Chapters (53)
- Cover
- About Alison Stuart
- Also by Alison Stuart
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- Preview of The Goldminer's Sister
Once again Caleb was reminded of family Christmases before the war. On Christmas Eve, he and his siblings would decorate a small fir tree cut from a nearby wood with little candles and paper chains. Their Quaker father may have disapproved of the pagan nonsense but he never stopped them. Nathan Hunt had valued his family’s happiness above everything else.
There were no fir trees in Maiden’s Creek, and his brother and sister and parents were all dead. The knife twisted in Caleb’s heart and he wanted to roll over and continue to wallow in his loneliness, but the eagerness in the boy’s expression pricked his conscience. He hauled himself off the bed. Better to keep busy. It kept the dark thoughts at bay.
Danny had laid out strips of bright paper, glue and scissors on the parlour table. A scrubby branch of a eucalypt had been planted in dirt in a bucket beside the fireplace. Three small presents neatly wrapped in brown paper and string had already been placed beneath it.
Caleb hefted himself into a chair at the table, propping his injured leg on one of the spare chairs and considered the packages. It occurred to him that it would be politic to produce presents for the residents of the Maiden’s Creek Post Office.
‘Danny, is there a store in Maiden’s Creek?’
‘You mean Mackie’s General Store?’
‘I need to buy presents for your mother and Netty. Can you show me where it is?’
Danny frowned. ‘It’s a way up the street. Can you walk?’
‘Of course,’ Caleb replied with more confidence than he felt. ‘The exercise will do me good.’
The exercise nearly killed him. He arrived at Mackie’s General Store pale and sweating from the exertion. The thin Scotsman hurried forward with a chair and offers of water, probably concerned that his customer might die on the floor of his shop. As Caleb caught his breath, he looked around the well-stocked and immaculately kept store. Shovels and gold pans jostled for room with wash tubs and bolts of brightly coloured calico. Mackie seemed to stock everything anyone in town could want.
While Danny poked around the corner of the store that stocked toys, Caleb purchased a pretty lace-edged cambric handkerchief for Adelaide and some blue ribbons for Netty. He considered the back of Danny’s fair head, bent over a box of toy soldiers. Such a toy was beyond Caleb’s purse. What would a nine-year-old boy want?
He smiled. He knew just the thing. His father had given him one at the same age and it still served him so well today.
Nine
Nine
Christmas Day, 1871