That very month of May saw Denis deep in an orderly determination of his Australian affairs. These were in a state scarcely credible, but for the fact that his case was not unique. Denis was not the only lucky digger of his day, but he was one of the few who made the most of their good fortune. Half the blood in his veins was averse from squandering, but every drop was on fire for his reward. Suffice it that the sweat rolled off him until he had his ten thousand safe, and enough over to carry him home; there followed civil strife between the two distinct natures whose union in one body made Denis what he was. He must sail by the first ship. He must stay to set his house in order. He could not do both. Yet half the house was his, however come by, and it went against his Yorkshire grain to give it up altogether. The claim was still paying handsomely. A second tunnel had been driven north; and it was to be a longer tunnel, since that good neighbour with the black beard had pegged out on the northern boundary of the claim, to obviate a hostile encroachment back and front, on the very natural understanding that he should join Doherty when Dent was gone. And yet Denis was loth to go. It was not for the financial sacrifice, though he was sufficiently alive to that. What was ten thousand pounds to take to Nan? It seemed almost criminal to go to her with so little when in a few more months he might have doubled it. Yet there was more to urge on the other side, and it was not the gold that he was grieved to leave. It was the work of his hands. The claim was largely that; the two tunnels were that and nothing else. Much had been given him, but it had been given into the right hands. Denis had carried on an excellent and shrewd bit of work with a thoroughness and an intelligence at least worthy of his predecessor; they were alike in this, that both had a soul aside from the mere gold; and Denis took as much pride in every inch of his two drives as the sinker had taken in every slab of his splendid shaft. The others realized how much was due to the outgoing partner, and it was they who first begged him to retain a share. At first he refused. "Very well, mister. Then I come with you," said Doherty; and that was an argument; for Denis did not want the lad in England, much less at first, strongly attached as they had become. He had to listen after that, and at last consented to reap a small profit till the year's end, "in case," he said to Doherty's new mate, "things are not as I expect to find them in the old country, and I should want to come straight out again. Then I should be back for Christmas; and it would be like coming home." He said it with a smile, yet it was significant that he did not say it in Doherty's hearing; and the mere possibility of the thing he voiced, however remote, turned Denis sick at heart at the very time when Ralph Devenish was most confident in London.