[iii]
]THE LAST CHANCE
A Tale of the Golden West

BY
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF
‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM.’
‘A COLONIAL REFORMER,’ ETC.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1905

All rights reserved

[iv]
]Copyright in the United States of America.

[1]
]CHAPTER I

As a Commissioner of Goldfields, and Police Magistrate, in New South Wales, it is hardly necessary to say that Arnold Banneret’s pay was not conspicuously in advance of the necessaries of life. Necessaries which may be thus catalogued: a couple of decent ride-and-drive horses, a light, much-enduring buggy, clothes and books, boots and shoes, bread and butter, for half-a-dozen growing boys and girls—with an occasional trip to the seaside, and a regularly recurring doctor’s bill; while the Rev. Mr. Wilson’s quarterly accounts for the eldest boy’s board and tuition had also a knack of turning up inconveniently soon, as it appeared to paterfamilias, after his departure to school.

He was leaning against the corner of the police barrack, having just returned from a long official ride with Inspector Falcon, revolving the question of ways and means, or else the conflicting evidence in a knotty, complicated mining case, upon which he had reserved his decision. He had invested all the money he could spare (this was before the [2] ]latest mining Act) in a promising claim, which had turned out worthless. His tradespeople, usually forbearing, had suddenly disclosed monetary pressure—requiring to be relieved by cash payment. Altogether, the outlook was overclouded—there was even a presage of storm and stress.

The Inspector had departed to dress for dinner, invited thereto by a wandering globe-trotter, known to his family in England. The Commissioner’s clerk, newly married, had gone home to his wife the moment the clock struck four—indeed, a few minutes earlier.

It was growing late; the minor officials had retired to their several quarters. His horse was finishing the corn which had been graciously ordered for him by the Inspector, and, strange to say, though in the centre of a populous goldfield, a feeling of loneliness and silence, almost oppressive, commenced to manifest itself.

He was about to bridle his horse, and depart for his home, a few miles distant from the goldfields ‘township’ of Barrawong, where ten thousand miners with their families, tradespeople, officials, and camp-followers generally, had made provisional homes, when his eye was attracted by a man at some distance, walking slowly towards him. A footsore tramp, evidently—‘remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.’ As he approached, Banneret’s experienced eye told him that the man before him had been ill—probably short of food—had broken down on the road, and was now straining every nerve to get to town, probably to be admitted into the Public [3] ]Hospital, so often a haven of rest and refreshment to the invalid wayfarer. When the ‘traveller,’ as a nomadic labourer is termed in Australia, came up to the barrack, the Commissioner was shocked at his emaciated appearance and deathlike pallor. His hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes proclaimed a struggle with weakness, dangerously protracted. His patched and threadbare garments told a tale of want and absolute poverty, rare in this land of careless plenty and comparative extravagance. It appeared as if the succour might even now come too late, as to sailors stricken with that mysterious malady of the sea, which decimates long-exiled crews, landing them only to die, with the scent in their nostrils of the freshly turned loam. As he came within a few paces of the Commissioner, he staggered and almost fell. That official sprang forward and caught him by the arm. ‘Why, Jack Waters!’ he said—‘I should hardly have known you. What have you been doing to yourself?’

‘It’s what’s left of me,’ said the exhausted man, hardly able to speak, it would seem, and trying as he did so to manage a sickly smile—a most melancholy attempt. ‘Where I’ve been and what I’ve gone through’s a long story; you might be in it towards the end, so we’d better come into the “Reefer’s Arms” (old Bill Barker’s alive yet, I suppose) and talk it over a bit. You know me, Mr. Banneret, this years and years, and you always found me straight, didn’t you?’

‘Certainly I have; I never thought anything [4] ]to the contrary. But what’s this great affair you want me to hear about? Won’t it do to-morrow? Stay at Barker’s to-night; I’ll shout your night’s lodging, you know.’

‘To-morrow mightn’t do, sir; and if you’ll take a fool’s advice, you’ll get his back room to sit in, where we can yarn without people hearin’ all we say, and do a bit o’ business, comfortable like. And it is business, my word! You don’t hear the like every day.’

The Commissioner, as became his office, was not in the habit of hobnobbing with miners promiscuously. He was reserved of manner, more affable indeed to the ordinary miners than to his equals, whom he treated with scant courtesy—particularly if his temper was ruffled.

But this man was an exceptional inhabitant of the gold region. Having known him for many years, he was in a position to prove against all comers that he was one of the most energetic, honest, capable workers that he had ever known upon this or other goldfields.

When about to be sold up, through no fault of his own, having gone security for a friend, the Commissioner came forward and provided a guarantee. This prevented the forced sale, after which Jack had a stroke of luck, and repaid every farthing. Since this occurrence he had been what the Commissioner called ‘ridiculously grateful.’

Departing from his ordinary custom, and walking into the ‘Reefer’s Arms,’ he asked the landlord, a burly ex-miner, popularly known as Bill the [5] ]Puddler, ‘if there was any one in the inner parlour?’

‘The shareholders in the “Blue Lookout” had it all the morning—a-settling after their last wash-up—but they’ve just cleared, and you can set there, quiet and comfortable, Commissioner. Why, what’s the matter with you, Jack?’ he continued, looking with sudden interest at the worn limbs and sunken features of the digger.

‘Had the fever at Ding Dong. Want the Commissioner to get me into the hospital—going to make my will first. Send us in a bottle o’ beer, and a bite o’ bread and cheese, and don’t yabber.’

As he spoke, the exhausted man reeled rather than walked along the passage leading to an inner apartment, and opening the door with a show of familiarity, threw himself upon the well-worn sofa, which, with a few chairs of various patterns, and a serviceable table, made up the furniture of the room. Then he closed his eyes as if about to faint.

Mr. Banneret walked quickly towards him, but he put up his hand warningly, and murmured, ‘All right directly. Wake up when Bill’s a-coming; that’s what’s the matter.’

Although the wayfarer closed his eyes and lay as if insensible, he raised himself when the host appeared a few minutes later, and assumed an air of comparative alertness.

That it was a miserable assumption Mr. Barker appeared to divine, as he drew the cork, and poured out two glasses of the bitter beer, departing without [6] ]further comment, and casting as he went a searching glance at the miner who was so ‘infernally down on his luck,’ as he would have phrased it. His footsteps had no sooner ceased to be audible, after reaching the end of the corridor, than the miner drained his glass, with a sigh of deepest satisfaction, saying, ‘Here’s luck this time. Would you mind lockin’ the door careful, sir? It’ll save my bones a bit, and they won’t stand much. You’ll see my dart directly.’

This precaution being duly carried out, he proceeded to unbutton a tattered woollen shirt. Below this was another in rather more careful preservation. Placing his hand in the region of his belt he produced a long canvas package, which had been secured to it, and which fitted closely round his body above the hips.

‘Blest if I didn’t think it was goin’ to cut me in two this last week,’ he said, throwing it on the table; ‘it rubbed me awful, and I dursn’t take it off and give any one a show to collar it. There was rough coves where it come from, you bet, as would have had a man’s life for half the stuff that’s there. Please to open it, sir. Take your knife to the stitchin’; it ain’t been touched since I put it in.’

The end being ripped open, and part of the side of the twine-stitched casing, the quartz specimens thus released rolled out on the table. They were rich indeed—almost fabulously so.

The Commissioner’s experienced eye gleamed, and even the sunken orbs of the miner showed a fresh, though faint glimmer, as the pale stones [7] ]‘strung together with gold,’ in miner’s parlance, lay heaped together.

‘And do you mean to say, with five hundred pounds worth of specimens and nuggets in your pocket’—here he took up a small lump of pure gold—‘a five-ounce bit, if it’s anything—you nearly starved yourself to death—nearly died on the road? Hang it, man! you’ve run it too fine altogether.’

‘Couldn’t help it, Commissioner. What was I to do? You know what a new rush is like. Wouldn’t they have tracked me up, and pegged over the ground, if they’d known I’d gold about me? I’d have lost my year’s work—hard work, and lonely—starving myself all the while; perhaps had a crack on the head as well. And then where’d we been? For I’m going to give you a half share, Commissioner, if you’ll see me through, so’s I can go back, and take up the lease proper and shipshape. I hadn’t a shillin’ when I come away from the find, nor an ounce of flour, nor a bit of sugar; meat I hadn’t seen for a month; I was afraid to go for it. So I gammoned sick when I come in. It didn’t take any painting to do that. Said I’d been doin’ a “perish” in the ranges (wrong direction, of course), and was all broke up. Begged most of the way back—many a long mile, too—and here I am!’

‘Take another glass of beer,’ said the Commissioner, ‘and finish the bread and cheese. I’m going to dine. And now what do you want me to do?’

‘You’ll find me five hundred pound, [8] ]Commissioner; less won’t do. It’s a long way to travel, but that says nothin’. That’ll about fix up the lease deposits—the rations, cart and horses—and what’s wanted for me and a mate. That’s all I’ll take if I can get a good one that can work and hold his tongue. I’ll transfer half my share in the lease to you, and a better day’s work you never done in your life. You see this—it’s nothing to what’s below. I covered the reef up. Sixteen foot wide, good walls, thick with gold, reg’lar jeweller’s shop.’

‘Well, of course, you know, I’ve heard all this before. Heard it all, and more too. Seen specimens as good as these, and better; and what did it all come to? Duffered out inside of three months, and never paid for candles.’

‘I’ve been diggin’ nigh hard thirty year—been a “forty-niner,” and so help me, God Almighty! I never dropped across a show like this afore—or within miles of it—for the real, solid stuff.’

‘Well, but five hundred pounds is a large sum. I’m not a rich man, you all know. It gives me enough to do to pay the butcher and baker. I should have to give security over everything I possess to raise it. Mr. Bright, the banker, would not advance it without security, to save my life, I had almost said. He dared not do it, for one thing.’

‘Now, look here, Commissioner! did you ever know me tell a lie? I drink a bit, sometimes, but’—and here the wasted form was straightened with an effort, and the hollow eyes gazed into the magistrate’s face with an intensity almost appalling—‘no [9] ]living man can say that Jack Waters told a lie, or hid the truth. When I say I saw and touched, by the Lord Almighty! what ’ud make you and me, and a dozen more, rich for life, won’t you believe me?’ and here, as if exhausted by the temporary excitement, the old man sank upon his knees, and raising his hands, as if in prayer, cried aloud, ‘For God’s sake, Commissioner! for the sake of your wife and children, go into this thing with me, or you’ll repent it to the last day of your life.’

Arnold Banneret gazed at the kneeling figure, stood for one minute in earnest thought, and then said: ‘All right, I’ll risk it. We’d better call it “The Last Chance,” for if it fails, I’m a ruined man.’

‘You’ll never be ruined this side of the grave, sir,’ said the miner, as he slowly rose to his feet. ‘If you mortgage the shirt on your back, and the shoes off your feet, it’s the best day’s work you ever did. I’ve seen a man write a cheque for a half share in the No. 1 British Hill, as was offered him on the ground floor. He jibbed on it, and tore up the cheque. He knows now that he tore up a fortune that day. But you’ll be right, Commissioner. There’s no go-back in you, I know from old times.’

‘True enough, Jack; I don’t change my line. Well, we must get to business. I’ll have an agreement drawn up, in case of accidents, as well as a transfer of the half share in the claim—I’ll find the five hundred pounds. By the bye, there’s another thing—how about the grog?’

[10]
]‘From the day I leave here, sir, I don’t touch a drop, if it was to save my life, till the first crushing’s out. Then you’ll have enough to pay managers and wages men, enough to run a town—you can do without poor old Jack Waters, even if he does break out, and something tells me he won’t—till the biggest part of the thing’s through. What’s more, I’ll make my will, and leave you the whole boiling, so if anything should happen to me, you’ll have the lot.’

‘That’s unnecessary. I couldn’t take your share, in any case, on any account. Your relations ought to come first, you know.’

‘Relations?’ echoed the old man, with a strange laugh. ‘When I ran away from home in Cornwall, I had only two people as cared to own me—my poor mother, the fellow that married her, and killed her with ill usage. She’s dead years ago, and he’s in—well, I won’t say where—he might have repented, you know. There’s no living soul claimed kin with me when I was poor, and I’m not going to give ’em a chance when I’m rich. No, you shall have the lot, to do what you like with, when poor old Jack takes up his last claim in the alluvial. And now I’ll have a bath, a square meal, and a good sleep till to-morrow, while you take charge of these specimens, and work the Bank business—Mr. Bright is a good sort, and he’ll spring a bit if he sees his way.’

. . . . . . . . .

The Commissioner proceeded to his office, where he carefully locked up the precious stones—precious in every sense of the word—in the [11] ]Government safe. He made a second inspection, after which his brow cleared, and the usual confident expression returned to his features. Before leaving for his home he had a private interview with his banker, who was fully acquainted with his pecuniary position.

‘How do, Banneret? pleased to see you; your quarter’s pay has just come in. That’s all right as far as it goes—so you want five hundred pounds for a mining venture? Rather a speculation, of course. But we’re all in that line here, worse luck. I dropped a hundred over that rascally “Blue Lookout”—blue enough it turned out—and there’s “Flash in the Pan” that I nearly bought into, paying a whacking dividend, and getting better as it goes down. You’ll give security, of course? What is it?’

‘Every mortal thing I’ve got—cows and horses, buggy and harness, furniture, saddles and bridles. Everything but the wife and children. You may put the whole lot into a Bill of Sale, and sell me up if the thing goes wrong.’

