Here they both fell to caressing Carlo, who jumped and barked and finished with a pretended onslaught on the captain as he was kneeling, looking at their so late imperiled gold, and knocked him over and slobbered his face when he was down.  Opinions varied, but the impression was he knew he had been a clever dog.  This same evening, Jem made a collar for him on which was written “Policeman C.”

The fine new tent was entered and found deserted, nothing there but an enormous mound of earth that came out of the subterranean, which Robinson got a light and inspected all the way to its debouchure in his own tent.  As he returned, holding up his light and peering about, he noticed something glitter at the top of the arch; he held the light close to it and saw a speck or two of gold sparkling here and there.  He took out his knife and scraped the roof in places, and brought to light in detached pieces a layer of gold-dust about the substance of a sheet of blotting-paper and full three yards wide; it crossed the subterranean at right angles, dipping apparently about an inch in two yards.  The conduct of brutus and co. had been typical.  They had been so bent on theft, that they were blind to the pocketfuls of honest, safe, easy gold they rubbed their very eyes and their thick skulls against on their subterraneous path to danger and crime.

Two courses occurred to Robinson; one was to try and monopolize this vein of gold, the other to take his share of it and make the rest add to his popularity and influence in the mine.  He chose the latter, for the bumptiousness was chilled in him.  This second attack on his tent made him tremble.

“I am a marked man,” said he.  “Well, if I have enemies, the more need to get friends all round me.”

I must here observe that many men failed altogether at the gold diggings and returned in rags and tatters to the towns; many others found a little, enough to live like a gentleman anywhere else, but too little for bare existence in a place where an egg cost a shilling, a cabbage a shilling, and baking two pounds of beef one shilling and sixpence, and a pair of mining boots eight pounds, and a frying-pan thirty shillings, and so on.

Besides, the hundreds that fell by diarrhea, their hands clutching in vain the gold that could not follow them, many a poor fellow died of a broken heart and hardships suffered in vain, and some, long unlucky but persevering, suddenly surprised by a rich find of gold, fell by the shock of good fortune, went raving mad, dazzled by the gold, and perished miserably.  For here all was on a great heroic scale, starvation, wealth, industry, crime, retribution, madness and disease.

Now the good-natured captain had his eye upon four unlucky men at this identical moment.

No. 1, Mr. Miles, his old master, who, having run through his means, had come to the diggings.  He had joined a gang of five; they made only about three pounds a week each, and had expelled him, alleging that his work was not quite up to their mark.  He was left without a mate and earned a precarious livelihood without complaining, for he was game; but Robinson’s quick eye and ear saw his clothes were shabby and that he had given up his ha! ha! ha!