d-looking object up in her
hand.

"What a curious stone; and how heavy it is!" she remarked, holding it up
to view.

Her companions came to inspect it, and Mrs Staunton took it in her hand
to make a close examination.

"Stone!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Why, my dear girl, this is _gold_--a
genuine nugget, unless I am greatly mistaken. Mr Thomson, a friend of
my husband's in Sydney, showed us several gold nuggets, and they were
exactly like this, only they were none of them nearly so large."

"Do you really think it is gold?" asked Blanche. "My dear Mrs
Staunton, my dear Violet, only fancy what a delightful thing it will be
if we have actually discovered a gold mine; why, we shall be able to
present our husbands with a magnificent fortune each."

A charming blush mantled the speaker's cheek as she said this,
notwithstanding the fact that by this time the three women had no
secrets from each other.

"I wonder if there are any more," remarked Mrs Staunton; "surely that
cannot be the only one here. I fancy I stepped on something hard just
now."

The three women at once went groping along the sand with their feet, and
not in vain. First one, and then another encountered a hard object
which proved to be similar in substance to the one found by Blanche; and
in a quarter of an hour they had between them collected upwards of a
dozen of them, though one only--found by Mrs Staunton--exceeded in size
that of the first discovery.

Then, feeling somewhat chilled by their long immersion, they returned to
_terra firma_, and were soon once more wending their way homeward. In
passing through the wood they contrived to lose their way; but, as it
happened, this proved of but slight consequence, as though they
eventually came out at a point nearly a mile distant from the pathway
which they had followed in the morning, they were quite as near the
settlement as they would have been had they faithfully retraced their
original footsteps; and by four o'clock in the afternoon they found
themselves once more within the shelter of the walls of Staunton
Cottage, greatly fatigued, it is true, by their long ramble, but with an
elasticity of spirits and a sense of renewed life to which they had long
been strangers.

Meanwhile the party at the shipyard had been thrown into a state of
unwonted excitement by an incident which at one moment threatened to
have a tragic termination.

A strong gang of men were at work upon the rock--all, i