It was latish. She was standing near the bar, talking to half-a dozen people at once, as usual; but I saw she noticed me at once. She quickly drew off a bit from them all; said it was near shutting-up time, and, after a while, passed through the bar into the little parlour where I was sitting down. It was just midnight. The night was half over before I thought of coming in. So when she came in and seated herself near me on the sofa I heard the clock strike twelve, and most of the men who were walking about the hall began to clear out.

Somehow, when you’ve been living at a place for a goodish while, and done well there, and has friends as has stuck by you, as we had at the Turon, you feel sorry to leave it. What you’ve done you’re sure of, no matter how it mayn’t suit you in some ways, nor how much better you expect to be off where you are going to. You had that and had the good of it. What the coming time may bring you can’t reckon on. All kinds of cross luck and accidents may happen. What’s the use of money to a man if he smashes his hip and has to walk with a crutch all his days? I’ve seen a miner with a thousand a month coming in, but he’d been crushed pretty near to death with a fall of earth, and about half of him was dead. What’s a good dinner to a man that his doctor only allows him one slice of meat, a bit of bread, and some toast and water? I’ve seen chaps like them, and I’d sooner a deal be the poorest splitter, slogging away with a heavy maul, and able, mind you, to swing it like a man, than one of those broken-down screws. We’d had a good time there, Jim and I. We always had a kind spot in our hearts for Turon and the diggings afterwards. Hard work, high pay, good friends that would stick to a man back and edge, and a safe country to lie in plant in as ever was seen. We was both middlin’ sorry, in a manner of speaking, to clear out. Not as Jim said much about it on account of Jeanie; but he thought it all the same.