There was a yell of laughter, interspersed with the usual cries of ‘Jo!’ as Wallis passed out after his men, and the diggers bombarded Mrs. Kyley with the bundles of washing that had been hastily distributed amongst them.  Ben Kyley followed the police out, and presently returned and nodded to Mary, who seized her jug and dived through the canvas partition.  She was back again in a minute with a jug full of spirits.

‘My shout, lads!’ she cried.  ’Roll up, and drink the health and long life of Mary Kyley!’

The device that enabled the washerwoman to deceive the police was known to a few of the diggers, but they kept the secret well.  Her tent was pitched close to a big hollow gum-tree.  High up in the butt nestled a barrel of rum, the bottom coated with cinders, like the interior of the burnt tree.  From this barrel a pipe came down under the bark to a neatly disguised little trap-door where the canvas lay against the butt.  A hidden slit in the tent corresponded with the trap-door.  It was Ben’s office to replenish the barrel at night, with kegs brought from their safe hiding-place in an abandoned claim, over which was pitched the tent of his mate, Sandy Harris.  Mary had adopted this plan on three rushes, and her savings, regularly banked in Melbourne, already assumed the proportions of a modest fortune.

When the police were gone Jim looked about him in search of Ryder, but his acquaintance had disappeared.  As his friendship with Aurora Griffiths ripened, Done shook off thoughts of Lucy Woodrow, since they never came without an underlying sense of accusation.  He was enjoying his present life to the full.  In his heart was a great kindness towards the people with whom he mingled.  He was naturally sociable, a lover of his kind, and recognised now that half the torment of his life since coming to manhood had arisen from his isolation, from the lack of opportunities of gratifying this affection.  He admired Aurora, comparing her with his youthful ideal, the strong animal, self-reliant, careless of custom.  True, she lacked the intellectual superiority with which he had endowed his defiant Dulcinea, but he had even forgotten to take delight in his own mental excellence of late, so that did matter.  He only concerned himself with living now.  He was quite at his ease in Aurora’s society, and the atmosphere on the Kyley establishment pleased him.  The place was full of interest, but his warmest interest was in the full-blooded pagan who officiated as Hebe to the assembled diggers.

He had quite respectable qualms at times, seeing her the object of so much rough gallantry—­qualms he stifled instantly as being in flat rebellion to his fine philosophy of individualism as applied to behaviour.  His rights of man must be rights of women too.  But, for all that, there was much comfort in the belief that Aurora showed no preference elsewhere.  Quigley’s prominence as a suitor was not due to any partiality on the part of the girl, but rather to Quigley’s own aggressive character, and his imperturbability under her eloquent banter.  To be sure, she persisted in treating Jim as an interesting boy, a line of conduct he found somewhat absurd, but which was partly the vein of her humour, and partly due to his inexperience in the role of Don Juan.