He has given us to see Nineveh disinterred by an English hero.

He has given us to see the northwest passage forced, and winter bearded on his everlasting throne, by another. (Is it the hero's fault if self and snowdrop-singing poetasters cannot see this feat with the eyes of Camoens?)

He has given us to see Titans enslaved by man; Steam harnessed to our carriages and ships; Galvanism tamed into an alphabet—a Gamut, and its metal harp-strings stretched across the earth malgre' mountains and the sea, and so men's minds defying the twin monsters Time and Space; and now, gold revealed in the East and West at once, and so mankind now first in earnest peopling the enormous globe. Yet old women and children of the pen say, this is a bad, a small, a lifeless, an unpoetic age—and they are not mistaken. For they lie.

As only tooth-stoppers, retailers of conventional phrases, links in the great cuckoo-chain, universal pill-venders, Satan, and ancient booksellers' ancient nameless hacks can lie, they lie.

It is they who are small-eyed. Now, as heretofore, weaklings cannot rise high enough to take a bird's-eye view of their own age, and calculate its dimensions.

The age, smaller than epochs to come, is a giant compared with the past, and full of mighty materials for any great pen in prose or verse.

My little friends aged nineteen and downward—fourscore and upward—who have been lending your ears to the stale little cant of every age, as chanted in this one by Buffo-Bombastes and other foaming-at-the-pen old women of both sexes—take by way of antidote to all that poisonous, soul-withering drivel, ten honest words.

I say before heaven and earth that the man who could grasp the facts of this day and do an immortal writer's duty by them, i.e., so paint them as a later age will be content to engrave them, would be the greatest writer ever lived. Such is the force, weight and number of the grand topics that lie this day on the world's face. I say that he who has eyes to see may now see greater and far more poetic things than human eyes have seen since our Lord and his Apostles and his miracles left the earth.

It is very hard to write a good book or a good play, or to invent a good picture, and having invented paint it. But it always was hard, except to those—to whom it was impossible. Bunglers will not mend matters by blackening the great canvases they can't paint on, nor the impotent become males by detraction.

"Justice!"

When we write a story or sing a poem of the great nineteenth century, there is but one fear—not that our theme will be beneath us, but we miles below it; that we shall lack the comprehensive vision a man must have from heaven to catch the historical, the poetic, the lasting features of the Titan events that stride so swiftly past IN THIS GIGANTIC AGE.



CHAPTER LVII.

THE life of George Fielding and Thomas Robinson for months could be composed in a few words: tremendous work from sunrise to sundown, and on Sunday welcome rest, a quiet pipe, and a book.

At night they slept in a good tent, with Carlo at their feet and a little bag between them; this bag never left their sight; it went out to their work and in to sleep.

It is dinner-time; George and Tom are snatching a mouthful, and a few words over it.

"How much do you think we are, Tom?"

"Hush! don't speak so loud, for Heaven's sake;" he added in a whisper, "not a penny under seven hundred pounds' worth."

George sighed.

"It is slower work than I thought; but it is my fault, I am so unlucky."

"Unlucky! and we have not been eight months at it."

"But one party near us cleared four thousand pounds at a haul; one thousand pounds apiece—ah!"

"And hundreds have only just been able to keep themselves. Come, you must not grumble, we are high above the average."

George persisted.

"The reason we don't get on is we try for nothing better than dust. You know what you told me, that the gold was never created in dust, but in masses, like all metals; the dust is only a trifle that has been washed off the bulk. Then you said we ought to track the gold-dust coarser and coarser till we traced the metal to its home in the great rocks."

"Ay! ay! I believe I used to talk so; but I am wiser now. Look here, George, no doubt the gold was all in block when the world started, but how many million years ago was that? This is my notion, George; at the beginning of the world the gold was all solid, at the end it is all to be dust; now which are we nearer, the end or the beginning?"

"Not knowing, can't say, Tom."

"Then I can, for his reverence told me. We are fifty times nearer the end than the beginning, follows there is fifty times as much gold-dust in nature as solid gold."

"What a head you ha' got, Tom! but I can't take it up so. Seems to me this dust is like the grain that is shed from a ripe crop before it comes to the sickle. Now if we could trace—"

"How can you trace syrup to the lump when the lump is all turned to syrup?"

George held his peace—shut up, but not convinced.

"Hallo! you two lucky ones," cried a voice distant about thirty yards. "Will you buy our hole, it is breaking our heart here."

Robinson went up and found a large hole excavated to a great depth; it was yielding literally nothing, and this determined that paradoxical personage to buy it if it was cheap. "What there is must be somewhere all in a lump."

He offered ten pounds for it, which was eagerly snapped at.

"Well done, Gardiner," said one of the band. "We would have taken ten shillings for it," explained he to Robinson.

Robinson paid the money, and let himself down into the hole with his spade. He drove his spade into the clay, and the bottom of it just reached the rock; he looked up. "I would have gone just one foot deeper before I gave in," said he; he called George. "Come, George, we can know our fate in ten minutes."

They shoveled the clay away down to about one inch above the rock, and there in the white clay they found a little bit of gold as big as a pin's head.

"We have done it this time," cried Robinson, "shave a little more off, not too deep, and save the clay." This time a score of little nuggets came to view sticking in the clay; no need for washing, they picked them out with their knives.

The news soon spread, and a multitude buzzed round the hole and looked down on the men picking out peas and beans of pure gold with their knives.

Presently a voice cried, "Shame, give the men back their hole!"

"Gammon," cried others, "they paid for a chance, and it turned out well; a bargain is a bargain." Gardiner and his mates looked sorrowfully down. Robinson saw their faces and came out of the hole a moment. He took Gardiner aside and whispered, "Jump into our hole like lightning, it is worth four pound a day."

"God bless you!" said Gardiner. He ran and jumped into the hole just as another man was going to take possession. By digger's law no party is allowed to occupy two holes.

All that afternoon there was a mob looking down at George and Robinson picking out peas and beans of gold, and envy's satanic fire burned many a heart. These two were picking up at least a hundred pounds an hour.

Now it happened late in the afternoon that a man of shabby figure, evidently not a digger, observing that there was always more or less crowd in one place, shambled up and looked down with the rest; as he looked down, George happened to look up; the newcomer drew back hastily. After that his proceedings were singular; he remained in the crowd more than two hours, not stationary, but winding in and out. He listened to everything that was said, especially if it was muttered and not spoken out; and he peered into every face, and peering into every face it befell that at last his eye lighted on one that seemed to fascinate him; it belonged to a fellow with a great bull neck, and hair and beard flowing all into one—a man more like the black-maned lion of North Africa than anything else. But it was not his appearance that fascinated the serpentine one, it was the look he cast down upon those two lucky diggers; a scowl of tremendous hatred—hatred unto death. Instinct told the serpent there must be more in this than extempore envy. He waited and watched, and, when the black-maned one moved away, he followed him about everywhere till at last he got him alone.

Then he sidled up, and in a cringing way said:

"What luck some men have, don't they?"

The man answered by a fierce grunt.

The serpent was half afraid of him, but he went on.

"There will be a good lump of gold in their tent to-night."

The other seemed struck with these words.

"They have been lucky a long time," explained the other, "and now this added—"

"Well, what about it?"

"Nothing! only I wish somebody else had it instead."

"Why?"

"That is a secret for the present. I only tell you because I think somehow they are no friends of yours either."

"Perhaps not! what then."

"Then we might perhaps do business together; it will strike you singular, but I have a friend who would give money to any one that would take a little from those two."

"Say that again."

"Would give money to any one that would take it from those two."

"And you won't ask for any share of the swag?"

"Me? I have nothing to do with it."

"Gammon! well, your friend! will he?"

"Not a farthing!"

"And what will he give, suppose I have a friend that will do the trick?"

"According to the risk!"

The man gave a whistle. A fellow with forehead villainously low came from behind some tents.

"What is it, Will?" asked the newcomer.

"A plant."

"This one in it?"

"Yes! This is too public, come to Bevan's store."



CHAPTER LVIII.

"GEORGE, I want you to go to Bathurst."

"What for?"

"To buy some things."

"What things?"

"First of all, a revolver; there were fellows about our tent last night, creeping and prowling."

"I never heard them."

"No more you would an earthquake—but I heard them, and got up and pointed my revolver at them; so then they cut—all the better for them. We must mind our eye, George; a good many tents are robbed every week, and we are known to have a good swag."

"Well, I must start this moment if I am to be back."

"And take a pound of dust and buy things that we can sell here to a profit."

George came back at night looking rather sheep-faced.

"Tom," said he, "I am afraid I have done wrong. You see there was a confounded auction, and what with the hammer, and the folk bidding, and his palaver, I could not help it."

"But what is it you have bought?"

"A bit o' land, Tom."

Robinson groaned; but, recovering himself, he said gayly:

"Well, have you brought it with you?"

"No, it is not so small as all that; as nice a bit of grass as ever you saw, Tom, and just outside the town of Bathurat; only I didn't ought to have spent your money as well as my own."

"Stuff and nonsense—I accept the investment. Let me load your new revolver. Now look at my day's work. I wouldn't take a hundred pound for these little fellows."

George gloated over the little nuggets, for he saw Susan's eyes in them. To-night she seemed so near. The little bag was placed between them, the day's spoils added to it, and the tired friends were soon asleep.



CHAPTER LIX.

"HELP! help! murder! help! murder!" Such were the cries that invaded the sleepers' ears in the middle of the night, to which horrible sounds was added the furious barking of Carlo.

