WITH ALL HER HEART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11713, 24 July 1901, Page 3

WITH ALL HER HEART.

BY CHAELES GAEVICE, Author of ""At Love's Cost," " Love, the Tyrant," "The Shadow of Her Life," "A , Heritage of Hate," " Nell of Shorne Mills." " Just a Girl," V Etc.. Etc., Etc. SYNOPSIS.CHAPTER I.—The reader is introduced to Ronnie and Cottie Lorton, brother and sister, who are found Wandering aimlessly in the Australian -bush, having just escaped the clntche3 of a gang of bushrangers. They find their way to a hut, the tenant being temporarily absent. There the brother succumbs to exhaustion, and the sister decides to assume the male garb, also taking possession ' of : her brother's belt, containing papers of value and money. Shortly i after leaving the hut she stumbles on a gang of gold-diggers, and while listening from the top of a bank to their conversation, her foot slips and she tumbles into their midst. CHAPTER HI. After Cottie had told her great falsehood she and Geoffrey sat and talked for awhile; they talked about things in general, about Blue Pig camp, which he avoided, because he "liked to be alone;" about the chances of the gold discovery which the men from Blue Pig had made; about the rain season and the hot season'; about anything, in fact, but their respective pasts; this subject was avoided by them as if by tacit consent. In Australia, and in some other outlying parts of the world,: curiosity as to one's neighbour's antecedents is considered ill-bred, not to say impertinent. As they talked the girl's embarrassment wore away; indeed, she had not been very embarrassed at any moment. She disliked deceiving Geoffrey because he had been good to her and had protected her; but there was very little, if anything, of girlish shame in her regret. : ' ■ How should there be. when one comes to think of it? She had been brought up almost as a boy, and shared poor Ronnie's toils, adventures, aspirations. . And yet there was no sign of coarseness, roughness, or immodesty about her; something had kept the girl refined and pure-minded even in the midst of a digger's camp. .Her purity was. even better than the conventional innocence, and it had never occurred to her during the scene Iha related to remember her sex, as it certainly would have been remembered by any girl who had been brought up in the midst of our acute and hyper-civilisation. ■-.Nor did it seem to her that there would be any difficulty in playing her part. She had always worn her hair short for convenience; she was almost as strong as a boy) possessed perhaps more than the usual boy's courage, and, into the bargain, was dowered by that ready wit and power of self-possession which is woman's birthright. After a while the talk languished, and presently she slid from the box to the sheepskin in front of the fire, which, the night being somewhat chill, though the day had been hot, Geoffrey had made up, and very soon her head sank upon her arm and she' fell asleep. Geoffrey, had intended giving " the youngster" the inner room ; but as he looked down at her lie decided that he would let him remain sleeping where he was. .

The young man regarded" the graceful form and the handsome! and clearly-cut face, with its short, silky curls and its long lashes, with an expression of pity and tenderness which made his own face very good to look upon. "Poor little chap!" he said to himself. "Just a waif and stray on life's sea. I wonder what sent him ting my way? No matter what it was, here he is and I have got to take care of him; though, by George! he could scarcely have a worse guardian. Well, I suppose I must do my best for him. What small hands and feet the young beggar's got; doesn't look like an ordinary digger's or squatter's kid. I wonder who he is. Well, it's no business of mine!" ••.•-. • As he spoke he turned to the table and poured himself out some brandy; but, as he raised the can to his lips, some thought seemed to strike him; he glanced at the sleeping youngster a little shamefacedly; a flush 'rose, to his' face, and he slowly and deliberately poured the spirit back into the bottle; then, with a short. laugh, he betook himself to the inner room. Cottie woke early in the morning, and looked round her with a confused sense, which quickly grew to one of acute sorrow as the death 'of Ronnie and her own loneliness flashed upon her. But she thrust her grief from her, and springing to her feet, made up the fire, took up the water jar, and went out with it to the spring which she had noticed a little way. from the hut. Early as - she was, Geoffrey was up before her, and as she bathed her face and hands in a pool and filled her jar from a runnet above she heard his axe busy in the wood. She went back to the hut, put on the kettle, found the flour-barrel and made a damper, and while it was cooking swept out the hut and put things straight with the quick;and deft hand of a woman; so that when Geoffrey returned with his faggot of wood he pulled up short at the door and stared in amazement at the altered aspect of things. .'

