The mates continued to do well at Jim Crow, and Jim Done found himself growing tolerably rich without any marked gratification.  He could not see what more gold could confer upon him.  He was now a nightly visitor at Mrs. Ben Kyley’s tent, but gambled with rather more spirit of late, and, finding himself a much less easy victim to Mary’s rum, drank more than formerly.  A certain stage of intoxication—­an intoxication of the blood rather than the senses—­threw a roseate glamour over the gaieties of the shanty, and robbed him of that remaining reticence of manner and speech that would have kept him an observer rather than a participant.

Police supervision was fitful and weak at Jim Crow, and there were wild nights at Mary Kyley’s.  Aurora appeared in a new character—­that of popular musician.  Seated with her heels tucked under her on the end of the shanty bar, she rattled off lively dance-music on an old violin; or, mounted on an inverted tub, she sang songs of rebellion and devilment to a crowd of diggers warm with rum and rampant with animal spirits.  Mary Kyley, whose gay heart responded readily to the conviviality of her guests, danced at these times, contesting in breathless jigs and reels, displaying amazing agility and a sort of barbaric frenzy, while the men yelled encouragement and applause, the pannikins circulated, and the smoke gathered in a cloud along the ridge-pole.  Sitting above the crowd in a gay gown, with a splash of artificial red roses in her mass of black hair, flushed with animation, her eyes beaded with fire, Aurora was a striking queen of the revels, and Done exulted over her, and called her Joy.  It was the new name he had given her, Aurora sounding too formidable for a lover’s lips.

One such night Aurora played them ‘The Wearing of the Green,’ breaking in upon a moment of exuberant merriment with the quaint melancholy of the music.  She wrung from the strings a pathetic appeal, and played the crowd into a sudden reverent silence.  They were rebel hearts there to a man, and many exiles from Erin were in the company.  The simple tune went right home to them all.  The men sat still, gazing into their pannikins, and big bearded diggers had a chastened pensiveness that might have been comic had there been any there to laugh at them.  Just as suddenly the girl swung into a rollicking dance-step, abandoning her tender mood with a burst of happy laughter; but Tim Carrol, a young new chum; fresh from ‘the most distressful country,’ sprang to the counter beside her, and, clasping Aurora and her fiddle in a generous hug, kissed the girl on the cheek.

‘Shtop!’ he cried.  ’Niver another word will ye play till the hold iv that’s gone from us!’

Done, who was standing near, saw the action, saw Aurora laughing in the man’s arms, and experienced a revulsion of feeling that turned him giddy, and blurred the lights and the figures about him.  He sprang at Carrol savagely.  It seemed to him that what followed occurred in darkness.  A few blows, a scuffle, and then he was torn away.  The next moment he found himself in Kyley’s hands, and Aurora before him, her eyes flashing anger, her white teeth bared, her hands clenched—­exactly the termagant she had appeared on the night she confronted Quigley in her wrath; but to-night her fury was directed against him.