"It's queer," said Nic to himself. "One minute you regularly hate the fellow, and feel half afraid of him; the next you quite like and feel as if it would be nice to know more about him. No, it wouldn't: he's a convict, and they warned me about him."

Nic became very thoughtful, and though his lovely Blue Mountain parrot, the object of his morning's walk, was close to his side, he did not glance at it, and the beautiful birds the convict had mentioned were for the time forgotten. For he found himself wondering what Leather had done, and why he had done it; whether he was a very bad man; and gradually found his head getting into quite a muddle of conflicting surmises.

"I wish I hadn't let him think I was suspicious," he said to himself.

"He jumped at it directly. I suppose I showed it pretty plainly. But no wonder! Any one would have felt as I did. To hand over one's gun to a convict, and give him a chance to point it at you and say, 'Now then, hand over that powder flask and that belt and all your wads.' Of course, so that he could go off--bush-ranging, don't they call it? Why, it seemed a mad thing to do.

"And yet I did it," said Nic to himself, after a thoughtful pause; "and he didn't run off. Why, he acted just as a gentleman would under the circ.u.mstances. I did feel sorry for him. There, I don't care: he can't be such a bad fellow as old Brookes wants to make out. Brookes is an old beast! I'd tell him so for two pins."

Nic's thoughts were flowing very freely, and feeling quite excited he went on:

"He must have done something very bad, and he has been severely punished; then they let him come out from the gang to be an a.s.signed servant, and he's trying hard to make up for the past, and when he gets bullied and ill-used it makes him look savage and fierce, of course.

"Well," said Nic, after a thoughtful pause, "I can keep him in his place and yet be civil to him. I'm not going to jump on a man because he has done wrong; and I don't see why he shouldn't be forgiven--if he deserves it, of course, and--somehow, though I don't like him, I seem to like him a good deal, and that's about as big a puzzle as some of the things in mathematics, and--" This next was aloud:

"Oh, murder! Needles and pins! Wasps and hornets! Oh!"

Nic had jumped up, to begin dancing about, slapping his legs, shaking his trousers, pulling off his shoes, and trying hard to get rid of something that was giving him intense pain.

"It's those bees!" he cried. "They've got up the legs of my trousers; and he said they had no stings. No! ants!--You nasty, miserable, abominable little wretches--no, big wretches," he muttered, as he picked off and crushed one by one the virulent creatures, which had made a lodgment upon his legs and evidently come to the conclusion that they were good to eat.

He soon freed himself; but the tingling, poisonous nature of their bites was still very evident, and excited an intense desire to rub and scratch.

"Why, there's quite a regiment of the little vicious wretches!" cried the boy as he was going back to where his gun stood by the tree. "I suppose they smelt me."

It seemed so for the moment, for a long line of the ants could be traced through the gra.s.s on and on; and then Nic uttered an exclamation, sprang forward and caught up his specimen, to hold it at arm's length and begin shaking it.

"Why, it's covered with them," he cried, as he swept them off, got them on his hands, saw them racing up his arms, and found them so quick and so tight-clinging that the task grew painful in the extreme before he could get rid of them, and when he did he tossed the rumpled, disfigured bird back amongst his enemies.

"There!" he cried: "eat it then. It's completely spoiled. What a pity I did not let it live!"

"Never mind, Nic," said his father that evening, as he sat at home, giving himself from time to time a vicious rub. "Take it as a lesson.

We all have to go through that sort of thing, and you'll know better next time. But it was a fine specimen, you say?"

"Lovely," replied Nic eagerly; but he did not say a word about who shot the bird, for he felt that if he did his father would be annoyed.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

A DAY'S FISHING.

Nic felt uncomfortable. There was something fascinating about being in company with a man who knew so much of the wild nature of his country; but then the man was a convict--he had been warned against him--and a companion that the doctor would not approve. But still, somehow or other, the boy was constantly finding himself in Leather's company, for the man was as much drawn to Nic as he was to the convict.

The consequence was that they were often together out in the wilder parts of the doctor's great estate.

One day, after a hint from his father, consequent upon his saying that he was going to explore the gully by the waterfall, he had taken the old fishing-rod and line from where it hung upon two hooks in the kitchen--a rod the doctor had used in old trout and salmon-fishing days, and had brought over on the chance of wanting, but had never found time to use.

"That gully is very beautiful higher up, Nic, and I have seen plenty of fish in the deep parts, gliding about among the tree roots and old trunks that have been washed down in the floods and got wedged in. I should certainly take the rod. The men tell me they are capital eating, but I have never tried."

"We had a dish one day, father, when you were out," said Janet.

"How did you get them?" asked the doctor.

"Samson brought them in--a basketful," cried Hilda.

"Then you had better ask old Sam what he baited with, and take your bait accordingly."

"Yes, father," said the boy.

"Take the biggest basket, Nic," said Hilda mischievously.

"Ah, you think I shan't catch any," said her brother, nodding his head; "but you'll see."

The rod was dusty, but good and strong, and in the bag the doctor pointed out there were plenty of good new hooks and lines; so leaving them ready, Nic went down the garden to where he expected to find old Sam.

Sure enough there he was hoeing away, and he stopped and wiped his perspiring face upon his arm as the boy came up.

"That's right, sir," he cried. "Glad to see you here. I want you to take a bit more hinterest in my garden. See they taters: ain't they getting on? Look at my peas and beans too. I calls they a sight, I do.

Make some o' they gardeners in Old England skretch their wigs and wish they could grow things like 'em."

"Beautiful, Sam; but--"

"There's cauliflowers too, sir: ain't they splendid?"

"Couldn't be better, Sam; but--"

"Try my peas, sir." _Pop_! "There's a pod. Dozen fine uns, just as if they was a row o' green teeth laughing at you."

"Deliciously tender, Sam; but--"

"It's the sun, Master Nic; it's the sun," said the old man, who was too much wrapped up in his subject to heed the boy's remarks. "Sun's a scarce article at home, but here you gets it all day long, and it's the clouds is scarce. Why, you know summer at home, where the skies seem all like so much sopping wet flannel being squeezed; and not a sign o'

sunshine for six weeks. What's to grow then?"

"Nothing, I suppose, Sam; but--"

"Of course you wants the water, sir. More sun you gets more water you wants, and that's why I tiddles it all along through the garden from up above yonder, just ketching it above where it comes over the waterfall."

"Yes, waterfall, Sam," cried Nic heartily. "I say, didn't you catch a lot of fish up there somewhere and bring home one day when my father was out?"

"To be sure I did," said the old man, now beginning to lend an ear.

"That's right. I want to catch some too."

"You'd ketch 'em then, my lad. There's lots on 'em."

"Tell me how you caught them. What did you use for bait?"

"Shovel," said the old man, grinning.