But the laugh which accompanied these words was so bitter and unboy-like that it grated on the ear of his friend, and his only reply was—
"I tell you, Will, stay here longer I will not; so if you wish to keep school you can try your hand at it in Sydney."
Will Smith held out against moving for a while, but he had to yield at last, and he and Barton began by easy stages the journey to Sydney.
When they reached it, Will was so exhausted that his friend's first care was, through the influence of a doctor there, to get him admitted into one of the best hospitals of the city, where every care and attention would be paid to him. And there, surrounded by every comfort, the lad lay for weeks, having time for serious thought, and experiencing evidently bitter remorse for past sin, learning, as so many have learned, that "as we sow so shall we reap."
It was in the hospital that he confessed to Alick Barton that Smith was not his real name, and that he had left his home to escape the disgrace of being found out to have been a companion of sharpers and a frequenter of the gaming-table. But not all Barton's entreaties could get him to disclose the name he bore, or induce him to write and tell his friends where he was. Not yet would the lad humble himself to confess the sin committed against an earthly father; not yet had he as a little child entered into the kingdom of God.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
THE SECRET DISCLOSED.
"Wait; yet I do not tell you,
The hour you long for now
Will not come with its radiance vanished
And a shadow upon its brow."
A YEAR had passed since Austin Warner had become a student at the University of Cambridge. The name and character he had earned at the Hereford Grammar School had been nobly sustained by him, and the better set of young men soon gathered around him and became associated with him in many a good work.
He had been twice home for a short holiday, but during the chief part of the long vacation, he had been engaged as tutor to a young nobleman. The resolve, made years before, that by God's help he would try to promote the interests of his kingdom, had been carried out; and there was more than one young lad at the university who confessed that Austin Warner, by his consistent character and gentle warnings, had saved them from evil-doing.