A Final Reckoning

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A Final Reckoning:
A Tale of Bush Life in Australia
by G. A. Henty.

Contents

Preface.
Chapter 1: The Broken Window.
Chapter 2: The Poisoned Dog.
Chapter 3: The Burglary At The Squire's.
Chapter 4: The Trial.
Chapter 5: Not Guilty!
Chapter 6: On The Voyage.
Chapter 7: Gratitude.
Chapter 8: A Gale.
Chapter 9: Two Offers.
Chapter 10: An Up-Country District.
Chapter 11: The Black Fellows.
Chapter 12: The Bush Rangers.
Chapter 13: Bush Rangers.
Chapter 14: An Unexpected Meeting.
Chapter 15: At Donald's.
Chapter 16: Jim's Report.
Chapter 17: In Pursuit.
Chapter 18: Settling Accounts.

Illustrations

Reuben Whitney Acquitted of the Charge of Burglary.
The Ladies Saved from the Malay's Crease.
A Fight with the Black Fellows.
Jim Notes the Bush Rangers' Plans for Mischief.

Preface.

In this tale I have left the battlefields of history, and have
written a story of adventure in Australia, in the early days when
the bush rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable
danger to the settlers. I have done this, not with the intention of
extending your knowledge, or even of pointing a moral, although the
story is not without one; but simply for a change--a change both
for you and myself, but frankly, more for myself than for you. You
know the old story of the boy who bothered his brains with Euclid,
until he came to dream regularly that he was an equilateral
triangle enclosed in a circle. Well, I feel that unless I break
away sometimes from history, I shall be haunted day and night by
visions of men in armour, and soldiers of all ages and times.

If, when I am away on a holiday I come across the ruins of a
castle, I find myself at once wondering how it could best have been
attacked, and defended. If I stroll down to the Thames, I begin to
plan schemes of crossing it in the face of an enemy; and if matters
go on, who can say but that I may find myself, some day, arrested
on the charge of surreptitiously entering the Tower of London, or
effecting an escalade of the keep of Windsor Castle! To avoid such
a misfortune--which would entail a total cessation of my stories,
for a term of years--I have turned to a new subject, which I can
only hope that you will find as interesting, if not as instructive,
as the other books which I have written.

G. A. Henty.

Chapter 1: The Broken Window.

"You are the most troublesome boy in the village, Reuben Whitney,
and you will come to a bad end."

The words followed a shower of cuts with the cane. The speaker was
an elderly man, the master of the village school of Tipping, near
Lewes, in Sussex; and the words were elicited, in no small degree,
by the vexation of the speaker at his inability to wring a cry from
the boy whom he was striking. He was a lad of some thirteen years
of age, with a face naturally bright and intelligent; but at
present quivering with anger.

"I don't care if I do," he said defiantly. "It won't be my fault,
but yours, and the rest of them."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the master said, "instead of
speaking in that way. You, who learn easier than anyone here, and
could always be at the top of your class, if you chose. I had hoped
better things of you, Reuben; but it's just the way, it's your
bright boys as mostly gets into mischief."

At this moment the door of the school room opened, and a lady with
two girls, one of about fourteen and the other eleven years of age,
entered.

"What is the matter now?" the lady asked, seeing the schoolmaster,
cane in hand, and the boy standing before him.

"Reuben Whitney! What, in trouble again, Reuben? I am afraid you
are a very troublesome boy."

"I am not troublesome, ma'm," the boy said sturdily. "That is, I
wouldn't be if they would let me alone; but everything that is done
bad, they put it down to me."

"But what have you been doing now, Reuben?"

"I have done nothing at all, ma'm; but he's always down on me," and
he pointed to the master, "and when they are always down on a
fellow, it's no use his trying to do right."

"What has the boy been doing now, Mr. White?" the lady asked.

"Look there, ma'm, at those four windows all smashed, and the
squire had all the broken panes mended only a fortnight ago."

"How was it done, Mr. White?"

"By a big stone, ma'm, which caught the frame where they joined,
and smashed them all."

"I did not do it, Mrs. Ellison, indeed I didn't."

"Why do you suppose it was Reuben?" Mrs. Ellison asked the master.

"Because I had kept him in, half an hour after the others went home
to dinner, for pinching young Jones and making him call out; and he
had only just gone out of the gate when I heard the smash; so there
is no doubt about it, for all the others must have been in at their
dinner at that time."