The men seized their revolvers and rushed out of the tent. At about sixty yards distant they saw a man on the ground struggling under two fellows, and still crying, though more faintly, "murder" and "help."

"They are killing him!" cried George; and Robinson and he cocked their revolvers and ran furiously toward the men. But these did not wait the attack. They started up and off like the wind, followed by two shots from Robinson that whistled unpleasantly near them.

"Have they hurt you, my poor fellow ?" said Robinson.

The man only groaned for answer.

Robinson turned his face up in the moonlight, and recognized a man to whom he had never spoken, but whom his watchful eye had noticed more than once in the mine—it was, in fact, the peddler Walker.

"Stop, George, I have seen this face in bad company. Oh! back to our tent for your life, and kill any man you see near it!"

They ran back. They saw two dark figures melting into the night on the other side the tent. They darted in—they felt for the bag. Gone! They felt convulsively all round the tent. Gone! With trembling hands Robinson struck a light. Gone—the work of months in a moment—-the hope of a life snatched out of a lover's very hand, and held out a mile off again!

The poor fellows rushed wildly out into the night. They saw nothing but the wretched decoy vanishing behind the nearest tents. They came into the tent again. They sat down and bowed to the blow in silence, and looked at one another, and their lips quivered, and they feared to speak lest they should break into unmanly rage or sorrow. So they sat like stone till daybreak.

And when the first streak of twilight came in, George said in a firm whisper:

"Take my hand, Tom, before we go to work."

So the two friends sat hand in hand a minute or two; and that hard grip of two workingmen's hands, though it was not gently eloquent like beauty's soft, expressive palm, did yet say many things good for the heart in this bitter hour.

It said: "A great calamity has fallen; but we do not blame each other, as some turn to directly and do. It is not your fault, George. It is not your fault, Tom."

It said: "We were lucky together; now we are unlucky together—all the more friends. We wrought together; now we have been wronged together—all the more friends." With this the sun rose, and for the first time they crept to their work instead of springing to it.

They still found gold in it, but not quite so abundant or so large. They had raised the cream of it for the thieves. Moreover, a rush had been made to the hole, claims measured off actually touching them; so they could not follow the gold-bearing strata horizontally—it belonged to their neighbors. They worked in silence, they ate their meal in silence. But as they rose to work again, Robinson said, very gravely, even solemnly:

"George, now I know what an honest man feels when he is robbed of the fruits of his work and his self-denial and his sobriety. If I had known it fifteen years ago, I should never have been a—what I have been."

For two months the friends worked stoutly with leaden hearts, but did little more than pay their expenses. The bag lay between them light as a feather. One morning Tom said to George:

"George, this won't do. I am going prospecting. Moore will lend me his horse for a day."

That day George worked alone. Robinson rode all over the country with a tin pan at his back, and tested all the places that seemed likely to his experienced eye. At night he returned to their tent. George was just lying down.

"No sleep to-night, George," said he, instinctively lowering his voice to a whisper; "I have found surface gold ten miles to the southward."

"Well, we will go to it to-morrow."

"What, by daylight, watched as we are? We, the two lucky ones," said Robinson bitterly. "No. Wait till the coast is clear—then strike tent and away."

At midnight they stole out of the camp. By peep of day they were in a little dell with a brook running at the bottom of it.

"Now, George, listen to me. Here is ten thousand pounds if we could keep this gully and the creek a fortnight to ourselves."

"Oh, Tom! and we will. Nobody will find us here, it is like a box."

Robinson smiled sadly. The men drove their spades in close to the little hole which Robinson had made prospecting yesterday, and the very first cradleful yielded an ounce of gold-dust extremely small and pure. They found it diffused with wonderful regularity within a few inches of the surface. Here for the first time George saw gold-dust so plentiful as to be visible. When a spadeful of the clay was turned up it glittered all over. When they tore up the grass, which was green as an emerald, specks of bright gold came up clinging to the roots. They fell like spaded tigers on the prey.

"What are you doing, George?"

"Going to light a fire for dinner. We must eat, I suppose, though I do grudge the time."

"We must eat, but not hot."

"Why not?"

"Because, if you light a fire, the smoke will be seen miles off, and half the diggings will be down upon us. I have brought three days' cold meat—-here it is."

"Will this be enough?" asked George, simply, his mouth full.

"Yes, it will be enough," replied the other, bitterly. "Do you hear that bird, George? They call him a leather-head. What is he singing?"

George laughed. "Seems to me he is saying, 'Off we go!' 'Off we go!' 'Off we go!'"

"That is it. And look now, off he is gone; and, what is more, he has gone to tell all the world he saw two men pick up gold like beans."

"Work!" cried George.

That night the little bag felt twice as heavy as last night, and Susan seemed nearer than for many a day. These two worked for their lives. They counted each minute, and George was a Goliath; the soil flew round him like the dust about a wmnnowing-machine. He was working for Susan. Robinson wasted two seconds admiring him.

"Well," said he, "gold puts us all on our mettle, but you beat all I ever saw. You are a man."

It was the morning of the third day, and the friends were filling the little bag fast; and at breakfast George quizzed Robinson's late fears.

"The leather-head didn't tell anybody, for here we are all alone."

Robinson laughed.

"But we should not have been, if I had let you light a fire. However, I really begin to hope now they will let us alone till we have cleared out the gully. Hallo!"

"What is the matter?"

"Look there, George."

"What is it? Smoke rising—down the valley ?"

"We are done! Didn't I tell you?"

"Don't say so, Tom. Why, it is only smoke, and five miles off."

"What signifies what it is or where it is? It is on the road to us."

"I hope better."

"What is the use of hoping nonsense? Was it there yesterday? Well, then."

"Don't you be faint-hearted," said George. "We are not caught yet. I wonder whether Susan would say it was a sin to try and mislead them?"

"A sin! I wish I knew how, I'd soon see. That was a good notion. This place is five hundred pound a day to us. We must keep it to-day by hook or by crook. Come with me, quick. Bring your tools and the bag."

George followed Robinson in utter ignorance of his design; that worthy made his way as fast as he could toward the smoke. When they got within a mile of it the valley widened and the smoke was seen rising from the side of the stream. Concealing themselves, they saw two men beating the ground on each side like pointers. Robinson drew back. "They are hunting up the stream," said he, "it is there we must put the stopper on them."

They made eastward for the stream which they had left.

"Come," said Robinson, "here is a spot that looks likely to a novice; dig and cut it up all you can."

George was mystified but obeyed, and soon the place looked as if men had been at work on it some time. Then Robinson took out a handful of gold-dust and coolly scattered it over a large heap of mould.

"What are you at? Are you mad, Tom? Why, there goes five pounds. What a sin!"

"Did you never hear of the man that flung away a sprat to catch a whale? Now turn back to our hole. Stop, leave your pickax, then they will think we are coming back to work."

In little more than half an hour they were in their little gully working like mad. They ate their dinner working. At five o'clock George pointed out to Robinson no less than seven distinct columns of smoke rising about a mile apart all down the valley.

"Ay!" said Robinson, "those six smokes are hunting the smoke that is hunting us! but we have screwed another day out."

Just as the sun was setting, a man came into the gully with a pickax on his shoulder.

"Ah! how d'ye do?" said Robinson, in a mock friendly accent. "We have been expecting you. Thank you for bringing us our pickax."

The man gave a sort of rueful laugh and came and delivered the pick and coolly watched the cradle.

"Why don't you ask what you want to know?" said Robinson.

The man sneered. "Is that the way to get the truth from a digger?" said he.

"It is from me, and the only one."

"Oh! then what are you doing, mate?"

"About ten ounces of gold per hour."

The man's mouth and eyes both opened. "Come, my lad," said Robinson, good-naturedly, "of course I am not glad you have found us, but since you are come, call your pals, light fires, and work all night. To-morrow it will be too late."

The man whistled. He was soon joined by two more and afterward by others. The whole party was eight. A hurried conference took place, and presently the captain, whose name was Ede, came up to Robinson with a small barrel of beer and begged him and his pal to drink as much as they liked. They were very glad of the draught and thanked the men warmly.

The newcomers took Robinson's advice, lighted large fires, divided their company, and groped for gold. Every now and then came a shout of joy, and, in the light of the fires, the wild figures showed red as blood against the black wall of night, and their excited eyes glowed like carbuncles as they clawed the sparkling dust. George and Robinson, fatigued already by a long day, broke down about three in the morning. They reeled into their tent, dug a hole, put in their gold bag, stamped it down, tumbled dead asleep down over it, and never woke till morn.

Gn l r-r-r! gn l r-r-r!

"What is the matter, Carlo?"

Gn l r-r-r.

Hum! hum! hum! Crash! crash!

At these sounds Robinson lifted up the corner of his tent. The gully was a digging. He ran out to see where he was to work, and found the whole soil one enormous tan-yard, the pits ten feet square, and so close there was hardly room to walk to your hole without tumbling into your neighbor's. You had to balance yourself like boys going along a beam in a timber-yard. In one of these he found Ede and his gang working. Mr. Ede had acquired a black eye, ditto one of his mates.

"Good-morning, Captain Robinson," said this personage, with a general gayety of countenance that contrasted most drolly with the mourning an expressive organ had gone into.

"Well, was I right?" asked Robinson, looking ruefully round the crowded digging.

"You were, Captain Robinson, and thank you for last night."

"Well, you have picked up my name somehow. Now just tell me how you picked up something else. How did you suspect us in this retired spot?"

"We were working just clear of the great digging by the side of the creek, and doing no good, when your cork came down."

"My cork?"

"Cork out of your bottle."

"I had no bottle. Oh, yes! my pal had a bottle of small beer."

