in thinking over it their imagination had not pictured to them so uncomfortable a workshop as this.  When they had returned to the light, the owner of the place took them through the crushing-mill attached, showed them the stone or mulloch, as it was thrust into the jaws of the devouring animal, and then brought them in triumph round to the place where the gold was eliminated from the debris of mud and water.  The gold did not seem to them to be very much; but still there it was.  ‘Two ounces to the ton, my boys!’ said Crinkett, as he brought them back to his house.  ’You’ll find that a 10s. share’ll give you about 6d. a month.  That’s about 60 per cent, I guess.  You can have your money monthly.  What comes out of that there mine in a March, you can have in a April, and so on.  There ain’t nothing like it anywhere else,—­not as I knows on.  And instead of working your hearts out, you can be just amusing yourselves about the country.  Don’t go to Ahalala;—­unless it is for dropping your money.  If that’s what you want, I won’t say but Ahalala is as good a place as you’ll find in the colony.’  Then he brought a bottle of whisky out of a cupboard, and treated them to a glass of grog apiece.  Beyond that his hospitality did not go.

Dick looked as though he liked the idea of having a venture in the ’Old Stick-in-the-Mud.’  Caldigate, without actually disbelieving all that had been said to him, did not relish the proposal.  It was not the kind of thing which they had intended.  After they had learned their trade as miners it might be very well for them to have shares in some established concern;—­but in that case he would wish to be one of the managers himself, and not to trust everything to any Crinkett, however honest.  That suggestion of travelling about and amusing themselves, did not commend itself to him.  New South Wales might, he thought, be a good country for work, but did not seem to offer much amusement beyond sheer idleness, and brandy-and-water.

‘I rather think we should like to do a little in the rough first,’ he said.

‘A very little’ll go a long way with you, I’m thinking.’

‘I don’t see that at all,’ said Dick, stoutly.

’You go down there and take one of them picks in your hand for a week,—­eight hours at a time, with five minutes’ spell allowed for a smoke, and see how you’ll feel at the end of the week.’

‘We’ll try it on, if you’ll give us 10s. a-day for the week,’ said Caldigate, rubbing his hands together.

’I wouldn’t give you half-a-crown for the whole time between you, and you wouldn’t earn it.  Ten shillings a day!  I suppose you think a man has only just to say the word and become a miner out of hand.  You’ve a deal to learn before you’ll be worth half the money.  I never knew chaps like you come to any good at working.  If you’ve got a little money, you know, I’ve shown you what you can do with it.  But perhaps you haven’t.’