It was not what you have seen pass for work in Europe, it was men working themselves for once as they make horses work forever.  Work?  It was battle; it was humanity fighting and struggling with Nature for her prime treasure—­(so esteemed).  How they dug and scraped, and fought tooth, and spade, and nail, and trowel, and tomahawk for gold!  Their shirts were wet through with sweat, yet they felt no fatigue.  Their trousers were sheets of clay, yet they suffered no sense of dirt.  The wounded man recovered a portion of his strength, and, thirsting for gold, brought feeble hands but indomitable ardor to the great cause.  They dug, they scraped, they bowed their backs, and wrought with fury and inspiration unparalleled; and when the sun began to decline behind the hills these four human mutes felt injured.  They lifted their eyes a moment from the ground, and cast a fretful look at the great, tranquil luminary.

“Are you really going to set this afternoon the same as usual, when we need your services so?”

Would you know why that wolfish yell of triumph?  Would you see what sight so electrified those gloating eyes and panting bosoms?  Would you realize that discovery, which in six months peopled that barren spot with thousands of men from all the civilized tribes upon earth, and in a few years must and will make despised Australia a queen among the nations—­nations who must and will come with the best thing they have, wealth, talent, cunning, song, pencil, pen, tongue, arm, and lay them all at her feet for this one thing?

Would you behold this great discovery the same in appearance and magnitude as it met the eyes of the first discoverers, picked with a knife from the bottom of a calabash, separated at last by human art and gravity’s great law from the meaner dust it had lurked in for a million years—­Then turn your eyes hither, for here it is: 

[Knife handle drawing

CHAPTER LIII.

MR. MEADOWS dispatched his work in Shropshire twice as fast as he had calculated, and returned home with two forces battling inside him—­love and prudence.  The battle was decided for him.

William Fielding’s honest but awkward interference had raised in Susan Merton a desire to separate her sentiments from his by showing Mr. Meadows a marked respect.  She heard of his arrival and instantly sent her father to welcome him home.  Old Merton embraced the commission, for he happened to need Meadows’s advice and assistance.  The speculations into which he had been led by Mr. Clinton, after some fluctuations, wore a gloomy look, “which could only be temporary,” said that gentleman.  Still a great loss would be incurred by selling out of them at a period of depression, and Mr. Clinton advised him to borrow a thousand pounds and hold on till things brightened.

Mr. Meadows smiled grimly as the fly came and buzzed all this in his web:  “Dear! dear! what a pity my money is locked up!  Go to Lawyer Crawley.  Use my name.  He won’t refuse my friend, for I could do him an ill turn if I chose.”