CHAPTER I
THE PACTOLUS CLAIM
In the early days of Australia, when the gold fever was at its
height, and the marvellous Melbourne of to-day was more like an
enlarged camp than anything else, there was a man called Robert
Curtis, who arrived in the new land of Ophir with many others to
seek his fortune. Mr Curtis was of good family, but having been
expelled from Oxford for holding certain unorthodox opinions quite
at variance with the accepted theological tenets of the University,
he had added to his crime by marrying a pretty girl, whose face was
her fortune, and who was born, as the story books say, of poor but
honest parents. Poverty and honesty, however, were not sufficient
recommendations in the eyes of Mr Curtis, senior, to excuse such a
match; so he promptly followed the precedent set by Oxford, and
expelled his son from the family circle. That young gentleman and
his wife came out to Australia filled with ambitious dreams of
acquiring a fortune, and then of returning to heap coals of fire on
the heads of those who had turned them out.
These dreams, however, were destined never to be realised, for
within a year after their arrival in Melbourne Mrs Curtis died
giving birth to a little girl, and Robert Curtis found himself once
more alone in the world with the encumbrance of a small child. He,
however, was not a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and did not
show much outward grief, though, no doubt, he sorrowed deeply enough
for the loss of the pretty girl for whom he had sacrificed so much.
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