that one portmanteau should be sent by the coach, and one left in the charge of Mrs. Henniker.  ’Them sort of traps ain’t never any good, in my mind,’ said Mick.  ’It’s unmanly, having all them togs.  I like a wash as well as any man,—­trousers, jersey, drawers, and all.  I’m always at ’em when I get a place for a rinse by the side of a creek.  But when my things are so gone that they won’t hang on comfortable any longer, I chucks ’em away and buys more.  Two jerseys is good, and two drawers is good, because of wet.  Boots is awkward, and I allays does with one pair.  Some have two, and ties ’em on with the pannikin.  But it ain’t ship-shape.  Them’s my ideas, and I’ve been at it these nine years.  You’ll come to the same.’

The three started the next morning at six, duly invested with their swags.  Before they went they found Mrs. Henniker up, with hot tea, boiled beef, and damper.  ’Just one drop at starting,—­for the good of the house,’ said Mick, apologetically.  Whereupon the whisky was brought, and Mick insisted on shouting for it out of his own pocket.

They had hardly gone a mile out of Nobble before Maggott started a little difficulty,—­merely for the purpose of solving it with a master’s hand.  ‘There ain’t to be no misters among us, you know.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Caldigate.

’My name’s Mick.  This chap’s name’s Dick.  I didn’t exactly catch your’n.  I suppose you’ve been kursened.’

‘Yes;—­they christened me John.’

‘Ain’t it never been Jack with you?’

‘I don’t think it ever was.’

’John!  It do sound lackadaisical.  What I call womanish.  But perhaps it’s for the better.  We have such a lot of Jacks.  There’s dirty Jack, and Jack the nigger, and Jack Misery,—­that’s poor Jack Brien;—­and a lot more.  Perhaps you wouldn’t like not another name of that sort.’

‘Well; no,—­unless it’s necessary.’

’There ain’t another John about the place, as I know.  I never knew a John down a mine,—­never.  We’ll try it, anyhow.’

And so that was settled.  As it happened, though Dick Shand had always been Dick to his friend, Caldigate had never, as yet, been either John or Jack to Dick Shand.  There are men who fall into the way of being called by their Christian names, and others who never hear them except from their own family.  But before the day was out, Caldigate had become John to both his companions.  ’It don’t sound as it ought to do;—­not yet,’ said Mick, after he had tried it about a dozen times in five minutes.

Before the day was over it was clear that Mick Maggott had assumed the mastery.  When three men start on an enterprise together, one man must be ‘boss.’  Let the republic be as few as it may one man must be president.  And as Mick knew what he was about, he assumed the situation easily.  The fact that he was to receive wages from the others had no bearing on the subject at all.  Before they got to Ahalala,