e you of a little money. Mind I tell
you. Gold! of course there's been gold to be got there. But what's been
the cost of it? What's been the return? If sixteen hundred men, among
'em, can sell fifteen hundred pounds' worth of gold a week, how is each
man to have twenty shillings on Saturday night? That's about what it is
at Ahalala. Of course there's gold. And where there's gold chucked about
in that way, just on the surface, one gets it and ten don't. Who is to
say you mayn't be the one. As to hiring a man to show you the way,--you
can hire a dozen. As long as you'll pay 'em ten shillings a-day to loaf
about, you may have men enough. But whether they'll show you the way to
anything except the liquor store, that's another thing. Now shall I tell
you what you two gents had better do?' Dick declared that the two gents
would be very much obliged to him if he would take that trouble. 'Of
course you've heard of the "Old Stick-in-the-Mud"?' Dick told him that
they had heard of that very successful mining enterprise since their
arrival at Nobble. 'You ask on the veranda at Melbourne, or at Ballarat,
or at Sydney. If they don't tell you about it, my name's not Crinkett.
You put your money, what you've got, into ten-shilling shares. I'll
accommodate you, as you're friends of Jones, with any reasonable number.
We're getting two ounces to the ton. The books'll show you that.'

'We thought you'd purchased out all the shareholders said Caldigate.

'So I did, and now I'm redividing it. I'd rather have a company. It's
pleasanter. If you can put in a couple of thousand pounds or so between
you, you can travel about and see the country, and your money'll be
working for you all the time. Did you ever see a gold mine?'

They owned that they never yet had been a yard below ground. Then he
opened his gate preparatory to taking them down the 'Old
Stick-in-the-Mud,' and brought them with him into one of the front
rooms. It was a large parlour, only half furnished, not yet papered,
without a carpet, in which it appeared that Mr. Crinkett kept his own
belongings. Here he divested himself of his black clothes and put on a
suit of miner's garments,--real miner's garments, very dirty, with a
slouch hat, on the top of which there was a lump of mud in which to
stick a candle-end. Any one learned in the matter would immediately have
known the real miner. 'Now if you like to see a mine we will go down,
and then you can do as you like about your money