abitants could induce the landlord of
Cudlip's Rest to "set 'em up" for luck in an all-round shout. Just to
stimulate the spirit of good fellowship, one man had dexterously annexed
a couple of bottles of Pain-killer from a hawker's waggon he stumbled
across, and those who were in his vicinity toasted one another and the
general run of the diggings in nobblers of it; but it was not a success,
and the festive season was even less exhilarating to the revellers than
it was to those who had not participated in the "find."

Now the situation was different. There was money in the land, and with
the memory still acute how, the year before, the landlord of Cudlip's
Rest had been deaf to their blandishments, and proof against their
numbers (for he had abstained even from replenishing his stock lest a
wave of communistic instinct might sweep up Boulder Creek), they turned
with one accord towards the town of Birralong. As they toiled and slaved
along Boulder Creek, when they thought of Birralong at all it was to
heap upon it and its inhabitants the scorn they considered was justly
earned by a settlement which looked at a miner askance, and from whence
stores, for years past, had been unobtainable save on a cash basis. The
name of Marmot did not rank high with the fossickers when funds were
low, and the joys of the Carrier's Rest were only known to the man who
had "struck it" from time to time in the creek; but the aloofness of
Cudlip's Rest the previous Christmas still rankled, and, not for any
special admiration or respect for it, Birralong was chosen as the scene
of the coming festivities.

Marmot, having completed on the day before the last order he was
expecting for the season, was taking it easy on the verandah, sitting,
as was his wont, in his shirt-sleeves and with a pipe in his mouth, on
the tobacco-box in front of the open doorway, just where he received the
full benefit of any draught which might be set up by the heated iron
roof over his head and the cool of the shade in the store. There was not
much danger of taking cold; rather would a chill have been enjoyable as
a change from the sweltering heat of the summer's day. The steady swing
of the grasshopper's song--like the wavering hum of a telegraph pole
pitched in a high, shrill key--came through the hot air on all sides,
until it seemed to spring from the ground in answer to the heat-rays
that beat upon it--a response from the great dusty parched crust to the
ceaseles