Going into the tent on the afternoon of the second Sunday, Jim found his mate asleep on one of the bunks.  In the hollow of his out-thrown hand lay a cheap lacquered frame containing a daguerreotype of a girl’s face.  A sudden contrition smote Jim; he turned anxiously to his bunk, throwing the clothes left and right.  The vest he had worn when he left the Francis Cadman lay under the pillow.  He dived his finger into the watch-pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief.  Yes, it was there, safe and sound.  He held Lucy Woodrow’s miniature, gazing on it, suffused with chastened emotions.  Heavens! how beautiful she was, and so gentle and generous!  What an ass he had been!  He kissed the picture very tenderly, and with a bit of twine secured it in the pocket of his jumper in dangerous proximity to his heart.

Jim Done had now seen much of the fanciful night life of the camps.  A populous lead presented a picturesque appearance by night.  The illuminated tents and the flaring camp-fires dotted the field thickly, and where the tents of the business people were drawn in line and something like a main street formed, slush lights and kerosene torches flamed and swinging oil-lamps lit up the scene.  Here the wilder spirits assembled and drank square gin, and gambled in the canvas shanty bars, or danced with fine frenzy to music provided by some enterprising German Fraeulein stolidly grinding a hurdy-gurdy.  There were numerous sly grog-shops amongst the tents, and most of the storekeepers sold illicit drink with open impudence.  These places were often centres of roaring, ribald life after nightfall; but the majority of the diggers lay in groups about their camp-fires, chatting quietly or reading the most recent papers available, and were peaceably inclined, easy-going citizens.

It was the fiercer side of existence on the fields that appealed most directly to Jim; he loved the strong colour, the exultant animation, the devil-may-care character, that marked the gatherings in the bars and the gambling-saloons.  He took little active part in the playing and the drinking, but the feverish energy of the men and the stirring scenes provided such vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all.  To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his attitude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim’s rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the enthusiasm of a little boy.

The mates had shifted their tent to a convenient position near the claim they were now working, and were camped within two hundred yards of the establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker.  Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field.  Her voice was the loudest amid the clamouring tongues in her