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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joe Wilson and His Mates
+
+Author: Henry Lawson
+
+Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1036]
+Release Date: September, 1997
+Last Updated: October 9, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan R. Light, and Gary M. Johnson
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+by Henry Lawson
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note: This etext was entered twice (manually) and
+electronically compared, by Alan R. Light This method assures a low rate
+of errors in the text--often lower than in the original. Special thanks
+go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for his assistance in
+procuring a copy of the original text, and to the readers of
+soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books (USENET newsgroups) for their
+help in preparing the glossary. Italicized words or phrases are
+capitalized. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and
+concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
+
+
+“A house where they took in cards on a tray” (from Joe Wilson’s
+Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a
+visitor’s card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family
+was out, to keep a record of the visit.
+
+Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day.
+It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in
+Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
+
+Gin: An obvious abbreviation of “aborigine”, it only refers to *female*
+aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered
+derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
+
+Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a “new chum” or
+newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
+The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A
+female station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo.
+
+Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans
+would say ‘Precocious’.
+
+‘Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally
+mistaken for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of
+North and South America, other than both being marsupials.
+
+Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a
+“public” bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always)
+dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
+
+Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack
+or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about
+10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but
+Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just “Tea” is used, it usually
+means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time.
+
+Tucker: Food.
+
+Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying
+drinks for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be
+confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
+
+Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
+
+Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
+
+Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is
+a castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was
+too heavy for horses. ‘Store’ may refer to those cattle, and their
+descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to
+settlers from the ‘Store’--hence, the standard draft animal.
+
+Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are reversed
+from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but
+December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the
+United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not
+even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed
+more by “dry” versus “wet” than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
+
+--A. L.
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+
+Author of “While the Billy Boils”, “On the Track and Over the
+Sliprails”, “When the World was Wide, and other verses”, “Verses,
+Popular and Humorous”, “Children of the Bush”, “When I was King, and
+other verses”, etc.
+
+
+
+
+The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+    Some carry their swags in the Great North-West
+     Where the bravest battle and die,
+    And a few have gone to their last long rest,
+     And a few have said “Good-bye!”
+     The coast grows dim, and it may be long
+     Ere the Gums again I see;
+    So I put my soul in a farewell song
+     To the chaps who barracked for me.
+
+    Their days are hard at the best of times,
+     And their dreams are dreams of care--
+    God bless them all for their big soft hearts,
+     And the brave, brave grins they wear!
+    God keep me straight as a man can go,
+     And true as a man may be!
+    For the sake of the hearts that were always so,
+     Of the men who had faith in me!
+
+    And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps
+     Of the blood of the Don’t-give-in!
+    The world will call it a boast, perhaps--
+     But I’ll win, if a man can win!
+    And not for gold nor the world’s applause--
+     Though ways to the end they be--
+    I’ll win, if a man might win, because
+     Of the men who believed in me.
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+     Prefatory Verses--
+
+       The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+             Part I.
+
+     Joe Wilson’s Courtship.
+     Brighten’s Sister-In-Law.
+     ‘Water Them Geraniums’.
+         I.  A Lonely Track.
+        II.  ‘Past Carin’’.
+     A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek.
+         I.  Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy.
+        II.  Joe Wilson’s Luck.
+       III.  The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice.
+        IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+             Part II.
+
+     The Golden Graveyard.
+     The Chinaman’s Ghost.
+     The Loaded Dog.
+     Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+         I.  Dave Regan’s Yarn.
+        II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+     The Ghostly Door.
+     A Wild Irishman.
+     The Babies in the Bush.
+     A Bush Dance.
+     The Buck-Jumper.
+     Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing.
+     At Dead Dingo.
+     Telling Mrs Baker.
+     A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+     The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+     Concluding Verses--
+       The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part I.
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson’s Courtship.
+
+
+
+There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he
+is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and ‘comes a man to-day,’ as
+my little Jim used to say. When they’re cooking something at home that
+he likes. When the ‘sandy-blight’ or measles breaks out amongst the
+children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill--or dies, it
+doesn’t matter which--‘and there ain’t no school.’ When a boy is naked
+and in his natural state for a warm climate like Australia, with three
+or four of his schoolmates, under the shade of the creek-oaks in the
+bend where there’s a good clear pool with a sandy bottom. When his
+father buys him a gun, and he starts out after kangaroos or ‘possums.
+When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle, of his own. When he has his
+arm in splints or a stitch in his head--he’s proud then, the proudest
+boy in the district.
+
+I wasn’t a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet
+by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn’t know what was the
+matter with me--or the world--but that’s got nothing to do with it.
+
+There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl
+loves him. When he’s just married. When he’s a lawful father for the
+first time, and everything is going on all right: some men make fools
+of themselves then--I know I did. I’m happy to-night because I’m out of
+debt and can see clear ahead, and because I haven’t been easy for a long
+time.
+
+But I think that the happiest time in a man’s life is when he’s courting
+a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn’t a thought
+for any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
+and keep them clean, for they’re about the only days when there’s a
+chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them
+and you’ll never regret it the longest day you live. They’re the days
+that the wife will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as
+well as in the blackest, and there shouldn’t be anything in those days
+that might hurt her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting
+days, you young chaps, for they will never come again.
+
+A married man knows all about it--after a while: he sees the woman world
+through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment’s pressure
+of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is inclined to be
+cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into awful messes
+sometimes, for a married man, if he’s inclined that way, has three times
+the chance with a woman that a single man has--because the married man
+knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what a woman means
+when she says something else; he knows just how far he can go; he can go
+farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a woman than an
+innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the married man
+is more decided with women; he takes them and things for granted. In
+short he is--well, he is a married man. And, when he knows all this, how
+much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says that he lost all
+the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot’s eye,--and there
+you have it.
+
+But it’s all new to a young chap, provided he hasn’t been a young
+blackguard. It’s all wonderful, new, and strange to him. He’s a
+different man. He finds that he never knew anything about women. He sees
+none of woman’s little ways and tricks in his girl. He is in heaven one
+day and down near the other place the next; and that’s the sort of thing
+that makes life interesting. He takes his new world for granted. And,
+when she says she’ll be his wife----!
+
+Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they’ve got a
+lot of influence on your married life afterwards--a lot more than you’d
+think. Make the best of them, for they’ll never come any more, unless
+we do our courting over again in another world. If we do, I’ll make the
+most of mine.
+
+But, looking back, I didn’t do so badly after all. I never told you
+about the days I courted Mary. The more I look back the more I come to
+think that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret in
+married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn’t walk to and fro
+in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes, or lie awake
+some nights thinking.... Ah well!
+
+I was between twenty-one and thirty then: birthdays had never been any
+use to me, and I’d left off counting them. You don’t take much stock in
+birthdays in the Bush. I’d knocked about the country for a few years,
+shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without
+getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of
+myself. I was reckoned ‘wild’; but I only drank because I felt less
+sensitive, and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when
+I had a few drinks: I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him.
+It’s better to be thought ‘wild’ than to be considered eccentric
+or ratty. Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank--as far as I could
+see--first because he’d inherited the gambling habit from his father
+along with his father’s luck: he’d the habit of being cheated and losing
+very bad, and when he lost he drank. Till drink got a hold on him. Jack
+was sentimental too, but in a different way. I was sentimental about
+other people--more fool I!--whereas Jack was sentimental about himself.
+Before he was married, and when he was recovering from a spree, he’d
+write rhymes about ‘Only a boy, drunk by the roadside’, and that sort of
+thing; and he’d call ‘em poetry, and talk about signing them and sending
+them to the ‘Town and Country Journal’. But he generally tore them up
+when he got better. The Bush is breeding a race of poets, and I don’t
+know what the country will come to in the end.
+
+Well. It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed in
+the Big Scrubs. Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong,
+and I was hanging round. Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done
+and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place
+at Haviland, a few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush
+carpenters, so we took the job to keep us going till something else
+turned up. ‘Better than doing nothing,’ said Jack.
+
+‘There’s a nice little girl in service at Black’s,’ he said. ‘She’s more
+like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant. She’s a real good
+little girl, and good-looking into the bargain. I hear that young Black
+is sweet on her, but they say she won’t have anything to do with him. I
+know a lot of chaps that have tried for her, but they’ve never had any
+luck. She’s a regular little dumpling, and I like dumplings. They call
+her ‘Possum. You ought to try a bear up in that direction, Joe.’
+
+I was always shy with women--except perhaps some that I should have
+fought shy of; but Jack wasn’t--he was afraid of no woman, good, bad, or
+indifferent. I haven’t time to explain why, but somehow, whenever a girl
+took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing
+with me, and felt nasty about it. I made one or two mistakes, but--ah
+well!
+
+‘My wife knows little ‘Possum,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll get her to ask her out
+to our place and let you know.’
+
+I reckoned that he wouldn’t get me there then, and made a note to be on
+the watch for tricks. I had a hopeless little love-story behind me, of
+course. I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love; few
+marry the first flame. Many a married man looks back and thinks it was
+damned lucky that he didn’t get the girl he couldn’t have. Jack had been
+my successful rival, only he didn’t know it--I don’t think his wife knew
+it either. I used to think her the prettiest and sweetest little girl in
+the district.
+
+But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at
+Haviland. He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in
+love with her at first sight. He took too many things for granted as far
+as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.
+
+‘You let me alone, and I’ll fix you up, Joe,’ he said, as we rode up
+to the station. ‘I’ll make it all right with the girl. You’re rather
+a good-looking chap. You’ve got the sort of eyes that take with girls,
+only you don’t know it; you haven’t got the go. If I had your eyes along
+with my other attractions, I’d be in trouble on account of a woman about
+once a-week.’
+
+‘For God’s sake shut up, Jack,’ I said.
+
+Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife? Perhaps not in
+England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood; but it’s
+different in Australia, where you may hail from two thousand miles away
+from where your wife was born, and yet she may be a countrywoman of
+yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too. I remember the
+first glimpse I got of Mary.
+
+It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all
+round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the
+back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight
+rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for
+kitchen, laundry, servants’ rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before
+the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored
+verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing up the
+verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine
+near the chimney. We rode up to the end of the verandah, and Jack called
+to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came trotting out; so it
+was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.
+
+More than once since then I’ve had a fancy to wonder whether the
+rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered ‘em both in the
+end. I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see. You
+do get strange fancies at odd times.
+
+Jack asked her if the boss was in. He did all the talking. I saw a
+little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue
+Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria.
+Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the
+biggest and brightest eyes I’d seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I
+found out afterwards, and bright as a ‘possum’s. No wonder they called
+her ‘’Possum’. I forgot at once that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest
+girl in the district. I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the
+fact that I was on horseback: most Bushmen look better on horseback. It
+was a black filly, a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls
+as I was myself. I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice
+to see if she knew me; but, when she looked, the filly took all my
+attention. Mary trotted in to tell old Black he was wanted, and after
+Jack had seen him, and arranged to start work next day, we started back
+to Solong.
+
+I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary--but he didn’t. He
+squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn’t say anything for a long
+time, and then he started talking of other things. I began to feel wild
+at him. He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way things were going.
+He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now; but, as he didn’t say
+so, I had no way of getting at him. I felt sure he’d go home and
+tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone on little ‘Possum at
+Haviland. That was all Jack’s way.
+
+Next morning we started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at
+the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down
+a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush
+before the old house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the
+laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did was to take
+out the sash. I’d noticed Jack yarning with ‘Possum before he started
+work. While I was at work at the window he called me round to the other
+end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when
+we’d done it, he took the tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb
+and stretched it and whispered into it--
+
+‘Don’t hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood and hard to
+get off--you’ll have to take the sash out very carefully so as not to
+break the glass.’ Then he stretched my ear a little more and put his
+mouth closer--
+
+‘Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,’ he said.
+
+I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to
+puzzle out what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.
+
+That window reflected the laundry window: the room was dark inside and
+there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary come to the
+laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back, thoughtfully
+watching me. The laundry window had an old-fashioned hinged sash, and I
+like that sort of window--there’s more romance about it, I think. There
+was thick dark-green ivy all round the window, and Mary looked prettier
+than a picture. I squared up my shoulders and put my heels together and
+put as much style as I could into the work. I couldn’t have turned round
+to save my life.
+
+Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.
+
+‘Well?’ he whispered.
+
+‘You’re a fool, Jack,’ I said. ‘She’s only interested in the old house
+being pulled down.’
+
+‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the business
+round the corner, and she ain’t interested when I’M round this end.’
+
+‘You seem mighty interested in the business,’ I said.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank in
+times of peace.’
+
+‘What made you think of the window?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh, that’s as simple as striking matches. I’m up to all those dodges.
+Why, where there wasn’t a window, I’ve fixed up a piece of looking-glass
+to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought I wasn’t
+looking.’
+
+He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this
+time she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and
+bread-and-butter. I was prizing off the strips that held the sash,
+very carefully, and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any
+reference to me. I’d never felt like that before, except once or
+twice. It was just as if I’d swallowed some clockwork arrangement,
+unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning. I reckon it
+was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up. He had a
+quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want to hit him
+sometimes--after you’d made an ass of yourself.
+
+I didn’t hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me
+out of the fix, but he didn’t.
+
+‘Mr--Mr Wilson!’ said Mary. She had a sweet voice.
+
+I turned round.
+
+‘I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.’
+
+‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry
+would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my
+shin and I stumbled--and that didn’t help matters much.
+
+‘Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?’ cried Mary.
+
+‘Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,’ I blurted out. ‘It takes
+more than that to hurt me.’
+
+I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken
+at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so
+that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too,
+like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and
+it’s a wonder we didn’t spill the whole lot between us. I got away
+from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a
+chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered
+round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he’s just made an
+ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you
+worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of
+a past crime would, I think.
+
+I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.
+
+‘Here, Jack!’ I said. ‘I’ve struck something all right; here’s some tea
+and brownie--we’ll hang out here all right.’
+
+Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it,
+just as if he’d paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that
+time.
+
+He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me
+wild at him. Presently he said, as if he’d just thought of it--
+
+‘That’s a very pretty little girl, ‘Possum, isn’t she, Joe? Do you
+notice how she dresses?--always fresh and trim. But she’s got on her
+best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it’s
+ironing-day, too. It can’t be on your account. If it was Saturday or
+Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps
+one of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong
+to-night. That’s what it is.’
+
+He gave me time to think over that.
+
+‘But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you
+offer to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in
+ahead of you? You miss all your chances, Joe.’
+
+Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have
+thought of it before.
+
+‘Look here, Jack,’ I said. ‘What have you been saying to that girl about
+me?’
+
+‘Oh, not much,’ said Jack. ‘There isn’t much to say about you.’
+
+‘What did you tell her?’
+
+‘Oh, nothing in particular. She’d heard all about you before.’
+
+‘She hadn’t heard much good, I suppose,’ I said.
+
+‘Well, that’s true, as far as I could make out. But you’ve only got
+yourself to blame. I didn’t have the breeding and rearing of you. I
+smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.’
+
+‘What did you tell her?’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
+
+‘Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t tell her anything much. I only
+answered questions.’
+
+‘And what questions did she ask?’
+
+‘Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn’t Joe Wilson; and
+I said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote
+poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.’
+
+‘Look here, Jack,’ I said, ‘I’ve two minds to punch your head.’
+
+‘And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,’ said Jack, ‘and I
+said you was, a bit. She said it seemed a pity. She asked me if it was
+true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said that I was sorry
+to say it was true. She asked me if you had any friends, and I said none
+that I knew of, except me. I said that you’d lost all your friends; they
+stuck to you as long as they could, but they had to give you best, one
+after the other.’
+
+‘What next?’
+
+‘She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as
+fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if
+you’d had an illness lately. And I said no--it was all on account of
+the wild, dissipated life you’d led. She said it was a pity you hadn’t
+a mother or a sister to look after you--it was a pity that something
+couldn’t be done for you, and I said it was, but I was afraid that
+nothing could be done. I told her that I was doing all I could to keep
+you straight.’
+
+I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true. And so she
+only pitied me after all. I felt as if I’d been courting her for six
+months and she’d thrown me over--but I didn’t know anything about women
+yet.
+
+‘Did you tell her I was in jail?’ I growled.
+
+‘No, by Gum! I forgot that. But never mind I’ll fix that up all right.
+I’ll tell her that you got two years’ hard for horse-stealing. That
+ought to make her interested in you, if she isn’t already.’
+
+We smoked a while.
+
+‘And was that all she said?’ I asked.
+
+‘Who?--Oh! ‘Possum,’ said Jack rousing himself. ‘Well--no; let me
+think---- We got chatting of other things--you know a married man’s
+privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl than a single man can. I
+got talking nonsense about sweethearts, and one thing led to another
+till at last she said, “I suppose Mr Wilson’s got a sweetheart, Mr
+Barnes?”’
+
+‘And what did you say?’ I growled.
+
+‘Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,’ said
+Jack. ‘You’d better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.’
+
+I wouldn’t take back the tray--but that didn’t mend matters, for Jack
+took it back himself.
+
+I didn’t see Mary’s reflection in the window again, so I took the window
+out. I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,
+as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool for
+thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought, except
+by way of kindness. Why! young Black and half a dozen better men than me
+were sweet on her, and young Black was to get his father’s station and
+the money--or rather his mother’s money, for she held the stuff (she
+kept it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time,
+and his mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn’t make
+any difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only
+just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship
+affair, as far as I was concerned--like my first love affair, that I
+haven’t told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls.
+You see, I didn’t know women then. If I had known, I think I might have
+made more than one mess of my life.
+
+Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some
+distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or
+four wet days, and we didn’t get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary
+till one day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the
+old-style sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was
+clean grass, so it didn’t matter much. I looked at Jack.
+
+‘Go and help her, you capital Idiot!’ he said, and I made the plunge.
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!’ said Mary, when I came to help. She had the
+broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off
+the ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets
+and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she
+did. But that’s the way with women--especially little women--some of ‘em
+would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on
+the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally
+touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right
+through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was.
+
+Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get
+hold of the loose end of the rope that’s hanging from the post with one
+hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and
+try to pull ‘em far enough together to make a knot. And that’s about
+all you do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off
+the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while
+Mary helped me with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken
+the prop from her, but he didn’t; he just went on with his work as if
+nothing was happening inside the horizon.
+
+She’d got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short
+now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down
+while she pegged a sheet she’d thrown over. I’d made the plunge now,
+so I volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw
+the things over and pegged out. As we got near the post and higher I
+straightened out some ends and pegged myself. Bushmen are handy at most
+things. We laughed, and now and again Mary would say, ‘No, that’s not
+the way, Mr Wilson; that’s not right; the sheet isn’t far enough over;
+wait till I fix it,’ &c. I’d a reckless idea once of holding her up
+while she pegged, and I was glad afterwards that I hadn’t made such a
+fool of myself.
+
+‘There’s only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,’ I said. ‘You
+can’t reach--I’ll fix ‘em up.’
+
+She seemed to give a little gasp.
+
+‘Oh, those things are not ready yet,’ she said, ‘they’re not rinsed,’
+and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me. The things looked
+the same to me as the rest on the line; they looked rinsed enough and
+blued too. I reckoned that she didn’t want me to take the trouble, or
+thought that I mightn’t like to be seen hanging out clothes, and was
+only doing it out of kindness.
+
+‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ I said, ‘let me hang ‘em out. I like it. I’ve
+hung out clothes at home on a windy day,’ and I made a reach into the
+basket. But she flushed red, with temper I thought, and snatched the
+basket away.
+
+‘Excuse me, Mr Wilson,’ she said, ‘but those things are not ready yet!’
+and she marched into the wash-house.
+
+‘Ah well! you’ve got a little temper of your own,’ I thought to myself.
+
+When I told Jack, he said that I’d made another fool of myself. He said
+I’d both disappointed and offended her. He said that my line was to
+stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.
+
+That evening when we’d started home, we stopped some time yarning with
+a chap we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary
+hanging out the rest of the things--she thought that we were out of
+sight. Then I understood why those things weren’t ready while we were
+round.
+
+For the next day or two Mary didn’t take the slightest notice of me,
+and I kept out of her way. Jack said I’d disillusioned her--and hurt her
+dignity--which was a thousand times worse. He said I’d spoilt the thing
+altogether. He said that she’d got an idea that I was shy and poetic,
+and I’d only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker.
+
+I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and
+it made me miserable. I got drunk two evenings running, and then, as it
+appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,
+when we were together--
+
+‘Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?’
+
+‘No,’ said Jack.
+
+‘Do you, Mr Wilson?’ she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on
+me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do a little.’ Then there was a silence, and I had to
+say something else.
+
+‘Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?’ I asked.
+
+‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I can’t get any one to play with me here of an
+evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.’ Then she said,
+‘It’s very dull these long winter evenings when you’ve got nothing to
+do. Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he’s away.’
+
+I saw Jack winking at me urgently.
+
+‘I’ll play a game with you, if you like,’ I said, ‘but I ain’t much of a
+player.’
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?’
+
+We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I
+had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from
+the pub.
+
+Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing
+herself. Women have ways--or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day the
+Boss came round and said to me--
+
+‘Look here, Joe, you’ve got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along
+your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You
+can have your tucker here.’
+
+He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old
+school, who’d shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn’t see
+why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times
+with any of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he’d
+married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she’d never
+got any Australian notions.
+
+Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed
+up for me. I’m not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that
+good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea
+I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don’t
+remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down
+first. There was about two feet between us. We got very chummy and
+confidential. She told me about her childhood and her father.
+
+He’d been an old mate of Black’s, a younger son of a well-to-do English
+family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia
+with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with
+more or less. They think they’re hard done by; they blue their thousand
+pounds in Melbourne or Sydney, and they don’t make any more nowadays,
+for the Roarin’ Days have been dead these thirty years. I wish I’d had a
+thousand pounds to start on!
+
+Mary’s mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected
+up there in the old days. She had a will of her own as far as I could
+understand, and bossed the home till the day of her death. Mary’s
+father made money, and lost it, and drank--and died. Mary remembered
+him sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head, and
+singing a German song (the ‘Lorelei’, I think it was) softly, as if to
+himself. Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept out of
+the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round (there was
+a little money coming from England).
+
+Mary told me all about her girlhood. She went first to live with a sort
+of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray, and
+then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first.
+I’d had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas of what
+the world ought to be, and she seemed interested.
+
+Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky until
+I remembered that I’d told her I had no one to care for me; then I
+suspected pity again.
+
+But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were
+dead, and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black,
+and things went on very satisfactorily.
+
+And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover
+and a looking-glass.
+
+I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was
+round, but Mary didn’t seem aware of it.
+
+We got very chummy. Mary wasn’t comfortable at Haviland. Old Black
+was very fond of her and always took her part, but she wanted to be
+independent. She had a great idea of going to Sydney and getting into
+the hospital as a nurse. She had friends in Sydney, but she had no
+money. There was a little money coming to her when she was twenty-one--a
+few pounds--and she was going to try and get it before that time.
+
+‘Look here, Miss Brand,’ I said, after we’d watched the moon rise. ‘I’ll
+lend you the money. I’ve got plenty--more than I know what to do with.’
+
+But I saw I’d hurt her. She sat up very straight for a while, looking
+before her; then she said it was time to go in, and said ‘Good-night, Mr
+Wilson.’
+
+I reckoned I’d done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards that she
+was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money might
+have been taken for a hint. She didn’t understand me yet, and I didn’t
+know human nature. I didn’t say anything to Jack--in fact about this
+time I left off telling him about things. He didn’t seem hurt; he worked
+hard and seemed happy.
+
+I really meant what I said to Mary about the money. It was pure good
+nature. I’d be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps, if
+I’d never grown any more selfish than I was that night on the wood-heap
+with Mary. I felt a great sympathy for her--but I got to love her. I
+went through all the ups and downs of it. One day I was having tea in
+the kitchen, and Mary and another girl, named Sarah, reached me a clean
+plate at the same time: I took Sarah’s plate because she was first, and
+Mary seemed very nasty about it, and that gave me great hopes. But all
+next evening she played draughts with a drover that she’d chummed up
+with. I pretended to be interested in Sarah’s talk, but it didn’t seem
+to work.
+
+A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good
+pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a
+target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or
+four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with
+the pleuro. The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle. Mary called ‘Mr
+Wilson’ to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking. If
+it hadn’t been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn’t have minded so much.
+
+Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went
+out ‘possum-shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn’t. I
+mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,
+and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer, and damned
+the world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was
+the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so
+miserable that I enjoyed it.
+
+I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary
+accidentally and had to say something.
+
+‘How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,’ she said. Then she asked, ‘How
+did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?’
+
+I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn’t make anything out of it.
+Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about
+this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and
+turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep
+an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened
+up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty,
+and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I’d slip down to the
+river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to
+look as if it hadn’t been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt
+so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one
+morning he remarked casually--
+
+‘I see you’ve made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying
+up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the
+wash-house.’
+
+I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such
+a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the
+hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.
+
+
+It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good
+day’s work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a
+yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along
+by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the
+bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the
+fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or
+two visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was
+there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps
+hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
+Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was
+a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was
+reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of
+Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest
+temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with
+him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had
+risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany
+loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the
+coach-house and across towards where we were--I suppose he was going to
+tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he
+disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the
+way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.
+
+‘What the hell’s Romany trying to do?’ said Jimmy Nowlett. ‘He couldn’t
+have fell off his horse--or else he’s drunk.’
+
+A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting,
+mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark and
+nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I’d
+stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
+forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line,
+and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows and scraped
+him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised
+voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn’t hurt, but the
+sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who’d put up that
+bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while.
+
+‘What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?’ asked Jim Bullock
+presently. ‘Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?’
+
+‘Why didn’t you ask the horse to go round?’ asked Dave Regan.
+
+‘I’d only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!’ growled Romany.
+
+‘Well,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if we’d put up a sign to beware of the line
+you couldn’t have seen it in the dark.’
+
+‘Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,’ said Dave Regan.
+‘But why didn’t you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along?
+It wouldn’t have jolted yer so much.’
+
+All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes.
+But I didn’t take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the
+Jackaroo.
+
+‘I’ve heard of men getting down over their horse’s head,’ said
+Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way--‘in fact I’ve done it
+myself--but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse’s rump.’
+
+But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play
+the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.
+
+Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice,
+and I’d have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn’t been listening
+too. We listened in silence until she’d finished.
+
+‘That gal’s got a nice voice,’ said Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+‘Nice voice!’ snarled Romany, who’d been waiting for a chance to be
+nasty. ‘Why, I’ve heard a tom-cat sing better.’
+
+I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The
+chaps didn’t like Romany’s talk about ‘Possum at all. They were all fond
+of her: she wasn’t a pet or a tomboy, for she wasn’t built that way,
+but they were fond of her in such a way that they didn’t like to hear
+anything said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a
+lot. Perhaps the single men didn’t care to speak for fear that it would
+be said that they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a
+big puff at his pipe and spoke--
+
+‘I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?’
+
+‘Oh, she tried it on, but it didn’t go,’ said Romany. ‘I’ve met her sort
+before. She’s setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run
+after anything with trousers on,’ and he stood up.
+
+Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and
+whispered, ‘Sit still, Joe, damn you! He’s too good for you!’ but I was
+on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and
+wrenched me off the log and set me there.
+
+‘You’re a damned crawler, Romany!’ I said.
+
+Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us
+before a blow got home. ‘Hold on, you damned fools!’ they said. ‘Keep
+quiet till we get away from the house!’ There was a little clear flat
+down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down
+there and have it out.
+
+Now I never was a fighting man; I’d never learnt to use my hands. I
+scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I
+wouldn’t bother about it. He’d say, ‘You’ll get into a fight some day,
+Joe, or out of one, and shame me;’ but I hadn’t the patience to learn.
+He’d wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to
+get excited, and I didn’t want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before
+he was married Jack was always getting into fights--he generally tackled
+a better man and got a hiding; but he didn’t seem to care so long as
+he made a good show--though he used to explain the thing away from a
+scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a
+horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I
+think I’d sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him
+with fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, ‘Don’t shoot me
+in the face!’ Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed
+brutal to me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what
+the matter was. Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the
+river, and he couldn’t help hanging out blue lights.
+
+‘Why didn’t you let me teach you to use your hands?’ he said. ‘The
+only chance now is that Romany can’t fight after all. If you’d waited
+a minute I’d have been at him.’ We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack
+started giving me points about lefts and rights, and ‘half-arms’, and
+that sort of thing. ‘He’s left-handed, and that’s the worst of it,’ said
+Jack. ‘You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will
+take him on afterwards.’
+
+But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since
+I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it--sort of dulled. If the
+chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of
+that, but it didn’t make any difference with me then; I knew it was a
+thing they couldn’t understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But
+I knew one thing that they didn’t know. I knew that it was going to be
+a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and
+imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the
+real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’ll have
+to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It’s the turning-point of your
+life.’ If I won the fight, I’d set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I’d
+leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I
+used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness
+of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis--Jack was the reverse. I
+looked ahead: I wouldn’t be able to marry a girl who could look back and
+remember when her husband was beaten by another man--no matter what sort
+of brute the other man was.
+
+I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering
+instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it
+was all lost on me.
+
+Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing
+under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the
+river in the moonlight to fight for her.
+
+It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off
+our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed
+an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack
+would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would
+fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn’t mind obliging for
+one; he was a mate of Jack’s, but he didn’t mind who he fought so long
+as it was for the sake of fair play--or ‘peace and quietness’, as he
+said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack
+backed me.
+
+As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one
+arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and
+then rush and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length
+of reach, and my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early
+in the round. But it did me good; the blow and the look I’d seen
+in Romany’s eyes knocked all the sentiment out of me. Jack said
+nothing,--he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first.
+Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me, and made a
+better show, but I went down in the end.
+
+I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.
+
+‘How are you, Joe?’ he whispered.
+
+‘I’m all right,’ I said.
+
+‘It’s all right,’ whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be
+hanged, but it would soon be all over. ‘He can’t use his hands much more
+than you can--take your time, Joe--try to remember something I told you,
+for God’s sake!’
+
+When two men fight who don’t know how to use their hands, they stand a
+show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps,
+but mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump
+round--he was an excitable little fellow.
+
+‘Fight! you----!’ he yelled. ‘Why don’t you fight? That ain’t fightin’.
+Fight, and don’t try to murder each other. Use your crimson hands or, by
+God, I’ll chip you! Fight, or I’ll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of
+you;’ then his language got awful. They said we went like windmills, and
+that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock
+if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.
+
+Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head
+and didn’t matter much--I had a good thick skull. And I had one good eye
+yet.
+
+‘For God’s sake, hit him!’ whispered Jack--he was trembling like a leaf.
+‘Don’t mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a
+blow home, for God’s sake! Make a good show this round and I’ll stop the
+fight.’
+
+That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.
+
+I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn’t going to be beaten while
+I could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There’s
+nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning
+more in three seconds than Jack’s sparring could have taught me in three
+weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don’t--not
+till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn’t altogether an
+animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.
+
+While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still
+air the sound of Mary’s voice singing up at the house. I thought hard
+into the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that
+was passing.
+
+I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt
+such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I’d put
+out my wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back.
+
+I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as
+he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said
+afterwards that he didn’t speak because he thought a word might spoil
+it.
+
+I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all
+right when he lifted me.
+
+Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated
+us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the
+novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
+
+‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel
+against a tuft of grass.
+
+‘Shake hands,’ yelled Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
+
+‘If yer don’t shake hands with Wilson, I’ll lamb yer!’ howled Jimmy; but
+Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow
+and rode off.
+
+I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard
+him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim
+said--
+
+‘If I thought that, I’d kill him.’
+
+‘What is it?’ asked Jack.
+
+Jim held up a butcher’s knife. It was common for a man to carry a
+butcher’s knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.
+
+‘Why did you let your man fight with a butcher’s knife in his belt?’
+asked Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we
+decided it that way.
+
+‘Any way,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if he’d stuck Joe in hot blood before us
+all it wouldn’t be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back
+in the dark. But you’d best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or
+two, Joe. That chap’s got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the
+best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this
+dark from the gals.’
+
+Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced
+at him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that
+Jack had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I’m sorry I
+said it.
+
+‘What’s up, Jack?’ I asked.
+
+‘Nothing,’ said Jack.
+
+‘What’s up, you old fool?’ I said.
+
+‘Nothing,’ said Jack, ‘except that I’m damned proud of you, Joe, you
+old ass!’ and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake.
+‘I didn’t know it was in you, Joe--I wouldn’t have said it before,
+or listened to any other man say it, but I didn’t think you had the
+pluck--God’s truth, I didn’t. Come along and get your face fixed up.’
+
+We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one
+of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.
+
+Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me.
+He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good
+many--he’d been mended himself so often.
+
+While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet
+amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl’s
+voice whispered, ‘Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know,--I might be able
+to help.’
+
+It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there
+was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild.
+
+‘What is it, Jack?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, ‘only that damned slut of a half-caste cook
+overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany’s knife
+got out of the sheath, and she’s put a nice yarn round amongst the
+girls. There’s a regular bobbery, but it’s all right now. Jimmy
+Nowlett’s telling ‘em lies at a great rate.’
+
+Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and
+brown paper was handed in.
+
+One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had
+a quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I
+reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he
+said he’d be round early in the morning, and went home.
+
+I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn’t feel proud of the affair at
+all. I thought it was a low, brutal business all round. Romany was a
+quiet chap after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps
+he’d had a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn’t
+know anything about. He seemed a lonely man. I’d gone through enough
+myself to teach me not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I
+felt about the matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake
+of bothering about ‘feelings’ in another party that hadn’t any feelings
+at all--perhaps I didn’t; but it’s generally best to chance it on the
+kind side in a case like this. Altogether I felt as if I’d made another
+fool of myself and been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and
+went to sleep.
+
+About daylight I woke and heard Jack’s horse on the gravel. He came
+round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly,
+a girl screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and ‘lastic-side boots and
+hurried out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone
+step at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was
+off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder.
+She kept saying, ‘I thought you were----! I thought you were----!’ I
+didn’t catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was
+lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded
+and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a
+cunning old hawk that they called ‘’Tarnal Death’, and that used to be
+always after the chickens.
+
+When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper, and her eyes
+seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.
+
+‘Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,’ she gasped. Then she gave a little
+ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.
+
+‘Oh, I’m a little fool!’ she said quickly. ‘I thought I heard old
+‘Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing
+if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly
+so as not to wake Sarah. And then you came round the corner and
+frightened me. I don’t know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.’
+
+‘Never mind,’ said Jack. ‘You go and have a sleep, or you won’t be
+able to dance to-night. Never mind the gun--I’ll put that away.’ And he
+steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah where
+she slept with one of the other girls.
+
+‘Well, that’s a rum start!’ I said.
+
+‘Yes, it is,’ said Jack; ‘it’s very funny. Well, how’s your face this
+morning, Joe?’
+
+He seemed a lot more serious than usual.
+
+We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed and
+getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles, making
+seats, &c. I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could. One side
+of my face was a sight and the other wasn’t too classical. I felt as if
+I had been stung by a swarm of bees.
+
+‘You’re a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,’ said
+Jimmy Nowlett--he was going to play the accordion that night. ‘You ought
+to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face’ll go down
+in about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight
+straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy--so
+I didn’t lose much beauty by it.’
+
+When we’d done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said--
+
+‘Look here, Joe! if you won’t come to the dance to-night--and I can’t
+say you’d ornament it--I tell you what you’ll do. You get little Mary
+away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll--and act like a man. The
+job’s finished now, and you won’t get another chance like this.’
+
+‘But how am I to get her out?’ I said.
+
+‘Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
+near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.’
+
+‘What good’ll that do?’
+
+‘Never you mind. You just do as you’re told, that’s all you’ve got to
+do,’ said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.
+
+After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The
+first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the
+second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking
+excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see
+sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary
+black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly
+that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor
+Romany. I went away and walked about four miles down the river road,
+getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding
+along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought
+that there wasn’t much to choose between us as far as happiness was
+concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling
+like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him.
+
+But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
+and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at
+the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn’t expect anything, in
+spite of what Jack said.
+
+I didn’t like the idea of hanging myself: I’d been with a party who
+found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round
+where he was. And I’d helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river
+in a flood, and they weren’t sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity
+that a chap couldn’t lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in
+the moonlight and die just by thinking of it--and die with his eyes
+and mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn’t make a beautiful
+corpse, anyway it went, with the face I had on me.
+
+I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,
+and my heart gave a jump. And I gave a start too.
+
+‘Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?’ said a timid little voice.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is that you, Mary?’
+
+And she said yes. It was the first time I called her Mary, but she did
+not seem to notice it.
+
+‘Did I frighten you?’ I asked.
+
+‘No--yes--just a little,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there was any
+one----’ then she stopped.
+
+‘Why aren’t you dancing?’ I asked her.
+
+‘Oh, I’m tired,’ she said. ‘It was too hot in the wool-shed. I thought
+I’d like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.’
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it must be hot in the wool-shed.’
+
+She stood looking out over the willows. Presently she said, ‘It must be
+very dull for you, Mr Wilson--you must feel lonely. Mr Barnes said----’
+Then she gave a little gasp and stopped--as if she was just going to put
+her foot in it.
+
+‘How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!’ she said.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘doesn’t it? Supposing we have a stroll by the river.’
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson. I’d like it very much.’
+
+I didn’t notice it then, but, now I come to think of it, it was a
+beautiful scene: there was a horseshoe of high blue hills round behind
+the house, with the river running round under the slopes, and in front
+was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges, and a soft blue
+peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.
+
+I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side
+turned to her. We walked down by the river, and didn’t say anything for
+a good while. I was thinking hard. We came to a white smooth log in a
+quiet place out of sight of the house.
+
+‘Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,’ I said.
+
+‘If you like, Mr Wilson,’ she said.
+
+There was about a foot of log between us.
+
+‘What a beautiful night!’ she said.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘isn’t it?’
+
+Presently she said, ‘I suppose you know I’m going away next month, Mr
+Wilson?’
+
+I felt suddenly empty. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’
+
+‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I thought you knew. I’m going to try and get into the
+hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn’t come off I’ll
+get a place as assistant public-school teacher.’
+
+We didn’t say anything for a good while.
+
+‘I suppose you won’t be sorry to go, Miss Brand?’ I said.
+
+‘I--I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s been so kind to me here.’
+
+She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened.
+I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice it. In
+fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.
+
+‘So you think you’ll be sorry to go away?’ I said.
+
+‘Yes, Mr Wilson. I suppose I’ll fret for a while. It’s been my home, you
+know.’
+
+I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn’t
+pretend not to know it was there. But she didn’t seem to notice.
+
+‘Ah, well,’ I said, ‘I suppose I’ll be on the wallaby again next week.’
+
+‘Will you, Mr Wilson?’ she said. Her voice seemed very soft.
+
+I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm. My heart was going like
+clockwork now.
+
+Presently she said--
+
+‘Don’t you think it’s time to go back now, Mr Wilson?’
+
+‘Oh, there’s plenty of time!’ I said. I shifted up, and put my arm
+farther round, and held her closer. She sat straight up, looking right
+in front of her, but she began to breathe hard.
+
+‘Mary,’ I said.
+
+‘Yes,’ she said.
+
+‘Call me Joe,’ I said.
+
+‘I--I don’t like to,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it would be right.’
+
+So I just turned her face round and kissed her. She clung to me and
+cried.
+
+‘What is it, Mary?’ I asked.
+
+She only held me tighter and cried.
+
+‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Ain’t you well? Ain’t you happy?’
+
+‘Yes, Joe,’ she said, ‘I’m very happy.’ Then she said, ‘Oh, your poor
+face! Can’t I do anything for it?’
+
+‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s all right. My face doesn’t hurt me a bit now.’
+
+But she didn’t seem right.
+
+‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Are you tired? You didn’t sleep last
+night----’ Then I got an inspiration.
+
+‘Mary,’ I said, ‘what were you doing out with the gun this morning?’
+
+And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.
+
+‘I couldn’t sleep--I was frightened. Oh! I had such a terrible dream
+about you, Joe! I thought Romany came back and got into your room and
+stabbed you with his knife. I got up and dressed, and about daybreak
+I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the
+wall--and--and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me. He’s
+something like Romany, you know.’
+
+Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.
+
+And, oh, but wasn’t I happy walking home with Mary that night! She was
+too little for me to put my arm round her waist, so I put it round
+her shoulder, and that felt just as good. I remember I asked her who’d
+cleaned up my room and washed my things, but she wouldn’t tell.
+
+She wouldn’t go back to the dance yet; she said she’d go into her room
+and rest a while. There was no one near the old verandah; and when she
+stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level with my shoulder.
+
+‘Mary,’ I whispered, ‘put your arms round my neck and kiss me.’
+
+She put her arms round my neck, but she didn’t kiss me; she only hid her
+face.
+
+‘Kiss me, Mary!’ I said.
+
+‘I--I don’t like to,’ she whispered.
+
+‘Why not, Mary?’
+
+Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing.
+I’m not sure to this day which it was.
+
+‘Why won’t you kiss me, Mary? Don’t you love me?’
+
+‘Because,’ she said, ‘because--because I--I don’t--I don’t think it’s
+right for--for a girl to--to kiss a man unless she’s going to be his
+wife.’
+
+Then it dawned on me! I’d forgot all about proposing.
+
+‘Mary,’ I said, ‘would you marry a chap like me?’
+
+And that was all right.
+
+     *****
+
+Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and
+didn’t take the slightest notice of the other girls’ astonishment.
+
+But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same
+evening. I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on
+the quiet with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went
+away, I sat down.
+
+‘Well, Joe,’ said Black, ‘I see somebody’s been spoiling your face for
+the dance.’ And after a bit he said, ‘Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want
+another job? If you do, you’ll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob’ (Bob was
+his eldest son); ‘they’re managing the station for me now, you know.’ He
+could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.
+
+‘No,’ I said; ‘it’s not that, Boss.’
+
+‘Well, what is it, Joe?’
+
+‘I--well the fact is, I want little Mary.’
+
+He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.
+
+‘What did you say, Boss?’ I said.
+
+‘Nothing, Joe,’ he said. ‘I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn’t be
+any use. My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.’
+
+I waited a good while for him to speak.
+
+‘Well, Boss,’ I said, ‘what about Mary?’
+
+‘Oh! I suppose that’s all right, Joe,’ he said. ‘I--I beg your pardon. I
+got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.’
+
+
+
+
+Brighten’s Sister-In-Law.
+
+
+Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say ‘on’
+Gulgong--and old diggers still talked of being ‘on th’ Gulgong’--though
+the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was
+only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the
+last of the great alluvial ‘rushes’ of the ‘roaring days’--and dreary
+and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression ‘on’ came
+from being on the ‘diggings’ or goldfield--the workings or the goldfield
+was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them--not in
+nor at ‘em.
+
+Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came----His name
+wasn’t ‘Jim’, by the way, it was ‘John Henry’, after an uncle godfather;
+but we called him Jim from the first--(and before it)--because Jim was a
+popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full
+of good-hearted scamps called Jim.
+
+We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,
+and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did
+a bit of digging [‘fossicking’, rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of
+fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,--anything, just to
+keep the billy boiling.
+
+We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every
+one of them, and we had most of them lanced--couldn’t pull him through
+without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before
+the tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky
+little chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor
+was lancing his gum: he used to say ‘tar’ afterwards, and want to bring
+the lance home with him.
+
+The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim
+out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I
+had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,
+and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the
+contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of
+a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our
+goods and chattels anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home
+an hour when Jim took convulsions for the first time.
+
+Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn’t want to see it
+again: it plays the devil with a man’s nerves. I’d got the beds fixed up
+on the floor, and the billies on the fire--I was going to make some tea,
+and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night--when Jim
+(he’d been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to
+sleep)--Jim, he screamed out twice. He’d been crying a good deal, and
+I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me) or I’d have
+noticed at once that there was something unusual in the way the child
+cried out: as it was I didn’t turn round till Mary screamed ‘Joe!
+Joe!’ You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or
+dying--short, and sharp, and terrible. ‘Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our
+child! Get the bath, quick! quick! it’s convulsions!’
+
+Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother’s
+arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed--a thing I saw twice
+afterwards, and don’t want ever to see again.
+
+I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the
+woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run
+for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into
+a hot bath and pulled him through.
+
+The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed
+with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and
+Mary’s screams out of my head and fell asleep.
+
+You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
+for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
+there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
+to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our
+wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had
+to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn’t so bad as the
+first, and we pulled him through.
+
+You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don’t want to. It must
+be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an
+hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
+or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty
+high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he
+cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I’d jump: I was
+always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or
+feeling his limbs to see if he was ‘limp’ yet. Mary and I often laughed
+about it--afterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights
+after Jim’s first attack I’d be just dozing off into a sound sleep,
+when I’d hear him scream, as plain as could be, and I’d hear Mary cry,
+‘Joe!--Joe!’--short, sharp, and terrible--and I’d be up and into their
+room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I’d feel
+Jim’s head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire
+and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights
+I was like that all night, and I’d feel relieved when daylight came.
+I’d be in first thing to see if they were all right; then I’d sleep till
+dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down
+about that time: I was worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up
+and never got paid for; and, besides, I’d been pretty wild before I met
+Mary.
+
+I was fighting hard then--struggling for something better. Both Mary and
+I were born to better things, and that’s what made the life so hard for
+us.
+
+Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have
+his teeth lanced in time.
+
+It used to hurt and worry me to see how--just as he was getting fat
+and rosy and like a natural happy child, and I’d feel proud to take him
+out--a tooth would come along, and he’d get thin and white and pale and
+bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. We’d say, ‘He’ll be safe when he gets his
+eye-teeth’: but he didn’t get them till he was two; then, ‘He’ll be safe
+when he gets his two-year-old teeth’: they didn’t come till he was going
+on for three.
+
+He was a wonderful little chap--Yes, I know all about parents thinking
+that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small for his
+age, friends will say that small children make big men; that he’s a
+very bright, intelligent child, and that it’s better to have a bright,
+intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is
+dull and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest
+men--and all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of
+clatter--took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don’t
+think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was
+everybody’s favourite. They spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about
+bringing up a child. I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. She’d say,
+‘Put that’ (whatever it was) ‘out of Jim’s reach, will you, Joe?’ and
+I’d say, ‘No! leave it there, and make him understand he’s not to have
+it. Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a
+regular hour,’ I’d say. Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. She’d
+say that I forgot he was only a baby: but I held that a baby could be
+trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.
+
+But, after all, what are you to do? You’ll see a boy that was brought up
+strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the
+hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when
+a child is delicate--and you might lose him any day--you don’t like to
+spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as delicate
+children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the same
+night he took convulsions, or something, and died--how’d you feel about
+it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than you can
+tell what some women are going to say or do.
+
+I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes I’d sit
+and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he
+talked, he’d make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all
+things, and I’d get him a clean new clay and he’d sit by my side, on the
+edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the
+evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do
+it. He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn’t quite the
+thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn’t smoke tobacco
+yet: he made the best he could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe
+he wouldn’t have a new one, and there’d be a row; the old one had to be
+mended up, somehow, with string or wire. If I got my hair cut, he’d
+want his cut too; and it always troubled him to see me shave--as if he
+thought there must be something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have
+to be shaved too. I lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him:
+he sat through it as solemn as an owl, but didn’t seem to appreciate
+it--perhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldn’t possibly be the
+real thing. He felt his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped
+off, and whimpered, ‘No blood, daddy!’
+
+I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving.
+
+Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his
+lingo better than I did.
+
+But I wasn’t always at ease with him. Sometimes he’d sit looking into
+the fire, with his head on one side, and I’d watch him and wonder what
+he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman
+was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:
+sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he’d glance round just as if to see
+what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.
+
+I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or
+Asiatic--something older than our civilisation or religion--about
+old-fashioned children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I
+thought would understand--and as it happened she had an old-fashioned
+child, with very slant eyes--a little tartar he was too. I suppose
+it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal
+theory, and set me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me
+mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husband--and all their
+tribe. It wasn’t an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row
+hasn’t been fixed up yet. There were some Chinamen in the district.
+
+I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,
+near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the
+Cudgeegong river--some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred
+from the coast--and ‘carrying’ was good then. I had a couple of
+draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking,
+and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon
+cheap, tinkered it up myself--christened it ‘The Same Old Thing’--and
+started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the
+bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the
+one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling
+wilderness. It wasn’t much of a team. There were the two heavy horses
+for ‘shafters’; a stunted colt, that I’d bought out of the pound for
+thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with
+points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the
+grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along
+in Cob & Co.’s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn’t
+belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.
+And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It
+was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and
+freight rates were high. So I got along.
+
+Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I’d sink a shaft somewhere,
+prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out
+of that.
+
+I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm--that an old mate of
+mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up--about thirty
+miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey’s Creek. (The places
+were all called Lahey’s Creek, or Spicer’s Flat, or Murphy’s Flat, or
+Ryan’s Crossing, or some such name--round there.) I reckoned I’d have
+a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had a
+dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctor--or a
+good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Lahey’s
+Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Mary’s--a young scamp
+(his name was Jim, too, and we called him ‘Jimmy’ at first to make room
+for our Jim--he hated the name ‘Jimmy’ or James). He came to live with
+us--without asking--and I thought he’d find enough work at Lahey’s
+Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn’t to be depended on much--he
+thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, ‘to have a look
+at the country’--but he was fond of Mary, and he’d stay by her till I
+got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road. He would
+be a protection against ‘sundowners’ or any shearers who happened to
+wander that way in the ‘D.T.’s’ after a spree. Mary had a married sister
+come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her
+and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or
+so--till we got settled down at Lahey’s Creek. They were newly married.
+
+Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end
+of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn’t too
+well--and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn’t time
+to get them cut, so we let Jim’s time run on a week or so longer, till I
+happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of
+flour for Lahey’s Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grand--no
+chance of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did--I would
+only camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me.
+
+Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned
+that he used to frighten me sometimes--I’d almost think that there was
+something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any
+notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.
+There’s always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish
+either) who’ll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks
+as, ‘You’ll never rear that child--he’s too bright for his age.’ To the
+devil with them! I say.
+
+But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I
+often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much
+to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung
+their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
+
+I don’t believe in parents talking about their own children
+everlastingly--you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are
+generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not.
+
+But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,
+was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
+
+For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about
+his adventures at his auntie’s.
+
+‘But they spoilt me too much, dad,’ he said, as solemn as a native bear.
+‘An’ besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!’
+
+I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a
+good deal of Jim’s time.
+
+Sometimes he’d jolt me, the way he talked; and other times I’d have
+to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from
+laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said--
+
+‘What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and
+going on that way for, dad? Why don’t you tell me something?’
+
+‘Tell you what, Jim?’
+
+‘Tell me some talk.’
+
+So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up,
+I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination--for Jim was a
+terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn’t think
+twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once
+he said--
+
+‘I’m glad you took me home with you, dad. You’ll get to know Jim.’
+
+‘What!’ I said.
+
+‘You’ll get to know Jim.’
+
+‘But don’t I know you already?’
+
+‘No, you don’t. You never has time to know Jim at home.’
+
+And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart
+all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from
+Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and
+when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired
+and worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of
+Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. ‘You never take notice
+of the child,’ she’d say. ‘You could surely find a few minutes of an
+evening. What’s the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will
+go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a
+lesson. You’ll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise
+that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.’
+
+This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with
+her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself--only
+for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to
+myself, ‘I’ll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,
+just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.’ And the hard days
+went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years---- Ah, well!
+
+Mary used to say, when things would get worse, ‘Why don’t you talk
+to me, Joe? Why don’t you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting
+yourself up in yourself and brooding--eating your heart out? It’s hard
+for me: I get to think you’re tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross
+and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you
+don’t tell me?’
+
+But I didn’t think she’d understand.
+
+And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums
+closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of
+sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of
+the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again--Jim
+and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen
+miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy Creek for
+the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted
+badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the
+horses--a vicious, red-eyed chestnut--was a kicker: he’d broken a
+man’s leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the
+chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with
+their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,
+munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for
+horse-teams--two pairs side by side,--and prop them up, and stretch bags
+between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the
+spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of
+it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a
+break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and ‘possum rug against
+the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case
+we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good
+fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryan’s
+Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands
+behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in.
+
+Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here
+were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
+boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those
+gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted ‘native apple-trees’ (about as much
+like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit
+of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather.
+To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs
+croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended
+in steep ‘sidings’ coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road
+that skirted them, running on west up over a ‘saddle’ in the ridges and
+on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey’s Creek to a place called Cobborah
+branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the
+left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the
+Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and
+so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.’s coaches and
+the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.
+There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones
+over a deep water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have
+rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher
+to the branches--and the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian
+poet, calls them the ‘she-oak harps Aeolian’. Those trees are always
+sigh-sigh-sighing--more of a sigh than a sough or the ‘whoosh’ of
+gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you can’t
+feel any wind. It’s the same with telegraph wires: put your head against
+a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and you’ll hear and feel the
+far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the
+distance, where there might be wind; and they don’t ROAR in a gale, only
+sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above
+or below a certain pitch,--like a big harp with all the strings the
+same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind’s voice
+telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.
+
+I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the
+tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with
+his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the
+fire.
+
+He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,
+wise expression in his big brown eyes--just as if he’d been a child for
+a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks and
+understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
+
+‘Dad!’ he said presently--‘Dad! do you think I’ll ever grow up to be a
+man?’
+
+‘Wh--why, Jim?’ I gasped.
+
+‘Because I don’t want to.’
+
+I couldn’t think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I
+remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
+
+‘Jim,’ I said, to break the silence, ‘do you hear what the she-oaks
+say?’
+
+‘No, I don’t. Is they talking?’
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, without thinking.
+
+‘What is they saying?’ he asked.
+
+I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I
+thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn’t:
+when I got back to the fire he was again on the ‘possum rug, comforting
+the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I’d brought out with me. Jim
+sang out from the waggon--
+
+‘Don’t cook too much, dad--I mightn’t be hungry.’
+
+I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new
+flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the
+rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was
+tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put
+his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said--
+
+‘I ain’t hungry, dad! You’ll have to eat it all.’
+
+It made me uneasy--I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his
+food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid
+that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.
+
+‘Sick, Jim?’ I asked.
+
+‘No, dad, I ain’t sick; I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
+
+‘Have some tea, sonny?’
+
+‘Yes, dad.’
+
+I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I’d brought in a bottle
+from his aunt’s for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot
+on the gin-case.
+
+‘Jim’s tired, dad,’ he said.
+
+I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned
+a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round--it was made to
+cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didn’t come above the rail,
+so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a
+comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift
+him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy,
+half-fascinated way that I didn’t like. Whenever Jim was extra
+old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
+
+‘How do you feel now, sonny?’
+
+It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
+
+‘Jim’s better, dad.’ Then he said something like, ‘The stars are looking
+at me.’ I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots,
+and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the
+night.
+
+‘Kiss me ‘night-night, daddy,’ he said.
+
+I’d rather he hadn’t asked me--it was a bad sign. As I was going to the
+fire he called me back.
+
+‘What is it, Jim?’
+
+‘Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.’
+
+I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he’d brought
+from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he
+took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ‘’night-night’ and
+‘daddy’ were two-year-old language to Jim. I’d thought he’d forgotten
+those words--he seemed to be going back.
+
+‘Are you quite warm enough, Jim?’
+
+‘Yes, dad.’
+
+I started to walk up and down--I always did this when I was extra
+worried.
+
+I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from
+myself. Presently he called me again.
+
+‘What is it, Jim?’
+
+‘Take the blankets off me, fahver--Jim’s sick!’ (They’d been teaching
+him to say father.)
+
+I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die
+(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said--
+
+‘Take the blankets off me, muvver--I’m dying.’
+
+And I couldn’t get that out of my head.
+
+I threw back a fold of the ‘possum rug, and felt Jim’s head--he seemed
+cool enough.
+
+‘Where do you feel bad, sonny?’
+
+No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he
+were talking in his sleep--
+
+‘Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!’
+
+I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept--in a
+restless, feverish sort of way.
+
+I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the
+fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got
+it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always
+carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a
+corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down
+into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of
+mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.
+
+I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head
+was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
+
+Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between
+the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I’d heard Mary say the last
+time we fought for Jim: ‘God! don’t take my child! God! don’t take my
+boy!’ I’d never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one
+then. The nearest was fifteen miles away.
+
+I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation;
+and--Well, I don’t ask you to take much stock in this, though most old
+Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; and--Now, it might
+have been that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky
+outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But
+I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the
+limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up
+and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on
+me----
+
+Four or five miles up the road, over the ‘saddle’, was an old shanty
+that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as
+far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man
+named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming,
+and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married--but it wasn’t
+that: I’d thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless
+woman, and both were pretty ‘ratty’ from hardship and loneliness--they
+weren’t likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I’d heard talk,
+among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten’s wife who’d gone
+out to live with them lately: she’d been a hospital matron in the city,
+they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack
+for exposing the doctors--or carrying on with them--I didn’t remember
+which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with
+such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles
+away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else
+Bushmen wouldn’t have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted
+a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking
+like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the
+waggon.
+
+I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the
+team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a
+half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to
+the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket,
+and scrambled into the saddle with him.
+
+The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and
+splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the
+level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded--she
+must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old
+racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I’d have
+to pull her hard else she’d race the other horse or burst. She ran low
+fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like
+wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then--like a railway
+carriage--when she settled down to it.
+
+The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the
+bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the
+strongest man, who isn’t used to it, hold a baby in one position for
+five minutes--and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my
+arms that night--it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind
+to feel it. And at home I’d often growled about being asked to hold the
+baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby
+at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There’s no timber in
+the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight--or just about
+daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged,
+twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the ‘white-box’ trees; a
+dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here
+and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that
+made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked
+corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by
+moonlight--every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
+you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of
+a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would
+start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening
+on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey
+kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would
+start with a ‘thump-thump’, and away up the siding.
+
+The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night--all going my way--and being
+left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat
+back and the mare ‘propped’--she’d been a stock-horse, and was used
+to ‘cutting-out’. I felt Jim’s hands and forehead; he was in a burning
+fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept
+saying out loud--and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards):
+‘He’s limp yet!--Jim’s limp yet!’ (the words seemed jerked out of me by
+sheer fright)--‘He’s limp yet!’ till the mare’s feet took it up. Then,
+just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she
+suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own and
+the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she’d do when I’d be riding
+alone and a strange horse drew up from behind--the old racing instinct.
+I FELT the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And
+then--the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk--I started saying,
+‘Death is riding to-night!... Death is racing to-night!... Death is
+riding to-night!’ till the hoofs took that up. And I believe the old
+mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or break
+her heart.
+
+I was mad with anxiety and fright: I remember I kept saying, ‘I’ll be
+kinder to Mary after this! I’ll take more notice of Jim!’ and the rest
+of it.
+
+I don’t know how the old mare got up the last ‘pinch’. She must have
+slackened pace, but I never noticed it: I just held Jim up to me and
+gripped the saddle with my knees--I remember the saddle jerked from the
+desperate jumps of her till I thought the girth would go. We topped the
+gap and were going down into a gully they called Dead Man’s Hollow, and
+there, at the back of a ghostly clearing that opened from the road
+where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong
+weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the
+gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the
+level of the window-sills--there was something sinister about it, I
+thought--like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place
+looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because
+of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the
+clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she struggled across
+some marshy ground, my heart kept jerking out the words, ‘It’s deserted!
+They’ve gone away! It’s deserted!’ The mare went round to the back and
+pulled up between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen. Some
+one shouted from inside--
+
+‘Who’s there?’
+
+‘It’s me. Joe Wilson. I want your sister-in-law--I’ve got the boy--he’s
+sick and dying!’
+
+Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins. ‘What boy?’ he asked.
+
+‘Here, take him,’ I shouted, ‘and let me get down.’
+
+‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang
+back. And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim’s head went
+back over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and
+glistening in the moonlight.
+
+I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach--but CLEAR-HEADED in
+a way: strange, wasn’t it? I don’t know why I didn’t get down and rush
+into the kitchen to get a bath ready. I only felt as if the worst had
+come, and I wished it were over and gone. I even thought of Mary and the
+funeral.
+
+Then a woman ran out of the house--a big, hard-looking woman. She had
+on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare. She laid her hand on
+Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me and ran into the
+kitchen--and me down and after her. As great good luck would have it,
+they had some dirty clothes on to boil in a kerosene tin--dish-cloths or
+something.
+
+Brighten’s sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table,
+wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water, dish-cloths
+and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner, dashed that in,
+and felt the water with her hand--holding Jim up to her hip all the
+time--and I won’t say how he looked. She stood him in the tub and
+started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes between the
+splashes.
+
+‘Here, that tin of mustard--there on the shelf!’ she shouted to me.
+
+She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub, and went on
+splashing and spanking Jim.
+
+It seemed an eternity. And I? Why, I never thought clearer in my life. I
+felt cold-blooded--I felt as if I’d like an excuse to go outside till
+it was all over. I thought of Mary and the funeral--and wished that that
+was past. All this in a flash, as it were. I felt that it would be a
+great relief, and only wished the funeral was months past. I felt--well,
+altogether selfish. I only thought for myself.
+
+Brighten’s sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard--hard enough to
+break his back I thought, and--after about half an hour it seemed--the
+end came: Jim’s limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub, and the
+pupils of his eyes came down. They seemed dull and expressionless, like
+the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.
+
+I dropped on the stool by the table.
+
+‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all over now. I wasn’t going to let
+him die.’ I was only thinking, ‘Well it’s over now, but it will come on
+again. I wish it was over for good. I’m tired of it.’
+
+She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little
+fool of a woman, who’d been running in and out and whimpering all the
+time--
+
+‘Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed. And you,
+Brighten, take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in
+that hole there to stop the draught.’
+
+Brighten--he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be
+seen for whiskers--had been running in with sticks and back logs from
+the wood-heap. He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack, and went
+inside and brought out a black bottle--got a cup from the shelf, and put
+both down near my elbow.
+
+Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it
+was, ready. She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily. I noticed
+that all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins
+and the like, that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and
+salt-cellars), and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible. She was
+all right at little things. I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman who
+put her whole soul--or all she’d got left--into polishing old tins till
+they dazzled your eyes.
+
+I didn’t feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail
+tea. So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn’t looking, at
+Brighten’s sister-in-law. She was a big woman, her hands and feet were
+big, but well-shaped and all in proportion--they fitted her. She was a
+handsome woman--about forty I should think. She had a square chin, and
+a straight thin-lipped mouth--straight save for a hint of a turn down
+at the corners, which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a
+sign of weakness in the days before she grew hard. There was no sign
+of weakness now. She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair. She hadn’t
+spoken yet. She didn’t ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or
+who or what I was--at least not until the next evening at tea-time.
+
+She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her
+knees, with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him,
+and she just rocked him gently.
+
+She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I’ve seen a tired
+needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away back into the
+past. And Jim might have been the work in her lap, for all she seemed to
+think of him. Now and then she knitted her forehead and blinked.
+
+Suddenly she glanced round and said--in a tone as if I was her husband
+and she didn’t think much of me--
+
+‘Why don’t you eat something?’
+
+‘Beg pardon?’
+
+‘Eat something!’
+
+I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her. I was beginning to
+feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour was coming
+back into his face, and he didn’t look like an unnaturally stiff and
+staring corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked
+another look at her.
+
+She was staring straight before her,--I never saw a woman’s face change
+so suddenly--I never saw a woman’s eyes so haggard and hopeless. Then
+her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,
+like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide
+open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone. And in the
+firelight they seemed tinged with blood.
+
+I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn’t
+seen her look round) she said--
+
+‘Go to bed.’
+
+‘Beg pardon?’ (Her face was the same as before the tears.)
+
+‘Go to bed. There’s a bed made for you inside on the sofa.’
+
+‘But--the team--I must----’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.’
+
+‘Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning--or
+send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy
+will be all right. I’ll see to that.’
+
+I went out--it was a relief to get out--and looked to the mare. Brighten
+had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she couldn’t eat
+yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the other,
+with her nose over the box--and she sobbed. I put my arms round her neck
+and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the second time since
+I was a boy.
+
+     * Maize or Indian corn--wheat is never called corn in
+     Australia.--
+
+As I started to go in I heard Brighten’s sister-in-law say, suddenly and
+sharply--
+
+‘Take THAT away, Jessie.’
+
+And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black
+bottle.
+
+The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the
+house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.
+
+She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over
+Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.
+
+I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time
+to hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten’s
+sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to
+come.
+
+‘And now,’ says Jim, ‘I want to go home to “muffer” in “The Same Ol’
+Fling”.’
+
+‘What?’
+
+Jim repeated.
+
+‘Oh! “The Same Old Thing”,--the waggon.’
+
+The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
+looking at some ‘indications’ (of the existence of gold) he had found.
+It was no use trying to ‘pump’ him concerning his sister-in-law;
+Brighten was an ‘old hand’, and had learned in the old Bush-ranging and
+cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people’s business. And,
+by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen to a bad
+character, the more you lose your dislike for him.
+
+I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten’s sister-in-law
+that evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least ten years
+younger. She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready. She
+rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,
+and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up
+with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl. She
+described Sydney and Sydney life as I’d never heard it described before;
+and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did. She
+kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.
+And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked. If she
+wanted to explain anything that we hadn’t seen, she wouldn’t say that it
+was ‘like a--like a’--and hesitate (you know what I mean); she’d hit the
+right thing on the head at once. A squatter with a very round, flaming
+red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon: she said
+it was ‘like a mushroom on the rising moon.’ She gave me a lot of good
+hints about children.
+
+But she was quiet again next morning. I harnessed up, and she dressed
+Jim and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him
+on the load with the ‘possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the
+wheel to do it herself. Then was the awkward time. I’d half start to
+speak to her, and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and
+then make another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up
+in her arms and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his
+arms tight round her neck, and kissed her--a thing Jim seldom did
+with anybody, except his mother, for he wasn’t what you’d call an
+affectionate child,--he’d never more than offer his cheek to me, in his
+old-fashioned way. I’d got up the other side of the load to take him
+from her.
+
+‘Here, take him,’ she said.
+
+I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays--no
+matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
+
+‘You’d better make a start,’ she said. ‘You want to get home early with
+that boy.’
+
+I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand and
+tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel, and I
+gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.
+
+‘That’s all right,’ she said; then tears came into her eyes, and she
+suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You be
+off--you’re only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy; be kind to your
+wife, and take care of yourself.’
+
+‘Will you come to see us?’
+
+‘Some day,’ she said.
+
+I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at
+Jim, who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load. And I saw
+that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes in spite of the
+tears.
+
+
+I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to
+Mary--I didn’t want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim
+home from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,
+nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten’s shanty and
+see Brighten’s sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the
+spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten’s overnight
+and didn’t get back till late the next afternoon. I’d got the place in a
+pig-muck, as Mary said, ‘doing for’ myself, and I was having a snooze
+on the sofa when they got back. The first thing I remember was some one
+stroking my head and kissing me, and I heard Mary saying, ‘My poor boy!
+My poor old boy!’
+
+I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again. But it
+seems that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started to pull grey
+hairs out of my head and put ‘em in an empty match-box--to see how many
+she’d get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft. I don’t
+know what she said to Brighten’s sister-in-law or what Brighten’s
+sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle for the next few
+days.
+
+
+
+
+‘Water Them Geraniums’.
+
+
+
+
+I. A Lonely Track.
+
+
+The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to ‘settle on
+the land’ at Lahey’s Creek.
+
+I’d sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
+and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations
+and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary
+drove out in the spring-cart. You remember we left little Jim with
+his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down. I’d sent James (Mary’s
+brother) out the day before, on horseback, with two or three cows and
+some heifers and steers and calves we had, and I’d told him to clean up
+a bit, and make the hut as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary
+came.
+
+We hadn’t much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar
+bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud
+of it: it had ‘turned’ posts and joints that bolted together. There was
+a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her ‘ironing-table’, upside
+down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the
+legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs--with apples
+painted on the hard board backs--that we used for the parlour; there was
+a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the
+uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and
+there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
+stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.
+
+There was the little Wilcox & Gibb’s sewing-machine--my present to Mary
+when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!). There
+was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some
+pictures that were presents from Mary’s friends and sister. She had her
+mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away, in the
+linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask, and a box
+that had been Jim’s cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box, and in
+another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques, two against
+one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do all over the world. I
+had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load--I always had a
+pup that I gave away, or sold and didn’t get paid for, or had ‘touched’
+(stolen) as soon as it was old enough. James had his three spidery,
+sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him. I was taking
+out three months’ provisions in the way of ration-sugar, tea, flour, and
+potatoes, &c.
+
+I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy
+Creek, where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
+
+Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,
+for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me as
+much as possible. I soon saw what was the matter. She’d been crying
+to herself coming along the road. I thought it was all on account of
+leaving little Jim behind for the first time. She told me that she
+couldn’t make up her mind till the last moment to leave him, and that,
+a mile or two along the road, she’d have turned back for him, only that
+she knew her sister would laugh at her. She was always terribly anxious
+about the children.
+
+We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way
+to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree
+flats. It was a dreary, hopeless track. There was no horizon, nothing
+but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees in all
+directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground, save for the
+coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road, for it was
+a dry season: there had been no rain for months, and I wondered what I
+should do with the cattle if there wasn’t more grass on the creek.
+
+In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles without
+seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery.
+The new tracks were ‘blazed’--that is, slices of bark cut off from both
+sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track
+until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with
+a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little
+used to the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half
+unconsciously as it were, and so finds his way about.
+
+Mary and I didn’t talk much along this track--we couldn’t have heard
+each other very well, anyway, for the ‘clock-clock’ of the waggon and
+the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground. And I suppose we
+both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened. I’d noticed
+lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking to each
+other--noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me (as vague
+things will irritate one) when I thought of it. But then I thought, ‘It
+won’t last long--I’ll make life brighter for her by-and-by.’
+
+As we went along--and the track seemed endless--I got brooding, of
+course, back into the past. And I feel now, when it’s too late, that
+Mary must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early
+boyhood, of the hard life of ‘grubbin’’ and ‘milkin’’ and ‘fencin’’ and
+‘ploughin’’ and ‘ring-barkin’’, &c., and all for nothing. The few months
+at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn’t spell. The cursed
+ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy--ambition or craving
+for--I didn’t know what for! For something better and brighter, anyhow.
+And I made the life harder by reading at night.
+
+It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon, behind Mary in
+the spring-cart. I thought of these old things more than I thought of
+her. She had tried to help me to better things. And I tried too--I had
+the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road clear before me,
+but shied at the first check. Then I brooded, or dreamed of making a
+home--that one might call a home--for Mary--some day. Ah, well!----
+
+And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles? I
+never thought of that. Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
+Of her girlhood. Of her homes--not the huts and camps she lived in with
+me. Of our future?--she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our
+future--but not lately. These things didn’t strike me at the time--I was
+so deep in my own brooding. Did she think now--did she begin to feel
+now that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life, but must
+make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I thought of it. But
+whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me, I’d think,
+‘I’ll soon win her back. We’ll be sweethearts again--when things
+brighten up a bit.’
+
+It’s an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
+we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now, as
+though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted, and
+had never really met since.
+
+The sun was going down when Mary called out--
+
+‘There’s our place, Joe!’
+
+She hadn’t seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to
+me, who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to
+the right, was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,
+darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge in
+the background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter--a
+water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain), across on the
+other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat between the spur and the
+creek, and a little higher than this side. The land was much better than
+on our old selection, and there was good soil along the creek on both
+sides: I expected a rush of selectors out here soon. A few acres round
+the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence of timber
+split from logs and saplings. The man who took up this selection left it
+because his wife died here.
+
+It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it
+with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but
+I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark
+shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools,
+harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets
+of bark and old chaff-bags. The house itself was floored roughly, with
+cracks between the boards; there were cracks between the slabs all
+round--though he’d nailed strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over
+some of them; the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags
+with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper. There was no ceiling,
+calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and
+battens, and the under ends of the shingles. But ceilings make a hut hot
+and harbour insects and reptiles--snakes sometimes. There was one
+small glass window in the ‘dining-room’ with three panes and a sheet
+of greased paper, and the rest were rough wooden shutters. There was a
+pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen, and--that was about all. There was
+no dam or tank (I made one later on); there was a water-cask, with the
+hoops falling off and the staves gaping, at the corner of the house, and
+spouting, made of lengths of bent tin, ran round under the eaves. Water
+from a new shingle roof is wine-red for a year or two, and water from
+a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water for years. In dry weather the
+selector had got his house water from a cask sunk in the gravel at
+the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek. And the longer the
+drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek for his water,
+with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink, if he had any. Four,
+five, six, or seven miles--even ten miles to water is nothing in some
+places.
+
+
+James hadn’t found himself called upon to do more than milk old ‘Spot’
+(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night, make a fire
+in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough. He helped me
+unharness and water and feed the horses, and then started to get the
+furniture off the waggon and into the house. James wasn’t lazy--so
+long as one thing didn’t last too long; but he was too uncomfortably
+practical and matter-of-fact for me. Mary and I had some tea in the
+kitchen. The kitchen was permanently furnished with a table of split
+slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes driven into the
+ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood, and two long
+stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves) with
+auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
+The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
+was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole
+across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.
+
+Mary didn’t seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the
+fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
+Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was
+thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
+when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was
+something very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
+about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she
+spoke. There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in
+figure and walk. I used sometimes to call her ‘Little Duchy’ and ‘Pigeon
+Toes’. She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate
+knit in her forehead between the eyes.
+
+Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
+
+‘What is it, Mary?’
+
+She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and
+irritated--suffering from a reaction.
+
+‘Now, what is it, Mary?’ I asked; ‘I’m sick of this sort of thing.
+Haven’t you got everything you wanted? You’ve had your own way. What’s
+the matter with you now?’
+
+‘You know very well, Joe.’
+
+‘But I DON’T know,’ I said. I knew too well.
+
+She said nothing.
+
+‘Look here, Mary,’ I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, ‘don’t go on
+like that; tell me what’s the matter?’
+
+‘It’s only this,’ she said suddenly, ‘I can’t stand this life here; it
+will kill me!’
+
+I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
+
+‘This is more than a man can stand!’ I shouted. ‘You know very well that
+it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren’t
+you content to stay in Gulgong?’
+
+‘And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?’ asked Mary quietly.
+
+(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A
+wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each
+side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick
+cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat--four
+rooms and a passage--the police-station, bank-manager and schoolmaster’s
+cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-board shanties--the three
+pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The town tailing off into
+weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts--relics of the
+digging days--propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home,
+mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the verandah
+posts of the pubs., saying, ‘’Ullo, Bill!’ or ‘’Ullo, Jim!’--or
+sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other’s and
+girls’ characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy’s
+washing hung out on the line: ‘And the colour of the clothes! Does that
+woman wash her clothes at all? or only soak ‘em and hang ‘em out?’--that
+was Gulgong.)
+
+‘Well, why didn’t you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?’ I asked Mary.
+
+‘You know very well, Joe,’ said Mary quietly.
+
+(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me. I had had an idea
+of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores--I was a fair wool
+expert--but Mary was afraid of the drink. I could keep well away from it
+so long as I worked hard in the Bush. I had gone to Sydney twice since
+I met Mary, once before we were married, and she forgave me when I came
+back; and once afterwards. I got a billet there then, and was going to
+send for her in a month. After eight weeks she raised the money somehow
+and came to Sydney and brought me home. I got pretty low down that
+time.)
+
+‘But, Mary,’ I said, ‘it would have been different this time. You would
+have been with me. I can take a glass now or leave it alone.’
+
+‘As long as you take a glass there is danger,’ she said.
+
+‘Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for, if you can’t
+stand it? Why didn’t you stay where you were?’ I asked.
+
+‘Well,’ she said, ‘why weren’t you more decided?’
+
+I’d sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.
+
+‘Good God!’ I shouted, ‘this is more than any man can stand. I’ll chuck
+it all up! I’m damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.’
+
+‘So am I, Joe,’ said Mary wearily.
+
+We quarrelled badly then--that first hour in our new home. I know now
+whose fault it was.
+
+I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek. I didn’t
+feel bitter against Mary--I had spoken too cruelly to her to feel that
+way. Looking back, I could see plainly that if I had taken her advice
+all through, instead of now and again, things would have been all right
+with me. I had come away and left her crying in the hut, and James
+telling her, in a brotherly way, that it was all her fault. The trouble
+was that I never liked to ‘give in’ or go half-way to make it up--not
+half-way--it was all the way or nothing with our natures.
+
+‘If I don’t make a stand now,’ I’d say, ‘I’ll never be master. I gave up
+the reins when I got married, and I’ll have to get them back again.’
+
+What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after,
+when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst
+other things, I kept saying, ‘I’ll give in, Mary--I’ll give in,’ and
+then I’d laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the
+room. But that time was to come.
+
+As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in
+my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house
+that evening--
+
+‘Why did I bring her here?’
+
+I was not fit to ‘go on the land’. The place was only fit for some
+stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no
+ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted
+here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.
+
+I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only
+neighbours--a wretched selector’s family, about four miles down the
+creek,--and I thought I’d go on to the house and see if they had any
+fresh meat.
+
+A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on
+a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector’s
+wife--I had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman,
+and, I supposed, the reason why she hadn’t gone mad through hardship
+and loneliness was that she hadn’t either the brains or the memory to go
+farther than she could see through the trunks of the ‘apple-trees’.
+
+‘You, An-nay!’ (Annie.)
+
+‘Ye-es’ (from somewhere in the gloom).
+
+‘Didn’t I tell yer to water them geraniums!’
+
+‘Well, didn’t I?’
+
+‘Don’t tell lies or I’ll break yer young back!’
+
+‘I did, I tell yer--the water won’t soak inter the ashes.’
+
+Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.
+I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some
+sticks against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks
+the fowls used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and
+scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there--with an idea of
+helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water
+was scarce--till you might as well try to water a dish of fat.
+
+Then the woman’s voice again--
+
+‘You, Tom-may!’ (Tommy.)
+
+Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.
+
+‘Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!’
+
+‘Ye-e-s!’ shrill shriek from across the creek.
+
+‘Didn’t I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want
+any meat or any think?’ in one long screech.
+
+‘Well--I karnt find the horse.’
+
+‘Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.
+And-don’t-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi’son-that-mother’ll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.’
+
+
+I didn’t feel like going to the woman’s house that night. I felt--and
+the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart--that this was what Mary
+would come to if I left her here.
+
+I turned and started to walk home, fast. I’d made up my mind. I’d take
+Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning--I forgot about the load I
+had to take to the sheep station. I’d say, ‘Look here, Girlie’ (that’s
+what I used to call her), ‘we’ll leave this wretched life; we’ll leave
+the Bush for ever! We’ll go to Sydney, and I’ll be a man! and work my
+way up.’ And I’d sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.
+
+When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene
+lamp, a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms
+washed out--to James’s disgust, for he had to move the furniture and
+boxes about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had
+laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf--a slab on two pegs over the
+fireplace--and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of
+the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American
+oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.
+
+‘How does that look, Joe? We’ll soon get things ship-shape.’
+
+I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the
+kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.
+
+Somehow I didn’t feel satisfied with the way things had gone.
+
+
+
+
+II. ‘Past Carin’’.
+
+
+Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter
+in the morning--more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in
+most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the
+lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades,
+and then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to
+ashes--it is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old
+things too, that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can’t
+understand. I often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to
+new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush.
+I used to think that they couldn’t have much brains, or the loneliness
+would drive them mad.
+
+I’d decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive
+alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better
+than me--as long as the novelty lasted; and I’d stay at home for a
+week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from
+somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of
+loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first
+weeks in jail are--I was never there. I know it’s so with tramping or
+hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.
+But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the
+last days used to be the worst with me: then I’d have to make a move, or
+drink. When you’ve been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,
+you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts--provided you have
+any imagination at all. You’ll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the
+lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that’s
+never likely to come that way--some one, or a stranger, that you can’t
+and don’t really expect to see. I think that most men who have been
+alone in the Bush for any length of time--and married couples too--are
+more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who
+is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to
+stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a
+rule. It’s only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you
+got. Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have
+their periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they’d go raving
+mad. Drink is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or
+half-yearly spree is the only thing they’ve got to look forward to: it
+keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead.
+
+     * ‘Graft’, work.  The term is now applied, in Australia, to
+     all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry.
+
+But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of
+loneliness. WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn’t as bad as it
+might have been farther up-country: there was generally some one came
+of a Sunday afternoon--a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe
+a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On
+a quiet Sunday, after I’d brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and
+herself--just the same as if we were in town--and make me get up on one
+end and put on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.
+She said she wanted to keep me civilised. She tried to make a gentleman
+of me for years, but gave it up gradually.
+
+Well. It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the
+waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out
+clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard
+her being hailed as ‘Hi, missus!’ from the front slip-rails.
+
+It was a boy on horseback. He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy
+of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs, especially
+his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged to a grown
+man. He had a good face and frank grey eyes. An old, nearly black
+cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears, turning them out at
+right angles from his head, and rather dirty sprouts they were. He wore
+a dirty torn Crimean shirt; and a pair of man’s moleskin trousers rolled
+up above the knees, with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide
+belt. I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough
+for him, he always rolled ‘em up above the knees when on horseback, for
+some reason of his own: to suggest leggings, perhaps, for he had them
+rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn’t have bothered to save them
+from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated.
+
+He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of
+a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern something
+after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.* His
+colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey; and, one time,
+when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought it was
+some old shepherd’s hut that I hadn’t noticed there before. When he
+cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.
+
+     * ‘Humpy’, a rough hut.
+
+‘Are you Mrs Wilson?’ asked the boy.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mary.
+
+‘Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink. We
+killed lars’ night, and I’ve fetched a piece er cow.’
+
+‘Piece of WHAT?’ asked Mary.
+
+He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy
+in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary’s arm out when she took
+it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a
+wood-axe, but it was fresh and clean.
+
+‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ cried Mary. She was always impulsive, save to me
+sometimes. ‘I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh
+meat. How kind of your mother! Tell her I’m very much obliged to her
+indeed.’ And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had. ‘And
+now--how much did your mother say it would be?’
+
+The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.
+
+‘How much will it be,’ he repeated, puzzled. ‘Oh--how much does it weigh
+I-s’pose-yer-mean. Well, it ain’t been weighed at all--we ain’t got no
+scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and
+cooks it, and eats it--and goes by guess. What won’t keep we salts down
+in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer
+wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad
+before you could scoff it. I can’t see----’
+
+‘Yes, yes,’ said Mary, getting confused. ‘But what I want to know is,
+how do you manage when you sell it?’
+
+He glared at her, and scratched his head. ‘Sell it? Why, we only goes
+halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers to the butcher--or
+maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors, or tank-sinkers, or
+them sorter people----’
+
+‘Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother
+for this?’
+
+‘How much what?’
+
+‘Money, of course, you stupid boy,’ said Mary. ‘You seem a very stupid
+boy.’
+
+Then he saw what she was driving at. He began to fling his heels
+convulsively against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward
+and forward at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork
+machinery inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need
+repairing or oiling.
+
+‘We ain’t that sorter people, missus,’ he said. ‘We don’t sell meat
+to new people that come to settle here.’ Then, jerking his thumb
+contemptuously towards the ridges, ‘Go over ter Wall’s if yer wanter buy
+meat; they sell meat ter strangers.’ (Wall was the big squatter over the
+ridges.)
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mary, ‘I’m SO sorry. Thank your mother for me. She IS kind.’
+
+‘Oh, that’s nothink. She said to tell yer she’ll be up as soon as she
+can. She’d have come up yisterday evening--she thought yer’d feel lonely
+comin’ new to a place like this--but she couldn’t git up.’
+
+The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting. You
+almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old
+propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of
+Mary’s voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been
+a very poor selection that couldn’t afford a better spare horse than
+that.
+
+‘Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?’ said the boy, and he
+pointed to one of my ‘spreads’ (for the team-chains) that lay inside the
+fence. ‘I’ll fling it back agin over the fence when I git this ole cow
+started.’
+
+‘But wait a minute--I’ve forgotten your mother’s name,’ said Mary.
