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 THE MINER'S RIGHT
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 A TALE OF 
 THE AUSTRALIAN GOLDFIELDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROLF BOLDREWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'robbery UNDER ARMS ' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 Hantron 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 I 890 
 
 A II rights reserved
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ THE MINER^S RIGHT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 •^ 
 
 I AM in Australia at last — actually in Botany- 
 Bay, as we called the colony of New South 
 ; Wales when Joe Bulder and I first thought 
 -^of leaving that dear quiet old Dibblestowe 
 ^""^^^^eys in Mid- Kent. More than that, I am a 
 ^real gold digger — very real, indeed — and the 
 ^holder of a Miner's Right, a wonderful docu- 
 r^ment, printed and written on parchment, pre- 
 ,cisely as follows. I ought to know it by heart, 
 Jgood reason have I therefor, I and mine. 
 sHere it is, life size, in full. Shall I ever take 
 '^it out and look at it by stealth in happy days 
 to come, I wonder ? 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 MIN.NO DISTRICT, *ND OMSION) / ,Q>^ C^^t^C^T-ZA^ Sii:lC, ^ 
 
 OR Pt»CI IN WHICH 1SSUI0. ^ / /^ y±^ ^ ^ 
 
 Yes, I am here now, at Yatala, safe enough ; 
 as I said before, with my mates — Cyrus Yorke, 
 Joe Bulder, and the Major. But I certainly 
 thought I should never get away from Eng- 
 land. One would have imagined that a younger 
 son of a decayed family had never quitted 
 Britain before to find fortune or be otherwise 
 provided for. Also, that Australia was Central 
 Africa, whence ingenuous youth had little 
 more chance of returning than dear old Living- 
 stone. 
 
 As for me, Here ward Pole, as I had but 
 little occupation and less money, I was surely 
 the precise kind of emigrant which the old land 
 can so gracefully spare to the new. Gently 
 nurtured, well intentioned, utterly useless, not 
 but that I was fitting myself according to my 
 lights for a colonial career — save the mark ! —
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 for I had been nearly a year on a farm in Mid- 
 Kent, for which high privilege I paid, or rather 
 my uncle did, ^loo sterling. 
 
 So, I had learned to plough indifferently, and 
 could be trusted to harrow, a few side strokes 
 not mattering in that feat of agriculture. I 
 could pronounce confidently on the various 
 samples of seed wheat submitted to me, and I 
 had completely learned the art of colouring 
 a meerschaum by smoking daily and hourly 
 what I then took to be the strongest tobacco 
 manufactured. 
 
 It wasn't bad fun. Jane Mangold, the old 
 farmer's daughter, who was coaching me, was a 
 pretty girl, with rosy cheeks, a saucy nose, and 
 no end of soft, fluffy, fair hair. We were 
 capital friends, and she stood by me when I got 
 into disgrace by over-driving the steam-engine 
 one day, and nearly blowing up the flower of 
 the village population of Dibblestowe Leys. 
 Now and then I had a little shooting, and 
 a by-day with the Tickham hounds. Life 
 passed on so peacefully and pleasantly that 
 I was half inclined to think of taking a farm 
 near the Leys at the end of my term, and 
 asking Jane to help with the dairy, poultry,
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 cider, and housekeeping department. Then 
 a little incident happened which changed 
 the current of ideas generally, and my life in 
 particular. 
 
 It was one of the fixtures of the Tickham 
 hounds, which sometimes honoured our slowish 
 neighbourhood. Old Mangold, being grumpy, 
 had told me that I might go to Bishop's Cote, 
 or indeed considerably farther, for all the help 
 I was to him. I had cheerfully accepted his 
 somewhat ungracious permission, and mounted 
 on a young horse I was schooling for Dick 
 Cheriton, a farmer's son of sporting tastes, I 
 made my way over, pleased with my mount, 
 satisfied with my boots, and altogether of opinion 
 that I was better treated by fortune than 
 usual. 
 
 I could ride, to do myself justice, and shoot. 
 Second whip or under keeper was the only 
 post for which I was really qualified. I could 
 make a fly and tie it : could somehow hit the 
 piscatorial need of most days and most waters. 
 Mine was rarely an empty basket. In fact, I 
 was like a very large majority of the young 
 Englishmen of the day, in that I could do a 
 number of useless things, mostly relating to field
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 sports and manual accomplishments. Tall and 
 strong, with thickish dark-brown hair, I had my 
 mother's features and dark gray eyes, that didn't 
 usually look anywhere but in people's faces. 
 For the rest, I was wholly ignorant of every 
 conceivable form and method of money-making, 
 and could not have earned a crown to save my 
 life. 
 
 Please to imagine me sitting sideways on my 
 horse, thinking whether there might be time to 
 have a smoke before the hounds threw off, 
 then suddenly aroused by the rattle of carriage 
 wheels, which denoted a stronger pace than 
 was generally resorted to by county families 
 assembling at a meet. Hastily looking round, I 
 saw a pair of grand-looking brown horses, which 
 had evidently bolted with a landau containing 
 two ladies. The coachman was sitting still and 
 doing his best, but he had only one rein ; the 
 other, broken short, was dangling from the 
 near horse's head. I knew the horses, and, of 
 course, the carriage. I had often remarked 
 them at the village church ; they belonged to 
 the squire, who was my host's landlord. I 
 knew, of course, the lady of the Manor by 
 sight, having gazed at her afar off; but the
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 girl who was by her side in the carriage — 
 pale and proud, yet despairing, with a piteous 
 look of appeal in her large dark eyes — I had 
 never seen before. 
 
 We were both early. The hounds had not 
 yet come up. Save the village apothecary 
 in antigropelos, and a stray horse-dealer or pad 
 groom, there was hardly a soul near. My 
 resolution was taken in an instant. I knew that 
 the road they were speeding so fast along 
 gradually commenced to descend. A longish 
 hill, flint bestrewn, with a turn and bridge at 
 the end of it, would soon account finally for all 
 concerned. 
 
 I took my five-year-old by the head and 
 raced for the hedge and ditch. He gave a 
 highly theatrical jump into the road just by the 
 side of the carriage. I saw both the ladies gaze 
 with astonishment as I sent him up to the head 
 of the reinless carriage horse. ' Help us, oh 
 help us ! ' cried Mrs. Allerton, ' or we shall be 
 dashed to pieces.' The younger lady did not 
 speak, but looked at me with her pleading eyes 
 in such a way that I felt I could have thrown 
 myself under the wheels then and there to have 
 been of the slightest service.
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 Nothing so sacrificial was required of me. 
 Jamming my youngster, fortunately one of the 
 bold temperate sort, against the near side 
 carriage horse's shoulder, I got hold of the 
 loose rein, and dragged at his mouth in a way 
 that must have hurt his feelings, if he had any 
 thereabouts. The coachman seconded me well 
 and prudently. Between us we stopped the 
 carriage within a quarter of a mile, and saved 
 the impending smash. The rein was knotted, 
 the bits altered to the lower bar, and peace was 
 restored. 
 
 Both ladies were ridiculously grateful, 
 though the younger, after impulsively placing 
 her hand in mine, when her mother — as I 
 found her to be — had shaken mine several 
 times warmly, rather looked than spoke her 
 thanks. 
 
 ' Haven't I seen you somewhere ? ' at length 
 asked the elder lady. * I am sure I know your 
 face and voice.' 
 
 I mentioned something about Dibblestowe 
 Leys and Mr. Mangold. 
 
 * Ah, of course, I was stupid not to remember 
 you before. You will tell us what name I shall 
 mention to the Squire, as that of the gentleman
 
 8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 who SO gallantly saved the lives of his wife and 
 daughter.' 
 
 ' Hereward Pole,' said I, bowing and 
 blushing — one blushed in those days ; ' very 
 much at your service.' 
 
 ' One of the Poles of Shute ? Surely not. 
 Why, I remember the old place when I was a 
 girl. And your dear mother, is she still alive '^. 
 I shall hope to see her again. What a wonder- 
 ful coincidence ! And, now I think of it, you 
 are like her, especially about the brow and eyes.' 
 
 ' Mamma, perhaps Mr. Pole would like to 
 have his run with the hounds, now that we are 
 all safe. We needn't stay in the road all day. I 
 see they have put the hounds into Holling- 
 bourne Wood. Papa says it was near Durn- 
 bank ; so if Mr. Pole cuts across these two 
 fields with that clever horse of his he will be 
 just in time.' 
 
 * My dearest Ruth, you are a matter-of-fact 
 darling ; but I daresay Mr. Pole will enjoy the 
 run after all. You young people are so strong. 
 My poor nerves will be agacd for days, I know. 
 May we hope to see you on Sunday to dinner, 
 my dear Mr. Pole ? I suppose Mr. Mangold 
 can spare you on that day.'
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 ' Or even on a week-day, perhaps,' said the 
 young lady maliciously. ' You had better get 
 away ; I see something like business over 
 yonder.' 
 
 I bowed low, and plunging in a dazed way at 
 the hedge, was mortified to find that my steed 
 adopted the tactics of multtim i7t parvo, and got 
 through rather by force of character than 
 activity. However, I flew the next two fences 
 in very creditable style, and reached the outer 
 edge of the covert as Reynard had stolen 
 forth, a few moments in advance of old Countess 
 and Columbine, the detectives of the pack, and 
 was well away with the leading hounds before 
 the carriage was out of sight in the direction of 
 Torry Hill. 
 
 The run was a cracker. How well I 
 remember it still ! I sailed along in the first 
 flight all through. Indeed, so well was I carried, 
 that I never had a chance of riding the young 
 horse again, as he was promptly snapped up at 
 a large advance upon his previous selling price. 
 A single day with its occurrence brightens or 
 shades a life. Fate takes the dial, and turns the 
 hands with strong slow fingers, and we think 
 we can carve out our own path in life, can
 
 lo THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 choose the good or shun the evil that lieth 
 around us. Now, like children, are we hurried 
 forward or frightened back on the track of 
 doom ! 
 
 When I returned to the Leys late that 
 evening Jane was most anxious to hear every- 
 thing about the day. Had there been a good 
 run ? Was I well up ? Did Dick Cheriton's 
 horse carry me well ? She didn't see why I 
 should go riding other people's young horses. 
 My neck was more valuable than Dick's — a 
 gambling, drinking, good-for-nothing fellow. 
 Was the Squire's lady there, and her daughter 
 Miss Ruth ? The under -gardener had been 
 down from the hall to see Deborah the dairy- 
 maid, and had told her that they were going to 
 the meet because Lord Arthur Gordon was to 
 be there. He was staying at the hall. 
 
 I must have been more curt than usual in my 
 answers ; perhaps I was tired or cross : men 
 sometimes are, for no reason at all, like women. 
 Anyhow, Jane was disappointed, and left off 
 questioning me, saying that 'she supposed I 
 would find my temper after a night's rest. 
 
 Only she did think ' and here there must 
 
 have been a few tears, as I found myself
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT ii 
 
 consoling her efficiently and protesting all kinds 
 of palliatives, Mr. Mangold having as usual 
 gone to smoke his pipe in the snug sanded 
 kitchen, which he said was a hundred times more 
 comfortable than Jane's smart parlour, which he 
 never would call a drawing-room, much to her 
 distress. 
 
 On the following Sunday I announced my 
 intention of going to church, a practice to which 
 I generally conformed on the ground of mixed 
 motives, involving as it did a pleasant walk 
 back through the lanes with Jane. To her 
 wild astonishment and that of the parish 
 generally, I was most cordially greeted by the 
 lady of the Manor ; hardly less so by Miss 
 Allerton, and finally carried off in the sacred 
 hall-carriage before the eyes of the dismayed 
 villagers, who looked upon it as something 
 hardly less than a translation to realms 
 Elysian. 
 
 On arriving at Allerton Court, a grand old 
 Elizabethan pile, we were met on the steps by 
 the Squire himself, who most warmly acknow- 
 ledged his indebtedness to me for the signal 
 service which I had rendered his family. 
 Delighted to find that I was the son of his old
 
 12 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 friend Dunston Pole, while I was in the neigh- 
 bourhood he hoped — indeed, he would take no 
 denial — that I must look upon his house as my 
 home. He was aware I was learning farming 
 at the Leys with old Mangold. Very worthy 
 old chap, and paid his rents with much more 
 punctuality than many of the newer lights. 
 Pretty daughter too, Miss Jane. Mind what 
 you're about. Must not go about breaking 
 hearts ; though girls look out for themselves 
 nowadays pretty well, he must say that, how- 
 ever. I must come over and shoot. They 
 always thought there was some of the best cock- 
 shooting in England at Allerton Court ; and as 
 for hunting, he would mount me to the end of 
 the season. I needn't ride five-year-olds after 
 to-day ; though the one I steered to the 
 Hollingbourne must have been a ' nailer,' if his 
 informant spoke truly. 
 
 The Squire's address was fragmentary and 
 conventional, but the tone of my whole recep- 
 tion was so truly sincere that I felt at once that 
 my position as the friend of the family was 
 assured. The lady of the Manor looked at me 
 with a truly maternal warmth of affection, and 
 frorh time to time recapitulated for the Squire's
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 13 
 
 benefit every incident of our joint thrilling 
 adventure. 
 
 ' Never was so near being a widower, my 
 dear,' he said. ' I wonder who there is in the 
 county that would have suited me ? Never 
 thought of it before ! One should always 
 be prepared for that kind of things though ; 
 couldn't have replaced my ladybird here though 
 so easily, eh, Ruth } ' and a tear gathered in the 
 old man's glistening eye. 
 
 ' You are a wicked old papa,' said she, hold- 
 ing up a finger reprovingly ; ' you would have 
 thought very little about successors and such 
 rubbish, you know, if poor mamma and I had 
 been dashed to pieces, which we should most 
 certainly have been but for Mr. Pole's help and 
 good riding.' And here I received a half-shy, 
 half-grateful glance that made me consider 
 myself a Paladin, and the lovely girl the fairest 
 of the fair, like her that was to reward le brave 
 et beatc Dunois, who of old returned from 
 Palestine. 
 
 This was all very well, but one could not 
 return from Palestine without having in the 
 first instance gone there. It was no doubt 
 mighty easy for such fellows as Dunois to go
 
 14 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 to foreign parts. Very little capital was 
 required, and fighting, if a hazardous, is 
 comparatively a cheap species of investment. 
 Now, in these latter days, a man must either 
 stay at home, leading an Inglorious and un- 
 profitable life, or be able to lay his hand upon 
 a good round sum of money with which to be 
 a backwoodsman in Canada, a squatter in 
 Australia, a sugar -grower in Natal, or an 
 indigo-planter In Nepaul. The days of cheap 
 yet dignified adventure seemed, ah me, to be 
 fled for ever. 
 
 Matters went on smoothly for me during the 
 rest of my sojourn at the Leys. I learnt a 
 decent amount of farming, and, indeed, gained 
 a reasonable meed of praise from old Mangold. 
 This advance in agricultural knowledge was 
 due rather to Increased attention on my part 
 than to the time which I was enabled to devote 
 to my duties ; for, indeed, Miss Mangold told 
 me with more acerbity than I had suspected 
 her of possessing, I was always up at the 
 Court, and, as she expressed it more familiarly 
 than elegantly, in Miss Ruth's pocket. 
 
 I mildly repelled the accusation of living at 
 the Court, excusing myself as to frequent visits
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 15 
 
 by saying that one wanted a little change, and 
 treating with silent scorn the unauthorised 
 allusion to any part of Miss Allerton's sacred 
 costume. 
 
 'You didn't want so much change once,' she 
 said, tossing her head, which still looked pretty 
 enough with her fresh colour and soft abundant 
 hair; ' but times are changed, I can see.' 
 
 ' I shall have to go away next month,' said 
 I, evading the latter part of her remark. ' You 
 and I mustn't part bad friends, Jane.' 
 
 'I'm not bad friends,' she said, 'though 
 some people are so fickle that they run after 
 every new face they see just because people 
 are high up in the world. I shall be sorry 
 when you go, for it will be fearfully dull — worse 
 than ever. But what will you do after you go 
 away — take a farm about here ? It will want 
 money to do that, with the stock and rotation 
 of crop you're bound to, and all the other fads 
 for making farmers spend money instead of 
 landlords nowadays.' 
 
 ' I don't know what I shall do, Jane,' I 
 answered somewhat reflectively. ' It appears 
 to me that I have not much chance of doing 
 anything in England.'
 
 i6 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' But you wouldn't go out of England, 
 Hereward — that is Mr. Pole,' said the girl 
 hastily, while the colour left her cheek. ' You 
 wouldn't go to America or India or any of those 
 places, surely ? ' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' said I bitterly. * What earthly 
 use is a fellow like me crawling about in 
 England ? I have no profession. I have no 
 money. And the only thing I can try for is 
 the post of a farm-bailiff, a gamekeeper, or a 
 second whip. Even these need recommenda- 
 tions. No ; I'm a useless gentleman, and 
 they might as well have drowned me like a 
 blind puppy as bring me up to such a fate.' 
 
 'Oh, don't you talk like that!' cried the 
 good-natured Jane, much moved by my un- 
 wonted bitterness and the tragic view of my 
 position. ' Surely your friends will do some- 
 thing for you. Set you up in a farm, or get 
 you a place under Government. You might 
 be happy enough that way, if you would only 
 be contented.' Here she sighed softly. Poor 
 Jane ! 
 
 ' I could never be contented,' said I, 'with 
 anything short of a decent position in the 
 world. I hate the sameness of an everyday
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 17 
 
 pokey life. I must travel, or get away from 
 England and try my luck somehow.' 
 
 * Why don't you ask the Squire to make you 
 gamekeeper at the Court ? ' she said mischiev- 
 ously ; and then, marking my sudden change 
 of countenance, said : ' Oh, don't be angry, Mr. 
 Pole ! But I hear father coming ' 
 
 Some days after this conversation I received 
 a letter from my uncle, in which he drew my 
 attention to the fact that the year during which 
 he had consented to pay for my training at 
 Dibblestowe Leys had well - nigh expired. 
 After that time he should be unable to do any- 
 thing further for me, unless I chose to take a 
 junior clerkship in the Treasury or a situation 
 as farm-bailiff; either appointment he doubted 
 not that he could procure for me. 
 
 I was much minded to answer hastily, telling 
 him that he need not trouble himself about 
 such means of maintenance. Then I bethought 
 myself that I ought seriously to think the 
 matter over. Careless and reckless as I had 
 been up to this time, a change had taken place 
 in my position which swayed the whole current 
 of my thoughts. 
 
 I had become sensible that my early admira- 
 
 VOL. I C 
 
 4tf
 
 i8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 tion for Ruth Allerton had gradually ripened, 
 from the opportunities which had been, perhaps 
 unwisely, afforded us of knowing one another 
 fully and unreservedly, into a deep, altogether 
 uncontrollable passion. Gradually had our 
 hearts become attracted, then inextricably inter- 
 twined in that mysterious bond of soul and 
 sense — that complete instinctive union of every 
 thought and feeling, which perhaps rarely 
 occurs so indissolubly as in early youth. 
 
 We had spoken no word on the subject to 
 each other. Yet had we discovered methods 
 of divining each other's inmost thoughts. And 
 as soon as I commenced to think about leaving 
 the neighbourhood and ending the pleasant life 
 of that most idyllic year, ah, me ! the whole 
 truth flashed upon me with lightning-like 
 revelation. 
 
 Curiously enough, I had scarcely realised it 
 before. Utterly contented with the friendly 
 liberty which I had enjoyed, I had, with the 
 utter carelessness of youth, rested satisfied with 
 the present. I was by no means so new to the 
 world that I did not gauge the utter impossi- 
 bility of my gaining the consent of Ruth's 
 parents to an engagement — even were she
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 19 
 
 favourable. County families don't usually 
 arrange the marriages of their daughters on 
 such terms as I had to offer. Granted that she 
 was weak enough to assent to any mad pro- 
 position of mine, what possible hope could I 
 entertain of carrying out an engagement ? I 
 firmly believe, looking back to that time, that I 
 had no other intention than loyally to abstain 
 from compromising or entangling her. I would 
 take my leave calmly of the old hall court and 
 its loved inmates, and afterwards I would leave 
 England. I was fixed in that opinion ; nothing 
 would persuade me to remain pottering in this 
 crowded old country, eating away my heart 
 with a sense of poverty, inferiority, and mis- 
 fortune. England was no place for a younger 
 son. Without money, more than one of my 
 ancestors had left it to seek his fortune. So 
 would I. 
 
 I prepared then for quitting Dibblestowe 
 Leys with something like method. I wrote to 
 my uncle stating that I had no inclination to 
 remain in England and commence a painful 
 ascent to a competence by beginning at the 
 bottom rung of the ladder. That my mind was 
 made up to go to America, north or south, I
 
 20 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 hardly cared which. That possibly I should 
 make for California, then in its second year as 
 a gold-producing country. That he might help 
 me to emigrate if he would. But that if he did 
 not, I should go before the mast and work my 
 passage in the first ship that would take me. 
 His answer was that he thought I was mad, 
 but that if I was determined to go, he would 
 pay my passage, and find me a trifle by way of 
 outfit. 
 
 I did not mention this notable determination 
 to Ruth, reserving it to the last ; perhaps 
 constitutionally unwilling to make a painful 
 statement until it was absolutely necessary. 
 Meanwhile, I commenced to use my practical 
 opportunity effectively ; to that end I worked 
 every day for a short time in the blacksmith's 
 shop attached to the farm, for which fascinating 
 work I had always had a boyish taste. 
 
 One bright morning I was relieving the 
 striker for a short time, when he pulled a grimy 
 newspaper from his pocket. He was a broad- 
 shouldered, muscular young fellow of twenty, 
 who had always been a kind of humble friend 
 and ally of mine. Passionately fond of shoot- 
 ing and fishing, I had taken pains to get him a
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 21 
 
 day's rabbiting occasionally, and had let him 
 carry my basket now and then when we had an 
 afternoon's holiday and set off for the trout 
 stream. ' Would ye look at this, Mr. Pole ? ' 
 said he. ' I ha' gotten it from a brother of 
 mine in Australia, who went there in a big ship 
 called the Red Jacket last year. Quarter- 
 master, Jack was ; and seems loike he's runned 
 away, and gotten hissen up the country to a 
 place they call Ballyrat, where they're a-rootin' 
 out the gold like spuds.' 
 
 ' That must be all nonsense,' said I, unable 
 to take in so much of the unusual at one 
 gulp. 
 
 'Nay, but it is na,' he replied. 'He sent 
 me the letter and two newspapers as I've got 
 at the kitchen as ye'd like to see 'em. Here's 
 the letter. Happen ye'd like to read it. It's 
 Jack's fist sure enough. He wants me to go 
 to him, and I'd go fast enou if I had any neigh- 
 bour folk as 'ud go with me. But I can't think 
 to face so far by mysen.' 
 
 ' Ha! Joe,' said I, raising the heavy hammer 
 and bringing down stroke after stroke with a 
 strangely excited feeling, w^hich made the heavy 
 tool tremble in my grasp like a tack hammer.
 
 22 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' Wants you to go, does he ? Well, maybe you 
 might have a mate after all.' 
 
 I finished my hour's striking, shod a horse, 
 and pointed some farm tools, thinking the while 
 that I miorht find such skill valuable in rude 
 lands. My task done, I ventured to the 
 Grange, and, locking myself in my bedroom, 
 opened the epistle of Mr. Jack Bulder. Thus 
 it ran : — 
 
 'Ballarat, October lo, 1851. 
 
 'Dere Brother — This comes from the land, and not 
 from the good ship Redjacket, as I expected to write home 
 from wen I left the Leys, in consekens of my having run 
 away from the old ship, wich I never thout to have done, 
 only every crew in Melbourne harbour has done the same, 
 and your brother Jack isn't worse than other people. We 
 all cut it, dere brother, because of the goold, which they 
 told us was tremenjus, and too much to resist, and so we 
 found it. Since I have cum here I have made three 
 hundred pound besides two nuggets which i kep in a wosh 
 lether bagg. There is plenty more ware that cum from. 
 Dere brother, if I was you I would cum here at once, and 
 don't let nothin' stop you, I send forty pound; it ain't 
 much, but it will pay your passidge. Dere brother, let 
 nothing kepe you from cummin' hear. This is a very nice 
 country and we all xpeck to make our pile, that is fortun, 
 in too yeares, at farthist. Dere brother, put yourself aboard 
 a ship at once is the advice of yours truly, John Bulder. 
 
 ^ P.S. — My mait has just found a lump of goold worth
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 fourty pound. When you go to Melbourne, go to the 
 Oriental Bank and ask for John Bulder ; they will know 
 my address. I send the Star and the Herild, as will let 
 you know what is happening every day here, quite 
 comman.' 
 
 I carefully read the newspapers after perusing 
 this characteristic but conclusive epistle. They 
 were well printed and respectably conducted. 
 I marked the following paragraph with an 
 instinctive feeling of relief and approbation, as 
 follows : — 
 
 *We are glad to be enabled to chronicle the good 
 fortune of our old friends Billy Watson and party. They 
 struck good gold on the Monkey lead last month, and 
 have washed up 200 loads to-day for 300 oz., worth at 
 present price ;£"iioo, no bad result for six weeks' work 
 for four men. 
 
 ' The Blue Danube Reef has, we hear, come again on 
 the lode at the 300 ft. level, and the specimens are ex- 
 cessively rich. Shares immediately went up, and it's 
 reported that Mr. Smarter, by timely sales, cleared ;^2 7oo 
 profit upon his original investment. We wish him every 
 success. 
 
 * A bazaar was opened yesterday for the benefit of the 
 local hospital, which we are glad to see was extensively 
 patronised. Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon 
 those ladies who have taken so much pains and bestowed 
 such unremitting personal labour on this exceedingly attrac- 
 tive exhibition. More than ^400, we hear, were collected 
 and subscribed. When we think of the great uncertainty of
 
 24 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 life and limb existing in mining communities, it is obvious 
 that such an institution, efficiently worked, is almost in- 
 estimable. We trust that the miners will rally round this 
 unsectarian charity at another time. Meanwhile, may the 
 Green Gully Hospital flourish and its founder meet with all 
 manner of success.' 
 
 Here, In my circumstances, was a manifest 
 revelation. It was plainly Indicative of the 
 country to which to go, and the reason for 
 which to go. In other lands long toilsome 
 years must be spent before there was even the 
 chance of a fortune being made. In this 
 wonderful country a single month might place 
 one In that blessed condition of Independence, 
 that no amount of self-denial and labour in 
 England could secure In half a lifetime. 
 
 I read and re-read the newspaper — the Star 
 — from end to end. The more I read was I 
 convinced of the bona fides of the Information, 
 and the general advantages of the locality. I 
 saw by the section of ' Police News ' that 
 offences were unsparingly punished in accordance 
 with British law. Deeds of mercy and charity 
 were by no means omitted from the dally life of 
 the tollers for gold. It was not all coideitr de rose, 
 as the record of casualties and accidents proved. 
 Still the fact remained incontestable that for-
 
 I THE MINER'S RIGHT 25 
 
 tunes we^'e bemg made weekly, daily, in that 
 
 favoured spot. The gold deposit was not likely 
 
 to be worked out very soon. Other finds were 
 
 referred to. It was the modern Eldorado. A 
 
 two months' voyage would land one there. My 
 
 ^.. ^ mind was made up. I would try the gold region, 
 
 ^' and either win fortune, with whom fame is 
 
 ^^ generally on speaking terms, or pay the usual 
 
 -/♦i. penalty. 
 
 I informed Joe Bulder of my decision. 
 " ^ Somewhat to my surprise he at once proposed 
 ^ jto accompany me. ' I'm nowt but a plain lad, 
 Mister Pole,' said he, ' but you might loike to 
 see a Dibb'stowe face in foreign parts ; and I'll 
 stand by thee hand and foot, I reckon. I'm 
 tired of working here for Farmer Mangold. 
 Doesn't thee see blacksmiths be a-gettin' a 
 pound a day oot there? — shoeing horses a 
 pound a set. Why, thou'st made a pound 
 thysen this marnin', besides sharpening they 
 picks at a shillin' each. Danged if I don't 
 keep t' forge while thee goes a-seekin' for 
 gowd, and we can share and share loike.' 
 
 Joe litde thought that he was advocating the 
 great Australian mining custom of ' dividing 
 mates,' by which most generously equitable
 
 26 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap, i 
 
 portion of the unwritten law, fortunes have 
 been made and shared on every goldfield in 
 AustraHa. ' I shall be only too glad to have 
 such a good fellow with me, Joe,' said I. 'It's 
 a bargain. The next thing is to find a ship.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 My intercourse with Allerton Court and Its 
 inmates had continued as usual. A half- 
 regretful tone had certainly characterised our 
 latter Interviews, since I had allowed It to be 
 known that I should not remain at DIbblestowe 
 Leys. May It have been that In each heart 
 was still some unacknowledged feeling that I 
 might not finally quit the neighbourhood, or, at 
 any rate, go no farther away than the county 
 in which my uncle resided. A few questions 
 had been put by the Squire and Mrs. Allerton 
 as to my future projects. To these I had 
 answered without strictly defining my Inten- 
 tions. I had, In return, received good advice 
 from the Squire, on the subject of making up 
 my mind and taking a path In life. They little 
 dreamed of the one I had chosen. 
 
 At length, however, the day before my
 
 28 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 departure arrived, and I rode over to the Court 
 to pay my farewell visit. The Squire was away 
 at a neighbouring farm, and Mrs. Allerton had 
 accompanied him for a morning drive. I found 
 Ruth in the old-fashioned garden, near the fish- 
 pond, a place where a stone balustered terrace 
 had been built, nigh which was a seat which 
 commanded an unrivalled view in our eyes. 
 There were Hollingbourne Woods and Torry 
 Hill — the marshes by the sea, with the isle of 
 Sheppy like a cloud in the hazy distance. 
 
 It was called the Lady's Seat, and was 
 popularly supposed to have been placed there 
 and much affected by an ancestress who had 
 lost her lover in the battle of Long Marston 
 Moor. It was the favourite resort of Ruth, 
 who was of a contemplative and studious 
 disposition. Here she was accustomed to take 
 her sketch-book or a volume, and spend many 
 a glad spring morning or still summer after- 
 noon under the shade of the ancestral oaks. 
 Half instinctively I wended my steps thither, 
 when I heard that the Squire and Mrs. Allerton 
 had driven over to Ollendean. 
 
 'You find me here all alone,' said she, 'and 
 I am not sorry. I have been reading the Bride
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 29 
 
 of Lamntermoor over again, and making myself 
 low-spirited over the woes of that most unlucky 
 Lucy Ashton. Yet, I cannot but think, if she 
 had acted with more firmness, and been true to 
 her better nature, the tragedy need never have 
 taken place. She was a victim of indecision.' 
 
 ' What, in spite of her mother, that terribly 
 despotic matron?' said I, 'and the prophecy? — 
 
 " When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood 
 shall ride, 
 And woo a dead maiden to be his bride. 
 He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow, 
 And his name shall be lost for evermoe ! " 
 
 What girl could stand against such a rhythmi- 
 cal doom, even leaving out the Inexorable 
 parent ? ' 
 
 ' Some girls would — most of them, I hope,' 
 she said, looking dreamily across the far wide 
 landscape, over the greater part of which her 
 ancestors had once held lordship. ' It might 
 have rent her heart well-nigh to resist her parents, 
 but there was no other course to pursue.' 
 
 ' Do you think you would have had strength 
 of mind and constancy enough to have kept faith 
 with the ruined, ill-fated Ravenswood ?' asked 
 I, with a sudden impulse ; ' think of the superior
 
 30 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 claims of a smooth, safe marriage with the 
 prosperous Laird of Bucklaw.' 
 
 Her cheek flushed for a moment, but her 
 eye met mine with an artless candour, which 
 showed how little she realised the analogy. 
 
 ' It's hard to go at once from romance to 
 reality,' she said, 'and I can hardly imagine the 
 situation occurring to any one in these modern 
 days ; but, surely, if she had ever loved him, 
 she must have clung to him more for his poverty 
 and his banishment. As for agreeing to her 
 mother's hateful project, she must have been 
 mad, poor thing, as she afterwards proved to 
 be, when she permitted them to speak of it to 
 her. But suppose we leave Sir Walter here,' 
 putting the book on the seat, * and walk down 
 the beech avenue this lovely morning. Have 
 you had any sport lately '^. I don't think you 
 have been over for a week.' 
 
 For a while, as we walked along the well- 
 known avenue which followed the brow of the 
 eminence, through the opening of which the 
 hills, the valleys, with their woods of hazel and 
 Spanish chestnut, contrasted strangely with the 
 dreary marshes, a momentary forgetfulness of 
 my plans and purpose possessed me. We talked
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 31 
 
 as usual upon the hundred -and -one subjects 
 which were common ground between us. The 
 state of the county poHtlcs, the new clergyman 
 in a neighbouring parish credited with advanced 
 views, the box of new books from Mudie's, the 
 grand run from Staplehurst, in which the Squire 
 had been well up with the hounds, a great 
 dinner-party which was to take place next week 
 and to which I was to come and practise a part 
 in a charade. A string of half-sisterly con- 
 fidences which had always, since our first 
 meeting, been open to me, and of which neither 
 of us had ever thought, except as trifles, which 
 might pass between ordinary friends or relatives 
 of similar ages. My heart had only now un- 
 deceived itself Hers was as yet strong and 
 unfaltering, with the unsuspecting confidence of 
 innocent girlhood. 
 
 I have often thought since that Ruth Allerton 
 was a very uncommon type of womanhood, 
 singularly unversed in the lore of the affections, 
 in which knowledge girls of. her age so often 
 discover a premature shrewdness. Unlike most 
 of her contemporaries, she was indisposed to the 
 amusements befitting her age. The Squire 
 abhorred London, and rarely went except when
 
 32 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 he could not avoid it. To Mrs. Allerton there 
 was no happiness where her husband was not. 
 And so it came to pass that Ruth had Hved a 
 Hfe practically isolated from the gay world, fully 
 absorbed in her own pursuits and resources. 
 
 When I recall the subjects upon which our 
 long talks chiefly turned — such unusual ones, 
 for instance, as what was the happier state of 
 life, whether to live for oneself or for others ? 
 This we decided very strongly in favour of the 
 unselfish line, as who at our ages would not ? 
 A great and often resolved scheme for hers was, 
 how to do the greatest good to the poor in this 
 or any other neighbourhood, without destroying 
 their independence and self- respect. How 
 rnany plots against capitalists did we hatch in 
 this behalf — as lawyers say. 
 
 What was the exact proportion of mental and 
 bodily labour most fitted to produce true health 
 of sense and spirit. Whether voluntary or in- 
 voluntary labour was more beneficial. 
 
 Since then, how many different women of 
 every creed and clime, rank and degree, have 
 I known, only to confirm my fixed opinion, that 
 she was a choice floweret of the rarest type of 
 womanhood. For, old or young, rich or poor,
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 33 
 
 wise or vain, homely or fair, I have never met 
 with any woman Hke her. 
 
 Surely, there never was one more unconscious 
 of her personal attractions. They were suffi- 
 ciently visible to the ordinary gaze, yet she 
 rarely troubled herself to heighten them in the 
 slightest degree, never alluded to her form or 
 face, hardly to those of others, and never but as 
 illustrations of a fact. Plainness of apparel, 
 except on occasions when she could not escape 
 adornment, invariably characterised her, though 
 she, perhaps, was a little exigea^ite as to 
 material. I used laughingly to tell her that she 
 would make an excellent Quakeress, but that 
 her muslin would always be wonderfully fine, 
 and cost more than any one else's. 
 
 Now, all this pleasant companionship must 
 perforce come to an end. No more arguments 
 when, with the pure light of truth shining from 
 her earnest eyes, she would combat my utili- 
 tarian views, often adopted to rouse opposition, 
 and to evoke the enthusiasm in which I delighted. 
 
 I did not, excited as I was with the idea, 
 realise within myself the completeness of dis- 
 ruption which would be caused from all my old 
 ties and life moorings. 
 
 VOL. I r>
 
 34 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 * Ruth,' said I, ' do you know that a sense of 
 mournful foreboding is creeping over me, lovely 
 as is the day and perfect the scene. I have bad 
 news which I must tell you. I am about to 
 leave Dibblestowe Leys and — and, indeed, 
 England, perhaps for some years.' 
 
 ' Leave England,' she said, with such a 
 sudden, sharp intonation, almost a cry of pain, 
 that I looked up amazed. * Oh, you are not 
 speaking in earnest, Here ward ; tell me you are 
 not.' 
 
 ' I must go away from this place, happy as I 
 have been here,' I said. * And as I have no 
 fortune, nor the slightest hope of making money 
 here, I must go to some part of the w^orld where 
 I may, if I have luck, make it quickly.' 
 
 She had looked at me for one moment with 
 a wild, piteous gaze of incredulity. Then she 
 sank down on a rustic seat bench, and, turning 
 away her head, sobbed unrestrainedly. 
 
 * Ruth,' said I, 'dearest, darling Ruth! do 
 not grieve so. I may, after all, only be a short 
 time absent. Besides, most men have to leave 
 their homes in youth. Why should I expect 
 a better fate ? If I had dreamed that you would 
 feel it thus, I might have '
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 35 
 
 She interrupted me with a wave of her hand, 
 as if forbidding me to continue my explanation. 
 I sat down beside her and permitted her to give 
 free course to her grief. 
 
 After a while she turned her face towards 
 me, — that sweet face I so often see in my dreams. 
 It was calm and still, but with the strange un- 
 natural look which comes when all hope has 
 passed away. 
 
 * Why did you tell me so suddenly, 
 Here ward?' she said softly. 'You see you 
 have made me confess to caring so very much 
 for your departure. If I had had more 
 warning, I might have behaved like a young 
 lady of the period, and hid my heart behind a 
 cheerful farewell. Are you not sorry for your 
 hastiness ?' 
 
 ' I am more glad than I ever was at any- 
 thing in the world since I was born,' I said, 
 throwing myself on my knees before her, and 
 kissing her cold hands, until they seemed to 
 burn with the wild fever of my own blood. 
 ' But I feel as if I had treated the Squire and 
 your mother dishonourably, in winning their 
 daughter's heart, under what they will consider 
 false pretences.'
 
 36 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 'We have both been to blame,' she said 
 sorrowfully, ' If people are to be blamed for 
 loving each other fondly, without a thought of 
 evil or deceit. But we could not help it, I 
 suppose. And I can certainly declare, that I 
 did not think I cared more for you than for a dear 
 friend whose tastes and feelings seemed much to 
 harmonise with and elevate my own. And now 
 you are going away — for ever, perhaps ; mtist 
 you go away ? Does love always begin by 
 making people utterly wretched ?' 
 
 ' I must go away,' I said, ' unless I am to 
 ask the Squire to please to support me for the 
 love of his child, or unless I am to content 
 myself with a position of sordid penury, as 
 hateful to myself as it would be dishonouring to 
 you. No, dearest ; there is but one path to me 
 now — that of honour and adventure. The die 
 is cast. But what are we to say for ourselves 
 at the Court ?' 
 
 'We must tell the truth, of course,' she 
 said proudly. ' There need be no concealment. 
 I am not ashamed of my choice, my own 
 Here ward — are you ? Then let us go boldly to 
 my dearest mother. I will tell her, as I have 
 always told her, everything from a little girl.
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 37 
 
 You are to dine here to-night, so you will have 
 to tell my dear old father.' 
 
 * And what will he say, Ruth, do you think, 
 when I mention my very handsome expect- 
 ations ?' 
 
 ' He may be angry or grieved at first, but 
 you must not mind that. The worst will soon 
 be over. And he is so generous and just in all 
 his thoughts — he will consider my happiness 
 before everything. Tell him what you hope to 
 do in — in — this far country ; and that in a few 
 years you will come to claim me. There is no 
 more to be said. It is the truth ; and the truth, 
 he is fond of saying, always prevails.' 
 
 All this was very well, and as my darling 
 looked into my face with her tender, honest 
 eyes, I felt it to be in a way reassuring ; but the 
 truth was, in the present case, that I was most 
 horribly frightened, and, having a clearer view 
 than my unworldly love of the extremely 
 inadequate grounds upon which I had sought 
 her affection, dreaded the dinner referred to, 
 as if it had been a feast to precede dissolution. 
 
 Having made up our minds to dare the 
 dreadful alternative of facing the Squire, Ruth 
 and I, with the happy rashness of youth.
 
 38 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 commenced to look upon our joint future as a 
 thing assured, in some form or other, and to 
 make plans with the cheerful confidence of birds 
 in a premature spring. 
 
 After dinner, during which Ruth had been 
 very quiet, even distraite, — but as she was often 
 so, less notice was taken of her mood than would 
 have been the case with a girl whose spirits 
 were ordinarily lighter, — I opened the trenches. 
 
 ' I am afraid I shall have to say good-bye, 
 soon, to this neighbourhood, and to all my 
 pleasant visits to Allerton Court, Squire,' said I, 
 gulping it out. 
 
 ' How is that?' said the Squire, 'leave the 
 country side ! why, we couldn't do without 
 you — who is to drive Mrs. Allerton, and get 
 ferns for Ruth, and sketch ruins for Dame 
 Ermentrude T 
 
 This was an old aunt, a special patroness 
 of mine, who lived in what was called the Old 
 Dower House, and who petted me for want of 
 much other kin to waste her loving heart 
 upon. 
 
 'Why, we shall be altogether moped and 
 desolated. I wanted you to ride that new 
 horse for me this next season. Why not stay
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 39 
 
 another year at the Leys ? You won't know too 
 much farming then, I'll be bound.' 
 
 * And what am I to do afterwards ?' said I. 
 ' No, Squire, the long and the short of it Is, that 
 I have made up my mind to strike out a new 
 path for myself, if not In this country, In some 
 other.' 
 
 Here Mrs. Allerton and Ruth left us, and I 
 continued with a boldness akin to reckless- 
 ness. 
 
 ' And I have something more to tell you, 
 Squire,' said I, looking him full In the face, 
 ' something, I am afraid, that you will not 
 approve of, but it cannot be helped.' 
 
 ' What the deuce Is the matter ? ' said the 
 old man, 'you haven't married Miss Mangold ? 
 I should consider that Imprudent, I must say, 
 but not my affair.' 
 
 'Never mind poor Jane Mangold, Squire,' 
 said I. 'It Is no laughing matter. Your 
 daughter and I have discovered that we love 
 one another, and have this day plighted our troth. 
 You will not suspect me of making dishonour- 
 able use of the confidence with which you have 
 always treated me, but the fact is, I believe we 
 neither of us suspected the state of our feelings.
 
