“And your intention was to stay?” asked Justin.

“Not I. When I have made the fortune I came out to find I shall go home. But it has to be a fortune. No little pickings for me. But in the meantime I want to make it comfortably. I have been thinking that you ladies ought to stay here.”

“Tell us about these places you have found for us,” said Morwenna.

“They are shacks really. It’s a shanty town. You saw some of them coming in.”

“It is good of you to suggest we stay here,” I said. “Thank you, Ben. But we shall have to be together … and do as the others do.”

He looked at me ruefully.

“So we are to live in two of those shacks …”

“The very same. At one time they were just in tents … and then they put up these shacks. They are in demand. I had to arrange a few details to get even them for you. There are two side by side. I think you would like that. They are furnished with a bed, a few chairs and a table. There is a small rental. There is a division making a bedroom and a living room and there is a little wash house at the back. You have to get your water from the well. Water is rather precious here. The man who owns the places is another retired from the gold hunt. He finds his business of letting more profitable.”

I looked anxiously at Morwenna and thought of her condition.

“I am sure we shall be all right,” she said bravely.

“Well, you ladies are welcome to stay here whenever you like.”

“It is so kind and thoughtful of you,” said Morwenna, “but we should want to be with our husbands.”

“Somehow I thought you might. It is what they would expect of you here.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The rest of the community.” Ben frowned. “You see, you are all living close together. They would want you to be as they are. They’re a mixed lot … all sorts and conditions. Some are quite aristocratic … others … well, definitely not. You have to mix with them. There is a certain code. We don’t want trouble in the township. We have to keep a sharp look out for that sort of thing.”

“What is there?” asked Gervaise. “Some sort of vigilante?”

“You could say that. Well, you will see soon enough how it works. Now tomorrow you will want to see about your claim. What you will buy will be your piece of land. I daresay you will want to work it together. I should think that was the best thing to do. The Mandeville-Cartwright Plot. You’ll need two of you in any case. Well, we shall see.”

“I can’t wait to start digging,” said Gervaise.

Ben gave him a strange look. I knew he was finding it difficult to imagine Gervaise as a miner.

That night I slept peacefully in the luxurious bed and I awoke early. I could not stay in bed so I left Gervaise there and went into the alcove and washed; and then went downstairs.

I found my way to the dining room, opened the French windows and stepped out.

The early morning air was delightfully fresh. I stood there looking out over the garden to what Ben had called Morley country.

I was thinking of a man who had come out here and bought up the land cheaply and started by grazing his sheep and cattle, unperturbed by the desire to make an easy fortune.

There was a step beside me and I was startled out of my reverie.

It was Ben.

“Taking the air?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Good, eh?”

I agreed that it was.

“Are you going to like it here, Angel?”

“Isn’t it rather too soon to say?”

“Yes. You are going to find it rough, you know. Perhaps I should have given you more warning.”

“We didn’t think we were coming out to a place with myriads of servants to wait on us, you know.”

“Even so … Well, remember, there is always room for you at the Hall here if it gets too much for you.”

“We shall have to live like the others.”

“Just at the moment, perhaps.”

Justin came out to join us. He looked fresh and rested. Ben asked him if he had had a good night and he replied that he had indeed. He was all ready now to start on the enterprise.

We went in to breakfast.

That day was one of great activity and discovery. In spite of Ben’s warnings, Morwenna and I were a little taken aback at the sight of our new homes. Shack was an apt description. I could not quite see my elegant Gervaise fitting into such surroundings; but with the lust for gold on him, he made no complaint. This was going to be the greatest gamble of all.

There was a great deal of business to be done; and the men went off to choose their plot which they did with Ben’s help; and then they staked their claim. This took some time and while they were doing it, Morwenna and I made a minute examination of our new homes. When we had recovered from the initial dismay, we began to make plans for them. We decided that we could make them more attractive with perhaps a pretty curtain at the window and a few cushions. We looked at the township, which did not take us very long for it was just one street with its wooden platform serving as a sidewalk, and the rest was scattered shacks rather like our own. We discovered the wells. There were two. We went to the store and were helped by a certain Mrs. Bowles, who ran it with her husband—two more who, I garnered, had given up the search for gold and settled for work which, while it might not bring the ultimate reward, gave them a steady living. She was very friendly and advised us as to what we should need. She was talkative and, as with most people, she was more interested in herself than in others: and once she had satisfied herself as to what part of the Old Country we had come from—no need to ask for what purpose—she was satisfied. She told us that her husband, Arthur, had come out to find gold.

She gave me a little nudge. “These nuggets the size of your fist don’t grow on trees. It’s one in a million that finds them. After we’d gone three months without finding more than a few specks, I said to Arthur, ‘Enough’s enough. What they want here is a good store … and that’s what we are giving them.’ ”

She told us that at home she had been a midwife. I was delighted. I looked significantly at Morwenna.

“Not enough babies born here to make it a profession,” she said. “So I do it in-between-like. When I’m called Arthur or one of the women will see to the shop. It works.”

We said nothing about Morwenna’s condition then, but at least we knew there was an experienced woman close by. It was comforting.

