"Anywhere and everywhere, my dear fellow! Are you a geologist, Dent?" The question came after a pause. "Not as yet," said Denis; and Doherty, who had no notion what a geologist was, glanced at him sidelong as at one who could soon be it or anything else he chose. So the time passed, and the miles were mounting up when Moseley, who ought to have known the way to a certain point, found that he had overshot it by as many miles again. It was a trying moment for the height and heat of the afternoon; but so savage was the mild Moseley with himself, so unusually animated with his contrition, that Denis slapped him on the back, and they turned back laughing to an inn where they had drunk beer a couple of hours before. This beer-drinking was an extravagance resented by Denis, yet not a point on which he cared to oppose the man who had contributed so freely to the common fund. Nothing could have been more wholesome for active young fellows, but their beer alone cost them eight and threepence the first day, bread three and six, billy-can two and six, tea and sugar two and six, and their beds at this inn six shillings. One pound two and nine-pence for the first nine miles. Denis did not grumble, but in his heart he resented the beds almost as much as the beer; there was more to be said for them, however, especially in a country teeming with desperate characters; and the beds at least were cheap, few travelers breaking their journey so near its beginning or its end. Denis, however, sat late in the bar, listening to the conversation of all and sundry who stopped to drink, and learning much in an unobtrusive way: he had never in his life been quite such a Dent, so canny, so calculating, and so cool. As a first step toward the accomplishment of his great resolve, he had already overcome the romantic spirit of its inception; thus the next night, at Bacchus Marsh, he thought nothing of foregathering with an odious little man, who consulted Denis as to the best place to get a "white 'igh 'at and a diamond ring" immediately on landing in London, but who gave him much valuable information in return. And the night after that, when they were fifty miles from Melbourne, there was a landlord with gold-dust sticking to the palms of his hands, who only needed plying with his own liquor to talk by the hour. By this time Moseley was keeping them all back with a sore heel; and the nearer the diggings, the greater each day's expenses; but Denis no longer grudged the money, for he was gaining much that money could not buy.