 40 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap, 
 
 and the avowal of them to-day was the purest 
 accident.' 
 
 ' What ? ' said the Squire, jumping off his 
 chair with alarm and astonishment, 'do you 
 mean to tell me that you two young fools have 
 engaged yourselves to be married without ask- 
 ing any one's leave in the matter ? What in 
 the name of everything imprudent have you to 
 marry upon. Master Hereward ? What geese 
 — idiots — deaf-and-dumb blind incurables have 
 Mrs. Allerton and I been ! And Ruth, too, the 
 last girl I should have ever thought would have 
 dreamed of such folly. My poor Ruth ! ' 
 
 'Squire,' said I, 'I will say good-bye, and 
 get back to the Leys. I see you are too 
 excited to hear what I have to say to-night.' 
 
 ' No, no, boy,' he said, motioning me back to 
 my chair. ' Mustn't turn you out like that. 
 You've always been a good lad, and one after 
 my own heart. But the inconceivable folly of 
 two children like you wishing to be married. 
 Why, it will be time enough for you to be 
 thinking of it this day ten years, and not then, 
 if you haven't a home to offer her. And to 
 think of my folly ! I am the person most to 
 blame in the matter.'
 
 11 THE MINER'S RIGHT 41 
 
 ' But, Squire,' said I, 'suppose I make a fair 
 thing, as fortunes go, in five years, I shall then 
 be six and twenty, and not so unpardonably 
 young. Ruth is not eighteen, so she could 
 afford to wait till she was three or four and 
 twenty, without wasting her bloom.' 
 
 ' Wait be hanged ! ' said the choleric old 
 gentleman ; * she would wait for twenty years. 
 I know her nature ; but do you think I want to 
 see my girl shrivelling up into an angular old 
 maid, with her temper and her health both 
 soured together, her good looks gone, and her 
 life wasted for the sake of a fellow who is, as 
 like as not, racketing on the other side of the 
 globe, and taking the matter very coolly ? 
 And what is this wonderful plan, may I ask, for 
 making a fortune in five years ? ' 
 
 * I am going to Australia to try my luck at 
 these goldfields we hear so much about. There 
 is no doubt they are wonderful places, and the 
 yields are enormous.' 
 
 *A11 lies, I daresay,' said the distrustful 
 senior. 'Anyhow, I have no great opinion of 
 colonies ; lots of people go there, who are no 
 great good when they leave, and they come 
 back a great deal worse.'
 
 42 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 * Look at the paper,' I said, and I unfolded 
 the Forest Creek Herald, which I had kept 
 and read and re-read till I knew the names of 
 all the people on the diggings as well as if I 
 had lived there. 
 
 * People write queer things in newspapers, 
 even in England,' he said, reaching out his 
 hand for the journal in question. ' I hardly 
 think they can be very trustworthy in a 
 colony.' 
 
 * Read for yourself,' said I. 'I think the 
 internal evidence shows intelligence and re- 
 spectability. There are chapter and verse for 
 the many wonderful things recorded.' 
 
 ' Certainly, it is well printed and got up,' he 
 said, relenting somewhat as he glanced over it ; 
 ' and really, it does seem all very wonderful 
 and enticing. If I were a young man, I think 
 I should take a run there myself. What does 
 this mean ? '' We are gratified to learn that the 
 shareholders in the Welcome Home Reef, who 
 have been for more than a year hoping against 
 hope, have struck good gold in their three 
 hundred and fifty feet level. This at once 
 sends up the shares to seventy-five and eighty. 
 They were offered at seven ten last week.
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 43 
 
 One gentleman whom we could name has 
 realised twenty thousand pounds, in addition to 
 his Sandy Creek profits, within the last fort- 
 night." ' 
 
 *It means,' said I, 'that a few energetic 
 workers have been rewarded for their pluck 
 and patience, — and after a fashion which would 
 need half the years of a man's life to develop in 
 England.' 
 
 * I must say,' he continued, looking over the 
 alluring announcements, 'that such enterprises 
 wear a very feasible appearance, as described 
 here.' 
 
 And he began to quote afresh. 
 
 ' '' The Crinoline Claim washed up for four 
 hundred loads on Saturday last ; the dirt went 
 well over two ounces to the load. Not so far 
 off a thousand pounds a man for eight weeks' 
 work. The shareholders are comparatively 
 new arrivals." That sounds encouraging, I 
 must say,' said the partly mollified elder. ' But 
 there is no certainty, no certainty. Ah, here's 
 another. '* All previous finds on the field have 
 been reduced to insignificance by the great 
 find of the Welcome Nugget, at Whipstick, by 
 Happy Jack and the Fiddler. Its net weight
 
 44 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 was 170 lb. 6 oz. Its value is estimated by the 
 manager of the Bank of New Holland as not 
 less than ^8000 sterling." Ha! ha! we don't 
 pull them up in Old England like that, Here- 
 ward, lad ! I suppose there'll be no keeping 
 thee ; I should go myself if I were young 
 again.' 
 
 On the morning after the storm — the winds 
 and waves having somewhat abated — a calmer 
 consideration of matters ensued. Of course, 
 Ruth had confessed all things to her mother, 
 and with feminine perseverance and entreaty 
 had fully enlisted that kindly matron on her 
 side. 
 
 'When I married your father, my dear,' she 
 said, * he never expected to succeed to this dear 
 old place. Several lives lay between us and 
 its possession, all of which were inscrutably 
 removed. We had to undergo many things ; 
 but we never repented of the tie which had 
 joined us before we came to our kingdom. 
 Still, some provision is needed to be assured. 
 I must say, I think Hereward very brave for 
 resolving to go to such a horrid country, and 
 not more adventurous than a young man 
 should be.'
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 45 
 
 It was finally settled that our engagement, 
 which could not be annulled without an amount 
 of judicial cruelty which neither parent had the 
 heart to inflict, should be conditionally ratified. 
 I was to be permitted to seek my fortune in the 
 far unknown land, concerning which they had 
 such very slender information. Ruth would 
 wait at home for five years, if that period 
 should be consumed in the not always speedy 
 process of making a fortune. 
 
 Have I before stated that the Squire and 
 his wife w^ere not average specimens of the 
 upper classes of the day ? Strange to say, they 
 elected to consult the feelings of their child. 
 They did not scoff, after the first natural out- 
 burst of the Squire, at youth and strength, high 
 hope and honest determination, nor secretly 
 resolve to compel Ruth to accept the first 
 middle-aged suitor of indifferent morals and 
 unexceptionable fortune that presented himself. 
 That such would have been the course pursued 
 by a very large majority of parents occupying 
 the same or a higher social position, my 
 experience of life enables me to assert fear- 
 lessly. Thank Heaven, my darling had been 
 blessed with a father and mother of wholly
 
 46 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 different ideas ; otherwise she might not have 
 been her sweet self, and the star which shone 
 so brightly amid the storm - clouds which 
 enveloped my career might have sunk for ever 
 in darkness and despair. 
 
 We, happy and heedless children that we 
 were, felt as transported with joy as if we had 
 received permission to marry next month. 
 Ruth was one of those maidens to whom 
 watching and waiting have ever been nearly as 
 suitable, indeed, quite as secretly satisfactory 
 as the immediate fulfilment of their hopes, as 
 affording scope for the self - sacrifice which 
 constituted so large a portion of their nature. 
 And I, on the other hand, felt moved with the 
 natural passion of adventure, so strong in early 
 youth, to kill my dragons and slay my 
 enchanters in decent profusion, before I entered 
 into the undisturbed possession of the fairy 
 princess and the enchanted castle. 
 
 Of course, Mrs. Grundy outdid herself in 
 protestations against the madness of the Squire 
 for even sanctioning our engagement. A 
 young man without a penny in the world, who 
 was going to a rude wild country like Australia, 
 from which he never would be heard of again.
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 47 
 
 And really, it certainly was so difficult to 
 believe — here they were permitting that nice, 
 sweet girl — she had not much money, to be 
 sure, but she belonged to a county family — to 
 engage herself to a penniless youngster, with- 
 out money, profession, or expectation ! 
 
 Fortunately for me, both the Squire and his 
 wife treated such babble with supreme contempt. 
 They were absurd enough to desire above all 
 their daughter's happiness. They knew her 
 steadfast disposition too well to doubt her 
 constancy — to think of coercing her will. The 
 affair was — even the marriage which it fore- 
 shadowed — a fixed and settled thing, not to be 
 gossiped about but to be made the best of. 
 
 The Squire made an attempt to prevent my 
 emigration, which, like most English people of 
 assured position, he looked upon as more bitter 
 than death. He offered me one of his own 
 farms at a low rent, with a promise of a loan of 
 money sufficient to stock it. But my pride was 
 fully aroused. My determination to do some- 
 thing worthy of the inestimable treasure they 
 had confided to me was unalterable. So, in 
 despite of all obstacles and hindrances, a month 
 saw my passage taken, and all preparations
 
 48 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 made for my voyage to the other end of the 
 world. 
 
 My uncle did not attempt to alter my heroic 
 determination ; he acted sensibly, if not 
 affectionately. 
 
 ' I observe in the papers,' he said, ' that very 
 astonishing finds have been made by the 
 adventurers who have crowded from all lands to 
 the Australian goldfields. You are young and 
 strong, and totally without occupation. All 
 the better for you that you have good blood 
 in your veins. Your sisters will need every 
 farthing of what was left by my brother. Still, 
 I can make shift to pay your passage, and find 
 you a decent outfit. You may make a fortune. 
 Many as broken a ship has come to land. 
 Write now and then and say how you get on. 
 We have not, perhaps, been the most 
 affectionate of relatives. When you reach my 
 age you may, perhaps, understand some of the 
 feelings of a disappointed man. Sincerely I 
 bid God to bless and speed you.' 
 
 He shook my hand more warmly than I 
 thought it was in his nature to do. My sisters 
 hung weeping around me. In a few minutes 
 the dog -cart came to take me to the station.
 
 II THE MINER'S RIGHT 49 
 
 and I left the home of my boyhood — for ever. 
 Joe Bulder joined me at the station. That 
 evening we slept on board the grand clipper 
 ship Marco Polo, Captain Driver, bound for 
 Melbourne, in company with four hundred and 
 fifty other passengers, of every conceivable age, 
 profession, and variety of mankind. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Apparently we escaped all perils of the deep. 
 To them I do not need specially to refer. For 
 here we are at the Yatala diggings, I and my 
 worthy mate and friend, Joe Bulder, both con- 
 siderably altered in several ways. Two men 
 are sitting by a large fire of logs, near the 
 doorway of a small tent. They are old mates, 
 and the other shareholders in the claim. Our 
 party consists of four, which is much the most 
 common number, particularly where the sinking 
 is deepish as here at Yatala. 
 
 As to dress and general appearance, I don't 
 think any one would have recognised the fresh- 
 coloured, moderately well got-up youngster who 
 used to sit in the Squire's pew at Bishop's Cote 
 Church, or even the amateur farm -labourer 
 holding the plough occasionally, or driving the 
 engine at Dibblestowe Leys. The man who
 
 CHAP. Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 51 
 
 has just come out of the tent wears certainly a 
 different appearance. He is arranging his rai- 
 ment preparatory to commencing 'the night-shift' 
 — eight hours' uninterrupted work, nearly one 
 hundred and fifty feet below the earth's surface. 
 The which term commences at eight p.m., 
 finishing at four o'clock in the morning. This 
 man is taller and broader than the slight 
 stripling who left England four years since in 
 the Marco Polo. His arms are bare to the 
 elbows, up to which is rolled a close-fitting 
 flannel shirt. They are bronzed with exposure 
 to a fiercer sun than that which ripens England's 
 harvests, and the muscles stand out, cord-like, 
 in relief. Round the waist, which is that of an 
 athlete in high training, is a leathern strap 
 tightly belted. He wears trousers of moleskin 
 which, though clean and of fairly good cut, have, 
 from constant washing with water holding a 
 large proportion of clay in solution, become of a 
 bright and cheerful yellow, altogether ineradi- 
 cable. Yet, though the garb is plain and 
 workmanlike, there is no trace of unnecessary 
 coarseness of habit. The short hair and trimmed 
 beard are those of the fashion-guided unit of 
 humanity, while a studied air of cleanliness 
 
 UBRARy 
 "NiVERSiTYOFILUNOm
 
 52 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 denoting regular baths and ablutions is plainly- 
 visible to the observant eye. This man is 
 Harry Pole, the digger, myself, kind reader, 
 after four years' steady, ill-rewarded toil at 
 Australian and, indeed, New Zealand goldfields 
 — no nearer, as may be surmised, to the fortune 
 which was to precede the priceless gift of the 
 hand of Ruth Allerton. 
 
 Let us listen to the conversation of this man 
 and his comrades. 
 
 ^I don't see the use of going any furder 
 with this confounded claim ; here we've been 
 bustin' ourselves for the last three months, night 
 and day, and not a foot nearer to the gold than 
 we was when the first shovelful was took out. 
 We haven't a pound to bless ourselves with, 
 and we're in debt to Mrs. Mangrove, at the 
 Beehive store, that deep that I'm ashamed to 
 go in for powder, or a bit of fuse. We're on 
 the bottom safe enough, and there's not gold 
 enough to put on the p'int of a needle. I say 
 ding it this very night, and let's try for a 
 show somewhere else.' 
 
 This encouraging speech, which most 
 accurately described our financial position and 
 prospects, capital and expectations, is made by
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 53 
 
 Mr. Cyrus Yorke, a young man of unusual 
 physical power, but weak as to the reasoning 
 faculties. He is of English descent, born in 
 Australia, and though possessing many good 
 qualities, is incorrigibly careless, besides being 
 averse to sustained labour of body or mind. 
 He is the only man of the party who is not a 
 bachelor. His wife is a good-looking, good- 
 tempered little woman, with twice as much 
 sense as her spouse. She is the housewife for 
 the party, and is treated on that account and 
 for other reasons with great respect and 
 consideration. Indeed, but for her conciliatory 
 ways, it is most probable that some one of Yorke's 
 many provoking sins of omission or commission 
 would have led long ere this to his exclusion 
 from the party. 
 
 ' We're bound to see the end of this drive,' I 
 say, in an argumentative tone. * Everybody 
 believes that the '' lead " lies due west of us, and 
 in thirty or forty feet we imtst strike it, if it's 
 there at all. It would be foolish to throw away 
 all -our work and expense, perhaps, just a few 
 yards from good gold.' 
 
 ' We're bound to drive oot to the last inch,' 
 said the square-set determined -looking man
 
 54 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 smoking a short black pipe. ' Harry here's 
 marked and ciphered it all out, and we all 
 agreed to it. What's the use of throwing up 
 the sponge afore the fight's over } What dost 
 thou say, Major .^' 
 
 * I fully agree with Pole,' said the individual 
 addressed, who, in monkey-jacket and gener- 
 ally rather roughish array, was lying on one 
 of the stretchers reading an English newspaper. 
 ' He has worked out the thing, as you say. I 
 was too lazy to follow him. But he is generally 
 right and Cyrus is always wrong ; so, perhaps, 
 he had better take his line and mind his 
 immediate business, which is to tackle this 
 night-shift, and wire-in at the cross-cut without 
 any more humbug.' 
 
 *Well, I'm blessed,' growled the unpopular 
 candidate, ' if that ain't a nice way to talk to a 
 mate and a shareholder, Major. One would 
 think I was a wages-man, the way you three 
 coves bosses it over me. You'll rouse the 
 British lion one of these fine days, and so I 
 tell you.' 
 
 Apparently Cyrus Yorke was minded to defer 
 poking up that long-suffering royal beast until 
 a more convenient season — for he walked on to
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 55 
 
 the * brace ' and commenced to peel off his 
 heavier garments, preparatory to descending 
 into the bowels of the earth, without more ado. 
 
 'You're all agin me,' he said, as he opened 
 his vast chest and stretched his colossal arms 
 above his head, as if trying whether his joints 
 were about to act in their usual manner. ' But 
 that's the way in this country, the majority 
 always has the pull. It's time that kind o' thing 
 was stopped, I think. Now, Mr. Joseph Bulder, 
 you go and lead the old mare. I s'pose you 
 don't want me to break my back, as bad as I 
 am.' 
 
 * Thou'rt a rattlin' fine chap, if thou'd use thy 
 four bones as is summot like, and drop botherin' 
 thy old turnip of a head, as God Almighty never 
 intended ye to do nowt wi' but tak' ither folks' 
 orders. I'll back thee to put down a shaft 
 agin any chap in Yatala. But don't thee go 
 argufying, for it spoils thee. Ask thee wife else. 
 Steady ! Bess, old girl.' 
 
 ^ Cyrus Yorke made no further reply, but 
 clasping the rope with his hands above his head, 
 placed one foot in the loop at the end and 
 swung himself off the wooden stage, which is 
 always built at the mouth of a mining shaft.
 
 56 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 A 'sprag,' being a stout piece of hard wood, 
 was inserted between the rope and the iron 
 roller on which the rope ran, and thus the miner 
 was slowly and steadily lowered down the deep, 
 dark, apparently fathomless shaft. 
 
 In being lowered, dependent upon a single 
 rope which, though apparently strong, has been 
 known to break, the sensations are complicated 
 if the depth be much over a hundred feet. The 
 closeness of the sides of the shaft to the explorer 
 gives a species of false security, by no means 
 borne out by reason. An inexperienced crags- 
 man would hardly consent to be lowered a 
 hundred and fifty feet over the face of a 
 Hebridean precipice, with the sea a thousand 
 feet below, and nought but the sky and 
 clamouring sea-fowl around — above. 
 
 Yet one adventure is fully as dangerous in 
 reality as the other. Let but a sudden spasm, 
 or syncope, attack the adventurer in the shaft, 
 and if he loses hold of the rope, no power on 
 earth can save him. The smooth hard sides of 
 the shaft furnish no foot-hold, did the velocity 
 acquired in falling not prevent him from 
 making use of them. Down, down, he must 
 fall until the end of the long cruel pit be
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 57 
 
 reached — and then, let those say who have ever 
 assisted to raise a man who from carelessness, 
 foul air, any one of the many accidents common 
 to miners, has fallen down a deep shaft. 
 
 In this instance Cyrus was not fated to 
 illustrate any of these dismal theories. Holding 
 the rope easily with one hand, and occasionally 
 preventing by adroit touch of foot against the 
 sides of the shaft the rope from swinging round, 
 and so discomposing his equilibrium, he passed 
 swiftly yet surely down to the bottom level, and 
 having exhausted his small supply of ill-temper, 
 crept along a gallery running at right angles to 
 the shaft, where, seizing a pick, he commenced 
 to knock down on to the floor of the gallery a 
 stratum of mixed sand, pebbles, and small quartz 
 fragments. Of these there was a layer about 
 nine inches thick in the roof of the gallery, 
 or ' drive,' as it is invariably called in Australian 
 mining parlance. He had dragged after him a 
 large raw-hide bucket which he found in the 
 bottom of the shaft. This he set up on end, 
 and quickly filling, drew to the shaft and 
 attached to the iron hook at the end of the rope 
 by which he had descended. He then pulled 
 twice a small line which hung down, almost
 
 58 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 invisible, close by the wall of the shaft. This 
 line moved a rude apparatus, in the nature of 
 an indicator, at the mouth of the shaft. It was 
 a hammer-like piece of hardwood above a plate 
 of tin, on which, at each pull of the line, it 
 smote smartly. The meaning of the percussion 
 was, attention — all ready — or pull up, as the 
 case might be. The old mare appeared to 
 understand it, for she at once pricked up her 
 ears, moved herself square to a single-tree by 
 which her trace-chains were fastened, holding 
 herself in readiness to draw. 
 
 ' Go on, old woman,' said Joe Bulder, ' haul 
 away.' 
 
 The intelligent animal, long trained to this 
 particular kind of work, needed no further 
 urging. Setting herself staunchly to the collar, 
 she drew steadily at the rope, now tightened by 
 the weight of the leathern bag, with, perhaps, a 
 hundredweight and a half of gravel therein. 
 She walked along the track made by her own 
 feet, called by miners the 'horse walk,' its 
 position being formally indicated by two lines 
 of very hastily constructed rail fence, and drew 
 the auriferous burden yet nearer to the upper 
 air. When she reached the limit of the horse
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 59 
 
 walk, denoted merely by a sapling laid across 
 two forked uprights, she stopped promptly, 
 holding, however, the rope, and neither turning 
 nor yet permitting it to slacken. At that 
 moment the bucket appeared slightly above the 
 brace at the shaft, and was taken by the topman, 
 Joe Bulder, who, lifting it to one side, unhooked 
 it and placed on the hook an empty bucket of 
 the same construction, ready for the unpromising 
 descent. 
 
 The lower portion of the rope is disconnected 
 with the former one, and the mare being 
 informed — one really does not see how — that 
 her tenacity is no longer needed, complacently 
 turns round and trots the whole way in, quite 
 unaided, turning herself with great agility at 
 the end, and disengaging the rope from her 
 hind legs most cleverly. I then, in turn, take 
 hold of the rope, place my foot in the leathern 
 bucket, and go down slowly out of the sunshine 
 in the humid darkness of the lower earth, with 
 the prospect of eight hours' continuous work 
 before me. 
 
 After all, it is not so hard to bear. We are, 
 all four of us, in magnificent health and condi- 
 tion, ' fit to go for a man's life,' as Cyrus Yorke
 
 6o THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 says, which means that we are hardened by 
 toil, trained down by exercise and regular diet, 
 until very little improvement could have been 
 made upon our condition, had we to run a 
 match against time, fight bushrangers, or 
 accomplish any of the feats of strength, speed, 
 or endurance which men are foolish enough 
 to attempt for cash or vainglory in the pride 
 of early manhood. 
 
 We are gold miners, neither more nor 
 less — diggers, as the more general term is. 
 Such we have been for the last three or four 
 years, during most of which time we have been 
 together, sharing the same toils or privations, 
 transient successes or protracted misfortunes. 
 Joe Bulder and I have, of course, been associ- 
 ated since we left England together. The 
 Major and Cyrus had by chance become mates 
 in the colony of Victoria, where we first met 
 them, and by the merest hazard joined forces 
 with us. Since then we have journeyed together; 
 quitted moderate goldfields where nothing more 
 than an easy liberal livelihood was to be had 
 for the stern hazards of a new rush, at a 
 moment's notice. Here, 'dividing mates,' as 
 the mining phrase is, one half of the party.
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 6i 
 
 when times were bad, working at bush or 
 other labour, in order to provide food and 
 raiment, tools and lodging for the whole, while 
 the other pair tried the mining ventures of the 
 locality, on the chance of striking, at any 
 moment, a fortune, small or great, to be loyally 
 and equally divided into four parts. 
 
 That the Major, as he was always called, 
 had been an officer in Her Majesty's army, 
 and in the cavalry arm of the service, no one 
 doubted for a moment who had been in his 
 company, and who was capable of verifying the 
 habitudes of an officer and a gentleman. To 
 what regiment he had been attached, he did 
 not think it apparently necessary to explain, 
 nor did we at any time ask him. Such ex- 
 amples of reticence were innumerable ' on 
 diggings.' Silence was generally observed as 
 to people's antecedents ; it being obvious that 
 to go about questioning everybody as to what 
 position he had originally occupied, and for 
 what reasons he had concluded to adopt a 
 miner's life, would have been altogether futile, 
 besides being patently ridiculous and imper- 
 tinent. And it will be conceded by all who 
 have gained their experience upon Australian
 
 62 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 goldfields, that for whatever sins diggers may 
 be responsible, bad manners and lack of 
 genuine courtesy cannot be reckoned among 
 them. 
 
 The Major, a man of four or five and thirty, 
 was in the full vigour of manhood. He had 
 evidently seen a good deal of the world, and in 
 many phases of society, though he habitually 
 spoke little of himself and merely permitted 
 such glimpses of his European experience to 
 escape him half unconsciously. He was ex- 
 tremely fond of reading, and though by no 
 means zealous in the performance of manual 
 labour for its own sake, performed his quota 
 efficiently enough. He and I, with Joe Bulder, 
 usually shared one of the smaller tents. We 
 took our meals in common. This might have 
 been distressing under the circumstances. But 
 Joe's and Cyrus Yorke's original habitudes had 
 become so altered by the influence of travel and 
 cultured association, that few of their superiors 
 would have objected to their companionship on 
 the warpath. 
 
 Mrs. Yorke and the two children had the 
 cart, with its tilt and other accommodations, to 
 themselves, and, indeed, this nomadic dwelling
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 63 
 
 was far from uncomfortable, with its divers and 
 manifold contrivances for ease and comfort. 
 
 Does it occur to some, as yet unexpatriated, 
 that the life I have roughly sketched was a dull, 
 laborious, well-nigh unendurable existence, to 
 be led by men who had the hereditary title to 
 move in good society, nay, who had at one time 
 of their lives shared that lesser Elysium ? Was 
 such the case, when added to the specific draw- 
 backs was that of hopelessness as to the future, 
 quickly subsiding to dull indifference ? Let us 
 calmly consider. 
 
 As a matter of fact, we were far from miser- 
 able. Indeed, if I assert that we were in a 
 condition bordering upon absolute contentment, 
 even happiness, incredible as it may appear, 
 I should be nearer the mark. For consider, 
 in the first place, miners are absolutely their 
 own masters, perfectly independent, qtiamdm se 
 bene gesserint, utterly free from fealty to all but 
 the Queen and the Commissioner. We were 
 ' by many a league of ocean-foam ' separated 
 from Her Most Gracious Majesty, but the 
 latter potentate was an abiding and highly 
 vitalised fact. 
 
 I see him now. How many years have
 
 64 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 rolled by ! Yet I stand up and feel inclined 
 to lift my hat, as if it were yesterday. An 
 erect, stalwart, middle-aged man, sitting his 
 wiry thoroughbred with careless ease, bold- 
 visaged, eagle-eyed, with the stamp ' of ours ' 
 writ large, like our mate, the Major, on every 
 movement of his body, on every expression of 
 his face, on every trick of speech, as he calls 
 to the half-dozen greyhounds that follow him 
 through the camp, as if his thoughts dwelt 
 more with them than with the crowding 
 miners who press and throng to get a word of 
 audience, a passing nod, or even a look of 
 recognition from the autocrat of the goldfields. 
 And, in good sooth. Captain Blake, formerly 
 of Her Majesty's i ith Hussars, was an autocrat 
 by instinct, habit, education, and circumstance, 
 if ever there was one upon God's earth. He 
 it was, certainly, who more inexorably than the 
 Roman Centurion was wont to say, ' Go here, 
 or go there;' and to this man, ' Do this, and he 
 doeth it.' For from his decision there was, 
 at that time, no appeal. The Medes and 
 Persians had apparently drawn up the scanty 
 Goldfields' Regulations of that day. Crude 
 and inapplicable to the multiform elaborate
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 65 
 
 complications of the mining industry, the largest 
 discretionary power was implied. And William 
 Devereux Blake, well known at many a mess- 
 table in England and Ireland as the Devil's 
 Own Billy Blake, was precisely the man to 
 accept all the responsibility of the position. 
 It would have crushed a weaker man. But 
 with a clear head, an utterly fearless, perhaps 
 aggressive, organisation, and a natural turn 
 for acting as a leader and ruler of men, he 
 had hitherto avoided misadventure in his 
 consulship. Large were the issues with which 
 he had to deal, and puzzling were the mining 
 laws which he had to administer. A bold, 
 ready, decisive manner sufficed to carry him 
 through everything ; and though occasional 
 dissentients might object to his decisions as 
 illogical, he was both highly popular and 
 legally successful. 
 
 To him were daily submitted the numberless 
 questions of mineral ownership which arose 
 in such a community as ours ; a gathering of 
 men from every country under Heaven, where 
 each, by chance or choice, had come to occupy, 
 under certain written and unwritten laws, so 
 limited a portion of the earth's surface that it 
 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 THE MIXER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 was measured by feet. Under it might be the 
 hidden treasure, the reward of a lost youth — a 
 ruined Hfe — the mere rumour of which had 
 brought the greater number of us so far over 
 the main, across so many a weary mile of wood 
 and wold. 
 
 To decide equitably and rapidly, to maintain 
 unswervingly, and to enforce rigidly, the 
 decisions arrived at after the hearing of such 
 evidence as was forthcoming, required natural 
 gifts which few men possessed. But ' Billy ' 
 Blake had been cast by Nature at his birth 
 for the role of a chieftain, and most eminently 
 qualified was he for the part w^hich he was 
 called upon to play. 
 
 At one time his decisions were given in the 
 modest structure which served as the court- 
 house, wherein were tried daily such offences as 
 opposed the statute law of the land. At another 
 they were delivered as he sat on horseback amid 
 an angry crowd of a thousand excited men. 
 But in no instance did the surroundings make 
 the slightest difference in the despotic tone of 
 utter finality which clothed them. Men spoke 
 of his acts and words with bated breath. The 
 Commissioner had ' decided ' this or that point
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 67 
 
 of mining law. He had turned this man out of 
 one of the richest claims on * the field ' and put 
 another into possession of it — and a fortune. 
 He had sentenced Towney Joe to six months' 
 imprisonment with hard labour for stealing 
 five shillings' worth of wash-dirt. He had 
 threatened Red Dick that if he heard of his 
 beating his wife again he should have twelve 
 months within stone walls. He had told Ned 
 White, upon that worthy making sarcastic 
 reference to the Commissioner's uniform coat as 
 a fortunate protection to the wearer, to put up 
 his hands, and dismounting, had then and there 
 so * straiorhtened ' him ' inside of three rounds ' 
 that Ned hadn't a word to say for himself, and 
 was ashamed to show his face for a fortnight 
 afterwards. 
 
 On the other hand, when Jim Black's wife 
 had come crying to him, saying her husband 
 hadn't the price of a Miner's Right, and it was 
 very hard because he knew where there was 
 some good ground, and he dursn't put a pick in 
 it, because any one with a ' Right ' could take it 
 away from him, he had sworn at Jim for a lazy 
 blackguard, who was always trying to rob the 
 Government, and declared, if he caught him
 
 68 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 digging without a Miner's Right he would send 
 him to gaol straightway, and then tossed a 
 sovereign to the sobbing woman, telling her to 
 take out a Miner's Right for her husband that 
 very day, and to keep the balance for the 
 children. 
 
 Every kind and variety of legend was current 
 about the Commissioner. He was the ogre of 
 the fairy tale, the good knight of the romances, 
 the wicked baron of the middle ages, the pitiless 
 official — all by turns. 
 
 The great pro-consul had been away on leave 
 of absence when I and my comrades first came 
 to Yatala ; so we did not immediately meet. 
 But daily so much and such extravagant 
 reference was made to his acts and deeds, 
 opinions and manners, that all unconsciously we 
 looked forward, as did, apparently, the larger 
 part of the population, to the momentous period 
 when the Captain should come back. 
 
 In the meantime the interest of the dwellers 
 and delvers of Yatala was divided by other 
 social and official celebrities, some of whom were 
 sufficiently characteristic. 
 
 Next to Zeus, the all-powerful, came the 
 Inspector of Police, Mr. Merlin, an astute, fine-
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 69 
 
 edged, courteously combative personage, who 
 always reminded me of a Toledo blade, habited 
 in the dress of the period — an animated rapier 
 (if such a type of humanity be consistent with 
 natural laws) : precisely that weapon and no 
 other, being difficult to confront, to evade, to 
 handle, or even to hold scabbardless ; only 
 really innocuous when securely sheathed and 
 placed on the shelf. There was little overt 
 aggressiveness about him. He was the least 
 egotistical of men, inasmuch as whatever ideas 
 of superiority to his surroundings he might have 
 cherished, he rarely expressed them. The 
 exploits and adventures of which he may have 
 been the hero he never narrated. Accomplish- 
 ments he may have possessed, and did in several 
 notably excel, but he never alluded to them. 
 His reserve was impenetrable ; his caustic 
 though courteous manner invariably the same. 
 Yet few there were of the Yatala community 
 who did not acknowledge pleasure in his society, 
 coupled with a slight infusion of fear. There 
 was an involuntary dread among the miners in 
 his presence, lest he might rake up from the 
 limbo of forgotten sins some deeply compro- 
 mising charge. Men respected him, liked him,
 
 -o THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 but, above everything, they feared him ; and 
 in consequence of this peculiar feeling he could 
 walk through a crowd of five thousand men 
 and bear off a prisoner (if necessary) like a 
 hawk appropriating a pigeon from a dovecot. 
 
 To him was chiefly owing what few British- 
 born people could have realised without actual 
 personal knowledge, the extraordinary state of 
 order and good government which prevailed in 
 our singular community. There was the utmost 
 personal freedom and independence, as enjoyed 
 in all Her Majesty's colonies, without lawless- 
 ness or licence. The reckless bullies of the 
 Californian mining towns were as impossible 
 here as Griffins and Enchanters. The great 
 crowd of waifs and strays was sufficiently 
 intelligent to know the laws, and apparently had 
 reached a moral standard sufficiently high to 
 obey them, and to yield uncomplainingly. 
 
 Our life, albeit so far unsuccessful, laborious, 
 and monotonous, as some might have termed 
 it, was not necessarily dull. Let it be 
 remembered that we had the maQ^IcIan Youth 
 on our side. Thus it rarely lacked interest, 
 variety, even enjoyment. 
 
 For was not the population itself one cease-
 
 in THE MINER'S RIGHT ji 
 
 less, never-ending mine of observation ? An 
 unending wonder-book to him who had eyes to 
 see and ears to hear, who, moreover, possessed 
 the key to the cipher, and so read much that 
 was sealed and closely locked to others. 
 
 Who were the men, the women, evidently 
 gently born and nurtured, some of whom were 
 daily encountered, performing the humblest 
 tasks am.id the rudest surroundinQ^s ? Was 
 there not material for scores of romances in 
 this privilege of companionship with them, 
 which was our daily common lot ? 
 
 When some careless miner, or even a half- 
 tamed bushman or ordinary labourer turned 
 digger, suddenly unearthed gold which would 
 have almost sufficed for a king's ransom, was 
 there not novelty and romance in this ? in 
 beholding the human grub swiftly metamor- 
 phosed into the butterfly — sometimes awk- 
 wardly fluttering amid his brilliant juniors, at 
 other times soaring with adjustable wing, as if 
 born to the inheritance of air and light ? 
 
 For the rest, albeit that our lot was that of 
 daily labour, it was such a measure of exertion 
 as came easily within the scope of the strong 
 sinews and muscles of youth. There was in it
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 nothing undignified, and the possible triumph 
 at any given hour of any day glorified the 
 drudgery which might, nay, daily did, for some 
 comrade or other, end in splendour undreamed 
 of and dazzling. 
 
 Our habitudes, maugre the daily labour, 
 were distinctly those of gentlemen. The 
 Major and I rose from our plain pallets to 
 bathe in the neighbouring streamlet, or to 
 * tub ' if such watercourse was not within reach, 
 as regularly as when we lived in England. 
 Our working clothes were of necessity plain 
 and coarse, but the work over, or the holiday 
 afternoon having arrived, on which all miners, 
 however good their ' prospects,' make a rule of 
 declining work, our dress was not widely 
 different from what it would have been in a 
 country town in England. Let all idea of 
 long-haired unkempt ruggedness be rejected as 
 the vogue of Australian miners. Even Joe 
 and Cyrus wore their hair clipped to a most 
 soldierly shortness of staple, as, indeed — 
 barbers abounding, and doing a most lucrative 
 business — do by far the greater majority of the 
 miners everywhere. 
 
 I had, of course, arrived in Australia
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHl 73 
 
 believing that I had only to establish myself 
 upon any known and accredited goldfield to 
 unearth a fortune without delay. Even In 
 unknown and non-accredited regions I had 
 visions of miraculous finds ; visions of ledges of 
 gold-bearing rock and nugget- strewed gravel 
 floated before my eyes waking and sleeping. 
 My limited knowledge of geology was pressed 
 into the service of my imagination. I knew, of 
 course, the leading formations In which gold 
 chiefly occurred. Such knowledge would 
 surely aid me in the discovery which was to 
 mean home and friends and native land now 
 rapturously regained, with the angel of my 
 dreams, radiant at my return, as her celestial 
 prototype. 
 
 Soon after I had fairly commenced my 
 practical course of fortune-digging these flatter- 
 ing hopes vanished. I found gold-mining to 
 be like any other profession, composed mainly 
 of hard and unrelieved drudgery. A living was 
 certainly to be made by It In a general way, 
 barring accidents, sickness, or exceptional bad 
 luck. The prizes were tangible and patent. 
 But like those of all professions, or even 
 lotteries, they were so few and far between, as
 
 74 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 merely to suffice to stimulate the crowd of 
 unsuccessful toilers, who wore out their lives, 
 their hopes, their strength, not unfrequently 
 their morals and reputations, in the delusive 
 quest. 
 
 Among the miners, though the community 
 comprises and ever will comprise some of the 
 best and noblest examples of manhood, were 
 many who had suffered grievously from rude 
 association and the corroding effects of dis- 
 appointment. These men had accepted their 
 destiny. They were life - long miners. The 
 salvation of an exceptional find could alone 
 restore them to the social surroundings they 
 had once and for ever quitted. Working 
 patiently while need was, they had lost the 
 power to resist the temptation to spend in 
 aimless dissipation the temporary gains which 
 from time to time they secured. ' A good 
 rise ' was the signal for a week s revelry. 
 Debts were paid ; all necessary repairs to the 
 mining requisites made. The remainder of the 
 money received for their gold was wasted in 
 excess. 
 
 In a few weeks the ex-foreign office clerk or 
 university graduate was to be seen with a serge
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 75 
 
 shirt and clay-stained clothes, patiently sinking, 
 driving, sluicing, or reefing, as the case might 
 be — as fixed to his endless search as though he 
 had been a gnome imprisoned in the depths ot 
 the treasure mountains of the Hartz. 
 
 We did not take Cyrus's advice. It would, 
 financially, have been better for us if we had. 
 But, of course, that could not be foreseen. If 
 we knew for a certainty where the gold was 
 not, we should probably be able to point 
 unerringly to where it was, which would lead to 
 the most astounding results, especially if the 
 knowledge was disseminated simultaneously. 
 The evil of this universal promulgation of 
 knowledge w^as exemplified in the following 
 digging episode. 
 
 Every one knows — that is, every one who 
 has been a few years on a goldfield and care- 
 fully read up the regulations, omitting those 
 which have been repealed, from time to time — 
 that when a ' frontage claim ' is blocked off, 
 that is, marked off as a permanent parallelo- 
 gram, instead of being a 'chose in action,' or 
 progressively developing mining tenement, any 
 one can take up or seize upon the ' block off it,' 
 or desirable section of land outside of the said
 
 76 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 frontage claim, by simply putting in four pegs 
 before any one else. 
 
 Now the frontage claim or section upon the 
 lead, or ancient river-bed, was known to be 
 rich because it had been worked, the gold 
 extracted and turned into cash fortnightly, so 
 that a very fair notion could be gathered of its 
 richness. As, however, the shareholders were 
 limited to an allotment of two hundred and 
 forty feet in length, being at the rate of forty 
 feet a man, along the course of the lead, it 
 followed that the ' block,' or so much of the 
 auriferous stratum as lay outside of this two 
 hundred and forty feet by three hundred, would 
 be tolerably rich also. The shareholders in the 
 claim I allude to. No. 5 Sinbad's Valley, had 
 made ;^8ooo a man (there were six of them) in 
 less than as many months. This I know of 
 my own knowledge, and can prove if required. 
 One of them was a Cornishman. Just before 
 the claim was worked out he said to me — 
 
 'Harry, what do you think? I'm going 
 home to Trevenna on Monday.' 
 
 'Are you. Cousin Jack?' said I. 'I think 
 you're a wise man. Have you written to tell 
 them all ? '
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT yj 
 
 ' Not a line,' said he. ' They think I'm dead 
 or lost. How they'll stare ! I don't think any 
 of 'em ever saw a ten pound note in their lives. 
 To-morrow's the last day's work as I shall do. 
 Go by the coach Monday, and off by the over- 
 land mail steamer as sails from Sydney on 
 Thursday next. Won't that be a holiday trip, 
 eh, mate ? ' 
 
 ' It will, indeed,' said I, rather regretfully, 
 and, I am afraid, envying the poor fellow in 
 my heart. 
 
 He was right. The next day zuas the last 
 day on which he ever worked ; but not in the 
 sense in which he intended it. In lifting a 
 heavy petrified fossil tree-trunk which the 
 waters of that long-buried primeval stream had 
 rolled down its golden sands, he overstrained 
 himself On Sunday night he was a corpse ; 
 and on Monday, the very day he was to have 
 taken the first stage of his trip home, we 
 followed him to his long home, in the spacious 
 newly-enclosed cemetery, already commencing 
 to be thickly sprinkled with newly-dug graves. 
 Later on I saw^ the cheque for seven thousand 
 some hundreds of pounds (less expenses and 
 the Curator of Intestate Estates' fees), which
 
 7^ THE MINER'S RIGHT chap.. 
 
 was remitted to the relatives in curious, old- 
 fashioned, steep - streeted, pebble - paved Tre- 
 venna. 
 
 Well, the adjacent lot to the highly- 
 satisfactory 'golden-hole claim,' as the miners 
 phrased it, was to be had for the pegging-out 
 first. The pegging -out, that is, the placing 
 of four stout sticks, one at each corner, was 
 easy enough. It was the 'first' business, the 
 priority, which was difficult, if not impossible, 
 of attainment. 
 
 The whole field was aware that at some 
 time, not earlier than six o'clock a.m. on a 
 certain morning, the shareholders of No. 5 
 Sinbad's Valley would mark out their claim for 
 good and all. One second after which operation 
 any alert persons might put in four pegs, one at 
 each corner of the coveted adjoining block claim, 
 and so hold the ground. 
 
 On the night before the battle, ^v^ hundred 
 men, by curious coincidence, bivouacked on the 
 ground, each man with a sharpened stick and 
 gold-sharpened determination to secure a corner 
 of the Aladdin-glorious treasure-chamber. 
 
 Precisely as the dawn's fresh pearly gray 
 succeeded the misty cloud-wrack of the waning
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 79 
 
 night, four shareholders of the frontage claim 
 suddenly appeared with prepared stakes and 
 marked out their carefully -measured earth- 
 portion, none daring to interfere with them ; 
 but the instant that their task was completed 
 there was a rush like the advanced guard of a 
 charging regiment of grenadiers. The confusion 
 which resulted defies description. 
 
