“He has the pluck of a hound, and the cunning of a fox,” said Mark; “and he’ll be a credit to you yet.”

And Mary prayed every morning and night for her old playfellow; and so the years slipped on till the autumn of 1853.

As no one has heard of Tom now for eight months and more (the pulse of Australian postage being of a somewhat intermittent type), we may as well go and look for him.

A sheet of dark rolling ground, quarried into a gigantic rabbit burrow, with hundreds of tents and huts dotted about among the heaps of rubbish; dark evergreen forests in the distance, and, above all, the great volcanic mountain of Buninyong towering far aloft—­these are the “Black Hills of Ballarat;” and that windlass at that shaft’s mouth belongs in part to Thomas Thurnall.

At the windlass are standing two men, whom we may have seen in past years, self-satisfied in countenance, and spotless in array, sauntering down Piccadilly any July afternoon, or lounging in Haggis’s stable-yard at Cambridge any autumn morning.  Alas! how changed from the fast young undergraduates, with powers of enjoyment only equalled by their powers of running into debt, are those two black-bearded and mud-bespattered ruffians, who once were Smith and Brown of Trinity.  Yet who need pity them, as long as they have stouter limbs, healthier stomachs, and clearer consciences, than they have had since they left Eton at seventeen?  Would Smith have been a happier man as a briefless barrister in a dingy Inn of Law, peeping now and then into third-rate London society, and scribbling for the daily press!  Would Brown have been a happier man had he been forced into those holy orders for which he never felt the least vocation, to pay off his college debts out of his curate’s income, and settle down on his lees, at last, in the family living of Nomansland-cum-Clayhole, and support a wife and five children on five hundred a-year, exclusive of rates and taxes?  Let them dig, and be men.

The windlass rattles and the rope goes down.  A shout from the bottom of the shaft proclaims all right; and in due time, sitting in the noose of the rope, up comes Thomas Thurnall, bare-footed and bare-headed, in flannel trousers and red jersey, begrimed with slush and mud; with a mahogany face, a brick-red neck, and a huge brown beard, looking, to use his own expression, “as jolly as a sandboy.”

“A letter for you, Doctor, from Europe.”

Tom takes it, and his countenance falls; for it is black-edged and black-sealed.  The handwriting is Mary Armsworth’s.

“I suppose the old lady who is going to leave me a fortune is dead,” says he drily, and turns away to read.

“Bad luck, I suppose,” he says to himself, “I have not had any for full six months, so I suppose it is time for Dame Fortune to give me a sly stab again.  I only hope it is not my father; for, begging the Dame’s pardon, I can bear any trick of hers but that.”  And he sets his teeth doggedly, and reads.