"It is the pinching of our own shoes we feel, old fellow. We're a selfish lot of brutes. Thank you for pulling me up. I'm sorry for you, Chaytor."
"And I'm sorry for you. Thinking our claim worthless we leave Mountain Maid Gully, and come here to Dead Man's Flat. We are ready to jump out of our skins with joy, for we come just in time--so we think. Here's a new lead struck, with big nuggets in it, and we mark out our claim exactly one hundred and twenty feet from the prospector's ground. They get one day twenty ounces, the next day twenty-eight, the next day forty-two--a fortune, if it lasts."
"Which it seldom does."
"It often does, and even if it lasts only six or seven weeks it brings in a lot. 'We're in luck this time,' I say to you, and I dream of nuggets as big as my head. The gutter, we reckon, is forty feet down, and we reach it in three weeks. Everybody round us is making his pile--why shouldn't we? But before we strike the lead a digger comes up, and says, 'Hallo, mates, have you heard about the claim you left in Mountain Maid Gully?' 'No,' say we, 'what about it?'--'Oh,' says the digger, 'only that two new chums jumped in after you'd gone away and found out it was the richest claim on the goldfield. They took a thousand ounces out of it the second week they were at work.' What do you say to that, Basil?"
"Jolly hard luck, Chaytor."
"Cursed hard luck, I say."
"Strong words won't better it."
"They're a relief. You take it philosophically, I admit; I growl over it like a bear with a sore head. I'd like to know why there's this difference between us."
"I'll try and tell you presently, when you've finished about the two claims."
"All right. I shouldn't be much of a man if the news about the ground we ran away from didn't rile me. I was so wild I could hardly sleep that night. But when I heard that in the next claim to the one we're working now a nugget weighing a hundred and fifty ounces was found I thought perhaps we'd got a richer claim than the one we'd deserted. So I bottled up my bad temper, and went on working with a good grace. And now we're on the gutter again, and here's the result." He held out the tin dish, and gazed at the tiny specks of gold with disgust. "Why it's the very worst we've struck yet."