" Holloa he said. "Good-morning! tVhy, I'm dashed if you oughtn't to have been a girl! The crib has never looked so tidy before." ' ' Cottie turned away to hide the blush— the blush of pleasure, not of shame, be it observed. • " You call it tidy, do you.'" she said. 1 call it a pigsty. Though maybe its, a little better than it was; out you. wait till I've had two or three days at it!" Geoffrey laughed, bub rather ruefully. "You're the first boy I knew with a love of neatness," he remarked; "and you've made the tea and the damper— I'm blessed • u -u As he spoke, he was about to pitch the faggot of wood into the corner, of the room, as per usual; but Cottie stopped him. ) " Not there!" she said, sharply. " What s the use of my tidying up if you make a mess directly? Put it outside!" ■ Geoffry smiled to himself but, man-like though he had no suspicion he was dealin with the more powerful sex— obeyed. . "Now, by the time you've washed yourself, breakfast will be ready," remarked Oottie. V ... r> "Oh!" he said. "Would you like me to put on a dress-suit?" "I don't know what you mean,' she returned. "But I don't think it would kill you to put on a clean shirt," she added, eyeing him critically, with her shapely head on one side and her lashes drooping. He laughed. "I've got another shirt or two somewhere," he said, "but I've got a kind of idea that they're worse than this. It's so long since that I've thought of my personal appearance, youngster, that I've almost forgotten that I possessed one." . When he returned, from his wash the breakfast was on the table, and he eyed its orderly arrangement with ft curious and comical smile. ;■■ ... . Cottie gave him his damper and his piece of toasted meat and poured out his tea ". as if she were performing a duty which fell to her by'' prescriptive right and Geoffrey watched her with amusement. "Where did'you learn to be so uncommon useful, eh, Ronnie?" he asked. " Oh, I don't know," she answered. " I've picked up a lot of things ; and I can do more than you can think. 1 Haven't you got any other knife but that jack one," she broke off, eyeing the knife with which he was cutting his breakfast. "You might clean it, anyhow." Geoffrey regarded it meditatively, as if lie had never seen it before, and gave it a perfunctory' wipe or two on his breeches, which provoked a moue of disgust from Cottie. She had herself very little appetite, but she saw that he hod a good breakfast; perhaps even she did not ■ guess that it was the most plentiful and comfortable he had eaten for many a long month. " Now I shall have to go down to the men," he said, rising; "you'd better come down with me and lend a hand; besides, if you don't put in. an appearance, they'll think you've bolted." ' " Let them think," said Cottie.' " I'll come down when I've cleared away—but perhaps you; think I'm going to run away?" she added, stopping suddenly in her collection of the cans and plates, 'and standing with downcast eyes. ! Geoffrey regarded her steadily for a moment; then he said, as he got his pick and spade: • ': ;" . ' - " No, I don't. I've got your promise, and I think you'll keep it. Anyway, I've given imy '.promise to shoot you if you try." ~

He tried to throw a fierce earnestness . into his voice; but the lad he was addressing was a girl; and she looked up into bis lace j and-laughed. • ■■ :' r - '_■';. '• i/J n {J\ //•■■■ The laugh,, soft and low, and strangely , musical for a boy, rang in his ears pleasantly as he strode down the steep. ' ' . ._ | Cottie went to the door and looked alter j him for a moment thoughtfully, noticing j again how differently he walked and carried j himself to the men she bad hitherto known; i then she went back to her work, and after clearing up the breakfast, attacked both the rooms. In the inner one she found some , shirts and socks belonging to Geoffrey, and she washed them out and hung them on the bushes outside the cottage. Then, having finished her cleaning-up and made the place look still more home-like, she made up the fire, slung the kettle on its hook, and with one comprehensive look round which had all the woman in