d me where
he had worked his first claim, and had made 400 pounds in a few days.
"You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said. "I think I
took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still
hereabout." I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for
myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each. Then we sat down on
a log. Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them
was unusually tall. Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there?
His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a
lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a
prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a
dirty digger."

"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?" I asked.

"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it.
My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned. Mother was left with
eight children, and we were as poor as church mice. I was the
oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin
boy. I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed
about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes. My last port
there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named
Small. He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him
early and late. He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it
across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a
boarding-house. There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier.
She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger. One day when we were
having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about
my mother, sisters, and brothers. Then I got mad, thinking how poor
they were, and I could not help them. 'Miss Small,' I said, 'my
mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks
younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.'

"Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was
mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he
took my part, saying, 'Sarves you right, Sue;' why can't you leave
Jack alone?'

"But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn't
stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again. Jonathan said
he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me. He could
manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea.
Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we
left the boat with his brother,