+
+He grabbed at his thatch impatiently. ‘Me mother--oh!--the old woman’s
+name’s Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)’ He twisted himself round, and
+brought the stretcher down on one of the horse’s ‘points’ (and he had
+many) with a crack that must have jarred his wrist.
+
+‘Do you go to school?’ asked Mary. There was a three-days-a-week school
+over the ridges at Wall’s station.
+
+‘No!’ he jerked out, keeping his legs going. ‘Me--why I’m going on fur
+fifteen. The last teacher at Wall’s finished me. I’m going to Queensland
+next month drovin’.’ (Queensland border was over three hundred miles
+away.)
+
+‘Finished you? How?’ asked Mary.
+
+‘Me edgercation, of course! How do yer expect me to start this horse
+when yer keep talkin’?’
+
+He split the ‘spread’ over the horse’s point, threw the pieces over the
+fence, and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old
+saw-stool lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a
+canter. That horse wasn’t a trotter.
+
+And next month he DID start for Queensland. He was a younger son and a
+surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection; and as there was
+‘northin’ doin’’ in the district, his father (in a burst of fatherly
+kindness, I suppose) made him a present of the old horse and a new
+pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him an old saddle and a coat, and he
+started for the Never-Never Country.
+
+And I’ll bet he got there. But I’m doubtful if the old horse did.
+
+Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don’t think he had anything more
+except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.
+
+‘Spicer’s farm’ was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native
+apple-tree scrub. The clearing was fenced in by a light ‘dog-legged’
+fence (a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights),
+and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered with
+cattle-dung. There was no attempt at cultivation when I came to live on
+the creek; but there were old furrow-marks amongst the stumps of another
+shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut. There was a wretched sapling
+cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for
+shelter. There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set
+in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to’s behind the hut,--the
+other was ‘the boys’ bedroom’. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers,
+and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek
+once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter
+and eggs. The hut was nearly as bare inside as it was out--just a frame
+of ‘round-timber’ (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was
+permanent (unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab
+table on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same
+way. Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark
+partitioned-off room [‘mother’s bedroom’) were simply poles laid side
+by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with
+straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old
+patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said
+it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds--to
+hide them as much as possible--when she went down there. A packing-case,
+with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked
+looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.
+There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys’ beds were
+three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights. The
+floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven with much
+sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked. Mrs
+Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets under as many of
+the leaks as she could. The saucepans, kettles, and boilers were old
+kerosene-tins and billies. They used kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in
+halves, for setting the milk in. The plates and cups were of tin;
+there were two or three cups without saucers, and a crockery plate or
+two--also two mugs, cracked and without handles, one with ‘For a Good
+Boy’ and the other with ‘For a Good Girl’ on it; but all these were kept
+on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company. They were the only
+ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock that hadn’t gone for
+years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she had ‘some things packed
+away from the children.’
+
+The pictures were cut from old copies of the ‘Illustrated Sydney News’
+and pasted on to the bark. I remember this, because I remembered, long
+ago, the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy, had the
+walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations of the American Civil
+War, cut from illustrated London papers, and I used to ‘sneak’ into
+‘mother’s bedroom’ with Fred Spencer whenever we got the chance, and
+gloat over the prints. I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for
+taking me in there.
+
+I saw very little of Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and
+whiskered man. I had an idea that he wasn’t a selector at all, only a
+‘dummy’ for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were
+allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters
+kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry
+persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold as he could afford,
+‘select’ as much land as the law allowed one man to take up, and then
+employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied
+about his run, and hold them for him.
+
+Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home. He was
+generally supposed to be away shearin’, or fencin’, or workin’ on
+somebody’s station. It turned out that the last six months he was away
+it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut
+out, found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he
+and his mates couldn’t account for satisfactorily, while the squatter
+could. Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and
+treacle, or bread and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every
+egg was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.
+Mary found that out, but couldn’t help them much--except by ‘stuffing’
+the children with bread and meat or bread and jam whenever they came up
+to our place--for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride that lies down in
+the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.
+
+Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was
+hungry, she denied it--but she looked it. A ragged mite she had with her
+explained things. The little fellow said--
+
+‘Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked; but if yer
+give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an’ say thenk yer, Mrs
+Wilson.’
+
+‘I wouldn’t ‘a’ told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,
+Mrs Wilson,’ said Annie. ‘Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.’
+
+She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested, and her face
+was ‘burnt to a brick’, as they say out there. She had brown eyes,
+nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face--ground
+sharp by hardship--the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression
+like--well, like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one
+time, and wanted to know everybody’s business and hear everything, and
+had lost all her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick
+suspicious movements of the head. I don’t suppose you understand. I
+can’t explain it any other way. She was not more than forty.
+
+I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look
+at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she
+had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of ‘corned beef’.
+
+‘Yes--of--course,’ she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, ‘Is
+there anything more you want while the shop’s open?’ I’d met just the
+same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the
+shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I
+didn’t turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.
+
+‘Come--inside,’ she said, ‘and sit down. I see you’ve got the waggon
+outside. I s’pose your name’s Wilson, ain’t it? You’re thinkin’ about
+takin’ on Harry Marshfield’s selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait
+till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.’
+
+Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of
+a phonograph--I heard one in Sydney the other day--and not like a voice
+coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday
+life on this selection she spoke in a sort of--in a sort of lost
+groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
+
+She didn’t talk much this time--just spoke in a mechanical way of the
+drought, and the hard times, ‘an’ butter ‘n’ eggs bein’ down, an’ her
+husban’ an’ eldest son bein’ away, an’ that makin’ it so hard for her.’
+
+I don’t know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count
+them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used
+to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as
+piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years--and
+God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she
+only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she
+seldom spoke of them. The girl, ‘Liza’, was ‘in service in Sydney.’ I’m
+afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was ‘away’. He had been a
+bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.
+
+Some one might ask her, ‘How’s your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?’ or, ‘Heard of
+Jack lately? and where is he now?’
+
+‘Oh, he’s somewheres up country,’ she’d say in the ‘groping’ voice, or
+‘He’s drovin’ in Queenslan’,’ or ‘Shearin’ on the Darlin’ the last time
+I heerd from him.’ ‘We ain’t had a line from him since--les’ see--since
+Chris’mas ‘fore last.’
+
+And she’d turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way
+towards the west--towards ‘up-country’ and ‘Out-Back’.*
+
+
+     * ‘Out-Back’ is always west of the Bushman, no matter how
+     far out he be.
+
+
+The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and
+lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother.
+Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill
+(older than Tommy), was ‘a bit wild.’
+
+I’ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the
+droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the
+warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard,
+‘bailing up’ and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round
+the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was
+tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the
+pigs or the ‘poddies’ (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I’d get off the
+horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old
+cow that wouldn’t ‘bail-up’ and threatened her with her horns. She’d
+say--
+
+‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we’re ever goin’ to have any rain?’
+
+I’ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or
+July, and seen her trudging about the yard--that was ankle-deep in black
+liquid filth--with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of
+her husband’s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I’ve seen
+her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and
+trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And
+when I’d fixed the leak--
+
+‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain’s a blessin’! Come in and have
+a dry at the fire and I’ll make yer a cup of tea.’ And, if I was in a
+hurry, ‘Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain
+holds up. Yer can’t go home like this! Yer’ll git yer death o’ cold.’
+
+I’ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and
+apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to
+feed the starving cattle.
+
+‘Jist tryin’ ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.’
+
+They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst
+her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were
+down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).
+
+‘An’, one day,’ she told Mary, ‘there was a big barren heifer (that we
+called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She’d been down
+for four days and hadn’t moved, when one mornin’ I dumped some wheaten
+chaff--we had a few bags that Spicer brought home--I dumped it in front
+of her nose, an’--would yer b’lieve me, Mrs Wilson?--she stumbled onter
+her feet an’ chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me
+skirts an’ run! Wasn’t it redic’lus?’
+
+They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried
+Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
+
+‘We lost nearly all our milkers,’ she told Mary. ‘I remember one day
+Tommy came running to the house and screamed: ‘Marther! [mother] there’s
+another milker down with the ploorer!’ Jist as if it was great news.
+Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an’ I giv’ in. I jist sat down
+to have a good cry, and felt for my han’kerchief--it WAS a rag of a
+han’kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without
+seein’ what I was doin’ I put me finger through one hole in the
+han’kerchief an’ me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into
+me eyes, instead of wipin’ them. Then I had to laugh.’
+
+There’s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were
+out all along the creek on Spicer’s side, Wall’s station hands were up
+above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and
+towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they
+saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small
+crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
+
+‘My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain’t
+already!’ shouted young Billy Wall. ‘Come along, three or four of you
+chaps’--(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the
+station).
+
+They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the
+wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning
+grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a
+gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer!
+Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’
+
+     *****
+
+After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked--
+
+‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’
+
+‘Well--no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster,
+once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river--we lived in
+a brick house then--the first time Spicer had to go away from home I
+nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month.
+I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while.
+He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a
+time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more
+than ever) ‘I don’t mind,--I somehow seem to have got past carin’.
+Besides--besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is
+now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’
+
+Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself--
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of
+me, Mrs Wilson,--I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’
+a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.’
+
+But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a
+different man to what he was now.’
+
+I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for
+a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said
+suddenly--
+
+‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’
+
+‘I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! I b’lieve I’m gittin’ ratty.
+You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.’
+
+She wasn’t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with
+her, she’d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which
+used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn’t help it, and she
+seemed to hear all the same.
+
+Her great trouble was that she ‘couldn’t git no reg’lar schoolin’ for
+the children.’
+
+‘I learns ‘em at home as much as I can. But I don’t git a minute to
+call me own; an’ I’m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I’m fit for
+nothink.’
+
+Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them
+a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the
+handiest youngster and said--
+
+‘There--do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin’ to teach yer, an’
+it’s more than yer deserve!’ (the youngster had been ‘cryin’’ over
+something). ‘Now, go up an’ say “Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.” And if yer
+ain’t good, and don’t do as she tells yer, I’ll break every bone in yer
+young body!’
+
+The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
+
+The children were sent by turns over to Wall’s to Sunday-school. When
+Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was
+no end of rows about them in the family--for the mother made him lend
+them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There
+were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and
+these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean
+and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
+
+And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God’s
+earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the
+broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces
+of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched
+threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand--and
+no matter where they are--I always see the worn face of the mother.
+
+Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.
+I’d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came
+back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up
+several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn’t sit down
+and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking
+about the time when she was ill herself. She’d take off her hat--a
+shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting--give
+her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her
+sleeves, and set to work to ‘tidy up’. She seemed to take most pleasure
+in sorting out our children’s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she
+used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different
+man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates
+of some women’s journals we had, and used to study them with an interest
+that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never
+talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed,
+was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up.
+For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall’s
+wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how
+Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some
+table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and
+she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the
+table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her
+that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life.
+
+Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say
+suddenly--
+
+‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.’
+
+‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’
+
+‘Because the visits doesn’t do me any good. I git the dismals
+afterwards.’
+
+‘Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?’
+
+‘Oh,-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-talkin’-about. You mustn’t take any notice
+of me.’ And she’d put on her hat, kiss the children--and Mary too,
+sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child--and go.
+
+Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.
+
+Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again
+next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said--
+
+‘I wish you wouldn’t come down any more till I’m on me feet, Mrs Wilson.
+The children can do for me.’
+
+‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’
+
+‘Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.’
+
+We were the aristocrats of Lahey’s Creek. Whenever we drove down on
+Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough
+for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we’d see the children running
+to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming--
+
+‘Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.’
+
+And we’d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the
+front door, and she’d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of
+‘broom-stuff’--coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges--with a stick
+stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front
+of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one flick
+of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she’d catch a youngster and
+scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel
+round her finger and dig out his ears--as if she was anxious to have him
+hear every word that was going to be said.
+
+No matter what state the house would be in she’d always say, ‘I was jist
+expectin’ yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And she was original in that, anyway.
+
+She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to
+spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course [‘The
+others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson’), but I saw
+by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing
+to them. ‘I must really git some more knives an’ forks next time I’m in
+Cobborah,’ she’d say. ‘The children break an’ lose ‘em till I’m ashamed
+to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.’
+
+She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather
+ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.
+But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to
+‘Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,’ or ‘Take yer maulies [hands] outer
+the sugar,’ or ‘Don’t touch Mrs Wilson’s baby with them dirty maulies,’
+or ‘Don’t stand starin’ at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an’ ears in that
+vulgar way.’
+
+Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was
+a habit, but they didn’t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging
+habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most
+willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged
+that child from daylight till dark--and after it. Taking it all round,
+I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary
+children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking
+habit in a father.
+
+One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who
+used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit
+suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye
+off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The
+men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. ‘They let him hang for
+a while,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘till he went black in the face and stopped
+kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.’
+
+‘Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?’ asked Mary.
+
+‘To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of
+tryin’ to hang himself again.’
+
+‘Well, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard of,’ said Mary.
+
+‘That’s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Spicer.
+
+‘One morning,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘Spicer had gone off on his horse
+somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the
+door and said--
+
+‘“For God’s sake, woman, give me a drink!”
+
+‘Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum--his
+clothes was good, but he looked as if he’d been sleepin’ in them in the
+Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin’,
+so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his
+head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said,
+“Thenk yer, mum.”
+
+‘I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say, so I jist said,
+“Would you like some more coffee?”
+
+‘“Yes, thenk yer,” he said--“about two quarts.”
+
+‘I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head
+as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, “Thenk yer,
+mum--it’s a fine day,” and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps
+in his hands.’
+
+‘Why, what did he stand on his head for?’ asked Mary.
+
+‘To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the
+coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall’s to tell them that
+there was a man wanderin’ about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and
+to get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he
+hanged himself that night.’
+
+‘O Lord!’ cried Mary.
+
+‘Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall’s
+branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin’
+to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.’
+
+Mary stared at her, speechless.
+
+‘Tommy came home yellin’ with fright. I sent him over to Wall’s at once.
+After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped
+away and went down there. They came back screamin’ at the tops of their
+voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won’t want ter see a dead
+body again in a hurry. Every time I’d mention it they’d huddle together,
+or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
+
+‘“Yer’ll go agen when I tell yer not to,” I’d say.
+
+‘“Oh no, mother,” they’d howl.
+
+‘“Yer wanted ter see a man hangin’,” I said.
+
+‘“Oh, don’t, mother! Don’t talk about it.”
+
+‘“Yer wouldn’t be satisfied till yer see it,” I’d say; “yer had to see
+it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain’t yer?”
+
+‘“Oh, don’t, mother!”
+
+‘“Yer run all the way there, I s’pose?”
+
+‘“Don’t, mother!”
+
+‘“But yer run faster back, didn’t yer?”
+
+‘“Oh, don’t, mother.”
+
+‘But,’ said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, ‘I’d been down to see it myself
+before they was up.’
+
+‘And ain’t you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible
+things?’ asked Mary.
+
+‘Well, no; I don’t mind. I seem to have got past carin’ for anythink
+now. I felt it a little when Tommy went away--the first time I felt
+anythink for years. But I’m over that now.’
+
+‘Haven’t you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?’
+
+‘Oh yes. There’s me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother
+near Dubbo; he’s got a station. They wanted to take me an’ the children
+between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn’t bring
+my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as
+much as possible. There’s enough of them gone, God knows. But it’s a
+comfort to know that there’s some one to see to them if anythink happens
+to me.’
+
+     *****
+
+One day--I was on my way home with the team that day--Annie Spicer came
+running up the creek in terrible trouble.
+
+‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl’s happened at home! A trooper’
+(mounted policeman--they called them ‘mounted troopers’ out there), ‘a
+trooper’s come and took Billy!’ Billy was the eldest son at home.
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘It’s true, Mrs Wilson.’
+
+‘What for? What did the policeman say?’
+
+‘He--he--he said, “I--I’m very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but--I--I want
+William.”’
+
+It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from
+Wall’s station and sold down-country.
+
+‘An’ mother took on awful,’ sobbed Annie; ‘an’ now she’ll only sit
+stock-still an’ stare in front of her, and won’t take no notice of any
+of us. Oh! it’s awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he’d tell Aunt
+Emma’ (Mrs Spicer’s sister at Cobborah), ‘and send her out. But I had to
+come to you, an’ I’ve run all the way.’
+
+James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
+
+Mary told me all about it when I came home.
+
+‘I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my
+arms. Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn’t cry like a woman. I heard a man
+at Haviland cry at his brother’s funeral, and it was just like that. She
+came round a bit after a while. Her sister’s with her now.... Oh, Joe!
+you must take me away from the Bush.’
+
+Later on Mary said--
+
+‘How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!’
+
+     *****
+
+Next morning I rode across to Wall’s station and tackled the old man;
+but he was a hard man, and wouldn’t listen to me--in fact, he ordered
+me off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But
+young Billy Wall rode after me.
+
+‘Look here, Joe!’ he said, ‘it’s a blanky shame. All for the sake of a
+horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn’t got enough to put up
+with already! I wouldn’t do it for twenty horses. I’LL tackle the boss,
+and if he won’t listen to me, I’ll walk off the run for the last time,
+if I have to carry my swag.’
+
+Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy
+Spicer off up-country.
+
+But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to
+our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk
+of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look
+forward to.
+
+‘If it only could have been kep’ quiet--for the sake of the other
+children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring ‘em all up
+decent, but I s’pose it was my fault, somehow. It’s the disgrace that’s
+killin’ me--I can’t bear it.’
+
+I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie
+Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall’s station (I must tell
+you about her some other time; James was ‘shook after her’), and we got
+talkin’ about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
+
+‘I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,’ said Mary. ‘She seems better lately.’
+
+‘Why!’ cried Maggie Charlsworth, ‘if that ain’t Annie coming running up
+along the creek. Something’s the matter!’
+
+We all jumped up and ran out.
+
+‘What is it, Annie?’ cried Mary.
+
+‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother’s asleep, and we can’t wake her!’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘It’s--it’s the truth, Mrs Wilson.’
+
+‘How long has she been asleep?’
+
+‘Since lars’ night.’
+
+‘My God!’ cried Mary, ‘SINCE LAST NIGHT?’
+
+‘No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this
+mornin’. She called me and said she didn’t feel well, and I’d have to
+manage the milkin’.’
+
+‘Was that all she said?’
+
+‘No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and
+calves; and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.’
+
+Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let her. James and I saddled our
+horses and rode down the creek.
+
+     *****
+
+Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last
+saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was
+dead. But she was ‘past carin’’ right enough.
+
+
+
+
+A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek.
+
+
+
+
+I. Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy.
+
+
+Ever since we were married it had been Mary’s great ambition to have a
+buggy. The house or furniture didn’t matter so much--out there in the
+Bush where we were--but, where there were no railways or coaches, and
+the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great
+thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get
+one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a
+second-hand one that I’d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at
+last she said, ‘Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I’ll
+be satisfied. I’ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.
+Wait till we’re better off.’
+
+After that, whenever I took a contract--to put up a fence or wool-shed,
+or sink a dam or something--Mary would say, ‘You ought to knock a buggy
+out of this job, Joe;’ but something always turned up--bad weather or
+sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another
+time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished
+it. Then Mary would say, ‘Ah, well--never mind, Joe. Wait till we are
+better off.’ But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and
+didn’t get paid for it, for we’d as good as settled about another
+second-hand buggy then.
+
+I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made
+a spring-cart--body and wheels--in spare time, out of colonial hardwood,
+and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart
+myself. It wasn’t much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it
+WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I
+didn’t hear any more of the buggy for a while.
+
+I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted
+a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was
+just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the
+money in case of extra expense--and she didn’t fret much at losing
+that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for
+a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of
+getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her
+till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing
+in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor
+regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the
+buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I’d thought of
+how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I’d say one morning, ‘Go round
+and have a look in the shed, Mary; I’ve got a few fowls for you,’ or
+something like that--and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw
+the buggy. I never told Mary about that--it wouldn’t have done any good.
+
+Later on I got some good timber--mostly scraps that were given to
+me--and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder
+at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from
+Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price
+and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through
+the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom
+Tarrant’s big van--to increase the surprise. We were swells then for
+a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we’d been settled at
+Lahey’s Creek for a couple of years.
+
+I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at
+Lahey’s Creek--for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed--and
+shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary’s young
+scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road.
+The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it--it
+was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from
+home. The game was right enough for a single man--or a married one whose
+wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have--God help ‘em!),
+and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small
+carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the
+coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put
+it on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff.
+
+The second year I made a rise--out of ‘spuds’, of all the things in the
+world. It was Mary’s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection--Mary
+called it ‘the run’--was a shallow watercourse called Snake’s Creek, dry
+most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above
+the junction, where it ran into Lahey’s Creek, was a low piece of good
+black-soil flat, on our side--about three acres. The flat was fairly
+clear when I came to the selection--save for a few logs that had been
+washed up there in some big ‘old man’ flood, way back in black-fellows’
+times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and
+trace-chains and dragged the logs together--those that wouldn’t split
+for fencing timber--and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat
+ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good water-hole,
+under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools
+and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and
+wash the clothes under the shade of the trees--it was cooler, and
+saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the
+washing she said to me--
+
+‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they
+don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is
+going to be like--they just go on farming the same old way and putting
+in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes
+on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn’t,
+they mow it for hay--and some of ‘em don’t have the brains to do that in
+time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck
+me that it wouldn’t be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,
+and have the land ploughed--old Corny George would do it cheap--and
+get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last
+couple of years.’
+
+I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for
+potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. ‘Everybody I know has
+tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,’ I said.
+
+‘All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,’ said Mary. ‘Just try
+one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t
+take my advice.’
+
+‘But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,’ I said.
+
+‘How do you know? You haven’t sown any there yet.’
+
+‘But I’ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It’s not rich enough,
+and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do
+you think I don’t know land when I see it?’
+
+‘But you haven’t TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you
+know----’
+
+I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea
+into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be
+talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,
+on the track she’d started,--just as if I wasn’t there,--and it used to
+make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my
+temper,--I did both at the same time, mostly.
+
+I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
+
+A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down
+to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after
+I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said--
+
+‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I
+will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his
+plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could
+put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’
+
+I thought she’d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue--I’d
+be sure to lose my temper, and then I’d either have to waste an hour
+comforting Mary or go off in a ‘huff’, as the women call it, and be
+miserable for the trip. So I said I’d see about it. She gave me another
+hug and a kiss. ‘Don’t forget, Joe,’ she said as I started. ‘Think it
+over on the road.’ I reckon she had the best of it that time.
+
+About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard
+some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a
+start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember,
+the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles
+I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back--only I thought
+she’d laugh at me.
+
+‘What is it, James?’ I shouted, before he came up--but I saw he was
+grinning.
+
+‘Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.’
+
+‘You clear off home!’ I said, ‘or I’ll lay the whip about your young
+hide; and don’t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.’
+
+‘Well, you needn’t get shirty with me!’ he said. ‘*I* don’t want to have
+anything to do with a hoe.’ And he rode off.
+
+I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn’t meant to. I
+knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out
+of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring
+‘Fifties--‘54--when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a
+hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get
+good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes
+in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the
+crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was
+struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble
+about when I felt grumpy.
+
+I got a couple of bags of potatoes--we could use those that were
+left over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the
+blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap--only about
+a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I
+generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding
+notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I
+could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn’t
+strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow
+against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen
+shillings.) Anyway, I’d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might
+as well get it now; it would give James something to do.
+
+I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and
+the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And
+Mary was down on the bank superintending. She’d got James with the
+trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every
+stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny
+looked pretty grumpy on it--he’d broken all his ploughshares but one, in
+the roots; and James didn’t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt
+hat and a new pair of ‘lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were
+covered with clay, for she’d been down hustling James to get a rotten
+old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round with his next
+furrow.
+
+‘I thought I’d make the boots easy for you, Joe,’ said Mary.
+
+‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to growl.’ Those boots
+were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off
+before I got home.
+
+Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,
+but I said that would be all right--we’d want a plough anyway.
+
+‘I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,’ she said.
+
+‘I never said so.’
+
+‘But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you
+didn’t say you wouldn’t bring it,’ she said.
+
+I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When
+Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or
+two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added
+nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork:
+he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or
+fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for
+grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the
+potatoes of an evening--and there was trouble between Mary and James
+over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe--and
+besides it wasn’t a novelty to James--so I just ran furrows and they
+dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them,
+and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled those spuds, too,
+with furrows--or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on.
+
+It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all
+through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the
+district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see
+if the potatoes were up; and she’d write to me about them, on the road.
+I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the
+district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen
+shillings a hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of
+mine--and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon.
+Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for
+sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of--and
+let me know about it, in an offhand way.
+
+
+
+
+II. Joe Wilson’s Luck.
+
+
+There was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up
+a small lot--about twenty head--of half-starved steers for next to
+nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my
+brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery
+at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or
+thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th’
+Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those
+places round there, and he was doing well.
+
+Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went--a
+tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would
+be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said--‘there’d be more room for
+the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong,
+or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small
+flock of sheep that a selector--who was about starved off his selection
+out Talbragar way--wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get
+them for less than half-a-crown a-head. We’d had a heavy shower of rain,
+that came over the ranges and didn’t seem to go beyond our boundaries.
+Mary said, ‘It’s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe.
+Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money
+with me, and I’ll send James over for them. Never mind about the
+buggy--we’ll get that when we’re on our feet.’
+
+So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that
+unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two
+hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed
+too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up,
+though. The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that
+my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to
+speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps
+began to talk of ‘Joe Wilson’s luck’.
+
+I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed
+or anything ready--along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom
+in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen
+to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to
+truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that
+was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and
+down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who
+was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool)
+offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after
+paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the
+sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding
+was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener
+shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
+
+I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks--one in James’s name, to
+encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an
+angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody
+thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went
+to the local land office and found out that it was ‘unoccupied Crown
+land’, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more
+sheep--I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.
+
+One evening--I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for
+myself--Mary said,--
+
+‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’
+
+The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and
+I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the
+old woman and girls were right enough.
+
+‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and
+camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go
+flashing round in a double buggy.’
+
+‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell
+their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or
+seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’
+
+‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to
+do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’
+
+‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’
+
+Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean--but
+couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary
+always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and
+struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her,
+and she spoke of the ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that
+cut me deep.
+
+It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my
+hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything
+that looked like injustice--I was so sensitive about it that it made
+me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t--it
+wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got
+thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had
+since we were married.
+
+When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I
+whispered.
+
+She seemed to wake up.
+
+‘Joe--Joe!’ she said.
+
+‘What is it Mary?’ I said.
+
+‘I’m pretty well sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James
+go at once!’
+
+Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her
+sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.
+
+We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel
+like laughing just then.
+
+Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,--
+
+‘Joe--Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the
+varnish!’
+
+I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to
+Mary.
+
+Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and
+took Mary’s breakfast in to her--like I used to do, sometimes, when we
+were first married. She didn’t say anything--just pulled my head down
+and kissed me.
+
+When I was ready to start Mary said,--
+
+‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres
+cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them
+up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children
+I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident
+yet.’
+
+So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and
+mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It
+suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and
+down in front of him.
+
+It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless--and
+I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me,
+but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes--trying to hatch out
+stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I
+used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up--and more generous. When I
+had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me
+a pound-note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless
+chaps--and lost mates that I wanted afterwards--and got the name of
+being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over
+the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy
+things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend
+a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the
+greater the fear I had of it--and, besides, there was always before us
+all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and
+dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the
+barren creeks.
+
+I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in
+Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a
+brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had
+one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t
+help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to
+talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black
+Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t
+oversentimental. Or maybe a selector’s wife (the nearest was five
+miles away), who could talk only of two or three things--‘lambin’’ and
+‘shearin’’ and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man,
+and what he said to her--and her own ailments--over and over again.
+
+It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad!--I know I could never listen to
+that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said,--
+
+‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the
+children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’
+
+I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from
+that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I
+reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
+
+
+
+
+III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice.
+
+
+When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the
+cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers--one was
+a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men--the biggest men in
+the district, ‘twas said.
+
+Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men,
+and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a
+special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into
+the painter’s shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had
+built for a man who couldn’t pay cash for it when it was finished--and
+Galletly wouldn’t trust him.
+
+There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to
+keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece
+of work--pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you
+only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in
+the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat;
+if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back
+seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go
+near fifty pounds.
+
+While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the
+back.
+
+‘Now, there’s a chance for you, Joe!’ he said. ‘I saw you rubbing your
+head round that buggy the last time you were in. You wouldn’t get a
+better one in the colonies, and you won’t see another like it in the
+district again in a hurry--for it doesn’t pay to build ‘em. Now you’re a
+full-blown squatter, and it’s time you took little Mary for a fly round
+in her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in
+the scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother
+Flourbag.’
+
+He called her ‘little Mary’ because the Galletly family had known her
+when she was a girl.
+
+I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again. It was a great
+temptation.
+
+‘Look here, Joe,’ said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone. ‘I’ll tell you
+what I’ll do. I’ll let YOU have the buggy. You can take it out and send
+along a bit of a cheque when you feel you can manage it, and the rest
+later on,--a year will do, or even two years. You’ve had a hard pull,
+and I’m not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.’
+
+They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men. I
+happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn’t let the man he built the
+buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down, though he was a
+big-bug round there. But that didn’t make it easier for me.
+
+Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than
+his brother, but the two were very much alike.
+
+‘Look here, Bob,’ said Bill; ‘here’s a chance for you to get rid of your
+harness. Joe Wilson’s going to take that buggy off my hands.’
+
+Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his
+pockets, rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his
+hand, and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did
+when he was thinking. Presently he took his foot down, put his hand
+back in his pocket, and said to me, ‘Well, Joe, I’ve got a double set of
+harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like
+I’ll let you have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he
+can out of you I’ll stand a show of getting something. He’s a regular
+Shylock, he is.’
+
+I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared at the
+buggy.
+
+‘Come across to the Royal, Joe,’ said Bob.
+
+But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said I’d get the
+wool up to the station first and think it over, and have a drink when I
+came back.
+
+I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn’t seem good
+enough. I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to
+be fenced in, and the instalments on the selections. I wanted lots of
+things that I couldn’t well do without. Then, again, the farther I got
+away from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it. I
+had two horses that would do; but I’d have to get another later on, and
+altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds.
+Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands.
+Besides, I wanted a spell. If I got the buggy it would only mean an
+extra turn of hard graft for me. No, I’d take Mary for a trip to Sydney,
+and she’d have to be satisfied with that.
+
+I’d got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white
+gates to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the
+station in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver and a lot
+of portmanteaus and rugs and things. They were going to do the grand
+in Sydney over Christmas. Now it was young Black who was so shook after
+Mary when she was in service with the Blacks before the old man died,
+and if I hadn’t come along--and if girls never cared for vagabonds--Mary
+would have been mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on
+her; and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there.
+She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up at the
+old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for, and seeing
+a play every night. And I’d have been knocking around amongst the big
+stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death at the shanties.
+
+The Blacks didn’t see me as I went by, ragged and dusty, and with an
+old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes. I didn’t care
+a damn for them, or any one else, at most times, but I had moods when I
+felt things.
+
+One of Black’s big wool teams was just coming away from the shed, and
+the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him,
+didn’t seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the
+road. I stopped my horses and waited. He looked at me and I looked at
+him--hard. Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses.
+I’d given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn’t
+forgotten it. And I felt then as if I wouldn’t mind trying to give some
+one a hiding.
+
+The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that
+day. I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren
+creek in the Bush--for it was little better--with no one to speak to
+except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her
+on Sunday. I thought of the hardships she went through in the first
+year--that I haven’t told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I
+away, and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and
+Jim sick; and of the loneliness she fought through out there. I thought
+of Mary, outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a
+felt hat, and a pair of ‘lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of
+a station manager as well as that of a housewife and mother. And her
+cheeks were getting thin, and her colour was going: I thought of the
+gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I
+knew--and some of them not much older than Mary.
+
+When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at
+the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the
+harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain. When I was going, Bob said,
+‘Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary’s with the horses: if
+the collars don’t fit I’ll fix up a pair of makeshifts, and alter the
+others.’ I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual, but that
+might have been the beer.
+
+     * ‘Shout’, to buy a round of drinks.--A. L., 1997.
+
+
+
+
+IV. The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+I ‘whipped the cat’ a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I
+thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money
+until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world
+again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray--there’d be
+some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had
+the buggy she wouldn’t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the
+Bush; and the Sydney trips needn’t be off either. I could drive down to
+Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the
+buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by
+the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive.
+I thought best to tell Mary’s sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told
+her I’d keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered
+into the spirit of the thing, and said she’d give the world to be able
+to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw
+it; but she couldn’t go, on account of a new baby she had. I was rather
+glad she couldn’t, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought.
+I wanted that all to myself.
+
+I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I’d finished
+telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn’t bring the
+cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James, out on a log
+of the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and
+told him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said--
+
+‘But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for?
+Why can’t you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She’s been pretty
+miserable since you’ve been away this trip.’
+
+‘I want it to be a surprise,’ I said.
+
+‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like
+this; but it ‘ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary
+about taking the two horses in? I’ll only want one to bring the cart
+out, and she’s sure to ask.’
+
+‘Tell her you’re going to get yours shod.’
+
+‘But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much
+about horses as we do. I don’t mind telling a lie so long as a chap has
+only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so
+many questions.’
+
+‘Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you
+go.’
+
+‘Yes. And she’ll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I’ll fix
+her--YOU needn’t worry.’
+
+‘And, James,’ I said, ‘get a chamois leather and sponge--we’ll want ‘em
+anyway--and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek, coming
+home. It’s sure to be covered with dust.’
+
+‘Oh!--orlright.’
+
+‘And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening,
+or just about sunset.’
+
+‘What for?’
+
+I’d thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool
+of the evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over
+it--better than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as
+at noon, and we’d have the long broiling day before us.
+
+‘What do you want me to come at sunset for?’ asked James. ‘Do you want
+me to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?’
+
+‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘get here at midnight if you like.’
+
+We didn’t say anything for a while--just sat and puffed at our pipes.
+Then I said,--
+
+‘Well, what are you thinking about?’
+
+I’m thinking it’s time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in
+through your old one too much,’ and he got out of my reach and went to
+see about penning the calves. Before we turned in he said,--
+
+‘Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?’
+
+He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in
+Cudgeegong had--one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said,--
+
+‘How much does Franca want for that gun?’
+
+‘Five-ten; but I think he’d take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can
+squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.’
+(Phil was his bosom chum.)
+
+‘All right,’ I said. ‘Make the best bargain you can.’
+
+He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get
+clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to
+give him overnight. He took his gun with him.
+
+I’d always thought that a man was a fool who couldn’t keep a secret
+from his wife--that there was something womanish about him. I found out.
+Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever
+spent in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything;
+and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the
+harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning,
+I rode up the ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I
+hurried home that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there
+before me.
+
+At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
+
+‘What’s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?’ I asked. ‘There’s only
+room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go
+out together?’
+
+‘We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can
+always fold up a blanket or ‘possum rug for them to sit on.’
+
+But she didn’t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would
+have taken at any other time, when I didn’t want her to. Women are
+aggravating that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and
+both the children were cross. She did look knocked up.
+
+‘We’ll give the buggy a rest, Joe,’ she said. (I thought I heard it
+coming then.) ‘It seems as far off as ever. I don’t know why you want to
+harp on it to-day. Now, don’t look so cross, Joe--I didn’t mean to hurt
+you. We’ll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you’re so set on
+it. There’ll be plenty of time when we’re better off.’
+
+After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she’d washed up, we sat
+outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking
+and watching the track up the creek.
+
+‘Why don’t you talk, Joe?’ asked Mary. ‘You scarcely ever speak to me
+now: it’s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What
+makes you so cross, Joe?’
+
+‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say.’
+
+‘But you should find something. Think of me--it’s very miserable for me.
+Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell
+me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making
+both our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you
+expect me to understand?’
+
+I said there was nothing the matter.
+
+‘But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking,
+Joe--or gambling?’
+
+I asked her what she’d accuse me of next.
+
+‘And another thing I want to speak to you about,’ she went on. ‘Now,
+don’t knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient----’
+
+‘Well, what is it?’
+
+‘I wish you wouldn’t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little
+Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn’t run
+right, and--and----’
+
+‘Well, what did he say?’
+
+‘He--he’ (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)--‘he said
+“damn it!”’
+
+I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.
+
+‘Never mind, old woman,’ I said, putting an arm round her, for her
+mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. ‘It won’t be
+always like this. Just wait till we’re a bit better off.’
+
+Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)
+came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going
+to hit him--poor little devil! I never did.
+
+‘What is it, Harry?’ said Mary.
+
+‘Buggy comin’, I bin thinkit.’
+
+‘Where?’
+
+He pointed up the creek.
+
+‘Sure it’s a buggy?’
+
+‘Yes, missus.’
+
+‘How many horses?’
+
+‘One--two.’
+
+We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary
+went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes--though the sun
+had gone--and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the
+stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down
+and came running in.
+
+‘There’s some one coming in a buggy, Joe!’ she cried, excitedly. ‘And
+both my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down
+to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It’s lucky I kept those
+new sheets packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting
+grinning like that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry--Why! It’s
+only James--by himself.’
+
+She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.
+
+‘Joe!’ she said, ‘whose buggy is that?’
+
+‘Well, I suppose it’s yours,’ I said.
+
+She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again.
+James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to
+the house.
+
+‘Oh, Joe! what have you done?’ cried Mary. ‘Why, it’s a new double
+buggy!’ Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. ‘Why didn’t you tell
+me, Joe? You poor old boy!--and I’ve been nagging at you all day!’ and
+she hugged me again.
+
+James got down and started taking the horses out--as if it was an
+everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under
+the seat. He’d stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that’s what made
+him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as
+usual, and breathing hard--taking the buggy in.
+
+James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and
+went down to the dam for a drink. ‘You’d better look under the seats,’
+growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.
+
+Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer
+in a candle-box from Galletly--James said that Galletly’s men had a
+gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they
+cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a ‘little bit of a
+ham’ from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he’d ‘cured
+himself’--it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of
+baker’s bread, a cake, and a dozen yards of something ‘to make up for
+the children’, from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water
+cod, that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie
+river, and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit
+for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of
+preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) [‘for the lil’ boy’), and
+a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle [‘for lil’ girl’) from Sun Tong
+Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong--James was chummy with Sun Tong Lee,
+and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick when he was short of
+money. And James said that the people would have loaded the buggy with
+‘rubbish’ if he’d waited. They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting
+on--and these things did me good.
+
+We got the things inside, and I don’t think either of us knew what we
+were saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in
+and said, in a very injured tone,--
+
+‘What about my tea? I ain’t had anything to speak of since I left
+Cudgeegong. I want some grub.’
+
+Then Mary pulled herself together.
+
+‘You’ll have your tea directly,’ she said. ‘Pick up that harness at
+once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back
+that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it
+presently--and we’ll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to
+keep the sun off. And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the
+cart,--we can’t have that buggy to knock about in.’
+
+‘All right,’ said James--‘anything! Only get me some grub.’
+
+Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn’t keep till the morning, and
+rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot--James growling
+all the time--and got out some crockery she had packed away that had
+belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James
+uncomfortable.
+
+‘I want some grub--not a blooming banquet!’ he said. And he growled a
+lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, ‘and that
+sort of Tommy-rot.’ When he’d finished he took his gun, and the black
+boy, and the dogs, and went out ‘possum-shooting.
+
+When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and
+made me get up alongside her. We hadn’t had such a comfortable seat for
+years; but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to
+feel like a pair of fools up there.
+
+Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked
+more than we’d done for years--and there was a good deal of ‘Do you
+remember?’ in it--and I think we got to understand each other better
+that night.
+
+And at last Mary said, ‘Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night
+just--just like I did the day we were married.’
+
+And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.
+
+
+
+
+The Writer Wants to Say a Word.
+
+
+In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened
+to be ‘Brighten’s Sister-in-law’, I had an idea of making Joe Wilson a
+strong character. Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems
+to me that the man’s natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature,
+‘softness’, or weakness--call it which you like--developed as I wrote
+on.
+
+I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the
+day he brought the double buggy to Lahey’s Creek. I met him in Sydney
+the other day. Tall and straight yet--rather straighter than he had
+been--dressed in a comfortable, serviceable sac suit of ‘saddle-tweed’,
+and wearing a new sugar-loaf, cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the
+hurrying street people calmly as though they were sheep of which he was
+not in charge, and which were not likely to get ‘boxed’ with his. Not
+the worst way in which to regard the world.
+
+He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush. He is a
+young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary a
+long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head, and the process
+would leave him pretty bald.
+
+In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete the
+story of his life.
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+
+
+
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+
+
+Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an ‘old hand’ (transported convict)
+some said. The prefix ‘mother’ in Australia mostly means ‘old hag’,
+and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from
+old diggers, that Mother Middleton--in common with most other ‘old
+hands’--had been sent out for ‘knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.’ We
+had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper
+when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on
+most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly
+as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had
+pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a
+heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler.
+She said that he had insulted her.
+
+She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any
+Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy’s; she had
+often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he’d be
+putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to
+do--because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see
+how she’d spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and ‘tailings’,
+and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of
+her, and few diggers’ wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second
+row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden
+Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly
+greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the ‘rough crowd’
+(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she
+went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or
+‘poor-man’s’ goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock
+goldfield ‘broke out’, adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove
+the truth of the old digger’s saying, that no matter how thoroughly
+ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.
+
+Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
+in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the
+river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in
+the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.
+Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the
+effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was
+unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and
+was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then
+lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did
+sewing and washing for single diggers.
+
+I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried
+on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly
+slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
+
+‘Why don’t you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on
+good land, Peter Olsen? You’re only slaving your stomach out here.’ (She
+didn’t say stomach.)
+
+*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). ‘But then
+you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn’t like to take
+her out in the Bush.’
+
+*Mrs Middleton*. ‘Delicate, be damned! she’s only shamming!’ (at her
+loudest.) ‘Why don’t you kick her off the bed and the book out of her
+hand, and make her go to work? She’s as delicate as I am. Are you a man,
+Peter Olsen, or a----?’
+
+This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
+
+Long Paddock was ‘petering’. There were a few claims still being worked
+down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and
+gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;
+and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over
+the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time
+lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with
+their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet
+‘mullock’.
+
+Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few
+prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the
+ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
+
+Dave Regan--lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently--a bit of a ‘Flash
+Jack’; and Andy Page--a character like what ‘Kit’ (in the ‘Old Curiosity
+Shop’) might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial
+experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for
+it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down
+pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the
+sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.
+
+Dave had theories--‘ideers’ or ‘notions’ he called them; Jim Bently laid
+claim to none--he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy
+Page--by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan--was
+simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be
+obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had
+reverence for higher things.
+
+Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next
+morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the
+cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub,
+about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post
+from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging
+indications. They ‘drove’ (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the
+fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were ‘making tucker’;
+a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom
+sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving,
+brownish, rotten rock.
+
+Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave’s drive,
+lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
+James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave
+was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been
+conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet
+here.
+
+Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
+timbering--i.e., putting in a sapling prop--here and there where he
+worked wide; but the ‘payable dirt’ ran in under the cemetery, and in no
+other direction.
+
+Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes
+after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
+sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to
+tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
+
+This was Dave’s theory--drawn from a little experience and many long
+yarns with old diggers:--
+
+He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with
+clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of
+from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running
+into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks
+of ‘wash’ or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich
+at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich ‘lead’ which was
+supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich
+lead round there somewhere. ‘There’s gold in them ridges yet--if a man
+can only git at it,’ says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
+
+Dave might strike a ledge, ‘pocket’, or ‘pot-hole’ holding wash rich
+with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found
+no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had
+prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few ‘colours’, and the
+bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards
+which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across
+the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty
+feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under
+the cemetery was rich--maybe the richest in the district. The old
+gravediggers had not been gold-diggers--besides, the graves, being six
+feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There
+was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced
+diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and
+racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of
+which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put
+through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded ‘payable
+gold’. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a
+case of this kind.
+
+Dave reckoned to strike the ‘lead’, or a shelf or ledge with a good
+streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the
+cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory
+in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old
+volcanic disturbances--‘the shrinkage of the earth’s surface,’ and that
+sort of old thing--upset everything. You might follow good gold along
+a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the
+continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.
+
+Had the ‘ground’ in the cemetery been ‘open’ Dave would have gone to the
+point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and
+worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way--it
+would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets
+of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But
+it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open
+the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich
+goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers
+and their backers--which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He
+wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old
+clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back
+of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or
+even a rush of wild diggers.
+
+‘We’ll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,’ said Dave.
+
+He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim
+grumbled, in conclusion,--
+
+‘Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It’s the shortest and
+straightest, and Jimmy’s the freshest, anyway.’
+
+Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of
+the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such
+an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave
+had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it
+down a deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and
+might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys
+‘possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.
+
+There was supposed to exist--and it has since been proved--another, a
+second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried
+for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in ‘duffers’,
+trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth
+of from eighty to a hundred feet--on solid rock, I suppose. This
+watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in
+person, and whenever he came to a little ‘colour’-showing shelf, or
+false bottom, thirty or forty feet down--he’d go rooting round and spoil
+the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that
+he hadn’t the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second
+bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other
+bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
+He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the
+last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a
+sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a
+deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I’m
+right off the line again.
+
+‘Old Pinter’, Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms
+ran as follows:--
+
+‘Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an’ grass
+on it, that we’re livin’ on, has got nothin’ to do with us. This here
+bottom in the shaller sinkin’s that we’re workin’ on is the slope to the
+bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was
+missin’ links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said
+to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
+SECON’ bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about
+the time when men was frogs. Now----’
+
+But it’s with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the
+friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they
+would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
+
+‘We’ll give out we’re tryin’ for the second bottom,’ said Dave Regan.
+‘We’ll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don’t want air in
+shallow sinkings.’
+
+‘And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the
+bottom,’ said Jim Bently.
+
+‘We must keep ‘em away,’ said Dave. ‘Tar the bottom, or cover it with
+tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won’t see it. There’s not
+many diggers left, and the rest are going; they’re chucking up the
+claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the
+rest and they wouldn’t come near me. The farmers ain’t in love with
+us diggers, so they won’t bother us. No man has a right to come poking
+round another man’s claim: it ain’t ettykit--I’ll root up that old
+ettykit and stand to it--it’s rather worn out now, but that’s no matter.
+We’ll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes
+nosing round on Sunday. They’ll think we’re only some more second-bottom
+lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We’re going to get our
+fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me
+till you’re born again with brains.’
+
+Dave’s schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often
+came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,
+bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a
+new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is
+to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of
+rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken
+up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.
+
+‘It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can’t
+afford them just yet,’ said Dave.
+
+But I’m a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery,
+finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton’s box
+appeared in the top corner of the ‘face’ (the working end) of the drive.
+They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the
+shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might
+disturb the mound above; they puddled--i.e., rammed--stiff clay up round
+the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given
+the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather
+under, an unpleasant matter.
+
+Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a
+good deal. ‘Blowed if I ever thought I’d be rooting for gold down among
+the blanky dead men,’ he said. But the dirt panned out better every
+dish they washed, and Dave worked the ‘wash’ out right and left as they
+drove.
+
+But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man
+whom Dave wished to see round there--‘Old Pinter’ (James Poynton),
+Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He’d been
+prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder--threaded
+through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that
+hung behind--and his gold-dish under his arm.
+
+I mightn’t get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what
+gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape
+of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
+dish we used for setting milk--I don’t know whether the same is used
+here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You
+get it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge
+of the water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just
+below its own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak
+a while, then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay
+dissolves, dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to
+wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till
+all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean
+gravel in the bottom of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning
+the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it. It
+requires some practice. The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by
+its own weight. At last there is only a little half-moon of sand or fine
+gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish--you work the dish slanting
+from you. Presently the gold, if there was any in the dirt, appears in
+‘colours’, grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of
+sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is,
+the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of
+gravel, without losing a ‘colour’, by just working the water round and
+off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold
+in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover practically
+every colour.
+
+The gold-washing ‘cradle’ is a box, shaped something like a boot, and
+the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby’s cradle,
+and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you’ll put your foot
+into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and
+gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked
+smartly. The finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a
+sloping board covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the
+gold. The dish was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash
+dirt was put through the horse-power ‘puddling-machine’, which there
+isn’t room to describe here.
+
+‘’Ello, Dave!’ said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size
+of Dave’s waste-heap. ‘Tryin’ for the second bottom?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Dave, guttural.
+
+Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap
+and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he
+resembled. Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his
+knees, he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
+
+Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
+over the graveyard.
+
+‘Tryin’ for a secon’ bottom,’ he reflected absently. ‘Eh, Dave?’
+
+Dave only stood and looked black.
+
+Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his
+chin-feathers, which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held
+horizontally.
+
+‘Kullers is safe,’ reflected Pinter.
+
+‘All right?’ snapped Dave. ‘I suppose we must let him into it.’
+
+‘Kullers’ was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter’s mate for
+some time--Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was that
+Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
+
+Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
+Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his
+shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along
+the other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.
+He lost no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and
+started to drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which
+Dave was making; he gave out that he had bottomed on good ‘indications’
+running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the
+fence. Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan--partly for the sake of appearances,
+but mainly because his and Jim’s lively imaginations made the air in the
+drive worse than it really was. A ‘fan’ is a thing like a paddle-wheel
+rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of
+a shoe, but rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the
+axle of the fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is
+carried over this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden
+driving-wheel rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle
+to turn. That’s how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless
+pillow-slip, made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of
+the fan-box, and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive--this
+carries the fresh air into the workings.
+
+Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning
+a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to
+work. He felt mad that it hadn’t struck him sooner.
+
+Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet
+place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while
+Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their
+tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into
+Pinter’s hole and saw at a glance what he was up to.
+
+After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the
+thuds of Pinter’s and Kullers’ picks drawing nearer. They would strike
+his tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only
+knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw
+themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours’ sleep. Pinter had
+practical experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time.
+The two parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking
+terms. Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal
+like--at least Dave and Jim did. They’d start if a horse stumbled
+through the Bush, and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at
+any moment and hear him ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five
+feet when, one Saturday afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave
+and Jim got drunk. The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning
+they felt too shaky to come to work and had more drink. On Monday
+afternoon, Kullers, whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the
+face of his drive into the wall of Dave’s, about four feet from the end
+of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.
+They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the
+offensive.
+
+Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim
+went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the
+spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close
+to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness
+in the air. He started picking away at the ‘face’ and scraping the clay
+back from under his feet, and didn’t hear Kullers come to work. Kullers
+came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his
+great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling
+horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw--
+
+‘’Ullo! you dar’?’
+
+No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker
+than Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes,
+and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
+
+‘What’s the matter?’ asked Dave. ‘Have you seen a ghost?’
+
+‘I’ve seen the--the devil!’ gasped Jim. ‘I’m--I’m done with this here
+ghoul business.’
+
+The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim’s
+language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till
+the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for
+goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or
+otherwise--so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they joined
+forces and became ‘Poynton, Regan, & Party’. They agreed to work the
+ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead, irrespective
+of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as possible before
+the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of ‘payable dirt’,
+and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers. They timbered
+up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and brown
+paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper with
+difficulty and talked of hard times.
+
+But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got
+a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they
+were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should
+march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was
+a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and
+her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,
+she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink
+to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had
+a stride like a grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her
+footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured
+three feet from toe to heel.
+
+She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of
+flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down
+on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt
+beneath her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart
+on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
+
+It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just
+deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in
+the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped
+down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if
+there was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
+
+‘What’s up now?’ demanded Dave apprehensively.
+
+‘Mother Middleton,’ said Jim; ‘she’s blind mad drunk, and she’s got a
+bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she’s bringing
+out for some one.’
+
+‘How the hell did she drop to it?’ exclaimed Pinter.
+
+‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘Anyway she’s coming for us. Listen to her!’
+
+They didn’t have to listen hard. The language which came down the
+shaft--they weren’t sure which one--and along the drives was enough to
+scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.
+
+‘Why didn’t you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,
+instead of giving her a lead here?’ asked Dave.
+
+Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
+
+Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft--it was Pinter’s--and
+they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of
+themselves, for they knew she couldn’t hurt them from the surface, and
+that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn’t fill
+both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
+
+‘I wonder which shaf’ she’ll come down,’ asked Kullers in a tone
+befitting the place and occasion.
+
+‘You’d better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,’ said Dave, ‘and Jim and
+I’ll watch mine.’
+
+‘I--I won’t,’ said Pinter hurriedly. ‘I’m--I’m a modest man.’
+
+Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter’s shaft.
+
+‘She’s thrown her bottle down,’ said Dave.
+
+Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned
+hurriedly.
+
+‘She’s broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe
+she’s coming down.’
+
+‘Her crinoline’ll handicap her,’ said Pinter vacantly, ‘that’s a
+comfort.’
+
+‘She’s took it off!’ said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter’s
+drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped
+stocking, then a section of scarlet petticoat.
+
+‘Lemme out!’ roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming
+motion with his hands in the direction of Dave’s drive. Kullers
+was already gone, and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward,
+scrambled up the shaft last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering
+she had the darkness to face and didn’t know the workings, and when Dave
+reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood
+ran from a nasty scratch. But he didn’t wait to argue over the price of
+a new pair of trousers. He made off through the Bush in the direction of
+an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.
+
+‘She’s too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,’ said Dave. ‘But
+to-morrow she’ll bring the neighbourhood down on us.’
+
+‘And she’s enough, without the neighbourhood,’ reflected Pinter.
+
+Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
+and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn’t carry,
+they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
+
+
+
+
+The Chinaman’s Ghost.
+
+
+‘Simple as striking matches,’ said Dave Regan, Bushman; ‘but it gave me
+the biggest scare I ever had--except, perhaps, the time I stumbled in
+the dark into a six-feet digger’s hole, which might have been eighty
+feet deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feet
+shaft left open close by.)
+
+‘It was the night of the day after the Queen’s birthday. I was sinking a
+shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, and
+we camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that was
+held at Peter Anderson’s pub., about four miles across the ridges, on
+Queen’s birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and
+we’d disgusted him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he
+stayed at home and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic
+book. (He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare
+time.)
+
+‘Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after the
+races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me--I don’t
+remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight
+each other when we got a bit on, and we’d fight if we weren’t stopped. I
+remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight
+him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver,
+used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn’t hate each
+other so much when we were tight and truthful.
+
+‘Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
+early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been
+carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.
+
+‘Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I’d
+lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he’d worn
+on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair,
+and fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask of
+whisky to help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long dark
+gully called Murderer’s Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man’s Gap,
+and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flats
+were covered with blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in the
+moonlight, and I was pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and a
+mouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle,
+and then to sing: I never used to sing unless I thought I was a couple
+of miles out of earshot of any one.
+
+‘Murderer’s Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course it
+was haunted. Women and children wouldn’t go through it after dark; and
+even me, when I’d grown up, I’d hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,
+and walk quick going along there at night-time. We’re all afraid of
+ghosts, but we won’t let on.
+
+‘Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the
+track, and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses
+laid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. All
+of a sudden a great ‘old man’ kangaroo went across the track with a
+thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked,
+white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree, where some one had
+stripped off a sheet of bark, started out from a bend in the track in a
+shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky before
+I started. There was a Chinaman’s grave close by the track on the top
+of the gap. An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years, and
+fossicked on the old diggings, and one day he was found dead in the
+hut, and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was a
+nipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese
+because the bones hadn’t been sent home to China. It was a lonely,
+ghostly place enough.
+
+‘It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the
+flats and up the gully--not a breath of air; but now as I got higher I
+saw signs of the thunderstorm we’d expected all day, and felt the breath
+of a warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap the
+first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the
+spot where the Chinaman’s grave was, and I stood staring at it with
+both eyes. It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it was
+a white bullock, and I felt relieved. I’d hardly felt relieved when, all
+at once, there came a “pat-pat-pat” of running feet close behind me!
+I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood
+staring all ways for Sunday, there came a “pat-pat”, then a pause, and
+then “pat-pat-pat-pat” behind me again: it was like some one dodging and
+running off that time. I started to walk down the track pretty fast,
+but hadn’t gone a dozen yards when “pat-pat-pat”, it was close behind me
+again. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going. There
+was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush to
+the right. It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs; there
+was a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, and
+was making across a spur to the main road, when “pat-pat!” “pat-pat-pat,
+pat-pat-pat!” it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it began
+to run too! “pat-pat-pat” after me all the time. I hadn’t time to look
+round. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road
+I went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea that
+I was getting a touch of the “jim-jams”, and that frightened me more
+than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and
+saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering
+on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I’d broken both
+my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and
+listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn’t hear nor
+see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when
+“pat-pat!” it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half
+altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to
+the camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up
+in my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The
+footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and
+I stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn’t noticed at Peter
+Anderson’s--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat
+of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose
+ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long
+as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails
+didn’t flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were
+still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat
+on the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being
+tight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw
+sounded loud of course.
+
+‘I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool
+down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long
+drink of water.
+
+‘“You seem to be a bit winded, Dave,” said Jim Bently, “and mighty
+thirsty. Did the Chinaman’s ghost chase you?”
+
+‘I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my
+bunk, and had a good rest.’
+
+
+
+
+The Loaded Dog.
+
+
+Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony
+Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist
+in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the
+vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
+beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck some
+pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the
+old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse. They’d make a sausage or
+cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the
+mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they’d dip the cartridge
+in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as
+possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with
+stiff clay and broken brick. Then they’d light the fuse and get out of
+the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom
+of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
+
+There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
+and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
+Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a ‘nibble’
+or a ‘bite’ now and then--say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was
+always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more
+than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn’t
+bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes,
+from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an
+average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling
+out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones
+till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes
+growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you’d know
+it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and
+went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew
+it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it
+too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and
+down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and
+kept him awake for two nights--only the toothache pain had a ‘burred
+edge’, Dave said.
+
+Dave got an idea.
+
+‘Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?’ he
+said. ‘I’ll try it.’
+
+He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put
+Dave’s theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the
+blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren’t.
+
+He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the
+rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the
+river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a
+six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of
+the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge
+in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on
+the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted
+bees’-wax to make it water-tight. ‘We’ll have to leave it some time
+before we light it,’ said Dave, ‘to give the fish time to get over their
+scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we’ll want it
+well water-tight.’
+
+Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave’s suggestion, bound a strip of sail
+canvas--that they used for making water-bags--to increase the force of
+the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper--on
+the plan of the sort of fireworks we called ‘gun-crackers’. He let the
+paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses
+of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout
+fishing-line. Dave’s schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his
+inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough
+now--a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed
+on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow,
+twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it
+in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he’d
+know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he
+went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their
+jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave
+and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.
+
+They had a big black young retriever dog--or rather an overgrown pup, a
+big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
+and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a
+stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin
+of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world,
+his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He’d retrieve
+anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw
+away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good
+distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat,
+after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp,
+and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make
+its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff
+suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise.
+He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he’d jump in after
+them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them,
+and scratch their naked bodies with his paws. They loved him for his
+good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a
+swim they had to tie him up in camp.
+
+He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the
+cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon
+he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to
+come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of
+mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with
+their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till
+dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something
+he seemed to have missed.
+
+Andy’s brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the
+glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him
+that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay,
+sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He
+may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion
+looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn’t interested in
+their ‘damned silliness’. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin--the
+sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the
+convenience of pouring out the treacle--and it struck him that this
+would have made the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had
+to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and
+seal it with bees’-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when
+Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing--and
+bolted. He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan
+spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim
+Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still,
+staring after them.
+
+‘Run, Andy! run!’ they shouted back at him. ‘Run!!! Look behind you, you
+fool!’ Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was
+the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth--wedged into his broadest
+and silliest grin. And that wasn’t all. The dog had come round the fire
+to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the
+burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end
+of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.
+
+Andy’s legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,
+and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy.
+
+Dave and Jim were good runners--Jim the best--for a short distance; Andy
+was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.
+The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find
+his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim kept shouting
+back, ‘Don’t foller us! don’t foller us, you coloured fool!’ but Andy
+kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any
+more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave
+keeping in Jim’s track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the
+dog circling round Andy--the live fuse swishing in all directions and
+hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow
+him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction--to ‘spread out’,
+and Andy roaring at the dog to go home. Then Andy’s brain began to work,
+stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but
+the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the
+dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he’d made a mistake about
+Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of
+mind to think that the fuse’s time wasn’t up yet, made a dive and a grab
+for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched
+the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog
+immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at
+the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim,
+who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native
+bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn’t safely get more than ten
+or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully
+as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and
+leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that
+this was part of the lark--he was all right now--it was Jim who was out
+for a spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim
+tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his
+feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took
+but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger’s hole, about ten feet deep,
+and dropped down into it--landing on soft mud--and was safe. The dog
+grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he
+thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
+
+‘Go away, Tommy,’ said Jim feebly, ‘go away.’
+
+The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy
+had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly
+remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of
+Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a
+newly-arrived shell.
+
+There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not
+far from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in
+his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the
+shanty. There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the
+bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. ‘My dog!’
+he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, ‘the blanky
+retriever--he’s got a live cartridge in his mouth----’
+
+The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded
+round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway
+leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse
+spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one
+and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends
+with everybody.
+
+The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
+There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
+on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.
+Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door--the publican
+cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and
+wanting to know what the hell he came here for.
+
+The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily
+for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking
+and nursing his nastiness under there--a sneaking, fighting, thieving
+canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy
+saw his danger--he’d had experience from this dog--and started out and
+across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across
+the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the
+cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog
+followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.
+
+Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the
+buildings--spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep-
+and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs--that slip after you in
+the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining--and yapping,
+yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty
+yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had
+found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the
+cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when----
+
+It was very good blasting powder--a new brand that Dave had recently got
+up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy
+was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as
+the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.
+
+Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When
+the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog
+were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had
+been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust
+under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
+Several saddle-horses, which had been ‘hanging-up’ round the verandah,
+were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken
+bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every
+point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them
+went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and
+reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards
+evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was
+trying to walk on two legs, and most of ‘em looked more or less singed;
+and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of
+hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad
+that he’d saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it
+now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years
+afterwards, who couldn’t stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it
+was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in
+the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind
+side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn’t wait to bring
+his solitary eye to bear--he’d take to the Bush and stay out all night.
+
+For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen
+round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or
+rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There
+were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing
+aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding
+his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to ‘hold up for my
+sake, Mary, or I’ll lam the life out of ye.’
+
+Dave decided to apologise later on, ‘when things had settled a bit,’ and
+went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, ‘Tommy’, the great,
+idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his
+legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest,
+longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for
+one afternoon with the fun he’d had.
+
+Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave
+went to help Jim out of the hole.
+
+And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going
+Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave’s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and
+with just a hint of the nasal twang--
+
+‘’El-lo, Da-a-ve! How’s the fishin’ getting on, Da-a-ve?’
+
+
+
+
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+
+
+
+
+I. Dave Regan’s Yarn.
+
+
+‘When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,’
+said Dave Regan, Bushman, ‘me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a
+turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a
+big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.
+
+‘We couldn’t get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our
+money, like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border,
+where they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses
+and pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our
+riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and
+by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.
+
+‘Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob
+of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They
+had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther
+with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to
+pay them off, and they were waiting for him.
+
+‘“And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us,” said one of them.
+
+‘Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp
+towards Mulgatown. He was called “Poisonous Jimmy” perhaps on account
+of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a
+station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had
+a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side
+and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he’d say to the girl,
+“Run and get your best frock on, Mary! Here’s the shearers comin’.” And
+if a chequeman wouldn’t drink he’d try to get him into his bar and shout
+for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.
+
+‘“But he won’t get us,” said another of the drovers. “I’m going to ride
+straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I
+get it.”
+
+‘“You’ve always said that, Jack,” said the first drover.
+
+‘We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our
+horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and
+parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings
+to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and
+dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was
+west of the sixpenny-line at that time--all drinks were a shilling along
+here.
+
+‘Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.
+
+‘“We’ll plant our swags in the scrub,” I said to Jim.
+
+‘“What for?” said Jim.
+
+‘“Never mind--you’ll see,” I said.
+
+‘So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the
+side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our
+horses to the verandah posts.
+
+‘“Poisonous” came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made
+anybody home-sick.
+
+‘He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he
+looked as if he’d be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight--he
+wasn’t the sort of man you’d care to try and swindle a second time.
+He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and
+stubble--like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose,
+and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye
+that seemed fixed. If you didn’t know him well you might talk to him for
+five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover
+that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the
+time. It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal
+with in a fight.
+
+‘“Good day, mates,” he said.
+
+‘“Good day,” we said.
+
+‘“It’s hot.”
+
+‘“It’s hot.”
+
+‘We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
+
+‘“What are you going to have?” he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a
+rag.
+
+‘We had two long-beers.
+
+‘“Never mind that,” said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
+“it’s my shout. I don’t suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in
+to Mulgatown this morning.”
+
+‘“No, he ain’t back,” I said; “I wish he was. We’re getting tired of
+waiting for him. We’ll give him another hour, and then some of us will
+have to ride in to see whether he’s got on the boose, and get hold of
+him if he has.”
+
+‘“I suppose you’re waiting for your cheques?” he said, turning to fix
+some bottles on the shelf.
+
+‘“Yes,” I said, “we are;” and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as
+solemn as an owl.
+
+‘Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we’d been on the
+track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand
+now an’ then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he
+was trying to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered
+accordingly.
+
+‘“Have another drink,” he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
+“It’s up to me,” and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
+as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and
+screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or
+unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart
+frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
+
+‘“Have you had dinner?” she asked. We could have done with a good meal,
+but it was too risky--the drovers’ boss might come along while we were
+at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we’d had
+dinner.
+
+‘Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
+
+‘“I wish the boss would come,” said Jim with a yawn. “I want to get into
+Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go
+in. I ain’t got a decent rag to me back. I don’t suppose there’s ten bob
+amongst the lot of us.”
+
+‘There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers’ camp.
+
+‘“Oh, go to the store and get what you want,” said Poisonous, taking a
+sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. “You can fix
+it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along.”
+
+‘“Thank you,” said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping
+it into his pocket.
+
+‘“Well, Jim,” I said, “suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
+are getting on?”
+
+‘“All right,” said Jim.
+
+‘“Tell them to come down and get a drink,” said Poisonous; “or, wait,
+you can take some beer along to them if you like,” and he gave us half
+a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with
+Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
+
+‘We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
+to where our swags were.
+
+‘“I say,” said Jim, when we’d strapped the swags to the saddles,
+“suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it’s meant for them, and
+it’s only a fair thing, anyway--we’ve got as much as we can hold till we
+get into Mulgatown.”
+
+‘“It might get them into a row,” I said, “and they seem decent chaps.
+Let’s hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that’s coming along
+will think there’s angels in the Bush.”
+
+‘“Oh! what’s a row?” said Jim. “They can take care of themselves;
+they’ll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take
+the can back and it comes to explanations. I’ll ride back to them.”
+
+‘So Jim rode back to the drovers’ camp with the beer, and when he came
+back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank
+good luck to him.
+
+‘We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the
+road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy
+some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
+about seven miles on the safe side of the town.’
+
+
+
+
+II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+
+
+‘Talkin’ o’ Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We’d
+brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
+We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin’ for the
+station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode
+on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin’ back, though in
+the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But
+while we was waitin’ there come along two fellers that had been drovin’
+up north. They yarned a while, an’ then went on to Poisonous Jimmy’s
+place, an’ in about an hour one on ‘em come ridin’ back with a can of
+beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy’s little
+games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we
+drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When
+the boss come back, an’ the station hands to take the bullocks, we
+started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous’s place an’ handed
+the can to the girl that was grinnin’ on the verandah. Poisonous come
+out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
+
+‘“Good day, boys!” he says.
+
+‘“Good day, Poisonous,” we says.
+
+‘“It’s hot,” he says.
+
+‘“It’s blanky hot,” I says.
+
+‘He seemed to expect us to get down. “Where are you off to?” he says.
+
+‘“Mulgatown,” I says. “It will be cooler there,” and we sung out,
+“So-long, Poisonous!” and rode on.
+
+‘He stood starin’ for a minute; then he started shoutin’, “Hi! hi
+there!” after us, but we took no notice, an’ rode on. When we looked
+back last he was runnin’ into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
+
+‘We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when
+we heard somebody gallopin’ after us, an’ lookin’ back we saw it was
+Poisonous.
+
+‘He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with
+us a bit gasping: then he burst out.
+
+‘“Where’s them other two carnal blanks?” he shouted.
+
+‘“What other two?” I asked. “We’re all here. What’s the matter with you
+anyway?”
+
+‘“All here!” he yelled. “You’re a lurid liar! What the flamin’ sheol do
+you mean by swiggin’ my beer an’ flingin’ the coloured can in me face?
+without as much as thank yer! D’yer think I’m a flamin’----!”
+
+‘Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
+
+‘“Well, we’ll pay for your dirty beer,” says one of the chaps, puttin’
+his hand in his pocket. “We didn’t want yer slush. It tasted as if it
+had been used before.”
+
+‘“Pay for it!” yelled Jimmy. “I’ll----well take it out of one of yer
+bleedin’ hides!”
+
+‘We stopped at once, and I got down an’ obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
+He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool
+as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one
+squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an’, even if you knowed
+him well, you couldn’t help watchin’ the stony eye--it was no good
+watchin’ his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have
+managed me if the boss hadn’t stopped the fight. The boss was a big,
+quiet-voiced man, that didn’t swear.
+
+‘“Now, look here, Myles,” said the boss (Jimmy’s name was Myles)--“Now,
+look here, Myles,” sez the boss, “what’s all this about?”
+
+‘“What’s all this about?” says Jimmy, gettin’ excited agen. “Why, two
+fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an’ put up
+half-a-dozen drinks, an’ borrered a sovereign, an’ got a can o’ beer on
+the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin’ for you--an’ I
+want my crimson money out o’ some one!”
+
+‘“What was they like?” asks the boss.
+
+‘“Like?” shouted Poisonous, swearin’ all the time. “One was a blanky
+long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with
+black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the
+blanky billy o’ beer.”
+
+‘“Now, what’s this all about, you chaps?” sez the boss to us.
+
+‘So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
+
+‘I’ve heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin’-shed, but I
+never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he’d been
+left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those
+fellers, just once, before he died.
+
+‘He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an’ started out along
+the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark
+feller; but two mounted police went after him an’ fetched him back. He
+said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two
+fellers till he could give ‘em in charge.
+
+‘They fined him ten bob.’
+
+
+
+
+The Ghostly Door.
+
+Told by one of Dave’s mates.
+
+
+
+Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making
+for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one
+of those three-days’ gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to
+cut off a man’s legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we
+just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our
+shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and
+our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the
+track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working
+bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled
+down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a
+tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a
+consultation.
+
+It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was
+either a deserted settler’s home or a hut attached to an abandoned
+sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped
+our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make
+sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
+there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled
+off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the
+catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the
+swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through
+the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the
+partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been
+lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some
+timber-getters or other Bush contractors who’d camped there last; and
+there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
+
+We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put
+the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the
+stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
+to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I
+hadn’t shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in
+it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it
+grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw
+a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
+and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a
+weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with
+the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and
+meat with clasp-knives.
+
+‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ says Dave, ‘but this is the “whare” * where the
+murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was
+to come along now and look in he’d get scared.’ Then after a while he
+looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched
+his ear, and said, ‘That looks very much like a blood-stain under your
+stool, doesn’t it, Jim?’
+
+     * ‘Whare’, ‘whorrie’, Maori name for house.
+
+I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the
+fire--it was too hot.
+
+I wouldn’t have liked to camp there by myself, but I don’t think Dave
+would have minded--he’d knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to
+mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more
+than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he’d mistook
+him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.
+
+Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two
+stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked
+comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in
+particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting
+up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and
+a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out
+again; and the door closed behind it.
+
+Dave scratched his ear. ‘That’s rum,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn I
+fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.’
+
+‘It looks like it,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has been on the boose
+lately.’
+
+He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.
+
+The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.
+Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the
+door, and called, ‘Puss--puss--puss!’ but the cat wouldn’t come. He shut
+the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got into
+bed again.
+
+He’d scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat
+walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as
+the door closed smartly.
+
+I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back
+of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared
+about the head.
+
+He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,
+sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there.
+Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn’t see the
+cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently
+the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she’d been outside
+the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed
+against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way.
+He had a weakness for cats. I’d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a
+horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any
+one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave
+was round, he’d see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair
+surplus. He said once to me, ‘I can understand a man kicking a dog, or
+hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can’t understand a man hurting
+a cat.’
+
+He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close
+to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a
+key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and
+the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum
+going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her
+he’d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled
+down again.
+
+We had some books of the ‘Deadwood Dick’ school. Dave was reading ‘The
+Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch’, and I had ‘The Dismembered Hand’,
+or ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, or some such names. They were first-class
+preparation for a ghost.
+
+I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and
+saw Dave’s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on
+the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.
+And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never
+felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and
+I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We
+waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching
+for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one
+end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
+
+‘You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,’ I said, as he caught hold of the
+door--like one grabs a craw-fish.
+
+‘I’ll swear I didn’t,’ said Dave. But he’d already turned the key a
+couple of times, so he couldn’t be sure. He shut and locked the door
+again. ‘Now, get out and see for yourself,’ he said.
+
+I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.
+Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
+
+I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck
+him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the
+door.
+
+‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.
+
+‘If there’s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of
+his funny business, we’ll hear him if he tries to come in while we’re
+asleep,’ says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves
+with the ‘Haunted Gulch’ and ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, and after a
+while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell
+from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous
+clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did
+Dave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little
+way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick,
+skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle,
+and the door wouldn’t come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave’s face
+began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire,
+and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the
+other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way
+slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and
+found it locked.
+
+‘It muster gone by the winder,’ whispered Dave. I noticed that he said
+‘it’ instead of ‘he’. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only
+needed that to scare me bad.
+
+We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.
+Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the
+floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of
+them, and started to roll up his swag.
+
+‘What are you going to do, Dave?’ I asked.
+
+‘I’m going to take the track,’ says Dave, ‘and camp somewhere farther
+on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.’
+
+I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the
+tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any
+noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.
+
+‘That comes of camping in a deserted house,’ said Dave, when we were
+safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned
+homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks
+ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.
+
+It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.
+
+We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the
+sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a
+landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we
+got it started we knocked the wet bark off ‘manuka’ sticks and logs and
+piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little
+drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and
+the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the
+night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, ‘I’m going back to
+that house.’
+
+‘What for?’ I said.
+
+‘I’m going to find out what’s the matter with that crimson door. If I
+don’t I’ll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long
+as I live.’
+
+So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by
+daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built
+of odds and ends and badly fitted. It ‘gave’ in the wind in almost any
+direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to
+throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to
+bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame
+was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of
+it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung
+to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose
+it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by
+accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind
+must have accounted for the variations of the door’s movements--and
+maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.
+
+Dave scratched his head a good bit.
+
+‘I never lived in a house yet,’ he said, as we came away--‘I never lived
+in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good
+tent.’
+
+
+
+
+A Wild Irishman.
+
+
+About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to
+Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town
+called Pahiatua, which meaneth the ‘home of the gods’, and is situated
+in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a
+pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not
+originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the
+tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of
+a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don’t remember
+which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to
+think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the
+scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
+
+Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks.
+While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I
+anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after
+paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the
+little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns
+of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon,
+he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called ‘The Flour
+of Wheat’, and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever
+and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made
+me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no
+matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I’d ask him
+if he knew the ‘Flour of Wheat’, and hear what he had to say.
+
+I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can’t be
+done in writing.
+
+
+‘There’s the little red Irishman,’ said the shoemaker, who was Irish
+himself, ‘who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and
+there’s the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and
+fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together;
+and there’s the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a
+combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the
+first amongst the boys at Th’ Canary as the Flour o’ Wheat, but no one
+knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not
+F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on
+wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man’s character
+by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without
+understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the
+Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might
+have worked in a mill. But we’ve had enough of that. It’s the man--not
+the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked
+hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn’t swear. No man had ever heard
+him swear (except once); all things were ‘lovely’ with him. He was
+always lucky. He got gold and threw it away.
+
+‘The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with
+some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn’t matter:
+there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that
+knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the
+trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man
+who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were
+soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made
+them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he’d walk restlessly to and
+fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him
+with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and
+muttering, as though in explanation to himself--
+
+‘“Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi
+must be walkin’ or foightin’!”
+
+‘They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was
+done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they
+put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.
+
+‘There’s no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on
+the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept
+by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a
+place called “Th’ Canary”. I remember the first time I saw the Flour.
+
+‘I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th’ Canary, and one evening I was
+standing outside Brady’s (the Flour’s cousin’s place) with Tom Lyons and
+Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on
+his back.
+
+‘“B’ God, there’s the Flour o’ Wheat comin’ this minute,” says Dinny
+Murphy to Tom, “an’ no one else.”
+
+‘“B’ God, ye’re right!” says Tom.
+
+‘There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and
+dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny--
+
+‘“Dinny, I’ll bet you a quid an’ the Flour’ll run against some of those
+new chums before he’s an hour on the spot.”
+
+‘But Dinny wouldn’t take him up. He knew the Flour.
+
+‘“Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!”
+
+‘“Good day to you, Flour!”
+
+‘I was introduced.
+
+‘“Well, boys, come along,” says the Flour.
+
+‘And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then
+he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was
+dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced
+to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn’t please
+the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair
+an’ flat on his back.
+
+‘“Take that,” he says. “Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an’ lay
+there! You can’t dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to
+dance when ye can’t dance?”
+
+‘He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought
+the new chums all night, and in the morning he said--
+
+‘“Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with
+me.”
+
+‘And of course they went in and had a drink with him.
+
+     *****
+
+‘Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a
+drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the “Nipper”.
+
+‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o’ Wheat!” says she.
+
+‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!” says the Flour.
+
+‘And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed
+him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens!
+
+‘A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a
+witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with
+his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a
+corner of his mouth on duty.
+
+‘“It’s nothing at all, your Honour,” he said to the S.M.; “only a
+pin-scratch--it’s nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to speak
+to the lovely woman at all.”
+
+‘But they didn’t let it pass,--they fined her a quid.
+
+‘And the Flour paid the fine.
+
+‘But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those
+days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn’t do a woman
+a good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted
+there was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys
+who knew the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried
+too far in some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour--nor to
+those who laughed too loud or grinned too long.
+
+     *****
+
+‘The Flour’s cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got “stiff”.
+He hadn’t any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got
+a blank summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he
+wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up
+and took it to his cousin.
+
+‘“What d’ye think of that?” he says, handing the summons across the bar.
+“What d’ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?”
+
+‘“Why, what’s this all about?”
+
+‘“That’s what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a
+fortnight ago when I was drunk, an’ now he sends me that.”
+
+‘“Well, I never would have dream’d that of Dinny,” says the cousin,
+scratching his head and blinking. “What’s come over him at all?”
+
+‘“That’s what I want to know.”
+
+‘“What have you been doing to the man?”
+
+‘“Divil a thing that I’m aware of.”
+
+‘The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.
+
+‘“Well, what am I to do about it?” asked the Flour impatiently.
+
+‘“Do? Pay the man, of course?”
+
+‘“How can I pay the lovely man when I haven’t got the price of a drink
+about me?”
+
+‘The cousin scratched his chin.
+
+‘“Well--here, I’ll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go and
+pay the man, and get back to work.”
+
+‘And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a
+howling spree together up at Brady’s, the opposition pub. And the cousin
+said he thought all the time he was being had.
+
+    .   .   .   .   .
+
+‘He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance,
+he’d come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and
+walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just
+when a big event was coming off he’d pass within earshot of some
+committee men--who had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the
+thing up and make it a success--saying to himself--
+
+‘“Where’s the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don’t see
+them! Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?”
+
+‘Or he’d pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of
+some sort,--
+
+‘“No gamblin’ for the Flour. I don’t believe in their little shwindles.
+It ought to be shtopped. Leadin’ young people ashtray.”
+
+‘Or he’d pass an Englishman he didn’t like,--
+
+‘“Look at Jinneral Roberts! He’s a man! He’s an Irishman! England has
+to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the
+marshes of Candyhar!”
+
+     *****
+
+‘They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year’s Day--except
+once--and old Duncan was always there,--never missed it till the day he
+died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted “hard-case”. They all
+knew “old Duncan”.
+
+‘But one New Year’s Eve he didn’t turn up, and was missed at once.
+“Where’s old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?” “Oh, he’ll turn up
+alright.” They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn’t come.
+
+‘Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came
+from Duffers, but they hadn’t seen him for two days. They had fully
+expected to find him at the creek. He wasn’t at Aliaura nor Notown. They
+inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn’t there.
+
+‘“There’s something happened to the lovely man,” said the Flour of Wheat
+at last. “Some of us had better see about it.”
+
+‘Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out
+over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the
+Flour.
+
+
+‘The door of Duncan’s “whare” was closed--BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The Flour
+noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in. The
+hut was tidied up and swept out--even the fireplace. Duncan had “lifted
+the boxes” and “cleaned up”, and his little bag of gold stood on a
+shelf by his side--all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean
+neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly
+and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his
+arms lying crossed on his chest, and one foot--with a boot on--resting
+on the ground. He had his “clean things” on, and was dressed except for
+one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease.
+
+‘“Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads,” said the Flour. “Here’s
+the lovely man lying dead in his bunk.”
+
+‘There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the
+crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on
+old Duncan’s account, but the Flour said he’d see to that.
+
+‘One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were
+no sports.
+
+‘And the Flour used to say, afterwards, “Ah, but it was a grand time we
+had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers.”
+
+    .   .   .   .   .
+
+‘The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from
+Th’ Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad--the man was
+dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a spare
+bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.
+
+‘“Inside there--come out!”
+
+‘The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the
+matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front
+of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little
+pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.
+
+‘“There’s me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry,” says the
+Flour, “and you’ve got to fix him up and bring him round.”
+
+‘Then he shook his fist in the doctor’s face and said--
+
+‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”
+
+‘The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at
+his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some
+order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round
+as he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said--
+
+‘“If you let that lovely man die--mind!”
+
+‘In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a
+barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.
+
+‘“There,” he said, “pour that into the lovely man.”
+
+‘Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible,
+and said--
+
+‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”
+
+‘They were used to hard-cases, and didn’t take much notice of him, but
+he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day
+and night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe,
+and then he’d say, “Ah, well, I’ll have to go up and see how me lovely
+mate’s getting on.”
+
+‘And every time he’d go up he’d shake his fist at the hospital in
+general and threaten to murder ‘em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.
+
+‘Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the
+doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and
+knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.
+
+‘“Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper,” said the Flour of Wheat; “you
+let that lovely man die!”
+
+‘The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were
+waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the
+hospital, and stood it on end by the doorway.
+
+‘“I’ve come for me lovely mate!” he said to the scared staff--or as much
+of it as he baled up and couldn’t escape him. “Hand him over. He’s going
+back to be buried with his friends at Th’ Canary. Now, don’t be sneaking
+round and sidling off, you there; you needn’t be frightened; I’ve
+settled with the doctor.”
+
+‘But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and
+between them--and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the
+premises--they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn’t ready yet; there were
+papers to sign; it wouldn’t be decent to the dead; he had to be
+prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and
+comfortable. Anyway, they’d have him ready in an hour, or take the
+consequences.
+
+‘The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as
+well and better by the boys at Th’ Canary. “However,” he said, “I’ll
+be round in an hour, and if you haven’t got me lovely mate ready--look
+out!” Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said--
+
+‘“I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there’s e’er a pin-scratch
+on me mate’s body--look out! If there’s a pairin’ of Dinny’s toe-nail
+missin’--look out!”
+
+‘Then he went out--taking the coffin with him.
+
+‘And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the
+coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on
+his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as
+dead drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked
+air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the
+Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the
+bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,
+and departed several ways to put the “boys” up to it. And about midnight
+the “boys” gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and
+somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong
+Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to
+plead in changed and awful tones--
+
+‘“Pray for me soul, boys--pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones
+between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour’s in
+Purgatory!”
