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They were very hard up, for times were bad in the theatre world, and nobody seemed to want either one or the other. But no one knew it except themselves. They used to look helplessly into each other's eyes every morning, when he would come up from his dingy little home to where she lived, to see if, Micawber-like, anything had turned up.

"Nothing, Chicken?"—his name for her.

"Nothing, Hen!"—her name for him.

And another hopeless day would drag along.

So it went for months.

They had been pals for years—players together all over the world—won together—rejoiced together suffered together—and he had watched over her just like an old hen over her one chicken.

So she called him "Hen-mother," then "Hen" for short.

And now things looked very blue.

In early life he had been at sea, but drifted away into the Australian bush, while his ship lay at Sandridge Pier and a new rush broke out. The rush was way up north on the Palmer; plenty of gold and lots of fever; he got some of both, and it became a question whether to get rich and die or get out. So he "humped his drum" to. the coast. But he had seen gold. One day, camping at noon, he knocked a piece of stone off the cap of a reef which showed color freely.

Gold had come too late! He crawled away along the ghastly track through Maytown to Hell's Gates and on to Cooktown where he stowed away on a ship bound south.