"What is it, Lacey? Now, out with it. You have something unpleasant to tell me, and don't like doing it. I'll bet you drinks that I can guess what it is. I saw you start when I mentioned the Capricornian Pastoralists' Bank. Has that 'busted' too?"

"Yes. It smashed yesterday as a result of the Dacre collapse. The news was in my rag this morning."

"Was it? I didn't look at the _Clarion_ to-day. Is it a bad case?"

"Very bad; about a shilling in the pound is all that will come out of the wreck. Will you be hard hit?"

"Rather! Curls me up like a corkscrew. To pay Mrs Tallis her six thousand pounds I gave a mortgage on Ocho Rios for five thousand pounds as I only had about three or four thousand pounds in the Capricornian.

I'm deuced lucky that it wasn't more."

He rose from his seat and paced angrily to and fro on the verandah for a moment or two, then he stopped suddenly, and a smile lit up his scarred face.

"What an a.s.s I am, Lacey! The thing can't be helped, but only a little while ago I had made up my mind to give Kaburie to my sister; and now I can't pay for Kaburie, for my draft for six thousand pounds is worthless to Mrs Tallis, and all the labouring of mustering and branding has gone for nothing. Poor little woman! I am sorry for her! Isn't it a beastly mess?"

"You think too much of others, Gerrard, and too little of yourself."

"I don't! I'm very fond of being good to myself, I can a.s.sure you. But a smack in the face like this is enough to make a saint swear like an Australian Member of Parliament. Now, I bought Kaburie with the idea of making it a breeding station--prize cattle and all that sort of thing--for Ocho Rios. Then when I received this telegram from my agents in Melbourne telling me that my sister would be left penniless, I made up my mind to write to her by the next mail south, and tell her that Kaburie was for her and my niece Mary. And another thing I wanted to do was to give a man I know a good lift." (He meant Fraser.) "And now I'll be as good as stony-broke for the next two years."

"I wish I could help you," began Lacey, earnestly.

"Thanks, old man. It is awfully good of you, but I shall pull through all right in the end, and with a good season or two should easily lift the mortgage on Ocho Rios. All I am scared of now is a drought, but if a drought does come, I can't stop it, and therefore, it is no use my worrying about it." He hoisted his feet upon the table, and touched the bell for the waitress. "Well, thank heavens, Lacey, I still have a thirst, and an iced brandy and soda is very soothing to the nerves.

Milly, bring the ice again please, and if you see the boy tell him to come here."

Jim soon appeared, still looking subdued and depressed.

"Sit down here, old son, and have a long drink of ginger ale with a lump of ice in it," and he put his hand on the boy's arm, and made him sit down between himself and Lacey. "Jim, my son, I've just had some beastly bad news. I've lost a lot of money, and you and I will have to work like n.i.g.g.e.rs when we get to Ocho Rios. Savvy?"

"Yes, Uncle Tom. I will work very, very hard for you."

"For us both, Jim, and for Mary and Aunt Lizzie; for we are all in the same boat I'll tell you the whole yarn by and by; but for the present well talk about something else for a change."

Lacey looked at him in silent admiration and wonder. "Nothing can disturb the equanimity of such a serene mind," he thought, "and I like him for taking the youngster into his confidence like that."

"I wonder what made Aulain leave so suddenly," said Gerrard, as Milly appeared with the ice, and the ginger ale for Jim. "It was strange of him not to even leave a note for me."

"Oh! when a man has fever he does very queer things. All he told me was that he was off to Brisbane to tender his resignation in person, and as that is against the regulations he hoped to be dismissed. He has been very strange lately. I think that matters have gone wrong in a certain quarter."

Gerrard nodded. "I know. Well, I'm sorry if it is the case. She is a bonny little lady."

Milly again appeared. "If you please, Mr Gerrard, Sergeant Macpherson would like to see you for a few minutes on important business."

"All right, Milly! Ask him to come up. Jim, I hope you haven't been up to any games while I was away."

The local Sergeant of Police was shown up.

"Good evening, sir," he said. "I have just had a wire from Cardwell from Inspector Sheridan, saying that news had come through by the mail boat from Somerset, that there has been a very bad bush fire up your way, and Ocho Rios station is destroyed."

"Any lives lost?"

"No, sir, but the fire spread all over the run for fifty miles about, and your stockman thinks that there are hardly two hundred head of cattle left I am sorry to bring you such bad news, sir."

"Oh! don't apologise, Sergeant," was the quiet reply, "I'm getting used to bad news. Milly, bring a chair for Mr Macpherson, and another big gla.s.s, and some more ice. Now sit down, Sergeant, and tell me all about it. Jim, get off that railing, or you'll fall off into the street, and break your leg. My luck is dead against me. Light your pipe, Sergeant, and make yourself comfy."

