"A nugget, Jimmy! A nugget in the nick of time! I nearly cut it in two with the spade!" It was a very small nugget, much in the shape and size of a kidney-bean, but of singularly pure and smooth gold, and Denis declared that it was just the thing. With the point of his knife he removed every particle of earth, and then scrubbed it with soap and water until it was as bright as the last sovereign from the mint. It seemed to give him greater pleasure than all the gold-dust despatched to Geelong; and no more work was done before breakfast, which was taken with the nugget on the table in front of Denis, save when he pressed a piece of twine into the cleft made by the spade and tried how it looked round Doherty's neck. "Half should be yours, by rights," he said; "but you won't mind if I credit you with the weight instead? Don't be a fool! Of course I'll do that! But it was almost my last promise--to send her my first nugget--and it's been such a long time coming." "Funny it's coming just when you wanted it for the mail," remarked Doherty in perfect innocence; but the steward spoke up from his self-appointed place beside the fire. "I only wonder it's the first," said he; "but you take my word it ain't the last. Talk about jewelers' shops! You've opened one of the best on Ballarat. Look at the men you're bringing back to the gully; there'd be a rush if it wasn't for the depth they've got to sink, and that you had all done for you. I sha'n't be satisfied till I see you put your pick into a bit like they took out of Canadian Gully twelve months ago." Nothing could have been more consistent and withal less officious than the discreetly sympathetic encouragement of the steward; he also knew something about gold-mining, and his unobtrusive suggestions were often of value. Denis was indeed more and more unable to reconcile the useful landsman with the ship's steward who had broached the ship's spirits and misbehaved himself in other ways; but after all, a man might pull himself together, and having suffered from a bad master, might well desire to make the most of a good one. So Denis was imposed upon while still as much on guard against imposition as these engrossing days allowed. And the eight days of harvest were almost at an end; that very morning there was a subtle change in the appearance of a bucketful that Doherty sent up, and Denis forthwith washed an almost wholly unprofitable tub. He then went down the shaft, and found as he expected that they had struck the bottom of the gutter, and were on the hard paleozoic floor. The difference was even more marked than that between the red clay and the auriferous drift, here only four or five feet thick. There were still some tubs to take before the corners of the shaft were cleared to the bed-rock. "And then?" asked Doherty with a blank face. "Then the fun begins." "Tunneling?" "Of course." "But how do you know which way?"