"You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said. "I think I
took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still
hereabout." I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for
myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each. Then we sat down on
a log. Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them
was unusually tall. Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there?
His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a
lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a
prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a
dirty digger."
"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?" I asked.
"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it.
My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned. Mother was left with
eight children, and we were as poor as church mice. I was the
oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin
boy. I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed
about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes. My last port
there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named
Small. He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him
early and late. He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it
across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a
boarding-house.
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