d her jug and dived through the canvas
partition. She was back again in a minute with a jug full of spirits.

'My shout, lads!' she cried. 'Roll up, and drink the health and long life
of Mary Kyley!'

The device that enabled the washerwoman to deceive the police was known
to a few of the diggers, but they kept the secret well. Her tent was
pitched close to a big hollow gum-tree. High up in the butt nestled a
barrel of rum, the bottom coated with cinders, like the interior of the
burnt tree. From this barrel a pipe came down under the bark to a neatly
disguised little trap-door where the canvas lay against the butt. A
hidden slit in the tent corresponded with the trap-door. It was Ben's
office to replenish the barrel at night, with kegs brought from their
safe hiding-place in an abandoned claim, over which was pitched the tent
of his mate, Sandy Harris. Mary had adopted this plan on three rushes,
and her savings, regularly banked in Melbourne, already assumed the
proportions of a modest fortune.

When the police were gone Jim looked about him in search of Ryder, but
his acquaintance had disappeared. As his friendship with Aurora Griffiths
ripened, Done shook off thoughts of Lucy Woodrow, since they never came
without an underlying sense of accusation. He was enjoying his present
life to the full. In his heart was a great kindness towards the people
with whom he mingled. He was naturally sociable, a lover of his kind, and
recognised now that half the torment of his life since coming to manhood
had arisen from his isolation, from the lack of opportunities of
gratifying this affection. He admired Aurora, comparing her with his
youthful ideal, the strong animal, self-reliant, careless of custom.
True, she lacked the intellectual superiority with which he had endowed
his defiant Dulcinea, but he had even forgotten to take delight in his
own mental excellence of late, so that did matter. He only concerned
himself with living now. He was quite at his ease in Aurora's society,
and the atmosphere on the Kyley establishment pleased him. The place was
full of interest, but his warmest interest was in the full-blooded pagan
who officiated as Hebe to the assembled diggers.

He had quite respectable qualms at times, seeing her the object of so
much rough gallantry--qualms he stifled instantly as being in flat
rebellion to his fine philosophy of individualism as applied to
behaviour. His rights of man must be rights of women too. Bu