dred yards of the
establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a
big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did
not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her
hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field. Her voice was
the loudest amid the clamouring tongues in her large tent at night, and
her guffaw overbore everything; it was one of the wonders of Forest
Creek. Many a time its echoes, rebounding from Boulder Hill, had set all
Diamond Gully grinning in sympathy. It was not known whether Mrs. Kyley
and Ben were married or merely mates, but popular opinion tended to the
latter belief, legal unions being incompatible with a nice adjustment of
forces at the rushes. The exigencies of life on the diggings made sudden
changes of scene necessary to the men, and a woman like Mrs. Kyley
couldn't be expected to abandon her business for the sake of a husband,
seeing that it was so much easier to set up another husband than another
establishment. But the most important branch of the business, that of sly
grog-selling, made a man who could handle the riotous and evil-disposed
quite essential. Ben Kyley's appearance, broad, thickly-set, solid as a
gum-butt, broken-nosed and heavy-handed, and his reputation as the man
who was beaten by Bendigo only after an hour's hard fighting, marked him
as the fittest man on the field for the position he held. For the rest,
Ben was a quiet, mild man, whose voice was seldom heard, and whose
subjugation to Mrs. Ben was almost comical. Ben worked on his claim by
day, and at night he officiated as 'chucker-out' in Mrs. Kyley's bar--for
a bar it was, to all intents and purposes. Ben's duty was not to suppress
disorder, but merely to see that the common disorder did not develop into
licentiousness, to the danger of Mrs. Kyley's property or the detriment
of her trade.

Mrs. Ben Kyley made bread because bread-baking at three shillings a loaf
was an exceedingly profitable business. For the same reason she washed
shirts at twelve shillings the half-dozen. But selling rum at a shilling
a nobbler to 'flash' diggers who despised change was much more profitable
still. The industrious woman, who washed and baked all day, was kept busy
for the greater part of the night retailing rum to insatiable diggers,
and the mystery was that, although nobody could see rum in the bottle or
in bulk anywhere about the place, it was rare that the su