Done and Burton, on returning to Jim Crow, found that Harry Peetree, quietly prospecting in the vicinity of the rush, had opened up a new gully.  The ‘find’ was kept dark pending Mike’s return, and when the Peetrees had secured their ground, the mates were given the pick of the lead.  The discovery leaked out as soon as the friends started operations, and a little rush from the original field followed.  Jim was now a mile and a half from Mrs. Kyley’s shanty, and derived some satisfaction from that fact.  His feelings towards Aurora had undergone another change.  Lucy’s image loomed to the almost total eclipse of that of her rival, and yet he could not spend ten minutes in the company of the girl at the shanty without being won by her buoyant spirits and the kindliness of her soul.  He had some dread of growing to hate Aurora now that Lucy had reestablished herself—­a dread founded more on some familiarity with popular fiction than on a knowledge of his own heart.

Christmas came, and there was a rough attempt to celebrate it on Jim Crow, an attempt by which Mrs. Ben Kyley profited largely, as she and Aurora were kept working at high pressure for two days, making Christmas puddings, for which the diggers cheerfully paid half a guinea apiece.  Rich plum-pudding, hearty eating, and heavy drinking, the proper concomitants to an English Christmas as the miners understood it, were not compatible with merriment during an Australian Christmas-tune, with the glass at one hundred degrees in the shade; but trifling considerations of that kind were not allowed to interfere with the uproarious festivities at Jim Crow.  January passed quietly.  The dirt at One Tree Gully proved highly remunerative, and the mates worked hard.  Done had discovered an object beyond the rapturous enjoyment of the moment, and showed himself more anxious to win gold.  He was living a comparatively quiet life, and the locket containing Lucy Woodrow’s picture was restored to its rightful place next his heart.  There was a time when the thought of such an act of flagrant and foolish sentimentality would have made him groan aloud.

One night in the following March, returning to their tent from the shanty, where he had left Burton deep in a game of euchre, Jim was startled to see a stream of light flash momentarily across the canvas wall.  His first thought was of thieves, and, drawing his revolver, he stole noiselessly to the entrance and peeped in.  He saw the figure of a man seated at the head of Mike’s bed.  On the small table between the two bunks at the end of the tent was a lighted candle, which the man was screening with his hat.  Before the intruder the small tin-box in which Done’s few heirlooms and papers were stored lay open, and the man was absorbed in its contents.

‘If you stir a hand I’ll fire!’ said Jim, presenting his revolver.

Instinctively the other smothered the light, but after that he sat quite still.

‘I can see you distinctly,’ said Jim, ‘and I’m a fair shot!’