“Honor, eh?”

“Yes! honor.  Look here, suppose in my unconverted days I had broke into a jeweler’s shop (that comes nearest to a mine) with four or five pals, do you think I should have held it lawful to rob my pals of any part of the swag just because we happened to be robbing a silversmith?  Certainly not; I assure you, George, the punishment of such a nasty, sneaking, dishonorable act would be death in every gang, and cheap, too.  Well, we have broken into Nature’s shop here, and we are to rifle her, and not turn to like unnatural monsters, and rob our ten thousand pals.”

“Thieving is thieving, in my view,” was the prejudiced reply.

“And hanging is hanging—­as all thieves shall find if caught convenient.”

“You make my flesh creep, Tom.  I liked you better when you were not so great a man, more humble like; have you forgotten when you had to make excuses for yourself; then you had Susan on your side and brought me round, for I was bitter against theft; but never so bad as you are now.”

“Oh, never mind what I said in those days; why, you must be well aware I did not know what I was talking about.  I had been a rogue and a fool, and I talked like both.  But now I am a man of property, and my eyes are open and my conscience revolts against theft, and the gallows is the finest institution going, and next to that comes a jolly good prison.  I wish there was one in this mine as big as Pentonville, then property—­”

Here the dialogue was closed by the demand the pick made upon the man of property’s breath.  But it rankled, and on laying down the pick he burst out:  “Well, to think of an honest man like you having a word to say for thieving.  Why, it is a despicable trait in a gold mine.  I’ll go farther, I’ll prove it is the sin of sins all round the world.  Stolen money never thrives—­goes for drink and nonsense.  Now you pick and I’ll wash.  Theft corrupts the man that is robbed as well as the thief; drives him to despair and drink and ruin temporal and eternal.  No country could stand half an hour without law!!  The very honest would turn thieves if not protected, and there would be a go.  Besides, this great crime is like a trunk railway, other little crimes run into it and out of it; lies buzz about it like these Australian flies—­drat you!  Drunkenness precedes and follows it, and perjury rushes to its defense.”

“Well, Tom, you are a beautiful speaker.”

“I haven’t done yet.  What wonder it degrades a man when a dog loses his dignity under it.  Behold the dog who has stolen; look at Carlo yesterday when he demeaned himself to prig Jem’s dinner (the sly brute won’t look at ours).  How mean he cut with his tail under his belly, instead of turning out to meet folk all jolly and waggle-um-tail-um as on other occasions—­Hallo, you, sir! what are you doing so near our tent?” and up jumped the man of property and ran cocking a revolver to a party who was kneeling close to the friends’ tent.