 At each corner of the coveted block stood 
 a couple of score of men, each wildly and 
 frantically endeavouring to place his particular 
 stake as near two of the frontage pegs as possible, 
 and as accurately opposite and the regular 
 distance. Men fought and struggled, cursed 
 and struck and fell, as each raised high his 
 stake or peg and strove to hammer it in securely. 
 A few intimate friends or joint-operators with 
 the frontage party were seen to appear on the 
 scene suddenly, only a few minutes after the 
 marking-off and essay to occupy. These were 
 usually supposed to have 'the office,' or special 
 information from the shareholders, and to ' stand 
 in ' with them ; but these in their turn were 
 swept forward and over in the mad rush of the 
 eager crowd. For five minutes indescribably 
 wild confusion prevailed. Then the crowd
 
 8o THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 sullenly parted. Certain pegs and stakes were 
 seen planted, sheaf-like, in each corner, and the 
 ' blocking-off of No. 5 Sinbad ' was over. The 
 result of this attempt to symbolise priority of 
 occupation, by means of pegs or stakes, possibly 
 among the most ancient landmarks, has been 
 accurately retained by the photographic art. 
 ' The apparatus can't lie,' and a wandering 
 artist, of that persuasion, attended the perform- 
 ance and faithfully reproduced both the pegs 
 and their owners. 
 
 Mr. Commissioner Blake had no easy task. 
 It will be seen. He was only required, in the 
 exercise of his duty, to take evidence and decide 
 as to which four pegs had been placed In the 
 corners of the block-claim off No. 5, first after 
 the shareholders of No. 5, and, having decided, 
 to place those persons to whom the pegs 
 belonged In possession of the claim. 
 
 He did what he could. He rode down to 
 the place attended by two troopers and a dozen 
 dogs, and narrowly Inspected the pegs. He 
 even counted them, making one hundred and 
 sixty-two In all. 
 
 ' Who put In the first peg In the north-east 
 corner ? ' he demanded.
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 8i 
 
 ' I did; 
 
 'No, I did; 'twas me, Captain.' 
 
 ' Me plenty plant 'm that one waddy,' said a 
 civilised aboriginal. 
 
 ' I put in first peg, Massa, sure as there's 
 snakes in Virginny,' sang out old man Ned. 
 
 ' No, no, my peg ; I thrust it in with this 
 meri,' yells Maori Jack, brandishing his war- 
 club, and showing his sharpened anthropophagic 
 teeth. 
 
 ' C'est le mien, c'est le mien, sacres cochons 
 que vous etes, sortons,' grinds out a French- 
 man. 
 
 '■ Das ist mein numero ein — ein — ein,' growls 
 a German, ' haben sie der fader gesehn ? er ist 
 todten — spitzbuben — Donner un' blitzen.' 
 
 ' Where are you shovin' to } ' grumbles a 
 
 but no, it is unnecessary to specify the 
 
 nationality of the last speaker ; ' d — n you all, 
 you may take my share, if we ever reach within 
 a hundred mile of Wingadee agin. I'm full up 
 of these here blank diggings. Let me get out 
 of this blank crowd. Call this digging .'^ I say 
 it's wild cattle meeting. I'll cut it while the 
 play is good.' 
 
 ' D — n the whole lot of you,' roars out the 
 
 VOL. I G
 
 82 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 irascible Commissioner, charging right among 
 the excited crowd. Why the blazes didn't you 
 come and have it out earlier in the day ? Get 
 home, all of you, and mind that not a soul stirs 
 the surface till I give leave. How the devil 
 am I to tell who is the first man ? I know no 
 more than Adam. But, anyhow, I shall reserve 
 judgment until to-morrow morning. Come up 
 to the camp at ten o'clock and I will there and 
 then deliver my decision. In the meantime, no 
 one touches the ground with axe, shovel, or pick, 
 or I shall know the reason why.' 
 
 On the following morning, as the Com- 
 missioner sat in his office, a small building, with 
 a room for himself and one for his clerk, a back- 
 room and a passage, a large crowd gradually 
 collected before the door. At ten o'clock pre- 
 cisely the office door was thrown open, and the 
 Commissioner's clerk, standing therein, informed 
 the crowd that the Captain was inside, and 
 would receive the names of every man who had 
 put in a peg in the block off No. 5 Sinbad's 
 Valley. 
 
 His orders were these. Each applicant was 
 to enter the passage by the back door. As he 
 passed through, his name would be taken down
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGHT 83 
 
 on a slip of paper by him, the clerk, and placed 
 in a ballot-box, to be dealt with by the 
 Commissioner afterwards according to his 
 sovereign will and pleasure. A cheer was 
 given as this announcement was made, and a 
 string of men commenced to pass through the 
 back door and out of the front, leaving their 
 names in the course of transit. In half an hour 
 all was completed. A hundred and sixty men, 
 forty applicants for each peg, for 07ily four men 
 could be shareholders, awaited the fiat of the 
 Commissioner. At a respectful distance a 
 motley crowd of three or four times the number 
 regarded them attentively. 
 
 This being completed, the Captain appeared 
 at the doorway, and, amid loud cheering, 
 commenced a brief oration. He said that he 
 had given this particular case great consideration, 
 that the confusion which had occurred was in con- 
 sequence of the Government having framed some 
 new regulations without submitting them to the 
 Commissioners. This one in particular — with 
 regard to frontage -block claims — was a d — d 
 stupid one, it seemed to him. He had no 
 hesitation in saying so [loud cheering] ; but 
 however that miorht be, it was the law ! And,
 
 84 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 of course, he would take care that it was rigidly 
 obeyed. 
 
 He would now proceed to select the names 
 of the four men to whom he should adjudge the 
 ownership of the block off No. 5. He should 
 do It by lot, as they would agree it was totally 
 impossible to sift the evidence or arrive at any 
 conclusion by ordinary methods, in the case of 
 a hundred and sixty pegs, all put down about 
 the same time. He was not going to try, at 
 any rate. 
 
 ' Mr. Watkins' (this to the clerk), ' would you 
 please to bring forward the ballot-box. I turn 
 away my head and select this ticket at random ; 
 [reading] it contains the name of James Grant. 
 The second, taken out similarly, is Patrick 
 Mahony. The third is that of — a — Ewen 
 Campbell. And the fourth is that of — a — John 
 Smith. I hereby adjudge these four men to be 
 the legal occupiers and shareholders of the 
 block off No. 5 Sinbad's Valley. God save the 
 Queen ! ' 
 
 The crowd cheered. The one hundred and 
 fifty-six disappointed claimants said never a 
 word, and the four men named received peace- 
 able possession of the claim, which turned out
 
 Ill THE MINER'S RIGH7 85 
 
 a very rich one, and which they worked out to 
 the last ounce. One man, whom I saw after- 
 wards, bought a snug farm with his share of the 
 gold ; and I visited him in a neat freestone 
 cottage which he had erected.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 We worked hard, doggedly, persistently, and 
 yet all was unavailing. 
 
 We 'hung on,' as the miners said, to our 
 claim, driving and delving with pick and shovel, 
 through the long hot days, or in the silent dark 
 cold nights. No luck, no gold. Having no 
 money was not the worst of it. Our balance 
 on the wrong side had run up with the store- 
 keeper, who trusted us to considerably over a 
 hundred pounds. A large sum, when it is 
 considered that our assets were almost nil, or 
 such as, if sold, would have made a very slight 
 Impression on the account. 
 
 We became unhappy and despondent, more 
 especially Cyrus Yorke, whose ' I told you so 
 from the beginning ' was daily more aggressive 
 and hard to bear. Our storekeeper friend, John 
 Mangrove, did not seem to care so much. He
 
 CHAP. IV THE MINER'S RIGHT ^y 
 
 had ' followed the diggings ' for many a year. 
 He and his smart, bustling, business-like wife 
 were quite used to giving fabulous amounts of 
 credit, to what they termed 'an honest crowd,' 
 meaning a party of men who might be relied 
 upon to pay when their luck turned. Mrs. 
 Mangrove, indeed, laughed at our undiggerlike 
 despondency when we came up one Saturday 
 night and vowed we would not take some beef 
 and flour for our married mate, having no money, 
 and having that morning decided to 'jack up' 
 or thoroughly abandon work at our present claim. 
 
 'We must go and fossick for a bit now,' I 
 said, 'just for enough to make the pot boil ; but 
 we won't take any more of your " tucker," Mrs. 
 Mangrove, without paying.' 
 
 ' Bother the paying ! ' said the buxom, cheery 
 woman, ' we shall get our money some time or 
 other ; but how are you and the Major to 
 fossick, or anything else, without a scrap to eat } 
 You must and shall take your rations till times 
 mend. Luck always turns if you stick to your 
 fight like men. Don't tell me you're down in 
 the mouth. You've got to work till you make 
 a "rise," for my sake, and how can you work 
 without tucker ? '
 
 88 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 'All right, Mrs. Mangrove,' said the Major ; 
 * you know what is good for us. We are your 
 boys, you know. Can't you lay us on to any- 
 thing ? ' 
 
 'Well, as you're good boys, I don't mind 
 letting you hear of a little whisper I caught 
 this morning of a rush out at the Eight Mile, 
 that they say is going to be a regular fizzer. 
 It is called "The Last Stake," and there are 
 only half a dozen claims marked out. You'd 
 be in time to-morrow morning early. I saw 
 some awfully rich specimens that Tim Daly 
 had.' 
 
 'Specimens are deceptive,' I say; 'but we 
 will mark out four men's ground there to- 
 morrow, only two need work till it's payable. 
 Cyrus and Joe will go splitting or fencing until 
 times improve a bit to pay the tucker-bill.' 
 
 'All right,' said Mrs. Mangrove, 'nothing 
 like facing it. My old man and me was down 
 to half- a- crown, and hardly a pair of boots 
 between us once at Eaglehawk ; but we 
 dropped on to a shallow patch, and I puddled 
 it in a wash-tub, didn't I, John ? We made 
 eighty pound out of that patch in two days.' 
 
 ' You was allers a good 'un to work at a
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 89 
 
 pinch, I will say that,' growled John, ' though 
 your tongue do run a bit fast sometimes.' 
 
 ' If I didn't do a bit of blowing we might 
 shut up shop,' she answered; 'you know that 
 very well, Master John. Here, Harry, take 
 this bottle of whisky with you ; you and the 
 Major want something besides tea just now. 
 You're looking dreadful thin of late, and you'll 
 be laid up with the fever if you don't mind. 
 Give that Mrs. Yorke of yours a sip, it won't 
 hurt her, a small drop. She's got a precious 
 soft-headed husband, I can see.' 
 
 'You see a many things,' said John; 'can 
 you see it's past twelve o'clock ? the sergeant'll 
 be turning everybody out directly. I shall shut 
 up. Good-night, mates.' 
 
 After this interesting colloquy, by which we 
 felt much cheered and invigorated, we went 
 home and indulged in a glass of whisky punch 
 each, which did not demoralise us much, not 
 having touched anything for a month pre- 
 viously. We also insisted upon Mrs. Yorke 
 joining us ; she and Cyrus had not gone to 
 bed. So we drank success to our next start, 
 and slept very soundly afterwards. 
 
 The stars were in the sky when the Major
 
 90 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 and I quietly arose and wended our way out to 
 the locale of The Last Stake Quartz Reef, 
 alluded to by Mrs. Mangrove, and walking the 
 four miles briskly, reached it soon after day- 
 light. Early as was the hour, others were there 
 bound upon the same errand. We could see 
 where the ledge of white silicate rock had been 
 bared and workings commenced with a view 
 of following it down. Carefully noticing the 
 direction of the reef, we placed our two pegs, 
 denoting two hundred feet in length along the 
 line of the reef, and giving a title to the full 
 width of one hundred yards on each side of 
 the base line, whatever that might be. Once 
 so placed, if only a minute before the next 
 coming, this act constituted a perfect mining 
 title to all gold within such defined boundaries. 
 The law allowed three days' grace for occupa- 
 tion and efficient work to take place. If such 
 work w^ere not commenced within three days, 
 any other miners might summarily take pos- 
 session of or 'jump' the claim. Wending our 
 way back to breakfast, there being no necessity 
 to take any other measures at present, we 
 explained the position of affairs to our fellow- 
 shareholders. I took the initiative from habit,
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 91 
 
 and laid great stress on Mrs. Mangrove's kind- 
 ness, which had enabled us to begin again in 
 a respectable and promising manner, instead 
 of having to take to fossicking like so many 
 ' hatters ' — solitary miners. Both the Major 
 and I considered The Last Stake Reef to look 
 like ' a good show ; ' but there were expenses 
 and of course food for the whole party. These 
 we should not get out of the reef for some 
 time. And we were all averse to sponging on 
 kind Mr. Mangrove more than we could help. 
 I therefore proposed that Cyrus and Joe 
 should take a job of bush work, the wages of 
 which — such labour being very well paid just 
 then — would suffice to placate the butcher and 
 baker for the whole party, until the reef turned 
 payable, which it was pretty sure to do. If 
 not, we were only where we were before. 
 
 ' That'll do,' said Joe ; ' I was just a-longing 
 like for a bit of farm work this fine sharp 
 weather. I ha' had such a spell of driving that 
 I'm regular cramped. It was pretty wet down 
 there, too, and I'm afeared of the rheumatiz. 
 I saw Mr. Banks this morning, and he offered 
 Cyrus and me half a mile of fencing at good 
 prices.'
 
 92 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' They just was good prices,' said Cyrus ; 
 ' I only wish I could have tumbled across 'em 
 down the country, I'd never have come digging 
 — would I, little woman ?' 
 
 ' I'm sure I don't know, Cyrus,' she said, 
 ' you were never very contented, and if you 
 hadn't come here, you'd have gone somewheres 
 else. But I do hope we'll make a rise on this 
 reef. We've been lower lately than ever I 
 remember since the party was a party.' 
 
 'We should have been lower down still, 
 Mrs. Yorke,' said the Major, ' if it had not 
 been for these capital scones of yours, and the 
 way your good cookery saves the rations. I 
 suppose it's because Cyrus has such a tremen- 
 dous appetite that you were first driven to 
 economise by method and high art.' 
 
 'If I've got a good twist, I can do a day's 
 work,' said the Hawkesbury giant, opening his 
 chest and raising his great arms. ' But we'd 
 better get away, Joe, and see Mr. Banks about 
 this fencing. I'd be sorry if he let it to any 
 other chaps. The Major and Harry can 
 begin and rig their stage at the reef. I don't 
 think much of reefs. I believe in the alluvial 
 myself.'
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 93 
 
 Then it was all settled. Next day we had 
 cut our logs, rigged our stage and windlass, 
 and were soon 'sinking for the reef,' which, 
 whether volatilised from a lower chemical 
 centre or laterally secreted, was not visible on 
 the surface where we had put down our pegs. 
 
 In a few days we ' struck it,' followed it down, 
 discovered small specks of gold almost invisible 
 to the naked eye, and at the first crushing were 
 rew^arded wath a handsome dividend. 
 
 We thought our fortunes were made ; we 
 put on two w^ages - men, and worked with 
 renewed energy. The next, and the next, 
 dividends were good ; but one dreadful day it 
 became apparent that the reef had 'pinched 
 out,' become gradually smaller and more diffi- 
 cult to find. Finally, it disappeared altogether. 
 
 There was the alternative of sinking perhaps 
 another hundred or two hundred feet, on the 
 chance of its being struck at a greater depth, 
 and ' carrying the gold better as it went 
 deeper.' But this style of operation was only 
 suited for men with capital. We resolved not 
 to risk the little we had. 
 
 Altogether we got about a thousand pounds 
 for our share of the gold in little more than
 
 94 
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 two months. That, of course, was not so bad. 
 Out of this the claim was in debt to Mr. Man- 
 grove about two hundred and fifty pounds, 
 which was religiously paid up at once, thus 
 leaving nearly two hundred pounds per man. 
 Each, probably, had some few personal and 
 private debts, which had to be liquidated. A 
 certain refitting of wardrobes was imperative ; 
 other matters, too, had become attenuated 
 during our longish term of ill-luck. A few 
 presents to friends who had sympathised with 
 us in our distress were also thought suitable. 
 Eventually, the experienced goldfield's resident 
 will have no difficulty in understanding that 
 forty or fifty pounds each was about the out- 
 side amount which remained in our pockets, 
 after a week's holiday and final settlement of 
 affairs. 
 
 This statement but too often correctly de- 
 scribes the course of a miner's life even when 
 there is no overt dissipation. His very virtues, 
 his truthfulness, energy, and good faith aid 
 him in extravagance, so to speak, for they 
 enlarge his facilities for credit, which are so 
 elastic while health and strength last that he 
 can get as deeply into debt as he pleases.
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 95 
 
 When he does meet with a fair sHce of luck, 
 such as I have referred to, the greater part of 
 his gains are swept away in repayment, while 
 the balance remaining is so small that, to his 
 easy mind, it seems hardly worth saving. 
 ' Plenty more where that came from ' is the 
 most popular mining motto, which is true 
 enough in a sense, but not always easy to 
 reduce to practical application. 
 
 I had seen and encountered so much in 
 my own person of this tantalising see - saw of 
 apparent prosperity and real poverty that I 
 had insensibly commenced to be drawn into 
 the fatal vortex of indifferentism which is so 
 apt to characterise the habitual miner, from 
 whatever class originally drawn. I was be- 
 ginning to be satisfied with the periodical 
 intervals of ease and comparative luxury, to 
 be more and more incapable of making any 
 sustained effort to free myself from rude and 
 unworthy surroundings. The fortune which I 
 had hoped for, how much more accurately could 
 I now gauge the slender probability of my 
 winning it! The return to dear England, the 
 union with my long - cherished darling, the 
 transfigured angel of my dreams. How much
 
 96 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 more nearly this approached, with every flying 
 minute, to the faint hopes of Heaven, and 
 misty realisations of eternal bliss which visit 
 the average believer ! 
 
 In my despondent moods, w^hen after weeks 
 of severe labour the end seemed no nearer, I 
 allowed my spirits to droop to the lowest depths 
 of despair. Why had I ever permitted my 
 thoughts to range to such mad impossibilities ? 
 Had aught but the insane heedlessness of youth 
 caused my fancy to soar so high, only to fall 
 with more stunning shock ? Was there the 
 most distant hope of my ever realising ten or 
 twenty thousand pounds by ordinary mining, 
 with which to present myself in the course ot 
 the coming year to the Squire, and to claim 
 the ecstatic reward ? Midsummer, moonstruck 
 madness the whole ! No greater expectation, 
 truly, as it now appeared to me, was there than 
 if I were engaged in digging potatoes. 
 
 And yet such prizes were to be had, and did 
 occasionally, at Yatala, fall to the grasp of the 
 lucky — chiefly undeserving adventurers. 
 
 While I was in this undecided and, above 
 all, agonising state of mind, I received a letter 
 from Ruth. We had not been forbidden, in so
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT c^-j 
 
 many words, to correspond, but it had been 
 explained to me by the Squire that while 
 matters remained in such an extremely un- 
 certain and precarious state, he thought I 
 should agree with him that a regular corre- 
 spondence would be inconsistent, etc., that, of 
 course, he left it to me, and so on. The 
 consequence of which was that, appreciating 
 his consideration, I refrained from pouring out 
 my heart as I otherwise should have done, 
 and merely wrote, from time to time, certain 
 matter-of-fact epistles. In them I stated my 
 plans, described my place of residence, and 
 gave my reasons for expecting good things In 
 the way of gold discovery. 
 
 The hue of despair which had commenced 
 to pervade my life of late had commenced to 
 tinge my letters, doubtless, and so awakened 
 a feeling of irrepressible tenderness and com- 
 passion in that dear heart that knew but one 
 deep, still -flowing current of self-sacrificing 
 love. Whatever the cause, I one day received 
 from Mrs. Mangrove, who also officiated as 
 postmistress, amid her other multifarious avoca- 
 tions, a letter, bearing the delicate characters 
 so Indelibly traced upon my heart. 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 THE MINER'S RIGHT . chap. 
 
 'A letter from home, Harry, English post- 
 mark, come from your sister, your mammy, or 
 your sweetheart. Don't be angry now ; if you'll 
 give me the address, I'll write and tell her what 
 a good boy you are. Not like some of the 
 swells here, who are the biggest rapscallions 
 out, instead of setting a good example to 
 us poor ignorant lower - class mullocks, eh, 
 John?' 
 
 ' What are you blowin' about now, old gal ? ' 
 said the sententious John, removing the pipe 
 from his mouth. ' I don't know about '' mul- 
 lock." God made all men free and equal, and 
 though anybody can see as Harry and the 
 Major are regular right-down swells, and so far 
 and away ahead of us, what does Bobbie Burns 
 say — *'Who hangs his head for honest poverty" 
 — and settera ? ' 
 
 * Come, you're not so poor, nor over and 
 above honest either, John,' retorted his better 
 half — ' that is, if you get a chance, and was 
 dead sure of not being bowled out. It's I 
 that knows you — still there's worse on the 
 diggings. And now, here's your letter, Harry, 
 and if you'd like to step into my back parlour 
 and read it in comfort — there's no one in there.
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 99 
 
 nor won't be till the Mildorah mail comes in. 
 Take your beer with you.' 
 
 I accepted the offer of my worthy friend 
 and banker; so, sitting down upon the sofa 
 and locking the door, I abandoned myself 
 thoroughly to the half-painful thrill of memory 
 ere I commenced to translate into half- whispered 
 speech the loved and familiar characters. 
 
 Ere I opened the letter I gazed long upon 
 the fateful scroll. How much of my former 
 life came back to me ; how sharp the contrast 
 appeared with my present existence ! I saw 
 myself as I once was, how differently lodged 
 and tended ! The old Court, with its look of 
 immemorial stateliness and reposeful comfort 
 that now seemed luxury undreamed of, more 
 than half forgotten in the rude surroundings to 
 which I had insensibly adapted myself. And 
 amid them my lot was fated to be cast, for how- 
 many years yet ? for my lifetime it might well 
 be ! for how could I endure to return an 
 unsuccessful, disappointed man — I that had 
 so obstinately severed the links that bound me 
 to the home of my youth, the position to 
 which I had been born ? I had seen men as 
 gently nurtured, better educated, ay, with far
 
 loo THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 higher attainments, after brave battling with 
 hopeless odds, sink gradually year by year, 
 yet more deeply into the slough of low com- 
 panionship and sensual indulgence. They 
 had despaired of ever returning to the dim, 
 far-off world of their lost heritage ; had been 
 contented thus to wear out the days of a 
 despised, self-contemning existence. If such 
 things happened to them, why not to me .^ 
 I was alone. My long pent-up dread of the 
 worst for a moment overpowered me. I 
 leaned my head upon my hands before the 
 unread letter, and the hot tears, never before 
 shed since childhood, rained down upon the 
 tawdry table-cover. 
 
 The unwonted passion aroused me. I 
 brushed the evidences of weakness from my 
 eyes, and, rising to my sense of manhood, 
 raised the precious evidence of woman's 
 fidelity. I well knew what tender assurance 
 I should find of fondly-cherished, brightly- 
 burning love — unalterable faith, unswerving 
 holy confidence. Yet, how many instances 
 had I known where men, having trusted as 
 deeply and loyally, had been heartlessly de- 
 ceived. I had watched life-wrecks which had
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 dated from the receipt of just such another 
 letter in outward seeming. They, with deH- 
 cate, deadly strokes, had yet rung the knell 
 of hope — of faith in woman's sacred truth. 
 Such was not to be my doom, whatever else 
 the Fates, which I had commenced to dread, 
 might have in store for Hereward Pole. How 
 I drank in the sweet sense of the precious, 
 priceless symbols — thus dumbly that spake — 
 
 ' My own dearest, ever dearest Hereward — Your 
 last letter, written from Yatala, roused me from a fit of de- 
 pression which had crept over me, I hardly know why ; 
 perhaps, from its being so long since I had received one. 
 I re-read it before I could do more than gather that you 
 were well, and still bravely striving to discover that terrible, 
 delusive gold, which seems to be such a will-o'-the-wisp — in 
 spite of the golden tales which come by every mail from 
 your far land. I was unspeakably cheered by this bare 
 knowledge, and shall never fear gloomy presentiments again. 
 But I had had so many. I read — for I read all the papers 
 I can get hold of from Australia — about terrible mining 
 accidents, till I was half unconsciously in the habit of connect- 
 ing my beloved with the dangers and the deaths that seemed 
 so common, and little regarded. I pictured you suddenly 
 overwhelmed by a fall of earth in your subterranean abode, 
 sometimes blown up by an explosion, like those awful ones 
 in coal mines. What a dreadful one was that in Wales the 
 other day ! We happened to be at Llanberis, for a change 
 for poor mother, who has been ailing lately. I went down 
 and saw the poor women, whose sons and husbands, brothers
 
 I02 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 and (alas !) lovers, had been reft from them in an instant. 
 How many forms of grief were there ! Now, / could 
 sympathise with them, unlike many who merely viewed it 
 as one of the far-away calamities that we read or hear of, 
 and turn from to the next excitement or frivolous pleasure. 
 My aching heart found some relief in aiding and comforting 
 those whom I could reach. I felt in a strange way cheered 
 and lightened when my task was done. But oh, how un- 
 speakable was the relief when I saw your dear handwriting 
 again, and knew that you were safe and strong and hopeful 
 as ever, though, so far, unsuccessful ! 
 
 ' Then, as I, for the sixth time, devoured your letter, I 
 discovered a desponding tone in your expressions, that I 
 had never before noticed. You did not speak with your 
 old gallant disregard of present ill-luck, and hope for future 
 fortune, as you used to do. My woman's quickness divined 
 a kind of dull resignation setting in ; a more than usual 
 dwelling upon your rashness in quitting England, joined to 
 a deeper regret for having, as you say, induced me " to link 
 my life with that of a beggar and an exile — to forfeit the 
 paradise of my childhood's home for the accursed outer- 
 world of labour and privation, which would be my portion 
 if I followed you." 
 
 ' All this, dearest, I look upon as sinful disbelief in God's 
 goodness ; besides which, to speak of an infinitely less 
 worthy matter, it is very wicked of you to doubt my love. 
 That you possess " once and for ever." It may not be all 
 that you fondly fancy, but such as it is, it is yours — all 
 yours — while life lasts, and beyond the grave, if there we 
 retain the feelings which animate our souls on earth. Per- 
 haps I am saying more than I could ever express if we 
 were nearer, but, separated by so vast a distance, we may be 
 doomed never asrain to hear each other's voices, and I feel
 
 THE MIXER'S RIGHT 103 
 
 as if I must give expression to every thought of my heart, 
 lest you might die and never know how its every pulse 
 beats for you. 
 
 ' After seeing the stony despair of some of these poor 
 women's faces at Pent-y-Glas ; after hearing their dreadful 
 agonising shrieks, as one after another of the dead miners 
 was carried up from the pit-mouth and laid in his cottage ; 
 after witnessing the frantic delight with which the rescued 
 were welcomed back to life, joy that sometimes threatened 
 like to death, you must pardon me for believing mere want 
 of success to be a small thing in true lovers' eyes, compared 
 with those ghastly realities. 
 
 ' Want of success, indeed ! Why, what does it mean, 
 that my high-hearted Hereward should not look it in the 
 face, and frown it down, as of old ? Have you not life, and 
 love, and health, and strength ? that stalwart form ? that 
 steady eye ? When these fail, it will be time enough to 
 despond, to retract, to despair, to lose faith in God and 
 man. 
 
 ' But you will do none of these, my own darling. You 
 will still work ; you will still pray. Remember that there 
 is another year, yet untried, before us, during which the 
 reward of all your long labour and heroic self-denial may 
 be found. IMy prayers may be answered, and your work, 
 which, according to the good old monkish legend, is also 
 prayer, because done in a good spirit, will bring its reward. 
 Keep up your heart for both our sakes — for the love's sake 
 which is your Ruth's life. When that time is finished, come 
 home to the old land, and be sure, if you can quell that 
 stubborn pride of yours — do I not love you the better for 
 it ? — my dear old father will welcome you as a son. But if 
 you will not or cannot come, I will never upbraid you, and 
 more — so prepare yourself — no power on earth shall then
 
 I04 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 keep me from coming to you, to follow your steps in weal 
 or woe, so long as we both shall live. 
 
 ' I have written you a woman's letter. It is the longest 
 I ever sent. But I did feel so lonely and wretched. It 
 has eased my heart. Would that it could lighten yours ; 
 perhaps it may. God keep and bless you, my own be- 
 loved. — Yours ever, in weal or woe, in the old world or the 
 new, Ruth Allerton.' 
 
 I rose from the perusal of the heaven-sent 
 letter an altered man. I pressed it to my lips, 
 to my heart. Then I vowed silently, yet 
 solemnly, to God, to work and deny myself from 
 aught but needful rest and sustenance, until the 
 time was expired, for her sweet sake — the best, 
 the tenderest, the truest of mortal women, for 
 her sweet sake — the angel that had stirred the 
 dreary pool of doubt. I was healed ; of that I 
 had no doubt. Should I ever be suffered to 
 thank her by my life ? 
 
 'My word! I'll go bail there was a bank 
 draft in that letter,' said Mrs. Mangrove, coming 
 in suddenly ; ' you look so cheered up by it. 
 Must be good news, or something like it. I 
 thought you were going to jack up at the claim 
 when you came in, or had got the fever, or 
 something. But now you look like a different 
 chap altogether.'
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 ' I am a different man,' I said. ' I believe 
 my luck's going to change, Mrs. Mangrove ; 
 and if you and John will always back us right 
 out, I believe we shall make our pile yet, and 
 you will have a slice of it.' 
 
 ' Never mind that,' said the good-natured 
 dame. ' If you take all your stores from us, and 
 pay your bill, that'll be enough for John and me. 
 Our profits are pretty smart. We only want 
 to get our goods off. But you and the Major 
 and your other mates, you're a good crowd to 
 work ; I will say that for you. Stick to those 
 new prospectors. There's something in that 
 lead, I'll go bail. There's no fear but what 
 you'll drop on to itby-and-by. John and I ain't 
 afraid to speculate a hundred or two ; we've not 
 followed the diggings five years next Christ- 
 mas to be afraid of giving a bit of credit to rale 
 out-and-out good working men. No, nor five 
 hundred at the back o' that ; you're right for 
 anything you want, tools, expenses, powder and 
 fuse, as long as we last out. Now, you'd better 
 have a whisky, and get home before the moon 
 sets. Those holes is nasty things to be walking 
 through when it's dark.' 
 
 I declined the refreshment, but thanked the
 
 io6 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 generous-hearted creature with a warmth that 
 made her and her husband exhibit siens of 
 distress. I then made off down the brightly- 
 Hghted street, and following a narrow but well- 
 worn track which threaded the hundreds of 
 shafts, wide, dark -mouthed in the moonlight, 
 like silent monsters watching for their prey, 
 soon reached the somewhat isolated spot, where 
 our tiny camp was situated. 
 
 My mates were all asleep. I was not sorry 
 for that. I w^as so filled with the deep per- 
 vading excitement which the reading of my 
 thrice -blessed letter had caused in me, that I 
 should have with difficulty compelled myself to 
 interchange the ordinary courtesies of conversa- 
 tion. I was as a man who had found a huge 
 and hidden treasure. I could no longer concern 
 myself with the poor coins and cares of daily 
 life, until I had had time to reflect upon my joy 
 and good fortune. 
 
 ' How good, how pure she is ! what more than 
 mortal fidelity has marked my Ruth's conduct ! ' 
 I thought, as I lay down on my humble couch. 
 ' How many girls in her position would have 
 caught at the first excuse to free themselves 
 from an engagement that must involve poverty
 
 IV THE MINER'S RIGHT 107 
 
 and privation — that might even end in exile ; 
 and yet she had kept her faith, had been true to 
 the vow made on the well-remembered terrace, 
 as we stood looking over woodland vales. How- 
 had I deserved such fidelity ? Still, there was 
 something in a man's strength, a man's hope 
 and struggle for success. She should have her 
 rew^ard, if a single-handed swordsman could hew 
 his way to success and glory. There was a year 
 of the precious granted time to spare now. 
 Perhaps the casuarina might not have changed 
 her gloomy filamental raiment once more before 
 the tide would have turned — the fulfilment 
 would have been 'assured.' 
 
 The next day was Sunday. The Major and 
 Joe had been on the night-shift; I had, there- 
 fore, all the day before me to dream over my 
 last found happiness, to permit my mind to 
 wander over the past, to hope and resolve for 
 the future. No mining, no work of any sort, 
 was carried on on the Sabbath at Yatala. An 
 utterly unbroken stillness reigned over the whole 
 strangely assorted camp on the sacred clay. In 
 some countries such would not have been the 
 case ; men would have pleased themselves as 
 to the course they took. But here, the whole
 
 io8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap, iv 
 
 sentiment of the place was as distinctly English 
 as if the concourse of adventurers had been 
 located in Surrey or Kent. The Australian 
 colonies are not only in many ways contented to 
 be English in act, manner, and thought. They 
 are the English of a century back in many, in 
 perhaps the highest embodiments of the national 
 character. And there was no more thought in 
 Yatala of Sunday work, or openly- avowed 
 Sunday dissipation, than of acarnival in Glasgow. 
 Moreover, such labour was against the law of 
 the land, which, as I before remarked, was by 
 no means suffered to remain a dead letter at 
 Yatala. Under 29 Carolus II. c. vii. sec. 7, an 
 information would have been laid by the sergeant 
 with exceeding promptitude ; and the fine would 
 have followed with mathematical precision of 
 effect after cause.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Next day being Sunday, we breakfasted late, 
 and by no means uncomfortably. When miners 
 are provided with provisions at all, they are 
 good of their kind. Fresh beefsteaks, grilled 
 to perfection, and served up hot by our 
 miraculous cook and good fairy Mrs. Yorke, 
 baker's bread (there were five tradesmen of the 
 craft in Yatala), fresh butter, and new laid eggs, 
 with hot coffee, were all forthcoming. We had 
 previously performed our ablutions and dressed 
 ourselves with a triflinor amount of extra care. 
 The Major and I messed together in our 
 weather-tight abode, wherein was a small ex- 
 temporised table. Cyrus Yorke, his wife, and 
 Joe Bulder had their meal at the family tent. 
 
 ' Well, Pole,' said the Major, ' what was the 
 result of your business interview with Mrs. 
 Mangrove ? Is she going to sell us up at the
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 end of the month, or have you blarneyed her 
 into another excursion towards the Insolvent 
 Court?' 
 
 * She is a brick,' I returned, 'and John is not 
 a bad fellow either. They have promised to 
 back us until Christmas. After that we must 
 take our chance.' 
 
 ' By Jove!' said my friend, 'she is a tower 
 of Shinar, in the brick line ; a regular goldfield's 
 guardian angel — a tutelar divinity ! I don't 
 know what all ! We shall strike the gutter yet, 
 depend upon it. And yet, consider my im- 
 proper exultation ! Depending for my daily 
 steak (how famous and tender this one is ! that 
 little woman of ours has had it hanging up a 
 week — bless her) ; depending, I say, for my 
 daily bread and butter on a poor woman's 
 bounty — what would the old 77th say to it ? 
 Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, 
 eh?' 
 
 I had determined to spend the day in tranquil 
 self-communion. To that end I sallied out, 
 with some slight provision for a midday meal, 
 for a long day's walk ; the Major electing to 
 pass the time on the broad of his back, work- 
 ing up his arrears of light literature, of which
 
 THE MIXER'S RIGHT 
 
 we always received from home a generous 
 supply. 
 
 ' Going for a regular all-day constitutional, 
 Harry, are you ?' he said. ' Well, every man to 
 his taste : this is a free country. Seems to me 
 we get a fair share of exercise without a twenty- 
 mile hump on Sundays. Keep your eyes open 
 for a likely gully for prospecting.' 
 
 He began to cut the leaves of his Satitrday 
 Review, and I departed. I was in no mood for 
 the grim pleasantries, the instructive scientific 
 articles, the scathing criticism of that magazine 
 of pure English and merciless sarcasm. Wel- 
 come had been its arrival to us in many a dull 
 unrelieved term of labour in the glaring dusty 
 midsummer, or the dreary winter weather, 
 when the rows of tents stood on a plateau of 
 knee-deep mud. But now I longed to speed 
 forth across the low green hills strewn with 
 diorite, across the sharply outlined ridge, where 
 the great white blocks of quartz gleamed in the 
 morning sun, adown the long eastern slope, for 
 miles through the park -like southern forest, 
 where, over the thick greensward, the forester 
 kangaroo and the wallaroo alone run, where 
 eager green and gold parrots chattered and
 
 112 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 screamed — where the blue heron fished silently 
 by the reed -fringed creek, where the eagle 
 soared calm and peerless amid the loneliness of 
 the firmament. And there I, too, could be 
 alone and relieve my heart, that seemed almost 
 bursting with unshared thought and thankful- 
 ness. 
 
 After hours of rambling and a gradual 
 descent, I found myself in a defile which slowly 
 widened until It became a pleasant meadow- 
 seeming flat, partly overgrown with high grass 
 and patches of rushes. The hillsides had been 
 precipitous, and an easier path having been 
 found by the strayed horses and cattle of the 
 miners, Nova Scotia Gully, as it had been 
 called by a wandering Blue Nose, had been 
 completely neglected. 
 
 A promising place for 'prospecting.' Yet 
 nowhere did I see the shafts and heaps of rock 
 or gravel which tell in a gold country of the 
 hasty search for the precious metal. Instinct- 
 ively reasoning on these passing thoughts, half 
 looking out for a pleasant spot for my midday 
 halt, I mechanically wandered to a depression 
 where a lofty eucalyptus, fallen before a hurri- 
 cane blast, lay with its bared roots sheer
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 113 
 
 athwart a tiny watercourse. Below this natural 
 embankment was a pool filled with pellucid water. 
 
 ' Here,' I said, ' I will dream out the day, 
 translating myself as nearly as may be in spirit 
 to the pleasant land of my fathers, and linking 
 my soul to hers, whose pure steadfast heart has 
 so strengthened and lightened mine.' 
 
 Hour after hour, after my frugal mid-day 
 meal, I lay on the grass under the vast trunk 
 of the fallen forest-monarch, and dreamed of 
 green England's meads and time-worn crum- 
 bling keeps, of the half- royal residences of the 
 great nobles — the time-honoured halls of the 
 squires and county gentlemen. I saw again the 
 ancient gables of Allerton Court, the ivy-but- 
 tressed village church, the plodding unambitious 
 farm-labourers, the old women in their caps, the 
 clerk withstanding the ever-troublesome boys, 
 trying in vain to restrain from sounds and antics, 
 secular if not profane, the calm voice of the 
 clergyman reading the prayers or preaching the 
 sermon. How much out of keeping would any 
 excited action or unfamiliar doctrine have been 
 in that haven of repose and assured joys ? And 
 then, turning first to one side and then to the 
 other, with a smile or a pleasant word, as either 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 parent spoke, came my own, my beloved, my 
 peerless Ruth Allerton. 
 
 Should I ever see her again, hear her voice, 
 under the great lime trees I remembered so 
 well, when we watched for the first shivering 
 whisper as the evening breeze came sighing 
 up over hill and dale ? What a waste world 
 was there between us ! What a mournful, 
 pale-gleaming, endless plain of ocean ! Nor 
 only such, but the great desert of Poverty, 
 where the dwellers are for ever Bedouins, 
 raiders, outcasts, desperate or despised dwellers 
 on sufferance, by the border of the high-walled 
 cities of wealth and respectability. 
 
 Thus did I think ; thus muse during the 
 little season of leisure which was allotted to me. 
 The short day was fading fast ere I had com- 
 pleted my round of thought. Henceforth, 
 action would obliterate contemplation. But 
 I felt that in my life I had made a fresh 
 departure. Kneeling on the turf by the gnarled 
 tree-trunk, scarred and scattered as by the fire- 
 storms of centuries, I swore solemnly that, until 
 the year expired, I would neither pause nor 
 slacken in my search for the magical metal. 
 Magical ! — it would be the long-lost Philo-
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 115 
 
 sopher's stone. Would it not transmute the base 
 dross of my present life into the minted trea- 
 sure of honourable security — successful love? 
 
 The lengthening shadows, the more distinct 
 woodland cries, warned me that I must tread the 
 homeward path. At twelve o'clock that night 
 I should have to go on to the ' night-shift,' 
 when eight hours of continuous labour were 
 before me. But my heart was light, my pur- 
 pose firm. Hope had never glowed so brightly 
 in my breast since first I quitted England's 
 shore, with all the sanguine strength of boy- 
 hood's expectation. As I stood up and faced 
 the glowing west, where the rich hues of sunset 
 poured a full glory upon the long green vistas 
 of the waving woodland, a fragment of quartz 
 attracted my attention. I picked it up and 
 applied the usual miner's test. A few minute 
 specks of the dull yellow but unmistakable 
 metal were visible. I hastily scooped out a 
 handful or two of the surrounding earth, and 
 improvising a dish from a circular bark 
 covering of a hole in the nearest tree, washed 
 it in the litde rivulet. The result was a few 
 grains of gold. This was fully satisfactory, as 
 giving a few grains to so small a quantity of
 
 ii6 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 the gravel, the proportion to a cartload, the 
 usual alluvial miner's measure, would be far 
 beyond ordinary yields. 
 
 I decided to take possession at once of this 
 lucky portion of the earth's surface, from which 
 I anticipated the realisation of my fondest 
 hopes, and commenced to cut four pegs, by 
 placing which in the ground, one at each angle 
 of the claim, I could, according to mining law, 
 take perfect and inalienable possession. But all 
 suddenly a feeling arose, vital and instinctive, 
 which arrested all action — it was the Sabbath 
 day. True, I had employed it most literally as 
 a day of rest, of idle reverie, not availing myself 
 of the regular preaching and prayers conducted 
 by the minister of each denomination on the 
 goldfield. Still, so strong was the reminiscent 
 tradition of my childhood that I could not, for 
 the life of me, commit so total a breach of all 
 my early teaching and belief as to mark out a 
 claim, thus doing actual work, and following 
 my regular workaday avocation on Sunday. 
 The old village chimes came back to my heart, 
 to my ears, I could almost have sworn. My 
 mother's voice, sweet, grave, low- toned — 7 1 
 seemed to hear the very words which incul-
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 117 
 
 cated self-denial, reading of the Word, heeding 
 the commandments, ' Thou shalt not labour, 
 thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy 
 servant, and the stranger that is within thy 
 gates.' I heard it all in memory's wondrous 
 phonograph, as the full tide of life rolled back- 
 ward, and I saw myself a schoolboy at the knee 
 of a pale lady with wistful eyes and a radiance 
 of holy love beaming around her worn features. 
 All this I saw and heard. I could not sin 
 against knowledge. I was not as one of the 
 reckless gold -hunters with which the camp 
 was thronged. I could not do the deed. 
 