‘Hum! ha! We’ll see about that. But of course the directors look at the security, and slang me if I give you an over-draft without it. I’ll have it ready to-morrow. The show’s extra good, I suppose?’

‘Out and out; never saw anything like it.’

‘Yes—of course, I know, and as safe as houses. They all are. Well, good-bye; I wish you luck. You won’t stay and dine with me?’

‘Thanks very much. I must go home’; and they parted—the banker to dine at the hotel [12] ]ordinary, and forget his business worries over a game of billiards afterwards; the Commissioner to ride home in the dark, revolving in his mind the pros and cons of the most risky speculation in which he had embarked for a while—after indeed resolving that never again would he risk a penny in those infernal gambling, deceitful, fascinating gold shares which, like the Sirens of old, lured the unwary to destruction, sooner or later.

[13]
]CHAPTER II

‘What’s been bothering you, my dear?’ queried the partner of his joys and sorrows—of which, indeed, she had borne more than her share during the latter years of their married life. ‘Those Antimony Lead people been having a deputation again? Or the “Western Watchdog” been barking at you? Never mind them, now. Come and look at Baby—she’s fast asleep, and looks so sweet and good—you can tackle those dreadful people after breakfast to-morrow—the proper time, as you always say.’

‘The Antimony Lead has relieved me, by “duffering out,” at No. 14—“No gold, no litigation,” is a safe rule in mining—and the “Watchdog’s” bark is stilled for a time. But you are right. I have something on my mind, connected with mining’—and here he seated himself in an arm-chair, and with his wife’s hand in his, opened his heart, by a full disclosure of facts, to that faithful helpmate and capable adviser.

Mrs. Banneret was a woman of exceptional courage, and capacity in business matters—such as few men are privileged to win and wear in [14] ]the alliance matrimonial. Without binding himself to be guided by her advice in the battles of life, her husband made a point of hearing her views—if time permitted—before engaging in action. Cool, sensible, and, withal, courageous to dare, as well as to suffer, his plans were often modified, if not changed, after hearing her opinion.

In this particular skirmish with fortune, he had, however, been compelled to act promptly on his own responsibility. He knew mines and miners,—that strange earth table, where lay such wondrous prizes; the game on which the cards meant want or wealth, and of which the counters were men’s lives. The opportunity—one of those which come rarely, if more than once in life—was too precious to let slip. Weak and low, after his hardships—if he had refused to accede to the old man’s proposals—he might, in despair, have adopted the fatal remedy, lost his gold, or transferred the greater part of his interest to one of the astute speculators always so numerous upon goldfields.

He had made the plunge. He had put fame and fortune on the cards—more or less—and must stand the hazard of the dip. Not, of course, that an officer of his character and experience would have lost his position by being sold up, and rendered temporarily homeless, as long as nothing worse could be laid to his charge than imprudence in speculation.

There were very few residents in any class, caste, or occupation in Barrawong who had not [15] ]had a throw for a prize in the game of ‘golden hazard.’ But none the less, if it came out a blank, it would involve serious loss, bitter mortification, and more or less privation to be shared by every member of the household.

Mrs. Banneret listened gravely to the narrative, after the first few sentences, which contained the key to the situation. She said nothing until the story was ended, and then proceeded to a cross-examination very much to the point, as her husband had had previous occasion to note. She commenced cheerfully. So does the rusé barrister, affecting an air of light raillery, as he reassures the witness, out of whose heart he resolves to tear the truth before he has done—regardless of laceration, how cruel soever, to that organ, in the process.

But this advocate had no such feeling. She was not an advanced woman. Gifted with intelligence sufficiently clear to perceive the differing treatment of the sexes at the hands of society, she was yet fixed in the opinion that, by marriage and motherhood, a woman’s individuality has deeply, irrevocably merged in the welfare of the household. Thenceforth, her sphere was circumscribed. It was her duty, her privilege, to administer the limited monarchy of that small but vitally important kingdom. If for insufficient cause she wandered from it—if for vain pleasures, or intellectual pride, she neglected her realm—she deserved reprobation as an enemy of the State—deserved to forfeit the crown of her womanhood. So it was with a heart touched [16] ]with wifely sympathy, as well as anxiety for the safety of the family ark, that she began her inquiry.

‘Well, my dear, you seem to have “put on the pot,” as your friend Captain Maurice says—I daresay you have good reason—but we must look out to have something left pour tout potage besides. You put full faith in old Jack Waters; I have heard you speak of him.’

‘With hardly an exception—gentle or simple—I do not know a man whose word I would more absolutely trust, and I have known him for ten years or more.’

‘You think the specimens beyond all doubt the richest you have ever seen? Remember those in the “Coming Event.”’

‘Yes, they were good—though nothing to these. I’m almost sorry I didn’t bring them home with me. I left them in the office safe, to be quite sure.’

‘You are to have a half share also, and the old man wills the whole to you, in case of accidents? That looks well.’

‘I’m sure if you saw him, and them, you would think more of the affair.’

‘Very likely—(thoughtfully). Now, suppose you drive in to-morrow, instead of riding, and take me to lunch with Mrs. Herbert? I can see old Waters and drop into the Bank besides. Then I’ll say what I propose. I’d like to think it over—and now, it’s nearly bedtime—I suppose you want to smoke?’

Mr. Banneret was a reasonable, though not an [17] ]inveterate smoker. He told himself that if ever a man needed the great sedative and composer of thought, this was one of the periods specially suggested by Fate. So he sat for nearly an hour before the fire in the dining-room, and meditatively smoked a couple of pipes of ‘rough cut,’ after which, his habitation being within a few miles of a populous goldfield, and not in a highly civilised and police-guarded city, he went to bed without locking a door or securing a window.

‘They know there’s nothing worth taking in the house of a Police Magistrate—why should they run the risk of a bullet or a gaol?’ he was wont to reply, when taxed by his wife with leaving the front door or the dining-room window open; and as no one ever essayed to break through and steal during their ten years’ sojourn in Barrawong, his argument apparently had force.

Since dawn he had been in Court or office for eight or nine hours—had ridden ten miles and walked five, so that when eleven o’clock came, he had done a fair day’s work. As a consequence, he slept soundly until cockcrow, when he arose with a clear head and renewed faculties, ready for whatever duties might be cast upon him.

The family breakfast concluded, the boys had been despatched to school, the girls to the daily ministrations of the governess, and the infantry division duly provided for, when Mr. and Mrs. Banneret departed for Barrawong, in the buggy of the period, behind a pair of extremely useful nags, moderate as to condition, to which the grass of the field had chiefly contributed, but exceptional [18] ]as to pace and courage. They were equally good in single or double harness, in saddle also, the near-side horse carrying Mrs. Banneret, who was a daring rider, with ease and distinction, while no pair within a hundred miles could, as to road action, ‘see the way they went.’ So the groom phrased it. They were, in fact, the Commissioner’s chief treasures and possessions. It was idle to lock up the house while these invaluable animals were left in an open paddock. Years since, when robbed by bushrangers, he had shivered in his shoes, not from personal apprehension, but for fear that the marauders should take a fancy to Hector, or Paris, and felt quite grateful when they only relieved him of a couple of gold watches, which he happened to have about him.

When, therefore, as the clock struck nine, Mr. and Mrs. Banneret rattled out of the front gate, at the rate of twelve miles an hour, old Hector holding up his head, and sending out his forelegs, as if he wanted to do the two hundred miles to the metropolis in forty-eight hours—the spirits of the ‘leading lady’ and the hero, in what might be a successful melodrama or a tragedy, as the Fates should decree, visibly rose.

‘Feels like old times, doesn’t it? This turnout was new when we were married. How we used to rattle about! Now we’re a dozen years older, and still “going strong,” thank God! Steady, Hector! what an old Turk you are to pull!’

‘Yes, my dear,’ said the lady, looking softly in [19] ]his face, with an added lustre in her dark eyes—‘we have not done so badly, considering we lost every penny in the world not long after that interesting event. We have known hard times, but as long as you and the children are well, and we can give them a decent education, I care for nothing. But we are going to risk nearly everything again, it seems to me—poor Hector and Paris too! It’s a plunge, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, I can get a friend to buy them in, and we must live on bread and cheese, till times improve, if the shot misses. But you come in, and see Waters and his quartz before you form an opinion. Then we’ll talk it out.’

It was a quarter to ten o’clock when they entered the yard of the inn, where the horses and trap were put up. Throwing the reins to the groom, and telling him to give the horses no water for half an hour, Mr. Banneret and his wife entered the hotel—in the parlour of which, reading the Western Watchman, that morning issued, sat Jack Waters with a serene and satisfied air. Refreshed by sleep it was wonderful what rest and refreshment had done for him. Though painfully emaciated, his eye was brighter, his colour improved—his very voice altered, as he respectfully saluted Mrs. Banneret.

‘I’m afraid you’ve had a hard time of it, Jack, since you left last year?’ she said; ‘you’re terribly fallen away, I can see.’

‘It was “a close call,” as the Yankee diggers say, ma’am! I thought I was goin’ under, many a mile from here—but I never gave in, and what [20] ]with the water getting better, and the weather cooler, I pulled through. Yes, Mrs. Banneret! and it was a good day for you and the children, and the Commissioner here, as I did. If poor old Jack had dropped, in that fifty-mile dry stage—I won’t say where—it mightn’t have mattered much to him. It was all in the day’s work—one more fool of a digger rubbed out. But to you, ma’am, that has always had a kind word and a bit of help for every one, and your boys and girls that’s been brought up to do the same—it will matter to the last day of your lives. You believe me, it’s God’s truth, as I’m a living man this day.’

And here the miner stood up and gazed with a far-off, dreamy look, as if beyond the place in which he stood—beyond other lands and seas—as he named a desert region as yet scarce heard of, from which even the reckless prospector often turned away, the haunt of the thirst demon and the fever fiend.

‘Westhampton!’ said the pair simultaneously. ‘Why, you don’t mean to say you’ve been there! Whatever made you think of it? Why, it’s thousands of miles from here.’

‘I was there, anyhow—and now I’m back here. There was a voyage to take—I had money enough for that, and I saved as much as would take me back. I had to walk over a hundred mile to get there, and double as much to come back. What I went through, no one will ever know. But I got back to the ship. Then I started to walk from the coast, and here I am; but there wasn’t much to spare, was there, Commissioner?’

[21]
]‘My time’s up,’ he replied, looking at his watch. ‘Court morning, and there’s always some one waiting to see me. I must go now, but you tell Mrs. Banneret all about it. She’ll be in the claim too, you know’; and the man of many duties and responsibilities walked forth to receive a report from the police of a mining accident, with loss of life; to fix the date for hearing an exhaustive action for trespass; to issue warrants—sign summonses and Miners’ Rights; to report upon complaints made against himself to the Secretary for Mines; to sit in a bankruptcy meeting—as also to act as general adviser, father confessor, and guardian of minors in pressing cases of the most delicate social and financial nature.

The lady’s colloquy with the miner was short, but material to the issue. ‘I have come in to-day,’ she said, ‘on purpose to see you about this speculation. Mr. Banneret believes in you, as a straight, reliable man! So do I, from what I have seen and heard. But this is a neck or nothing venture. We have little to spare as it is, and if we lose this five hundred pounds we shall be ruined—and you know that the oldest miners are deceived sometimes. It is a long way off, too.’

‘If it wasn’t a long way off, it wouldn’t be what it is, ma’am. I’ve been mining these thirty year, and never see a reef like it afore. Of course it’s not too late to go back on it, though I’d rather you had it than any one else I know—you helped me afore, you see, when I had my tent burnt, and I’d like to do you good.’

‘How did you come to know of it?’

[22]
]‘Well, it was this way. You know, ma’am, us diggers often write and lay one another on to good things. An old mate of mine had been campin’ out and prospectin’ round there, for more’n a year, livin’ hard, eatin’ lizards, pigface, what not—nigh perished for want of water, until he come across this here reef. Well, he goes back to Southern Cross, where he gets laid up with rheumatic fever, and close up dies—ain’t right yet. Well, he wires and lays me on, and I’m to give him an eighth share, when it’s floated—as floated it will be—and for a price that’ll astonish some people. I can’t say more, ma’am, now, and every word of it’s God’s truth.’

‘I think you’ve said enough,’ said the lady, bending her gaze upon him with a searching glance, which he returned steadfastly and half wistfully. ‘Whatever Mr. Banneret has promised, of course he will perform. You may trust my husband to carry it out, and I feel more satisfied now I have heard you explain matters.’

‘If we can’t trust the Commissioner, ma’am, we can’t trust nobody—that’s what all of us miners says; there’s not a man on the field that don’t say the same. So I’ll wish you good-bye, ma’am, and my sarvice to you.’

‘Good-bye, and I hope it will bring good fortune to all of us.’

That afternoon, about half-past four o’clock, the Commissioner closed his office earlier than usual. As they were speeding along the homeward road, winding between yawning shafts and over the insecure bridges spanning the water-races, which [23] ]gurgled and bubbled beneath the horses’ feet, Mrs. Banneret thus addressed her husband:

‘Had a good day, my dear?’

‘Very fair, all things considered. Long Small Debts Court. Big police case. Inquest on poor fellow killed in Happy Valley. Deputation from the “Great Intended”—want the base line swung. Report urgently required in the last jumping case. Got through them all except the last—they can wait a week. I must go on the ground.’

‘Not a bad day’s work either, for an overpaid, under-worked Civil servant, as the Radical papers call you; and now I’ll bring in my report, which is urgent—immediate, and can’t “wait a week,” whatever else can.’

‘Go ahead, my dear!’ said her husband, lighting his pipe, and steadying the impatient horses to a ten-mile trot. ‘I’m all attention.’