it she went down the hill in Geoffrey's footsteps.' She found the men already at work in the bend of the valley. Two of the gang had already gone back to Blue -Pig, as arranged, and the others were working with the feverish eagerness, the intense absorption which the gold-seeker, and the gold-seeker alone, displays. The sun was fierce, the mens shirts were open, the perspiration was streaming from, them, as they panted over the pick and the shovel. They were so ab-sorbed-that they scarcelv glanced round as Cottie approached them, but Moser grunted and nodded to a pick grimly, as she advanced with her hands in her pockets and an air which was an admirable, imitation of poor Ronnie's. " Get to work, young 'un," he said. "If you'd been under my hand, you'd have been 'at it two or three hours ,ago. There's no i room for moochers in this camp.', : -.; » - "Shut up and let the boy alone.' Moser," said Geoffrey, coolly enough ; but Moser, after a growl or two, subsided.' Cottie gradually edged up to Geoffrey and worked side by side with him. He was working hard enough, but she noticed that he did not display any of the fierce eagerness which characterised the others ; and every now and then he paused ynd looked about;him to notice the flight of some bird or the movement of some living thing in the grass.:. ; Cottie picked away beside him ; but presently he tossed a cradle to her. - : '■• / '■'. : "Here, work that," he said; " its not quite so hard ,as picking. ' Oh, you know, how to do it, do. you?" he added, as: she worked the cradle to and fro in proper "fashion and deftly throw out the water end soil, leaving the heavier gold behind. "Oh, yes,'.' she said, with a little toss of her head; "I've done it scores of times. There's nothing you can teach me in this business." •'■.■' :/' ' •".. • " Nor in anything else," remarked Warner, who was working near them, eyeing Cottie shrewdly. "Boys is monkeys, and I suppose this one will be up to some trick or other." "Perhaps so," said Geoffrey; "but we'll wait till'he is, eh, Ronnie?" > Cottie shot a grateful glance at him, but said nothing. Presently they ceased to make remarks about her, and all worked in silence until the dinner-hour. Then each man dropped his shovel or pick or cradle and sank to the earth pantingly, as if he had been suddenly smitten clown by the hand of a giant, or as if his muscles had lost tho power to work ; and when they had rested for a few minutes lying prone, they ate their food in an absorbed and mechanical way like machines taking in fuel, casting, while they ate, hungry glances at the work at which they had stopped reluctantly. Cottie ate a few mouthfuls of damper, then strolled up the valley; for she was not yet tired, and this young lady was quite incapable of resting. until she was compelled to do so by cheer weariness. As she sauntered along she looked from side to side" with her keen young eyes. Not a detail of the configuration of the ground escaped her, and every now and then she would pause, almost inperceptibly, to kick at a piece of rock op mculd. . .-.' ■• 3 Suddenly her eyes grew sharper, if that were possible ; she glanced over her shoulder at the men, saw that they were not watching her, and, stopping quickly, examined a boulder, the surface of which she had skimmed with her toe. ' The result of her examination sent the colour to her face for a moment and' made her eyes sparkle, and she smiled rather mischievously. ?•■-. '.; v.- > ;,.'.,: After sauntering on a little farther, . she turned and went back for her pick, and saun"' tering again to the boulder she had examined, she began to dig immediately in front of : t, ■throwing ■ tip the earth with apparent carelessness,; but contriving to cover the front of the boulder with it. Then she went back to the men, and, in answer to their looks i Jrterrogation, remarked with a yawn : "I thought there might have been something up there." "You keep within bounds with the rest of us, young 'un," growled Moser, as he ■took up his tools. , ■ She shrugged her shoulders, and laughed shortly, as a boy might have done, and resumed work with the others.