 ' It matters not,' thought I ; 'the place is 
 rarely visited. I will come to-morrow after my 
 shift is over. That will surely be time enough ; 
 and now I must stretch out if I wish to save the 
 light.' 
 
 I cast down the stake, turned my back upon 
 the temptation, and stepped out manfully 
 towards the camp. As I left the spot the 
 sun's level gleam seemed to light up the 
 scattered quartz fragments with a glitter which 
 transformed them into golden ingots. The 
 strange laughing kingfisher of the south 
 {Dacelo giganteits), perched upon a dead tree
 
 Ii8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 in my path, where his extravagant and 
 ludicrous cachinnatory succession of notes, 
 ending in a long-drawn ha-ha-ha, had a weird 
 derisive chuckle to my ears. Was I turning 
 my back upon a fortune, in obedience to the 
 bidding of an outworn superstition ? No, 
 assuredly not ! Yet my heart misgave me, 
 and an evil presentiment commenced to depress 
 my so lately exulted faculties. 
 
 The moon was up as I passed the track 
 which for the last mile, running through an 
 abandoned lead, was a narrow riband of safety 
 amid a region of shafts of all depths and sud- 
 denness of approach. The lead with its 
 hundreds of mounds, its black yawning pit- 
 mouths, had a ghostly appearance in the still, 
 clear, cold light, as of a graveyard awaiting the 
 unburied dead of a battlefield. The narrow 
 path led onward, over, and around the lesser 
 hillocks, passing the edge of sullen, narrow 
 mine -mouths, where the displaced clod or 
 pebble went rumbling and murmuring long — 
 long — ^long — minutes it seemed, though but 
 seconds in reality — ere the dull thud or splash 
 at the bottom told of its completed errand. 
 What would a man's fate be if, belated or tarry-
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 119 
 
 ing too long at the wine-cup, he stumbled into 
 one of those entrances to the nether world ? 
 I had known of such a fate happening to more 
 than one stalwart miner, who had risen that 
 day in rude health and well-nigh giant strength. 
 More than one skeleton had I known scooped 
 out, months, nay years, after the disappearance 
 of a comrade, only to be identified by the 
 clothing that enwrapped the bones. But such 
 would never be my fate. I knew every yard 
 of the track. I rarely travelled the path but 
 by daylight, and no living man could assert 
 with truth that he had ever seen Herew^ard 
 Pole under the influence of intoxicating liquor. 
 
 When I reached our camp fire I found all 
 preparation for our evening meal in such a 
 state of perfect arrangement as induced me to 
 suspect what indeed was the case, that the Major 
 had been considerately awaiting my return. 
 
 'Thought you were never coming,' he 
 growled, with affected sulkiness of tone. 
 ' Mrs. Yorke, please to put the gridiron upon 
 the fire at once, and the steak upon the 
 gridiron one minute afterwards. I'm so de- 
 lighted you've returned safe. Master Harry. 
 I was just thinking how my supper was in a
 
 I20 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 fair way to be ruined. Not that I was going 
 to be fool enough to wait for you ten minutes 
 longer; but how could a fellow — I put it to 
 you as a gentleman and a man of the world — 
 how could a fellow enjoy his steak, knowing 
 that he would have to go up to the camp and 
 report his mate's probable death by flood and 
 field — gunshot or suicide, or miscalculation of 
 distance, in the morning ?' 
 
 * A decidedly epicurean view to take of my 
 probable decease,' rejoined I ; ' but your friend 
 the coroner will find no inquest necessary at 
 present. It was very good of you to wait 
 supper for me, dead or alive. How delight- 
 fully the steak hisses and simmers ! Wait till I 
 have just time to dress the least bit, and It will 
 be done to a turn. I have news, too.' 
 
 To change my outer coat for an old — very 
 old — shooting jacket, but still distinguished as 
 to cut, to replace the heavy walking boots by 
 shoes, and to perform certain splashings, did 
 not occupy many minutes. When I came 
 forth from the recesses of the tent, refreshed 
 and charitable of mood, the steak before 
 referred to was In the act of being placed upon 
 our humble board. Such It was, literally, being
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 121 
 
 a section of a cedar plank about two feet wide, 
 supported on trestles, which rendered transport 
 and packing a very simple transaction. Covered 
 with a clean cloth, it was sufficiently large for 
 the present dinner-party, the number of which 
 never required to be increased. Potatoes 
 baked in the ashes and served up hot, coffee, 
 white bread in very excellent rolls, with honey 
 and fresh butter, completed our meal. There 
 was one rare and indispensable adjunct, that of 
 appetite, which we rarely lacked, and which I 
 may frankly confess to have provided in a 
 very high state of perfection on this particular 
 occasion. 
 
 We had eaten with satisfaction ; we had 
 washed down the solids with cups of coffee ; 
 we had lighted our pipes, and were miles 
 beyond any of the lower unamiable forms of 
 conversation, when I thus spoke — 
 
 ' Major, I did not go out expressly with a 
 view of prospecting to-day. I want to tell you 
 that I came across something which I fancy 
 will materially alter our worldly expectations.' 
 
 * Nobody said you were going prospecting,' 
 observed the Major quietly. ' Nobody thought 
 you had as much sense. We knew you would
 
 122 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 lie under a tree all day, and dream of the per- 
 fections of — what's her name ? — Miss Allerton. 
 Besides, I know you have the narrow English 
 notion of Sunday.' 
 
 ' I didn't go out prospecting,' said I ; 'as 
 you kindly observe, I had not sense enough ; 
 but I made a discovery, all the same. What 
 do you think of that?' said I, suddenly pro- 
 ducing one of my specimens. 
 
 The Major took it carelessly in his hand, 
 looked narrowly at the sides and facets, 
 moistened it with his tongue, squinted at it, 
 and finally, with an air of high professional 
 skill, said — 
 
 ' To my mind, it's awfully good, fine gold 
 showing all through it — the best kind of stone, 
 always. Rich enough for everybody. You 
 took up a claim of course ? ' 
 
 'Well, no,' said I, 'Major, I did not. I 
 have, as you say, some lingering traditions 
 about my early days, and I could not disavow 
 them. We can go and take it up early to- 
 morrow after I come off the night-shift. We 
 must be all four there to put in the pegs, you 
 know ? ' 
 
 * Yes, and an awful bother, too. Why can't
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 123 
 
 one man, in the name of his partners, take up 
 a claim — always supposing that they have the 
 requisite number of Miners' Rights ?' 
 
 * Well, of course ; but there's something to 
 be said on the other side. Occupation is the 
 great fundamental principle of the miner. 
 Otherwise the capitalist might, by proxy, 
 delegate, and so on, monopolise half the good 
 ground on a goldfield.' 
 
 * You be hanged!' growled the Major; 'you're 
 talking now like an intelligent practical miner, 
 a friend of the people, and so on. But we'd 
 better all start at sunrise to-morrow morning, 
 if it's a good show.' 
 
 On the next morning, accordingly, four men 
 might have been observed wending their way 
 eastward from Yatala at an unusually early 
 hour. They walked rapidly forward, silent, 
 strong with steadfast resolve. It was the mid- 
 winter ; the frost was white upon grass and 
 shrub, the drooping points of which were bright 
 and crystal-glittering. 
 
 ' It occurs to me,' said the Major, after a 
 long pause, in an ill-used tone, 'that we are 
 most confoundedly cold, and most probably 
 proceeding on a fool's errand as well. Ten to
 
 124 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 one there's nothing in this claim after we have 
 pegged it out.' 
 
 ' I alius reckoned this was a lucky gully- 
 out here,' said Cyrus Yorke, ' and much 
 about the lie of the place where Harry talks 
 of. I had a mind to peg out there myself 
 once.' 
 
 ' And why didn't you ? ' said I. 
 
 * Well, something put me off it,' said Cyrus, 
 the most inconsequent of men. It was an 
 excuse that we all eagerly accepted. 
 
 ' This gully does shape like the real thing,' 
 said Joe Bulder. * I'll be bound when we get 
 on a mile farther we'll all be of the same mind. 
 I wish we'd thought of it a week ago. All the 
 gold seems running this way. There's the 
 Australian Maid, the Blue Snake, and the 
 Doubtful Card, all struck gold in the same 
 line. I believe we'll be on the gutter this time 
 if we stick in to work at once.' 
 
 ' I can only say,' returned I, ' that in all my 
 experience ' — we were beginning to talk, nay, 
 to think, like men who had possessed no 
 interest but those allied with the search for 
 gold since childhood — who dreamed of no 
 other distraction for the years that lay between
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 125 
 
 them and the grave — ' In all my experience I 
 never saw anything more promising.' 
 
 * Daresay not,' said the Major scornfully, 
 ' all goldfield ventures are promising. Devil 
 mend them. They are his lures specially and 
 entirely. I should never be surprised at seeing 
 him come and carry away a miner, or elevate 
 the editor of a mining newspaper bodily. What 
 lies — only inferior to those of the Father of 
 those inventions — must he have hatched, have 
 supported ! What an atmosphere of dis- 
 simulation must he have experienced, nay, 
 have revelled in ! ' 
 
 * We have only to cross that ridge and we are 
 in sight of the spot. I am sure that you will 
 be taken with it. Push on, boys ; a fortune is 
 waiting for you. I am as sure as that we stand 
 here that the Nova Scotia Prospecting Claim 
 will run gold into our pockets like a schoolboy 
 making dumps.' 
 
 ' Seeing's believing,' said the Major, quite 
 inconsequentially. ' We have had not quite so 
 much of that lately. Why, who is this, and 
 what is he doing so early ? By Jove, it's Gus 
 Maynard. What's up, Gus ? ' 
 
 Gus Maynard, an American, ranked highly
 
 126 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 in our metallurgical phalanstery. Well edu- 
 •cated and well mannered, he was one of the 
 enigmas which abound on goldfields, but which, 
 after the incurious mental habit which prevails 
 in these societies, doubtless for good and suffi- 
 cient reason, no one attempts to solve. Un- 
 obtrusive, yet manly and direct of demeanour, 
 he was equally bon camarade with the humblest 
 miner and with the educated and what might 
 be termed aristocratic section. He was 
 thoroughly practical, in spite of his rather 
 advanced geological theories, and had not 
 wielded pick and shovel, from Suttor's Mill to 
 Hokitiki Beach-terraces, for nothing. 
 
 ' I've been pegging out a fraud, I reckon, 
 for the 999th time,' he said, with the slow 
 monotone which few northern Americans con- 
 trive to evade. ' The early bird gets the worm, 
 you benighted Britishers are fond of saying. 
 My notion is that he rushes out before he com- 
 pletes his ciphering, and so gets " had " by a 
 stockbroker, an insurance agent, or some other 
 varmint.' 
 
 'Or by a betting man, eh, Gus ? ' said I. 
 But where have you been pegging out, and 
 where are your mates ? '
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 127 
 
 * Gone home ; but I can show you their 
 Miners' Rights, if you wish. Just marked out a 
 prospecting claim, and if I hadn't sworn never 
 to waste words on a hole till I saw the gold 
 come out of it, I'd say it was a good one.' 
 
 ' Show it to us, Gus,' said I faintly. As I 
 spoke, a sudden thrill of pain struck through me, 
 while I saw in my mind's eye countless loads 
 of ounce wash-dirt stacked around my spot. 
 
 ' Know where there's a big fallen tree, a little 
 well-hole like, just in the dip of the flat ? There 
 you have it. I'd spotted this Nova Scotia 
 Gulch for some time, and this morning I up and 
 drove pegs, with the other three boys, because 
 I had a dream four others were going to take it 
 up.' 
 
 ' Would you know any of them again ? ' 
 
 ' One of 'em had a velvet coat on. I 
 remembered that, for I never saw one here.' 
 
 ' Your dream carried true as a pea-rifle, 
 Gus,' said I. ' The fit took me to put on an 
 old velveteen shooting jacket yesterday that I 
 had in my kit. I wish it may bring you no ill 
 luck, but it's my claim that you've just taken up. 
 The Major and I and the other two mates are 
 on our way to mark that very claim. I was
 
 128 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 there all day yesterday, but couldn't put in a peg 
 because it was Sunday.' 
 
 ' And a very good reason, too,' said Gus ; 
 ' suited us admirably. But hadn't you better 
 come on and take up No. i South? It may be 
 a good show. We've taken up five hundred 
 feet square, and will set to work the day after 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 The Major burst into a fit of immoderate 
 laughter. 'Harry,' said he, 'we're not going 
 to make our fortune this time. Fate and Gus 
 Maynard have been too much for you. Let's 
 have the melancholy satisfaction of seeing Gus's 
 pegs, and noting whether they are all en regie. 
 If not, w^e'll ''jump " him.' 
 
 I mechanically followed our transatlantic 
 friend, though I felt more inclined to sit down 
 and cast ashes on my head, in sincere imitation 
 of the older races, who thus very naturally 
 vented their emotions. 
 
 It was too true. The fallen tree — the 
 pellucid basin, no longer stood unsoiled by the 
 hand of man. They were in the centre of a 
 square, at each corner of which was a substantial 
 peg, with a trench cut to show the intersection 
 of the angles. Every bit of ground which but
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 129 
 
 yestereven I so fondly trusted to be the means 
 of restoring my fallen fortunes, was now 
 inalienably vested in others. 
 
 For, according to mining law, well known 
 and carefully studied by us all, ' prior occupation,' 
 if but of five minutes' standing, was sufficient to 
 establish a right valid as that of an immemorial 
 freehold. I knew Gus Maynard too well to 
 doubt that he had neglected any of the necessary 
 forms. My golden estate was as completely 
 forfeited as if I had remained in England. 
 
 Not entirely to lose all our labour we marked 
 out the first claim, after the prospecting claim, 
 in a southerly direction. This, however, as by 
 law established, would be but half the size of 
 the premier or prospecting claim, and to my 
 jaundiced vision did not appear to be half as 
 likely to contain gold. 
 
 ' What are you going to call it, Gus ? ' said I. 
 ' It may as well have a name.' 
 
 'We'll call it the Nova Scotia Lead,' said 
 Gus. ' The man this gully was named after 
 was a friend of mine, and a real smart chap, but 
 so darned unlucky that I believe if he bought 
 an axe the handle would split before he got 
 home.* 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 I30 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' Perhaps his luck will turn some day/ said I ; 
 ' nothing like perseverance.' 
 
 'Well, so it may,' said the mild-mannered 
 but somewhat obstinate Gus ; ' in about thirty 
 or forty years, may be, he might have a throw 
 in. Then, most likely he'd pass in his checks 
 right away. I'm a great believer in luck. I 
 never had much myself, or I shouldn't be here, 
 you bet. And an old Indian woman told me 
 once — but — let's talk of something else.' 
 
 ' What did she tell you, Gus ? ' said I, reck- 
 less in my despair, and not disposed to acquiesce 
 in any man's softly superstitious moods. 
 
 ' It's nonsense, no doubt, but all her tribe 
 swore — I hunted with them w^hen I was a boy 
 — that old Tacomah was never known to be 
 wrong, and more than a score of deaths had 
 occurred in the exact order she had predicted. 
 It was this,' continued he, while a shadow 
 covered his face, like a dim presage of coming 
 ill — ' She said I should go to a far land across 
 sea, to find gold ; that I should have my desire, 
 but that when I had reached it, to beware, for 
 the end was nigh.' 
 
 * Every man's end must be nigh whose fate 
 compels him to live in this infernal place,' said
 
 V THE MINER'S RIGHT 131 
 
 the Major. ' We work like niggers, and live 
 like black fellows (this was rather unfair to 
 Mrs. Yorke) ; we never see any gold ourselves, 
 and yet have the privilege of looking at other 
 fellows handling it and hugging it as their own. 
 Now, I know you'll be on it here ; and as you're 
 a sporting man, let us have a wager.' 
 
 ' All right,' said Gus, a born gambler, who, 
 though prudent and highly respectable, had a 
 book always at the Metropolitan Races, * what 
 shall it be ? ' 
 
 ' I'll lay a hundred to two in fives,' said the 
 Major, ' that you get nothing payable out of 
 this claim. If you win, I sha'n't miss the brace 
 of fives. If it turns out a real golden hole, five 
 hundred pounds won't be worth considering — 
 will it ? ' 
 
 ' Done, and done again,' said he heartily. 
 
 The bets were written down carefully and 
 methodically. After a while we returned to our 
 old claim, crestfallen it is true, but fully resolved 
 to make a stand upon No. i South Nova Scotia 
 Lead, and to free ourselves from debt, if 
 possible, if we didn't make our ' pile ' just yet. 
 
 We sold out our old claim for a ten-pound 
 note ; and in a couple of days, with our
 
 132 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 belongings at Nova Scotia Gully, had logged 
 up and made a start with another shaft. 
 
 The sinking was good. No rock, no water. 
 Gus and his party were soon down to the 
 bottom — that is, the alluvial drift, the sand 
 and water-worn pebbles, the gravel and debris 
 of the long dead, deeply buried stream, which 
 in past ages had rippled and murmured under 
 the blue heavens, heard the birds call amid the 
 trees which lined its banks, and reflected the 
 still azure of a southern sky. 
 
 Now waterless, soundless — blind, dumb, and 
 imprisoned it lay, with a hundred feet of the 
 earth's crust upon its bosom — that bosom which 
 was once more bared to the light of day, solely 
 by reason of the gems and scattered treasure 
 which lay amid the sands of shore and channel. 
 
 Man, the arch disturber, burying himself 
 deep below the soil, and groping, mole fashion, 
 in his sunless galleries, was able to trace out all 
 the meanderings of that sunless stream. Even 
 the dark, hard, stone-like fragments of the 
 perished forest did he exhume, scrutinising the 
 grain of the timber which had fallen, the fruit 
 which had ripened, the leaf which had withered 
 in the long solitary eeons of dimmest eld.
 
 V THE MINERS RIGHT 133 
 
 When the first 'prospect,' the first pan of 
 alluvial gold-drift, was sent up to be tested, we 
 stopped work and joined the anxious crowd, who 
 pressed around, deeply curious and, indeed, 
 directly interested in its proved value. 
 
 The manner of separating the clay, sand, 
 gravel, etc., from the precious metal is much 
 after this fashion : carrying his tin pan or dish 
 to the nearest water, the miner — Gus himself in 
 this present instance — dips the vessel beneath, 
 and immediately commences a half- circular, 
 half-vertical, rotatory movement, suffering the 
 clay-stained water to pour off, to be replenished 
 from time to time, and always leaving less and 
 less debris behind it. 
 
 After successive washings and castings forth 
 of the pebbles by hand, nothing is left but a 
 narrow crescent of sand, on the edge of which a 
 border of dull red grains, specks, small particles, 
 and a few irregular yellowish fragments are 
 plainly visible. There is no mistaking the king 
 of metals. As Gus holds up the dish first for 
 mine, and then for the inspection of the eager 
 crowd, each man takes a rapid, earnest glance 
 and draws back. Then a wild cry bursts forth, 
 hats are thrown up in the excitement of the
 
 134 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 moment, and the more intelligible utterances 
 can be translated into * fine gold, mostly, some 
 rather coarse and water-worn — half a penny- 
 weight to dish.' 
 
 This was success, indeed — triumphant, 
 intoxicating success. The rule of three sum 
 under such circumstances, which every miner 
 entrusts to his mental arithmetic, runs thus : 
 two dishes to a bucket, sixty buckets to a load, 
 which makes three ounces, or ^ii odd to the 
 load — the load meaning a reasonable quantity 
 for one horse to draw in a box cart. The wash- 
 dirt has in a general way to be subjected to a 
 puddling machine, a shallow wooden cylinder 
 like a large circular trough, in which a species 
 of harrow is drawn by an unlucky horse, which 
 continues his unending round, like the tradition- 
 ary mill horse, until he must be heartily sick of 
 the whole concern. 
 
 Poignant regret and bitter disappointment 
 were over, though so little a matter as the delay 
 of a day's marking out had lost us what promised 
 to be as good a claim as any on Yatala — in 
 fact, 'a gentle fortune,' as Cyrus observed. 
 We comforted ourselves with the belief that in 
 No. I we had a claim which would almost
 
 V THE MINERS RIGHT 135 
 
 necessarily be a good one — might, indeed, be as 
 rich, or, indeed, richer than the prospecting 
 claim. 
 
 Taking the general nature of ' leads ' or dead 
 rivers, it chiefly obtained that if gold were found 
 on one portion of them, it extended to all the 
 claims within a considerable distance. Some- 
 times, of course, it was not so. All the gold in 
 the locality appeared to have been shovelled by 
 malignant gnomes into one crevice, in the 
 familiar phrase of the miners 'a pot-hole,' 
 leaving the rest of the lead non-auriferous and 
 disappointing. This we knew to be possible, 
 but did not think probable. We accordingly 
 worked away, stimulated daily by the pile of 
 wash-dirt rising high on the side of the pro- 
 specting claim's brace — a pile in which the gold 
 could be seen with the naked eye. At length 
 we bottomed. Our shaft was down amid huge 
 gray boulders of limestone which formed the 
 bed rock of the locale. The drift was reached. 
 With what anxious eagerness did the Major and 
 I carry out our first dish of wash-dirt to ' try a 
 prospect!' Inch by inch the sand and gravel 
 lowered in the dish, the clay -stained water 
 flowed and flowed, till at length, in the full view
 
 136 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 of a hundred men, the last streak of sand and 
 minute gravel was left. In vain we looked, with 
 practised eye, for the faint red rim which had 
 comforted us in the prospecting claim. I shook 
 the dish, and with the action dispersed and re- 
 united the remnant sand. It was of no avail. 
 No trace — even the faintest — of 'the colour' 
 could be descried. With a half-angry, half- 
 humorous roar, the crowd parted right and left, 
 while the verdict was proclaimed, expressively 
 if not elegantly, by Cyrus Yorke himself, who 
 cried aloud, plain for all men to hear. 
 
 ' Bottomed a duffer, by gum, not the colour 
 itself, no mor'n on the palm o' my hand.' 
 
 We tried a few more dishes, all with the 
 same melancholy result. Not a scintilla of the 
 magic metal. Our labour had gone for nothing. 
 We felt humiliated in the opinion of the crowd, 
 many of whom had a personal interest in our 
 success, as their claims, following after ours, 
 would have been enhanced in value. Others, 
 in despite of the stern mining law, were evasive 
 of regulations and were awaiting our success, 
 in order to commence sinking on their own 
 account. Others had speculated in shares for 
 the rise, and now found themselves hung up in
 
 V THE MINERS RIGHT 137 
 
 a falling market. All these persons regarded 
 us, with more or less of justice, as having done 
 them an injury. 
 
 About the same time, or, indeed, within a 
 few days afterwards. No. i North, with Nos. 2 
 and 3 on either side, bottomed with similar 
 results. It was the more astonishing, as all the 
 while the prospecting claim was raising any 
 quantity of wash-dirt, and the market value of 
 shares therein had risen to one thousand pounds 
 per man. How I almost cursed my too rigidly 
 puritanic education ! 
 
 Cast adrift again, we struck out for pastures 
 new in the mining- nomadic sense, and, dis- 
 appointed — not despairing — commenced a fresh 
 shaft some ten miles off — this time on a 
 Saturday night, and In an extremely promising 
 flat, in which, as usual, I sanguinely trusted to 
 find my schatz, like the drez reisende aztf ihreni 
 zuege. The schatz, however, was not, as yet, 
 for any one — except Gus Maynard, it seemed. 
 The Nova Scotia base line was changed by the 
 Commissioner, upon the Impassioned application 
 of scores of distressed miners, some with large 
 families, others without any encumbrance, as 
 they are politely termed In Australia. All
 
 138 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap, v 
 
 kinds of efforts were made to trace the gold ; 
 but no gold could by any means be traced, 
 except in the unlucky-lucky prospecting claim 
 — the shareholders in which were Gus Maynard 
 and party, and not Harry Pole and Co., alas ! 
 
 Then was the well-known frontage expedient 
 tried of ' swinging the base line,' which the Com- 
 missioner was empowered to do, when called 
 upon by a majority of the registered claim- 
 holders, on any given frontage lead. This 
 somewhat remarkable operation, well-nigh im- 
 possible to explain to non-mining intelligence, 
 and sufficiently confusing even to those who had 
 the dear-bought privilege of mining experience, 
 may be illustrated as follows.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 After sinking in every claim to the bed rock, 
 on the Imaginary course of the lead, not only Is 
 no gold found, but, from the depth and 
 character of the strata, it Is evident that the 
 lead or ancient river-bed cannot possibly run In 
 that direction. Then, after due application to 
 the Commissioner, the base line is altered or 
 ' swung,' i.e. freshly marked on another imagin- 
 ary course, and the registered claims only, of 
 equal size and number of men — of precisely the 
 same rotation — are marked out afresh on the 
 new base line. All previous markings and 
 occupations are thereby annulled. Only the 
 new ones are valid. 
 
 This mode of procedure, originally framed 
 by officers thoroughly versed In all mining 
 law, had stood the test of experience. If not 
 the fairest mode of distribution of risk, it was
 
 I40 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 the best compromise that could be effected 
 between opposing interests. Still, curious 
 contretemps were continually occurring. When 
 No. 6, let us say, was measured off and allotted 
 on the new line, it would be found, perhaps, 
 that No. 5's shaft, seventy feet deep, the last 
 twenty through basalt, and a highly expensive 
 exploration, was now situated In No. 6 claim. 
 
 Thereupon the No. 5 men would come to 
 the Commissioner and represent that they were 
 all married men with large families, and that 
 they had spent their last shilling in sinking the 
 said shaft, and if No. 6 were allowed to have it, 
 what a hard case it would be ; and wouldn't his 
 honour allow them to work it still, and drive 
 (or tunnel) into No. 5, their present claim ? 
 
 A Commissioner who was soft-hearted or 
 philanthropical would probably be disposed to 
 assent to this very feasible suggestion. Thereby 
 he would straightway complicate matters, and 
 get the whole lead into confusion, inasmuch as 
 If No. 5 got gold in No. 6's claim, there would 
 be a very nice bit of work cut out as to the 
 distribution of it. 
 
 Of course, Captain Blake, after years at the 
 Meroo in the early days of Louisa and Lambing
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 141 
 
 Flat, had seen far too much of that kind of thing 
 to be taken in. He would simply tell them to 
 ' go to the devil ' and read the regulations. He 
 and they alike were bound by what they saw 
 there. They were clever enough to read them, 
 underline them, and worry the life and soul out 
 of him, William Devereux Blake, by taking 
 technical objections, God knows. Then let 
 them obey the law, whatever it was, and not 
 come bothering him with ridiculous applications. 
 It was as fair for one as another. As to wives 
 and families, and such like rubbish (in the way 
 of argument, he meant), it was waste of time to 
 introduce such matter into the question. Lose 
 their shaft ? Of course they must lose their 
 shaft. And any block claim that the new base 
 line, as newly surveyed, took in, must stop work 
 till the frontage line was proved. How were 
 men to expend capital, and develop the deep 
 lead properly — answer him that — unless they 
 were defended in the possession of their duly 
 registered frontage claim ? he asked. They 
 must be protected in following the registered 
 claims on the lead wherever they were found to 
 go. Much grumbling was occasionally heard, 
 and threats were now and then used. But a
 
 142 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Commissioner of Goldfields should know how to 
 put down his foot ; and when once planted in 
 accordance with his reading of the law, should 
 never raise it. Firmness invariably, in the long- 
 run, succeeds with large bodies of men. 
 
 As I said before, we had the base line 
 altered over and over again at Nova Scotia 
 Gully, until the south claim levels were nearly 
 turned into the north and vice versa. The old 
 shareholders in the prospecting claim were quite 
 contented. They, of course, did not budge. 
 Their claim was central, measured off by the 
 mining surveyor. It was daily turning out 
 loads of wash-dirt from half an ounce to an 
 ounce to the ton. It seemed inexhaustible too. 
 The stratum of wash-dirt was the thickest ever 
 known in an Australian goldfield. It was in 
 some places of the unparalleled — well - nigh 
 incredible — depth of forty feet. Think of that, 
 said all the experienced miners ; years and 
 years of w^ork. When would it come to an 
 end ? But, jammed between the fossiliferous 
 gray limestone walls of a tremendous crevassey 
 it seemed to be only what the diggers called a 
 pot-hole. It apparently came from no other 
 'run of gold;' led to none, certainly. Hence
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 143 
 
 was the disappointment deep and bitter in 
 proportion amid all the unsuccessful comrades 
 of the hero of this wonderful discovery, Gus 
 Maynard. 
 
 Again we were disappointed. Not for the 
 first, not for the tenth — the twentieth time ! 
 We had simply, failing to find gold in our 
 claim, known as No. 7 North Nova Scotia, 
 lost our time, our labour, and every shilling 
 which we had been compelled to disburse for 
 what are called in mining phrase 'expenses,' 
 that is, rope, tools, iron work, wax candles (for 
 working below), and any other matters without 
 which ' sinking ' cannot be carried on. We 
 had gone more deeply still into debt to our 
 good friend and backer, Mrs. Mangrove ; and 
 really, I felt quite ashamed to face that truly 
 generous and estimable woman. 
 
 'So you're "duffered out" again, Harry!' 
 she said, in her usual cheery accent ; ' well, 
 you are an unlucky beggar, I must say. I 
 don't think that young lady of yours will have 
 any great catch of you. And the Major, he's 
 just as bad. He generally buys a few yellow 
 books after he's had a regular march down like 
 this, and lies on his back and reads for a week.
 
 144 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Your mate, Joe Bulder, he always seems to 
 me to take it to heart too much ; he sits, and 
 smokes, and grizzles about It, no end. And 
 that Hawkesbury chap, he never takes on at 
 all ; he's too careless to fret about anything : 
 he leaves all that to the poor little wife— just 
 like you men, that is. But you are an unlucky 
 crowd, and there's no use saying you ain't' 
 
 * I'm afraid we are, Mrs. Mangrove,' I said 
 sadly, for my heart was low enough, I confess. 
 'If I hadn't sworn an oath to keep on till 
 the end of the year, I'd throw the whole thing 
 up. As it is, I don't know what we shall 
 do, for I can't think of asking you for more 
 credit.' 
 
 ' You needn't ask for it, Harry, my boy ; 
 you shall have it without asking, to the end of 
 the year, as you've sworn such a big oath about 
 it. My word ! I haven't followed the diggings 
 all these years, me and John, without having to 
 put the pot on now and then. We'll chance it 
 till your time's up, just for the luck of the thing. 
 Perhaps you'll make a rise, and pull us through, 
 and something over.' 
 
 ' And suppose we don't ? ' 
 
 'Then we can "blue the lot," and your
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 145 
 
 tucker account can go with many another good 
 pound as we've seen the last of. But mind 
 you, it ain't all losings, not by a long way. 
 Didn't Joe Hall put us Into that Mary Jane 
 reef, as we're drawing good divs. out of to 
 this day ? And German Harry gave us a half 
 share in the Fatherland. It was down a bit 
 to be sure, but we got eight hundred pound 
 for that, and four good washings up, too. So 
 you go and fossick out another good show, 
 and I'll stand to you, whether the old man 
 likes it or not. Take a nip, won't you ; it'll 
 keep your pecker up. No ? Then have a 
 glass of beer — it's only she-oak, but there's 
 nothing wrong about It, or we should have 
 had a funeral or two by now, this hot weather.' 
 
 I accepted the table - ale of the colony, 
 said 'God bless you, old woman,' to my kind 
 and generous, If somewhat unrefined, friend 
 In need, and walked back to Nova Scotia 
 Gully. . 
 
 There I found the whole party so nearly 
 posed In the different conditions that Mrs. 
 Mangrove had predicted of them, that I burst 
 out laughing in the Major's mildly - Inquiring 
 face. That calm warrior was never truly and 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 unaffectedly surprised — if outward appearances 
 were to be considered — at anything. 
 
 He looked up from a cheaply - published 
 * yellow - back ' novel of the period, which he 
 had apparently borrowed since I left in the 
 morning, and which, lying flat upon his back, 
 he had been engaged in assimilating. 
 
 ' Been drowning atra ctira in the flowing B. 
 and S., Harry ? ' he said. ' It's a terrible tempt- 
 ation when fellows have just '' duffered out," 
 I admit. A debauch of light reading, I find, 
 however, has less reactionary vengeance about 
 it. I don't seem to mind drinking so much, 
 but I can't stand the repentance. That's what 
 keeps me so virtuous.' 
 
 'I am not "on," most noble centurion,' I 
 made answer ; ' but I have just had a great yarn 
 with Mrs. Mangrove — God bless the dear old 
 woman — and she described so exactly the way 
 you all took bad luck, that when I found you 
 with your yellow-back, whatever it is ' 
 
 ' The CoiLiit of Monte Christo, my dear boy. 
 Of course, I've read it before; but it's a fine, 
 long, solid romance, and I thought this the 
 most appropriate time for a big read, so I went 
 and borrowed it from Burton — but go on.'
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 147 
 
 'Well, there's poor Joe, smoking and look- 
 ing like a man who, having made up his mind 
 to hang himself, is now devoting all his mental 
 powers to fixing upon a suitable tree. She 
 says, truly, that he feels it too much, and that 
 Cyrus, who has gone fast asleep, leaving his 
 wife at the water-tub, and all the plates and 
 dishes to finish before she goes to bed, doesn't 
 feel it half enough.' 
 
 ' " To each his sufferings : all are men 
 Condemned alike to groan, 
 The tender for another's woes (that's me), 
 The unfeeling for his own (that's you)," ' 
 
 quoted the Major with emphasis. ' I am at 
 present so deeply penetrated with the scoun- 
 drelly ungrateful way in which his nionde has 
 treated the deserving Edmund Dante, that I 
 have no tears to spare for our own apparently 
 real misfortunes ; but I do not mind quitting the 
 "Chateau d'lf" for a few minutes to inquire 
 whether or no we are to starve, or whether we 
 have eaten our last, or rather Mrs. Mangrove's 
 last, beef and bread.' 
 
 'That admirable woman has pressed upon 
 us a whole Elysium of ''tick,'" I say, 'that is 
 until Christmas, when she will probably with-
 
 148 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 draw, leaving us to perish financially If we 
 continue to be the prey of the gods.' 
 
 'But not until then?' the Major Inquired, 
 with a certain air of indifference, returning to 
 his romance. 
 
 * No,' I said ; * our existence literally, and as 
 a mining party, is secured until then. If we 
 don't make a rise before that time, we shall 
 have to become wages -men, bushrangers, or 
 knock-about-men on a station — farm-labourers.' 
 
 ' I was one once,' murmured the Major, with 
 his eyes fixed on his book. 
 
 ' What, a bushranger ? ' Inquired I eagerly. 
 
 * No ; not so good as that. But Mayne 
 and I — remittances being disgracefully long In 
 coming — contracted to dig a lot of potatoes for 
 an old buffer near Tenterfield. We dug away 
 with great Industry ; it seemed an easy sort of 
 game, but I couldn't help cutting most of the 
 potatoes in half. These I had to bury to avoid 
 detection, which led to old Baggs (that was 
 our master's name) referring blasphemously to 
 the smallness of the crop. I looked virtuously 
 grieved.' 
 
 ' Heroic virtue,' I said; 'and how long did 
 It last ? '
 
 VI THE MINERS RIGHT 149 
 
 ' More than a month, I assure you. One day 
 our letters came — Mayne's to the care of John 
 Baggs, Esq., Bubbrah, and two addressed Major 
 Blank, you know, late 77th Regiment. How 
 old Baggs stared when I took mine from him ! 
 ''These for you?" he said, gasping audibly. 
 " Without a doubt they are ; hand them here, 
 Baggs — there are not two ex-majors of the 77th 
 knocking about this beastly hot village of yours. 
 Perhaps you'll send for the spades, and let a 
 boy bring our swags down to the village. 
 We're going there now. There's hardly time 
 to order dinner. Better drop in and join us ; 
 one o'clock sharp." " No, thank ye, er — er 
 — Major. Well, I'm blowed," said he, and 
 walked off' 
 
 Let me strive to produce, as we are out of 
 employment, a picture of that strange settle- 
 ment, a mining community in its first inception, 
 while the colours are fresh upon memory's 
 pallet. What should I have thought of it, 
 familiar as all things are now, had I been sud- 
 denly deposited before the door of our tent, in 
 the old happy, sleepy days, at Dibblestowe 
 Leys ? 
 
 Far as eye can see, the area of settlement — •
 
 I50 THE MINER'S RIGHT ' chap. 
 
 several miles square — is denuded of timber, the 
 felled or burned trees represented by unsightly 
 stumps in all directions. Within this clearing 
 every kind of building and tenement is care- 
 lessly strewed. Tents, log-huts, with the walls 
 built, American fashion, of horizontal tree-trunks; 
 slab-huts of split heavy boards, Australian 
 fashion, placed vertically, and for the most part 
 not impervious to heat or cold ; bark-huts, of 
 which both sides, and sometimes doors, are 
 composed of sheets of the flattened eucalyptus 
 bark — this material composing the roof both of 
 this and the previously described architectural 
 edifices. The more ambitious buildings are of 
 weather-board, sawn pine or hardwood boards, 
 roofed with large sheets of galvanised iron. 
 These are chiefly confined to the streets of the 
 township proper. This is held to be the 
 maximum of architectural solidity, elegance, 
 and durability, from a digging point of view, 
 beyond which no reasonable man could frame 
 an aspiration. 
 
 To the untravelled European mind such a 
 picture of household habitudes would doubtless 
 present the idea of ugliness, squalor, and priva- 
 tion difficult to realise or exaggerate. As with
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 151 
 
 most superficial conclusions, the Idea would be 
 erroneous. Amonor other factors of a bene- 
 ficent nature the climate stands prominently 
 forward. The Interior of Australia, for the 
 most part, enjoys seasons, mild, rainless, devoid 
 of storms and tempests, rendering unnecessary 
 the durable abodes of more northern regions. 
 There Is no want of space ; land Is cheap and 
 accessible. The Miner's Right — that talls- 
 manlc document — In addition to conferring the 
 potentiality of untold gold, has other powers 
 and magic qualities. It provides the holder 
 with a perfect title to an allotment of the earth's 
 surface, varying from a quarter of an acre within 
 town boundaries, to four times the quantity In 
 a suburban location, always supposing that 
 ' payable gold ' is not demonstrated to exist on 
 or below the surface. In such case any fellow- 
 miner may claim to dig thereon, previously 
 compensating the householder, as may be fixed 
 by arbitration, the Commissioner, as usual, 
 being the final arbiter for the affront to his 
 Lares and Penates. 
 
 It follows hence that the thrifty miner who 
 possesses the treasure, not less common on 
 Australian goldfields than in other places, of a
 
 152 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 cleanly managing wife, is enabled to surround 
 himself with ordinary rural privileges. A plot 
 of garden ground, well fenced, grows not only 
 vegetables but flowers, which a generation since 
 were only to be found in conservatories. He 
 has a goodly array of laying hens, occasionally 
 even a well-fed pig. On a rainy day, when 
 the claim is off work, the domestic miner is 
 often seen surrounded by his children, hoeing 
 up his potatoes or cauliflowers, or training the 
 climbing rose which beautifies his rude but by 
 no means despicable dwelling. 
 
 Entering such a hut, as it is uniformly, but 
 in no sense of contempt, termed — a hut being 
 simply lower in the scale than a cottage — you 
 will there find nothing to shock the eye or 
 displease the taste. As in a midshipman's cabin, 
 economy of space may be the rule but untidi- 
 ness is the exception. Not only is the earthen 
 floor scrupulously swept and perhaps damped 
 with sprinkled water every day, but the space 
 to a considerable distance in the rear of the 
 premises. All scraps and refuse are raked into 
 heaps, and on Saturday, which is invariably a 
 half- holiday and cleaning -up day, carefully 
 burned. The meal to which the married
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 153 
 
 miner sits down at mid-day is generally com- 
 posed of excellent beef or mutton, roast or 
 boiled, bread of the best wheaten flour, 
 vegetables and tea, a discretion, always sup- 
 posing the claim to be 'in full work.' At less 
 prosperous seasons, no doubt, there is occa- 
 sional need for distinct but seldom for distress- 
 ing retrenchment. Before that stage sets in, 
 the married miner generally betakes himself to 
 hired work of some sort, for the neighbouring 
 squatters or farmers, until he 'gets a show 
 again ' in a mineral point of view. 
 
 When the field becomes so worked out that 
 there is no longer hope of employment at his 
 favourite occupation, the domestic miner gener- 
 ally sells his improvements and the good- 
 will of his little holding to a more sanguine 
 or more stationary comrade, and packing wife 
 and children, furniture, pots and pans, shovels 
 and picks, cocks and hens, upon his dray, 
 catches the old horse, and migrates to the next 
 promising ' rush,' whether fifty or five hundred 
 miles distant. Arrived there, he selects an 
 unoccupied allotment, and proceeds to levy on 
 the adjacent forest for a fresh dwelling, which 
 in a few days presents in all essential respects
 
 154 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 a Striking resemblance to the home he had just 
 quitted. This done, he attacks the green or 
 gravelly garment which garbs the bosom of the 
 Mighty Mother, with his old patient industry 
 and a courage undaunted by a hundred defeats. 
 
 Among this class of miners, constituting a 
 very large proportion of the mining population 
 on every goldfield, it will be seen that the 
 chance of lawless behaviour being supported is 
 slight. Malcontents and criminals doubtless 
 there were in due proportion to the exceptional 
 circumstances which brought together the com- 
 munity, but the police being aided by the whole 
 body of respectable miners, and still more 
 strengthened by the propriety of public feeling, 
 there was little probability of crime rioting 
 and reigning unchecked, as (unless their own 
 chroniclers are marvellously and unnecessarily 
 mendacious) was the case on the American 
 gold and silver fields. 
 
