“Well,” he exclaimed, “what have you decided to do about the store?  The patronage of the whole of Ballarat is at your disposal, for, go where I will, I can hear of nothing but the two Americans, who fight duels with one hand and rescue people with the other.”

“We have decided,” replied Fred.

“That you will commence business?” eagerly inquired the inspector.

“Yes.”

“Good!” and without another word the inspector left our tent abruptly, as though he had forgotten some important business.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

INCIDENTS IN LIFE AT BALLARAT.

We had hardly recovered from the surprise of the inspector’s mysterious disappearance, when our old acquaintances, Charley, the proprietor of the “Californian’s Retreat,” and “Big Ben,” made their appearance, and seated themselves upon boxes in our tent without the formality of being asked.  Ben was smoking away desperately at a short pipe, nearly as black as his beard, while Charley, as became the owner of an established business, confined his attention to a cigar which are vulgarly called, in this country, “short sixes,” I believe.

“I s’pose you hain’t forgot old friends nor nothing?” Charley said, as he carefully laid aside his cigar, to be resumed some other time, while he accepted a pot of coffee at the hands of Smith.

“We have thought of you often since we parted,” replied Fred, with a slight flight of imagination.

“Do tell if you have?  Well, I declare to man, if you two fellers don’t beat all natur, and no mistake.  You don’t ’pear to make any thing of fighting duels, and then hiring folks to dig other folks out of a mine.  I tell Ben, here, ef I had known you had the dust to spare I should have axed you to discount a note for me for sixty days, payable at sight, with interest.  You wouldn’t want to do any such thing as that, I s’pose?  No, I reckoned not.”

For the first time we really noticed our countryman’s peculiar dialect and manners, and it gave us more pleasure to see a genuine Yankee at the mines of Ballarat than it would had we found a nugget weighing a pound.

“We have but little money, and from appearances I think we shall need all we have brought with us,” replied Fred.

“You’d better believe you will,” said Ben, with an ominous shake of the head, as though he had passed through the furnace of experience.

“What we came here to see you fellers for,” Charley said, after a slight pause, and an exchange wink with Ben, “is to know how you stand in regard to this ’ere mining tax, which is crushing the life blood out of the vitals of us honest working men, and making us think of Bunker Hill and the American Eagle, I can tell you?”

“Really,” Fred answered, after a moment’s thought, “I am too fresh an arrival at the mines to give an opinion as yet, and I think we shall have to wait and see how grievous the tax is.”