‘In the first place, I had a short talk with old Waters which impressed me. He thoroughly believes in the find, and I believe in him. So do you. If his tale is true, our fortune is made; and though the risk is great, the speculation is no more imprudent than some we know of that ended triumphantly.’

‘Of course, there was Lindsay, district Surveyor, just as hard worked and no better paid than I am, took early shares in Rocky Hill, went home with £200,000 or more! Desmond went in with the “first robbers” in Valley Gorge—came out with over £100,000. Very cautious men both of them, too. Nearly not going in. Higgleson declined—swears now, when he thinks of it.’

[24]
]‘Well, my dear, these are truths—stranger than fiction, as the eminent person says. Shows that all mining ventures are not swindles; and now for my proposal. You haven’t had leave of absence lately?’

‘Not for four years. Leave obtainable, but no visible means, if I had gone.’

‘Quite so—couldn’t be better put. But now the case is different. You have the five hundred pounds to come and go on—Oh! I may say here that I called at the Bank and asked Mr. Bright to show me the specimens. They made my mouth water. What necklaces and rings—pearls and diamonds I saw in the future—if the reef “went down,” as old Waters said. How the shares would go up! That wasn’t the only thing I saw. I saw schools and colleges—travel, society for the children, a house in town—a carriage (which my soul loveth),—all these I saw in those pretty white and fawn-coloured stones with their threads and veins of gold—pure gold running through and through them. Mr. Bright thinks well of the affair too, I can see.’

‘Yes, he does—and he ought to be a judge. How many a ton of that same quartz, more or less auriferous, has he handled in his time! Many a pound has he lost over it too.’

‘Well, we can’t all win, of course; but I’m with you in this, my dear, heart and soul—and if it breaks down, and we have to live on dry bread for a couple of years, you shall never hear a whimper from me.’

‘I know that, my dear. Pluck enough for [25] ]half-a-dozen men—let alone women. What about this leave? Do you mean——?’

‘Of course I do; apply at once for three months’ leave. Pressure of work, and so on. I’ve noticed you do look rather fagged now and then—though I never said so. Urgent private affairs also. Then go with him. You’ll have the spending of the cash. He can’t object to that. I’m surprised you didn’t see it yourself. He might drink, or be drugged, and lose it all. Where should we be then? Depend upon it, that’s the thing to do. It makes all safe, once for all.’

‘I see your point. I might have thought of it, as you say; but they’ll have to send a man in my place. Every one wouldn’t do. However, there’s sure to be some goldfields official knocking about who’d like the change. In for a penny, etc. I’ll write to-night. But how will you get on?’

‘Have your pay put into my private account while you’re away. I’ll manage somehow. The five hundred pounds ought to frank you there, and do all the taking up and so on—with care.’

‘Yes, and careful enough we shall have to be; there’ll be no more when that’s gone. It’s the “last chance” in every sense of the word.’

‘I shall be lonely enough while you’re away, my dear; but we have had to do without each other before—and must again. You’ll write regularly—a letter will always cheer me up. I shan’t suffer for want of employment, that’s one thing.’

The Commissioner got his leave of absence on the ground of ‘urgent private affairs’—which was [26] ]only just, as he had been hard at it for several years, without change or respite, in one of the most difficult, anxious, wearing occupations in the Civil Service: that of Warden, and Police Magistrate, on a large alluvial goldfield. To rule over an excitable population, varying from ten to twenty thousand; to hear and decide the interminable mining lawsuits arising from the production of tons of gold—literally tons, won, held, and distributed under a code of mining laws, of a sufficiently complicated nature, and appearing to the unlearned a mass of confused, contradictory regulations, was no sinecure. The amounts, too, in question were often incredibly large, so that a mistake in law, or an error in judgment, magnified by the local press, assumed gigantic proportions in the eye of the public. In the police department of jurisdiction, murders and robberies, though not alarmingly frequent, were occasionally matters of by no means a quantité négligeable. Excitable public meetings were common, and, as an outlet for smouldering popular feeling, answered a good purpose.

But, on the whole, Barrawong was an appointment which a gentleman with prejudices in favour of a quiet life would have found singularly unsuitable.

As for Jack, he fell in with the proposition warmly and loyally from its first mention. Distrustful, from past experience, of his will-power in the way of resistance in the grip of terrible drink temptation, to which, in the past, he had succumbed full many a time and oft, he was not [27] ]sorry to have the custody of the joint capital placed in safe hands. And yet nothing is a more astonishing psychical phenomenon than the unbroken abstention from alcohol which the intermittent drunkard will and can practise. Having so resolved, the whilom victim will sit with roystering comrades, whose full glasses pass before his face—lodge in hotels, where he sees (and smells) the soul-destroying liquid from morning to night, and under the fire of this temptation—over the grave of so many broken vows and tearful resolutions—he will remain as unshaken as a teetotaller in a coffee-house.

What a miracle it seems! What a superhuman effort must the first days of sobriety require! How does it put to shame the better born, the better instructed, whose every-day resolutions they are often so powerless to abide by!

But it is a time-bargain with the fiend, alas! in so many—in by far the majority of instances. In ‘an hour that he knoweth not,’ the Enemy of man asserts his power, and the victim falls—to be cast into the outer darkness of despair—of hopeless surrender—to a ruined life, an unhonoured death.

A fortnight’s rest and good living set up the returned prospector to such an extent that his former comrades hardly recognised him in the neatly dressed, alert personage, who gave out that he was open to invest in a ‘show,’ but wasn’t up to any more prospecting for a while. ‘Not good enough,’ and so on. Thought he’d take a trip to Melbourne to see a friend. This resolve he carried out rather [28] ]suddenly, it having been so arranged, the partners not holding it expedient that they should leave in company, or that it should be matter for general information that they were bound upon a joint mining speculation. As to the tempting local ventures, then common among all classes on a large goldfield, Mr. Banneret had always studiously abstained from the slightest connection with them.

‘No!’ was his uniform answer to applications of a persuasive nature—‘I am here to decide upon questions of immense importance to these people over whom I am placed as a judge and a ruler. To inspire confidence in the impartiality of my decisions, I cannot be financially associated with any mining property on this goldfield. Say that my partner, or partners, do not come before me in any judicial matter. Such are the ramifications of mining association, that the partners, and friends of their partners, are certain at some time or other to be suitors in my Court. I should not then stand in the same relation to them as to perfectly unknown or detached parties to a suit. Thus I fully resolved, from my first acceptance of this office, to hold myself free from the slightest ground of suspicion.’

‘As for this affair,’ he told his wife, talking over the matter before his departure, ‘it is entirely different; the locality is in another colony, under different laws and another government. If it comes off, I shall be indifferent to all mining law, except as it affects our particular lease—which I shall take up directly I get there.’

[29]
]The last farewell was said, the last embrace given. With a brave and tearless face, but an aching heart, the loyal wife bade adieu to the one man that the world held for her—stood looking after the fast-receding vehicle which was to meet the coach at the country town—waving her handkerchief till the turning-point of the road was reached, then, with falling tears, walked slowly back to the cottage, and busied herself with the never-ending needlework—over which the tears flowed so fast at times that a pause in the stitching was necessary. In her chamber she poured out her heart in fervent supplication, that he whom she loved and trusted above all other created beings might return to her, safe as to health and successful in his enterprise, if so God willed, but if otherwise, in His good Providence, let him only be spared to return in health to glad his wife’s and children’s eyes, and her soul would be satisfied—‘Thy will, not mine be done, O Lord!’ were the closing words of the heartfelt, simple petition. Rising with an expression of renewed confidence and trusting faith, she smoothed her hair, bathed her face, and with a composed and steadfast countenance betook herself to the ever-recurring duties of the household.

. . . . . . . . .

The wrench of parting with wife and children was over. Mr. Banneret, like most strong men of an observant turn of mind, enjoyed change. A born traveller, he was equally at home on sea and land, hill or dale, plain or forest—hot or cold, wet or dry—it made no difference to him. There [30] ]was always some one, or something, to see and be interested in. His was a chiefly sympathetic constitution of mind, which could, in all literal truth, be described as irrepressible and universal.

Such being the case, he had no sooner looked up Waters, whom he found well and hearty, at the hostelry agreed upon, in Melbourne, and taken passage in the first steamer bound for far Westralia, than Hope, the day star, which had illumined so many darksome passages of his life, arose, and amid the twilight of the uncertain adventure, commenced to glow with a mild but steady irradiation. The next afternoon found them on the wave, units of a crowd, bound for the newest Eldorado.

Under instructions, an agent had arranged for the purchase of a strong, but light-running waggonette, and three horses, together with the ordinary necessaries for an overland journey through new, untried country. Reduced to their smallest weight and compass, there was still a sufficient load for the team, probably condemned to indifferent fare on the road. The selection had been careful—no one is a better judge of travel requisites than that man of many makeshifts and dire experiences, the mining prospector. The outfit needed but to be paid for, and shipped, and the first act of the melodrama began.

Voyages are much alike. They differ occasionally in length, safety, comfort, and convenience. But these are details. The chief matters are departure, and arrival in port. When the second part of the contract is unfulfilled, the performance borders on a tragedy. In this case the contract [31] ]was carried out—after a week’s voyage, they duly arrived at their distant stage.

‘So this is another colony,’ said Mr. Banneret, looking around on the small old-fashioned town—so long settled—so sparsely populated—so meagre in tokens of civilisation, in contrast with the coast cities of the East. They were not, of course, over-fastidious. There were decent hotels—even a Club for people with introductions. To the Commissioner unstinted hospitality was tendered. He considered it, however, expedient to pitch the tent and pack their movables in the waggon: to begin to camp in earnest, as indeed they would be compelled to do during the remainder of the journey. This would be the more economical method of travelling, and the safety of their property, including the horses, would be assured.

On the morrow Waters proceeded to explain his plan of action.

They had, first of all, to travel for a week in a nor’-westerly direction, at the end of which they would reach a mining camp or township.

The track after that was fairly well marked; but the feed was bad, or none at all—water scarce and precarious. There were all sorts of disadvantages. ‘It was the worst country in Australia,’ Jack said, averring that he had seen everything bad in his time. It would take them more than a month, even if they had luck. They would have to carry everything with them; even forage for the horses. But at the end, however long and wearisome, there was a claim—a reef, the like of which he, John Waters, had never seen before. [32] ]‘Then the sooner we’re off the better,’ said Mr. Banneret. ‘We can get everything ready to-morrow, and make a short journey at any rate. The great thing is the start. It’s mostly plain sailing afterwards.’

So the next day everything was done, fitted, and made ready for a three months’ journey, as indeed it needed to be. Waiting and working at the claim would not be very dissimilar from the wayfaring—except that they would be stationary. As for the hard work, with fare to match, Mr. Banneret had had similar experiences in his youth, and believed that he could do what any other man could do, of whatever age, class, or condition.

By this time his ‘mate’—a ‘dividing mate,’ in the eye of the law, socially and otherwise—had, as he himself expressed it, ‘picked up surprisin’’—after the first week or two on the road, he would be (he stated) in hard condition again, fit to go for a man’s life. Originally of the flawless constitution peculiarly the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon, and, as such, contemptuous of hardship by land or sea, nothing but his own folly had power to harm it. The wonderful recuperative power common to the race had reasserted itself—conjointly with a regular system of food and rest. The typical miner’s boundless optimism and sanguine expectation bore him up as upon wings—and, as they drove along in the clear atmosphere, under a cloudless sky, the Commissioner’s face lost its troubled expression.

The ‘township,’ when they got there, was such a one as the Commissioner had never before seen [33] ]in all his varied experiences; never in his dreams had he imagined such a mining camp. A person of restricted imagination, or feeble sympathies, might even have described the landscape as ‘unspeakably desolate, and ghastly.’ A certain appearance of grass, even if trodden down, and fed off by horses and bullocks, had always been visible on goldfields where he had borne rule formerly.

Here there was none, absolutely none. Dust of a red hue, subtly pervading all nature, was the chief elemental feature. Water was more or less available for sluicing, puddling, cradling, or other purposes connected with mining operations,—here there was none to be seen except in the small quantities required for partial lavation and for engine work. This last was of course procurable, but being generally salt or brackish, required to be subjected to the condenser, lest damage to the engine should ensue. In the hotels it was dearer than wine or beer in the coast cities—was always, indeed, charged for separately in the bars when supplied with alcohol!

‘What a desert!’ thought the Commissioner. ‘Have we reached Arabia by any magical process? And here come the camels proper to the scene.’ As he spoke, a long string of those Eastern-seeming animals came nearer, and the Afghan drivers, turbaned and with flowing garb, heightened the resemblance.

‘This is a queer shop, sir,’ said Waters, as he observed his companion’s looks of amazement and curiosity. ‘Barrawong wasn’t over-pleasant, as you [34] ]might say, on a hot day, with the north wind blowin’ the dust in your eyes—but it was a king to this; and then the river—you could allers have a swim; and nothing freshens a man up like a good header into cool, deep water after his day’s work.’

‘It certainly is not a place a man would pick to spend his honeymoon—though I suppose some adventurous couples have done that; but, of course, the main thing is the gold. Men didn’t come out here to hunt for scenery, or farm-lands. Are they on good gold? If they are, all the rest will follow.’

