The digger looked at the goldsmith in astonishment.
“If I didn’t want the money, I’d chuck these bits o’ paper in the fire,” he exclaimed. “S’fer as I’m concerned the odd seventeen pound would do me, but it’s the missis down in Otago. She must ’ave a clear hundred. Women is expensive, I own, but they mustn’t be let starve. So anty up like a white man.”
“I’ll try,” said Tresco.
“If I was you I’d try blanky hard,” said the digger. “Act honest, and I’ll peg you off a claim as good as my own. Act dishonest, an’ you can go to the devil.”
Tresco had taken off his apron, and was putting on his coat. “I’ve no intention of doing that,” he said. “How would it be to get the police to make those spielers disgorge?—you’d be square enough then.”
“Do that, and I’ll never speak to you again. I’ve no mind to be guy’d in the papers as a new chum that was bested by a set of lags.”
“But I tell you they had loaded dice and six-shooters.”
“The bigger fools we to set two minutes in their comp’ny.”
“What if I say they drugged you?”
“I own to bein’ drunk. But if you think to picture me to the public as a greenhorn that can be drugged first and robbed afterwards, you must think me a bigger fool’n I look.”