VIII
Fate and a Family Council
Where for?" asked the guard. "Nymph Aurelia," I replied. "Change at Great Wivelton," he commented. The door was banged, the whistle sounded, and the important-looking train drew slowly along the platform.
All that I knew about Nymph Aurelia could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. Five years previously I was living at Woollambo just clearing expenses. I should perhaps explain that Woollambo is a rather out-of-the-way spot in the Mount Valkyria district of Western Australia. I was prospecting one day when a scrap of paper, blown from heaven knows where, came skimming along the ground. I secured it and found that it was a page from an English railway guide; all that the sun and rain had left on it were the words, "Nymph Aurelia (347). See trains to Great Wivelton and thence twice daily."
Your gold-seeker is necessarily something of a gambler, and therefore, I take it, more or less a creature of superstition. Probably I did not expect anything, but I released the paper again, pegged the exact direction it took, and then made 347 paces down the line. That incident marked the discovery of the celebrated Golden Nymph mine.
You will understand now why I was making a pilgrimage, as it were, to Nymph Aurelia. I was curious and not ungrateful. When I had seen the place I would
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