r our party of
gold-hunters to refrain from resuming work as usual on that morning.
Some of them had never been trained to love or keep the Sabbath, and
would have certainly gone to work had not Ned and the captain
remonstrated. All were under great excitement in consequence of their
valuable discovery, and anxious to know whether the run of luck was
likely to continue, and not one of the party escaped the strong
temptation to break the Sabbath-day, except, indeed, the Chinamen, who
were too easy-going and lazy to care whether they worked or rested. But
the inestimable advantage of good early training told at this time on
Ned Sinton. It is questionable whether his principles were strong
enough to have carried him through the temptation, but Ned had been
_trained_ to reverence the Lord's-day from his earliest years, and he
looked upon working on the Sabbath with a feeling of dread which he
could not have easily shaken off, even had he tried. The promise, in
his case, was fulfilled--"Train up a child in the way he should go, and
he will not depart from it when he is old;" and though no mother's voice
of warning was heard in that wild region of the earth, and no guardian's
hand was there to beckon back the straggler from the paths of rectitude,
yet he was not "let alone;" the arm of the Lord was around him, and His
voice whispered, in tones that could not be misunderstood, "Remember the
Sabbath-day, to keep it holy."

We have already said, that the Sabbath at the mines was a day of rest as
far as mere digging went, but this was simply for the sake of resting
the wearied frame, not from a desire to glorify God. Had any of the
reckless miners who filled the gambling-houses been anxious to work
during Sunday on a prolific claim, he would not have hesitated because
of God's command.

The repose to their overworked muscles, and the feeling that they had
been preserved from committing a great sin, enabled the party to
commence work on Monday with a degree of cheerfulness and vigour that
told favourably on their profits that night, and in the course of a few
days they dug out gold to the extent of nearly two thousand pounds
sterling.

"We're goin' to get rich, no doubt of it," said the captain one morning
to Ned, as the latter was preparing to resume work in the creek; "but
I'll tell you what it is, I'm tired o' salt beef and pork, and my old
hull is gettin' rheumatic with paddling about barefoot in the water, so
I mean