In due course they came to a claim that interested Burton deeply, but the man at the windlass was gloomy, almost despairing.  He didn’t believe he’d got a tucker show, and sadly advised Mike to shepherd a hole down to the left.

‘We ain’t in sight of her here,’ he said.

Burton took a pinch of dirt from the side of the bucket at his feet, rubbed it between his finger and thumb, and grinned at the digger.

‘Take me for a Johnny Raw, don’t you?’ he said.  ’This is good enough for me.  Quick, Jim, the pegs!’

The exclamation was drawn from him by the sight of three men running along the lead in their direction.

As Burton hammered in his first peg, the newcomers started hammering a peg for the same holding.  Mike paced the twenty-four feet, and kicked the stranger’s peg out of the ground.  Not a word was spoken.  The intruding digger, a stoutly-built, cheerful-looking Geordie, promptly struck at Mike, and they fought.  Done stood aside, nonplussed by the suddenness of all this, and for a minute a hard give-and-take battle raged on the claim.  Jim discovered the Geordie’s mate busying himself driving in a peg.  Seizing the man by the back of the neck, he dragged him to his feet, and sent him spinning with a long swing.  After which he gripped Mike’s opponent in the same way, and bowled him over and over.

‘Now you get the pegs in, Mike,’ said Jim.  ‘I’ll attend to these.’

The Geordie arose and rushed at Jim with the vehemence of an old fighter, but Done stopped him with a straight left, closed, and threw him.  Mike ceased hammering the peg to applaud.

‘Neat and nice!’ he cried.  ‘Would any other gentleman like a sample?’

‘I’m quite satisfied,’ said the Geordie, without a trace of ill-feeling.

‘Then peg out the next,’ continued Mike.  ’It should be quite as good a spec as this if your friend’s on anything like a gutter.’

‘Ay, ay, lad!’ responded the Tynesider, who had a mouse on his cheek as big as his thumb, and he set cheerfully to work to peg out two men’s ground further on.  His bluff having failed, he cherished not the slightest resentment, and two minutes later, to Jim’s great amusement, all concerned were indulging in affable conversation.  The newcomers were friends of the party in the working mine, where the lead had been cut, a prospect from the headings promising so well that the holders had hastened to acquaint the Geordie with the fact.  The latter arrived too late, however—­first come, first served, being the law of the diggings, and first peg in meant legal possession.

Two men’s ground measured twelve feet by twenty-four feet.  Mike had taken the twenty-four feet in the direction in which the lead seemed to be running, and now he lined out a shaft about four feet by two feet, and commenced sinking.  He dug down to the depth of his waist, and at sunset the mates returned to Forest Creek.  That night the teamster arrived with their goods, and Done and Burton slept under canvas, the tent having been hastily thrown across a hurdle to provide a screen from the glowing moonlight, the trees here being stunted and widely scattered.