 Had such characters as Slade, and others, 
 but presumed to have shown themselves in 
 Yatala for a single day, they would have been 
 hunted down and extirpated, I venture to say, 
 with as little delay and compunction as the 
 tiger which once escaped from a travelling
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 155 
 
 showman in the neighbourhood of Dibblestowe 
 Leys. Not a trace of sympathy would have 
 been shown with their acts and braggart blood- 
 deeds. I can fancy the speechless astonish- 
 ment, mingled with wrath unspeakable, with 
 which Sergeant M'Mahon would have received 
 the astounding statement that the portly host 
 of the Freemason's Arms had been shot dead 
 by Ned White or Bill Jinks, across his own 
 bar. Hardly more surprise and incredibility 
 would have been evoked had the news appeared 
 in the Yatala WatcJima7i that the Church of 
 England clergyman, a Cambridge graduate, 
 and a most highly respected personage, had 
 been scalped by Bungarree, the black fellow, an 
 aboriginal chieftain, who (when in liquor) was 
 wont to assert his prior right to the whole 
 goldfield, and his fixed determination to peti- 
 tion Queen Wikitoria for a share of the 
 weekly gold escort. 
 
 The carrying of arms, that apparently 
 natural and necessary habit in the United 
 States of America, was here a monopoly en- 
 joyed by the police. Even threatening to 
 shoot was an offence punishable by law. A 
 worthy Downeaster was, for that offence only.
 
 156 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 promptly apprehended and haled into * the 
 Logs,' as the strongly timbered lock-up was 
 usually termed, for merely using the threat of 
 shooting. He was called upon to find sureties 
 to keep the peace in the sum of one hundred 
 pounds, and, to his dismay and mortification, 
 retained a night in duress for the first time in 
 his life, he averred, such sureties not being 
 forthcoming. The Commissioner, with his 
 usual good-nature, sent word to one of his 
 countrymen, who appeared and tendered bail to 
 the amount, so that the free and enlightened 
 citizen was liberated. 
 
 The town of Yatala, where the houses, 
 huts, and cottages were so close to one another 
 that every foot of frontage had its value, was 
 composed of two principal and seven or eight 
 cross streets and lesser thoroughfares. The 
 larger shops, especially when lighted up at 
 night, were gorgeous with plate glass, and 
 brilliant in display of all the wares requisite 
 for a mining community. There were haber- 
 dashers, grocers, fruiterers, tailors, shoemakers, 
 butchers, bakers, booksellers, not noticeably 
 different in the appearance of the warehouses 
 and wares from their city prototypes. Paint
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 157 
 
 and calico, varnish and gilding, with the glare 
 of well-fed oil lamps, made the outer present- 
 ment dazzling to behold. The tourist, walking 
 down the main street at night, in the midst of 
 a surging, stalwart, but most well-behaved 
 crowd, must needs be struck with astonish- 
 ment at the close resemblance of the mushroom 
 town to the real, legitimate, accredited cities of 
 an older world. 
 
 The back premises of these imposing struc- 
 tures would seldom bear close scrutiny, shading 
 off as they did to bark and tin, and sometimes 
 calico continuations. But, commodious and 
 weather-proof, they answered fairly well the 
 purposes for which they were Intended. The 
 most prosperous establishments were naturally 
 the licensed hotels and public-houses. Of 
 these there were a hundred and seventy in all. 
 A very large number, doubtless ; but any 
 attempt to limit the licensing produced such 
 a crop of ' shanties ' or sly-grogshops, that the 
 magistrates granted licenses to nearly every 
 one who chose to apply. The license fee, £2^0, 
 was rather high. But, presumably, a demand 
 for such entertainment existed, or persons 
 would not be found willing to lay out their
 
 158 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 money on the speculation. Upon these estab- 
 Hshments, which are generally suspected in 
 rude communities of being seed-beds of 
 disorder, a strong hand was kept. They were 
 only permitted to have music with dancing at 
 their saloons once a week. This permission 
 was applied for in writing to the Bench, and 
 liable to be promptly withdrawn at any time 
 upon complaint by the police. 
 
 Gambling, in an open manner, was sternly 
 repressed. Hotel-keepers were fined severely 
 if convicted, and every pai^ticeps crzmznis was 
 similarly dealt with. Mr. Jack Hamlin, in 
 spite of his engaging social qualities and latent 
 nobility of nature, would have had a bad time 
 of it at Yatala. Strictly under the surveillance 
 of the police, Mr. Merlin's cold gray eye would 
 have been invariably upon him ; and it would 
 have been unsafe to have offered long odds 
 that the sergeant did not eventually run him 
 in for contravening some of the statutes which 
 he knew and loved so well. 
 
 Although many of the miners could not have 
 been described as religious persons, yet was 
 Yatala, on the whole, a very church-going com- 
 munity. The Protestant denominations were
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 159 
 
 well represented. The Church of England, 
 the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, and the 
 Congregationallsts had all built, without a 
 sixpence of Government aid, very neat and 
 commodious edifices, in which service was 
 held, by ordained ministers, twice on each 
 Sunday regularly. Sunday schools, visiting 
 societies, and other allied associations were 
 as plentiful and well kept up as in any settled 
 parish. The Roman Catholics had perhaps 
 the most imposing building, except the Wes- 
 leyans ; but then Cousin Jack Tresslder, an 
 opulent Cornish miner, had given eight 
 hundred pounds to the latter, which had en- 
 abled them to have stained-glass windows, with 
 varnished seats, and divers other decorative 
 distinctions. 
 
 I was never done wondering at what struck 
 me first as the chief characteristic of this ereat 
 army of adventurers suddenly gathered together 
 from all lands and seas — viz. its outward pro- 
 priety and submission to the law. Closely 
 applicable was the description of the mixed 
 host at the leaguer of Valencia — 
 
 ' There were men from wilds where the death wind sweeps, 
 There were spears from hills where the lion sleeps,
 
 i6o THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 There were bows from sands where the ostrich runs — 
 For the shrill horn of Afric had called her sons 
 To the battle of the West.' 
 
 And, Indeed, swarthy, grizzled Callfornlans, 
 red sashed and high booted, with great felt 
 sombreros that took all kinds of fantastic 
 shapes — jostled stalwart ' Geordles ' and Cousin 
 Jacks, whose fresh faces told that they had 
 never before left the shores of good old 
 England. Frenchmen and Spaniards, Ger- 
 mans and Italians, Hungarians and Poles, 
 Greeks and — Trojans ? Well, I may not 
 swear that any unit of that richly variegated 
 crowd had quitted the windy plains of Ilium 
 or the banks of SImoIs for Yatala Creek — but 
 If that once famous nationality was unrepre- 
 sented at the great Yatala rush, It stood alone 
 In disfranchisement. 
 
 The compatriots of Achilles and Ajax, 
 though not of Hector and Paris, were 
 sufficiently numerous, proving, as one marked 
 their stately forms, their flashing eyes and 
 chiselled features, that the modern Inhabitants 
 of Hellas have not relinquished the birthright of 
 godlike strength and beauty which witched the 
 world when ' the fearless old fashion held sway.'
 
 VI 772^^ MINER'S RIGHT i6i 
 
 Yet, though the narrow streets actually 
 trembled under the feet of the surging crowd 
 of grand-looking athletes that thronged the 
 well-lighted thoroughfares, and filled the shops 
 and tavern bars after working hours, there was 
 no lawless act, no wearing of deadly weapons, 
 no foul language, no open drunkenness or 
 offensive parade of immorality ; far more 
 decorous of demeanour and easy to thread 
 than the ordinary crowd of a manufacturing 
 town or a metropolis. What was the reason 
 of this strange reserve, this almost unnatural 
 decorum ? 
 
 It was apparently a triumph of moral control ! 
 It was not wholly the spontaneous propriety of 
 a highly intelligent, travelled, experienced com- 
 munity. Human nature, in the mass, though 
 often unduly maligned, scarcely attains such 
 results unaided or unrestrained. 
 
 A patent fact was, that the vast crowd was 
 under the sway of a very smart officer of police, 
 who, with two sergeants, a couple of detect- 
 ives, and about a score of constables of the 
 rank and file, about one man to each thousand, 
 kept the whole of the great band of adventurers 
 in perfect and admirable order. 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 i62 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Such, in other colonies, had not {vide Mick 
 Hord, barkeeper, ex-miner, storekeeper, pugiHst, 
 etc.) always been the successful result under 
 such circumstances. ' Perleece, Mr. Merlin,* 
 he said one day to that officer, ' talk about 
 perleece, and call this a "rush." Tve known 
 a rush of forty thousand men, and seen em 
 kickin' the perleece from one end of the town 
 to the other.' 
 
 ' I was not at the Red Hills, my dear boy, 
 nor Sergeant M'Mahon either,' said Mr. 
 Merlin, smiling with that way of his that some- 
 how did not tend to reassure people. ' I should 
 not advise any one to commence that kind of 
 thing here.' 
 
 Whatever the reason, no one did apparently 
 care to take the initiative in any kind of disturb- 
 ance, though such was often threatened. 
 
 The inspector, Mr. Merlin, was always 
 extremely keen at knowing everybody and 
 everything which it concerned him to know 
 very thoroughly. Patient and calculating, too, 
 always averse to use force when diplomacy 
 would suffice. Yet utterly impartial and 
 pitiless in the execution of his duty when need 
 was. He was, therefore, respected by the
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 163 
 
 miners generally, as a man of capacity, liked 
 for his bojihoinie, superficial as they knew it to 
 be, and secretly feared by all those who re- 
 called 'sins unwhipt of justice,' which were 
 the precise traits of character needed by a man 
 in his position. 
 
 Sergeant M'Mahon, the second in command 
 of this somewhat minute battalion — have I 
 described that good old warrior before ? — was a 
 man to w^hom not less than to Mr. Merlin the 
 peace of the goldfield population was mainly 
 owing. He was truly an astonishing combin- 
 ation of natural sagacity and acquired wisdom, 
 as recognised in the force. Emigrating from 
 county Mayo in his youth, he had passed his 
 earlier manhood and middle age in the ranks of 
 the New South Wales police. To say that he 
 was shrewd, active, rarely at fault, was to give 
 but little estimate of the unerring half-instinctive 
 accuracy with which he pounced upon a criminal, 
 if wanted, like a lurcher upon a leveret. An 
 immensely powerful man, with a fair share of 
 activity, he was invincible at close quarters, 
 armed as he was with the terrors and majesty 
 of the law, which he had, so to speak, incorpor- 
 ated with his own personal presence, until no
 
 1 64 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 man could separate them. His air of authority 
 and grave official dignity soared far beyond all 
 vain attempt at description. Kings might be 
 regal of aspect and Emperors unapproachably 
 grand, but the sergeant's majesty of demeanour 
 was, perhaps, not exceeded by any crowned 
 head in the universe. 
 
 A steady reader, he had mastered the Intri- 
 cacies and forms of ordinary police-court law to 
 such an extent that few of the stipendiary 
 magistrates, and none of the unpaid justices, 
 could successfully contravene his legal dicta ; 
 while, in the matter of foresight and discretion, 
 he possessed a fund which would have set up 
 an ordinary Lieutenant-Governor, or a couple 
 of chairmen of Quarter-Sessions. 
 
 The old Adam — not to mention the eager 
 tameless spirit of the Western Celt — occasionally 
 displayed itself, lighting up the dark gray eye, 
 and changing the quiet, unimpassioned tones. 
 But rarely was such a manifestation descried by 
 the laity. Respectful to his superiors, firm yet 
 reasonable with his subordinates, carefully civil 
 or humorously polite to the general popula- 
 tion, sudden and startling in any coup cTdtat 
 the hour for which had arrived, the sergeant
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 165 
 
 was a man whose successful aim in life was to 
 prevent minor revolutions, and who only needed 
 a national one to have become a General of 
 Division. 
 
 Like many of the generals of the empire, a 
 slight solecism here and there might be observ- 
 able in his speech. But the courage, coolness, 
 and organisation were there, and a natural 
 consciousness of power about the man effectually 
 prevented any appearance of incongruity, 
 bordering on ridicule. 
 
 Mounted troopers and foot constables com- 
 posed the contingent. Their duty was to arrest, 
 or cause to be summoned to the police court, all 
 such as betrayed themselves ignorant of the 
 statute law of Great Britain, as adopted in the 
 colonies, by committing breaches thereof. 
 
 It might seem futile to punish such offences 
 as ordinary drunkenness or evil speech in the 
 streets of a mining township by fine or imprison- 
 ment. Nevertheless the thing was done, and 
 done effectually. Every offence against the law 
 was taken cognisance of instantly, dealt with 
 promptly, and punished sharply. All knew 
 what they had to expect. The administration 
 of justice was entirely impartial, and the law was
 
 1 66 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 backed up by the whole force of genuine diggers. 
 They knew full well — being, perhaps, the most 
 intelligent, experienced, and, so to speak, 
 cultured class of ottvriers in the world — that the 
 strong arm of the law would only be weakened 
 to the detriment of the whole society. 
 
 As for petty mining thefts, the stealing of 
 small articles of value, of wash-dirt or auriferous 
 drift — these offences were so manifestly con- 
 temptible as well as immoral, that the whole 
 field, as one man, worked for the detection and 
 apprehension of the offender, who had no more 
 chance than a lurcher among a pack of hounds. 
 There was no lynching, however, — the invari- 
 able result of a weak executive. Once handed 
 over to the ' secular arm,' all w^ere assured that 
 justice would be done. Six months' imprison- 
 ment, even in the case of the smallest value 
 stolen, might be taken to be a sufficient 
 deterrent penalty. 
 
 It was true enough that the whole population 
 did not consist of industrious, straightforward 
 miners. Every army has its fringe of camp- 
 followers, wretches who murder the dying and 
 strip the dead. The great mining army of 
 Yatala was not exempt from this ghoul -like
 
 VI THE MINER'S RIGHT 167 
 
 accompaniment. Harpies of every length of 
 beak and talon full surely congregate wherever 
 gold is plentiful on this earth. There it was 
 unearthed daily, to the value of thousands, of 
 tens of thousands of pounds. Gamblers and 
 thieves, men and women of the worst reputation, 
 flock to a new rush. xA^mong these there were 
 men known to have committed one murder — 
 suspected of more. But their persons were 
 known, and their every act and word carefully 
 watched. There was little chance of indis- 
 criminate pillage or death-dealing at Yatala.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Some difficulty was encountered In quelling the 
 gambling mania among the Chinese. Watchful 
 and cunning, though they were in the habit of 
 congregating to play ' fan-tan ' for largish sums, 
 the police never could catch them. One fortu- 
 nate evening the sergeant surrounded the 
 house of Mr. Lin Yun, and captured thirty-five 
 Mongolians in all, bringing with him, In triumph, 
 their strange instruments, their copper and brass 
 counters, and all kinds of collateral evidences. 
 A handy Interpreter was found, and the upshot 
 was that Lin Yun was fined ten pounds, and the 
 rest five pounds each, with a threat of Imprison- 
 ment for the next offence. This broke up the 
 confederacy. 
 
 When the Chinese are in excess of, or nearly 
 approach In number the white population, they 
 are difficult to manage. It was not so as yet
 
 CHAP. VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 169 
 
 in Yatala, though a time came. As traders or 
 labourers, house servants or gardeners, they 
 were more industrious than and as trustworthy 
 as the whites ; while their breaches of the law 
 were by no means numerous, considering their 
 proportion to the population. After a quarrel 
 In a gambling-house, one Chinaman drew a 
 knife and stabbed another, with whom he had 
 an altercation. The others at once secured him, 
 while a messenger ran to report to the sergeant, 
 by whom the culprit was at once carried Into 
 captivity. He was subsequently committed for 
 trial In due course, the court-house being 
 crowded with his countrymen, and at the assizes 
 found guilty and sentenced to death. His 
 sentence was, however, commuted to imprison- 
 ment for life. 
 
 Looking back upon that exceptional, perhaps 
 abnormal settlement, of which, however, I was 
 for some years so completely a part that I doubted 
 at times If my old life at Dibblestowe Leys, with 
 my visits to Allerton Court, and my morning 
 tramplings over the brown fallows, had not been 
 a dream, and this my true and real existence, I 
 see many things to be admired as well as some 
 which were to be deplored and condemned.
 
 I70 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Let me here testify of my own knowledge 
 and experience to a much more than ordinary 
 amount of Christianity. By this I mean 
 that adoption of the spirit of our reHgion 
 which finds vent in sympathy, charity, and 
 abstinence from evil speaking and evil 
 judging. 
 
 The main body of miners are, by circum- 
 stances, led to assume much of the demeanour 
 and mode of thought which prevails in club life. 
 They have graduated in the University of 
 Travel, and are in a general way too experienced 
 as gentlemen adventurers, and men of the 
 world, to go blurting out their sentiments, like 
 simple villagers, upon every tiny question of 
 manners and morals that arises. Prompt and 
 decided in action when need arises, they fully 
 appreciate these qualities in their rulers. But 
 they exercise a large measure of toleration, and 
 have learned very thoroughly the high ex- 
 pediency of each man minding his own business. 
 Only watch their bearing in the case of the 
 family of a dead comrade, of hospital funds, of 
 sudden misfortune or bereavement, of un- 
 deserved obloquy. I have never seen any body 
 of men, in any land, so ready of hand in relief,
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 SO prompt and generous in aid, so delicate and 
 effusive in sympathy. 
 
 A modern community is incomplete without 
 its newspaper. At Yatala there were two, 
 diametrically opposed, of course, in law, religion, 
 and politics. One journal was strictly conser- 
 vative, upholding the Government, with the 
 administration of justice, and all things and 
 persons pertaining thereto. The other, the 
 Watchman, was democratic, not to say 
 destructive, scoffing at the constituted author- 
 ities, sneering at the police, badgering the 
 magistrates, impeaching the Commissioner him- 
 self, and continually calling on the great body 
 of miners ' to assemble in the night and sweep 
 away all tyrants and goldfields officials, together 
 with the absurd contradictory regulations which 
 hampered their honest efforts and trammelled 
 their virtuous industry.' The editor of this 
 exciting, not to say inflammatory journal, was 
 named Fitzgerald Keene. 
 
 Clever, fairly educated, and morally un- 
 prejudiced, he, like another historical scribe, 
 was quite capable of raising a wale upon that 
 epidermis which it suited him to thong, when- 
 ever such to him seemed necessary for the
 
 172 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 purpose of the hour. Ingenious in discovering 
 the weak point of an adversary, he would 
 concentrate and exaggerate until the uninitiated 
 were almost fain to believe that there mttst be 
 some ground for this furious invective, this 
 wholesale denunciation. 
 
 When once he had singled out an official for 
 attack, no part of the whole moral surface 
 seemed to escape him. Caution was cowardice 
 and irresolution, pitiful indecision, conscious 
 incompetence ; firmness was obstinacy ; decision 
 was tyranny ; coolness was contempt of the 
 toiling masses ; silence was dumb idiocy ; speech 
 in explanation was drivelling insanity or 
 ludicrous display of ignorance. There was no 
 pleasing him. 
 
 ' The only cure (of course) for all this 
 miserable official muddling and disgraceful 
 apathy on the part of an effete and corrupt 
 Government that stood tamely by while a great 
 interest was being plundered and blundered 
 through daily, was that the hardy and intelligent 
 miners of Yatala should ''roll up," and take the 
 law, the government, the land, and the gold into 
 their own hands.' 
 
 After reading one of these anti-monarchical
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 173 
 
 productions, Mr. Merlin, with his customary 
 coolness, intimated to the editor that it was 
 very well written — so much so, that he himself 
 would not be surprised if some fine day it, or a 
 similar proclamation, did actually arouse the 
 mining population to some mad revolutionary 
 act ; in which case he would take upon himself 
 to arrest the author of the whole mischief — the 
 writer himself — and that he would so far honour 
 him as to make the arrest with his, Merlin's, own 
 hands. 
 
 Mr Keene turned rather pale at this piece of 
 voluntary information, which he did not work 
 up into a 'paragraph.' For some weeks after- 
 wards there w^as decidedly less red pepper in 
 the leading articles of the Watchman. 
 
 It w^as not to be supposed that the rough and 
 ready partition of twenty or thirty tons of gold, 
 to the value of something under two millions of 
 pounds sterling, was to be effected without a 
 little litigation. Law, of course, there was in 
 abundance, and a very good thing, too, though 
 it bore hard upon our particular party. The 
 vulgar error arises that disputes are more easily 
 settled without law or lawyers. Such is by no 
 means the case. Unlearned people, when the
 
 174 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 castis belli is presumably important, are tedious 
 and difficult to deal with. Unaware of the 
 nature of evidence, they waste the time of the 
 court far more than any professional men, how- 
 ever prone to take objections. 
 
 In order to lay down the law there must of 
 necessity be lawyers. At Yatala there were 
 four, who not infrequently had their hands full 
 between police cases, civil processes, and mining 
 suits. When it is borne in mind that the 
 mining laws, as settled by statute and the 
 regulations founded thereon, were in some 
 instances intricate and perhaps ambiguous, that 
 a large discretionary power was vested in the 
 Commissioner, and that a cheap and accessible 
 court of appeal existed, — a rehearing before two 
 magistrates, who were empowered to reverse the 
 most elaborate decision of a Commissioner, if 
 they saw fit, — it may be calculated how many 
 suits came on for hearing before our adminis- 
 trators, and how crowded the court-house was 
 on nearly every day in the week. 
 
 The legal gentlemen consisted of duly 
 qualified solicitors. Such only were empowered 
 to plead and conduct cases before the court on 
 behalf of clients. No miner was debarred from
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 175 
 
 pleading his own cause, but he was not permitted 
 to cross-examine witnesses, or to address the 
 court on behalf of another. It was held that 
 such conduct would trench on the vested rights 
 and privileges of professional gentlemen. And, 
 as all matters were settled at Yatala — notwith- 
 standing it was a goldfield, and a diggings in far- 
 away Australia — principally and in accordance 
 with ' the law of England, in that case made and 
 provided,' and not as ardent reformers chose to 
 suggest, so the status of the profession was upheld. 
 The chief personages among the band of 
 advocates, who occasionally pocketed in a week 
 fees that would have made a junior barrister's 
 mouth water, were Mr. Markham and Mr. 
 Cramp. They were nearly always employed on 
 different sides, and either had or simulated a 
 distinct personal antagonism — whether merely 
 forensic or otherwise it was difficult to deter- 
 mine ; but the fierceness of their tones, the 
 bitterness of their sarcasms, the desperate 
 tenacity with which they fought over the last 
 shred of the probability of victory, with the 
 power and elaboration of their addresses to the 
 court, would have stamped them as advocates 
 of a high order before any tribunal.
 
 176 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 There was, perhaps, no great difference in 
 their legal attainments. In mining experience 
 they were level. Both had paid in hard cash, 
 in common with all outside speculators, for what- 
 ever trustworthy knowledge of actual mining 
 they had gained. No wonder that they threw 
 sufficient energy into their advocacy of mining 
 suits, when it was no uncommon thing in the 
 flush times of a goldfield for the lawyer on either 
 side to receive a half or quarter sleeping share 
 in the mining property at stake. In one 
 instance a quarter share so given, or promised, 
 realised within a short space of time no less a 
 sum than two thousand three hundred pounds 
 sterling. 
 
 Mr. Markham was a ruddy-faced, full-whis- 
 kered, middle-aged bachelor. He apparently 
 kicked all care behind him, and thought of 
 nothing but his business during the day, with 
 a steady game of whist in the evening, and a 
 few congenial friends with whom to share the 
 flowing bowl, which regularly at ii p.m. made 
 its appearance in the shape of whisky and water. 
 His friends said he was a man of regular habits, 
 and knew exactly how much was good for him. 
 His enemies said that he drank hard, if regularly,
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 177 
 
 and was undermining his constitution. They 
 called him careless, indolent, and fitful in the 
 discharge of his duties. His friends (and they 
 were many and less lukewarm than such easy- 
 going well-wishers generally are) averred that 
 no more watchful and rusd diplomatist ever 
 veiled consummate art under a carefully care- 
 less manner. However that might be, Mr. 
 Markham had a pretty high average of verdicts 
 to score to his legal bat, and in all leading 
 mining or criminal cases some curiosity was 
 always displayed to know which side Markham 
 was on. 
 
 A family man, of staid and austere morals, 
 Mr. Cramp had his own good points, and was 
 valued accordingly. He was closely and 
 technically acquainted with mining and common 
 law to an extent that made him a dangerous 
 antagonist, when anything was to be gained 
 by a fatal objection. When a point of law 
 happened to be in his favour he would seize upon 
 it and shake it, as a learned judge remarked, 
 * like a dog shaking a rat.' There was no fear 
 of a Bench or a Commissioner forgetting his 
 vantage-ground, once he descried it. Pains- 
 taking and perspicuous, he was dangerous with 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 1/8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 a bad case, and irresistible with a good one. A 
 tendency to irritability, of which his adversaries 
 occasionally made use, was perhaps his weak 
 point. But he was conscious of this defect, and 
 under ordinary circumstances refused to ' rise ' 
 to any bait, however tempting. 
 
 Of the other two professional gentlemen, one 
 was a Frenchman, who had successfully mas- 
 tered the difficulties of our English tongue, 
 as well as the intricacy of our laws. He was 
 indeed a man of unusual talent — an orator, a 
 logician, a tribune of the people, a republican 
 of very advanced opinions. But for the 
 genuine British distrust of a foreigner, Dr. 
 Bellair would have taken a high rank as a 
 political leader as well as a lawyer and a 
 physician. But the invincible British prejudice 
 against 'a Eyetalian, a Mossoo, or summat o' 
 that there sort,' was sufficient to neutralise the 
 fire of his oratory, the fervour of his philan- 
 thropy, and the ardour of his (adopted) patriot- 
 ism. The Bench had occasionally great 
 difficulty in controlling him ; his temper was 
 utterly unmanageable, and occasionally landed 
 him in disrespectful allusions to the quality of 
 the law as at Yatala administered. The magis-
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 1/9 
 
 trates with much tact and kindness bore with 
 him, trusting to his sense of propriety, which 
 was dehcate, to bring matters round. But the 
 Commissioner, who was too awful a potentate 
 to be bearded with impunity, had once sworn 
 that he would incarcerate him in that provi- 
 sional dungeon, 'the Logs,' if he did not then 
 and there apologise and retract certain words, 
 which he accordingly, with a bad grace, con- 
 sented to do. 
 
 The fourth advocate was an elderly gentle- 
 man, who had formerly enjoyed a large metropol- 
 itan experience, and a well-deserved reputation 
 for exactitude in the recollection of statutory 
 enactments from Carolus I. upwards. He 
 was scarcely so familiar with the subtleties of 
 mining law and phraseology as his younger 
 brethren, and though as good as ever in the 
 labyrinth of common law, found a difficulty in 
 adapting himself to these latter-day develop- 
 ments. However, so great was the general 
 press of legal exercise that he had his hands 
 full, and was rarely without more business than 
 he could get through at his somewhat steady 
 pace. 
 
 However, for some few weeks there came
 
 i8o THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 one of those lulls and seasons of depression 
 which occasionally take place on goldfields. 
 None of the claims, except the Nova Scotia, 
 had been yielding richly for some time. We 
 had cleared out from that unlucky neighbour- 
 hood, and were down fifty feet on the Liberator 
 Lead, so called after the great Dan O'Connell, 
 a party of whose countrymen had taken up a 
 prospecting claim, of which strong hopes were 
 entertained. So much confidence was felt that 
 the value of shares all along the lead were 
 steadily rising, and we, In No. 4, began to 
 hope that we might be in for a good thing at 
 last. 
 
 That man must be inconsiderable of mark, 
 extremely cautious, or unnaturally inoffensive, 
 who does not possess enemies. Among these 
 natural antagonists, who seem born for the 
 chief purpose of working evil to foredoomed 
 men and women, one individual always stands 
 prominently forward. Whether fostered by 
 chance or developed by circumstances, the 
 enmity is unmistakable. Deadly, unsleeping 
 hate fills the whole nature of the creature. 
 And they are exceptionally fortunate for whom 
 the gods act as shield and buckler, so that the
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT i8i 
 
 evil eye is dimmed, and the renegade from 
 civilisation foiled. 
 
 The dangerous classes of Yatala, very fully 
 represented at times, held among their evil 
 celebrities a man named Algernon Malgrade. 
 He had been known by name to me before I 
 left England as a gambler and a low profligate. 
 By birth one of an old county family, he was 
 shunned by acquaintances and scouted by 
 relatives. More than one shady transaction 
 had left him not wholly unscathed. Toleration 
 is long extended to the merely extravagant and 
 selfish spendthrift, so long as certain society 
 laws are not infringed. But at length a day 
 came when a wholly unpardonable escapade 
 caused Algy Mai, as his friends and humble 
 imitators called him, to be ' cut ' beyond all 
 hope of rehabilitation. The fiat of expulsion 
 from the inner circle is often delayed ; but 
 when it once goes forth the sentence is stern 
 and irrevocable. Malgrade strove against it, 
 with a sneer and a mocking laugh, for a while. 
 But the odds were too great, and one fine day, 
 like many another bad bargain, the goldfields 
 of Australia were enriched by his presence and 
 example.
 
 i82 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 We met at Yatala soon after his arrival. 
 Flush of money, as not having wholly exhausted 
 his outfit, he was looked up to by the, perhaps, 
 not fastidious set with which he chose to ally 
 himself. He was by way of greeting me as an 
 old acquaintance. We had met more than once, 
 but I repelled his overtures, and showed his 
 companions plainly that I meant to keep clear 
 of him. From that moment the whole evil 
 nature of the man seemed to concentrate itself 
 in a settled and passionate hatred, as violent 
 as it was irrational. 
 
 In a score of different ways he soon 
 announced himself as my sworn foe and 
 antagonist. At all the meetings upon matters 
 of local interest we invariably were ranged on 
 opposite sides. He was not without talent ; 
 indeed, he possessed a superabundance of 
 natural gifts, which he might have turned to 
 material advantage had he listed. He had a 
 persuasive manner of talking when he cared 
 to hide the unclean spirit which dwelt ever 
 within him. He was accomplished, graceful, 
 and, as far as animal courage went, utterly 
 fearless. Reckless and remorseless, he needed 
 but mediaeval power to have furnished a true
 
 vii THE MINER'S RIGHT 183 
 
 type of the Visconti of old, sparing neither 
 man in his anger nor woman in his lust. In 
 these modern days, and under the democratic 
 miner rule, such personages are only covertly 
 dangerous. 
 
 At the amiable Algy, therefore, we could 
 afford to laugh, and the Major, more than once, 
 caused the evil sneer to deepen by carelessly 
 inquiring whether he had heard from home 
 lately, or whether a club to which they both 
 formerly belonged was still as celebrated for 
 its Madeira as ever. From this abode of bliss 
 we knew that Malgrade had been driven forth 
 by a well-nigh unanimous ballot of the members. 
 
 Though I had the worst possible opinion of 
 his heart, and regarded the man's intellect as 
 merely subservient to his appetites, I could 
 not for the life of me return his detestation of 
 me in kind, or cease to take a certain interest 
 in his actions. For one thing, he was wonder- 
 fully good-looking. His recklessly indulged 
 passions had, as yet, written no evil record upon 
 face or form. The fair hair was still bright, the 
 blue eyes still steadfast and clear. And a 
 certain appearance of fallen-angel pride clung 
 to him in the midst of his degradation. I could
 
 1 84 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap 
 
 not help cherishing a dim hope that some day- 
 he might thrust from him the foul incrustation 
 of vice and crime, and return to his natural 
 position among men. 
 
 The Major never omitted to laugh at my 
 credulous optimisms, and to sneer at my ignor- 
 ance of the world, on these occasions. 
 
 ' You ought to know a thing or two by this 
 time, Harry, but I doubt if you ever will,' he 
 would say. ' If a man doesn't pick up an accu- 
 rate method of gauging the moral attributes 
 of his fellow-men at a goldfield he will never 
 analyse worth a cent. And here you are, just 
 as much carried away by this infernal scoundrel's 
 regular features and soft voice, as that handsome 
 pantheress that he's stolen somewhere. She'll 
 poison him some day or he'll knock her brains 
 out, I feel certain. And what the loss to 
 society would be in either case, I should fear 
 to over-estimate by the faintest expression of 
 regret.' 
 
 ' You are rather too hard on the other side,' 
 I made answer. ' You have no sympathy for 
 human weakness. I say that it is a piteous 
 thing to see the decadence of creatures origin- 
 ally noble and formed for higher things.'
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 185 
 
 *Bah!' retorted my unconvinced friend. 
 ' Do you remember what Athos and Co. did 
 with Miladi ? That she-devil of a Dolores — 
 she's no more Spanish than I am Greek — will 
 give you a rough turn, as Cyrus would say, 
 some day, if you let her so much as look at you 
 — " I think I knows 'em ! " ' 
 
 All of a sudden, without any previous warn- 
 ing, a wonderful rumour arose that the 
 prospectors in the Liberator Lead had struck 
 incredible gold. Although they had not yet 
 announced it, the excitement occasioned by this 
 statement was astounding to those who had 
 never known the tremendous force of the 
 passions which, from time to time, stir the 
 crowds which make up a goldfield's population. 
 At one moment you would imagine them to be 
 the most logical, law-abiding body of men in 
 the world ; at another time a brigade of red 
 republicans would be liberal conservatives com- 
 pared to them. In this instance no one but an 
 eye-witness could have credited the turmoil 
 which arose. As the report was soon passed 
 around in every paper in the colony, strangers 
 began to arrive within a month of the first 
 announcement, whose worn draught animals
 
 1 86 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 and vehicles told of far and fast journeying. 
 Every unoccupied person, male or female, young 
 or old, from Yatala and within twenty miles of 
 it, was apparently massed around the wings of 
 the famed Liberator Lead. Daily the numbers 
 swelled. The forest was felled. Huts were 
 erected in all directions. Tents were like the 
 sands of the sea for multitude, or the advance 
 guard of an army. All was eager excitement 
 and feverish expectation. The prospectors of 
 the Liberator, as of every other lead or course 
 of auriferous deposit, were bound by the regu- 
 lations then in force to report ' payable gold ' as 
 soon as such had been struck, and to hoist a red 
 flag as denoting the discovery. In default of 
 such advertisement, for the general benefit, they 
 were liable, according to custom and practice, 
 to have their claim 'jumped ' or taken forcible 
 possession of by any party of miners who could 
 prove that they were concealing the golden 
 reality. 
 
 The prospectors made no sign. They refused 
 to state precisely what the indications were. 
 They simply declared that they had not as yet 
 ' bottomed ' or sunk down to the alluvial drift, 
 immediately above the bed rock, and which
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 187 
 
 alone is likely to be auriferous. Some of the 
 impatient holders of claims on 'the line' frontage, 
 and others, who were merely ' blockers ' or the 
 occupants of ordinary chance claims, anywhere 
 in the vicinity, were more than impatient — they 
 were threatening and abusive. They insisted 
 that the shareholders were 'on gold,' for their 
 own purposes hiding the nature of the deposit, 
 cheating the public, disobeying the regulations, 
 and injuring their fellow-miners. 
 
 The chief man of the party, a grand-looking 
 herculean Milesian, quietly rejoined that they 
 had not bottomed yet, that they had nothing to 
 show or report, though the indications were 
 good, that when the time came they would at 
 once report at the Commissioner's office. In the 
 meantime they would answer no questions, nor 
 let any one go down their shaft, except by order 
 of the Commissioner. 
 
 That gentleman, who had condescended to 
 appear on the occasion, and who began to realise 
 that a crisis was approaching, asked Mr. Phelim 
 O'Shaughnessy how long they expected to be, 
 the sinking being easy, before they were on the 
 drift. 
 
 ' About a week.'
 
 1 88 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' Then on this day week I will be here,' said 
 Captain Blake, addressing himself both to the 
 speaker and the mob, ' and on that day, whether 
 gold be reported or otherwise, I will send down 
 two men to examine the workings and to report 
 to me.' 
 
 'All right, your honour,' replied Phelim. 
 ' There's no two ways about us. Any one your 
 honour likes to send down is welcome, but we're 
 not going to let all the rapscallions in the country 
 down our shaft just because they happen to think 
 we're to slave and murther ourselves intirely for 
 their convanience — to find gold for the likes o' 
 them — coch 'em up, indeed ; the lazy naygurs.' 
 At ten o'clock in the morning of Monday, 
 the 17th May, which was the day week follow- 
 ing, the Commissioner sat on his horse beside 
 the shaft, in much the same careless attitude as 
 before. But the scene was changed in some 
 important particulars. Gold had been duly 
 reported. A red flag proudly flaunted from a 
 lofty pole in front of the claim, while a crowd of 
 ^v^ thousand souls, eager, earnest, dangerously 
 roused at once by the strong passions of greed 
 and anxiety, swayed and surged around the little 
 group.
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 189 
 
 On a new and presumably rich lead it was 
 no unusual matter to see a concourse of this 
 kind. But rarely was there so much feeling 
 shown as here. Rarely were there so many 
 knitted brows and scowling faces ; rarely so 
 much savage and insubordinate language. How 
 had it all come about ? Mr. Merlin, with a 
 couple of troopers, well armed and mounted, 
 rode behind the Commissioner. Why was this 
 semi-warlike accompaniment ? 
 
 The solution was this. A short time previous 
 several fresh regulations had been drafted, and 
 had become law, which to a certain extent 
 altered the existing customs, more particularly 
 as regarded frontage. 
 
 That which more particularly affected the 
 present question was Regulation 22, reciting as 
 follows : — 
 
 ' When the sinking in new ground shall be 
 found not to reach a depth of a hundred feet in 
 dry ground, or sixty feet in wet or rocky ground, 
 of which the bottoming of three or more shafts 
 on the supposed line of lead shall be a sufficient 
 test, unless the Commissioner shall specially 
 sanction a further testing, all marking on the 
 line of lead shall be mdl and void ^ and the s^round
 
 I90 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 shall be open for taking np claims in the block 
 fo7^m, the frontage holders having a preference 
 to select their claims in rotation, according to 
 their priority of occupation on the supposed 
 lead.' 
 
 This then was it which so agitated the 
 seething human mass, which by this time 
 included, as well as the true miner, men of 
 every rank, trade, and occupation, lured to the 
 banks of the Waraldah Creek by the widely 
 exaggerated reports which had gone forth. 
 
 So much depended upon the accident of the 
 golden drift being struck at a foot or two below 
 instead of above the magic number of a hundred 
 feet. 
 
 Should this rich deposit be proved to lie at 
 or beneath the specified depth, the rich claims, 
 already numbered and registered as far as fifty, 
 down the lead, would belong only and inalien- 
 ably to those who had months before occupied 
 and registered them according to law. 
 
 But should the golden seed of discord repose 
 upon a drift shallower than the regulation 
 number of feet, every man in the crowd might 
 deem that he had a share in the golden sub- 
 terraneous channel ; possibly might delve
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 191 
 
 within a fortnight into a recess as rich as that 
 of Aladdin, or of the one to which AH Baba 
 procured the enti^de at so great personal risk. 
 
 But would the Commissioner pronounce the 
 ' open sesame 7 For it lay with him — with him 
 only rested the responsibility, graver than often 
 befalls one man in a century, of dashing to the 
 ground the hopes of a body of hard-working 
 legitimate miners, or of unloosing the flood of 
 half-infuriated physical force, which needed but 
 one word from his lips to burst the bonds of 
 restraint. The anxious chafing thousands were 
 only too ready to scatter themselves with pick 
 and shovel, a swarm of human locusts, upon the 
 golden ground which they seemed to devour 
 with their eyes. 
 
 The word was * Block.' But would Captain 
 Blake utter it ? 
 
 There was much to be done yet. Both sides 
 were strongly represented — legally, officially, 
 socially, as well as numerically. 
 
 ' And many a banner will be torn, 
 And many a knight to earth be borne, 
 And many a sheaf of arrows spent, 
 Ere Scotland's King shall cross the Trent.' 
 
 * In the first place, I shall send down two
 
 192 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 practical miners to examine the wash,' quoth 
 he. ' I Intend to satisfy myself as to the fact of 
 payable gold to begin with.' 
 
 He looked around — scanning the faces of the 
 miners nearest to him — on the crowd. 
 
 ' Here, Tom Denman, and you, Geordie, my 
 boy, get away down and send up a couple of 
 dishes of wash-dirt. Then we shall all see if It's 
 worth fighting about, and not have a row about 
 nothing.' 
 
 Two stalwart miners stepped forward, and 
 the man called Geordie, a middle -sized but 
 tremendously muscular specimen from * cannle 
 Newcassel,' putting his foot in a loop of the 
 rope, closed his hands upon it above his head, 
 and was rapidly lowered down. In a few 
 minutes the rope came up empty, and Tom 
 Denman descended. 
 
 In less than a quarter of an hour the hammer 
 indicator rose and fell upon its tin sheet, where- 
 upon the raw-hide bucket used for the purpose 
 brought to light a collection of sand, quartz 
 fragments, rounded pebbles, and gritty greenish 
 clay-loam. This was unanimously pronounced 
 a ' very nice wash,' and being placed in a couple 
 of tin dishes beneath the strict supervision of
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 193 
 
 the Commissioner, was taken to a neighbouring 
 pool of water and placed in readiness for the 
 two miners who had excavated it. These 
 returned gnomes having been brought to light, 
 at once commenced to 'pan off,' according to 
 the recognised rule and practice. 
 
 Dipping the full dish into the pool, each 
 man held the vessel aslant while he washed 
 among the gravel and small stones, permitting 
 the water to flow uninterruptedly over and 
 away from the wash-dirt. The clay-stained 
 water assumed a bright yellow hue. As the 
 stones became cleared of the encrusting dirt, 
 the miner carefully examined them for traces 
 of adhering gold and then threw them on one 
 side. Gradually the sand and clay disappeared 
 over the rim, in the unvaried steady flow of 
 water, the dish being held slightly downwards 
 and off the level. 
 
 The sandy deposit at the bottom grew finer 
 and finer, as with a peculiar half-circular motion 
 the water and the outer grains were ejected 
 and the heavier particles retained. At length 
 there remained but a narrow segment of darkish 
 sand at the bottom of each dish, while plain 
 for all to see was a streak of deep though dull 
 VOL. I o
 
 194 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 yellow particles, chiefly fine in grain, but 
 sprinkled with coarser grains, some of which 
 were of the size of wheat. 
 
