"It isn't much to look at, gentlemen," said Obed, "but looks is deceptive, as my old grandmother used to tell me. 'Handsome is as handsome does,' and this 'ere hole's done the handsome thing for me and my partners, and I venture to say it hasn't got through doin' handsome things. It's made three of us rich, and it's ready to make somebody else rich. Who'll be the lucky man? Do I hear a bid!"
"Fifty pounds," said Tom Lewis.
"That'll do to start on, but it won't do to take. Fifty pounds I am offered. Who says a hundred?"
A German miner offered a hundred, and Tom Lewis raised ten pounds.
A Scotch miner, Aleck Graham, offered a hundred and twenty-five.
From that time the bids rose slowly. Obed showed himself an excellent auctioneer—indeed he had had some experience at home—and by his dry and droll remarks stimulated the bidding when it became dull, and did not declare the claim sold till it was clear no higher bid could be obtained.
"Three hundred pounds, and sold to Frank Scott," he concluded. "Mr. Scott, I congratulate you. I calculate you've made a pretty good investment, and I shouldn't wonder if you'd find another nugget within a week. 'Birds of a feather flock together,' as my writing-book says, and 'it never rains but it pours.'"
Frank Scott came forward and made arrangements for the payment of the sum he had offered. Within five minutes he was offered an advance of twenty-five pounds for his bargain, which put him in good humor, though he declined it. I may as well say here, since we are soon to bid farewell to Bendigo, that the claim yielded him double the amount of his investment, and though this was not up to his expectations, he had no reason to regret his purchase.
The little crowd of miners were just separating when two new-comers appeared on the scene. They were the well-matched pair who had met earlier in the morning at the deserted cabin. For convenience' sake we will call them Colson and Ropes, the former being the man who had stolen the nugget, as he supposed.
"What's all this crowd?" said Colson in a tone of curiosity.