"It would have to be a lucky one," said Denis, dryly, though not until he had paused to think. "Then it wouldn't be the only one," retorted Doherty, with the readiness of their common race. Denis could not help dallying with the idea. "Have they been doing such good business up there, then?" "Good! Why, haven't you heard? There's never been such doings as they've had on Ballarat this year. I thought it was all over the world," the boy added, with shining eyes. "It may be," said Denis, "but I've been at sea since June, and it isn't exactly in a sailor's line." "Isn't it!" laughed Jimmy. "You wait till you see the empty ships in Hobson's Bay! Some of 'em been stuck there since the last day of January, when the fun began. Do you mean to say you never heard of the big finds in Canadian Gully?" "You tell me, Jimmy. I want to hear." Denis was leaning on an elbow. Jimmy had long been on his feet. "There were some coves had a claim in Canadian Gully, on Ballarat," the boy began, a wild light in his face, a light that Denis had never seen before. "They were doing well, but not too well, and they offered to sell the hole for a matter of three hundred. Then one of them went down and came up with a nugget weighing sixty-six ounces!" "At how much the ounce?" "About four guineas." "Well, that wasn't quite the three hundred." "Stop a bit!" cried Doherty, a perfect fever in his eyes, a fever as new to Denis as the light upon the lad's face. "That was only the beginning of it. Of course they wouldn't sell after that. And before night they'd got a nugget of a hundred and twenty pounds. Troy weight--whatever that is--perhaps you can turn it into the other pounds, for I can't." Denis sat forward, pressing the lint upon his forehead with his hands. When at length he looked up there was the same light beneath the bandages, the same fever in the still blood-shot eyes, as Denis himself had remarked in the face and eyes of his companion. "Six thousand pounds!" he whispered almost aghast. "Six thousand golden sovereigns!" shouted the lad, capering about the room. "Think of that, mister, think of that! I had it read to me out of the papers. I got it off by heart. It was one big, solid, yellow lump of gold, and they had to carry it between them slung to a pole. It wasn't the only one, neither; as they went tunneling on it stuck out of the sides, like bunches of grapes--at twenty pound a berry! There was only four on 'em in the party; they made their fortunes in less than no time; and two on 'em was new chums, same as you'd be if you went up and--and----" "And what, boy?" "And took me along with you!" Denis only wondered that the little brown face, thrust so near him in its eagerness, did not burst into actual flame; it never occurred to him that his own was perhaps presenting the like phenomenon. "You talk as though you'd been there already, Jimmy," said he.