"Ay, he must have thrown it into the creek, for a cork came down to us. Then I looked at it, and I said, 'Here is a cork from Moore's store; there is a party working up stream by this cork.'"

Robinson gave a little groan. "We are never to be at the bottom of gold digging," said he.

"So we came up the stream and tried several places as we came, but found nothing; at last we came to your pickax and signs of work, so my lads would stay and work there, and I let them an hour or two, and then I said, 'Come now, lads, the party we are after is higher up.'"

"Now how could you pretend to know that?" inquired Robinson, with curiosity.

"Easy enough. The water came down to us thick and muddyish, so I knew you were washing up stream."

"Confound my stupid head," cried Robinson, "I deserve to have it cut off after all my experience."

And he actually capered with vexation.

"The best may make a mistake," said the other soothingly. "Well, captain, you did us a good turn last night, so here is your claim. We put your pal's pick in it—here close to us. Oh! there was a lot that made difficulties, but we over-persuaded them."

"Indeed! How?"

"Gave them a hiding, and promised to knock out any one's brains that went into it. Oh! kindness begets kindness, even in a gold mine."

"It does," cried Robinson, "and the proof is—that I give you the claim. Here come this way and seem to buy it of me. All their eyes are upon us. Now split your gang, and four take my claim."

"Well, that is good of you. But what will you do, captain? Where shall you go?" And his eyes betrayed his curiosity.

"Humph! Well, I will tell you on condition that you don't bring two thousand after me again. You should look behind you as well as before, stupid."

These terms agreed to, Robinson let Ede know that he was going this moment back to the old digging. The other was greatly surprised. Robinson then explained that in the old digging gold lay at various depths and was inexhaustible; that this afternoon there would be a rush made from it to Robinson's Gully (so the spot where they stood was already called); that thousands of good claims would thus by diggers' law be vacated; and that he should take the best before the rush came back, which would be immediately, since Robinson's Gully would be emptied of its gold in four hours.

"So clear out your two claims," said he. "It won't take you two hours. All the gold lies in one streak four inches deep. Then back after me; I'll give you the office. I'll mark you down a good claim."

Mr. Ede, who was not used to this sort of thing since he fought for gold, wore a ludicrous expression of surprise and gratitude. Robinson read it and grinned superior, but the look rendered words needless, so he turned the conversation.

"How did you get your black eye?"

"Oh! didn't I tell you? Fighting with the blackguards for your claim."

It was now Robinson's turn to be touched.

"You are a good fellow. You and I must be friends. Ah! if I could but get together about forty decent men like you, and that had got gold to lose."

"Well," said Ede, "why not? Here are eight that have got gold to lose, thanks to you, and your own lot—that makes ten. We could easy make up forty for any good lay; there is my hand for one. What is it?"

Robinson took Ede's hand with a haste and an energy that almost startled him, and his features darkened with an expression unusual now to his good-natured face. "To put down thieving in the camp," said he, sternly.

"Ah!" said the other, half sadly (the desirableness of this had occurred to him before now); "but how are we to do that?" asked he, incredulously. "The camp is choke-full of them."

Robinson looked blacker, uglier and more in earnest. So was his answer when it came.

"Make stealing death by the law."

"The law! What law?"

"Lynch!"



CHAPTER LX.

ABOUT a fortnight after Robinson's return to the diggings two men were seated in a small room at Bevan's store. There was little risk of their being interrupted by any honest digger, for it was the middle of the day.

"I know that well enough," growled the black-maned one, "everybody knows the lucky rip has got a heavier swag than ever, but we shan't get it so cheap, if we do at all."

"Why not?"

"He is on his guard now, night and day, and what is more he has got friends in the mine that would hang me or you either up to dry, if they but caught us looking too near his tent."

"The ruffians. Well, but if he has friends he has enemies."

"Not so many; none that I know of but you and me. I wonder what he has done to you?"

The other waived this question and replied: "I have found two parties that hate him; two that came in last week."

"Have you? then, if you are in earnest, make me acquainted with them, for I am weak-handed; I lost one of my pals yesterday."

"Indeed! how?"

"They caught him at work and gave him a rap over the head with a spade. The more —— fool he for being caught. Here is to his memory."

"Ugh! what, is he, is he—"

"Dead as a herring."

"Where shall we all go to? What lawless fellows these diggers are. I will bring you the men."

For the last two months the serpentine man had wound in and out the camp, poking about for a villain of the darker sort as minutely as Diogenes did for an honest man, and dispensing liquor and watching looks and words. He found rogues galore, and envious spirits that wished the friends ill, but none of them seemed game to risk their lives against two men, one of whom said openly he would kill any stranger he caught in his tent, and whom some fifty stout fellows called Captain Robinson, and were ready to take up his quarrel like fire. But at last he fell in with two old lags, who had a deadly grudge against the captain, and a sovereign contempt for him into the bargain. By the aid of liquor he wormed out their story. This was the marrow of it: The captain had been their pal, and, while they were all three cracking a crib, had with unexampled treachery betrayed them, and got them laid by the heels for nearly a year; in fact, if they had not broken prison they would not have been here now. In short, in less than half an hour he returned with our old acquaintances, brutus and mephistopheles.

These two came half reluctant, suspicious and reserved. But at sight of Black Will they were reassured, villain was so stamped on him. With instantaneous sympathy and an instinct of confidence the three compared notes, and showed how each had been aggrieved by the common enemy. Next they held a council of war, the grand object of which was to hit upon some plan of robbing the friends of their new swag.

It was a difficult and very dangerous job. Plans were proposed and rejected, and nothing agreed upon but this, that the men should be carefully watched for days to find out where they kept their gold at night and where by day, and an attempt timed and regulated accordingly. Moreover, the same afternoon a special gang of six was formed, including Walker, which pitiful fox was greatly patronized by the black-maned lion. At sight of him, brutus, who knew him not indeed by name but by a literary transaction, was "for laying on," but his patron interposed, and, having inquired and heard the offense, bellowed with laughter, and condemned the ex-peddler to a fine of half a crown in grog. This softened brutus, and a harmonious debauch succeeded. Like the old Egyptians they debated first sober and then drunk, and to stagger my general notion that the ancients were unwise, candor compels me to own, it was while stammering, maudling, stinking and in every sense drunk that mephistopheles driveled out a scheme so cunning and so new as threw everybody and everything into the shade. It was carried by hiccoughation.

To work this scheme mephistopheles required a beautiful large new tent; the serpentine man bought it. Money to feed the gang; serpent advanced it.

Robinson's tent was about thirty yards from his claim, which its one opening faced. So he and George worked with an eye ever upon their tent. At night two men of Robinson's party patrolled armed to the teeth; they relieved guard every two hours. Captain Robinson's orders to these men, if they saw anybody doing anything suspicious after dark, were these:

First fire, Then inquire.

This general order was matter of publicity for a quarter of a mile round Robinson's tent, and added to his popularity and our rascals' perplexities.

These orders had surely the double merit of conciseness and melody; well, for all that, they were disgustingly offensive to one true friend of the captain, viz., to George Fielding.

"What is all the gold in the world compared with a man's life?" said he, indignantly.

"An ounce of it is worth half a dozen such lives as some here," was the cool reply.

"I have heard you talk very different. I mind when you could make excuses even for thieves that were never taught any better, poor unfortunate souls."

"Did I?" said the captain, a little taken aback. "Well, perhaps I did; it was natural, hem, under the circumstances. No! not for such thieves as these, that haven't got any honor at all."

"Honor, eh?"

"Yes! honor. Look here, suppose in my unconverted days I had broke into a jeweler's shop (that comes nearest to a mine) with four or five pals, do you think I should have held it lawful to rob my pals of any part of the swag just because we happened to be robbing a silversmith? Certainly not; I assure you, George, the punishment of such a nasty, sneaking, dishonorable act would be death in every gang, and cheap, too. Well, we have broken into Nature's shop here, and we are to rifle her, and not turn to like unnatural monsters, and rob our ten thousand pals."

"Thieving is thieving, in my view," was the prejudiced reply.

"And hanging is hanging—as all thieves shall find if caught convenient."

"You make my flesh creep, Tom. I liked you better when you were not so great a man, more humble like; have you forgotten when you had to make excuses for yourself; then you had Susan on your side and brought me round, for I was bitter against theft; but never so bad as you are now."

"Oh, never mind what I said in those days; why, you must be well aware I did not know what I was talking about. I had been a rogue and a fool, and I talked like both. But now I am a man of property, and my eyes are open and my conscience revolts against theft, and the gallows is the finest institution going, and next to that comes a jolly good prison. I wish there was one in this mine as big as Pentonville, then property—"

Here the dialogue was closed by the demand the pick made upon the man of property's breath. But it rankled, and on laying down the pick he burst out: "Well, to think of an honest man like you having a word to say for thieving. Why, it is a despicable trait in a gold mine. I'll go farther, I'll prove it is the sin of sins all round the world. Stolen money never thrives—goes for drink and nonsense. Now you pick and I'll wash. Theft corrupts the man that is robbed as well as the thief; drives him to despair and drink and ruin temporal and eternal. No country could stand half an hour without law!! The very honest would turn thieves if not protected, and there would be a go. Besides, this great crime is like a trunk railway, other little crimes run into it and out of it; lies buzz about it like these Australian flies—drat you! Drunkenness precedes and follows it, and perjury rushes to its defense."

"Well, Tom, you are a beautiful speaker."

