To Mrs. Henniker's they went, and there, stretched out at length on the wooden veranda before the house, they found the hero of the potatoes,--the man who had taken them down to Crinkett's house. He seemed to be fast asleep, but as they came up on the boards, he turned himself on his elbow, and looked at them. 'Well, mates,' he said, 'what do you think of Tom Crinkett now you've seen him?' 'He doesn't seem to approve of Ahalala,' said Dick. 'In course he don't. When a new rush is opened like that, and takes away half the hands a man has about him, and raises the wages of them who remain, in course he don't like it. You see the difference. The Old Stick-in-the-Mud is an established kind of thing.' 'It's a paying concern, I suppose,' said Caldigate. 'It has paid;--not a doubt about it. Whether it's played out or not, I'm not so sure. But Ahalala is a working-man's diggings, not a master's, such as Crinkett is now. Of course Crinkett has a down on Ahalala.' 'Your friend Jack Brien didn't seem to think much of the place,' said Dick. 'Poor Jack is one of them who never has a stroke of luck. He's a sort of chum who, when he has a bottle of pickles, somebody else is sure to eat 'em. Ahalala isn't so bad. It's one of them chancy places, of course. You may and you mayn't, as I was a-saying before. When the great rush was on, I did uncommon well at Ahalala. I never was the man I was then.' 'What became of it?' asked Caldigate with a smile. 'Mother Henniker can tell you that, or any other publican round the country. It never will stick to me. I don't know why, but it never will. I've had my luck, too. Oh, laws! I might have had my house, just as grand as Polly Hooker this moment, only I never could stick to it like Tom Crinkett. I've drank cham--paign out of buckets;--I have.' 'I'd rather have a pot of beer out of the pewter,' said Caldigate. 'Very like. One doesn't drink cham--paign because it's better nor anything else. A nobbler of brandy's worth ten of it. It's the glory of out-facing the swells at their own game. There was a chap over in the other colony shod his horse with gold,--and he had to go shepherding afterwards for thirty pounds a-year and his grub. But it's something for him to have ridden a horse with gold shoes. You've never seen a bucketful of cham--paign in the old country?' When both Dick and Caldigate had owned that they had never encountered luxury so superabundant, and had discussed the matter in various shapes,--asking whether the bucket had been emptied, and other questions of the same nature,--Caldigate inquired of his friend whether he knew Mick Maggott? 'Mick Maggott!' said the man, jumping up to his feet. 'Who wants Mick Maggott?' Then Caldigate explained the recommendation which Mr. Crinkett had made. 'Well;--I'm darned;--Mick Maggott? I'm Mick Maggott, myself.'