‘Well, sir, this is the richest goldfield in Australia, just now, and likely to be the biggest. You know, if that keeps on, they’ll get everything else they want, and more too, directly; but we shan’t stop here long enough to think about it, hot or cold,’ said Waters. ‘I’ll watch the horses to-night, for there’s a lot of cross coves about, who’d steal the teeth out of your head if you slept sound enough. We’d better load up all we’ll want for a month or two, and get away afore sundown to-morrer. You might write out a list of things we’ll want. I’ll mind the camp till you come back.’ This being arranged, Banneret went into town after a frugal lunch, and walked down the main street, which, with a few others crossing it at right angles, constituted the nucleus of the infant city. A few large and fairly well kept hotels, with ornamental bars and spacious billiard and dining rooms, accommodated the floating population, of whom the greater number took their meals there, in preference to undergoing [35] ]the doubtful experiment of housekeeping. The expense was considerable; but those who had shares in dividend-paying mines could well afford war prices, while to those making short visits to this and other ‘fields’—partly on business, and partly for curiosity—a few pounds could make but slight difference. Of course, the township bore a family likeness to all other mining centres,—one long main street, with others branching off at right angles, the frontage to which was filled with cabins, huts, cottages, tents, of every size, shape, and colour. The roofs were chiefly of corrugated iron, which, unsightly as a building material, yet enabled the possessor to collect rain-water. When the walls, or rather sides, were not of the same material they were of hessian—of slabs, or weatherboard. Some indeed were of bark—the climate being consistently hot and dry. The nights, however, were cool, as the goldfield stood fairly high above sea-level. When it did rain, it came down with tropical force and volume, as was seen by the depth of the ravines. But this state of matters occurred too rarely to occasion serious thought. Here and there tiny gardens, wherein grew a few carefully tended vegetables and flowers, showed that the soil was not wholly barren. The pepper tree (Schinus molle), friend of the pioneer horticulturist, had already made a lodgment, as well as the Kurrajong or Cooramin (Sterculia), the slow growth of which, however, few of the present population would remain to witness.

All purchases made, the team fed and rested, the loading arranged as only the experienced [36] ]overlander knows how, and supper over, a start was made by the light of a rising moon.

‘We take this track, sir,’ said Waters. ‘It’s the main road to the “twenty-mile soak,” and give out as we’re goin’ to Kurnalpi. There’s whips o’ tracks for ten or twelve mile; and then we strike due west. If any of ’em follers us up, we can say we’re makin’ for Kimberley—that’ll choke ’em off, if anything will.’

‘I suppose there are men on these fields that will track up prospectors if they believe they’ve made a find?’

‘In course there are, sir. Chaps as like pickin’ up the fruits of other men’s work, and ain’t game to tackle the hardships theirselves.’

So the strangely constituted companions journeyed on, by the faint wavering light of the struggling moon, sometimes obscured, but generally available, as the track, so far, was across open plains or downs, sandy, gravelly, or rock-strewn by turns, but offering no serious obstacle to the passage of horse or man. What timber there was consisted chiefly of scrub and brushwood, mulga or mallee. Some of it was available for camel food; but, in a general way, it appeared to the Commissioner as a land accursed of God and man—unfitted for providing sustenance for man or beast.

As the night dragged through, he could not but consider the contrast between his present position and that which he had abandoned in order to follow what might be a delusive phantom, a ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’—an ‘ignis fatuus,’ specially provided for leading astray wayfarers, [37] ]blinded by the ‘auri sacra fames.’ Suppose he lost his way, broke down in health or eyesight—the most vulnerable point in the explorer’s armoury? Waters was old, and though apparently strong, and inured to hardship, could not go on for ever, or if he missed his way to the Waterloo Spring?—they were far apart and the aboriginal natives were indifferent or hostile—in any case, averse, from their standpoint, to point out or conduct the party to the inestimable water-store. What might be his fate? And what—still more harrowing thought—the condition of his wife and family, deprived of his protecting care, and having exhausted his slender store of earnings—the fruit of many an hour of toil and self-denial? He had reached the point of almost intolerable doubt and distress of mind when a cheery shout from his companion, who held the reins, dislodged the nightmare which he had conjured up.

‘Yes, Captain, yonder’s the Black Peak! I was pretty near told out when I struck it, and that done when I got there that I never expected to see home again. I’d been walking half the night, and all day—my water-bag was empty—I’d had nothing to eat to speak of for a week past, just a morsel of biscuit now and then. My boots was wore through, my feet bleedin’, and that sore I could hardly drag myself along. By George! if a digger wants to have the heart of a lion, as people say, what must a prospector? Heat and cold, hunger and thirst—blacks to fight, off and on—whites if he’s got a bit of gold, nigh hand as bad, perhaps worse, as they’re more cunning. [38] ]How many a heap of bones lies bleaching in the sun, between here and Kurnalpi! Sometimes they’re found, and there’s papers on ’em that tells where the only son, or the favourite youngest one, laid down to die, and never come home, all the years they was expecting of him to open the door of the old place and say, “Here I am, with a brown face and a bag of nuggets”—as the story-writers tell us. Well, well! I’m ramblin’ away, just like a chap I did hear once, as I come on just in time to give him a bite and a sup, and save his precious life. How he was a-talkin’ and goin’ on! I heard him a matter of half a mile afore I got to him. He talked and talked—thought he saw his people again, and they wouldn’t let him in. Then he’d scream and yell, and curse frightful, and say the devil was coming for him—just for all the world like a man with the jim-jams—the D.T.s, or whatever doctors call it. There ain’t so much difference between what men and women say when once they’re off their head. We’re all queer animals—larned or unlarned—and that’s a fact.

‘And now, sir, as I’ve talked enough rot for a while, only I thought you was lookin’ rather down on it, and it might liven you up a bit, I see we’re on a bit of good saltbush where we can stop and give the horses a feed. I’ll fry a bit of the mutton for a relish, and make a pot of tea. There’s a plenty of the damper left as I baked a while back. We can take it easy while you have a “bange.” I’ll watch the nags, in case any one comes along. We can push on afterwards. Anyhow the horses will be all the better for a spell.’

[39]
]Waters bustled about, unharnessing and hobbling the horses, which immediately began to nibble the saline bushes that seemed to have found a patch of congenial soil. Walking down a small gully or shallow ravine, he was fortunate enough to discover a tiny ‘soak’ under a rock, being directed thereto by a brace of the beautiful bronzewing pigeons. These birds will fly great distances to a spring or water-hole of any sort, but are difficult to shoot, as their habit is to drink rapidly, and fly back to their haunts so suddenly that it is a case of snap-shot, or too late.

The soak proved sufficient to give the team a drink, and also to fill up the ten-gallon keg, which was kept as a reserve in case of need.

After this halt Mr. Banneret felt easier in his mind, and more sanguine as to the results of the expedition.

The sky was cloudless, of course. The desert sun had shone its fiercest for the last two hours. The pocket thermometer and aneroid registered 90 degrees. Before the close of day it would probably reach 105 or 110.

‘We’ll not start till after sundown, sir,’ said the practical partner. ‘I want to blind our trail a bit, so as we shan’t be follered up just yet. By gum! if this ain’t the very identical mob o’ horses come a purpose, like as if it was ordered. See them camels?’

‘Yes! what a string of them, with Afghan drivers. What have they to do with us?’

‘You’ll find out, sir, soon’s they come a bit closer.’

[40]
]It may not be generally known that horses have an insuperable dread of camels when first seen. It is on record that, on the first progress of an explorer’s expedition down the Darling River, the station horses with one accord fled from the river frontage, stampeding towards the ‘back blocks,’ and were recovered with difficulty days and weeks afterwards.

On this occasion, there happened to be an overland mob (drove) of horses on their way to the Southern Cross goldfield—coming in a different direction from that of the travellers. Directly they caught sight of the camel train, they swung across the road, and headed apparently for Coongarrie, in spite of the utmost efforts of the drivers, who by cries, yells, and stockwhip cracks, strove to stop or wheel them. ‘That’s all right for us, sir,’ said Waters, who, after several perfunctory efforts to assist the men in charge, was content to let them go their own way. ‘We’ll be off as soon as we can harness up, sir, and drive along the way they’ve gone. They’ve made tracks enough to cover ours ten times over. Next day we’ll hit out due north, where the ground’s that bloomin’ hard and rocky as it won’t hold a track—unless they had a nigger with them, which it’s not likely—not hereabouts, anyway.’

As they drove quietly along in the line of the flying squadron, it really appeared as if circumstance had aided them in an unforeseen but perfectly effectual manner. Some miles farther on they met the runaway mob, considerably steadied by their escapade, being driven quietly back, with [41] ]a man in front of them, who was keeping closely to their track, as in the outward run.

‘That makes it just right for us, sir,’ said the old man; ‘they’ll knock out the track of our wheels, for good and all, so that no man can tell where we left the main trail—and they’ve twisted, and twisted so, as any feller that’s trackin’ us up won’t have any show of hittin’ our dart, any more’n a mob of kangaroos.’

Both partners knew enough of the working of claims on new goldfields to judge how essential it was to their success that they should be able to take possession, undisturbed by the tumult and confusion of a rush on new ground, known or reported to be rich. Wild exaggerations, and rumours of Aladdin’s caves, would pass from camp to camp, with every fresh arrival of miners. The Commissioner had seen before the lonely creek flat, or fern-fringed gully, converted within forty-eight hours into a populous township, with main street, shops, hotels, billiard-rooms, more or less effective for their needs; while every acre for miles around the reef or alluvial deposit was pegged out and jealously guarded by armed men, whom it needed but little imagination to believe capable of shedding blood in defence of their legal or fancied rights.

He now began to comprehend that their present action was decided by an experienced and capable coadjutor, and resolved to continue in the position of sleeping partner until circumstances demanded a change.

Many days and nights were passed in desert travelling, in more or less monotonous fashion. [42] ]The days were hot—almost intolerably so; the sand and gravel of the soil, unrelieved by pasture, even of the humblest description, seemed to burn the very soles of their boots. What then would happen if they were attacked by the dreaded ophthalmia, the ‘sandy blight’ of the colonists, he shuddered to think of. He had known of terrible experiences when the sufferers were far from medical aid, so of course had brought the accepted tinctures with them, had invested in ‘solar topees’ and sunshades—that is to say, he had; but his companion, with the reckless indifference of the average miner to every kind of danger, trusted to chance and a hitherto unbroken constitution. ‘That fever pretty nigh knocked me out, sir—I was bad when you seen me in Barrawong. But it was the starvation and it together that near settled me. I won’t cut it so fine again, believe me.’ This statement was made at the close of the day—when the final journey was commenced. The nights, Banneret was glad to remark, were fairly cool, and free from the mosquito pest, the elevation above the sea being greater than would be at first conjectured.

‘We strike an old camel track,’ said his companion, after they were fairly started; ‘it was made just after the Kurnalpi field broke out. They don’t take that line now, and just as well. It’s wonderful how they missed our “bonanza,” but that’s what you’ll notice on every field—they’ll go washin’ and cradlin’ in every gully but the right ’un, and almost break their shins over the real thing without ever knowin’ it.’

[43]
]The dawn was painting the pale east with gold streaks and crimson patches as they broke camp and headed for a peak, of which the irregular outline stood in sharp relief against the glowing sky. They had quitted the camel-track, obscured in places by the blown sand and occasional storm showers, and now struck boldly across the limitless plain. Their landmark was distinct, and encouraging, as relieving them from anxiety about the route. As the Commissioner gazed upon the bold outline of the fantastic peak, one thought possessed his mind, dominating all others. Here was the goal of his ambition: the secret hope which had during long years of struggle and self-denial kept alive the prospect of eventual prosperity, such as should comprehend peace of mind, in a well-ordered country home near the metropolis, education of the children, social privileges, with a modest allowance of travel and art culture, and generally unrestricted rational enjoyment. Would this mysterious mountain lead them to a veritable Sinbad’s valley of diamonds, or would the fairy gold, by virtue of the magical transmutation which seems connected with rich deposits of the precious metals, be for them rendered illusionary and disappointing? Would they find the sacred spot already captured and despoiled; desecrated by alien pegs, and filled with defiant claimants? He knew the keenness with which a prospector’s track could be followed up—by men versed in the lore of the wilderness—the outcome of those who, like his guide and partner, ‘had done a perish,’ in goldfields argot, [44] ]not less hazardous than he; their safety, their very existence, dependent upon such a hazard—a mere cast of the die, as might be this. It grew, this dark surmise, raged and traversed his brain, increasing in force and virulence, until he almost imagined that he saw in the dim distance the outline of a tent, the form of a man, the thin thread of smoke which goes up from a tiny desert fire, such as, God in Heaven! he remembered noting so well of old. It was a trick of the imagination doubtless. Was he indeed becoming lightheaded? Was distemper of the brain setting in? He was wont to regard himself as a level-headed person, cool in emergency, steadfast to bear untoward circumstance. He would wait, and divert his thoughts for a while. He would drive out one frame of mind by compelling another—several other imagined states of mind to take its place. He thought then, at first resolutely—then as the picture became more clear and vivid, of the happy day of his arrival—by coach, of course: they had quitted the train at midnight, and taken their seats, secured by telegram, in the well-horsed, well-lighted, punctual conveyance of Cobb and Co., which has earned so many a blessing from home-returning travellers. The long night was past; the dawn discovered the well-known goldfields road, from which in half an hour—ye gods! but half an hour!—the main street of the old familiar township, with its improvised banks, stores, shops, and hotels, would burst upon the view. Ha! well—I have been dreaming to some purpose. The vision fades. Let us hope that the hill will [45] ]not suffer the fate of ‘Poor Susan’s,’ in those exquisite lines of the poet. Yes! it stands there, clear, neutral-tinted—nude—frowning, as doubtless it has done for centuries, æons, if you will—since the central fires lifted it from the womb of Dame Hertha. The day is older, but the unclouded sky and the atmosphere are of such clearness that distant objects can be discerned with almost perfect certainty; he is awake and alert now, if ever—his senses have not played him false—there is a tent, at no very great distance, and sitting by it, on a box, is a man smoking, while another appears to be putting together articles of camp furniture.

