ck towards Boulder Creek, along the route
where many a camp-fire twinkled in the darkness as the marching army of
miners formed their bivouacs in twos and threes. And where it echoed,
men turned their heads to listen, and ceased even to smoke for the
moment, as they strove to gauge the distance the main camp was ahead,
and wondered if it were "good enough to shove along" in the dark. On
either side of the main camp, and all around, the sounds reverberated
amidst the tall, gaunt, scanty-leaved gums, till the 'possums scratched
and chattered as they danced along the boughs, and the slow-witted bears
sniffed the cool-scented air of the night to find some reason for the
unusual flood of melody. Farther ahead still it travelled, till the
lonely dingo heard it as he prowled, and, sitting on his haunches,
raised his throat towards the skies and poured forth a melancholy howl
in unison, rousing the suspicions of the night curlew that everything
was not as it should be, and inducing him in turn to give utterance to
his cry, mournful and weird as the wail of an outcast soul, to warn his
fellows to be on the alert, and to add to the unspeakably awe-inspiring
solemnity of the bush at night.

Farther still it travelled, until, little more than a faint echo, it
reached another camp-fire far ahead of the main camp, a fire beside
which two men sat. A blanket was spread between them, and upon it lay a
pile of small nuggets of gold, and, on a tin plate, a heap of gold-dust.

One of the two, a man whose eyebrows formed a black heavy band across
the forehead, held up his hand as the sound came to him. Then he
laughed.

"Hear that?" he asked, looking at his companion. "If we'd waited till
to-morrow where would our chance have been? They're barely two miles
away, and there's a mob of them, by the sound. The news of the great
find is out, Tap, my son, and the rush has begun. They'll be swarming
over the place to-morrow, swarming--and swearing," he added, as he again
laughed loudly.

His companion, a slim, long-limbed man, with a sharp-featured face and
shifty eyes, sat listening intently to the faint echo of the refrain of
Palmer Billy's song.

"They're less than two miles, less than one mile away," he said, with a
fleeting glance at the dark, heavy face of the other. "Look here--what
if some of them push on in the dark?"

"Well, what if they do? Do you think the first-comers will know where to
look? You're as weak in the nerves as eve