Patrick Doyle was here at Mass last Sunday; he was
then a poor digger. Next day he found gold, 'struck it rich,' as you
say; then he found the grog also and brought it to his tent.
Yesterday he was found dead at the bottom of his golden shaft, and he
was buried in the graveyard over there near the Government camp."

My conscience was quite easy when the sermon was finished. It would
be time enough for me to take warning from the fate of Paddy Doyle
when I had made my pile. Let the lucky diggers beware! I was not
one of them.

After we had been at work a few weeks, Father Backhaus, before
stepping down from the packing-case, said:

"I want someone to teach in a school; if there is anyone here willing
to do so, I should like to see him after Mass."

I was looking round for Philip among the crowd when he came up, eager
and excited.

"I am thinking of going in to speak to the priest about that school,"
he said. "Would you have any objection? You know we are doing no
good in the gully, but I won't leave itif you think I had better not."

Philip was honourable; he would not dissolve our short partnership,
and leave me alone unless I was quite willing to let him go.

"Have you ever kept school before?"

"No, never. But I don't think the teaching will give me much
trouble. There can't be many children around here, and I can surely
teach them A B C and the Catechism."

Although I thought he had not given fortune a fair chance to bless
us, he looked so wistful and anxious that I had not the heart to say
no. Philip went into the tent, spoke to the priest, and became a
schoolmaster. I was then a solitary "hatter."

Next day a man came up the gully with a sack on his back with
something in it which he had found in a shaft. He thought the shaft
had not been dug down to the bedrock, and he would bottom it. He
bottomed on a corpse. The claim had been worked during the previous
summer by two men. One morning there was only one man on it; he said
his mate had gone to Melbourne, but he had in fact killed him during
the night, and dropped him down the hole. The police never hunted
out that murderer; they were too busy hunting us.

I was not long alone. A beggarly looking young man came a few days
later, and said:

"I hear you have lost your mate Philip, and my mates have all gone
away and taken the tent with them; so I want to ask you to let me
stay in your tent until I can look round a bit."

This young m