The toil went on unremittingly until sundown. Cottie did not work particularly hard, and though Moser and Warner sometimes growled and grumbled at her she did not appear to be much affected by their disapproval; she kept near Geoffrey, the proceeds of their day's toil was collected, and handed to Moser to take charge of, and Geoffrey and Cottie, with their tools over their shoulders, dragged slowly up the steep to the hut. Then it became apparent why Cottie had been " saving" herself. " You go and get a wash while I get the supper," she said to Geoffrey. " You've done a hard day's work and are tired." He stared at her, and laughed at her tone of command, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow with the back of his sleeve. - " So have you done a hard day's work, and ought to be tired,' youngster," he said. " Oh, no, I haven't, and I ain't," she retorted, decisively;" I was only making believe half the time. I don't see any sense in working yourself to death, like most of the men in the diggings. By the time they've got the gold they've played themselves out, and have to go on the bend to recover; that's the worst of they're such idiots." To such impudence* as this Geoffrey felt that no reply could be adequate, so, with a short laugh of resignation, he went off to the stream for the wash he so sorely needed. When he returned, Cottie had also had a wash, and was looking remarkably clean and neatfor a boy; she had likewise very nearly cooked the supper, and Geoffrey, as he lokoed round, breathed a sigh of satisfaction for the lad so altered the place that it had almost taken to itself that sacred look of "home." . . r She motioned him to a seat, and very soon put his supper before him, and she nodded approval as she glanced at the jack-knife ha had cleaned it after his Wash. . " You're a first-rate cook, Ronnie," he remarked, as he leant back and regarded his fare approvingly. . " You might have had a course of lessons at South Kensington;: though I suspect you wouldn't have done half so well if you had; for I was once tempted into tasting a pudding made by a young lady who had gone through the whole course, and that pudding lay heavy on my conscience for a week." Cottie glanced at him with a concealed curiosity. " Where's South Kensington Melbourne way?" she asked casually. • " South Kensington is in London, you young ignoramus, he replied. "Oh!" she said; then, after a pause: "I suppose you lived there?" - Geoffrey nodded. " Sometimes," he answered. " I had rooms there; but most of the time I lived in the country, at a place called"— stopped abruptly—" at a place you never heard of." She was silent for a minute or two as she ate with a moderation and delicateness rather strange in a boy ; then she said: " How- far up the valley does the men's claim run? They can only claim a part of it, can't they?" "Only a part," he replied " not farther than we were working this evening, because we began lower down." - There was another pause, during which she seemed to be thinking hard, and presently she asked, as casually as before :"-■ "I suppose you'd like to go back to England—London?". Geoffrey coloured slightly. " Rather!" he responded. " So also would cows like to fly; but they can't fly because they haven't wings; and I can't go back because I haven't money." " Is everybody in England rich, then?" she asked. ■-.'■•' /■' ■' Geoffrey laughed shortly. "■'.' "Not' much. I should say there are more poor there thani- anywhere else; and it's worse being poor there than in any country under heaven. It don't matter out here in Australia, because we're most of us poor, and there's no shame in taking a pick

or a shovel and digging for your daily damper, and pannikin of tea; but there Oh, l well! one's ashamed to dig, and begging is bad form." "It must be a beastly place to live in," she remarked. • » He laughed. ' " Oh it's not so bad when you've got the tin; and you can have a better time there than you can anywhere else; " though, give me the country all the year round, or b early." . .. - , He stifled a sigh, and looked before h:m as if he were seeing a vision. Though her eyes were downcast, she was watching him closely, with that awful sharpness and shrewdness of her sex and age. " What was the name of that girl at Soith --South Kensington? ~ Was 1 she nice she asked, with an assumption of indifference, as if she were'talking for talking's sake. "Eh? 1 ' he said, coming back from dreamland with a start. "That girl? Oh, I don't remember—oh, yes; she was very nice. Most ; London girls , are nice and pleasant they're brought up so." She poured him out some more tea. as fhe rose to clear away the things, she raid lightly: "I shall stake out a claim for myse'f up the valley." Geoffrey smiled at her presumption. : " You can't do that. 