"I haven't done yet. What wonder it degrades a man when a dog loses his dignity under it. Behold the dog who has stolen; look at Carlo yesterday when he demeaned himself to prig Jem's dinner (the sly brute won't look at ours). How mean he cut with his tail under his belly, instead of turning out to meet folk all jolly and waggle-um-tail-um as on other occasions—Hallo, you, sir! what are you doing so near our tent?" and up jumped the man of property and ran cocking a revolver to a party who was kneeling close to the friends' tent.

The man looked up coolly; he was on his knees.

"We are newly arrived and just going to pitch, and a digger told us we must not come within thirty yards of the captain's tent, so we are measuring the distance."

"Well, measure it—and keep it."

Robinson stayed by his tent till the man, whose face was strange to him, had measured and marked the ground. Soon after the tent in question was pitched, and it looked so large and new that the man of property's suspicions were lulled.

"It is all right," said he, "tent is worth twenty pounds at the lowest farthing."

While Black Will and his gang were scheming to get the friends' gold, Robinson, though conscious only of his general danger, grew more and more nervous as the bag grew heavier, and strengthened his defenses every day.

This very day one was added to the cause of order in a very characteristic way. I must first observe that Mr. McLaughlan had become George's bailiff, that is, on discovery of the gold he had agreed to incorporate George's flocks, to use his ground and to account to him, sharing the profits, and George running the risks. George had, however, encumbered the property with Abner as herdsman. That worthy had come whining to him lame of one leg from a blow on the head, which he convinced George Jacky had given him with his battle-ax.

"I'm spoiled for life and by your savage. I have lost my place; do something for me."

Good-hearted George did as related, and moreover promised to give Jacky a hiding if ever he caught him again. George's aversion to bloodshed is matter of history; it was also his creed that a good hiding did nobody any harm.

Now it was sheep-shearing time and McLaughlan was short of hands; he came into the mine to see whether out of so many thousands he could not find four or five who would shear instead of digging.

When he put the question to George, George shook his head doubtfully. "However," said he, "look out for some unlucky ones, that is your best chance, leastways your only one."

So McLaughlan went cannily about listening here and there to the men who were now at their dinners, and he found Ede's gang grumbling and growling with their mouths full; in short, enjoying at the same time a good dinner and an Englishman's grace.

"This will do," thought the Scot, misled like continental nations by that little trait of ours; he opened the ball.

"I'm saying—my lads—will ye gie ower this weary warrk a wee whilee and sheer a wheen sheep to me?"

The men looked in his face, then at one another, and the proposal struck them as singularly droll. They burst out laughing in his face.

McLaughlan (keeping his temper thoroughly, but not without a severe struggle). "Oh, fine I ken I'll ha'e to pay a maist deevelich price for your highnesses—aweel, I'se pay—aw thing has its price; jaast name your wage for shearing five hunder sheep."

The men whispered together. The Scot congratulated himself on his success; it would be a question of price, after all.

"We will do it for—the wool."

"Th' 'oo?—oo ay! but hoo muckle o' th' 'oo? for ye ken—"

"How muckle? why, all."

"A' the 'oo! ye blackguard, ye're no blate."

"Keep your temper, farmer, it is not worth our while to shear sheep for less than that."

"De'il go wi' ye then!" and he moved off in great dudgeon.

"Stop," cried the captain, "you and I are acquainted—you lived out Wellington way—me and another wandered to your hut one day and you gave us our supper."

"Ay, lad, I mind o' ye the noo!"

"The jolliest supper ever I had—a haggis you called it."

"Ay, did I, my fine lad. I cookit it till ye myssel. Ye meicht help me for ane."

"I will," said Captain Ede; and a conference took place in a whisper between him and his men.

"It is a' reicht the noo!" thought McLaughlan.

"We have an offer to make you," said Ede, respectfully.

"Let us hear't."

"Our party is large; we want a cook for it, and we offer you the place in return for past kindness."

"Me a cuik, y' impudent vagabond!" cried the Caledonian, red as a turkey-cock; and, if a look could have crushed a party of eight, their hole had been their grave.

McLaughlan took seven ireful steps—wide ones—then his hot anger assumed a cold, sardonic form, he returned, and with blighting satire speered this question by way of gratifying an ironical curiosity.

"An' whaat would ye ha'e the cheek t'offer a McLanghlan to cuik till ye, you that kens sae fine the price o' wark?"

"Thirty shillings."

"Thretty shilling the week for a McLaughlan!"

"The week," cried Ede, "nonsense—thirty shillings a day of course. We sell work for gold, sir, and we give gold for it; look here!" and he suddenly bared a sturdy brown arm, and, smacking it, cried, "That is dirt where you come from, but it is gold here."

"Ye're a fine lad," said the Scot, smoothly, "and ye've a boeny aerm," added he, looking down at it. "I'se no deny that. I'm thinking—I'll just come—and cuik till ye a wee—for auld lang syne—thretty schelln the day—an' ye'll buy the flesh o' me. I'll sell it a hantle cheaper than thir warldly-minded fleshers."

Bref, he came to be shorn, and remained to fleece.

He went and told George what he had done.

"Hech! hech!" whined he, "thir's a maist awfu' come doon for the McLaughlans—-but wha wadna' stuip to lift gowd?"

He left his head man, a countryman of his own, in charge of the flocks, and tarried in the mine. He gave great satisfaction, except that he used to make his masters wait for dinner while he pronounced a thundering long benediction; but his cookery compensated the delay.

Robinson enrolled him in his police and it was the fashion openly to quiz, and secretly respect him.

Robinson also made friends with the women, in particular with one Mary McDogherty, wife of a very unsuccessful digger. Many a pound of potatoes Pat and she had from the captain, and this getting wind secured the good will of the Irish boys.



CHAPTER LXI.

GEORGE was very homesick.

"Haven't we got a thousand pounds apiece yet?"

"Hush! no! not quite; but too much to bawl about."

"And we never shall till you take my advice, and trace the gold to its home in the high rocks. Here we are plodding for dust, and one good nugget would make us."

"Well! well!" said Robinson, "the moment the dry weather goes you shall show me the home of the gold." Poor George and his nuggets!

"That is a bargain," said George, "and now I have something more to say. Why keep so much gold in our tent? It makes me fret. I am for selling some of it to Mr. Levi.

"What, at three pounds the ounce? not if I know it."

"Then why not leave it with him to keep?"

"Because it is safer in its little hole in our tent. What do the diggers care for Mr. Levi? You and I respect him, but I am the man they swear by. No, George, Tom Weasel isn't caught napping twice in the same year. Don't you see I've been working this four months past to make my tent safe? and I've done it. It is watched for me night and day, and if our swag was in the Bank of England it wouldn't be safer than it is. Put that in your pipe. Well, Carlo, what is the news in your part?"

Carlo came running up to George, and licked his face, which just rose above the hole.

"What is it, Carlo?" asked George, in some astonishment.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the other. "Here is the very dog come out to encourage his faint-hearted master."

"No!" said George, "it can't be that—he means something—be quiet, Carlo, licking me to pieces—but what it is Heaven only knows; don't you encourage him; he has no business out of the tent—go back, Carlo—go into kennel, sir;" and off slunk Carlo back into the tent, of which he was the day sentinel.

"Tom," remarked George, thoughtfully, "I believe Carlo wanted to show me something; he is a wonderful wise dog."

"Nonsense," cried Robinson, sharply, "he heard you at the old lay, grumbling, and came to say cheer up, old fellow."

While Robinson was thus quizzing George, a tremendous noise was suddenly heard in their tent. A scuffle—a fierce, muffled snarl—and a human yell; with a cry, almost as loud, the men bounded out of their hole, and, the blood running like melting ice down their backs with apprehension, burst into the tent; then they came upon a sight that almost drew the eyes out of their heads.

In the center of the tent, not six inches from their buried treasure, was the head of a man emerging from the bowels of the earth, and cursing and yelling, for Carlo had seized his head by the nape of the neck, and bitten it so deep that the blood literally squirted, and was stamping and going back snarling and pulling and hauling in fierce jerks to extract it from the earth, while the burly-headed ruffian it belonged to, cramped by his situation, and pounced on unawares by the fiery teeth, was striving and battling to get down into the earth again. Spite of his disadvantage, such were his strength and despair that he now swung the dog backward and forward. But the men burst in. George seized him by the hair of his head, Tom by the shoulder, and with Carlo's help, wrenched him on to the floor of the tent, where he was flung on his back with Tom's revolver at his temple, and Carlo flew round and round barking furiously, and now and then coming flying at him; on which occasions he was always warded off by George's strong arm, and passed devious, his teeth clicking together like machinery, the snap and the rush being all one design that must succeed or fail together. Captain Robinson put his lips to his whistle, and the tent was full of his friends in a moment.

"Get me a bullock rope."

"Ay!"

"And drive a stout pole into the ground."

"Ay!"

In less than five minutes brutus was tied up to a post in the sun, with a placard on his breast on which was written in enormous letters—

THIEF

(and underneath in smaller letters—)

Caught trying to shake Captain Robinson's tent. First offense. N B—To be hanged next time.

Then a crier was sent through the mine to invite inspection of brutus's features, and ere sunset thousands looked into his face, and when he tried to lower it pulled it savagely up.

"I shall know you again, my lad," was the common remark, "and, if I catch you too near my tent, rope or revolver, one of the two."

Captain Robinson's men did not waste five minutes with brutus. They tied him to the stake, and dashed into their holes to make up lost time, but Robinson and George remained quiet in their tent.

"George," said Tom, in a low, contrite, humble voice, "let us return thanks to Heaven, for vain is man's skill."

And they did.