[46]
]CHAPTER III

Apparently at the same moment the guide, who is walking ahead as usual, has made up his mind as to the apparition, for he halts and walks back to the cart.

‘What the deuce is that? Who do you think they are?’

‘Well, sir, they’re a couple of “travellers,” on the same lay as ourselves—far as I can make out. They’ve no horse, nor cart—so they’ve been goin’ slow, naturally. They’ve not found our show, or they’d ’a stopped on it—or be makin’ back to raise an outfit. I can’t quite make out whether they’re goin’ on to the hill, or just on the turn-back for want of grub. We’d better act cautious with them after seein’ who they are.’

‘We ought to go over to them?’

‘That’s my idee, sir. If we head for the mountain, they’ll be sure to foller us up, thinkin’ we’ve reasons for it. It’s too late to pretend to go back. They’ve seen we were headin’ for the hill, anyway, and it won’t bluff ’em if we turn round, besides losin’ time.’

‘I agree with you,’ said the Commissioner. [47] ]‘Put the saddle on the leader; I’ll ride over and talk to them.’

‘All right, sir; if they’re men to be trusted we can take ’em in as mates. We can’t hold a Reward Claim, or leastways work it, with only our two selves. There’s enough for all, if we can only get to work.’

The leading horse was saddled. On riding over to the camp of the wayfarers, the Commissioner was at once struck by its peculiar appearance. The articles scattered about the door of the bell tent were certainly not those of the ordinary miner. The towels were of better than usual quality; the bath sponges, arranged for drying, were larger than usual—other articles of the toilet similarly distinctive.

‘Pleased to see you, sir!’ said one of the young men, with a clear British accent. ‘’Fraid we can’t offer you much in the way of refreshment. Point of fact we’ve had nothing to eat for the last forty-eight hours but dried apples—they’re not so bad when they’ve been well soaked.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Denzil!’ said his companion. ‘They’re just a trifle better than stewed boots, if you ask me. But we’re alive, which is something—though how long we shall last out is a very, very doubtful question.’

‘Permit me to introduce myself as Arnold Banneret. My mate and I are travelling due north, unless we strike something attractive.’

‘Just our case,’ said the elder of the two young men—they were neither of them far from the legal standard of manhood—‘except that we’re [48] ]travelling due south—isn’t it south, Denzil? I’m not much of a geographical chap, but we’re going back to Coolgardie—if we can get there. Sorry we can’t join forces—awfully so; give you my word.’

The Commissioner gazed searchingly at the strangers. Accustomed to reading faces—and in circumstances where a mistake might have cost him dear, he had often been forced to act upon a hasty summing-up of presumed character. He did so in this instance. ‘Swells out of luck,’ was his unspoken verdict. ‘Temporarily, of course. The dark one has the face, the bold and steady look, of a born explorer. He’ll go far yet. The other boy is the well-bred youth of the day, with little experience but that of Oxford or Cambridge. Athletics are chiefly in his line. But they are men as well as gentlemen, I’m convinced.’

‘Our acquaintance has been short,’ he said, ‘but may develop later on. As I have a proposal to make, may I ask whom I have the pleasure of addressing?’

‘My friend’s name is Southwater. My own name Newstead,’ said the ‘traveller.’ ‘As you say, we haven’t seen each other before, but are quite ready to consider any offer that it suits you to make.’ His friend nodded assent. ‘From present appearances the advantage seems likely to be entirely on our side.’

‘We shall see,’ said the Commissioner; ‘probably it may be mutual. In the meanwhile, will you come over and take breakfast with me? I’ll go [49] ]on ahead and speak to my mate.’ And he cantered off.

The young men lost no time in collecting their property, and arranging it into the ‘swags’ of the period, with a celerity to be acquired only by experience.

‘This is a throw-in!’ said the younger man to his friend. ‘I wonder who our distinguished stranger is? There was a note of authority in his manner, though nothing could be more courteous than his bearing. Looks like an army man—though we can’t be certain. But I’ll swear he’s held a command somewhere. At any rate we are sure of getting something to eat. People with a waggonette always have a stock of provisions which we poor swagmen can’t rival.’

‘Swagmen, indeed!’ laughed his friend. ‘I wonder what the girls at Brancepeth or Aunt Eleanora would think if they saw us now?’

‘Why, of course, that they always knew it would come to this. Probably turn bushrangers before we’d done. At any rate we’re not likely to be robbed. Cantabit vacuus—eh?’

On reaching the waggonette they found the regulation meal laid out upon a board supported by tressels, a portable affair such as surveyors carry. People living much in tents are ingenious in contrivances for comfort. There were also camp-stools, equally light and effective. Corned beef and damper, with tin plates, were set out, while the inevitable ‘billy’ was boiling near a small but hot fire.

‘This is John Waters, my partner, gentlemen,’ [50] ]said their entertainer; ‘as a miner of experience I guarantee him.’ Here old Jack shook hands solemnly with the new arrivals, while regarding them with fixed and scrutinising eye. ‘You will find him a “white man” in the best sense of the word. After lunch I shall be happy to talk business. Allow me to help you to this excellent corned beef.’

‘Thanks awfully; we shan’t be long, I assure you—we’ve not had a square meal since we left Coolgardie. You mustn’t mind if we seem greedy. As for me, I’m ravenous, but still capable of self-restraint.’

‘Fellows grumble at a tough steak at home,’ said Southwater; ‘talk about having no appetite till 8 P.M. I wonder what they would say to camp fare in Australian deserts? Lucky we didn’t fall across any blacks, or roast picaninny would have suggested itself.’

The meal concluded, at which the strangers did not, in spite of their confession, exhibit extraordinary eagerness, their entertainer lit his pipe and commenced the conference. ‘I was doubtful lest our interests might be antagonistic,’ said he, ‘but we meet now on a different footing.’

‘We should have started back to Coolgardie in half an hour,’ said Mr. Newstead. ‘Denzil and I were played out, and had resolved on turning back in preference to leaving our bones to bleach by the wayside. Your appearance decided us to reconsider. I take it you have a “show” farther on?’

‘That is the precise state of the case. Here is [51] ]the prospector who discovered our bonanza, and will explain.’

‘Best reef I ever seen,’ interposed the grizzled veteran—‘and I’m a “forty-niner.” So that says somethin’. If no one’s dropped across my cache (as the trappers say) there’s enough to make all our fortunes twice over. We can be t’other side of that there hill inside of twelve hours.’

‘Shortly. You understand enough of mining law, I presume, to see that though we can take up a Reward Claim, we can’t work it with two men. I see by your hands—excuse me—that the manual part of mining is not unknown to you. We must take in some one. I prefer, and so does Jack, to work with gentlemen, so I’m prepared to offer you such shares as may be further agreed between us when the allocation takes place.’

‘It sounds too good to be true,’ said Newstead. ‘You are not going to lure us into a cavern and slay us for our property, are you? But one can’t help regarding oneself as the modernest Aladdin. In any case, I say, done with you, magician or no! and so does Denzil, if I know him. Allow me to help pack, and follow, as Dick Burton used to write to his wife—the pay portion of the injunction must await developments.’

. . . . . . . . .

The journey was resumed, the saddle was removed from the leader’s back, and placed in the waggonette, as were also the effects of the new associates. Apparently willing workers, they proved themselves cheery and entertaining companions.

[52]
]Unaffected in manner and simple of speech, it was yet apparent, though they conversed on perfectly equal terms with old Jack as with the Commissioner, that they had moved in the haute volée of English society.

They made no statement to that effect, but it was indirectly plain to the Commissioner, himself an aristocrat by birth and social surroundings, that such was the case. It was many a year since he had been ‘home,’ yet, nevertheless, the merry chatter of these youngsters, which, though careless, was redolent of the best English ‘form,’ was refreshing in the life of a man who, though long absent from the old country, was yet in full sympathy with her ideas and traditions. So they fared on for the long remaining hours of the day, until they reached the spinifex flat, immediately adjacent to the base of the hill which had been so long within sight, but without reaching the gradually ascending ‘rise’ which led to a plateau slightly above the level of the plain. Here they halted—to feed the horses and await the rising of the moon—after which the journey would recommence.

‘We can’t afford to take no risks,’ said the old man; ‘we might have another party comin’ along from “the Cross” way. And if they got there first—some men’s that smart, you’d a’most swear as they could smell the gold—there’d be a barney over it; and law, likely as not, which you never know how it might turn out. So I’m thinkin’ it’s best to go on, and collar right away—that’ll put an end to all bother in one act.’

[53]
]As the other members of the party were, more or less, excited and ardent with the thought that the tedious journey was nearly at an end, with fame and fortune almost within their grasp (for when is fortune achieved without fame following dutifully behind the triumphal car?)—the Commissioner, with the far-off cottage ready to be illumined with the glad tidings, and the children’s shouts almost in his ears; the young men, fired with the idea of a return to England with a record rivalling that of the hero who ‘broke the bank at Monte Carlo,’—no objection was raised. And when the moon, nearly at her full, rose slowly over the horizon, commencing to flood the wide bare solitudes, the plain, the hill crags, the mighty sweep of waterless silent landscape, and deserted save for themselves, it seemed a weird mockery to expect anything of the nature of wealth won from a region so far removed from the benevolence of Nature or of man.

Leaving one of the ‘jackeroos’ (as the old man called them, apologising, however, and explaining the term) to take charge of the waggonette, the others followed the prospector for a few hundred yards until, as they came to a spot where a few stones had been carelessly thrown together, he stopped, and pointed to a stake. ‘There it is!’ he gasped; ‘no one’s been next or anigh it. I’ll go round, sir, with you and see the other ones. If Mr. Southwater’ll go back to the cart, and feed the horses, and start a fire to boil the billy, we’ll make sure that nothing’s been touched since I left here months ago. It’s not far from daylight, and [54] ]after a bit of breakfast we can open up the reef, and you’ll see what sort of a show it is.’

. . . . . . . . .

‘Well, this is something what we went into the wilderness to see—not to be profane—but isn’t it exactly what one would have thought in the old, old days? This is a wilderness, and no mistake. I used to wonder what one was like when I was at school. Now I know.’

‘Wild and bare, and open to the air,’ continued Mr. Newstead. ‘It takes a lot of imagination to think of villages, towns, cities, and so on—“in this neglected spot,” as Gray’s Elegy hath it. But gold rules the court, the camp, the grove, rather more strongly than t’other imperial power. Everything else follows in its train, so they tell me—Denzil and I are too young to lay down the law on these great subjects. We’ll live and learn, I surmise, as our American friend said.’

. . . . . . . . .

The stakes had been duly cut, sharpened, and driven in, as far as the rocky nature of the hill permitted. There was no path or track to the wondrous spot itself. The faint footsteps of a weak, overwrought, famished man left no imprint upon rock or sand.

An aboriginal tracker on the man-hunt for foe or felon might have read, from a displaced pebble, a bent or broken twig, a deeper indent from a stumbling boot, that a white man had passed that way, but no senses less keen than those of the desert roamer could have followed the tokens of travel.

‘I’d been in an’ out them upper gulches,’ said [55] ]Jack, reminiscent of Californian digger talk, ‘and what with bein’ tol’ble used up when I come, and dead beat afterwards, was just about stumblin’ downhill again when I spots this here openin’. It’s the last chance, thinks I, but I’d better prospect the lot afore I give in. And this is what I come on afore I’d been ten minutes at work. Reg’lar jeweller’s shop, and no mistake.’ While he was talking, his hands were not idle: he had brought a pick and shovel from the waggonette, and after shovelling back the rock and earth from the tiny shaft, commenced to break down the ‘cap’ of the reef. This was almost incredibly rich. The rock appeared to be (as the Commissioner said) half gold—indeed, in some of the specimens there was more gold than quartz.

Strings of the precious metal hung down, which, indeed, seemed to loosely unite fragments of the dull, cloud-coloured quartz—so dear to the miner’s soul—while here and there were ‘nuggets’—actual lumps of the gold. ‘This one’s not short of fifty ounces,’ said he, lifting one of four or five pounds’ weight. ‘And there’s bigger ones to come, I’ll go bail.’

‘I’ve always doubted,’ said Newstead, ‘whether my relations believed my statements about rich finds in Australia. Certainly my banking account was not such as to inspire credence. But I shall pour contempt on their incredulity after this display.’

‘I should think so,’ said Mr. Banneret. ‘And now we must have a council of war. What do you say about the next move, Jack?’

[56]
]‘I vote we dolly all the gold as we can get out of the picked stone. Then, in course, the mine’ll have to be registered, and a company floated on the strength of these here specimens. It won’t take long to do that once they get to Melbourne. The Commissioner and Mr. Newstead can go back to Coolgardie with the team and waggonette, leaving us enough to go on with. There’s a “soak” not far off, and we can fill the ten-gallon keg afore they leave. A team can be sent up with all the things we want. Mr. Southwater and I’ll work on the “stope,” if he’s agreeable—feeling along the reef as we go, like. And now I’m beginning to think about summat to eat.’

The adjournment was carried nem. con. When they reached the camp Mr. Southwater had got everything in fine order. He was pleased with the idea of having to stop behind, as old Jack had told him that he was a born bushman, and would make a first-class prospector some day. Mr. Banneret said little, but, looking at the bold expression and steady eye of the young Englishman, was fully of opinion that he was destined to be a leader of men.

