hough his joining had been settled
long before he met Tony.

When they had all set out and had disappeared over the hill, riding away
to the west, Marmot stood at the door of his store with Smart, watching
the dust that floated where their horses moved.

"I would have told him, only I couldn't get him by himself; for it seems
a bit queer to me, what with Yaller-head going out to Barellan and young
Dickson going bail for Bob Murray's stores," the storekeeper said. "It
ain't no business of ours, Smart--it ain't no business of ours; but I'd
as lief have seen him and Yaller-head in double harness as any."

"And why not?" Smart asked.

"Well, there's a cause in it all--a fust cause, maybe. Tony ain't the
chap to put off so easy, and what gets me is why does she go out there
while he goes off here, and never a word to either, and both of them
thick as twins since they were kids? And now here's Dickson puts up the
dibs for young Murray to get away; Dickson--a chap that wouldn't give
away the bones of a dead sheep. It may be best for Tony in the end, mind
you. Never was a married man myself, but I've seen those as was,
and--well, you're an experienced hand yourself," Marmot said, waving his
hand to Smart, whose domestic differences contributed many an item of
discussion to the _habitues_ of the verandah.

The reference was not pleasing to Smart, and he did not reply.

"We've got to watch it," Marmot went on, failing to notice that Smart
had not replied--"we've got to watch it. There's a drama in all this, if
we only knew it, a panorama of human play-acting. Maybe it's as well I
held my tongue, but all the same, young Dickson ain't running straight
if he's getting open-handed, that I will swear."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FINDING OF PETERS'S REEF.

For a couple of weeks the four who had set out from Birralong full of
enthusiasm for the proving of the theory Palmer Billy had formed,
wandered along the course of the creek where they had previously found
gold. Palmer Billy insisted that as the gold must have come from a reef
before it became embedded in the loose gravel of the stream, the proper
way to seek for the reef was to follow up the stream, prospecting
wherever there was a sign of sand or gravel in the bed, and keeping a
sharp look-out for any outcrop of rock which might contain quartz. The
mother-reef whence the gold had been washed must be higher up the
stream, he argued, and if once they found that, they would