hile his eyes rested complacently on the proceeds of the day's
labour--a little heap of nuggets and gold-dust, which lay on a sheet of
paper beside him; "a carriage and pair, a town house in London, a
country house near Bath or Tunbridge Wells, and a shooting-box in the
Scotch Highlands. Such is my reasonable ambition."

"Not bad," said Philosopher Jack, "if you throw in a salmon river near
the shooting-box, and the right to wear the bonnet, plaid, and kilt at
pleasure."

"Not to mention bare legs an' rheumatiz," remarked Simon O'Rook, who was
busy with the frying-pan. "Sure, if the good Queen herself was to order
me to putt on such things, I'd take off me bonnet an' plaid in excuse
that I'd be kilt entirely if she held me to it. All the same I'd obey
her, for I'm a loyal subject."

"You're a bad cook, anyhow," said Baldwin Burr, "to burn the bacon like
that."

"Burn it!" retorted O'Rook with an air of annoyance, "man alive, how can
I help it? It hasn't fat enough to slide in, much less to swim. It's
my belief that the pig as owned it was fed on mahogany-sawdust and steel
filin's. There, ait it, an' howld yer tongue. It's good enough for a
goold-digger, anyhow."

"In regard to that little bit of ambition o' your'n," said Bob Corkey,
as the party continued their meal, "seems to me, Watty, that you might
go in for a carriage an' four, or six, when you're at it."

"No, Corkey, no," returned the other, "that would be imitating the
foibles of the great, which I scorn. What is _your_ particular
ambition, now, Mr Luke? What will you buy when you've dug up your
fortune?"

The cadaverous individual addressed, who had become thinner and more
cadaverous than ever, looked up from his pewter plate, and, with a
sickly smile, replied that he would give all the gold in the mines to
purchase peace of mind.

This was received with a look of surprise, which was followed by a burst
of laughter.

"Why, you ain't an escaped convict, are you?" exclaimed Baldwin Burr.

"No, I'm only an escaped man of business, escaped from the toils, and
worries, and confinements of city life," returned Mr Luke, with another
sickly smile, as he returned to his tough bacon.

"Well, Mr Luke, if contrast brings any blessing with it," said Edwin
Jack, "you ought to revive here, for you have splendid fresh country
air--by night as well as by day--a fine laborious occupation with pick
and shovel, a healthy appetite, wet feet continually, mud u