"George," said Tom, rising from his knees, "the conceit is taken out of me for about the twentieth time; I felt so strong and I was nobody. The danger came in a way I never dreamed, and when it had come we were saved by a friend I never valued. Give a paw, Carlo."

Carlo gave a paw.

"He has been a good friend to us this day," said George. "I see it all now; he must have heard the earth move and did not understand it so he came for me, and, when you would not let me go, he went back, and says he, 'I dare to say it is a rabbit burrowing up.' So he waited still as death, watching, and nailed six feet of vermin instead of bunny."

Here they both fell to caressing Carlo, who jumped and barked and finished with a pretended onslaught on the captain as he was kneeling, looking at their so late imperiled gold, and knocked him over and slobbered his face when he was down. Opinions varied, but the impression was he knew he had been a clever dog. This same evening, Jem made a collar for him on which was written "Policeman C."

The fine new tent was entered and found deserted, nothing there but an enormous mound of earth that came out of the subterranean, which Robinson got a light and inspected all the way to its debouchure in his own tent. As he returned, holding up his light and peering about, he noticed something glitter at the top of the arch; he held the light close to it and saw a speck or two of gold sparkling here and there. He took out his knife and scraped the roof in places, and brought to light in detached pieces a layer of gold-dust about the substance of a sheet of blotting-paper and full three yards wide; it crossed the subterranean at right angles, dipping apparently about an inch in two yards. The conduct of brutus and co. had been typical. They had been so bent on theft, that they were blind to the pocketfuls of honest, safe, easy gold they rubbed their very eyes and their thick skulls against on their subterraneous path to danger and crime.

Two courses occurred to Robinson; one was to try and monopolize this vein of gold, the other to take his share of it and make the rest add to his popularity and influence in the mine. He chose the latter, for the bumptiousness was chilled in him. This second attack on his tent made him tremble.

"I am a marked man," said he. "Well, if I have enemies, the more need to get friends all round me."

I must here observe that many men failed altogether at the gold diggings and returned in rags and tatters to the towns; many others found a little, enough to live like a gentleman anywhere else, but too little for bare existence in a place where an egg cost a shilling, a cabbage a shilling, and baking two pounds of beef one shilling and sixpence, and a pair of mining boots eight pounds, and a frying-pan thirty shillings, and so on.

Besides, the hundreds that fell by diarrhea, their hands clutching in vain the gold that could not follow them, many a poor fellow died of a broken heart and hardships suffered in vain, and some, long unlucky but persevering, suddenly surprised by a rich find of gold, fell by the shock of good fortune, went raving mad, dazzled by the gold, and perished miserably. For here all was on a great heroic scale, starvation, wealth, industry, crime, retribution, madness and disease.

Now the good-natured captain had his eye upon four unlucky men at this identical moment.

No. 1, Mr. Miles, his old master, who, having run through his means, had come to the diggings. He had joined a gang of five; they made only about three pounds a week each, and had expelled him, alleging that his work was not quite up to their mark. He was left without a mate and earned a precarious livelihood without complaining, for he was game; but Robinson's quick eye and ear saw his clothes were shabby and that he had given up his ha! ha! ha!

No. 2, Jem, whose mate had run away and robbed him, and he was left solus with his tools.

No. 3, Mr. Stevens, an accomplished scholar, and, above all, linguist, broad in the forehead but narrow in the chest, who had been successively rejected by five gangs and was now at a discount. He picked up a few shillings by interpreting, but it was a suspicious circumstance that he often came two miles from his end of the camp to see Robinson just at dinner-time. Then a look used to pass between those two good-hearted creatures, and Mr. Stevens was served first and Carlo docked till evening. Titles prevailed but little in the mine. They generally addressed the males of our species thus:

"Hi! man!"

The females thus:

"Hi! woman!"

The Spartans! but these two made an exception in favor of this reduced scholar. They called him "Sir," and felt abashed his black coat should be so rusty; and they gave him the gristly bits, for he was not working, but always served him first.

No. 4, Unlucky Jack, a digger. This man really seemed to be unlucky. Gangs would find the stuff on four sides of him, and he none; his last party had dissolved, owing they said to his ill-luck, and he was forlorn. These four Robinson convened, with the help of Mary McDogherty, who went for Stevens; and made them a little speech, telling them he had seen all their four ill-lucks, and was going to end that with one blow. He then, taking the direction of brutus's gold-vein, marked them out a claim full forty yards off, and himself one close to them; organized them, and set them working in high spirits, tremulous expectation, and a fervor of gratitude to him, and kindly feeling toward their unlucky comrades.

"You won't find anything for six feet," said the captain. "Meantime, all of you turn to and tell the rest how you were the unluckiest man in the whole mine—till you fell in with me—he! he!"

And the captain chuckled. His elastic vanity was fast recovering from brutus, and his spirits rising.

Toward evening he collected his whole faction, got on the top of two cradles, made a speech, thanked them for their good-will, and told them he had now an opportunity of making them a return. He had discovered a vein of gold which he could have kept all to himself, but it was more just and more generous to share it with his partisans.

"Now, pass through this little mine one at a time," said he, "and look at the roof, where I have stuck the two lighted candles, and then pass on quick to make room for others."

The men dived one after another, examined the roof, and, rushing wildly out at the other end in great excitement, ran and marked out claims on both sides of the subterranean.

But, with all their greediness and eagerness, they left ten feet square untouched on each side the subterranean.

"What is this left for?"

"That is left for the clever fellow that found the gold after a thief had missed it," cried one.

"And for the generous fellow that parted his find," roared another, from a distance.

Robinson seemed to reflect.

"No! I won't spoil the meat by cutting myself the fat—no! I am a digger, but not only a digger, I aspire to the honor of being a captain of diggers; my claim lies out there."

"Hurrah; three cheers for Captain Robinson!"

"Will you do me a favor in return?"

"Hurrah! won't we?"

"I am going to petition the governor to send us out police to guard our tents."

"Hurrah!"

"And even beaks, if necessary" (doubtful murmurs). "And, above all, soldiers to take our gold safe down to Sydney."

"Hurrah!"

"Where we can sell it at three fifteen the ounce."

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

"Instead of giving it away here for three pounds, and then being robbed. If you will all sign, Mr. Stevens and I will draw up the petition; no country can stand without law!"

"Hurrah for Captain Robinson, the diggers' friend."

And the wild fellows jumped out of the holes, and four seized the diggers' friend, and they chaired him in their rough way, and they put Carlo into a cradle, and raised him high, and chaired him; and both man and dog were right glad to get safe out of the precarious honor.

The proceedings ended by brutus being loosed and set between two long lines of men with lumps of clay, and pelted and knocked down, and knocked up again, and driven, bruised, battered and bleeding, out of that part of the camp. He found his way to a little dirty tent not much bigger than a badger's hole, crawled in, and sank down in a fainting state, and lay on his back stiff and fevered, and smarting soul and body many days.

And while Robinson was exulting in his skill, his good fortune, his popularity, his swelling bag, and the constabulary force he was collecting and heading, this tortured ruffian, driven to utter desperation by the exposure of his features to all the camp with "Thief" blazing on him, lay groaning stiff and sore—but lived for revenge.

"Let him keep his gold—I don't care for his gold now. I'll have his blood!"



CHAPTER LXII.

"I WONDER at you giving away the claim that lay close to the gold; it is all very well to be generous, but you forget—Susan."

"Don't you be silly, George. The vein dips, and those that cut down on it where it is horizontalish will get a little; we, that nick it nearly verticalish, will get three times as much out of a ten-foot square claim."

"Well! you are a sharp fellow, to be sure; but, if it is so, why on earth did you make a favor to them of giving them the milk and taking the cream?"

"Policy, George! policy!"



CHAPTER LXIII.

SUNDAY.

"TOM, I invite you to a walk."

"Ay! ay! I'd give twenty pounds for one; but the swag?"

"Leave it this one day with Mr. Levi; he has got two young men always armed in his tent, and a little peevish dog, and gutta-percha pipes running into all the Jews' tents that are at his back like chicks after the old hen."

"Oh, he is a deep one."

"And he has got mouth-pieces to them, and so he could bring thirty men upon a thief in less than half a minute."

"Well, then, George! a walk is a great temptation, this beautiful day."

In short, by eight o'clock the gold was deposited, and the three friends, for Policeman C must count for one, stepped lustily out in the morning air.

It was the month of January; a blazing hot day was beginning to glow through the freshness of morning; the sky was one cope of pure blue, and the southern air crept slowly up, its wings clogged with fragrance, and just tuned the trembling leaves—no more.

"Is not this pleasant, Tom—isn't it sweet?"

"I believe you, George! and what a shame to run down such a country as this. There they come home, and tell you the flowers have no smell, but they keep dark about the trees and bushes being haystacks of flowers. Snuff the air as we go, it is a thousand English gardens in one. Look at all those tea-scrubs each with a thousand blossoms on it as sweet as honey, and the golden wattles on the other side, and all smelling like seven o'clock; after which flowers be hanged!"

"Ay, lad! it is very refreshing; and it is Sunday, and we have got away from the wicked for an hour or two; but in England there would be a little white church out yonder, and a spire like an angel's forefinger pointing from the grass to heaven, and the lads in their clean smock-frocks like snow, and the wenches in their white stockings and new shawls, and the old women in their scarlet cloaks and black bonnets, all going one road, and a tinkle-tinkle from the belfry, that would turn all these other sounds and colors and sweet smells holy, as well as fair, on the Sabbath morn. Ah! England. Ah!"

"You will see her again—no need to sigh."

