or tucker--I'm good for a
sixty-pound swag, and you for eighty. So-long."

He turned off the gas, took the key of the side door, which he locked
after him, and disappeared, whilst Tresco groped his way to bed.

The surreptitious goldsmith had slept for two hours when the stealthy
apprentice let himself quietly into the dark and cheerless house. He
bore on his back a heavy bag of flour, and carried on his arm a big
basket filled with minor packages gleaned from sleepy shopkeepers, who
had been awakened by the lynx-eyed youth knocking at their backdoors.

In the cheerful and enlivening company of an alarum clock, Jake retired
to his couch, which consisted of a flax-stuffed mattress resting on a
wooden bedstead, and there he quickly buried himself in a weird tangle
of dirty blankets, and went to sleep.

At the conclusion of three brief hours, which to the heavy sleeper
appeared as so many minutes, the strident alarum woke the apprentice to
the stress of life. By the light of a tallow candle he huddled on his
clothes, and entered the goldsmith's chamber.

"Now, then, boss, three o'clock! Up you git!"

Benjamin rubbed his eyes, sat up in bed, and yawned.

"''Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain: You've waked me
too soon--I must slumber again.'

What's the time, Jake?"

"Ain't I tellin' you?--three o'clock. If we don't want to be followed by
every digger in the town, we must get out of it before dawn."

"Wise young Solomon, youth of golden promise. Go and boil the kettle.
We'll have a snack before we go. Then for fresh fields and pastures
new."

The goldsmith bounded out of bed, with a buoyancy which resembled that
of an india-rubber ball.

"Ah-ha!
'Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweek bird's throat,
Come hither.'
You see, Jakey, mine, we were eddicated when we was young." Benjamin
had jumped into his clothes as he talked. "A sup and a snack, and we
flit by the light of the moon."

"There ain't no moon."

"So much the better. We'll guide our steps by the stars' pale light and
the beams of the Southern Cross."

By back lanes and by-roads the goldsmith and his boy slunk out of the
town. At the mouth of the gorge where diggers' tents lined the road,
they walked delicately, exchanging no word till they were deep in the
solitude of the hills.

As the first streak of dawn pierced the gloom of the deep valley,
they we