“Well, we will go to it to-morrow.”

“What, by daylight, watched as we are?  We, the two lucky ones,” said Robinson bitterly.  “No.  Wait till the coast is clear—­then strike tent and away.”

At midnight they stole out of the camp.  By peep of day they were in a little dell with a brook running at the bottom of it.

“Now, George, listen to me.  Here is ten thousand pounds if we could keep this gully and the creek a fortnight to ourselves.”

“Oh, Tom! and we will.  Nobody will find us here, it is like a box.”

Robinson smiled sadly.  The men drove their spades in close to the little hole which Robinson had made prospecting yesterday, and the very first cradleful yielded an ounce of gold-dust extremely small and pure.  They found it diffused with wonderful regularity within a few inches of the surface.  Here for the first time George saw gold-dust so plentiful as to be visible.  When a spadeful of the clay was turned up it glittered all over.  When they tore up the grass, which was green as an emerald, specks of bright gold came up clinging to the roots.  They fell like spaded tigers on the prey.

“What are you doing, George?”

“Going to light a fire for dinner.  We must eat, I suppose, though I do grudge the time.”

“We must eat, but not hot.”

“Why not?”

“Because, if you light a fire, the smoke will be seen miles off, and half the diggings will be down upon us.  I have brought three days’ cold meat—–­here it is.”

“Will this be enough?” asked George, simply, his mouth full.

“Yes, it will be enough,” replied the other, bitterly.  “Do you hear that bird, George?  They call him a leather-head.  What is he singing?”

George laughed.  “Seems to me he is saying, ‘Off we go!’ ‘Off we go!’ ‘Off we go!’”

“That is it.  And look now, off he is gone; and, what is more, he has gone to tell all the world he saw two men pick up gold like beans.”

“Work!” cried George.

That night the little bag felt twice as heavy as last night, and Susan seemed nearer than for many a day.  These two worked for their lives.  They counted each minute, and George was a Goliath; the soil flew round him like the dust about a wmnnowing-machine.  He was working for Susan.  Robinson wasted two seconds admiring him.

“Well,” said he, “gold puts us all on our mettle, but you beat all I ever saw.  You are a man.”

It was the morning of the third day, and the friends were filling the little bag fast; and at breakfast George quizzed Robinson’s late fears.

“The leather-head didn’t tell anybody, for here we are all alone.”

Robinson laughed.

“But we should not have been, if I had let you light a fire.  However, I really begin to hope now they will let us alone till we have cleared out the gully.  Hallo!”

“What is the matter?”

“Look there, George.”