Next week the Commissioner and Newstead started back on the homeward track, taking with them five thousand ounces of gold and specimens. There was a good deal of business to be done, as he reflected, when they reached civilisation. A Report in terms provided for by the Goldfields Act and Regulations had to be made to the Commissioner of the district, as well as a Lease to be applied for; a deposit in cash paid to the Mining [57] ]Registrar; a Prospecting Area had been pegged out, and must be registered, and the whole auriferous area would be floated as a company, with a hundred thousand shares of 20s. each. Machinery for a quartz mill with fifty stamps and all the newest improvements, Diehl process, etc., had to be purchased and forwarded by team at once, and provisions, tools, extra tents, bedding, books, cooking utensils—in fact, everything necessary for a large staff; with engineer, manager, metallurgist, wages men, shift-bosses, and others—the numbers in such case amounting to hardly less than fifty men to begin with. The unpretending vehicle carried a considerable amount of treasure, tempting enough to outlaws sure to be included in every goldfields rush. But both men were well armed, and not likely to surrender without a desperate struggle; the chances of an ambush were small—the open, waterless nature of the country being against such a mode of attack. Many thousand ounces of gold were indeed carried on horseback, or in the unpretending buggy of the period, without much knowledge of the same being noised abroad. Their journey to Coolgardie, and afterwards to Perth, was, in this instance, wholly devoid of incident, and Mr. Banneret had the satisfaction of banking his precious cargo without any but the officials of the institution being aware of the nature of the transaction.

The only incident of note which bordered upon risk occurred during an enforced stoppage at a stage a few miles distant from Perth. Here a large detachment of navvies had just been set down, [58] ]and apparently they had managed to possess themselves of more beer than was good for them. They were consequently in a state of humorous, if not aggressive excitement. This displayed itself in curious inquiry as to the contents of the portmanteau over which such jealous guard was kept. Both men were dressed in ordinary miner’s costume, and therefore lacked the prestige which in Australia ensures respect for all men presumably of the rank of ‘gentleman.’ However, a miner who had been at Barrawong just before the ‘breaking out’ of the West Australian goldfields, happened to arrive in a waggonette. He and his mate were ‘going east,’ in order to float a company for the working of a mine, which they had discovered, and declared to be of great promise. The man from Barrawong was affected almost to tears by the sight of the Commissioner, that dread and august potentate, in working man’s garb. He looked as if he wished to fall down and worship him. But, introducing his mate, he said, with a choking voice:

‘Bill, this here’s our Commissioner, same as I told yer of, when I was on Barrawong; he’s struck it rich, he tells me, and as we’re on the road to Perth, he’ll be obliged to us for a lift in our waggonette if you’re agreeable.’

‘I’ve heard of Commissioner Banneret,’ said the mate, making what he imagined to be a bow suitable to the occasion, ‘and he should have my seat if I had to walk every bloomin’ step of the road to the coast.’

‘There isn’t a man as was on the field when I [59] ]left,’ responded the mate, ‘that wouldn’t do the same; but there’s no call for any of us to walk—the horses are in good fettle, considerin’ the price of feed, and they’ll take the four on us—not leavin’ the portmanter behind—into Perth, flyin’.’

This settled the matter. The portmanteau, so curiously regarded, was promptly lifted into the waggonette, and, as well as the Commissioner, was driven briskly along the road to the city, Mr. Newstead being left with the baggage of the expedition to follow at his leisure, and rejoin his chief at the township. That gentleman lost no time after being dropped at the Bank of Barataria. The mineral collection was produced.

‘What name shall I enter?’ said the young banker at the counter. ‘Gold and specimens, how many ounces?’

‘Seven thousand four hundred and twenty-three, seventeen pennyweights, and ten grains.’

‘Oh!’ said the bank clerk, with an instant change of manner. ‘You’re Mr. Banneret! Very glad to see you, sir! The Bank had advice of your expected arrival. I’ll take the weights, and give you a receipt directly. Won’t keep you waiting.’

‘Well, good-bye, Captain!’ said the miner from Barrawong. ‘You’re all right now. Anything more we can do for you—drive you anywheres? Say the word.’

‘No; thanks very much! As it’s early yet, I’ll take a stroll round the town until Mr. Newstead comes up. It’s a little different from New South Wales, eh?’

[60]
]‘It is that, sir. I suppose you couldn’t lay us on to the spot where that show come from?’

‘Hum! it won’t be long before we’re tracked up, I daresay. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a chance as well as another. What is the leading hotel here, Mr. Carter?’—this to the bank clerk.

‘Oh, “The Palace.” It’s that two-storeyed place at the corner of the street. Clean, and the cookery fair. The Mining Registrar’s office is next door.’

[61]
]CHAPTER IV

‘Thanks very much. Perhaps you’ll dine with me to-night. One of my partners is coming along, who will be pleased to make your acquaintance. We’ll drive over, Con. Now then,’ he continued, after they had trotted a short distance along the dusty street, ‘The “Last Chance,” as you have seen, is one of the richest claims in Australia. All the vacant ground within miles of it will be rushed in a week. Would you and your mate like to register four men’s ground on No. 1, north of the Reward Claim—on half shares? There’s plenty for all.’

‘All right, sir. We’ve got our Miners’ Rights all square and regular—and glad of the offer. I know a couple more chaps here—old mates that’ll go in with us, so as to make up the claim. You know Murphy, and Crowley, don’t you, sir? They’ll come, quick and lively. Good men to work, too.’ The next step was taken without delay. It was legally necessary to register the Prospecting Area—to take out Miners’ Rights—to apply for a lease. They were entitled under Regulation No. 15 of the Goldfields Act of 189– to twelve acres, in the shape of a rectangular [62] ]parallelogram. These matters rendered it necessary to remain for the day at Swantown, so Mr. Banneret surrendered himself to the inevitable without much uneasiness. He took rooms for himself and partner at the hotel called ‘Palace’—large and fairly commodious, though by no means so much so as in the stage to which the city was destined to develop. He expected Newstead to arrive about lunch-time, and philosophically set off on a tour of inspection.

That this was destined to be the centre of the largest, richest goldfield in Australia, his experience enabled him to decide. From all directions prospecting parties were converging—immediately importing themselves at the Bank. There was but one, at present. The shops and stores were much the same as those on every promising goldfield, perhaps more comprehensive and high-priced. The surroundings were, however, distinctly suggestive of a dry country in a dry season.

For rain does come to these ‘habitations in sicco,’ though chiefly with reluctance and economy. The animals for team and burden were half-starved, sometimes emaciated to a degree. The strings of camels, with their turbaned Afghan drivers, were strangely foreign to his unaccustomed eyes. They stood patient, and uncomplaining, before the larger stores, or arrived laden with wool from the more distant stations, which, owing to the dry season, were unable to forward their fleeces, or obtain supplies without the aid of the ‘ship of the desert.’ There he stood, huge, ungainly, unpopular with [63] ]the teamsters, terrifying to their horses—and all others.

Sullenly regarded by the white labourers as alien to their country and their trade, it yet could not be denied that here, at least, was the right burden-bearer in the right place—in spite of his queer temper, his general unpleasantness, and his incongruous appearance in this twentieth-century Australia, utterly, manifestly indispensable, as he had been in the long-past ages when ‘the famine was sore in the land.’

Mr. Banneret having a taste for exploring, and being also a practised pedestrian, took a longish walk around the outskirts of the town, before returning to the hotel and taking his seat at the dinner-table. This was a long, substantial piece of furniture, amply supplied with materials for a meal of the same character. All sorts and conditions of men were there represented: aristocratic tourists, on the look-out for mining investments—directors, or managers of syndicates, companies, exploring parties, mercantile partnerships, what not. All were animated by the common attraction, most successful of all baits with which to ensnare the soul of man, from the dawn of history. Recruits for the great army of industry, from all lands, of all colours, castes, and conditions—the coach-driver, the teamster, the newly arrived emigrant, the army deserter, the runaway sailor, the stock-rider, the navvy, the shepherd,—all men were free and equal at the Palace Hotel, so long as they could pay for bed and board. Nor was there [64] ]observable any objectionable roughness of tone or manner, in a company formed of such heterogeneous elements.

It is surprising to the ‘observer of human nature’ how the higher tone seems instinctively adopted by the mass, when leavened with gentlefolk, though they may have been wholly unused to its rules and limitations in earlier life.

To Arnold Banneret this was nothing new. Accustomed in his official journeyings to mix occasionally, though not, of course, habitually, with all classes of Australian workers, he knew—no man better—that, given a courteous and unpretending manner, no gentleman, in the true sense of the word, need fear annoyance or disrespect in the remote ‘back block’ region, or the recent goldfield ‘rush.’ It had leaked out that he had ‘come in’ from a find of more than ordinary value, the locality of which was deeply interesting to everybody. But the unwritten code of mining etiquette prevented direct questioning. They knew, these keen-eyed prospectors and workers on so many a field, that the necessary information would soon disclose itself, so to speak, and that the last who followed the tracks of the earlier searchers would have as good a chance of success as the first.

Having satisfied his appetite, a fairly keen one, he betook himself to his bedroom, and wrote at length to his wife, detailing all progress since his last letter, and finishing up with this exceptional statement: ‘This journey has, of course, not been without a certain share of inconvenience, [65] ]and what some people might call hardship. But you know that such wayfaring is in the nature of holiday-making for me. It was, of course, a hazardous adventure, inasmuch as all our small reserve of capital was embarked. A miscalculation would have been wreck, and almost total loss: would have taken years of painful saving and rigid self-denial to have made up the deficit. But now success, phenomenal, assured, has more than justified the risk, the apparent imprudence, everything. Our fortune is made! as the phrase goes; think of that! When the company is floated, the shares allotted, the machinery on the road to Perth, a hundred thousand pounds will be the lowest valuation at which our half share in the “Last Chance” can be calculated. A hundred thousand pounds! Think of that! Of what it means for you, for me, for the children. For everybody concerned. And a good many people will be concerned beneficially in the venture as soon as the money is paid to my account in the Bank of New Holland.

‘I don’t intend that there shall be any risk or uncertainty in the future—apart from those apparently accidental occurrences from which, under God’s providence, no man is free. But I will invest fifty thousand pounds in debentures, well secured; so that, come what will, a comfortable home, a sufficing income, will always be assured to you and the children. Of course I shall resign my appointment as soon as I return, giving the Government all proper notice. Our future home will be in Sydney or Melbourne, on whichever we [66] ]may decide. The children are just at the age when higher educational facilities are required. They have not done badly so far. But they are growing up fast, and upon what they assimilate, intellectually, for the next few years will their social success largely depend.

‘It is needless to dilate upon the endless pleasures and the general advantages of the possession of ample means, now, for the first time in our lives, enjoyed, or about to be provided for us, before the fruition is accomplished. I have always been averse to a too sanguine appropriation of the probable treasure. Alnaschar’s basket is still to be met with. And I must cross both desert sand, and ocean wave, before I can pour into your ear the tale of my strange adventures and their marvellous ending. For the present, I conclude, full of thankfulness, but, I trust, not unduly elated. “People I have met” will furnish many an hour’s talk, not the least of whom are my two mates and partners—one of whom is now delving away at the claim with old Jack Waters, as if to the manner born; and the other, whom I expect will rejoin me before sunset, is unromantically driving the light waggon containing all our goods and chattels. These “labouring men” are of a type unlikely to be found in any land less contradictory to all preconceived ideas than Australia. They are, in fact and truth, genuine English aristocrats—one being Lord Newstead, the other the Honourable Denzil, son of the Earl of Southwater. They are quite young, hardly past their majority, in fact; but [67] ]full of pluck, hungering for adventure, and resolving to see it out before they turn their backs on this Eldorado of the West. Particularly the Honourable Denzil, who is a born explorer and pathfinder. He will make his mark, if I mistake not, before he is many years older.

‘It is a great pleasure to me, as you may believe, to work with men of this sort. No doubt we are mutually helpful—their high spirits, and sanguine anticipations, tend to raise mine, which my experience (not to mention that of old Jack) moderates. We have been, since we forgathered, as Scotch people say, a cheerful and congenial party, destined, I think, to become firm friends and attached comrades in the future.’

The afternoon was well advanced when Newstead made his appearance, having come quietly along, sparing his horses, as he had already learned to do since his arrival in Australia. Mr. Banneret had finished his letter and his walk; was therefore not disinclined to have a companion with whom to discuss the situation. He was pleased to find that a share of the only available bedroom had been engaged for him, and deposited his personal property therein with unconcealed satisfaction.

‘One can’t help being childishly pleased with the certainty of a real bed, and a dinner to match, again,’ he said. ‘Denzil and I have roughed it as thoroughly as any two “new chums” (which is Australian for English here), and it’s done us no end of good. But there’s a time for all things, and after six months’ hard graft, with a trifle of [68] ]hunger and thirst thrown in, it’s awfully jolly to come to a land of chops and steaks, sheets and blankets, with a prospect of yet higher life in the near future. But on that we must not dwell yet a while. I suppose you made it all right with the Bank?’

‘Yes; the nuggets are safe for the present, and I can draw against them to any reasonable amount. That’s consoling. Our next move will be to fix up about the lease, and so on. I’ve just bought the W.A. Act and Regulations, which I needn’t tell you it is vitally necessary to be well up in, on a goldfield. Any big show is sure to be well scrutinised by the “jumper” fraternity, and any joint in the armour pierced, if possible. Litigation, too, always means delay, if not loss and anxiety.’

‘How long do we stay here?’

