on to the verandah and through into the long, bare room that
once had been festive with many a merry gathering, they all had one
expression on their faces and one inquiry on their tongues.

Round the bar, which stretched across the end of the room, they found
four men standing, with pipes in their mouths and filled glasses in
front of them, and only a glance was needed to reveal to every one as he
entered that not one of the four was a new chum or a sundowner. They
stood smoking in silence, like men who have known one another's society
for many days, and had no need for words to express the enjoyment they
felt in a smoke and a nip. Occasionally one would glance towards the
door as man after man trudged into the room, toil-stained and unkempt,
and stood covertly watching the four with hungry eyes.

Cudlip--all the keepers of the Rest took the name with the house--was
behind the bar, glancing suspiciously from the new arrivals to the
incoming residents.

"And you say it's payable?" he said at length; and every ear in the room
was strained and every eye turned upon the silent four.

"You take your colonial," one of the four answered.

"And a poor man's field? Good alluvial?" Cudlip added.

The man who had answered before looked round at him.

"Ain't we going there?" he said.

The crowd round the door and along the walls of the room surged forward.
Good alluvial and a poor man's field? And four men going there? The
questions were in every mind and the answer as well. For years the
gully-rakers round Boulder Creek had been living and longing to hear
such things, and the hungry eyes grew more hungry and the faces more
alert. If four, why not forty? Why not----

"Where's the lay?" one of the Creekers asked sharply and shortly; and
the room was silent till the answer came.

"Over the ridge," the man answered, nodding towards the west.

"How far?" some one inquired.

"Twenty mile or so."

"And you've been there?"

"That's so."

"You and your mates?"

"Not the four of us."

"How do you know it's a boomer?"

The man looked round slowly on the still gathering crowd.

"I found it," he said.

For a moment every man in the room held his breath. They had had faith
in the creek for years without seeing more than specks of gold--faith so
great that they would all have scorned to leave their shafts and drives
for the sake of fossicking neighbouring streams and gullies.
But--payable alluvial and plenty of it only