'You're one of the gang,'' he remarked. . "No, I'm not!" she said, with a toss of her head. " I didn't start prospecting with the others, and I only work with them because I'm - obliged to ; and they couldn't make me if I didn't want to. I'm not one of the gang. I belong to you, if I belong to anyone; and I've a right to stake out my claim, and I'm going to—that is, if 1 think proper. Perhaps I shall change my mind, so you needn't say anything about it; but I ' reserve my right.' " " You : talk like a lawyer," said Geoffrey, laughing. He began to hunt about for his tobacco, and she got it from the cupboard and put it in front of him, together with a pipe which she had found under the bed when she was clearing out. - Georgel; my favourite pipe?" said Goeffrey.' "Where on earth did you find that? I've looked for it everywhere!" : A". Under the bed, where you seem to have pitched everything: out of hand," she retorted. I wonder you didn't put your head there.": .■;.' , *■ - -■ "I might just as well," he said, ruefully, " for it hasn't been of much use to me up to now."-'.- V She looked at the handsome head and rueful face meditatively. " What's the matter with it?" she asked. ;" It's like this can," said Geoffrey, flicking it with his finger; " empty, Ronnie, empty! If it hadn't been, if I had had any brains, I should be serving Her Majesty in a red tunic and busby. But they're not satisfied in the army with sinews and muscles—they want brain; that's why I'm here —or partly digging sometimes, and going to the dogs always." " She looked at him again. "I should think you'd make a good soldier,", she remarked. " I'm sorry you haven't any brains. I should have thought*you could have fought without them. You faced Moser and the other boys' last night when they were threatening me." Oh, that's different," said Geoffrey. "You see, an officer— But I'm not clever enough to explain or to make you understand. You see, you've never been in England, have you, Ronnie?'.' She shook her head. "No; and I don't know that I want to go there," she retorted. " Oh, yes, you would, Ronnie," he said in a low voice, as if he were communing with himself. " You'd change your time if you were there. By George! I wish you and I were there together, lad, with plenty of money! I should like to show you. the crowded streets, the great houses, the horses and carriages than you could count, Ronnieall the sights of London. I should like to,take' you into the. country, and show you some of the beautiful places, the glorious gardens, the fields with the fine green grass not the coarse stuff we grow here, : but fine as a woman's hair— shaded lanes, the grand old elms and oaks! Lord! what rides we'd have, you and I, over the rolling downs, with the scent of the sea in our nostrils, and. the singing of the birds in our, ears! Australia's , grand enough, but England England's as beautiful as a dream and I dream, of it?" ; "■". ■'■'■ ; .- : '"':' "•""'"-'■'. > - She was lying beside the fire, with her. chin pillowed in kef 'hands, her, * exquisite eyes fixed intently upon his face, which was flushed by his words and his longing. " But I'll havo to be satisfied with dreaming, . Ronnie," he said, with a laugh; " I doubt if I'll ever see the Old Country again. I doubt —" He paused and fell into silent meditation. There was a flash on the girl's face and her eyes still dwelt on his as, in evident forgetfulness of her presnece, he stared moodily, and with knitted brow, at the smouldering fire. . . ; ! Suddenly he started from his brown study. "It's time you turned in, young 'un," ,he said. " You. can take the other room I and Til sleep here on the rug." Geoffrey jerked his head towards the inner room. ; .

■ " Off you go," he said in a tone that admitted of no argument. She rose slowly and stood kicking the fire together with a foot that was ridiculously small for a boy's. .. "Perhaps you may go back to that England of yours you're so fond of," she said. " You may have a streak of luck— " Cows might fly," he commented, curtly. " Off to bed with you, Ronnie!" , She went towards the inner room and paused at the door. x "Good-night, Geoffrey!" she said. It was the first time that she had addressed him by his name, and she spoke it hesitatingly,. Kngeringly, and made a subtle kind of music of it. " Good-night!" he responded, more gently than he had spoken before. An hour later she was still awake, though Geoffrey was lying in a deep sleep before the fire. She could not sleep; her active brain was hard at work. This man who had protected her and befriended her was unhappy, was longing to get back to England, and could not "do so because he was poor. If he had money She fell asleep at last and dreamed, dreamed so vividly that she murmured, almost audibly: > " The claim's mine. It's my right I Take it, Geoffrey: go back to England 1" (To lie continued on Saturday next.)