aceful Sabbath Mahony made
preparations for his journey. Waking his assistant, he gave the man--a
stupid clodhopper, but honest and attached--instructions how to manage
during his absence, then sent him to the township to order horses.
Himself, he put on his hat and went out to look for Purdy.

His search led him through all the drunken revelry of a Saturday night.
And it was close on twelve before, having followed the trace from
bowling-alley to Chinese cook-shop, from the "Adelphi" to Mother
Flannigan's and haunts still less reputable, he finally succeeded in
catching his bird.

Chapter IV

The two young men took to the road betimes: it still wanted some
minutes to six on the new clock in the tower of Bath's Hotel, when they
threw their legs over their saddles and rode down the steep slope by
the Camp Reserve. The hoofs of the horses pounded the plank bridge that
spanned the Yarrowee, and striking loose stones, and smacking and
sucking in the mud, made a rude clatter in the Sunday quiet.

Having followed for a few hundred yards the wide, rut-riddled
thoroughfare of Main Street, the riders branched off to cross rising
ground. They proceeded in single file and at a footpace, for the
highway had been honeycombed and rendered unsafe; it also ascended
steadily. Just before they entered the bush, which was alive with the
rich, strong whistling of magpies, Purdy halted to look back and wave
his hat in farewell. Mahony also half-turned in the saddle. There it
lay--the scattered, yet congested, unlovely wood and canvas settlement
that was Ballarat. At this distance, and from this height, it resembled
nothing so much as a collection of child's bricks, tossed out at random
over the ground, the low, square huts and cabins that composed it being
all of a shape and size. Some threads of smoke began to mount towards
the immense pale dome of the sky. The sun was catching here the panes
of a window, there the tin that encased a primitive chimney.

They rode on, leaving the warmth of the early sun-rays for the cold
blue shadows of the bush. Neither broke the silence. Mahony's day had
not come to an end with the finding of Purdy. Barely stretched on his
palliasse he had been routed out to attend to Long Jim, who had missed
his footing and pitched into a shaft. The poor old tipsy idiot hauled
up--luckily for him it was a dry, shallow hole--there was a broken
collar-bone to set. Mahony had installed him in his own bed, and had