r a ring
out of the first gold we got, and they promised to write to us and tell
us if they heard any news. They knew what to say, and we shouldn't be
caught simple if they could help it. Jim took care, though, to keep well
off the road, and take all the short cuts he knew. We weren't quite safe
till we was in the thick of the mining crowd. That's the best place
for a man, or woman either, to hide that wants to drop out of sight and
never be seen again. Many a time I've known a man, called Jack or Tom
among the diggers, and never thought of as anything else, working like
them, drinking and taking his pleasure and dressing like them, till he
made his pile or died, or something, and then it turned out he was
the Honourable Mr. So-and-So, Captain This, or Major That; perhaps the
Reverend Somebody--though that didn't happen often.

We were all the more contented, though, when we heard the row of the
cradles and the clang and bang of the stampers in the quartz-crushing
batteries again, and saw the big crowd moving up and down like a hill of
ants, the same as when we'd left Turon last. As soon as we got into the
main street we parted. Jim and I touched our hats and said good-bye to
Starlight and the other two, who went away to the crack hotel. We went
and made a camp down by the creek, so that we might turn to and peg out
a claim, or buy out a couple of shares, first thing in the morning.

Except the Hollow it was the safest place in the whole country just now,
as we could hear that every week fresh people were pouring in from
all the other colonies, and every part of the world. The police on the
diggings had their own work pretty well cut out for them, what with old
hands from Van Diemen's Land, Californians--and, you may bet, roughs and
rascals from every place under the sun. Besides, we wanted to see for
ourselves how the thing was done, and pick up a few wrinkles that might
come in handy afterwards. Our dodge was to take a few notes with us, and
buy into a claim--one here, one there--not to keep together for fear of
consequences. If we worked and kept steady at it, in a place where
there were thousands of strangers of all kinds, it would take the devil
himself to pick us out of such a queer, bubbling, noisy, mixed-up pot of
hell-broth.

Things couldn't have dropped in more lucky for us than they did. In this
way. Starlight was asked by the two swells to join them, because they
wanted to do a bit of digging, just for the