Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/22

 But his face was mostly round and brown and jolly, his hands were always horny, and his beard grey. Sometimes he might have seemed strange and uncouth to us at first, but the old man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or did―they understood each other so well and we would soon take to this relic of our father's past, who would have fruit or lollies for us―strange that he always remembered them―and would surreptitiously slip 'shilluns' into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories about the old days, 'when me an' yer father was on the diggin's, an' you wasn't thought of, my boy.'

Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the forenoon or after dinner he and father would take a walk amongst the deserted shafts of Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old ground, and talk of past diggers' mistakes, and second bottoms, and feelers, and dips, and leads―also outcrops and absently pick up pieces of quartz and slate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in an abstracted manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some old lead they had worked on: 'Hogan's party was here on one side of us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting good gold and so was Hogan, and now, why the blanky blank weren't we on gold?' And the mate would always agree that there was 'gold in them ridges and gullies yet, if a man only had the money behind him to git at it.' And then perhaps the guv'nor would show him a spot where he intended to put down a shaft some day―the old man was always