"I didn't do it, ma'm," the boy repeated. "Directly I got out of
the gate, I started off to run home. I hadn't gone not twenty yards
when I heard a smash; but I wasn't going for to stop to see what it
was. It weren't no business of mine, and that's all I know about
it."

"Mamma," the younger of the two girls said eagerly, "what he says
is quite true. You know you let me run down the village with the
jelly for Mrs. Thomson's child, and as I was coming down the road I
saw a boy come out of the gate of the school and run away; and then
I heard a noise of broken glass, and I saw another boy jump over
the hedge opposite, and run, too. He came my way and, directly he
saw me, he ran to a gate and climbed over."

"Do you know who it was, Kate?" Mrs. Ellison asked.

"Yes, mamma. It was Tom Thorne."

"Is Thomas Thorne here?" Mrs. Ellison asked in a loud voice.

There was a general turning of the heads of the children to the
point where a boy, somewhat bigger than the rest, had been
apparently studying his lessons with great diligence.

"Come here, Tom Thorne," Mrs. Ellison said.

The boy slouched up with a sullen face.

"You hear what my daughter says, Tom. What have you to say in
reply?"

"I didn't throw the stone at the window," the boy replied. "I
chucked it at a sparrow, and it weren't my fault if it missed him
and broke the window."

"I should say it was your fault, Tom," Mrs. Ellison said
sharply--"very much your fault, if you throw a great stone at a
bird without taking care to see what it may hit. But that is
nothing to your fault in letting another boy be punished for what
you did. I shall report the matter to the squire, and he will speak
to your father about it. You are a wicked, bad boy.

"Mr. White, I will speak to you outside."

Followed by her daughters, Mrs. Ellison went out; Kate giving a
little nod, in reply to the grateful look that Reuben Whitney cast
towards her, and his muttered:

"Thank you, miss."

"Walk on, my dears," Mrs. Ellison said. "I will overtake you, in a
minute or two.

"This will not do, Mr. White," she said, when she was alone with
the master. "I have told you before that I did not approve of your
thrashing so much, and now it is proved that you punish without any
sufficient cause, and upon suspicion only. I shall report the case
at once to the squire and, unless I am greatly mistaken, you will
have to look out for another place."

"I am very sorry, Mrs. Ellison, indeed I am; and it is not often I
use the cane, now. If it had been anyone else, I might have
believed him; but Reuben Whitney is always in mischief."

"No wonder he is in mischief," the lady said severely, "if he is
punished, without a hearing, for all the misdeeds of others. Well,
I shall leave the matter in the squire's hands; but I am sure he
will no more approve than I do of the children being ill treated."

Reuben Whitney was the son of a miller, near Tipping. John Whitney
had been considered a well-to-do man, but he had speculated in corn
and had got into difficulties; and his body was, one day, found
floating in the mill dam. No one knew whether it was the result of
intention or accident, but the jury of his neighbours who sat upon
the inquest gave him the benefit of the doubt, and brought in a
verdict of "accidental death." He was but tenant of the mill and,
when all the creditors were satisfied, there were only a few pounds
remaining for the widow.

With these she opened a little shop in Tipping, with a
miscellaneous collection of tinware and cheap ironmongery; cottons,
tapes, and small articles of haberdashery; with toys, sweets, and
cakes for the children. The profits were small, but the squire, who
had known her husband, charged but a nominal rent for the cottage;
and this was more than paid by the fruit trees in the garden, which
also supplied her with potatoes and vegetables, so that she managed
to support her boy and herself in tolerable comfort.

She herself had been the daughter of a tradesman in Lewes, and many
wondered that she did not return to her father, upon her husband's
death. But her home had not been a comfortable one, before her
marriage; for her father had taken a second wife, and she did not
get on well with her stepmother. She thought, therefore, that
anything would be better than returning with her boy to a home
where, to the mistress at least, she would be most unwelcome.

She had, as a girl, received an education which raised her somewhat
above the other villagers of Tipping; and of an evening she was in
the habit of helping Reuben with his lessons, and trying to correct
the broadness of dialect which he picked up from the other boys.
She was an active and bustling woman, managed her little shop well,
and kept the garden, with Reuben's assistance, in excellent order.

