tered feeling about the ribs, to remind
him of his fight with Quigley.

It was a pleasant morning, the winter was already well advanced; but only
an improved water-supply, an occasional wetting at the windlass, and the
need of a rug on the bunk, marked the change of season, so far as Jim
could see. There was no place for verdure on Diamond Gully; the whole
field turned upside down, littered with the debris of the mines, washed
with yellow slurry, and strewn in places with white boulders and the
gravel tailings sluiced clean by the gold-seekers. The creek, recently a
limpid rivulet, was now a sluggish, muddy stream, winding about its
tumbled bed; but a bright sky was over all, and a benignant sun smiled
upon the gully, scintillating among the tailings and burnishing the muddy
stream to silver. The tents looked white and clean, and the smoke from
the camp-fires rose straight and high in the peaceful atmosphere. A
strange quiet was upon the lead; it needed only the chastened clanging of
a church-bell to complete the suggestion of an English Sabbath.

Jim was sitting on the foot of his bunk reading. Mike had gone up the
creek on a prospecting expedition. Presently a magpie in a dead tree at a
little distance burst into full-throated melody. Done dropped his book to
listen. That clarion of jubilation always delighted him. It seemed to him
that if the young Australian republic men were talking of ever came into
being its anthem must ring with the wild, free notes of its bravest
singing-bird.

'So the bold hayro was not kilt intoirely?' Aurora was smiling in at him,
her eyes full of sunshine, her cheeks suffused with more than their
wonted colour. 'Are ye axin' me in? Thank ye, kind sir.' She slipped into
the tent, and, placing a hand upon each shoulder, examined him
critically, while he smiled back into her face, and wondered why she
brought with her suggestions of a bounteous rose-garden. 'Ah, Jimmy, I
thought I'd hardly know ye!

'"Where are your eyes that looked so mild?
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild,
When my poor heart you first beguiled?"

She sang no more, but sank upon his knee, and her arms were about his
neck. Her accent was mischievious, but there was the fire of rubies in
her eyes.

'They're both there fast enough,' laughed Jim. 'An' niver a black one
among the