"Not down here, but there may have been thunderstorms among the mountains. Don't let us set our hearts too much upon finding it."
"But I have."
"And so have I," confessed Alec, with a little dry, nervous laugh.
Poor lads! the gold fever was on them.
"Hasn't Murri or any of them ever been since?" asked Geordie, anxiously.
"No; they say that the myalls" (the wild and savage aborigines) "are very numerous and fierce about there, and that they are their deadly enemies."
"We must go well armed," said George, in a matter-of-fact voice, and as calmly as though he were a man of forty. "And now, Alec, old boy, put the dip out and tumble in. It is late, and we have an awful lot to do to-morrow before we start."
In a few minutes silence fell upon the room, and after tossing about restlessly for a short time the sound of regular and deep breathing from the boys' beds told that they were lost in the strange, dim land of dreams.