"
I was looking round for Philip among the crowd when he came up, eager
and excited.
"I am thinking of going in to speak to the priest about that school,"
he said. "Would you have any objection? You know we are doing no
good in the gully, but I won't leave itif you think I had better not."
Philip was honourable; he would not dissolve our short partnership,
and leave me alone unless I was quite willing to let him go.
"Have you ever kept school before?"
"No, never. But I don't think the teaching will give me much
trouble. There can't be many children around here, and I can surely
teach them A B C and the Catechism."
Although I thought he had not given fortune a fair chance to bless
us, he looked so wistful and anxious that I had not the heart to say
no. Philip went into the tent, spoke to the priest, and became a
schoolmaster. I was then a solitary "hatter."
Next day a man came up the gully with a sack on his back with
something in it which he had found in a shaft. He thought the shaft
had not been dug down to the bedrock, and he would bottom it. He
bottomed on a corpse. The claim had been worked during the previous
summer by two men. One morning there was only one man on it; he said
his mate had gone to Melbourne, but he had in fact killed him during
the night, and dropped him down the hole.
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