"I see them."
"High and dry on the banks of one red river, instead of on the river itself?"
"Yes."
"That was our old claim."
CHAPTER XVI
A WINDFALL
The pair had passed the place where they had waved farewell to Moseley, and were in sound but not quite in sight of all that one of them had never expected to see or to hear again, when a voice hailed them in the rear, and they found that a buggy and pair had crept upon them while they talked. Doherty was filled with apprehension. He had not been so happy for two months. But Denis was much interested in the driver of the buggy, who drove alone, and who looked as though he might have been got up in Bedford Row, what with his black silk stock, his high hat still shining through its layer of yellow dust, and his spectacled face clean-shaven to the lips.
"May I ask if you are Ballarat diggers," said he, "or new arrivals like myself?"
"We are diggers," replied Denis, "and Ballarat's just over that hill."
"So I should suppose," observed the gentleman from afar, and proceeded to weigh the couple with a calculating eye. "Been at it long?" he added as one who did not find them altogether wanting.