After three months of hard work and steady conduct Mick Maggott had broken out and had again taken to drinking champagne out of buckets.

Efforts were made, with infinite trouble, to reclaim him, which would be successful for a time,--and then again he would slip away into the mud.

And then Shand would sometimes go into the mud with him; and Shand, when drunk, would be more unmanageable even than Mick.

And this went on till Mick had--killed himself, and Dick Shand had disappeared.

'I grieve for the man as for a dear friend,' he said in one of his father's letters; 'for he has been as true to me as steel in all things, save drink; and I feel that I have learned under him the practical work of a gold-miner as it cannot be learned except by the unwearied attention of the teacher.
Could he have kept from spirits, this man would have made a large fortune and would have deserved it; for he was indefatigable and never-ending in resources.' Such was the history of poor Mick Maggott.
And Shand's history was told also.