‘Nothin’ ’sept ‘Oh, crickey!’’

’Well, he won’t split on us.  He won’t know a word about it in the mornin’.  We’re all right if none of us blabs.  You fellers goin’ to stay?’

‘I ain’t.  I’m sick o’ bein’ a bushranger,’ said Jacker, with a reflective and remorseful rub at his hurt place.

‘So’m I,’ said Ted.

Phil Doon, it appeared, had pressing reasons for returning home, but Peterson remembered that he had still an account to settle with his father, and resolved to share Dick’s fortune.

‘Right you are,’ said Dick.  ‘You fellers bring some crib to-morrer, an’ if you see Parrot Cann tell him to fetch some too—­an’, mind, no blabbin’.’

Reverses of this kind did not depress him; he had experienced many failures, but the wreck of one enterprise only implied the necessity of starting another.

‘Say,’ he said mysteriously, ’there’s a big reason why we should keep things darker’n ever.  Listen.  We’ve struck the reef!

The others stared incredulously.

‘You’re havin’ us,’ said Jacker.

’Am I?  Tell ’em, Billy.’

‘No, he ain’t,’ said Peterson.  ’It’s true, strike me breath.  We got a specimen this mornin’ wif three colours in it.’

‘So if anyone’s told where we’re hidin’ they’ll see the stone an’ go an’ jump the mine,’ said Dick artfully.

CHAPTER XIV.

Neither of the McKnights nor Parrot came to the boys on the Sunday morning, and Dick and Billy, whose larder had run short, were compelled to make a raid on Wilson’s garden—­which yielded little in the way of fruit, but carrots and turnips were not despised.  At about eleven o’clock, from an outlook amongst some scrub on the Red hand tip, Dick and his mate could see that something unusual was going on in Waddy.  They saw a crowd gathering near the Drovers’ Arms, and could catch the glitter of the accoutrements of a couple of troopers.  A little later a mounted policeman actually came cantering into the paddock and forced them to creep stealthily to their safe retreat at the bottom of the mine.  Here they sat and talked, prey to the most torturing curiosity.  Dick’s theories to explain the apparent sensation were fine and large, investing himself and his companion with profound dignity as the heroes of a thrilling adventure; but Billy’s for a wonder were somewhat gloomy, reckoning with parental castigations and ten years in gaol.  This unusual frame of mind was induced, no doubt, by a limited and strictly vegetarian diet.  Dick took into account the possibility that Jacker, Ted, or Phil Doon might divulge the Company’s great secret, although his faith in the loyalty of his mates was strong.  If the worst came to the worst he meditated a retreat through the hole into the Red Hand drive, and flight from thence down the ladder-shaft and into the spacious workings of the Silver Stream.