"Oh, I was not thinking of her in particular just then."

"Of who?"

"Of Susan!"

"Prejudice be hanged, this is a lovely land."

"So 'tis, Tom, so 'tis. But I'll tell you what puts me out a little bit; nothing is what it sets up for here. If you see a ripe pear and go to eat it,—it is a lump of hard wood. Next comes a thing the very sight of which turns your stomach—and that is delicious, a loquot, for instance. There now, look at that magpie! well, it is Australia—so that magpie is a crow and not a magpie at all. Everything pretends to be some old friend or other of mine, and turns out a stranger. Here is nothing but surprises and deceptions. The flowers make a point of not smelling, and the bushes that nobody expects to smell, or wants to smell, they smell lovely.

"What does it matter where the smell comes from, so that you get it?"

"Why, Tom," replied George, opening his eyes, "it makes all the difference. I like to smell a flower—flower is not complete without smell—but I don't care if I never smell a bush till I die. Then the birds they laugh and talk like Christians; they make me split my sides, God bless their little hearts; but they won't chirrup. Oh, dear, no, bless you, they leave the Christians to chirrup—they hold conversations and giggle and laugh and play a thing like a fiddle—it is Australia! where everything is inside-out and topsy-turvy. The animals have four legs, so they jump on two. Ten-foot square of rock lets for a pound a month; ten acres of grass for a shilling a year. Roasted at Christmas, shiver o' cold on midsummer-day. The lakes are grass, and the rivers turn their backs on the sea and run into the heart of the land; and the men would stand on their heads, but I have taken a thought, and I've found out why they don't."

"Why?"

"Because if they did their heads would point the same way a man's head points in England."

Robinson laughed, and told George he admired the country for these very traits. "Novelty for me against the world. Who'd come twelve thousand miles to see nothing we couldn't see at home? Hang the same old story always; where are we going, George?"

"Oh, not much farther, only about twelve miles from the camp?"

"Where to?"

"To a farmer I know. I am going to show you a lark, Tom," said George. His eyes beamed benevolence on his comrade.

Robinson stopped dead short. "George," said he, "no! don't let us. I would rather stay at home and read my book. You can go into temptation and come out pure; I can't. I am one of those that, if I go into a puddle up to my shoe, I must splash up to my middle."

"What has that to do with it?"

"Your proposing to me to go in for a lark on the Sabbath day.

"Why, Tom, am I the man to tempt you to do evil?" asked George, hurt.

"Why, no! but, for all that, you proposed a lark."

"Ay, but an innocent one, one more likely to lift your heart on high than to give you ill thoughts."

"Well, this is a riddle;" and Robinson was intensely puzzled.

"Carlo," cried George, suddenly, "come here. I will not have you hunting and tormenting those kangaroo rats to-day. Let us all be at peace, if you please. Come to heel."

The friends strode briskly on, and a little after eleven o'clock they came upon a small squatter's house and premises. "Here we are," cried George, and his eyes glittered with innocent delight.

The house was thatched and whitewashed, and English was written on it and on every foot of ground round it. A furzebush had been planted by the door. Vertical oak palings were the fence, with a five-barred gate in the middle of them. From the little plantation all the magnificent trees and shrubs of Australia had been excluded with amazing resolution and consistency, and oak and ash reigned safe from overtowering rivals. They passed to the back of the house, and there George's countenance fell a little, for on the oval grass-plot and gravel walk he found from thirty to forty rough fellows, most of them diggers.

"Ah, well," said he, on reflection, "we could not expect to have it all to ourselves, and indeed it would be a sin to wish it, you know. Now, Tom, come this way; here it is, here it is—there." Tom looked up, and in a gigantic cage was a light brown bird.

He was utterly confounded. "What, is it this we came twelve miles to see?"

"Ay! and twice twelve wouldn't have been much to me."

"Well, but what is the lark you talked of?"

"This is it."

"This? This is a bird."

"Well, and isn't a lark a bird?"

"Oh, ay! I see! ha! ha! ha! ha!"

Robinson's merriment was interrupted by a harsh remonstrance from several of the diggers, who were all from the other end of the camp.

"Hold your —— cackle," cried one, "he is going to sing;" and the whole party had their eyes turned with expectation toward the bird.

Like most singers, he kept them waiting a bit. But at last, just at noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him to sing, the little feathered exile began as it were to tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round the cage that moment, and amid a dead stillness the bird uttered some very uncertain chirps, but after a while he seemed to revive his memories, and call his ancient cadences back him to one by one, and string them sotto voce.

And then the same sun that had warmed his little heart at home came glowing down on him here, and he gave music back for it more and more, till at last—amid breathless silence and glistening eyes of the rough diggers hanging on his voice—out burst in that distant land his English song.

It swelled his little throat and gushed from him with thrilling force and plenty, and every time he checked his song to think of its theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first soared from, and the spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had held their breath to hear him; and when he swelled with song again, and poured with all his soul the green meadows, the quiet brooks, the honey clover and the English spring, the rugged mouths opened and so stayed, and the shaggy lips trembled, and more than one drop trickled from fierce unbridled hearts down bronzed and rugged cheeks.

Dulce dornurn!

And these shaggy men, full of oaths and strife and cupidity, had once been white-headed boys, and had strolled about the English fields with little sisters and little brothers, and seen the lark rise, and heard him sing this very song. The little playmates lay in the churchyard, and they were full of oaths and drink and lusts and remorses—but no note was changed in this immortal song. And so for a moment or two years of vice rolled away like a dark cloud from the memory, and the past shone out in the song-shine. They came back, bright as the immortal notes that lighted them, those faded pictures and those fleeted days; the cottage, the old mother's tears when he left her without one grain of sorrow; the village-church and its simple chimes; the clover-field hard by in which he lay and gamboled, while the lark praised God overhead; the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked, the sweet hours of youth—and innocence—and home.



CHAPTER LXIV.

"WHAT will you take for him, mistress? I will give you five pounds for him."

"No! no! I won't take five pounds for my bird!"

"Of course she won't," cried another, "she wouldn't be such a flat. Here, missus," cried he, "I'll give you that for him;" and he extended a brown hand with at least thirty new sovereigns glittering in it.

The woman trembled; she and her husband were just emerging from poverty after a hard fight. "Oh!" she cried, "it is a shame to tempt a poor woman with so much gold. We had six brought over, and all died on the way but this one!" and she threw her white apron over her head, not to see the glittering bribe.

"—— you, put the blunt up and don't tempt the woman," was the cry. Another added: "Why, you fool, it wouldn't live a week if you had it," and they all abused the merchant. But the woman turned to him kindly and said:

"You come to me every Sunday, and he shall sing to you. You will get more pleasure from him so," said she, sweetly, "than if he was always by you."

"So I will, old girl," replied the rough, in a friendly tone.

George stayed till the lark gave up singing altogether, and then he said: "Now I am off. I don't want to hear bad language after that; let us take the lark's chirp home to bed with us;" and they made off; and true it was the pure strains dwelt upon their spirits, and refreshed and purified these sojourners in a godless place. Meeting these two figures on Sunday afternoon, armed each with a double-barreled gun and a revolver, you would never have guessed what gentle thoughts possessed them wholly. They talked less than they did coming, but they felt so quiet and happy.

"The pretty bird," purred George (seeing him by the ear), "I feel after him—there—as if I had just come out o' church."

"So do I, George, and I think his song must be a psalm, if we knew all."

"That it is, for Heaven taught it him. We must try and keep all this in our hearts when we get among the broken bottles, and foul language, and gold," says George. "How sweet it all smells, sweeter than before."

"That is because it is afternoon."

"Yes! or along of the music; that tune was a breath from home that makes everything please me. Now this is the first Sunday that has looked, and smelled, and sounded Sunday."

"George, it is hard to believe the world is wicked. Everything seems good, and gentle, and at peace with heaven and earth."

A jet of smoke issued from the bush, followed by the report of a gun, and Carlo, who had taken advantage of George's revery to slip on ahead, gave a sharp howl, and spun round upon all fours.

"The scoundrels!" shrieked Robinson. And in a moment his gun was at his shoulder, and he fired both barrels slap into the spot whence the smoke had issued.

Both the men dashed up and sprang into the bush revolver in hand, but ere they could reach it the dastard had run for it; and the scrub was so thick pursuit was hopeless. The men returned full of anxiety for Carlo.

The dog met them, his tail between his legs, but at sight of George he wagged his tail, and came to him and licked George's hand, and walked on with them, licking George's hand every now and then.

"Look, Tom, he is as sensible as a Christian. He knows the shot was meant for him, though they didn't hit him."

By this time the men had got out of the wood, and pursued their road, but not with tranquil hearts. Sunday ended with the noise of that coward's gun. They walked on hastily, guns ready, fingers on trigger—at war. Suddenly Robinson looked back, and stopped and drew George's attention to Carlo. He was standing with all his four legs wide apart, like a statue.

George called him; he came directly, and was for licking George's hand, but George pulled him about and examined him all over.

"I wish they may not have hurt him after all, the butchers; they have, too. See here, Tom, here is one streak of blood on his belly, nothing to hurt, though, I do hope. Never mind, Carlo," cried George, "it is only a single shot by what I can see, 'tisn't like when Will put the whole charge into you, rabbit-shooting, is it, Carlo? No, says he; we don't care for this, do we, Carlo?" cried George, rather boisterously.

"Make him go into that pool, there," said Robinson; "then he won't have fever."

"I will; here—cess! cess!" He threw a stone into the pool of water that lay a little off the road, and Carlo went in after it without hesitation, though not with his usual alacrity. After an unsuccessful attempt to recover the stone he swam out lower down, and came back to the men and wagged his tail slowly, and walked behind George.

