Have cabled you one thousand pounds today. Paris Bank. Well.HEN."
Then she cried.
She didn't know what to do she felt so happy. She had been a bit ill, but all that seemed to vanish and everyone at the theatre that night though she was "Splendid!"
The gully turned out to be a regular bonanza, and for weeks he worked on alone until he had stripped it from end to end. The creek near where he camped ran all year, and from morning till dark he panned and worked the "pay dirt," until there was no more to pan.
At first glance he used to hide the gold in his flock pillow, which had got into hard lumps itself, hardly distinguishable from the nuggets. And as the pile grew and there were no more soft spots for his head, he used to laugh and think, "I wonder if Chicken would rather I kept my pillow now than change it for a horse-hair one?
He didn't know how much gold there was. When the pillow got too full, he dug a hole under his camp and buried it all. Then he went in to Maytown and told the Warden he had found gold on the creek.
There was a rush and the papers heard of it. "Revival of the Palmer," announced one. "Big Find Near Maytown," another.
Hen pegged out a fifty-acre lease of the reef and called it the "Hen and Chicken." Then in a little time he got some gunny bags, filled them with stone from the reef and in each he put another bag full of the gold he had won from the gully and buried in his tent. Chinamen "packed" these bags down to the Laura River for him; from there they were never out of his reach to Cooktown, where he sailed on the same ship with them for Brisbane. Here he opened the big bags and took out the