Mrs. Ellison had, at her first arrival in the village three years
before, done much to give her a good start, by ordering that all
articles of use for the house, in which she dealt, should be
purchased of her; and she highly approved of the energy and
independence of the young widow. But lately there had been an
estrangement between the squire's wife and the village shopkeeper.
Mrs. Ellison, whose husband owned all the houses in the village, as
well as the land surrounding it, was accustomed to speak her mind
very freely to the wives of the villagers. She was kindness itself,
in cases of illness or distress; and her kitchen supplied soups,
jellies, and nourishing food to all who required it; but in return,
Mrs. Ellison expected her lectures on waste, untidiness, and
mismanagement to be listened to with respect and reverence.

She was, then, at once surprised and displeased when, two or three
months before, having spoken sharply to Mrs. Whitney as to the
alleged delinquencies of Reuben, she found herself decidedly,
though not disrespectfully, replied to.

"The other boys are always set against my Reuben," Mrs. Whitney
said, "because he is a stranger in the village, and has no father;
and whatever is done, they throw it on to him. The boy is not a bad
boy, ma'm--not in any way a bad boy. He may get into mischief, like
the rest; but he is not a bit worse than others, not half as bad as
some of them, and those who have told you that he is haven't told
you the truth."

Mrs. Ellison had not liked it. She was not accustomed to be
answered, except by excuses and apologies; and Mrs. Whitney's
independent manner of speaking came upon her almost as an act of
rebellion, in her own kingdom. She was too fair, however, to
withdraw her custom from the shop; but from that time she had not,
herself, entered it.

Reuben was a source of anxiety to his mother, but this had no
reference to his conduct. She worried over his future. The receipts
from the shop were sufficient for their wants; and indeed the widow
was enabled, from time to time, to lay by a pound against bad
times; but she did not see what she was to do with the boy. Almost
all the other lads of the village, of the same age, were already in
the fields; and Mrs. Whitney felt that she could not much longer
keep him idle. The question was, what was she to do with him? That
he should not go into the fields she was fully determined, and her
great wish was to apprentice him to some trade; but as her father
had recently died, she did not see how she was to set about it.

That evening, at dinner, Mrs. Ellison told the squire of the scene
in the school room.

"White must go," he said, "that is quite evident. I have seen, for
some time, that we wanted a younger man, more abreast of the times
than White is; but I don't like turning him adrift altogether. He
has been here upwards of thirty years. What am I to do with him?"

Mrs. Ellison could make no suggestion; but she, too, disliked the
thought of anyone in the village being turned adrift upon the
world.

"The very thing!" the squire exclaimed, suddenly "We will make him
clerk. Old Peters has long been past his work. The old man must be
seventy-five, if he's a day, and his voice quavers so that it makes
the boys laugh. We will pension him off. He can have his cottage
rent free, and three or four shillings a week. I don't suppose it
will be for many years. As for White, he cannot be much above
sixty. He will fill the place very well.

"I am sure the vicar will agree, for he has been speaking to me,
about Peters being past his work, for the last five years. What do
you say, my dear?"

"I think that will do very well, William," Mrs. Ellison replied,
"and will get over the difficulty altogether."

"So you see, wife, for once that boy of Widow Whitney's was not to
blame. I told you you took those stories on trust against him too
readily. The boy's a bit of a pickle, no doubt; and I very near
gave him a thrashing, myself, a fortnight since, for on going up to
the seven-acre field, I found him riding bare backed on that young
pony I intended for Kate."

"You don't say so, William!" Mrs. Ellison exclaimed, greatly
shocked. "I never heard of such an impudent thing. I really wonder
you didn't thrash him."

"Well, perhaps I should have done so, my dear; but the fact is, I
caught sight of him some time before he saw me, and he was really
sitting her so well that I could not find it in my heart to call
out. He was really doing me a service. The pony had never been
ridden, and was as wild as a wild goat. Thomas is too old, in fact,
to break it in, and I should have had to get someone to do it, and
pay him two or three pounds for the job.

"It was not the first time the boy had been on her back, I could
see. The pony was not quite broken and, just as I came on the
scene, was trying its best to get rid of him; but it couldn't do
it, and I could see, by the way he rode her about afterwards, that
he had got her completely in hand; and a very pretty-going little
thing she will turn out."

"But what did you say to him, William? I am sure I should never
stop to think whether he was breaking in the pony, or not, if I saw
him riding it about."

"I daresay not, my dear," the squire said, laughing; "but then you
see, you have never been a boy; and I have, and can make
allowances. Many a pony and horse have I broken in, in my time; and
have got on the back of more than one, without my father knowing
anything about it."

