hanging all the valley, as if it had been sailing
in the clear sky over it ever since the beginning of the world. We
didn't smoke then, and we used to sit in the verandah, and Aileen would
talk to us till it was time to go to bed.

Even when we went into Bargo, or some of the other country towns, they
did not seem so much brighter. Sleepy-looking, steady-going places they
all were, with people crawling about them like a lot of old working
bullocks. Just about as sensible, many of 'em. What a change all this
was! Main Street at the Turon! Just as bright as day at twelve o'clock
at night. Crowds walking up and down, bars lighted up, theatres going
on, dance-houses in full swing, billiard-tables where you could hear the
balls clicking away till daylight; miners walking down to their night
shifts, others turning out after sleeping all the afternoon quite fresh
and lively; half-a-dozen troopers clanking down the street, back
from escort duty. Everybody just as fresh at midnight as at breakfast
time--more so, perhaps. It was a new world.

One thing's certain; Jim and I would never have had the chance of seeing
as many different kinds of people in a hundred years if it hadn't been
for the gold. No wonder some of the young fellows kicked over the traces
for a change--a change from sheep, cattle, and horses, ploughing and
reaping, shearing and bullock-driving; the same old thing every day;
the same chaps to talk to about the same things. It does seem a
dead-and-live kind of life after all we've seen and done since. However,
we'd a deal better have kept to the bulldog's motter, 'Hang on', and
stick to it, even if it was a shade slow and stupid. We'd have come out
right in the end, as all coves do that hold fast to the right thing and
stick to the straight course, fair weather or foul. I can see that now,
and many things else.

But to see the big room at the Prospectors' Arms at night--the hall,
they called it--was a sight worth talking about--as Jim and I walked up
and down, or sat at one of the small tables smoking our pipes, with good
liquor before us. It was like a fairy-tale come true to chaps like us,
though we had seen a little life in Sydney and Melbourne.

What made it so different from any other place we'd ever seen or thought
of before was the strange mixture of every kind and sort of man and
woman; to hear them all jabbering away together in different languages,
or trying to speak English, used to knock us altogethe