“Oh, you beauty!” cried George, and he went on his knees and kissed it; “that is not because you are gold, but because you take me to Susan.  Now, Tom, let us thank Heaven for its goodness to us, and back to camp this very day.”

“Ay! but stop, we must wrap it in our wipes or we shall never get back alive.  The very honest ones would turn villains at sight of it.  It is the wonder of the world.”

“I see my Susan’s eyes in it,” cried George, in rapture.  “Oh, Tom, good, kind, honest Tom, shake hands over it once more!”

In the midst of all this rapture a horrible thought occurred.

“Why, it’s Jacky’s,” said George, faintly, “he found it.”

“Nonsense! nonsense!” cried Tom, uneasily; he added, however, “but I am afraid one third of it is—­pals share, white or black.”

All their eyes now turned uneasily to the Aboriginal, who lay yawning on the grass.

“Jacky give him you, George,” said this worthy savage, with superb indifference.  He added with a yawn:  “What for you dance corroboree when um not dark?—­den you bite yellow stone,” continued this original, “den you red, den you white, den you red again, all because we pull up yellow stone-all dis a good deal dam ridiculous.”

“So ’tis, Jacky,” replied Robinson, hastily; “don’t you have anything to do with yellow stone, it would make you as great a fool as we are.  Now show us the shortest cut back home through the bush.”

At the native camp they fell in with Jem.  The monstrous nugget was too heavy to conceal from his shrewd eye, so they showed it him.  The sight of it almost knocked him down.  Robinson told him where they found it, and advised Jem to go and look for another.  Alas! the great nugget already made him wish one friend away.  But Jem said: 

“No, I will see you safe through the bush first.”

CHAPTER LXXI.

ALL this time two persons in the gold mine were upon thorns of expectation and doubt—­brutus and Peter Crawley.  George and Robinson did not return, but no more did Black Will.  What had happened?  Had the parties come into collision? and, if so, with what result?  If the friends had escaped, why had they never been heard of since?  If, on the other hand, Will had come off conqueror, why had he never reappeared?  At last brutus arrived at a positive conviction that Black Will had robbed and probably murdered the men, and was skulking somewhere with their gold, thereby defrauding him, his pal; however, he kept this to himself, and told Crawley that he feared Will had come to grief, so he would go well armed, and see what was the matter, and whether he could help him.  So he started for the bush, well armed.  Now his real object, I blush to say, was to murder Black Will, and rob him of the spoils of George and Robinson.