Benjamin rubbed his eyes, sat up in bed, and yawned.
“‘’Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain:
You’ve waked me too soon—I must slumber again.’
What’s the time, Jake?”
“Ain’t I tellin’ you?—three o’clock. If we don’t want to be followed by every digger in the town, we must get out of it before dawn.”
“Wise young Solomon, youth of golden promise. Go and boil the kettle. We’ll have a snack before we go. Then for fresh fields and pastures new.”
The goldsmith bounded out of bed, with a buoyancy which resembled that of an india-rubber ball.
“Ah-ha!
‘Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweek bird’s throat,
Come hither.’
You see, Jakey, mine, we were eddicated when we was young.” Benjamin had jumped into his clothes as he talked. “A sup and a snack, and we flit by the light of the moon.”
“There ain’t no moon.”
“So much the better. We’ll guide our steps by the stars’ pale light and the beams of the Southern Cross.”
By back lanes and by-roads the goldsmith and his boy slunk out of the town. At the mouth of the gorge where diggers’ tents lined the road, they walked delicately, exchanging no word till they were deep in the solitude of the hills.