They went on.

"Tom," said George, after a pause, "I don't like it."

"Don't like what?"

"He never so much as shook himself."

"What of that? He did shake himself, I should say."

"Not as should be. Who ever saw a dog come out of the water and not shake himself? Carlo, hie, Carlo!" and George threw a stone along the ground, after which Carlo trotted; but his limbs seemed to work stiffly; the stone spun round a sharp corner in the road, the dog followed it.

"He will do now," said Robinson.

They walked briskly on. On turning the corner they found Carlo sitting up and shivering, with the stone between his paws.

"We must not let him sit," said Tom; "keep his blood warm. I don't think we ought to have sent him into the water."

"I don't know," muttered George, gloomily. "Carlo," cried he, cheerfully, "don't you be down-hearted; there is nothing so bad as faint-heartedness for man or beast. Come, up and away ye go, and shake it off like a man."

Carlo got up and wagged his tail in answer, but he evidently was in no mood for running; he followed languidly behind.

"Let us get home," said Robinson; "there is an old pal of mine that is clever about dogs, he will cut the shot out if there is one in him, and give him some physic."

The men strode on, and each, to hide his own uneasiness, chatted about other matters; but all of a sudden Robinson cried out, "Why, where is the dog?" They looked back, and there was Carlo some sixty yards in the rear, but he was not sitting this time, he was lying on his belly.

"Oh! this is a bad job," cried George. The men ran up in real alarm; Carlo wagged his tail as soon as they came near him, but he did not get up.

"Carlo," cried George, despairingly, "you wouldn't do it, you couldn't think to do it. Oh, my dear Carlo, it is only making up your mind to live; keep up your heart, old fellow; don't go to leave us alone among these villains. My poor, dear, darling dog! Oh, no! he won't live, he can't live; see how dull his poor, dear eye is getting. Oh, Carlo! Carlo!"

At the sound of his master's voice in such distress, Carlo whimpered, and then he began to stretch his limbs out. At the sight of this Robinson cried hastily:

"Rub him, George; we did wrong to send him into the water."

George rubbed him all over. After rubbing him a while, he said:

"Tom, I seem to feel him turning to dead under my hand."

George's hand in rubbing Carlo came round to the dog's shoulder, then Carlo turned his head and for the third time began to lick George's hand. George let him lick his hand and gave up rubbing him, for where was the use? Carlo never left off licking his hand, but feebly, very feebly, more and more feebly.

Presently, even while he was licking his hand, the poor thing's teeth closed slowly on his loving tongue, and then he could lick the beloved hand no more. Breath fluttered about his body a little while longer; but in truth he had ceased to live when he could no longer kiss his master's hand.

And so the poor single-hearted soul was gone.

George took it up tenderly in his arms. Robinson made an effort to console him. "Don't speak to me, if you please," said George, gently but quickly. He carried it home silently, and laid it silently down in a corner of the tent.

Robinson made a fire and put some steaks on, and made George slice some potatoes to keep him from looking always at what so little while since was Carlo. Then they sat down silently and gloomily to dinner, it was long past their usual hour and they were workingmen. Until we die we dine, come what may. The first part of the meal passed in deep silence. Then Robinson said sadly:

"We will go home, George. I fall into your wishes now. Gold can't pay for what we go through in this hellish place."

"Not it," replied George, quietly.

"We are surrounded by enemies."

"Seems so," was the reply, in a very languid tone.

"Labor by day and danger by night."

"Ay," but in a most indifferent tone.

"And no Sabbath for us two."

"No!"

"I'll do my best for you, and when we have five hundred pounds more you shall go home to Susan."

"Thank you. He was a good friend to us that lies there under my coat; he used to lie over it, and then who dare touch it?"

"No! but don't give way to that, George—do eat a bit, it will do you good."

"I will, Tom, I will. Thank you kindly. Ah! now I see why he came to me and kept licking my hand so the moment he got the hurt. He had more sense than we had; he knew he and I were to part that hour. And I tormented his last minutes sending him into the water and after stones, when the poor thing wanted to be bidding me good-by all the while. Oh, dear! oh, dear!" and George pushed his scarce-tasted dinner from him, and left the tent hurriedly, his eyes thick with tears.

Thus ended this human day so happily begun; and thus the poor dog paid the price of fidelity this Sunday afternoon.

Siste viator iter—and part with poor Carlo—for whom there are now no more little passing troubles—no more little simple joys. His duty is performed, his race is run. Peace be to him, and to all simple and devoted hearts. Ah me! how rare they are among men!

"What are you doing, Tom, if you please?"

"Laying down a gut line to trip them up when they get into our tent."

"When—who?"

"Those that shot Carlo."

"They won't venture near me.

"Won't they? What was the dog shot for? They will come—and come to their death; to-night, I hope. Let them come! you will hear me cry 'Carlo' in their ears as I put my revolver to their skulls and pull the trigger."

George said nothing, but he clinched his teeth. After a pause he muttered, "We should pray against such thoughts."

Robinson was disappointed, no attack was made; in fact, even if such a thing was meditated, the captain's friends watched his tent night and day, and made such a feat a foolhardy enterprise, full of danger from without and within.

In the course of the next week a good deal of rain fell and filled many of the claims, and caused much inaction and distress among the diggers, and Robinson guarded the tent, and wrote letters and studied Australian politics, with a view to being shortly a member of Congress in these parts. George had his wish at last and cruised about looking for the home of the gold. George recollected to have seen what he described as a river of quartz sixty feet broad, and running between two black rocks. It ran in his head that gold in masses was there locked up, for, argued he, all the nuggets of any size I have seen were more than half quartz. Robinson had given up debating the point.

George was uneasy and out of spirits at not hearing from Susan for several months, and Robinson was for indulging him in everything.

Poor George! he could not even find his river of quartz. And when he used to come home day after day empty-handed and with this confession, the other's lips used to twitch with the hard struggle not to laugh at him; and he used to see the struggle and be secretly more annoyed than if he had been laughed out at.

One afternoon Tom Robinson, internally despising the whole thing, and perfectly sure in his own mind that there was no river of quartz, but paternal and indulgent to his friend's one weakness, said to him:

"I'll tell you how to find this river of quartz, if it is anywhere except in your own head."

"I shall be much obliged to you. How?"

"Jem has come back to camp and he tells me that Jacky is encamped with a lot more close to the gully he is working—it was on the other side the bush there-and Jacky inquired very kind after you."

"The little viper."

"He grinned from ear to ear, Jem tells me; and says he, 'Me come and see George a good deal soon,' says he."

"If he does, George will tan his black hide for him."

"What makes you hold spite so long against poor Jacky?"

"He is a little sneaking varmint."

"He knows every part of this country, and he would show you 'the home of the gold,'" observed Robinson, restraining his merriment with great difficulty.

This cock would not fight, as vulgar wretches say. Jacky had rather mortified George by deserting him upon the first discovery of gold. "Dis a good deal stupid," was that worthy's remark on the second day. "When I hunt tings run, and I run behind and catch dem. You hunt—it not run—yet you not catch it always. Dat a good deal stupid. Before we hunt gold you do many tings, now do one; dat a good deal stupid. Before, you go so (erecting a forefinger); now you always so (crooking it). Dat too stupid." And with this—whir! my lord was off to the woods.

On the head of this came Abner limping in, and told how a savage had been seen creeping after him with a battle-ax, and how he had lain insensible for days, and now was lame for life. George managed to forgive Jacky's unkind desertion, but for creeping after Abner and "spoiling him for life," to use Abner's phrase, he vowed vengeance on that black hide and heart.

Now if the truth must be told, Jacky had come back to the camp with Jem, and would have marched before this into George's tent. But Robinson, knowing how angry George was with him, and not wishing either Jacky to be licked or George to be tomahawked, insisted on his staying with Jem till he had smoothed down his friend's indignation. Soon after this dialogue Robinson slipped out, and told Jacky to stay with Jem and keep out of George's way for a day or two.

And now the sun began to set red as blood, and the place to sparkle far and wide with the fiery rays emitted from a hundred thousand bottles that lay sown broadcast over the land; and the thunder of the cradles ceased, and the accordions came out all over five miles of gold mine. Their gentler strains lasted till the sun left the sky; then, just at dusk, came a tremendous discharge of musketry roaring, rattling, and re-echoing among the rocks. This was tens of thousands of diggers discharging their muskets and revolvers previous to reloading them for the night; for, calm as the sun had set to the music of accordions, many a deadly weapon they knew would be wanted to defend life and gold ere that same tranquil sun should rise again.

Thus the tired army slept not at their ease, like other armies, guarded by sentinels and pickets, but every man in danger every night and every hour of it. Each man lay in his clothes with a weapon of death in his hand; Robinson with two, a revolver and a cutlass ground like a razor. Outside it was all calm and peaceful. No boisterous revelry—all seemed to sleep innocent and calm in the moonlight after the day of herculean toil.

Perhaps if any one eye could have visited the whole enormous camp, the children of theft and of the night might have been seen prowling and crawling from one bit of shade to another. But in the part where our friends lay the moon revealed no human figures but Robinson's patrol, three men, who, with a dark-lantern and armed to the teeth, went their rounds and guarded forty tents, above all the captain's. It was at his tent that guard was relieved every two hours. So all was watched the livelong night.

Two pointed rocks connected at the base faced the captain's tent. The silver rays struck upon their foreheads wet with the vapors of night, and made them like frost seen through phosphorus. It was startling. The soul of silver seemed to be sentinel and eye the secret gold below.

