o free her arm; but Purdy, winking at
his friend, squeezed it to his side and held her prisoner.

Tilly buzzed a word in his ear.

"Yes, by thunder!" he ejaculated; and letting go of his companions, he
spun round like a ballet-dancer. "Ladies! Let me introduce to you my
friend, Dr. Richard Townshend-Mahony, F.R.C.S., M.D., Edinburgh, at
present proprietor of the 'Diggers' Emporium,' Dead Dog Hill, Ballarat.
--Dick, my hearty, Miss Tilly Beamish, world-famed for her sauce; Miss
Jinny, renowned for her skill in casting the eyes of sheep; and, last
but not least, pretty little Polly Perkins, alias Miss Polly Turnham,
whose good deeds put those of Dorcas to the blush."

The Misses Beamish went into fits of laughter, and Tilly hit Purdy over
the back with her parasol.

But the string of letters had puzzled them, roused their curiosity.

"What'n earth do they mean?--Gracious! So clever! It makes me feel
quite queer."

"Y'ought to 'ave told us before 'and, Purd, so's we could 'ave studied
up."

However, a walk to a cave was under discussion, and Purdy urged them
on. "Phoebus is on the wane, girls. And it's going to be damn cold
to-night."

Once more with the young person called Polly as companion, Mahony
followed after. He walked in silence, listening to the rattle of the
three in front. At best he was but a poor hand at the kind of repartee
demanded of their swains by these young women; and to-day his slender
talent failed him altogether, crushed by the general tone of vulgar
levity. Looking over at the horizon, which swam in a kind of gold-dust
haze below the sinking sun, he smiled thinly to himself at Purdy's
ideas of wiving.

Reminded he was not alone by feeling the hand on his arm tremble, he
glanced down at his companion; and his eye was arrested by a neatly
parted head, of the glossiest black imaginable.

He pulled himself together. "Your cousins are excellent walkers."

"Oh, yes, very. But they are not my cousins."

Mahony pricked up his ears. "But you live here?"

"Yes. I help moth ... Mrs. Beamish in the house."

But as if, with this, she had said too much, she grew tongue-tied
again; and there was nothing more to be made of her. Taking pity on her
timidity, Mahony tried to put her at ease by talking about himself. He
described his life on the diggings and the straits to which he was at
times reduced: the buttons affixed to his clothing by means of
gingerbeer-bottle wire; his periodic onslaughts on