an's name was David Beswick, but he was known simply as
"Bez." He was a harmonious tailor from Manchester; he played the
violoncello, also the violin; had a good tenor voice, and a talent
for the drama. He, and a man named Santley from Liverpool, had taken
leading parts in our plays and concerts on shipboard. Scott, the
artist, admired Bez; he said he had the head, the features, and the
talent of a Shakespeare. He had a sketch of Bez in his portfolio,
which he was filling with crooked trees, common diggers, and ugly
blackamoors. I could see no Shakespeare in Bez; he was nothing but a
dissipated tailor who had come out in the steerage, while I had
voyaged in the house on deck. I was, therefore, a superior person,
and looked down on the young man, who was seated on a log near the
fire, one leg crossed over the other, and slowly stroking his
Elizabethan beard. I said:

"Yes, Philip has left me, but I don't want any partner. I understand
you are a tailor by trade, and I don't think much of a tailor."

"Well," replied Bez, "I don't think much of him myself, so I have
dropped the business. I am now a sailor. You know yourself I sailed
from Liverpool to Melbourne, and, anyhow, there's only the difference
of a letter between a tailor and a sailor."

There was a flaw somewhere in the argument, but I only said, "'Valeat
quantum valere potest.'" Bez looked solemn; a little Latin goes a
long way with some people. He was an object of charity, and I made
him feel it.

"In the first place this tent is teetotal. No grog is to come inside
it. There is to be no mining partnership. You can keep all the gold
you get, and I shall do the same. You must keep all trade secrets,
and never confess you are a tailor. I could never hold up my head
among the diggers if they should discover that my mate was only the
ninth part of a man. You must carry to the tent a quantity of clay
and rocks sufficient to build a chimney, of which I shall be the
architect. You will also pay for your own tucker, chop wood, make
the fire, fetch water, and boil the billy." Bez promised solemnly to
abide by these conditions, and then I allowed him to deposit his swag
in the tent.

The chimney was built in three days, and we could then defy the
weather, and dispense with the umbrella. Bez performed his part of
the contract well. He adopted a rolling gait and the frown of a
pirate; he swore naval oaths strong enough to still a hurricane.
Among