’A sign of some kind is necessary.  But isn’t the old man likely to suffocate with that bung in?’

‘Not he; there’s heaps o’ breathin’ in the cask.  That bung’s just to gag him awhile.’

That evening after tea the two sons, with old Peetree under guard between them, joined the mates at their fire.  Harry, Jim’s friend of the morning’s adventure, was about twenty-eight, tall and bony, with the shoulder stoop of a hard worker.  Con and the father had the same general peculiarities.  The three were identical in height and complexion, and in their mannerism and tricks of speech; but to-night the old man had a vacant, helpless expression, and seemed for the greater part of the time unconscious of the company he was in, and looked furtively about him into the night, muttering strangely to himself, and picking eagerly at his shirt-sleeves.  The sons pressed their father to a sitting position, and then seated themselves one on each side, mounting guard.

‘See, we got him loose again,’ said Harry.

‘He’s milder to-night,’ answered Done.  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Only a touch o’ the jims.  He’s liable to howl a bit now ’n again, but don’t mind him.  He’s all right.  Ain’t you, dad?’ He gave the old man’s head an affectionate push.

‘Once he takes to smoke he’s comin’ round,’ said Con Peetree, making a vain attempt to induce the old man to draw at his pipe.

‘There ain’t a finer ole tough walkin’ when he’s off the licker,’ said the elder proudly, ‘an’ not a better miner-ever lived.’

Done watched the group with keen delight.  The young men’s respect for their bibulous parent was quite sincere, their care of him was marked with a rough but unmistakable liking.  The conversation turned upon the characteristics of the lead at Jim Crow, and drifted to the inevitable subject, the development of the agitation for the emancipation of the miners and the doings and sayings of the insurgent party at Ballarat, and every now and again Peetree senior would whisper ambiguously:  ’There ain’t such a thing ez a drop of gin?  No, of course not.’

Once Harry drew a small flask from his pocket, poured a little spirit into a pannikin, and gave it to the old man.  ’Hair off his dog, you know,’ he said.  And two or three times Con made an effort to induce his father to take a whiff of smoke, but old Peetree shook his head disgustedly, and returned to his mutterings and the picking of imaginary tarantulas off his sleeves.

In the morning Jim noticed that the wards ‘Inebrits’ Retreet’ had been printed on the barrel with pipeclay.

The good luck that had marked their initial effort on Diamond Gully followed the mates to Jim Crow.  They struck the wash-dirt in their first claim, and Jim, in sinking through the alluvial, stuck his pick into the largest nugget he had yet seen, a lump of rugged gold, pure and clean, which Mike estimated to be worth four hundred pounds.  It glowed in the sunlight with the lustre of a live ember, and, gazing upon it, Done trembled again with the vehement joy that thrills in the veins of the least avaricious digger at the sight of such a find.