CHAPTER XII.

AT THE GOLD DIGGINGS.

"More and more my eyes were clouded, Till at last God's glorious light Passed away from me for ever, And I lived and live in night."

FAR away from the quiet English shire of Hereford, under a burning Australian sun, a group of people of all ages, and from all parts of the world, were gathered together hard at work digging for gold. Not long before, a vein of the precious metal had been discovered at Kiandra, and a crowd of people from all parts of the world had resorted thither, allured by the hope of making a fortune.

Gold to be had for the picking it up, or at least by simply digging for it! Such was the idea which had impressed the mind of many who had rushed to the Kiandra gold-fields. Little had they reckoned on the hardships before them—days and nights of toil spent standing above the knees in water; laborious digging, only to be rewarded, in most cases, by small nuggets of gold which, when separated from the dross mixed with it, often proved of little or no value. Whilst provisions, and even the bare necessaries of life, could be obtained only at fabulous prices. Add to this a climate more changeable than that of almost any other part of the world, and you will scarcely wonder that, although in some few cases large nuggets were obtained and the coveted fortune made, to the great majority of diggers, the gold-fields of Kiandra brought only disappointment, and in many instances ruined health and an early grave in a foreign land.

But on the warm day we write of, hope was filling every breast, and work seemed light under its influence; for that very morning in one of the claims, some specially good nuggets had been found, and visions of abundance of gold rose before many eyes. The burning rays of the sun struck fiercely on the workers; but they heeded it not, led on by the thirst for gold. But in the group a momentary lull came, and the word rung out—

"Carry him into the shed, lads. The sun has been too much for him. Carry him in, I say."

The speaker, a pleasant-looking man, putting down the "cradle" in which he was washing the gold, went forward and helped to lift a young lad who had fallen prostrate to the ground in the midst of his work.

They carried him to a canvas hut, and laid him on a low bed there.

Presently he opened his eyes and looked around.

"Where am I," he said, "and what has happened?"

The man who had so kindly helped to carry him to the hut said cheerily, "Don't be frightened, Will; you're in good hands. 'Twas just the sun was a bit too hot for you, and you fainted, that's all. You'll have to lie still a bit, my good fellow; but I tell you what, if a nugget falls to my share I'll halve it with you. I'm not one to forget the good turn you did me, Will, in keeping me from the gaming-table the week we spent together in Sydney. Thank God you did, my boy, for I know what it would have led to now."

The boy groaned, and turned uneasily on his bed, then said, "Alick, don't say you or any one else owes anything to me; only, God helping me, I'll never touch a card in my life again, nor let any one do so, if I can help it."

"There now, Will," said his friend, "you must not be speaking too much, nor vexing yourself over the past, whatever wrong you may have done then. You're none so old yet, my boy, that you can't retrieve the past and live a useful life in the future. Just wait till you and I get enough of gold here, then we'll away from the whole concern, diggers and all, and either settle in Sydney or go home to dear old England again and join our friends there."

At these words, the lad gave a half-stifled sob; and the digger, thinking he was best to remain quiet awhile, withdrew without saying another word.

But once outside the door he said to himself, "Poor boy, poor boy! I can't think his sin can have been a great one, but it troubles him sorely. I wish he would tell me all about it, and also what his real name is, and then I might help him more. He is but a slip of a lad yet, and a clever one too. He should not be here, 'tis plain; for, as a rule, they are but a rough lot of men we are amongst."

When Alick Barton returned from his day's work to the hut which he shared with Willie Smith, he found the lad much worse, and for many days to come Alick watched beside his friend as he tossed about in the delirium of fever. Many names escaped his lips, but they conveyed little information to the kind watcher, saving that he was sure the lad's father must be alive, for again and again he had called on him, once saying:

"O father, forgive me, only forgive me, and I'll never, never touch a card again!"

Weeks passed, and Barton, as he was called by his mates, was no longer to be seen at work in the claim. It was whispered amongst the diggers that he had been successful in obtaining some large nuggets, and gone off to Sydney along with Will Smith to spend them there.

Others contradicted that story; but one thing was certain, that both Barton and Will had disappeared from the Kiandra diggings.

After many weeks had elapsed, a digger, who had lately come from Sydney, told that the day he had left that city, he had seen Barton going up the steps of a large hospital there. And such was the case. Barton had realized enough at the gold diggings to enable him to take Will Smith along with himself back to Sydney. The lad, although he had so far rallied from the fever which had kept him in bed for weeks, still remained so languid and weak that his friend had become alarmed about his state, and resolved, if possible, to remove him from a place of which neither the climate nor the work was suitable for him.

When he first broached the subject to his companion the lad refused to go.

"No, no, Barton," he said; "I'll not hear of your relinquishing all your prospects of making a fortune for my sake. Never mind me, my good fellow; I'll get better by-and-by, and though I fear I will never make a digger, or get money in a gold-claim, I need not either beg or be a burden to you. Several of the men have asked me to give them some lessons in reading and writing in the evenings, saying they will pay me well for it; for they say, 'What's the use of getting gold and setting up as gentlefolk if we can neither read nor write?' And you know, Barton, there are lots of them can do neither. So you see I'll just stay here and turn schoolmaster. Doesn't that sound grand?"

But the laugh which accompanied these words was so bitter and unboy-like that it grated on the ear of his friend, and his only reply was—

"I tell you, Will, stay here longer I will not; so if you wish to keep school you can try your hand at it in Sydney."

Will Smith held out against moving for a while, but he had to yield at last, and he and Barton began by easy stages the journey to Sydney.

When they reached it, Will was so exhausted that his friend's first care was, through the influence of a doctor there, to get him admitted into one of the best hospitals of the city, where every care and attention would be paid to him. And there, surrounded by every comfort, the lad lay for weeks, having time for serious thought, and experiencing evidently bitter remorse for past sin, learning, as so many have learned, that "as we sow so shall we reap."

It was in the hospital that he confessed to Alick Barton that Smith was not his real name, and that he had left his home to escape the disgrace of being found out to have been a companion of sharpers and a frequenter of the gaming-table. But not all Barton's entreaties could get him to disclose the name he bore, or induce him to write and tell his friends where he was. Not yet would the lad humble himself to confess the sin committed against an earthly father; not yet had he as a little child entered into the kingdom of God.