'Oh, make tracks!' retorted Burton with some impatience. 'We're tired.

Set your man-eater at a red-gum b.u.t.t or a bull--something in his cla.s.s.'

'It's very disappointing after coming so far to oblige you.'

'You didn't receive a pressing invitation from any body here,' said Jim.

'Any other day,' ventured the Nut deferentially in his small, hoa.r.s.e voice, intelligible only at intervals. 'Way o' friendship--no ill-feelin's--gent ez is a gent--no 'arm did.'

'I'll not fight you at any time,' Done replied. 'You see, Brummy, my friend hesitates to raise false hopes in your heart,' said the Prodigal.

'He might promise to punch the hair and hide off you at some future date, and then disappoint all your tender, joyful antic.i.p.ations; but he's not a man of that sort: he tells you straight he wouldn't attempt to 'spoil beauty like yours for all the gilt in the Gravel Pits.'

'Gent don't wanter fight,' whispered Brummy; 'tha's all right--no 'arm did.' Brummy was the only man of his party who betrayed no feeling whatever in the matter.

There was a further conference, and the spokesman turned to Jim again.

Brummy claims the championship of Diamond Gully,' he said.

'That's no business of mine. He's welcome to claim anything he takes a fancy to for me,' replied Jim.

'No ill-feelin's----way o' frien'ship,' said the husky champion; and he made his curious salutation again, and went shuffling off with his keepers, who had the airs of sorely ill-used citizens.

'Well,' gasped Jim, 'if this is what a man brings down on himself by waging a casual battle in his own defence, I'll be careful to keep out of fights in the future.'

However, Jim Done was not again called upon to do battle while he remained on Diamond Gully. The reputation he had won was a guarantee against further molestation and Aurora's open and unabashed devotion prevented any approach to serious rivalry. The girl still preserved her manner of a boon companion in the presence of Mrs. Ben Kyley's customers, but no man of them was given occasion for the ghost of a hope of supplanting Jim in her tempestuous heart. She now a.s.sumed towards Done an att.i.tude of happy submission; the quizzical insistence on his boyishness was abandoned: she acknowledged her master with an exuberant rapture that had not the faintest suspicion of coyness, and although Jim often blushed under it, and experienced a great uneasiness in the course of a public demonstration, Aurora showed a barbaric disregard for contemporary opinion. She felt no shame in the presence of her emotions, and consequently had no impulse to hide them. She beguiled Jim from his work to take long rambles; she devoted herself to him, to the neglect of Mrs.

Ben Kyley's patrons.

Mike Burton was often lonely in his tent, and often Mrs. Kyley stormed at Jim, highly vociferous and wildly pantomimic, but good-natured and sympathetic at bottom, for there was a vagabondish harmony between the two women that made them fast friends, and caused Mary Kyley to feel a share in Aurora's happiness.

The writing of the letter to Lucy Woodrow was now indefinitely postponed, and Jim found himself reluctant to open the box containing Lucy's locket.

When his hand fell upon it by chance he put it by hastily, as if it were just possible that the face in the trinket might force itself upon his attention. He never lived to understand this fugitive idea, for the thoughts were cast aside just as hastily, and with an absurd touch of impatience.

The young man had given himself up to Aurora's influence. The plenitude and the ardour of her love carried him along; he felt at times like a twig in a torrent, but the sensation was luxurious, and another joy of life was with him. He opened wide arms to it. Once again he saw the world with new eyes, and for having despised and mistrusted it so found it the more adorable. He squared his shoulders and experienced a curious sensation of physical growth and accrued manhood. Two years ago he might have weighed his feelings for Aurora and hers for him, and sought out motives; to-day he went along the flow of life, unresisting, with a leaping heart, and had he been questioned would have said that not he but the world had changed.

Mike Burton watched the development of events in a judicial way, without offering any comment. There had not been a waste month in his life for as long as he could remember. In spite of his busy days and his Bush breeding, he had been much in touch with the humanities, and he knew men and women well enough to expect no startling surprises from them; but Jim was a curiosity. With a certain robustness of character, no little knowledge, and considerable worldly wisdom in abstract matters, the younger man yet seemed to bring a boy's mind to bear upon actualities, and excited himself absurdly over matters which, from Mike's patriarchal point of view, were merely the expected events of existence--the things that happen to all men, and about which no man need distress himself. He had seen a good deal of the women of the camps, and thought he knew the types well. He summed up Aurora to his own satisfaction: 'Like an eel--easy to catch, but hard to hold!' Amongst other pleasant qualities, Mike had the comfortable human one of often being wrong in his estimates of men and women and things. He expected the girl's infatuation to wear itself out quickly, and meanwhile possessed his soul with patience, prospected here and there, tried new claims, and found a few payable and one rich before the summer came again; but he wanted to try the other rushes, and the winter pa.s.sed without his having broached the matter to Done.

