“‘If you want to know what it was, Mr. Tom,’ I went on, with my politest air, although in agony from the nugget underneath--for I hold it is always best to be polite to a man who is so ready with a handspike--‘my boy and I have had a slight difference of opinion, and I was enforcing my view of the matter upon him; that’s all.’ “‘Yes, Mr. Tom,’ put in Harry, beginning to weep, for Harry was a smart boy, and saw the difficulty we were in, ‘that was it--I halloed because father beat me.’ “‘Well, now, did yer, my dear boy--did yer? Well, all I can say is that a played-out old claim is a wonderful queer sort of place to come to for to argify at ten o’clock of night, and what’s more, my sweet youth, if ever I should ‘ave the argifying of yer’--and he leered unpleasantly at Harry--‘yer won’t ‘oller in quite such a jolly sort ‘o way. And now I’ll be saying good-night, for I don’t like disturbing of a family party. No, I ain’t that sort of man, I ain’t. Good-night to yer, ‘unter Quatermain--good-night to yer, my argified young one;’ and Mr. Tom turned away disappointed, and prowled off elsewhere, like a human jackal, to see what he could thieve or kill. “‘Thank goodness!’ I said, as I slipped off the lump of gold. ‘Now, then, do you get up, Harry, and see if that consummate villain has gone.’ Harry did so, and reported that he had vanished towards Pilgrim’s Rest, and then we set to work, and very carefully, but trembling with excitement, with our hands hollowed out all the space of ground into which I had struck the pick. Yes, as I hoped, there was a regular nest of nuggets, twelve in all, running from the size of a hazel-nut to that of a hen’s egg, though of course the first one was much larger than that. How they all came there nobody can say; it was one of those extraordinary freaks, with stories of which, at any rate, all people acquainted with alluvial gold-mining will be familiar. It turned out afterwards that the American who sold me the claim had in the same way made his pile--a much larger one than ours, by the way--out of a single pocket, and then worked for six months without seeing colour, after which he gave it up. “At any rate, there the nuggets were, to the value, as it turned out afterwards, of about twelve hundred and fifty pounds, so that after all I took out of that hole four hundred and fifty pounds more than I put into it. We got them all out and wrapped them up in a handkerchief, and then, fearing to carry home so much treasure, especially as we knew that Mr. Handspike Tom was on the prowl, made up our minds to pass the night where we were--a necessity which, disagreeable as it was, was wonderfully sweetened by the presence of that handkerchief full of virgin gold--the interest of my lost half-sovereign.