The day was far spent when the straggling tents and red-streaked mullock-heaps around the Tin Pot Reef came in view.
'Here it was,' she thought, 'where I saw poor Lance last. It isn't far to his claim—near the old dead urabba log. There it is! I'll go over and have a look.'
She rode to the spot. The reef was not abandoned. The claim was in work. The raw-hide bucket was ascending and descending with its gold-besprinkled load, as so many a time at Ballarat and other places she had watched it before.
'Curse the gold,' she said aloud, 'and all that belongs to it! It was a bad day for the country when the first speck was found.'
'Halloo! mate,' she said to the miner above ground who was pensively turning out the broken quartz on the 'paddock' side of the shaft. 'How are you doing? Ground pretty good?'
'Might be better—might be worse, missus. Can't complain,' said the man civilly.
'Wasn't this Ballarat Harry's claim?' she inquired, with an assumption of carelessness, though her voice trembled and her cheek paled. 'You bought him out?'
'That's so. Sold it to Yorkey Dickson and me. Yorkey's below. We very nigh had to fight for it, after that. Some of the "Tips" tried to bluff us out of it. Harry was a-comin' to see us through. Leastways he told a young man as we sent to him. But he never turned up. That was queer, wasn't it?'
'And you never seen him after?'
'Not a sign of him. Yorkey was for goin' into Omeo after him. Only we heard he was off for Melbourne. So we didn't bother, and the jumpers gave us best next day.'