 ' Here you are, sir,' quoth Tom Denman, 
 exhibiting the residuum respectfully to the 
 Commissioner. ' There's no mistake about 
 that. Geordie and I took these from different 
 parts of "the face." I haven't seen such a 
 prospect for some time. A good half-ounce to 
 the dish, and Geordie's, I can see from here, is 
 better.' 
 
 ' I declare the Prospecting Claim of the 
 Liberator Lead,' said the Commissioner, 
 passing the dish to the nearest of the eager 
 crowd, ' to be in possession of payable gold.' 
 
 The first man who looked at it shouted 
 out, ' Half an ounce to the dish,' and threw up 
 his hat. Hundreds, of course, were not near 
 enough to see, but the tone and the action 
 were sufficient. A cheer rose from the vast 
 multitude that roused the wallaroos in the 
 sandstone spurs of the Dividing Range miles 
 away. 
 
 ' The next thing to determine,' said the 
 Commissioner, ' is the depth of sinking. A 
 good deal will depend upon that. One of
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 195 
 
 you men give my compliments to Mr. 
 Underlay, the mining surveyor, and ask him 
 if he will come here. I wish him to measure 
 this shaft. I know he is not far off.' 
 
 ' It's never a hundred feet sinking,' yelled 
 an excited miner, in a ragged red shirt. ' All 
 the field knows it ain't much over ninety. 
 They may have bin and sunk through the 
 bottom to make it handy for their friends in 
 No. I and 2, where they've got half shares. 
 But there's no hundred feet in it, and it ought 
 to be " block " out and out, this blessed minit.' 
 
 Here the multitude caught up the word, 
 and sounded it over and over again in a vast 
 reverberating chorus. For nearly a quarter 
 of an hour nothing could be heard but ' block ' 
 — ' block '— ' block.' 
 
 'What the devil do you mean by making 
 all that row, you fellows .^ ' said the Com- 
 missioner irascibly. ' Do you think it will 
 make any difference in 77iy decision if you 
 yelled yourselves hoarse and shouted till dooms- 
 day ? Thank you, Mr. Underlay,' he continued, 
 with a rapid change of manner. ' Will you 
 have the goodness to go down this shaft and 
 measure the exact depth from the surface to
 
 196 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 the top of the "wash." That I shall take 
 leave to consider to be the real depth of 
 sinking.' 
 
 Before he had well done speaking, Mr. 
 Underlay, the mining surveyor, an active, 
 resolute-looking youngster, had his hand upon 
 the rope, and was on his way towards the 
 lower regions. After a short sojourn he re- 
 appeared, holding a tape - line, and after 
 comparing and verifying his measurements, 
 pronounced the words ' Ninety -eight feet 
 eleven inches.' 
 
 Again a wild cheer rent the air, while the 
 excited individuals of the outer crowd so 
 pushed inwards under the impression that 
 * block ' was to be declared, and claims given 
 away there and then, that the Commissioner's 
 horse began to get impatient, and Mr. Merlin 
 and his troopers were under the necessity of 
 turning round their chargers several times, 
 which resulted in inconvenience to the toes 
 and other portions of the frames of the van- 
 guard. 
 
 * Understand once and for all,' said Captain 
 Blake, * that by Regulation No. 22 I am bound 
 to allow three shafts to be bottomed on gold,
 
 VII THE MINER'S RIGHT 197 
 
 on the course of the lead, before I finally 
 decide upon the average depth of sinking, and 
 before I declare the lead to be worked either 
 under block or frontage. I shall, therefore, 
 return this day week at the same hour. If the 
 requisite number of shafts have been bottomed 
 on the lead by that period, I will deliver my 
 decision as to the question of block or frontage.' 
 Then a hoarse roar arose from the crowd, as 
 of some hungry monster baulked of its prey. 
 But further remonstrance or interference was 
 not thought of. The Captain rode carelessly 
 and peacefully homeward, lighting his cigar, 
 and calling to his dogs, as if no such torments 
 as gold and gold diggers, prospectors and claim- 
 holders, frontage men and blockers, existed 
 upon the hardly entreated earth.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 It is not to be supposed that our party added 
 in any way to this state of incipient disorder, 
 though we had taken up No. 4 North under 
 the old frontage system and were sinking with 
 might and main to get down and know our 
 fate. We had every reason to think our claim 
 would be unusually good. The indications in 
 the prospecting shaft disclosed ' a show ' of 
 which the oldest miners spoke with bated 
 breath. 
 
 But where the coming decision touched us, 
 and the other frontage men, was in this wise : 
 if we happened to drop right down on the 
 'gutter,' or main course of the lead, we were 
 all right ; we should be allowed so many days 
 to mark out our claim of a hundred and sixty 
 feet, forty feet a man along the lead, and two 
 hundred back, and it would be all right. That
 
 CHAP. VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 199 
 
 area of ground, all on gold, was a very fair 
 allowance for four men. 
 
 But if we were not exactly on the course of 
 the lead, but a little to the right or left of it, 
 and if the block system was declared next 
 week, matters would be very different. We 
 should have to mark out our claim there and 
 then. It could not afterwards be altered by 
 a single inch. This would have to be done at 
 haphazard, instead of by cautious 'proving' 
 the ground, as under the frontage system. 
 And if we missed the lead it might be taken 
 possession of by any random blocker, just 
 pitchforked here from another colony. We 
 should lose the reward of months and years of 
 work, the certainty we had a right to expect 
 when we registered under the frontage system. 
 
 In the interim much agitation took place. 
 Councils and caucuses were held. Letters and 
 petitions despatched profusely to the Minister 
 for Lands, who in those days held ultimate 
 control over all mining affairs. The news- 
 papers exhausted themselves in leading articles, 
 each tending to exalt and glorify a different 
 mining policy. 
 
 One gave a strictly conservative support to
 
 200 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 authority. ' The frontage system, framed as 
 it was with the advice of experienced officials, 
 was considered by intelHgent miners to afford 
 a highly needful guarantee for capital invested 
 in mining enterprise. Without capital there 
 would be little mining worthy of the name, 
 more particularly where, as in Yatala, the 
 difficulties of piercing the basaltic strata, and 
 of subduinof the flow of subterranean streams, 
 had to be surmounted. Still it was the 
 opinion of many competent authorities that the 
 frontage system had had its day. The field 
 had been for some time in a languishing state. 
 Many hard-working men were out of employ- 
 ment. There were specific regulations which 
 had to be interpreted with a literal exactitude 
 independently of personal feeling or private 
 interest. And no one who knew Commissioner 
 Blake doubted but that he would decide accord- 
 ing to the letter of the law, and carry out that 
 decision with unbending firmness.' Thus the 
 Beacon. 
 
 This was the opportunity which the opposition 
 journal had been waiting. And cheerfully did 
 Mr. Fitzgerald Keene avail himself of the happy 
 convention of circumstances.
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 ' Many occasions had arisen during the last 
 decade of shameless oppression and official 
 incompetency, when the long-suffering mining 
 community, comprising a singularly large pro- 
 portion of the Intelligence, the energy, and the 
 Industrial enterprise of the land, might have 
 spoken out with effect. True to their law- 
 abiding Instincts, they had hitherto remained 
 loyal to the Crown, and obedient If not humble 
 before constituted authority. But now the time 
 had come, the hour had struck, when they must 
 proclaim themselves to be freemen or for ever 
 endure to be known and treated as slaves. 
 Under the Iniquitous mining statutes, and the 
 still more contemptible mining regulations, their 
 intelligence had been stultified, their freedom had 
 been mocked, their opinions derided, and their 
 industry fettered. 
 
 ' Still there had been a pretence of fair play 
 — there had been a tendency, erratic as had 
 been the course pursued, In the right direction. 
 Now, in this thrice accursed muddle which had 
 taken place at The Liberator, would the herd 
 of down-trampled miners, numerically the sti^ong- 
 est body of labourers In the land, stand by and 
 consent to their own ruin and spoliation ? Was
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 there not a man from old Ballarat to utter the 
 magic words " roll up " ? 
 
 ' And would a monster meeting separate 
 without compelling present safety, and exacting 
 material guarantees for the future ? ' 
 
 It was not altogether a sterile soil into which 
 these seeds of revolution were so recklessly 
 cast. It was a mob. Though vastly superior, 
 as I have elsewhere stated, in its composition to 
 most other mobs, it yet possessed their inherent 
 characteristics. By the turn of a straw its 
 action might have oscillated from good to evil, 
 from patience and obedience to insubordination 
 and wildest excess. 
 
 Among other expedients and demonstrations 
 of the time, each party favoured large and 
 imposing deputations. One day the frontage 
 men and their adherents, backers, friends, 
 acquaintances, etc., would march into town, 
 several hundred strong, with banners flying and 
 a band of music, to which a drum of sonorous, 
 mysterious power lent effect. Forming in front 
 of the Commissioner's office, they would request 
 an audience. 
 
 When that gentleman sent word to say that 
 he would consent to see them as soon as he had
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 203 
 
 completed his immediate business, the crack 
 speaker of the connection would be detailed for 
 the occasion. When he appeared, that gifted 
 person would fire away at the unmoved 
 Commissioner for twenty minutes or so without 
 a check. 
 
 ' He could inform him that the honest and 
 legitimate miners whom he saw now assembled 
 had come to lay their grievances respectfully 
 before him, and to ask him if he was minded to 
 have mercy upon them, upon their helpless 
 wives and children, depending upon their rights 
 as holders of frontage claims for bread ; or was 
 he going to be carried away by the senseless 
 clamour of a mob of strangers and adventurers, 
 who had not a shred of title to the land they 
 sought to plunder. Had not they, the frontage 
 men, conformed to the laws laid down by the 
 Government closely and obediently ; had they 
 not duly registered their claims, incurred debts 
 from their storekeepers and business men on the 
 field on the strength of the security of tenure 
 guaranteed by the frontage system ? And now, 
 after waiting for days, and weeks, and months, 
 were they to be told that, because a new and 
 unjust regulation had been made, because the
 
 204 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 first few shafts on the lead had not proved to be 
 the full hundred feet In depth, they were to be 
 turned out of their property ?— for It was as much 
 theirs while they paid for their Miner's Right 
 as the lands of Mr. Howard or Mr. Stanley, 
 neighbouring country gentlemen. Were they 
 to be turned out of their claims just when they 
 were seen to be worth holding ? No ! They 
 were honest men and loyal subjects, but there 
 was a point beyond which men could not be 
 urged. If justice were not given them In this 
 matter, bloodshed would be the end of It. They 
 said It sorrowfully but firmly, and upon the 
 heads of the Government the crime would rest.' 
 
 The speaker, who was a bachelor, and had 
 last week had a quarter share In a frontage 
 claim given to him as a retaining fee, almost wept 
 at this point, and, with a look of sorrowful but 
 manly appeal, closed his address amid cheers 
 and applause. 
 
 The Commissioner always heard out such 
 addresses, knowing from long experience that 
 when a grievance has been rankling In the 
 breasts of men, ordinarily silent about their 
 dissatisfactions, nothing Is more unsafe than to 
 deny a hearing when they demand one.
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 205 
 
 ' You may do as you please about granting 
 their petitions,' he was wont to say. ' You may 
 do what they don't Hke, or do nothing at all. 
 But if you wish to rule large bodies of men 
 peaceably, always hear what they have got to 
 say. It is an inestimable safety valve.' 
 
 So Captain Blake listened to the eloquent 
 miners' advocate, and gazed at him and the 
 assembled crowd with an approving and 
 benevolent expression. At the end of the 
 oration he told them that ' he was sorry for 
 them personally, if by any act of his, in carrying 
 out the regulations, they should lose their claims 
 on the Liberator Lead, some of which to his 
 knowledge had been held, in despite of difficulty 
 and privation, for many months. But, above 
 all, it would depend upon what proof was 
 furnished to him of the depth of the sinking, 
 and upon other particulars which would bring 
 their claims under the provisions of the mining 
 regulations. He would examine most care- 
 fully the evidence and those sections which 
 bore upon the case in point. After that he 
 would give his decision. He would frame that 
 decision most elaborately, so that it should be 
 in accordance with the law. And when it was
 
 2o6 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 given he should see that it was carried out. 
 That was all he had to say to them.' 
 
 Whereupon they always thanked him for 
 his courtesy and departed. The Commissioner 
 went back into his office. The band struck up 
 afresh, and the excited crowd dispersed, to walk 
 six or seven miles back again. 
 
 A report would soon arise, that they had 
 stated their case to the Commissioner with such 
 power and pathos — the orator of the deputation 
 would, perhaps, be responsible for this — that he 
 had promised to decide in favour of the frontage 
 men. The blockers, being thereby infuriated, 
 would resolve to come in and state their vjrongs>. 
 Being, as the proletariat, much more numerous 
 than the frontage holders, who represented 
 capital, they would ' roll up ' so successfully that 
 a crowd more than a thousand strong would, on 
 the appointed day, be seen marching in a 
 tremendous long line, four abreast, down the 
 main street of the town, halting finally at the 
 Commissioner's office. That much tried official 
 would certainly begin a sentence with blank 
 and end it with the same, placing divers other 
 blanks in the middle, all having reference to 
 the eyes and future prospects of the majority of
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 207 
 
 the members of the band and the personages of 
 the deputation. 
 
 After thus blowing off the steam, he would 
 meet them at the door, and listen tranquilly to 
 what they had to say. Then the advanced 
 democrat who was their philosopher and 
 spokesman would thus open the trenches — 
 
 ' As miners, and as men, they had come 
 there to-day, not with any intention of 
 threatening or intimidation ' — the Captain 
 looked quietly at the speaker as he said this, 
 who passed on to the next sentence — ' but to 
 protest mildly yet firmly, as became legitimate 
 miners, against any monopoly of the field, 
 whether it was by men claiming to be frontage 
 holders, or any others, he cared not who they 
 might be, or what they were called. 
 
 ' If they were not all experienced miners who 
 were here assembled this day, they all were the 
 holders of Miners' Rights — many of them had 
 families — many had helpless relatives depending 
 upon them. Some had come from a distance, it 
 is true. But what of that? As long as they 
 we^e at this moment dwellers in New South 
 Wales, they had as much right to a fair share 
 of any payable ground that turned up as the
 
 2o8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Governor himself. All they wanted was justice 
 and impartiality. Let every man be allowed to 
 mark out his claim, and get gold or not as his 
 luck went. The law said, if the ground was 
 under a hundred feet deep it was no frontage, 
 and must be worked on the block. All they 
 wanted was the law. The Commissioner was 
 appointed to carry out the law, fair and equal, 
 between man and man. They knew very well 
 that the Liberator Lead was no frontage lead — 
 but block, that is, ground to be worked in 
 ordinary block claims. And block they hoped 
 the Commissioner would declare it to be. It 
 would be better for the whole field, and not 
 leave the gold that was intended for the country 
 at large in the hands of a few.' 
 
 To this the Commissioner would reply that 
 ' he would very closely examine the ground 
 when three or more shafts had been bottomed 
 on the lead, and would then give his decision in 
 accordance with the strict law of the case. 
 They might depend upon that being done when 
 the time came, that is, when that number had 
 been bottomed. Until that time came, he could 
 not, of course, tell them what his decision would 
 be. He hoped it would be found to be accord-
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 209 
 
 ing to law, and excepting by the Appeal Court 
 there was not much chance of its being 
 altered.' 
 
 The speaker then essayed to get another 
 hearing, reminding the Commissioner that 'they 
 represented four thousand men. They were 
 not going to boast or make threats ; but they 
 were determined to have justice, peaceably, if 
 possible, but if justice was denied them they 
 would consider the advisability of using the 
 power which their numbers gave them.' 
 
 At this point the Captain's patience — for the 
 most part an algebraic or unknown quantity — 
 abruptly gave out. He reminded the speaker 
 that the miners had never gained anything by 
 physical force in New South Wales, and as long 
 as he had anything to do with mining, he trusted 
 they never would. He had said all he had to 
 say. They had fully explained their case, and 
 could add nothing more, it appeared, but empty 
 threats, which were utterly contemptible. He 
 was busy now and begged to retire. Then he 
 went in and closed the door. 
 
 In consequence of the reported 'bottoming ' 
 of certain shafts, punctually to the hour on the 
 morning appointed, the Commissioner rode up 
 
 VOL. I p
 
 THE MINER'S RIGHT 
 
 to the Liberator Lead. There was hardly 
 standing room for a mile around. The line of 
 shafts could be traced by the flags which each 
 exhibited. At the Prospectors', being ' on 
 gold,' streamed a red flag, emblem of success. 
 Also on other three shafts, Nos. i, 2, and 3 
 North, which had bottomed on the supposed 
 line of lead, thus forming a sufficient test of the 
 depth of the ground according to the conditions 
 of Regulation No. 22. 
 
 When the great man appeared, a deep hoarse 
 sound rose indistinctly from the enormous crowd. 
 Fully five thousand men had gathered hours 
 since to wait his approach. His fiat, to be 
 given that day, was looked for with an intensity 
 almost painful to a sympathetic bystander. 
 
 Upon Captain Blake alone, apparently, the 
 immense concourse, the strained attention of 
 the masses, the weight of responsibility, had no 
 visible effect. He regarded the whole scene and 
 its peculiar features with haughty immobility. 
 
 Riding to the first claim, he said to the men 
 who were ' off work,' and standing at the mouth 
 of their shaft, shareholders of No. i — 
 
 * You are on gold?' 
 
 'Yes, sir, we've struck it all right.'
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 211 
 
 * At what depth ?' is the next question. 
 
 'Well, about a hundred feet,' they answered. 
 
 ' I shall send down two men first, and then 
 measure your shaft.' 
 
 ' All right. Captain.' 
 
 Two selected miners, as before, were lowered 
 down the shaft, returning as hitherto, in the case 
 of the Prospectors, with tangible proof of the 
 highly auriferous nature of the deposit. 
 
 ' So far, so good. Now Mr. Richardson ' — 
 here advances the mining surveyor — ' have the 
 goodness to measure this shaft.' 
 
 Mr. Richardson descends ; then, after due 
 delay, regains this upper earth, distinctly 
 enunciating — ' Ninety-seven feet five inches.' 
 
 At which statement a cheer from the blockers 
 for the first time wakes the forest echoes, and a 
 thousand caps or hats are thrown excitedly into 
 the air. 
 
 The same formalities are carefully gone 
 through with No. 2 and No. 3. Each is demon- 
 strated to be 'a golden hole.' When measured, 
 No. 2 is declared to be ninety-three feet and a 
 half. No. 3 ninety-one only. Each declaration 
 elicits a bursting cheer from the majority of the 
 crowd.
 
 212 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Then the Commissioner braces himself, 
 sitting squarely on his horse and confronting 
 the assembled multitude. His address is brief. 
 But rarely have words more power. This only 
 does he say : ' I declare the Liberator Lead to 
 be "on the block." ' 
 
 This simple word would appear to have 
 converted the whole assemblage into a crowd 
 of raging lunatics. With one mighty cry rather 
 than a shout the crowd broke up, apparently 
 prepared to take immediate possession of the 
 Tom Tidler's ground then and there handed 
 over to them. 
 
 * Stop !' roared the Commissioner, in a voice 
 of thunder which dominated the great mob, and 
 almost immediately reduced those within hear- 
 ing to a listening attitude. ' I give the holders 
 of frontage claims twenty-four hours to mark 
 out their claims in rotation, according to their 
 priority of occupation — the ground will then be 
 open for taking up claims in the block form.' 
 
 ' I belong to No. 6,' said a tall miner ; ' we 
 haven't proved it yet. We hardly know where 
 to take our ground. Won't you give us a day 
 or two more. Captain? It's rather rough on 
 us frontage holders.'
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 213 
 
 'Not an hour — not a minute,' replied the 
 Commissioner. * I have adhered strictly to the 
 regulations. I didn't make them, and I can't 
 help the ground not being deeper. That's your 
 affair. I have given my decision, and by the 
 Lord I mean to stick to it. Good-morning, all 
 of you.' 
 
 A world of opposing forces and passionate 
 feelings was seething in the hearts of the men 
 to whom he thus bade adieu. That single word 
 * block ' had sufficed to render possible hundreds 
 of working parties, which to-day would be pro- 
 curing timber, rope, tools, and provisions. At 
 the same hour on the morrow they would be 
 eagerly commencing a shaft, having previously 
 put in the indispensable four pegs, which, with 
 the more necessary Miner's Right, secured an 
 unalienable title to the coveted landed estate. 
 
 On the next day, the spot so lately void and 
 bare resembled a human rabbit warren. Every- 
 where trees were felled. Everywhere the miner 
 was seen, mole -like, burying himself in the 
 orthodox narrow shaft, and throwing up the 
 yellow clay which was the upper stratum. In 
 a week the principal street of the village of 
 O'Connell was a mass of gaudy -looking shops,
 
 214 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 filled with every kind of ware — every third 
 house of course a public-house. Vehicles of all 
 kinds crowded the narrow way, and with 
 difficulty threaded the crowd of wayfarers of 
 every age, calling, and nationality. Within a 
 month the four banks were all day long weigh- 
 ing, buying, sifting gold, while bundles of notes 
 and handfuls of sovereigns were handed over the 
 counter with apparently careless confidence. 
 
 As soon as the main body of block claims 
 began to bottom, gold flowed in with almost 
 fabulous profusion. And still the rumour grew 
 and increased, until people from the uttermost 
 ends of Australia commenced to leave their 
 ordinary avocations and turn their heads towards 
 the new Eldorado — the great, unprecedented, 
 fabulously rich Liberator Lead near Yatala. 
 
 Our party had been exceptionally fortunate. 
 We had No. 4 on the lead. There was neither 
 rock nor water. We had the luck to bottom 
 ' dead on the gutter,' that is, immediately over 
 the defunct river, and to find the whole of its 
 long-buried bed, with the usual admixture of 
 gravel, sand, and waterworn pebbles, richly 
 studded with gold. Occasionally, indeed, we 
 took several ounces of gold from a single dish
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 215 
 
 of wash-dirt. When it is reckoned that two 
 dishes, in miner's measurement, go to a bucket, 
 and sixty buckets to a load — about a ton of 
 earth — and that half an ounce to the load is 
 thought a rich lead, it may be imagined what 
 properties the Liberator claims were held to be. 
 
 Our fortunes were made, we all knew. We 
 had about three years' work before us before 
 we could bring ' to grass ' our buried treasure — 
 the sands of this long -dead Pactolus of the 
 South. 
 
 We were in the proud position of being able 
 to 'put on wages -men,' or hired miners, at 
 three pounds each per week to assist us. We 
 also bought a 'whip horse' for forty -five 
 pounds, which staunch and well-trained animal 
 drew up the precious gravel, and in many ways 
 economised labour. We calculated that if the 
 yield kept up at the present rate, we should 
 clear from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds 
 per man before No. 4 was 'worked out.' This 
 was worth waiting and toiling for. 
 
 'Well, Joe,' said I, one day, 'this is better 
 than striking in old Grimsby's forge at the 
 Leys, isn't it ? We've got our pile at last.' 
 
 ' I doubt it is,' said he, as he leaned back
 
 2i6 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 for a moment, and then sending his pick into 
 the face at which we were working, dislodged 
 a quantity of the precious wash-dirt. ' We'd 
 never ha' picked up a ''slug" like this at yon 
 old Dibblestowe — not but what I've wished 
 myself back there many times.' 
 
 *Yes, Joe,' said I, taking from him the 
 rough red heavy clay - stained lump, which 
 looked like an ordinary bit of conglomerate, 
 but which we knew to be a nugget of almost 
 pure gold, weighing more than fifty ounces, 
 and worth two hundred pounds. ' This didn't 
 grow in Farmer Mangold's turnip fields, did it ? 
 I've wished myself at the old village, too, I 
 can tell you. However, this is going to pay us 
 for all.' 
 
 * Happen it is ! ' he said ; ' and not before it's 
 time, too. I was getting full about digging, 
 and but for you I'd ha' ta'en my passage home 
 again, worked it before the mast, long and long 
 ago.' 
 
 ' You'll go home and be a gentleman now, 
 Joe,' said I. * Anyhow, you can buy a big farm 
 or two. You might settle down near the Leys 
 and marry Miss Mangold yet, if she'd have you.' 
 
 * No fear,' said Joe, using one of the Australian
 
 VIII THE MINER'S RIGHT 217 
 
 idioms which he had grafted on to his homely 
 Kentish speech. ' She'd a niver touched me 
 with a pair of tongs, she was that proud and 
 set up Hke then. But dost know what ? ' Here 
 he made a pretence of whispering, though, 
 being but the two of us in the 'drive,' a hundred 
 feet from air, there was not much chance of 
 being overheard. 'Jack Thursby told me he 
 believed he seed her at Warraluen.' 
 
 ' Jane Mangold at Warraluen ? But how 
 did he know anything about her ? ' 
 
 ' Well, she got talking about Dibblestowe 
 Leys, where she lived in England, as she should 
 say. Then he up and told her he come from 
 close about there, and as there was two chaps, 
 Harry Pole and Joe Bulder, as was diggin' 
 here, — he didn't know aught about you being a 
 gentleman born, — and how as they come from 
 the same place. Then she gave a sort of cry, 
 and says, "Oh, surely it isn't Hereward Pole — 
 don't you tell him I'm here in this hell, for it's 
 nothing better." And then, he said, she cried 
 badly, and went on terrible, till Black Ned, as 
 she s married to, swore at her and threatened 
 to knock her brains out if she didn't give over. 
 I'd like to 'a bin there.'
 
 2i8 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap, viii 
 
 'Good God,' said I, 'and is this the end of 
 pretty, innocent Jane Mangold! How is it we 
 never heard of it before ? ' 
 
 ' Well, this chap, he kept it dark for a bit, 
 but one day he and I was on a bit of a booze, 
 and it all came out. It's a 'nation pity, ain't it 
 now ? Jack Thursby said he beats her awful, 
 and some day he'll be the death of her — and it 
 won't be the first he's made away with.' 
 
 ' I wonder if we can do anything for her,' I 
 said. ' Some day I must take a ride over to 
 Warraluen and see her, though I hardly know 
 how to help her. Still she shall have the offer 
 of my assistance — poor — poor Jane.' 
 
 Then I fell to thinking how strangely inter- 
 mingled our lives had been. More wonderful 
 than any romance it seemed, if we two, who 
 had wandered over the peaceful uplands and 
 oakwoods of Dibblestowe Leys, hardly more 
 than boy and girl, should now meet once more 
 again in the far, strange, gold-town of Yatala.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 It is generally taken for granted in Britain that 
 every person in a colony must of necessity 
 know, or be known by, everybody else. Mr. 
 Smith, of Sydney, on furlough, is importuned 
 to carry a letter to Mr. Jones's cousin in 
 Queensland, while his disclaimer as to personal 
 knowledge of Miss Thompson's brother in 
 Victoria is evidently looked upon with suspicion. 
 It seems hopeless to attempt to convey to old- 
 world people correct ideas of the enormous 
 distances which separate the settlements of a 
 newly-peopled continent ; impossible almost to 
 explain the nature of those social divisions 
 which still further tend to prevent the universal 
 brotherhood which is held to characterise the 
 Arcadian existence of colonists. 
 
 They cannot imagine the necessity for such 
 lines of demarcation 'in a colony,' clearly as
 
 220 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 they are defined and rigidly enforced in every 
 third-rate county town and old-fashioned village 
 in. Britain. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there are few places in 
 the world, London excepted, where individuals 
 may be more securely hidden from kith or kin, 
 early friends, and later acquaintances than in 
 Australia : and no place in Australia furnishes 
 greater facilities for personal effacement than 
 a large goldfield. A squarely - built man in 
 ordinary miner's garb, known as Jack Scott 
 only by his associates, passes by carrying a tin 
 dish and a shovel. How are you to divine 
 that this particular Jack is the son of a clergy- 
 man, and the grandson of a general in the 
 Indian army, who will presently die and leave 
 him a fortune, when the whole thing comes 
 out ? You are summoned as a juror to attend 
 the coroner's inquest held on a poor fellow 
 found in an eighty -feet shaft, where he has 
 fallen overnight, having missed his way in the 
 dark. He was ' Bill Jones ' to all men, and lo ! 
 his brother arrives from town to attend the 
 funeral, and it seems poor, easy - going, un- 
 ambitious Bill, contented with the society of 
 'equals' — the shareholders in the claim — and
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 221 
 
 an occasional carouse, was the cadet of an 
 ancient house, the members of which are 
 broken - hearted at his early ignoble death. 
 How many instances of this decadence had 
 I noted ! How often had I dreaded in 
 moments of despondency a like fate ; shudder- 
 ing to contemplate in myself a possible waif, 
 hopelessly stranded on the shore of despair and 
 evil hap ! 
 
 It had easily occurred, then, that Jane Man- 
 gold and I, though we had been living con- 
 siderably less than a hundred miles apart, had 
 never met, had never heard of each other, until 
 this recent chance. Now that I was assured 
 of her near presence, an intensely eager desire, 
 a thrill repeated from the ardent boyish period, 
 
 when 
 
 ' She was a part of those fresh days to me,' 
 
 urged me with resistless power to gaze upon 
 that face once more of my old friend and play- 
 mate. 
 
 I had often analysed my feelings towards 
 the girl who had so nearly been linked for 
 ever with my destiny. I had never been 
 absolutely ' in love ' with her, as the phrase 
 goes ; but the vivid unreasoning admiration
 
 222 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 of early youth for the first fair form and face 
 might easily have ripened into a passion. From 
 this misfortune — the grave error of declining 
 to a lower level of birth, breeding, intellect, and 
 sentiment — I was saved by a loftier, a purer, a 
 more absorbing devotion. 
 
 Yet he who has once been inspired by a 
 woman, even with feelings short of the highest 
 degree of admiring interest, rarely ceases to 
 regard her with a peculiar tenderness. If there 
 be generosity in his nature, he is ever ready to 
 stand forth as her champion, ready with aid or 
 counsel. And students of the human heart are 
 wont to aver that the friendship which might 
 have been love has ere now expressed itself in 
 acts of sublime self-abnegation to which the 
 world furnishes few parallels. 
 
 On the following Saturday, therefore, I 
 borrowed a horse for the journey to Warraluen, 
 ' putting a man on ' — that is, hiring an ex- 
 perienced miner, for the sum of ten shillings 
 per diem, to perform my duty in the claim until 
 my return. 
 
 Before the stars had left the sky, I rode 
 quietly and steadily forth, thereby giving my 
 horse, fresh from a run on grass but a few
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 223 
 
 days since, a chance of settling to his work by 
 degrees. As the sun rose higher I quickened 
 my pace, and riding fast, but not unreasonably, 
 the well -seasoned animal brought me within 
 sight of the substantial little township of War- 
 raluen before sundown. 
 
 As I rode up the narrow street, serpentine 
 in construction, as in all gold -founded town- 
 ships, I looked carefully for the hotel which I 
 had been informed that Edward Morsley kept. 
 The settlement differed in some respects from 
 the one I had quitted ; its prosperity depended 
 almost wholly upon quartz reefs. In their 
 nature, the reefs or ledges of quartz rock are 
 more permanent as to the gold crop than the 
 alluvial deposits, which can be rifled In a com- 
 paratively short time. Whereas the great depth 
 of the matrix, as a rule, and consequently slow, 
 steady extraction of the golden stone, necessi- 
 tates a more protracted service, a more settled 
 population. Hence the populations of ' reefing 
 districts ' are for the most part famed for com- 
 fortable cottages, well -grown orchards, and a 
 general air of well-paid, contented ^^^ourlng life. 
 
 The miners in this particular locality were 
 chiefly Cornishmen, hereditarily accustomed to
 
 224 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 subterranean labour in their own land. 
 Laborious, enduring, and efficient in their own 
 occupation, to which many of them had served 
 a life-long apprenticeship thousands of feet 
 below old 'ocean's swells and falls,' in Wheal 
 Maria or The Great Dungavel, they were said 
 to be by no means so suave of manner or 
 agreeable in association as their cosmopolitan 
 brethren of the alluvial goldfields. The 
 aggressive, sullen nature of the untravelled 
 Briton was still uncorrected by association with 
 the outer world. They formed a community 
 within themselves, and, as such, shut up to the 
 development of their own peculiar tendencies, 
 some of which were less pleasing than remark- 
 able. 
 
 At this particular time the reefs at one 
 end of the line of shafts, upon a mountain crest 
 far above the town, had been lately yielding 
 enormously, and were renowned throughout 
 Australia. The ' Cousin Jacks ' were, there- 
 fore, in great force. Much given to brawling 
 amongst themselves, they were more than likely 
 to be uncivil to strangers. The small force of 
 police, hitherto thought sufficient for their 
 subjugation, was all-inadequate when a dozen
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 225 
 
 reefs in line were sending up ten ounce stone 
 — even better than that, it was whispered, and 
 hundreds of wages men, employed by the great 
 absentee companies, received their three pounds 
 each as regularly as Saturday came. 
 
 In some respects, therefore, I had arrived at 
 an inopportune season. Saturday night was pay 
 night, and the vinous aspect of the groups 
 I encountered — so different from the men at 
 Yatala, except perhaps upon a high festival — 
 convinced me that I had chosen a bad day for 
 my entrance into Warraluen. However, I 
 bestowed myself at the first available inn, and 
 after needful refreshments and a couple of 
 hours' rest, strolled out into the well-lighted 
 streets. 
 
 'Well, lad,' said a short man, whose blue- 
 black curly hair and deep-set eyes betrayed the 
 'Cousin Jack,' while his enormous spread of 
 chest redeemed him from any imputation of 
 insignificance, ' thou farest all as one as a 
 stranger, loike ? Where be'st bound ? ' 
 
 ' To Morsley's Inn, if I can find it among 
 these crooked streets of yours,' I said, slightly 
 irritated at my want of success and inauspicious 
 surroundings. 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 'Black Ned?' said the pocket Hercules, 
 rolling himself around, and not resenting the 
 imputation on his town, but steadying himself 
 for a comprehensive look at me. * Be'st a 
 friend o' that'n ? Not by the looks o' thee — 
 danged sight more loike to be friends with yon 
 pratty mawther as he's gotten boxed-up there 
 wi' him — more's the pity.' 
 
 ' Can you show me the house ? ' I asked, not 
 much disposed for the sort of conversation that 
 I foresaw could only be extracted from my 
 acquaintance. 
 
 'Show thee t' house — why, I'm a-gannin 
 theer, straight as I can go. There's a dance 
 there t' night, man — a ball ! and we'll fare there 
 together, Billy Pentreath and a friend, an owd 
 friend — eh, lad .-^ I'll show thee the missis. 
 Mayhap she'll dance with thee — thou'rt a 
 tidyish soart o' chap.' 
 
 After a short walk, and a considerable 
 amount of tacking indulged in by my guide 
 before he could ' fetch,' as he expressed it, the 
 *main drive,' we fronted a large, imposing, two- 
 storied brick building. Beyond doubt it was a 
 gala night, as the profuse lighting up, the group 
 of men and women round the doors, the sound
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 227 
 
 of music which issued from the open windows, 
 abundantly testified. 
 
 ' Why, here's Billy Pen,' said a red-bearded 
 giant, who looked like Odin or Thor about 
 to enter a modern Valhalla. ' Here's Billy 
 a-coming to see the ball, and another chap. 
 Whose yer friend ; a Geordie, most like ? ' 
 
 ' No fear. Red Gaffer — dunna thee moind 
 about Geordies. Seems as he's a Yatala man, 
 and a golden hole man, as I'm warned,' said 
 Billy, improvising slightly for the benefit of his 
 audience, and unaware that he was so far 
 clinging to truth. ' Wants to buy a few shares 
 in Frohmann's, and Barrell's, and Caird's. But 
 let's in, boys, and don't obstrooct th' entrance.' 
 
 A shout of laughter greeted this imposing 
 utterance of Mr. Pentreath, performed with 
 some difficulty. But seconding his expressed 
 wish with an energetic shoulder movement, 
 which even the giant did not care to withstand 
 seriously, Mr. William Pentreath rolled through 
 the open door into the hall of mirth, whither I 
 followed with comparative ease. 
 
 ' E. Morsley's Reefers' Arms,' as the large 
 gilt letters on the front of the house proclaimed 
 it to be, had always been celebrated as a ' dance-
 
 228 THE MIXER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 house,' where from time to time gatherings were 
 permitted by the police for the avowed 
 enjoyment of music and dancing. This 
 privilege had always been fenced round with 
 restrictions and sparingly conceded by the 
 police authorities. It was found, in the early 
 history of the goldfields, that these assemblages 
 of men of all classes and characters, excited by 
 liquor, flush of money, and urged on by the 
 presence of women, more fair than honest, led 
 to many undesirable results. It was then enacted 
 that each hotel-keeper who desired to have 
 music and dancing in his licensed house should 
 apply in writing for the permission. This 
 application was referred to the police officers, 
 who recommended or otherwise. If broils had 
 taken place, robberies been hatched, or bad 
 characters been encouraged to frequent the 
 house on former occasions, the police stated 
 objections, when the application was sternly 
 vetoed by the Bench of Magistrates. In no 
 case was such permission granted oftener than 
 once a week. It was, therefore, no scene of 
 wild, unhallowed revelry upon which Mr. Billy 
 Pentreath and I were about to intrude, no reck- 
 less orgy, but a fairly regulated entertainment,
 
 IX THE MIXER'S RIGHT 229 
 
 in which, if there was a certain hcense as to 
 Hquor and language, no great abuse of either 
 would be possible. Still, I knew well that, had 
 the woman I had come to seek retained her 
 former feelings and principles, there would have 
 been as much likelihood of her joining in a 
 gipsy feast on the common near Dibblestowe as 
 willingly lending the sanction of her presence 
 to revelry like this. 
 
 The room was large and well lighted by 
 lamps which hung from the ceiling ; the floor 
 good in a general way, although uneven to- 
 wards one end, where the difference in the 
 height of the wall showed that a smaller room 
 had been annexed for greater public accommoda- 
 tion. A brass band of considerable power, and 
 by no means inharmonious time, was at the 
 moment performing a German waltz, to which 
 about a hundred couples gyrated with orthodox 
 slowness and precision. Of the women, some 
 were handsome and showily dressed, others 
 again were homely, middle-aged, and plain of 
 attire, the wives of working miners who had a 
 mind for once to enjoy themselves, and, at the 
 same time, make sure that Sam or Joe would 
 be back in time for his ' shift ' at the claim.
 
 230 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 These were, in the main, reputable and hard- 
 working women. It was easy to see many who 
 deserved neither of these epithets. But whether 
 fair or honest, there was one striking fact 
 apparent, that women of any kind were at a 
 considerable premium at Warraluen. More 
 than half the couples were men dancing with 
 men. The saltatory instinct must be, even 
 when diluted by descent, of great original 
 strength, if one may judge from the fact that 
 men, long absent from the pleasures of ordinary 
 civilisation, when met for purposes of amuse- 
 ment, will dance for hours contentedly with one 
 another rather than not dance at all. 
 
 At the end of the room was a highly 
 ornamental bar for the sale of liquors, behind 
 which was displayed in tempting profusion 
 every kind of alcoholic stimulant. Officiating 
 here, in company with an assistant whose time 
 was completely taken up in serving the drinks 
 which were ceaselessly called for, was a tall 
 dark man, showily dressed according to the 
 taste of the locality, and affecting a kind of 
 spurious gentility which I thought sat ill on a 
 lowering, savage cast of countenance. 
 
 ' Yon's Black Ned, blank him,' said my
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 231 
 
 companion, ' as large as life, and twice as nasty 
 if a' dared ; let's over and have a drink, and 
 he'll tell us a' the lees as is agoin' about 
 Frohmann's, Caird's, and Bolterman's, and the 
 lot on 'em. You're a-wantin' sheers for a 
 Sydney company, eh, lad ? That's your little 
 game. I seed it soon as ye said fust word.' 
 And here Billy winked at me with a portentous 
 cunning, the effect of which was much enhanced 
 by the difficulty with which he performed the 
 feat. 
 
 Whether with characteristic shrewdness he 
 had assumed that, whatever my real errand, 
 there was no need to advertise it, or whether 
 my appearance suggested an agency for the 
 purchase of reef shares, then popular with 
 speculators and rising fast in the market, I 
 could not divine. But I instantly saw the 
 advantage of following the hint accidentally 
 given, and being made known to Mr. Ned 
 Morsley under the style and title of a purchaser 
 of shares in the great reefs which were then 
 sending all the Australian world mad with hope, 
 fear, and regret. 
 
 Such buyers were always, of necessity, pro- 
 vided with a sufficiency of ready cash ; and the
 
 232 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 bearer of promptly available moneys has always 
 been a welcome guest at hostelries of every 
 grade since the days of the Tabard. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Pentreath lumbered 
 up with diagonal dexterity to the bar, narrowly 
 avoiding the destruction of more than one 
 couple of performers, and further informed 
 Morsley that I was Mr. Poole, a friend of his, 
 from Yatala, as was ' on the gutter ' in the best 
 blank clairn in the blank field, and was bound 
 to have the pick of all the sheers as was for 
 sale in the leading reefs on the blank Hill, the 
 sullen face of the host assumed an air of 
 laboured welcome, and even an ominous, half- 
 gracious, half-sinister smile illuminated his dark 
 visage. 
 
 ' You're only just in time. I had some of 
 Frohmann's this morning, but they're gone. 
 There's a half- share in Caird's, and two 
 quarters in Bolterman's, that I can put you on 
 to. The men were here this morning ; one's 
 off to Sydney, and the other's just spliced — 
 that's why they want to sell ; d — d fools 
 both.' 
 
 ' Eh, thou'lt find him some, I warrant thee, 
 as long as there's a loomp o' quartz o' th' hill
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 233 
 
 the soize o' a brickbat. Whoy, thou'st grinnin 
 aal over t' face loike a Cheshire cat. But coom, 
 what'll thee tak', Mr. Poole ? let's booze up, 
 summat near the mark. Ned, what's thine ? 
 whoy, here's t' missis and Grizzly Joe as is 
 finished their dance aready. Stir thee stumps, 
 Ned. It's Billy Pentreath's shout, all round. 
 Blanked if thee don't own the handsomest wife 
 from here to Los Angeles.' 
 
 Mr. Pentreath threw a five-pound note upon 
 the bar and looked defiantly around, as a tall 
 American miner, with close-shaved face and 
 heavy moustache, lounged up to the bar with 
 his partner, followed by the first detachment of 
 the dancers, whose waltz had suddenly come to 
 a full stop. 
 