CHAPTER XVII

"The saying that misfortunes never come singly seems to be verified in your case, Mr Gerrard," said Kate Fraser, as, a fortnight after he had received the news of Westonley's death, he was relating his disastrous experiences to her and her father.

"Looks like it, doesn't it? But there are lots of fellows who have had worse luck than me, and so I shouldn't 'make a song' over mine. Now, do you know the story of Knowles's life?"

"No, he has never told us."

"Well, he told it to me yesterday" (Gerrard had been to Kaburie to tell the dapper little overseer that he could not pay for the station, and that he, Knowles, must re-take possession as manager for Mrs Tallis), "and I think the poor little chap only related it out of pure sympathy for me when I explained to him how I was fixed, and how sorry I was for him--as well as for myself--for I had doubled the salary he was receiving from Mrs Tallis."

"He told _me_ that," said Kate, and her eyes sparkled with fun.

"Naturally, he would tell _you_" and Gerrard, with a faint quiver of one eyelid, gave Douglas Fraser a sly glance. "I am sure you must be the recipient of the confidences of all the country side, and would never 'give any one away,' as vulgar persons like myself would say; so please don't 'give me away' to Knowles." Then his voice changed. "Miss Fraser, that little man is both a hero and a martyr. He was in the Naval Brigade at Sebastopol, and was recommended for the V.C. for distinguished bravery in one of the futile attacks on the Redan. Did you know that?"

"No! He only told us that he was with Peel's Naval Brigade and had seen most of the fighting, was severely wounded, and that after he came home he left the Navy through ill-health, and came to Australia."

"Well, he didn't get the Cross after all; that was his first bit of bad luck. Then his father, who was always looked upon as a very wealthy man, went smash for a huge amount, which ruined hundreds of people, and then shot himself; so poor Knowles left the Navy and took a billet as house-master at a boys' college. Six months after, his uncle, Lord Accrington, died, and left Knowles twenty thousand pounds. Of that twenty thousand pounds he kept only five hundred pounds; every penny of the rest he gave to his dead father's creditors."

"How n.o.ble of him," said Kate. "It was indeed, 'but you see,' he said to me, 'I didn't want the money. My mother had died years before, and I have no brothers or sisters, and it would have been a disgraceful thing for me to have kept the money after what had occurred. Lord Accrington was my mother's brother, and I was always a favourite of his (he did not like my father, and had not spoken to him for years). I never expected he would leave me a cent, and so it was no sacrifice on my part' And then he said that ten years ago he had saved enough money to buy a small sheep station in the Riverina District, and then came the drought of '72 which broke him."

"Poor fellow!" said Kate, "I shall like him now more than ever."

Gerrard nodded. "One doesn't often come across such men. And, as I was saying, I have no reason to make a song over my affairs when so many other fellows have had worse luck than me."

Douglas Fraser, who for the past few days had been depressed in spirits, said, as he rose from his seat:

"True, Gerrard. It is of no use any one girding at his misfortunes, if they are not caused by himself. Sometimes a man thinks in mining parlance that he has 'struck it rich,' and straightway begins building his Chateaux en Espagne. Then he finds he has bottomed on a rank duffer, and wants to swear, as I do now." He smiled and spread out his chest, "Kate, I'm going up to the claim to see Sam Young."

"And Mr Gerrard and I are going to the creek to catch some fish for supper."

"Very well! I shall come back that way and join you," and the big man strode off to the claim--half a mile away.

"Your father is not in his usual spirits, I think, Miss Fraser," said Gerrard, as he and Kate walked down to the fishing pool through the ever-sighing she-oaks which lined the banks of the creek.

"He is not; the reef has been gradually thinning out, and Sam Young told him yesterday that he is afraid it will pinch out altogether. Last Sat.u.r.day's cleaning up at the battery only yielded ten ounces of melted gold--worth about forty pounds--and the week's expenses came to one hundred and forty pounds. I am afraid, Mr Gerrard, that father and I and all the men will have to leave Fraser's Gully, and set our faces to the North, and leave the old battery behind us to the native bears and opossums and iguanas and snakes," and her voice faltered, for she dearly loved the place where she had spent so many happy years.

"I am sorry," said Gerrard, musingly. "I suppose your father--if he does leave here--from what he said to me is thinking of going to the newly-opened gold fields on the Gilbert River?"

"Yes, in that direction at any rate, prospecting as we travel. That is the one thing that consoles me; I love the idea of seeing new country."

Gerrard made no answer for some minutes. He was thinking of a certain place on a creek, running into the Batavia River--the place "with a hunking big boulder standing up in the middle of a deep pool," of which he had spoken to Aulain, and he now half-regretted his promise to him to "keep it dark" for six months.