‘For a short time me an’ Bill stands and listens to the wranglin’. Then I looks at Bill, and he nods his head, and I shoves my spoke in. ‘“Look here, chaps!” I says, “this may be only a surface leader, as some of you appears to think, or it may be a pile. I don’t care a damn which it is! It’s Fairleigh’s first say. His kid, as lies there dead, found it! An’, by the Lord, his father’s goin’ to be first served! I’m goin’ now to peg out what I considers a fair prospectin’ claim for him. That’ll be seen to after. When that’s done you can strike in as you likes. If you objects to that you ain’t men. Bill, here, ’ll back me up, an’, if you don’t like it, we’ll do it in spite o’ you. We’re all poor enough, God knows! But none of us ain’t just lost an only child, an’ self an’ wife gone half mad with the sorrow of it.” ‘Well, sir, the Germans, who was beginning to drop to how the thing lay, set up a big shout o’ “_Hoch! Hoch!_” meanin’ in their lingo, “Hooray.” An’ the rest, what was right enough at bottom, an’ only wanted showin’ like what was the fair an’ square thing to do, quick agreed. All ’cept, that is, one flash sort of a joker from the Barossa. But, while I steps the groun’, Bill put such a head on him in half-a-dozen rounds that his own mother wouldn’t know him again. ‘It were only a couple o’ miles in a straight line from the settlement, through the ranges, to that bit of a bald hill. ‘Exactly, almost, where you stood to-day, lookin’ at the windin’ plant o’ the El Dorado, was where we found Dot. ‘When the field was proclaimed the Warden didn’t have much alteration to make in the p.c. I’d marked off for Fairleigh. ‘You see it was only one man’s groun’ then. An’ it turned out rich from the jump. An’ it’s gettin’ better every foot. None o’ the others, as the Company’s bought an’ ’malgamated with it, although joinin’, can touch “Dot’s.” ‘But Fairleigh’s never to say held up his head sence that night. ‘A week after we buried the child we carried the mother to rest beside him. ‘Fairleigh must be a rich man now. Everythin’ he touches, as the sayin’ is, seems to turn to gold. He can’t go wrong. But he seldom comes a-nigh the place. One of the first things he done when “Dot’s” turned up such trumps, was to put five thousand pounds to mine and Bill’s credit in the A—— bank. But we never touched it. Ever sence that night our luck’s been right in. First we sells out No. 1 North to the Company at a pretty stiff figure. Then we buys out No. 2 South an’ seemingly we’ve struck it again, an’ rich.’ ‘And, now,’ I remark as my friend, his yarn finished, sits gazing meditatively at the glowing logs,—‘and, now, all you want is a wife. Follow your mate’s example, and make a home where you’re making your money.’ Ward shook his head, smiling doubtfully, and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, rose to go.