During the next few days I learned a little about what life would be like here for Morwenna and me. We should be busy in the house. We had to cook which meant keeping a fire going in the outhouse-type kitchen. We had to get water from the well. We had to be ready to buy meat early in the morning, so that we got it before the flies did. We could not keep it but had to cook it immediately. It seemed that we—who had never done any domestic work in our lives—had a good deal to learn.

So had the men.

Ben explained to us that much of the gold to be found now was deep in the earth. That near the surface had already been mined. It would be found in channels which they called leads—and we must follow them. This could mean digging down to perhaps one hundred feet. It had been easier in the beginning when the leads had been close to the surface of the earth.

Shafts had to be sunk through the clay and gravel; and these shafts had to be timbered as there was a danger of the earth’s falling in and burying the miners alive.

Great heaps of what they called mullock—the earth which had been dug up—made hillocks at the sides of the mine shafts.

“Windlasses used to be placed on top of these,” said Ben, “but that was simply not good enough for deep sinking. There have to be men down in the mine digging and filling buckets with earth; these are drawn up by winding the windlasses. Then the soil has to be panned in the stream to see if it contains the magic metal.”

Neither Gervaise nor Justin lost any of their enthusiasm at the prospect of so much hard work. This was a gamble and I had come to realize that for Gervaise there was nothing in life which he found so irresistible.

They were out all day and came back to the shacks exhausted. Morwenna and I cooked the steaks for them in the open fire in our kitchens and we learned how to make dampers. There was beer to drink for we had a saloon run by another of the disillusioned miners.

A week passed and I was surprised how much had been accomplished and how quickly we accepted our way of life.

I had glimpsed Ben now and then. He always seemed pleased to see me. He called at the shack one day and asked if Morwenna and I would ride with him. He thought we ought to see something of the countryside. He had seen Gervaise and Justin that morning and they were hard at it. He grinned.

“They can’t stop working,” he said. “It’s always the way when people first come out. They are afraid to lose a minute because that might be the one minute when they find the six-hundred-ounce nugget. I told them I was going to call on you ladies and suggest I take you for a ride round.”

I said I should enjoy it and I thought Morwenna would too.

We found Morwenna lying down. She was having one of her bouts of sickness.

“Then it will be just the two of us,” said Ben. “Come on. I’ll find a horse for you.”

He had a sizable stable; he chose a mare which he thought would be suitable for me and saddled her.

“She’s yours,” he said, “for as long as you are here.”

“You are so generous.”

“What! To my old friend?”

I smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re here, Ben. I think I should be a little uneasy if you weren’t.”

“No need to think of that. I’m here. And here I stay.”

“Till you find your fortune.”

“That’s right. How’s that? Comfortable?”

“Very.”

“She’s a good old stager, aren’t you, Foxey?”

“Foxey! Is that her name?”

“Yes. She’s that reddish color and there’s a look of a fox about her … or there was when she was born. She’s a nice easygoing old thing.”

“You mean she’s sober and suitable for a greenhorn?”

“Exactly. You don’t want a wild thing when you are new to a country. This isn’t like home, you know. It’s all shrub for miles and miles. You could lose yourself here and wander round and round in circles. Now Foxey likes her home here in the stables and I wouldn’t mind taking a bet that if you were lost, she’d bring you back.”

We rode away from the township.

“This is like old times,” he said. “Remember how we used to ride together when I came to Cador?”

“Yes. Ben … do you ever think of …”

“You mean all that by the pool?”

“Yes,” I said. “It haunts me even now.”

“It is all over and done with.”

“I can’t forget what we did, Ben.”

“I know.”

“Does it still haunt you?”

“Not much.”

“In a way we killed him.”

He looked at me in amazement. “He fell and hit his head on a stone. That was what killed him. It was a good thing. He wouldn’t be able to murder any more innocent little girls.”

“But we … disposed of him.”

“Hm. Perhaps we should have left him there on the grass and reported it. That would have been the right thing to do, I suppose.”

“Yes, Ben, I wish we had.”

“There would have been a lot of questions. It would have been horrible for you … for me, too. No, what happened was best. He would have been hanged in any case.”

“I tell myself that.”

“My dear Angelet. I believe it has worried you terribly.”

“And you?”

“I don’t think about it. It happened. I knocked him down and he struck his head on a stone. It killed him. We put him in that pool. That finished it.”

“I wish I had felt like that.”

“My dear Angel, it was easier for me. I was not nearly raped and murdered. You were the one who suffered that nightmare.”

He had pulled up and was looking at me.

“It has been on your mind all this time. Oh, you poor little Angel.” He took my hand and kissed it. “I wish I’d known. I would have come to comfort you and made you see it as I did.”

“All the way from Australia?”

He looked at me solemnly. “From the ends of the Earth,” he said.

“Well, it would have been from the other side.”

We laughed and he said: “You don’t still feel guilty, do you?”

“I feel better and better. Seeing you helps.”

“I’m so glad you have come, Angel. I’ve thought a lot about you.”

“You mean because of that man?”