Slivers and his friend Villiers were by no means pleased with the existing state of things. In sending Vandeloup to the Pactolus claim, they had thought to compromise Madame Midas by placing her in the society of a young and handsome man, and counting on one of two things happening — either that Madame would fall in love with the attractive Frenchman, and seek for a divorce in order to marry him — which divorce Villiers would of course resist, unless she bribed him by giving him an interest in the Pactolus — or that Villiers could assume an injured tone and accuse Vandeloup of being his wife’s lover, and threaten to divorce her unless she made him her partner in the claim. But they had both reckoned wrongly, for neither of these things happened, as Madame was not in love with Vandeloup, and acted with too much circumspection to give any opportunity for scandal. Consequently, Slivers and Co., not finding matters going to their satisfaction, met one day at the office of the senior partner for the purpose of discussing the affair, and seeing what could be done towards bringing Madame Midas to their way of thinking.

Villiers was lounging in one of the chairs, dressed in a white linen suit, and looked rather respectable, though his inflamed face and watery eyes showed what a drunkard he was. He was sipping a glass of whisky and water and smoking his pipe, while he watched Slivers stumping up and down the office, swinging his cork arm vehemently to and fro as was his custom when excited. Billy sat on the table and eyed his master with a steady stare, or else hopped about among the papers talking to himself.

‘You thought you were going to do big things when you sent that jackadandy out to the Pactolus,’ said Villiers, after a pause.

‘At any rate, I did something,’ snarled Slivers, in a rage, ‘which is more than you did, you whisky barrel.’

‘Look here, don’t you call names,’ growled Mr Villiers, in a sulky tone. ‘I’m a gentleman, remember that.’

‘You were a gentleman, you mean,’ corrected the senior partner, with a malignant glance of his one eye. ‘What are you now?’

‘A stockbroker,’ retorted the other, taking a sip of whisky.

‘And a damned poor one at that,’ replied the other, sitting on the edge of the table, which position caused his wooden leg to stick straight out, a result which he immediately utilized by pointing it threateningly in the direction of Villiers.

‘Look here,’ said that gentleman, suddenly sitting up in his chair in a defiant manner, ‘drop these personalities and come to business; what’s to be done? Vandeloup is firmly established there, but there’s not the slightest chance of my wife falling in love with him.’

‘Wait,’ said Slivers, stolidly wagging his wooden leg up and down; ‘wait, you blind fool, wait.’

‘Wait for the waggon!’ shrieked Billy, behind, and then supplemented his remarks by adding, ‘Oh, my precious mother!’ as he climbed up on Slivers’ shoulder.

‘You always say wait,’ growled Villiers, not paying any attention to Billy’s interruption; ‘I tell you we can’t wait much longer; they’ll drop on the Devil’s Lead shortly, and then we’ll be up a tree.’

‘Then, suppose you go out to the Pactolus and see your wife,’ suggested Slivers.

‘No go,’ returned Villiers, gloomily, ‘she’d break my head.’

‘Bah! you ain’t afraid of a woman, are you?’ snarled Slivers, viciously.

‘No, but I am of McIntosh and the rest of them,’ retorted Villiers. ‘What can one man do against twenty of these devils. Why, they’d kill me if I went out there; and that infernal wife of mine wouldn’t raise her little finger to save me.’

‘You’re a devil!’ observed Billy, eyeing Villiers from his perch on Slivers’ shoulder. ‘Oh, Lord! ha! ha! ha!’ going into fits of laughter; then drawing himself suddenly up, he ejaculated ‘Pickles!’ and shut up.

‘It’s no good beating about the bush,’ said the wooden-legged man, getting down from the table. ‘You go out near the claim, and see if you can catch her; then give it to her hot.’

‘What am I to say?’ asked Villiers, helplessly.

Slivers looked at him with fiery scorn in his one eye.

‘Say!’ he shrieked, waving his cork arm, ‘talk about your darned honour! Say she’s dragging your noble name through the mud, and say you’ll divorce her if she don’t give you half a share in the Pactolus; that will frighten her.’

‘Pickles!’ again ejaculated the parrot.

‘Oh, no, it won’t,’ said Villiers; ‘Brag’s a good dog, but he don’t bite. I’ve tried that game on before, and it was no go.’

‘Then try it your own way,’ grumbled Slivers, sulkily, going to his seat and pouring himself out some whisky. ‘I don’t care what you do, as long as I get into the Pactolus, and once I’m in the devil himself won’t get me out.’

Villiers thought a moment, then turned to go.

‘I’ll try,’ he said, as he went out of the door, ‘but it’s no go, I tell you, she’s stone,’ and with a dismal nod he slouched away.

‘Stone, is she?’ cried the old man, pounding furiously on the floor with his wooden leg, ‘then I’d smash her; I’d crush her; I’d grind her into little bits, damn her,’ and overcome by his rage, Slivers shook Billy off his shoulder and took a long drink.

Meanwhile Mr Villiers, dreading lest his courage should give way, went to the nearest hotel and drank pretty freely so that he might bring himself into an abnormal condition of bravery. Thus primed, he went to the railway station, took the train to the Pactolus claim, and on arriving at the end of his journey had one final glass of whisky to steady his nerves.

The last straw, however, breaks the camel’s back, and this last drink reduced Mr Villiers to that mixed state which is known in colonial phrase as half-cocked. He lurched out of the hotel, and went in the direction of the Pactolus claim. His only difficulty was that, as a matter of fact, the solitary mound of white earth which marked the entrance to the mine, suddenly appeared before his eyes in a double condition, and he beheld two Pactolus claims, which curious optical delusion rather confused him, inasmuch as he was undecided to which he should go.

‘Itsh the drinksh,’ he said at length, stopping in the middle of the white dusty road, and looking preternaturally solemn; ‘it maksh me see double: if I see my wife, I’ll see two of her, then’— with a drunken giggle —‘I’ll be a bigamist.’

This idea so tickled him, that he commenced to laugh, and, finding it inconvenient to do so on his legs, he sat down to indulge his humour freely. A laughing jackass perched on the fence at the side of the road heard Mr Villiers’ hilarity, and, being of a convivial turn of mind itself, went off into fits of laughter also. On hearing this echo Mr Villiers tried to get up, in order to punish the man who mocked him, but, though his intentions were good, his legs were unsteady, and after one or two ineffectual attempts to rise he gave it up as a bad job. Then rolling himself a little to one side of the dusty white road, he went sound asleep, with his head resting on a tuft of green grass. In his white linen suit he was hardly distinguishable in the fine white dust of the road, and though the sun blazed hotly down on him and the mosquitos stung him, yet he slept calmly on, and it was not till nearly four o’clock in the afternoon that he woke up. He was more sober, but still not quite steady, being in that disagreeable temper to which some men are subject when suffering a recovery. Rising to his feet, with a hearty curse, he picked up his hat and put it on; then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he slouched slowly along, bent upon meeting his wife and picking a quarrel with her.

Unluckily for Madame Midas, she had that day been to Ballarat, and was just returning. She had gone by train, and was now leaving the station and walking home to the Pactolus along the road. Being absorbed in thought, she did not notice the dusty figure in front of her, otherwise she would have been sure to have recognised her husband, and would have given him a wide berth by crossing the fields instead of going by the road. Mr V............