+
+‘Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing
+over a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour
+was heard to swear. And he swore then.
+
+‘They didn’t pray for him--they gave him a month. And, when he came
+out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he--to his
+credit, perhaps--came the other half. They had a drink together, and
+the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for a
+pin.
+
+‘“It was the will o’ God, after all, doctor,” said the Flour. “It was
+the will o’ God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand,
+doctor.... Good-bye.”
+
+‘Then he left for Th’ Canary.’
+
+
+
+
+The Babies in the Bush.
+
+
+    ‘Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright--
+       That only the Bushmen know--
+    Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
+    Or carry them up through the starry night,
+       Where the Bush-lost babies go.’
+
+
+He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the
+Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and
+professions (and of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile,
+the smile is either mechanical or bitter as a rule--cynical. They seldom
+talk. The sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority--and
+without reason or evidence--as being proud, hard, and selfish,--‘too
+mean to live, and too big for their boots.’
+
+But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and
+very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in
+sitting on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and
+gloom. He was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes--haunted grey eyes
+sometimes--and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not
+above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with
+their hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
+The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed
+men who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and
+die respectably in their beds.
+
+His name was Head--Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland
+routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to
+travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales,
+with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney
+market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)--a rover, of
+course, and a ne’er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a
+thin skin--worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I
+went by the name of ‘Jack Ellis’ this trip,--not because the police
+were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack
+Ellis--and so the chaps nicknamed me.
+
+The Boss spoke little to the men: he’d sit at tucker or with his pipe
+by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the
+big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky
+starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more
+confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party. There was a
+something of sympathy between us--I can’t explain what it was. It seemed
+as though it were an understood thing between us that we understood each
+other. He sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of
+explanation--so I thought--had he said them to any other of the party.
+He’d often, after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off
+with ‘You know, Jack.’ And somehow I understood, without being able to
+explain why. We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
+His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy,
+and never drank a glass nor ‘shouted’ on the trip: he was reckoned a
+‘mean boss’, and rather a nigger-driver.
+
+He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who
+shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon’s poems on the
+route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked
+me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but
+by-and-by we’d quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
+‘Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren’t
+they, Jack?’ he’d say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his
+briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as
+often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn’t enjoy it: an empty
+pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.)
+‘Those are great lines,’ he’d say--
+
+    ‘“In Collins Street standeth a statue tall--
+         A statue tall on a pillar of stone--
+      Telling its story to great and small
+       Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
+
+         *****
+
+    Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
+       Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
+    He lay on the desert a dying man,
+       Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.”
+
+     That’s a grand thing, Jack.  How does it go?--
+    “With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
+       And the film of death o’er his fading eyes,
+     He saw the sun go down on the sand,”’--
+
+    The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn--
+    ‘“And he slept and never saw it rise,”’
+    --speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.
+    Then maybe he’d stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
+    with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
+
+    ‘“What mattered the sand or the whit’ning chalk,
+       The blighted herbage or blackened log,
+    The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
+       Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?”
+
+They don’t matter much, do they, Jack?’
+
+‘Damned if I think they do, Boss!’ I’d say.
+
+    ‘“The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
+       But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
+    That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms’ food
+       Where once they have gone where we all must go.”’
+
+Once he repeated the poem containing the lines--
+
+    ‘“Love, when we wandered here together,
+    Hand in hand through the sparkling weather--
+    God surely loved us a little then.”
+
+Beautiful lines those, Jack.
+
+    “Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
+       And the blue sea over the white sand rolled--
+     Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur’--
+
+How does it go, Jack?’ He stood up and turned his face to the light, but
+not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth
+are mostly women’s eyes, but I’ve seen few so sad as the Boss’s were
+just then.
+
+It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon’s sea poems to
+his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem
+was that one of Gordon’s with the lines--
+
+    ‘I would that with sleepy soft embraces
+       The sea would fold me, would find me rest
+    In the luminous depths of its secret places,
+       Where the wealth of God’s marvels is manifest!’
+
+He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp; but
+after we’d been on Gordon’s poetry for a while he’d end it abruptly
+with, ‘Well, it’s time to turn in,’ or, ‘It’s time to turn out,’ or he’d
+give me an order in connection with the cattle. He had been a well-to-do
+squatter on the Lachlan river-side, in New South Wales, and had been
+ruined by the drought, they said. One night in camp, and after smoking
+in silence for nearly an hour, he asked--
+
+‘Do you know Fisher, Jack--the man that owns these bullocks?’
+
+‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. Fisher was a big squatter, with stations
+both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
+
+‘Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in
+his pocket, or decent rag to his back, or a crust in his tucker-bag, and
+I gave him a job. He’s my boss now. Ah, well! it’s the way of Australia,
+you know, Jack.’
+
+The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him; he
+was ‘bred’ on the Boss’s station, they said, and had been with him
+practically all his life. His name was ‘Andy’. I forget his other name,
+if he really had one. Andy had charge of the ‘droving-plant’ (a tilted
+two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
+and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for
+figures. Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in
+between. His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big
+grey eyes also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or
+he theirs, I don’t know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think,
+the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
+Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
+about the Boss.
+
+‘The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.’
+
+‘Think so?’ I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
+
+‘I’m sure of it. It’s very seldom HE takes to any one.’
+
+I said nothing.
+
+Then after a while Andy said suddenly--
+
+‘Look here, Jack, I’m glad of it. I’d like to see him make a chum of
+some one, if only for one trip. And don’t you make any mistake about the
+Boss. He’s a white man. There’s precious few that know him--precious few
+now; but I do, and it’ll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn
+with.’ And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.
+
+The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains--big
+clearings rather--and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we reached
+Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that
+we’d left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,--as I
+suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
+
+The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one
+long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we’d finished the
+boss said to me--
+
+‘Look here, Jack, you’re going on to Sydney, aren’t you?’
+
+‘Yes; I’m going down to have a fly round.’
+
+‘Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He’s going
+down in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It
+won’t be so comfortable as the passenger; but you’ll save your fare, and
+you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You’ve only got to have a
+look at ‘em every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the
+trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren’t you?’
+
+I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed
+anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
+I felt really sorry to part with him. I’d had to work as hard as any
+of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He’d
+struck me as a man who’d been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and
+I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
+
+‘Come and have a drink, Boss,’ I said. The agent had paid us off during
+the day.
+
+He turned into a hotel with me.
+
+‘I don’t drink, Jack,’ he said; ‘but I’ll take a glass with you.’
+
+‘I didn’t know you were a teetotaller, Boss,’ I said. I had not been
+surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now
+that it was over it was a different thing.
+
+‘I’m not a teetotaller, Jack,’ he said. ‘I can take a glass or leave
+it.’ And he called for a long beer, and we drank ‘Here’s luck!’ to each
+other.
+
+‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wish I could take a glass or leave it.’ And I meant
+it.
+
+Then the Boss spoke as I’d never heard him speak before. I thought for
+the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before
+the night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a
+man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. ‘Jack!’
+he said, ‘there’s worse things than drinking, and there’s worse things
+than heavy smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on
+him that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it’s a heavy load.
+And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no
+comfort in liquor, then it’s deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.’
+
+He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if
+impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet
+tone--
+
+‘But you’re only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won’t ask you to take
+the second drink. You don’t want it; and, besides, I know the signs.’
+
+He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter, and
+looking down between his arms at the floor. He stood that way thinking
+for a while; then he suddenly straightened up, like a man who’d made up
+his mind to something.
+
+‘I want you to come along home with me, Jack,’ he said; ‘we’ll fix you a
+shake-down.’
+
+I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.
+
+‘But won’t it put Mrs Head about?’
+
+‘Not at all. She’s expecting you. Come along; there’s nothing to see in
+Bathurst, and you’ll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney. Come on,
+we’ll just be in time for tea.’
+
+He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town--an
+old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses, like you see in some
+of those old settled districts. There was, I remember, the stump of a
+tree in front, covered with ivy till it looked like a giant’s club with
+the thick end up.
+
+When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the
+gate. He’d been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the
+bullocks.
+
+‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble at
+one time. We--we lost our two children. It does her good to talk to a
+stranger now and again--she’s always better afterwards; but there’s very
+few I care to bring. You--you needn’t notice anything strange. And agree
+with her, Jack. You know, Jack.’
+
+‘That’s all right, Boss,’ I said. I’d knocked about the Bush too long,
+and run against too many strange characters and things, to be surprised
+at anything much.
+
+The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms. I saw by the
+light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman’s hair was grey, and
+I reckoned that he had his mother living with him. And--we do have odd
+thoughts at odd times in a flash--and I wondered how Mrs Head and her
+mother-in-law got on together. But the next minute I was in the room,
+and introduced to ‘My wife, Mrs Head,’ and staring at her with both
+eyes.
+
+It was his wife. I don’t think I can describe her. For the first minute
+or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the
+lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman--one of those
+fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies--who dressed young, wore
+false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head’s
+impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so grey as
+I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it was like
+dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and
+it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her
+face--her nose and chin--I fancied, and something that you couldn’t
+describe. She had big dark eyes--dark-brown, I thought, though they
+might have been hazel: they were a bit too big and bright for me, and
+now and again, when she got excited, the white showed all round the
+pupils--just a little, but a little was enough.
+
+She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit
+of a gusher.
+
+‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Mr Ellis,’ she said, giving my hand a
+grip. ‘Walter--Mr Head--has been speaking to me about you. I’ve been
+expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready
+presently. Don’t you find it a bit chilly?’ She shivered. It was a bit
+chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea,
+and set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished
+even for a lucky boss drover’s home; the furniture looked as if it had
+belonged to a tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first,
+sitting down to tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable
+tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room. But she knew a lot
+about the Bush, and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip,
+and soon put me at my ease. You see, for the last year or two I’d
+taken my tucker in my hands,--hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife
+mostly,--sitting on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.
+
+There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called
+‘Auntie’. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round
+herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea.
+
+Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of
+thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and
+movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too--a womanly
+girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about
+her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the
+fire and Andy and I on the other--Andy a little behind me at the corner
+of the table.
+
+‘Walter--Mr Head--tells me you’ve been out on the Lachlan river, Mr
+Ellis?’ she said as soon as she’d settled down, and she leaned forward,
+as if eager to hear that I’d been there.
+
+‘Yes, Mrs Head. I’ve knocked round all about out there.’
+
+She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her
+forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had--she often did
+it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what
+she’d said last.
+
+She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.
+
+‘Oh, I’m so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,’
+she said. ‘Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of
+talking to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same
+faces. You don’t know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face
+and talk to a stranger.’
+
+‘I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,’ I said. And so I could. I never
+stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.
+
+She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss
+straightened up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and
+then put his arm round her shoulders. This brought her back.
+
+‘You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever
+tell you about the time we lived there?’
+
+‘No,’ I said, glancing at the Boss. ‘I know you had a station there;
+but, you know, the Boss doesn’t talk much.’
+
+‘Tell Jack, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘I don’t mind.’
+
+She smiled. ‘You know Walter, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind him.
+He doesn’t like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me,
+but that’s foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.’ She
+leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: ‘I’ve been
+wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me
+about you. I knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These
+town people don’t understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we
+lost our children out on the station. The fairies took them. Did Walter
+ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?’
+
+This was a facer. ‘I--I beg pardon,’ I commenced, when Andy gave me a
+dig in the back. Then I saw it all.
+
+‘No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn’t tell me about that.’
+
+‘You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,’ she said, her big
+eyes fixed on my face--‘the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones
+that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are
+not found? You’ve surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that
+I’ve spoken to. Maybe you’ve seen them? Andy there has?’ Andy gave me
+another dig.
+
+‘Of course I’ve heard of them, Mrs Head,’ I said; ‘but I can’t swear
+that I’ve seen one.’
+
+‘Andy has. Haven’t you, Andy?’
+
+‘Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn’t I tell you all about it the last
+time we were home?’
+
+‘And didn’t you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?’
+
+‘Of course he did!’ I said, coming to Andy’s rescue; ‘I remember it now.
+You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.’
+
+‘Of course!’ said Andy.
+
+‘Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy; ‘I told him all about that.’
+
+‘And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,
+and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.’
+
+‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that’s what Andy told me.’
+
+‘And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?’ asked Mrs Head, fixing
+her eyes on his face.
+
+‘Like. It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs
+Head,’ said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big
+innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling
+lies. ‘It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture
+we had at home on the station--the right-hand one in blue.’
+
+She smiled. You couldn’t call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish
+smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy
+childish smile.
+
+‘I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot
+of trouble,’ she said. ‘Of course it never struck me, until afterwards,
+that the fairies had taken the children.’
+
+She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and
+sat so for a while; then she roused herself again--
+
+‘But what am I thinking about? I haven’t started to tell you about the
+children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children’s portraits, will you,
+please? You’ll find them on my dressing-table.’
+
+The old woman seemed to hesitate.
+
+‘Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,’ said Mrs Head. ‘Don’t be
+foolish. You know I’m all right now.’
+
+‘You mustn’t take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,’ she said with a
+smile, while the old woman’s back was turned. ‘Poor old body, she’s a
+bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn’t like me to get
+talking about the children. She’s got an idea that if I do I’ll start
+talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were
+lost. I was very foolish then, wasn’t I, Walter?’
+
+‘You were, Maggie,’ said the Boss. ‘But that’s all past. You mustn’t
+think of that time any more.’
+
+‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, ‘at first nothing would
+drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they
+perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would
+let them do that.’
+
+‘You were very foolish, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘but don’t think about
+that.’
+
+The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl:
+they must have been very pretty children.
+
+‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them
+to me one by one, ‘we had these taken in Sydney some years before the
+children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally’s is not a good
+portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That’s him standing on
+the chair. Isn’t the pose good? See, he’s got one hand and one little
+foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark,
+and you’ve got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that
+the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait
+he’s sitting on the chair--he’s just settled himself to enjoy the fun.
+But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was
+holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally
+had just turned two.’
+
+She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
+
+‘Let me see; Wally (that’s little Walter, you know)--Wally was five and
+little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren’t they, Walter?’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss.
+
+‘You were away, Walter, when it happened.’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss--cheerfully, it seemed to me--‘I was away.’
+
+‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter. You see,’ she said to me, ‘Walter--Mr
+Head--was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn’t find his address.
+It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the
+break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It
+was a lonely place; there wasn’t much bush cleared round the homestead,
+just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the
+edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles--fifty or a hundred
+miles in some directions without a break; didn’t they, Walter?’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie.’
+
+‘I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who
+used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the
+run with the men, mustering sheep; weren’t you, Andy?’
+
+‘Yes, Mrs Head.’
+
+‘I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because
+if they once got into the edge of the scrub they’d be lost; but this
+morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down
+under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather
+buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?’
+
+‘I remember, Maggie.’
+
+‘“I won’t go through the fence a step, mumma,” little Wally said. I
+could see Old Peter--an old shepherd and station-hand we had--I could
+see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down
+there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?’
+
+‘Of course I do, Maggie.’
+
+‘I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told
+little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister’s hand and go straight
+down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.’
+
+She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me
+all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
+
+‘The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands
+holding fast their straw hats. “In case a bad wind blowed,” as little
+Maggie said. I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the
+last that any one saw of them.’
+
+‘Except the fairies, Maggie,’ said the Boss quickly.
+
+‘Of course, Walter, except the fairies.’
+
+She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
+
+‘It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers’ camp
+that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam
+and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the
+house, and before the children got near him. They either followed
+him for some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or
+butterflies----’ She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, ‘Do you
+think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?’
+
+The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
+
+‘No. I’m sure they wouldn’t, Mrs Head,’ I said--‘at least not from what
+I know of them.’
+
+She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless
+puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather
+mechanically, it seemed to me--
+
+‘The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour
+afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said--I
+said, “O my God! where’s the children?”’ Her fingers fluttered up to her
+temples.
+
+‘Don’t mind about that, Maggie,’ said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her
+head. ‘Tell Jack about the fairies.’
+
+‘You were away at the time, Walter?’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie.’
+
+‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter?’
+
+‘No, Maggie,’ very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin
+on his hand, and looked into the fire.
+
+‘It wasn’t your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think
+the fairies would have taken the children?’
+
+‘Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.’
+
+‘And they’re bringing the children home next year?’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie--next year.’
+
+She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
+before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost
+children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards
+where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The
+hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time
+for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old
+Peter’s ride to the musterers’ camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no
+time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this, and no matter
+how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all
+directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother mad with
+anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch through
+the night; starting up at every sound of a horse’s hoof, and reading
+the worst in one glance at the rider’s face. The systematic work of the
+search-parties next day and the days following. How those days do fly
+past. The women from the next run or selection, and some from the town,
+driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay with and try to
+comfort the mother. [‘Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I must go to that
+poor woman!’) Comforting her with improbable stories of children who had
+been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when they were
+found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers. Search-parties
+cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting signal-fires. The
+reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the Boss himself,
+wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two
+others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given
+up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me as
+Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were in another
+room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to the fairies
+again.
+
+‘It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after--months after, I
+think--I’d insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for
+the children. I’d stand there and call “Maggie!” and “Wally!” until
+Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter!
+But of course I didn’t know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was
+really out of my mind for a time.’
+
+‘No wonder you were, Mrs Head,’ I said. ‘It was terrible trouble.’
+
+‘Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it’s all
+right now, Walter,’ she said, rumpling the Boss’s hair. ‘I’ll never be
+so foolish again.’
+
+‘Of course you won’t, Maggie.’
+
+‘We’re very happy now, aren’t we, Walter?’
+
+‘Of course we are, Maggie.’
+
+‘And the children are coming back next year.’
+
+‘Next year, Maggie.’
+
+He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
+
+‘You mustn’t take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,’ she went on. ‘Poor Walter
+is away so much that I’m afraid I make a little too much of him when he
+does come home.’
+
+She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said
+quickly--
+
+‘They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but
+they were no friends of mine. I shouldn’t have listened to them, Walter.
+You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.’
+
+‘Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?’ I asked.
+
+‘The Voices,’ she said; ‘you know about the Voices, Walter?’
+
+‘Yes, Maggie. But you don’t hear the Voices now, Maggie?’ he asked
+anxiously. ‘You haven’t heard them since I’ve been away this time, have
+you, Maggie?’
+
+‘No, Walter. They’ve gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes,
+but they’re the Bush Fairies’ voices. I hear them calling Maggie and
+Wally to come with them.’ She paused again. ‘And sometimes I think I
+hear them call me. But of course I couldn’t go away without you, Walter.
+But I’m foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr
+Ellis. They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then,
+if the fairies hadn’t taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black
+trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them at once.’
+
+‘Of course they could, Mrs Head,’ I said.
+
+‘They said that the trackers couldn’t track them because there was rain
+a few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It
+was only a thunderstorm.’
+
+‘Why!’ I said, ‘I’ve known the blacks to track a man after a week’s
+heavy rain.’
+
+She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it
+was in a scared way.
+
+‘Oh, Walter!’ she said, clutching the Boss’s arm; ‘whatever have I been
+talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me
+talk like that?’
+
+He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up.
+
+‘Where are you going, Mr Ellis?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘You’re not going
+to-night. Auntie’s made a bed for you in Andy’s room. You mustn’t mind
+me.’
+
+‘Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,’ said the Boss.
+‘They’ll be in to supper. We’ll have a yarn, Maggie.’
+
+‘Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘I really don’t
+know what you must think of me,--I’ve been talking all the time.’
+
+‘Oh, I’ve enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,’ I said; and Andy hooked me out.
+
+‘She’ll have a good cry and be better now,’ said Andy when we got away
+from the house. ‘She might be better for months. She has been fairly
+reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he
+came back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns
+now and again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a
+longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her
+good. The doctor’s against it, but doctors don’t know everything.’
+
+‘It’s all true about the children, then?’ I asked.
+
+‘It’s cruel true,’ said Andy.
+
+‘And were the bodies never found?’
+
+‘Yes;’ then, after a long pause, ‘I found them.’
+
+‘You did!’
+
+‘Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either--and in a
+fairly clear space. It’s a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it
+often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and
+came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were
+lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss’s sake. You see, in
+a case like this, and when the bodies aren’t found, the parents never
+quite lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush
+to-night (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst,
+or cold. That mad idea haunts ‘em all their lives. It’s the same, I
+believe, with friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a
+long while with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and
+drifting round in the water.’
+
+‘And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?’
+
+‘Not for a long time. It wouldn’t have done any good. She was raving
+mad for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne--to the best
+doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold
+the station--sacrificed everything, and took her to England.’
+
+‘To England?’
+
+‘Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He’d offer a
+thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She
+got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the
+children. The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent
+all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a
+nurse, and trying to get her cured; that’s why he’s droving now. She was
+restless in Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there
+till the fairies brought the children home. She’d been getting the fairy
+idea into her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the
+station was sold, and he couldn’t have lived there anyway without going
+mad himself. He’d married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got
+friends and relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He
+persuaded her that the fairies were going to bring the children here.
+Everybody’s very kind to them. I think it’s a mistake to run away from a
+town where you’re known, in a case like this, though most people do it.
+It was years before he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet--after
+she’s been fairly well for a longish time.’
+
+‘And you never tried telling her that the children were found?’
+
+‘Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river at
+first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so
+he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near
+the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they
+go out. It’s all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had
+thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were
+against it; but he couldn’t rest till he tried it. He took her out, and
+explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the
+names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions
+about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite
+sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back
+on the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so
+then he let it be. I think it’s better as it is. Now and again, at her
+best, she seems to understand that the children were found dead, and
+buried, and she’ll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet
+way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave
+next time he’s down. But it doesn’t last long, and she’s always worse
+afterwards.’
+
+We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy
+‘shouted’ in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer a
+thought struck me.
+
+‘The Boss was away when the children were lost?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy.
+
+‘Strange you couldn’t find him.’
+
+‘Yes, it was strange; but HE’LL have to tell you about that. Very likely
+he will; it’s either all or nothing with him.’
+
+‘I feel damned sorry for the Boss,’ I said.
+
+‘You’d be sorrier if you knew all,’ said Andy. ‘It’s the worst trouble
+that can happen to a man. It’s like living with the dead. It’s--it’s
+like a man living with his dead wife.’
+
+When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and
+cheerful, bustling round. You’d have thought her one of the happiest and
+brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the
+fairies. She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips. She told
+some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I’d spent for a
+long time.
+
+‘Good night, Mr Ellis,’ she said brightly, shaking hands with me when
+Andy and I were going to turn in. ‘And don’t forget your pipe. Here it
+is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn
+in. Walter smokes in bed. I don’t mind. You can smoke all night if you
+like.’
+
+‘She seems all right,’ I said to Andy when we were in our room.
+
+He shook his head mournfully. We’d left the door ajar, and we could hear
+the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very
+clear voice.
+
+‘Yes, I’ll tell you the truth, Walter. I’ve been deceiving you, Walter,
+all the time, but I did it for the best. Don’t be angry with me, Walter!
+The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you
+to come back! They haven’t come since you’ve been home, Walter. You
+must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and
+telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself;
+they told me it was all my own fault--that I killed the children. They
+said I was a drag on you, and they’d laugh--Ha! ha! ha!--like that.
+They’d say, “Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie.” They told me to come to
+the river, Walter.’
+
+Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.
+
+We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months
+and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground
+or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn’t too tired to pull
+them down, and my saddle for a pillow.
+
+But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I’ve never
+since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably
+he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;
+perhaps he wanted me to understand--maybe he was weakening as he grew
+older, and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.
+
+When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but
+Andy roused me out about four o’clock. The old woman that they called
+Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee
+ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and
+had our breakfast quietly.
+
+‘The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say
+Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,’ said the
+Boss. ‘I’m going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made
+up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don’t forget it.’
+
+Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
+which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
+without speaking. He didn’t seem sociable this morning, or any way
+sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
+
+But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at
+last I made a swallow and blurted out--
+
+‘Look here, Boss, old chap! I’m damned sorry!’
+
+Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was
+over the Bathurst plains.
+
+We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly--
+
+‘I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling
+spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I’d tell her I had to
+go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When
+the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly
+drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush--a sly grog-shop. The old
+brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the
+lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn’t
+seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They
+were mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three
+policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the
+country.’
+
+I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could
+do for him.
+
+‘Good-bye, Jack!’ he said at the door of the brake-van. ‘Good-bye,
+Andy!--keep those bullocks on their feet.’
+
+The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat
+silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a
+coal-stove in the centre of the van.
+
+‘Does the boss never go to Sydney?’ I asked.
+
+‘Very seldom,’ said Andy, ‘and then only when he has to, on business.
+When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out
+to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.’
+
+After a while I said, ‘He told me about the drink, Andy--about his being
+on the spree when the children were lost.’
+
+‘Well, Jack,’ said Andy, ‘that’s the thing that’s been killing him ever
+since, and it happened over ten years ago.’
+
+
+
+
+A Bush Dance.
+
+
+
+‘Tap, tap, tap, tap.’
+
+The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly
+in the midst of the ‘close’, solid blackness of that moonless December
+night, when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought
+haze.
+
+It was the evening of the school children’s ‘Feast’. That is to say that
+the children had been sent, and ‘let go’, and the younger ones ‘fetched’
+through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,
+and raced--sometimes in couples tied together by the legs--and caked,
+and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got
+rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and
+tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea
+was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better
+things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been
+taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
+
+On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
+more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
+
+On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat
+about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
+
+It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls
+spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.
+Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you
+would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness
+and to swear.
+
+‘Tap, tap, tap.’
+
+The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces
+nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
+
+‘Tap--tap.’
+
+The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher’s
+residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it
+was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour--more like that of
+warm cheap glue than anything else.
+
+In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever
+one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,
+all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then
+withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse’s step all eyes and ears
+were on the door, till some one muttered, ‘It’s only the horses in the
+paddock.’
+
+Some of the girls’ eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the
+belle of the party--a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain
+girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with
+blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands,
+rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in
+a hurry by two sympathetic and rather ‘upset’ girl friends, and as she
+passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically--
+
+‘Oh, I can’t help it! I did want to dance! It’s a sh-shame! I can’t help
+it! I--I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance--and--and I want to
+dance!’
+
+A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the
+girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and
+other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from
+the outside--being man comforted--
+
+‘I can’t help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I--I had such--such--a
+job--to get mother--and--and father to let me come--and--and now!’
+
+The two girl friends came back. ‘He sez to leave her to him,’ they
+whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.
+
+‘It’s--it’s no use, Jack!’ came the voice of grief. ‘You don’t know
+what--what father and mother--is. I--I won’t--be able--to ge-get
+away--again--for--for--not till I’m married, perhaps.’
+
+The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. ‘I’ll take
+her into my room and make her lie down,’ she whispered to her sister,
+who was staying with her. ‘She’ll start some of the other girls
+presently--it’s just the weather for it,’ and she passed out quietly.
+That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.
+
+A final ‘tap-tap’ from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a
+hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in
+that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like
+‘damn!’ and hopelessness settled down.
+
+A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the
+girls rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the
+darkness--
+
+‘It’s two horses, I tell you!’
+
+‘It’s three, you----!’
+
+‘Lay you----!’
+
+‘Put the stuff up!’
+
+A clack of gate thrown open.
+
+‘Who is it, Tom?’
+
+Voices from gatewards, yelling, ‘Johnny Mears! They’ve got Johnny
+Mears!’
+
+Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
+
+Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the
+table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which
+he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight;
+and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms, as a
+football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of
+his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick, the concertina shot out into
+the blackness, from which was projected, in return, first a short,
+sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring and the other covered by
+an enormous brick-coloured hand, and a voice that wanted to know who
+shot ‘that lurid loaf of bread?’
+
+But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews,
+M.C.,--
+
+‘Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They’ve got Johnny
+Mears with his fiddle!’
+
+
+
+
+The Buck-Jumper.
+
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them lanky
+and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel on the
+edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster’s camp) when Cob & Co.’s
+mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding from round Crown Ridge,
+in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage. Some wiry,
+ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings about the
+place. The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard close to the
+shanty. As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek at the foot of
+the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves from verandah posts,
+from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah and the rough slab
+wall against which they’d been resting, and joined a group of four or
+five who stood round one. He stood with his back to the corner post
+of the stock-yard, his feet well braced out in front of him, and
+contemplated the toes of his tight new ‘lastic-side boots and whistled
+softly. He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords,
+leggings, and a blue sash; he was Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed, and
+his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim of a new
+cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.
+
+‘Do it for a quid, Jack?’ asked one.
+
+‘Damned if I will, Jim!’ said the young man at the post. ‘I’ll do it for
+a fiver--not a blanky sprat less.’
+
+Jim took off his hat and ‘shoved’ it round, and ‘bobs’ were ‘chucked’
+into it. The result was about thirty shillings.
+
+Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.
+
+‘Not me!’ he said, showing some emotion for the first time. ‘D’yer think
+I’m going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement for thirty
+blanky bob. I’ll ride the blanky horse for a fiver, and I’ll feel the
+blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.’
+
+Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty. There
+were about twenty passengers aboard--inside, on the box-seat, on the
+tail-board, and hanging on to the roof--most of them Sydney men going up
+to the Mudgee races. They got down and went inside with the driver for
+a drink, while the stablemen changed horses. The Bushmen raised their
+voices a little and argued.
+
+One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man--a good-hearted,
+sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands. He had
+a round red face and a white cork hat. ‘What’s those chaps got on
+outside?’ he asked the publican.
+
+‘Oh, it’s a bet they’ve got on about riding a horse,’ replied the
+publican. ‘The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the
+horse-breaker; and they reckon they’ve got the champion outlaw in the
+district out there--that chestnut horse in the yard.’
+
+The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the
+Bushmen.
+
+‘Well, chaps! what have you got on here?’ he asked cheerily.
+
+‘Oh,’ said Jim carelessly, ‘it’s only a bit of a bet about ridin’
+that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.’ He indicated an
+ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles
+in a corner of the stock-yard. ‘Flash Jack there--he reckons he’s the
+champion horse-breaker round here--Flash Jack reckons he can take it out
+of that horse first try.’
+
+‘What’s up with the horse?’ inquired the big, red-faced man. ‘It looks
+quiet enough. Why, I’d ride it myself.’
+
+‘Would yer?’ said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up, and an
+innocent, inquiring expression. ‘Looks quiet, does he? YOU ought to know
+more about horses than to go by the looks of ‘em. He’s quiet enough just
+now, when there’s no one near him; but you should have been here an
+hour ago. That horse has killed two men and put another chap’s shoulder
+out--besides breaking a cove’s leg. It took six of us all the morning to
+run him in and get the saddle on him; and now Flash Jack wants to back
+out of it.’
+
+‘Euraliar!’ remarked Flash Jack cheerfully. ‘I said I’d ride that blanky
+horse out of the yard for a fiver. I ain’t goin’ to risk my blanky neck
+for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.’
+
+‘He said he’d ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,’ said Jim.
+
+‘And get smashed against the rails!’ said Flash Jack. ‘I would be a
+fool. I’d rather take my chance outside in the scrub--and it’s rough
+country round here.’
+
+‘Well, how much do you want?’ asked the man in the mushroom hat.
+
+‘A fiver, I said,’ replied Jack indifferently. ‘And the blanky stuff in
+my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.’
+
+‘Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?’ inquired one
+of the passengers who had gathered round.
+
+‘I’m frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,’
+said Flash Jack. ‘I know that horse; he’s got a mouth like iron. I might
+be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with
+my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?’
+
+‘You wouldn’t want ‘em then,’ suggested a passenger. ‘Or, say!--we’d
+leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.’
+
+Flash Jack ignored that passenger. He eyed his boots and softly whistled
+a tune.
+
+‘All right!’ said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his
+pocket. ‘I’ll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.’
+
+The five pounds were got together.
+
+‘I’ll lay a quid to half a quid he don’t stick on ten minutes!’ shouted
+Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off. The
+passengers also betted amongst themselves. Flash Jack, after putting the
+money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails and led the horse into
+the middle of the yard.
+
+‘Quiet as an old cow!’ snorted a passenger in disgust. ‘I believe it’s a
+sell!’
+
+‘Wait a bit,’ said Jim to the passenger, ‘wait a bit and you’ll see.’
+
+They waited and saw.
+
+Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard, and
+trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub, which
+swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.
+
+Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack
+to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty; then
+they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses,
+while they laughed.
+
+At the hotel there was just time for another drink. The driver climbed
+to his seat and shouted, ‘All aboard!’ in his usual tone. The passengers
+climbed to their places, thinking hard. A mile or so along the road the
+man with the cork hat remarked, with much truth--
+
+‘Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.’
+
+     *****
+
+The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of
+sight, and proceeded to ‘knock down’ the fiver.
+
+
+
+
+Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing.
+
+
+The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia) kept Daniel
+Myers--licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors--in drink and
+the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time he lay
+hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man would
+care to see--or hear when it gave forth sound. ‘Good accommodation
+for man and beast’; but few shanties save his own might, for a
+consideration, have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers
+had become towards the end of his career. But at last the eccentric Bush
+doctor, ‘Doc’ Wild’ (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without
+its having any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him
+awake and cynical), pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried
+legally; so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out, and the
+sign altered to read, ‘Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.’, and continued to
+conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years, with the
+joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer a human pig and
+pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm. Most of the regular
+patrons of the Half-way House could have their horrors decently, and,
+comparatively, quietly--or otherwise have them privately--in the Big
+Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been one of that sort.
+
+Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily, at
+the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so. She was
+a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid in the droughts of
+Out-Back without losing her good looks, and had put up with a hard life,
+and Myers, all those years without losing her good humour and nature.
+Probably, had her husband been the opposite kind of man, she would have
+been different--haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible--for
+of such is woman. But then it might be taken into consideration that she
+had been practically a widow during at least the last five years of her
+husband’s alleged life.
+
+Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed
+that she was not to be caught.
+
+‘It would be a grand thing,’ one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog
+would say to his mates, ‘for one of us to have his name up on a pub.; it
+would save a lot of money.’
+
+‘It wouldn’t save you anything, Bill, if I got it,’ was the retort. ‘You
+needn’t come round chewing my lug then. I’d give you one drink and no
+more.’
+
+The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers,
+even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos, tried their
+luck in vain. In answer to the suggestion that she ought to have a man
+to knock round and look after things, she retorted that she had had one,
+and was perfectly satisfied. Few trav’lers on those tracks but tried
+‘a bit of bear-up’ in that direction, but all to no purpose. Chequemen
+knocked down their cheques manfully at the Half-way House--to get
+courage and goodwill and ‘put it off’ till, at the last moment, they
+offered themselves abjectly to the landlady; which was worse than bad
+judgment on their part--it was very silly, and she told them so.
+
+One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith
+in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much
+that they ‘broke out’ and went on record-breaking sprees.
+
+About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra
+coat of paint on the ‘Margaret’, whereat suitors looked hopeless.
+
+One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big
+Scrub--anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the
+horrors. But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing
+the opportunity when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell
+asleep, went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher’s
+gallows--having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea of
+leaving the world as naked as he came into it. He climbed the pole, sat
+astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell--a yell
+of drunken triumph--before he dropped, and woke his mates.
+
+They cut him down and brought him to. Next day he apologised to Mrs
+Myers, said, ‘Ah, well! So long!’ to the rest, and departed--cured of
+drink and love apparently. The verdict was that the blanky fool should
+have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed, and it
+began to look as though, if she wished to continue to live on happily
+and comfortably for a few years longer at the fixed age of thirty-nine,
+she would either have to give up the pub. or get married.
+
+Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was
+mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the
+camp-fire.
+
+About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw,
+widower--otherwise known as ‘Old Jimmy’, though he was little past
+middle age--had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up,
+and tackled afresh (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts)
+ever since the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was
+a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a
+certain ‘cleanness’ about the shape of his limbs which suggested the
+old jockey or hostler. There were two strong theories in connection with
+Jimmy--one was that he had had a university education, and the other
+that he couldn’t write his own name. Not nearly such a ridiculous nor
+simple case Out-Back as it might seem.
+
+Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the ‘heard tells’ in
+connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his
+contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, ‘I’ll go up to Tinned
+Dog next week and try my luck.’
+
+His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to
+laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian
+actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to
+think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an
+imaginary table and exclaimed--
+
+‘By God! Jimmy’ll do it.’ (Applause.)
+
+     *****
+
+So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
+runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a
+clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
+greased-bluchered--altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was
+served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the
+river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
+
+A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a
+clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, ‘Is that
+trav’ler there yet, Mary?’
+
+‘Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.’
+
+The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when
+limited for ‘stuff’ or wondering whether a section has been cut
+wrong--or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn’t been a ‘clean
+pfellar’. She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
+across the clearing.
+
+‘Good-day, mister,’ she said, seeming to become aware of him for the
+first time.
+
+‘Good-day, missus!’
+
+‘Hot!’
+
+‘Hot!’
+
+Pause.
+
+‘Trav’lin’?’
+
+‘No, not particular!’
+
+She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he
+wasn’t raving. But the swagman smoked on.
+
+‘Have a drink?’ she suggested, to keep her end up.
+
+‘No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take more
+than two a-day--one before breakfast, if I can get it, and a night-cap.’
+
+What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
+
+‘Come and have some tea; it’s ready.’
+
+‘Thank you. I don’t mind if I do.’
+
+They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him
+except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,
+and was ‘just having a look at the country.’ He politely declined a
+‘shake-down’, saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out
+this weather. She got his name with a ‘by-the-way’, as he rose to leave,
+and he went back to camp.
+
+He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning, and
+got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon
+pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of
+nails.
+
+And, well--to make it short--when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,
+and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed
+by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words--
+
+            HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,
+                     BY
+               JAMES GRIMSHAW.
+                Good Stabling.
+
+The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.
+
+
+
+
+At Dead Dingo.
+
+
+It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board
+and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where
+there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called
+‘Roasted’, and other times ‘Potted Dingo’--nicknames suggested by the
+everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned
+Dog.
+
+From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running
+right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red
+sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust,
+and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
+
+There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year’s Day.
+There weren’t many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar--the
+coolest place in the shanty--reading ‘Deadwood Dick’. On a worn and torn
+and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better
+days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms
+twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death
+of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim--shearer and rouseabout--sat at a table
+playing cards. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had
+been gambling since nine--and the greater part of the night before--so
+they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps
+physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
+
+Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a
+sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
+
+Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an
+oath that would have been savage if it hadn’t been drawled.
+
+‘Stumped?’ inquired Jim.
+
+‘Not a blanky, lurid deener!’ drawled Bill.
+
+Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and
+hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the
+eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking
+in a strange place.
+
+‘Got anything?’ asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
+
+Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and
+spat out on to the verandah floor.
+
+‘That’s all I got,’ he drawled. ‘It’s gone now.’
+
+Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the
+dog.
+
+‘That there dog yours?’ he asked, brightening.
+
+They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each
+other as Bushmen can be.
+
+Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke
+suddenly to a flea fact.
+
+‘Yes,’ drawled Bill, ‘he’s mine.’
+
+‘Well, I’m going Out-Back, and I want a dog,’ said Jim, gathering the
+cards briskly. ‘Half a quid agin the dog?’
+
+‘Half a quid be----!’ drawled Bill. ‘Call it a quid?’
+
+‘Half a blanky quid!’
+
+‘A gory, lurid quid!’ drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his
+swag.
+
+But Jim’s hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
+
+‘Alright. Call it a---- quid.’
+
+The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died
+again. Remember this, it might come in useful.
+
+Bill sat down to the table once more.
+
+Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned ‘Ah, well!’ and
+shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his
+foot, unwound the chain, said ‘Ah, well--so long!’ and drifted out and
+along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail
+down.
+
+Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,
+shouldered his swag, said, ‘So long, Mary!’ and drifted out and along
+the road towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
+
+     *****
+
+A long, drowsy, half hour passed--the sort of half hour that is as long
+as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold
+about as much as days do in other places.
+
+The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a
+moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his
+elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and
+came back to life gradually.
+
+He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and
+formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words--
+
+‘Put up a drink?’ *
+
+     * ‘Put up a drink’--i.e., ‘Give me a drink on credit’, or
+     ‘Chalk it up’.
+
+She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
+
+He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress
+signals with hand, eyes, and mouth.
+
+‘No!’ she snapped. ‘I means no when I says no! You’ve had too many last
+drinks already, and the boss says you ain’t to have another. If you
+swear again, or bother me, I’ll call him.’
+
+He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his
+swag, and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round,
+whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
+through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and
+started through to the back-door.
+
+‘What the devil do you want now?’ demanded the girl, interrupted in her
+reading for the third time by him. ‘Stampin’ all over the house. You
+can’t go through there! It’s privit! I do wish to goodness you’d git!’
+
+‘Where the blazes is that there dog o’ mine got to?’ he muttered. ‘Did
+you see a dog?’
+
+‘No! What do I want with your dog?’
+
+He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back
+with a decided step and tone.
+
+‘Look here! that there dog was lyin’ there agin the wall when I went
+to sleep. He wouldn’t stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn’t
+dragged. He’s been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn’ter lost
+him for a fiver. Are you sure you ain’t seen a dog?’ then suddenly, as
+the thought struck him: ‘Where’s them two chaps that was playin’ cards
+when I wenter sleep?’
+
+‘Why!’ exclaimed the girl, without thinking, ‘there was a dog, now I
+come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
+Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.’
+
+He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.
+
+‘What sort of a dog was it?’
+
+Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
+
+He scowled at her darkly.
+
+‘Now, look here,’ he said; ‘you’ve allowed gamblin’ in this bar--your
+boss has. You’ve got no right to let spielers gamble away a man’s dog.
+Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your
+boss? I’ll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and
+I don’t care if you lose your licence. I ain’t goin’ to lose my dog. I
+wouldn’ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I----’
+
+She was filling a pewter hastily.
+
+‘Here! for God’s sake have a drink an’ stop yer row.’
+
+He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and
+scowled out the door.
+
+‘Which blanky way did them chaps go?’ he growled.
+
+‘The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.’
+
+‘And I’ll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
+lose me shed! Here!’ jerking the empty pewter across the bar, ‘fill that
+up again; I’m narked properly, I am, and I’ll take twenty-four blanky
+hours to cool down now. I wouldn’ter lost that dog for twenty quid.’
+
+He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,
+muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the
+track to Tinned Dog.
+
+               *****
+
+Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite
+settled it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it
+to you.
+
+
+
+
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+
+
+Most Bushmen who hadn’t ‘known Bob Baker to speak to’, had ‘heard tell
+of him’. He’d been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie
+river in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and
+had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to
+Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a
+pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob
+Baker went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager
+in charge.
+
+He’d been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he’d been
+a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for
+they had to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of
+vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed. It’s very nice to hear the
+chaps sing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, but you’ve mostly got to pay
+for it twice--first in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the
+chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place
+and they were giving me a send-off. It thrilled me, and brought a warm
+gush to my eyes; but, all the same, I wished I had half the money I’d
+lent them, and spent on ‘em, and I wished I’d used the time I’d wasted
+to be a jolly good fellow.
+
+When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great
+north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on
+the Sydney side. He was going north to new country round by the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle, on a two years’ trip; and I and
+my mate, Andy M’Culloch, engaged to go with him. We wanted to have a
+look at the Gulf Country.
+
+After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me that the Boss
+was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs. Andy had been
+with him on another trip, and he told me that the Boss was only going
+this way lately. Andy knew Mrs Baker well, and seemed to think a deal of
+her. ‘She’s a good little woman,’ said Andy. ‘One of the right stuff. I
+worked on their station for a while when I was a nipper, and I know.
+She was always a damned sight too good for the Boss, but she believed in
+him. When I was coming away this time she says to me, “Look here, Andy,
+I’m afraid Robert is drinking again. Now I want you to look after him
+for me, as much as you can--you seem to have as much influence with him
+as any one. I want you to promise me that you’ll never have a drink with
+him.”
+
+‘And I promised,’ said Andy, ‘and I’ll keep my word.’ Andy was a chap
+who could keep his word, and nothing else. And, no matter how the Boss
+persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him, Andy would never drink with him.
+
+It got worse and worse: the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at a
+shanty, and sometimes he’d be days behind us; and when he’d catch up to
+us his temper would be just about as much as we could stand. At last he
+went on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles
+north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow with a flash
+barmaid there--one of those girls who are engaged, by the publicans up
+country, as baits for chequemen.
+
+He went mad over that girl. He drew an advance cheque from the
+stock-owner’s agent there, and knocked that down; then he raised some
+more money somehow, and spent that--mostly on the girl.
+
+We did all we could. Andy got him along the track for a couple of
+stages, and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the
+night and went back.
+
+We had two other men with us, but had the devil’s own bother on account
+of the cattle. It was a mixed-up job all round. You see it was all big
+runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks moving along the route
+all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass. The agent wasn’t
+going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock until
+the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass on the route or the
+travelling-stock reserves or camps, so we had to keep travelling for
+grass.
+
+The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle have
+to go through--that’s the law of the stock-routes. So the agent wired
+to the owners, and, when he got their reply, he sacked the Boss and sent
+the cattle on in charge of another man. The new Boss was a drover coming
+south after a trip; he had his two brothers with him, so he didn’t want
+me and Andy; but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged,
+between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to
+us--the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.
+
+We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober,
+mad or sane, good or bad, it isn’t Bush religion to desert a mate in a
+hole; and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.
+
+We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with
+us as much as possible, and did all we could for him.
+
+‘How could I face his wife if I went home without him?’ asked Andy, ‘or
+any of his old mates?’
+
+The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was, and
+then he’d hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow, and fight,
+and get knocked about. He was an awful object by this time, wild-eyed
+and gaunt, and he hadn’t washed or shaved for days.
+
+Andy got the constable in charge of the police station to lock him up
+for a night, but it only made him worse: we took him back to the camp
+next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes he
+slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started to hang
+himself to a leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope. We got to
+him just in time.
+
+Then Andy wired to the Boss’s brother Ned, who was fighting the drought,
+the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border.
+Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
+
+Perhaps the Boss hadn’t been quite right in his head before he started
+drinking--he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of
+it; maybe he’d got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his
+troubles--anyway he died in the horrors within the week.
+
+His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought he was the
+devil, and grappled with him. It took the three of us to hold the Boss
+down sometimes.
+
+Sometimes, towards the end, he’d be sensible for a few minutes and talk
+about his ‘poor wife and children’; and immediately afterwards he’d
+fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils. He cursed
+everything; he cursed his wife and children, and yelled that they were
+dragging him down to hell. He died raving mad. It was the worst case of
+death in the horrors of drink that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
+
+Ned saw to the funeral: it was very hot weather, and men have to be
+buried quick who die out there in the hot weather--especially men who
+die in the state the Boss was in. Then Ned went to the public-house
+where the barmaid was and called the landlord out. It was a desperate
+fight: the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man; but
+Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who will carry a thing
+through to death when they make up their minds. He gave that publican
+nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved. The constable in charge of
+the station backed Ned, while another policeman picked up the publican.
+Sounds queer to you city people, doesn’t it?
+
+Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at
+Ned Baker’s station on the border, and then started on our
+three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so
+we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned’s place at dusk.
+He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet,
+done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob’s
+pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we’d gone a
+piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and
+a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. ‘Poor old Ned,’ said
+Andy to me. ‘He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married,
+but she picked the wrong man--girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together
+on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he’s been
+up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you
+something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of
+fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he
+died easy--and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she
+is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I’ll have
+to go and see her when we get to Solong; there’s no getting out of it,
+I’ll have to face her--and you’ll have to come with me.’
+
+‘Damned if I will!’ I said.
+
+‘But you’ll have to,’ said Andy. ‘You’ll have to stick to me; you’re
+surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I’ll
+have to lie like hell--I’ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman
+before; and you’ll have to back me and corroborate every lie.’
+
+I’d never seen Andy show so much emotion.
+
+‘There’s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,’ said Andy. He said no
+more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss’s name casually,
+until we were within about a day’s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the
+yarn he’d made up about the Boss’s death.
+
+‘And I want you to listen, Jack,’ he said, ‘and remember every word--and
+if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it
+was like this: the Boss wasn’t too well when he crossed the border. He
+complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back
+of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,--but that doesn’t matter; it’s
+lucky I ain’t supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck
+to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as
+easy as we could for him. He’d just take it easy, and ride on from camp
+to camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did,
+if you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a
+while, but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give
+up. A squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up
+at the best hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for
+him--put him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for
+Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day
+and got there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off
+his head some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards
+the end and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and
+told us to tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children’s
+sake. How does that sound?’
+
+I’d been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.
+
+‘Why not let her know the truth?’ I asked. ‘She’s sure to hear of
+it sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken
+blackguard she might get over it all the sooner.’
+
+‘You don’t know women, Jack,’ said Andy quietly. ‘And, anyway, even if
+she is a sensible woman, we’ve got a dead mate to consider as well as a
+living woman.’
+
+‘But she’s sure to hear the truth sooner or later,’ I said, ‘the Boss
+was so well known.’
+
+‘And that’s just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,’ said
+Andy. ‘If he wasn’t well known--and nobody could help liking him, after
+all, when he was straight--if he wasn’t so well known the truth might
+leak out unawares. She won’t know if I can help it, or at least not yet
+a while. If I see any chaps that come from the North I’ll put them up
+to it. I’ll tell M’Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he’s a straight
+man--he’ll keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker’s sisters
+is staying with her, and I’ll give her a hint so that she can warn off
+any women that might get hold of a yarn. Besides, Mrs Baker is sure to
+go and live in Sydney, where all her people are--she was a Sydney girl;
+and she’s not likely to meet any one there that will tell her the truth.
+I can tell her that it was the last wish of the Boss that she should
+shift to Sydney.’
+
+We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called a
+‘happy thought’. He went to his saddle-bags and got out the small canvas
+packet that Ned had given him: it was sewn up with packing-thread, and
+Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.
+
+‘What are you doing, Andy?’ I asked.
+
+‘Ned’s an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,’ said Andy. ‘I
+guess he hasn’t looked through the Boss’s letters, and I’m just going to
+see that there’s nothing here that will make liars of us.’
+
+He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire. There
+were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband, also a portrait of her
+and the children; these Andy put aside. But there were other letters
+from barmaids and women who were not fit to be seen in the same street
+with the Boss’s wife; and there were portraits--one or two flash ones.
+There were two letters from other men’s wives too.
+
+‘And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!’ said Andy, in
+a tone of disgust.
+
+He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss’s
+pocket-book and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on
+them, and burnt them too. Then he sewed up the packet again and put it
+away in his saddle-bag.
+
+‘Such is life!’ said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.
+
+We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a
+paddock, and put up at M’Grath’s pub. until such time as we made up our
+minds as to what we’d do or where we’d go. We had an idea of waiting
+until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big
+sheds.
+
+Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker. ‘We’ll go after
+dinner,’ said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink, and felt
+sleepy--we weren’t used to big dinners of roast-beef and vegetables and
+pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather--so we decided to have a
+snooze and then go. When we woke up it was late in the afternoon, so we
+thought we’d put it off till after tea. ‘It wouldn’t be manners to walk
+in while they’re at tea,’ said Andy--‘it would look as if we only came
+for some grub.’
+
+But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs
+Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we’d call
+up as soon as possible. You see, in those small towns you can’t move
+without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.
+
+‘We’ll have to face the music now!’ said Andy, ‘and no get out of it.’
+He seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite
+where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to
+Andy--
+
+‘Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in
+there an hour or two.’
+
+‘You don’t want another drink,’ said Andy, rather short. ‘Why, you seem
+to be going the same way as the Boss!’ But it was Andy that edged off
+towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker’s place. ‘All right!’ he
+said. ‘Come on! We’ll have this other drink, since you want it so bad.’
+
+We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the
+road--we’d bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit. Half-way
+across Andy grabbed my arm and asked--
+
+‘How do you feel now, Jack?’
+
+‘Oh, I’M all right,’ I said.
+
+‘For God’s sake!’ said Andy, ‘don’t put your foot in it and make a mess
+of it.’
+
+‘I won’t, if you don’t.’
+
+Mrs Baker’s cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a
+garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and
+whispered--
+
+‘For God’s sake stick to me now, Jack!’
+
+‘I’ll stick all right,’ I said--‘you’ve been having too much beer,
+Andy.’
+
+I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented
+sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss’s shirts
+and things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is
+contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular
+about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like
+the ghost of herself. I wouldn’t have recognised her at first. I never
+saw such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.
+
+Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes
+for the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four
+or twenty-five, and fresh and fair--not like the sun-browned women we
+were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick
+to understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had
+told me, and wrote stories for the Sydney ‘Bulletin’ and other Sydney
+papers. She had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and
+that took us back a bit at first.
+
+‘It’s very good of you to come,’ said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice,
+when we first went in. ‘I heard you were in town.’
+
+‘We were just coming when we got your message,’ said Andy. ‘We’d have
+come before, only we had to see to the horses.’
+
+‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Baker.
+
+They wanted us to have tea, but we said we’d just had it. Then Miss
+Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn’t feel
+as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully
+just then.
+
+There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room,
+and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.
+
+‘You mustn’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right presently, and then
+I want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It’s seeing you, that saw the
+last of him, that set me off.’
+
+Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall,
+and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting
+Blucher on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture
+was there.
+
+The child was calling ‘mumma’, and Mrs Baker went in to it, and her
+sister came out. ‘Best tell her all about it and get it over,’ she
+whispered to Andy. ‘She’ll never be content until she hears all about
+poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died. Let me take your
+hats. Make yourselves comfortable.’
+
+She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine. I wished she’d let
+us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to, and nothing to do
+with our hands; and as for being comfortable, we were just about as
+comfortable as two cats on wet bricks.
+
+When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker, about
+four years old; he wanted to see Andy. He ran to Andy at once, and Andy
+took him up on his knee. He was a pretty child, but he reminded me too
+much of his father.
+
+‘I’m so glad you’ve come, Andy!’ said Bobby.
+
+‘Are you, Bobby?’
+
+‘Yes. I wants to ask you about daddy. You saw him go away, didn’t you?’
+and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy’s face.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy.
+
+‘He went up among the stars, didn’t he?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy.
+
+‘And he isn’t coming back to Bobby any more?’
+
+‘No,’ said Andy. ‘But Bobby’s going to him by-and-by.’
+
+Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her
+hand, tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister
+took her out of the room.
+
+Andy looked miserable. ‘I wish to God I was off this job!’ he whispered
+to me.
+
+‘Is that the girl that writes the stories?’ I asked.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, ‘and poems
+too.’
+
+‘Is Bobby going up among the stars?’ asked Bobby.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy--‘if Bobby’s good.’
+
+‘And auntie?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘And mumma?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Are you going, Andy?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy hopelessly.
+
+‘Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy, ‘I saw him go up.’
+
+‘And he isn’t coming down again any more?’
+
+‘No,’ said Andy.
+
+‘Why isn’t he?’
+
+‘Because he’s going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.’
+
+There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked--
+
+‘Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?’ with the same expression of
+innocent wonder in his eyes.
+
+Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand. ‘Auntie’ came in and told him
+he’d see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed, after he’d kissed
+us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker settled down to hear
+Andy’s story.
+
+‘Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,’ whispered Andy to me
+just before they came in.
+
+‘Poor Bob’s brother Ned wrote to me,’ said Mrs Baker, ‘but he scarcely
+told me anything. Ned’s a good fellow, but he’s very simple, and never
+thinks of anything.’
+
+Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border.
+
+‘I knew he was not well,’ said Mrs Baker, ‘before he left. I didn’t want
+him to go. I tried hard to persuade him not to go this trip. I had a
+feeling that I oughtn’t to let him go. But he’d never think of anything
+but me and the children. He promised he’d give up droving after this
+trip, and get something to do near home. The life was too much for
+him--riding in all weathers and camping out in the rain, and living like
+a dog. But he was never content at home. It was all for the sake of me
+and the children. He wanted to make money and start on a station again.
+I shouldn’t have let him go. He only thought of me and the children! Oh!
+my poor, dear, kind, dead husband!’ She broke down again and sobbed, and
+her sister comforted her, while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting
+Blucher on the field of Waterloo. I thought the artist had heaped up the
+dead a bit extra, and I thought that I wouldn’t like to be trod on by
+horses, even if I was dead.
+
+‘Don’t you mind,’ said Miss Standish, ‘she’ll be all right presently,’
+and she handed us the ‘Illustrated Sydney Journal’. This was a great
+relief,--we bumped our heads over the pictures.
+
+Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down
+near Mulgatown. Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite
+me. Both of them kept their eyes on Andy’s face: he sat, with his hair
+straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes
+fixed on Mrs Baker’s face all the time he was speaking. I watched Miss
+Standish. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen; it was a
+bad case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me, and
+the case was hopeless. I began to feel pretty miserable, and to think
+back into the past: I just heard Andy droning away by my side.
+
+‘So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets
+and coats and things,’ Andy was saying, ‘and the squatter started into
+Mulgatown.... It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn’t it?’ he asked,
+turning suddenly to me. He always looked so innocent that there were
+times when I itched to knock him down.
+
+‘More like thirty-five,’ I said, waking up.
+
+Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look at Wellington
+and Blucher.
+
+‘They were all very good and kind to the Boss,’ said Andy. ‘They thought
+a lot of him up there. Everybody was fond of him.’
+
+‘I know it,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘Nobody could help liking him. He was one
+of the kindest men that ever lived.’
+
+‘Tanner, the publican, couldn’t have been kinder to his own brother,’
+said Andy. ‘The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only a young
+fellow, and Tanner hadn’t much faith in him, so he wired for an older
+doctor at Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses to meet the
+doctor’s buggy. Everything was done that could be done, I assure you,
+Mrs Baker.’
+
+‘I believe it,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘And you don’t know how it relieves me
+to hear it. And did the publican do all this at his own expense?’
+
+‘He wouldn’t take a penny, Mrs Baker.’
+
+‘He must have been a good true man. I wish I could thank him.’
+
+‘Oh, Ned thanked him for you,’ said Andy, though without meaning more
+than he said.
+
+‘I wouldn’t have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,’ said Mrs
+Baker. ‘When I first heard of my poor husband’s death, I thought perhaps
+he’d been drinking again--that worried me a bit.’
+
+‘He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs
+Baker,’ said Andy quickly.
+
+Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or
+twice, while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him;
+then she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head
+and looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn’t like. Once or
+twice she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question, but I
+always looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington, or into
+the empty fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me. Then she
+asked Andy a question or two, in all innocence I believe now, but it
+scared him, and at last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp.
+Then she gave a little gasp and shut up like a steel trap.
+
+The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again. Mrs Baker went
+to it. We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring
+all over the place: presently Miss Standish excused herself, and went
+out of the room after her sister. She looked hard at Andy as she left
+the room, but he kept his eyes away.
+
+‘Brace up now, Jack,’ whispered Andy to me, ‘the worst is coming.’
+
+When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.
+
+‘He--he died very quietly,’ said Andy, hitching round, and resting his
+elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his
+face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister.
+‘He died very easy,’ said Andy. ‘He was a bit off his head at times, but
+that was while the fever was on him. He didn’t suffer much towards the
+end--I don’t think he suffered at all.... He talked a lot about you and
+the children.’ (Andy was speaking very softly now.) ‘He said that you
+were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children’s sake.... It was the
+biggest funeral ever seen round there.’
+
+Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half out of his pocket,
+but shoved it back again.
+
+‘The only thing that hurts me now,’ says Mrs Baker presently, ‘is to
+think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far
+from home. It’s--cruel!’ and she was sobbing again.
+
+‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Baker,’ said Andy, losing his head a little.
+‘Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down
+and buried in Sydney.’ Which was about the first thing Andy had told her
+that evening that wasn’t a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as
+he sold his wool.
+
+‘It’s very kind indeed of Ned,’ sobbed Mrs Baker. ‘I’d never have
+dreamed he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all
+along. And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Andy--then one of his ‘happy thoughts’ struck him. ‘Except
+that he hoped you’d shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you’ve got friends
+and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the children.
+He told me to tell you that.’
+
+‘He was thoughtful up to the end,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘It was just like
+poor Robert--always thinking of me and the children. We are going to
+Sydney next week.’
+
+Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted
+to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up
+and bumped against each other, and got each other’s hats, and promised
+Mrs Baker we’d come again.
+
+‘Thank you very much for coming,’ she said, shaking hands with us. ‘I
+feel much better now. You don’t know how much you have relieved me. Now,
+mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.’
+
+Andy caught her sister’s eye and jerked his head towards the door to let
+her know he wanted to speak to her outside.
+
+‘Good-bye, Mrs Baker,’ he said, holding on to her hand. ‘And don’t you
+fret. You’ve--you’ve got the children yet. It’s--it’s all for the best;
+and, besides, the Boss said you wasn’t to fret.’ And he blundered out
+after me and Miss Standish.
+
+She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.
+
+‘I want you to give that to her,’ he said; ‘it’s his letters and papers.
+I hadn’t the heart to give it to her, somehow.’
+
+‘Tell me, Mr M’Culloch,’ she said. ‘You’ve kept something back--you
+haven’t told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know.
+Was it an accident--or the drink?’
+
+‘It was the drink,’ said Andy. ‘I was going to tell you--I thought it
+would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow,
+I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t asked me.’
+
+‘Tell me all,’ she said. ‘It would be better for me to know.’
+
+‘Come a little farther away from the house,’ said Andy. She came along
+the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he
+could.
+
+‘I’ll hurry her off to Sydney,’ she said. ‘We can get away this week as
+well as next.’ Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly,
+her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She
+looked splendid.
+
+‘I want to thank you for her sake,’ she said quickly. ‘You are good men!
+I like the Bushmen! They are grand men--they are noble! I’ll probably
+never see either of you again, so it doesn’t matter,’ and she put her
+white hand on Andy’s shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the
+mouth. ‘And you, too!’ she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had
+to stoop. ‘Good-bye!’ she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her
+hand to us. We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.
+
+I don’t think it did either of us any harm.
+
+
+
+
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+
+
+This is a story--about the only one--of Job Falconer, Boss of the
+Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales in the early
+Eighties--when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs out of the
+hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.
+
+Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete, and as
+his family grew up he would become as angry as it was in his easy-going
+nature to become if reference were made to the incident in his presence.
+But his wife--little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer--often told the
+story (in the mysterious voice which women use in speaking of private
+matters amongst themselves--but with brightening eyes) to women friends
+over tea; and always to a new woman friend. And on such occasions she
+would be particularly tender towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his
+thin, sandy hair in a way that embarrassed him in company--made him look
+as sheepish as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned
+amongst the ewes. And the woman friend on parting would give Job’s hand
+a squeeze which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she
+could love him.
+
+According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been
+tall, and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered. But he wasn’t.
+He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy (his skin
+was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber), and his
+eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly, his arms were
+short, and his legs bowed to the saddle. Altogether he was an awkward,
+unlovely Bush bird--on foot; in the saddle it was different. He hadn’t
+even a ‘temper’.
+
+The impression on Job’s mind which many years afterwards brought about
+the incident was strong enough. When Job was a boy of fourteen he saw
+his father’s horse come home riderless--circling and snorting up by the
+stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on one of the snapped
+ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side with bruised
+pommel and knee-pad broken off.
+
+Job’s father wasn’t hurt much, but Job’s mother, an emotional woman, and
+then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock for three months
+only. ‘She wasn’t quite right in her head,’ they said, ‘from the day
+the horse came home till the last hour before she died.’ And, strange to
+say, Job’s father (from whom Job inherited his seemingly placid nature)
+died three months later. The doctor from the town was of the opinion
+that he must have ‘sustained internal injuries’ when the horse threw
+him. ‘Doc. Wild’ (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job’s father was
+hurt inside when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn’t pull
+round. But doctors differ all over the world.
+
+
+Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way. He had been
+married a year, and had lately started wool-raising on a pastoral lease
+he had taken up at Talbragar: it was a new run, with new slab-and-bark
+huts on the creek for a homestead, new shearing-shed, yards--wife and
+everything new, and he was expecting a baby. Job felt brand-new himself
+at the time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman;
+but Gerty was a settler’s daughter. The newness took away some of the
+loneliness, she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the
+scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight,
+as the bark and slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers.
+And there’s nothing under God’s sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as
+a deserted old home in the Bush.
+
+Job’s wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the
+run, and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman
+from within the kicking radius in Lancashire--wife of a selector) was
+only seven miles away. She promised to be on hand, and came over two or
+three times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty’s time drew near, and
+wished that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty
+miles away), as originally proposed. Gerty’s mother, who lived in town,
+was coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with
+the town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a
+doctor who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty
+miles away.
+
+Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had
+more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan,
+and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of
+the district together--maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or
+he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions--or, perhaps, because he’d do
+things which no ‘respectable practitioner’ dared do. I’ve described him
+in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn’t.
+There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank
+fearfully, and ‘on his own’, but was seldom incapable of performing an
+operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when
+perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had
+a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His
+movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be--in a town
+hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog
+shanty, in a shearer’s, digger’s, shepherd’s, or boundary-rider’s hut;
+in a surveyor’s camp or a black-fellows’ camp--or, when the horrors were
+on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost
+all his things sometimes--even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin
+bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once;
+then he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him.
+
+His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he
+rode as far and fast to a squatter’s home as to a swagman’s camp. When
+nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and
+the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He
+had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by
+squatters for ‘pulling round’ their wives or children; but such offers
+always angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered
+a 10 Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no
+diploma; but the magistrate, on reading certain papers, suggested a
+settlement out of court, which both doctors agreed to--the other doctor
+apologising briefly in the local paper. It was noticed thereafter
+that the magistrate and town doctors treated Doc. Wild with great
+respect--even at his worst. The thing was never explained, and the case
+deepened the mystery which surrounded Doc. Wild.
+
+As Job Falconer’s crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty
+on the main road, about half-way between Job’s station and the town.
+(Township of Come-by-Chance--expressive name; and the shanty was the
+‘Dead Dingo Hotel’, kept by James Myles--known as ‘Poisonous Jimmy’,
+perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.) Job’s
+brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel with instructions
+to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor didn’t either drink
+himself into the ‘D.T.’s’ or get sober enough to become restless; to
+prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did; and to bring him
+to the station in about a week’s time. Mac. (rather more careless,
+brighter, and more energetic than his brother) was carrying out these
+instructions while pretending, with rather great success, to be himself
+on the spree at the shanty.
+
+But one morning, early in the specified week, Job’s uneasiness was
+suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy
+for the neighbour’s wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance to hurry
+out Gerty’s mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac. were
+getting on. On the arrival of the neighbour’s wife, who drove over in a
+spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.
+
+‘Don’t be anxious, Job,’ said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her. ‘We’ll
+be all right. Wait! you’d better take the gun--you might see those
+dingoes again. I’ll get it for you.’
+
+The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep; and Job and
+Gerty had started three together close to the track the last time they
+were out in company--without the gun, of course. Gerty took the loaded
+gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall, carried it out,
+and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again and then rode
+off.
+
+It was a hot day--the beginning of a long drought, as Job found to his
+bitter cost. He followed the track for five or six miles through the
+thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off to make a short cut to the
+main road across a big ring-barked flat. The tall gum-trees had been
+ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out round the butts), or rather
+‘sapped’--that is, a ring cut in through the sap--in order to kill them,
+so that the little strength in the ‘poor’ soil should not be drawn out
+by the living roots, and the natural grass (on which Australian stock
+depends) should have a better show. The hard, dead trees raised their
+barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches for three or four
+miles, and the grey and brown grass stood tall between, dying in the
+first breaths of the coming drought. All was becoming grey and ashen
+here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects, and the pale brassy
+dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with
+its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready
+(it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for
+shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was
+saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush
+fashion, hitched a little to one side--and I’m not sure that he didn’t
+have a leg thrown up and across in front of the pommel of the saddle--he
+was riding along in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking
+fatherly thoughts in advance, perhaps, when suddenly a great black,
+greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the track amongst
+the dry tufts of grass and shreds of dead bark, and started up a
+sapling. ‘It was a whopper,’ Job said afterwards; ‘must have been over
+six feet, and a foot across the body. It scared me nearly as much as the
+filly.’
+
+The filly shied off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively,
+as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the
+rein--lying loosely on the pommel--the filly ‘fetched up’ against a dead
+box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job’s left leg was jammed from stirrup
+to pocket. ‘I felt the blood flare up,’ he said, ‘and I knowed that
+that’--(Job swore now and then in an easy-going way)--‘I knowed that
+that blanky leg was broken alright. I threw the gun from me and freed
+my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall to the
+right, as the filly started off again.’
+
+What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer,
+and Job’s own ‘wanderings in his mind’, as he called them. ‘They took
+a blanky mean advantage of me,’ he said, ‘when they had me down and I
+couldn’t talk sense.’
+
+The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring--as a mob of
+brumbies, when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke. Job’s
+leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible. But he
+thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix. No doubt the scene at
+the lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him: his father’s
+horse appeared riderless, and he saw the look in his mother’s eyes.
+
+Now a Bushman’s first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this is
+that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed, and the horse’s
+tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there for days, for
+weeks--till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones. Job was on an
+old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for
+months, but he did not consider this. He crawled to his gun, then to a
+log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him. How he did it he doesn’t
+know. Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log, took aim
+at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over and lay with his
+head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down, rested on his
+neck. He had fainted. The crows were interested, and the ants would come
+by-and-by.
+
+
+Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed,
+after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no
+other possible way. He often turned up where and when he was wanted
+above all men, and at no other time. He had gipsy blood, they said; but,
+anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had, and living
+the life he lived--and doing the things he did--it was quite probable
+that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world
+all round and between us, of which we only see distorted faces and hear
+disjointed utterances when we are ‘suffering a recovery’--or going mad.
+
+On the morning of Job’s accident, and after a long brooding silence,
+Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer--
+
+‘Git the hosses, Mac. We’ll go to the station.’
+
+Mac., used to the doctor’s eccentricities, went to see about the horses.
+
+And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer--Job’s mother-in-law--on
+her way from the town to the station. She stayed to have a cup of tea
+and give her horses a feed. She was square-faced, and considered a
+rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh, good
+sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes. She lived
+in the town comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband
+left in the bank. She drove an American waggonette with a good width
+and length of ‘tray’ behind, and on this occasion she had a pole and two
+horses. In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows, a generous
+pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries,
+delicacies, and luxuries. All round she was an excellent mother-in-law
+for a man to have on hand at a critical time.
+
+And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her
+right here. She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace
+and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home! Then it’s
+‘Write to Mother! Wire for Mother! Send some one to fetch Mother! I’ll
+go and bring Mother!’ and if she is not near: ‘Oh, I wish Mother were
+here! If Mother were only near!’ And when she is on the spot, the
+anxious son-in-law: ‘Don’t YOU go, Mother! You’ll stay, won’t you,
+Mother?--till we’re all right? I’ll get some one to look after your
+house, Mother, while you’re here.’ But Job Falconer was fond of his
+mother-in-law, all times.
+
+Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses. Mrs
+Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her about a mile
+before she reached the homestead track, which turned in through the
+scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
+
+Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along in
+the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat
+through the dead, naked branches. Mac. looked that way. The crows were
+hopping about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat,
+flopping down from branch to branch to the grass, then rising hurriedly
+and circling.
+
+‘Dead beast there!’ said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.
+
+‘No--dying,’ said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more
+intellect.
+
+‘There’s some steers of Job’s out there somewhere,’ muttered Mac. Then
+suddenly, ‘It ain’t drought--it’s the ploorer at last! or I’m blanked!’
+
+Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, which
+was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto kept clear of
+Job’s run.
+
+‘We’ll go and see, if you like,’ suggested Doc. Wild.
+
+They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way amongst
+the dried tufts and fallen branches.
+
+‘Theer ain’t no sign o’ cattle theer,’ said the doctor; ‘more likely a
+ewe in trouble about her lamb.’
+
+‘Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,’ said Mac. ‘I wish we had a
+gun--might get a shot at them.’
+
+Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of
+a hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. ‘In case I feel obliged to
+shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,’ he explained once,
+whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly,
+without result.
+
+‘We’d never git near enough for a shot,’ said the doctor; then he
+commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost
+Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,--
+
+   ‘“The crows kept flyin’ up, boys!
+       The crows kept flyin’ up!
+    The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
+       Though he was but a pup.”’
+
+‘It must be something or other,’ muttered Mac. ‘Look at them blanky
+crows!’
+
+    ‘“The lost was found, we brought him round,
+       And took him from the place,
+    While the ants was swarmin’ on the ground,
+       And the crows was sayin’ grace!”’
+
+‘My God! what’s that?’ cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode
+a tall horse.
+
+It was Job’s filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as
+they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and
+her head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against
+the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write
+the reason of it there.
+
+The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat
+pocket, and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner;
+then something--professional instinct or the something supernatural
+about the doctor--led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass,
+where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly,
+which must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac.
+followed the doctor, shaking violently.
+
+‘Oh, my God!’ he cried, with the woman in his voice--and his face so
+pale that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said--‘oh,
+my God! he’s shot himself!’
+
+‘No, he hasn’t,’ said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier
+position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then
+he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. ‘He’s got a
+broken leg,’ said the doctor. Even then he couldn’t resist making a
+characteristic remark, half to himself: ‘A man doesn’t shoot himself
+when he’s going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he
+can see a long way into the future.’ Then he took out his whisky-flask
+and said briskly to Mac., ‘Leave me your water-bag’ (Mac. carried a
+canvas water-bag slung under his horse’s neck), ‘ride back to the track,
+stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here. Tell her it’s only a
+broken leg.’
+
+Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.
+
+As he worked the doctor muttered: ‘He shot his horse. That’s what gits
+me. The fool might have lain there for a week. I’d never have suspected
+spite in that carcass, and I ought to know men.’
+
+But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.
+
+‘Where’s the filly?’ cried Job suddenly between groans.
+
+‘She’s all right,’ said the doctor.
+
+‘Stop her!’ cried Job, struggling to rise--‘stop her!--oh God! my leg.’
+
+‘Keep quiet, you fool!’
+
+‘Stop her!’ yelled Job.
+
+‘Why stop her?’ asked the doctor. ‘She won’t go fur,’ he added.
+
+‘She’ll go home to Gerty,’ shouted Job. ‘For God’s sake stop her!’
+
+‘O--h!’ drawled the doctor to himself. ‘I might have guessed that. And I
+ought to know men.’
+
+‘Don’t take me home!’ demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval. ‘Take me
+to Poisonous Jimmy’s and tell Gerty I’m on the spree.’
+
+When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was in
+his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages. The
+lower half of Job’s trouser-leg and his ‘lastic-side boot lay on the
+ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched between
+two strips of bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows, and bound by
+saddle-straps.
+
+‘That’s all I kin do for him for the present.’
+
+Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived rather pale and
+a little shaky: nevertheless she called out, as soon as she got within
+earshot of the doctor--
+
+‘What’s Job been doing now?’ (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable
+for doing anything.)
+
+‘He’s got his leg broke and shot his horse,’ replied the doctor. ‘But,’
+he added, ‘whether he’s been a hero or a fool I dunno. Anyway, it’s a
+mess all round.’
+
+They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap,
+backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in. It was a
+ticklish job, but they had to manage it: Job, maddened by pain and heat,
+only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to
+them to stop his horse.
+
+‘Lucky we got him before the ants did,’ muttered the doctor. Then he had
+an inspiration--
+
+‘You bring him on to the shepherd’s hut this side the station. We must
+leave him there. Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him now and then;
+when the brandy’s done pour whisky, then gin--keep the rum till the
+last’ (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette at
+Poisonous Jimmy’s). ‘I’ll take Mac.’s horse and ride on and send Peter’
+(the station hand) ‘back to the hut to meet you. I’ll be back myself if
+I can. THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.’
+
+Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor’s
+which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for--except in
+Doc. Wild’s madness.
+
+He rode off at a gallop. The burden of Job’s raving, all the way, rested
+on the dead filly--
+
+‘Stop her! She must not go home to Gerty!... God help me shoot!...
+Whoa!--whoa, there!... “Cope--cope--cope”--Steady, Jessie, old girl....
+Aim straight--aim straight! Aim for me, God!--I’ve missed!... Stop her!’
+&c.
+
+‘I never met a character like that,’ commented the doctor afterwards,
+‘inside a man that looked like Job on the outside. I’ve met men behind
+revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo’nia; but I’ve met a derned sight
+more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin, here in Australia.
+These lanky sawney Bushmen will do things in an easy-going way some day
+that’ll make the old world sit up and think hard.’
+
+He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour
+later he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman--whom he saw
+reason to admire--and rode back to the hut to help Job, whom they soon
+fixed up as comfortably as possible.
+
+They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job’s alleged
+phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger, and the truth
+less important, they told it to her. And so, instead of Job being
+pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born, Gerty
+Falconer herself took the child down to the hut, and so presented Uncle
+Job with my first and favourite cousin and Bush chum.
+
+Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the
+homestead, then he prepared to depart.
+
+‘I’m sorry,’ said Job, who was still weak--‘I’m sorry for that there
+filly. I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should
+get about. I wouldn’t have lost her for twenty quid.’
+
+‘Never mind, Job,’ said the doctor. ‘I, too, once shot an animal I was
+fond of--and for the sake of a woman--but that animal walked on two legs
+and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.’
+
+And he left for Poisonous Jimmy’s.
+
+
+
+
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia after
+many years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise things were
+drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged. There was the same old
+grant, comprising several thousands of acres of the richest land in the
+district, lying idle still, except for a few horses allowed to run there
+for a shilling a-head per week.
+
+There were the same old selections--about as far off as ever from
+becoming freeholds--shoved back among the barren ridges; dusty little
+patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps, and called farms,
+deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little dried-up
+family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was
+the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
+Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
+in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and
+yards, and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up
+the ground and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers--the
+only people there worthy of the name--toiling (men, women, and children)
+from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done; the
+elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
+
+The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
+was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
+and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever--it started three
+generations ago over a stray bull. The O’Dunn was still fighting for his
+great object in life, which was not to be ‘onneighborly’, as he put it.
+‘I DON’T want to be onneighborly,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be aven wid some
+of ‘em yit. It’s almost impossible for a dacent man to live in sich a
+neighborhood and not be onneighborly, thry how he will. But I’ll be aven
+wid some of ‘em yit, marruk my wurrud.’
+
+Jones’s red steer--it couldn’t have been the same red steer--was
+continually breaking into Rooney’s ‘whate an’ bringin’ ivery head av
+the other cattle afther him, and ruinin’ him intirely.’ The Rooneys and
+M’Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child, over the
+impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney’s brother-in-law, by a
+distant relation of the M’Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
+
+The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
+in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion. The
+string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
+whirling into town, to ‘service’, through clouds of dust and broiling
+heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
+The neighbours’ sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up
+their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun, and sat on their
+heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily concerning crops, fruit,
+trees, and vines, and horses and cattle; the drought and ‘smut’ and
+‘rust’ in wheat, and the ‘ploorer’ (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle,
+and other cheerful things; that there colt or filly, or that there
+cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o’ mine (or ‘Jim’s’). They always talked
+most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name was
+possible--except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening the old local
+relic of the golden days dropped in and announced that he intended to
+‘put down a shaft’ next week, in a spot where he’d been going to put
+it down twenty years ago--and every week since. It was nearly time that
+somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
+
+An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
+with her ‘bit av prodjuce’, as O’Dunn called it. She still drove a long,
+bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling for a
+whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins. The floor of the
+dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always ahead of the
+other--or behind, according to which shaft was pulled. She wore, to all
+appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl, men’s ‘lastic sides, and
+white hood that she had on when the world was made. She still stopped
+just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly’s on the way in for a yarn and
+a cup of tea--as she had always done, on the same days and at the same
+time within the memory of the hoariest local liar. However, she had a
+new clothes-line bent on to the old horse’s front end--and we fancy that
+was the reason she didn’t recognise us at first. She had never looked
+younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled
+face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines
+till there wasn’t room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and
+twinkled with humour at times.
+
+She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires,
+droughts, hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all
+the things that God curses Australian settlers with. She had had two
+husbands, and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an
+honest day’s work, or any good for himself or any one else. She had
+reared something under fifteen children, her own and others; and there
+was scarcely one of them that had not given her trouble. Her sons had
+brought disgrace on her old head over and over again, but she held up
+that same old head through it all, and looked her narrow, ignorant world
+in the face--and ‘lived it down’. She had worked like a slave for fifty
+years; yet she had more energy and endurance than many modern city women
+in her shrivelled old body. She was a daughter of English aristocrats.
+
+And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities--we
+grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life is worth
+living or not.
+
+I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular
+sameness of things, but there was none. The railway station was about
+the only new building in town. The old signs even were as badly in need
+of retouching as of old. I picked up a copy of the local ‘Advertiser’,
+which newspaper had been started in the early days by a brilliant
+drunkard, who drank himself to death just as the fathers of our nation
+were beginning to get educated up to his style. He might have made
+Australian journalism very different from what it is. There was nothing
+new in the ‘Advertiser’--there had been nothing new since the last time
+the drunkard had been sober enough to hold a pen. There was the same
+old ‘enjoyable trip’ to Drybone (whereof the editor was the hero), and
+something about an on-the-whole very enjoyable evening in some place
+that was tastefully decorated, and where the visitors did justice to the
+good things provided, and the small hours, and dancing, and our host and
+hostess, and respected fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang
+very nicely, and a young Mr Somebody favoured the company with a comic
+song.
+
+There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old
+subscriber, who said that ‘he had said before and would say again’, and
+he proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper when
+we first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old
+subscriber proceeded to ‘maintain’, and recalled attention to the fact
+that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few
+abstract, incoherent remarks about the ‘surrounding district’, and
+concluded by stating that he ‘must now conclude’, and thanking the
+editor for trespassing on the aforesaid valuable space.
+
+There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation was still
+carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence to both
+papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin--a place where no
+sane man ever had occasion to go.
+
+I took up the ‘unreliable contemporary’, but found nothing there except
+a letter from ‘Parent’, another from ‘Ratepayer’, a leader on the
+Government, and ‘A Trip to Limeburn’, which latter I suppose was made in
+opposition to the trip to Drybone.
+
+There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable gang of
+city spoilers hadn’t arrived with the railway. They would have been
+a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than
+hopeless little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom
+came in on council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had
+always remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but
+on this occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had
+remembered something his grandfather (old time English alderman) had
+told him, and they were stirring up all the old local quarrels and
+family spite of the district over a motion, or an amendment on a motion,
+that a letter--from another enlightened body and bearing on an
+equally important matter (which letter had been sent through the
+post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary, handed to the
+chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times for
+private perusal)--over a motion that such letter be received.
+
+There was a maintenance case coming on--to the usual well-ventilated
+disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case
+differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming
+on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
+was not even brilliant in adultery.
+
+After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit
+it, and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with
+an address. Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away
+unnoticed in the general lunacy.
+
+
+
+
+The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+    By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
+     By railroad, coach, and track--
+    By lonely graves of our brave dead,
+     Up-Country and Out-Back:
+    To where ‘neath glorious clustered stars
+     The dreamy plains expand--
+    My home lies wide a thousand miles
+     In the Never-Never Land.
+
+    It lies beyond the farming belt,
+     Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
+    A blazing desert in the drought,
+     A lake-land after rain;
+    To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
+     Or whirls the scorching sand--
+    A phantom land, a mystic land!
+     The Never-Never Land.
+
+    Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
+     Mounts Dreadful and Despair--
+    ‘Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
+     In hopeless deserts there;
+    It spreads nor’-west by No-Man’s Land--
+     Where clouds are seldom seen--
+    To where the cattle-stations lie
+     Three hundred miles between.
+
+    The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
+     The strange Gulf country know--
+    Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
+     The big lean bullocks go;
+    And camped by night where plains lie wide,
+     Like some old ocean’s bed,
+    The watchmen in the starlight ride
+     Round fifteen hundred head.
+
+    And west of named and numbered days
+     The shearers walk and ride--
+    Jack Cornstalk and the Ne’er-do-well,
+     And the grey-beard side by side;
+    They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
+     And slumber on the sand--
+    Sad memories sleep as years go round
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+    By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
+     Through years of flood and drought,
+    The best of English black-sheep work
+     Their own salvation out:
+    Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown--
+     Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed--
+    They live the Dead Past grimly down!
