“But he refused. He said he wouldn’t have hurt my feelings for anything. He seemed to overlook altogether what I was going to do to him, and asked me where it hurt me. I told him, and he said it was his fault--fancy that! and wished he was big enough to carry me back. I kept on asking him to go, and at last, after begging my pardon like anything, for about a week it seemed, he went. But I heard him shouting and yelling French yells in the woods, and after a bit he came back with two men and a hurdle. They presently took me back, and what Frenchy’s said since to the Doctor I don’t know. In fact, I didn’t know anything for days. Anyway, I’ve had nothing but a mild rowing and very good grub, and I’m not to be even flogged, though that’s probably because I broke a rib or two, not including the bone in my leg. But I’m all right now, and I think it was about the most sporting thing a chap ever did for Frenchy to treat me like that--eh? I shouldn’t have thought it was in a Frenchman to do it, especially after I told him what I was going to do.” “Yes,” I said, “that’s all right, but what about bushranging?” “It’s pretty sickening,” he said, “but I feel as if all the keenness was knocked out of me. If a chap can’t so much as fall out of a tree on a wanderer’s path at the nick of time without smashing himself, what’s the good of him?” “Besides,” I said, “if it hadn’t been Frenchy, but somebody else of a different turn of mind, he might have taken you at a disadvantage and jolly well killed you.” “In real bushranging that is what would have happened,” admitted Freckles. “As it is, I expect months, perhaps years, will have to go by before I feel to hanker after it again. And meantime I sha’n’t rest in peace till I’ve paid Frenchy.” “How?” I asked. “Well, I believe it’s to be done. He’s often come to see me while I was on my back in bed, and he’s told me a lot about himself. He’s frightfully hard up, and a Roman Catholic, and hopes to lay his bones in _la belle_ France with luck, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to manage it. He told me all this, little knowing my father was extremely rich. Well, you see, the mater wants somebody French for the kids at home, which are girls, and, knowing Frenchy bars this climate, I think Australia might do him good. He’s fifty-three years old, and it seems to me if the guv’nor wrote and offered him his passage and a good screw he’d go. I have made it a personal thing to myself, and told the guv’nor what a good little chap he is, and what a beautiful accent he’s got, and the thing that happened in the wood.” The affair dropped then, and about six weeks after, when Freckles was getting fit again, he walked with me one half-holiday to see the place where he was smashed up. The bough was a frightful high one to drop from even in daylight, also it was broken. Freckles got awfully excited when he spotted it. “There! there!” he said, “that’s the best thing I’ve seen for twelve weeks!”