something else turned up.

Not that we troubled our heads over much about things of this sort. We
had set our minds to go on until our claims were worked out, or close
up; then to sell out, and with the lot we'd already banked to get down
to Melbourne and clear out. Should we ever be able to manage that? It
seemed getting nearer, nearer, like a star that a man fixes his eyes on
as he rides through a lonely bit of forest at night. We had all got our
eyes fixed on it, Lord knows, and were working double tides, doing our
very best to make up a pile worth while leaving the country with. As
for Jim, he and his little wife seemed that happy that he grudged
every minute he spent away from her. He worked as well as ever--better,
indeed, for he never took his mind from his piece of work, whatever it
was, for a second. But the very minute his shift was over Jim was away
along the road to Specimen Gully, like a cow going back to find her
calf. He hardly stopped to light his pipe now, and we'd only seen him
once up town, and that was on a Saturday night with Jeanie on his arm.

Well, the weeks passed over, and at long last we got on as far in the
year as the first week in December. We'd given out that we might go
somewhere to spend our Christmas. We were known to be pretty well in,
and to have worked steady all these months since the early part of the
year. We had paid our way all the time, and could leave at a minute's
notice without asking any man's leave.

If we were digging up gold like potatoes we weren't the only ones. No,
not by a lot. There never was a richer patch of alluvial, I believe, in
any of the fields, and the quantity that was sent down in one year was
a caution. Wasn't the cash scattered about then? Talk of money, it was
like the dirt under your feet--in one way, certainly--as the dirt was
more often than not full of gold.

We could see things getting worse on the field after a bit. We didn't
set up to be any great shakes ourselves, Jim and I; but we didn't want
the field to be overrun by a set of scoundrels that were the very scum
of the earth, let alone the other colonies. We were afraid they'd go in
for some big foolish row, and we should get dragged in for it. That was
exactly what we didn't want.

With the overflowing of the gold, as it were, came such a town and such
a people to fill it, as no part of Australia had ever seen before. When
it got known by newspapers, and letters from the miners themselves