e
good girls, when we sell the horses, unless we're nailed at the Turon.
What sort of a shop is it? Are they getting much gold?'

'Digging it out like potatoes,' says Bella; 'so a young chap told us
that come this way last week. My word! didn't he go on about the coach
being stuck up. Mad and I nearly choked ourselves laughing. We made him
tell it over twice. He said a friend of his was in it--in the coach,
that is--and we could have told him friends of ours was in it too,
couldn't we?'

'And what did he think of it all?'

'Oh, he was a new chum; hadn't been a year out. Not a bad cut of a young
feller. He was awful shook on Mad; but she wouldn't look at him. He said
if it was in England the whole countryside would rise up and hunt such
scoundrels down like mad dogs; but in a colony like this people didn't
seem to know right from wrong.'

'Did he, indeed?' says Starlight. 'Ingenuous youth! When he lives a
little longer he'll find that people in England, and, indeed, everywhere
else, are very much like they are here. They'll wink at a little
robbery, or take a hand themselves if it's made worth their while. And
what became of your English friend?'

'Oh! he said he was going on to Port Phillip. There's a big diggings
broke out there too, he says; and he has some friends there, and he
thinks he'll like that side better.'

'I think we'd better cut the Sydney "side", too,' says Starlight.
'What do you say, Maddie? We'll be able to mix up with these new chum
Englishmen and Americans that are coming here in swarms, and puzzle
Sergeant Goring and his troopers more than ever.'

'Oh! come, now! that would be mean,' says Maddie. 'I wouldn't be drove
away from my own part of the country, if I was a man, by anybody. I'd
stay and fight it out. Goring was here the other day, and tried to pick
out something from father and us about the lot of you.'

'Ha!' says Starlight, his face growing dark, and different-looking about
the eyes from what I'd ever seen him, 'did he? He'd better beware. He
may follow up my trail once too often. And what did you tell him?'

'We told him a lot of things,' says the girl; 'but I am afeared they was
none of 'em true. He didn't get much out of us, nor wouldn't if he was
to come once a week.'

'I expect not,' says Jim; 'you girls are smart enough. There's no man
in the police or out of it that'll take much change out of you. I'm most
afraid of your father, though, letting the cat out of the bag; he