he digs
away till the brave little wife comes and takes him gently by the arm.
He half rouses himself and follows her to the house like an obedient
dog.

Trial and disgrace follow, and then other misfortunes, pleuro among the
cattle, drought, and poverty.

Thud, thud, thud again! But it is not the sound of the fossicker's
pick--it is the fall of sods on his wife's coffin.

It is a little bush cemetery, and he stands stonily watching them
fill up her grave. She died of a broken heart and shame. "I can't bear
disgrace! I can't bear disgrace!" she had moaned all these six weary
years--for the poor are often proud.

But he lives on, for it takes a lot to break a man's heart. He holds
up his head and toils on for the sake of a child that is left, and that
child is--Isley.

And now the fossicker seems to see a vision of the future. He seems to
be standing somewhere, an old, old man, with a younger one at his side;
the younger one has Isley's face. Horses' feet again! Ah, God! Nemesis
once more in troopers' uniform!

The fossicker falls on his knees in the mud and clay at the bottom of
the drive, and prays Heaven to take his last child ere Nemesis comes for
him.

Long Bob Sawkins had been known on the diggings as "Bob the Devil."
His profile at least from one side, certainly did recall that of the
sarcastic Mephistopheles; but the other side, like his true character,
was by no means a devil's. His physiognomy had been much damaged,
and one eye removed by the premature explosion of a blast in some old
Ballarat mine. The blind eye was covered with a green patch, which gave
a sardonic appearance to the remaining features.

He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little,
and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable "why" into his
conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up
the pauses caused by his stuttering; but this by no means assisted him
in his speech, for he often stuttered over the "why" itself.

The sun was getting low down, and its yellow rays reached far up among
the saplings of Golden Gully when Bob appeared coming down by the
path that ran under the western hill. He was dressed in the usual
costume-cotton shirt, moleskin trousers, faded hat and waistcoat, and
blucher boots. He carried a pick over his shoulder, the handle of which
was run through the heft of a short shovel that hung down behind, and
he had a big dish under his arm. He paused opposi