al
restraints, called them, and bitterness could not live in their hearts.
They danced, and sang, and roared, and were glad, who two or three hours
earlier might have offered their lives freely to avenge a slight or to
mark their sense of a gross injustice.

Jim and his friends were served with a rough dinner at one of the hotels.
The waiter, an old Frenchman, told them that bands sent out by the
insurgent leader were taking levies on all hands.

'Some gather at Eureka. Ze fight mus' be soon,' he said; 'but ze
crowd--ah, zey laugh, zey drink, zey dance wis ze fiddle, zey will not
believe! Et ces a great pity, but zey haff not ze--what, ah?--ze
experience.'

'Are many coming in from the other fields?' asked Jim.

The Frenchman shook his head. 'Et ees expect zey will come; but the men
say always, "Oh, et will go over!" Ze soldier say not so: they are ver'
bitter. My friend, the blow come soon; I go to the army of the republic
this to-night.'

'The men are rolling up all right,' said a digger at another table.
'They're rallying them at Creswick again, and on the other fields. We'll
have an army of thousands in a week.'

'A week!' cried the waiter. 'My soul! in two day more et will all be up
wiss ze republic, suppose zey are not here!'

'That Frenchman's an all-fired skite,' said the digger disgustedly. 'The
swaddies don't like the job: they won't strike. We'll have the making of
the fight, and we'll call time when it suits us.'

'All the same,' commented Mike later, 'the Frenchman's got the safest
grip o' things, it seems to me.'

In the streets the watchword of the most serious of the diggers was 'Roll
up!' and the friends heard it passing from lip to lip. They did not lack
company on their way to Eureka, but Done experienced a keen
disappointment in the absence of deep and genuine emotion amongst the
main body of the men. The popular impression was that there would be no
fighting; it was thought that the demonstration Lalor and his men were
making would have the effect of bringing the powers to reason, and this
opinion was held in spite of past bitter experience of the stupid
immobility of the Legislative Council in Melbourne.

The five friends were challenged at the stockade, and on expressing their
wish to be enlisted were marched before an officer of the rebel forces
and sworn in. Standing under the blue Australian flag, with its five
silver stars, they took Peter Lalor's oath: 'We swear by the Southern
C