th looked at him.

'Wa-al!' said one of our Yankee friends, 'what 'yur twistin' your necks
at like a flock of geese in a corn patch? How d'ye fix it that a lord's
better'n any other man?'

'He's a bit different, somehow,' I says. 'We're not goin' to kneel down
or knuckle under to him, but he don't look like any one else in this
room, does he?'

'He's no slouch, and he looks yer square and full in the eye, like a
hunter,' says Arizona Bill; 'but durn my old buckskins if I can see
why you Britishers sets up idols and such and worship 'em, in a colony,
jest's if yer was in that benighted old England again.'

We didn't say any more. Jim lit his pipe and smoked away, thinking,
perhaps, more whether Sir Ferdinand was anything of a revolver shot, and
if he was likely to hit him (Jim) at forty or fifty yards, in case such
a chance should turn up, than about the difference of rank and such
things.

While we were talking we saw Starlight and one of the Honourables come
in and sit down close by Sir Ferdinand, who was taking his grog at a
small table, and smoking a big cigar. The Honourable and he jumps up at
once and shook hands in such a hurry so as we knew they'd met before.
Then the Honourable introduces Starlight to Sir Ferdinand. We felt too
queer to laugh, Jim and I, else we should have dropped off our seats
when Starlight bowed as grave as a judge, and Sir Ferdinand (we could
hear) asked him how many months he'd been out in the colony, and how he
liked it?

Starlight said it wasn't at all a bad place when you got used to it, but
he thought he should try and get away before the end of the year.

We couldn't help sniggerin' a bit at this, 'specially when Arizona Bill
said, 'Thar's another durned fool of a Britisher; look at his eyeglass!
I wonder the field has not shaken some of that cussed foolishness out of
him by this time.'

Chapter 29

Jim and his wife moved over to the cottage in Specimen Gully; the miners
went back to their work, and there was no more talk or bother about the
matter. Something always happened every day at the Turon which wiped the
last thing clean out of people's mind. Either it was a big nugget, or
a new reef, or a tent robbery, a gold-buyer stuck up and robbed in the
Ironbarks, a horse-stealing match, a fight at a dance-house, or a big
law case. Accidents and offences happened every day, and any of them was
enough to take up the whole attention of every digger on the field till