‘Only as long as it will take us to complete arrangements. Then you return to the claim, “Waters’ Reward.” We must call it after old Jack, who has certainly the best title to it, after doing such a “perish,” as he would say, in its discovery. You’ll see it all in the paper to-morrow morning, for, of course, I’ve been attacked by the ferocious reporter of the “Dry, dry desolate Land” (with apologies to Mr. Kipling).’

‘And you told him all about it?’

‘Of course—he has a quasi-legal right to the information, now that the Mining Registrar is in possession of the facts. Payable gold, as you are aware, must be declared within so many days. And as any miner, for a small fee, is entitled to search the Registration Book, there is no object to be gained by secrecy.’

[69]
]‘What a rush there’ll be, directly it gets wind! No doubt about that. When does the Miner’s Friend come out?’

‘At breakfast time to-morrow. We had better stable the horses to-night, and keep a good lock on the door, for there’ll be many a nag missing by the morning light.’

His conjecture was correct. The news had leaked out accidentally through the office. Told to a few comrades at first, the group had widened. Then like the trickling rill from the faulty reservoir, the rivulet gained width and force, until the volume of sound and objurgation swelled, echoing amid the encampment of huts, tents, and shelter contrivances. The tramp of a thousand men, the galloping of horses, the strange cries of Afghan camel-drivers, formed no inadequate presentment of, in all but the discipline, an army brigade on the march.

. . . . . . . . .

A few hours of the night were devoted to a carefully-thought-out list, and programme of future proceedings, as well as the formation of a list of requisites for Newstead to take back to the claim. A couple of wages men were also engaged, it being thought expedient to strengthen the man-power of the expedition, in view of the crowd of probable fellow-travellers which would be heading for Pilot Mount on the morrow—indeed on that very night. Mr. Banneret was fortunate in picking up a couple of ex-residents on his old field.

They had not been successful, so far, and so [70] ]were only too ready to embark under the auspices of the Commissioner, in whom, like all his former subjects (so to speak), they had unbounded faith. ‘These men,’ he said, ‘have been known to me for years, and two better men than Pat Halloran and Mickey Doyle never handled pick and shovel. They are perfectly straight, plucky, and experienced. In anything like danger I would trust my life to them. We were lucky to have fallen in with them. They have travelled, too, in their day, and know New Zealand, from the Thames to Hohitika—as well as Ballarat and Bendigo.’

‘So far, so good,’ said Mr. Newstead. ‘We shall want a lot of stores—machinery too. All sorts of eatables and wearables. No end of sundries, which will “foot up” to a total of some importance. Where shall we get them in your absence? Everything seems to be at war prices.’

‘I’ve fallen on my feet in that matter also. That you can get everything on a goldfield, has always been a contention of mine. It’s a sort of Universal Provider shop, once it’s been established sufficiently long to attract the regulation army of Adullamites. A goldfield is created for them, and they for a goldfield. We’ve got two first-class wages men, and I’ve found the ideal storekeeper and general agent.’

‘What’s he like?—has been a gentleman, Lord help him! I can’t say I care for that brand.’

‘Wait till you see him, that’s all. He’s an old schoolfellow of mine, and his wife’s a lady, if ever there was one, as I think you’ll admit. I guarantee him.’

[71]
]‘Well, if you do that, it’s all right, of course.’

‘I vouch for him absolutely. We can depend on not paying a shilling more than the current market price, and on getting everything good of its kind.’

. . . . . . . . .

The return journey and voyage were so little eventful that they require no mention in detail. The local papers were full of highly coloured references to the phenomenal find at Waters’ Reward, for which a lease had been granted to Messrs. Banneret and Waters.

‘The actual prospector was Mr. John Waters, a pioneer miner, experience in California, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. His name was sufficient among the mining community to account for any fortunate discovery in the world of metals. It was not the first, by a dozen or more. That he had not profited permanently by his well-known rich finds in former days and other climes, must be attributed to the spirit of restless change and hunger for adventure, so characteristic of the miner’s life. He had “struck it rich,” in mining parlance, again and again. But the “riches had been of the winged description,” had flown far and wide—were, for practical purposes, non-existent. There may have been a certain degree of imprudence, but what golden-hole miner hasn’t done the same? The fortunate rover lends and spends, ever lavish of hospitality and friendly aid, as if the deposit was inexhaustible. “Plenty more where that came from,” is the miner’s motto.

‘Doubtless there is, but delays occur, protracted [72] ]not infrequently within our experience, until the prodigal, like his prototype, is reduced to dire distress and unbefitting occupation. In our respected comrade’s case the fickle goddess has again smiled on his enterprise. Let us trust that he will learn from the past to be independent of her moods for the future. The senior shareholder, well known and respected as a Goldfields Warden in another State, has gone east to arrange for the necessary machinery, and the thousand-and-one requisites for a quartz-crushing plant of fifty stamps, with everything, up to the latest date, in the way of metallurgical reduction. No time will be lost in getting it on the ground, and the results will be, it may be confidently stated by this journal, such as will startle the mining world, and give fresh impetus to all industrial occupation in our midst.’

. . . . . . . . .

At home once more. What a blessed sound! comprehensive, endearing, filled with the domestic joys which wife and children supply—a joy such as no other earthly pleasure can simulate. The Commissioner was ‘once more on his native heath,’ so to speak; and as he walked into his well-remembered office, earlier than usual, in order to take a leisurely survey of the great mass of papers, private and official, which awaited his return, and noted the gathering crowd which had already formed around the Court House door, a certain feeling of regret arose in his mind at the idea that his ministerial and judicial functions were about to cease and determine within so short [73] ]a time. True, at times his position had been one of great, even painful responsibility.

It could hardly have been otherwise, when the hundreds, even thousands, of disputes, inevitable on a rich and extensive alluvial goldfield, had, as a Court of First Instance, to be decided by the Commissioner hearing evidence ‘on the ground’—the centre of an excited crowd; or in the district Court House, with counsel for and against, and all legal accessories, but chiefly with the Commissioner as sole adjudicator and all but final referee. To be sure, there was an appeal to the District Court, attending quarterly; beyond that, if doubt existed, and the claim was sufficiently rich to fee counsel and support the great expense of a Supreme Court trial. A thousand-pounds brief had been handed to the leader of the Bar, in his experience, before now in an important claim. But, so far, his decisions had been chiefly unchallenged. In fewer instances still, had they been reversed. Long years of goldfields wars and rumours of wars had given him such thorough knowledge of the intricacies of that abstruse and (apparently) complicated subject, mineral law, that he was seldom technically doubtful, while his staunch adherence to equity, with an unflinching love of abstract justice, were universally recognised. So, on the whole, as ‘a judge, and a ruler in Israel,’ his reign had been satisfactory.

And now he was about to relinquish the trappings of office—the prestige—the social weight and authority—which he had held and, in a sense, appreciated for the last decade. True, the [74] ]accompanying distinctions were purely honorary. The salary was barely equal to the family needs, for education, apparel, travelling, and other expenses. But it had sufficed in time past. He was admittedly the leading personage in his provincial circle; the universal referee in art, letters, sport, and magisterial sway. And the declension to the status of a private individual is after such prominence not unfelt.

On the other hand, what glories, even triumphs, lay in the future, if this marvellous Reward Claim ‘kept up,’ or ‘went down’ equally rich! Travel—books—pictures—education—society—all on the higher scale,—money being no object in the coming Arabian Nights existence. Aladdin’s lamp would speedily be brought into requisition. Sydney or Melbourne would be their headquarters for the next few years. Of course they would ‘go home’ as the children grew up. Harrow or Eton—Oxford or Cambridge for the boys. Continental tours—lessons in languages—Henley, in the green English spring. The Derby, the Grand National—Kennington Oval (had they not a cousin a renowned Australian cricketer, who had made the record score in a world-renowned match!). It was too fairy-like—too ecstatic! They would never live to go through the programme. Fate would interfere after her old malign, mysterious fashion, to withhold such superhuman happiness.

But more matter-of-fact mundane considerations had to be considered, and primarily dealt with. Three months’ further leave had to be applied for [75] ]‘upon urgent private affairs,’ at the conclusion of which period the applicant proposed to retire from the New South Wales Civil Service. This was tolerably certain to be granted. The appointment was a fairly good one, as such billets go. There are always aspiring suitors for promotion, or officials of equal rank and qualifications, who, from family or other reasons, desire removal.

Of course the truth leaked out after a few days. The departure of the Commissioner and the old prospector had not been unnoticed. No joint enterprise could have been possible in his own district; such a partnership would have been illegal. Even if veiled, it must inevitably have led to complications between private and official relations. Against all such enterprises, however alluring, he had set his face resolutely. So the public came to the conclusion even before the first copies of the Western Watchman came to hand, that the ‘show’ must be in another colony; and so would result only in the loss of their Commissioner and Police Magistrate—in addition to the usual exodus of that section of the population which invariably follows the newest ‘rush,’ whether to Carpentaria or Klondyke. Then waifs and wasters could be well spared, while the steady workers would be useful in sending back reliable information to their mates and friends. Con Heffernan had started, Patroclus the Greek, Karl Richter, and the two Morgans; they would write quick enough after they got there, and if the find was half as good as was talked about, every man in Barrawong who wasn’t married, or [76] ]had cash enough to take him there, would be on the road within forty-eight hours.

Of course they would be sorry to lose the Commissioner; they wouldn’t get another in a hurry who was as smart, straight, and decided. He was fair, between man and man, and didn’t care a hang what creed, country, or caste a man belonged to when he was trying a case. All he wanted was to do justice, and he didn’t mind making the law himself sometimes, so as he could give the claim to the right man. Didn’t he fight the great No. 4 Black Creek Block case for Pat Farrell and party against the Dawson crowd, and them having a lot of money behind them—after it was adjourned, and remanded and sent to the Full Court in Sydney—fresh magistrates being got to sit on the bench; and, after all, old Pat Farrell got it, with heavy costs against the jumpers? And Mrs. Banneret—wasn’t she the kind woman to the diggers’ wives and kids?—though she had a young family of her own, and little enough time or money to spare from them. Well, good luck go with them, and the poor man’s blessing, wherever they went, far or near! They’d be remembered in Barrawong for many a year to come, anyhow—as long as there was a shaft or a windlass left on the field.

What thoughts and emotions struggled for precedence in Arnold Banneret’s breast when he reached the country town near his home, and saw the familiar faces of the provincial inhabitants, mildly interested in the arrival of the daily coach, bringing as usual novelties, human and otherwise—last [77] ]from the sea-port, and by that medium from the world at large. Casting his eyes around, after a few hurried but warm greetings, they fell on the well-worn buggy and the favourite pair of horses. His eldest son, a boy of fourteen, held the reins, which he transferred to his father, after replying in the affirmative to the important inquiry, ‘All well at home?’

As he gave the accustomed touch, the horses, needing no other hint, started along the metalled high road at a ten-mile-an-hour trot, which they showed no disposition to relax until they came to the turn-off track leading to the home paddock.

‘Well, father,’ said the youngster, ‘you’ve had a fine time of it, I suppose? I’d have given all the world to have gone with you. I suppose you couldn’t take me when you go back?’

‘No, my man! You’ve got your education to attend to, and to see mother and the children settled in Sydney first. I can’t afford to stay long. So you’ll have to be mother’s right-hand man while I’m away.’

‘I suppose I’m to go to school when we get to Sydney?’—in a slightly aggrieved tone.

‘Of course you are—and to the University afterwards, unless you are not able to pass the Matric.—which I should be sorry to think for a moment you couldn’t manage.’

‘Oh dear! I suppose it will be years and years of Latin and Greek, and history and geometry, before I can make a start in life for myself. If I’m to be a squatter—and I’m not going to be [78] ]anything else—what is the use of losing all this time?’

‘My dear boy, you are to have the education of a gentleman. Whether you decide for a bush life or a profession, a mining investor’s or a soldier’s, it will be equally useful—I may say, indispensable—to you. But there is ever so much time before us in which to settle such a very important question. How well the country is looking! I haven’t seen so much grass and water since I left home.’

‘It ought to look well—we nearly had a flood in the river last week. The flats were covered, feet deep, but it soon went off again. It won’t do any harm, they say; but we thought it would come into the house one evening, and mother sat up half the night. It began to fall next day.’

‘That was fortunate. Everything looks flourishing now. Oh, here are the children, all come out to meet Dad, who is a man from a far country. Pull up, Reggie! and I’ll get out. Steady, Hector!’

Hector, the impatient, didn’t see the use of stopping so near home: indeed, gave two or three tugs and rushes before Mr. Banneret got clear of the buggy. Then there was great kissing and hugging, to be sure, from the half-dozen children, who hung round Daddy’s neck and kissed impartially, taking any part of him that came handy. There were four girls and three boys of differing ages and sizes, from Reggie, aged fourteen, and Eric, ten, to Jack and Jill, aged five, and a rose-faced pet of three, who demanded to be taken [79] ]into the buggy forthwith. So did the entire troop. But a compromise was effected by the girls getting in, and the boys electing to walk home. The load made no appreciable difference—eleven, including five adults and six children, had been carted eight miles on their first introduction to the district, in the same trap, the redoubtable Hector being quite as hard to hold then as now.

. . . . . . . . .