And now a sad, a miserable sound grated on the ear of night. A lugubrious quail doled forth a grating, dismal note at long but measured intervals, offending the ear and depressing the heart. This was the only sound Nature afforded for hours. The neighboring bush, though crammed with the merriest souls that ever made feathers vibrate and dance with song, was like a tomb of black marble; not a sound—only this little raven of a quail tolled her harsh, lugubrious crake.

Those whose musical creed is Time before Sentiment might have put up with this night-bird; for to do her justice she was a perfect timist—one crake in a bar the livelong night; but her tune—ugh! She was the mother of all files that play on iron throughout the globe. Crake!—crake!—crake! untuning the night.

An eye of red light suddenly opened in the silver stream shows three men standing by a snowy tent. It is the patrol waiting to be relieved. Three more figures emerge from the distant shade and join them. The first three melt into the shade.

Crake!

The other three remain and mutter. Now they start on their rounds. "What is that?" mutters one.

"I'll go and see." Click.

"Well!"

"Oh, it is only that brown donkey that cruises about here. She will break her neck in one of the pits some day."

"Not she. She is not such an ass."

These three melted into the night, going their rounds; and now nothing is left in sight but a thousand cones of snow, and the donkey paddling carefully among the pits.

Craake!

Now the donkey stands a moment still in the moonlight—now he paddles slowly away and disappears on the dark side the captain's tent. What is he doing? He stoops—he lies down—he takes off his head and skin and lays them down.

It is a man! He draws his knife and puts it between his teeth. A pistol is in his hand—he crawls on his stomach—the tent is between him and the patrol. His hand is inside the tent—he finds the opening and winds like a serpent into the tent.

Craake!



CHAPTER LXV.

BLACK WILL no sooner found himself inside the tent than he took out a dark lantern and opened the slide cautiously. There lay in one corner the two men fast asleep side by side. Casting the glare around he saw at his feet a dog with a chain round him. It startled him for a moment—but only for a moment. He knew that dog was dead. mephistopheles had told him within an hour after the feat was performed. Close to his very hand was a pair of miner's boots. He detached them from the canvas and passed them out of the tent; and now looking closely at the ground he observed a place where the soil seemed loose. His eye flashed with triumph at this. He turned up the openings of the tent behind him to make his retreat clear if necessary. He made at once for the loose soil, and the moment he moved forward Robinson's gut-lines twisted his feet from under him. He fell headlong in the middle, and half a dozen little bells rang furiously at the sleepers' heads.

Up jumped Tom and George, weapons in hand, but not before Black Will had wrenched himself clear and bounded back to the door. At the door, in his rage at being balked, he turned like lightning and leveled his pistol at Robinson, who was coming at him cutlass in hand. The ex-thief dropped on his knees and made a furious upward cut at his arm. At one and the same moment the pistol exploded and the cutlass struck it and knocked it against the other side of the tent. The bullet passed over Robinson's head. Black Will gave a yell so frightful that for a moment it paralyzed the men, and even with this yell he burst backward through the opening, and with a violent wrench of his left hand brought the whole tent down and fled, leaving George and Robinson struggling in the canvas like cats in an empty flour-sack.

The baffled burglar had fled but a few yards, when, casting his eye back, he saw their helplessness. Losing danger in hatred he came back, not now to rob, but murder, his left hand lifted high and gleaming like his cruel eye. As he prepared to plunge his knife through the canvas, flash bang! flash bang! bang! came three pistol-shots in his face from the patrol, who were running right slap at him not thirty yards off, and now it was life or death. He turned and ran for his life, the patrol blazing and banging at him. Eighteen shots they fired at him, one after another; more than one cut his clothes, and one went clean through his hat, but he was too fleet, he distanced them; but at the reports diggers peeped out of distant tents, and at sight of him running, flash bang went a pistol at him from every tent he passed, and George and Robinson, who had struggled out into the night, saw the red flashes issue, and then heard the loud reports bellow and re-echo as he dodged about down the line, and then all was still and calm as death under the cold, pure stars.

Craake!

They put up their tent again. The patrol came panting back. "He has got off—but he carried some of our lead in him. Go to bed, captain, we won't leave your tent all night."

Robinson and George lay down again thus guarded. The patrol sat by the tent. Two slept, one loaded the arms again and watched. In a few minutes the friends were actually fast asleep again, lying silent as the vast camp lay beneath the silver stars.

Craake!

And now it was cold, much colder than before, darker, too, no moon now, only the silver stars; it makes one shiver. Nature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge. All tended to shivering and gloom. Yet a great event approached.

Craake!

A single event, a thousand times weightier to the world, each time it comes, than if with one fell stroke all the kingdoms of the globe became republics and all the republics empires, so to remain a thousand years. An event a hundred times more beautiful than any other thing the eye can hope to see while in the flesh, yet it regaled the other senses, too, and blessed the universal heart.

Before this prodigious event came its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air—it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush one little hesitating chirp.

Craake! went the lugubrious quail, pooh-poohing the suggestion. Then somehow rocks and forest and tents seemed less indistinct in shape; outlines peeped where masses had been.

Jug! jug! went a bird with a sweet jurgle in his deep throat. Craake! went the ill-omened one directly, disputing the last inch of nature. But a gray thrush took up the brighter view; otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee oo! o chio chee! o chio chee! sang the thrush, with a decision as well as a melody that seemed to say: "Ah! but I am sure of it; I am sure, I am sure, wake up, joy! joy!"

From that moment there was no more craake. The lugubrious quail shut up in despair, perhaps in disdain,* and out gurgled another jug! jug! jug! as sweet a chuckle as Nature's sweet voice ever uttered in any land; and with that a mist like a white sheet came to light, but only for a moment, for it dared not stay to be inspected, "I know who is coming, I'm off," and away it crept off close to the ground—and little drops of dew peeped sparkling in the frost-powdered grass.

* Like anonymous detraction before vox populi.

Yock! yock! O chio faliera po! Otock otock tock! o chio chee! o chio chee!

Jug! jug! jug! jug!

Off we go! off we go!

And now a thin red streak came into the sky, and perfume burst from the bushes, and the woods rang, not only with songs some shrill, some as sweet as honey, but with a grotesque yet beautiful electric merriment of birds that can only be heard in this land of wonders. The pen can give but a shadow of the drollery and devilry of the sweet, merry rogues that hailed the smiling morn. Ten thousand of them, each with half a dozen songs, besides chattering and talking and imitating the fiddle, the fife and the trombone. Niel gow! niel gow! niel gow! whined a leather-head. Take care o' my hat! cries a thrush, in a soft, melancholy voice; then with frightful harshness and severity, where is your bacca-box! your box! your box! then before any one could answer, in a tone that said devil may care where the box is or anything else, gyroc de doc! gyroc de doc! roc de doc! cheboc cheboc! Then came a tremendous cackle ending with an obstreperous hoo! hoo! ha! from the laughing jackass, who had caught sight of the red streak in the sky—harbinger, like himself, of morn; and the piping crows or whistling magpies modulating and humming and chanting, not like birds, but like practiced musicians with rich baritone voices, and the next moment creaking just for all the world like Punch, or barking like a pug dog. And the delicious thrush with its sweet and mellow tune. Nothing in an English wood so honey-sweet as his otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee o o! o chio chee! o chio chee!

But the leather-heads beat all. Niel gow! niel gow! niel gow! off we go! off we go! off we go! followed by rapid conversations, the words unintelligible but perfectly articulate, and interspersed with the oddest chuckles, plans of pleasure for the day, no doubt. Then ri tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle tiddle! playing a thing like a fiddle with wires; then "off we go" again, and bow! wow! wow! jug! jug! jug! jug! jug! and the whole lot in exuberant spirits, such extravagance of drollery, such rollicking jollity, evidently splitting their sides with fun, and not able to contain themselves for it.

Oh! it was twelve thousand miles above the monotonous and scanty strains of a European wood; and when the roving and laughing, and harshly demanding bacca-boxes and then as good as telling you they didn't care a feather for bacca-boxes or anything else, gyroc de doc! cheboc cheboc cheboc! and loudly announcing their immediate departure, and perching in the same place all the more and sweet, low modulations ending in putting on the steam and creaking like Punch, and then almost tumbling off the branches with laughing at the general accumulation of nonsense—when all this drollery and devilry and joy and absurdity were at their maddest, and a thousand feathered fountains bubbling song were at their highest, then came the cause of all the merry hubbub—the pinnacles of rock glowed burnished gold, Nature, that had crept from gloom to pallor, burst from pallor to light and life and burning color—the great sun's forehead came with one gallant stride into the sky—and it was day!

Out shone ten thousand tents of every size and hue and shape, from Isaac Levi's rood of white canvas down to sugar-loaves, and even to miserable roofs built on the bare ground with slips of bark, under which unlucky diggers crept at night like badgers—roofed beds—no more—the stars twinkling through chinks in the tester. The myriad tents were clustered for full five miles on each side of the river, and it wound and sparkled in and out at various distances, and shone like a mirror in the distant background.

At the first ray the tents disgorged their inmates, and the human hive began to hum; then came the fight, the maneuvering, the desperate wrestle with Nature, and the keen fencing with their fellows—in short, the battle—to which, that nothing might be wanting, out burst the tremendous artillery of ten thousand cradles louder than thunder, and roaring and crashing without a pause.

The base of the two-peaked rock that looked so silvery in the moon is now seen to be covered with manuscript advertisements posted on it; we can only read two or three as we run to our work: