"Considering," said Miles, "how I treated you a few years ago, and what you owe to that treatment, I should have thought you might behave rather differently to-night; you might have shown a little generosity, outlaw as I am."
"You remind me," said Dick, "that in '82, in the scrub near Balranald, you stuck up me and my mate, and took almost everything we had—except our money. I didn't require to be reminded of that forbearance of yours. I haven't forgotten it, and I know pretty well its worth by now, though hitherto I have overvalued it. But that old account—supposing it to be one, for argument's sake—was squared last month; you have been fool enough to open a new one."
"It is a pity," said Miles, bitterly, "that I didn't let Jem Pound knife you!"
"On the contrary, through saving me then you found one man in England actually ready to screen you from justice. If you had not broken faith with him that man would screen you still; but as it is—Steady! don't move! I am pressing the trigger."
"Do you mean that you are going to betray me after all?" cried Miles, in a quick gasp of dismay, yet drawing back—he had taken a step forward in his agitation.
"What else would you have me do? Give you another chance? Honestly," cried Dick, with honesty in his tone, "I wish that I could! But can you expect it?"
"Listen to me!" cried Miles, in a deep faltering voice. "Listen to me!"
"I am listening."
"The other day, then—I mean the night you found me out, you and those blood-suckers—I was on the brink of a new life! You smile—but before Heaven it is the truth! I had lived for weeks as I never lived before—among good people. Bad as I was, they influenced me, at first without my knowing it. It was a new side of life to me. I found it was the best side. I grew—well, call it happy. Then I looked back and loathed the old days. I began to map out a better life for myself. I was a new man, starting afresh. I thanked God for my escape, for it seemed like His act."
"If the fellow isn't in earnest," thought Dick, "this is the worst blasphemy I ever heard. I half think he means what he says, poor wretch."
"It was you that blotted out that new existence—just as it opened out before me! It was you that drove me from my haven! It was you that turned me adrift in a city full of foes! So much for your side of the balance between us!"
Dick was half-carried away by the man's rough eloquence, and the note of pathos in his deep tones. But he was only half-carried away; he was a man hard to shift when his stand was once taken. His answer was shrewd:
"That city is the safest place in the world for such as you—safer even than the bush. As to your friends, did you expect to live on them forever?"
The other's vehemence was checked.
"Perhaps you intended to become one of the family!" said Edmonstone scornfully, pursuing his advantage.
Miles pulled himself together, and dismissed this keen question with a smile and a wave of the hand; but the smile faded quickly; nor had it been anything better than a ghastly mockery.
"You do not appreciate my position," said Miles presently, fetching a deep sigh; "you cannot put yourself in my place. No honest man could, I suppose! And you shut me off from all decent living; you made me bid good-bye to the people who had befriended me, and somehow—well, made me wish I was a little less the ruffian! I became an outcast! I tried to make new friends, but failed. I had lost my nerve somehow—that was the worst of it! I resolved to throw it up, and quit England. I took my passage for New York, and—"
"Do you mean what you say? Have you actually done that?"
"Yes. The ticket is in my room, which is opposite this room." He pointed to the door. "I can bring it to show you."
"No; stay where you are; I believe you. When do you sail?"
"In a week—next Tuesday."
Dick breathed more freely. Here was an extenuating circumstance of the broken compact. On the whole, Dick was glad to find one.
"Go on," said Dick, in a slightly less hostile tone: "tell me the rest, and what it was that induced you to come up here."
"Surely you can see the rest for yourself? Surely you can put yourself in my place at this point? I own that hearing you were not to be of the party finally induced me to come—I thought you would not hear of it till afterwards; but I came to bid my friends good-bye! to get one more glimpse of a kind of life I had never seen before and shall never see again! for one more week in a pure atmosphere."
"Oh! not to make up to Miss Bristo, then?"
Blunt though the words were, each one was a self-inflicted stab to the heart of the man that spoke them.
"No!" cried Miles, and his voice was turned suddenly hoarse; "no, before Heaven!"
"If I believed it was that, I think I should pull this trigger on the spot."
"It is not," cried Miles; "I swear it is not," he whispered.
And Dick believed him then.
"Why, man," the bushranger went on, more steadily, "you have got me under the whip here. Down with the lash and cut me to ribbons the first time you see me playing false. Keep your eye on me; watch me all day; I can do nothing up here without your knowledge; I cannot speak but you will hear what it is I say. As to Miss Bristo, I will not go near her—but this is a small part of the whole. In my whole conduct you will find me behave like—like a changed man. Only let me stay this week out. But one other thing—a thing I would go down on my knees to you for, if that would do any good: don't open their eyes when I am gone. There will be no need to; they will forget me as Miles the squatter if you let them. Then let them. They think well of me because I saved the old man from drowning. Edmonstone, you can let me keep their good opinions if you will. God help me! they are the only good opinions I ever honestly earned, because I got them entirely through that simple, paltry affair at the seaside. Do not rob me of them, now or afterwards. That is all I ask."
Dick was beginning to waver.
There was an honest ring in Ned Ryan's asseverations; and after all it was just possible that a villain, who had shown a soft side at least once before, might be softened right through by the gracious influence of an English home. Then Sundown, the bushranger, desperado though he had been, had preserved hands unstained by blood; and Sundown the bushranger had saved him, Edmonstone, from death and ruin in the Australian wilds, and Colonel Bristo from drowning. Such acts could not be made light of or forgotten, no matter who was their author.
Dick was relenting, and the other saw it.
"Stay!" said Miles, suddenly. "You have my word only so far. I can show you a better pledge of good faith if you will let me."
"Where is it?"
"In my room."
Edmonstone nodded. Miles left the room, and returned immediately with a paper, which he handed to Edmonstone.
"Why, this is a receipt of passage-money for two!" said Edmonstone, looking up. "You are not going out alone, then?"
"No," said Miles. His voice was low. His back was to the window, through which grey dawn was now stealing. It was impossible to see the expression on his face—its outline was all that was visible.
"Who is going with you?"
"My wife!" whispered Miles.
Dick was taken aback, glad, incredulous.
"Your wife!" he said. "Then you admit that she is your wife? When did you see her?"
"Yesterday."
"But not until then!" Dick meant to put a question; he did not succeed in his excitement—his tone was affirmative.
"No, not until then," said Miles quietly; "because, though I have been watching her as closely as I dared, it was the first chance I got of seeing her without seeing Pound. He thinks she has not seen me since the night in Bushey Park. She must not escape him until the very day of joining me on board the steamer. If she did, he would find her sooner or later; and then he would find me, which is all he is living for. That man would murder me if he got the chance. Do you understand now?"