e opportunity of representing life and scenery at the
diggings, for the sake of old Mr Shirley, as well as for his own
satisfaction. Thus equipped they set forth.

Before leaving San Francisco, the captain, and Ned, and Tom Collins had
paid a final visit to their friend the merchant, Mr Thompson, and
committed their property to his care--i.e. the hull of the good ship
_Roving Bess_--the rent of which he promised to collect monthly--and
Ned's curious property, the old boat and the little patch of barren
sand, on which it stood. The boat itself he made over, temporarily, to
a poor Irishman who had brought out his wife with him, and was unable to
proceed to the diggings in consequence of the said wife having fallen
into a delicate state of health. He gave the man a written paper
empowering him to keep possession until his return, and refused to
accept of any rent whereat the poor woman thanked him earnestly, with
the tears running down her pale cheeks.

It was the hottest part of an exceedingly hot day when the travellers
found themselves, as we have described, under the grateful shade of what
Larry termed the "lone oak."

"Now our course of proceeding is as follows," said Ned, at the
conclusion of their meal--"We shall travel all this afternoon, and as
far into the night as the mules can be made to go. By that time we
shall be pretty well off the level ground, and be almost within hail of
the diggings--"

"I don't belave it," said Larry O'Neil, knocking the ashes out of his
pipe in an emphatic manner; "sure av there _was_ goold in the country we
might have seed it by this time."

Larry's feelings were a verification of the words, "hope deferred maketh
the heart sick." He had started enthusiastically many days before on
this journey to the gold regions, under the full conviction that on the
first or second day he would be, as he expressed it, "riding through
fields of goold dust;" instead of which, day after day passed, and night
after night, during which he endured all the agonies inseparable from a
_first_ journey on horseback, and still not a symptom of gold was to be
seen, "no more nor in owld Ireland itself." But Larry bore his
disappointments like an Irishman, and defied "fortin' to put him out of
timper by any manes wotiver."

"Patience," said Bill Jones, removing his pipe to make room for the
remark, "is a wirtue--that's wot I says. If ye can't make things
better, wot then? why, let 'em alone. W'en t