in the cabin.
I never thought of taking them out before we left the _Greenock_."

"That's precious unlucky," observed Val, searching his pockets too, and
trying each vainly in turn. "I've only a couple of shillings left now
after paying for the railway tickets. Whatever shall we do?"

"Oh, bother that!" replied Teddy sanguinely; "we sha'n't want any. The
fellows I've read about who went to the diggings never had a halfpenny,
but they always met with a friendly squatter or tumbled into luck in
some way or other."

"That was in the old days," said Val in a forlorn way. "The squatters
have all been cleared out, and there are only hotels and boarding-houses
left, where they expect people to pay for what they have to eat."

"They're a stingy lot then, and quite unlike what I've read in books
about the customs in Australia; but what can you expect when they have a
railway!"

Teddy spoke in such a scornful manner of this sign of civilisation that
he made Val laugh, raising his spirits again.

"All right, old chap!" said the little fellow. "I daresay we'll get
along very well although we haven't any money to speak of with us. Two
shillings, you know, is something; and no doubt it will keep us from
starving till we come across luck."

Teddy cheerfully acquiesced in this hopeful view of things; and then the
two, being alone in the carriage, chatted away merrily on all sorts of
subjects until they arrived at their station, which a porter sang out
the name of exactly in the same fashion as if they were at home.

This quite exasperated Teddy, who, when he got down and looked about
him, opened his eyes with even greater wonder.

Surely this large town couldn't be Ballarat!

Why, that place ought to be only a collection of hastily-run-up wooden
shanties, he thought, with perhaps one big store where they sold
everything, provisions, and picks and shovels, with cradles for rocking
the gold-dust out of the quartz and mud.

Where were the canvas tents of the diggers, and the claims, and all?

But, yes, Ballarat it was; although the only diggings were quarries
worked by public mining companies with an immense mass of machinery that
crushed the rock and sent streams of water through the refuse, using
quicksilver to make an amalgam with--companies that were satisfied to
get a grain of gold for every ton of quartz they excavated and pounded
into powder, and realised a handsome dividend at that, where ordinary
diggers woul