“What’s wanted out there?”

“We wish to come in—­open the door, and don’t keep us away from, the lush all night,” responded the inspector.

“But who are you?” queried our interrogator.

“We is fakey kens and quiddling coves,” Mr. Brown answered, adopting the flash language, most in vogue among thieves at Ballarat.

“If you is fakey coves you should know the dig,” was the response, meaning that we should know the password.

“Bush and bush,” cried Mr. Brown, promptly, being the words which Steel Spring had informed us would carry us into the house without delay.

“Why didn’t you go for to say so in the fust place,” growled the doorkeeper; and we heard a heavy bar removed, and a bolt drawn, and then the door was opened just wide enough for us to squeeze in one by one, and after we stood in the large room, where twenty or thirty persons were congregated, it was instantly shut, and again secured, and our retreat was cut off had we been disposed to have left the choice company before us in a summary manner.

I had time to glance around the apartment and take a brief survey of the assembly before the ruffian who guarded the door had bolted it, and I must confess that my impression was not very favorable.  As I said before, there were between twenty and thirty persons in the room, all with such villanous-looking countenances that a jury would have hanged them without a word of evidence in regard to their guilt.  The very creme de la creme of scoundrelism was before us, plotting a recruiting from deeds of crime, and ready to cut a man’s throat for a pound.

The apartment was filled with smoke, for each man had a clay pipe in his mouth, and was puffing away in a state of great enjoyment.  Along the walls of the room were common pine tables, with rude benches and but a few rough chairs.  The tables were nailed to the floor, or confined by iron staples; and I afterwards learned that the plan was adopted by the proprietor of the house to save his property, as sometimes his guests got angry, and were in the habit of breaking chairs over the heads of adversaries—­a custom which had been discontinued, owing to the shrewdness of Dan in looking after number one.  Of course, the knife and pistol were the next resort; but that was a matter of the most supreme indifference to Dan, who didn’t care how many were killed or wounded as long as they didn’t injure him or what belonged to him.

Every man was drinking, or had a pot of ale or a glass of rum before him; and in one corner of the apartment were half a dozen persons asleep, or else dead drunk, and even beside them were glasses or pewter cups.

At the farthest end of the room from the street was a small bar, behind which Dan, with coat off and shirt sleeves rolled up, was the presiding genius, and to show his aristocracy was smoking a cigar.

He scanned us with his sharp black eyes when we entered, as though wondering who we were; but apparently satisfied that we were “kenkly coves,” or first-class thieves, he turned his attention to more congenial matters, and refreshed his inner man with a stiff glass of rum, diluted with but a slight mixture of water.