but good in
all this?"

His hands dropped to his side as he spoke, and he sauntered slowly down
the slope on which he stood. Entering a small plantation of fir-trees
at the foot of it, he disappeared.

When he returned to the cottage all trace of strong feeling was gone.
"We won't talk of the bank to-night," he said, "let's be jolly," and
jolly he was accordingly. Not only so, but he made Dobbin jolly too, by
supplying him with such a number of treacle-pieces that the child could
hardly gasp his refusal of the last slice offered, and was made sticky
from the ends of his filthy fingers to the crown of his curly head.

It is not necessary, nor would it be pleasant to describe minutely the
effect of the "bad news" on the other members of our gold-digging party.
Captain Samson and Watty Wilkins took it well, but Polly and Simon
O'Rook could not easily reconcile themselves to their fate. The former,
it is true, sorrowed not for herself, but for her father. O'Rook,
however, was more selfish, and came down very heavily on what he called
his "luck."

"Sure it's a misfortunate pig I've been iver since I left Owld Ireland,"
he remarked to his pipe one day after dinner, being alone with that
implement at the time; "an no sooner does the first stroke of good luck
befall me, an me fortune's made intirely, than whoop! down goes the
whole consarn to the bottom of the say. It's well, hows'ever, that ye
didn't go down yerself along with it, Simon. Ye've raison to be
thankful for that, anyhow."

If O'Rook's pipe did not offer him a comforting reply it appeared to
console him with its fumes, for after a pause, during which the smoke
played voluminously about his nose, he wrinkled his visage into a smile
of good humour.

"Now, Simon," he said, rising and putting the black little implement in
his pocket, "you're in a fit state to go an' comfort the widdy."

Saying which he went out of the cheap refreshment room in which he had
dined, and betook himself to the principal street of the city, whose
name we have already declined to mention.

To explain his remark, we may state here that after the most diligent
inquiry without success, the Irishman had, by the merest chance,
discovered the widow of David Ban--in this very city, to which he had
accompanied Philosopher Jack and Captain Samson, after clearly
ascertaining that every vestige of the wreck of the _Rainbow_ had
disappeared, and that all his gold was irrevocably gone. Wal