But Jim had got one of his obstinate fits. He said we were regularly mixed up with the diggers now. He never intended to follow any other life, and wouldn’t go back to the Hollow or take part in any fresh cross work, no matter how good it might be. Poor old Jim! I really believe he’d made up his mind to go straight from the very hour he was buckled to Jeanie; and if he’d only had common luck he’d have been as square and right as George Storefield to this very hour.

I was near forgetting about old George. My word! he was getting on faster than we were, though he hadn’t a golden hole. He was gold-finding in a different way, and no mistake. One day we saw a stoutish man drive up Main Street to the camp, with a well-groomed horse, in a dogcart, and a servant with him; and who was this but old George? He didn’t twig us. He drove close alongside of Jim who was coming back from the creek, where he’d been puddling with two shovels and a pick over his shoulder, and a pair of old yellow trousers on, and him splashed up to the eyes. George didn’t know him a bit. But we knew him and laughed to ourselves to see the big swell he had grown into. He stopped at the camp and left his dogcart outside with his man. Next thing we saw was the Commissioner walking about outside the camp with him, and talking to him just as if he was a regular intimate friend.

The Commissioner, that was so proud that he wouldn’t look at a digger or shake hands with him, not if he was a young marquis, as long as he was a digger. “No!” he used to say,“I have to keep my authority over these thousands and tens of thousands of people, some of them very wild and lawless, principally by moral influence, though, of course, I have the Government to fall back upon. To do that I must keep up my position, and over-familiarity would be the destruction of it.” When we saw him shaking hands with old George and inviting him to lunch we asked one of the miners next to our claim if he knew what that man’s name and occupation was there.

“Oh!” he says, “I thought everybody knew him. That’s Storefield, the great contractor. He has all the contracts for horse-feed for the camps and police stations; nearly every one between here and Kiandra. He’s took ‘em lucky this year, and he’s making money hand over fist.”

Well done, steady old George! No wonder he could afford to drive a good horse and a swell dogcart. He was getting up in the world. We were a bit more astonished when we heard the Commissioner say—