"Yes, but they were your father's horses, William," Mrs. Ellison
persisted. "That makes all the difference."

"I don't suppose it would have made much difference to me," the
squire laughed, "at that time. I was too fond of horse flesh, even
from a boy, to be particular whose horse it was I got across.
However, of course, after waiting till he had done, I gave the
young scamp a blowing up."

"Not much of a blowing up, I am sure," Mrs. Ellison said; "and as
likely as not, a shilling at the end of it."

"Well, Mary, I must own," the squire said pleasantly, "that a
shilling did find its way out of my pocket into his."

"It's too bad of you, William," Mrs. Ellison said indignantly.
"Here is this boy, who is notoriously a scapegrace, has the
impertinence to ride your horse, and you encourage him in his
misdeeds by giving him a shilling."

"Well, my dear, don't you see, I saved two pounds nineteen by the
transaction.

"Besides," he added more seriously, "I think the boy has been
maligned. I don't fancy he's a bad lad at all. A little mischief
and so on, but none the worse for that. Besides, you know, I knew
his father; and have sat many a time on horseback chatting to him,
at the door of his mill; and drank more than one glass of good ale,
which his wife has brought out to me. I am not altogether easy in
my conscience about them. If there had been a subscription got up
for the widow at his death, I should have put my name down for
twenty pounds; and all that I have done for her is to take eighteen
pence a week off that cottage of theirs.

"No, I called the boy to me when he got off, and pretty scared he
looked when he saw me. When he came up, I asked him how he dared to
ride my horses about, without my leave. Of course he said he was
sorry, which meant nothing; and he added, as a sort of excuse, that
he used from a child to ride the horses at the mill down to the
ford for water; and that his father generally had a young one or
two, in that paddock of his by the mill, and he used often to ride
them; and seeing the pony one day, galloping about the field and
kicking up its heels, he wondered whether he could sit a horse
still, and especially whether he could keep on that pony's back.
Then he set to, to try.

"The pony flung him several times, at first; and no wonder, as he
had no saddle, and only a piece of old rope for a bridle; but he
mastered him at last, and he assured me that he had never used the
stick, and certainly he had not one when I saw him. I told him, of
course, that he knew he ought not to have done it; but that, as he
had taken it in hand, he might finish it. I said that I intended to
have it broken in for Kate, and that he had best get a bit of
sacking and put it on sideways, to accustom the pony to carry a
lady. Then I gave him a shilling, and told him I would give him
five more, when he could tell me the pony was sufficiently broken
and gentle to carry Kate."

Mrs. Ellison shook her head in disapprobation.

"It is of no use, William, my talking to the villagers as to the
ways of their boys, if that is the way you counteract my advice."

"But I don't always, my dear," the squire said blandly. "For
instance, I shall go round tomorrow morning with my dog whip to
Thorne's; and I shall offer him the choice of giving that boy of
his the soundest thrashing he ever had, while I stand by to see it,
or of going out of his house at the end of the quarter.

"I rather hope he will choose the latter alternative. That beer
shop of his is the haunt of all the idle fellows in the village. I
have a strong suspicion that he is in league with the poachers, if
he doesn't poach himself; and the first opportunity I get of laying
my finger upon him, out he goes."

A few days later when Kate Ellison issued from the gate of the
house, which lay just at the end of the village, with the basket
containing some jelly and medicine for a sick child, she found
Reuben Whitney awaiting her. He touched his cap.

"Please, miss, I made bold to come here, to thank you for having
cleared me."

"But I couldn't help clearing you, Reuben, for you see, I knew it
wasn't you."

"Well, miss, it was very kind, all the same; and I am very much
obliged to you."

"But why do you get into scrapes?" the girl said. "If you didn't,
you wouldn't be suspected of other things. Mamma said, the other
day, you got into more scrapes than any boy in the village; and you
look nice, too. Why do you do it?"

"I don't know why I do it, miss," Reuben said shamefacedly. "I
suppose it's because I don't go into the fields, like most of the
other boys; and haven't got much to do. But there's no great harm
in them, miss. They are just larks, nothing worse."

"You don't do really bad things?" the girl asked.

"No, miss, I hope not."

"And you don't tell stories, do you?"

"No, miss, never. If I do anything and I am asked, I always own it.
I wouldn't tell a lie to save myself from a licking."

"That's right," the girl said graciously.

