‘Well, that writer’s an ass, whoever he is; and you’re a deal nearer the mark than he is. He’s a donkey, that, because their ain’t a thistle right against his nose, thinks there ain’t no more thistles in the world—let alone corn. Now I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ the whole matter over since a friend of mine in Port Phillip sent me this paper, and I cipher it out this way. They’ve sent down five thousand ounces this week from this place, Ballarat. Then they’ve struck it at Forest Creek, fifty miles off. Well, that tells me that there’s plenty of it, and more than years will see out, judging from California and Turonia, as we know of. Now what do you suppose all Europe—all the world—will do when they hear of this, that you can dig up gold like potatoes? Why, they won’t be able to find ships fast enough to bring ‘em here. When they do come they’ll want to be fed. The tea and sugar and tents and spades and shovels old Paul Frankston and the other merchants will find ’em somehow; the flour the farmers will find them, or if they can’t, old Paul and his friends will get it from Chili. _But they can’t import beef and mutton._ No; not if meat rose to a shilling a pound. Live stock is the worst freight in the world, and there’s nowhere within boating distance where it grows plentiful as it does here. So when my sum’s worked out it means this, that more gold means double and treble the population, and double and treble the price of everything that we have here and want to sell.’ As Mr. Levison paused,—not for breath, for he did not exceed his ordinary slow monotonal enunciation, as he propounded these original and startling ideas much as though he were reading from a book,—Mr. Neuchamp looked fixedly at his guest, as if to discover whether or no some subtle local influence peculiar to Rainbar had infected with speculative mania the shrewd, calm-judging stockholder. But the _genius loci_, however seductive, would have fared ill in a mental encounter with the slow, sure inferences and iron logic of Abstinens Levison. He displayed no trace of more than ordinary interest. And from all that was apparent, the onward march of a revolution fated to flood the land with wealth and to change a handful of pioneer communities into a nation, was accepted by him with the same faint unnoted surprise as would have been the announcement of a glut in the cattle market or the ‘sticking up’ of the downriver mail coach.