Aunt Bob used to say that she was `a girl as God made her' -- a good, true, womanly girl -- one of those sort of girls that only love once.
Tom got on with her father, who was packing horses through the ranges to the new goldfields -- it was rough country and there were no roads; they had to pack everything there in those days, and there was money in it.
The girl's father took to Tom -- as almost everybody else did -- and, as far as the girl was concerned, I think it was a case of love at first sight. They only knew each other for about six months, and were only `courting' (as they called it then) for three or four months altogether, but she was that sort of girl that can love a man for six weeks and lose him for ever, and yet go on loving him to the end of her life -- and die with his name on her lips.
"Well, things were brightening up every way for Tom, and he and his sweetheart were beginning to talk about their own little home in future, when there came a letter from the `Madeline' girl in New South Wales.
"She was in terrible trouble. Her baby was to be born in a month.
Her people had kicked her out, and she was in danger of starving.
She begged and prayed of him to come back and marry her, if only for his child's sake. He could go then, and be free; she would never trouble him any more -- only come and marry her for the child's sake.
"The Oracle doesn't know where he lost that letter, but I do.
It was burnt afterwards by a woman, who was more than a mother to him in his trouble -- Aunt Bob. She thought he might carry it round with the rest of his papers, in his swag, for years, and come across it unexpectedly when he was camped by himself in the bush and feeling dull.
It wouldn't have done him any good then.
"He must have fought the hardest fight in his life when he got that letter.
No doubt he walked to and fro, to and fro, all night, with his hands behind him, and his eyes on the ground, as he does now sometimes.
Walking up and down helps you to fight a thing out.
"No doubt he thought of things pretty well as he thinks now: the poor girl's shame on every tongue, and belled round the district by every hag in the township; and she looked upon by women as being as bad as any man who ever went to Bathurst in the old days, handcuffed between two troopers. There is sympathy, a pipe and tobacco, a cheering word, and, maybe, a whisky now and then, for the criminal on his journey; but there is no mercy, at least as far as women are concerned, for the poor foolish girl, who has to sneak out the back way and round by back streets and lanes after dark, with a cloak on to hide her figure.
"Tom sent what money he thought he could spare, and next day he went to the girl he loved and who loved him, and told her the truth, and showed her the letter. She was only a girl -- but the sort of girl you COULD go to in a crisis like that. He had made up his mind to do the right thing, and she loved him all the more for it.
And so they parted.
"When Tom reached `Pipeclay', the girl's relations, that she was stopping with, had a parson readied up, and they were married the same day."
"And what happened after that?" asked Mitchell.
"Nothing happened for three or four months; then the child was born.
It wasn't his!"
Mitchell stood up with an oath.
"The girl was thoroughly bad. She'd been carrying on with God knows how many men, both before and after she trapped Tom."
"And what did he do then?"
"Well, you know how the Oracle argues over things, and I suppose he was as big an old fool then as he is now. He thinks that, as most men would deceive women if they could, when one man gets caught, he's got no call to squeal about it; he's bound, because of the sins of men in general against women, to make the best of it. What is one man's wrong counted against the wrongs of hundreds of unfortunate girls.
"It's an uncommon way of arguing -- like most of the Oracle's ideas -- but it seems to look all right at first sight.
"Perhaps he thought she'd go straight; perhaps she convinced him that he was the cause of her first fall; anyway he stuck to her for more than a year, and intended to take her away from that place as soon as he'd scraped enough money together. It might have gone on up till now, if the father of the child -- a big black Irishman named Redmond -- hadn't come sneaking back at the end of a year.
He -- well, he came hanging round Mrs. Marshall while Tom was away at work -- and she encouraged him. And Tom was forced to see it.
"Tom wanted to fight out his own battle without interference, but the chaps wouldn't let him -- they reckoned that he'd stand very little show against Redmond, who was a very rough customer and a fighting man.
My uncle Bob, who was there still, fixed it up this way:
The Oracle was to fight Redmond, and if the Oracle got licked Uncle Bob was to take Redmond on. If Redmond whipped Uncle Bob, that was to settle it; but if Uncle Bob thrashed Redmond, then he was also to fight Redmond's mate, another big, rough Paddy named Duigan.
Then the affair would be finished -- no matter which way the last bout went.
You see, Uncle Bob was reckoned more of a match for Redmond than the Oracle was, so the thing looked fair enough -- at first sight.
"Redmond had his mate, Duigan, and one or two others of the rough gang that used to terrorise the fields round there in the roaring days of Gulgong.
