ed, causing himself great pain,
but could not get his boot off. At last, looking back over his shoulder
he cried impatiently: "Dick!... I say, Dick Mahony! Give us a drink,
old boy! ... I'm dead-beat."

At this the storekeeper--a tall, slenderly built man of some seven or
eight and twenty--appeared, bearing a jug and a pannikin.

"Oh, bah!" said the lad, when he found that the jug held only water.
And, on his friend reminding him that he might by now have been sitting
in the lock-up, he laughed and winked. "I knew you'd go bail."

"Well! ... of all the confounded impudence...."

"Faith, Dick, and d'ye think I didn't see how your hand itched for your
pocket?"

The man he called Mahony flushed above his fair beard. It was true: he
had made an involuntary movement of the hand--checked for the rest
halfway, by the knowledge that the pocket was empty. He looked
displeased and said nothing.

"Don't be afraid, I'll pay you back soon's ever me ship comes home,"
went on the young scapegrace, who very well knew how to play his cards.
At his companion's heated disclaimer, however, he changed his tone. "I
say, Dick, have a look at my foot, will you? I can't get this damned
boot off."

The elder man bent over the injury. He ceased to show displeasure.
"Purdy, you young fool, when will you learn wisdom?"

"Well, they shouldn't hunt old women, then--the swine!" gave back
Purdy; and told his tale. "Oh, lor! there go six canaries." For, at his
wincing and shrinking, his friend had taken a penknife and ripped up
the jackboot. Now, practised hands explored the swollen, discoloured
ankle.

When it had been washed and bandaged, its owner stretched himself on
the ground, his head in the shade of a barrel, and went to sleep.

He slept till sundown, through all the traffic of a busy afternoon.

Some half-a-hundred customers came and went. The greater number of them
were earth-stained diggers, who ran up for, it might be, a missing
tool, or a hide bucket, or a coil of rope. They spat jets of
tobacco-juice, were richly profane, paid, where coin was scarce, in
gold-dust from a match-box, and hurried back to work. But there also
came old harridans--as often as not, diggers themselves--whose language
outdid that of the males, and dirty Irish mothers; besides a couple of
the white women who inhabited the Chinese quarter. One of these was in
liquor, and a great hullabaloo took place before she could be got rid
of. Put out, she stood in