+     Where boundary-riders ride.
+
+    The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
+     Then rose above his shame,
+    Tramps West in mateship with the man
+     Who cannot write his name.
+    ‘Tis there where on the barren track
+     No last half-crust’s begrudged--
+    Where saint and sinner, side by side,
+     Judge not, and are not judged.
+
+    Oh rebels to society!
+     The Outcasts of the West--
+    Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
+     And broken hearts that jest!
+    The pluck to face a thousand miles--
+     The grit to see it through!
+    The communism perfected!--
+     And--I am proud of you!
+
+    The Arab to true desert sand,
+     The Finn to fields of snow;
+    The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
+     Where the seasons come and go;
+    And this old fact comes home to me--
+     And will not let me rest--
+    However barren it may be,
+     Your own land is the best!
+
+    And, lest at ease I should forget
+     True mateship after all,
+    My water-bag and billy yet
+     Are hanging on the wall;
+    And if my fate should show the sign,
+     I’d tramp to sunsets grand
+    With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+[End of original text.]
+
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+A Note on the Author and the Text:
+
+
+Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on 17
+June 1867. Although he has since become the most acclaimed Australian
+writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often “on the side”--his
+“real” work was whatever he could find, often painting houses, or
+doing rough carpentry. His writing was often taken from memories of his
+childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he
+states that many of his characters were taken from the better class of
+diggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time
+deeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number of
+descriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography and in
+his stories and poems. He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922. Much of his
+writing was for periodicals, and even his regular publications were
+so varied, including books originally released as one volume being
+reprinted as two, and vice versa, that the multitude of permutations
+cannot be listed here. However, the following should give a basic
+outline of his major works.
+
+
+  Books of Short Stories:
+    While the Billy Boils  (1896)
+    On the Track  (1900)
+    Over the Sliprails  (1900)
+    The Country I Come From  (1901)     | These works were first published
+    Joe Wilson and His Mates  (1901)    | in England, during or shortly after
+    Children of the Bush  (1902)        | Lawson’s stay there.
+    Send Round the Hat  (1907)          | These two books were first published
+    The Romance of the Swag  (1907)     | as “Children of the Bush”.
+    The Rising of the Court  (1910)
+
+  Poetry:
+    In the Days When the World Was Wide  (1896)
+    Verses Popular and Humorous  (1900)
+    When I Was King and Other Verses (1905)
+    The Skyline Riders (1910)
+    Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
+
+
+Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes,
+“Joe Wilson” and “Joe Wilson’s Mates”, which correspond to Parts I & II
+in Joe Wilson and His Mates. This work was first published in England,
+which may be evident from some of Lawson’s comments in the text which
+are directed at English readers. For example, Lawson writes in ‘The
+Golden Graveyard’: “A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape
+of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
+dish we used for setting milk--I don’t know whether the same is used
+here....”
+
+Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
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+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Joe Wilson and his Mates, by Henry Lawson
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joe Wilson and His Mates
+
+Author: Henry Lawson
+
+Release Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1036]
+Last Updated: October 9, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan R. Light, Gary M. Johnson, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Henry Lawson
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Transcriber&rsquo;s Note: This etext was entered twice (manually) and
+      electronically compared, by Alan R. Light This method assures a low rate
+      of errors in the text&mdash;often lower than in the original. Special
+      thanks go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for his assistance
+      in procuring a copy of the original text, and to the readers of
+      soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books (USENET newsgroups) for their
+      help in preparing the glossary. Italicized words or phrases are
+      capitalized. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and
+      concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A house where they took in cards on a tray&rdquo; (from Joe Wilson&rsquo;s
+      Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a visitor&rsquo;s
+      card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family was out, to
+      keep a record of the visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day. It
+      commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in
+      Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gin: An obvious abbreviation of &ldquo;aborigine&rdquo;, it only refers to *female*
+      aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered
+      derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a &ldquo;new chum&rdquo; or
+      newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
+      The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A female
+      station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans would
+      say &lsquo;Precocious&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally mistaken
+      for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of North and
+      South America, other than both being marsupials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a &ldquo;public&rdquo;
+       bar&mdash;hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always) dispensed
+      with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack
+      or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about
+      10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but
+      Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just &ldquo;Tea&rdquo; is used, it usually
+      means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tucker: Food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying drinks
+      for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be
+      confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is a
+      castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was too
+      heavy for horses. &lsquo;Store&rsquo; may refer to those cattle, and their
+      descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to
+      settlers from the &lsquo;Store&rsquo;&mdash;hence, the standard draft animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also: a hint with the seasons&mdash;remember that the seasons are reversed
+      from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but December
+      is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the United States,
+      so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not even mild in the
+      north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed more by &ldquo;dry&rdquo; versus
+      &ldquo;wet&rdquo; than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;A. L. <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      Author of &ldquo;While the Billy Boils&rdquo;, &ldquo;On the Track and Over the Sliprails&rdquo;,
+      &ldquo;When the World was Wide, and other verses&rdquo;, &ldquo;Verses, Popular and
+      Humorous&rdquo;, &ldquo;Children of the Bush&rdquo;, &ldquo;When I was King, and other verses&rdquo;,
+      etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Author&rsquo;s Farewell to the Bushmen.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Some carry their swags in the Great North-West
+     Where the bravest battle and die,
+    And a few have gone to their last long rest,
+     And a few have said &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     The coast grows dim, and it may be long
+     Ere the Gums again I see;
+    So I put my soul in a farewell song
+     To the chaps who barracked for me.
+
+    Their days are hard at the best of times,
+     And their dreams are dreams of care&mdash;
+    God bless them all for their big soft hearts,
+     And the brave, brave grins they wear!
+    God keep me straight as a man can go,
+     And true as a man may be!
+    For the sake of the hearts that were always so,
+     Of the men who had faith in me!
+
+    And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps
+     Of the blood of the Don&rsquo;t-give-in!
+    The world will call it a boast, perhaps&mdash;
+     But I&rsquo;ll win, if a man can win!
+    And not for gold nor the world&rsquo;s applause&mdash;
+     Though ways to the end they be&mdash;
+    I&rsquo;ll win, if a man might win, because
+     Of the men who believed in me.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> The Author&rsquo;s Farewell to the Bushmen. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>Part I.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Joe Wilson&rsquo;s Courtship. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> Brighten&rsquo;s Sister-In-Law. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> &lsquo;Water Them Geraniums&rsquo;. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> I. A Lonely Track. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> II. &lsquo;Past Carin&rsquo;&rsquo;. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> A Double Buggy at Lahey&rsquo;s Creek. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> I. Spuds, and a Woman&rsquo;s Obstinacy. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> II. Joe Wilson&rsquo;s Luck. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> III. The Ghost of Mary&rsquo;s Sacrifice. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> IV. The Buggy Comes Home. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> The Writer Wants to Say a Word. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>Part II.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> The Golden Graveyard. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> The Chinaman&rsquo;s Ghost. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> The Loaded Dog. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> I. Dave Regan&rsquo;s Yarn. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> II. Told by One of the Other Drovers. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> The Ghostly Door. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> A Wild Irishman. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> The Babies in the Bush. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> A Bush Dance. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> The Buck-Jumper. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> Jimmy Grimshaw&rsquo;s Wooing. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> At Dead Dingo. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> Telling Mrs Baker. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> The Little World Left Behind. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> The Never-Never Country. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Part I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Joe Wilson&rsquo;s Courtship.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he is
+      put into knickerbockers, for instance, and &lsquo;comes a man to-day,&rsquo; as my
+      little Jim used to say. When they&rsquo;re cooking something at home that he
+      likes. When the &lsquo;sandy-blight&rsquo; or measles breaks out amongst the children,
+      or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill&mdash;or dies, it doesn&rsquo;t
+      matter which&mdash;&lsquo;and there ain&rsquo;t no school.&rsquo; When a boy is naked and in
+      his natural state for a warm climate like Australia, with three or four of
+      his schoolmates, under the shade of the creek-oaks in the bend where
+      there&rsquo;s a good clear pool with a sandy bottom. When his father buys him a
+      gun, and he starts out after kangaroos or &lsquo;possums. When he gets a horse,
+      saddle, and bridle, of his own. When he has his arm in splints or a stitch
+      in his head&mdash;he&rsquo;s proud then, the proudest boy in the district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wasn&rsquo;t a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet by
+      mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn&rsquo;t know what was the matter
+      with me&mdash;or the world&mdash;but that&rsquo;s got nothing to do with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl loves
+      him. When he&rsquo;s just married. When he&rsquo;s a lawful father for the first time,
+      and everything is going on all right: some men make fools of themselves
+      then&mdash;I know I did. I&rsquo;m happy to-night because I&rsquo;m out of debt and
+      can see clear ahead, and because I haven&rsquo;t been easy for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I think that the happiest time in a man&rsquo;s life is when he&rsquo;s courting a
+      girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn&rsquo;t a thought for
+      any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, and
+      keep them clean, for they&rsquo;re about the only days when there&rsquo;s a chance of
+      poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them and you&rsquo;ll
+      never regret it the longest day you live. They&rsquo;re the days that the wife
+      will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as well as in the
+      blackest, and there shouldn&rsquo;t be anything in those days that might hurt
+      her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting days, you young
+      chaps, for they will never come again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A married man knows all about it&mdash;after a while: he sees the woman
+      world through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment&rsquo;s
+      pressure of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is
+      inclined to be cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into
+      awful messes sometimes, for a married man, if he&rsquo;s inclined that way, has
+      three times the chance with a woman that a single man has&mdash;because
+      the married man knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what
+      a woman means when she says something else; he knows just how far he can
+      go; he can go farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a
+      woman than an innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the
+      married man is more decided with women; he takes them and things for
+      granted. In short he is&mdash;well, he is a married man. And, when he
+      knows all this, how much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says
+      that he lost all the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot&rsquo;s
+      eye,&mdash;and there you have it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it&rsquo;s all new to a young chap, provided he hasn&rsquo;t been a young
+      blackguard. It&rsquo;s all wonderful, new, and strange to him. He&rsquo;s a different
+      man. He finds that he never knew anything about women. He sees none of
+      woman&rsquo;s little ways and tricks in his girl. He is in heaven one day and
+      down near the other place the next; and that&rsquo;s the sort of thing that
+      makes life interesting. He takes his new world for granted. And, when she
+      says she&rsquo;ll be his wife&mdash;&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they&rsquo;ve got a
+      lot of influence on your married life afterwards&mdash;a lot more than
+      you&rsquo;d think. Make the best of them, for they&rsquo;ll never come any more,
+      unless we do our courting over again in another world. If we do, I&rsquo;ll make
+      the most of mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, looking back, I didn&rsquo;t do so badly after all. I never told you about
+      the days I courted Mary. The more I look back the more I come to think
+      that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret in married
+      life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn&rsquo;t walk to and fro in the
+      room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes, or lie awake some
+      nights thinking.... Ah well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was between twenty-one and thirty then: birthdays had never been any use
+      to me, and I&rsquo;d left off counting them. You don&rsquo;t take much stock in
+      birthdays in the Bush. I&rsquo;d knocked about the country for a few years,
+      shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without
+      getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of myself.
+      I was reckoned &lsquo;wild&rsquo;; but I only drank because I felt less sensitive, and
+      the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when I had a few
+      drinks: I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him. It&rsquo;s better to
+      be thought &lsquo;wild&rsquo; than to be considered eccentric or ratty. Now, my old
+      mate, Jack Barnes, drank&mdash;as far as I could see&mdash;first because
+      he&rsquo;d inherited the gambling habit from his father along with his father&rsquo;s
+      luck: he&rsquo;d the habit of being cheated and losing very bad, and when he
+      lost he drank. Till drink got a hold on him. Jack was sentimental too, but
+      in a different way. I was sentimental about other people&mdash;more fool
+      I!&mdash;whereas Jack was sentimental about himself. Before he was
+      married, and when he was recovering from a spree, he&rsquo;d write rhymes about
+      &lsquo;Only a boy, drunk by the roadside&rsquo;, and that sort of thing; and he&rsquo;d call
+      &lsquo;em poetry, and talk about signing them and sending them to the &lsquo;Town and
+      Country Journal&rsquo;. But he generally tore them up when he got better. The
+      Bush is breeding a race of poets, and I don&rsquo;t know what the country will
+      come to in the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well. It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed in
+      the Big Scrubs. Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong, and
+      I was hanging round. Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done and a
+      new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place at Haviland, a
+      few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush carpenters, so we took
+      the job to keep us going till something else turned up. &lsquo;Better than doing
+      nothing,&rsquo; said Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a nice little girl in service at Black&rsquo;s,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;She&rsquo;s more
+      like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant. She&rsquo;s a real good
+      little girl, and good-looking into the bargain. I hear that young Black is
+      sweet on her, but they say she won&rsquo;t have anything to do with him. I know
+      a lot of chaps that have tried for her, but they&rsquo;ve never had any luck.
+      She&rsquo;s a regular little dumpling, and I like dumplings. They call her
+      &lsquo;Possum. You ought to try a bear up in that direction, Joe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was always shy with women&mdash;except perhaps some that I should have
+      fought shy of; but Jack wasn&rsquo;t&mdash;he was afraid of no woman, good, bad,
+      or indifferent. I haven&rsquo;t time to explain why, but somehow, whenever a
+      girl took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing
+      with me, and felt nasty about it. I made one or two mistakes, but&mdash;ah
+      well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My wife knows little &lsquo;Possum,&rsquo; said Jack. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll get her to ask her out to
+      our place and let you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reckoned that he wouldn&rsquo;t get me there then, and made a note to be on
+      the watch for tricks. I had a hopeless little love-story behind me, of
+      course. I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love; few
+      marry the first flame. Many a married man looks back and thinks it was
+      damned lucky that he didn&rsquo;t get the girl he couldn&rsquo;t have. Jack had been
+      my successful rival, only he didn&rsquo;t know it&mdash;I don&rsquo;t think his wife
+      knew it either. I used to think her the prettiest and sweetest little girl
+      in the district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at Haviland.
+      He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in love with her
+      at first sight. He took too many things for granted as far as I was
+      concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You let me alone, and I&rsquo;ll fix you up, Joe,&rsquo; he said, as we rode up to
+      the station. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll make it all right with the girl. You&rsquo;re rather a
+      good-looking chap. You&rsquo;ve got the sort of eyes that take with girls, only
+      you don&rsquo;t know it; you haven&rsquo;t got the go. If I had your eyes along with
+      my other attractions, I&rsquo;d be in trouble on account of a woman about once
+      a-week.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake shut up, Jack,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife? Perhaps not in
+      England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood; but it&rsquo;s
+      different in Australia, where you may hail from two thousand miles away
+      from where your wife was born, and yet she may be a countrywoman of yours,
+      and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too. I remember the first glimpse
+      I got of Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all
+      round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the
+      back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight
+      rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for
+      kitchen, laundry, servants&rsquo; rooms, &amp;c. This was the old homestead
+      before the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned,
+      brick-floored verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing
+      up the verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a
+      grape-vine near the chimney. We rode up to the end of the verandah, and
+      Jack called to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came trotting
+      out; so it was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than once since then I&rsquo;ve had a fancy to wonder whether the rose-bush
+      killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered &lsquo;em both in the end. I used to
+      have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see. You do get strange
+      fancies at odd times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack asked her if the boss was in. He did all the talking. I saw a little
+      girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue Mountain
+      girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria. Red and white
+      girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the biggest and
+      brightest eyes I&rsquo;d seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I found out
+      afterwards, and bright as a &lsquo;possum&rsquo;s. No wonder they called her
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Possum&rsquo;. I forgot at once that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest girl in
+      the district. I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the fact that I
+      was on horseback: most Bushmen look better on horseback. It was a black
+      filly, a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls as I was
+      myself. I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice to see if she
+      knew me; but, when she looked, the filly took all my attention. Mary
+      trotted in to tell old Black he was wanted, and after Jack had seen him,
+      and arranged to start work next day, we started back to Solong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary&mdash;but he didn&rsquo;t. He
+      squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn&rsquo;t say anything for a long
+      time, and then he started talking of other things. I began to feel wild at
+      him. He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way things were going. He
+      seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now; but, as he didn&rsquo;t say so, I
+      had no way of getting at him. I felt sure he&rsquo;d go home and tell his wife
+      that Joe Wilson was properly gone on little &lsquo;Possum at Haviland. That was
+      all Jack&rsquo;s way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at the
+      back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down a rotten
+      old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush before the old
+      house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the laundry window in
+      the old place, and the first thing I did was to take out the sash. I&rsquo;d
+      noticed Jack yarning with &lsquo;Possum before he started work. While I was at
+      work at the window he called me round to the other end of the hut to help
+      him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when we&rsquo;d done it, he took the
+      tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb and stretched it and
+      whispered into it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood and hard to
+      get off&mdash;you&rsquo;ll have to take the sash out very carefully so as not to
+      break the glass.&rsquo; Then he stretched my ear a little more and put his mouth
+      closer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to puzzle
+      out what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That window reflected the laundry window: the room was dark inside and
+      there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary come to the
+      laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back, thoughtfully
+      watching me. The laundry window had an old-fashioned hinged sash, and I
+      like that sort of window&mdash;there&rsquo;s more romance about it, I think.
+      There was thick dark-green ivy all round the window, and Mary looked
+      prettier than a picture. I squared up my shoulders and put my heels
+      together and put as much style as I could into the work. I couldn&rsquo;t have
+      turned round to save my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well?&rsquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a fool, Jack,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;She&rsquo;s only interested in the old house
+      being pulled down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been keeping an eye on the business
+      round the corner, and she ain&rsquo;t interested when I&rsquo;M round this end.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You seem mighty interested in the business,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Jack. &lsquo;This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank in times
+      of peace.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What made you think of the window?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s as simple as striking matches. I&rsquo;m up to all those dodges.
+      Why, where there wasn&rsquo;t a window, I&rsquo;ve fixed up a piece of looking-glass
+      to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought I wasn&rsquo;t
+      looking.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this time
+      she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and bread-and-butter.
+      I was prizing off the strips that held the sash, very carefully, and my
+      heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any reference to me. I&rsquo;d never
+      felt like that before, except once or twice. It was just as if I&rsquo;d
+      swallowed some clockwork arrangement, unconsciously, and it had started to
+      go, without warning. I reckon it was all on account of that blarsted Jack
+      working me up. He had a quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made
+      you want to hit him sometimes&mdash;after you&rsquo;d made an ass of yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me out
+      of the fix, but he didn&rsquo;t.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mr&mdash;Mr Wilson!&rsquo; said Mary. She had a sweet voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, thank you!&rsquo; I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry
+      would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my shin
+      and I stumbled&mdash;and that didn&rsquo;t help matters much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; cried Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,&rsquo; I blurted out. &lsquo;It takes more
+      than that to hurt me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken at
+      a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so that a
+      lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too, like the
+      damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and it&rsquo;s a
+      wonder we didn&rsquo;t spill the whole lot between us. I got away from the
+      window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a chisel and
+      fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered round to where
+      he was, feeling like a man feels when he&rsquo;s just made an ass of himself in
+      public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you worse and makes you
+      jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of a past crime would, I
+      think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here, Jack!&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve struck something all right; here&rsquo;s some tea
+      and brownie&mdash;we&rsquo;ll hang out here all right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it, just
+      as if he&rsquo;d paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me
+      wild at him. Presently he said, as if he&rsquo;d just thought of it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s a very pretty little girl, &lsquo;Possum, isn&rsquo;t she, Joe? Do you notice
+      how she dresses?&mdash;always fresh and trim. But she&rsquo;s got on her best
+      bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it&rsquo;s
+      ironing-day, too. It can&rsquo;t be on your account. If it was Saturday or
+      Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps one
+      of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong
+      to-night. That&rsquo;s what it is.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave me time to think over that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you offer
+      to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in ahead of
+      you? You miss all your chances, Joe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have
+      thought of it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Jack,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;What have you been saying to that girl about
+      me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, not much,&rsquo; said Jack. &lsquo;There isn&rsquo;t much to say about you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What did you tell her?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, nothing in particular. She&rsquo;d heard all about you before.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She hadn&rsquo;t heard much good, I suppose,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, that&rsquo;s true, as far as I could make out. But you&rsquo;ve only got
+      yourself to blame. I didn&rsquo;t have the breeding and rearing of you. I
+      smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What did you tell her?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, to tell the truth, I didn&rsquo;t tell her anything much. I only answered
+      questions.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what questions did she ask?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn&rsquo;t Joe Wilson; and I
+      said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote
+      poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Jack,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve two minds to punch your head.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,&rsquo; said Jack, &lsquo;and I
+      said you was, a bit. She said it seemed a pity. She asked me if it was
+      true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said that I was sorry to
+      say it was true. She asked me if you had any friends, and I said none that
+      I knew of, except me. I said that you&rsquo;d lost all your friends; they stuck
+      to you as long as they could, but they had to give you best, one after the
+      other.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What next?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as
+      fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if
+      you&rsquo;d had an illness lately. And I said no&mdash;it was all on account of
+      the wild, dissipated life you&rsquo;d led. She said it was a pity you hadn&rsquo;t a
+      mother or a sister to look after you&mdash;it was a pity that something
+      couldn&rsquo;t be done for you, and I said it was, but I was afraid that nothing
+      could be done. I told her that I was doing all I could to keep you
+      straight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true. And so she only
+      pitied me after all. I felt as if I&rsquo;d been courting her for six months and
+      she&rsquo;d thrown me over&mdash;but I didn&rsquo;t know anything about women yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you tell her I was in jail?&rsquo; I growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, by Gum! I forgot that. But never mind I&rsquo;ll fix that up all right.
+      I&rsquo;ll tell her that you got two years&rsquo; hard for horse-stealing. That ought
+      to make her interested in you, if she isn&rsquo;t already.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We smoked a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And was that all she said?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who?&mdash;Oh! &lsquo;Possum,&rsquo; said Jack rousing himself. &lsquo;Well&mdash;no; let
+      me think&mdash;&mdash; We got chatting of other things&mdash;you know a
+      married man&rsquo;s privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl than a single
+      man can. I got talking nonsense about sweethearts, and one thing led to
+      another till at last she said, &ldquo;I suppose Mr Wilson&rsquo;s got a sweetheart, Mr
+      Barnes?&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what did you say?&rsquo; I growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,&rsquo; said Jack.
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;d better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wouldn&rsquo;t take back the tray&mdash;but that didn&rsquo;t mend matters, for Jack
+      took it back himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t see Mary&rsquo;s reflection in the window again, so I took the window
+      out. I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,
+      as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool for
+      thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought, except by
+      way of kindness. Why! young Black and half a dozen better men than me were
+      sweet on her, and young Black was to get his father&rsquo;s station and the
+      money&mdash;or rather his mother&rsquo;s money, for she held the stuff (she kept
+      it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time, and his
+      mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn&rsquo;t make any
+      difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only just going
+      to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship affair, as far
+      as I was concerned&mdash;like my first love affair, that I haven&rsquo;t told
+      you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls. You see, I
+      didn&rsquo;t know women then. If I had known, I think I might have made more
+      than one mess of my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some distance
+      out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or four wet
+      days, and we didn&rsquo;t get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary till one
+      day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the old-style
+      sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was clean grass,
+      so it didn&rsquo;t matter much. I looked at Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go and help her, you capital Idiot!&rsquo; he said, and I made the plunge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!&rsquo; said Mary, when I came to help. She had the
+      broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off the
+      ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets and
+      table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she did.
+      But that&rsquo;s the way with women&mdash;especially little women&mdash;some of
+      &lsquo;em would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on
+      the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally
+      touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right
+      through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get
+      hold of the loose end of the rope that&rsquo;s hanging from the post with one
+      hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and try
+      to pull &lsquo;em far enough together to make a knot. And that&rsquo;s about all you
+      do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off the post end,
+      spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while Mary helped me
+      with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken the prop from her,
+      but he didn&rsquo;t; he just went on with his work as if nothing was happening
+      inside the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She&rsquo;d got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short
+      now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down while
+      she pegged a sheet she&rsquo;d thrown over. I&rsquo;d made the plunge now, so I
+      volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw the things
+      over and pegged out. As we got near the post and higher I straightened out
+      some ends and pegged myself. Bushmen are handy at most things. We laughed,
+      and now and again Mary would say, &lsquo;No, that&rsquo;s not the way, Mr Wilson;
+      that&rsquo;s not right; the sheet isn&rsquo;t far enough over; wait till I fix it,&rsquo; 
+      &amp;c. I&rsquo;d a reckless idea once of holding her up while she pegged, and I
+      was glad afterwards that I hadn&rsquo;t made such a fool of myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t reach&mdash;I&rsquo;ll fix &lsquo;em up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to give a little gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, those things are not ready yet,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;they&rsquo;re not rinsed,&rsquo; and
+      she grabbed the basket and held it away from me. The things looked the
+      same to me as the rest on the line; they looked rinsed enough and blued
+      too. I reckoned that she didn&rsquo;t want me to take the trouble, or thought
+      that I mightn&rsquo;t like to be seen hanging out clothes, and was only doing it
+      out of kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s no trouble,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;let me hang &lsquo;em out. I like it. I&rsquo;ve hung
+      out clothes at home on a windy day,&rsquo; and I made a reach into the basket.
+      But she flushed red, with temper I thought, and snatched the basket away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Excuse me, Mr Wilson,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;but those things are not ready yet!&rsquo; 
+      and she marched into the wash-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah well! you&rsquo;ve got a little temper of your own,&rsquo; I thought to myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I told Jack, he said that I&rsquo;d made another fool of myself. He said
+      I&rsquo;d both disappointed and offended her. He said that my line was to stand
+      off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening when we&rsquo;d started home, we stopped some time yarning with a
+      chap we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary hanging
+      out the rest of the things&mdash;she thought that we were out of sight.
+      Then I understood why those things weren&rsquo;t ready while we were round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the next day or two Mary didn&rsquo;t take the slightest notice of me, and I
+      kept out of her way. Jack said I&rsquo;d disillusioned her&mdash;and hurt her
+      dignity&mdash;which was a thousand times worse. He said I&rsquo;d spoilt the
+      thing altogether. He said that she&rsquo;d got an idea that I was shy and
+      poetic, and I&rsquo;d only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and
+      it made me miserable. I got drunk two evenings running, and then, as it
+      appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,
+      when we were together&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on
+      me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I do a little.&rsquo; Then there was a silence, and I had to say
+      something else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;but I can&rsquo;t get any one to play with me here of an
+      evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.&rsquo; Then she said,
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s very dull these long winter evenings when you&rsquo;ve got nothing to do.
+      Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he&rsquo;s away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw Jack winking at me urgently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll play a game with you, if you like,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;but I ain&rsquo;t much of a
+      player.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I had
+      a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from the
+      pub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing
+      herself. Women have ways&mdash;or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day
+      the Boss came round and said to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe, you&rsquo;ve got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along
+      your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You can
+      have your tucker here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old school,
+      who&rsquo;d shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn&rsquo;t see why he
+      should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times with any
+      of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he&rsquo;d married an
+      Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she&rsquo;d never got any
+      Australian notions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed up
+      for me. I&rsquo;m not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that
+      good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea I had
+      a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don&rsquo;t remember
+      exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down first. There was
+      about two feet between us. We got very chummy and confidential. She told
+      me about her childhood and her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He&rsquo;d been an old mate of Black&rsquo;s, a younger son of a well-to-do English
+      family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia with
+      a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with more or
+      less. They think they&rsquo;re hard done by; they blue their thousand pounds in
+      Melbourne or Sydney, and they don&rsquo;t make any more nowadays, for the
+      Roarin&rsquo; Days have been dead these thirty years. I wish I&rsquo;d had a thousand
+      pounds to start on!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary&rsquo;s mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected up
+      there in the old days. She had a will of her own as far as I could
+      understand, and bossed the home till the day of her death. Mary&rsquo;s father
+      made money, and lost it, and drank&mdash;and died. Mary remembered him
+      sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head, and singing
+      a German song (the &lsquo;Lorelei&rsquo;, I think it was) softly, as if to himself.
+      Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept out of the room;
+      and, when he died, the children were adopted round (there was a little
+      money coming from England).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary told me all about her girlhood. She went first to live with a sort of
+      cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray, and then
+      she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first. I&rsquo;d had
+      no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas of what the world
+      ought to be, and she seemed interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky until I
+      remembered that I&rsquo;d told her I had no one to care for me; then I suspected
+      pity again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were
+      dead, and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black, and
+      things went on very satisfactorily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover
+      and a looking-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was
+      round, but Mary didn&rsquo;t seem aware of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got very chummy. Mary wasn&rsquo;t comfortable at Haviland. Old Black was
+      very fond of her and always took her part, but she wanted to be
+      independent. She had a great idea of going to Sydney and getting into the
+      hospital as a nurse. She had friends in Sydney, but she had no money.
+      There was a little money coming to her when she was twenty-one&mdash;a few
+      pounds&mdash;and she was going to try and get it before that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Miss Brand,&rsquo; I said, after we&rsquo;d watched the moon rise. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll
+      lend you the money. I&rsquo;ve got plenty&mdash;more than I know what to do
+      with.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I saw I&rsquo;d hurt her. She sat up very straight for a while, looking
+      before her; then she said it was time to go in, and said &lsquo;Good-night, Mr
+      Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reckoned I&rsquo;d done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards that she was
+      only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money might have
+      been taken for a hint. She didn&rsquo;t understand me yet, and I didn&rsquo;t know
+      human nature. I didn&rsquo;t say anything to Jack&mdash;in fact about this time
+      I left off telling him about things. He didn&rsquo;t seem hurt; he worked hard
+      and seemed happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I really meant what I said to Mary about the money. It was pure good
+      nature. I&rsquo;d be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps, if I&rsquo;d
+      never grown any more selfish than I was that night on the wood-heap with
+      Mary. I felt a great sympathy for her&mdash;but I got to love her. I went
+      through all the ups and downs of it. One day I was having tea in the
+      kitchen, and Mary and another girl, named Sarah, reached me a clean plate
+      at the same time: I took Sarah&rsquo;s plate because she was first, and Mary
+      seemed very nasty about it, and that gave me great hopes. But all next
+      evening she played draughts with a drover that she&rsquo;d chummed up with. I
+      pretended to be interested in Sarah&rsquo;s talk, but it didn&rsquo;t seem to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good
+      pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a
+      target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or
+      four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with the
+      pleuro. The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle. Mary called &lsquo;Mr
+      Wilson&rsquo; to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking. If
+      it hadn&rsquo;t been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn&rsquo;t have minded so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went
+      out &lsquo;possum-shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn&rsquo;t. I
+      mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,
+      and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer, and damned the
+      world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was the only
+      time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so miserable that
+      I enjoyed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary
+      accidentally and had to say something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,&rsquo; she said. Then she asked, &lsquo;How did
+      you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn&rsquo;t make anything out of it.
+      Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about this
+      time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and turned up
+      washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep an eye out,
+      but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened up, and kept my
+      room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty, and I was ashamed
+      of letting it go to the wash, I&rsquo;d slip down to the river after dark and
+      wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to look as if it hadn&rsquo;t
+      been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt so full of hope and joy that
+      I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one morning he remarked casually&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I see you&rsquo;ve made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying up
+      your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the
+      wash-house.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such a bad
+      night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the hopelessness
+      square in the face and live the thing down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good
+      day&rsquo;s work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a yarn
+      with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along by the
+      fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the
+      bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the
+      fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or two
+      visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was there too,
+      so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps hanging
+      round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night. Along in
+      the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was a big
+      shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was reckoned
+      that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of Romany. He was
+      supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest temper and the
+      best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with him a lot because
+      they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had risen over Pine
+      Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany loom up, riding in
+      from the gate; he rode round the end of the coach-house and across towards
+      where we were&mdash;I suppose he was going to tie up his horse at the
+      fence; but about half-way across the grass he disappeared. It struck me
+      that there was something peculiar about the way he got down, and I heard a
+      sound like a horse stumbling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What the hell&rsquo;s Romany trying to do?&rsquo; said Jimmy Nowlett. &lsquo;He couldn&rsquo;t
+      have fell off his horse&mdash;or else he&rsquo;s drunk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting,
+      mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark and
+      nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I&rsquo;d
+      stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
+      forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line,
+      and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows and scraped
+      him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised
+      voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn&rsquo;t hurt, but the
+      sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who&rsquo;d put up that
+      bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?&rsquo; asked Jim Bullock
+      presently. &lsquo;Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you ask the horse to go round?&rsquo; asked Dave Regan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!&rsquo; growled Romany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said Jimmy Nowlett, &lsquo;if we&rsquo;d put up a sign to beware of the line
+      you couldn&rsquo;t have seen it in the dark.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,&rsquo; said Dave Regan.
+      &lsquo;But why didn&rsquo;t you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along? It
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have jolted yer so much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes. But I
+      didn&rsquo;t take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the Jackaroo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of men getting down over their horse&rsquo;s head,&rsquo; said Dave
+      presently, in a reflective sort of way&mdash;&lsquo;in fact I&rsquo;ve done it myself&mdash;but
+      I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse&rsquo;s rump.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play
+      the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice, and
+      I&rsquo;d have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn&rsquo;t been listening too. We
+      listened in silence until she&rsquo;d finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That gal&rsquo;s got a nice voice,&rsquo; said Jimmy Nowlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nice voice!&rsquo; snarled Romany, who&rsquo;d been waiting for a chance to be nasty.
+      &lsquo;Why, I&rsquo;ve heard a tom-cat sing better.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The
+      chaps didn&rsquo;t like Romany&rsquo;s talk about &lsquo;Possum at all. They were all fond
+      of her: she wasn&rsquo;t a pet or a tomboy, for she wasn&rsquo;t built that way, but
+      they were fond of her in such a way that they didn&rsquo;t like to hear anything
+      said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a lot. Perhaps
+      the single men didn&rsquo;t care to speak for fear that it would be said that
+      they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a big puff at his
+      pipe and spoke&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, she tried it on, but it didn&rsquo;t go,&rsquo; said Romany. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve met her sort
+      before. She&rsquo;s setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run
+      after anything with trousers on,&rsquo; and he stood up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and
+      whispered, &lsquo;Sit still, Joe, damn you! He&rsquo;s too good for you!&rsquo; but I was on
+      my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and wrenched
+      me off the log and set me there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a damned crawler, Romany!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us before
+      a blow got home. &lsquo;Hold on, you damned fools!&rsquo; they said. &lsquo;Keep quiet till
+      we get away from the house!&rsquo; There was a little clear flat down by the
+      river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down there and have
+      it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I never was a fighting man; I&rsquo;d never learnt to use my hands. I
+      scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t bother about it. He&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll get into a fight some day,
+      Joe, or out of one, and shame me;&rsquo; but I hadn&rsquo;t the patience to learn.
+      He&rsquo;d wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to
+      get excited, and I didn&rsquo;t want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before
+      he was married Jack was always getting into fights&mdash;he generally
+      tackled a better man and got a hiding; but he didn&rsquo;t seem to care so long
+      as he made a good show&mdash;though he used to explain the thing away from
+      a scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a
+      horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I think
+      I&rsquo;d sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him with
+      fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t shoot me in the
+      face!&rsquo; Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed brutal to
+      me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what the matter was.
+      Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the river, and he
+      couldn&rsquo;t help hanging out blue lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you let me teach you to use your hands?&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;The only
+      chance now is that Romany can&rsquo;t fight after all. If you&rsquo;d waited a minute
+      I&rsquo;d have been at him.&rsquo; We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack started
+      giving me points about lefts and rights, and &lsquo;half-arms&rsquo;, and that sort of
+      thing. &lsquo;He&rsquo;s left-handed, and that&rsquo;s the worst of it,&rsquo; said Jack. &lsquo;You
+      must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will take him on
+      afterwards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since I
+      was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it&mdash;sort of dulled. If the
+      chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of
+      that, but it didn&rsquo;t make any difference with me then; I knew it was a
+      thing they couldn&rsquo;t understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But I
+      knew one thing that they didn&rsquo;t know. I knew that it was going to be a
+      fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and imagination
+      than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the real cause of
+      most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll have to go through
+      with it now, Joe, old man! It&rsquo;s the turning-point of your life.&rsquo; If I won
+      the fight, I&rsquo;d set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I&rsquo;d leave the district
+      for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I used to get excited
+      over little things, because of the very paltriness of them, but I was
+      mostly cool in a crisis&mdash;Jack was the reverse. I looked ahead: I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t be able to marry a girl who could look back and remember when her
+      husband was beaten by another man&mdash;no matter what sort of brute the
+      other man was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering
+      instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it
+      was all lost on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing
+      under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the
+      river in the moonlight to fight for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off our
+      coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed an
+      understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack would
+      fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would fight Jack
+      to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn&rsquo;t mind obliging for one; he was a
+      mate of Jack&rsquo;s, but he didn&rsquo;t mind who he fought so long as it was for the
+      sake of fair play&mdash;or &lsquo;peace and quietness&rsquo;, as he said. Jim was very
+      good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack backed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one arm
+      up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and then rush
+      and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length of reach, and
+      my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early in the round. But
+      it did me good; the blow and the look I&rsquo;d seen in Romany&rsquo;s eyes knocked
+      all the sentiment out of me. Jack said nothing,&mdash;he seemed to regard
+      it as a hopeless job from the first. Next round I tried to remember some
+      things Jack had told me, and made a better show, but I went down in the
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How are you, Joe?&rsquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m all right,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be
+      hanged, but it would soon be all over. &lsquo;He can&rsquo;t use his hands much more
+      than you can&mdash;take your time, Joe&mdash;try to remember something I
+      told you, for God&rsquo;s sake!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When two men fight who don&rsquo;t know how to use their hands, they stand a
+      show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps, but
+      mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump round&mdash;he
+      was an excitable little fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fight! you&mdash;&mdash;!&rsquo; he yelled. &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you fight? That ain&rsquo;t
+      fightin&rsquo;. Fight, and don&rsquo;t try to murder each other. Use your crimson
+      hands or, by God, I&rsquo;ll chip you! Fight, or I&rsquo;ll blanky well bullock-whip
+      the pair of you;&rsquo; then his language got awful. They said we went like
+      windmills, and that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to
+      kill a bullock if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held
+      him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head
+      and didn&rsquo;t matter much&mdash;I had a good thick skull. And I had one good
+      eye yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, hit him!&rsquo; whispered Jack&mdash;he was trembling like a
+      leaf. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a
+      blow home, for God&rsquo;s sake! Make a good show this round and I&rsquo;ll stop the
+      fight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn&rsquo;t going to be beaten while I
+      could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There&rsquo;s
+      nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning
+      more in three seconds than Jack&rsquo;s sparring could have taught me in three
+      weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don&rsquo;t&mdash;not
+      till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn&rsquo;t altogether an
+      animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still
+      air the sound of Mary&rsquo;s voice singing up at the house. I thought hard into
+      the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that was
+      passing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt such
+      a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I&rsquo;d put out my
+      wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as he
+      straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said afterwards
+      that he didn&rsquo;t speak because he thought a word might spoil it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all
+      right when he lifted me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us.
+      I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty
+      of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve done,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve twisted my ankle.&rsquo; He&rsquo;d caught his heel
+      against a tuft of grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shake hands,&rsquo; yelled Jimmy Nowlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If yer don&rsquo;t shake hands with Wilson, I&rsquo;ll lamb yer!&rsquo; howled Jimmy; but
+      Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow
+      and rode off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard
+      him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If I thought that, I&rsquo;d kill him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it?&rsquo; asked Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim held up a butcher&rsquo;s knife. It was common for a man to carry a
+      butcher&rsquo;s knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did you let your man fight with a butcher&rsquo;s knife in his belt?&rsquo; asked
+      Jimmy Nowlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we
+      decided it that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Any way,&rsquo; said Jimmy Nowlett, &lsquo;if he&rsquo;d stuck Joe in hot blood before us
+      all it wouldn&rsquo;t be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back in
+      the dark. But you&rsquo;d best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or two,
+      Joe. That chap&rsquo;s got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the best
+      thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this dark
+      from the gals.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced at
+      him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that Jack
+      had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I&rsquo;m sorry I said
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s up, Jack?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing,&rsquo; said Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s up, you old fool?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing,&rsquo; said Jack, &lsquo;except that I&rsquo;m damned proud of you, Joe, you old
+      ass!&rsquo; and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake. &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t
+      know it was in you, Joe&mdash;I wouldn&rsquo;t have said it before, or listened
+      to any other man say it, but I didn&rsquo;t think you had the pluck&mdash;God&rsquo;s
+      truth, I didn&rsquo;t. Come along and get your face fixed up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one of
+      the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me. He fixed
+      up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good many&mdash;he&rsquo;d
+      been mended himself so often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet amongst
+      the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl&rsquo;s voice
+      whispered, &lsquo;Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know,&mdash;I might be able to
+      help.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there
+      was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Jack?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, nothing,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;only that damned slut of a half-caste cook
+      overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany&rsquo;s knife got
+      out of the sheath, and she&rsquo;s put a nice yarn round amongst the girls.
+      There&rsquo;s a regular bobbery, but it&rsquo;s all right now. Jimmy Nowlett&rsquo;s telling
+      &lsquo;em lies at a great rate.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and
+      brown paper was handed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had a
+      quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I
+      reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he
+      said he&rsquo;d be round early in the morning, and went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn&rsquo;t feel proud of the affair at all.
+      I thought it was a low, brutal business all round. Romany was a quiet chap
+      after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps he&rsquo;d had a
+      hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn&rsquo;t know anything
+      about. He seemed a lonely man. I&rsquo;d gone through enough myself to teach me
+      not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I felt about the
+      matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake of bothering
+      about &lsquo;feelings&rsquo; in another party that hadn&rsquo;t any feelings at all&mdash;perhaps
+      I didn&rsquo;t; but it&rsquo;s generally best to chance it on the kind side in a case
+      like this. Altogether I felt as if I&rsquo;d made another fool of myself and
+      been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and went to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About daylight I woke and heard Jack&rsquo;s horse on the gravel. He came round
+      the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly, a girl
+      screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and &lsquo;lastic-side boots and hurried
+      out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone step at the
+      back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was off his horse
+      and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder. She kept saying,
+      &lsquo;I thought you were&mdash;&mdash;! I thought you were&mdash;&mdash;!&rsquo; I
+      didn&rsquo;t catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was
+      lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded
+      and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a
+      cunning old hawk that they called &lsquo;&rsquo;Tarnal Death&rsquo;, and that used to be
+      always after the chickens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper, and her eyes
+      seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,&rsquo; she gasped. Then she gave a little
+      ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m a little fool!&rsquo; she said quickly. &lsquo;I thought I heard old &lsquo;Tarnal
+      Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing if I got
+      the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly so as not to
+      wake Sarah. And then you came round the corner and frightened me. I don&rsquo;t
+      know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never mind,&rsquo; said Jack. &lsquo;You go and have a sleep, or you won&rsquo;t be able to
+      dance to-night. Never mind the gun&mdash;I&rsquo;ll put that away.&rsquo; And he
+      steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah where she
+      slept with one of the other girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, that&rsquo;s a rum start!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, it is,&rsquo; said Jack; &lsquo;it&rsquo;s very funny. Well, how&rsquo;s your face this
+      morning, Joe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed a lot more serious than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed and
+      getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles, making
+      seats, &amp;c. I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could. One
+      side of my face was a sight and the other wasn&rsquo;t too classical. I felt as
+      if I had been stung by a swarm of bees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,&rsquo; said
+      Jimmy Nowlett&mdash;he was going to play the accordion that night. &lsquo;You
+      ought to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face&rsquo;ll go down in
+      about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight
+      straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy&mdash;so
+      I didn&rsquo;t lose much beauty by it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we&rsquo;d done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe! if you won&rsquo;t come to the dance to-night&mdash;and I can&rsquo;t
+      say you&rsquo;d ornament it&mdash;I tell you what you&rsquo;ll do. You get little Mary
+      away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll&mdash;and act like a man.
+      The job&rsquo;s finished now, and you won&rsquo;t get another chance like this.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But how am I to get her out?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
+      near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What good&rsquo;ll that do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never you mind. You just do as you&rsquo;re told, that&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got to do,&rsquo; 
+      said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The
+      first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the
+      second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking
+      excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see
+      sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary black
+      looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly that I
+      should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor Romany. I
+      went away and walked about four miles down the river road, getting out of
+      the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding along. I thought of
+      poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought that there wasn&rsquo;t much
+      to choose between us as far as happiness was concerned. Perhaps he was
+      walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling like I did. I wished I could
+      shake hands with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
+      and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at the
+      rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn&rsquo;t expect anything, in spite
+      of what Jack said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t like the idea of hanging myself: I&rsquo;d been with a party who found
+      a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round where he
+      was. And I&rsquo;d helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river in a
+      flood, and they weren&rsquo;t sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity that a
+      chap couldn&rsquo;t lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in the
+      moonlight and die just by thinking of it&mdash;and die with his eyes and
+      mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn&rsquo;t make a beautiful corpse,
+      anyway it went, with the face I had on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,
+      and my heart gave a jump. And I gave a start too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; said a timid little voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Is that you, Mary?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she said yes. It was the first time I called her Mary, but she did not
+      seem to notice it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did I frighten you?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No&mdash;yes&mdash;just a little,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t know there was any
+      one&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; then she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why aren&rsquo;t you dancing?&rsquo; I asked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m tired,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;It was too hot in the wool-shed. I thought I&rsquo;d
+      like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;it must be hot in the wool-shed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood looking out over the willows. Presently she said, &lsquo;It must be
+      very dull for you, Mr Wilson&mdash;you must feel lonely. Mr Barnes said&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      Then she gave a little gasp and stopped&mdash;as if she was just going to
+      put her foot in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;doesn&rsquo;t it? Supposing we have a stroll by the river.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson. I&rsquo;d like it very much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t notice it then, but, now I come to think of it, it was a
+      beautiful scene: there was a horseshoe of high blue hills round behind the
+      house, with the river running round under the slopes, and in front was a
+      rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges, and a soft blue peak
+      away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side
+      turned to her. We walked down by the river, and didn&rsquo;t say anything for a
+      good while. I was thinking hard. We came to a white smooth log in a quiet
+      place out of sight of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you like, Mr Wilson,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was about a foot of log between us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a beautiful night!&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;isn&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently she said, &lsquo;I suppose you know I&rsquo;m going away next month, Mr
+      Wilson?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt suddenly empty. &lsquo;No,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t know that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I thought you knew. I&rsquo;m going to try and get into the
+      hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn&rsquo;t come off I&rsquo;ll get
+      a place as assistant public-school teacher.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We didn&rsquo;t say anything for a good while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suppose you won&rsquo;t be sorry to go, Miss Brand?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Everybody&rsquo;s been so kind to me here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened. I
+      put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn&rsquo;t seem to notice it. In fact,
+      I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you think you&rsquo;ll be sorry to go away?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Mr Wilson. I suppose I&rsquo;ll fret for a while. It&rsquo;s been my home, you
+      know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn&rsquo;t
+      pretend not to know it was there. But she didn&rsquo;t seem to notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah, well,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I suppose I&rsquo;ll be on the wallaby again next week.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; she said. Her voice seemed very soft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm. My heart was going like
+      clockwork now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you think it&rsquo;s time to go back now, Mr Wilson?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s plenty of time!&rsquo; I said. I shifted up, and put my arm farther
+      round, and held her closer. She sat straight up, looking right in front of
+      her, but she began to breathe hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mary,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call me Joe,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like to,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t think it would be right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I just turned her face round and kissed her. She clung to me and cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Mary?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She only held me tighter and cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Mary?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t you well? Ain&rsquo;t you happy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Joe,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m very happy.&rsquo; Then she said, &lsquo;Oh, your poor
+      face! Can&rsquo;t I do anything for it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right. My face doesn&rsquo;t hurt me a bit now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she didn&rsquo;t seem right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Mary?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Are you tired? You didn&rsquo;t sleep last night&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      Then I got an inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mary,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;what were you doing out with the gun this morning?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I couldn&rsquo;t sleep&mdash;I was frightened. Oh! I had such a terrible dream
+      about you, Joe! I thought Romany came back and got into your room and
+      stabbed you with his knife. I got up and dressed, and about daybreak I
+      heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the wall&mdash;and&mdash;and
+      Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me. He&rsquo;s something like
+      Romany, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, oh, but wasn&rsquo;t I happy walking home with Mary that night! She was too
+      little for me to put my arm round her waist, so I put it round her
+      shoulder, and that felt just as good. I remember I asked her who&rsquo;d cleaned
+      up my room and washed my things, but she wouldn&rsquo;t tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wouldn&rsquo;t go back to the dance yet; she said she&rsquo;d go into her room and
+      rest a while. There was no one near the old verandah; and when she stood
+      on the end of the floor she was just on a level with my shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mary,&rsquo; I whispered, &lsquo;put your arms round my neck and kiss me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her arms round my neck, but she didn&rsquo;t kiss me; she only hid her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Kiss me, Mary!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like to,&rsquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why not, Mary?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing. I&rsquo;m
+      not sure to this day which it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why won&rsquo;t you kiss me, Mary? Don&rsquo;t you love me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;because&mdash;because I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+      think it&rsquo;s right for&mdash;for a girl to&mdash;to kiss a man unless she&rsquo;s
+      going to be his wife.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it dawned on me! I&rsquo;d forgot all about proposing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mary,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;would you marry a chap like me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was all right.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and didn&rsquo;t
+      take the slightest notice of the other girls&rsquo; astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same evening.
+      I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on the quiet
+      with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went away, I sat
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, Joe,&rsquo; said Black, &lsquo;I see somebody&rsquo;s been spoiling your face for the
+      dance.&rsquo; And after a bit he said, &lsquo;Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want
+      another job? If you do, you&rsquo;ll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob&rsquo; (Bob was his
+      eldest son); &lsquo;they&rsquo;re managing the station for me now, you know.&rsquo; He could
+      be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; I said; &lsquo;it&rsquo;s not that, Boss.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what is it, Joe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;well the fact is, I want little Mary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What did you say, Boss?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing, Joe,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn&rsquo;t be any
+      use. My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I waited a good while for him to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, Boss,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;what about Mary?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! I suppose that&rsquo;s all right, Joe,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I&mdash;I beg your
+      pardon. I got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Brighten&rsquo;s Sister-In-Law.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say &lsquo;on&rsquo; Gulgong&mdash;and
+      old diggers still talked of being &lsquo;on th&rsquo; Gulgong&rsquo;&mdash;though the
+      goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was only a
+      dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the last of
+      the great alluvial &lsquo;rushes&rsquo; of the &lsquo;roaring days&rsquo;&mdash;and dreary and
+      dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression &lsquo;on&rsquo; came from
+      being on the &lsquo;diggings&rsquo; or goldfield&mdash;the workings or the goldfield
+      was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them&mdash;not
+      in nor at &lsquo;em.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came&mdash;&mdash;His
+      name wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;Jim&rsquo;, by the way, it was &lsquo;John Henry&rsquo;, after an uncle
+      godfather; but we called him Jim from the first&mdash;(and before it)&mdash;because
+      Jim was a popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush
+      is full of good-hearted scamps called Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop, and
+      the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did a bit of
+      digging (&lsquo;fossicking&rsquo;, rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of fencing, a bit
+      of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,&mdash;anything, just to keep the billy
+      boiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every one
+      of them, and we had most of them lanced&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t pull him through
+      without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before the
+      tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky little
+      chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor was
+      lancing his gum: he used to say &lsquo;tar&rsquo; afterwards, and want to bring the
+      lance home with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim
+      out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I had
+      two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays, and I
+      took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the contract
+      was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of a doctor, the
+      day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our goods and chattels
+      anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home an hour when Jim took
+      convulsions for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn&rsquo;t want to see it
+      again: it plays the devil with a man&rsquo;s nerves. I&rsquo;d got the beds fixed up
+      on the floor, and the billies on the fire&mdash;I was going to make some
+      tea, and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night&mdash;when Jim
+      (he&rsquo;d been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to sleep)&mdash;Jim,
+      he screamed out twice. He&rsquo;d been crying a good deal, and I was dog-tired
+      and worried (over some money a man owed me) or I&rsquo;d have noticed at once
+      that there was something unusual in the way the child cried out: as it was
+      I didn&rsquo;t turn round till Mary screamed &lsquo;Joe! Joe!&rsquo; You know how a woman
+      cries out when her child is in danger or dying&mdash;short, and sharp, and
+      terrible. &lsquo;Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our child! Get the bath, quick!
+      quick! it&rsquo;s convulsions!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother&rsquo;s
+      arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed&mdash;a thing I saw twice
+      afterwards, and don&rsquo;t want ever to see again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the
+      woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run for
+      the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into a hot
+      bath and pulled him through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed
+      with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and Mary&rsquo;s
+      screams out of my head and fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it, for
+      a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this) there
+      came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired to bother
+      about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our wood-heap was
+      done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had to run a quarter
+      of a mile for water; but this turn wasn&rsquo;t so bad as the first, and we
+      pulled him through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don&rsquo;t want to. It must be
+      only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an hour
+      afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you, or stretched
+      out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty high-strung and
+      sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he cried, or turned
+      over, or stretched out in the night, I&rsquo;d jump: I was always feeling his
+      forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or feeling his limbs to
+      see if he was &lsquo;limp&rsquo; yet. Mary and I often laughed about it&mdash;afterwards.
+      I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights after Jim&rsquo;s first attack
+      I&rsquo;d be just dozing off into a sound sleep, when I&rsquo;d hear him scream, as
+      plain as could be, and I&rsquo;d hear Mary cry, &lsquo;Joe!&mdash;Joe!&rsquo;&mdash;short,
+      sharp, and terrible&mdash;and I&rsquo;d be up and into their room like a shot,
+      only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I&rsquo;d feel Jim&rsquo;s head and his
+      breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire and water, and go back
+      to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights I was like that all
+      night, and I&rsquo;d feel relieved when daylight came. I&rsquo;d be in first thing to
+      see if they were all right; then I&rsquo;d sleep till dinner-time if it was
+      Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down about that time: I was
+      worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up and never got paid for;
+      and, besides, I&rsquo;d been pretty wild before I met Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was fighting hard then&mdash;struggling for something better. Both Mary
+      and I were born to better things, and that&rsquo;s what made the life so hard
+      for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have his
+      teeth lanced in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It used to hurt and worry me to see how&mdash;just as he was getting fat
+      and rosy and like a natural happy child, and I&rsquo;d feel proud to take him
+      out&mdash;a tooth would come along, and he&rsquo;d get thin and white and pale
+      and bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. We&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll be safe when he gets
+      his eye-teeth&rsquo;: but he didn&rsquo;t get them till he was two; then, &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll be
+      safe when he gets his two-year-old teeth&rsquo;: they didn&rsquo;t come till he was
+      going on for three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a wonderful little chap&mdash;Yes, I know all about parents
+      thinking that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small
+      for his age, friends will say that small children make big men; that he&rsquo;s
+      a very bright, intelligent child, and that it&rsquo;s better to have a bright,
+      intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is dull
+      and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest men&mdash;and
+      all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of clatter&mdash;took
+      it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don&rsquo;t think I ever saw such
+      a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was everybody&rsquo;s favourite. They
+      spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about bringing up a child. I
+      reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. She&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;Put that&rsquo; (whatever it
+      was) &lsquo;out of Jim&rsquo;s reach, will you, Joe?&rsquo; and I&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;No! leave it
+      there, and make him understand he&rsquo;s not to have it. Make him have his
+      meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a regular hour,&rsquo; I&rsquo;d say.
+      Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. She&rsquo;d say that I forgot he was only
+      a baby: but I held that a baby could be trained from the first week; and I
+      believe I was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after all, what are you to do? You&rsquo;ll see a boy that was brought up
+      strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the
+      hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when a
+      child is delicate&mdash;and you might lose him any day&mdash;you don&rsquo;t
+      like to spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as
+      delicate children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the
+      same night he took convulsions, or something, and died&mdash;how&rsquo;d you
+      feel about it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than
+      you can tell what some women are going to say or do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes I&rsquo;d sit and
+      wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he talked,
+      he&rsquo;d make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things,
+      and I&rsquo;d get him a clean new clay and he&rsquo;d sit by my side, on the edge of
+      the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the evening,
+      and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do it. He seemed
+      to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn&rsquo;t quite the thing, yet to have
+      the sense to know that he couldn&rsquo;t smoke tobacco yet: he made the best he
+      could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe he wouldn&rsquo;t have a new one,
+      and there&rsquo;d be a row; the old one had to be mended up, somehow, with
+      string or wire. If I got my hair cut, he&rsquo;d want his cut too; and it always
+      troubled him to see me shave&mdash;as if he thought there must be
+      something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have to be shaved too. I
+      lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him: he sat through it as
+      solemn as an owl, but didn&rsquo;t seem to appreciate it&mdash;perhaps he had
+      sense enough to know that it couldn&rsquo;t possibly be the real thing. He felt
+      his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped off, and whimpered, &lsquo;No
+      blood, daddy!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his lingo
+      better than I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I wasn&rsquo;t always at ease with him. Sometimes he&rsquo;d sit looking into the
+      fire, with his head on one side, and I&rsquo;d watch him and wonder what he was
+      thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman was thinking
+      about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me: sometimes, when
+      I moved or spoke, he&rsquo;d glance round just as if to see what that old fool
+      of a dadda of his was doing now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or Asiatic&mdash;something
+      older than our civilisation or religion&mdash;about old-fashioned
+      children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I thought would
+      understand&mdash;and as it happened she had an old-fashioned child, with
+      very slant eyes&mdash;a little tartar he was too. I suppose it was the
+      sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal theory, and set
+      me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me mixed up in an awful
+      row with the woman and her husband&mdash;and all their tribe. It wasn&rsquo;t an
+      easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row hasn&rsquo;t been fixed up
+      yet. There were some Chinamen in the district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,
+      near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the
+      Cudgeegong river&mdash;some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred from
+      the coast&mdash;and &lsquo;carrying&rsquo; was good then. I had a couple of
+      draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking,
+      and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon
+      cheap, tinkered it up myself&mdash;christened it &lsquo;The Same Old Thing&rsquo;&mdash;and
+      started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the
+      bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the
+      one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling
+      wilderness. It wasn&rsquo;t much of a team. There were the two heavy horses for
+      &lsquo;shafters&rsquo;; a stunted colt, that I&rsquo;d bought out of the pound for thirty
+      shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points like
+      a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the grit of an old
+      washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along in Cob &amp; Co.&lsquo;s
+      mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn&rsquo;t belong to me: I
+      worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. And I had all
+      sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It was a mixed team,
+      but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and freight rates were
+      high. So I got along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I&rsquo;d sink a shaft somewhere,
+      prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out of
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm&mdash;that an old mate
+      of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up&mdash;about
+      thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey&rsquo;s Creek. (The
+      places were all called Lahey&rsquo;s Creek, or Spicer&rsquo;s Flat, or Murphy&rsquo;s Flat,
+      or Ryan&rsquo;s Crossing, or some such name&mdash;round there.) I reckoned I&rsquo;d
+      have a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had
+      a dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctor&mdash;or
+      a good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Lahey&rsquo;s
+      Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Mary&rsquo;s&mdash;a young
+      scamp (his name was Jim, too, and we called him &lsquo;Jimmy&rsquo; at first to make
+      room for our Jim&mdash;he hated the name &lsquo;Jimmy&rsquo; or James). He came to
+      live with us&mdash;without asking&mdash;and I thought he&rsquo;d find enough
+      work at Lahey&rsquo;s Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn&rsquo;t to be
+      depended on much&mdash;he thought nothing of riding off, five hundred
+      miles or so, &lsquo;to have a look at the country&rsquo;&mdash;but he was fond of
+      Mary, and he&rsquo;d stay by her till I got some one else to keep her company
+      while I was on the road. He would be a protection against &lsquo;sundowners&rsquo; or
+      any shearers who happened to wander that way in the &lsquo;D.T.&lsquo;s&rsquo; after a
+      spree. Mary had a married sister come to live at Gulgong just before we
+      left, and nothing would suit her and her husband but we must leave little
+      Jim with them for a month or so&mdash;till we got settled down at Lahey&rsquo;s
+      Creek. They were newly married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end of
+      the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn&rsquo;t too well&mdash;and,
+      besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn&rsquo;t time to get them
+      cut, so we let Jim&rsquo;s time run on a week or so longer, till I happened to
+      come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of flour for
+      Lahey&rsquo;s Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grand&mdash;no chance
+      of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did&mdash;I would only
+      camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned
+      that he used to frighten me sometimes&mdash;I&rsquo;d almost think that there
+      was something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any
+      notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.
+      There&rsquo;s always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish
+      either) who&rsquo;ll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks as,
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll never rear that child&mdash;he&rsquo;s too bright for his age.&rsquo; To the
+      devil with them! I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I often
+      told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much to old
+      diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung their horses
+      outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t believe in parents talking about their own children everlastingly&mdash;you
+      get sick of hearing them; and their kids are generally little devils, and
+      turn out larrikins as likely as not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,
+      was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about his
+      adventures at his auntie&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But they spoilt me too much, dad,&rsquo; he said, as solemn as a native bear.
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a
+      good deal of Jim&rsquo;s time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he&rsquo;d jolt me, the way he talked; and other times I&rsquo;d have to
+      turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from laughing
+      outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and going
+      on that way for, dad? Why don&rsquo;t you tell me something?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell you what, Jim?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell me some talk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up, I
+      can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination&mdash;for Jim was a
+      terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn&rsquo;t think
+      twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once he
+      said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m glad you took me home with you, dad. You&rsquo;ll get to know Jim.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll get to know Jim.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But don&rsquo;t I know you already?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, you don&rsquo;t. You never has time to know Jim at home.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart
+      all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from Jim.
+      You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and when I
+      was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired and
+      worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of Jim.
+      Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. &lsquo;You never take notice of the
+      child,&rsquo; she&rsquo;d say. &lsquo;You could surely find a few minutes of an evening.
+      What&rsquo;s the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will go with a
+      snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a lesson. You&rsquo;ll
+      be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise that you had a
+      child once. Then it will be too late.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with
+      her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself&mdash;only
+      for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to
+      myself, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time, just
+      as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.&rsquo; And the hard days went on,
+      and the weeks, and the months, and the years&mdash;&mdash; Ah, well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary used to say, when things would get worse, &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you talk to me,
+      Joe? Why don&rsquo;t you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself up
+      in yourself and brooding&mdash;eating your heart out? It&rsquo;s hard for me: I
+      get to think you&rsquo;re tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross and speak
+      sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you don&rsquo;t tell
+      me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I didn&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;d understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing
+      over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and
+      shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load, over
+      the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again&mdash;Jim and I got
+      along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen miles before
+      sunset, and camped at Ryan&rsquo;s Crossing on Sandy Creek for the night. I got
+      the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted badly to help me, but
+      I made him stay on the load; for one of the horses&mdash;a vicious,
+      red-eyed chestnut&mdash;was a kicker: he&rsquo;d broken a man&rsquo;s leg. I got the
+      feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the chaff-and-corn into them;
+      and there stood the horses all round with their rumps north, south, and
+      west, and their heads between the shafts, munching and switching their
+      tails. We use double shafts, you know, for horse-teams&mdash;two pairs
+      side by side,&mdash;and prop them up, and stretch bags between them,
+      letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the spare tarpaulin
+      over the wheels on one side, letting about half of it lie on the ground in
+      case of damp, and so making a floor and a break-wind. I threw down bags
+      and the blankets and &lsquo;possum rug against the wheel to make a camp for Jim
+      and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the
+      frying-pan and billy down, and made a good fire at a log close handy, and
+      soon everything was comfortable. Ryan&rsquo;s Crossing was a grand camp. I stood
+      with my pipe in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the
+      fire, and took the country in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here
+      were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
+      boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those
+      gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted &lsquo;native apple-trees&rsquo; (about as much like
+      apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of
+      sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. To the
+      left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking, and
+      across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended in steep
+      &lsquo;sidings&rsquo; coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road that skirted
+      them, running on west up over a &lsquo;saddle&rsquo; in the ridges and on towards
+      Dubbo. The road by Lahey&rsquo;s Creek to a place called Cobborah branched off,
+      through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left, just beyond
+      the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong were
+      inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and so they gave small
+      carriers a chance, now that Cob &amp; Co.&lsquo;s coaches and the big teams and
+      vans had shifted out of the main western terminus. There were tall
+      she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones over a deep
+      water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have rough barked
+      trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher to the branches&mdash;and
+      the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian poet, calls them the &lsquo;she-oak
+      harps Aeolian&rsquo;. Those trees are always sigh-sigh-sighing&mdash;more of a
+      sigh than a sough or the &lsquo;whoosh&rsquo; of gum-trees in the wind. You always
+      hear them sighing, even when you can&rsquo;t feel any wind. It&rsquo;s the same with
+      telegraph wires: put your head against a telegraph-post on a dead, still
+      day, and you&rsquo;ll hear and feel the far-away roar of the wires. But then the
+      oaks are not connected with the distance, where there might be wind; and
+      they don&rsquo;t ROAR in a gale, only sigh louder and softer according to the
+      wind, and never seem to go above or below a certain pitch,&mdash;like a
+      big harp with all the strings the same. I used to have a theory that those
+      creek oaks got the wind&rsquo;s voice telephoned to them, so to speak, through
+      the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the
+      tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with his
+      legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,
+      wise expression in his big brown eyes&mdash;just as if he&rsquo;d been a child
+      for a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks
+      and understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dad!&rsquo; he said presently&mdash;&lsquo;Dad! do you think I&rsquo;ll ever grow up to be
+      a man?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wh&mdash;why, Jim?&rsquo; I gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because I don&rsquo;t want to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I couldn&rsquo;t think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I
+      remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jim,&rsquo; I said, to break the silence, &lsquo;do you hear what the she-oaks say?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, I don&rsquo;t. Is they talking?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, without thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is they saying?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I
+      thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn&rsquo;t:
+      when I got back to the fire he was again on the &lsquo;possum rug, comforting
+      the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I&rsquo;d brought out with me. Jim
+      sang out from the waggon&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t cook too much, dad&mdash;I mightn&rsquo;t be hungry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new
+      flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the rug
+      looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was tired out,
+      and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put his plate on
+      it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I ain&rsquo;t hungry, dad! You&rsquo;ll have to eat it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made me uneasy&mdash;I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his
+      food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid
+      that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sick, Jim?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, dad, I ain&rsquo;t sick; I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s the matter with me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Have some tea, sonny?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, dad.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I&rsquo;d brought in a bottle
+      from his aunt&rsquo;s for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot on
+      the gin-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jim&rsquo;s tired, dad,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned a
+      bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round&mdash;it was made to
+      cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didn&rsquo;t come above the rail, so
+      the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a
+      comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift him
+      in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy,
+      half-fascinated way that I didn&rsquo;t like. Whenever Jim was extra
+      old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do you feel now, sonny?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jim&rsquo;s better, dad.&rsquo; Then he said something like, &lsquo;The stars are looking
+      at me.&rsquo; I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots, and
+      carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Kiss me &lsquo;night-night, daddy,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d rather he hadn&rsquo;t asked me&mdash;it was a bad sign. As I was going to
+      the fire he called me back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Jim?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he&rsquo;d brought from
+      Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took all
+      his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And &lsquo;&rsquo;night-night&rsquo; and &lsquo;daddy&rsquo; were
+      two-year-old language to Jim. I&rsquo;d thought he&rsquo;d forgotten those words&mdash;he
+      seemed to be going back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you quite warm enough, Jim?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, dad.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I started to walk up and down&mdash;I always did this when I was extra
+      worried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from
+      myself. Presently he called me again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Jim?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take the blankets off me, fahver&mdash;Jim&rsquo;s sick!&rsquo; (They&rsquo;d been teaching
+      him to say father.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die
+      (she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take the blankets off me, muvver&mdash;I&rsquo;m dying.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I couldn&rsquo;t get that out of my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I threw back a fold of the &lsquo;possum rug, and felt Jim&rsquo;s head&mdash;he
+      seemed cool enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where do you feel bad, sonny?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he were
+      talking in his sleep&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept&mdash;in a
+      restless, feverish sort of way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the
+      fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got it full
+      of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always carried one
+      to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a corner of the
+      tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down into the hole, to
+      serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of mustard, and meant
+      to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head was
+      burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between the
+      waggon and the fire, and repeating what I&rsquo;d heard Mary say the last time
+      we fought for Jim: &lsquo;God! don&rsquo;t take my child! God! don&rsquo;t take my boy!&rsquo; I&rsquo;d
+      never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one then. The
+      nearest was fifteen miles away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation; and&mdash;Well,
+      I don&rsquo;t ask you to take much stock in this, though most old Bushmen will
+      believe anything of the Bush by night; and&mdash;Now, it might have been
+      that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky outlined in
+      the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But I saw the
+      figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the
+      trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up and vanish,
+      still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on me&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four or five miles up the road, over the &lsquo;saddle&rsquo;, was an old shanty that
+      had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as far as
+      Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man named
+      Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming, and as much
+      sly-grog selling as he could. He was married&mdash;but it wasn&rsquo;t that: I&rsquo;d
+      thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless woman, and
+      both were pretty &lsquo;ratty&rsquo; from hardship and loneliness&mdash;they weren&rsquo;t
+      likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I&rsquo;d heard talk, among some
+      women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten&rsquo;s wife who&rsquo;d gone out to live
+      with them lately: she&rsquo;d been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and
+      there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack for exposing the
+      doctors&mdash;or carrying on with them&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t remember which. The
+      fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with such people,
+      was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles away, but then
+      there must have been something extra about her, else Bushmen wouldn&rsquo;t have
+      talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted a woman out of the
+      ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking like lightning, as I
+      knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the waggon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the team.
+      In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a half-full
+      chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to the pommel as
+      a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled
+      into the saddle with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and
+      splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the
+      level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded&mdash;she
+      must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old
+      racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I&rsquo;d have to
+      pull her hard else she&rsquo;d race the other horse or burst. She ran low fore
+      and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like wheels on
+      rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then&mdash;like a railway carriage&mdash;when
+      she settled down to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the
+      bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the
+      strongest man, who isn&rsquo;t used to it, hold a baby in one position for five
+      minutes&mdash;and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my
+      arms that night&mdash;it must have gone before I was in a fit state of
+      mind to feel it. And at home I&rsquo;d often growled about being asked to hold
+      the baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a
+      baby at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There&rsquo;s no timber
+      in the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight&mdash;or just
+      about daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between
+      ragged, twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the &lsquo;white-box&rsquo; 
+      trees; a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting
+      out here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road
+      that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse
+      laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight&mdash;every
+      one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one: you have to trust to
+      your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of a red stringy-bark
+      tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would start out like a
+      ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening on these things,
+      according to the season. Now and again a great grey kangaroo, that had
+      been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would start with a
+      &lsquo;thump-thump&rsquo;, and away up the siding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night&mdash;all going my way&mdash;and
+      being left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat
+      back and the mare &lsquo;propped&rsquo;&mdash;she&rsquo;d been a stock-horse, and was used
+      to &lsquo;cutting-out&rsquo;. I felt Jim&rsquo;s hands and forehead; he was in a burning
+      fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept
+      saying out loud&mdash;and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards):
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s limp yet!&mdash;Jim&rsquo;s limp yet!&rsquo; (the words seemed jerked out of me
+      by sheer fright)&mdash;&lsquo;He&rsquo;s limp yet!&rsquo; till the mare&rsquo;s feet took it up.
+      Then, just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest,
+      she suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own
+      and the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she&rsquo;d do when I&rsquo;d be riding
+      alone and a strange horse drew up from behind&mdash;the old racing
+      instinct. I FELT the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse WAS there!
+      And then&mdash;the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk&mdash;I
+      started saying, &lsquo;Death is riding to-night!... Death is racing to-night!...
+      Death is riding to-night!&rsquo; till the hoofs took that up. And I believe the
+      old mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or
+      break her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was mad with anxiety and fright: I remember I kept saying, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+      kinder to Mary after this! I&rsquo;ll take more notice of Jim!&rsquo; and the rest of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t know how the old mare got up the last &lsquo;pinch&rsquo;. She must have
+      slackened pace, but I never noticed it: I just held Jim up to me and
+      gripped the saddle with my knees&mdash;I remember the saddle jerked from
+      the desperate jumps of her till I thought the girth would go. We topped
+      the gap and were going down into a gully they called Dead Man&rsquo;s Hollow,
+      and there, at the back of a ghostly clearing that opened from the road
+      where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong
+      weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the
+      gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the
+      level of the window-sills&mdash;there was something sinister about it, I
+      thought&mdash;like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The
+      place looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was
+      because of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the
+      clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she struggled across
+      some marshy ground, my heart kept jerking out the words, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s deserted!
+      They&rsquo;ve gone away! It&rsquo;s deserted!&rsquo; The mare went round to the back and
+      pulled up between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen. Some one
+      shouted from inside&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s me. Joe Wilson. I want your sister-in-law&mdash;I&rsquo;ve got the boy&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+      sick and dying!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins. &lsquo;What boy?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here, take him,&rsquo; I shouted, &lsquo;and let me get down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with him?&rsquo; asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang back.
+      And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim&rsquo;s head went back
+      over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and glistening
+      in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach&mdash;but CLEAR-HEADED
+      in a way: strange, wasn&rsquo;t it? I don&rsquo;t know why I didn&rsquo;t get down and rush
+      into the kitchen to get a bath ready. I only felt as if the worst had
+      come, and I wished it were over and gone. I even thought of Mary and the
+      funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a woman ran out of the house&mdash;a big, hard-looking woman. She had
+      on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare. She laid her hand on
+      Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me and ran into the
+      kitchen&mdash;and me down and after her. As great good luck would have it,
+      they had some dirty clothes on to boil in a kerosene tin&mdash;dish-cloths
+      or something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table, wrenched
+      the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water, dish-cloths and all,
+      snatched a can of cold water from a corner, dashed that in, and felt the
+      water with her hand&mdash;holding Jim up to her hip all the time&mdash;and
+      I won&rsquo;t say how he looked. She stood him in the tub and started dashing
+      water over him, tearing off his clothes between the splashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here, that tin of mustard&mdash;there on the shelf!&rsquo; she shouted to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub, and went on
+      splashing and spanking Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed an eternity. And I? Why, I never thought clearer in my life. I
+      felt cold-blooded&mdash;I felt as if I&rsquo;d like an excuse to go outside till
+      it was all over. I thought of Mary and the funeral&mdash;and wished that
+      that was past. All this in a flash, as it were. I felt that it would be a
+      great relief, and only wished the funeral was months past. I felt&mdash;well,
+      altogether selfish. I only thought for myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard&mdash;hard enough
+      to break his back I thought, and&mdash;after about half an hour it seemed&mdash;the
+      end came: Jim&rsquo;s limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub, and the
+      pupils of his eyes came down. They seemed dull and expressionless, like
+      the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dropped on the stool by the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all over now. I wasn&rsquo;t going to let him
+      die.&rsquo; I was only thinking, &lsquo;Well it&rsquo;s over now, but it will come on again.
+      I wish it was over for good. I&rsquo;m tired of it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little fool
+      of a woman, who&rsquo;d been running in and out and whimpering all the time&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed. And you, Brighten,
+      take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in that hole
+      there to stop the draught.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brighten&mdash;he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be
+      seen for whiskers&mdash;had been running in with sticks and back logs from
+      the wood-heap. He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack, and went inside
+      and brought out a black bottle&mdash;got a cup from the shelf, and put
+      both down near my elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it was,
+      ready. She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily. I noticed that all
+      the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins and the like,
+      that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and salt-cellars),
+      and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible. She was all right at little
+      things. I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman who put her whole soul&mdash;or
+      all she&rsquo;d got left&mdash;into polishing old tins till they dazzled your
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail tea.
+      So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn&rsquo;t looking, at Brighten&rsquo;s
+      sister-in-law. She was a big woman, her hands and feet were big, but
+      well-shaped and all in proportion&mdash;they fitted her. She was a
+      handsome woman&mdash;about forty I should think. She had a square chin,
+      and a straight thin-lipped mouth&mdash;straight save for a hint of a turn
+      down at the corners, which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been
+      a sign of weakness in the days before she grew hard. There was no sign of
+      weakness now. She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair. She hadn&rsquo;t
+      spoken yet. She didn&rsquo;t ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or who
+      or what I was&mdash;at least not until the next evening at tea-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her knees,
+      with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him, and she
+      just rocked him gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I&rsquo;ve seen a tired
+      needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away back into the
+      past. And Jim might have been the work in her lap, for all she seemed to
+      think of him. Now and then she knitted her forehead and blinked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she glanced round and said&mdash;in a tone as if I was her
+      husband and she didn&rsquo;t think much of me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you eat something?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beg pardon?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Eat something!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her. I was beginning to feel
+      more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour was coming back
+      into his face, and he didn&rsquo;t look like an unnaturally stiff and staring
+      corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked another
+      look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was staring straight before her,&mdash;I never saw a woman&rsquo;s face
+      change so suddenly&mdash;I never saw a woman&rsquo;s eyes so haggard and
+      hopeless. Then her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long
+      shuddering breath, like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped
+      from her wide open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of
+      stone. And in the firelight they seemed tinged with blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn&rsquo;t seen
+      her look round) she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go to bed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beg pardon?&rsquo; (Her face was the same as before the tears.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go to bed. There&rsquo;s a bed made for you inside on the sofa.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But&mdash;the team&mdash;I must&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning&mdash;or
+      send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy will
+      be all right. I&rsquo;ll see to that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went out&mdash;it was a relief to get out&mdash;and looked to the mare.
+      Brighten had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she
+      couldn&rsquo;t eat yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the
+      other, with her nose over the box&mdash;and she sobbed. I put my arms
+      round her neck and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the
+      second time since I was a boy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Maize or Indian corn&mdash;wheat is never called corn in
+     Australia.&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As I started to go in I heard Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law say, suddenly and
+      sharply&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take THAT away, Jessie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the house
+      and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over Jim
+      and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time to
+      hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten&rsquo;s
+      sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And now,&rsquo; says Jim, &lsquo;I want to go home to &ldquo;muffer&rdquo; in &ldquo;The Same Ol&rsquo; 
+      Fling&rdquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! &ldquo;The Same Old Thing&rdquo;,&mdash;the waggon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
+      looking at some &lsquo;indications&rsquo; (of the existence of gold) he had found. It
+      was no use trying to &lsquo;pump&rsquo; him concerning his sister-in-law; Brighten was
+      an &lsquo;old hand&rsquo;, and had learned in the old Bush-ranging and cattle-stealing
+      days to know nothing about other people&rsquo;s business. And, by the way, I
+      noticed then that the more you talk and listen to a bad character, the
+      more you lose your dislike for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law that
+      evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least ten years younger.
+      She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready. She rooted out
+      some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere, and set the
+      table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up with pillows,
+      and laughed and played with him like a great girl. She described Sydney
+      and Sydney life as I&rsquo;d never heard it described before; and she knew as
+      much about the Bush and old digging days as I did. She kept old Brighten
+      and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight. And she seemed quick
+      to understand everything when I talked. If she wanted to explain anything
+      that we hadn&rsquo;t seen, she wouldn&rsquo;t say that it was &lsquo;like a&mdash;like a&rsquo;&mdash;and
+      hesitate (you know what I mean); she&rsquo;d hit the right thing on the head at
+      once. A squatter with a very round, flaming red face and a white cork hat
+      had gone by in the afternoon: she said it was &lsquo;like a mushroom on the
+      rising moon.&rsquo; She gave me a lot of good hints about children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was quiet again next morning. I harnessed up, and she dressed Jim
+      and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him on the
+      load with the &lsquo;possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the wheel to
+      do it herself. Then was the awkward time. I&rsquo;d half start to speak to her,
+      and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and then make
+      another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up in her arms
+      and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his arms tight
+      round her neck, and kissed her&mdash;a thing Jim seldom did with anybody,
+      except his mother, for he wasn&rsquo;t what you&rsquo;d call an affectionate child,&mdash;he&rsquo;d
+      never more than offer his cheek to me, in his old-fashioned way. I&rsquo;d got
+      up the other side of the load to take him from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here, take him,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays&mdash;no
+      matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;d better make a start,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;You want to get home early with
+      that boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand and tried
+      to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel, and I gave it
+      up, and only squeezed her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; she said; then tears came into her eyes, and she
+      suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. &lsquo;You be
+      off&mdash;you&rsquo;re only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy; be kind to
+      your wife, and take care of yourself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you come to see us?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Some day,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at
+      Jim, who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load. And I saw
+      that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes in spite of the
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to Mary&mdash;I
+      didn&rsquo;t want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim home from
+      Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days, nothing
+      would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten&rsquo;s shanty and see
+      Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the
+      spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten&rsquo;s overnight
+      and didn&rsquo;t get back till late the next afternoon. I&rsquo;d got the place in a
+      pig-muck, as Mary said, &lsquo;doing for&rsquo; myself, and I was having a snooze on
+      the sofa when they got back. The first thing I remember was some one
+      stroking my head and kissing me, and I heard Mary saying, &lsquo;My poor boy! My
+      poor old boy!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again. But it seems
+      that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started to pull grey hairs
+      out of my head and put &lsquo;em in an empty match-box&mdash;to see how many
+      she&rsquo;d get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      she said to Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law or what Brighten&rsquo;s sister-in-law said
+      to her, but Mary was extra gentle for the next few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      &lsquo;Water Them Geraniums&rsquo;.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. A Lonely Track.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to &lsquo;settle on
+      the land&rsquo; at Lahey&rsquo;s Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
+      and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations
+      and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary
+      drove out in the spring-cart. You remember we left little Jim with his
+      aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down. I&rsquo;d sent James (Mary&rsquo;s brother)
+      out the day before, on horseback, with two or three cows and some heifers
+      and steers and calves we had, and I&rsquo;d told him to clean up a bit, and make
+      the hut as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We hadn&rsquo;t much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar
+      bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud
+      of it: it had &lsquo;turned&rsquo; posts and joints that bolted together. There was a
+      plain hardwood table, that Mary called her &lsquo;ironing-table&rsquo;, upside down on
+      top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the legs; there
+      were four of those common black kitchen-chairs&mdash;with apples painted
+      on the hard board backs&mdash;that we used for the parlour; there was a
+      cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the
+      uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and
+      there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
+      stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the little Wilcox &amp; Gibb&rsquo;s sewing-machine&mdash;my present
+      to Mary when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!).
+      There was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some
+      pictures that were presents from Mary&rsquo;s friends and sister. She had her
+      mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away, in the
+      linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask, and a box that
+      had been Jim&rsquo;s cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box, and in another
+      an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques, two against one, turn
+      about, as three of the same sex will do all over the world. I had my old
+      cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load&mdash;I always had a pup that
+      I gave away, or sold and didn&rsquo;t get paid for, or had &lsquo;touched&rsquo; (stolen) as
+      soon as it was old enough. James had his three spidery, sneaking,
+      thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him. I was taking out three
+      months&rsquo; provisions in the way of ration-sugar, tea, flour, and potatoes,
+      &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan&rsquo;s Crossing on Sandy
+      Creek, where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,
+      for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me as much
+      as possible. I soon saw what was the matter. She&rsquo;d been crying to herself
+      coming along the road. I thought it was all on account of leaving little
+      Jim behind for the first time. She told me that she couldn&rsquo;t make up her
+      mind till the last moment to leave him, and that, a mile or two along the
+      road, she&rsquo;d have turned back for him, only that she knew her sister would
+      laugh at her. She was always terribly anxious about the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way to
+      the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree flats.
