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Page 7

| Chapter One |

| Melbourne, Australia . . . 1856 |

| "Come, mates, and suck it up!" a voice yelled from outside York's Pub. "Come one, come all, and get your taste of champagne! Melbourne's finest!" |

| Barefoot, Sasha Seymour hurried to the pub window. She groaned as she stared outside at a shabbily dressed, thick-whiskered gold prospector just in from the fields, pouring one bottle of champagne after another into a horse trough. Though it had been five years since the first major sighting of gold in Australia, Melbourne was still a round-the-clock orgy conducted by the diggers, their mates, and their red-faced doxies drinking the gold away. |

| From morning till night, miners lurched in and out of the luxury shops, jamming huge, tawdry rings on their girls' fingers, lighting their pipes with notes, and pouring gold dust from their matchboxes |

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