Jim was quite ignorant of the fact that he was making unfair demands upon his mate's loyalty. They were doing well on the whole; the life on Diamond Gully had lost none of its attractiveness--it was still vigorous and eventful. There had been a riot in Forest Creek during May, providing a stirring week, and many alarms and excursions on the part of the miners and the license-hunters. Solo had visited Diamond Gully again, and neatly victimized Cootmeyer--a gold-buyer at one of the stores--gagging his victim with his own bacon-knife, and imprisoning him in a salt-pork barrel. The revolutionary feeling in the hearts of the men had increased in intensity, and the talk about the camp-fires stirred the bad blood to fever-heat. To Done time had gone on wings so swift that he could not mark its flight. Burton, a nomad in blood and breeding, thirsted for change, and in ordinary circ.u.mstances would have rolled his swag and gone on alone long ago; but the liking he had for Jim was the strongest emotion that had crept into his stolid soul, excepting only the affection he bore for a certain black-browed boss-c.o.c.kie's daughter on the Sydney side, and be found it hard to break away. But Aurora's hold on Jim had not weakened so far as he could judge, and the time came at length when his restless spirit drove him on. He broke the news to Jim one night as they lay in their bunks, he smoking, Jim reading.

'I'm full o' this, old man,' he said abruptly.

'Of what?'

'Oh, of Diamond Gully! I reckon it's played out or thereabouts.'

'And we got twelve ounces a man for the last week's work.

'Not enough, Jimmy. Not more 'n wages, an' men like you 'n me should be in the thickest an' richest of it. I'm gettin' along to-morrow.'

'You mean to say you are going?' Done jerked himself on to his elbow and stared across the tent at his mate.

'Um--m Mean to try a new rush.'

'Anything wrong, Mike? Have I been getting on your raw lately? You want to break up this partner ship of ours.'

'My oath, no!' Mike had raised himself eagerly, and was looking at Jim.

Then you reckoned on having me along?'

'No; I thought maybe you wouldn't care to pad out from here jes' yet awhile.

'If it rests with me, mate, where you go I go. You've given me a bit of a jolt, old man.'

'You'll come, then?' cried Mike.

'Why, yes! What should keep me?'

The two men gripped hands, and a few minutes of, silence followed, during which Mike's pipe went out and Jim's book fell to the floor. Both were more moved than they cared to show.

'This makes things much more comfortable,' said Burton presently.

'Where do we go?'

'To Jim Crow, an' from there we may make tracks to Ballarat.

'To Ballarat!' The name epitomized all that Done knew of mining life and the aspirations of the diggers.

'Yes, Jim. If there's goin' to be fightin', we must be in it.'

'Mike,' said Jim, breaking the thoughtful silence that followed, 'what put into your head the mad idea that I would want to break with you? G.o.d, man, I'd be a desolate, helpless wastrel without you!'

'Aurora!' said Mike sententiously.

'Aurora!' Jim sat up abruptly, and then sank slowly back upon his pillow again. It was very curious, but till this moment no thought of Aurora had occurred to him.

Mike blew out the candle, and it was quite half an hour later when he said, speaking as if the conversation had just been dropped: 'You'll go all the same, Jimmy?'

'Yes,' said Jim, with the emphasis of a man making a resolution.

XII

AURORA! What would she say? What would she do? It was less the thought of his losing Aurora than the picture of her great distress that worried him. She would be broken-hearted. And yet go he must, there was no question of that; he had not come to Australia to tether himself to a woman's ap.r.o.n strings, even though that woman be the brightest and winsomest of her s.e.x--excepting one. He smuggled that saving clause in in a cowardly way. He had carefully masked his treachery even to his own eyes, and yet it was treachery that was in his bones. Of course, he must a.s.sure her that they would meet again: they were not necessarily parting for ever; but even as these thoughts worked in his mind he was not conscious of any anxiety at the prospect of a lasting separation. Jim did not realize to what extent the pa.s.sion for Aurora had fastened upon his blood; he still liked her, there remained a decided tenderness, and he hated the idea of hurting her or causing her grief. This was the better part of his liking for the girl, but the vehement selfishness seemed to have gone from his love, and without a fierce note of selfishness love becomes as pale as friendship. She had been a wonder, a revelation, a great glory; she had become merely an attractive, handsome girl, rather exuberant in her affection. If Done were our villain we could show him unmanly, ign.o.ble, and vile for all this, but not one voluntary impulse went to the making of his present att.i.tude; it was a development entirely foreign to his will, and that much at least must be remembered in the defence of our hero.

Mike put off their departure a day. He had intended leaving the tools and camp-ware with his mate, but now it was necessary to make arrangements with a teamster to follow them to the new rush with their property.

Done approached Aurora with great misgivings; he expected a pa.s.sionate demonstration. There had been no sign of waning affection on her part; on the contrary, she had seemed to grow more devoted to him.

'Burton thinks this field is pretty well worked out,' said Jim, as a preparatory announcement.

'Well, I suppose it is, Jimmy. Been panning out badly of late?'