e proper sort of
cove to preach. I'd better leave it to him. So we didn't spend our money
foolish, like most part of the diggers that had a bit of luck; but we
had to do a fair thing. We got through a lot of money every week, I
expect. Talking of foolish things, I saw one man that had his horse shod
with gold, regular pure gold shoes. The blacksmith made 'em--good solid
ones, and all regular. He rode into the main street one holiday, and no
end of people stopped him and lifted up his horse's feet to see. They
weighed 7 oz. 4 dwt. each. Rainbow ought to have been shod that way.
If ever a horse deserved it he did. But Starlight didn't go in for that
kind of thing. Now and then some of the old colonial hands, when they
were regularly 'on the burst', would empty a dozen of champagne into a
bucket or light their pipes with a ten-pound note. But these were not
everyday larks, and were laughed at by the diggers themselves as much as
anybody.

But of course some allowance had to be made for men not making much
above wages when they came suddenly on a biggish stone, and sticking
the pick into it found it to be a gigantic nugget worth a small fortune.
Most men would go a bit mad over a stroke of luck like that, and they
did happen now and then. There was the Boennair nugget, dug at Louisa
Creek by an Irishman, that weighed 364 oz. 11 dwt. It was sold in Sydney
for 1156 Pounds. There was the King of Meroo nugget, weighing 157 oz.;
and another one that only scaled 71 oz. seemed hardly worth picking up
after the others, only 250 Pounds worth or so. But there was a bigger
one yet on the grass if we'd only known, and many a digger, and shepherd
too, had sat down on it and lit his pipe, thinking it no better than
other lumps of blind white quartz that lay piled up all along the crown
of the ride.

Mostly after we'd done our day's work and turned out clean and
comfortable after supper, smoking our pipes, we walked up the street for
an hour or two. Jim and I used to laugh a bit in a queer way over the
change it was from our old bush life at Rocky Flat when we were boys,
before we had any thoughts beyond doing our regular day's work and
milking the cows and chopping wood enough to last mother all day. The
little creek, that sounded so clear in the still night when we woke up,
rippling and gurgling over the stones, the silent, dark forest all
round on every side; and on moonlight nights the moon shining over Nulla
Mountain, dark and over