 I looked at Mr. Grizzly Joe's partner, guard- 
 ing myself carefully from any appearance of 
 unusual interest. The first glance showed me 
 that it was Jane Mangold, the woman whom 
 I had last set eyes on as she bade me fare- 
 well at the Leys. I could recall her figure and 
 dress even now, as I watched her run hurriedly 
 into the old-fashioned porch at the entrance to 
 the red-brown many-gabled farmhouse. 
 
 We had met again. And here !
 
 234 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 I was changed, as the boy changes to the 
 man, when the days of Hghtly carried duties 
 and pleasures have passed away, and those of 
 the stern taskmasters of later years have worked 
 their will on mind and muscle. But I was still 
 free — had I the world's goods — to resume my 
 former place in the land we had both quitted, 
 even, perhaps, with added fame and the prestige 
 of the roamer and adventurer. While she ? 
 
 Our eyes met, and for one moment the flush 
 upon her face faded so suddenly that I thought 
 Mr. Pentreath's favourable romance had failed 
 in its effect, and that I should stand confessed 
 before the jealous eyes of Ned Morsley, as a 
 former friend and admirer of his wife. 
 
 For the moment, however, he had been 
 engaged professionally — and hastily seizing the 
 wine-glass before her, she drank it hurriedly, 
 and, turning to her partner, with a forced laugh 
 made some commonplace remark about the 
 heat of the room, and her fatigue as mistress 
 of the house and principal partner at these 
 troublesome balls. 
 
 The next minute Morsley returned from his 
 spirituous search, and, with a peculiar look at 
 his wife, introduced me as a friend of Billy
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT iy^ 
 
 Pen's from Yatala, who had come over to buy 
 a few shares. 
 
 ' Very glad to see him or anybody from 
 Yatala in this rough place,' she said, half 
 looking down, but with assumed carelessness 
 of manner. ' But I thought all the shares were 
 sold that were worth buying.' 
 
 ' Never you mind about that, Jenny,' Mr. 
 Morsley said, with a kind of jocular gruffness. 
 * Billy and I could find him some shares if 
 every claim on the hill had been sold twice 
 over.' 
 
 ' I've no doubt of that,' she returned sar- 
 castically. ' The question is, whether Mr. 
 Poole — I think you said — would care to buy.' 
 
 Here the band struck up a popular war 
 dance of the period, and the room being 
 immediately made noisily cheerful with stamp- 
 ing and trampling to the somewhat exigent 
 time, I formally solicited the pleasure of Mrs. 
 Morsley's hand for the dance, thereby antici- 
 pating the intentions of half-a-dozen burly 
 aspirants, one of whom, evidently considering 
 that a dance was a dance, promptly thus 
 addressed Mr. Pentreath — 
 
 *'Ave a shottise, Bill .^ '
 
 236 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 It was not for the first time that my arm 
 had encircled my partner's shapely waist. In 
 old times there had been rustic junketings, 
 picnics, and other informal merrymakings, at 
 which a little dancing was allowable, if not 
 ostensibly in the programme. As soon as we 
 swung clear of the encircling crowd at the 
 farther end of the room, where there was an 
 outlet to a small garden with seats and other 
 appliances for availing of the refreshments 
 ordered at the bar, we stopped by mutual 
 consent and looked in each other's eyes. For 
 one brief moment they met, and then hers, 
 which wore a troubled and half-appealing 
 wistful expression, sank suddenly before mine, 
 as she hurriedly broke the silence. 
 
 ' This is like — and yet how dreadfully unlike 
 — old times, isn't it '^. Who would ever have 
 thought that Jane Mangold and Here ward 
 Pole would have met in Australia — in such a 
 place as this, too ? Oh, my God ! who would 
 have dreamed it ? Don't say a kind word to 
 me — don't — or I shall burst out crying — and 
 then Ned will ' 
 
 ' Are you afraid of him ? ' I said. ' Will he 
 be angry if he finds you and I are old friends ? '
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 237 
 
 ' Of course he will. I am not afraid of him, 
 or of any one else,' she said, turning on me 
 with a sudden light in her eye and a defiant 
 look which marked the change from the inno- 
 cent country girl of old days. ' But I know 
 he'll kill me one of these days. And now let 
 us finish our dance, or these people will wonder. 
 My miserable story will do some time when we 
 can have a quiet talk together. I try to forget. 
 Oh, if I only coitld\ 
 
 We whirled off to the familiar measure, to 
 which with an odd inexplicable impulse we 
 addressed ourselves gaily. It afforded strange 
 feelings of relief. We did not again stop till 
 the dance was over. 
 
 So complete was the recognition of the once 
 familiar face, that I had hardly asked myself 
 whether or no the alteration in her appearance 
 had been favourable or otherwise. Scanning 
 her features more closely, I was astonished to 
 confess that, as far as outward seeming went, 
 Jane was now incomparably more attractive 
 than she had ever been. Her complexion, 
 still, as ever, wonderfully delicate, pure-tinted, 
 and but faintly coloured with a warmer glow, 
 was of the class so rarely seen save amid the
 
 238 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 green meads and sheltered vales of the British 
 Isles. Her figure had but altered from that of 
 girlhood to the more perfect symmetry of the 
 more fully developed woman. The blue eyes, 
 though their expression, ah me ! had changed, 
 were softly radiant, as of yore. Added to all, 
 there was an air of self-possession — of higher 
 resolution and quickened intelligence, that had 
 been absent in the dear innocent old days of 
 Dibblestowe Leys. She was then a bright- 
 faced, merry, wayward country maiden — much 
 resembling her whom Chaucer limned — 
 
 ' Wincing she went as doth a wanton colt. 
 Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt.' 
 
 Now, it may be that she had sinned and 
 suffered, borne hard usage, and flung back 
 bitter words ; but the sorrow and the shame, 
 the suffering and remorse, had been all power- 
 less to deprive her of that gift, so fatal, alas ! to 
 many a possessor among Eve's daughters. 
 
 She was still graceful and striking-looking, 
 nay more — a dangerously beautiful woman. 
 
 I remained at Warraluen some days. I 
 continued my fortuitously - formed friendship 
 with Mr. Billy Pentreath, who devoted himself 
 to my service and entertainment, being, appar-
 
 IX THE MINER'S RIGHT 239 
 
 ently, curiously anxious to justify his hastily-con- 
 ceived description of my character and errand, 
 by letting me into some of the confidential 
 mining operations which had then financially so 
 much interest for all classes of society in New 
 South Wales. 
 
 I kept up the idea, which now thoroughly 
 pervaded the larger portion of the community, 
 by purchasing guardedly a few ' interests ' from 
 time to time out of the largish number sub- 
 mitted for my approval, and by assuming a 
 gay and careless manner, much at variance 
 with my habit and present inclination. 
 
 Thus Billy Pentreath, and his friend Harry 
 Pole from Yatala, became fully accepted as the 
 last novelty in speculative mineral society. 
 
 Even the suspicious Morsley relaxed his 
 grim menacing demeanour, regarding me, 
 doubtless, as one of the harmless pigeons 
 of the golden period, whose pecuniary pinions 
 were fated to be even more completely and 
 effectually plucked than usual. 
 
 Meanwhile opportunities were freely afforded 
 me of hearing poor Jane's sad story. After my 
 departure from the Leys she had become (she 
 told me) restless and dissatisfied with her home
 
 240 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 and her ordinary duties. Her father was, as 
 she thought then (' not now — not now,' she 
 said, with how sad a look and sigh !), hard and 
 unkind. After several quarrels, resulting in 
 settled home discomfort, she in a fit of pique 
 and rebellion accepted Dick Cheriton's 
 addresses. Marrying him without her father's 
 consent, they emigrated to Australia, full of 
 the golden expectations which, about that 
 time — the great days of the Turon, of Ballarat, 
 and Bendigo — lured so many hapless rustics 
 from their homes, little dreaming of the 
 ferocity of the dragons that guarded the 
 Hesperides of the South. They arrived at 
 Ballarat in the early days of that astonishing 
 treasure-city, now with a population of many 
 thousand souls, with banks and churches, 
 railways and public schools, with parks on 
 gala days crowded with school children, and 
 regattas with fleets of boats upon Lake 
 Wendouree ; then a vast camp of cabins 
 clustered beside the sodden banks of a muddy 
 creek, or on the slopes of a gloomy forest, 
 where in endless ranks stood charred iron- 
 seeming stems of the great eucalypti. Some 
 of the usual consequences followed.
 
 IX THE MINERS RIGHT 241 
 
 Richard Cheriton, weak and dissipated, had, 
 after a temporary run of luck, swiftly succumbed 
 to the temptations of the scene and the period. 
 Hard drinking and reckless gambling had 
 made short work of him and his capital, and 
 within three years of their landing, the ruddy- 
 faced farmer, whose mild misdeeds in his 
 native county would almost have counted as 
 virtues amid the fierce whirlpool of vice in 
 which he had lately revolved, was laid in the 
 crowded cemetery, a shattered wreck, an im- 
 becile, and a pauper. 
 
 Lonely and wretched, though flattered for 
 her beauty and distracted amid the thousand 
 excitements of the great goldfield, Jane had, 
 half in despair, half in instinctive feeling of 
 self-preservation, accepted the first apparently 
 favourable offer of marriage made to her. Ned 
 Morsley, apparently wealthy and successful, 
 courted for his money, and veiling his villainy 
 under a mask of careless dissipation, easily 
 imposed himself upon her. 
 
 His wealth and his protection were alike 
 
 shams. A wandering adventurer, he had 
 
 dragged her from one goldfield to another, 
 
 from colony to colony, or had deserted her, 
 
 VOL. I R
 
 242 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 leaving her well-nigh to starve, unaided and 
 unguarded. Used as a lure and a decoy, yet 
 subject to paroxysms of causeless jealousy on 
 the part of her husband, she had often experi- 
 enced the vilest abuse, the grossest ill-treat- 
 ment at his hands. Loathing herself and her 
 surroundings, an inherent vigour of organisa- 
 tion, joined with the sustaining power of a 
 false excitement, had hitherto served to keep 
 her alive. 
 
 But how weary of her life she was, she again 
 and again told me, with bitter tears. She would 
 long since have ended it, but that her father was 
 alive, and she clung to some half-instinctive 
 hope that she might yet see him, and end 
 her feverish wasted life near the cool brook 
 and under the aged trees of the quiet village, 
 where for generations her race had lived and 
 died peacefully, innocently, happily. 
 
 ' Oh ! if I could only see the Leys again,' 
 she sobbed, leaning her head against my 
 shoulder in the abandonment of despairing 
 and passionate grief, 'how happily I should 
 die ! I do not wish to live. I have long 
 ago come to hate my life. Alas ! false and 
 wretched dream that it has been. But if I
 
 IX THE MINERS RIGHT 243 
 
 could only get away from these hateful heaps 
 of earth, this miserable monotonous existence, 
 this sickening endless turmoil about gold — 
 the accursed gold — ruining alike in body and 
 soul those who have it and those who have 
 it not — I could sleep away my life peacefully 
 and thankfully. Oh, Hereward, my friend, 
 my brother, of the old ,glad, innocent days, 
 you cannot think what a joy your coming has 
 been to me. Do you think God will ever let 
 me go back .^ ' 
 
 I soothed the weeping woman, and offered 
 such poor consolation as I could think suitable 
 to her hopeless state. But that nothing could 
 be done I was only too well aware. How can 
 any woman of any degree be helped against 
 her husband ? She had chosen her fate and 
 must abide by it, enduring torture only short 
 of legally punishable violence, hardly restrained, 
 indeed, within such bounds. 
 
 I was to leave Warraluen next day. I 
 could not longer prolong my stay without 
 causing inconvenience to my partners at 
 Yatala, and probably exciting unfavourable 
 remarks at Warraluen. I promised to aid 
 and help my unhappy friend in all loyalty,
 
 244 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 and caused her to promise that if matters 
 became dangerous or intolerable she would 
 trust herself to my care at Yatala, where I 
 would do for her what a brother might. 
 
 In keeping up my character with Billy 
 Pentreath, as an earnest mining speculator, I 
 had purchased more shares in Frohmann's, 
 Caird's, the Frenchman's, and Bolterman's than 
 I had at first intended, but the money stood at 
 my credit in the Bank of New Holland, at 
 Yatala, and with the true mining disdain of the 
 odds, I considered that a favourable rise was 
 quite as likely to take place in their market 
 value as the reverse. 
 
 When I returned to Yatala, after my week's 
 unwonted recreation, I was accompanied as far 
 as the first inn, about ten miles on my way, by 
 Mr. Pentreath and a few friends, who were 
 determined that I should not quit 'the Hill,' as 
 Warraluen was familiarly called, without some 
 sort of public recognition. We rode along, 
 therefore, with a free rein as far as Spraggs's, 
 as the hostelry of that gentleman was chiefly 
 designated, irrespectively of a patently aggress- 
 ive signboard, legended The Jolly Miner, and 
 representing a suspiciously well-dressed indi-
 
 THE MINERS RIGHT 245 
 
 vidual in recent possession of a fabulously large 
 and brilliant nugget. Thither arrived, cham- 
 pagne was demanded, and my health was 
 proposed by Mr. Pentreath as a legitimate 
 miner and a true friend, as was a honour to 
 his country and to Yatala, which tho' it was only 
 alluvial — in a manner of speaking — had some 
 tidy claims on it, and ' whoever met his friend 
 Harry Pole from theer, would find him a man, 
 whether the sinkin' was deep or shallow — and 
 here was his jolly good health, with all the 
 honours, three times three — hurrah.' 
 
 But for leaving poor Jane to bear unaided 
 her miserable fate, I should have quitted 
 Warraluen with a much lighter heart than I 
 had entered it with. I made shift, however, to 
 feign the requisite amount of hilarity, and part- 
 ing cordially with my kind-hearted Cousin 
 Jacks, I breasted the line of steep green hills 
 around which the road wound, and ' they went 
 on their way, and I saw them no more.' 
 
 Once more at Yatala, and again seated at 
 our humble board, I had hardly completed my 
 mutton chop and commenced to extract the 
 impartial local news from yesterday's Beacon
 
 246 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 when suddenly a low, rumbling sound attracted 
 my attention. Something which I could not 
 analyse aroused a kind of sickening anxiety, 
 and I looked out. God in heaven ! what was 
 that ? I could see plainly the shaft and the 
 staging of Gus Maynard's claim. As I looked 
 I saw the woodwork on the top of the shaft 
 driven up as by an unchained hell -blast, the 
 bark roof of the sun -covering is burst upwards 
 as by an explosion, and comes down in frag- 
 ments all over the spot. Is it fancy, or do I 
 see the heavy pile of crossed logs, ten or twelve 
 feet from the surface of the earth, stagger — and 
 fall ruinous to the earth .^ Does the adjacent 
 ground disappear and finally remain stationary, 
 as a hideous, dry, formless pond ? 
 
 It is even so, and my senses have not 
 deceived me. There is a general rush from all 
 sides to the place. Men commence to work 
 frantically for a time, and then stop, and say 
 sadly that there can be no help. Finally we 
 discover the nature of the terrific accident which 
 Providence has seen fiit to suffer. 
 
 The Nova Scotia claim has fallen in. All 
 the present workings are for ever closed, and 
 Gus Maynard and seven stalwart miners, who
 
 IX THE MINERS RIGHT 247 
 
 this morning were full of lusty life, are lying- 
 crushed lifeless clay in the sealed-up galleries, 
 and a hundred feet from the day. The heavy 
 props which supported the drives had given way 
 simultaneously, and an enormous mass of super- 
 incumbent earth fallen in upon the doomed 
 miners. The suddenly expelled air, driven out 
 through the shaft as by a tube, had produced 
 the volcanic effect we had witnessed. There is 
 no going down the shaft, no volunteering to 
 risk life for the chance of saving dying or 
 crippled men, as when the fatal fire-damp slays 
 or only stupefies the miner in the ancient work- 
 ings of British coal-mines. All such effort was 
 useless. All trace of shaft or drive was here 
 completely lost. Fresh shafts, of course, will 
 be sunk, fresh galleries excavated, the old work- 
 ings will be freshly scooped out of the jealous 
 bosom of the dread mother — for the gold is still 
 there, in fine dust and shot- like grains, and 
 rugged, rough, red ingots. Such prizes will 
 always tempt the heedless heart of man. 
 Against these will he cheerfully barter afresh 
 his life and limb, health and strength. 
 
 But Gus Maynard and his mates will never 
 more be seen on earth, never more appear in
 
 248 THE MINERS RIGHT chap, ix 
 
 the forms known and loved so well — for wives 
 and orphans are weeping hopelessly now — till the 
 sea gives up her dead, and the caves and dark 
 places of the earth render up those that lie 
 'prisoned with them, awaiting the last dread 
 trump. 
 
 When I dragged my feet back to our tent 
 that night — for how unwillingly move the 
 members when the heart is heavy ! — I felt as if 
 a cloud of evil omen had gathered around our 
 fortunes and prosperity. All were silent, all 
 desponding. Gus was a universal favourite, 
 and there were few at Yatala that night who 
 did not sorrow as for a friend or a brother.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 I HAD not, however, much leisure for the 
 indulgence of grief in the matter of poor 
 Gus Maynard, sudden and terrible as had been 
 his fate. For we had no sooner quitted the 
 sorrowful procession which had at length 
 returned from the buried mine -works than 
 Cyrus Yorke, who had been away all day, 
 dashed in with the astounding intelligence, 
 ' Our claim has been jumped.' The words 
 were simple, but no addition could have 
 exaggerated their significance. 
 
 From the first we had been almost instinct- 
 ively aware of the framer of the plot which had 
 done us so great an injury, which might even 
 yet compass our ruin. Malgrade was the man 
 whom each tongue amongst us simultaneously 
 named and, with the sole exception of Mrs. 
 Yorke, deeply and vengefully cursed. I am
 
 2 50 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 not sure now whether that prudent matron 
 did not utter a wish connected with his pro- 
 spective condition of existence which sounded 
 less Hke a prayer than a prophecy. He had 
 bided his time, and had dealt us a shrewd blow. 
 In the long history of human strife, how unwise 
 has it ever been to underrate a foe. Wiser than 
 his fellows was he who said of old, ' Consider 
 your enemies if you would be safe and strong 
 — heed not your friends.' And, doubtless, 
 what a coign of vantage has the stealthy, 
 patlent-w^atching brigand over the unsuspecting 
 toilers — the heedless wayfarers of life! Daily, 
 nightly, his thoughts are marshalled solely with 
 a view to the season of opportunity, which 
 sooner or later an ironic fate appears to grant. 
 Thus had it been with us. The blow had 
 found us unprepared. And though we had the 
 ordinary means of defence, we were by no 
 means sure that a joint in our armour would 
 not be discovered, in which case no mercy need 
 be hoped for. 
 
 But it was apparent Malgrade was not our 
 sole antagonist. In all privateering on gold- 
 fields and other tempting vicinities, the initiated 
 are aware that the alliance of capital with labour
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT i^\ 
 
 is indispensable. In the 'ebony' trade and 
 other adventurous semi-mercantile enterprises, 
 as well as Captain Kidd and his merry men, 
 there must be the moneyed speculator, grave 
 possibly, decorous of mien, but nevertheless 
 not unwilling to furnish the outfit of the long 
 low waterwitch of a schooner for a considera- 
 tion. He 'planks down' the dollars requisite 
 for the purchase of prints and necklaces, fetters 
 and gunpowder, rum, small arms, and other 
 necessaries. The crew must be paid and 
 money found for the personal expenses of 
 Captain Kidd as well, unprejudiced commander 
 and thorough seaman that he is. In requital of 
 which by no means paltry outlay a swingeing 
 share of profits, when the middle passage is 
 safely passed and the death-scared sable crowd 
 ' sold and delivered,' is cheerfully yielded to the 
 foreseeing man of money. 
 
 Such philanthropical individuals, loth to 
 behold energetic men languishing for lack of 
 means, have from the earliest records existed 
 in every land. No more complete microcosm 
 than a goldfield is to be found among human 
 communities. It follows in natural sequence, 
 therefore, that the sleek, remorseless trader in
 
 252 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' fellow-creatures' lives ' was not far to seek at 
 Yatala. Our ban-dog, Malgrade, had given 
 him the office ; the calculation was simple and 
 reassuring, and the matter being settled with 
 the celerity characteristic of the locale, the 
 funds were instantly forthcoming. 
 
 Mr. Isaac Poynter was a stout, florid, voluble 
 personage, whose sleek black hair always shone 
 in such oppressively lustrous fashion as to 
 suggest that in his former trade as a butcher 
 he had contracted the habit of anointing it with 
 suet, and was unable to relinquish the practice 
 now that less inexpensive pomade was accessible. 
 He had followed many trades on various gold- 
 fields, including that of unlicensed liquor seller, 
 and having accumulated a considerable capital 
 by the consistent exercise of the strictest 
 dishonesty, had settled down into the ostensible 
 occupation of sharebroker and mining agent, 
 with which elastic vocation he combined those 
 of money-lender, gold-buyer, and receiver of 
 property more or less disputed as to title. 
 
 This astute personage, as well as Mr. Algernon 
 aforesaid, honoured our party by a grudge for 
 several reasons hardly necessary to specify. 
 The Major and I, he had been heard to say,
 
 THE MINERS RIGHT 
 
 were infernal stuck - up swells, who thought 
 themselves too good for the society of parties 
 in trade, while them fellers, Yorke and Bulder, 
 had refused to stand in with him in a little 
 safe speculation, and had had the cheek to offer 
 to kick him off their claim. He'd had it in for 
 'em, and had settled in his own mind for to 
 give 'em a rough turn some day, and now 
 they'd see who they'd got to deal with. 
 
 Long practice of every conceivable evasion 
 of the mining laws had made him familiar with 
 modes by which, without infringing rules, the 
 honest occupant of a claim could be harassed, 
 ousted, besieged, and black-mailed. Any swind- 
 ling device which Poynter was not acquainted 
 with — and such an acquirement was, in the 
 opinion of the looser members of the field, ' not 
 worth knowing' — was promptly supplied by 
 Malgrade. It will be easily seen how difficult 
 it was for our straight-going, unsuspicious band 
 to foil the machinations of foes so deliberate 
 and experienced. 
 
 The necessary arrangements having been 
 made and the plan of the campaign mapped out 
 with Prussian completeness of detail, nothing 
 remained but to find the requisite number of
 
 254 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' honest hard-working miners ' who were to be 
 the ostensible actors and moral scapegoats in 
 the affair. 
 
 Such men, of course, were to be had. The 
 price was tempting, being no less than a half- 
 share each in the claim, if the fortress fell and 
 the condottieri were successful. This was 
 formally made over by legal transfer in the 
 mining registrar's office, the rank and file being 
 far too experienced to trust their superior's 
 promise in such an affair. Besides this, it was 
 agreed that they should receive wages at the 
 rate of half the ordinary tariff, amounting to 
 thirty shillings per week, during all the time 
 occupied in professing to work on the ground, 
 attending court, or in any way furthering the 
 plot. 
 
 This was but the ordinary custom, and 
 without such a payment the humblest miner 
 on the goldfield would not have given his 
 services. The men, in addition to being 
 average practical workers, required also to be 
 fully experienced in all mining usages and 
 regulations, lest they might be betrayed into 
 any illegal act which might jeopardise their title 
 to the property.
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT 255 
 
 Each detail having been long thought out," 
 was now executed with a precision ' worthy of 
 a better cause,' as the apologetic formula runs, 
 doubtless originated by some moralist, wonder- 
 ing In his secret soul why the fiend's emissaries 
 were always so faultless in drill, so true to their 
 colours, so zealous and so sleepless. 
 
 And yet, the outcome of this recondite 
 calculation was the apparently simple and 
 harmless proceeding of four men putting In 
 corner pegs, and going through the form of 
 picking a shovelful of earth from the sand 
 surface of No. 4 Liberator Lead. 
 
 Yes, long before that pawn had been 
 advanced upon the chessboard, whereon was to 
 be played such an exceedingly stiff game with 
 live pieces, many a gambit, many a check and 
 counter-check, had been conned over. Money 
 had been lodged in the bank, arrangements had 
 been made for subdividing shares, for forming 
 a committee, for engaging professional aid, for 
 floating a company. If the need arose. 
 
 Mr. Cramp and Dr. Bellalrhad both received 
 a retaining fee In case of accidents, and with 
 veiled but malignant expectation the chief con- 
 spirators awaited the next move.
 
 256 . THE -MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 The requisite period, sacred to the law's 
 delays, was fulfilled. All needful preliminaries 
 were executed. The day of trial arrived. In 
 all mining causes the method of procedure 
 was this : every case must be tried before the 
 Commissioner, who sat as primary judge. He 
 heard the evidence in full and gave his decision ; 
 but in view of the natural impatience of the 
 mere ipse dixit of one man, even a man so 
 widely respected and even feared as the 
 Commissioner of all the southern goldfields, the 
 Parliament of New South Wales in its wisdom 
 had devised a mode of further trial. An appeal 
 lay to a court composed of two or more magis- 
 trates of the territory, w^ho were empowered to 
 rehear the whole case, and afterwards to confirm 
 or reverse the previous decision. If still further 
 objection were taken to the verdict, and in any 
 Important mining case involving large amounts 
 such proceedings were the rule rather than the 
 exception, a last appeal would be heard before 
 the Supreme Court, by whom the matter was 
 adjudicated upon and finally settled. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that we looked 
 despondingly along a vista of legal proceedings 
 on protracted, if probably successful, action,
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT 257 
 
 but which was surely fraught with profuse ex- 
 penditure along the whole line. However, 
 there was nothing for it but to attack the 
 beleaguering force and compel them to raise 
 the siege, or for us to yield up the citadel. 
 The last act we held to be Impossible. We 
 had, without an hour's delay, retained Mr. 
 Markham, soon finding cause to congratulate 
 ourselves upon our promptitude. 
 
 Punctual as usual on the appointed day, that 
 gentleman arrived early, smiling and confident 
 of mien. The streets appeared to us to carry an 
 unwonted crowd. Many a miner left his work 
 that day. Captain Blake rode up, followed by 
 his dogs, as was his wont, at ten o'clock sharp. 
 
 Throwing the rein to his orderly, he entered 
 the court-house, and took his seat upon the 
 bench with a stern and resolved air. He 
 foresaw six hours of steady attention to a series 
 of interminable technical details with which he 
 was already painfully familiar, and all such 
 methods of spending the bright summer days 
 William Blake cordially hated, though, under 
 compulsion, few men more successfully admin- 
 istered the apparently complicated but really 
 equitable and comprehensive mining statutes. 
 VOL. I s
 
 258 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 Then, advancing with stately steps, the 
 sergeant caused to be opened the principal door 
 of the court-house. In a few moments it was 
 crowded to the rails which protected the pro- 
 fessional gentlemen, the parties to the suit, and 
 the witnesses. Dr. Bellair and Mr. Cramp 
 appeared for the other side. Both editors were 
 in their places when the case — Pole and party 
 versus Ingerstrom and party — was formally 
 called on by the clerk of the Bench. 
 
 Mr. Markham stood up at once, and made 
 the opening address. 
 
 ' He was not there to defend illegal action ; 
 he trusted that he knew too well the principles 
 of law, the requirements of justice, to attempt 
 to pursue a short-sighted policy, whether on the 
 part of his clients or any others. But he would 
 say that a more scandalous outrage upon mining 
 law, goldfields custom, and even the ordinary 
 rules of equity which guided the transactions of 
 society — as between man and man — had, 
 hitherto, not been numbered among his 
 experiences. However, knowing that there 
 was a long day before the Court, he would not 
 detain it further, but proceed to call his 
 witnesses. Harry Pole, go into the box ! '
 
 X THE MINER'S RIGHT 259 
 
 I Stepped upon the modern rack, where, in 
 
 this over-civiHsed age, heartstrings strain and 
 
 quiver in agony, as that dread agent of the law, 
 
 ' 'yclept the barrister, plies probe and scalpel. 
 
 My operation was simple and painless. 
 
 ' Your name is Hereward Pole. You 
 produce your Miner's Right, of date January 
 185 — , the present year.' 
 
 This was done. The important piece of 
 parchment, about the size of a bank cheque, was 
 handed first to the Court, and then to Messrs. 
 Markham and Bellair, by whom it was as 
 closely scrutinised as if, indeed, it had been an 
 informal bank note. 
 
 Further judicious examination elicited from 
 me the important facts that ' I had, on the loth 
 of August last, about a quarter past six in the 
 morning, in company with Joseph Bulder, 
 Cyrus Yorke, and Edgar Treseder Borlase, 
 generally known as " The Major," put in a peg, 
 not less than three feet long and three inches 
 in diameter, and had affixed the same in an L 
 trench not less than six feet long and six inches 
 deep on the north-east boundary of the claim of 
 four men's ground, known as No. 4 Liberator 
 Lead. The other three shareholders mentioned
 
 26o THE MIXER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 put in similar pegs and cut similar trenches at 
 the same time in my presence. The land was 
 then vacant Crown land, there being no one in 
 possession or occupation thereof, or any pegs, 
 shafts, or workings whatever visible. Further- 
 more, I had within three days thereafter, in 
 company with the other shareholders, com- 
 menced to work the claim, now known as No. 4 
 Liberator, and had assisted to work it without 
 intermission until the trespass by defendants. 
 I had seen the defendant Ingerstrom break the 
 surface of said claim with a pick. This was the 
 trespass complained of.' 
 
 This cross-examined by Dr. Bellair : ' The 
 measurement of the claim No. 4 was so many 
 square feet. It was more than forty feet per 
 man along the base line of the lead. It was 
 not an exact parallelogram, but was of an 
 irregular shape. There was not more than the 
 number of superficial feet allowed by the 
 regulations to a claim of four men's ground. 
 The Commissioner had formally allotted us this 
 claim soon after the Prospecting Claim struck 
 gold. The quantity of ground so granted to 
 us was not illegal by the regulations, so far as 
 this deponent knew. Would not swear one
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT idi 
 
 way or another as to its being illegal to grant a 
 claim in a form different from that laid down in 
 the regulations.' 
 
 Here Mr. Markham objected. His learned 
 friend was compelling the witness to answer a 
 question which referred to a matter of law, 
 not of fact. The witness's opinion as to a 
 point of law was not relevant to the issue. 
 The witness might hold an erroneous opinion 
 as to mining law, or a correct one. In either 
 case his opinion would, he submitted, be value- 
 less as evidence. The Court was not con- 
 cerned with what he thotcght with regard to 
 mining law, or any other abstract subject, 
 merely with what he did. 
 
 The Commissioner ruled that the question 
 could not be put. As Mr. Markham had 
 stated, * the Court did not care a straw whether 
 or not witness had the whole Act and Regu- 
 lations at his fingers' ends, only what he did on 
 that tenth day of August last.' 
 
 Dr. Bellair differed in toto from his friend 
 Mr. Markham, and was not disposed to accept 
 the dictum of the Court unconditionally. ' As 
 a Doctor of Medicine, a Doctor of Laws, and 
 a Barrister of the Supreme Court of New
 
 262 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 South Wales, he held himself entitled to con- 
 travene the ruling of any Chairman of a Quarter- 
 Sessions, much less a magistrate presiding over 
 an inferior tribunal as was that of a Commis- 
 sioner's Court. But he would proceed.' 
 
 The Commissioner was gratified to hear 
 that. He was as little disposed to question Dr. 
 Bellair's leQ-al attainments as to make trial of 
 his medical skill, but he wished him to under- 
 stand most fully that he, William Devereux 
 Blake, was judge in his own little court, and 
 should demonstrate by prompt and decisive 
 action (to which he trusted, however, that he 
 should have no occasion to resort) that he 
 would permit no disrespect or contempt of court 
 as long as he sat there. He would remind gentle- 
 men that much evidence remained to be taken. 
 
 Cross-examination proceeded with : ' Was 
 certain that his party commenced work on the 
 third day after pegging out No. 4. Had 
 another claim on the Last Stake before that. 
 Was working there till the 6th. Then 
 abandoned it as they all considered the Liber- 
 ator Lead the better show. Had more than 
 one washing up at No. 4. Dividends were 
 declared. Declined to state how much gold
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT 263 
 
 per man was divided. Were satisfied, at any 
 rate, and did not want it stolen from them by 
 defendants, or any other ruffians/ 
 
 Witness was here admonished by the Com- 
 missioner and told that he was only at liberty 
 to answer questions, and not to refer to the 
 morality of the defendants' presumed course of 
 action. 
 
 Joseph Bulder is likewise sworn. He 
 produces his Miner's Right of date ist January 
 185 — , and gives corroborative testimony as to 
 the occupation of No. 4 claim. 
 
 Edgar Treseder Borlase, sworn, states : ' Is 
 a miner, residing at Yatala. Produces Miner's 
 Right of date ist January 185 — . Assisted in 
 the presence of the two previous witnesses and 
 Cyrus Yorke in taking up the claim known as 
 No. 4. Has worked regularly upon it ever 
 since. Will swear that he has never been away 
 more than a day at a time since they commenced 
 work. If so, has been employed in doing work 
 for the benefit of the claim. Is a practical 
 miner ; has worked at several other goldfields 
 before coming here. Doesn't know exactly the 
 number of superficial feet in the claim ; believes 
 it to be about the right quantity for four men's
 
 264 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 ground. The right quantity would be so-and- 
 so. If he had time, could calculate it easily 
 enough. Am not sure that he could do it 
 accurately here. The Commissioner gave them 
 their claim in that shape, partly because he chose 
 to do so, and partly because in no other way, 
 since the base line was swung, could they get 
 their fair proportion of ground. Did not think 
 that defendants acted otherwise than as ' 
 
 'Thanks, Major' — this from Mr. Markham. 
 * I will not trouble you any further.' 
 
 Cross - examined by Dr. Bellair : ' Was 
 formerly in the army, in the 77th Regiment. 
 Have seen some service. Was not in any way 
 compelled to quit the army. Would have 
 knocked down any man who 'asked him this 
 offensive question outside this Court, but was 
 aware that it was his duty to treat all persons 
 in that Court with becoming respect. Trusted 
 that the learned counsel would assist him by his 
 line of cross-examination in so doing. Did not 
 wish to answer questions upon other than 
 mining transactions. Was a miner here in 
 every sense of the word, and expected miners' 
 treatment — that of honourable consideration 
 and manly fair play.'
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT 265 
 
 (Slight signs of gallery approval promptly 
 suppressed.) 
 
 Amos Burton called : * Is the holder of a 
 Miner's Right, but at present does wood 
 carting. Was in the vicinity of No. 4 Liber- 
 ator Lead very early on loth August, in the 
 morning, and there saw the last witness and 
 three other men marking out a claim. It 
 might be No. 3 or No. 4. They took their 
 time over it, and hammered in their pegs, and 
 dug trenches all ship-shape and reg'lar. Saw 
 no one there before they came. Believed the 
 land to be vacant. Do not know the shape 
 of the claim. Only, if any one took it up 
 according to the regulations, these men did and 
 no mistake.' (Is directed by the Court not to 
 volunteer his opinion upon legal points.) 
 ' Anyhow, they were in occupation.' 
 
 Cross-examined by Dr. Bellair : ' Is not a 
 friend of the last witness, or the party, that is, 
 not partic'lar. Knows Harry Pole, remember 
 him at Cold Point. The Major was there, too. 
 Always believed in 'em as legitimate diggers. 
 Diggers will take advantage sometimes if they 
 can work it with the regulations and the 
 ground's good. Wouldn't do so himself- — that
 
 266 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 is, not unless it was a "clean jump," and the 
 wash was Ai.' 
 
 Ah Sing, storekeeper and general dealer, 
 is next called, and sworn by blowing out a 
 match, repeating after the clerk of the court 
 a formula declaratory of the fact that if he do 
 not now speak the truth his soul will perish 
 as that match is blown out : ' Was on such a 
 day on the line near Liberator Lead. Wantee 
 catchee that one piecee horsee dlive em cart 
 Milliwa velly early morning — sun come up 
 allee samee wantee breakfast. See Hally 
 Pole, Joe, Major, and 'nother man — big man 
 — peg out claim, altogether. See um put in 
 pegs, dig tlench, quite esure, no foolee me, 
 allee samee digger. Know digger way, catchee 
 claim once Myer Flat.' 
 
 Cross-examined : ' Digger buy things my 
 shop, little boy, old woman, young woman, 
 allee samee Ah Sing. Suppose catchee money, 
 suppose swear lie, go to hellee quick, same 
 as Doctor and evlybody.' Is requested by 
 the Court not to include professional gentle- 
 men in his theories of future punishment, to 
 which he replies, ' All lightee. Doctor stop at 
 hom^e, no tell lie. Ah Sing no tell lie. Com-
 
 X THE MINERS RIGHT 267 
 
 mish'ner. Commish'ner shutee up bad China- 
 man, Logs, my word.' Being asked if he 
 knows anything about the present mining re- 
 gulations, replies, 'Me plenty savee, Hally Pole 
 takee up No. 4, and that Dutchy man, plenty 
 jumpee. No more savee.' 
 
 Mr. Markham submitted that their heathen 
 friend had shown his ability to take a com- 
 prehensive grasp of the nature of the suit. 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 Dr. Bellair would not further examine this 
 witness, whose evidence he regarded as either 
 venal or wholly untrustworthy for want of 
 intelligence and sense of moral responsibility. 
 
 Cyrus Yorke is called. He walks up through 
 the closely-packed crowd, who, partly knowing 
 him as a shareholder in the claim, and one of 
 the parties to this cause celebre, make way for 
 him as he slowly marches up, squaring his vast 
 shoulders, and taller by the head than the 
 audience, composed though it be of men of 
 more than average stature. But Cyrus stands 
 as near seven feet as six in the Wellington 
 boots which he always adopts for great 
 occasions ; weighing besides over seventeen 
 stone, below which the hardest of regular
 
 THE MINERS RIGHT 
 
 work does not reduce him. He is not a man 
 to be jostled in any congregation, however 
 dense. As he walks forward to-day, neatly 
 dressed in suitable garments, he is the very 
 pink of cleanliness, and does full justice to 
 Mrs. Yorke's talents as a laundress. His linen 
 is spotless as that of a crack espada among the 
 bull -fighters of Valencia. A grand specimen 
 of Anglo-Saxon manhood is Cyrus, as developed 
 by the kindly conditions of Australian life. I 
 cannot help contrasting him with the ordinary 
 specimens of the English farm-labourers, from 
 which he is sprung. Generations of unre- 
 mitting toil, privation, and anxiety for the 
 morrow, had in most of these instances stamped 
 a look of almost painful endurance indelibly 
 upon form and features, writing them down as 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water, adscripti 
 glebcB born thralls of a higher race and a more 
 favoured class. But this man's external pre- 
 sentment bore the record of years spent in 
 easily-borne tasks and well -requited effort, of 
 long intervals of repose and recreation, of 
 seasons of pleasant social intercourse and free 
 independent action.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The evidence, however, of Mr. Cyrus Yorke 
 proved to be less striking than his appearance, 
 save that portion of it of which the effect was 
 on the wrong side. 
 
 He had pegged out on the loth August 
 with me, the Major, and Joe Bulder. He 
 had assisted to commence work three days 
 afterwards, and worked and occupied the claim 
 without intermission until those four scoundrels, 
 with other scoundrels backing them, whose 
 names he did not know, but might find out 
 some day, 'jumped ' it. 
 
 Is told by the Commissioner that he must 
 not refer to the moral tone of any of the 
 parties to the suit. Replies that, as an honest 
 man, he can't help it. Is assured by the 
 Commissioner that his honesty will land him 
 presently in the lock-up for twenty-four hours
 
 270 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 for disrespect of court, upon a repetition of the 
 offence. Cyrus grumblingly subsides. 
 
 Is certain that there was no person in 
 occupation when he and his mates took it up 
 legally, and In proper digger fashion. If they 
 have no right to it, no claim on this field is 
 properly taken up. 
 
 Mr. Markham asks the well-meaning blunder- 
 ing giant no more questions. 
 
 The Doctor, with a look of evil triumph, 
 rises quickly, looks at Cyrus with a vivisecting 
 eye. In a voice of terrific acerbity, he thus 
 beean — 
 
 ' Produce your Miner's Right, Mr. Cyrus 
 Yorke, If you have such a document.' 
 
 There was a moment's ominous pause, 
 during which the whole Court, to the smallest 
 gamin, was pervaded by an intense, almost 
 painful interest. The spectators stirred and 
 leaned over towards the witness, silently gazing 
 upon him as he was about to speak the words 
 which, if in the negative, would seal the doom 
 of the claim. Here was a man who, out of 
 his own mouth, was perhaps about to convict 
 himself of a breach of the law, which would 
 have the tremendous consequences of depriving
 
 XI THE MINERS RIGHT 271 
 
 his party of the prize actually within their 
 grasp — the well-earned reward of years of toil, 
 hardship, suffering. Only for the sake of ten 
 shillings, too. That was the price of a Miner's 
 Right for the first half of the year. After 
 June it was reduced to a crown. A claim 
 worth fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand 
 pounds was going to be lost or held before 
 their eyes, for half a sovereign, and a shilling's 
 worth of trouble! It was, indeed, as more 
 than one bronzed, weather-beaten spectator 
 remarked under his breath, ' as good as a play.' 
 And was there no natural pity, no trace of 
 sympathy among the hearts of those who saw 
 the blow, so crushing, so disastrous, about to 
 fall upon comrades by whose side many had 
 worked, with whom they had interchanged the 
 simple offices of goldfields' friendship, who had 
 tended one another sick and wounded, who 
 had knelt by the grave of each other's dead, 
 who knew that the man about to speak had 
 a true wife and prattling children to be helped 
 or beggared by the upshot ? Truth to tell, 
 the excitement of the spectacle much out- 
 weighed the interest, and almost obliterated 
 the sympathy.
 
 272 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 For the rest — the miner belongs to a class 
 with whom the gambling element has ever 
 been strong, even to apparent madness. In 
 his ordinary avocation he places upon the cast 
 his health, his fortune, his life, and, possibly, 
 the food and shelter of his wife and children, 
 whom let no man say that he loves less 
 passionately and enduringly than his more 
 stationary fellow-labourer. 
 
 But he Is accustomed, from the commence- 
 ment of his perilous trade, to see fortunes 
 approach with dazzling nearness, then — 
 
 ' like the Borealis race, 
 Flit ere you can point their place.' 
 
