"Where are you now?"
"Nowhere. We have sold up and are going to start again. Your friend has given us a lift, for which we're much obliged, but I think the horses would stand all right without us."
"Would you like to take over this claim and hole?"
"I have no money," said Denis. Behind him Doherty had given a gasp, followed by something like a sob of disappointment. But the deep-sinker wore the broadest smile they had ever seen upon his languid countenance.
"My dear good fellow, I don't want money for it!" cried he. "I want a worthy inheritor with energy and ideas, somebody a cut above the stupid average, and by Jove you're my very man! Come on: if you don't the whole thing will be jumped by the nearest ruffian. I don't say there's much in the hole; but it's a good, sound hole as far as it goes, and it can't have to go much further. We've worked through the light clays and through the sand, and we're well in the red; when you get through that you can start washing, and I wish you the luck you deserve. Thank me? What for? If you don't come in some one else will. I am only too glad to leave the little place in such good hands. It was pretty carefully chosen, and if it isn't plumb over the gutter it ought to be."
So the reconstructed firm of Dent and Doherty became possessed of one of the deepest holes and best-appointed claims on the celebrated Eureka Lead, and all within a few minutes; for it took the man Charles no longer to collect such chattels as were worth his master's while to take away with him. Thus, ere the diggings were astir again for the afternoon, the new owners were alone in their unforeseen glory, and one of them at least was still capering and singing in his joy. But over Denis a cloud had already fallen; and there was a blacker cloud on Jimmy when he grasped the cause.
"It's Moseley," said Denis. "This is horribly unfair on him."
"Unfair! How?"
"Suppose we should have as good luck here as we had bad luck on the flat!"
"Well? Didn't he want to be out of it? Wasn't he longing to go home?"