That night Aurora—­surnamed Australis by a facetious digger—­was particularly attentive to Done.  Jim was flattered by her open preference, dazzled by her bright eyes and glowing cheeks, and piqued by her bantering manner, for she still implied that he might be allowed indulgences because of his beardless, boyish face and his seeming ingenuousness.  As a protest against this attitude, Done was impelled to drink rather more rum than was good for him, and under the influence of the fiery spirit he lost some thing of his habitual reserve, and a fight with Quigley was only averted by the tactful intervention of Burton.

‘Didn’t like interferin’, Jim,’ said Mike next morning, ’but Quigley’s a hard nut and an ugly fighter.  He’d have eaten you if you’d taken him on as you stood.’

‘I’m much obliged, old man,’ answered Done mournfully.  ’I suppose I made an outrageous ass of myself.’

But he went back to Mrs. Kyley’s bar again on the Monday evening, and there got good advice from Aurora.

‘You don’t like this rubbish, Jimmy,’ she said, serving him with the drink he had asked for.  The remark was made with an air of positive assurance.  They were alone.

‘Well, no, I don’t particularly,’ he admitted.

’Then, don’t be a fool.  Don’t gammon you do.  You need not drink it.  I don’t want you to.  See here, Jimmy,’ she continued gravely, ’Quigley doesn’t like you; he is looking for a chance to do you a mischief, and he would have had his chance the other night if I hadn’t overlooked you like a mothering hen, and sold you good creek water at a shilling the nip.’

‘I did act the fool, I admit.’

’Never a bit; but don’t give Quigley his chance by numbing your good sense with Mary Kyley’s rum.  Sure,’ said Aurora, dropping into her honied brogue, ‘it’s fer the love of me ye’re comin’, not for the dthrop o’ drink.  Murther! would ye kill me wid denyin’ it?’ She was sitting on the counter; she pressed her fingers on his lips, and laughed in his face with happy impudence, her large handsome mouth full of pearls, her eyes flashing a challenge.  Jim’s arm stole to her waist of its own initiative.

Then Mrs. Ben Kyley came roaring into the tent.  ’Inveigling my girl away!’ she cried.  ’Get out, you kidnapper!  Where’s your taste, anyhow, philandering with a slip of a girl when there’s a fine woman about with a heart as empty as a big sieve?’ And the bouncing washerwoman bore down upon him, and bombarded him out of the place with gusts of laughter.

As yet, Done had seen little of the trials and tribulations of the diggers.  Diamond Gully was a prosperous rush, and the impositions under which the Victorian miners complained so bitterly had not come home to many on this field; but he had heard a great deal.  The political and social wrongs of the diggers were the staples of conversation about the camp-fires.  To Jim’s great surprise, he found these men, surrounded with the exciting conditions of their peculiar