worst.  They went through Wagga-Wagga and Murrumburra, and other places with similar names, till at last they were told that they had reached Nobble.  Nobble they thought was the foulest place which they had ever seen.  It was a gold-digging town, as such places are called, and had been built with great rapidity to supply the necessities of adjacent miners.  It was constructed altogether of wood, but no two houses had been constructed alike.  They generally had gable ends opening on to the street, but were so different in breadth, altitude, and form, that it was easy to see that each enterprising proprietor had been his own architect.  But they were all alike in having enormous advertisement-boards, some high, some broad, some sloping, on which were declared the merits of the tradesmen who administered within to the wants of mining humanity.  And they had generally assumed most singular names for themselves:  ’The Old Stick-in-the-Mud Soft Goods Store,’ ‘The Polyeuka Stout Depot,’ ’Number Nine Flour Mills,’ and so on,—­all of which were very unintelligible to our friends till they learned that these were the names belonging to certain gold-mining claims which had been opened in the neighbourhood of Nobble.  The street itself was almost more perilous to vehicles than the slush of the forest-tracks, so deep were the holes and so uncertain the surface.  When Caldigate informed the driver that they wanted to be taken as far as Henniker’s hotel, the man said that he had given up going so far as that for the last two months, the journey being too perilous.  So they shouldered their portmanteaus and struggled forth down the street.  Here and there a short bit of wooden causeway, perhaps for the length of three houses, would assist them; and then, again, they would have to descend into the roadway and plunge along through the mud.

‘It is not quite as nice walking as the old Quad at Trinity,’ said Caldigate.

‘It is the beastliest hole I ever put my foot in since I was born,’ said Dick, who had just stumbled and nearly came to the ground with his burden.  ‘They told us that Nobble was a fine town.’

Henniker’s hotel was a long, low wooden shanty, divided into various very small partitions by thin planks, in most of which two or more dirty-looking beds had been packed very closely.  But between these little compartments there was a long chamber containing a long and very dirty table, and two long benches.  Here were sitting a crowd of miners, drinking, when our friends were ushered in through the bar or counter which faced to the street.  At the bar they were received by a dirty old woman who said that she was Mrs. Henniker.  Then they were told, while the convivial crowd were looking on and listening, that they could have the use of one of the partitions and their ‘grub’ for 7s. 6d. a-day each.  When they asked for a partition apiece, they were told that if they didn’t like what was offered to them they might go elsewhere.  Upon that they agreed to Mrs. Henniker’s terms, and sitting down on one of the benches looked desolately into each others faces.