rrow night, won't you?'

'All right, Kate,' I said, and we followed our party.

Chapter 27

This meeting with Kate Morrison put the stuns upon me and Jim, and
no mistake. We never expected to see her up at the Turon, and it all
depended which way the fit took her now whether it would be a fit place
for us to live in any longer. Up to this time we had done capital well.
We had been planted as close as if we had been at the Hollow. We'd had
lots of work, and company, and luck. It began to look as if our luck
would be dead out. Anyhow, we were at the mercy of a tiger-cat of a
woman who might let loose her temper at any time and lay the police
on to us, without thinking twice about it. We didn't think she knew
Starlight was there, but she was knowing enough for anything. She could
put two and two together, and wait and watch, too. It gave me a fit of
the shivers every time I thought of it. This was the last place I ever
expected to see her at. However, you never can tell what'll turn up in
this world. She might have got over her tantrums.

Of course we went over to the Prospectors' Arms that night, as the new
hotel was called, and found quite a warm welcome. Mrs. Mullockson had
turned into quite a fashionable lady since the Melbourne days; dressed
very grand, and talked and chaffed with the commissioner, the police
inspectors, and goldfield officers from the camp as if she'd been
brought up to it. People lived fast in those goldfields days; it don't
take long to pick up that sort of learning.

The Prospectors' Arms became quite the go, and all the swell miners
and quartz reefers began to meet there as a matter of course. There was
Dandy Green, the Lincolnshire man from Beevor, that used to wear no end
of boots and spend pounds and pounds in blacking. He used to turn out
with everything clean on every morning, fit to go to a ball, as he
walked on to the brace. There was Ballersdorf, the old Prussian soldier,
that had fought against Boney, and owned half-a-dozen crushing machines
and a sixth share in the Great Wattle Flat Company; Dan Robinson, the
man that picked up the 70 pound nugget; Sam Dawson, of White Hills,
and Peter Paul, the Canadian, with a lot of others, all known men, went
there regular. Some of them didn't mind spending fifty or a hundred
pounds in a night if the fit took them. The house began to do a
tremendous trade, and no mistake.

Old Mullockson was a quiet, red-faced old chap, who seemed to