The girl blushed deeply as she took the letter, for she instinctively divined that Gerrard had purposely deferred giving her the letter whilst Forde was with them. And from that moment she liked him.

"Thank you, Mr Gerrard," she said, as she placed the letter in the pocket of her skirt. "Is Mr Aulain any better?"

"Yes, but he won't be 'fit' for another six weeks or so. He has had a very bad attack of fever this time. Of course you know that he and I are old friends?"

"Oh, yes, indeed! He always writes and speaks of you as 'old Tom-and-Jerry.' And I am so really, really glad to meet you, Mr Gerrard.

Randolph says that you are the finest scrub rider in Australia, and he is next."

"Ah, no, he is the first, as I told Lacey a couple of days ago. His own troopers can hardly follow him when----"

"Don't, Mr Gerrard! I know what you were about to say," and she shuddered; "but please do not ever speak to me of Mr Aulain in connection with the Native Police. I loathe and detest them, and would rather he were a working miner or a stockman, than a leader of such fiends."

"Randolph Aulain is a different stamp of a man from the usual Inspector, Miss Fraser. No one has ever accused him of cruelty or unnecessary severity in discharging his duties."

"It is an ignominious duty, I think, to shoot and hara.s.s the blacks in the manner the police do," persisted Kate. "When the brig _Maria_ was lost here on the coast some years ago, and some of the crew killed by the blacks, the Government acted most cruelly. The Native Police not only shot the actual murderers, but ruthlessly wiped out whole camps of tribes that were hundreds of miles away from where the vessel was lost."

Gerrard nodded. "So I heard. But I can a.s.sure you, Miss Fraser, that the Native Police under men like Aulain, can, and do, good service.

The blacks in this part of the colony are bad enough, but on Cape York Peninsula, they are worse--daring and ferocious cannibals. The instinct to slay all strangers is inborn with them. Some of the tribes on the Batavia River district I believe to be absolutely untamable."

"Would _you_ shoot a black-fellow, Mr Gerrard, for spearing a horse or bullock?"

"No, certainly not! But you see, Miss Fraser, we squatters would not mind them killing a beast or two for food occasionally, but they will spear perhaps thirty or forty, and so terrify a large mob of cattle that they will seek refuge in the ranges, and eventually become so wild as to be irrecoverable. I can put down my losses alone from this cause at over a thousand head. Then, again, two of my stockmen were killed and eaten three years ago; and this necessitated inflicting a very severe punishment."

The girl sighed, but said no more on the subject.

"You will stay with us to-night, will you not, Mr Gerrard?" she said as Forde returned. "It will be so pleasant for father and me to have both Mr Forde and you with us for the night."

"Thank you, I will, with pleasure. Perhaps your father--and you too--will come on to, Kaburie with me in the morning, show me the ropes, and tell me something about the country. And then you can see how the garden looks as well."

Kate's eyes brightened. "Indeed, we will I I love Kaburie. When we heard that it was to be sold, father tried to lease it from poor Mrs Tallis, but she wanted to sell outright, so father has to keep 'pegging away'

at the claim, and our old rattle-trap of a crushing mill. But some day, perhaps, we shall 'strike it rich' as the miners say."

The horses were again saddled, and the party set out on their way, riding single file along the narrow bush track towards the ranges in which the little mining camp was situated. The sun was well towards the west when they came in sight of the rough, bark-roofed shed with uncovered sides, which contained the battery plant, and Fraser's equally unpretentious dwelling, which, with three or four miners' huts const.i.tuted the camp. A bright, brawling little mountain stream, with high banks lined with the graceful whispering she-oaks, gave a pleasant and refreshing appearance to the scene, and the clash and rattle of the heavy stampers as they crushed the golden quartz, echoed and re-echoed among the rugged tree clad range.

A big, broad-shouldered man of about sixty years of age, who was engaged in thrusting a log of ironbark wood into the boiler furnace, turned as he heard Forde's loud _coo-e-e!_ and came towards them. He was bareheaded, and clad in a coa.r.s.e flannel singlet, and dirty moleskin pants, with knee-boots; and his perspiring face was streaked with oil and grease from the engine. Taking a piece of cotton-waste from his belt, he wiped his hands leisurely as the three travellers dismounted.

"Father," said Kate, "I couldn't find the horses. But I 'found' Mr Forde, and this is Mr Gerrard, who is going to Kaburie, and who has promised to camp here to-night."

"Glad to see you," and the big man shook hands with Gerrard; "how are you, Forde? Get along up to the house, Kate, and I'll follow you soon.

Give Forde and Mr Gerrard towels. I daresay they'll be glad of a bathe in the creek before supper. You know where the whisky is, parson. Help yourself and Mr Gerrard."

"How is she going, father?" asked Kate.

"Oh! just the same, about half an ounce or so."

("She", in miners' parlance, was the stone then being crushed--a crushing is always a "she." Sometimes "she" is a "bully-boy with a gla.s.s eye; going four ounces to the ton." Sometimes "she" is a "rank duffer."

Sometimes "she" is "just paying and no more.")

