‘Oh, he was pretty wild, but he couldn’t do nothing, of course.’
‘I’ll take three hundred and half out of the ground for a share in number two,’ and so on, and so on.
Mr. Neuchamp had come on to the long-disputed territory, ‘Tom Tidler’s ground,’ and the ‘demnition gold’ (if not silver) was sticking out of the soil everywhere. Ten-pound notes were handed across the bar for change as readily as half-crowns. Nuggets worth from £50 to £100 were passed about in the crowd for inspection with the most undoubting good faith and confidence in the collective honesty of mining mankind.
Under these conditions, it was a night for bold and reckless conception, a night when the ordinary prudences and severities of conscience might be calmly placed behind the perceptions, and the ‘fore-soul’ be permitted to leap forth and disport in the glorious freedom of the instincts and original faculties.
No sooner had Ernest handled his cue and struck the first ball than he perceived that he was in one of his rarely happy veins, when, sure of his play, he was also likely to fall in for an unusual allowance of ‘flukes.’ Therefore, when Greffham, who had kindly allowed him ten points, proposed to have a pound on the game, just for the fun of the thing, he promptly acceded.
He won the first with ease, Mr. Greffham playing a steady but by no means brilliant game. And, much to his astonishment, the second also, with a couple of pounds which he had staked, with the good-natured intention of giving back Mr. Greffham his money. Ernest did not win the second game quite so easily, but his luck adhered to him, and a shower of flukes at the latter end landed him the winner. His antagonist bore his defeat with the finest breeding and perfect composure, deciding that it was quite a pleasure to meet with a gentleman in this howling desert, socially, who could play, and trusting that they might have another game or two before Ernest left the district. Then Mr. Bright and the inspector had a short but brilliant game, chiefly remarkable for the sparkling, if somewhat acidulated, repartee which it called forth. Then it was voted proper to return to the ballroom. Here matters had apparently reached the after-supper stage. The dancing was more determined, the floor smooth to the last degree of perfection. De Bracy, the Commissioner, the Colonel, and the Branksome Hall party were still untired, unsatiated—the cheeks of the young ladies showed paler in the growing dawn-light, their eyes larger and more bright, and the hair of little Miss Maybell positively ‘would not keep up, and there was no use trying to make it.’ Ernest was just sufficiently fortunate to capture Miss Janie Campion for the galop, which proved to be the concluding one as far as he was concerned. For old Mr. Branksome, not being quite so fond of dancing and young ladies as his gallant brother, ordered the phaeton round, and caused his daughters to perceive that he wished to go home, without any kind of doubt or hesitation.
So all wraps being secured, and the Colonel having taken a most tender leave of his last partner, the highly-conditioned horses went at their collars, and, after threading the unabated crowd, rattled along the smooth if winding track, by stumps, ditches, and yawning shafts, at a pace which, with luck and good driving, brought them in due time safe and sleepy to the avenue gate of Branksome Hall.
On the following morning Ernest received a letter from Charley Banks, by which he learned that his party would not arrive in the neighbourhood of Turonia for at least another fortnight—their advance being unavoidably slow. He cheerfully concluded, therefore, to spend the intervening time in the golden city, where he would have an opportunity of noticing the preparations for mustering the herd, in which he and Mr. Levison were jointly interested, and of acquiring new facts in a tolerably new field of observation.
He therefore took temporary leave of his very kind friends at the Hall, reserving to himself the right of occasional visits until he should depart, with his newly-acquired herd, for the ‘waste lands of the Crown,’ where the Great River flowed on, as in the long lonely æons of the past, through the vast plains and pine-bordered sandhills of Rainbar.
Once domiciled in Turonia, Mr. Neuchamp found its society more various and entertaining than in any locality other than the metropolis which he had visited since his arrival in Australia. It was the flush and prosperous stage of a great alluvial goldfield. All things wore the golden tint, all bore the image and superscription of the modern Cæsar and Imperator.