Such a paradise as home (blessed place and blessed word) appeared to the far-travelled father and husband! We pass over the mutual greetings of wife and husband—matters too sacred for descriptive analysis—‘with whose joy the stranger intermeddleth not.’ That they ‘kissed again with tears,’ on one side at any rate, may be conceded. All had gone well during the house-father’s absence. Hector had been lame for a week—which had led to anxiety. No cause could be assigned; but the shoeing smith was suspected of a tap with his hammer, as a hint to stand still. He declined to confess, but relieved his mind by abusing Hector as the most impatient, troublesome old wretch whose leg he had ever lifted. Anyhow, he was quite well again, and ‘flasher than ever’—this was the second son’s contribution to the case.

Next morning, in the pre-breakfast stroll, the springing crops—the wide alluvial flats—the lucerne fields—the dairy herd—the stud of well-bred horses—all appealed to the wanderer’s tastes and early associations; the delightful country attributes of a long-held fertile [80] ]estate—inherited by the present proprietor. The Commissioner was indeed but a tenant, dwelling in the ‘barton,’ so to speak, in old English term—the manor was the Squire’s by inheritance and occupation since he had come of age. A new house had been built soon after the auspicious occasion of his marriage; while, on the Commissioner’s arrival in the district, the roomy, old-fashioned cottage, with large rambling garden and aged orchard, had been gladly rented by him. For a man in his position, no more suitable place could have been found. The families became fast friends, and, what is more to the purpose, remained so for the whole decade during which the Commissioner’s official duties attached him to the district. The green fields and pastures were as much his as their owner’s, in the sense that a woodland scene belongs to him who can appreciate the lovely, verdant landscape. In earliest spring—in the bracing, but never severe winter of the South land—amid evergreen forests and running streams, even in the torrid summer, when the fresh, dry air has no enervating tendency—in the still dreamy autumn, ere yet the first hint of frost has shown itself in the yellowing oaks and elms—children they of the far north home-land—how good was the outlook! The Commissioner loved these demarcations of the changing year. In the river, which divided the great meadows from the estate of a neighbouring potentate, his boys learned to swim, and, both in the early summer morn and lingering eve, were eager to plunge into its cool depths, or unwilling [81] ]to return in time for the evening meal, to race and splash over the pebbly shallows. There were well-grassed paddocks for their ponies as well as for Hector and Paris, and their father’s hackney. They established also, it may be easily surmised, trial races and contests with the sons of the house, and by degrees developed the equine association, which helped them notably in the aftertime of polo, hunting, and four-in-hand driving—when such pastimes and practice became suitable to their age and position.

It was a happy time then, with occasional exceptions, for the years of early youth that the children spent at Carjagong; for the parents also, though work was constant, and the just soul of Proconsul Paterfamilias was often vexed by malign editors and Radical demagogues, who stirred up strife in his kingdom, but he was supported by the more thoughtful of the mining population, as well as by the gentry of the district, with whom the family were always on good terms. A yearly or biennial visit to the cities of the coast gave all hands a taste of social life, and, with a breath of the sea breezes, a sight of the ocean wave and the world-famed harbour. So the family grew up: the girls into vigorous, independent maidens, riding and driving, reading and dancing alternately—with equal enthusiasm, as is the wont of the country-reared damsel, whether in Britain or Australia, Galway or Goulburn. There is, it must be allowed, in both hemispheres a note of freshness, vigour, and vitality observable in the country cousins, to which the town denizens, blasées with [82] ]unnumbered dissipations, rarely attain. Added to the ordinary accomplishments, in which they were fairly proficient, they had from time to time personal experience of the household duties, which the dearth of female domestics—then as now a grave matter of concern on the part of matrons—rendered necessary. Thus it must be allowed that for the position of chatelaine, to which, in due course of time, they might reasonably aspire, they were fairly equipped.

And the sons of the house, destined in days to come to work in distant States, or ‘outside’ regions, calling for leaders in the various industries of a great, almost boundless continent, would be found not unequal in brain or muscle to the duties imposed on them. Sons and grandsons of pioneers, they inherited the thirst for adventure which had brought the founder of the family, sea-borne in his own galley, like a Viking of old, so far across the restless main, to the new world under the Southern Cross. And now the abiding-place of the Bannerets was again to be changed. Leaving on former occasions their established residences in or near the principal cities of the coast, where flower-gardens bloomed, and orchards bore their annual store of tropical or British fruits, they had voyaged, or journeyed, to new, unpeopled regions. The same experience had been repeated—the building, the planting, the rearing of stock, the turning of waste land into fields and gardens, vineyards and olive-yards—sometimes for the benefit of the exiled family, more often for the use and reward of others when the route was given once again.

[83]
]There had been sadness and heartburnings on all these occasions of uprooting ties and friendships which more than once had struck deep into a kindly soil; but the inherited pioneer instinct had triumphed over all regrets. Sometimes the exodus had been from a country life to that of cities; then the regret was softened by the anticipation of metropolitan privileges—the meeting with friends and relatives, the enchantments of novelty and romance. Still, again, the departure from these new delights to a distant, untried region, a strange environment, an unknown society, was proportionately distasteful.

But the Bannerets were an adaptable race: they soon familiarised themselves with new surroundings. Hot or cold, plain or forest, ‘out back’ or near town, it seemed alike to them. They discovered kindred spirits in the strangers amongst whom, for the first time, they were thrown. They were sociable to the point of tolerating those whom they could not admire; being civil and friendly to all sorts and conditions of men, ready to do a kindness whenever such opportunity came in their way, while preserving, as far as in them lay, that standard of conduct and manners which had been habitual from childhood. Small wonder, then, that they never left one of the country towns, to which the exigencies of official or pastoral life guided their steps, without public regrets being expressed. A presentation in every case accompanied the address, which, in the shape of coin of the realm, was not unwelcome. Their residence in this, a fertile as well as [84] ]gold-bearing district, had exceeded the usual term, and the manifestations of public sympathy were therefore more general and pronounced.

To be sure, on the following morning after the Commissioner’s arrival, when it was announced that he had decided to ask for three months’ leave of absence, and to retire at the end of that time from the Government service, there was a certain excitement, almost a commotion.

Many of the inhabitants, who had accepted the rule of the Commissioner without any particular enthusiasm, were always willing to admit that he was a man ready to work in season or out of season, whenever there was public duty to be performed—considerate and impartial—treating the Christian or the Chinaman according to the Act and Regulations in such cases made and provided, and to no other code, moral or otherwise; an official almost ceaselessly employed during the waking hours—often before sunrise, or after dark, by the journeys which his duties of inspection rendered indispensable; rarely known to be tired, ill, or discourteous; ready alike to hear as patiently the case of the humblest miner as that of the most powerful syndicate;—such was his record for the ten long years that he had lived among them in almost daily intercourse. A judge and a ruler, moreover, whose decisions, in the words of an influential local journal, ‘had been rarely appealed against, and still more rarely reversed.’

As in many other possessions and privileges, the benefits of which are not sufficiently valued until in danger of being lost, great was the outcry, [85] ]many the professions of regret, when the news of resignation was confirmed. Where were they to get another man versed in their mining laws?

Then the family, that was another important consideration. From the lady of the house downward, they were favourites in the district. Friendly and sympathetic with all classes, there was no case of sorrow or distress where they were not helpful in aid, as far as their means allowed. Fond of amusement in a rational way, they joined in all the social and public entertainments with a cordiality which notably tended towards their success—pecuniary or otherwise. At bazaars for charitable purposes, hospital balls, race meetings, and other enterprises, they were well to the fore—entering into the spirit of the entertainments and giving unstinted personal service. And now, the Commissioner and this exceptional family were about to leave them and be replaced, possibly, by a formal, ceremonious personage, who disliked the mining duties of his appointment, and was concerned chiefly with the magisterial routine of Court, and Petty Sessions duty, which he would (erroneously) consider more dignified and aristocratic than riding hither and thither in all kinds of weather, early and late, inspecting shafts, and, indeed, descending occasionally into the bowels of the earth, where a feeling of insecurity was painfully present. On the other hand, this gloomy probability might not be realised. There were popular Commissioners and able Police Magistrates yet to be found in the land. Many of them had wives and daughters capable of irradiating the [86] ]social atmosphere and helping in all good works. They must keep a good heart, and hope for the best; and if they could not keep their proconsul, so to speak, for the term of his natural life—which would be unjust on the face of it, inasmuch as he had dropped on a veritable ‘golden hole,’—they must wish him luck, and give him a good ‘send off.’ And to that end, the best plan now was to hold a public meeting, appoint a strong committee, and show what the miners of the great alluvial field of Barrawong could do to show their appreciation of ‘a man and a gentleman,’ a friend of every miner, rich or poor, and a magistrate whom every man on the field respected, even when he decided against him. This, of course, took time, but everybody worked with a will, and the committee, composed of leading miners, storekeepers, bankers, and magistrates of the district, made great progress. Dinners were given in his honour, speeches were made, even a ball was ‘tendered to him and his amiable family’—such were the words of the invitation in which reference was made to all the good qualities which could be packed into any given official, and freely attributed to him. The ball was a great success; the room was handsomely decorated with the great fronds of the tree fern, the mimosa, and other botanical favourites, intermixed with flags of all nations, which, indeed, the festive company represented. The Mayor in the opening quadrille danced with Mrs. Banneret, the Commissioner with the Mayoress, and according to their degree, as in more aristocratic circles, the other sets were [87] ]arranged. That ball was a pronounced success. It was referred to, at intervals, for years afterwards, as the Commissioner’s farewell ball. Not only were the élite of the mining community present, but the families of the leading residents of the district for many miles round, who had travelled long distances in order to attend. Mrs. Banneret was driven home at a comparatively early period in the evening, but the Commissioner, who had been devoted to dancing in his youth, and was not now beyond the age when that charming exercise can be enjoyed, remained until the ‘wee short hour ayont the twal’,’ when finding that the gate of the stable-yard was locked, and the groom asleep, he felt himself almost in a quandary. However, being a man of resource, as from his varied occupations he needed to be, he saddled his well-known cob, and leading that well-trained hackney through the back door of the hotel parlour, and across the floor, he made a safe exit by the front, and reached home without let or hindrance.

. . . . . . . . .

After years of settled official work—not hard or distasteful, but still compulsory and exacting—there is always an exhilarating feeling, resulting from the knowledge that henceforth the trammels of regulated occupation are loosed for ever. Like the freed bird darting into the blithe sunshine, the wide world seems opened, as in our boyhood, to an exhaustless series of wonders and privileges impossible in the earlier stages of life for lack of time, opportunity, money—if you will. Travelling, the very salt of life, has been sparely, [88] ]if at all, enjoyed. There are cities to visit—art treasures in which to revel—every kind and degree of rational enjoyment open to him and those dear ones whose welfare had always been his highest aim and consideration.

It is a matter generally of chastened, peaceful enjoyment to the released official of any degree, when, as dear ‘Elia’ phrases it, he can ‘go home for good’—with an income sufficient to provide suitably for the declining years of life. But what must be his feelings when such a man is suddenly translated into a position of affluence—to wealth beyond his wildest dreams? Hardly that, perhaps, as every one connected with a goldfield can dream, and generally does, of the lease so slow ‘in beating the water,’ the reef so unwilling to ‘jump’ from pennyweights to ounces, floating him out to measureless wealth, celebrity, and world-wide fame. Now, however, for the Commissioner all the anxieties, uncertainties, and regrets of daily life had suddenly come to an end. The ‘Last Chance’ was a proved, triumphant success—seven to ten ounces to the ton, the great reef doing better and better as it went down—the richest claim in the richest and, for the future, the largest goldfield in Australia—the end of doubt, debt, and difficulty had come. “His fortune was made!”

The well-worn phrase in commonest use among all classes and conditions, trite and terse, even vulgarly so, but how comprehensive! The open sesame to how many doors, gates, and treasure-caves of delights innumerable, jealously guarded in the past. What a heaven in anticipation seemed opening [89] ]before him! But even then a half-regretful feeling arose—a sigh escaped for the old, fully occupied life of ‘pleasure and pain,’ when ‘the hardest day was never then too hard.’ Certainly there had been doubts, wearying anxieties, troubles, burdens of debt, disappointments; but, as a set-off, the family had enjoyed, on the whole, excellent health, high spirits, and reasonable comfort.

He himself had never had, with one exception (an intrusive fever), a day’s illness, or absence from work on that account. Would this Arcadian state of matters be continuous in the future? He did not know—who can tell what a day may bring forth? He would be separated from his family for months at a time. This was inevitable. The goldfield was distant, and at the most dangerous period of occupation,—scourged with typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, dysentery, what not? Afflicting fatally the young and brave, the old and feeble, the hardy miner and the immature tourist, how would his family fare? Of course he would not take his wife and children there—the thought was impossible. Heat and dust, bad water, bad food, flies in myriads, no domestic servants, or merely the outlaws of the industrial army—the thought was too distasteful! So, even at this stage, the prosperity was not unalloyed; what condition of human existence is, when we come to think? Dangers thicken at every step in the battle of life, but better they a hundredfold than the cankers, the ‘moth and rust’ of inglorious peace. ‘However,’ thought Banneret, as he roused himself from this introspective reverie, ‘here is a state of [90] ]so-called prosperity, for which I have been longing, consciously or otherwise, all my life; and now that it has come, why am I indulging in useless regrets and imaginary, unreal drawbacks? Surely, as I have fought against trouble and discouragement in the past, I ought not to waver at the ideal fairyland in the future.’

. . . . . . . . .

The final arrangements which heralded the departure of the Banneret family from Carjagong, where they had led a tranquil and, on the whole, happy existence, were carried out successfully. The address and testimonial were presented in due form. In the address the departing official was credited with all the virtues; and the testimonial, which took the form of coin of the realm, was a liquid asset which had been decidedly useful in former flittings of exceptional expensiveness.