t?'

'Oh, of Diamond Gully! I reckon it's played out or thereabouts.'

'And we got twelve ounces a man for the last week's work.

'Not enough, Jimmy. Not more 'n wages, an' men like you 'n me should be
in the thickest an' richest of it. I'm gettin' along to-morrow.'

'You mean to say you are going?' Done jerked himself on to his elbow and
stared across the tent at his mate.

'Um--m Mean to try a new rush.'

'Anything wrong, Mike? Have I been getting on your raw lately? You want
to break up this partner ship of ours.'

'My oath, no!' Mike had raised himself eagerly, and was looking at Jim.

Then you reckoned on having me along?'

'No; I thought maybe you wouldn't care to pad out from here jes' yet
awhile.

'If it rests with me, mate, where you go I go. You've given me a bit of a
jolt, old man.'

'You'll come, then?' cried Mike.

'Why, yes! What should keep me?'

The two men gripped hands, and a few minutes of, silence followed, during
which Mike's pipe went out and Jim's book fell to the floor. Both were
more moved than they cared to show.

'This makes things much more comfortable,' said Burton presently.

'Where do we go?'

'To Jim Crow, an' from there we may make tracks to Ballarat.

'To Ballarat!' The name epitomized all that Done knew of mining life and
the aspirations of the diggers.

'Yes, Jim. If there's goin' to be fightin', we must be in it.'

'Mike,' said Jim, breaking the thoughtful silence that followed, 'what
put into your head the mad idea that I would want to break with you? God,
man, I'd be a desolate, helpless wastrel without you!'

'Aurora!' said Mike sententiously.

'Aurora!' Jim sat up abruptly, and then sank slowly back upon his pillow
again. It was very curious, but till this moment no thought of Aurora had
occurred to him.

Mike blew out the candle, and it was quite half an hour later when he
said, speaking as if the conversation had just been dropped: 'You'll go
all the same, Jimmy?'

'Yes,' said Jim, with the emphasis of a man making a resolution.

XII

AURORA! What would she say? What would she do? It was less the thought of
his losing Aurora than the picture of her great distress that worried
him. She would be broken-hearted. And yet go he must, there was no
question of that; he had not come to Australia to tether himself to a
woman's apron strings, even though that woman be the brightest and
winsomest of her sex--excepting one. He smuggled that saving clause in