en much heed to Jerry--no one
did--was pleased by his straightforward air. Still, he did not know
what could be done for him, and said so.

Here Polly had an inspiration. "But I think I do. I remember Mr. Ocock
saying to me the other day he must take another boy into the business,
it was growing so--the fourth, this will make. I don't know if he's
suited yet, but even if he is, he may have heard of something else.--
Only you know, Jerry, you mustn't mind WHAT it is. After tea I'll put
on my bonnet and go down to the Flat with you. And Ned shall come,
too," she added, with a consoling glance at her elder brother: Ned had
extended his huff to his second slice of pie, which lay untouched on
his plate.

"Somebody has always got something up her sleeve," said Mahony
affectionately, when Polly came to him in walking costume. "None the
less, wife, I shouldn't be surprised if those brothers of yours gave us
some trouble, before we're done with them."

Chapter VI

In the weeks and months that followed, as he rode from one end of
Ballarat to the other--from Yuille's Swamp in the west, as far east as
the ranges and gullies of Little Bendigo--it gradually became plain to
Mahony that Ned's frothy tales had some body in them after all. The
character of the diggings was changing before his very eyes. Nowadays,
except on an outlying muddy flat or in the hands of the retrograde
Chinese, tubs, cradles, and windlasses were rarely to be met with.
Engine-sheds and boiler-houses began to dot the ground; here and there
a tall chimney belched smoke, beside a lofty poppet-head or an aerial
trolley-line. The richest gutters were found to take their rise below
the basaltic deposits; the difficulties and risks of rock-mining had
now to be faced, and the capitalist, so long held at bay, at length
made free of the field. Large sums of money were being subscribed; and,
where these proved insufficient, the banks stepped into the breach with
subsidies on mortgages. The population, in whose veins the gold-fever
still burned, plunged by wholesale into the new hazard; and under the
wooden verandahs of Bridge Street a motley crew of jobbers and brokers
came into existence, who would demonstrate to you, a la Ned, how you
might reap a fortune from a claim without putting in an hour's work on
it--without even knowing where it was.

A temptation, indeed! ... but one that did not affect him. Mahony let
the reins droop on his horse's neck, and the an