Of All the Crowd That Assembled There

Lay preacher George Williams and Richard Lucas are vainly trying to muster support for miners' rights when news comes of the discovery of a large gold nugget. Constable Colvin has been assigned to escort Gold Commissioner Edmund Fitzalan, newly arrived from India, to the Crockers Gully goldfields. Fitzalan's duties overlap those of the Sergeant of Troopers, Robert McKellar, and there is an ill-disguised hostility between them due to their differing backgrounds. Fitzalan was impressed by Const. Colvin, newly appointed to McKellar's detachment, and appoints him as his orderly. Colvin, a notorious police spy despised by everyone, falls out of favour with Fitzalan when he is found drunk after making advances on Mary Dwyer, the proprietor of a sly grog tent. Also arriving on the goldfields is English lady Sarah Lucas, whose first duty is to bury her husband who died on the voyage to Australia.