+      It was a dreary, hopeless track. There was no horizon, nothing but the
+      rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees in all directions,
+      little or no undergrowth, and the ground, save for the coarse, brownish
+      tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road, for it was a dry season: there
+      had been no rain for months, and I wondered what I should do with the
+      cattle if there wasn&rsquo;t more grass on the creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles without seeming
+      to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery. The new
+      tracks were &lsquo;blazed&rsquo;&mdash;that is, slices of bark cut off from both sides
+      of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track until
+      the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with a sharp
+      tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little used to
+      the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half
+      unconsciously as it were, and so finds his way about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary and I didn&rsquo;t talk much along this track&mdash;we couldn&rsquo;t have heard
+      each other very well, anyway, for the &lsquo;clock-clock&rsquo; of the waggon and the
+      rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground. And I suppose we both began
+      to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened. I&rsquo;d noticed lately that
+      Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking to each other&mdash;noticed
+      it in a vague sort of way that irritated me (as vague things will irritate
+      one) when I thought of it. But then I thought, &lsquo;It won&rsquo;t last long&mdash;I&rsquo;ll
+      make life brighter for her by-and-by.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we went along&mdash;and the track seemed endless&mdash;I got brooding,
+      of course, back into the past. And I feel now, when it&rsquo;s too late, that
+      Mary must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early boyhood,
+      of the hard life of &lsquo;grubbin&rsquo;&rsquo; and &lsquo;milkin&rsquo;&rsquo; and &lsquo;fencin&rsquo;&rsquo; and &lsquo;ploughin&rsquo;&rsquo; 
+      and &lsquo;ring-barkin&rsquo;&rsquo;, &amp;c., and all for nothing. The few months at the
+      little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn&rsquo;t spell. The cursed ambition
+      or craving that tortured my soul as a boy&mdash;ambition or craving for&mdash;I
+      didn&rsquo;t know what for! For something better and brighter, anyhow. And I
+      made the life harder by reading at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon, behind Mary in the
+      spring-cart. I thought of these old things more than I thought of her. She
+      had tried to help me to better things. And I tried too&mdash;I had the
+      energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road clear before me, but shied at
+      the first check. Then I brooded, or dreamed of making a home&mdash;that
+      one might call a home&mdash;for Mary&mdash;some day. Ah, well!&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles? I
+      never thought of that. Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
+      Of her girlhood. Of her homes&mdash;not the huts and camps she lived in
+      with me. Of our future?&mdash;she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal
+      of our future&mdash;but not lately. These things didn&rsquo;t strike me at the
+      time&mdash;I was so deep in my own brooding. Did she think now&mdash;did
+      she begin to feel now that she had made a great mistake and thrown away
+      her life, but must make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I
+      thought of it. But whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards
+      me, I&rsquo;d think, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll soon win her back. We&rsquo;ll be sweethearts again&mdash;when
+      things brighten up a bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It&rsquo;s an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
+      we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now, as
+      though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted, and had
+      never really met since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was going down when Mary called out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s our place, Joe!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hadn&rsquo;t seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to me,
+      who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to the
+      right, was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,
+      darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge in
+      the background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter&mdash;a
+      water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain), across on the other
+      bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat between the spur and the creek, and
+      a little higher than this side. The land was much better than on our old
+      selection, and there was good soil along the creek on both sides: I
+      expected a rush of selectors out here soon. A few acres round the hut was
+      cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence of timber split from logs
+      and saplings. The man who took up this selection left it because his wife
+      died here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it with
+      shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but I built
+      one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark shed, bigger
+      than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools, harness, and
+      horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets of bark and
+      old chaff-bags. The house itself was floored roughly, with cracks between
+      the boards; there were cracks between the slabs all round&mdash;though
+      he&rsquo;d nailed strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over some of them; the
+      partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags with newspapers
+      pasted over them for wall-paper. There was no ceiling, calico or
+      otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and battens, and the
+      under ends of the shingles. But ceilings make a hut hot and harbour
+      insects and reptiles&mdash;snakes sometimes. There was one small glass
+      window in the &lsquo;dining-room&rsquo; with three panes and a sheet of greased paper,
+      and the rest were rough wooden shutters. There was a pretty good cow-yard
+      and calf-pen, and&mdash;that was about all. There was no dam or tank (I
+      made one later on); there was a water-cask, with the hoops falling off and
+      the staves gaping, at the corner of the house, and spouting, made of
+      lengths of bent tin, ran round under the eaves. Water from a new shingle
+      roof is wine-red for a year or two, and water from a stringy-bark roof is
+      like tan-water for years. In dry weather the selector had got his house
+      water from a cask sunk in the gravel at the bottom of the deepest
+      water-hole in the creek. And the longer the drought lasted, the farther he
+      had to go down the creek for his water, with a cask on a cart, and take
+      his cows to drink, if he had any. Four, five, six, or seven miles&mdash;even
+      ten miles to water is nothing in some places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James hadn&rsquo;t found himself called upon to do more than milk old &lsquo;Spot&rsquo; 
+      (the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night, make a fire in
+      the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough. He helped me unharness
+      and water and feed the horses, and then started to get the furniture off
+      the waggon and into the house. James wasn&rsquo;t lazy&mdash;so long as one
+      thing didn&rsquo;t last too long; but he was too uncomfortably practical and
+      matter-of-fact for me. Mary and I had some tea in the kitchen. The kitchen
+      was permanently furnished with a table of split slabs, adzed smooth on
+      top, and supported by four stakes driven into the ground, a three-legged
+      stool and a block of wood, and two long stools made of half-round slabs
+      (sapling trunks split in halves) with auger-holes bored in the round side
+      and sticks stuck into them for legs. The floor was of clay; the chimney of
+      slabs and tin; the fireplace was about eight feet wide, lined with clay,
+      and with a blackened pole across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it
+      for the pots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary didn&rsquo;t seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the
+      fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me. Mary
+      was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was
+      thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much when
+      she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was something
+      very German about her expression; also something aristocratic about the
+      turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she spoke. There
+      was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in figure and walk. I
+      used sometimes to call her &lsquo;Little Duchy&rsquo; and &lsquo;Pigeon Toes&rsquo;. She had a
+      will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate knit in her forehead
+      between the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Mary?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and
+      irritated&mdash;suffering from a reaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, what is it, Mary?&rsquo; I asked; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sick of this sort of thing. Haven&rsquo;t
+      you got everything you wanted? You&rsquo;ve had your own way. What&rsquo;s the matter
+      with you now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know very well, Joe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I DON&rsquo;T know,&rsquo; I said. I knew too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Mary,&rsquo; I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t go on
+      like that; tell me what&rsquo;s the matter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s only this,&rsquo; she said suddenly, &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t stand this life here; it
+      will kill me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is more than a man can stand!&rsquo; I shouted. &lsquo;You know very well that
+      it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren&rsquo;t
+      you content to stay in Gulgong?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?&rsquo; asked Mary quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A
+      wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each
+      side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick
+      cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat&mdash;four
+      rooms and a passage&mdash;the police-station, bank-manager and
+      schoolmaster&rsquo;s cottages, &amp;c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-board
+      shanties&mdash;the three pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The
+      town tailing off into weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts&mdash;relics
+      of the digging days&mdash;propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when
+      at home, mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the
+      verandah posts of the pubs., saying, &lsquo;&rsquo;Ullo, Bill!&rsquo; or &lsquo;&rsquo;Ullo, Jim!&rsquo;&mdash;or
+      sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other&rsquo;s and
+      girls&rsquo; characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy&rsquo;s
+      washing hung out on the line: &lsquo;And the colour of the clothes! Does that
+      woman wash her clothes at all? or only soak &lsquo;em and hang &lsquo;em out?&rsquo;&mdash;that
+      was Gulgong.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, why didn&rsquo;t you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?&rsquo; I asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know very well, Joe,&rsquo; said Mary quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me. I had had an idea
+      of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores&mdash;I was a fair wool
+      expert&mdash;but Mary was afraid of the drink. I could keep well away from
+      it so long as I worked hard in the Bush. I had gone to Sydney twice since
+      I met Mary, once before we were married, and she forgave me when I came
+      back; and once afterwards. I got a billet there then, and was going to
+      send for her in a month. After eight weeks she raised the money somehow
+      and came to Sydney and brought me home. I got pretty low down that time.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But, Mary,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;it would have been different this time. You would
+      have been with me. I can take a glass now or leave it alone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As long as you take a glass there is danger,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for, if you can&rsquo;t
+      stand it? Why didn&rsquo;t you stay where you were?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;why weren&rsquo;t you more decided?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; I shouted, &lsquo;this is more than any man can stand. I&rsquo;ll chuck it
+      all up! I&rsquo;m damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So am I, Joe,&rsquo; said Mary wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We quarrelled badly then&mdash;that first hour in our new home. I know now
+      whose fault it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek. I didn&rsquo;t
+      feel bitter against Mary&mdash;I had spoken too cruelly to her to feel
+      that way. Looking back, I could see plainly that if I had taken her advice
+      all through, instead of now and again, things would have been all right
+      with me. I had come away and left her crying in the hut, and James telling
+      her, in a brotherly way, that it was all her fault. The trouble was that I
+      never liked to &lsquo;give in&rsquo; or go half-way to make it up&mdash;not half-way&mdash;it
+      was all the way or nothing with our natures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If I don&rsquo;t make a stand now,&rsquo; I&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll never be master. I gave up
+      the reins when I got married, and I&rsquo;ll have to get them back again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after, when
+      I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst other
+      things, I kept saying, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll give in, Mary&mdash;I&rsquo;ll give in,&rsquo; and then
+      I&rsquo;d laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the room.
+      But that time was to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in my
+      ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house that
+      evening&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did I bring her here?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not fit to &lsquo;go on the land&rsquo;. The place was only fit for some stolid
+      German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no ambition
+      but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted here
+      through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only neighbours&mdash;a
+      wretched selector&rsquo;s family, about four miles down the creek,&mdash;and I
+      thought I&rsquo;d go on to the house and see if they had any fresh meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on a
+      patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector&rsquo;s wife&mdash;I
+      had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman, and, I
+      supposed, the reason why she hadn&rsquo;t gone mad through hardship and
+      loneliness was that she hadn&rsquo;t either the brains or the memory to go
+      farther than she could see through the trunks of the &lsquo;apple-trees&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You, An-nay!&rsquo; (Annie.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye-es&rsquo; (from somewhere in the gloom).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell yer to water them geraniums!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, didn&rsquo;t I?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t tell lies or I&rsquo;ll break yer young back!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I did, I tell yer&mdash;the water won&rsquo;t soak inter the ashes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there. I
+      remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some sticks
+      against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks the fowls
+      used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and scratch dust over
+      them, and ashes were thrown there&mdash;with an idea of helping the
+      flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water was scarce&mdash;till
+      you might as well try to water a dish of fat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the woman&rsquo;s voice again&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You, Tom-may!&rsquo; (Tommy.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye-e-s!&rsquo; shrill shriek from across the creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want any
+      meat or any think?&rsquo; in one long screech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well&mdash;I karnt find the horse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.
+      And-don&rsquo;t-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi&rsquo;son-that-mother&rsquo;ll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t feel like going to the woman&rsquo;s house that night. I felt&mdash;and
+      the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart&mdash;that this was what
+      Mary would come to if I left her here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned and started to walk home, fast. I&rsquo;d made up my mind. I&rsquo;d take
+      Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning&mdash;I forgot about the load
+      I had to take to the sheep station. I&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;Look here, Girlie&rsquo; (that&rsquo;s
+      what I used to call her), &lsquo;we&rsquo;ll leave this wretched life; we&rsquo;ll leave the
+      Bush for ever! We&rsquo;ll go to Sydney, and I&rsquo;ll be a man! and work my way up.&rsquo; 
+      And I&rsquo;d sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene lamp,
+      a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms washed
+      out&mdash;to James&rsquo;s disgust, for he had to move the furniture and boxes
+      about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had laid clean
+      newspapers on the mantel-shelf&mdash;a slab on two pegs over the fireplace&mdash;and
+      put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of the ornaments on
+      each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American oil-cloth round
+      the rough edge of the slab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How does that look, Joe? We&rsquo;ll soon get things ship-shape.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the
+      kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow I didn&rsquo;t feel satisfied with the way things had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. &lsquo;Past Carin&rsquo;&rsquo;.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter in
+      the morning&mdash;more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in
+      most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the
+      lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades, and
+      then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to ashes&mdash;it
+      is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old things too,
+      that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can&rsquo;t understand. I
+      often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to new-chum
+      blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush. I used to
+      think that they couldn&rsquo;t have much brains, or the loneliness would drive
+      them mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive
+      alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better
+      than me&mdash;as long as the novelty lasted; and I&rsquo;d stay at home for a
+      week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from
+      somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of
+      loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first
+      weeks in jail are&mdash;I was never there. I know it&rsquo;s so with tramping or
+      hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.
+      But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the
+      last days used to be the worst with me: then I&rsquo;d have to make a move, or
+      drink. When you&rsquo;ve been too much and too long alone in a lonely place, you
+      begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts&mdash;provided you have
+      any imagination at all. You&rsquo;ll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the
+      lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that&rsquo;s
+      never likely to come that way&mdash;some one, or a stranger, that you
+      can&rsquo;t and don&rsquo;t really expect to see. I think that most men who have been
+      alone in the Bush for any length of time&mdash;and married couples too&mdash;are
+      more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who is
+      painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to stand
+      the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a rule.
+      It&rsquo;s only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you got.
+      Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have their
+      periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they&rsquo;d go raving mad. Drink
+      is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or half-yearly
+      spree is the only thing they&rsquo;ve got to look forward to: it keeps their
+      minds fixed on something definite ahead.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Graft&rsquo;, work.  The term is now applied, in Australia, to
+     all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of loneliness.
+      WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn&rsquo;t as bad as it might have been
+      farther up-country: there was generally some one came of a Sunday
+      afternoon&mdash;a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe a family,&mdash;or
+      a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On a quiet Sunday,
+      after I&rsquo;d brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and herself&mdash;just
+      the same as if we were in town&mdash;and make me get up on one end and put
+      on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek. She said she
+      wanted to keep me civilised. She tried to make a gentleman of me for
+      years, but gave it up gradually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well. It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the
+      waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out
+      clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard her
+      being hailed as &lsquo;Hi, missus!&rsquo; from the front slip-rails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a boy on horseback. He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy
+      of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs, especially his
+      bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged to a grown man. He had
+      a good face and frank grey eyes. An old, nearly black cabbage-tree hat
+      rested on the butts of his ears, turning them out at right angles from his
+      head, and rather dirty sprouts they were. He wore a dirty torn Crimean
+      shirt; and a pair of man&rsquo;s moleskin trousers rolled up above the knees,
+      with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide belt. I noticed, later
+      on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough for him, he always
+      rolled &lsquo;em up above the knees when on horseback, for some reason of his
+      own: to suggest leggings, perhaps, for he had them rolled up in all
+      weathers, and he wouldn&rsquo;t have bothered to save them from the sweat of the
+      horse, even if that horse ever sweated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of a
+      big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern something
+      after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.* His colour
+      was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey; and, one time, when I saw
+      his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought it was some old
+      shepherd&rsquo;s hut that I hadn&rsquo;t noticed there before. When he cantered it was
+      like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Humpy&rsquo;, a rough hut.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you Mrs Wilson?&rsquo; asked the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink. We
+      killed lars&rsquo; night, and I&rsquo;ve fetched a piece er cow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Piece of WHAT?&rsquo; asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy in
+      the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary&rsquo;s arm out when she took it. It
+      was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a
+      wood-axe, but it was fresh and clean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad!&rsquo; cried Mary. She was always impulsive, save to me
+      sometimes. &lsquo;I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh
+      meat. How kind of your mother! Tell her I&rsquo;m very much obliged to her
+      indeed.&rsquo; And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had. &lsquo;And now&mdash;how
+      much did your mother say it would be?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How much will it be,&rsquo; he repeated, puzzled. &lsquo;Oh&mdash;how much does it
+      weigh I-s&rsquo;pose-yer-mean. Well, it ain&rsquo;t been weighed at all&mdash;we ain&rsquo;t
+      got no scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it,
+      and cooks it, and eats it&mdash;and goes by guess. What won&rsquo;t keep we
+      salts down in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it
+      if yer wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go
+      bad before you could scoff it. I can&rsquo;t see&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes,&rsquo; said Mary, getting confused. &lsquo;But what I want to know is, how
+      do you manage when you sell it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared at her, and scratched his head. &lsquo;Sell it? Why, we only goes
+      halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers to the butcher&mdash;or
+      maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors, or tank-sinkers, or
+      them sorter people&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother
+      for this?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How much what?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Money, of course, you stupid boy,&rsquo; said Mary. &lsquo;You seem a very stupid
+      boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he saw what she was driving at. He began to fling his heels
+      convulsively against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward and
+      forward at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork
+      machinery inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need repairing
+      or oiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We ain&rsquo;t that sorter people, missus,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;We don&rsquo;t sell meat to new
+      people that come to settle here.&rsquo; Then, jerking his thumb contemptuously
+      towards the ridges, &lsquo;Go over ter Wall&rsquo;s if yer wanter buy meat; they sell
+      meat ter strangers.&rsquo; (Wall was the big squatter over the ridges.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Mary, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m SO sorry. Thank your mother for me. She IS kind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s nothink. She said to tell yer she&rsquo;ll be up as soon as she can.
+      She&rsquo;d have come up yisterday evening&mdash;she thought yer&rsquo;d feel lonely
+      comin&rsquo; new to a place like this&mdash;but she couldn&rsquo;t git up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting. You almost
+      heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old
+      propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of
+      Mary&rsquo;s voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been a
+      very poor selection that couldn&rsquo;t afford a better spare horse than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?&rsquo; said the boy, and he
+      pointed to one of my &lsquo;spreads&rsquo; (for the team-chains) that lay inside the
+      fence. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll fling it back agin over the fence when I git this ole cow
+      started.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But wait a minute&mdash;I&rsquo;ve forgotten your mother&rsquo;s name,&rsquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grabbed at his thatch impatiently. &lsquo;Me mother&mdash;oh!&mdash;the old
+      woman&rsquo;s name&rsquo;s Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)&rsquo; He twisted himself round,
+      and brought the stretcher down on one of the horse&rsquo;s &lsquo;points&rsquo; (and he had
+      many) with a crack that must have jarred his wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you go to school?&rsquo; asked Mary. There was a three-days-a-week school
+      over the ridges at Wall&rsquo;s station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No!&rsquo; he jerked out, keeping his legs going. &lsquo;Me&mdash;why I&rsquo;m going on
+      fur fifteen. The last teacher at Wall&rsquo;s finished me. I&rsquo;m going to
+      Queensland next month drovin&rsquo;.&rsquo; (Queensland border was over three hundred
+      miles away.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Finished you? How?&rsquo; asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Me edgercation, of course! How do yer expect me to start this horse when
+      yer keep talkin&rsquo;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He split the &lsquo;spread&rsquo; over the horse&rsquo;s point, threw the pieces over the
+      fence, and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old
+      saw-stool lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a
+      canter. That horse wasn&rsquo;t a trotter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And next month he DID start for Queensland. He was a younger son and a
+      surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection; and as there was
+      &lsquo;northin&rsquo; doin&rsquo;&rsquo; in the district, his father (in a burst of fatherly
+      kindness, I suppose) made him a present of the old horse and a new pair of
+      Blucher boots, and I gave him an old saddle and a coat, and he started for
+      the Never-Never Country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I&rsquo;ll bet he got there. But I&rsquo;m doubtful if the old horse did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don&rsquo;t think he had anything more
+      except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Spicer&rsquo;s farm&rsquo; was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native
+      apple-tree scrub. The clearing was fenced in by a light &lsquo;dog-legged&rsquo; fence
+      (a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights), and the
+      dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered with cattle-dung.
+      There was no attempt at cultivation when I came to live on the creek; but
+      there were old furrow-marks amongst the stumps of another shapeless patch
+      in the scrub near the hut. There was a wretched sapling cow-yard and
+      calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for shelter. There
+      was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set in one of the two
+      skillion rooms, or lean-to&rsquo;s behind the hut,&mdash;the other was &lsquo;the
+      boys&rsquo; bedroom&rsquo;. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers, and had thirty or
+      forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek once a-week, in her
+      rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter and eggs. The hut was
+      nearly as bare inside as it was out&mdash;just a frame of &lsquo;round-timber&rsquo; 
+      (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was permanent (unless you
+      rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab table on stakes driven
+      into the ground, and seats made the same way. Mary told me afterwards that
+      the beds in the bag-and-bark partitioned-off room (&lsquo;mother&rsquo;s bedroom&rsquo;)
+      were simply poles laid side by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes
+      driven into the ground, with straw mattresses and some worn-out
+      bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old patchwork quilt, in rags, and the
+      remains of a white one, and Mary said it was pitiful to see how these
+      things would be spread over the beds&mdash;to hide them as much as
+      possible&mdash;when she went down there. A packing-case, with something
+      like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked looking-glass
+      (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table. There were a couple of
+      gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys&rsquo; beds were three-bushel bags stretched
+      between poles fastened to uprights. The floor was the original surface,
+      tramped hard, worn uneven with much sweeping, and with puddles in rainy
+      weather where the roof leaked. Mrs Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes,
+      and buckets under as many of the leaks as she could. The saucepans,
+      kettles, and boilers were old kerosene-tins and billies. They used
+      kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in halves, for setting the milk in. The
+      plates and cups were of tin; there were two or three cups without saucers,
+      and a crockery plate or two&mdash;also two mugs, cracked and without
+      handles, one with &lsquo;For a Good Boy&rsquo; and the other with &lsquo;For a Good Girl&rsquo; on
+      it; but all these were kept on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for
+      company. They were the only ornaments in the house, save a little wooden
+      clock that hadn&rsquo;t gone for years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she
+      had &lsquo;some things packed away from the children.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pictures were cut from old copies of the &lsquo;Illustrated Sydney News&rsquo; and
+      pasted on to the bark. I remember this, because I remembered, long ago,
+      the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy, had the walls of
+      their bedroom covered with illustrations of the American Civil War, cut
+      from illustrated London papers, and I used to &lsquo;sneak&rsquo; into &lsquo;mother&rsquo;s
+      bedroom&rsquo; with Fred Spencer whenever we got the chance, and gloat over the
+      prints. I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for taking me in there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw very little of Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and whiskered
+      man. I had an idea that he wasn&rsquo;t a selector at all, only a &lsquo;dummy&rsquo; for
+      the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were allowed to take
+      up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters kept them off as much
+      as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry persecution. The squatter
+      would get as much freehold as he could afford, &lsquo;select&rsquo; as much land as
+      the law allowed one man to take up, and then employ dummies (dummy
+      selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied about his run, and hold
+      them for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home. He was
+      generally supposed to be away shearin&rsquo;, or fencin&rsquo;, or workin&rsquo; on
+      somebody&rsquo;s station. It turned out that the last six months he was away it
+      was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut out,
+      found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he and his
+      mates couldn&rsquo;t account for satisfactorily, while the squatter could. Then
+      the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and treacle, or bread
+      and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every egg was needed for
+      the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar. Mary found that out,
+      but couldn&rsquo;t help them much&mdash;except by &lsquo;stuffing&rsquo; the children with
+      bread and meat or bread and jam whenever they came up to our place&mdash;for
+      Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride that lies down in the end and turns
+      its face to the wall and dies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was hungry,
+      she denied it&mdash;but she looked it. A ragged mite she had with her
+      explained things. The little fellow said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked; but if yer give
+      us anythink to eat, we was to take it an&rsquo; say thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;a&rsquo; told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me, Mrs
+      Wilson,&rsquo; said Annie. &lsquo;Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested, and her face was
+      &lsquo;burnt to a brick&rsquo;, as they say out there. She had brown eyes, nearly red,
+      and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face&mdash;ground sharp by
+      hardship&mdash;the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression like&mdash;well,
+      like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one time, and
+      wanted to know everybody&rsquo;s business and hear everything, and had lost all
+      her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick suspicious
+      movements of the head. I don&rsquo;t suppose you understand. I can&rsquo;t explain it
+      any other way. She was not more than forty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look
+      at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she
+      had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of &lsquo;corned beef&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes&mdash;of&mdash;course,&rsquo; she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to
+      say, &lsquo;Is there anything more you want while the shop&rsquo;s open?&rsquo; I&rsquo;d met just
+      the same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the
+      shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I
+      didn&rsquo;t turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come&mdash;inside,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and sit down. I see you&rsquo;ve got the waggon
+      outside. I s&rsquo;pose your name&rsquo;s Wilson, ain&rsquo;t it? You&rsquo;re thinkin&rsquo; about
+      takin&rsquo; on Harry Marshfield&rsquo;s selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait till
+      I fry you a chop and boil the billy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of a
+      phonograph&mdash;I heard one in Sydney the other day&mdash;and not like a
+      voice coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday
+      life on this selection she spoke in a sort of&mdash;in a sort of lost
+      groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She didn&rsquo;t talk much this time&mdash;just spoke in a mechanical way of the
+      drought, and the hard times, &lsquo;an&rsquo; butter &lsquo;n&rsquo; eggs bein&rsquo; down, an&rsquo; her
+      husban&rsquo; an&rsquo; eldest son bein&rsquo; away, an&rsquo; that makin&rsquo; it so hard for her.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count
+      them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used to
+      run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as
+      piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years&mdash;and
+      God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she
+      only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she
+      seldom spoke of them. The girl, &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;, was &lsquo;in service in Sydney.&rsquo; I&rsquo;m
+      afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was &lsquo;away&rsquo;. He had been a bit
+      of a favourite round there, it seemed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one might ask her, &lsquo;How&rsquo;s your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?&rsquo; or, &lsquo;Heard of
+      Jack lately? and where is he now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s somewheres up country,&rsquo; she&rsquo;d say in the &lsquo;groping&rsquo; voice, or
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s drovin&rsquo; in Queenslan&rsquo;,&rsquo; or &lsquo;Shearin&rsquo; on the Darlin&rsquo; the last time I
+      heerd from him.&rsquo; &lsquo;We ain&rsquo;t had a line from him since&mdash;les&rsquo; see&mdash;since
+      Chris&rsquo;mas &lsquo;fore last.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she&rsquo;d turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way
+      towards the west&mdash;towards &lsquo;up-country&rsquo; and &lsquo;Out-Back&rsquo;.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Out-Back&rsquo; is always west of the Bushman, no matter how
+     far out he be.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and lines
+      across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother. Tommy
+      went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill (older
+      than Tommy), was &lsquo;a bit wild.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the
+      droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the warm,
+      sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard,
+      &lsquo;bailing up&rsquo; and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round the
+      neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was tough
+      as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the
+      &lsquo;poddies&rsquo; (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I&rsquo;d get off the horse and give her
+      a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow that wouldn&rsquo;t
+      &lsquo;bail-up&rsquo; and threatened her with her horns. She&rsquo;d say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we&rsquo;re ever goin&rsquo; to have any rain?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July,
+      and seen her trudging about the yard&mdash;that was ankle-deep in black
+      liquid filth&mdash;with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat
+      of her husband&rsquo;s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I&rsquo;ve
+      seen her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner,
+      and trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And
+      when I&rsquo;d fixed the leak&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain&rsquo;s a blessin&rsquo;! Come in and have a
+      dry at the fire and I&rsquo;ll make yer a cup of tea.&rsquo; And, if I was in a hurry,
+      &lsquo;Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds
+      up. Yer can&rsquo;t go home like this! Yer&rsquo;ll git yer death o&rsquo; cold.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and
+      apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to
+      feed the starving cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jist tryin&rsquo; ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst
+      her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were
+      down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo;, one day,&rsquo; she told Mary, &lsquo;there was a big barren heifer (that we
+      called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She&rsquo;d been down
+      for four days and hadn&rsquo;t moved, when one mornin&rsquo; I dumped some wheaten
+      chaff&mdash;we had a few bags that Spicer brought home&mdash;I dumped it
+      in front of her nose, an&rsquo;&mdash;would yer b&rsquo;lieve me, Mrs Wilson?&mdash;she
+      stumbled onter her feet an&rsquo; chased me all the way to the house! I had to
+      pick up me skirts an&rsquo; run! Wasn&rsquo;t it redic&rsquo;lus?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried
+      Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We lost nearly all our milkers,&rsquo; she told Mary. &lsquo;I remember one day Tommy
+      came running to the house and screamed: &lsquo;Marther! [mother] there&rsquo;s another
+      milker down with the ploorer!&rsquo; Jist as if it was great news. Well, Mrs
+      Wilson, I was dead-beat, an&rsquo; I giv&rsquo; in. I jist sat down to have a good
+      cry, and felt for my han&rsquo;kerchief&mdash;it WAS a rag of a han&rsquo;kerchief,
+      full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without seein&rsquo; what I was
+      doin&rsquo; I put me finger through one hole in the han&rsquo;kerchief an&rsquo; me thumb
+      through the other, and poked me fingers into me eyes, instead of wipin&rsquo; 
+      them. Then I had to laugh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&rsquo;s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out
+      all along the creek on Spicer&rsquo;s side, Wall&rsquo;s station hands were up above
+      our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and towards
+      evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they saw smoke
+      down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small crop of
+      wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain&rsquo;t
+      already!&rsquo; shouted young Billy Wall. &lsquo;Come along, three or four of you
+      chaps&rsquo;&mdash;(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the
+      station).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raced down the creek to Spicer&rsquo;s, and were just in time to save the
+      wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning
+      grass with a bough. She&rsquo;d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a
+      gin, they said. She only said when they&rsquo;d turned the fire: &lsquo;Thenk yer!
+      Wait an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll make some tea.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well&mdash;no, Mrs Wilson,&rsquo; she said in the groping sort of voice. &lsquo;I
+      uster, once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river&mdash;we
+      lived in a brick house then&mdash;the first time Spicer had to go away
+      from home I nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin&rsquo; shearin&rsquo; for
+      a month. I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little
+      while. He&rsquo;s been away drovin&rsquo; in Queenslan&rsquo; as long as eighteen months at
+      a time since then. But&rsquo; (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than
+      ever) &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t mind,&mdash;I somehow seem to have got past carin&rsquo;. Besides&mdash;besides,
+      Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now. He&rsquo;s got so moody
+      and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m talkin&rsquo; about! You mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of
+      me, Mrs Wilson,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t often go on like this. I do believe I&rsquo;m
+      gittin&rsquo; a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time &lsquo;when Spicer was a
+      different man to what he was now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for a
+      long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said
+      suddenly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She&rsquo;s only a girl.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m talkin&rsquo; about! I b&rsquo;lieve I&rsquo;m gittin&rsquo; ratty. You
+      mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wasn&rsquo;t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with
+      her, she&rsquo;d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which
+      used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn&rsquo;t help it, and she
+      seemed to hear all the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her great trouble was that she &lsquo;couldn&rsquo;t git no reg&rsquo;lar schoolin&rsquo; for the
+      children.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I learns &lsquo;em at home as much as I can. But I don&rsquo;t git a minute to call
+      me own; an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I&rsquo;m fit for
+      nothink.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them a
+      little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the
+      handiest youngster and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&mdash;do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin&rsquo; to teach yer, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s
+      more than yer deserve!&rsquo; (the youngster had been &lsquo;cryin&rsquo;&rsquo; over something).
+      &lsquo;Now, go up an&rsquo; say &ldquo;Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.&rdquo; And if yer ain&rsquo;t good, and
+      don&rsquo;t do as she tells yer, I&rsquo;ll break every bone in yer young body!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children were sent by turns over to Wall&rsquo;s to Sunday-school. When
+      Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was
+      no end of rows about them in the family&mdash;for the mother made him lend
+      them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There
+      were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and
+      these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean
+      and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God&rsquo;s earth
+      is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the broken
+      worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string
+      for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched threadbare
+      frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand&mdash;and no matter
+      where they are&mdash;I always see the worn face of the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.
+      I&rsquo;d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back
+      with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up several
+      times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn&rsquo;t sit down and condole
+      with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking about the time
+      when she was ill herself. She&rsquo;d take off her hat&mdash;a shapeless little
+      lump of black straw she wore for visiting&mdash;give her hair a quick
+      brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her sleeves, and set to
+      work to &lsquo;tidy up&rsquo;. She seemed to take most pleasure in sorting out our
+      children&rsquo;s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she used to dress her own
+      like that in the days when Spicer was a different man from what he was
+      now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates of some women&rsquo;s journals
+      we had, and used to study them with an interest that puzzled me, for she
+      was not likely to go in for fashion. She never talked of her early
+      girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed, was inclined to think
+      that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up. For instance, Dr
+      Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall&rsquo;s wife, and drove up
+      the creek to our place on his way back to see how Mary and the baby were
+      getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some table-napkins that she had
+      packed away for occasions like this; and she said that the way Mrs Spicer
+      handled the things, and helped set the table (though she did it in a
+      mechanical sort of way), convinced her that she had been used to
+      table-napkins at one time in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say
+      suddenly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, Mrs Spicer?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because the visits doesn&rsquo;t do me any good. I git the dismals afterwards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh,-I-don&rsquo;t-know-what-I&rsquo;m-talkin&rsquo;-about. You mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of
+      me.&rsquo; And she&rsquo;d put on her hat, kiss the children&mdash;and Mary too,
+      sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child&mdash;and go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again next
+      day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t come down any more till I&rsquo;m on me feet, Mrs Wilson.
+      The children can do for me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, Mrs Spicer?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were the aristocrats of Lahey&rsquo;s Creek. Whenever we drove down on Sunday
+      afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough for them to
+      hear the rattle of the cart, we&rsquo;d see the children running to the house as
+      fast as they could split, and hear them screaming&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we&rsquo;d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the front
+      door, and she&rsquo;d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of
+      &lsquo;broom-stuff&rsquo;&mdash;coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges&mdash;with
+      a stick stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in
+      front of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one
+      flick of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she&rsquo;d catch a youngster and
+      scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel round
+      her finger and dig out his ears&mdash;as if she was anxious to have him
+      hear every word that was going to be said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No matter what state the house would be in she&rsquo;d always say, &lsquo;I was jist
+      expectin&rsquo; yer, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; And she was original in that, anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to
+      spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course (&lsquo;The others
+      is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson&rsquo;), but I saw by the
+      eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing to them.
+      &lsquo;I must really git some more knives an&rsquo; forks next time I&rsquo;m in Cobborah,&rsquo; 
+      she&rsquo;d say. &lsquo;The children break an&rsquo; lose &lsquo;em till I&rsquo;m ashamed to ask
+      Christians ter sit down ter the table.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather
+      ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.
+      But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to &lsquo;Drive
+      out them fowls, karnt yer,&rsquo; or &lsquo;Take yer maulies [hands] outer the sugar,&rsquo; 
+      or &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t touch Mrs Wilson&rsquo;s baby with them dirty maulies,&rsquo; or &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      stand starin&rsquo; at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an&rsquo; ears in that vulgar way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was a
+      habit, but they didn&rsquo;t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit.
+      I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing,
+      and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child
+      from daylight till dark&mdash;and after it. Taking it all round, I think
+      that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary children,
+      and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking habit in a
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who used
+      to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit suicide.
+      Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye off him for
+      a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The men ran in and
+      found him hanging and kicking. &lsquo;They let him hang for a while,&rsquo; said Mrs
+      Spicer, &lsquo;till he went black in the face and stopped kicking. Then they cut
+      him down and threw a bucket of water over him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?&rsquo; asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of
+      tryin&rsquo; to hang himself again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, that&rsquo;s the coolest thing I ever heard of,&rsquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,&rsquo; said Mrs Spicer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One morning,&rsquo; said Mrs Spicer, &lsquo;Spicer had gone off on his horse
+      somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the door
+      and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, woman, give me a drink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum&mdash;his
+      clothes was good, but he looked as if he&rsquo;d been sleepin&rsquo; in them in the
+      Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin&rsquo;, so I
+      gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his head
+      till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said, &ldquo;Thenk
+      yer, mum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was so surprised that I didn&rsquo;t know what to say, so I jist said, &ldquo;Would
+      you like some more coffee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes, thenk yer,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;about two quarts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head as
+      long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, &ldquo;Thenk yer, mum&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      a fine day,&rdquo; and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps in his
+      hands.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, what did he stand on his head for?&rsquo; asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the
+      coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall&rsquo;s to tell them that
+      there was a man wanderin&rsquo; about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and to
+      get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he hanged
+      himself that night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O Lord!&rsquo; cried Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall&rsquo;s
+      branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin&rsquo; to
+      the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary stared at her, speechless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tommy came home yellin&rsquo; with fright. I sent him over to Wall&rsquo;s at once.
+      After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped
+      away and went down there. They came back screamin&rsquo; at the tops of their
+      voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won&rsquo;t want ter see a dead
+      body again in a hurry. Every time I&rsquo;d mention it they&rsquo;d huddle together,
+      or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yer&rsquo;ll go agen when I tell yer not to,&rdquo; I&rsquo;d say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh no, mother,&rdquo; they&rsquo;d howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yer wanted ter see a man hangin&rsquo;,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t, mother! Don&rsquo;t talk about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yer wouldn&rsquo;t be satisfied till yer see it,&rdquo; I&rsquo;d say; &ldquo;yer had to see it
+      or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain&rsquo;t yer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t, mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yer run all the way there, I s&rsquo;pose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;But yer run faster back, didn&rsquo;t yer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But,&rsquo; said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, &lsquo;I&rsquo;d been down to see it myself
+      before they was up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And ain&rsquo;t you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible
+      things?&rsquo; asked Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, no; I don&rsquo;t mind. I seem to have got past carin&rsquo; for anythink now.
+      I felt it a little when Tommy went away&mdash;the first time I felt
+      anythink for years. But I&rsquo;m over that now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh yes. There&rsquo;s me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother
+      near Dubbo; he&rsquo;s got a station. They wanted to take me an&rsquo; the children
+      between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn&rsquo;t bring
+      my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as much
+      as possible. There&rsquo;s enough of them gone, God knows. But it&rsquo;s a comfort to
+      know that there&rsquo;s some one to see to them if anythink happens to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      One day&mdash;I was on my way home with the team that day&mdash;Annie
+      Spicer came running up the creek in terrible trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl&rsquo;s happened at home! A trooper&rsquo; (mounted
+      policeman&mdash;they called them &lsquo;mounted troopers&rsquo; out there), &lsquo;a
+      trooper&rsquo;s come and took Billy!&rsquo; Billy was the eldest son at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s true, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for? What did the policeman say?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&mdash;he&mdash;he said, &ldquo;I&mdash;I&rsquo;m very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but&mdash;I&mdash;I
+      want William.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from
+      Wall&rsquo;s station and sold down-country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; mother took on awful,&rsquo; sobbed Annie; &lsquo;an&rsquo; now she&rsquo;ll only sit
+      stock-still an&rsquo; stare in front of her, and won&rsquo;t take no notice of any of
+      us. Oh! it&rsquo;s awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he&rsquo;d tell Aunt Emma&rsquo; 
+      (Mrs Spicer&rsquo;s sister at Cobborah), &lsquo;and send her out. But I had to come to
+      you, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve run all the way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary told me all about it when I came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my arms.
+      Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn&rsquo;t cry like a woman. I heard a man at
+      Haviland cry at his brother&rsquo;s funeral, and it was just like that. She came
+      round a bit after a while. Her sister&rsquo;s with her now.... Oh, Joe! you must
+      take me away from the Bush.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on Mary said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Next morning I rode across to Wall&rsquo;s station and tackled the old man; but
+      he was a hard man, and wouldn&rsquo;t listen to me&mdash;in fact, he ordered me
+      off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But young
+      Billy Wall rode after me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe!&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s a blanky shame. All for the sake of a
+      horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn&rsquo;t got enough to put up
+      with already! I wouldn&rsquo;t do it for twenty horses. I&rsquo;LL tackle the boss,
+      and if he won&rsquo;t listen to me, I&rsquo;ll walk off the run for the last time, if
+      I have to carry my swag.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy
+      Spicer off up-country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to
+      our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk of
+      nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look forward
+      to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If it only could have been kep&rsquo; quiet&mdash;for the sake of the other
+      children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring &lsquo;em all up decent,
+      but I s&rsquo;pose it was my fault, somehow. It&rsquo;s the disgrace that&rsquo;s killin&rsquo; me&mdash;I
+      can&rsquo;t bear it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie
+      Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall&rsquo;s station (I must tell you
+      about her some other time; James was &lsquo;shook after her&rsquo;), and we got
+      talkin&rsquo; about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,&rsquo; said Mary. &lsquo;She seems better lately.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why!&rsquo; cried Maggie Charlsworth, &lsquo;if that ain&rsquo;t Annie coming running up
+      along the creek. Something&rsquo;s the matter!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all jumped up and ran out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Annie?&rsquo; cried Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother&rsquo;s asleep, and we can&rsquo;t wake her!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s the truth, Mrs Wilson.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How long has she been asleep?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Since lars&rsquo; night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My God!&rsquo; cried Mary, &lsquo;SINCE LAST NIGHT?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this
+      mornin&rsquo;. She called me and said she didn&rsquo;t feel well, and I&rsquo;d have to
+      manage the milkin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Was that all she said?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and calves;
+      and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn&rsquo;t let her. James and I saddled our horses
+      and rode down the creek.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last saw
+      her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was dead. But
+      she was &lsquo;past carin&rsquo;&rsquo; right enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A Double Buggy at Lahey&rsquo;s Creek.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. Spuds, and a Woman&rsquo;s Obstinacy.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ever since we were married it had been Mary&rsquo;s great ambition to have a
+      buggy. The house or furniture didn&rsquo;t matter so much&mdash;out there in the
+      Bush where we were&mdash;but, where there were no railways or coaches, and
+      the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great
+      thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one
+      then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a
+      second-hand one that I&rsquo;d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at
+      last she said, &lsquo;Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I&rsquo;ll
+      be satisfied. I&rsquo;ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while. Wait
+      till we&rsquo;re better off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, whenever I took a contract&mdash;to put up a fence or
+      wool-shed, or sink a dam or something&mdash;Mary would say, &lsquo;You ought to
+      knock a buggy out of this job, Joe;&rsquo; but something always turned up&mdash;bad
+      weather or sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up;
+      and, another time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I
+      finished it. Then Mary would say, &lsquo;Ah, well&mdash;never mind, Joe. Wait
+      till we are better off.&rsquo; But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed
+      and didn&rsquo;t get paid for it, for we&rsquo;d as good as settled about another
+      second-hand buggy then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made a
+      spring-cart&mdash;body and wheels&mdash;in spare time, out of colonial
+      hardwood, and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the
+      cart myself. It wasn&rsquo;t much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but
+      it WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway,
+      I didn&rsquo;t hear any more of the buggy for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted a
+      strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was just
+      before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the money in
+      case of extra expense&mdash;and she didn&rsquo;t fret much at losing that cart.
+      But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for a buggy, as a
+      present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of getting the
+      turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her till she was on
+      her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing in the shed. But
+      she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor regularly, and get a
+      proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the buggy idea was knocked on
+      the head. I was set on it, too: I&rsquo;d thought of how, when Mary was up and
+      getting strong, I&rsquo;d say one morning, &lsquo;Go round and have a look in the
+      shed, Mary; I&rsquo;ve got a few fowls for you,&rsquo; or something like that&mdash;and
+      follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw the buggy. I never told
+      Mary about that&mdash;it wouldn&rsquo;t have done any good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on I got some good timber&mdash;mostly scraps that were given to me&mdash;and
+      made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder at
+      Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from
+      Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price
+      and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through the
+      paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom Tarrant&rsquo;s
+      big van&mdash;to increase the surprise. We were swells then for a while; I
+      heard no more of a buggy until after we&rsquo;d been settled at Lahey&rsquo;s Creek
+      for a couple of years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at
+      Lahey&rsquo;s Creek&mdash;for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed&mdash;and
+      shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary&rsquo;s young
+      scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road. The
+      first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it&mdash;it
+      was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from
+      home. The game was right enough for a single man&mdash;or a married one
+      whose wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have&mdash;God
+      help &lsquo;em!), and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other
+      small carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the
+      coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put it
+      on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second year I made a rise&mdash;out of &lsquo;spuds&rsquo;, of all the things in
+      the world. It was Mary&rsquo;s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection&mdash;Mary
+      called it &lsquo;the run&rsquo;&mdash;was a shallow watercourse called Snake&rsquo;s Creek,
+      dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just
+      above the junction, where it ran into Lahey&rsquo;s Creek, was a low piece of
+      good black-soil flat, on our side&mdash;about three acres. The flat was
+      fairly clear when I came to the selection&mdash;save for a few logs that
+      had been washed up there in some big &lsquo;old man&rsquo; flood, way back in
+      black-fellows&rsquo; times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the
+      horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together&mdash;those that
+      wouldn&rsquo;t split for fencing timber&mdash;and burnt them off. I had a notion
+      to get the flat ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good
+      water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take
+      her stools and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot
+      weather, and wash the clothes under the shade of the trees&mdash;it was
+      cooler, and saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she&rsquo;d
+      done the washing she said to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they
+      don&rsquo;t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is
+      going to be like&mdash;they just go on farming the same old way and
+      putting in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it
+      comes on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn&rsquo;t,
+      they mow it for hay&mdash;and some of &lsquo;em don&rsquo;t have the brains to do that
+      in time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck
+      me that it wouldn&rsquo;t be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes, and
+      have the land ploughed&mdash;old Corny George would do it cheap&mdash;and
+      get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last
+      couple of years.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for
+      potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. &lsquo;Everybody I know has tried
+      it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,&rsquo; said Mary. &lsquo;Just try one
+      crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you&rsquo;ll be sorry you didn&rsquo;t take my
+      advice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do you know? You haven&rsquo;t sown any there yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I&rsquo;ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It&rsquo;s not rich enough,
+      and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do
+      you think I don&rsquo;t know land when I see it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you haven&rsquo;t TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you know&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea into
+      her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I&rsquo;d be talking
+      she&rsquo;d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead, on the
+      track she&rsquo;d started,&mdash;just as if I wasn&rsquo;t there,&mdash;and it used to
+      make me mad. She&rsquo;d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my
+      temper,&mdash;I did both at the same time, mostly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down to
+      Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after I&rsquo;d
+      kissed Mary good-bye, she said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I will
+      slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his plough up
+      in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could put the
+      potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought she&rsquo;d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      be sure to lose my temper, and then I&rsquo;d either have to waste an hour
+      comforting Mary or go off in a &lsquo;huff&rsquo;, as the women call it, and be
+      miserable for the trip. So I said I&rsquo;d see about it. She gave me another
+      hug and a kiss. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t forget, Joe,&rsquo; she said as I started. &lsquo;Think it over
+      on the road.&rsquo; I reckon she had the best of it that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard some
+      one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a start,
+      for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember, the first
+      day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles I was
+      half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back&mdash;only I thought she&rsquo;d
+      laugh at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, James?&rsquo; I shouted, before he came up&mdash;but I saw he was
+      grinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You clear off home!&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;or I&rsquo;ll lay the whip about your young hide;
+      and don&rsquo;t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, you needn&rsquo;t get shirty with me!&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;*I* don&rsquo;t want to have
+      anything to do with a hoe.&rsquo; And he rode off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn&rsquo;t meant to. I knew
+      of an independent man in that district who&rsquo;d made his money out of a crop
+      of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring &lsquo;Fifties&mdash;&lsquo;54&mdash;when
+      spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight (in Sydney), on
+      account of the gold rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it
+      wouldn&rsquo;t cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would
+      be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I&rsquo;d have a better
+      show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping,
+      and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got a couple of bags of potatoes&mdash;we could use those that were left
+      over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the
+      blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap&mdash;only about a
+      pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I
+      generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding
+      notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I
+      could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn&rsquo;t
+      strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow
+      against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen
+      shillings.) Anyway, I&rsquo;d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might as
+      well get it now; it would give James something to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and
+      the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And Mary
+      was down on the bank superintending. She&rsquo;d got James with the trace-chains
+      and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every stick and bush
+      where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny looked pretty grumpy
+      on it&mdash;he&rsquo;d broken all his ploughshares but one, in the roots; and
+      James didn&rsquo;t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair
+      of &lsquo;lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were covered with clay,
+      for she&rsquo;d been down hustling James to get a rotten old stump out of the
+      way by the time Corny came round with his next furrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought I&rsquo;d make the boots easy for you, Joe,&rsquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all right, Mary,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not going to growl.&rsquo; Those boots were
+      a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off before I
+      got home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,
+      but I said that would be all right&mdash;we&rsquo;d want a plough anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I never said so.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you
+      didn&rsquo;t say you wouldn&rsquo;t bring it,&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When
+      Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or
+      two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added
+      nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork:
+      he&rsquo;d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or fencing,
+      or any graft he could make a show at. He didn&rsquo;t care for grubbing out
+      stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the potatoes of an evening&mdash;and
+      there was trouble between Mary and James over cutting through the &lsquo;eyes&rsquo;.
+      There was no time for the hoe&mdash;and besides it wasn&rsquo;t a novelty to
+      James&mdash;so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me,
+      and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground.
+      I think I hilled those spuds, too, with furrows&mdash;or a crop of Indian
+      corn I put in later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all
+      through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the district.
+      I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see if the
+      potatoes were up; and she&rsquo;d write to me about them, on the road. I forget
+      how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the district
+      sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen shillings a
+      hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of mine&mdash;and
+      saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon. Then Mary
+      began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for sale cheap,
+      or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of&mdash;and let me know
+      about it, in an offhand way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. Joe Wilson&rsquo;s Luck.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was good grass on the selection all the year. I&rsquo;d picked up a small
+      lot&mdash;about twenty head&mdash;of half-starved steers for next to
+      nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my
+      brother-in-law (Mary&rsquo;s sister&rsquo;s husband), who was running a butchery at
+      Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or thirty
+      miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th&rsquo; Home Rule,
+      Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those places round
+      there, and he was doing well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went&mdash;a
+      tray-body arrangement, and she thought she&rsquo;d do with that. &lsquo;It would be
+      better than the buggy, Joe,&rsquo; she said&mdash;&lsquo;there&rsquo;d be more room for the
+      children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, or
+      Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.&rsquo; Then James heard of a small flock
+      of sheep that a selector&mdash;who was about starved off his selection out
+      Talbragar way&mdash;wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get them
+      for less than half-a-crown a-head. We&rsquo;d had a heavy shower of rain, that
+      came over the ranges and didn&rsquo;t seem to go beyond our boundaries. Mary
+      said, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe. Better get
+      those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money with me, and
+      I&rsquo;ll send James over for them. Never mind about the buggy&mdash;we&rsquo;ll get
+      that when we&rsquo;re on our feet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that
+      unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two
+      hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed
+      too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up, though.
+      The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that my corner
+      of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to speak of. We
+      had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps began to talk of
+      &lsquo;Joe Wilson&rsquo;s luck&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn&rsquo;t time to get a shed
+      or anything ready&mdash;along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom
+      in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen to
+      fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to truck
+      the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that was
+      going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and down
+      Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who was
+      speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) offered
+      James as much for them as he reckoned I&rsquo;d get in Sydney, after paying the
+      carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the sheep in a
+      paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding was concerned.
+      I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his
+      saddle done up, out of that job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks&mdash;one in James&rsquo;s name, to
+      encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an angle
+      between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody thought
+      belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went to the
+      local land office and found out that it was &lsquo;unoccupied Crown land&rsquo;, and
+      so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more sheep&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening&mdash;I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for
+      myself&mdash;Mary said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and I
+      didn&rsquo;t think much of them. The sons were all &lsquo;bad-eggs&rsquo;, though the old
+      woman and girls were right enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what of that?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;They&rsquo;re up to their neck in debt, and
+      camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go
+      flashing round in a double buggy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But that isn&rsquo;t what I was going to say,&rsquo; said Mary. &lsquo;They want to sell
+      their old single buggy, James says. I&rsquo;m sure you could get it for six or
+      seven pounds; and you could have it done up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wish James to the devil!&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t he find anything better to do
+      than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said Mary, &lsquo;it was James who got the steers and the sheep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn&rsquo;t mean&mdash;but
+      couldn&rsquo;t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary always
+      dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and
+      struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her, and
+      she spoke of the &lsquo;homes&rsquo; she&rsquo;d had since she was married. And that cut me
+      deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my hat
+      and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything that
+      looked like injustice&mdash;I was so sensitive about it that it made me
+      unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn&rsquo;t&mdash;it
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got
+      thinking of Mary&rsquo;s first year on the selection and the life she&rsquo;d had
+      since we were married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went in she&rsquo;d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, &lsquo;Mary,&rsquo; I
+      whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to wake up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Joe&mdash;Joe!&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it Mary?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m pretty well sure that old Spot&rsquo;s calf isn&rsquo;t in the pen. Make James go
+      at once!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Spot&rsquo;s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her
+      sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn&rsquo;t feel
+      like laughing just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Joe&mdash;Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the
+      varnish!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to
+      Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and took
+      Mary&rsquo;s breakfast in to her&mdash;like I used to do, sometimes, when we
+      were first married. She didn&rsquo;t say anything&mdash;just pulled my head down
+      and kissed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was ready to start Mary said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres
+      cut and set. They&rsquo;re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up
+      till he&rsquo;s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children I had to
+      knock one of them back with a stone: there&rsquo;ll be an accident yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and mean
+      and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It suggested
+      a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down in front
+      of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless&mdash;and
+      I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me, but
+      that didn&rsquo;t keep me from brooding sometimes&mdash;trying to hatch out
+      stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I
+      used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up&mdash;and more generous. When
+      I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, &lsquo;Lend me
+      a pound-note, Joe,&rsquo; than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless
+      chaps&mdash;and lost mates that I wanted afterwards&mdash;and got the name
+      of being mean. When I got a good cheque I&rsquo;d be as miserable as a miser
+      over the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I&rsquo;d buy
+      things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a
+      pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the
+      greater the fear I had of it&mdash;and, besides, there was always before
+      us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and
+      dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren
+      creeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had a long yarn with Mary&rsquo;s sister and her husband that night in
+      Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a
+      brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one,
+      and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn&rsquo;t help
+      thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to talk
+      to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black Mary or
+      Black Jimmy (our black boy&rsquo;s father and mother), who weren&rsquo;t
+      oversentimental. Or maybe a selector&rsquo;s wife (the nearest was five miles
+      away), who could talk only of two or three things&mdash;&lsquo;lambin&rsquo;&rsquo; and
+      &lsquo;shearin&rsquo;&rsquo; and &lsquo;cookin&rsquo; for the men&rsquo;, and what she said to her old man,
+      and what he said to her&mdash;and her own ailments&mdash;over and over
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It&rsquo;s a wonder it didn&rsquo;t drive Mary mad!&mdash;I know I could never listen
+      to that woman more than an hour. Mary&rsquo;s sister said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the children
+      oftener. Then she wouldn&rsquo;t feel the loneliness so much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said &lsquo;Good night&rsquo; then and turned in. There was no getting away from
+      that buggy. Whenever Mary&rsquo;s sister started hinting about a buggy, I
+      reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. The Ghost of Mary&rsquo;s Sacrifice.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly&rsquo;s coach-shop to leave the
+      cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers&mdash;one
+      was a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men&mdash;the biggest
+      men in the district, &lsquo;twas said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men, and
+      only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a special
+      work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into the
+      painter&rsquo;s shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had built
+      for a man who couldn&rsquo;t pay cash for it when it was finished&mdash;and
+      Galletly wouldn&rsquo;t trust him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to
+      keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece of
+      work&mdash;pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you
+      only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in the
+      shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat; if you
+      only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back seat, and
+      there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go near fifty
+      pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, there&rsquo;s a chance for you, Joe!&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I saw you rubbing your
+      head round that buggy the last time you were in. You wouldn&rsquo;t get a better
+      one in the colonies, and you won&rsquo;t see another like it in the district
+      again in a hurry&mdash;for it doesn&rsquo;t pay to build &lsquo;em. Now you&rsquo;re a
+      full-blown squatter, and it&rsquo;s time you took little Mary for a fly round in
+      her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in the
+      scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother
+      Flourbag.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called her &lsquo;little Mary&rsquo; because the Galletly family had known her when
+      she was a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again. It was a great temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Joe,&rsquo; said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you
+      what I&rsquo;ll do. I&rsquo;ll let YOU have the buggy. You can take it out and send
+      along a bit of a cheque when you feel you can manage it, and the rest
+      later on,&mdash;a year will do, or even two years. You&rsquo;ve had a hard pull,
+      and I&rsquo;m not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men. I happened
+      to know that Bill Galletly wouldn&rsquo;t let the man he built the buggy for
+      take it out of the shop without cash down, though he was a big-bug round
+      there. But that didn&rsquo;t make it easier for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than
+      his brother, but the two were very much alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Bob,&rsquo; said Bill; &lsquo;here&rsquo;s a chance for you to get rid of your
+      harness. Joe Wilson&rsquo;s going to take that buggy off my hands.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his
+      pockets, rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his
+      hand, and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did when
+      he was thinking. Presently he took his foot down, put his hand back in his
+      pocket, and said to me, &lsquo;Well, Joe, I&rsquo;ve got a double set of harness made
+      for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like I&rsquo;ll let you
+      have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he can out of you I&rsquo;ll
+      stand a show of getting something. He&rsquo;s a regular Shylock, he is.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared at the
+      buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come across to the Royal, Joe,&rsquo; said Bob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said I&rsquo;d get the
+      wool up to the station first and think it over, and have a drink when I
+      came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn&rsquo;t seem good
+      enough. I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to be
+      fenced in, and the instalments on the selections. I wanted lots of things
+      that I couldn&rsquo;t well do without. Then, again, the farther I got away from
+      debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it. I had two
+      horses that would do; but I&rsquo;d have to get another later on, and altogether
+      the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds. Supposing a dry
+      season threw me back with that buggy on my hands. Besides, I wanted a
+      spell. If I got the buggy it would only mean an extra turn of hard graft
+      for me. No, I&rsquo;d take Mary for a trip to Sydney, and she&rsquo;d have to be
+      satisfied with that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white gates to
+      the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the station in
+      his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver and a lot of
+      portmanteaus and rugs and things. They were going to do the grand in
+      Sydney over Christmas. Now it was young Black who was so shook after Mary
+      when she was in service with the Blacks before the old man died, and if I
+      hadn&rsquo;t come along&mdash;and if girls never cared for vagabonds&mdash;Mary
+      would have been mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on
+      her; and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there. She
+      would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up at the old
+      Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for, and seeing a play
+      every night. And I&rsquo;d have been knocking around amongst the big stations
+      Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death at the shanties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Blacks didn&rsquo;t see me as I went by, ragged and dusty, and with an old,
+      nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes. I didn&rsquo;t care a damn
+      for them, or any one else, at most times, but I had moods when I felt
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of Black&rsquo;s big wool teams was just coming away from the shed, and the
+      driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him, didn&rsquo;t
+      seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the road. I
+      stopped my horses and waited. He looked at me and I looked at him&mdash;hard.
+      Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses. I&rsquo;d given him a
+      hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn&rsquo;t forgotten it. And I felt
+      then as if I wouldn&rsquo;t mind trying to give some one a hiding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that
+      day. I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren creek
+      in the Bush&mdash;for it was little better&mdash;with no one to speak to
+      except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her on
+      Sunday. I thought of the hardships she went through in the first year&mdash;that
+      I haven&rsquo;t told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I away, and no
+      one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and Jim sick; and
+      of the loneliness she fought through out there. I thought of Mary, outside
+      in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a felt hat, and a pair of
+      &lsquo;lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of a station manager as well as
+      that of a housewife and mother. And her cheeks were getting thin, and her
+      colour was going: I thought of the gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced,
+      hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I knew&mdash;and some of them not much
+      older than Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at
+      the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the
+      harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain. When I was going, Bob said,
+      &lsquo;Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary&rsquo;s with the horses: if the
+      collars don&rsquo;t fit I&rsquo;ll fix up a pair of makeshifts, and alter the others.&rsquo; 
+      I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual, but that might have
+      been the beer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Shout&rsquo;, to buy a round of drinks.&mdash;A. L., 1997.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. The Buggy Comes Home.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I &lsquo;whipped the cat&rsquo; a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I
+      thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money
+      until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world
+      again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray&mdash;there&rsquo;d
+      be some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary
+      had the buggy she wouldn&rsquo;t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in
+      the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn&rsquo;t be off either. I could drive down
+      to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the
+      buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by
+      the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive. I
+      thought best to tell Mary&rsquo;s sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told her
+      I&rsquo;d keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered into the
+      spirit of the thing, and said she&rsquo;d give the world to be able to go out
+      with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw it; but she
+      couldn&rsquo;t go, on account of a new baby she had. I was rather glad she
+      couldn&rsquo;t, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought. I wanted
+      that all to myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I&rsquo;d finished
+      telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn&rsquo;t bring the
+      cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James, out on a log of
+      the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and told
+      him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for? Why
+      can&rsquo;t you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She&rsquo;s been pretty miserable
+      since you&rsquo;ve been away this trip.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want it to be a surprise,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like
+      this; but it &lsquo;ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary about
+      taking the two horses in? I&rsquo;ll only want one to bring the cart out, and
+      she&rsquo;s sure to ask.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell her you&rsquo;re going to get yours shod.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much about
+      horses as we do. I don&rsquo;t mind telling a lie so long as a chap has only got
+      to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so many
+      questions.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you
+      go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. And she&rsquo;ll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I&rsquo;ll fix
+      her&mdash;YOU needn&rsquo;t worry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And, James,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;get a chamois leather and sponge&mdash;we&rsquo;ll want
+      &lsquo;em anyway&mdash;and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek,
+      coming home. It&rsquo;s sure to be covered with dust.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh!&mdash;orlright.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening, or
+      just about sunset.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool of the
+      evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over it&mdash;better
+      than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as at noon, and
+      we&rsquo;d have the long broiling day before us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you want me to come at sunset for?&rsquo; asked James. &lsquo;Do you want me
+      to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh well,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;get here at midnight if you like.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We didn&rsquo;t say anything for a while&mdash;just sat and puffed at our pipes.
+      Then I said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what are you thinking about?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;m thinking it&rsquo;s time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in through
+      your old one too much,&rsquo; and he got out of my reach and went to see about
+      penning the calves. Before we turned in he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in
+      Cudgeegong had&mdash;one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How much does Franca want for that gun?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Five-ten; but I think he&rsquo;d take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can
+      squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.&rsquo; (Phil
+      was his bosom chum.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Make the best bargain you can.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get
+      clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to
+      give him overnight. He took his gun with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d always thought that a man was a fool who couldn&rsquo;t keep a secret from
+      his wife&mdash;that there was something womanish about him. I found out.
+      Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever spent
+      in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything; and poor Mary
+      had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the harness and
+      mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning, I rode up the
+      ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I hurried home
+      that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s only
+      room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go
+      out together?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can
+      always fold up a blanket or &lsquo;possum rug for them to sit on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she didn&rsquo;t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would have
+      taken at any other time, when I didn&rsquo;t want her to. Women are aggravating
+      that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and both the
+      children were cross. She did look knocked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll give the buggy a rest, Joe,&rsquo; she said. (I thought I heard it coming
+      then.) &lsquo;It seems as far off as ever. I don&rsquo;t know why you want to harp on
+      it to-day. Now, don&rsquo;t look so cross, Joe&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t mean to hurt you.
+      We&rsquo;ll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you&rsquo;re so set on it.
+      There&rsquo;ll be plenty of time when we&rsquo;re better off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she&rsquo;d washed up, we sat
+      outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking and
+      watching the track up the creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you talk, Joe?&rsquo; asked Mary. &lsquo;You scarcely ever speak to me now:
+      it&rsquo;s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What makes
+      you so cross, Joe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve got nothing to say.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you should find something. Think of me&mdash;it&rsquo;s very miserable for
+      me. Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell
+      me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making both
+      our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you expect me
+      to understand?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said there was nothing the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking, Joe&mdash;or
+      gambling?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked her what she&rsquo;d accuse me of next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And another thing I want to speak to you about,&rsquo; she went on. &lsquo;Now, don&rsquo;t
+      knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what is it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little Jim
+      to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn&rsquo;t run right,
+      and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what did he say?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&mdash;he&rsquo; (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)&mdash;&lsquo;he
+      said &ldquo;damn it!&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never mind, old woman,&rsquo; I said, putting an arm round her, for her mouth
+      was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. &lsquo;It won&rsquo;t be always
+      like this. Just wait till we&rsquo;re a bit better off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)
+      came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going to
+      hit him&mdash;poor little devil! I never did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, Harry?&rsquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Buggy comin&rsquo;, I bin thinkit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed up the creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sure it&rsquo;s a buggy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, missus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How many horses?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One&mdash;two.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary went
+      and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes&mdash;though the sun had
+      gone&mdash;and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the
+      stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down and
+      came running in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s some one coming in a buggy, Joe!&rsquo; she cried, excitedly. &lsquo;And both
+      my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down to the
+      fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It&rsquo;s lucky I kept those new sheets
+      packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting grinning like
+      that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry&mdash;Why! It&rsquo;s only James&mdash;by
+      himself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Joe!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;whose buggy is that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I suppose it&rsquo;s yours,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again. James
+      drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Joe! what have you done?&rsquo; cried Mary. &lsquo;Why, it&rsquo;s a new double buggy!&rsquo; 
+      Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me, Joe?
+      You poor old boy!&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve been nagging at you all day!&rsquo; and she
+      hugged me again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James got down and started taking the horses out&mdash;as if it was an
+      everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under
+      the seat. He&rsquo;d stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that&rsquo;s what made
+      him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as
+      usual, and breathing hard&mdash;taking the buggy in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and went
+      down to the dam for a drink. &lsquo;You&rsquo;d better look under the seats,&rsquo; growled
+      James, as he took his gun out with great care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer in
+      a candle-box from Galletly&mdash;James said that Galletly&rsquo;s men had a
+      gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they
+      cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a &lsquo;little bit of a ham&rsquo; 
+      from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he&rsquo;d &lsquo;cured himself&rsquo;&mdash;it
+      was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of baker&rsquo;s bread, a
+      cake, and a dozen yards of something &lsquo;to make up for the children&rsquo;, from
+      Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water cod, that long Dave
+      Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie river, and sent out
+      packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit for the black boy, with
+      red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of preserved ginger, and some
+      lollies (sweets) (&lsquo;for the lil&rsquo; boy&rsquo;), and a rum-looking Chinese doll and
+      a rattle (&lsquo;for lil&rsquo; girl&rsquo;) from Sun Tong Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong&mdash;James
+      was chummy with Sun Tong Lee, and got his powder and shot and caps there
+      on tick when he was short of money. And James said that the people would
+      have loaded the buggy with &lsquo;rubbish&rsquo; if he&rsquo;d waited. They all seemed glad
+      to see Joe Wilson getting on&mdash;and these things did me good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got the things inside, and I don&rsquo;t think either of us knew what we were
+      saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in and
+      said, in a very injured tone,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What about my tea? I ain&rsquo;t had anything to speak of since I left
+      Cudgeegong. I want some grub.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mary pulled herself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll have your tea directly,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Pick up that harness at once,
+      and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back that buggy
+      under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it presently&mdash;and
+      we&rsquo;ll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to keep the sun off. And
+      James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the cart,&mdash;we can&rsquo;t have
+      that buggy to knock about in.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; said James&mdash;&lsquo;anything! Only get me some grub.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn&rsquo;t keep till the morning, and rubbed
+      over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot&mdash;James growling all the
+      time&mdash;and got out some crockery she had packed away that had belonged
+      to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want some grub&mdash;not a blooming banquet!&rsquo; he said. And he growled a
+      lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, &lsquo;and that
+      sort of Tommy-rot.&rsquo; When he&rsquo;d finished he took his gun, and the black boy,
+      and the dogs, and went out &lsquo;possum-shooting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and made
+      me get up alongside her. We hadn&rsquo;t had such a comfortable seat for years;
+      but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to feel like a
+      pair of fools up there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked more
+      than we&rsquo;d done for years&mdash;and there was a good deal of &lsquo;Do you
+      remember?&rsquo; in it&mdash;and I think we got to understand each other better
+      that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last Mary said, &lsquo;Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night just&mdash;just
+      like I did the day we were married.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Writer Wants to Say a Word.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened to be
+      &lsquo;Brighten&rsquo;s Sister-in-law&rsquo;, I had an idea of making Joe Wilson a strong
+      character. Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems to me
+      that the man&rsquo;s natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature, &lsquo;softness&rsquo;,
+      or weakness&mdash;call it which you like&mdash;developed as I wrote on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the
+      day he brought the double buggy to Lahey&rsquo;s Creek. I met him in Sydney the
+      other day. Tall and straight yet&mdash;rather straighter than he had been&mdash;dressed
+      in a comfortable, serviceable sac suit of &lsquo;saddle-tweed&rsquo;, and wearing a
+      new sugar-loaf, cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the hurrying street
+      people calmly as though they were sheep of which he was not in charge, and
+      which were not likely to get &lsquo;boxed&rsquo; with his. Not the worst way in which
+      to regard the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush. He is a
+      young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary a
+      long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head, and the process
+      would leave him pretty bald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete the
+      story of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Part II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Golden Graveyard.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an &lsquo;old hand&rsquo; (transported convict)
+      some said. The prefix &lsquo;mother&rsquo; in Australia mostly means &lsquo;old hag&rsquo;, and is
+      applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from old diggers,
+      that Mother Middleton&mdash;in common with most other &lsquo;old hands&rsquo;&mdash;had
+      been sent out for &lsquo;knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.&rsquo; We had never seen a
+      donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper when the spirit
+      moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on most occasions.
+      There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly as boys, to the
+      effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had pulled a mounted
+      policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle,
+      which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler. She said that he had
+      insulted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any
+      Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy&rsquo;s; she had
+      often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he&rsquo;d be
+      putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to do&mdash;because
+      of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see how she&rsquo;d spin
+      up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and &lsquo;tailings&rsquo;, and land and
+      empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of her, and few
+      diggers&rsquo; wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second row with Mother
+      Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden Gully and Specimen
+      Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly greeting. She came to the
+      old Pipeclay diggings with the &lsquo;rough crowd&rsquo; (mostly Irish), and when the
+      old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she went with the rush to Gulgong
+      (about the last of the great alluvial or &lsquo;poor-man&rsquo;s&rsquo; goldfields) and came
+      back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock goldfield &lsquo;broke out&rsquo;, adjacent to
+      the old fields, and so helped prove the truth of the old digger&rsquo;s saying,
+      that no matter how thoroughly ground has been worked, there is always room
+      for a new Ballarat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last, in
+      the little old cemetery&mdash;appertaining to the old farming town on the
+      river, about four miles away&mdash;which adjoined the district racecourse,
+      in the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.
+      Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the effect
+      that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was unfair and
+      cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and was, for all I
+      ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then lived in a hut in
+      Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did sewing and washing for
+      single diggers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried on
+      across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly slaving
+      to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on
+      good land, Peter Olsen? You&rsquo;re only slaving your stomach out here.&rsquo; (She
+      didn&rsquo;t say stomach.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      *Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). &lsquo;But then
+      you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn&rsquo;t like to take
+      her out in the Bush.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      *Mrs Middleton*. &lsquo;Delicate, be damned! she&rsquo;s only shamming!&rsquo; (at her
+      loudest.) &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you kick her off the bed and the book out of her
+      hand, and make her go to work? She&rsquo;s as delicate as I am. Are you a man,
+      Peter Olsen, or a&mdash;&mdash;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long Paddock was &lsquo;petering&rsquo;. There were a few claims still being worked
+      down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and
+      gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;
+      and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over
+      the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below&mdash;time
+      lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with
+      their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet
+      &lsquo;mullock&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few
+      prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the
+      ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave Regan&mdash;lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently&mdash;a bit of
+      a &lsquo;Flash Jack&rsquo;; and Andy Page&mdash;a character like what &lsquo;Kit&rsquo; (in the
+      &lsquo;Old Curiosity Shop&rsquo;) might have been after a voyage to Australia and some
+      Colonial experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity,
+      for it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down
+      pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the
+      sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave had theories&mdash;&lsquo;ideers&rsquo; or &lsquo;notions&rsquo; he called them; Jim Bently
+      laid claim to none&mdash;he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog.
+      Andy Page&mdash;by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave
+      Regan&mdash;was simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was
+      apt to be obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and
+      he had reverence for higher things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next morning
+      he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the cemetery
+      fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub, about
+      three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post from the road.
+      They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging indications. They
+      &lsquo;drove&rsquo; (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the fence, and at a point
+      immediately beneath it they were &lsquo;making tucker&rsquo;; a few feet farther and
+      they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom sloped gently that way.
+      The bottom here, by the way, was shelving, brownish, rotten rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave&rsquo;s drive, lay
+      the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented James
+      Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave was supposed to be
+      six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been conscientious. The old
+      alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft, timbering&mdash;i.e.,
+      putting in a sapling prop&mdash;here and there where he worked wide; but
+      the &lsquo;payable dirt&rsquo; ran in under the cemetery, and in no other direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after
+      tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
+      sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to tramp
+      Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Dave&rsquo;s theory&mdash;drawn from a little experience and many long
+      yarns with old diggers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with
+      clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of from
+      nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running into the
+      bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks of &lsquo;wash&rsquo; or
+      gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich at any stroke of
+      his pick; he might strike the rich &lsquo;lead&rsquo; which was supposed to exist
+      round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there
+      somewhere. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s gold in them ridges yet&mdash;if a man can only git at
+      it,&rsquo; says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave might strike a ledge, &lsquo;pocket&rsquo;, or &lsquo;pot-hole&rsquo; holding wash rich with
+      gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found no
+      gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had
+      prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few &lsquo;colours&rsquo;, and the
+      bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards
+      which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across the
+      road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty feet and
+      not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under the cemetery
+      was rich&mdash;maybe the richest in the district. The old gravediggers had
+      not been gold-diggers&mdash;besides, the graves, being six feet, would,
+      none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There was nothing strange
+      in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the
+      district had thought of the cemetery and racecourse. Old brick chimneys
+      and houses, the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from sites of
+      subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill in
+      subsequent years and had yielded &lsquo;payable gold&rsquo;. Fossicking Chinamen were
+      said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave reckoned to strike the &lsquo;lead&rsquo;, or a shelf or ledge with a good streak
+      of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the cemetery.
+      But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory in gambling,
+      in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic
+      disturbances&mdash;&lsquo;the shrinkage of the earth&rsquo;s surface,&rsquo; and that sort
+      of old thing&mdash;upset everything. You might follow good gold along a
+      ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the
+      continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the &lsquo;ground&rsquo; in the cemetery been &lsquo;open&rsquo; Dave would have gone to the
+      point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and
+      worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way&mdash;it
+      would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of
+      dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But it was
+      very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
+      even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under
+      it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers&mdash;which
+      last was what Dave wished for least of all. He wanted, above all things,
+      to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old clannish local spirit of the
+      old farming town, rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have
+      been too strong for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,&rsquo; said Dave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim
+      grumbled, in conclusion,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It&rsquo;s the shortest and
+      straightest, and Jimmy&rsquo;s the freshest, anyway.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of
+      the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such an
+      extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave had an
+      idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it down a
+      deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and might lead
+      to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys &lsquo;possum-hunting on
+      those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was supposed to exist&mdash;and it has since been proved&mdash;another,
+      a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried
+      for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in &lsquo;duffers&rsquo;,
+      trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth of from
+      eighty to a hundred feet&mdash;on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker,
+      an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and
+      whenever he came to a little &lsquo;colour&rsquo;-showing shelf, or false bottom,
+      thirty or forty feet down&mdash;he&rsquo;d go rooting round and spoil the shaft,
+      and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that he hadn&rsquo;t the
+      sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom, and if he
+      found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms, or build
+      platforms at the proper level and then explore them. He was living in a
+      lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the last time I heard
+      from that field, they were boring the ground like a sieve, with the latest
+      machinery, to find the best place to put down a deep shaft, and finding
+      gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I&rsquo;m right off the line again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Old Pinter&rsquo;, Ballarat digger&mdash;his theory on second and other bottoms
+      ran as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye see, THIS here grass surface&mdash;this here surface with trees an&rsquo; 
+      grass on it, that we&rsquo;re livin&rsquo; on, has got nothin&rsquo; to do with us. This
+      here bottom in the shaller sinkin&rsquo;s that we&rsquo;re workin&rsquo; on is the slope to
+      the bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men
+      was missin&rsquo; links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be
+      said to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
+      SECON&rsquo; bottom&mdash;eighty or a hundred feet down&mdash;was on the surface
+      about the time when men was frogs. Now&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it&rsquo;s with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the friends
+      of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they would have
+      regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll give out we&rsquo;re tryin&rsquo; for the second bottom,&rsquo; said Dave Regan.
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don&rsquo;t want air in
+      shallow sinkings.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the
+      bottom,&rsquo; said Jim Bently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We must keep &lsquo;em away,&rsquo; said Dave. &lsquo;Tar the bottom, or cover it with
+      tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won&rsquo;t see it. There&rsquo;s not many
+      diggers left, and the rest are going; they&rsquo;re chucking up the claims in
+      Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the rest and
+      they wouldn&rsquo;t come near me. The farmers ain&rsquo;t in love with us diggers, so
+      they won&rsquo;t bother us. No man has a right to come poking round another
+      man&rsquo;s claim: it ain&rsquo;t ettykit&mdash;I&rsquo;ll root up that old ettykit and
+      stand to it&mdash;it&rsquo;s rather worn out now, but that&rsquo;s no matter. We&rsquo;ll
+      shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes nosing round
+      on Sunday. They&rsquo;ll think we&rsquo;re only some more second-bottom lunatics, like
+      Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We&rsquo;re going to get our fortune out from
+      under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me till you&rsquo;re born
+      again with brains.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave&rsquo;s schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often came
+      to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher, bent
+      about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a new
+      one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is to say,
+      a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of rope and
+      then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken up and the
+      rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can&rsquo;t afford
+      them just yet,&rsquo; said Dave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I&rsquo;m a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery,
+      finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton&rsquo;s box appeared
+      in the top corner of the &lsquo;face&rsquo; (the working end) of the drive. They went
+      under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the shell with
+      a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might disturb the
+      mound above; they puddled&mdash;i.e., rammed&mdash;stiff clay up round the
+      edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given the
+      bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather under,
+      an unpleasant matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a
+      good deal. &lsquo;Blowed if I ever thought I&rsquo;d be rooting for gold down among
+      the blanky dead men,&rsquo; he said. But the dirt panned out better every dish
+      they washed, and Dave worked the &lsquo;wash&rsquo; out right and left as they drove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man whom
+      Dave wished to see round there&mdash;&lsquo;Old Pinter&rsquo; (James Poynton),
+      Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He&rsquo;d been prospecting
+      down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder&mdash;threaded through
+      the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that hung
+      behind&mdash;and his gold-dish under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I mightn&rsquo;t get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what
+      gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish&mdash;nearer the shape
+      of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
+      dish we used for setting milk&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know whether the same is used
+      here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You get
+      it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge of the
+      water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just below its
+      own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak a while,
+      then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay dissolves,
+      dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to wash the pebbles
+      in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till all the muddy or
+      clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean gravel in the bottom
+      of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning the dish about this way
+      and that and swishing the water round in it. It requires some practice.
+      The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by its own weight. At last there
+      is only a little half-moon of sand or fine gravel in the bottom lower edge
+      of the dish&mdash;you work the dish slanting from you. Presently the gold,
+      if there was any in the dirt, appears in &lsquo;colours&rsquo;, grains, or little
+      nuggets along the base of the half-moon of sand. The more gold there is in
+      the dirt, or the coarser the gold is, the sooner it appears. A practised
+      digger can work off the last speck of gravel, without losing a &lsquo;colour&rsquo;,
+      by just working the water round and off in the dish. Also a careful digger
+      could throw a handful of gold in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in
+      dishfuls, recover practically every colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gold-washing &lsquo;cradle&rsquo; is a box, shaped something like a boot, and the
+      size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby&rsquo;s cradle, and a
+      stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you&rsquo;ll put your foot into the
+      boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and gravel is
+      thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked smartly. The
+      finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a sloping board
+      covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the gold. The dish
+      was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash dirt was put
+      through the horse-power &lsquo;puddling-machine&rsquo;, which there isn&rsquo;t room to
+      describe here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Ello, Dave!&rsquo; said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size
+      of Dave&rsquo;s waste-heap. &lsquo;Tryin&rsquo; for the second bottom?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Dave, guttural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap and
+      scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he resembled.
+      Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his knees, he
+      peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
+      over the graveyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tryin&rsquo; for a secon&rsquo; bottom,&rsquo; he reflected absently. &lsquo;Eh, Dave?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave only stood and looked black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his chin-feathers,
+      which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held horizontally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Kullers is safe,&rsquo; reflected Pinter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right?&rsquo; snapped Dave. &lsquo;I suppose we must let him into it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Kullers&rsquo; was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter&rsquo;s mate for
+      some time&mdash;Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was
+      that Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
+      Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his
+      shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along the
+      other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole. He lost
+      no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and started to
+      drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which Dave was making;
+      he gave out that he had bottomed on good &lsquo;indications&rsquo; running in the
+      other direction, and would work the ground outside the fence. Meanwhile
+      Dave rigged a fan&mdash;partly for the sake of appearances, but mainly
+      because his and Jim&rsquo;s lively imaginations made the air in the drive worse
+      than it really was. A &lsquo;fan&rsquo; is a thing like a paddle-wheel rigged in a
+      box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of a shoe, but
+      rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the axle of the
+      fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is carried over
+      this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden driving-wheel
+      rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle to turn. That&rsquo;s
+      how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless pillow-slip, made
+      of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of the fan-box, and the
+      end taken down the shaft and along the drive&mdash;this carries the fresh
+      air into the workings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning a
+      thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to
+      work. He felt mad that it hadn&rsquo;t struck him sooner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet
+      place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while Pinter
+      and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their tent, and
+      whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into Pinter&rsquo;s hole
+      and saw at a glance what he was up to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the
+      thuds of Pinter&rsquo;s and Kullers&rsquo; picks drawing nearer. They would strike his
+      tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only knocking off
+      to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw themselves
+      dressed on their bunks to get a few hours&rsquo; sleep. Pinter had practical
+      experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time. The two
+      parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking terms.
+      Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal like&mdash;at
+      least Dave and Jim did. They&rsquo;d start if a horse stumbled through the Bush,
+      and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at any moment and hear him
+      ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five feet when, one Saturday
+      afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave and Jim got drunk. The
+      spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning they felt too shaky to
+      come to work and had more drink. On Monday afternoon, Kullers, whose shift
+      it was below, stuck his pick through the face of his drive into the wall
+      of Dave&rsquo;s, about four feet from the end of it: the clay flaked away,
+      leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin. They knocked off for the day
+      and decided to let the other party take the offensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim went
+      below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the spiked
+      iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close to the
+      hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness in the
+      air. He started picking away at the &lsquo;face&rsquo; and scraping the clay back from
+      under his feet, and didn&rsquo;t hear Kullers come to work. Kullers came in
+      softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his great
+      round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling horribly
+      in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Ullo! you dar&rsquo;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker than
+      Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes, and sat
+      on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rsquo; asked Dave. &lsquo;Have you seen a ghost?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve seen the&mdash;the devil!&rsquo; gasped Jim. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m&mdash;I&rsquo;m done with this
+      here ghoul business.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim&rsquo;s
+      language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till
+      the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for
+      goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or
+      otherwise&mdash;so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they
+      joined forces and became &lsquo;Poynton, Regan, &amp; Party&rsquo;. They agreed to
+      work the ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead,
+      irrespective of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as
+      possible before the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of
+      &lsquo;payable dirt&rsquo;, and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers.
