himself by the luck of finding gold in a gully.  To Mr. Bolton it was no better than had he found a box of treasure at the bottom of a well.  Mr. Bolton had himself been a seeker of money all his life, but he had his prejudices as to the way in which money was to be sought.  It should be done in a gradual, industrious manner, and in accordance with recognised forms.  A digger who might by chance find a lump of gold as big as his head, or might work for three months without finding any, was to him only one degree better than Davis, and therefore he did not receive his old friend’s statements as to the young man’s success with all the encouragement which his old friend would have liked.

But his father was very enthusiastic in his return letter to the miner.  The matter as to the estate had been arranged.  The nephew, who, after all, had not shown himself to be very praiseworthy, had already been—­compensated.  His own will had already been made,—­of course in his son’s favour.  As there had been so much success,—­and as continued success must always be doubtful,—­would it not be well that he should come back as soon as possible?  There would be enough now for them all.  Then he expressed an opinion that such a place as Nobble could not be very nice for a permanent residence.

Nobble was not very nice.  Over and beside his professional success, there was not much in his present life which endeared itself to John Caldigate.  But the acquisition of gold is a difficult thing to leave.  There is a curse about it, or a blessing,—­it is hard to decide which,—­that makes it almost impossible for a man to tear himself away from its pursuit when it is coming in freely.  And the absolute gold,—­not the money, not the balance at one’s banker’s, not the plentiful so much per annum,—­but the absolute metal clinging about the palm of one’s hands like small gravel, or welded together in a lump too heavy to be lifted, has a peculiar charm of its own.  I have heard of a man who, having his pocket full of diamonds, declared, as he let them run through his fingers, that human bliss could not go beyond that sensation.  John Caldigate did not shoe his horse with gold; but he liked to feel that he had enough gold by him to shoe a whole team.  He could not return home quite as yet.  His affairs were too complicated to be left quite at a moment’s notice.  If, as he hoped, he should find himself able to leave the colony within four years of the day on which he had begun work, and could then do so with an adequate fortune, he believed that he should have done better than any other Englishman who had set himself to the task of gold-finding.  In none of his letters did he say anything special about Hester Bolton; but his inquiries about the family generally were so frequent as to make his father wonder why such questions should be asked.  The squire himself, who was living hardly a dozen miles from Mr. Bolton’s house, did not see the old banker above once a quarter perhaps and