on of dissimulation. She was the least self-conscious creature
living, the least calculating. If she had really set herself the task of
displaying to the best advantage the more gentle and womanly side of her
nature, she would certainly not have succeeded as well as she did this
evening, moved by one of the thousand vagrant impulses that lent such
varying colour to her character. Her humour was more subdued, her gaiety
was restrained within the limits of an almost conventional decorum. She
helped the men with a graciousness that was wholly effeminate, and the
diggers responded to its influence.

'Blast me if it don't make a cove feel religious!' was Harry Peetree's
sober comment, after he had lit his pipe and settled his back comfortably
against the log.

The night came while they were still at their meal, and sticks were
thrown on the fire to provide light. Other diggers, attracted by the glow
and the cheerful atmosphere of the party, sauntered up, and modestly
disposed themselves in the shadows, where they lay smoking. Women of any
kind were few on Jim Crow, and a scene like this was sufficient to stir
the deeper feelings of many of the miners, particularly those in whose
hearts long absence from hearth and home had served to invest domesticity
with a reverent sentimentality.

Aurora insisted on washing up, but Josh dried the dishes, while the
others lit their pipes, and, lying on their backs, with knees drawn up
and hands clasped under their heads, gave themselves over to quiet
enjoyment of the night. A big moon was stealing through the tree-tops;
the denuded gully still lay in the lower gloom, dotted with camp-fires
and illumined tents. But Aurora threw aside her domestic mood with her
apron, and reappeared as the enemy of reflection and repose. Throned on
her gin-case, where the ruddy light of the wood-fire glowed upon her, she
chattered in her delectable brogue for an hour or more, the picture of
animation. Then came Mary Kyley storming upon the scene.

'Do I pay a girl the wages of a princess to run a temperance meeting
among my customers?' she cried.

'Go away, Mother Kyley, an' work yer own ould shebang,' replied Aurora,
'or else bring me fiddle wid ye, an' give us a step on the turf!'

'Not a step will I.'

'Then I'll lave divil a man in the shanty, dthrunk or dthry!'

Aurora sprang upon her box, and began to sing a rousing nonsensical song
of the moment. The chorus was caught up, and swelled in the sh