+      They timbered up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and
+      brown paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper
+      with difficulty and talked of hard times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got a
+      bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they were
+      worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should march down
+      from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was a hard woman
+      to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and her hair in a
+      greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions, she wore the
+      expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink to make him
+      nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had a stride like a
+      grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her footprints in the
+      mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured three feet from toe
+      to heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of flowers
+      thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down on the
+      table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt beneath
+      her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart on her way
+      into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just
+      deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in the
+      direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped down
+      and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if there
+      was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s up now?&rsquo; demanded Dave apprehensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother Middleton,&rsquo; said Jim; &lsquo;she&rsquo;s blind mad drunk, and she&rsquo;s got a
+      bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she&rsquo;s bringing
+      out for some one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How the hell did she drop to it?&rsquo; exclaimed Pinter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dunno,&rsquo; said Jim. &lsquo;Anyway she&rsquo;s coming for us. Listen to her!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They didn&rsquo;t have to listen hard. The language which came down the shaft&mdash;they
+      weren&rsquo;t sure which one&mdash;and along the drives was enough to scare up
+      the dead and make them take to the Bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance, instead
+      of giving her a lead here?&rsquo; asked Dave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft&mdash;it was Pinter&rsquo;s&mdash;and
+      they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of
+      themselves, for they knew she couldn&rsquo;t hurt them from the surface, and
+      that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn&rsquo;t fill both
+      shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wonder which shaf&rsquo; she&rsquo;ll come down,&rsquo; asked Kullers in a tone befitting
+      the place and occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;d better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,&rsquo; said Dave, &lsquo;and Jim and
+      I&rsquo;ll watch mine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I won&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said Pinter hurriedly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m&mdash;I&rsquo;m a modest man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter&rsquo;s shaft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s thrown her bottle down,&rsquo; said Dave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned
+      hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe
+      she&rsquo;s coming down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Her crinoline&rsquo;ll handicap her,&rsquo; said Pinter vacantly, &lsquo;that&rsquo;s a comfort.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s took it off!&rsquo; said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter&rsquo;s
+      drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped stocking,
+      then a section of scarlet petticoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lemme out!&rsquo; roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming motion
+      with his hands in the direction of Dave&rsquo;s drive. Kullers was already gone,
+      and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward, scrambled up the shaft
+      last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering she had the darkness to
+      face and didn&rsquo;t know the workings, and when Dave reached the top he had a
+      tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood ran from a nasty scratch.
+      But he didn&rsquo;t wait to argue over the price of a new pair of trousers. He
+      made off through the Bush in the direction of an encouraging whistle
+      thrown back by Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,&rsquo; said Dave. &lsquo;But
+      to-morrow she&rsquo;ll bring the neighbourhood down on us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And she&rsquo;s enough, without the neighbourhood,&rsquo; reflected Pinter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
+      and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn&rsquo;t carry, they
+      rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Chinaman&rsquo;s Ghost.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Simple as striking matches,&rsquo; said Dave Regan, Bushman; &lsquo;but it gave me
+      the biggest scare I ever had&mdash;except, perhaps, the time I stumbled in
+      the dark into a six-feet digger&rsquo;s hole, which might have been eighty feet
+      deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feet shaft
+      left open close by.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was the night of the day after the Queen&rsquo;s birthday. I was sinking a
+      shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, and we
+      camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that was held
+      at Peter Anderson&rsquo;s pub., about four miles across the ridges, on Queen&rsquo;s
+      birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and we&rsquo;d disgusted
+      him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he stayed at home
+      and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic book. (He used
+      to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare time.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after the
+      races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+      remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight
+      each other when we got a bit on, and we&rsquo;d fight if we weren&rsquo;t stopped. I
+      remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight
+      him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver,
+      used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn&rsquo;t hate each
+      other so much when we were tight and truthful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
+      early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been
+      carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I&rsquo;d
+      lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he&rsquo;d worn
+      on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair, and
+      fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask of whisky to
+      help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long dark gully
+      called Murderer&rsquo;s Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man&rsquo;s Gap, and down
+      the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flats were covered with
+      blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in the moonlight, and I was
+      pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and a mouthful of water at a
+      creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle, and then to sing: I never
+      used to sing unless I thought I was a couple of miles out of earshot of
+      any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Murderer&rsquo;s Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course it
+      was haunted. Women and children wouldn&rsquo;t go through it after dark; and
+      even me, when I&rsquo;d grown up, I&rsquo;d hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,
+      and walk quick going along there at night-time. We&rsquo;re all afraid of
+      ghosts, but we won&rsquo;t let on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the track,
+      and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses laid out
+      naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. All of a sudden
+      a great &lsquo;old man&rsquo; kangaroo went across the track with a thud-thud, and up
+      the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked, white glistening trunk
+      of a stringy-bark tree, where some one had stripped off a sheet of bark,
+      started out from a bend in the track in a shaft of moonlight, and that
+      gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky before I started. There was a
+      Chinaman&rsquo;s grave close by the track on the top of the gap. An old chow had
+      lived in a hut there for many years, and fossicked on the old diggings,
+      and one day he was found dead in the hut, and the Government gave some one
+      a pound to bury him. When I was a nipper we reckoned that his ghost
+      haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese because the bones hadn&rsquo;t been sent
+      home to China. It was a lonely, ghostly place enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the flats
+      and up the gully&mdash;not a breath of air; but now as I got higher I saw
+      signs of the thunderstorm we&rsquo;d expected all day, and felt the breath of a
+      warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap the first thing
+      I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the spot where the
+      Chinaman&rsquo;s grave was, and I stood staring at it with both eyes. It moved
+      out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it was a white bullock, and I
+      felt relieved. I&rsquo;d hardly felt relieved when, all at once, there came a
+      &ldquo;pat-pat-pat&rdquo; of running feet close behind me! I jumped round quick, but
+      there was nothing there, and while I stood staring all ways for Sunday,
+      there came a &ldquo;pat-pat&rdquo;, then a pause, and then &ldquo;pat-pat-pat-pat&rdquo; behind me
+      again: it was like some one dodging and running off that time. I started
+      to walk down the track pretty fast, but hadn&rsquo;t gone a dozen yards when
+      &ldquo;pat-pat-pat&rdquo;, it was close behind me again. I jerked my eyes over my
+      shoulder but kept my legs going. There was nothing behind, but I fancied I
+      saw something slip into the Bush to the right. It must have been the
+      moonlight on the moving boughs; there was a good breeze blowing now. I got
+      down to a more level track, and was making across a spur to the main road,
+      when &ldquo;pat-pat!&rdquo; &ldquo;pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat!&rdquo; it was after me again. Then I
+      began to run&mdash;and it began to run too! &ldquo;pat-pat-pat&rdquo; after me all the
+      time. I hadn&rsquo;t time to look round. Over the spur and down the siding and
+      across the flat to the road I went as fast as I could split my legs apart.
+      I had a scared idea that I was getting a touch of the &ldquo;jim-jams&rdquo;, and that
+      frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a
+      few times, and saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell
+      slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I&rsquo;d broken
+      both my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and
+      listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn&rsquo;t hear nor see
+      anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when
+      &ldquo;pat-pat!&rdquo; it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half
+      altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the
+      camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up in my
+      throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The
+      footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and I
+      stared at it&mdash;and the thing dawned on me. I hadn&rsquo;t noticed at Peter
+      Anderson&rsquo;s&mdash;my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old
+      hat of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of
+      loose ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As
+      long as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the
+      tails didn&rsquo;t flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were
+      still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat on
+      the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being tight
+      on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw sounded loud
+      of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool
+      down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long
+      drink of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You seem to be a bit winded, Dave,&rdquo; said Jim Bently, &ldquo;and mighty
+      thirsty. Did the Chinaman&rsquo;s ghost chase you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my
+      bunk, and had a good rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Loaded Dog.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek
+      in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist in the
+      vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity;
+      the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds beneath the
+      surface, and in which direction. They had struck some pretty solid rock,
+      also water which kept them baling. They used the old-fashioned
+      blasting-powder and time-fuse. They&rsquo;d make a sausage or cartridge of
+      blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and
+      bound round the end of the fuse; they&rsquo;d dip the cartridge in melted tallow
+      to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible, drop in the
+      cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with stiff clay and broken
+      brick. Then they&rsquo;d light the fuse and get out of the hole and wait. The
+      result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom of the shaft and half a
+      barrow-load of broken rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
+      and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
+      Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a &lsquo;nibble&rsquo; 
+      or a &lsquo;bite&rsquo; now and then&mdash;say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was
+      always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more
+      than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn&rsquo;t bite.
+      However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the
+      hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an average depth
+      of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling out the smaller
+      holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to
+      the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides
+      of its head, and if you got pricked you&rsquo;d know it, as Dave said. Andy took
+      off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to
+      stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew it. Dave scooped one out with
+      his hand and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the
+      pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he
+      said, like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights&mdash;only
+      the toothache pain had a &lsquo;burred edge&rsquo;, Dave said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave got an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?&rsquo; he
+      said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll try it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put
+      Dave&rsquo;s theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the blame
+      for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren&rsquo;t.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the
+      rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the
+      river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a
+      six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the
+      bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge in the
+      water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface,
+      ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees&rsquo;-wax to make
+      it water-tight. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll have to leave it some time before we light it,&rsquo; 
+      said Dave, &lsquo;to give the fish time to get over their scare when we put it
+      in, and come nosing round again; so we&rsquo;ll want it well water-tight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave&rsquo;s suggestion, bound a strip of sail
+      canvas&mdash;that they used for making water-bags&mdash;to increase the
+      force of the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown
+      paper&mdash;on the plan of the sort of fireworks we called &lsquo;gun-crackers&rsquo;.
+      He let the paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two
+      thicknesses of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with
+      stout fishing-line. Dave&rsquo;s schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his
+      inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now&mdash;a
+      formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed on
+      another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, twisted a
+      length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it in tallow
+      again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he&rsquo;d know where to
+      find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he went to the
+      camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a
+      billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave and Jim were at
+      work in the claim that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a big black young retriever dog&mdash;or rather an overgrown pup,
+      a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them and
+      lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip.
+      Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of
+      appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world, his
+      two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He&rsquo;d retrieve
+      anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw away.
+      They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good distance
+      away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, after it
+      had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, and laid it just
+      inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make its presence known when
+      the mates should rise and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly
+      smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise. He used to retrieve them when
+      they went in swimming; he&rsquo;d jump in after them, and take their hands in
+      his mouth, and try to swim out with them, and scratch their naked bodies
+      with his paws. They loved him for his good-heartedness and his
+      foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up
+      in camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge,
+      and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon he went off
+      to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to come home to
+      dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of mutton-chops
+      on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with their backs to
+      the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be
+      ready. The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have
+      missed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy&rsquo;s brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the
+      glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him that
+      it wouldn&rsquo;t be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay, sand, or
+      stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He may have
+      been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion looked all
+      right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn&rsquo;t interested in their &lsquo;damned
+      silliness&rsquo;. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin&mdash;the sort with the
+      little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the convenience of
+      pouring out the treacle&mdash;and it struck him that this would have made
+      the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had to pour in the
+      powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and seal it with
+      bees&rsquo;-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when Dave glanced over
+      his shoulder to see how the chops were doing&mdash;and bolted. He
+      explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan spluttering extra,
+      and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim Bently looked behind and
+      bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still, staring after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Run, Andy! run!&rsquo; they shouted back at him. &lsquo;Run!!! Look behind you, you
+      fool!&rsquo; Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was the
+      retriever with the cartridge in his mouth&mdash;wedged into his broadest
+      and silliest grin. And that wasn&rsquo;t all. The dog had come round the fire to
+      Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the
+      burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of
+      the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy&rsquo;s legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,
+      and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave and Jim were good runners&mdash;Jim the best&mdash;for a short
+      distance; Andy was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind
+      and could last. The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog
+      could be to find his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim
+      kept shouting back, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t foller us! don&rsquo;t foller us, you coloured fool!&rsquo; 
+      but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any
+      more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave
+      keeping in Jim&rsquo;s track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the dog
+      circling round Andy&mdash;the live fuse swishing in all directions and
+      hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow
+      him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction&mdash;to &lsquo;spread
+      out&rsquo;, and Andy roaring at the dog to go home. Then Andy&rsquo;s brain began to
+      work, stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog,
+      but the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the
+      dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he&rsquo;d made a mistake about
+      Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of
+      mind to think that the fuse&rsquo;s time wasn&rsquo;t up yet, made a dive and a grab
+      for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched the
+      cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog
+      immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at
+      the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim,
+      who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native
+      bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn&rsquo;t safely get more than ten or
+      twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as
+      if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and
+      whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that this was part
+      of the lark&mdash;he was all right now&mdash;it was Jim who was out for a
+      spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim tried to
+      climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his feet and
+      ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took but a very
+      few moments. Jim ran to a digger&rsquo;s hole, about ten feet deep, and dropped
+      down into it&mdash;landing on soft mud&mdash;and was safe. The dog grinned
+      sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he thought it
+      would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go away, Tommy,&rsquo; said Jim feebly, &lsquo;go away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy
+      had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly
+      remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of Turks lying
+      flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a newly-arrived shell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not far
+      from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in his
+      stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the shanty.
+      There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the bar; Dave
+      rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. &lsquo;My dog!&rsquo; he gasped,
+      in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, &lsquo;the blanky retriever&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+      got a live cartridge in his mouth&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded round
+      and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway leading from
+      the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse spluttering.
+      They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one and then after
+      another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends with everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
+      There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
+      on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside. Dave
+      and the publican bundled in there and shut the door&mdash;the publican
+      cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and wanting
+      to know what the hell he came here for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily
+      for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking
+      and nursing his nastiness under there&mdash;a sneaking, fighting, thieving
+      canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy saw
+      his danger&mdash;he&rsquo;d had experience from this dog&mdash;and started out
+      and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across the
+      yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the
+      cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog
+      followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the
+      buildings&mdash;spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel
+      sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs&mdash;that slip
+      after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining&mdash;and
+      yapping, yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the
+      nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he
+      had found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at
+      the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very good blasting powder&mdash;a new brand that Dave had recently
+      got up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy
+      was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as the
+      average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the
+      smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were
+      lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been
+      kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a
+      barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance. Several
+      saddle-horses, which had been &lsquo;hanging-up&rsquo; round the verandah, were
+      galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken bridle-reins
+      flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every point of the
+      compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them went home, to
+      the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and reached it the same
+      night and stayed there; it was not till towards evening that the rest came
+      back cautiously to make inquiries. One was trying to walk on two legs, and
+      most of &lsquo;em looked more or less singed; and a little, singed,
+      stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of
+      him along on one leg, had reason to be glad that he&rsquo;d saved up the other
+      leg all those years, for he needed it now. There was one old one-eyed
+      cattle-dog round that shanty for years afterwards, who couldn&rsquo;t stand the
+      smell of a gun being cleaned. He it was who had taken an interest, only
+      second to that of the yellow dog, in the cartridge. Bushmen said that it
+      was amusing to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under
+      his nose: he wouldn&rsquo;t wait to bring his solitary eye to bear&mdash;he&rsquo;d
+      take to the Bush and stay out all night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen
+      round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or
+      rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There were
+      two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing
+      aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding his
+      wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to &lsquo;hold up for my sake,
+      Mary, or I&rsquo;ll lam the life out of ye.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave decided to apologise later on, &lsquo;when things had settled a bit,&rsquo; and
+      went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, &lsquo;Tommy&rsquo;, the great,
+      idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs
+      with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest,
+      and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one
+      afternoon with the fun he&rsquo;d had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave
+      went to help Jim out of the hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen,
+      riding lazily past Dave&rsquo;s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a
+      hint of the nasal twang&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;El-lo, Da-a-ve! How&rsquo;s the fishin&rsquo; getting on, Da-a-ve?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. Dave Regan&rsquo;s Yarn.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,&rsquo; 
+      said Dave Regan, Bushman, &lsquo;me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a
+      turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a
+      big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We couldn&rsquo;t get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our money,
+      like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border, where
+      they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses and
+      pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our
+      riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and
+      by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob
+      of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They
+      had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther with
+      them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to pay
+      them off, and they were waiting for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us,&rdquo; said one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp
+      towards Mulgatown. He was called &ldquo;Poisonous Jimmy&rdquo; perhaps on account of
+      his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a
+      station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had a
+      girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side and
+      he saw the shearers coming along the road, he&rsquo;d say to the girl, &ldquo;Run and
+      get your best frock on, Mary! Here&rsquo;s the shearers comin&rsquo;.&rdquo; And if a
+      chequeman wouldn&rsquo;t drink he&rsquo;d try to get him into his bar and shout for
+      him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;But he won&rsquo;t get us,&rdquo; said another of the drovers. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to ride
+      straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I
+      get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve always said that, Jack,&rdquo; said the first drover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our
+      horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and
+      parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings to
+      carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and dusty,
+      and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was west of the
+      sixpenny-line at that time&mdash;all drinks were a shilling along here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll plant our swags in the scrub,&rdquo; I said to Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What for?&rdquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Never mind&mdash;you&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the side of
+      the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our horses to
+      the verandah posts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Poisonous&rdquo; came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made
+      anybody home-sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he looked
+      as if he&rsquo;d be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight&mdash;he wasn&rsquo;t
+      the sort of man you&rsquo;d care to try and swindle a second time. He had a
+      monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and stubble&mdash;like
+      a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose, and a cunning,
+      sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye that seemed
+      fixed. If you didn&rsquo;t know him well you might talk to him for five minutes,
+      looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover that it was the
+      sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the time. It was awful
+      embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal with in a fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day, mates,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day,&rdquo; we said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What are you going to have?&rdquo; he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a
+      rag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We had two long-beers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Never mind that,&rdquo; said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
+      &ldquo;it&rsquo;s my shout. I don&rsquo;t suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in to
+      Mulgatown this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;No, he ain&rsquo;t back,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I wish he was. We&rsquo;re getting tired of
+      waiting for him. We&rsquo;ll give him another hour, and then some of us will
+      have to ride in to see whether he&rsquo;s got on the boose, and get hold of him
+      if he has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re waiting for your cheques?&rdquo; he said, turning to fix some
+      bottles on the shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we are;&rdquo; and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as
+      solemn as an owl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we&rsquo;d been on the
+      track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now
+      an&rsquo; then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he was trying
+      to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Have another drink,&rdquo; he said, and he filled the pewters up again. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      up to me,&rdquo; and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag, as if
+      he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and screwing
+      up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or unconscious
+      expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart frock and a
+      see-you-after-dark smirk on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Have you had dinner?&rdquo; she asked. We could have done with a good meal,
+      but it was too risky&mdash;the drovers&rsquo; boss might come along while we
+      were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we&rsquo;d
+      had dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I wish the boss would come,&rdquo; said Jim with a yawn. &ldquo;I want to get into
+      Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go
+      in. I ain&rsquo;t got a decent rag to me back. I don&rsquo;t suppose there&rsquo;s ten bob
+      amongst the lot of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers&rsquo; camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh, go to the store and get what you want,&rdquo; said Poisonous, taking a
+      sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. &ldquo;You can fix it
+      up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping it
+      into his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, Jim,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
+      are getting on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Tell them to come down and get a drink,&rdquo; said Poisonous; &ldquo;or, wait, you
+      can take some beer along to them if you like,&rdquo; and he gave us half a
+      gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with
+      Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
+      to where our swags were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said Jim, when we&rsquo;d strapped the swags to the saddles, &ldquo;suppose
+      we take the beer back to those chaps: it&rsquo;s meant for them, and it&rsquo;s only a
+      fair thing, anyway&mdash;we&rsquo;ve got as much as we can hold till we get into
+      Mulgatown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It might get them into a row,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and they seem decent chaps.
+      Let&rsquo;s hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that&rsquo;s coming along
+      will think there&rsquo;s angels in the Bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oh! what&rsquo;s a row?&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;They can take care of themselves; they&rsquo;ll
+      have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take the can back
+      and it comes to explanations. I&rsquo;ll ride back to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So Jim rode back to the drovers&rsquo; camp with the beer, and when he came
+      back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank good
+      luck to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the
+      road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy some
+      tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night about seven
+      miles on the safe side of the town.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Talkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We&rsquo;d brought
+      a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown. We camped
+      about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin&rsquo; for the station
+      hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode on into
+      town to draw our money. Some of us was goin&rsquo; back, though in the end we
+      all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But while we was
+      waitin&rsquo; there come along two fellers that had been drovin&rsquo; up north. They
+      yarned a while, an&rsquo; then went on to Poisonous Jimmy&rsquo;s place, an&rsquo; in about
+      an hour one on &lsquo;em come ridin&rsquo; back with a can of beer that he said
+      Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy&rsquo;s little games&mdash;the beer
+      was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we drunk the beer, and
+      reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When the boss come back, an&rsquo; 
+      the station hands to take the bullocks, we started into Mulgatown. We
+      stopped outside Poisonous&rsquo;s place an&rsquo; handed the can to the girl that was
+      grinnin&rsquo; on the verandah. Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a
+      parson with a broken nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day, boys!&rdquo; he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day, Poisonous,&rdquo; we says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hot,&rdquo; he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s blanky hot,&rdquo; I says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He seemed to expect us to get down. &ldquo;Where are you off to?&rdquo; he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Mulgatown,&rdquo; I says. &ldquo;It will be cooler there,&rdquo; and we sung out,
+      &ldquo;So-long, Poisonous!&rdquo; and rode on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He stood starin&rsquo; for a minute; then he started shoutin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Hi! hi there!&rdquo;
+       after us, but we took no notice, an&rsquo; rode on. When we looked back last he
+      was runnin&rsquo; into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when we
+      heard somebody gallopin&rsquo; after us, an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; back we saw it was
+      Poisonous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with us
+      a bit gasping: then he burst out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s them other two carnal blanks?&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What other two?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all here. What&rsquo;s the matter with you
+      anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;All here!&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a lurid liar! What the flamin&rsquo; sheol do
+      you mean by swiggin&rsquo; my beer an&rsquo; flingin&rsquo; the coloured can in me face?
+      without as much as thank yer! D&rsquo;yer think I&rsquo;m a flamin&rsquo;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll pay for your dirty beer,&rdquo; says one of the chaps, puttin&rsquo; his
+      hand in his pocket. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t want yer slush. It tasted as if it had been
+      used before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Pay for it!&rdquo; yelled Jimmy. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll&mdash;&mdash;well take it out of one of
+      yer bleedin&rsquo; hides!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We stopped at once, and I got down an&rsquo; obliged Jimmy for a few rounds. He
+      was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool as a
+      cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one squirmy
+      little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an&rsquo;, even if you knowed him well,
+      you couldn&rsquo;t help watchin&rsquo; the stony eye&mdash;it was no good watchin&rsquo; his
+      eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have managed me if the boss
+      hadn&rsquo;t stopped the fight. The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that
+      didn&rsquo;t swear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Now, look here, Myles,&rdquo; said the boss (Jimmy&rsquo;s name was Myles)&mdash;&ldquo;Now,
+      look here, Myles,&rdquo; sez the boss, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s all this about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s all this about?&rdquo; says Jimmy, gettin&rsquo; excited agen. &ldquo;Why, two
+      fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an&rsquo; put up
+      half-a-dozen drinks, an&rsquo; borrered a sovereign, an&rsquo; got a can o&rsquo; beer on
+      the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin&rsquo; for you&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      I want my crimson money out o&rsquo; some one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What was they like?&rdquo; asks the boss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Like?&rdquo; shouted Poisonous, swearin&rsquo; all the time. &ldquo;One was a blanky long,
+      sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black
+      hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the blanky
+      billy o&rsquo; beer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Now, what&rsquo;s this all about, you chaps?&rdquo; sez the boss to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin&rsquo;-shed, but I
+      never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he&rsquo;d been
+      left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those
+      fellers, just once, before he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an&rsquo; started out along the
+      road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;
+      but two mounted police went after him an&rsquo; fetched him back. He said he
+      only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers till
+      he could give &lsquo;em in charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They fined him ten bob.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Ghostly Door.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Told by one of Dave&rsquo;s mates.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making for
+      a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one of
+      those three-days&rsquo; gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to cut
+      off a man&rsquo;s legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we just tramped
+      on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades&mdash;from
+      cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags&mdash;and our boots, full of
+      water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track. We were settled to it&mdash;to
+      drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks till we came to somewhere&mdash;when,
+      just before darkness settled down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort
+      on the slope of a tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it,
+      without holding a consultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was
+      either a deserted settler&rsquo;s home or a hut attached to an abandoned sawmill
+      round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped our swags
+      under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make sure; then Dave
+      pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in: there was light
+      enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled off some more boards,
+      put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the catch back, and then
+      pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the swags to him. The room
+      was very draughty; the wind came in through the broken window and the
+      cracks between the slabs, so we tried the partitioned-off room&mdash;the
+      bedroom&mdash;and that was better. It had been lined with chaff-bags, and
+      there were two stretchers left by some timber-getters or other Bush
+      contractors who&rsquo;d camped there last; and there were a box and a couple of
+      three-legged stools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put the
+      billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the stretchers;
+      and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire to dry. There was
+      plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I hadn&rsquo;t shaved for
+      days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it like an ill-used
+      fibre brush&mdash;a beard that got redder the longer it grew; he had a
+      hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man so
+      easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head), and he was
+      very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a weird pair
+      as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with the billy and
+      the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and meat with
+      clasp-knives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder,&rsquo; says Dave, &lsquo;but this is the &ldquo;whare&rdquo; * where the
+      murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was to
+      come along now and look in he&rsquo;d get scared.&rsquo; Then after a while he looked
+      down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched his ear, and
+      said, &lsquo;That looks very much like a blood-stain under your stool, doesn&rsquo;t
+      it, Jim?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Whare&rsquo;, &lsquo;whorrie&rsquo;, Maori name for house.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire&mdash;it
+      was too hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wouldn&rsquo;t have liked to camp there by myself, but I don&rsquo;t think Dave
+      would have minded&mdash;he&rsquo;d knocked round too much in the Australian Bush
+      to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was
+      more than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he&rsquo;d
+      mistook him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted
+      murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two
+      stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked
+      comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in
+      particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting up
+      a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and a
+      black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out
+      again; and the door closed behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave scratched his ear. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s rum,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I could have sworn I
+      fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It looks like it,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Neither of us has been on the boose lately.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.
+      Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the
+      door, and called, &lsquo;Puss&mdash;puss&mdash;puss!&rsquo; but the cat wouldn&rsquo;t come.
+      He shut the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got
+      into bed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He&rsquo;d scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat
+      walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as the
+      door closed smartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at Dave and he looked at me&mdash;hard; then he scratched the
+      back of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared
+      about the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,
+      sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there. Dave
+      took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn&rsquo;t see the cat. He
+      came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat
+      answered him and came in from somewhere&mdash;she&rsquo;d been outside the
+      window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against
+      his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way. He had a
+      weakness for cats. I&rsquo;d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse&mdash;brutally,
+      I thought&mdash;but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it.
+      Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave was round, he&rsquo;d
+      see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus. He said
+      once to me, &lsquo;I can understand a man kicking a dog, or hammering a horse
+      when it plays up, but I can&rsquo;t understand a man hurting a cat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close
+      to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a
+      key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and
+      the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum
+      going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her
+      he&rsquo;d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled
+      down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had some books of the &lsquo;Deadwood Dick&rsquo; school. Dave was reading &lsquo;The
+      Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch&rsquo;, and I had &lsquo;The Dismembered Hand&rsquo;, or
+      &lsquo;The Disembowelled Corpse&rsquo;, or some such names. They were first-class
+      preparation for a ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and saw
+      Dave&rsquo;s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on the
+      wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes. And that
+      door was opening again&mdash;slowly&mdash;and Dave had locked it! I never
+      felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and I
+      drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We waited,
+      for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching for the
+      door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one end, and
+      went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,&rsquo; I said, as he caught hold of the
+      door&mdash;like one grabs a craw-fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll swear I didn&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said Dave. But he&rsquo;d already turned the key a couple
+      of times, so he couldn&rsquo;t be sure. He shut and locked the door again. &lsquo;Now,
+      get out and see for yourself,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.
+      Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him.
+      He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you doing that for?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If there&rsquo;s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of his
+      funny business, we&rsquo;ll hear him if he tries to come in while we&rsquo;re asleep,&rsquo; 
+      says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves with the
+      &lsquo;Haunted Gulch&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Disembowelled Corpse&rsquo;, and after a while I heard
+      Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell from the door
+      against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous clatter. I
+      snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did Dave&mdash;the cat
+      went over the partition. That door opened, only a little way this time,
+      paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the
+      door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, and the door
+      wouldn&rsquo;t come!&mdash;it was fast and locked! Then Dave&rsquo;s face began to
+      look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked
+      me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the other room,
+      Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his
+      feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It muster gone by the winder,&rsquo; whispered Dave. I noticed that he said
+      &lsquo;it&rsquo; instead of &lsquo;he&rsquo;. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only
+      needed that to scare me bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.
+      Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the floor,
+      laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &amp;c., on top of
+      them, and started to roll up his swag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you going to do, Dave?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to take the track,&rsquo; says Dave, &lsquo;and camp somewhere farther on.
+      You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the
+      tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any
+      noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That comes of camping in a deserted house,&rsquo; said Dave, when we were safe
+      on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned
+      homestead, or even near it&mdash;probably because a deserted home looks
+      ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the
+      sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a
+      landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we
+      got it started we knocked the wet bark off &lsquo;manuka&rsquo; sticks and logs and
+      piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little
+      drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and the
+      oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the night
+      pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going back to that
+      house.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to find out what&rsquo;s the matter with that crimson door. If I
+      don&rsquo;t I&rsquo;ll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long as
+      I live.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by
+      daylight&mdash;after a little watching and experimenting. The house was
+      built of odds and ends and badly fitted. It &lsquo;gave&rsquo; in the wind in almost
+      any direction&mdash;not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough
+      to throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to
+      bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame
+      was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of
+      it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung to&mdash;the
+      frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose it would take
+      Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by accident. The
+      different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind must have
+      accounted for the variations of the door&rsquo;s movements&mdash;and maybe the
+      draught of our big fire had helped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave scratched his head a good bit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I never lived in a house yet,&rsquo; he said, as we came away&mdash;&lsquo;I never
+      lived in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a
+      good tent.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A Wild Irishman.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington,
+      the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called
+      Pahiatua, which meaneth the &lsquo;home of the gods&rsquo;, and is situated in the
+      Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a pretty
+      little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not
+      originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the tears
+      alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of a warrior
+      chief who was looking his first, or last&mdash;I don&rsquo;t remember which&mdash;upon
+      the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to think of it,
+      else the place would have been already named. Maybe the scene reminded the
+      old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks. While
+      waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper&mdash;which, I
+      anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after
+      paying board) to take me away somewhere&mdash;I spent many hours in the
+      little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns of
+      the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon, he
+      returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called &lsquo;The Flour of
+      Wheat&rsquo;, and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever and
+      again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made me
+      promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger&mdash;no
+      matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober&mdash;I&rsquo;d ask
+      him if he knew the &lsquo;Flour of Wheat&rsquo;, and hear what he had to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue&mdash;it can&rsquo;t
+      be done in writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s the little red Irishman,&rsquo; said the shoemaker, who was Irish
+      himself, &lsquo;who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and
+      there&rsquo;s the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and fights
+      at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; and there&rsquo;s the
+      cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a combination of all three
+      and several other sorts. He was known from the first amongst the boys at
+      Th&rsquo; Canary as the Flour o&rsquo; Wheat, but no one knew exactly why. Some said
+      that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not F-l-o-u-r, and that he was
+      called that because there was no flower on wheat. The name might have been
+      a compliment paid to the man&rsquo;s character by some one who understood and
+      appreciated it&mdash;or appreciated it without understanding it. Or it
+      might have come of some chance saying of the Flour himself, or his mates&mdash;or
+      an accident with bags of flour. He might have worked in a mill. But we&rsquo;ve
+      had enough of that. It&rsquo;s the man&mdash;not the name. He was just a big,
+      dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked hard, drank hard, fought hard&mdash;and
+      didn&rsquo;t swear. No man had ever heard him swear (except once); all things
+      were &lsquo;lovely&rsquo; with him. He was always lucky. He got gold and threw it
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with
+      some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn&rsquo;t matter:
+      there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that knew
+      the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the trouble&mdash;provided
+      he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man who knew him in
+      Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were soon very anxious to
+      see the end of him. He was as wild as they made them in Ireland. When he
+      had a few drinks, he&rsquo;d walk restlessly to and fro outside the shanty,
+      swinging his right arm across in front of him with elbow bent and hand
+      closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and muttering, as though in
+      explanation to himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Oi must be walkin&rsquo; or foightin&rsquo;!&mdash;Oi must be walkin&rsquo; or foightin&rsquo;!&mdash;Oi
+      must be walkin&rsquo; or foightin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was
+      done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they
+      put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on
+      the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept by a
+      cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a place
+      called &ldquo;Th&rsquo; Canary&rdquo;. I remember the first time I saw the Flour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th&rsquo; Canary, and one evening I was
+      standing outside Brady&rsquo;s (the Flour&rsquo;s cousin&rsquo;s place) with Tom Lyons and
+      Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on
+      his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;B&rsquo; God, there&rsquo;s the Flour o&rsquo; Wheat comin&rsquo; this minute,&rdquo; says Dinny
+      Murphy to Tom, &ldquo;an&rsquo; no one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;B&rsquo; God, ye&rsquo;re right!&rdquo; says Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and
+      dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Dinny, I&rsquo;ll bet you a quid an&rsquo; the Flour&rsquo;ll run against some of those
+      new chums before he&rsquo;s an hour on the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But Dinny wouldn&rsquo;t take him up. He knew the Flour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good day to you, Flour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was introduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, boys, come along,&rdquo; says the Flour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then he
+      went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was dancing
+      a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced to dance
+      too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn&rsquo;t please the Flour,
+      so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down&mdash;fair an&rsquo; flat
+      on his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Take that,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an&rsquo; lay
+      there! You can&rsquo;t dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to dance
+      when ye can&rsquo;t dance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought the
+      new chums all night, and in the morning he said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And of course they went in and had a drink with him.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a
+      drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the &ldquo;Nipper&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o&rsquo; Wheat!&rdquo; says she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!&rdquo; says the Flour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed
+      him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a
+      witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with
+      his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a
+      corner of his mouth on duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing at all, your Honour,&rdquo; he said to the S.M.; &ldquo;only a
+      pin-scratch&mdash;it&rsquo;s nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to
+      speak to the lovely woman at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But they didn&rsquo;t let it pass,&mdash;they fined her a quid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the Flour paid the fine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those
+      days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn&rsquo;t do a woman a
+      good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted there
+      was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys who knew
+      the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried too far in
+      some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour&mdash;nor to those who
+      laughed too loud or grinned too long.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Flour&rsquo;s cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got &ldquo;stiff&rdquo;. He
+      hadn&rsquo;t any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got a blank
+      summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he wanted to
+      frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up and took it
+      to his cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What d&rsquo;ye think of that?&rdquo; he says, handing the summons across the bar.
+      &ldquo;What d&rsquo;ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s this all about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a
+      fortnight ago when I was drunk, an&rsquo; now he sends me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, I never would have dream&rsquo;d that of Dinny,&rdquo; says the cousin,
+      scratching his head and blinking. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s come over him at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What have you been doing to the man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Divil a thing that I&rsquo;m aware of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well, what am I to do about it?&rdquo; asked the Flour impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Do? Pay the man, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;How can I pay the lovely man when I haven&rsquo;t got the price of a drink
+      about me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The cousin scratched his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Well&mdash;here, I&rsquo;ll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go
+      and pay the man, and get back to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a
+      howling spree together up at Brady&rsquo;s, the opposition pub. And the cousin
+      said he thought all the time he was being had.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    .   .   .   .   .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance, he&rsquo;d
+      come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and walk
+      round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just when a big
+      event was coming off he&rsquo;d pass within earshot of some committee men&mdash;who
+      had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the thing up and make it a
+      success&mdash;saying to himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don&rsquo;t see them!
+      Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or he&rsquo;d pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of
+      some sort,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;No gamblin&rsquo; for the Flour. I don&rsquo;t believe in their little shwindles. It
+      ought to be shtopped. Leadin&rsquo; young people ashtray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or he&rsquo;d pass an Englishman he didn&rsquo;t like,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Look at Jinneral Roberts! He&rsquo;s a man! He&rsquo;s an Irishman! England has to
+      come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the marshes
+      of Candyhar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year&rsquo;s Day&mdash;except
+      once&mdash;and old Duncan was always there,&mdash;never missed it till the
+      day he died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted &ldquo;hard-case&rdquo;.
+      They all knew &ldquo;old Duncan&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But one New Year&rsquo;s Eve he didn&rsquo;t turn up, and was missed at once.
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;ll turn up
+      alright.&rdquo; They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn&rsquo;t come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came from
+      Duffers, but they hadn&rsquo;t seen him for two days. They had fully expected to
+      find him at the creek. He wasn&rsquo;t at Aliaura nor Notown. They inquired of
+      men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn&rsquo;t there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something happened to the lovely man,&rdquo; said the Flour of Wheat
+      at last. &ldquo;Some of us had better see about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out over
+      the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the Flour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The door of Duncan&rsquo;s &ldquo;whare&rdquo; was closed&mdash;BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The
+      Flour noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in.
+      The hut was tidied up and swept out&mdash;even the fireplace. Duncan had
+      &ldquo;lifted the boxes&rdquo; and &ldquo;cleaned up&rdquo;, and his little bag of gold stood on a
+      shelf by his side&mdash;all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean
+      neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly
+      and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his arms
+      lying crossed on his chest, and one foot&mdash;with a boot on&mdash;resting
+      on the ground. He had his &ldquo;clean things&rdquo; on, and was dressed except for
+      one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads,&rdquo; said the Flour. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s
+      the lovely man lying dead in his bunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the
+      crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on old
+      Duncan&rsquo;s account, but the Flour said he&rsquo;d see to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were no
+      sports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the Flour used to say, afterwards, &ldquo;Ah, but it was a grand time we
+      had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    .   .   .   .   .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from
+      Th&rsquo; Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad&mdash;the man
+      was dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a
+      spare bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Inside there&mdash;come out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the
+      matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front
+      of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little
+      pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry,&rdquo; says the
+      Flour, &ldquo;and you&rsquo;ve got to fix him up and bring him round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he shook his fist in the doctor&rsquo;s face and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;If you let that lovely man die&mdash;look out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at
+      his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some
+      order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round as
+      he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;If you let that lovely man die&mdash;mind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a
+      barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;pour that into the lovely man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible, and
+      said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;If you let that lovely man die&mdash;look out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They were used to hard-cases, and didn&rsquo;t take much notice of him, but he
+      had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day and
+      night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe, and
+      then he&rsquo;d say, &ldquo;Ah, well, I&rsquo;ll have to go up and see how me lovely mate&rsquo;s
+      getting on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And every time he&rsquo;d go up he&rsquo;d shake his fist at the hospital in general
+      and threaten to murder &lsquo;em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the
+      doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and
+      knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper,&rdquo; said the Flour of Wheat; &ldquo;you
+      let that lovely man die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were
+      waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the hospital,
+      and stood it on end by the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come for me lovely mate!&rdquo; he said to the scared staff&mdash;or as
+      much of it as he baled up and couldn&rsquo;t escape him. &ldquo;Hand him over. He&rsquo;s
+      going back to be buried with his friends at Th&rsquo; Canary. Now, don&rsquo;t be
+      sneaking round and sidling off, you there; you needn&rsquo;t be frightened; I&rsquo;ve
+      settled with the doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and
+      between them&mdash;and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the
+      premises&mdash;they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn&rsquo;t ready yet; there
+      were papers to sign; it wouldn&rsquo;t be decent to the dead; he had to be
+      prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and
+      comfortable. Anyway, they&rsquo;d have him ready in an hour, or take the
+      consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as
+      well and better by the boys at Th&rsquo; Canary. &ldquo;However,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+      round in an hour, and if you haven&rsquo;t got me lovely mate ready&mdash;look
+      out!&rdquo; Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there&rsquo;s e&rsquo;er a pin-scratch on
+      me mate&rsquo;s body&mdash;look out! If there&rsquo;s a pairin&rsquo; of Dinny&rsquo;s toe-nail
+      missin&rsquo;&mdash;look out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he went out&mdash;taking the coffin with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the
+      coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on
+      his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as dead
+      drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked
+      air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the
+      Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the
+      bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,
+      and departed several ways to put the &ldquo;boys&rdquo; up to it. And about midnight
+      the &ldquo;boys&rdquo; gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and
+      somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong
+      Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to
+      plead in changed and awful tones&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Pray for me soul, boys&mdash;pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones
+      between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour&rsquo;s in
+      Purgatory!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing over
+      a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour was
+      heard to swear. And he swore then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They didn&rsquo;t pray for him&mdash;they gave him a month. And, when he came
+      out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he&mdash;to
+      his credit, perhaps&mdash;came the other half. They had a drink together,
+      and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for
+      a pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;It was the will o&rsquo; God, after all, doctor,&rdquo; said the Flour. &ldquo;It was the
+      will o&rsquo; God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand,
+      doctor.... Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he left for Th&rsquo; Canary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Babies in the Bush.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright&mdash;
+       That only the Bushmen know&mdash;
+    Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
+    Or carry them up through the starry night,
+       Where the Bush-lost babies go.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the Australian
+      Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and professions (and
+      of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile, the smile is
+      either mechanical or bitter as a rule&mdash;cynical. They seldom talk. The
+      sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority&mdash;and without
+      reason or evidence&mdash;as being proud, hard, and selfish,&mdash;&lsquo;too
+      mean to live, and too big for their boots.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and very
+      sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in sitting
+      on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and gloom. He
+      was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes&mdash;haunted grey eyes
+      sometimes&mdash;and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not
+      above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their
+      hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown. The
+      opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men who
+      grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and die
+      respectably in their beds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name was Head&mdash;Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland
+      routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to
+      travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales,
+      with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney
+      market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)&mdash;a rover,
+      of course, and a ne&rsquo;er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a
+      thin skin&mdash;worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I
+      went by the name of &lsquo;Jack Ellis&rsquo; this trip,&mdash;not because the police
+      were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack
+      Ellis&mdash;and so the chaps nicknamed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Boss spoke little to the men: he&rsquo;d sit at tucker or with his pipe by
+      the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the big,
+      restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky starlit plain.
+      I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more confidentially to
+      me than to any other of the droving party. There was a something of
+      sympathy between us&mdash;I can&rsquo;t explain what it was. It seemed as though
+      it were an understood thing between us that we understood each other. He
+      sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of explanation&mdash;so
+      I thought&mdash;had he said them to any other of the party. He&rsquo;d often,
+      after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off with &lsquo;You
+      know, Jack.&rsquo; And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why.
+      We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip. His men
+      respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy, and never
+      drank a glass nor &lsquo;shouted&rsquo; on the trip: he was reckoned a &lsquo;mean boss&rsquo;,
+      and rather a nigger-driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who shot
+      himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon&rsquo;s poems on the route,
+      and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked me if I
+      liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but by-and-by we&rsquo;d
+      quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. &lsquo;Those are grand
+      lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren&rsquo;t they, Jack?&rsquo; he&rsquo;d say,
+      after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while
+      without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but
+      somehow I fancied he didn&rsquo;t enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have
+      suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) &lsquo;Those are great lines,&rsquo; he&rsquo;d
+      say&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;In Collins Street standeth a statue tall&mdash;
+         A statue tall on a pillar of stone&mdash;
+      Telling its story to great and small
+       Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
+       Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
+    He lay on the desert a dying man,
+       Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.&rdquo;
+ 
+     That&rsquo;s a grand thing, Jack.  How does it go?&mdash;
+    &ldquo;With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
+       And the film of death o&rsquo;er his fading eyes,
+     He saw the sun go down on the sand,&rdquo;&rsquo;&mdash;
+
+    The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn&mdash;
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;And he slept and never saw it rise,&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    &mdash;speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.
+    Then maybe he&rsquo;d stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
+    with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
+
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;What mattered the sand or the whit&rsquo;ning chalk,
+       The blighted herbage or blackened log,
+    The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
+       Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      They don&rsquo;t matter much, do they, Jack?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Damned if I think they do, Boss!&rsquo; I&rsquo;d say.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
+       But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
+    That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms&rsquo; food
+       Where once they have gone where we all must go.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once he repeated the poem containing the lines&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;Love, when we wandered here together,
+    Hand in hand through the sparkling weather&mdash;
+    God surely loved us a little then.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Beautiful lines those, Jack.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
+       And the blue sea over the white sand rolled&mdash;
+     Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur&rsquo;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      How does it go, Jack?&rsquo; He stood up and turned his face to the light, but
+      not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth
+      are mostly women&rsquo;s eyes, but I&rsquo;ve seen few so sad as the Boss&rsquo;s were just
+      then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon&rsquo;s sea poems to his
+      horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem was
+      that one of Gordon&rsquo;s with the lines&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;I would that with sleepy soft embraces
+       The sea would fold me, would find me rest
+    In the luminous depths of its secret places,
+       Where the wealth of God&rsquo;s marvels is manifest!&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp; but
+      after we&rsquo;d been on Gordon&rsquo;s poetry for a while he&rsquo;d end it abruptly with,
+      &lsquo;Well, it&rsquo;s time to turn in,&rsquo; or, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s time to turn out,&rsquo; or he&rsquo;d give me
+      an order in connection with the cattle. He had been a well-to-do squatter
+      on the Lachlan river-side, in New South Wales, and had been ruined by the
+      drought, they said. One night in camp, and after smoking in silence for
+      nearly an hour, he asked&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you know Fisher, Jack&mdash;the man that owns these bullocks?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of him,&rsquo; I said. Fisher was a big squatter, with stations both
+      in New South Wales and in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in
+      his pocket, or decent rag to his back, or a crust in his tucker-bag, and I
+      gave him a job. He&rsquo;s my boss now. Ah, well! it&rsquo;s the way of Australia, you
+      know, Jack.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him; he was
+      &lsquo;bred&rsquo; on the Boss&rsquo;s station, they said, and had been with him practically
+      all his life. His name was &lsquo;Andy&rsquo;. I forget his other name, if he really
+      had one. Andy had charge of the &lsquo;droving-plant&rsquo; (a tilted two-horse
+      waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed), and he did
+      the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for figures. Andy
+      might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in between. His
+      hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big grey eyes also
+      had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or he theirs, I don&rsquo;t
+      know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think, the most innocent,
+      good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met. Towards the middle of the
+      trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp about the Boss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Think so?&rsquo; I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure of it. It&rsquo;s very seldom HE takes to any one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a while Andy said suddenly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Jack, I&rsquo;m glad of it. I&rsquo;d like to see him make a chum of some
+      one, if only for one trip. And don&rsquo;t you make any mistake about the Boss.
+      He&rsquo;s a white man. There&rsquo;s precious few that know him&mdash;precious few
+      now; but I do, and it&rsquo;ll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn
+      with.&rsquo; And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains&mdash;big
+      clearings rather&mdash;and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we
+      reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months
+      that we&rsquo;d left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,&mdash;as
+      I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one
+      long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we&rsquo;d finished the
+      boss said to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Jack, you&rsquo;re going on to Sydney, aren&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; I&rsquo;m going down to have a fly round.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He&rsquo;s going down
+      in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It won&rsquo;t
+      be so comfortable as the passenger; but you&rsquo;ll save your fare, and you can
+      give Andy a hand with the cattle. You&rsquo;ve only got to have a look at &lsquo;em
+      every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the trucks. You and
+      Andy are mates, aren&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed
+      anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth, I
+      felt really sorry to part with him. I&rsquo;d had to work as hard as any of the
+      other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He&rsquo;d struck me
+      as a man who&rsquo;d been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and I felt sorry
+      for him without knowing what the trouble was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come and have a drink, Boss,&rsquo; I said. The agent had paid us off during
+      the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned into a hotel with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t drink, Jack,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;but I&rsquo;ll take a glass with you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you were a teetotaller, Boss,&rsquo; I said. I had not been
+      surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now
+      that it was over it was a different thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not a teetotaller, Jack,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I can take a glass or leave it.&rsquo; 
+      And he called for a long beer, and we drank &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s luck!&rsquo; to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I wish I could take a glass or leave it.&rsquo; And I meant it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Boss spoke as I&rsquo;d never heard him speak before. I thought for the
+      moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before the
+      night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a man who
+      has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. &lsquo;Jack!&rsquo; he said,
+      &lsquo;there&rsquo;s worse things than drinking, and there&rsquo;s worse things than heavy
+      smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on him that he
+      can find no comfort in his pipe, then it&rsquo;s a heavy load. And when a man
+      who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no comfort in
+      liquor, then it&rsquo;s deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if
+      impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet tone&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you&rsquo;re only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won&rsquo;t ask you to take
+      the second drink. You don&rsquo;t want it; and, besides, I know the signs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter, and looking
+      down between his arms at the floor. He stood that way thinking for a
+      while; then he suddenly straightened up, like a man who&rsquo;d made up his mind
+      to something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want you to come along home with me, Jack,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;we&rsquo;ll fix you a
+      shake-down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But won&rsquo;t it put Mrs Head about?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not at all. She&rsquo;s expecting you. Come along; there&rsquo;s nothing to see in
+      Bathurst, and you&rsquo;ll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney. Come on,
+      we&rsquo;ll just be in time for tea.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town&mdash;an
+      old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses, like you see in some
+      of those old settled districts. There was, I remember, the stump of a tree
+      in front, covered with ivy till it looked like a giant&rsquo;s club with the
+      thick end up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the
+      gate. He&rsquo;d been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the
+      bullocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jack,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble at one
+      time. We&mdash;we lost our two children. It does her good to talk to a
+      stranger now and again&mdash;she&rsquo;s always better afterwards; but there&rsquo;s
+      very few I care to bring. You&mdash;you needn&rsquo;t notice anything strange.
+      And agree with her, Jack. You know, Jack.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Boss,&rsquo; I said. I&rsquo;d knocked about the Bush too long, and
+      run against too many strange characters and things, to be surprised at
+      anything much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms. I saw by the
+      light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman&rsquo;s hair was grey, and I
+      reckoned that he had his mother living with him. And&mdash;we do have odd
+      thoughts at odd times in a flash&mdash;and I wondered how Mrs Head and her
+      mother-in-law got on together. But the next minute I was in the room, and
+      introduced to &lsquo;My wife, Mrs Head,&rsquo; and staring at her with both eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his wife. I don&rsquo;t think I can describe her. For the first minute or
+      two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the
+      lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman&mdash;one of
+      those fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies&mdash;who dressed
+      young, wore false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of
+      Mrs Head&rsquo;s impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so
+      grey as I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it
+      was like dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and
+      it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her face&mdash;her
+      nose and chin&mdash;I fancied, and something that you couldn&rsquo;t describe.
+      She had big dark eyes&mdash;dark-brown, I thought, though they might have
+      been hazel: they were a bit too big and bright for me, and now and again,
+      when she got excited, the white showed all round the pupils&mdash;just a
+      little, but a little was enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit of
+      a gusher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;ve come, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said, giving my hand a grip.
+      &lsquo;Walter&mdash;Mr Head&mdash;has been speaking to me about you. I&rsquo;ve been
+      expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready
+      presently. Don&rsquo;t you find it a bit chilly?&rsquo; She shivered. It was a bit
+      chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea, and
+      set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished even for a
+      lucky boss drover&rsquo;s home; the furniture looked as if it had belonged to a
+      tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first, sitting down to
+      tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable tuck-in at a
+      restaurant or in a pub. dining-room. But she knew a lot about the Bush,
+      and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip, and soon put me at
+      my ease. You see, for the last year or two I&rsquo;d taken my tucker in my
+      hands,&mdash;hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife mostly,&mdash;sitting
+      on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called
+      &lsquo;Auntie&rsquo;. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round
+      herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of
+      thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and
+      movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too&mdash;a
+      womanly girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish
+      about her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the
+      fire and Andy and I on the other&mdash;Andy a little behind me at the
+      corner of the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Walter&mdash;Mr Head&mdash;tells me you&rsquo;ve been out on the Lachlan river,
+      Mr Ellis?&rsquo; she said as soon as she&rsquo;d settled down, and she leaned forward,
+      as if eager to hear that I&rsquo;d been there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Mrs Head. I&rsquo;ve knocked round all about out there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her
+      forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had&mdash;she often
+      did it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what
+      she&rsquo;d said last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she
+      said. &lsquo;Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of talking
+      to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same faces. You
+      don&rsquo;t know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face and talk to a
+      stranger.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said. And so I could. I never
+      stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss straightened
+      up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and then put his
+      arm round her shoulders. This brought her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever
+      tell you about the time we lived there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; I said, glancing at the Boss. &lsquo;I know you had a station there; but,
+      you know, the Boss doesn&rsquo;t talk much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell Jack, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss; &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled. &lsquo;You know Walter, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;You won&rsquo;t mind him. He
+      doesn&rsquo;t like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me, but
+      that&rsquo;s foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.&rsquo; She leaned
+      forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been wanting to
+      tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me about you. I
+      knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These town people
+      don&rsquo;t understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we lost our
+      children out on the station. The fairies took them. Did Walter ever tell
+      you about the fairies taking the children away?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a facer. &lsquo;I&mdash;I beg pardon,&rsquo; I commenced, when Andy gave me a
+      dig in the back. Then I saw it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn&rsquo;t tell me about that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said, her big eyes
+      fixed on my face&mdash;&lsquo;the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones
+      that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are
+      not found? You&rsquo;ve surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that
+      I&rsquo;ve spoken to. Maybe you&rsquo;ve seen them? Andy there has?&rsquo; Andy gave me
+      another dig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve heard of them, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said; &lsquo;but I can&rsquo;t swear that
+      I&rsquo;ve seen one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Andy has. Haven&rsquo;t you, Andy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn&rsquo;t I tell you all about it the last time
+      we were home?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And didn&rsquo;t you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course he did!&rsquo; I said, coming to Andy&rsquo;s rescue; &lsquo;I remember it now.
+      You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course!&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy; &lsquo;I told him all about that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,
+      and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said; &lsquo;that&rsquo;s what Andy told me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?&rsquo; asked Mrs Head, fixing
+      her eyes on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Like. It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs
+      Head,&rsquo; said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big
+      innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling lies.
+      &lsquo;It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture we had at
+      home on the station&mdash;the right-hand one in blue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled. You couldn&rsquo;t call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish smile
+      you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy
+      childish smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot of
+      trouble,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Of course it never struck me, until afterwards, that
+      the fairies had taken the children.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and sat
+      so for a while; then she roused herself again&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what am I thinking about? I haven&rsquo;t started to tell you about the
+      children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children&rsquo;s portraits, will you,
+      please? You&rsquo;ll find them on my dressing-table.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman seemed to hesitate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,&rsquo; said Mrs Head. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be foolish.
+      You know I&rsquo;m all right now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said with a smile,
+      while the old woman&rsquo;s back was turned. &lsquo;Poor old body, she&rsquo;s a bit
+      crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn&rsquo;t like me to get talking
+      about the children. She&rsquo;s got an idea that if I do I&rsquo;ll start talking
+      nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were lost. I
+      was very foolish then, wasn&rsquo;t I, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You were, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss. &lsquo;But that&rsquo;s all past. You mustn&rsquo;t think
+      of that time any more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see,&rsquo; said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, &lsquo;at first nothing would
+      drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they
+      perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would
+      let them do that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You were very foolish, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss; &lsquo;but don&rsquo;t think about
+      that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl: they
+      must have been very pretty children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see,&rsquo; said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them to
+      me one by one, &lsquo;we had these taken in Sydney some years before the
+      children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally&rsquo;s is not a good
+      portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That&rsquo;s him standing on the
+      chair. Isn&rsquo;t the pose good? See, he&rsquo;s got one hand and one little foot
+      forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark, and
+      you&rsquo;ve got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that the
+      photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait he&rsquo;s
+      sitting on the chair&mdash;he&rsquo;s just settled himself to enjoy the fun. But
+      see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was holding
+      her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally had just
+      turned two.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let me see; Wally (that&rsquo;s little Walter, you know)&mdash;Wally was five
+      and little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren&rsquo;t they,
+      Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You were away, Walter, when it happened.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss&mdash;cheerfully, it seemed to me&mdash;&lsquo;I
+      was away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And we couldn&rsquo;t find you, Walter. You see,&rsquo; she said to me, &lsquo;Walter&mdash;Mr
+      Head&mdash;was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn&rsquo;t find his
+      address. It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after
+      the break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It
+      was a lonely place; there wasn&rsquo;t much bush cleared round the homestead,
+      just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the
+      edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles&mdash;fifty or a
+      hundred miles in some directions without a break; didn&rsquo;t they, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who
+      used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the
+      run with the men, mustering sheep; weren&rsquo;t you, Andy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Mrs Head.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because if
+      they once got into the edge of the scrub they&rsquo;d be lost; but this morning
+      little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down under a
+      clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather buttercups.
+      You remember that clump of gums, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I remember, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t go through the fence a step, mumma,&rdquo; little Wally said. I could
+      see Old Peter&mdash;an old shepherd and station-hand we had&mdash;I could
+      see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down
+      there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course I do, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told little
+      Wally to keep tight hold of his sister&rsquo;s hand and go straight down to Old
+      Peter and tell him I sent them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me
+      all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands holding
+      fast their straw hats. &ldquo;In case a bad wind blowed,&rdquo; as little Maggie said.
+      I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the last that any one
+      saw of them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Except the fairies, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course, Walter, except the fairies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers&rsquo; camp that
+      morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam and
+      started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the
+      house, and before the children got near him. They either followed him for
+      some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or butterflies&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, &lsquo;Do you think the Bush Fairies
+      would entice children away, Mr Ellis?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. I&rsquo;m sure they wouldn&rsquo;t, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said&mdash;&lsquo;at least not from
+      what I know of them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless puzzled
+      way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather mechanically, it
+      seemed to me&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour
+      afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said&mdash;I
+      said, &ldquo;O my God! where&rsquo;s the children?&rdquo;&rsquo; Her fingers fluttered up to her
+      temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t mind about that, Maggie,&rsquo; said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her
+      head. &lsquo;Tell Jack about the fairies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You were away at the time, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And we couldn&rsquo;t find you, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, Maggie,&rsquo; very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on
+      his hand, and looked into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It wasn&rsquo;t your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think
+      the fairies would have taken the children?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And they&rsquo;re bringing the children home next year?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie&mdash;next year.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
+      before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost
+      children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards where
+      the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The hurried search
+      in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time for Maggie and Wally,
+      and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old Peter&rsquo;s ride to the
+      musterers&rsquo; camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no time and from nowhere,
+      as they do in a case like this, and no matter how lonely the district.
+      Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all directions. The hurried search
+      the first day, and the mother mad with anxiety as night came on. Her long,
+      hopeless, wild-eyed watch through the night; starting up at every sound of
+      a horse&rsquo;s hoof, and reading the worst in one glance at the rider&rsquo;s face.
+      The systematic work of the search-parties next day and the days following.
+      How those days do fly past. The women from the next run or selection, and
+      some from the town, driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay
+      with and try to comfort the mother. (&lsquo;Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I
+      must go to that poor woman!&rsquo;) Comforting her with improbable stories of
+      children who had been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when
+      they were found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers.
+      Search-parties cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting
+      signal-fires. The reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the
+      Boss himself, wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and
+      one or two others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest
+      had given up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed
+      before me as Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were
+      in another room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to the
+      fairies again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after&mdash;months after, I
+      think&mdash;I&rsquo;d insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling
+      for the children. I&rsquo;d stand there and call &ldquo;Maggie!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Wally!&rdquo; until
+      Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter!
+      But of course I didn&rsquo;t know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was really
+      out of my mind for a time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No wonder you were, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;It was terrible trouble.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it&rsquo;s all
+      right now, Walter,&rsquo; she said, rumpling the Boss&rsquo;s hair. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll never be so
+      foolish again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course you won&rsquo;t, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;re very happy now, aren&rsquo;t we, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course we are, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the children are coming back next year.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Next year, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she went on. &lsquo;Poor Walter
+      is away so much that I&rsquo;m afraid I make a little too much of him when he
+      does come home.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said
+      quickly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but they
+      were no friends of mine. I shouldn&rsquo;t have listened to them, Walter. You
+      told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Voices,&rsquo; she said; &lsquo;you know about the Voices, Walter?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, Maggie. But you don&rsquo;t hear the Voices now, Maggie?&rsquo; he asked
+      anxiously. &lsquo;You haven&rsquo;t heard them since I&rsquo;ve been away this time, have
+      you, Maggie?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, Walter. They&rsquo;ve gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes,
+      but they&rsquo;re the Bush Fairies&rsquo; voices. I hear them calling Maggie and Wally
+      to come with them.&rsquo; She paused again. &lsquo;And sometimes I think I hear them
+      call me. But of course I couldn&rsquo;t go away without you, Walter. But I&rsquo;m
+      foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr Ellis.
+      They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then, if the
+      fairies hadn&rsquo;t taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black trackers with
+      the police, could have tracked and found them at once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course they could, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They said that the trackers couldn&rsquo;t track them because there was rain a
+      few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It was
+      only a thunderstorm.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why!&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve known the blacks to track a man after a week&rsquo;s heavy
+      rain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it was
+      in a scared way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Walter!&rsquo; she said, clutching the Boss&rsquo;s arm; &lsquo;whatever have I been
+      talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me talk
+      like that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where are you going, Mr Ellis?&rsquo; she asked hurriedly. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re not going
+      to-night. Auntie&rsquo;s made a bed for you in Andy&rsquo;s room. You mustn&rsquo;t mind
+      me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,&rsquo; said the Boss. &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll
+      be in to supper. We&rsquo;ll have a yarn, Maggie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I really don&rsquo;t
+      know what you must think of me,&mdash;I&rsquo;ve been talking all the time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,&rsquo; I said; and Andy hooked me out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll have a good cry and be better now,&rsquo; said Andy when we got away
+      from the house. &lsquo;She might be better for months. She has been fairly
+      reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he came
+      back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns now and
+      again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a longing to
+      talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her good. The
+      doctor&rsquo;s against it, but doctors don&rsquo;t know everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all true about the children, then?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s cruel true,&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And were the bodies never found?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes;&rsquo; then, after a long pause, &lsquo;I found them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You did!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either&mdash;and in a
+      fairly clear space. It&rsquo;s a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it
+      often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and
+      came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were
+      lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss&rsquo;s sake. You see, in a
+      case like this, and when the bodies aren&rsquo;t found, the parents never quite
+      lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush to-night
+      (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst, or cold. That
+      mad idea haunts &lsquo;em all their lives. It&rsquo;s the same, I believe, with
+      friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a long while with
+      the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and drifting round in
+      the water.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not for a long time. It wouldn&rsquo;t have done any good. She was raving mad
+      for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne&mdash;to the best
+      doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold the
+      station&mdash;sacrificed everything, and took her to England.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To England?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He&rsquo;d offer a
+      thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She got
+      worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the children.
+      The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent all his
+      money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a nurse, and
+      trying to get her cured; that&rsquo;s why he&rsquo;s droving now. She was restless in
+      Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there till the
+      fairies brought the children home. She&rsquo;d been getting the fairy idea into
+      her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the station was
+      sold, and he couldn&rsquo;t have lived there anyway without going mad himself.
+      He&rsquo;d married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got friends and
+      relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He persuaded her
+      that the fairies were going to bring the children here. Everybody&rsquo;s very
+      kind to them. I think it&rsquo;s a mistake to run away from a town where you&rsquo;re
+      known, in a case like this, though most people do it. It was years before
+      he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet&mdash;after she&rsquo;s been fairly
+      well for a longish time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And you never tried telling her that the children were found?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river at
+      first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so he
+      had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near the
+      sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they go
+      out. It&rsquo;s all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had
+      thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were
+      against it; but he couldn&rsquo;t rest till he tried it. He took her out, and
+      explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the
+      names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions
+      about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite
+      sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back on
+      the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so then he
+      let it be. I think it&rsquo;s better as it is. Now and again, at her best, she
+      seems to understand that the children were found dead, and buried, and
+      she&rsquo;ll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet way, and make
+      him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave next time he&rsquo;s down.
+      But it doesn&rsquo;t last long, and she&rsquo;s always worse afterwards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy
+      &lsquo;shouted&rsquo; in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer a thought
+      struck me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Boss was away when the children were lost?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Strange you couldn&rsquo;t find him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, it was strange; but HE&rsquo;LL have to tell you about that. Very likely
+      he will; it&rsquo;s either all or nothing with him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I feel damned sorry for the Boss,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;d be sorrier if you knew all,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s the worst trouble
+      that can happen to a man. It&rsquo;s like living with the dead. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      like a man living with his dead wife.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and
+      cheerful, bustling round. You&rsquo;d have thought her one of the happiest and
+      brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the
+      fairies. She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips. She told some
+      good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I&rsquo;d spent for a long
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good night, Mr Ellis,&rsquo; she said brightly, shaking hands with me when Andy
+      and I were going to turn in. &lsquo;And don&rsquo;t forget your pipe. Here it is! I
+      know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn in. Walter
+      smokes in bed. I don&rsquo;t mind. You can smoke all night if you like.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She seems all right,&rsquo; I said to Andy when we were in our room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head mournfully. We&rsquo;d left the door ajar, and we could hear
+      the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very
+      clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ll tell you the truth, Walter. I&rsquo;ve been deceiving you, Walter,
+      all the time, but I did it for the best. Don&rsquo;t be angry with me, Walter!
+      The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you to
+      come back! They haven&rsquo;t come since you&rsquo;ve been home, Walter. You must stay
+      with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and telling me
+      lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself; they told me
+      it was all my own fault&mdash;that I killed the children. They said I was
+      a drag on you, and they&rsquo;d laugh&mdash;Ha! ha! ha!&mdash;like that. They&rsquo;d
+      say, &ldquo;Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie.&rdquo; They told me to come to the
+      river, Walter.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months
+      and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground
+      or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn&rsquo;t too tired to pull
+      them down, and my saddle for a pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I&rsquo;ve never
+      since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably he
+      really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger; perhaps
+      he wanted me to understand&mdash;maybe he was weakening as he grew older,
+      and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but
+      Andy roused me out about four o&rsquo;clock. The old woman that they called
+      Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee ready
+      in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and had our
+      breakfast quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say
+      Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,&rsquo; said the
+      Boss. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made up
+      a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don&rsquo;t forget it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
+      which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
+      without speaking. He didn&rsquo;t seem sociable this morning, or any way
+      sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at
+      last I made a swallow and blurted out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here, Boss, old chap! I&rsquo;m damned sorry!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was
+      over the Bathurst plains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling
+      spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I&rsquo;d tell her I had to
+      go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When the
+      children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly drunk
+      in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush&mdash;a sly grog-shop. The old
+      brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the
+      lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn&rsquo;t seen
+      me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They were
+      mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three
+      policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the
+      country.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could do
+      for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, Jack!&rsquo; he said at the door of the brake-van. &lsquo;Good-bye, Andy!&mdash;keep
+      those bullocks on their feet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat silent
+      for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a
+      coal-stove in the centre of the van.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Does the boss never go to Sydney?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very seldom,&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;and then only when he has to, on business. When
+      he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out to
+      Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a while I said, &lsquo;He told me about the drink, Andy&mdash;about his
+      being on the spree when the children were lost.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, Jack,&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;that&rsquo;s the thing that&rsquo;s been killing him ever
+      since, and it happened over ten years ago.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A Bush Dance.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tap, tap, tap, tap.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly in
+      the midst of the &lsquo;close&rsquo;, solid blackness of that moonless December night,
+      when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the evening of the school children&rsquo;s &lsquo;Feast&rsquo;. That is to say that
+      the children had been sent, and &lsquo;let go&rsquo;, and the younger ones &lsquo;fetched&rsquo; 
+      through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays, and
+      raced&mdash;sometimes in couples tied together by the legs&mdash;and
+      caked, and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and
+      got rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled
+      and tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea
+      was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better
+      things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been
+      taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
+      more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat
+      about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls spoke
+      above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath. Now and
+      again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you would have
+      found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness and to
+      swear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tap, tap, tap.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces nervously
+      towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tap&mdash;tap.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher&rsquo;s residence,
+      and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it was also
+      accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour&mdash;more like that of warm
+      cheap glue than anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever one
+      of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door, all eyes
+      were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then withdrawn
+      hopelessly. At the sound of a horse&rsquo;s step all eyes and ears were on the
+      door, till some one muttered, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s only the horses in the paddock.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the girls&rsquo; eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the
+      belle of the party&mdash;a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue
+      Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her,
+      with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her
+      hands, rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered
+      in a hurry by two sympathetic and rather &lsquo;upset&rsquo; girl friends, and as she
+      passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I can&rsquo;t help it! I did want to dance! It&rsquo;s a sh-shame! I can&rsquo;t help
+      it! I&mdash;I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance&mdash;and&mdash;and
+      I want to dance!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the
+      girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and
+      other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from
+      the outside&mdash;being man comforted&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I&mdash;I had such&mdash;such&mdash;a
+      job&mdash;to get mother&mdash;and&mdash;and father to let me come&mdash;and&mdash;and
+      now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two girl friends came back. &lsquo;He sez to leave her to him,&rsquo; they
+      whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s no use, Jack!&rsquo; came the voice of grief. &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t know
+      what&mdash;what father and mother&mdash;is. I&mdash;I won&rsquo;t&mdash;be able&mdash;to
+      ge-get away&mdash;again&mdash;for&mdash;for&mdash;not till I&rsquo;m married,
+      perhaps.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take her
+      into my room and make her lie down,&rsquo; she whispered to her sister, who was
+      staying with her. &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll start some of the other girls presently&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      just the weather for it,&rsquo; and she passed out quietly. That schoolmistress
+      was a woman of penetration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A final &lsquo;tap-tap&rsquo; from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a hurt
+      or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in that
+      direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like &lsquo;damn!&rsquo; 
+      and hopelessness settled down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the girls
+      rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the darkness&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s two horses, I tell you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s three, you&mdash;&mdash;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lay you&mdash;&mdash;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Put the stuff up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A clack of gate thrown open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who is it, Tom?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Voices from gatewards, yelling, &lsquo;Johnny Mears! They&rsquo;ve got Johnny Mears!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the
+      table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which he
+      had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight; and,
+      holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms, as a football is
+      held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of his riding-boot.
+      It was a beautiful kick, the concertina shot out into the blackness, from
+      which was projected, in return, first a short, sudden howl, then a face
+      with one eye glaring and the other covered by an enormous brick-coloured
+      hand, and a voice that wanted to know who shot &lsquo;that lurid loaf of bread?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews,
+      M.C.,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They&rsquo;ve got Johnny Mears
+      with his fiddle!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Buck-Jumper.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Saturday afternoon.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them lanky
+      and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel on the edge
+      of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster&rsquo;s camp) when Cob &amp; Co.&lsquo;s
+      mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding from round Crown Ridge, in
+      all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage. Some wiry, ill-used
+      hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings about the place. The fresh
+      coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard close to the shanty. As the coach
+      climbed the nearer bank of the creek at the foot of the ridge, six of the
+      Bushmen detached themselves from verandah posts, from their heels, from
+      the clay floor of the verandah and the rough slab wall against which
+      they&rsquo;d been resting, and joined a group of four or five who stood round
+      one. He stood with his back to the corner post of the stock-yard, his feet
+      well braced out in front of him, and contemplated the toes of his tight
+      new &lsquo;lastic-side boots and whistled softly. He was a clean-limbed,
+      handsome fellow, with riding-cords, leggings, and a blue sash; he was
+      Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed, and his glossy, curly black hair bunched up
+      in front of the brim of a new cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do it for a quid, Jack?&rsquo; asked one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Damned if I will, Jim!&rsquo; said the young man at the post. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll do it for a
+      fiver&mdash;not a blanky sprat less.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim took off his hat and &lsquo;shoved&rsquo; it round, and &lsquo;bobs&rsquo; were &lsquo;chucked&rsquo; into
+      it. The result was about thirty shillings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not me!&rsquo; he said, showing some emotion for the first time. &lsquo;D&rsquo;yer think
+      I&rsquo;m going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement for thirty
+      blanky bob. I&rsquo;ll ride the blanky horse for a fiver, and I&rsquo;ll feel the
+      blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty. There were
+      about twenty passengers aboard&mdash;inside, on the box-seat, on the
+      tail-board, and hanging on to the roof&mdash;most of them Sydney men going
+      up to the Mudgee races. They got down and went inside with the driver for
+      a drink, while the stablemen changed horses. The Bushmen raised their
+      voices a little and argued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man&mdash;a good-hearted,
+      sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands. He had a
+      round red face and a white cork hat. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s those chaps got on outside?&rsquo; 
+      he asked the publican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s a bet they&rsquo;ve got on about riding a horse,&rsquo; replied the
+      publican. &lsquo;The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the
+      horse-breaker; and they reckon they&rsquo;ve got the champion outlaw in the
+      district out there&mdash;that chestnut horse in the yard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the
+      Bushmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, chaps! what have you got on here?&rsquo; he asked cheerily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; said Jim carelessly, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s only a bit of a bet about ridin&rsquo; that
+      blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.&rsquo; He indicated an
+      ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles in
+      a corner of the stock-yard. &lsquo;Flash Jack there&mdash;he reckons he&rsquo;s the
+      champion horse-breaker round here&mdash;Flash Jack reckons he can take it
+      out of that horse first try.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s up with the horse?&rsquo; inquired the big, red-faced man. &lsquo;It looks
+      quiet enough. Why, I&rsquo;d ride it myself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would yer?&rsquo; said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up, and an
+      innocent, inquiring expression. &lsquo;Looks quiet, does he? YOU ought to know
+      more about horses than to go by the looks of &lsquo;em. He&rsquo;s quiet enough just
+      now, when there&rsquo;s no one near him; but you should have been here an hour
+      ago. That horse has killed two men and put another chap&rsquo;s shoulder out&mdash;besides
+      breaking a cove&rsquo;s leg. It took six of us all the morning to run him in and
+      get the saddle on him; and now Flash Jack wants to back out of it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Euraliar!&rsquo; remarked Flash Jack cheerfully. &lsquo;I said I&rsquo;d ride that blanky
+      horse out of the yard for a fiver. I ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to risk my blanky neck
+      for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said he&rsquo;d ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,&rsquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And get smashed against the rails!&rsquo; said Flash Jack. &lsquo;I would be a fool.
+      I&rsquo;d rather take my chance outside in the scrub&mdash;and it&rsquo;s rough
+      country round here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, how much do you want?&rsquo; asked the man in the mushroom hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A fiver, I said,&rsquo; replied Jack indifferently. &lsquo;And the blanky stuff in my
+      pocket before I get on the blanky horse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?&rsquo; inquired one
+      of the passengers who had gathered round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,&rsquo; said
+      Flash Jack. &lsquo;I know that horse; he&rsquo;s got a mouth like iron. I might be at
+      the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with my head
+      caved in, and then what chance for the quids?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t want &lsquo;em then,&rsquo; suggested a passenger. &lsquo;Or, say!&mdash;we&rsquo;d
+      leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flash Jack ignored that passenger. He eyed his boots and softly whistled a
+      tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right!&rsquo; said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his pocket.
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five pounds were got together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll lay a quid to half a quid he don&rsquo;t stick on ten minutes!&rsquo; shouted
+      Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off. The
+      passengers also betted amongst themselves. Flash Jack, after putting the
+      money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails and led the horse into
+      the middle of the yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Quiet as an old cow!&rsquo; snorted a passenger in disgust. &lsquo;I believe it&rsquo;s a
+      sell!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wait a bit,&rsquo; said Jim to the passenger, &lsquo;wait a bit and you&rsquo;ll see.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited and saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard, and
+      trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub, which
+      swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack to
+      a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty; then they
+      dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses, while
+      they laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hotel there was just time for another drink. The driver climbed to
+      his seat and shouted, &lsquo;All aboard!&rsquo; in his usual tone. The passengers
+      climbed to their places, thinking hard. A mile or so along the road the
+      man with the cork hat remarked, with much truth&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of sight,
+      and proceeded to &lsquo;knock down&rsquo; the fiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Jimmy Grimshaw&rsquo;s Wooing.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia) kept Daniel Myers&mdash;licensed
+      to retail spirituous and fermented liquors&mdash;in drink and the horrors
+      for upward of five years, at the end of which time he lay hidden for weeks
+      in a back skillion, an object which no decent man would care to see&mdash;or
+      hear when it gave forth sound. &lsquo;Good accommodation for man and beast&rsquo;; but
+      few shanties save his own might, for a consideration, have accommodated
+      the sort of beast which the man Myers had become towards the end of his
+      career. But at last the eccentric Bush doctor, &lsquo;Doc&rsquo; Wild&rsquo; (who perhaps
+      could drink as much as Myers without its having any further effect upon
+      his temperament than to keep him awake and cynical), pronounced the
+      publican dead enough to be buried legally; so the widow buried him, had
+      the skillion cleaned out, and the sign altered to read, &lsquo;Margaret Myers,
+      licensed, &amp;c.&rsquo;, and continued to conduct the pub. just as she had run
+      it for over five years, with the joyful and blessed exception that there
+      was no longer a human pig and pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere
+      was calm. Most of the regular patrons of the Half-way House could have
+      their horrors decently, and, comparatively, quietly&mdash;or otherwise
+      have them privately&mdash;in the Big Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not
+      been one of that sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily, at the
+      fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so. She was a
+      pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid in the droughts of
+      Out-Back without losing her good looks, and had put up with a hard life,
+      and Myers, all those years without losing her good humour and nature.
+      Probably, had her husband been the opposite kind of man, she would have
+      been different&mdash;haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible&mdash;for
+      of such is woman. But then it might be taken into consideration that she
+      had been practically a widow during at least the last five years of her
+      husband&rsquo;s alleged life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed
+      that she was not to be caught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would be a grand thing,&rsquo; one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog
+      would say to his mates, &lsquo;for one of us to have his name up on a pub.; it
+      would save a lot of money.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t save you anything, Bill, if I got it,&rsquo; was the retort. &lsquo;You
+      needn&rsquo;t come round chewing my lug then. I&rsquo;d give you one drink and no
+      more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers, even
+      one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos, tried their luck in
+      vain. In answer to the suggestion that she ought to have a man to knock
+      round and look after things, she retorted that she had had one, and was
+      perfectly satisfied. Few trav&rsquo;lers on those tracks but tried &lsquo;a bit of
+      bear-up&rsquo; in that direction, but all to no purpose. Chequemen knocked down
+      their cheques manfully at the Half-way House&mdash;to get courage and
+      goodwill and &lsquo;put it off&rsquo; till, at the last moment, they offered
+      themselves abjectly to the landlady; which was worse than bad judgment on
+      their part&mdash;it was very silly, and she told them so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith in
+      them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much that
+      they &lsquo;broke out&rsquo; and went on record-breaking sprees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra coat
+      of paint on the &lsquo;Margaret&rsquo;, whereat suitors looked hopeless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big Scrub&mdash;anyway,
+      the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the horrors. But the
+      climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing the opportunity when
+      the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell asleep, went down to the
+      yard and hanged himself on the butcher&rsquo;s gallows&mdash;having first
+      removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea of leaving the world as
+      naked as he came into it. He climbed the pole, sat astride on top, fixed
+      the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell&mdash;a yell of drunken triumph&mdash;before
+      he dropped, and woke his mates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They cut him down and brought him to. Next day he apologised to Mrs Myers,
+      said, &lsquo;Ah, well! So long!&rsquo; to the rest, and departed&mdash;cured of drink
+      and love apparently. The verdict was that the blanky fool should have
+      dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed, and it began to
+      look as though, if she wished to continue to live on happily and
+      comfortably for a few years longer at the fixed age of thirty-nine, she
+      would either have to give up the pub. or get married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was
+      mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the
+      camp-fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw, widower&mdash;otherwise
+      known as &lsquo;Old Jimmy&rsquo;, though he was little past middle age&mdash;had a
+      small selection which he had worked, let, given up, and tackled afresh
+      (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts) ever since the death of
+      his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was a practical, square-faced,
+      clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a certain &lsquo;cleanness&rsquo; about the
+      shape of his limbs which suggested the old jockey or hostler. There were
+      two strong theories in connection with Jimmy&mdash;one was that he had had
+      a university education, and the other that he couldn&rsquo;t write his own name.
+      Not nearly such a ridiculous nor simple case Out-Back as it might seem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the &lsquo;heard tells&rsquo; in
+      connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his
+      contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go up to Tinned Dog
+      next week and try my luck.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to laugh,
+      and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian actor would
+      put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to think, with the
+      result that the joker swung his hand down through an imaginary table and
+      exclaimed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By God! Jimmy&rsquo;ll do it.&rsquo; (Applause.)
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
+      runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a
+      clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
+      greased-bluchered&mdash;altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was
+      served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the
+      river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a clean
+      clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, &lsquo;Is that trav&rsquo;ler
+      there yet, Mary?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when
+      limited for &lsquo;stuff&rsquo; or wondering whether a section has been cut wrong&mdash;or
+      perhaps she thought of that other who hadn&rsquo;t been a &lsquo;clean pfellar&rsquo;. She
+      put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out across the
+      clearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-day, mister,&rsquo; she said, seeming to become aware of him for the first
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-day, missus!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Trav&rsquo;lin&rsquo;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, not particular!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he wasn&rsquo;t
+      raving. But the swagman smoked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Have a drink?&rsquo; she suggested, to keep her end up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take more
+      than two a-day&mdash;one before breakfast, if I can get it, and a
+      night-cap.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come and have some tea; it&rsquo;s ready.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thank you. I don&rsquo;t mind if I do.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him except
+      the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract, and was &lsquo;just
+      having a look at the country.&rsquo; He politely declined a &lsquo;shake-down&rsquo;, saying
+      he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out this weather. She got
+      his name with a &lsquo;by-the-way&rsquo;, as he rose to leave, and he went back to
+      camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning, and got along
+      so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon pottering about
+      the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of nails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, well&mdash;to make it short&mdash;when the big Tinned Dog shed had
+      cut-out, and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly
+      impressed by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+            HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,
+                     BY
+               JAMES GRIMSHAW.
+                Good Stabling.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      At Dead Dingo.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board and
+      iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where there was a
+      pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called &lsquo;Roasted&rsquo;, and
+      other times &lsquo;Potted Dingo&rsquo;&mdash;nicknames suggested by the everlasting
+      drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned Dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running right
+      and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red sand dust
+      for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust, and the
+      heat-wave blazing across every object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year&rsquo;s Day. There
+      weren&rsquo;t many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar&mdash;the
+      coolest place in the shanty&mdash;reading &lsquo;Deadwood Dick&rsquo;. On a worn and
+      torn and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better
+      days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms
+      twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death of
+      the dead drunk. Bill and Jim&mdash;shearer and rouseabout&mdash;sat at a
+      table playing cards. It was about three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon, and they
+      had been gambling since nine&mdash;and the greater part of the night
+      before&mdash;so they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and
+      perhaps physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a
+      sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an
+      oath that would have been savage if it hadn&rsquo;t been drawled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stumped?&rsquo; inquired Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not a blanky, lurid deener!&rsquo; drawled Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and
+      hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the
+      eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking
+      in a strange place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Got anything?&rsquo; asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and spat
+      out on to the verandah floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all I got,&rsquo; he drawled. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s gone now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That there dog yours?&rsquo; he asked, brightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each
+      other as Bushmen can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke
+      suddenly to a flea fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; drawled Bill, &lsquo;he&rsquo;s mine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going Out-Back, and I want a dog,&rsquo; said Jim, gathering the
+      cards briskly. &lsquo;Half a quid agin the dog?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Half a quid be&mdash;&mdash;!&rsquo; drawled Bill. &lsquo;Call it a quid?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Half a blanky quid!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A gory, lurid quid!&rsquo; drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his
+      swag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jim&rsquo;s hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Alright. Call it a&mdash;&mdash; quid.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died again.
