Mrs. Ben Kyley greeted the mates with noisy joviality when they met, and Ben took his pipe from his mouth, and said he was ’right down blarsted glad,’ which amounted to quite a demonstration, coming from him.  Within two days the tents were up, and Mrs. Kyley’s business was resumed, and was carried on as at Diamond Gully, and with much the same success.  But here for some time Ben’s services as ‘chucker-out’ were more in requisition, spirits being more unruly on Jim Crow.  One night he even had to fight a five-round battle with a riotous young Cousin Jack, in which engagement Done seconded him by special request.  Ben triumphed, but came out of the contest with a black eye and an inflamed nose of a preposterous size, at which Mary was virtuously indignant.

’You, a professional, fighting for diversion like any fool of a gentleman!’ she said scornfully.

‘Man mus’ keep his hand in,’ replied Ben.

’If you can’t attend to your duties without making such a mess of yourself, you’d better have a month’s notice.  What was the good of me taking on a pugilist if I’m to have fighting about the place continually?’

‘Come, come, Mrs. Ben,’ said Jim; ’if you treat him like this when he wins, what would you do if he lost?’

‘Divorce him and take up with the Cornishman!’ replied the raffish washerwoman, exploding into Gargantuan laughter.

Done had often thought of Ryder since the night of the troopers’ raid on Mrs. Kyley’s grog-store, but had seen nothing of him in the meantime.  Mike recalled him to his mind again as they were lying out in the moonlight on a Sunday night about two weeks later.

’Remember the chap that tried to throttle Stony that night in the Black Forest?’ he said.  ‘Saw him on the lead to-day.’

‘You did?  Ryder was hunting Stony on Diamond Gully.’

‘He’s gettin’ pretty warm, then.  Stony’s here too.  That’s his tent above the bend to the left.  He’s a hatter, an’ works a lone hand in the shallow ground.’

‘Then trouble’s brewing for Mr. Stony.’

‘You seemed to feel for him.  Better drop him the word, hadn’t you?’

’No.  My sympathies are with the other man, and as he means something short of manslaughter, Stony can take his chances.’

It was not long after this that Jim encountered Stony in Mary Kyley’s tent.  He was drinking alone, and drinking with the feverish haste of a man who deliberately seeks intoxication.  He was more tremulous than when Done first met him, and his face had the colour, and looked as if it might have the consistency, of putty.  The man was an instinctive hater:  he lived alone, worked alone, and desired no companionship.  Previous to the gold discoveries he had served for years in the capacity of shepherd on one of the big Australian sheep-runs, and had lived cut off from communion with his kind in the great lone land, absorbing into his blood the spirit of solitude that broods in the Bush and in time robs man of his gregarious impulses.