 He has seen the treasure which was to crown 
 and justify life's toil, an existence of desperate 
 adventure and untold hardship, so often missed 
 by a halr's-breadth, that he has lost the faculty 
 of wonder and pity at such mere daily occur- 
 rences. He is not hard-hearted, few men less 
 so, only he is prone to regard all human 
 effort and temporal reward as the direct 
 concomitants of the w^orld's grand demon 
 ' Luck.' — All other explanation seems to him 
 futile. 
 
 So it might be our luck to lose this claim.
 
 XI THE MINER'S RIGHT 273 
 
 the richest on the lead, the best on the field, 
 a fortune to each shareholder. As surely It 
 might be another * crowd's ' luck to get it — 
 they, and their backers, the secret partners vand 
 abettors in this conspiracy, who ' stood In ' 
 with the actual operators, and found the cash 
 for these very expensive law proceedings, which, 
 of course, the actual jumpers, men of straw, 
 could not furnish. 
 
 'Will you produce your Miner's Right, 
 witness, I ask you again ? ' thundered the 
 irascible Doctor. 
 
 There was not the slightest variation from 
 his usual sleepy monotone, not a change 
 In his leonine countenance as Cyrus placidly 
 answered — 
 
 * I haven't got one — leastways, I haven't got 
 it here.' 
 
 A suppressed sound, half sigh half groan, 
 proceeded in a muffled involuntary way from 
 the great assemblage at the fatal announcement. 
 
 *What do you mean, then,' demanded the 
 triumphant advocate, ' by occupying Crown 
 lands, and illegally mining for gold thereon 
 with your companions, without a shadow of 
 title ? Answer me, do you hear ? ' 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 ' I apprehend, Dr. Bellair,' said the Commis- 
 sioner, 'that such a question is not relevant 
 material to the issue. The Court is only con- 
 cerned with facts. The witness's opinion as to 
 the legality of his previous acts does not touch 
 the point at issue.' 
 
 ' I ask, Mr. Commissioner, do you disallow 
 the question I have just asked ? ' 
 
 ' Most certainly, for the reason I have just 
 given,' said the Commissioner, with cheerful 
 promptitude. 
 
 The Doctor gnashed his teeth, figuratively, 
 and thus proceeded — 
 
 ' Do you know, then, where your Miner's 
 Right is ? ' 
 
 ' I do not.' 
 
 ' Will you swear, then, where you saw it last, 
 or will you swear that you have one at all '^. ' 
 
 The witness declared that 'he would do 
 nothing, either one way or the other. That he 
 might, or he might not, have a Miner's Right. 
 Anyhow, he had not got it then, in Court, that 
 day — they must make the best of it' 
 
 And here Cyrus looked defiantly round upon 
 the crowd, with the air of the lion caught in 
 the toils.
 
 XI THE MINERS RIGHT 275 
 
 ' I don't know that I need go any further 
 with this case, your worship,' said the Doctor, 
 with an air of the calmest assumption. ' The 
 whole case is perfectly plain. The occupation 
 is bad — has been illegal from the first, and ' 
 
 ' I must protest against my learned friend 
 making his speech upon the merits of the case 
 at this stage of the proceedings,' said Mr. Mark- 
 ham. ' He never was more mistaken in his 
 life, if he thinks he is approaching a verdict for 
 his clients.' 
 
 The real fact was, that Mr. Markham had, 
 after hearing the damaging admission of Cyrus 
 Yorke, given up all for lost, as far as it was in 
 the indomitable nature of the man to do so. 
 But he thought it due to himself and his clients 
 to repudiate all likelihood of so dire a cata- 
 strophe, and to suspend his judgment till the 
 evidence had been exhausted on both sides. 
 
 The Commissioner was of the same opinion. 
 But years of experience, marking thousands of 
 involved cases, had taught him the necessity of 
 wearing the legend audi alteram partem close 
 to his heart, metaphorically. He therefore 
 said, * If you have any witnesses. Doctor, I 
 shall prefer to hear them.'
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 ' Very well, your worship,' said the Doctor, 
 biting his lips. ' Call Carl Ingerstrom. Stop 
 — I ask the last witness — Did you see this man 
 on No. 4 claim on the morning of the 12th 
 December, and if so, what did you say to him ?' 
 
 ' I did see him loafing about the claim on 
 the 1 2th,' said Cyrus, 'and I told him if he 
 didn't clear I'd kick him out of it that hard as 
 he'd never find his way back.' 
 
 *Ha! that will do, Mr. Yorke. You give 
 very good evidence indeed. Permit me to 
 compliment you upon it' 
 
 A large, respectable - looking Teuton steps 
 into the witness-box. His name is Carl Inger- 
 strom. He produces his Miner's Right, com- 
 pletely en regie, and deposes as follows, with a 
 clear unhesitating air, though somewhat shifty 
 as to the eyes —
 
 CHAP. XII THE MINERS RIGHT 277 
 
 ' It vas de morgen of de dwelvth Tecemper 
 I goes to numper vour of de Liperator Lead 
 mit Mick Docheroty, Santy Mag Vails, and 
 der Bommer. Ve dakes new begs and buds 
 dem in de biases of dere begs. Ve vas occupy 
 de ground — ve gommence do to vorks by be- 
 ginnen to sinken anoder shaft. Dey rons and 
 brevents us from vorken on our glaim — de last 
 vitness, der breitmann, and anoder man. Ve 
 has a sommons for de drespass. Ve knock off 
 vorks dill de case is dried. Ve are here.' 
 
 Of course, this is a bare statement of the 
 course of procedure necessary on the taking 
 possession of a mining tenement, so as effect- 
 ively to put the other occupants on their title. 
 In the completeness of that title lies the gist of 
 the whole action at law. And in that complete- 
 ness very few of the more experienced specta- 
 tors now believe. 
 
 Cross-examined by Mr. Markham. Is asked 
 what induced him to peg out a claim in full 
 work and occupation, and known to be on gold. 
 Answer : ' Dat is de very reason — vould you 
 hafe me beg out a glaim as is got nodings for 
 do bay vages and du croob, and lawyer and alle 
 teufels .'^ I haf zeen Mr. I key Boynter, he adfice
 
 278 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 me not to shoomp noomber vour. I say I will 
 do all as I d — n like, shoost like an honest 
 miner. I belief as der didle of de glaim is bat. 
 I know Mr. Malcrate ; he is ein herr hoch bes 
 ahlter. I gif him one half- share out of bure 
 freundlich. I haf zentimend — en sprach du 
 deutsh. I lofe him. I gif all my freunds half- 
 shares. Ve are all mades — hed and fest, in dis 
 glaim.' 
 
 Michael Docherty, Alexander M'Phail, and 
 Thomas Bommer (alias ' Tommy the Clock ') 
 are severally sworn and examined. Their 
 Miners' Rights are perfectly legal. Their 
 evidence is, in essentials, identical with that of 
 Carl Ingerstrom. They have legally taken up 
 and occupied No. 4 Liberator Lead, always 
 supposing that the former occupation and 
 tenancy were bad in law. 
 
 Finally, the case for the defence is con- 
 cluded, and Mr. Markham rises to commence 
 his speech. 
 
 The Commissioner looks at his watch. 
 
 M can sit until five,' he says, 'if that will 
 enable you to conclude your remarks.' 
 
 ' I think I shall be enabled, your worship, 
 to bring my address to an end within that time,'
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 279 
 
 says our counsel, ' though I cannot promise, in 
 view of the very important nature and extent of 
 the issue, to abate one iota of my privilege to 
 address the Court, in order to clearly lay before 
 it any point of the case that may seem material 
 to the issue.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' groans out the Commissioner 
 resignedly. ' Of course, this case will have to 
 be adjourned, in order to permit the counsel for 
 the defence to be heard in reply. Now then, 
 Mr. Markham.' 
 
 Mr. Markham, availing himself of the per- 
 mission, at once commenced a lucid and masterly 
 analysis of the whole mining law and custom 
 bearing upon the case, than which no advocate 
 was better fitted to display and unravel, no 
 judge more qualified by experience to deal with 
 than the Commissioner. 
 
 Hasty and impatient by nature, William 
 Blake was a man whose clear intellect enabled 
 him to comprehend with rapid and comprehen- 
 sive grasp the apparently involved cases that 
 were constantly brought before him. He could 
 detect the flaw in the most subtle of reasoning 
 with unerring accuracy. His attention never 
 flagged, nor did his memory fail to retain the
 
 28o THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 most minute detail during the weary length of 
 the protracted cases with which a crowded gold- 
 field inundated his Court. 
 
 Ours was one of the most important cases 
 which had occurred for a long time, and we had 
 full assurance, as had every miner in that great 
 gold region, that every legal formality would be 
 scrupulously complied with. We knew that, if 
 the fortunes of himself, his family, and his whole 
 kindred had depended upon the verdict, our 
 advocate could not have been more tireless, 
 more energetic, more watchful, more desperately 
 resolved to win, by the employment of his every 
 gift and faculty, than he was now. 
 
 He drew a picture of the long discouraging 
 struggle with fortune, which most miners had 
 experienced. The travel and voyage from one 
 colony to another. The terrible privations, by 
 cold or heat, famine or poverty, silently borne 
 or uncomplainingly defied ! The weary waiting, 
 the soul-sickness of hope deferred. The pos- 
 sible failure of health, the chances of accident, 
 all the best gifts of mortality offered on the cast 
 of the die. Life itself cast down recklessly as 
 the last stake against gold. 
 
 Then the horizon brightens ; a fortunate
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 281 
 
 find is made. The last hope, when so many 
 were vain, has proved successful. The old 
 dream of home and native land and longing 
 early friends is no longer a romance but a tan- 
 gible reality. The richness of the claim is 
 proved. The ceaseless labour is for once muni- 
 ficently rewarded. The toil of years is at length 
 duly compensated. 
 
 But what then ? Envy and greed, watchful 
 and eager as harpies, swoop down. A sham 
 title is set up to the property — so fairly, so 
 truly, so honestly acquired. 
 
 'But not legally,' interjects the irrepressible 
 Doctor. 
 
 ' Am I to be interrupted in this way ? ' says 
 Mr. Markham, appealing gravely to the Bench. 
 
 The Doctor is informed that it is hardly cor- 
 rect for him to interpose during Mr. Markham's 
 address. 
 
 He apologises, and the speech proceeds. 
 
 A sham title (he repeats) is set up. These 
 loafing scoundrels — he must apologise for the 
 expression, but they are 7iot legitimate miners, 
 or self-respecting labourers of any kind — who 
 had shammed occupation, shammed efficient 
 labour, were set on by, if possible, greater
 
 282 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 scoundrels than themselves, only with a little 
 more money, and who even now, in the back- 
 ground, were watching, spider-like, for the en- 
 meshing of their prey. He trusted, however, 
 that the web of deceit and chicanery would be 
 rent on this occasion, would be swept into in- 
 famous oblivion by the besom of the law in the 
 hands of Justice. (Applause.) Proceeding to 
 quote a number of well-known decisions in 
 mining cases, he traced the gradual growth of 
 the assumption — for it was no more — that all 
 the partners in a mining enterprise should suffer 
 in title, in property, in person, in their very min- 
 ing existence, if but one had failed to provide him- 
 self with what, he admitted, was an indispensable 
 preliminary to all searching for gold upon the 
 public estate — on the lands of the Crown — a 
 Miners Right. And he characterised as cruel, 
 oppressive, and nltra vires of all the spirit and 
 even letter of the common law of the realm, 
 and, therefore, of the statute law under which 
 the Commissioner was now adjudicating, this 
 crushing and extreme penalty of forfeiture of 
 the claim. If the work of men's hands, right- 
 eously won and manfully laboured at, was to be 
 handed over to the first sneaking informer who
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 283 
 
 discovered a paltry technical defect, then the 
 goldfields would soon cease to be composed, as 
 they were now, of the very flower of the work- 
 ing classes. They would no longer have among 
 them the more stalwart and intelligent individ- 
 uals of those above the grade of labour, if such 
 there were, but a concourse of thieves and 
 assassins, cut-throats and gamblers — the scum 
 of the nations of the earth. 
 
 Not a single point which could by any means 
 be brought to bear upon the question at issue 
 was omitted. Not a standard authority or lead- 
 ing case was left unquoted. Not an appeal to 
 honest judgment, to good conscience and equity, 
 as he maintained the Commissioner's Court as 
 at present constituted to be, not a single part of 
 the evidence which was favourable was left 
 without reference ; and when, candles having 
 been procured and the hour of ordinary sitting 
 long passed, the exhaustive oration was brought 
 to a close by a solemn and impassioned perora- 
 tion, in which the high magistrate was besought 
 to right the oppressed and free the administra- 
 tion of goldfields law from the reproach of con- 
 structive unfairness and over-litigation which 
 had so long clung to it, the Court adjourned
 
 284 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 with one universal feeling on the part of the 
 crowd of spectators, that justice was with the 
 cause of the last speaker, and that he had nobly- 
 cleared away all doubts from the minds of his 
 hearers. 
 
 On the morrow, punctually at the usual hour, 
 the officials of the Court were in attendance. 
 Directly the doors were thrown open by the 
 police an eager crowd of miners, business 
 people, and even strangers, attracted by the 
 cause cdlebre, poured in, filling every seat and 
 foot of standing room. 
 
 Dr. Bellair was to make his speech in reply, 
 and all knew that the Commissioner would then 
 give his decision, that important verdict, which, 
 though certain to be appealed against, was 
 rarely, in such cases as this, reversed. 
 
 But little time was lost. After a few 
 moments the case was again called on. The 
 Doctor commenced his reply. His nervous, 
 eager countenance was toned down to a deco- 
 rous appearance of calmness and gravity much 
 at variance with his volcanic temperament, as 
 he, with a great show of deference and respect, 
 addressed the Commissioner, whose experience 
 and thorough knowledge of mining law (he
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 285 
 
 said) had made his opinion weighty, and his 
 decisions all but immutable, wherever a gold- 
 field gathered together its strangely constituted 
 population. He would implore him to dismiss 
 from his mind all knowledge of the different 
 social footing of the parties to the suit ; to 
 obliterate all fanciful ideas of presumed equity 
 and false generosity of sentiment, and to cling 
 tenaciously and sternly, as a British judge 
 should do, to the only pure and unmixed truth 
 — the unquestioned and unquestionable law. 
 This power, this rock, this law of the land, his 
 clients, he should be able to demonstrate, had 
 most unmistakably on their side. Whoever 
 they were, whatever they were, he only claimed 
 for them the status of the ordinary legitimate 
 gold digger, who, however, with his Miner's 
 Right, had the proud privilege of being able to 
 occupy and search for gold every acre of the 
 broad Crown lands of this great colony of New 
 South Wales. They had never forfeited their 
 right to justice. He should not dwell on this 
 portion of the facts, in opening his case, were it 
 not that so much stress had been laid by his 
 learned friend on the previous career of the 
 complainants, on their long course of evil for-
 
 286 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 tune, and their present prize, which it was 
 asserted his dients had conspired to wrest from 
 them. 
 
 Whether it was so or not, he would submit, 
 it did not touch the case in any shape. What 
 was it to his worship, sitting here as judge both 
 of law and of fact, how or with what success the 
 complainants had laboured ? If they had given 
 their whole lives to an unsuccessful pursuit of 
 gold, or fame, or happiness, had not others, all 
 the world, indeed, with but few exceptions, done 
 the same ? The Commissioner did not sit here 
 to redress the wrongs of society, and pose 
 himself as a second-hand Providence, reading 
 the hearts and rewardino^ the hidden motives of 
 men, but to administer the law, not to make 
 it — as the great Bacon, with almost divine 
 wisdom, defined it — not to consider probable 
 compensations of fate, but to hear and determine 
 within the limits of the statute, and only with 
 regard to sworn evidence brought before him. 
 He himself knew the Commissioner, and the 
 whole tenor of his previous decisions — decisions 
 which lent stability and assurance to the great 
 interest he was called upon to control — too well 
 to dream that he would otherwise think, other-
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 287 
 
 wise act. But he ought, considering the 
 quality of the ad captandum arguments used 
 by his learned friend, due, no doubt, to the 
 defects of his cause, not to pass over this aspect 
 of the matter. 
 
 The Doctor then, warming to his work, to 
 our dismay briefly and trenchantly dealt with 
 the evidence, bringing out the default of that 
 unlucky Cyrus, as to his missing or wilfully 
 evaded Miner's Right, into full and distressing 
 prominence. He showed that, over and over 
 again, claims which had turned out to be the 
 richest and most valuable on their field had 
 been ruthlessly forfeited in consequence of 
 similar illegality. It was as firmly established 
 as anything could be by a series of judgments, 
 by the consensus of opinion, by the unwritten 
 custom vof mining law, that in all such cases 
 the default of one shareholder made the whole 
 occupation bad. If the previous occupation was 
 bad, the land was in the position of vacant, 
 waste Crown lands, which his clients had had a 
 perfect right to enter upon. They had legally 
 done so ; they had worked until prevented by 
 force by the complainants. Their title was 
 perfect. He defied any one to find a fiaw in it.
 
 288 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 If a verdict was not given for them in this case, 
 then the whole previous weight and authority 
 of mining law fell to the ground, an un- 
 substantial and baseless fabric. All future 
 decisions must rest on caprice and injustice, on 
 personal feeling and improper partiality. 
 
 But he had no fear of any such result, though, 
 if it occurred, he would carry the case on behalf 
 of his clients, poor and of small account as they 
 were, through every court in the colony, includ- 
 ing the highest, the Supreme Court, if it cost 
 him every penny he had in the world. But 
 (he repeated) he had no fear of such a con- 
 tingency, such a perversion of right, such a 
 miscarriage of justice. The experienced magis- 
 trate, the pro-consul he might call him, before 
 whose words of fate the fortunes, almost the 
 lives of men, had before now trembled in 
 the balance, could not, dared not [the Com- 
 missioner's eye glowed, and then rested fixedly 
 on the impassioned advocate, who seemed 
 transfigured into a tribune, shrieking forth 
 the wrongs of oppressed humanity, and pro- 
 claiming gospel of the people's rights], dared 
 not, in the clear light of his fame for strict 
 justice and stern impartiality, record other
 
 XII THE MINER'S RIGHT 289 
 
 than one verdict, one decree. He had no 
 fear for the issue. He rested upon the firm 
 basis of the evidence they had all that day 
 heard. It was from first to last unassailed, un- 
 assailable ; the law was plain, the issue certain. 
 He awaited but the formality of his worship the 
 Commissioner's sanction to place his clients 
 in possession of the ground of which they 
 and the public at large had been illegally 
 deprived. 
 
 Now came the exciting last act of the melo- 
 drama so likely to terminate in tragedy as far 
 as we were concerned. The Commissioner 
 calmly looked over his notes, and prepared 
 to deliver his decision amid the ominous hush 
 and suppressed excitement of the crowded 
 Court. Not a sound was heard, though the 
 spectators in the rear of the assemblage raised 
 themselves on tiptoe, and strained every ear 
 with deepest curiosity to hear the words of 
 fate. The Commissioner, in whose hands lay 
 life and death (so to speak), who had the 
 power to take away from us all that made 
 life worth living for, to doom us to the barren 
 and hopeless' existence of unrewarded toil 
 and hope long deferred from which we had so 
 
 VOL. I u
 
 290 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 lately emerged, commenced his address. It 
 would not be long, we knew. It was not his 
 wont to ' improve the occasion ' in the hundreds 
 of cases, more or less important, which he 
 administered monthly. He was fully aware 
 that his audience, whether as malefactors or 
 parties to civil process, understood the con- 
 sequences of legal wrong-doing on the facts 
 of the case fully and accurately without ex- 
 planation from him or any other magistrate. 
 His duty was to administer the law, with 
 which as a class they were singularly well 
 acquainted, without favour or affection ; and 
 this he always did shortly and decidedly. He 
 was very careful in arriving at his decisions ; 
 but once given, they were as the laws of the 
 Medes and Persians. If they could be shown 
 to be ultra vires or informal, well and good ; 
 let the higher courts see to that. But he, 
 William Blake, had never been known to alter 
 a decision, and as long as he was Commissioner 
 of Goldfields never would be. 
 
 Thus he began — 
 
 ' This was an information laid for trespass 
 by Pole and party, complainants, who sought 
 to cause Ingerstrom and others to abate tres-
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 291 
 
 pass upon a certain mining tenement, known 
 as No. 4 Liberator Lead. 
 
 ' The gist of the matter clearly lay in the 
 evidence given on the part of Pole and party, 
 as to the legality of their prior occupation of 
 No. 4 claim, before referred to. It had -been 
 proved before him this day in Court that they 
 had taken up, that is, occupied and worked the 
 claim, had sunk upon and traced the auriferous 
 drift, had taken out wash-dirt, and received 
 and shared dividends, long before the defend- 
 ants had appeared upon the scene. If they had 
 in all respects complied with the regulations, 
 there was no doubt about the complainants 
 possessing the prior right. Upon that proof 
 being complete the whole title hinged. If it 
 were not so proved, no natural feeling of sym- 
 pathy on his part, no consideration of the 
 crushing severity with which a breach of the 
 goldfields' regulations would be visited on their 
 heads, in the event of their forfeiture of so rich 
 a claim as No. 4 had been proved to be, would 
 prevent .him from recording a verdict adverse 
 to them. He, sitting there, had nothing 
 whatever to do with the feelings, nay, the 
 equitable right of individuals. He had always,
 
 292 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 he hoped, clearly interpreted and enforced the 
 law, and the law only. Such he would con- 
 tinue to do, he trusted, to the end. 
 
 * With regard to the occupation of Pole and 
 party, it had been shown that three of the 
 shareholders possessed Miners' Rights. But 
 the fourth shareholder was unable to produce 
 that indispensable permit. He must, therefore, 
 be presumed to be without it, and, in such a 
 case, he was an unauthorised occupant of Crown 
 lands, whether for residence or mining pur- 
 poses. He had no loctts stmidi. He could 
 not legally apply for relief of any kind to 
 that Court. Any share which he possessed 
 must be forfeited. He was also liable to 
 a fine, with imprisonment in default of pay- 
 ment. 
 
 'This, however, was not all. It had been 
 long held by mining authorities that, unless all 
 the shareholders taking up a claim were 
 possessed of Miners' Rights at the time when 
 they pegged out and commenced operations, 
 their action was illegal as far as taking 
 possession of Crown lands for gold mining 
 purposes, under the Act, was concerned. The 
 occupation, he repeated, if but one even of
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 293 
 
 the shareholders was not at that time the 
 holder of a Miner's Right, would be bad in 
 law. 
 
 ' In this case, It had not been shown in 
 evidence before him that Cyrus Yorke, one 
 of the complainants in the trespass case now 
 before him, was the holder of a Miner's Right 
 when No. 4 claim was first by them taken up. 
 That default, in his opinion, invalidated the 
 whole title. Not the slightest doubt existed in 
 his mind upon the subject. He would, there- 
 fore, give a verdict for ' 
 
 Here an uproar arose in the body of the 
 Court towards the entrance door, of such a pro- 
 nounced, ungoverned nature, that the sergeant, 
 looking at first pained and then justly indignant, 
 marched with long dignified strides and a sternly 
 resolved air to the scene of disorder, as if to 
 bring the offenders, there and then, before the 
 Court for doom. 
 
 He reappeared, however, with an altered 
 and relaxed visage, escorting gallantly our good 
 friend Mrs. Cyrus Yorke, on the other side of 
 whom was Mr. Markham, who ever and anon 
 inclined his ear in confidential legal intercourse. 
 The little woman held one hand triumphantly
 
 294 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 aloft, in which was something which stirred our 
 hearts anew and caused the flickering light of 
 hope to be freshly irradiated with a glow of 
 celestial illumination. 
 
 'Your worship,' commenced the sergeant, 
 ' I beg respectfully to state that the apparently 
 disorderly conduct in Court was caused by the 
 attempts of the friends of this witness to procure 
 her admission to the vicinity of your worship.' 
 
 'Sergeant M'Mahon, the irregularity is fully 
 explained. You desire to address the Court, 
 Mr. Markham ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, your worship. I tender this witness, 
 the wife of one of the complainants, who has 
 most important evidence, material to the issue, 
 to give. I am aware that the proceedings on 
 the side of the complainants have been closed, 
 but your worship's Court, as that of a Commis- 
 sioner of Goldfields, is one of equity and good 
 conscience, and I trust that such evidence as 
 this witness may produce will not be shut 
 out' 
 
 ' I object to any such proceeding as mon- 
 strous, illegal, and perfectly unprecedented,' 
 shouts Dr. Bellair, with a most excited air. 
 ' The evidence has been closed, the whole
 
 THE MINERS RIGHT 
 
 proceedings finished, but the actual pronuncia- 
 tion of the verdict, in defendants' favour, of 
 course ; and now you ask to have the pro- 
 ceedings reopened, for what possibly may 
 be perfectly unnecessary evidence.' 
 
 'We shall see that,' said Mr. Markham, with 
 a sanguine air. ' Will your worship admit the 
 evidence ? ' 
 
 ' The question with me, in such cases as I am 
 called upon to try under the Mining Act and 
 Regulations, is less whether the evidence be 
 informally tendered, than whether the nature of 
 it be material. In this case I will shut out no 
 evidence that may possibly bear on the legality 
 of my decision. Swear the witness.' 
 
 * Mrs. Yorke, go into the box,' said Mr. 
 Markham. ' You are the wife of Cyrus Yorke, 
 one of the complainants who has given evidence 
 in this case to-day '^. ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' Do you produce a Miner's Right, and, if so, 
 in whose favour, and of what date .^ ' 
 
 ' I do. I took it out for my husband, one 
 day in Louisa, knowing how careless he was in 
 such things, and put it into a box for safety. 
 It was hidden under the children's clothes, or I
 
 296 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 should have had it out in Court long before 
 this. Goodness knows what ' 
 
 ' Have the goodness to hand it to the Clerk 
 of the Court,' interrupted the Commissioner. 
 
 The truly important document was inspected 
 with eager eyes by that functionary, who re- 
 spectfully handed it to the Commissioner. He 
 read aloud the talismanic signs — 
 
 '" Cyrus Yorke. ist January 185 — . Issued 
 in the Registrar's office at Louisa. To remain 
 in force till 31st December 185 — . 
 
 (Signed) ''William D. Blake, P.M., 
 
 " Commissioner.'" 
 
 An utterly irrepressible sound of relief and 
 amazement escaped the lips of the majority of 
 the listeners. There was the missing link, the 
 indispensable, vitally necessary legal act, in 
 default of which this tremendously rich claim 
 was about to be forfeited and transferred to the 
 enemy, as sure as anything ever was in this 
 world. 
 
 'Silence in the Court,' growls the sergeant, 
 but with a sympathetic intonation noticeable 
 through all his official severity. 
 
 ' I demand to see this paper, this Miner's
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 297 
 
 Right as it is called,' here breaks in Dr. Bellair, 
 with a voice of mingled passion, regret, and 
 disbelief. 'How do we know that it has not 
 been manufactured for the occasion ? I demand 
 the fullest investigation as to how and when it 
 was issued, and I protest against any notice 
 being taken of it as evidence in this most 
 improper manner.' 
 
 'You may protest. Doctor,' said Mr. Mark- 
 ham, good-humouredly, 'but my client's case is 
 complete. I am in a position to prove, by the 
 evidence of the Mining Registrar at Louisa, 
 that the Right produced was taken out by 
 witness during the week following Christmas of 
 last year — she very properly determining to 
 make sure that her husband should not be 
 placed in a false position. I wish all wives 
 were as careful on the goldfields. Now you 
 can examine the witness. Doctor, and make 
 what you can of her.' 
 
 ' I shall do so, without your permission,' cried 
 the fiery little advocate. ' Now then, Mary 
 Ann Yorke. Is that your real name ; are you 
 married to the complainant, Yorke .^ ' 
 
 ' I'd soon show you, if I had you down on 
 the Blue Lead,' said the little woman, trembling
 
 298 THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 with passion, and suggestively raising her hand. 
 * What do you mean by ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Yorke,' said the Commissioner, suavely 
 but firmly, ' you must answer Dr. Bellair's ques- 
 tions, and I would remind you not to become 
 excited in this Court. Answer the questions 
 shortly, and to the best of your knowledge ; 
 the examination will soon be over.' 
 
 ' Yes, Commissioner, yes, your worship,' said 
 poor Mrs. Yorke, already repenting her of her 
 just indignation, in that it might imperil the 
 cause ; ' but what does he mean by trying to 
 make out I'm not an honest woman, and don't 
 have my right name ? I'll name him if he tries 
 that on, as sure as my name's Mary Ann 
 Yorke.' 
 
 ' I trust I shall be protected by the Court/ 
 said the Doctor, defiantly. 'It is necessary 
 that I should test this woman's credibility, 
 which I have every reason to doubt.' 
 
 * Certainly, Dr. Bellair, but I must ask you 
 not to put such questions needlessly, as may be 
 offensive to the witness's feelings of modesty 
 and self-respect.' 
 
 ' I claim the privileges of the Bar ! and I 
 defy your worship to abate one jot or tittle of
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 299 
 
 those privileges in my person. A judge of the 
 Supreme Court could not do so.' 
 
 ' You will find, Dr. Bellair, that I am judge 
 in my own court, and that I will interfere very 
 decidedly, if you pursue a line of cross-examina- 
 tion which can only have the effect of distressing 
 the feelings and outraging the moral sense of 
 the witness — in this case, a most exemplary and 
 respectable woman.' 
 
 The Doctor snorted indignantly, and went on 
 with his cross-examination ; but although he 
 made himself sufficiently disagreeable to Mrs. 
 Yorke, whose eyes became so round and fierce 
 that we all felt alarmed, particularly Cyrus, at 
 the probable consequences, he did not choose 
 to adopt the vivisecting process permitted to 
 counsel in the higher courts. He knew full 
 well, by experience, in spite of his bravado, 
 that he would be peremptorily stopped by the 
 Commissioner, one of whose fixed principles it 
 was, never to permit a woman, whatever might 
 be her character and antecedents, to be need- 
 lessly harassed in the witness-box, or treated 
 with unnecessary disrespect. So the day 
 wore on. 
 
 * Why did her husband not take out his own
 
 300 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 Miner's Right ; wasn't he man enough to do 
 it ? ' said the Doctor. 
 
 ' He was man enough to work hard for his 
 family, and had never denied them anything — 
 not like some folk, a- spending their money 
 away from home, and isn't very particular what 
 company they went into on the sly ; but he 
 hadn't no head for business like. And wasn't 
 there many a good all-round man on this field, 
 as the same could be said of ? ' 
 
 All Mrs. Yorke's timidity gradually left her. 
 Such is generally the case with female witnesses. 
 And, being fully aroused to a sense of the 
 Doctor's antagonistic position to the party, 
 answered him with such vigour and unexpected 
 epigram, that the Court, more than once, felt 
 compelled to interfere. However, nothing 
 could be got out of her but that she had 
 taken out the Miner's Right for the use and 
 benefit of her husband, ' as any wife as had 
 any sense had good call to do.' 
 
 'Why, I might have one myself, Doctor,' 
 she continued, ' for all you know, or the baby 
 in arms, bless him ! The Act says, '' any 
 person," don't it.'^ It doesn't say man or 
 woman, child or sucking babe, does it ? I
 
 XII THE MINER'S RIGHT 301 
 
 shouldn't wonder if I knew as much mining 
 law as you do, Doctor ; close up.' 
 
 * I opine that we do not come here to listen 
 to this woman's disrespectful maunderings about 
 Mining Acts and Regulations, your worship,' 
 said the little man, loftily. ' I demand the 
 protection of the Court.' 
 
 'Who do you call ''this woman"?' Mrs. 
 Yorke was just commencing to inquire, when 
 she was told by the Commissioner that she 
 might stand down after signing her name to 
 her deposition. 
 
 'One moment, your worship. I wish to 
 interpose one question,' said Mr. Markham. 
 'What Mining Registrar did you get your 
 Miner's Right from ? who issued it ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. Allen, of Louisa. I went over there 
 about some quinces ; and I saw him write 
 it down in the butt of his book. It'll be there, 
 with the day and date, I know. There's no 
 get away, you take my word, your worship.' 
 
 ' That will do, Mrs. Yorke. We will not 
 detain you.' 
 
 And the little woman retired to a seat, 
 previously casting a look of withering indigna- 
 tion at her late opponent.
 
 302 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 The Commissioner, apparently, did not see 
 the necessity of making two speeches upon the 
 same subject. Besides, it was getting late. He 
 briefly gave the reasons for the decision he was 
 about to pronounce. 
 
 * He had stated, he thought, in his first 
 address that the missing link in the chain of 
 evidence for the complainants was an im- 
 portant one — no less than the Miner's Right of 
 Cyrus Yorke, one of the original and prior 
 occupants. Had the defect in the evidence not 
 been cured, a verdict must have been given by 
 him virtually for the defendants — '' No trespass 
 committed." 
 
 ' The last piece of evidence, although from 
 circumstances tendered so late in the day that 
 some magistrates would have felt justified in 
 shutting it out altogether, had clearly proved 
 that the complainants were each and all legally 
 authorised when they went on the ground. 
 That they had prior occupation could not be 
 doubted for an instant. They had w^orked 
 their claim for gold, had washings out of it, and 
 shared dividends. As to the size of the claim, 
 and its irregular shape, that was partly caused 
 by the course of the lead, and was a minor
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 303 
 
 matter in his eyes. So long as they had no 
 more than the number of superficial feet allowed 
 in four men's ground, he saw no illegality in 
 that circumstance. He, therefore, unhesita- 
 tingly pronounced a verdict for complainants, 
 with one hundred and fifty pounds costs against 
 defendants, who were hereby ordered forthwith 
 to abate trespass.' 
 
 At this announcement a general impulse 
 tempted the closely -packed crowd, to cheer. 
 The sergeant looked around with so horrified 
 and severely surprised expression of counte- 
 nance, that the audience relapsed into the dumb- 
 ness of church-goers. Mrs. Yorke wept for 
 joy, and infected with that strange contagious 
 feminine luxury a young woman who sat next 
 to her, and who, being a relation of one of 
 the jumpers, might be said to belong to the 
 enemy's camp. 
 
 ' I give notice of appeal ! ' promptly said the 
 fiery little advocate. 
 
 * Lodge your money within seven days, and 
 a written notice in due form,' said the unmoved 
 Commissioner. 
 
 ' I desire to apply for an injunction also, to 
 restrain Pole and party from washing up and
 
 304 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 getting gold from my clients' claim while this 
 suit is pending.' 
 
 ' And I oppose the granting of any such 
 instrument,' said Mr. Markham. ' My clients 
 have been placed in this position for no fault of 
 their own. They have lost valuable time. 
 They have been compelled to attend here 
 without a shadow of reason, and debarred from 
 their legal rights. And now your worship is 
 asked, forsooth, to keep them idle for another 
 three or six months.' 
 
 * Under the circumstances, I refuse to grant 
 an injunction,' quoth the Commissioner. 
 
 ' I shall only be compelled to apply to a 
 judge of the Supreme Court,' replied Dr. 
 Bellair. 
 
 ' It is not for me to suggest to whom you 
 may or may not apply,' answers the Com- 
 missioner. ' I shall grant no injunction, if every 
 barrister in the colony made separate application. 
 The Court stands adjourned to this day week.' 
 
 Whereupon there was a general stampede to 
 the nearest hotels on the part of the witnesses, 
 spectators, complainants, and defendants ; while 
 the Commissioner, evidently not in the humour 
 for conversation, mounted his well-known
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 305 
 
 hackney, which was brought to the office door 
 by a trooper, and departed in the direction of the 
 poHce camp, whistHng, as he went, to his dogs, 
 but evidently not 'for want of thought.' 
 
 The melodrama had been played. The 
 denouement was satisfactory as far as we were 
 concerned. But more uncertainties and a 
 further experience of litigation awaited us. 
 The prize was too rich to be abandoned at 
 the first check ; Dr. Bellair a man, when in 
 the guise of an opponent, not to be lightly 
 regarded. He had, it was reported, received a 
 transfer of a ' sleeping quarter share,' that is, a 
 proportion of the property of the claim, involv- 
 ing a sixteenth of the entire profit, without the 
 necessity of representing or paying for the 
 services of an able-bodied miner. 
 
 This might be worth a thousand — two — 
 three thousand pounds. No doubt it was worth 
 a considerable amount of trouble and legal 
 research. We did not expect to be let alone 
 for long. Of course notice of appeal had at 
 once been given by the opposite side, and the 
 sum of money, stated in the regulations, lodged 
 with the registrar of the district court. 
 
 But we went to work again, and made haste 
 
 VOL. I X
 
 3o6 THE MINERS RIGHT 
 
 to raise enough to complete a machineful of 
 wash-dirt, which, when put through or puddled, 
 produced a sufficiency of gold to pay all our 
 late law expenses, and leave us a comforting 
 surplus, thus demonstrating also the unabated 
 richness of No. 4. 
 
 Hardly, however, had we completed this 
 gratifying transaction than one of our late 
 antagonists arrived in company with a police 
 trooper, and called upon us to stop working on 
 their claim. 
 
 ' Your claim ! ' said Cyrus Yorke, striding 
 up to him and lifting him off the ground, as 
 if he had been a schoolboy, instead of a wiry, 
 muscular labourer. ' You may serve out your 
 injunction, or summons, or whatever it is that 
 you've got the bobby to help you with ; but if 
 you call No. 4 yoii7^ c\a.im again, I'll drop you 
 down the shaft as sure as there's homminey on 
 the Hawkesbury.' 
 
 We had seldom seen our easy-going, careless 
 partner so excited before. Like most slow- 
 moving intellects, his faculties were capable of 
 great expansion when fully aroused. Once or 
 twice we had marked him in the thick of an 
 affray. Like Athelstane the Unready when
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 307 
 
 his blood was up, knight, and squire, and 
 yeoman, and villain went down with wondrous 
 suddenness before the South -Saxon giant of 
 Wiseman's Ferry. On this occasion there was 
 no need for deeds of valour. The miners of 
 Yatala had long since discovered the futility of 
 resorting to physical force. 
 
 ' I say, Cornstalk, I shall have to put the 
 bracelets on those mutton fists of yours,' said 
 the trooper good-humouredly. ' That chap's on 
 the Queen's service, or all the same. Here's a 
 Supreme Court injunction, which I hereby serve 
 by giving to your mate, Harry Pole, here. 
 D'ye hear ? Let go this honest old miner, or 
 you'll drop in for it. I've seen as big a chap as 
 you straightened afore now.' 
 
 Cyrus was too good a subject of Her Gracious 
 Majesty to resist the law's representative. He 
 relinquished Mr. Bommer with a gentle shake, 
 growling to himself meanwhile likean interrupted 
 grizzly. We capitulated. I called out ' Below 
 there.' The indicator rapped, and presently the 
 Major and Joe Bulder emerged from the lower 
 depths, clay-stained and disgusted. 
 
 ' Blocked again ! ' quoth the Major ; ' what an 
 infernal shame ! It's enough to demoralise a
 
 3o8 THE MINERS RIGHT chap. 
 
 man altogether and irrevocably, this forced 
 idleness. Enough to drive him to take to — 
 well — Alison's History of Europe, or even 
 Martin Farquhar Tupper. Do you ever reflect 
 for one moment,' he said, facing the astonished 
 jumper, ' what may be the consequence of your 
 unprincipled litigation ? Heavy reading, in- 
 cipient dementia, violent inanity, imbecility. 
 And all because you won't respect the tenth 
 commandment. Had you a mother ? Did you 
 ever attend a Sunday school ? Had you so 
 much as a maiden aunt ? Answer me.' 
 
 ' You be hanged,' said the half-puzzled, half- 
 irritated cat's-paw, who had evidently been 
 drowning his sense of defeat in the flowing 
 bowl, from his flushed and heavy- eyed look. 
 ' You think because you and Harry Pole are 
 swells that you can carry things all your own 
 way on the field. But we'll learn ye different 
 before we've done with yen' 
 
 'And you think, because you're a pack of 
 loafing blackguards,' retorted the Major, roused 
 for the nonce, ' that you can interfere with fair 
 working miners, and steal claims that you have 
 no more right to than the bank in Main Street. 
 We shall see you all in gaol for half a year for
 
 XII THE MINER'S RIGHT 309 
 
 our costs that's one comfort ; and It's a great 
 pity we can't put your underhand friends and 
 backers there along with you/ 
 
 * You'll be pulled for using language calcu- 
 lated to cause a breach of the peace, Major,' 
 said the trooper, * if you don't stash it. Come 
 along, my noble jumper, you've served your in- 
 junction, and that ought to satisfy you for one 
 while.' 
 
 So the malignant departed, rather to my 
 relief, for there was nothing to be gained by 
 being summoned to Court, and fined under 
 the 5th clause of the Vagrant Act. No. 4 was 
 sufficiently near a public road, thoroughfare, or 
 place, to tempt our adversary to swear that we 
 were within the meaning of that very stringent 
 clause. 
 
 Our wisest plan was to comply with the law, 
 to hang up our buckets, put away the rope, and 
 abide the issue. A deep claim is not a property 
 that can be worked, or larcenously interfered 
 with, without remark. The only way that our 
 golden hoard could in any way be rifled was by 
 the men in one of the adjacent claims driving 
 or making a lateral gallery over our boundary 
 below, when our wash-dirt might have gone up
 
 3IO THE MINER'S RIGHT chap. 
 
 their shaft in the Hght of day, and no one 
 been any wiser. This has been done before 
 now. 
 
 In addition to this safeguard, the neighbours 
 on either side were straightforward and honour- 
 able men. We also possessed another legal 
 preventive. By application to the Commis- 
 sioner we could at any time obtain an order to 
 descend and survey either of the adjacent shafts, 
 when, by means known to all miners, we could 
 soon discover if any subterranean encroachment 
 had been made. 
 
 We were stopped accordingly. It was a 
 bore, but the other side could not work either; 
 and being precluded from hard work, with 
 plenty of money to spend, and no unpaid 
 debts, or anxiety about the morrow, was a 
 very different thing from our former ex- 
 periences. 
 
 So we all preserved our souls in peace for 
 the six weeks that elapsed before the appeal 
 could be heard. The Major read every book 
 in the library of the Mechanics' School of Arts, 
 besides buying so many that they may seriously 
 interfere with the comfort of our sleeping apart- 
 ment. Joe Bulder smoked a good deal more
 
 XII THE MINERS RIGHT 311 
 
 than was good for him, and anathematised those 
 scoundrels of jumpers with more fervency than 
 propriety. While Cyrus ran his horse in several 
 exciting sweepstakes, and won or lost as the 
 case might be. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.