Dave Regan -- lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently --

a bit of a `Flash Jack'; and Andy Page -- a character like
what `Kit' (in the `Old Curiosity Shop') might have been

after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial experience.
These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for it was all

shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down pot-holes
in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the sinking

was from ten to fifteen feet.
Dave had theories -- `ideers' or `notions' he called them; Jim Bently

laid claim to none -- he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog.
Andy Page -- by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan --

was simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions,
he was apt to be obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest,

and he had reverence for higher things.
Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon,

and next morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole
as close to the cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot

in the thick scrub, about three panels along the fence
from the farthest corner post from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet,

and found encouraging indications. They `drove' (tunnelled) inwards
at right angles to the fence, and at a point immediately beneath it

they were `making tucker'; a few feet farther and they were making wages.
The old alluvial bottom sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way,

was shelving, brownish, rotten rock.
Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave's drive,

lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave was supposed

to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been conscientious.
The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.

Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
timbering -- i.e., putting in a sapling prop -- here and there

where he worked wide; but the `payable dirt' ran in under the cemetery,
and in no other direction.

Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after tea,
as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,

sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim,
and started to tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.

This was Dave's theory -- drawn from a little experience and many long yarns
with old diggers: --

He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course,
covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains

to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter
running into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying

patches and streaks of `wash' or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on
he might strike it rich at any stroke of his pick; he might strike

the rich `lead' which was supposed to exist round there.
(There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere.

`There's gold in them ridges yet -- if a man can only git at it,'
says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)

Dave might strike a ledge, `pocket', or `pot-hole' holding wash
rich with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery,

found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.
He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few `colours',

and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery
towards which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts

across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking
twenty feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground

under the cemetery was rich -- maybe the richest in the district.
The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers -- besides,

the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched
the alluvial bottom. There was nothing strange in the fact

that none of the crowd of experienceddiggers who rushed the district
had thought of the cemetery and racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses,

the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from
sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill

in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'. Fossicking Chinamen
were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.

Dave reckoned to strike the `lead', or a shelf or ledge
with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet

within the cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining
was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects.

The theory might be right enough, but old volcanicdisturbances --
`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that sort of old thing --

upset everything. You might follow good gold along a ledge,
just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be

a hundred feet or so under your nose.
Had the `ground' in the cemetery been `open' Dave would have gone to the point

under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked
the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way -- it would have

saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along
a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But it was very doubtful

if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,

and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --
which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He wanted,

above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again,
the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,

rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong
for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.

`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.

Jim grumbled, in conclusion, --
`Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It's the shortest

and straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
Then there was another trouble. How were they to account

for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be
the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel

for shallow sinkings? Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt
away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;

but that would double the labour, and might lead to detection
sooner than anything else. There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats

every night. Then Dave got an idea.
There was supposed to exist -- and it has since been proved --

another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,
and several had tried for it. One, the town watchmaker,

had sunk all his money in `duffers', trying for the second bottom.
It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --

on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker, an Italian,
would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever

he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf, or false bottom,
thirty or forty feet down -- he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,

and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense
to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom,

and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms,
or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.

He was living in a lunaticasylum the last time I heard of him.
And the last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground

like a sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place
to put down a deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore.

But I'm right off the line again.
`Old Pinter', Ballarat digger -- his theory on second and other bottoms

ran as follows: --
`Ye see, THIS here grass surface -- this here surface with