Simple as was the girl's question, Gerrard noted the grey shadow of disappointment in her dark eyes, as her father replied to it, and a quick sympathy for her sprung up in his heart. And to Fraser himself he had taken an instantaneous liking. Those big, light-grey Scotsman's eyes with their heavy brows of white overshadowing, and the rough, but genial voice reminded him of his brother-in-law Westonley.

"I'll give the old man a lift," he said to himself, as he walked beside Kate to the house.

"What are you thinking of, Mr Fraser?" asked Kate, "I really believe you are talking to yourself."

"Was I?" he laughed, "it is a habit of mine that has grown on me from being so much alone. What a splendid type of a man your father is, Miss Fraser."

The glance of delight which shone in her eyes made Tom Gerrard's heart quicken as it had never before to the voice of any woman.

CHAPTER X

Douglas Fraser was a widower, his wife having died when Kate was only four years of age. She was now nineteen, and had been her father's constant companion and helpmate ever since the death of her mother.

Fraser, who to all appearance was only the ordinary type of working miner common to all Australasian gold-fields, was in reality a highly-educated man, who had been not only a successful barrister, but a judge of the District Court of New South Wales. The death of his wife, however, to whom he was pa.s.sionately devoted, changed the whole course of his existence. Resigning his appointment, he withdrew himself absolutely from all society, sold his house and such other property as he possessed, and then, to the astonishment of his many warm friends, disappeared with his little daughter from Sydney altogether. A year or so later one of these friends came across him riding down the main street of the mining township of Gympie (on the Mary River in Queensland). He was in the ordinary diggers' costume, and the once clean-shaved, legal face was now covered with a rough, strong beard.

"How are you, Favenc?" said his ex-Honour the Judge, quietly, as he pulled up his horse, and dismounted; "have you too, caught the gold-field fever, that I see you in Gympie?"

"No! I'm here on circuit with Judge Blakeney--Crown-Prosecuting. And how are you, Fraser?"

"Oh, very well! I've gone in for mining; always had a hankering that way. So far I have had no brilliant success, but hope to get on to something good in the course of time."

For some years after this he wandered from one gold-field to another, always getting further northward, and always accompanied by his child, to whom he was able to give a good education, though not in a style that would have met with the approbation of the princ.i.p.al of a ladies' school. He had finally settled at Fraser's Gully, where he had discovered a large, but not rich reef, and for the past five years he and some half a dozen miners had worked it, sometimes doing very well, at others their labour yielding them a poor return. On the whole, however, he was making money, and the life suited him. Very often he would urge Kate to go to Sydney for a year or two, and see something of the world, under the care of her mother's people, but she steadfastly refused to leave him.

"It would be simply horrible for me, father. I could not stand it for even a month. I am very, very happy here with you, and only wish I had more to do."

"You have quite enough I think, little woman--keeping house for me, milking and dairy work, and making bread for seven hungry men."

"I like it. And then I am the only woman about here now that Mrs Tallis has gone, and I feel more important than ever. But I _do_ wish I were a man, and could help you more than I do."

Between father and daughter there had ever been the greatest love and confidence, and their existence, though often monotonous, was a happy one. To her father's miners, "Miss Kate" was a fairy G.o.ddess, and consternation reigned among them when one day a pa.s.sing Jewish hawker told them that it was rumoured that Parson Forde was "a stickin' up ter Miss Fraser, and the match was as good as made."

The men had bought a couple of bottles of whisky from the hawker when this portentous announcement was made, and little "c.o.c.kney Smith" the youngest man of the party, who was just about to drink off the first grog he had tasted since his semi-annual spree at Boorala, set it down untouched.

"I thought the bloomin' Holy Joe was a comin' 'ere pretty frequent,"

he said, "but didn't think he was after Miss Kate. Well, all I can say is,"--he raised his gla.s.s--"that suthin'll 'appin to 'im. I 'ope 'e may be bloomin' well drownded when 'e's crossin' a creek."

"Shut up, c.o.c.kney," growled Sam Young, an old grey-haired miner, "it's only a Boorala yarn, and Boorala is as full of liars as the bottomless pit is full of wood and coal merchants. And it doesn't become you to call the parson a Holy Joe. Maybe you've forgottten that when you busted your last cheque at Hooley's pub in Boorala, and had the dilly tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, that it was the parson who brought you back here, you boozy little swine. Didn't he, boys?"

"You bet he did," was the unanimous response.

"And come here and give you four good nips a day outer his own flask until you was rid of the green dogs with red eyes, and flamin' fiery tails that you was screechin' about," went on Sam, relentlessly. "If she's going to hitch up with the parson it can't be helped. Anyways he's the right sort of a sky pilot; a white man all over, and can shoe a horse, and do a bit of bullocking{*} as well as he can preach."

* Hard manual labour.

"Wasn't there some talk about her and the Black Police officer being engaged?" said the hawker, who was a great retailer of bush gossip.

"Wasn't there some talk of you havin' done time for trying to do the fire insurance people?" angrily retorted Young, who was wroth at the hawker's familiar way of speaking of the G.o.ddess of Fraser's Gully.