+      Remember this, it might come in useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill sat down to the table once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned &lsquo;Ah, well!&rsquo; and
+      shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his
+      foot, unwound the chain, said &lsquo;Ah, well&mdash;so long!&rsquo; and drifted out
+      and along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck, shouldered
+      his swag, said, &lsquo;So long, Mary!&rsquo; and drifted out and along the road
+      towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A long, drowsy, half hour passed&mdash;the sort of half hour that is as
+      long as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years
+      hold about as much as days do in other places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a
+      moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his
+      elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and came
+      back to life gradually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and
+      formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Put up a drink?&rsquo; *
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &lsquo;Put up a drink&rsquo;&mdash;i.e., &lsquo;Give me a drink on credit&rsquo;, or
+     &lsquo;Chalk it up&rsquo;.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress signals
+      with hand, eyes, and mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No!&rsquo; she snapped. &lsquo;I means no when I says no! You&rsquo;ve had too many last
+      drinks already, and the boss says you ain&rsquo;t to have another. If you swear
+      again, or bother me, I&rsquo;ll call him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his swag, and
+      shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round, whistled,
+      waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round, through the
+      heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and started
+      through to the back-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What the devil do you want now?&rsquo; demanded the girl, interrupted in her
+      reading for the third time by him. &lsquo;Stampin&rsquo; all over the house. You can&rsquo;t
+      go through there! It&rsquo;s privit! I do wish to goodness you&rsquo;d git!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where the blazes is that there dog o&rsquo; mine got to?&rsquo; he muttered. &lsquo;Did you
+      see a dog?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No! What do I want with your dog?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back
+      with a decided step and tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look here! that there dog was lyin&rsquo; there agin the wall when I went to
+      sleep. He wouldn&rsquo;t stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn&rsquo;t
+      dragged. He&rsquo;s been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn&rsquo;ter lost him
+      for a fiver. Are you sure you ain&rsquo;t seen a dog?&rsquo; then suddenly, as the
+      thought struck him: &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s them two chaps that was playin&rsquo; cards when I
+      wenter sleep?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why!&rsquo; exclaimed the girl, without thinking, &lsquo;there was a dog, now I come
+      to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps. Anyway,
+      they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What sort of a dog was it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scowled at her darkly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, look here,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve allowed gamblin&rsquo; in this bar&mdash;your
+      boss has. You&rsquo;ve got no right to let spielers gamble away a man&rsquo;s dog. Is
+      a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your boss?
+      I&rsquo;ll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and I don&rsquo;t
+      care if you lose your licence. I ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to lose my dog. I wouldn&rsquo;ter
+      taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was filling a pewter hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here! for God&rsquo;s sake have a drink an&rsquo; stop yer row.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and
+      scowled out the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Which blanky way did them chaps go?&rsquo; he growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I&rsquo;ll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
+      lose me shed! Here!&rsquo; jerking the empty pewter across the bar, &lsquo;fill that
+      up again; I&rsquo;m narked properly, I am, and I&rsquo;ll take twenty-four blanky
+      hours to cool down now. I wouldn&rsquo;ter lost that dog for twenty quid.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out, muttering,
+      swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the track to Tinned
+      Dog.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite settled
+      it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Telling Mrs Baker.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Most Bushmen who hadn&rsquo;t &lsquo;known Bob Baker to speak to&rsquo;, had &lsquo;heard tell of
+      him&rsquo;. He&rsquo;d been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie river
+      in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and had gone
+      in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to Sydney,
+      where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a pretty
+      severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob Baker
+      went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager in
+      charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He&rsquo;d been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he&rsquo;d been a
+      selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for they had
+      to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of vanity, or
+      moral cowardice, or both mixed. It&rsquo;s very nice to hear the chaps sing &lsquo;For
+      he&rsquo;s a jolly good fellow&rsquo;, but you&rsquo;ve mostly got to pay for it twice&mdash;first
+      in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the chaps singing that I
+      was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place and they were giving
+      me a send-off. It thrilled me, and brought a warm gush to my eyes; but,
+      all the same, I wished I had half the money I&rsquo;d lent them, and spent on
+      &lsquo;em, and I wished I&rsquo;d used the time I&rsquo;d wasted to be a jolly good fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great north-western
+      route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on the Sydney side. He
+      was going north to new country round by the Gulf of Carpentaria, with a
+      big mob of cattle, on a two years&rsquo; trip; and I and my mate, Andy
+      M&rsquo;Culloch, engaged to go with him. We wanted to have a look at the Gulf
+      Country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me that the Boss
+      was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs. Andy had been
+      with him on another trip, and he told me that the Boss was only going this
+      way lately. Andy knew Mrs Baker well, and seemed to think a deal of her.
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s a good little woman,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;One of the right stuff. I worked
+      on their station for a while when I was a nipper, and I know. She was
+      always a damned sight too good for the Boss, but she believed in him. When
+      I was coming away this time she says to me, &ldquo;Look here, Andy, I&rsquo;m afraid
+      Robert is drinking again. Now I want you to look after him for me, as much
+      as you can&mdash;you seem to have as much influence with him as any one. I
+      want you to promise me that you&rsquo;ll never have a drink with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I promised,&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;and I&rsquo;ll keep my word.&rsquo; Andy was a chap who
+      could keep his word, and nothing else. And, no matter how the Boss
+      persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him, Andy would never drink with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It got worse and worse: the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at a
+      shanty, and sometimes he&rsquo;d be days behind us; and when he&rsquo;d catch up to us
+      his temper would be just about as much as we could stand. At last he went
+      on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles north of
+      the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow with a flash barmaid there&mdash;one
+      of those girls who are engaged, by the publicans up country, as baits for
+      chequemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went mad over that girl. He drew an advance cheque from the
+      stock-owner&rsquo;s agent there, and knocked that down; then he raised some more
+      money somehow, and spent that&mdash;mostly on the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We did all we could. Andy got him along the track for a couple of stages,
+      and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the night and
+      went back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had two other men with us, but had the devil&rsquo;s own bother on account of
+      the cattle. It was a mixed-up job all round. You see it was all big runs
+      round there, and we had to keep the bullocks moving along the route all
+      the time, or else get into trouble for trespass. The agent wasn&rsquo;t going to
+      go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock until the Boss
+      sobered up; there was very little grass on the route or the
+      travelling-stock reserves or camps, so we had to keep travelling for
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle have to
+      go through&mdash;that&rsquo;s the law of the stock-routes. So the agent wired to
+      the owners, and, when he got their reply, he sacked the Boss and sent the
+      cattle on in charge of another man. The new Boss was a drover coming south
+      after a trip; he had his two brothers with him, so he didn&rsquo;t want me and
+      Andy; but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged, between
+      the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to us&mdash;the
+      Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober, mad
+      or sane, good or bad, it isn&rsquo;t Bush religion to desert a mate in a hole;
+      and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with us
+      as much as possible, and did all we could for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How could I face his wife if I went home without him?&rsquo; asked Andy, &lsquo;or
+      any of his old mates?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was, and
+      then he&rsquo;d hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow, and fight,
+      and get knocked about. He was an awful object by this time, wild-eyed and
+      gaunt, and he hadn&rsquo;t washed or shaved for days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy got the constable in charge of the police station to lock him up for
+      a night, but it only made him worse: we took him back to the camp next
+      morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes he slipped away
+      into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started to hang himself to a
+      leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope. We got to him just in
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Andy wired to the Boss&rsquo;s brother Ned, who was fighting the drought,
+      the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border.
+      Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the Boss hadn&rsquo;t been quite right in his head before he started
+      drinking&mdash;he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of it;
+      maybe he&rsquo;d got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his troubles&mdash;anyway
+      he died in the horrors within the week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought he was the
+      devil, and grappled with him. It took the three of us to hold the Boss
+      down sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, towards the end, he&rsquo;d be sensible for a few minutes and talk
+      about his &lsquo;poor wife and children&rsquo;; and immediately afterwards he&rsquo;d fall
+      a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils. He cursed
+      everything; he cursed his wife and children, and yelled that they were
+      dragging him down to hell. He died raving mad. It was the worst case of
+      death in the horrors of drink that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned saw to the funeral: it was very hot weather, and men have to be buried
+      quick who die out there in the hot weather&mdash;especially men who die in
+      the state the Boss was in. Then Ned went to the public-house where the
+      barmaid was and called the landlord out. It was a desperate fight: the
+      publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man; but Ned was one of
+      those quiet, simple-minded chaps who will carry a thing through to death
+      when they make up their minds. He gave that publican nearly as good a
+      thrashing as he deserved. The constable in charge of the station backed
+      Ned, while another policeman picked up the publican. Sounds queer to you
+      city people, doesn&rsquo;t it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at Ned
+      Baker&rsquo;s station on the border, and then started on our three-hundred-mile
+      ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so we decided to travel
+      at night for a while, and left Ned&rsquo;s place at dusk. He parted from us at
+      the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet, done up in canvas, for
+      Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob&rsquo;s pocket-book, letters, and
+      papers. We looked back, after we&rsquo;d gone a piece along the dusty road, and
+      saw Ned still standing by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked.
+      Ned was a bachelor. &lsquo;Poor old Ned,&rsquo; said Andy to me. &lsquo;He was in love with
+      Mrs Bob Baker before she got married, but she picked the wrong man&mdash;girls
+      mostly do. Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left when
+      his brother married, and he&rsquo;s been up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever
+      since. Look, I want to tell you something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs
+      Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever, and everything was done for him
+      that could be done, and that he died easy&mdash;and all that sort of
+      thing. Ned sent her some money, and she is to think that it was the money
+      due to Bob when he died. Now I&rsquo;ll have to go and see her when we get to
+      Solong; there&rsquo;s no getting out of it, I&rsquo;ll have to face her&mdash;and
+      you&rsquo;ll have to come with me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Damned if I will!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you&rsquo;ll have to,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll have to stick to me; you&rsquo;re
+      surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I&rsquo;ll have
+      to lie like hell&mdash;I&rsquo;ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman before;
+      and you&rsquo;ll have to back me and corroborate every lie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d never seen Andy show so much emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,&rsquo; said Andy. He said no more
+      about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss&rsquo;s name casually, until we
+      were within about a day&rsquo;s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the yarn he&rsquo;d
+      made up about the Boss&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I want you to listen, Jack,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and remember every word&mdash;and
+      if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it was
+      like this: the Boss wasn&rsquo;t too well when he crossed the border. He
+      complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back
+      of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,&mdash;but that doesn&rsquo;t matter; it&rsquo;s
+      lucky I ain&rsquo;t supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck to
+      the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as easy
+      as we could for him. He&rsquo;d just take it easy, and ride on from camp to
+      camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did, if
+      you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a while,
+      but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give up. A
+      squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up at the best
+      hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for him&mdash;put
+      him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for Ned as
+      soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day and got
+      there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off his head
+      some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards the end
+      and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and told us to
+      tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children&rsquo;s sake. How
+      does that sound?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&rsquo;d been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why not let her know the truth?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;She&rsquo;s sure to hear of it
+      sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken blackguard
+      she might get over it all the sooner.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t know women, Jack,&rsquo; said Andy quietly. &lsquo;And, anyway, even if she
+      is a sensible woman, we&rsquo;ve got a dead mate to consider as well as a living
+      woman.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But she&rsquo;s sure to hear the truth sooner or later,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;the Boss was
+      so well known.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And that&rsquo;s just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,&rsquo; said
+      Andy. &lsquo;If he wasn&rsquo;t well known&mdash;and nobody could help liking him,
+      after all, when he was straight&mdash;if he wasn&rsquo;t so well known the truth
+      might leak out unawares. She won&rsquo;t know if I can help it, or at least not
+      yet a while. If I see any chaps that come from the North I&rsquo;ll put them up
+      to it. I&rsquo;ll tell M&rsquo;Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he&rsquo;s a straight man&mdash;he&rsquo;ll
+      keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker&rsquo;s sisters is staying
+      with her, and I&rsquo;ll give her a hint so that she can warn off any women that
+      might get hold of a yarn. Besides, Mrs Baker is sure to go and live in
+      Sydney, where all her people are&mdash;she was a Sydney girl; and she&rsquo;s
+      not likely to meet any one there that will tell her the truth. I can tell
+      her that it was the last wish of the Boss that she should shift to
+      Sydney.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called a
+      &lsquo;happy thought&rsquo;. He went to his saddle-bags and got out the small canvas
+      packet that Ned had given him: it was sewn up with packing-thread, and
+      Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you doing, Andy?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ned&rsquo;s an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;I
+      guess he hasn&rsquo;t looked through the Boss&rsquo;s letters, and I&rsquo;m just going to
+      see that there&rsquo;s nothing here that will make liars of us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire. There
+      were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband, also a portrait of her
+      and the children; these Andy put aside. But there were other letters from
+      barmaids and women who were not fit to be seen in the same street with the
+      Boss&rsquo;s wife; and there were portraits&mdash;one or two flash ones. There
+      were two letters from other men&rsquo;s wives too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!&rsquo; said Andy, in a
+      tone of disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss&rsquo;s
+      pocket-book and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on them,
+      and burnt them too. Then he sewed up the packet again and put it away in
+      his saddle-bag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Such is life!&rsquo; said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a paddock,
+      and put up at M&rsquo;Grath&rsquo;s pub. until such time as we made up our minds as to
+      what we&rsquo;d do or where we&rsquo;d go. We had an idea of waiting until the
+      shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big sheds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll go after
+      dinner,&rsquo; said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink, and felt
+      sleepy&mdash;we weren&rsquo;t used to big dinners of roast-beef and vegetables
+      and pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather&mdash;so we decided to
+      have a snooze and then go. When we woke up it was late in the afternoon,
+      so we thought we&rsquo;d put it off till after tea. &lsquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be manners to
+      walk in while they&rsquo;re at tea,&rsquo; said Andy&mdash;&lsquo;it would look as if we
+      only came for some grub.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs Baker
+      wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we&rsquo;d call up as soon
+      as possible. You see, in those small towns you can&rsquo;t move without the
+      thing getting round inside of half an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll have to face the music now!&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;and no get out of it.&rsquo; He
+      seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite where
+      Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to Andy&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in
+      there an hour or two.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t want another drink,&rsquo; said Andy, rather short. &lsquo;Why, you seem to
+      be going the same way as the Boss!&rsquo; But it was Andy that edged off towards
+      the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker&rsquo;s place. &lsquo;All right!&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Come
+      on! We&rsquo;ll have this other drink, since you want it so bad.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the
+      road&mdash;we&rsquo;d bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit.
+      Half-way across Andy grabbed my arm and asked&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do you feel now, Jack?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;M all right,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake!&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t put your foot in it and make a mess of
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t, if you don&rsquo;t.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Baker&rsquo;s cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a
+      garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and
+      whispered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake stick to me now, Jack!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll stick all right,&rsquo; I said&mdash;&lsquo;you&rsquo;ve been having too much beer,
+      Andy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented
+      sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss&rsquo;s shirts and
+      things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is
+      contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular
+      about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like
+      the ghost of herself. I wouldn&rsquo;t have recognised her at first. I never saw
+      such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes for
+      the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four or
+      twenty-five, and fresh and fair&mdash;not like the sun-browned women we
+      were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick to
+      understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had told me,
+      and wrote stories for the Sydney &lsquo;Bulletin&rsquo; and other Sydney papers. She
+      had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and that took us back
+      a bit at first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to come,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice,
+      when we first went in. &lsquo;I heard you were in town.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We were just coming when we got your message,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;We&rsquo;d have come
+      before, only we had to see to the horses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you, I&rsquo;m sure,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wanted us to have tea, but we said we&rsquo;d just had it. Then Miss
+      Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn&rsquo;t feel
+      as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully
+      just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room,
+      and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You mustn&rsquo;t mind me,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll be all right presently, and then I
+      want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It&rsquo;s seeing you, that saw the last
+      of him, that set me off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall, and
+      held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting Blucher
+      on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was calling &lsquo;mumma&rsquo;, and Mrs Baker went in to it, and her sister
+      came out. &lsquo;Best tell her all about it and get it over,&rsquo; she whispered to
+      Andy. &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll never be content until she hears all about poor Bob from
+      some one who was with him when he died. Let me take your hats. Make
+      yourselves comfortable.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine. I wished she&rsquo;d let
+      us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to, and nothing to do with
+      our hands; and as for being comfortable, we were just about as comfortable
+      as two cats on wet bricks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker, about
+      four years old; he wanted to see Andy. He ran to Andy at once, and Andy
+      took him up on his knee. He was a pretty child, but he reminded me too
+      much of his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;ve come, Andy!&rsquo; said Bobby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you, Bobby?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. I wants to ask you about daddy. You saw him go away, didn&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+      and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He went up among the stars, didn&rsquo;t he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And he isn&rsquo;t coming back to Bobby any more?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;But Bobby&rsquo;s going to him by-and-by.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her
+      hand, tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister
+      took her out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy looked miserable. &lsquo;I wish to God I was off this job!&rsquo; he whispered to
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is that the girl that writes the stories?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, &lsquo;and poems too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is Bobby going up among the stars?&rsquo; asked Bobby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy&mdash;&lsquo;if Bobby&rsquo;s good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And auntie?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And mumma?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you going, Andy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy hopelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy, &lsquo;I saw him go up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And he isn&rsquo;t coming down again any more?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Andy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why isn&rsquo;t he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because he&rsquo;s going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?&rsquo; with the same expression of
+      innocent wonder in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand. &lsquo;Auntie&rsquo; came in and told him
+      he&rsquo;d see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed, after he&rsquo;d kissed
+      us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker settled down to hear
+      Andy&rsquo;s story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,&rsquo; whispered Andy to me
+      just before they came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor Bob&rsquo;s brother Ned wrote to me,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker, &lsquo;but he scarcely
+      told me anything. Ned&rsquo;s a good fellow, but he&rsquo;s very simple, and never
+      thinks of anything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I knew he was not well,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker, &lsquo;before he left. I didn&rsquo;t want
+      him to go. I tried hard to persuade him not to go this trip. I had a
+      feeling that I oughtn&rsquo;t to let him go. But he&rsquo;d never think of anything
+      but me and the children. He promised he&rsquo;d give up droving after this trip,
+      and get something to do near home. The life was too much for him&mdash;riding
+      in all weathers and camping out in the rain, and living like a dog. But he
+      was never content at home. It was all for the sake of me and the children.
+      He wanted to make money and start on a station again. I shouldn&rsquo;t have let
+      him go. He only thought of me and the children! Oh! my poor, dear, kind,
+      dead husband!&rsquo; She broke down again and sobbed, and her sister comforted
+      her, while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting Blucher on the field of
+      Waterloo. I thought the artist had heaped up the dead a bit extra, and I
+      thought that I wouldn&rsquo;t like to be trod on by horses, even if I was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you mind,&rsquo; said Miss Standish, &lsquo;she&rsquo;ll be all right presently,&rsquo; and
+      she handed us the &lsquo;Illustrated Sydney Journal&rsquo;. This was a great relief,&mdash;we
+      bumped our heads over the pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down
+      near Mulgatown. Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite me.
+      Both of them kept their eyes on Andy&rsquo;s face: he sat, with his hair
+      straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes
+      fixed on Mrs Baker&rsquo;s face all the time he was speaking. I watched Miss
+      Standish. I thought she was the prettiest girl I&rsquo;d ever seen; it was a bad
+      case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me, and the
+      case was hopeless. I began to feel pretty miserable, and to think back
+      into the past: I just heard Andy droning away by my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets and
+      coats and things,&rsquo; Andy was saying, &lsquo;and the squatter started into
+      Mulgatown.... It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; he asked,
+      turning suddenly to me. He always looked so innocent that there were times
+      when I itched to knock him down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;More like thirty-five,&rsquo; I said, waking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look at Wellington
+      and Blucher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They were all very good and kind to the Boss,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;They thought a
+      lot of him up there. Everybody was fond of him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know it,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker. &lsquo;Nobody could help liking him. He was one of
+      the kindest men that ever lived.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tanner, the publican, couldn&rsquo;t have been kinder to his own brother,&rsquo; said
+      Andy. &lsquo;The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only a young fellow,
+      and Tanner hadn&rsquo;t much faith in him, so he wired for an older doctor at
+      Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses to meet the doctor&rsquo;s buggy.
+      Everything was done that could be done, I assure you, Mrs Baker.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I believe it,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker. &lsquo;And you don&rsquo;t know how it relieves me to
+      hear it. And did the publican do all this at his own expense?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t take a penny, Mrs Baker.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He must have been a good true man. I wish I could thank him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Ned thanked him for you,&rsquo; said Andy, though without meaning more than
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,&rsquo; said Mrs
+      Baker. &lsquo;When I first heard of my poor husband&rsquo;s death, I thought perhaps
+      he&rsquo;d been drinking again&mdash;that worried me a bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs
+      Baker,&rsquo; said Andy quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or
+      twice, while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him; then
+      she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head and
+      looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn&rsquo;t like. Once or twice
+      she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question, but I always
+      looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington, or into the empty
+      fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me. Then she asked Andy a
+      question or two, in all innocence I believe now, but it scared him, and at
+      last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp. Then she gave a little
+      gasp and shut up like a steel trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again. Mrs Baker went to
+      it. We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring all
+      over the place: presently Miss Standish excused herself, and went out of
+      the room after her sister. She looked hard at Andy as she left the room,
+      but he kept his eyes away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Brace up now, Jack,&rsquo; whispered Andy to me, &lsquo;the worst is coming.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&mdash;he died very quietly,&rsquo; said Andy, hitching round, and resting
+      his elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his
+      face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister. &lsquo;He
+      died very easy,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;He was a bit off his head at times, but that
+      was while the fever was on him. He didn&rsquo;t suffer much towards the end&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t think he suffered at all.... He talked a lot about you and the
+      children.&rsquo; (Andy was speaking very softly now.) &lsquo;He said that you were not
+      to fret, but to cheer up for the children&rsquo;s sake.... It was the biggest
+      funeral ever seen round there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half out of his pocket,
+      but shoved it back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The only thing that hurts me now,&rsquo; says Mrs Baker presently, &lsquo;is to think
+      of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far from home.
+      It&rsquo;s&mdash;cruel!&rsquo; and she was sobbing again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right, Mrs Baker,&rsquo; said Andy, losing his head a little.
+      &lsquo;Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down
+      and buried in Sydney.&rsquo; Which was about the first thing Andy had told her
+      that evening that wasn&rsquo;t a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as he
+      sold his wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s very kind indeed of Ned,&rsquo; sobbed Mrs Baker. &lsquo;I&rsquo;d never have dreamed
+      he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all along. And that
+      is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Andy&mdash;then one of his &lsquo;happy thoughts&rsquo; struck him.
+      &lsquo;Except that he hoped you&rsquo;d shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you&rsquo;ve got
+      friends and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the
+      children. He told me to tell you that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was thoughtful up to the end,&rsquo; said Mrs Baker. &lsquo;It was just like poor
+      Robert&mdash;always thinking of me and the children. We are going to
+      Sydney next week.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted to
+      make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up and
+      bumped against each other, and got each other&rsquo;s hats, and promised Mrs
+      Baker we&rsquo;d come again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thank you very much for coming,&rsquo; she said, shaking hands with us. &lsquo;I feel
+      much better now. You don&rsquo;t know how much you have relieved me. Now, mind,
+      you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy caught her sister&rsquo;s eye and jerked his head towards the door to let
+      her know he wanted to speak to her outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, Mrs Baker,&rsquo; he said, holding on to her hand. &lsquo;And don&rsquo;t you
+      fret. You&rsquo;ve&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got the children yet. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s all for
+      the best; and, besides, the Boss said you wasn&rsquo;t to fret.&rsquo; And he
+      blundered out after me and Miss Standish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want you to give that to her,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;it&rsquo;s his letters and papers. I
+      hadn&rsquo;t the heart to give it to her, somehow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell me, Mr M&rsquo;Culloch,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve kept something back&mdash;you
+      haven&rsquo;t told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know.
+      Was it an accident&mdash;or the drink?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was the drink,&rsquo; said Andy. &lsquo;I was going to tell you&mdash;I thought it
+      would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow, I
+      couldn&rsquo;t have done it if you hadn&rsquo;t asked me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell me all,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;It would be better for me to know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come a little farther away from the house,&rsquo; said Andy. She came along the
+      fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll hurry her off to Sydney,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;We can get away this week as
+      well as next.&rsquo; Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly,
+      her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She
+      looked splendid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want to thank you for her sake,&rsquo; she said quickly. &lsquo;You are good men! I
+      like the Bushmen! They are grand men&mdash;they are noble! I&rsquo;ll probably
+      never see either of you again, so it doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rsquo; and she put her
+      white hand on Andy&rsquo;s shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the mouth.
+      &lsquo;And you, too!&rsquo; she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had to stoop.
+      &lsquo;Good-bye!&rsquo; she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her hand to us.
+      We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t think it did either of us any harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This is a story&mdash;about the only one&mdash;of Job Falconer, Boss of
+      the Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales in the early
+      Eighties&mdash;when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs out of the
+      hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete, and as his
+      family grew up he would become as angry as it was in his easy-going nature
+      to become if reference were made to the incident in his presence. But his
+      wife&mdash;little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer&mdash;often told the
+      story (in the mysterious voice which women use in speaking of private
+      matters amongst themselves&mdash;but with brightening eyes) to women
+      friends over tea; and always to a new woman friend. And on such occasions
+      she would be particularly tender towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle
+      his thin, sandy hair in a way that embarrassed him in company&mdash;made
+      him look as sheepish as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and
+      turned amongst the ewes. And the woman friend on parting would give Job&rsquo;s
+      hand a squeeze which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she
+      could love him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been
+      tall, and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered. But he wasn&rsquo;t. He
+      was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy (his skin was
+      pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber), and his eyes
+      were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly, his arms were short,
+      and his legs bowed to the saddle. Altogether he was an awkward, unlovely
+      Bush bird&mdash;on foot; in the saddle it was different. He hadn&rsquo;t even a
+      &lsquo;temper&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impression on Job&rsquo;s mind which many years afterwards brought about the
+      incident was strong enough. When Job was a boy of fourteen he saw his
+      father&rsquo;s horse come home riderless&mdash;circling and snorting up by the
+      stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on one of the snapped
+      ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side with bruised
+      pommel and knee-pad broken off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Job&rsquo;s father wasn&rsquo;t hurt much, but Job&rsquo;s mother, an emotional woman, and
+      then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock for three months
+      only. &lsquo;She wasn&rsquo;t quite right in her head,&rsquo; they said, &lsquo;from the day the
+      horse came home till the last hour before she died.&rsquo; And, strange to say,
+      Job&rsquo;s father (from whom Job inherited his seemingly placid nature) died
+      three months later. The doctor from the town was of the opinion that he
+      must have &lsquo;sustained internal injuries&rsquo; when the horse threw him. &lsquo;Doc.
+      Wild&rsquo; (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job&rsquo;s father was hurt inside
+      when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn&rsquo;t pull round. But
+      doctors differ all over the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way. He had been married
+      a year, and had lately started wool-raising on a pastoral lease he had
+      taken up at Talbragar: it was a new run, with new slab-and-bark huts on
+      the creek for a homestead, new shearing-shed, yards&mdash;wife and
+      everything new, and he was expecting a baby. Job felt brand-new himself at
+      the time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman; but Gerty
+      was a settler&rsquo;s daughter. The newness took away some of the loneliness,
+      she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the scrubs looks
+      lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight, as the bark and
+      slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers. And there&rsquo;s nothing
+      under God&rsquo;s sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as a deserted old home
+      in the Bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Job&rsquo;s wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the run,
+      and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman from
+      within the kicking radius in Lancashire&mdash;wife of a selector) was only
+      seven miles away. She promised to be on hand, and came over two or three
+      times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty&rsquo;s time drew near, and wished
+      that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty miles
+      away), as originally proposed. Gerty&rsquo;s mother, who lived in town, was
+      coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with the
+      town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a doctor
+      who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty miles
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had more
+      faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan, and
+      worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of the
+      district together&mdash;maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or he
+      knew the Bush and Bush constitutions&mdash;or, perhaps, because he&rsquo;d do
+      things which no &lsquo;respectable practitioner&rsquo; dared do. I&rsquo;ve described him in
+      another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn&rsquo;t. There
+      are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank
+      fearfully, and &lsquo;on his own&rsquo;, but was seldom incapable of performing an
+      operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when
+      perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had a
+      pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His
+      movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be&mdash;in a town
+      hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog
+      shanty, in a shearer&rsquo;s, digger&rsquo;s, shepherd&rsquo;s, or boundary-rider&rsquo;s hut; in
+      a surveyor&rsquo;s camp or a black-fellows&rsquo; camp&mdash;or, when the horrors were
+      on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost all
+      his things sometimes&mdash;even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin
+      bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once; then
+      he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he
+      rode as far and fast to a squatter&rsquo;s home as to a swagman&rsquo;s camp. When
+      nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and the
+      doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He had on
+      occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by squatters
+      for &lsquo;pulling round&rsquo; their wives or children; but such offers always
+      angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered a 10
+      Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no diploma;
+      but the magistrate, on reading certain papers, suggested a settlement out
+      of court, which both doctors agreed to&mdash;the other doctor apologising
+      briefly in the local paper. It was noticed thereafter that the magistrate
+      and town doctors treated Doc. Wild with great respect&mdash;even at his
+      worst. The thing was never explained, and the case deepened the mystery
+      which surrounded Doc. Wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Job Falconer&rsquo;s crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty on
+      the main road, about half-way between Job&rsquo;s station and the town.
+      (Township of Come-by-Chance&mdash;expressive name; and the shanty was the
+      &lsquo;Dead Dingo Hotel&rsquo;, kept by James Myles&mdash;known as &lsquo;Poisonous Jimmy&rsquo;,
+      perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.) Job&rsquo;s
+      brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel with instructions to
+      hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor didn&rsquo;t either drink
+      himself into the &lsquo;D.T.&lsquo;s&rsquo; or get sober enough to become restless; to
+      prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did; and to bring him to
+      the station in about a week&rsquo;s time. Mac. (rather more careless, brighter,
+      and more energetic than his brother) was carrying out these instructions
+      while pretending, with rather great success, to be himself on the spree at
+      the shanty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one morning, early in the specified week, Job&rsquo;s uneasiness was
+      suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy
+      for the neighbour&rsquo;s wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance to hurry
+      out Gerty&rsquo;s mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac. were
+      getting on. On the arrival of the neighbour&rsquo;s wife, who drove over in a
+      spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be anxious, Job,&rsquo; said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll
+      be all right. Wait! you&rsquo;d better take the gun&mdash;you might see those
+      dingoes again. I&rsquo;ll get it for you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep; and Job and
+      Gerty had started three together close to the track the last time they
+      were out in company&mdash;without the gun, of course. Gerty took the
+      loaded gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall, carried it
+      out, and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again and then rode
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a hot day&mdash;the beginning of a long drought, as Job found to
+      his bitter cost. He followed the track for five or six miles through the
+      thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off to make a short cut to the
+      main road across a big ring-barked flat. The tall gum-trees had been
+      ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out round the butts), or rather &lsquo;sapped&rsquo;&mdash;that
+      is, a ring cut in through the sap&mdash;in order to kill them, so that the
+      little strength in the &lsquo;poor&rsquo; soil should not be drawn out by the living
+      roots, and the natural grass (on which Australian stock depends) should
+      have a better show. The hard, dead trees raised their barkless and
+      whitened trunks and leafless branches for three or four miles, and the
+      grey and brown grass stood tall between, dying in the first breaths of the
+      coming drought. All was becoming grey and ashen here, the heat blazing and
+      dancing across objects, and the pale brassy dome of the sky cloudless over
+      all, the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the
+      sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled
+      muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled), and
+      he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was saving his horse for a long ride,
+      jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to one side&mdash;and
+      I&rsquo;m not sure that he didn&rsquo;t have a leg thrown up and across in front of
+      the pommel of the saddle&mdash;he was riding along in the careless Bush
+      fashion, and thinking fatherly thoughts in advance, perhaps, when suddenly
+      a great black, greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the
+      track amongst the dry tufts of grass and shreds of dead bark, and started
+      up a sapling. &lsquo;It was a whopper,&rsquo; Job said afterwards; &lsquo;must have been
+      over six feet, and a foot across the body. It scared me nearly as much as
+      the filly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The filly shied off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively, as was
+      natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein&mdash;lying
+      loosely on the pommel&mdash;the filly &lsquo;fetched up&rsquo; against a dead
+      box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job&rsquo;s left leg was jammed from stirrup to
+      pocket. &lsquo;I felt the blood flare up,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and I knowed that that&rsquo;&mdash;(Job
+      swore now and then in an easy-going way)&mdash;&lsquo;I knowed that that blanky
+      leg was broken alright. I threw the gun from me and freed my left foot
+      from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall to the right, as the
+      filly started off again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer, and
+      Job&rsquo;s own &lsquo;wanderings in his mind&rsquo;, as he called them. &lsquo;They took a blanky
+      mean advantage of me,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;when they had me down and I couldn&rsquo;t talk
+      sense.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring&mdash;as a mob of
+      brumbies, when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke. Job&rsquo;s
+      leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible. But he
+      thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix. No doubt the scene at the
+      lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him: his father&rsquo;s horse
+      appeared riderless, and he saw the look in his mother&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a Bushman&rsquo;s first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this is
+      that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed, and the horse&rsquo;s
+      tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there for days, for
+      weeks&mdash;till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones. Job was on
+      an old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for
+      months, but he did not consider this. He crawled to his gun, then to a
+      log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him. How he did it he doesn&rsquo;t
+      know. Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log, took aim at
+      the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over and lay with his head
+      against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down, rested on his neck. He
+      had fainted. The crows were interested, and the ants would come by-and-by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed, after
+      they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no other
+      possible way. He often turned up where and when he was wanted above all
+      men, and at no other time. He had gipsy blood, they said; but, anyway,
+      being the mystery he was, and having the face he had, and living the life
+      he lived&mdash;and doing the things he did&mdash;it was quite probable
+      that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world
+      all round and between us, of which we only see distorted faces and hear
+      disjointed utterances when we are &lsquo;suffering a recovery&rsquo;&mdash;or going
+      mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of Job&rsquo;s accident, and after a long brooding silence, Doc.
+      Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Git the hosses, Mac. We&rsquo;ll go to the station.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mac., used to the doctor&rsquo;s eccentricities, went to see about the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer&mdash;Job&rsquo;s mother-in-law&mdash;on
+      her way from the town to the station. She stayed to have a cup of tea and
+      give her horses a feed. She was square-faced, and considered a rather hard
+      and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh, good sympathetic
+      common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes. She lived in the town
+      comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband left in the
+      bank. She drove an American waggonette with a good width and length of
+      &lsquo;tray&rsquo; behind, and on this occasion she had a pole and two horses. In the
+      trap were a new flock mattress and pillows, a generous pair of new white
+      blankets, and boxes containing necessaries, delicacies, and luxuries. All
+      round she was an excellent mother-in-law for a man to have on hand at a
+      critical time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her
+      right here. She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace and
+      comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home! Then it&rsquo;s &lsquo;Write
+      to Mother! Wire for Mother! Send some one to fetch Mother! I&rsquo;ll go and
+      bring Mother!&rsquo; and if she is not near: &lsquo;Oh, I wish Mother were here! If
+      Mother were only near!&rsquo; And when she is on the spot, the anxious
+      son-in-law: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t YOU go, Mother! You&rsquo;ll stay, won&rsquo;t you, Mother?&mdash;till
+      we&rsquo;re all right? I&rsquo;ll get some one to look after your house, Mother, while
+      you&rsquo;re here.&rsquo; But Job Falconer was fond of his mother-in-law, all times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses. Mrs
+      Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her about a mile
+      before she reached the homestead track, which turned in through the scrubs
+      at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along in the
+      edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat through
+      the dead, naked branches. Mac. looked that way. The crows were hopping
+      about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat, flopping
+      down from branch to branch to the grass, then rising hurriedly and
+      circling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dead beast there!&rsquo; said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No&mdash;dying,&rsquo; said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more
+      intellect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s some steers of Job&rsquo;s out there somewhere,&rsquo; muttered Mac. Then
+      suddenly, &lsquo;It ain&rsquo;t drought&mdash;it&rsquo;s the ploorer at last! or I&rsquo;m
+      blanked!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, which was
+      raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto kept clear of Job&rsquo;s
+      run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll go and see, if you like,&rsquo; suggested Doc. Wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way amongst the
+      dried tufts and fallen branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Theer ain&rsquo;t no sign o&rsquo; cattle theer,&rsquo; said the doctor; &lsquo;more likely a ewe
+      in trouble about her lamb.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,&rsquo; said Mac. &lsquo;I wish we had a gun&mdash;might
+      get a shot at them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of a
+      hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. &lsquo;In case I feel obliged to shoot
+      a first person singular one of these hot days,&rsquo; he explained once, whereat
+      Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly, without
+      result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;d never git near enough for a shot,&rsquo; said the doctor; then he
+      commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost
+      Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &lsquo;&ldquo;The crows kept flyin&rsquo; up, boys!
+       The crows kept flyin&rsquo; up!
+    The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
+       Though he was but a pup.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It must be something or other,&rsquo; muttered Mac. &lsquo;Look at them blanky
+      crows!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;&ldquo;The lost was found, we brought him round,
+       And took him from the place,
+    While the ants was swarmin&rsquo; on the ground,
+       And the crows was sayin&rsquo; grace!&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My God! what&rsquo;s that?&rsquo; cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode a
+      tall horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Job&rsquo;s filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as
+      they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and her
+      head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against the
+      ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write the
+      reason of it there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat pocket,
+      and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner; then
+      something&mdash;professional instinct or the something supernatural about
+      the doctor&mdash;led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass, where
+      Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly, which
+      must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac. followed
+      the doctor, shaking violently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, my God!&rsquo; he cried, with the woman in his voice&mdash;and his face so
+      pale that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said&mdash;&lsquo;oh,
+      my God! he&rsquo;s shot himself!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, he hasn&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier
+      position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then
+      he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. &lsquo;He&rsquo;s got a broken
+      leg,&rsquo; said the doctor. Even then he couldn&rsquo;t resist making a
+      characteristic remark, half to himself: &lsquo;A man doesn&rsquo;t shoot himself when
+      he&rsquo;s going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he can
+      see a long way into the future.&rsquo; Then he took out his whisky-flask and
+      said briskly to Mac., &lsquo;Leave me your water-bag&rsquo; (Mac. carried a canvas
+      water-bag slung under his horse&rsquo;s neck), &lsquo;ride back to the track, stop Mrs
+      Spencer, and bring the waggonette here. Tell her it&rsquo;s only a broken leg.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he worked the doctor muttered: &lsquo;He shot his horse. That&rsquo;s what gits me.
+      The fool might have lain there for a week. I&rsquo;d never have suspected spite
+      in that carcass, and I ought to know men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s the filly?&rsquo; cried Job suddenly between groans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stop her!&rsquo; cried Job, struggling to rise&mdash;&lsquo;stop her!&mdash;oh God!
+      my leg.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Keep quiet, you fool!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stop her!&rsquo; yelled Job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why stop her?&rsquo; asked the doctor. &lsquo;She won&rsquo;t go fur,&rsquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll go home to Gerty,&rsquo; shouted Job. &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake stop her!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O&mdash;h!&rsquo; drawled the doctor to himself. &lsquo;I might have guessed that.
+      And I ought to know men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t take me home!&rsquo; demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval. &lsquo;Take me
+      to Poisonous Jimmy&rsquo;s and tell Gerty I&rsquo;m on the spree.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was in his
+      shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages. The lower
+      half of Job&rsquo;s trouser-leg and his &lsquo;lastic-side boot lay on the ground,
+      neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched between two strips of
+      bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows, and bound by saddle-straps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all I kin do for him for the present.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived rather pale and a
+      little shaky: nevertheless she called out, as soon as she got within
+      earshot of the doctor&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s Job been doing now?&rsquo; (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable
+      for doing anything.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s got his leg broke and shot his horse,&rsquo; replied the doctor. &lsquo;But,&rsquo; he
+      added, &lsquo;whether he&rsquo;s been a hero or a fool I dunno. Anyway, it&rsquo;s a mess
+      all round.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap,
+      backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in. It was a
+      ticklish job, but they had to manage it: Job, maddened by pain and heat,
+      only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to them
+      to stop his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lucky we got him before the ants did,&rsquo; muttered the doctor. Then he had
+      an inspiration&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You bring him on to the shepherd&rsquo;s hut this side the station. We must
+      leave him there. Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him now and then;
+      when the brandy&rsquo;s done pour whisky, then gin&mdash;keep the rum till the
+      last&rsquo; (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette at
+      Poisonous Jimmy&rsquo;s). &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take Mac.&lsquo;s horse and ride on and send Peter&rsquo; 
+      (the station hand) &lsquo;back to the hut to meet you. I&rsquo;ll be back myself if I
+      can. THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor&rsquo;s
+      which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for&mdash;except
+      in Doc. Wild&rsquo;s madness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rode off at a gallop. The burden of Job&rsquo;s raving, all the way, rested
+      on the dead filly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stop her! She must not go home to Gerty!... God help me shoot!... Whoa!&mdash;whoa,
+      there!... &ldquo;Cope&mdash;cope&mdash;cope&rdquo;&mdash;Steady, Jessie, old girl....
+      Aim straight&mdash;aim straight! Aim for me, God!&mdash;I&rsquo;ve missed!...
+      Stop her!&rsquo; &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I never met a character like that,&rsquo; commented the doctor afterwards,
+      &lsquo;inside a man that looked like Job on the outside. I&rsquo;ve met men behind
+      revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo&rsquo;nia; but I&rsquo;ve met a derned sight
+      more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin, here in Australia. These
+      lanky sawney Bushmen will do things in an easy-going way some day that&rsquo;ll
+      make the old world sit up and think hard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour later
+      he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman&mdash;whom he saw
+      reason to admire&mdash;and rode back to the hut to help Job, whom they
+      soon fixed up as comfortably as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job&rsquo;s alleged phenomenal
+      shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger, and the truth less
+      important, they told it to her. And so, instead of Job being pushed,
+      scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born, Gerty Falconer
+      herself took the child down to the hut, and so presented Uncle Job with my
+      first and favourite cousin and Bush chum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the
+      homestead, then he prepared to depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rsquo; said Job, who was still weak&mdash;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that there
+      filly. I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should get
+      about. I wouldn&rsquo;t have lost her for twenty quid.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never mind, Job,&rsquo; said the doctor. &lsquo;I, too, once shot an animal I was
+      fond of&mdash;and for the sake of a woman&mdash;but that animal walked on
+      two legs and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he left for Poisonous Jimmy&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Little World Left Behind.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia after many
+      years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise things were drearily,
+      hopelessly, depressingly unchanged. There was the same old grant,
+      comprising several thousands of acres of the richest land in the district,
+      lying idle still, except for a few horses allowed to run there for a
+      shilling a-head per week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were the same old selections&mdash;about as far off as ever from
+      becoming freeholds&mdash;shoved back among the barren ridges; dusty little
+      patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps, and called farms,
+      deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little dried-up
+      family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was the
+      cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
+      Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps in
+      the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and yards,
+      and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up the
+      ground and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers&mdash;the
+      only people there worthy of the name&mdash;toiling (men, women, and
+      children) from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had
+      done; the elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses was
+      unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens and the
+      Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever&mdash;it started three
+      generations ago over a stray bull. The O&rsquo;Dunn was still fighting for his
+      great object in life, which was not to be &lsquo;onneighborly&rsquo;, as he put it. &lsquo;I
+      DON&rsquo;T want to be onneighborly,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;but I&rsquo;ll be aven wid some of &lsquo;em
+      yit. It&rsquo;s almost impossible for a dacent man to live in sich a
+      neighborhood and not be onneighborly, thry how he will. But I&rsquo;ll be aven
+      wid some of &lsquo;em yit, marruk my wurrud.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jones&rsquo;s red steer&mdash;it couldn&rsquo;t have been the same red steer&mdash;was
+      continually breaking into Rooney&rsquo;s &lsquo;whate an&rsquo; bringin&rsquo; ivery head av the
+      other cattle afther him, and ruinin&rsquo; him intirely.&rsquo; The Rooneys and
+      M&rsquo;Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child, over the
+      impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney&rsquo;s brother-in-law, by a
+      distant relation of the M&rsquo;Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week in
+      the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion. The
+      string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
+      whirling into town, to &lsquo;service&rsquo;, through clouds of dust and broiling
+      heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon. The
+      neighbours&rsquo; sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up their
+      poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun, and sat on their heels
+      about the verandah, and drawled drearily concerning crops, fruit, trees,
+      and vines, and horses and cattle; the drought and &lsquo;smut&rsquo; and &lsquo;rust&rsquo; in
+      wheat, and the &lsquo;ploorer&rsquo; (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, and other cheerful
+      things; that there colt or filly, or that there cattle-dog (pup or bitch)
+      o&rsquo; mine (or &lsquo;Jim&rsquo;s&rsquo;). They always talked most of farming there, where no
+      farming worthy of the name was possible&mdash;except by Germans and
+      Chinamen. Towards evening the old local relic of the golden days dropped
+      in and announced that he intended to &lsquo;put down a shaft&rsquo; next week, in a
+      spot where he&rsquo;d been going to put it down twenty years ago&mdash;and every
+      week since. It was nearly time that somebody sunk a hole and buried him
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
+      with her &lsquo;bit av prodjuce&rsquo;, as O&rsquo;Dunn called it. She still drove a long,
+      bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling for a whip,
+      and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins. The floor of the dray
+      covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always ahead of the other&mdash;or
+      behind, according to which shaft was pulled. She wore, to all appearances,
+      the same short frock, faded shawl, men&rsquo;s &lsquo;lastic sides, and white hood
+      that she had on when the world was made. She still stopped just twenty
+      minutes at old Mrs Leatherly&rsquo;s on the way in for a yarn and a cup of tea&mdash;as
+      she had always done, on the same days and at the same time within the
+      memory of the hoariest local liar. However, she had a new clothes-line
+      bent on to the old horse&rsquo;s front end&mdash;and we fancy that was the
+      reason she didn&rsquo;t recognise us at first. She had never looked younger than
+      a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled face was the
+      colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines till there wasn&rsquo;t
+      room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and twinkled with humour
+      at times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires, droughts,
+      hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all the things
+      that God curses Australian settlers with. She had had two husbands, and it
+      could be said of neither that he had ever done an honest day&rsquo;s work, or
+      any good for himself or any one else. She had reared something under
+      fifteen children, her own and others; and there was scarcely one of them
+      that had not given her trouble. Her sons had brought disgrace on her old
+      head over and over again, but she held up that same old head through it
+      all, and looked her narrow, ignorant world in the face&mdash;and &lsquo;lived it
+      down&rsquo;. She had worked like a slave for fifty years; yet she had more
+      energy and endurance than many modern city women in her shrivelled old
+      body. She was a daughter of English aristocrats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities&mdash;we
+      grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life is worth
+      living or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular
+      sameness of things, but there was none. The railway station was about the
+      only new building in town. The old signs even were as badly in need of
+      retouching as of old. I picked up a copy of the local &lsquo;Advertiser&rsquo;, which
+      newspaper had been started in the early days by a brilliant drunkard, who
+      drank himself to death just as the fathers of our nation were beginning to
+      get educated up to his style. He might have made Australian journalism
+      very different from what it is. There was nothing new in the &lsquo;Advertiser&rsquo;&mdash;there
+      had been nothing new since the last time the drunkard had been sober
+      enough to hold a pen. There was the same old &lsquo;enjoyable trip&rsquo; to Drybone
+      (whereof the editor was the hero), and something about an on-the-whole
+      very enjoyable evening in some place that was tastefully decorated, and
+      where the visitors did justice to the good things provided, and the small
+      hours, and dancing, and our host and hostess, and respected
+      fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang very nicely, and a young Mr
+      Somebody favoured the company with a comic song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old
+      subscriber, who said that &lsquo;he had said before and would say again&rsquo;, and he
+      proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper when we
+      first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old
+      subscriber proceeded to &lsquo;maintain&rsquo;, and recalled attention to the fact
+      that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few
+      abstract, incoherent remarks about the &lsquo;surrounding district&rsquo;, and
+      concluded by stating that he &lsquo;must now conclude&rsquo;, and thanking the editor
+      for trespassing on the aforesaid valuable space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation was still
+      carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence to both
+      papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin&mdash;a place where no
+      sane man ever had occasion to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up the &lsquo;unreliable contemporary&rsquo;, but found nothing there except a
+      letter from &lsquo;Parent&rsquo;, another from &lsquo;Ratepayer&rsquo;, a leader on the
+      Government, and &lsquo;A Trip to Limeburn&rsquo;, which latter I suppose was made in
+      opposition to the trip to Drybone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable gang of city
+      spoilers hadn&rsquo;t arrived with the railway. They would have been a relief.
+      There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than hopeless
+      little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on
+      council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always
+      remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this
+      occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had remembered
+      something his grandfather (old time English alderman) had told him, and
+      they were stirring up all the old local quarrels and family spite of the
+      district over a motion, or an amendment on a motion, that a letter&mdash;from
+      another enlightened body and bearing on an equally important matter (which
+      letter had been sent through the post sufficiently stamped, delivered to
+      the secretary, handed to the chairman, read aloud in council, and passed
+      round several times for private perusal)&mdash;over a motion that such
+      letter be received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a maintenance case coming on&mdash;to the usual well-ventilated
+      disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case
+      differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming
+      on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
+      was not even brilliant in adultery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit it, and
+      preparations were made to welcome him and present him with an address.
+      Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away unnoticed in the
+      general lunacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      The Never-Never Country.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
+     By railroad, coach, and track&mdash;
+    By lonely graves of our brave dead,
+     Up-Country and Out-Back:
+    To where &lsquo;neath glorious clustered stars
+     The dreamy plains expand&mdash;
+    My home lies wide a thousand miles
+     In the Never-Never Land.
+
+    It lies beyond the farming belt,
+     Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
+    A blazing desert in the drought,
+     A lake-land after rain;
+    To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
+     Or whirls the scorching sand&mdash;
+    A phantom land, a mystic land!
+     The Never-Never Land.
+
+    Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
+     Mounts Dreadful and Despair&mdash;
+    &lsquo;Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
+     In hopeless deserts there;
+    It spreads nor&rsquo;-west by No-Man&rsquo;s Land&mdash;
+     Where clouds are seldom seen&mdash;
+    To where the cattle-stations lie
+     Three hundred miles between.
+
+    The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
+     The strange Gulf country know&mdash;
+    Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
+     The big lean bullocks go;
+    And camped by night where plains lie wide,
+     Like some old ocean&rsquo;s bed,
+    The watchmen in the starlight ride
+     Round fifteen hundred head.
+
+    And west of named and numbered days
+     The shearers walk and ride&mdash;
+    Jack Cornstalk and the Ne&rsquo;er-do-well,
+     And the grey-beard side by side;
+    They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
+     And slumber on the sand&mdash;
+    Sad memories sleep as years go round
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+    By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
+     Through years of flood and drought,
+    The best of English black-sheep work
+     Their own salvation out:
+    Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown&mdash;
+     Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed&mdash;
+    They live the Dead Past grimly down!
+     Where boundary-riders ride.
+
+    The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
+     Then rose above his shame,
+    Tramps West in mateship with the man
+     Who cannot write his name.
+    &lsquo;Tis there where on the barren track
+     No last half-crust&rsquo;s begrudged&mdash;
+    Where saint and sinner, side by side,
+     Judge not, and are not judged.
+
+    Oh rebels to society!
+     The Outcasts of the West&mdash;
+    Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
+     And broken hearts that jest!
+    The pluck to face a thousand miles&mdash;
+     The grit to see it through!
+    The communism perfected!&mdash;
+     And&mdash;I am proud of you!
+
+    The Arab to true desert sand,
+     The Finn to fields of snow;
+    The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
+     Where the seasons come and go;
+    And this old fact comes home to me&mdash;
+     And will not let me rest&mdash;
+    However barren it may be,
+     Your own land is the best!
+
+    And, lest at ease I should forget
+     True mateship after all,
+    My water-bag and billy yet
+     Are hanging on the wall;
+    And if my fate should show the sign,
+     I&rsquo;d tramp to sunsets grand
+    With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
+     In Never-Never Land.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      [End of original text.]
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A Note on the Author and the Text:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on 17 June
+      1867. Although he has since become the most acclaimed Australian writer,
+      in his own lifetime his writing was often &ldquo;on the side&rdquo;&mdash;his &ldquo;real&rdquo;
+       work was whatever he could find, often painting houses, or doing rough
+      carpentry. His writing was often taken from memories of his childhood,
+      especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he states that
+      many of his characters were taken from the better class of diggers and
+      bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time deeply influenced his
+      work, for it is interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases
+      that are identical in his autobiography and in his stories and poems. He
+      died in Sydney, 2 September 1922. Much of his writing was for periodicals,
+      and even his regular publications were so varied, including books
+      originally released as one volume being reprinted as two, and vice versa,
+      that the multitude of permutations cannot be listed here. However, the
+      following should give a basic outline of his major works.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Books of Short Stories:
+    While the Billy Boils  (1896)
+    On the Track  (1900)
+    Over the Sliprails  (1900)
+    The Country I Come From  (1901)     | These works were first published
+    Joe Wilson and His Mates  (1901)    | in England, during or shortly after
+    Children of the Bush  (1902)        | Lawson&rsquo;s stay there.
+    Send Round the Hat  (1907)          | These two books were first published
+    The Romance of the Swag  (1907)     | as &ldquo;Children of the Bush&rdquo;.
+    The Rising of the Court  (1910)
+
+  Poetry:
+    In the Days When the World Was Wide  (1896)
+    Verses Popular and Humorous  (1900)
+    When I Was King and Other Verses (1905)
+    The Skyline Riders (1910)
+    Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes, &ldquo;Joe
+      Wilson&rdquo; and &ldquo;Joe Wilson&rsquo;s Mates&rdquo;, which correspond to Parts I &amp; II in
+      Joe Wilson and His Mates. This work was first published in England, which
+      may be evident from some of Lawson&rsquo;s comments in the text which are
+      directed at English readers. For example, Lawson writes in &lsquo;The Golden
+      Graveyard&rsquo;: &ldquo;A gold washing-dish is a flat dish&mdash;nearer the shape of
+      a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the dish
+      we used for setting milk&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know whether the same is used
+      here....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES ***
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1036.txt b/old/1036.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4df1e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1036.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9666 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joe Wilson and His Mates
+
+Author: Henry Lawson
+
+Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1036]
+Release Date: September, 1997
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan R. Light, and Gary M. Johnson
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+by Henry Lawson
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: This etext was entered twice (manually) and
+electronically compared, by Alan R. Light This method assures a low rate
+of errors in the text--often lower than in the original. Special thanks
+go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for his assistance in
+procuring a copy of the original text, and to the readers of
+soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books (USENET newsgroups) for their
+help in preparing the glossary. Italicized words or phrases are
+capitalized. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and
+concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
+
+
+"A house where they took in cards on a tray" (from Joe Wilson's
+Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a
+visitor's card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family
+was out, to keep a record of the visit.
+
+Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day.
+It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in
+Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
+
+Gin: An obvious abbreviation of "aborigine", it only refers to *female*
+aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered
+derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
+
+Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a "new chum" or
+newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
+The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A
+female station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo.
+
+Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans
+would say 'Precocious'.
+
+'Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally
+mistaken for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of
+North and South America, other than both being marsupials.
+
+Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a
+"public" bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always)
+dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
+
+Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack
+or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about
+10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but
+Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just "Tea" is used, it usually
+means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time.
+
+Tucker: Food.
+
+Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying
+drinks for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be
+confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
+
+Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
+
+Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
+
+Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is
+a castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was
+too heavy for horses. 'Store' may refer to those cattle, and their
+descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to
+settlers from the 'Store'--hence, the standard draft animal.
+
+Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are reversed
+from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but
+December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the
+United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not
+even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed
+more by "dry" versus "wet" than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
+
+--A. L.
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+
+Author of "While the Billy Boils", "On the Track and Over the
+Sliprails", "When the World was Wide, and other verses", "Verses,
+Popular and Humorous", "Children of the Bush", "When I was King, and
+other verses", etc.
+
+
+
+
+The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+    Some carry their swags in the Great North-West
+     Where the bravest battle and die,
+    And a few have gone to their last long rest,
+     And a few have said "Good-bye!"
+    The coast grows dim, and it may be long
+     Ere the Gums again I see;
+    So I put my soul in a farewell song
+     To the chaps who barracked for me.
+
+    Their days are hard at the best of times,
+     And their dreams are dreams of care--
+    God bless them all for their big soft hearts,
+     And the brave, brave grins they wear!
+    God keep me straight as a man can go,
+     And true as a man may be!
+    For the sake of the hearts that were always so,
+     Of the men who had faith in me!
+
+    And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps
+     Of the blood of the Don't-give-in!
+    The world will call it a boast, perhaps--
+     But I'll win, if a man can win!
+    And not for gold nor the world's applause--
+     Though ways to the end they be--
+    I'll win, if a man might win, because
+     Of the men who believed in me.
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+     Prefatory Verses--
+
+       The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+             Part I.
+
+     Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+     Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+     'Water Them Geraniums'.
+         I.  A Lonely Track.
+        II.  'Past Carin''.
+     A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+         I.  Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+        II.  Joe Wilson's Luck.
+       III.  The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+        IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+             Part II.
+
+     The Golden Graveyard.
+     The Chinaman's Ghost.
+     The Loaded Dog.
+     Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+         I.  Dave Regan's Yarn.
+        II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+     The Ghostly Door.
+     A Wild Irishman.
+     The Babies in the Bush.
+     A Bush Dance.
+     The Buck-Jumper.
+     Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+     At Dead Dingo.
+     Telling Mrs Baker.
+     A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+     The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+     Concluding Verses--
+       The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part I.
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+
+
+
+There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he
+is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and 'comes a man to-day,' as
+my little Jim used to say. When they're cooking something at home that
+he likes. When the 'sandy-blight' or measles breaks out amongst the
+children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill--or dies, it
+doesn't matter which--'and there ain't no school.' When a boy is naked
+and in his natural state for a warm climate like Australia, with three
+or four of his schoolmates, under the shade of the creek-oaks in the
+bend where there's a good clear pool with a sandy bottom. When his
+father buys him a gun, and he starts out after kangaroos or 'possums.
+When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle, of his own. When he has his
+arm in splints or a stitch in his head--he's proud then, the proudest
+boy in the district.
+
+I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet
+by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the
+matter with me--or the world--but that's got nothing to do with it.
+
+There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl
+loves him. When he's just married. When he's a lawful father for the
+first time, and everything is going on all right: some men make fools
+of themselves then--I know I did. I'm happy to-night because I'm out of
+debt and can see clear ahead, and because I haven't been easy for a long
+time.
+
+But I think that the happiest time in a man's life is when he's courting
+a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn't a thought
+for any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
+and keep them clean, for they're about the only days when there's a
+chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them
+and you'll never regret it the longest day you live. They're the days
+that the wife will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as
+well as in the blackest, and there shouldn't be anything in those days
+that might hurt her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting
+days, you young chaps, for they will never come again.
+
+A married man knows all about it--after a while: he sees the woman world
+through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment's pressure
+of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is inclined to be
+cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into awful messes
+sometimes, for a married man, if he's inclined that way, has three times
+the chance with a woman that a single man has--because the married man
+knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what a woman means
+when she says something else; he knows just how far he can go; he can go
+farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a woman than an
+innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the married man
+is more decided with women; he takes them and things for granted. In
+short he is--well, he is a married man. And, when he knows all this, how
+much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says that he lost all
+the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot's eye,--and there
+you have it.
+
+But it's all new to a young chap, provided he hasn't been a young
+blackguard. It's all wonderful, new, and strange to him. He's a
+different man. He finds that he never knew anything about women. He sees
+none of woman's little ways and tricks in his girl. He is in heaven one
+day and down near the other place the next; and that's the sort of thing
+that makes life interesting. He takes his new world for granted. And,
+when she says she'll be his wife----!
+
+Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they've got a
+lot of influence on your married life afterwards--a lot more than you'd
+think. Make the best of them, for they'll never come any more, unless
+we do our courting over again in another world. If we do, I'll make the
+most of mine.
+
+But, looking back, I didn't do so badly after all. I never told you
+about the days I courted Mary. The more I look back the more I come to
+think that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret in
+married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn't walk to and fro
+in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes, or lie awake
+some nights thinking.... Ah well!
+
+I was between twenty-one and thirty then: birthdays had never been any
+use to me, and I'd left off counting them. You don't take much stock in
+birthdays in the Bush. I'd knocked about the country for a few years,
+shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without
+getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of
+myself. I was reckoned 'wild'; but I only drank because I felt less
+sensitive, and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when
+I had a few drinks: I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him.
+It's better to be thought 'wild' than to be considered eccentric
+or ratty. Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank--as far as I could
+see--first because he'd inherited the gambling habit from his father
+along with his father's luck: he'd the habit of being cheated and losing
+very bad, and when he lost he drank. Till drink got a hold on him. Jack
+was sentimental too, but in a different way. I was sentimental about
+other people--more fool I!--whereas Jack was sentimental about himself.
+Before he was married, and when he was recovering from a spree, he'd
+write rhymes about 'Only a boy, drunk by the roadside', and that sort of
+thing; and he'd call 'em poetry, and talk about signing them and sending
+them to the 'Town and Country Journal'. But he generally tore them up
+when he got better. The Bush is breeding a race of poets, and I don't
+know what the country will come to in the end.
+
+Well. It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed in
+the Big Scrubs. Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong,
+and I was hanging round. Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done
+and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place
+at Haviland, a few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush
+carpenters, so we took the job to keep us going till something else
+turned up. 'Better than doing nothing,' said Jack.
+
+'There's a nice little girl in service at Black's,' he said. 'She's more
+like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant. She's a real good
+little girl, and good-looking into the bargain. I hear that young Black
+is sweet on her, but they say she won't have anything to do with him. I
+know a lot of chaps that have tried for her, but they've never had any
+luck. She's a regular little dumpling, and I like dumplings. They call
+her 'Possum. You ought to try a bear up in that direction, Joe.'
+
+I was always shy with women--except perhaps some that I should have
+fought shy of; but Jack wasn't--he was afraid of no woman, good, bad, or
+indifferent. I haven't time to explain why, but somehow, whenever a girl
+took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing
+with me, and felt nasty about it. I made one or two mistakes, but--ah
+well!
+
+'My wife knows little 'Possum,' said Jack. 'I'll get her to ask her out
+to our place and let you know.'
+
+I reckoned that he wouldn't get me there then, and made a note to be on
+the watch for tricks. I had a hopeless little love-story behind me, of
+course. I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love; few
+marry the first flame. Many a married man looks back and thinks it was
+damned lucky that he didn't get the girl he couldn't have. Jack had been
+my successful rival, only he didn't know it--I don't think his wife knew
+it either. I used to think her the prettiest and sweetest little girl in
+the district.
+
+But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at
+Haviland. He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in
+love with her at first sight. He took too many things for granted as far
+as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.
+
+'You let me alone, and I'll fix you up, Joe,' he said, as we rode up
+to the station. 'I'll make it all right with the girl. You're rather
+a good-looking chap. You've got the sort of eyes that take with girls,
+only you don't know it; you haven't got the go. If I had your eyes along
+with my other attractions, I'd be in trouble on account of a woman about
+once a-week.'
+
+'For God's sake shut up, Jack,' I said.
+
+Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife? Perhaps not in
+England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood; but it's
+different in Australia, where you may hail from two thousand miles away
+from where your wife was born, and yet she may be a countrywoman of
+yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too. I remember the
+first glimpse I got of Mary.
+
+It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all
+round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the
+back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight
+rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for
+kitchen, laundry, servants' rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before
+the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored
+verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing up the
+verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine
+near the chimney. We rode up to the end of the verandah, and Jack called
+to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came trotting out; so it
+was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.
+
+More than once since then I've had a fancy to wonder whether the
+rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered 'em both in the
+end. I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see. You
+do get strange fancies at odd times.
+
+Jack asked her if the boss was in. He did all the talking. I saw a
+little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue
+Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria.
+Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the
+biggest and brightest eyes I'd seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I
+found out afterwards, and bright as a 'possum's. No wonder they called
+her ''Possum'. I forgot at once that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest
+girl in the district. I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the
+fact that I was on horseback: most Bushmen look better on horseback. It
+was a black filly, a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls
+as I was myself. I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice
+to see if she knew me; but, when she looked, the filly took all my
+attention. Mary trotted in to tell old Black he was wanted, and after
+Jack had seen him, and arranged to start work next day, we started back
+to Solong.
+
+I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary--but he didn't. He
+squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn't say anything for a long
+time, and then he started talking of other things. I began to feel wild
+at him. He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way things were going.
+He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now; but, as he didn't say
+so, I had no way of getting at him. I felt sure he'd go home and
+tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone on little 'Possum at
+Haviland. That was all Jack's way.
+
+Next morning we started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at
+the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down
+a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush
+before the old house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the
+laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did was to take
+out the sash. I'd noticed Jack yarning with 'Possum before he started
+work. While I was at work at the window he called me round to the other
+end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when
+we'd done it, he took the tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb
+and stretched it and whispered into it--
+
+'Don't hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood and hard to
+get off--you'll have to take the sash out very carefully so as not to
+break the glass.' Then he stretched my ear a little more and put his
+mouth closer--
+
+'Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,' he said.
+
+I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to
+puzzle out what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.
+
+That window reflected the laundry window: the room was dark inside and
+there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary come to the
+laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back, thoughtfully
+watching me. The laundry window had an old-fashioned hinged sash, and I
+like that sort of window--there's more romance about it, I think. There
+was thick dark-green ivy all round the window, and Mary looked prettier
+than a picture. I squared up my shoulders and put my heels together and
+put as much style as I could into the work. I couldn't have turned round
+to save my life.
+
+Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.
+
+'Well?' he whispered.
+
+'You're a fool, Jack,' I said. 'She's only interested in the old house
+being pulled down.'
+
+'That's all right,' he said. 'I've been keeping an eye on the business
+round the corner, and she ain't interested when I'M round this end.'
+
+'You seem mighty interested in the business,' I said.
+
+'Yes,' said Jack. 'This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank in
+times of peace.'
+
+'What made you think of the window?' I asked.
+
+'Oh, that's as simple as striking matches. I'm up to all those dodges.
+Why, where there wasn't a window, I've fixed up a piece of looking-glass
+to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought I wasn't
+looking.'
+
+He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this
+time she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and
+bread-and-butter. I was prizing off the strips that held the sash,
+very carefully, and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any
+reference to me. I'd never felt like that before, except once or
+twice. It was just as if I'd swallowed some clockwork arrangement,
+unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning. I reckon it
+was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up. He had a
+quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want to hit him
+sometimes--after you'd made an ass of yourself.
+
+I didn't hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me
+out of the fix, but he didn't.
+
+'Mr--Mr Wilson!' said Mary. She had a sweet voice.
+
+I turned round.
+
+'I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.'
+
+'Oh, thank you!' I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry
+would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my
+shin and I stumbled--and that didn't help matters much.
+
+'Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?' cried Mary.
+
+'Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,' I blurted out. 'It takes
+more than that to hurt me.'
+
+I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken
+at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so
+that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too,
+like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and
+it's a wonder we didn't spill the whole lot between us. I got away
+from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a
+chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered
+round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he's just made an
+ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you
+worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of
+a past crime would, I think.
+
+I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.
+
+'Here, Jack!' I said. 'I've struck something all right; here's some tea
+and brownie--we'll hang out here all right.'
+
+Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it,
+just as if he'd paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that
+time.
+
+He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me
+wild at him. Presently he said, as if he'd just thought of it--
+
+'That's a very pretty little girl, 'Possum, isn't she, Joe? Do you
+notice how she dresses?--always fresh and trim. But she's got on her
+best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it's
+ironing-day, too. It can't be on your account. If it was Saturday or
+Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps
+one of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong
+to-night. That's what it is.'
+
+He gave me time to think over that.
+
+'But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,' he said. 'Why didn't you
+offer to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in
+ahead of you? You miss all your chances, Joe.'
+
+Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have
+thought of it before.
+
+'Look here, Jack,' I said. 'What have you been saying to that girl about
+me?'
+
+'Oh, not much,' said Jack. 'There isn't much to say about you.'
+
+'What did you tell her?'
+
+'Oh, nothing in particular. She'd heard all about you before.'
+
+'She hadn't heard much good, I suppose,' I said.
+
+'Well, that's true, as far as I could make out. But you've only got
+yourself to blame. I didn't have the breeding and rearing of you. I
+smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.'
+
+'What did you tell her?' I said. 'That's what I want to know.'
+
+'Well, to tell the truth, I didn't tell her anything much. I only
+answered questions.'
+
+'And what questions did she ask?'
+
+'Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn't Joe Wilson; and
+I said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote
+poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.'
+
+'Look here, Jack,' I said, 'I've two minds to punch your head.'
+
+'And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,' said Jack, 'and I
+said you was, a bit. She said it seemed a pity. She asked me if it was
+true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said that I was sorry
+to say it was true. She asked me if you had any friends, and I said none
+that I knew of, except me. I said that you'd lost all your friends; they
+stuck to you as long as they could, but they had to give you best, one
+after the other.'
+
+'What next?'
+
+'She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as
+fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if
+you'd had an illness lately. And I said no--it was all on account of
+the wild, dissipated life you'd led. She said it was a pity you hadn't
+a mother or a sister to look after you--it was a pity that something
+couldn't be done for you, and I said it was, but I was afraid that
+nothing could be done. I told her that I was doing all I could to keep
+you straight.'
+
+I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true. And so she
+only pitied me after all. I felt as if I'd been courting her for six
+months and she'd thrown me over--but I didn't know anything about women
+yet.
+
+'Did you tell her I was in jail?' I growled.
+
+'No, by Gum! I forgot that. But never mind I'll fix that up all right.
+I'll tell her that you got two years' hard for horse-stealing. That
+ought to make her interested in you, if she isn't already.'
+
+We smoked a while.
+
+'And was that all she said?' I asked.
+
+'Who?--Oh! 'Possum,' said Jack rousing himself. 'Well--no; let me
+think---- We got chatting of other things--you know a married man's
+privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl than a single man can. I
+got talking nonsense about sweethearts, and one thing led to another
+till at last she said, "I suppose Mr Wilson's got a sweetheart, Mr
+Barnes?"'
+
+'And what did you say?' I growled.
+
+'Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,' said
+Jack. 'You'd better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.'
+
+I wouldn't take back the tray--but that didn't mend matters, for Jack
+took it back himself.
+
+I didn't see Mary's reflection in the window again, so I took the window
+out. I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,
+as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool for
+thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought, except
+by way of kindness. Why! young Black and half a dozen better men than me
+were sweet on her, and young Black was to get his father's station and
+the money--or rather his mother's money, for she held the stuff (she
+kept it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time,
+and his mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn't make
+any difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only
+just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship
+affair, as far as I was concerned--like my first love affair, that I
+haven't told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls.
+You see, I didn't know women then. If I had known, I think I might have
+made more than one mess of my life.
+
+Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some
+distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or
+four wet days, and we didn't get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary
+till one day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the
+old-style sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was
+clean grass, so it didn't matter much. I looked at Jack.
+
+'Go and help her, you capital Idiot!' he said, and I made the plunge.
+
+'Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!' said Mary, when I came to help. She had the
+broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off
+the ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets
+and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she
+did. But that's the way with women--especially little women--some of 'em
+would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on
+the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally
+touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right
+through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was.
+
+Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get
+hold of the loose end of the rope that's hanging from the post with one
+hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and
+try to pull 'em far enough together to make a knot. And that's about
+all you do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off
+the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while
+Mary helped me with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken
+the prop from her, but he didn't; he just went on with his work as if
+nothing was happening inside the horizon.
+
+She'd got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short
+now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down
+while she pegged a sheet she'd thrown over. I'd made the plunge now,
+so I volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw
+the things over and pegged out. As we got near the post and higher I
+straightened out some ends and pegged myself. Bushmen are handy at most
+things. We laughed, and now and again Mary would say, 'No, that's not
+the way, Mr Wilson; that's not right; the sheet isn't far enough over;
+wait till I fix it,' &c. I'd a reckless idea once of holding her up
+while she pegged, and I was glad afterwards that I hadn't made such a
+fool of myself.
+
+'There's only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,' I said. 'You
+can't reach--I'll fix 'em up.'
+
+She seemed to give a little gasp.
+
+'Oh, those things are not ready yet,' she said, 'they're not rinsed,'
+and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me. The things looked
+the same to me as the rest on the line; they looked rinsed enough and
+blued too. I reckoned that she didn't want me to take the trouble, or
+thought that I mightn't like to be seen hanging out clothes, and was
+only doing it out of kindness.
+
+'Oh, it's no trouble,' I said, 'let me hang 'em out. I like it. I've
+hung out clothes at home on a windy day,' and I made a reach into the
+basket. But she flushed red, with temper I thought, and snatched the
+basket away.
+
+'Excuse me, Mr Wilson,' she said, 'but those things are not ready yet!'
+and she marched into the wash-house.
+
+'Ah well! you've got a little temper of your own,' I thought to myself.
+
+When I told Jack, he said that I'd made another fool of myself. He said
+I'd both disappointed and offended her. He said that my line was to
+stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.
+
+That evening when we'd started home, we stopped some time yarning with
+a chap we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary
+hanging out the rest of the things--she thought that we were out of
+sight. Then I understood why those things weren't ready while we were
+round.
+
+For the next day or two Mary didn't take the slightest notice of me,
+and I kept out of her way. Jack said I'd disillusioned her--and hurt her
+dignity--which was a thousand times worse. He said I'd spoilt the thing
+altogether. He said that she'd got an idea that I was shy and poetic,
+and I'd only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker.
+
+I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and
+it made me miserable. I got drunk two evenings running, and then, as it
+appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,
+when we were together--
+
+'Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?'
+
+'No,' said Jack.
+
+'Do you, Mr Wilson?' she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on
+me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'I do a little.' Then there was a silence, and I had to
+say something else.
+
+'Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'but I can't get any one to play with me here of an
+evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.' Then she said,
+'It's very dull these long winter evenings when you've got nothing to
+do. Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he's away.'
+
+I saw Jack winking at me urgently.
+
+'I'll play a game with you, if you like,' I said, 'but I ain't much of a
+player.'
+
+'Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?'
+
+We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I
+had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from
+the pub.
+
+Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing
+herself. Women have ways--or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day the
+Boss came round and said to me--
+
+'Look here, Joe, you've got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along
+your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You
+can have your tucker here.'
+
+He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old
+school, who'd shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn't see
+why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times
+with any of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he'd
+married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she'd never
+got any Australian notions.
+
+Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed
+up for me. I'm not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that
+good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea
+I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don't
+remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down
+first. There was about two feet between us. We got very chummy and
+confidential. She told me about her childhood and her father.
+
+He'd been an old mate of Black's, a younger son of a well-to-do English
+family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia
+with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with
+more or less. They think they're hard done by; they blue their thousand
+pounds in Melbourne or Sydney, and they don't make any more nowadays,
+for the Roarin' Days have been dead these thirty years. I wish I'd had a
+thousand pounds to start on!
+
+Mary's mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected
+up there in the old days. She had a will of her own as far as I could
+understand, and bossed the home till the day of her death. Mary's
+father made money, and lost it, and drank--and died. Mary remembered
+him sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head, and
+singing a German song (the 'Lorelei', I think it was) softly, as if to
+himself. Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept out of
+the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round (there was
+a little money coming from England).
+
+Mary told me all about her girlhood. She went first to live with a sort
+of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray, and
+then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first.
+I'd had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas of what
+the world ought to be, and she seemed interested.
+
+Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky until
+I remembered that I'd told her I had no one to care for me; then I
+suspected pity again.
+
+But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were
+dead, and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black,
+and things went on very satisfactorily.
+
+And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover
+and a looking-glass.
+
+I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was
+round, but Mary didn't seem aware of it.
+
+We got very chummy. Mary wasn't comfortable at Haviland. Old Black
+was very fond of her and always took her part, but she wanted to be
+independent. She had a great idea of going to Sydney and getting into
+the hospital as a nurse. She had friends in Sydney, but she had no
+money. There was a little money coming to her when she was twenty-one--a
+few pounds--and she was going to try and get it before that time.
+
+'Look here, Miss Brand,' I said, after we'd watched the moon rise. 'I'll
+lend you the money. I've got plenty--more than I know what to do with.'
+
+But I saw I'd hurt her. She sat up very straight for a while, looking
+before her; then she said it was time to go in, and said 'Good-night, Mr
+Wilson.'
+
+I reckoned I'd done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards that she
+was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money might
+have been taken for a hint. She didn't understand me yet, and I didn't
+know human nature. I didn't say anything to Jack--in fact about this
+time I left off telling him about things. He didn't seem hurt; he worked
+hard and seemed happy.
+
+I really meant what I said to Mary about the money. It was pure good
+nature. I'd be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps, if
+I'd never grown any more selfish than I was that night on the wood-heap
+with Mary. I felt a great sympathy for her--but I got to love her. I
+went through all the ups and downs of it. One day I was having tea in
+the kitchen, and Mary and another girl, named Sarah, reached me a clean
+plate at the same time: I took Sarah's plate because she was first, and
+Mary seemed very nasty about it, and that gave me great hopes. But all
+next evening she played draughts with a drover that she'd chummed up
+with. I pretended to be interested in Sarah's talk, but it didn't seem
+to work.
+
+A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good
+pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a
+target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or
+four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with
+the pleuro. The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle. Mary called 'Mr
+Wilson' to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking. If
+it hadn't been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn't have minded so much.
+
+Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went
+out 'possum-shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn't. I
+mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,
+and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer, and damned
+the world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was
+the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so
+miserable that I enjoyed it.
+
+I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary
+accidentally and had to say something.
+
+'How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+'Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,' she said. Then she asked, 'How
+did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?'
+
+I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn't make anything out of it.
+Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about
+this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and
+turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep
+an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened
+up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty,
+and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I'd slip down to the
+river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to
+look as if it hadn't been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt
+so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one
+morning he remarked casually--
+
+'I see you've made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying
+up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the
+wash-house.'
+
+I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such
+a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the
+hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.
+
+
+It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good
+day's work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a
+yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along
+by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the
+bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the
+fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or
+two visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was
+there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps
+hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
+Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was
+a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was
+reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of
+Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest
+temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with
+him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had
+risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany
+loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the
+coach-house and across towards where we were--I suppose he was going to
+tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he
+disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the
+way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.
+
+'What the hell's Romany trying to do?' said Jimmy Nowlett. 'He couldn't
+have fell off his horse--or else he's drunk.'
+
+A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting,
+mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark and
+nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I'd
+stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
+forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line,
+and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows and scraped
+him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised
+voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn't hurt, but the
+sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who'd put up that
+bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while.
+
+'What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?' asked Jim Bullock
+presently. 'Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?'
+
+'Why didn't you ask the horse to go round?' asked Dave Regan.
+
+'I'd only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!' growled Romany.
+
+'Well,' said Jimmy Nowlett, 'if we'd put up a sign to beware of the line
+you couldn't have seen it in the dark.'
+
+'Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,' said Dave Regan.
+'But why didn't you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along?
+It wouldn't have jolted yer so much.'
+
+All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes.
+But I didn't take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the
+Jackaroo.
+
+'I've heard of men getting down over their horse's head,' said
+Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way--'in fact I've done it
+myself--but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse's rump.'
+
+But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play
+the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.
+
+Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice,
+and I'd have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn't been listening
+too. We listened in silence until she'd finished.
+
+'That gal's got a nice voice,' said Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+'Nice voice!' snarled Romany, who'd been waiting for a chance to be
+nasty. 'Why, I've heard a tom-cat sing better.'
+
+I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The
+chaps didn't like Romany's talk about 'Possum at all. They were all fond
+of her: she wasn't a pet or a tomboy, for she wasn't built that way,
+but they were fond of her in such a way that they didn't like to hear
+anything said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a
+lot. Perhaps the single men didn't care to speak for fear that it would
+be said that they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a
+big puff at his pipe and spoke--
+
+'I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?'
+
+'Oh, she tried it on, but it didn't go,' said Romany. 'I've met her sort
+before. She's setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run
+after anything with trousers on,' and he stood up.
+
+Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and
+whispered, 'Sit still, Joe, damn you! He's too good for you!' but I was
+on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and
+wrenched me off the log and set me there.
+
+'You're a damned crawler, Romany!' I said.
+
+Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us
+before a blow got home. 'Hold on, you damned fools!' they said. 'Keep
+quiet till we get away from the house!' There was a little clear flat
+down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down
+there and have it out.
+
+Now I never was a fighting man; I'd never learnt to use my hands. I
+scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I
+wouldn't bother about it. He'd say, 'You'll get into a fight some day,
+Joe, or out of one, and shame me;' but I hadn't the patience to learn.
+He'd wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to
+get excited, and I didn't want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before
+he was married Jack was always getting into fights--he generally tackled
+a better man and got a hiding; but he didn't seem to care so long as
+he made a good show--though he used to explain the thing away from a
+scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a
+horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I
+think I'd sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him
+with fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, 'Don't shoot me
+in the face!' Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed
+brutal to me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what
+the matter was. Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the
+river, and he couldn't help hanging out blue lights.
+
+'Why didn't you let me teach you to use your hands?' he said. 'The
+only chance now is that Romany can't fight after all. If you'd waited
+a minute I'd have been at him.' We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack
+started giving me points about lefts and rights, and 'half-arms', and
+that sort of thing. 'He's left-handed, and that's the worst of it,' said
+Jack. 'You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will
+take him on afterwards.'
+
+But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since
+I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it--sort of dulled. If the
+chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of
+that, but it didn't make any difference with me then; I knew it was a
+thing they couldn't understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But
+I knew one thing that they didn't know. I knew that it was going to be
+a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and
+imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the
+real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, 'You'll have
+to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It's the turning-point of your
+life.' If I won the fight, I'd set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I'd
+leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I
+used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness
+of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis--Jack was the reverse. I
+looked ahead: I wouldn't be able to marry a girl who could look back and
+remember when her husband was beaten by another man--no matter what sort
+of brute the other man was.
+
+I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering
+instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it
+was all lost on me.
+
+Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing
+under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the
+river in the moonlight to fight for her.
+
+It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off
+our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed
+an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack
+would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would
+fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn't mind obliging for
+one; he was a mate of Jack's, but he didn't mind who he fought so long
+as it was for the sake of fair play--or 'peace and quietness', as he
+said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack
+backed me.
+
+As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one
+arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and
+then rush and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length
+of reach, and my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early
+in the round. But it did me good; the blow and the look I'd seen
+in Romany's eyes knocked all the sentiment out of me. Jack said
+nothing,--he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first.
+Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me, and made a
+better show, but I went down in the end.
+
+I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.
+
+'How are you, Joe?' he whispered.
+
+'I'm all right,' I said.
+
+'It's all right,' whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be
+hanged, but it would soon be all over. 'He can't use his hands much more
+than you can--take your time, Joe--try to remember something I told you,
+for God's sake!'
+
+When two men fight who don't know how to use their hands, they stand a
+show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps,
+but mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump
+round--he was an excitable little fellow.
+
+'Fight! you----!' he yelled. 'Why don't you fight? That ain't fightin'.
+Fight, and don't try to murder each other. Use your crimson hands or, by
+God, I'll chip you! Fight, or I'll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of
+you;' then his language got awful. They said we went like windmills, and
+that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock
+if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.
+
+Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head
+and didn't matter much--I had a good thick skull. And I had one good eye
+yet.
+
+'For God's sake, hit him!' whispered Jack--he was trembling like a leaf.
