"Let it be.

What we need here is colonists--small matter how we get 'em." Having had his say, Mahony scamped the recital of his own sufferings: the discomforts of the month he had been forced to spend in Melbourne getting his slender outfit together; the miseries of the tramp to Ballarat on delicate unused feet, among the riff-raff of nations, under a wan December sky, against which the trunks of the gum-trees rose whiter still, and out of which blazed a copper sun with a misty rim.

He scamped, too, his six-months' attempt at digging--he had been no more fit for the work than a child.

Worn to skin and bone, his small remaining strength sucked out by dysentery, he had in the end bartered his last pinch of gold-dust for a barrow-load of useful odds and ends; and this had formed the nucleus of his store.

Here, fortune had smiled on him; his flag hardly set a-flying custom had poured in, business gone up by leaps and bounds--"Although I have never sold so much as a pint of spirits, sir!" His profits for the past six months equalled a clear three hundred, and he had most of this to the good.