She caught somewhat of her mother's manner, from going about with
her to the cottages; and it seemed quite natural, to her, to give
her advice to this village scapegrace.

"Well, try not to do these sort of things again, Reuben; because I
like you, and I don't like to hear people say you are the worst boy
in the village, and I don't think you are. Good-bye," and Kate
Ellison proceeded on her way.

Reuben smiled as he looked after her. Owing to his memory of his
former position at the mill, and to his mother's talk and teaching,
Reuben did not entertain the same feeling of respect, mingled with
fear, for the squire's family which was felt by the village in
general. Instead of being two years younger than himself, the girl
had spoken as gravely as if she had been twenty years his senior,
and Reuben could not help a smile of amusement.

"She is a dear little lady," he said, as he looked after her; "and
it's only natural she should talk like her mother. But Mrs. Ellison
means well, too, mother says; and as for the squire, he is a good
fellow. I expected he would have given it to me the other day.

"Well, now I will go up to the pony. One more lesson, and I think a
baby might ride it."

As he walked along, he met Tom Thorne. There had been war between
them, since the affair of the broken window. Reuben had shown the
other no animosity on the subject as, having been cleared, he had
felt in no way aggrieved; but Tom Thorne was very sore over it. In
the first place, he had been found out; and although Reuben himself
had said nothing to him, respecting his conduct in allowing him to
be flogged for the offence which he himself had committed, others
had not been so reticent, and he had had a hard time of it in the
village. Secondly, he had been severely thrashed by his father, in
the presence of the squire; the former laying on the lash with a
vigour which satisfied Mr. Ellison, the heartiness of the thrashing
being due, not to any indignation at the fault, but because the
boy's conduct had excited the squire's anger; which Thorne, for
many reasons, was anxious to deprecate. He was his landlord, and
had the power to turn him out at a quarter's notice; and as there
was no possibility of obtaining any other house near, and he was
doing by no means a bad trade, he was anxious to keep on good terms
with him.

Tom Thorne was sitting on a gate, as Reuben passed.

"You think you be a fine fellow, Reuben, but I will be even with
you, some day."

"You can be even with me now," Reuben said, "if you like to get off
that gate."

"I bain't afeared of you, Reuben, don't you go to think it; only I
ain't going to do any fighting now. Feyther says if I get into any
more rows, he will pay me out; so I can't lick you now, but some
day I will be even with you."

"That's a good excuse," Reuben said scornfully. "However, I don't
want to fight if you don't, only you keep your tongue to yourself.
I don't want to say nothing to you, if you don't say nothing to me.
You played me a dirty trick the other day, and you got well
larrupped for it, so I don't owe you any grudge; but mind you, I
don't want any more talk about your getting even with me, for if
you do give me any more of it I will fetch you one on the nose, and
then you will have a chance of getting even, at once."

Tom Thorne held his tongue, only relieving his feelings by making a
grimace after Reuben, as the latter passed on. In the various
contests among the boys of the village, Reuben had proved himself
so tough an adversary that, although Tom Thorne was heavier and
bigger, he did not care about entering upon what would be, at best,
a doubtful contest with him.

Contenting himself, therefore, with another muttered, "I will be
even with you some day," he strolled home to his father's ale
house.

The change at the school was very speedily made. The squire
generally carried out his resolutions while they were hot and, on
the very day after his conversation with his wife on the subject,
he went first to the vicar and arranged for the retirement of the
clerk, and the instalment of White in his place; and then went to
the school house, and informed the master of his intention. The
latter had been expecting his dismissal, since Mrs. Ellison had
spoken to him on the previous day; and the news which the squire
gave him was a relief to him. His emoluments, as clerk, would be
smaller than those he received as schoolmaster; but while he would
not be able to discharge the duties of the latter for very much
longer, for he felt the boys were getting too much for him, he
would be able to perform the very easy work entailed by the
clerkship for many years to come. It was, too, a position not
without dignity; and indeed, in the eyes of the village the clerk
was a personage of far greater importance than the schoolmaster. He
therefore thankfully accepted the offer, and agreed to give up the
school as soon as a substitute could be found.

In those days anyone was considered good enough for a village
schoolmaster, and the post was generally filled by men who had
failed as tradesmen, and in everything else they put their hands
to; and whose sole qualification for the office was that they were
able to read and write. Instead of advertising, however, in the
county paper, the squire wrote to an old college friend, who was
now in charge of a London parish, and asked him to choose a man for
the post.

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