“Ain’t thirsty,” replied the “swagger.”
“Let ’im alone,” said a third. “Can’t you see he’s bin working a ‘duffer’?”
Benjamin Tresco, standing on the curb of the pavement, watched the advent of the prospector with an altogether remarkable interest, which rose to positive restlessness when he saw the digger pause before the entrance of the Kangaroo Bank.
The ill-clad, dirty stranger pushed through the swinging, glass door, stood with his hobnailed boots on the tesselated pavement inside the bank, and contemplated the Semitic face of the spruce clerk who, with the glittering gold-scales by his side, stood behind the polished mahogany counter.
But either the place looked too grand and expensive, or else the clerk’s appearance offended, but the “swagger” backed out of the building, and stood once more upon the asphalt, wearing the air of a stray dog with no home or friends.
Tresco crossed the street. With extended hand, portly mien, and benign countenance, he approached the digger, after the manner of a benevolent sidesman in a church.
“Selling gold, mate?” He spoke in his most confidential manner. “Come this way. I will help you.”
Down the street he took the derelict, like a ship in full sail towing a battered, mastless craft into a haven of safety.
Having brought the “swagger” to a safe anchorage inside his shop, Tresco shut the door, to the exclusion of all intruders; took his gold-scales from a shelf where they had stood, unused and dusty, for many a month; stepped behind the counter, and said, in his best business manner: “Now, sir.”
The digger unhitched his swag and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor, stood his long manuka stick against the wall, thrust his hand inside his “jumper,” looked at the goldsmith’s rubicund face, drew out a long canvas bag which was tied at the neck with a leather boot-lace, and said, in a hoarse whisper, “There, mister, that’s my pile.”