+'Don't mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a
+blow home, for God's sake! Make a good show this round and I'll stop the
+fight.'
+
+That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.
+
+I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn't going to be beaten while
+I could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There's
+nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning
+more in three seconds than Jack's sparring could have taught me in three
+weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don't--not
+till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn't altogether an
+animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.
+
+While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still
+air the sound of Mary's voice singing up at the house. I thought hard
+into the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that
+was passing.
+
+I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt
+such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I'd put
+out my wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back.
+
+I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as
+he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said
+afterwards that he didn't speak because he thought a word might spoil
+it.
+
+I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all
+right when he lifted me.
+
+Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated
+us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the
+novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
+
+'I've done,' he said. 'I've twisted my ankle.' He'd caught his heel
+against a tuft of grass.
+
+'Shake hands,' yelled Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
+
+'If yer don't shake hands with Wilson, I'll lamb yer!' howled Jimmy; but
+Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow
+and rode off.
+
+I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard
+him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim
+said--
+
+'If I thought that, I'd kill him.'
+
+'What is it?' asked Jack.
+
+Jim held up a butcher's knife. It was common for a man to carry a
+butcher's knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.
+
+'Why did you let your man fight with a butcher's knife in his belt?'
+asked Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we
+decided it that way.
+
+'Any way,' said Jimmy Nowlett, 'if he'd stuck Joe in hot blood before us
+all it wouldn't be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back
+in the dark. But you'd best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or
+two, Joe. That chap's got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the
+best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this
+dark from the gals.'
+
+Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced
+at him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that
+Jack had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I'm sorry I
+said it.
+
+'What's up, Jack?' I asked.
+
+'Nothing,' said Jack.
+
+'What's up, you old fool?' I said.
+
+'Nothing,' said Jack, 'except that I'm damned proud of you, Joe, you
+old ass!' and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake.
+'I didn't know it was in you, Joe--I wouldn't have said it before,
+or listened to any other man say it, but I didn't think you had the
+pluck--God's truth, I didn't. Come along and get your face fixed up.'
+
+We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one
+of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.
+
+Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me.
+He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good
+many--he'd been mended himself so often.
+
+While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet
+amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl's
+voice whispered, 'Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know,--I might be able
+to help.'
+
+It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there
+was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild.
+
+'What is it, Jack?' I asked.
+
+'Oh, nothing,' he said, 'only that damned slut of a half-caste cook
+overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany's knife
+got out of the sheath, and she's put a nice yarn round amongst the
+girls. There's a regular bobbery, but it's all right now. Jimmy
+Nowlett's telling 'em lies at a great rate.'
+
+Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and
+brown paper was handed in.
+
+One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had
+a quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I
+reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he
+said he'd be round early in the morning, and went home.
+
+I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn't feel proud of the affair at
+all. I thought it was a low, brutal business all round. Romany was a
+quiet chap after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps
+he'd had a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn't
+know anything about. He seemed a lonely man. I'd gone through enough
+myself to teach me not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I
+felt about the matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake
+of bothering about 'feelings' in another party that hadn't any feelings
+at all--perhaps I didn't; but it's generally best to chance it on the
+kind side in a case like this. Altogether I felt as if I'd made another
+fool of myself and been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and
+went to sleep.
+
+About daylight I woke and heard Jack's horse on the gravel. He came
+round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly,
+a girl screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and 'lastic-side boots and
+hurried out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone
+step at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was
+off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder.
+She kept saying, 'I thought you were----! I thought you were----!' I
+didn't catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was
+lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded
+and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a
+cunning old hawk that they called ''Tarnal Death', and that used to be
+always after the chickens.
+
+When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper, and her eyes
+seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.
+
+'Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,' she gasped. Then she gave a little
+ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.
+
+'Oh, I'm a little fool!' she said quickly. 'I thought I heard old
+'Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing
+if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly
+so as not to wake Sarah. And then you came round the corner and
+frightened me. I don't know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.'
+
+'Never mind,' said Jack. 'You go and have a sleep, or you won't be
+able to dance to-night. Never mind the gun--I'll put that away.' And he
+steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah where
+she slept with one of the other girls.
+
+'Well, that's a rum start!' I said.
+
+'Yes, it is,' said Jack; 'it's very funny. Well, how's your face this
+morning, Joe?'
+
+He seemed a lot more serious than usual.
+
+We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed and
+getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles, making
+seats, &c. I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could. One side
+of my face was a sight and the other wasn't too classical. I felt as if
+I had been stung by a swarm of bees.
+
+'You're a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,' said
+Jimmy Nowlett--he was going to play the accordion that night. 'You ought
+to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face'll go down
+in about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight
+straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy--so
+I didn't lose much beauty by it.'
+
+When we'd done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said--
+
+'Look here, Joe! if you won't come to the dance to-night--and I can't
+say you'd ornament it--I tell you what you'll do. You get little Mary
+away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll--and act like a man. The
+job's finished now, and you won't get another chance like this.'
+
+'But how am I to get her out?' I said.
+
+'Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
+near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.'
+
+'What good'll that do?'
+
+'Never you mind. You just do as you're told, that's all you've got to
+do,' said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.
+
+After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The
+first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the
+second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking
+excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see
+sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary
+black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly
+that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor
+Romany. I went away and walked about four miles down the river road,
+getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding
+along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought
+that there wasn't much to choose between us as far as happiness was
+concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling
+like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him.
+
+But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
+and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at
+the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn't expect anything, in
+spite of what Jack said.
+
+I didn't like the idea of hanging myself: I'd been with a party who
+found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round
+where he was. And I'd helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river
+in a flood, and they weren't sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity
+that a chap couldn't lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in
+the moonlight and die just by thinking of it--and die with his eyes
+and mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn't make a beautiful
+corpse, anyway it went, with the face I had on me.
+
+I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,
+and my heart gave a jump. And I gave a start too.
+
+'Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?' said a timid little voice.
+
+'Yes,' I said. 'Is that you, Mary?'
+
+And she said yes. It was the first time I called her Mary, but she did
+not seem to notice it.
+
+'Did I frighten you?' I asked.
+
+'No--yes--just a little,' she said. 'I didn't know there was any
+one----' then she stopped.
+
+'Why aren't you dancing?' I asked her.
+
+'Oh, I'm tired,' she said. 'It was too hot in the wool-shed. I thought
+I'd like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'it must be hot in the wool-shed.'
+
+She stood looking out over the willows. Presently she said, 'It must be
+very dull for you, Mr Wilson--you must feel lonely. Mr Barnes said----'
+Then she gave a little gasp and stopped--as if she was just going to put
+her foot in it.
+
+'How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!' she said.
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'doesn't it? Supposing we have a stroll by the river.'
+
+'Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson. I'd like it very much.'
+
+I didn't notice it then, but, now I come to think of it, it was a
+beautiful scene: there was a horseshoe of high blue hills round behind
+the house, with the river running round under the slopes, and in front
+was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges, and a soft blue
+peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.
+
+I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side
+turned to her. We walked down by the river, and didn't say anything for
+a good while. I was thinking hard. We came to a white smooth log in a
+quiet place out of sight of the house.
+
+'Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,' I said.
+
+'If you like, Mr Wilson,' she said.
+
+There was about a foot of log between us.
+
+'What a beautiful night!' she said.
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'isn't it?'
+
+Presently she said, 'I suppose you know I'm going away next month, Mr
+Wilson?'
+
+I felt suddenly empty. 'No,' I said, 'I didn't know that.'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'I thought you knew. I'm going to try and get into the
+hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn't come off I'll
+get a place as assistant public-school teacher.'
+
+We didn't say anything for a good while.
+
+'I suppose you won't be sorry to go, Miss Brand?' I said.
+
+'I--I don't know,' she said. 'Everybody's been so kind to me here.'
+
+She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened.
+I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn't seem to notice it. In
+fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.
+
+'So you think you'll be sorry to go away?' I said.
+
+'Yes, Mr Wilson. I suppose I'll fret for a while. It's been my home, you
+know.'
+
+I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn't
+pretend not to know it was there. But she didn't seem to notice.
+
+'Ah, well,' I said, 'I suppose I'll be on the wallaby again next week.'
+
+'Will you, Mr Wilson?' she said. Her voice seemed very soft.
+
+I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm. My heart was going like
+clockwork now.
+
+Presently she said--
+
+'Don't you think it's time to go back now, Mr Wilson?'
+
+'Oh, there's plenty of time!' I said. I shifted up, and put my arm
+farther round, and held her closer. She sat straight up, looking right
+in front of her, but she began to breathe hard.
+
+'Mary,' I said.
+
+'Yes,' she said.
+
+'Call me Joe,' I said.
+
+'I--I don't like to,' she said. 'I don't think it would be right.'
+
+So I just turned her face round and kissed her. She clung to me and
+cried.
+
+'What is it, Mary?' I asked.
+
+She only held me tighter and cried.
+
+'What is it, Mary?' I said. 'Ain't you well? Ain't you happy?'
+
+'Yes, Joe,' she said, 'I'm very happy.' Then she said, 'Oh, your poor
+face! Can't I do anything for it?'
+
+'No,' I said. 'That's all right. My face doesn't hurt me a bit now.'
+
+But she didn't seem right.
+
+'What is it, Mary?' I said. 'Are you tired? You didn't sleep last
+night----' Then I got an inspiration.
+
+'Mary,' I said, 'what were you doing out with the gun this morning?'
+
+And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.
+
+'I couldn't sleep--I was frightened. Oh! I had such a terrible dream
+about you, Joe! I thought Romany came back and got into your room and
+stabbed you with his knife. I got up and dressed, and about daybreak
+I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the
+wall--and--and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me. He's
+something like Romany, you know.'
+
+Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.
+
+And, oh, but wasn't I happy walking home with Mary that night! She was
+too little for me to put my arm round her waist, so I put it round
+her shoulder, and that felt just as good. I remember I asked her who'd
+cleaned up my room and washed my things, but she wouldn't tell.
+
+She wouldn't go back to the dance yet; she said she'd go into her room
+and rest a while. There was no one near the old verandah; and when she
+stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level with my shoulder.
+
+'Mary,' I whispered, 'put your arms round my neck and kiss me.'
+
+She put her arms round my neck, but she didn't kiss me; she only hid her
+face.
+
+'Kiss me, Mary!' I said.
+
+'I--I don't like to,' she whispered.
+
+'Why not, Mary?'
+
+Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing.
+I'm not sure to this day which it was.
+
+'Why won't you kiss me, Mary? Don't you love me?'
+
+'Because,' she said, 'because--because I--I don't--I don't think it's
+right for--for a girl to--to kiss a man unless she's going to be his
+wife.'
+
+Then it dawned on me! I'd forgot all about proposing.
+
+'Mary,' I said, 'would you marry a chap like me?'
+
+And that was all right.
+
+     *****
+
+Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and
+didn't take the slightest notice of the other girls' astonishment.
+
+But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same
+evening. I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on
+the quiet with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went
+away, I sat down.
+
+'Well, Joe,' said Black, 'I see somebody's been spoiling your face for
+the dance.' And after a bit he said, 'Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want
+another job? If you do, you'll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob' (Bob was
+his eldest son); 'they're managing the station for me now, you know.' He
+could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.
+
+'No,' I said; 'it's not that, Boss.'
+
+'Well, what is it, Joe?'
+
+'I--well the fact is, I want little Mary.'
+
+He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.
+
+'What did you say, Boss?' I said.
+
+'Nothing, Joe,' he said. 'I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn't be
+any use. My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.'
+
+I waited a good while for him to speak.
+
+'Well, Boss,' I said, 'what about Mary?'
+
+'Oh! I suppose that's all right, Joe,' he said. 'I--I beg your pardon. I
+got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.'
+
+
+
+
+Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+
+
+Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say 'on'
+Gulgong--and old diggers still talked of being 'on th' Gulgong'--though
+the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was
+only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the
+last of the great alluvial 'rushes' of the 'roaring days'--and dreary
+and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression 'on' came
+from being on the 'diggings' or goldfield--the workings or the goldfield
+was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them--not in
+nor at 'em.
+
+Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came----His name
+wasn't 'Jim', by the way, it was 'John Henry', after an uncle godfather;
+but we called him Jim from the first--(and before it)--because Jim was a
+popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full
+of good-hearted scamps called Jim.
+
+We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,
+and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did
+a bit of digging ('fossicking', rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of
+fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,--anything, just to
+keep the billy boiling.
+
+We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every
+one of them, and we had most of them lanced--couldn't pull him through
+without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before
+the tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky
+little chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor
+was lancing his gum: he used to say 'tar' afterwards, and want to bring
+the lance home with him.
+
+The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim
+out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I
+had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,
+and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the
+contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of
+a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our
+goods and chattels anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home
+an hour when Jim took convulsions for the first time.
+
+Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn't want to see it
+again: it plays the devil with a man's nerves. I'd got the beds fixed up
+on the floor, and the billies on the fire--I was going to make some tea,
+and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night--when Jim
+(he'd been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to
+sleep)--Jim, he screamed out twice. He'd been crying a good deal, and
+I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me) or I'd have
+noticed at once that there was something unusual in the way the child
+cried out: as it was I didn't turn round till Mary screamed 'Joe!
+Joe!' You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or
+dying--short, and sharp, and terrible. 'Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our
+child! Get the bath, quick! quick! it's convulsions!'
+
+Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother's
+arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed--a thing I saw twice
+afterwards, and don't want ever to see again.
+
+I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the
+woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run
+for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into
+a hot bath and pulled him through.
+
+The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed
+with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and
+Mary's screams out of my head and fell asleep.
+
+You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
+for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
+there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
+to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our
+wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had
+to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn't so bad as the
+first, and we pulled him through.
+
+You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don't want to. It must
+be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an
+hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
+or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty
+high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he
+cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump: I was
+always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or
+feeling his limbs to see if he was 'limp' yet. Mary and I often laughed
+about it--afterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights
+after Jim's first attack I'd be just dozing off into a sound sleep,
+when I'd hear him scream, as plain as could be, and I'd hear Mary cry,
+'Joe!--Joe!'--short, sharp, and terrible--and I'd be up and into their
+room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I'd feel
+Jim's head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire
+and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights
+I was like that all night, and I'd feel relieved when daylight came.
+I'd be in first thing to see if they were all right; then I'd sleep till
+dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down
+about that time: I was worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up
+and never got paid for; and, besides, I'd been pretty wild before I met
+Mary.
+
+I was fighting hard then--struggling for something better. Both Mary and
+I were born to better things, and that's what made the life so hard for
+us.
+
+Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have
+his teeth lanced in time.
+
+It used to hurt and worry me to see how--just as he was getting fat
+and rosy and like a natural happy child, and I'd feel proud to take him
+out--a tooth would come along, and he'd get thin and white and pale and
+bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. We'd say, 'He'll be safe when he gets his
+eye-teeth': but he didn't get them till he was two; then, 'He'll be safe
+when he gets his two-year-old teeth': they didn't come till he was going
+on for three.
+
+He was a wonderful little chap--Yes, I know all about parents thinking
+that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small for his
+age, friends will say that small children make big men; that he's a
+very bright, intelligent child, and that it's better to have a bright,
+intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is
+dull and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest
+men--and all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of
+clatter--took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don't
+think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was
+everybody's favourite. They spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about
+bringing up a child. I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. She'd say,
+'Put that' (whatever it was) 'out of Jim's reach, will you, Joe?' and
+I'd say, 'No! leave it there, and make him understand he's not to have
+it. Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a
+regular hour,' I'd say. Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. She'd
+say that I forgot he was only a baby: but I held that a baby could be
+trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.
+
+But, after all, what are you to do? You'll see a boy that was brought up
+strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the
+hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when
+a child is delicate--and you might lose him any day--you don't like to
+spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as delicate
+children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the same
+night he took convulsions, or something, and died--how'd you feel about
+it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than you can
+tell what some women are going to say or do.
+
+I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes I'd sit
+and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he
+talked, he'd make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all
+things, and I'd get him a clean new clay and he'd sit by my side, on the
+edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the
+evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do
+it. He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn't quite the
+thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn't smoke tobacco
+yet: he made the best he could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe
+he wouldn't have a new one, and there'd be a row; the old one had to be
+mended up, somehow, with string or wire. If I got my hair cut, he'd
+want his cut too; and it always troubled him to see me shave--as if he
+thought there must be something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have
+to be shaved too. I lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him:
+he sat through it as solemn as an owl, but didn't seem to appreciate
+it--perhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldn't possibly be the
+real thing. He felt his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped
+off, and whimpered, 'No blood, daddy!'
+
+I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving.
+
+Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his
+lingo better than I did.
+
+But I wasn't always at ease with him. Sometimes he'd sit looking into
+the fire, with his head on one side, and I'd watch him and wonder what
+he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman
+was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:
+sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he'd glance round just as if to see
+what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.
+
+I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or
+Asiatic--something older than our civilisation or religion--about
+old-fashioned children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I
+thought would understand--and as it happened she had an old-fashioned
+child, with very slant eyes--a little tartar he was too. I suppose
+it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal
+theory, and set me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me
+mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husband--and all their
+tribe. It wasn't an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row
+hasn't been fixed up yet. There were some Chinamen in the district.
+
+I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,
+near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the
+Cudgeegong river--some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred
+from the coast--and 'carrying' was good then. I had a couple of
+draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking,
+and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon
+cheap, tinkered it up myself--christened it 'The Same Old Thing'--and
+started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the
+bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the
+one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling
+wilderness. It wasn't much of a team. There were the two heavy horses
+for 'shafters'; a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for
+thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with
+points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the
+grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along
+in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn't
+belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.
+And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It
+was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and
+freight rates were high. So I got along.
+
+Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I'd sink a shaft somewhere,
+prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out
+of that.
+
+I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm--that an old mate of
+mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up--about thirty
+miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey's Creek. (The places
+were all called Lahey's Creek, or Spicer's Flat, or Murphy's Flat, or
+Ryan's Crossing, or some such name--round there.) I reckoned I'd have
+a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had a
+dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctor--or a
+good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Lahey's
+Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Mary's--a young scamp
+(his name was Jim, too, and we called him 'Jimmy' at first to make room
+for our Jim--he hated the name 'Jimmy' or James). He came to live with
+us--without asking--and I thought he'd find enough work at Lahey's
+Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn't to be depended on much--he
+thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, 'to have a look
+at the country'--but he was fond of Mary, and he'd stay by her till I
+got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road. He would
+be a protection against 'sundowners' or any shearers who happened to
+wander that way in the 'D.T.'s' after a spree. Mary had a married sister
+come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her
+and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or
+so--till we got settled down at Lahey's Creek. They were newly married.
+
+Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end
+of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn't too
+well--and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn't time
+to get them cut, so we let Jim's time run on a week or so longer, till I
+happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of
+flour for Lahey's Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grand--no
+chance of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did--I would
+only camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me.
+
+Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned
+that he used to frighten me sometimes--I'd almost think that there was
+something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any
+notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.
+There's always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish
+either) who'll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks
+as, 'You'll never rear that child--he's too bright for his age.' To the
+devil with them! I say.
+
+But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I
+often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much
+to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung
+their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
+
+I don't believe in parents talking about their own children
+everlastingly--you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are
+generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not.
+
+But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,
+was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
+
+For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about
+his adventures at his auntie's.
+
+'But they spoilt me too much, dad,' he said, as solemn as a native bear.
+'An' besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!'
+
+I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a
+good deal of Jim's time.
+
+Sometimes he'd jolt me, the way he talked; and other times I'd have
+to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from
+laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said--
+
+'What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and
+going on that way for, dad? Why don't you tell me something?'
+
+'Tell you what, Jim?'
+
+'Tell me some talk.'
+
+So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up,
+I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination--for Jim was a
+terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn't think
+twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once
+he said--
+
+'I'm glad you took me home with you, dad. You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+'What!' I said.
+
+'You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+'But don't I know you already?'
+
+'No, you don't. You never has time to know Jim at home.'
+
+And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart
+all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from
+Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and
+when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired
+and worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of
+Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. 'You never take notice
+of the child,' she'd say. 'You could surely find a few minutes of an
+evening. What's the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will
+go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a
+lesson. You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise
+that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.'
+
+This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with
+her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself--only
+for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to
+myself, 'I'll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,
+just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.' And the hard days
+went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years---- Ah, well!
+
+Mary used to say, when things would get worse, 'Why don't you talk
+to me, Joe? Why don't you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting
+yourself up in yourself and brooding--eating your heart out? It's hard
+for me: I get to think you're tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross
+and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you
+don't tell me?'
+
+But I didn't think she'd understand.
+
+And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums
+closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of
+sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of
+the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again--Jim
+and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen
+miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek for
+the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted
+badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the
+horses--a vicious, red-eyed chestnut--was a kicker: he'd broken a
+man's leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the
+chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with
+their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,
+munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for
+horse-teams--two pairs side by side,--and prop them up, and stretch bags
+between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the
+spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of
+it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a
+break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and 'possum rug against
+the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case
+we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good
+fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryan's
+Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands
+behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in.
+
+Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here
+were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
+boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those
+gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted 'native apple-trees' (about as much
+like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit
+of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather.
+To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs
+croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended
+in steep 'sidings' coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road
+that skirted them, running on west up over a 'saddle' in the ridges and
+on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey's Creek to a place called Cobborah
+branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the
+left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the
+Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and
+so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.'s coaches and
+the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.
+There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones
+over a deep water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have
+rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher
+to the branches--and the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian
+poet, calls them the 'she-oak harps Aeolian'. Those trees are always
+sigh-sigh-sighing--more of a sigh than a sough or the 'whoosh' of
+gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you can't
+feel any wind. It's the same with telegraph wires: put your head against
+a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and you'll hear and feel the
+far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the
+distance, where there might be wind; and they don't ROAR in a gale, only
+sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above
+or below a certain pitch,--like a big harp with all the strings the
+same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind's voice
+telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.
+
+I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the
+tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with
+his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the
+fire.
+
+He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,
+wise expression in his big brown eyes--just as if he'd been a child for
+a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks and
+understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
+
+'Dad!' he said presently--'Dad! do you think I'll ever grow up to be a
+man?'
+
+'Wh--why, Jim?' I gasped.
+
+'Because I don't want to.'
+
+I couldn't think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I
+remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
+
+'Jim,' I said, to break the silence, 'do you hear what the she-oaks
+say?'
+
+'No, I don't. Is they talking?'
+
+'Yes,' I said, without thinking.
+
+'What is they saying?' he asked.
+
+I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I
+thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn't:
+when I got back to the fire he was again on the 'possum rug, comforting
+the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I'd brought out with me. Jim
+sang out from the waggon--
+
+'Don't cook too much, dad--I mightn't be hungry.'
+
+I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new
+flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the
+rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was
+tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put
+his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said--
+
+'I ain't hungry, dad! You'll have to eat it all.'
+
+It made me uneasy--I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his
+food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid
+that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.
+
+'Sick, Jim?' I asked.
+
+'No, dad, I ain't sick; I don't know what's the matter with me.'
+
+'Have some tea, sonny?'
+
+'Yes, dad.'
+
+I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I'd brought in a bottle
+from his aunt's for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot
+on the gin-case.
+
+'Jim's tired, dad,' he said.
+
+I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned
+a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round--it was made to
+cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didn't come above the rail,
+so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a
+comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift
+him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy,
+half-fascinated way that I didn't like. Whenever Jim was extra
+old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
+
+'How do you feel now, sonny?'
+
+It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
+
+'Jim's better, dad.' Then he said something like, 'The stars are looking
+at me.' I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots,
+and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the
+night.
+
+'Kiss me 'night-night, daddy,' he said.
+
+I'd rather he hadn't asked me--it was a bad sign. As I was going to the
+fire he called me back.
+
+'What is it, Jim?'
+
+'Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.'
+
+I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he'd brought
+from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he
+took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ''night-night' and
+'daddy' were two-year-old language to Jim. I'd thought he'd forgotten
+those words--he seemed to be going back.
+
+'Are you quite warm enough, Jim?'
+
+'Yes, dad.'
+
+I started to walk up and down--I always did this when I was extra
+worried.
+
+I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from
+myself. Presently he called me again.
+
+'What is it, Jim?'
+
+'Take the blankets off me, fahver--Jim's sick!' (They'd been teaching
+him to say father.)
+
+I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die
+(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said--
+
+'Take the blankets off me, muvver--I'm dying.'
+
+And I couldn't get that out of my head.
+
+I threw back a fold of the 'possum rug, and felt Jim's head--he seemed
+cool enough.
+
+'Where do you feel bad, sonny?'
+
+No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he
+were talking in his sleep--
+
+'Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!'
+
+I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept--in a
+restless, feverish sort of way.
+
+I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the
+fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got
+it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always
+carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a
+corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down
+into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of
+mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.
+
+I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head
+was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
+
+Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between
+the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I'd heard Mary say the last
+time we fought for Jim: 'God! don't take my child! God! don't take my
+boy!' I'd never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one
+then. The nearest was fifteen miles away.
+
+I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation;
+and--Well, I don't ask you to take much stock in this, though most old
+Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; and--Now, it might
+have been that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky
+outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But
+I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the
+limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up
+and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on
+me----
+
+Four or five miles up the road, over the 'saddle', was an old shanty
+that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as
+far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man
+named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming,
+and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married--but it wasn't
+that: I'd thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless
+woman, and both were pretty 'ratty' from hardship and loneliness--they
+weren't likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I'd heard talk,
+among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife who'd gone
+out to live with them lately: she'd been a hospital matron in the city,
+they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack
+for exposing the doctors--or carrying on with them--I didn't remember
+which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with
+such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles
+away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else
+Bushmen wouldn't have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted
+a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking
+like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the
+waggon.
+
+I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the
+team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a
+half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to
+the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket,
+and scrambled into the saddle with him.
+
+The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and
+splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the
+level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded--she
+must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old
+racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I'd have
+to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst. She ran low
+fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like
+wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then--like a railway
+carriage--when she settled down to it.
+
+The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the
+bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the
+strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position for
+five minutes--and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my
+arms that night--it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind
+to feel it. And at home I'd often growled about being asked to hold the
+baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby
+at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There's no timber in
+the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight--or just about
+daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged,
+twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the 'white-box' trees; a
+dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here
+and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that
+made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked
+corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by
+moonlight--every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
+you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of
+a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would
+start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening
+on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey
+kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would
+start with a 'thump-thump', and away up the siding.
+
+The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night--all going my way--and being
+left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat
+back and the mare 'propped'--she'd been a stock-horse, and was used
+to 'cutting-out'. I felt Jim's hands and forehead; he was in a burning
+fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept
+saying out loud--and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards):
+'He's limp yet!--Jim's limp yet!' (the words seemed jerked out of me by
+sheer fright)--'He's limp yet!' till the mare's feet took it up. Then,
+just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she
+suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own and
+the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she'd do when I'd be riding
+alone and a strange horse drew up from behind--the old racing instinct.
+I FELT the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And
+then--the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk--I started saying,
+'Death is riding to-night!... Death is racing to-night!... Death is
+riding to-night!' till the hoofs took that up. And I believe the old
+mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or break
+her heart.
+
+I was mad with anxiety and fright: I remember I kept saying, 'I'll be
+kinder to Mary after this! I'll take more notice of Jim!' and the rest
+of it.
+
+I don't know how the old mare got up the last 'pinch'. She must have
+slackened pace, but I never noticed it: I just held Jim up to me and
+gripped the saddle with my knees--I remember the saddle jerked from the
+desperate jumps of her till I thought the girth would go. We topped the
+gap and were going down into a gully they called Dead Man's Hollow, and
+there, at the back of a ghostly clearing that opened from the road
+where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong
+weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the
+gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the
+level of the window-sills--there was something sinister about it, I
+thought--like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place
+looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because
+of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the
+clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she struggled across
+some marshy ground, my heart kept jerking out the words, 'It's deserted!
+They've gone away! It's deserted!' The mare went round to the back and
+pulled up between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen. Some
+one shouted from inside--
+
+'Who's there?'
+
+'It's me. Joe Wilson. I want your sister-in-law--I've got the boy--he's
+sick and dying!'
+
+Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins. 'What boy?' he asked.
+
+'Here, take him,' I shouted, 'and let me get down.'
+
+'What's the matter with him?' asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang
+back. And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim's head went
+back over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and
+glistening in the moonlight.
+
+I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach--but CLEAR-HEADED in
+a way: strange, wasn't it? I don't know why I didn't get down and rush
+into the kitchen to get a bath ready. I only felt as if the worst had
+come, and I wished it were over and gone. I even thought of Mary and the
+funeral.
+
+Then a woman ran out of the house--a big, hard-looking woman. She had
+on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare. She laid her hand on
+Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me and ran into the
+kitchen--and me down and after her. As great good luck would have it,
+they had some dirty clothes on to boil in a kerosene tin--dish-cloths or
+something.
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table,
+wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water, dish-cloths
+and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner, dashed that in,
+and felt the water with her hand--holding Jim up to her hip all the
+time--and I won't say how he looked. She stood him in the tub and
+started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes between the
+splashes.
+
+'Here, that tin of mustard--there on the shelf!' she shouted to me.
+
+She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub, and went on
+splashing and spanking Jim.
+
+It seemed an eternity. And I? Why, I never thought clearer in my life. I
+felt cold-blooded--I felt as if I'd like an excuse to go outside till
+it was all over. I thought of Mary and the funeral--and wished that that
+was past. All this in a flash, as it were. I felt that it would be a
+great relief, and only wished the funeral was months past. I felt--well,
+altogether selfish. I only thought for myself.
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard--hard enough to
+break his back I thought, and--after about half an hour it seemed--the
+end came: Jim's limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub, and the
+pupils of his eyes came down. They seemed dull and expressionless, like
+the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.
+
+I dropped on the stool by the table.
+
+'It's all right,' she said. 'It's all over now. I wasn't going to let
+him die.' I was only thinking, 'Well it's over now, but it will come on
+again. I wish it was over for good. I'm tired of it.'
+
+She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little
+fool of a woman, who'd been running in and out and whimpering all the
+time--
+
+'Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed. And you,
+Brighten, take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in
+that hole there to stop the draught.'
+
+Brighten--he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be
+seen for whiskers--had been running in with sticks and back logs from
+the wood-heap. He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack, and went
+inside and brought out a black bottle--got a cup from the shelf, and put
+both down near my elbow.
+
+Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it
+was, ready. She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily. I noticed
+that all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins
+and the like, that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and
+salt-cellars), and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible. She was
+all right at little things. I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman who
+put her whole soul--or all she'd got left--into polishing old tins till
+they dazzled your eyes.
+
+I didn't feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail
+tea. So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn't looking, at
+Brighten's sister-in-law. She was a big woman, her hands and feet were
+big, but well-shaped and all in proportion--they fitted her. She was a
+handsome woman--about forty I should think. She had a square chin, and
+a straight thin-lipped mouth--straight save for a hint of a turn down
+at the corners, which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a
+sign of weakness in the days before she grew hard. There was no sign
+of weakness now. She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair. She hadn't
+spoken yet. She didn't ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or
+who or what I was--at least not until the next evening at tea-time.
+
+She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her
+knees, with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him,
+and she just rocked him gently.
+
+She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I've seen a tired
+needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away back into the
+past. And Jim might have been the work in her lap, for all she seemed to
+think of him. Now and then she knitted her forehead and blinked.
+
+Suddenly she glanced round and said--in a tone as if I was her husband
+and she didn't think much of me--
+
+'Why don't you eat something?'
+
+'Beg pardon?'
+
+'Eat something!'
+
+I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her. I was beginning to
+feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour was coming
+back into his face, and he didn't look like an unnaturally stiff and
+staring corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked
+another look at her.
+
+She was staring straight before her,--I never saw a woman's face change
+so suddenly--I never saw a woman's eyes so haggard and hopeless. Then
+her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,
+like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide
+open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone. And in the
+firelight they seemed tinged with blood.
+
+I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn't
+seen her look round) she said--
+
+'Go to bed.'
+
+'Beg pardon?' (Her face was the same as before the tears.)
+
+'Go to bed. There's a bed made for you inside on the sofa.'
+
+'But--the team--I must----'
+
+'What?'
+
+'The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.'
+
+'Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning--or
+send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy
+will be all right. I'll see to that.'
+
+I went out--it was a relief to get out--and looked to the mare. Brighten
+had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she couldn't eat
+yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the other,
+with her nose over the box--and she sobbed. I put my arms round her neck
+and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the second time since
+I was a boy.
+
+     * Maize or Indian corn--wheat is never called corn in
+     Australia.--
+
+As I started to go in I heard Brighten's sister-in-law say, suddenly and
+sharply--
+
+'Take THAT away, Jessie.'
+
+And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black
+bottle.
+
+The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the
+house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.
+
+She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over
+Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.
+
+I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time
+to hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten's
+sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to
+come.
+
+'And now,' says Jim, 'I want to go home to "muffer" in "The Same Ol'
+Fling".'
+
+'What?'
+
+Jim repeated.
+
+'Oh! "The Same Old Thing",--the waggon.'
+
+The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
+looking at some 'indications' (of the existence of gold) he had found.
+It was no use trying to 'pump' him concerning his sister-in-law;
+Brighten was an 'old hand', and had learned in the old Bush-ranging and
+cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people's business. And,
+by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen to a bad
+character, the more you lose your dislike for him.
+
+I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten's sister-in-law
+that evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least ten years
+younger. She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready. She
+rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,
+and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up
+with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl. She
+described Sydney and Sydney life as I'd never heard it described before;
+and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did. She
+kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.
+And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked. If she
+wanted to explain anything that we hadn't seen, she wouldn't say that it
+was 'like a--like a'--and hesitate (you know what I mean); she'd hit the
+right thing on the head at once. A squatter with a very round, flaming
+red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon: she said
+it was 'like a mushroom on the rising moon.' She gave me a lot of good
+hints about children.
+
+But she was quiet again next morning. I harnessed up, and she dressed
+Jim and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him
+on the load with the 'possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the
+wheel to do it herself. Then was the awkward time. I'd half start to
+speak to her, and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and
+then make another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up
+in her arms and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his
+arms tight round her neck, and kissed her--a thing Jim seldom did
+with anybody, except his mother, for he wasn't what you'd call an
+affectionate child,--he'd never more than offer his cheek to me, in his
+old-fashioned way. I'd got up the other side of the load to take him
+from her.
+
+'Here, take him,' she said.
+
+I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays--no
+matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
+
+'You'd better make a start,' she said. 'You want to get home early with
+that boy.'
+
+I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand and
+tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel, and I
+gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.
+
+'That's all right,' she said; then tears came into her eyes, and she
+suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. 'You be
+off--you're only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy; be kind to your
+wife, and take care of yourself.'
+
+'Will you come to see us?'
+
+'Some day,' she said.
+
+I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at
+Jim, who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load. And I saw
+that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes in spite of the
+tears.
+
+
+I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to
+Mary--I didn't want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim
+home from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,
+nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten's shanty and
+see Brighten's sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the
+spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten's overnight
+and didn't get back till late the next afternoon. I'd got the place in a
+pig-muck, as Mary said, 'doing for' myself, and I was having a snooze
+on the sofa when they got back. The first thing I remember was some one
+stroking my head and kissing me, and I heard Mary saying, 'My poor boy!
+My poor old boy!'
+
+I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again. But it
+seems that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started to pull grey
+hairs out of my head and put 'em in an empty match-box--to see how many
+she'd get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft. I don't
+know what she said to Brighten's sister-in-law or what Brighten's
+sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle for the next few
+days.
+
+
+
+
+'Water Them Geraniums'.
+
+
+
+
+I. A Lonely Track.
+
+
+The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to 'settle on
+the land' at Lahey's Creek.
+
+I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
+and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations
+and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary
+drove out in the spring-cart. You remember we left little Jim with
+his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down. I'd sent James (Mary's
+brother) out the day before, on horseback, with two or three cows and
+some heifers and steers and calves we had, and I'd told him to clean up
+a bit, and make the hut as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary
+came.
+
+We hadn't much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar
+bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud
+of it: it had 'turned' posts and joints that bolted together. There was
+a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her 'ironing-table', upside
+down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the
+legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs--with apples
+painted on the hard board backs--that we used for the parlour; there was
+a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the
+uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and
+there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
+stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.
+
+There was the little Wilcox & Gibb's sewing-machine--my present to Mary
+when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!). There
+was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some
+pictures that were presents from Mary's friends and sister. She had her
+mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away, in the
+linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask, and a box
+that had been Jim's cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box, and in
+another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques, two against
+one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do all over the world. I
+had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load--I always had a
+pup that I gave away, or sold and didn't get paid for, or had 'touched'
+(stolen) as soon as it was old enough. James had his three spidery,
+sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him. I was taking
+out three months' provisions in the way of ration-sugar, tea, flour, and
+potatoes, &c.
+
+I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy
+Creek, where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
+
+Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,
+for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me as
+much as possible. I soon saw what was the matter. She'd been crying
+to herself coming along the road. I thought it was all on account of
+leaving little Jim behind for the first time. She told me that she
+couldn't make up her mind till the last moment to leave him, and that,
+a mile or two along the road, she'd have turned back for him, only that
+she knew her sister would laugh at her. She was always terribly anxious
+about the children.
+
+We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way
+to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree
+flats. It was a dreary, hopeless track. There was no horizon, nothing
+but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees in all
+directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground, save for the
+coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road, for it was
+a dry season: there had been no rain for months, and I wondered what I
+should do with the cattle if there wasn't more grass on the creek.
+
+In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles without
+seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery.
+The new tracks were 'blazed'--that is, slices of bark cut off from both
+sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track
+until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with
+a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little
+used to the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half
+unconsciously as it were, and so finds his way about.
+
+Mary and I didn't talk much along this track--we couldn't have heard
+each other very well, anyway, for the 'clock-clock' of the waggon and
+the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground. And I suppose we
+both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened. I'd noticed
+lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking to each
+other--noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me (as vague
+things will irritate one) when I thought of it. But then I thought, 'It
+won't last long--I'll make life brighter for her by-and-by.'
+
+As we went along--and the track seemed endless--I got brooding, of
+course, back into the past. And I feel now, when it's too late, that
+Mary must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early
+boyhood, of the hard life of 'grubbin'' and 'milkin'' and 'fencin'' and
+'ploughin'' and 'ring-barkin'', &c., and all for nothing. The few months
+at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn't spell. The cursed
+ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy--ambition or craving
+for--I didn't know what for! For something better and brighter, anyhow.
+And I made the life harder by reading at night.
+
+It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon, behind Mary in
+the spring-cart. I thought of these old things more than I thought of
+her. She had tried to help me to better things. And I tried too--I had
+the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road clear before me,
+but shied at the first check. Then I brooded, or dreamed of making a
+home--that one might call a home--for Mary--some day. Ah, well!----
+
+And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles? I
+never thought of that. Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
+Of her girlhood. Of her homes--not the huts and camps she lived in with
+me. Of our future?--she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our
+future--but not lately. These things didn't strike me at the time--I was
+so deep in my own brooding. Did she think now--did she begin to feel
+now that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life, but must
+make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I thought of it. But
+whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me, I'd think,
+'I'll soon win her back. We'll be sweethearts again--when things
+brighten up a bit.'
+
+It's an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
+we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now, as
+though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted, and
+had never really met since.
+
+The sun was going down when Mary called out--
+
+'There's our place, Joe!'
+
+She hadn't seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to
+me, who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to
+the right, was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,
+darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge in
+the background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter--a
+water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain), across on the
+other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat between the spur and the
+creek, and a little higher than this side. The land was much better than
+on our old selection, and there was good soil along the creek on both
+sides: I expected a rush of selectors out here soon. A few acres round
+the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence of timber
+split from logs and saplings. The man who took up this selection left it
+because his wife died here.
+
+It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it
+with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but
+I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark
+shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools,
+harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets
+of bark and old chaff-bags. The house itself was floored roughly, with
+cracks between the boards; there were cracks between the slabs all
+round--though he'd nailed strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over
+some of them; the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags
+with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper. There was no ceiling,
+calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and
+battens, and the under ends of the shingles. But ceilings make a hut hot
+and harbour insects and reptiles--snakes sometimes. There was one
+small glass window in the 'dining-room' with three panes and a sheet
+of greased paper, and the rest were rough wooden shutters. There was a
+pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen, and--that was about all. There was
+no dam or tank (I made one later on); there was a water-cask, with the
+hoops falling off and the staves gaping, at the corner of the house, and
+spouting, made of lengths of bent tin, ran round under the eaves. Water
+from a new shingle roof is wine-red for a year or two, and water from
+a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water for years. In dry weather the
+selector had got his house water from a cask sunk in the gravel at
+the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek. And the longer the
+drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek for his water,
+with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink, if he had any. Four,
+five, six, or seven miles--even ten miles to water is nothing in some
+places.
+
+
+James hadn't found himself called upon to do more than milk old 'Spot'
+(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night, make a fire
+in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough. He helped me
+unharness and water and feed the horses, and then started to get the
+furniture off the waggon and into the house. James wasn't lazy--so
+long as one thing didn't last too long; but he was too uncomfortably
+practical and matter-of-fact for me. Mary and I had some tea in the
+kitchen. The kitchen was permanently furnished with a table of split
+slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes driven into the
+ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood, and two long
+stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves) with
+auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
+The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
+was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole
+across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.
+
+Mary didn't seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the
+fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
+Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was
+thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
+when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was
+something very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
+about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she
+spoke. There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in
+figure and walk. I used sometimes to call her 'Little Duchy' and 'Pigeon
+Toes'. She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate
+knit in her forehead between the eyes.
+
+Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
+
+'What is it, Mary?'
+
+She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and
+irritated--suffering from a reaction.
+
+'Now, what is it, Mary?' I asked; 'I'm sick of this sort of thing.
+Haven't you got everything you wanted? You've had your own way. What's
+the matter with you now?'
+
+'You know very well, Joe.'
+
+'But I DON'T know,' I said. I knew too well.
+
+She said nothing.
+
+'Look here, Mary,' I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, 'don't go on
+like that; tell me what's the matter?'
+
+'It's only this,' she said suddenly, 'I can't stand this life here; it
+will kill me!'
+
+I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
+
+'This is more than a man can stand!' I shouted. 'You know very well that
+it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren't
+you content to stay in Gulgong?'
+
+'And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?' asked Mary quietly.
+
+(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A
+wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each
+side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick
+cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat--four
+rooms and a passage--the police-station, bank-manager and schoolmaster's
+cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-board shanties--the three
+pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The town tailing off into
+weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts--relics of the
+digging days--propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home,
+mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the verandah
+posts of the pubs., saying, ''Ullo, Bill!' or ''Ullo, Jim!'--or
+sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other's and
+girls' characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy's
+washing hung out on the line: 'And the colour of the clothes! Does that
+woman wash her clothes at all? or only soak 'em and hang 'em out?'--that
+was Gulgong.)
+
+'Well, why didn't you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?' I asked Mary.
+
+'You know very well, Joe,' said Mary quietly.
+
+(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me. I had had an idea
+of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores--I was a fair wool
+expert--but Mary was afraid of the drink. I could keep well away from it
+so long as I worked hard in the Bush. I had gone to Sydney twice since
+I met Mary, once before we were married, and she forgave me when I came
+back; and once afterwards. I got a billet there then, and was going to
+send for her in a month. After eight weeks she raised the money somehow
+and came to Sydney and brought me home. I got pretty low down that
+time.)
+
+'But, Mary,' I said, 'it would have been different this time. You would
+have been with me. I can take a glass now or leave it alone.'
+
+'As long as you take a glass there is danger,' she said.
+
+'Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for, if you can't
+stand it? Why didn't you stay where you were?' I asked.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'why weren't you more decided?'
+
+I'd sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.
+
+'Good God!' I shouted, 'this is more than any man can stand. I'll chuck
+it all up! I'm damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.'
+
+'So am I, Joe,' said Mary wearily.
+
+We quarrelled badly then--that first hour in our new home. I know now
+whose fault it was.
+
+I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek. I didn't
+feel bitter against Mary--I had spoken too cruelly to her to feel that
+way. Looking back, I could see plainly that if I had taken her advice
+all through, instead of now and again, things would have been all right
+with me. I had come away and left her crying in the hut, and James
+telling her, in a brotherly way, that it was all her fault. The trouble
+was that I never liked to 'give in' or go half-way to make it up--not
+half-way--it was all the way or nothing with our natures.
+
+'If I don't make a stand now,' I'd say, 'I'll never be master. I gave up
+the reins when I got married, and I'll have to get them back again.'
+
+What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after,
+when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst
+other things, I kept saying, 'I'll give in, Mary--I'll give in,' and
+then I'd laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the
+room. But that time was to come.
+
+As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in
+my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house
+that evening--
+
+'Why did I bring her here?'
+
+I was not fit to 'go on the land'. The place was only fit for some
+stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no
+ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted
+here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.
+
+I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only
+neighbours--a wretched selector's family, about four miles down the
+creek,--and I thought I'd go on to the house and see if they had any
+fresh meat.
+
+A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on
+a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector's
+wife--I had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman,
+and, I supposed, the reason why she hadn't gone mad through hardship
+and loneliness was that she hadn't either the brains or the memory to go
+farther than she could see through the trunks of the 'apple-trees'.
+
+'You, An-nay!' (Annie.)
+
+'Ye-es' (from somewhere in the gloom).
+
+'Didn't I tell yer to water them geraniums!'
+
+'Well, didn't I?'
+
+'Don't tell lies or I'll break yer young back!'
+
+'I did, I tell yer--the water won't soak inter the ashes.'
+
+Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.
+I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some
+sticks against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks
+the fowls used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and
+scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there--with an idea of
+helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water
+was scarce--till you might as well try to water a dish of fat.
+
+Then the woman's voice again--
+
+'You, Tom-may!' (Tommy.)
+
+Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.
+
+'Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!'
+
+'Ye-e-s!' shrill shriek from across the creek.
+
+'Didn't I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want
+any meat or any think?' in one long screech.
+
+'Well--I karnt find the horse.'
+
+'Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.
+And-don't-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi'son-that-mother'll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.'
+
+
+I didn't feel like going to the woman's house that night. I felt--and
+the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart--that this was what Mary
+would come to if I left her here.
+
+I turned and started to walk home, fast. I'd made up my mind. I'd take
+Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning--I forgot about the load I
+had to take to the sheep station. I'd say, 'Look here, Girlie' (that's
+what I used to call her), 'we'll leave this wretched life; we'll leave
+the Bush for ever! We'll go to Sydney, and I'll be a man! and work my
+way up.' And I'd sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.
+
+When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene
+lamp, a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms
+washed out--to James's disgust, for he had to move the furniture and
+boxes about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had
+laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf--a slab on two pegs over the
+fireplace--and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of
+the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American
+oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.
+
+'How does that look, Joe? We'll soon get things ship-shape.'
+
+I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the
+kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.
+
+Somehow I didn't feel satisfied with the way things had gone.
+
+
+
+
+II. 'Past Carin''.
+
+
+Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter
+in the morning--more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in
+most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the
+lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades,
+and then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to
+ashes--it is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old
+things too, that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can't
+understand. I often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to
+new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush.
+I used to think that they couldn't have much brains, or the loneliness
+would drive them mad.
+
+I'd decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive
+alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better
+than me--as long as the novelty lasted; and I'd stay at home for a
+week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from
+somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of
+loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first
+weeks in jail are--I was never there. I know it's so with tramping or
+hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.
+But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the
+last days used to be the worst with me: then I'd have to make a move, or
+drink. When you've been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,
+you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts--provided you have
+any imagination at all. You'll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the
+lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that's
+never likely to come that way--some one, or a stranger, that you can't
+and don't really expect to see. I think that most men who have been
+alone in the Bush for any length of time--and married couples too--are
+more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who
+is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to
+stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a
+rule. It's only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you
+got. Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have
+their periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they'd go raving
+mad. Drink is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or
+half-yearly spree is the only thing they've got to look forward to: it
+keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead.
+
+     * 'Graft', work.  The term is now applied, in Australia, to
+     all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry.
+
+But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of
+loneliness. WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn't as bad as it
+might have been farther up-country: there was generally some one came
+of a Sunday afternoon--a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe
+a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On
+a quiet Sunday, after I'd brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and
+herself--just the same as if we were in town--and make me get up on one
+end and put on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.
+She said she wanted to keep me civilised. She tried to make a gentleman
+of me for years, but gave it up gradually.
+
+Well. It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the
+waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out
+clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard
+her being hailed as 'Hi, missus!' from the front slip-rails.
+
+It was a boy on horseback. He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy
+of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs, especially
+his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged to a grown
+man. He had a good face and frank grey eyes. An old, nearly black
+cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears, turning them out at
+right angles from his head, and rather dirty sprouts they were. He wore
+a dirty torn Crimean shirt; and a pair of man's moleskin trousers rolled
+up above the knees, with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide
+belt. I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough
+for him, he always rolled 'em up above the knees when on horseback, for
+some reason of his own: to suggest leggings, perhaps, for he had them
+rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn't have bothered to save them
+from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated.
+
+He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of
+a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern something
+after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.* His
+colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey; and, one time,
+when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought it was
+some old shepherd's hut that I hadn't noticed there before. When he
+cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.
+
+     * 'Humpy', a rough hut.
+
+'Are you Mrs Wilson?' asked the boy.
+
+'Yes,' said Mary.
+
+'Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink. We
+killed lars' night, and I've fetched a piece er cow.'
+
+'Piece of WHAT?' asked Mary.
+
+He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy
+in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took
+it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a
+wood-axe, but it was fresh and clean.
+
+'Oh, I'm so glad!' cried Mary. She was always impulsive, save to me
+sometimes. 'I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh
+meat. How kind of your mother! Tell her I'm very much obliged to her
+indeed.' And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had. 'And
+now--how much did your mother say it would be?'
+
+The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.
+
+'How much will it be,' he repeated, puzzled. 'Oh--how much does it weigh
+I-s'pose-yer-mean. Well, it ain't been weighed at all--we ain't got no
+scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and
+cooks it, and eats it--and goes by guess. What won't keep we salts down
+in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer
+wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad
+before you could scoff it. I can't see----'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Mary, getting confused. 'But what I want to know is,
+how do you manage when you sell it?'
+
+He glared at her, and scratched his head. 'Sell it? Why, we only goes
+halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers to the butcher--or
+maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors, or tank-sinkers, or
+them sorter people----'
+
+'Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother
+for this?'
+
+'How much what?'
+
+'Money, of course, you stupid boy,' said Mary. 'You seem a very stupid
+boy.'
+
+Then he saw what she was driving at. He began to fling his heels
+convulsively against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward
+and forward at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork
+machinery inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need
+repairing or oiling.
+
+'We ain't that sorter people, missus,' he said. 'We don't sell meat
+to new people that come to settle here.' Then, jerking his thumb
+contemptuously towards the ridges, 'Go over ter Wall's if yer wanter buy
+meat; they sell meat ter strangers.' (Wall was the big squatter over the
+ridges.)
+
+'Oh!' said Mary, 'I'm SO sorry. Thank your mother for me. She IS kind.'
+
+'Oh, that's nothink. She said to tell yer she'll be up as soon as she
+can. She'd have come up yisterday evening--she thought yer'd feel lonely
+comin' new to a place like this--but she couldn't git up.'
+
+The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting. You
+almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old
+propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of
+Mary's voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been
+a very poor selection that couldn't afford a better spare horse than
+that.
+
+'Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?' said the boy, and he
+pointed to one of my 'spreads' (for the team-chains) that lay inside the
+fence. 'I'll fling it back agin over the fence when I git this ole cow
+started.'
+
+'But wait a minute--I've forgotten your mother's name,' said Mary.
+
+He grabbed at his thatch impatiently. 'Me mother--oh!--the old woman's
+name's Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)' He twisted himself round, and
+brought the stretcher down on one of the horse's 'points' (and he had
+many) with a crack that must have jarred his wrist.
+
+'Do you go to school?' asked Mary. There was a three-days-a-week school
+over the ridges at Wall's station.
+
+'No!' he jerked out, keeping his legs going. 'Me--why I'm going on fur
+fifteen. The last teacher at Wall's finished me. I'm going to Queensland
+next month drovin'.' (Queensland border was over three hundred miles
+away.)
+
+'Finished you? How?' asked Mary.
+
+'Me edgercation, of course! How do yer expect me to start this horse
+when yer keep talkin'?'
+
+He split the 'spread' over the horse's point, threw the pieces over the
+fence, and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old
+saw-stool lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a
+canter. That horse wasn't a trotter.
+
+And next month he DID start for Queensland. He was a younger son and a
+surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection; and as there was
+'northin' doin'' in the district, his father (in a burst of fatherly
+kindness, I suppose) made him a present of the old horse and a new
+pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him an old saddle and a coat, and he
+started for the Never-Never Country.
+
+And I'll bet he got there. But I'm doubtful if the old horse did.
+
+Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don't think he had anything more
+except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.
+
+'Spicer's farm' was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native
+apple-tree scrub. The clearing was fenced in by a light 'dog-legged'
+fence (a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights),
+and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered with
+cattle-dung. There was no attempt at cultivation when I came to live on
+the creek; but there were old furrow-marks amongst the stumps of another
+shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut. There was a wretched sapling
+cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for
+shelter. There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set
+in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to's behind the hut,--the
+other was 'the boys' bedroom'. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers,
+and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek
+once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter
+and eggs. The hut was nearly as bare inside as it was out--just a frame
+of 'round-timber' (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was
+permanent (unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab
+table on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same
+way. Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark
+partitioned-off room ('mother's bedroom') were simply poles laid side
+by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with
+straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old
+patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said
+it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds--to
+hide them as much as possible--when she went down there. A packing-case,
+with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked
+looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.
+There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys' beds were
+three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights. The
+floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven with much
+sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked. Mrs
+Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets under as many of
+the leaks as she could. The saucepans, kettles, and boilers were old
+kerosene-tins and billies. They used kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in
+halves, for setting the milk in. The plates and cups were of tin;
+there were two or three cups without saucers, and a crockery plate or
+two--also two mugs, cracked and without handles, one with 'For a Good
+Boy' and the other with 'For a Good Girl' on it; but all these were kept
+on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company. They were the only
+ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock that hadn't gone for
+years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she had 'some things packed
+away from the children.'
+
+The pictures were cut from old copies of the 'Illustrated Sydney News'
+and pasted on to the bark. I remember this, because I remembered, long
+ago, the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy, had the
+walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations of the American Civil
+War, cut from illustrated London papers, and I used to 'sneak' into
+'mother's bedroom' with Fred Spencer whenever we got the chance, and
+gloat over the prints. I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for
+taking me in there.
+
+I saw very little of Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and
+whiskered man. I had an idea that he wasn't a selector at all, only a
+'dummy' for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were
+allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters
+kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry
+persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold as he could afford,
+'select' as much land as the law allowed one man to take up, and then
+employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied
+about his run, and hold them for him.
+
+Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home. He was
+generally supposed to be away shearin', or fencin', or workin' on
+somebody's station. It turned out that the last six months he was away
+it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut
+out, found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he
+and his mates couldn't account for satisfactorily, while the squatter
+could. Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and
+treacle, or bread and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every
+egg was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.
+Mary found that out, but couldn't help them much--except by 'stuffing'
+the children with bread and meat or bread and jam whenever they came up
+to our place--for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride that lies down in
+the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.
+
+Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was
+hungry, she denied it--but she looked it. A ragged mite she had with her
+explained things. The little fellow said--
+
+'Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked; but if yer
+give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an' say thenk yer, Mrs
+Wilson.'
+
+'I wouldn't 'a' told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,
+Mrs Wilson,' said Annie. 'Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested, and her face
+was 'burnt to a brick', as they say out there. She had brown eyes,
+nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face--ground
+sharp by hardship--the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression
+like--well, like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one
+time, and wanted to know everybody's business and hear everything, and
+had lost all her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick
+suspicious movements of the head. I don't suppose you understand. I
+can't explain it any other way. She was not more than forty.
+
+I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look
+at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she
+had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of 'corned beef'.
+
+'Yes--of--course,' she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, 'Is
+there anything more you want while the shop's open?' I'd met just the
+same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the
+shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I
+didn't turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.
+
+'Come--inside,' she said, 'and sit down. I see you've got the waggon
+outside. I s'pose your name's Wilson, ain't it? You're thinkin' about
+takin' on Harry Marshfield's selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait
+till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.'
+
+Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of
+a phonograph--I heard one in Sydney the other day--and not like a voice
+coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday
+life on this selection she spoke in a sort of--in a sort of lost
+groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
+
+She didn't talk much this time--just spoke in a mechanical way of the
+drought, and the hard times, 'an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down, an' her
+husban' an' eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it so hard for her.'
+
+I don't know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count
+them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used
+to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as
+piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years--and
+God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she
+only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she
+seldom spoke of them. The girl, 'Liza', was 'in service in Sydney.' I'm
+afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was 'away'. He had been a
+bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.
+
+Some one might ask her, 'How's your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?' or, 'Heard of
+Jack lately? and where is he now?'
+
+'Oh, he's somewheres up country,' she'd say in the 'groping' voice, or
+'He's drovin' in Queenslan',' or 'Shearin' on the Darlin' the last time
+I heerd from him.' 'We ain't had a line from him since--les' see--since
+Chris'mas 'fore last.'
+
+And she'd turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way
+towards the west--towards 'up-country' and 'Out-Back'.*
+
+
+     * 'Out-Back' is always west of the Bushman, no matter how
+     far out he be.
+
+
+The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and
+lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother.
+Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill
+(older than Tommy), was 'a bit wild.'
+
+I've passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the
+droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the
+warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard,
+'bailing up' and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round
+the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was
+tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the
+pigs or the 'poddies' (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I'd get off the
+horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old
+cow that wouldn't 'bail-up' and threatened her with her horns. She'd
+say--
+
+'Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we're ever goin' to have any rain?'
+
+I've ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or
+July, and seen her trudging about the yard--that was ankle-deep in black
+liquid filth--with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of
+her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I've seen
+her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and
+trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And
+when I'd fixed the leak--
+
+'Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain's a blessin'! Come in and have
+a dry at the fire and I'll make yer a cup of tea.' And, if I was in a
+hurry, 'Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain
+holds up. Yer can't go home like this! Yer'll git yer death o' cold.'
+
+I've even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and
+apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to
+feed the starving cattle.
+
+'Jist tryin' ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.'
+
+They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst
+her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were
+down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).
+
+'An', one day,' she told Mary, 'there was a big barren heifer (that we
+called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She'd been down
+for four days and hadn't moved, when one mornin' I dumped some wheaten
+chaff--we had a few bags that Spicer brought home--I dumped it in front
+of her nose, an'--would yer b'lieve me, Mrs Wilson?--she stumbled onter
+her feet an' chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me
+skirts an' run! Wasn't it redic'lus?'
+
+They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried
+Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
+
+'We lost nearly all our milkers,' she told Mary. 'I remember one day
+Tommy came running to the house and screamed: 'Marther! [mother] there's
+another milker down with the ploorer!' Jist as if it was great news.
+Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an' I giv' in. I jist sat down
+to have a good cry, and felt for my han'kerchief--it WAS a rag of a
+han'kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without
+seein' what I was doin' I put me finger through one hole in the
+han'kerchief an' me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into
+me eyes, instead of wipin' them. Then I had to laugh.'
+
+There's a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were
+out all along the creek on Spicer's side, Wall's station hands were up
+above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and
+towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they
+saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small
+crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
+
+'My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain't
+already!' shouted young Billy Wall. 'Come along, three or four of you
+chaps'--(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the
+station).
+
+They raced down the creek to Spicer's, and were just in time to save the
+wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning
+grass with a bough. She'd been at it for an hour, and was as black as a
+gin, they said. She only said when they'd turned the fire: 'Thenk yer!
+Wait an' I'll make some tea.'
+
+     *****
+
+After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked--
+
+'Don't you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?'
+
+'Well--no, Mrs Wilson,' she said in the groping sort of voice. 'I uster,
+once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river--we lived in
+a brick house then--the first time Spicer had to go away from home I
+nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin' shearin' for a month.
+I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while.
+He's been away drovin' in Queenslan' as long as eighteen months at a
+time since then. But' (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more
+than ever) 'I don't mind,--I somehow seem to have got past carin'.
+Besides--besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is
+now. He's got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.'
+
+Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself--
+
+'Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about! You mustn't take any notice of
+me, Mrs Wilson,--I don't often go on like this. I do believe I'm gittin'
+a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.'
+
+But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time 'when Spicer was a
+different man to what he was now.'
+
+I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for
+a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said
+suddenly--
+
+'What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She's only a girl.'
+
+'I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about! I b'lieve I'm gittin' ratty.
+You mustn't take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.'
+
+She wasn't much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with
+her, she'd start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which
+used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn't help it, and she
+seemed to hear all the same.
+
+Her great trouble was that she 'couldn't git no reg'lar schoolin' for
+the children.'
+
+'I learns 'em at home as much as I can. But I don't git a minute to
+call me own; an' I'm ginerally that dead-beat at night that I'm fit for
+nothink.'
+
+Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them
+a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the
+handiest youngster and said--
+
+'There--do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin' to teach yer, an'
+it's more than yer deserve!' (the youngster had been 'cryin'' over
+something). 'Now, go up an' say "Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson." And if yer
+ain't good, and don't do as she tells yer, I'll break every bone in yer
+young body!'
+
+The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
+
+The children were sent by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school. When
+Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was
+no end of rows about them in the family--for the mother made him lend
+them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There
+were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and
+these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean
+and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
+
+And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God's
+earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the
+broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces
+of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched
+threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand--and
+no matter where they are--I always see the worn face of the mother.
+
+Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.
+I'd sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came
+back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up
+several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn't sit down
+and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking
+about the time when she was ill herself. She'd take off her hat--a
+shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting--give
+her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her
+sleeves, and set to work to 'tidy up'. She seemed to take most pleasure
+in sorting out our children's clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she
+used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different
+man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates
+of some women's journals we had, and used to study them with an interest
+that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never
+talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed,
+was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up.
+For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall's
+wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how
+Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some
+table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and
+she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the
+table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her
+that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life.
+
+Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say
+suddenly--
+
+'Oh, I don't think I'll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+'Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+'Because the visits doesn't do me any good. I git the dismals
+afterwards.'
+
+'Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?'
+
+'Oh,-I-don't-know-what-I'm-talkin'-about. You mustn't take any notice
+of me.' And she'd put on her hat, kiss the children--and Mary too,
+sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child--and go.
+
+Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.
+
+Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again
+next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said--
+
+'I wish you wouldn't come down any more till I'm on me feet, Mrs Wilson.
+The children can do for me.'
+
+'Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+'Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.'
+
+We were the aristocrats of Lahey's Creek. Whenever we drove down on
+Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough
+for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we'd see the children running
+to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming--
+
+'Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.'
+
+And we'd see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the
+front door, and she'd lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of
+'broom-stuff'--coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges--with a stick
+stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front
+of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one flick
+of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she'd catch a youngster and
+scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel
+round her finger and dig out his ears--as if she was anxious to have him
+hear every word that was going to be said.
+
+No matter what state the house would be in she'd always say, 'I was jist
+expectin' yer, Mrs Wilson.' And she was original in that, anyway.
+
+She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to
+spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course ('The
+others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson'), but I saw
+by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing
+to them. 'I must really git some more knives an' forks next time I'm in
+Cobborah,' she'd say. 'The children break an' lose 'em till I'm ashamed
+to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.'
+
+She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather
+ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.
+But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to
+'Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,' or 'Take yer maulies [hands] outer
+the sugar,' or 'Don't touch Mrs Wilson's baby with them dirty maulies,'
+or 'Don't stand starin' at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an' ears in that
+vulgar way.'
+
+Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was
+a habit, but they didn't seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging
+habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most
+willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged
+that child from daylight till dark--and after it. Taking it all round,
+I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary
+children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking
+habit in a father.
+
+One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who
+used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit
+suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye
+off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The
+men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. 'They let him hang for
+a while,' said Mrs Spicer, 'till he went black in the face and stopped
+kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.'
+
+'Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?' asked Mary.
+
+'To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of
+tryin' to hang himself again.'
+
+'Well, that's the coolest thing I ever heard of,' said Mary.
+
+'That's jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,' said Mrs Spicer.
+
+'One morning,' said Mrs Spicer, 'Spicer had gone off on his horse
+somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the
+door and said--
+
+'"For God's sake, woman, give me a drink!"
+
+'Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum--his
+clothes was good, but he looked as if he'd been sleepin' in them in the
+Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin',
+so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his
+head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said,
+"Thenk yer, mum."
+
+'I was so surprised that I didn't know what to say, so I jist said,
+"Would you like some more coffee?"
+
+'"Yes, thenk yer," he said--"about two quarts."
+
+'I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head
+as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, "Thenk yer,
+mum--it's a fine day," and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps
+in his hands.'
+
+'Why, what did he stand on his head for?' asked Mary.
+
+'To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the
+coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall's to tell them that
+there was a man wanderin' about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and
+to get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he
+hanged himself that night.'
+
+'O Lord!' cried Mary.
+
+'Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall's
+branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin'
+to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.'
+
+Mary stared at her, speechless.
+
+'Tommy came home yellin' with fright. I sent him over to Wall's at once.
+After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped
+away and went down there. They came back screamin' at the tops of their
+voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won't want ter see a dead
+body again in a hurry. Every time I'd mention it they'd huddle together,
+or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
+
+'"Yer'll go agen when I tell yer not to," I'd say.
+
+'"Oh no, mother," they'd howl.
+
+'"Yer wanted ter see a man hangin'," I said.
+
+'"Oh, don't, mother! Don't talk about it."
+
+'"Yer wouldn't be satisfied till yer see it," I'd say; "yer had to see
+it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain't yer?"
+
+'"Oh, don't, mother!"
+
+'"Yer run all the way there, I s'pose?"
+
+'"Don't, mother!"
+
+'"But yer run faster back, didn't yer?"
+
+'"Oh, don't, mother."
+
+'But,' said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, 'I'd been down to see it myself
+before they was up.'
+
+'And ain't you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible
+things?' asked Mary.
+
+'Well, no; I don't mind. I seem to have got past carin' for anythink
+now. I felt it a little when Tommy went away--the first time I felt
+anythink for years. But I'm over that now.'
+
+'Haven't you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+'Oh yes. There's me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother
+near Dubbo; he's got a station. They wanted to take me an' the children
+between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn't bring
+my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as
+much as possible. There's enough of them gone, God knows. But it's a
+comfort to know that there's some one to see to them if anythink happens
+to me.'
+
+     *****
+
+One day--I was on my way home with the team that day--Annie Spicer came
+running up the creek in terrible trouble.
+
+'Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl's happened at home! A trooper'
+(mounted policeman--they called them 'mounted troopers' out there), 'a
+trooper's come and took Billy!' Billy was the eldest son at home.
+
+'What?'
+
+'It's true, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+'What for? What did the policeman say?'
+
+'He--he--he said, "I--I'm very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but--I--I want
+William."'
+
+It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from
+Wall's station and sold down-country.
+
+'An' mother took on awful,' sobbed Annie; 'an' now she'll only sit
+stock-still an' stare in front of her, and won't take no notice of any
+of us. Oh! it's awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he'd tell Aunt
+Emma' (Mrs Spicer's sister at Cobborah), 'and send her out. But I had to
+come to you, an' I've run all the way.'
+
+James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
+
+Mary told me all about it when I came home.
+
+'I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my
+arms. Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn't cry like a woman. I heard a man
+at Haviland cry at his brother's funeral, and it was just like that. She
+came round a bit after a while. Her sister's with her now.... Oh, Joe!
+you must take me away from the Bush.'
+
+Later on Mary said--
+
+'How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!'
+
+     *****
+
+Next morning I rode across to Wall's station and tackled the old man;
+but he was a hard man, and wouldn't listen to me--in fact, he ordered
+me off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But
+young Billy Wall rode after me.
+
+'Look here, Joe!' he said, 'it's a blanky shame. All for the sake of a
+horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn't got enough to put up
+with already! I wouldn't do it for twenty horses. I'LL tackle the boss,
+and if he won't listen to me, I'll walk off the run for the last time,
+if I have to carry my swag.'
+
+Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy
+Spicer off up-country.
+
+But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to
+our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk
+of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look
+forward to.
+
+'If it only could have been kep' quiet--for the sake of the other
+children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring 'em all up
+decent, but I s'pose it was my fault, somehow. It's the disgrace that's
+killin' me--I can't bear it.'
+
+I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie
+Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall's station (I must tell
+you about her some other time; James was 'shook after her'), and we got
+talkin' about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
+
+'I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,' said Mary. 'She seems better lately.'
+
+'Why!' cried Maggie Charlsworth, 'if that ain't Annie coming running up
+along the creek. Something's the matter!'
+
+We all jumped up and ran out.
+
+'What is it, Annie?' cried Mary.
+
+'Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother's asleep, and we can't wake her!'
+
+'What?'
+
+'It's--it's the truth, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+'How long has she been asleep?'
+
+'Since lars' night.'
+
+'My God!' cried Mary, 'SINCE LAST NIGHT?'
+
+'No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this
+mornin'. She called me and said she didn't feel well, and I'd have to
+manage the milkin'.'
+
+'Was that all she said?'
+
+'No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and
+calves; and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.'
+
+Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn't let her. James and I saddled our
+horses and rode down the creek.
+
+     *****
+
+Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last
+saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was
+dead. But she was 'past carin'' right enough.
+
+
+
+
+A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+
+
+
+
+I. Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+
+
+Ever since we were married it had been Mary's great ambition to have a
+buggy. The house or furniture didn't matter so much--out there in the
+Bush where we were--but, where there were no railways or coaches, and
+the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great
+thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get
+one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a
+second-hand one that I'd had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at
+last she said, 'Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I'll
+be satisfied. I'll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.
+Wait till we're better off.'
+
+After that, whenever I took a contract--to put up a fence or wool-shed,
+or sink a dam or something--Mary would say, 'You ought to knock a buggy
+out of this job, Joe;' but something always turned up--bad weather or
+sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another
+time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished
+it. Then Mary would say, 'Ah, well--never mind, Joe. Wait till we are
+better off.' But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and
+didn't get paid for it, for we'd as good as settled about another
+second-hand buggy then.
+
+I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made
+a spring-cart--body and wheels--in spare time, out of colonial hardwood,
+and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart
+myself. It wasn't much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it
+WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I
+didn't hear any more of the buggy for a while.
+
+I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted
+a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was
+just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the
+money in case of extra expense--and she didn't fret much at losing
+that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for
+a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of
+getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her
+till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing
+in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor
+regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the
+buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I'd thought of
+how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I'd say one morning, 'Go round
+and have a look in the shed, Mary; I've got a few fowls for you,' or
+something like that--and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw
+the buggy. I never told Mary about that--it wouldn't have done any good.
+
+Later on I got some good timber--mostly scraps that were given to
+me--and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder
+at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from
+Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price
+and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through
+the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom
+Tarrant's big van--to increase the surprise. We were swells then for
+a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we'd been settled at
+Lahey's Creek for a couple of years.
+
+I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at
+Lahey's Creek--for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed--and
+shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary's young
+scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road.
+The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it--it
+was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from
+home. The game was right enough for a single man--or a married one whose
+wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have--God help 'em!),
+and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small
+carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the
+coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put
+it on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff.
+
+The second year I made a rise--out of 'spuds', of all the things in the
+world. It was Mary's idea. Down at the lower end of our selection--Mary
+called it 'the run'--was a shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek, dry
+most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above
+the junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek, was a low piece of good
+black-soil flat, on our side--about three acres. The flat was fairly
+clear when I came to the selection--save for a few logs that had been
+washed up there in some big 'old man' flood, way back in black-fellows'
+times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and
+trace-chains and dragged the logs together--those that wouldn't split
+for fencing timber--and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat
+ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good water-hole,
+under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools
+and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and
+wash the clothes under the shade of the trees--it was cooler, and
+saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she'd done the
+washing she said to me--
+
+'Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they
+don't seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is
+going to be like--they just go on farming the same old way and putting
+in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes
+on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn't,
+they mow it for hay--and some of 'em don't have the brains to do that in
+time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck
+me that it wouldn't be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,
+and have the land ploughed--old Corny George would do it cheap--and
+get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last
+couple of years.'
+
+I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for
+potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. 'Everybody I know has
+tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,' I said.
+
+'All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,' said Mary. 'Just try
+one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you'll be sorry you didn't
+take my advice.'
+
+'But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,' I said.
+
+'How do you know? You haven't sown any there yet.'
+
+'But I've turned up the surface and looked at it. It's not rich enough,
+and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do
+you think I don't know land when I see it?'
+
+'But you haven't TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you
+know----'
+
+I didn't listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea
+into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I'd be
+talking she'd just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,
+on the track she'd started,--just as if I wasn't there,--and it used to
+make me mad. She'd keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my
+temper,--I did both at the same time, mostly.
+
+I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
+
+A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down
+to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after
+I'd kissed Mary good-bye, she said--
+
+'Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I
+will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his
+plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could
+put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.'
+
+I thought she'd forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue--I'd
+be sure to lose my temper, and then I'd either have to waste an hour
+comforting Mary or go off in a 'huff', as the women call it, and be
+miserable for the trip. So I said I'd see about it. She gave me another
+hug and a kiss. 'Don't forget, Joe,' she said as I started. 'Think it
+over on the road.' I reckon she had the best of it that time.
+
+About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard
+some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a
+start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember,
+the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles
+I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back--only I thought
+she'd laugh at me.
+
+'What is it, James?' I shouted, before he came up--but I saw he was
+grinning.
+
+'Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.'
+
+'You clear off home!' I said, 'or I'll lay the whip about your young
+hide; and don't come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.'
+
+'Well, you needn't get shirty with me!' he said. '*I* don't want to have
+anything to do with a hoe.' And he rode off.
+
+I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn't meant to. I
+knew of an independent man in that district who'd made his money out
+of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring
+'Fifties--'54--when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a
+hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get
+good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes
+in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the
+crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary next time she was
+struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble
+about when I felt grumpy.
+
+I got a couple of bags of potatoes--we could use those that were
+left over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the
+blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap--only about
+a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I
+generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding
+notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I
+could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn't
+strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow
+against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen
+shillings.) Anyway, I'd want a plough and harrow later on, and I might
+as well get it now; it would give James something to do.
+
+I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and
+the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And
+Mary was down on the bank superintending. She'd got James with the
+trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every
+stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny
+looked pretty grumpy on it--he'd broken all his ploughshares but one, in
+the roots; and James didn't look much brighter. Mary had an old felt
+hat and a new pair of 'lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were
+covered with clay, for she'd been down hustling James to get a rotten
+old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round with his next
+furrow.
+
+'I thought I'd make the boots easy for you, Joe,' said Mary.
+
+'It's all right, Mary,' I said. 'I'm not going to growl.' Those boots
+were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off
+before I got home.
+
+Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,
+but I said that would be all right--we'd want a plough anyway.
+
+'I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,' she said.
+
+'I never said so.'
+
+'But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you
+didn't say you wouldn't bring it,' she said.
+
+I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When
+Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or
+two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added
+nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork:
+he'd bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or
+fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn't care for
+grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the
+potatoes of an evening--and there was trouble between Mary and James
+over cutting through the 'eyes'. There was no time for the hoe--and
+besides it wasn't a novelty to James--so I just ran furrows and they
+dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them,
+and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled those spuds, too,
+with furrows--or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on.
+
+It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all
+through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the
+district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see
+if the potatoes were up; and she'd write to me about them, on the road.
+I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the
+district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen
+shillings a hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of
+mine--and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon.
+Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for
+sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of--and
+let me know about it, in an offhand way.
+
+
+
+
+II. Joe Wilson's Luck.
+
+
+There was good grass on the selection all the year. I'd picked up
+a small lot--about twenty head--of half-starved steers for next to
+nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my
+brother-in-law (Mary's sister's husband), who was running a butchery
+at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or
+thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th'
+Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those
+places round there, and he was doing well.
+
+Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went--a
+tray-body arrangement, and she thought she'd do with that. 'It would
+be better than the buggy, Joe,' she said--'there'd be more room for
+the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong,
+or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.' Then James heard of a small
+flock of sheep that a selector--who was about starved off his selection
+out Talbragar way--wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get
+them for less than half-a-crown a-head. We'd had a heavy shower of rain,
+that came over the ranges and didn't seem to go beyond our boundaries.
+Mary said, 'It's a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe.
+Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money
+with me, and I'll send James over for them. Never mind about the
+buggy--we'll get that when we're on our feet.'
+
+So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that
+unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two
+hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed
+too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up,
+though. The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that
+my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to
+speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps
+began to talk of 'Joe Wilson's luck'.
+
+I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn't time to get a shed
+or anything ready--along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom
+in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen
+to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to
+truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that
+was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and
+down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who
+was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool)
+offered James as much for them as he reckoned I'd get in Sydney, after
+paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the
+sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding
+was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener
+shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
+
+I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks--one in James's name, to
+encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an
+angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody
+thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went
+to the local land office and found out that it was 'unoccupied Crown
+land', and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more
+sheep--I'd saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.
+
+One evening--I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for
+myself--Mary said,--
+
+'Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?'
+
+The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and
+I didn't think much of them. The sons were all 'bad-eggs', though the
+old woman and girls were right enough.
+
+'Well, what of that?' I said. 'They're up to their neck in debt, and
+camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go
+flashing round in a double buggy.'
+
+'But that isn't what I was going to say,' said Mary. 'They want to sell
+their old single buggy, James says. I'm sure you could get it for six or
+seven pounds; and you could have it done up.'
+
+'I wish James to the devil!' I said. 'Can't he find anything better to
+do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?'
+
+'Well,' said Mary, 'it was James who got the steers and the sheep.'
+
+Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn't mean--but
+couldn't forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary
+always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and
+struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her,
+and she spoke of the 'homes' she'd had since she was married. And that
+cut me deep.
+
+It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my
+hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything
+that looked like injustice--I was so sensitive about it that it made
+me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn't--it
+wouldn't have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got
+thinking of Mary's first year on the selection and the life she'd had
+since we were married.
+
+When I went in she'd cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, 'Mary,' I
+whispered.
+
+She seemed to wake up.
+
+'Joe--Joe!' she said.
+
+'What is it Mary?' I said.
+
+'I'm pretty well sure that old Spot's calf isn't in the pen. Make James
+go at once!'
+
+Old Spot's last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her
+sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.
+
+We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn't feel
+like laughing just then.
+
+Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,--
+
+'Joe--Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the
+varnish!'
+
+I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to
+Mary.
+
+Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and
+took Mary's breakfast in to her--like I used to do, sometimes, when we
+were first married. She didn't say anything--just pulled my head down
+and kissed me.
+
+When I was ready to start Mary said,--
+
+'You'd better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres
+cut and set. They're ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them
+up till he's tired of it. The last time I was out with the children
+I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there'll be an accident
+yet.'
+
+So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and
+mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It
+suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and
+down in front of him.
+
+It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless--and
+I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me,
+but that didn't keep me from brooding sometimes--trying to hatch out
+stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I
+used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up--and more generous. When I
+had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, 'Lend me
+a pound-note, Joe,' than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless
+chaps--and lost mates that I wanted afterwards--and got the name of
+being mean. When I got a good cheque I'd be as miserable as a miser over
+the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I'd buy
+things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend
+a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the
+greater the fear I had of it--and, besides, there was always before us
+all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and
+dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the
+barren creeks.
+
+I had a long yarn with Mary's sister and her husband that night in
+Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a
+brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had
+one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn't
+help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to
+talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black
+Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy's father and mother), who weren't
+oversentimental. Or maybe a selector's wife (the nearest was five
+miles away), who could talk only of two or three things--'lambin'' and
+'shearin'' and 'cookin' for the men', and what she said to her old man,
+and what he said to her--and her own ailments--over and over again.
+
+It's a wonder it didn't drive Mary mad!--I know I could never listen to
+that woman more than an hour. Mary's sister said,--
+
+'Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the
+children oftener. Then she wouldn't feel the loneliness so much.'
+
+I said 'Good night' then and turned in. There was no getting away from
+that buggy. Whenever Mary's sister started hinting about a buggy, I
+reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
+
+
+
+
+III. The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+
+
+When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly's coach-shop to leave the
+cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers--one was
+a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men--the biggest men in
+the district, 'twas said.
+
+Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men,
+and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a
+special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into
+the painter's shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had
+built for a man who couldn't pay cash for it when it was finished--and
+Galletly wouldn't trust him.
+
+There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to
+keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece
+of work--pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you
+only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in
+the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat;
+if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back
+seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go
+near fifty pounds.
+
+While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the
+back.
+
+'Now, there's a chance for you, Joe!' he said. 'I saw you rubbing your
+head round that buggy the last time you were in. You wouldn't get a
+better one in the colonies, and you won't see another like it in the
+district again in a hurry--for it doesn't pay to build 'em. Now you're a
+full-blown squatter, and it's time you took little Mary for a fly round
+in her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in
+the scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother
+Flourbag.'
+
+He called her 'little Mary' because the Galletly family had known her
+when she was a girl.
+
+I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again. It was a great
+temptation.
+
+'Look here, Joe,' said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone. 'I'll tell you
+what I'll do. I'll let YOU have the buggy. You can take it out and send
+along a bit of a cheque when you feel you can manage it, and the rest
+later on,--a year will do, or even two years. You've had a hard pull,
+and I'm not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.'
+
+They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men. I
+happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn't let the man he built the
+buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down, though he was a
+big-bug round there. But that didn't make it easier for me.
+
+Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than
+his brother, but the two were very much alike.
+
+'Look here, Bob,' said Bill; 'here's a chance for you to get rid of your
+harness. Joe Wilson's going to take that buggy off my hands.'
+
+Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his
+pockets, rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his
+hand, and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did
+when he was thinking. Presently he took his foot down, put his hand
+back in his pocket, and said to me, 'Well, Joe, I've got a double set of
+harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like
+I'll let you have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he
+can out of you I'll stand a show of getting something. He's a regular
+Shylock, he is.'
+
+I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared at the
+buggy.
+
+'Come across to the Royal, Joe,' said Bob.
+
+But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said I'd get the
+wool up to the station first and think it over, and have a drink when I
+came back.
+
+I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn't seem good
+enough. I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to
+be fenced in, and the instalments on the selections. I wanted lots of
+things that I couldn't well do without. Then, again, the farther I got
+away from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it. I
+had two horses that would do; but I'd have to get another later on, and
+altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds.
+Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands.
+Besides, I wanted a spell. If I got the buggy it would only mean an
+extra turn of hard graft for me. No, I'd take Mary for a trip to Sydney,
+and she'd have to be satisfied with that.
+
+I'd got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white
+gates to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the
+station in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver and a lot
+of portmanteaus and rugs and things. They were going to do the grand
+in Sydney over Christmas. Now it was young Black who was so shook after
+Mary when she was in service with the Blacks before the old man died,
+and if I hadn't come along--and if girls never cared for vagabonds--Mary
+would have been mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on
+her; and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there.
+She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up at the
+old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for, and seeing
+a play every night. And I'd have been knocking around amongst the big
+stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death at the shanties.
+
+The Blacks didn't see me as I went by, ragged and dusty, and with an
+old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes. I didn't care
+a damn for them, or any one else, at most times, but I had moods when I
+felt things.
+
+One of Black's big wool teams was just coming away from the shed, and
+the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him,
+didn't seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the
+road. I stopped my horses and waited. He looked at me and I looked at
+him--hard. Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses.
+I'd given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn't
+forgotten it. And I felt then as if I wouldn't mind trying to give some
+one a hiding.
+
+The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that
+day. I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren
+creek in the Bush--for it was little better--with no one to speak to
+except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her
+on Sunday. I thought of the hardships she went through in the first
+year--that I haven't told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I
+away, and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and
+Jim sick; and of the loneliness she fought through out there. I thought
+of Mary, outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a
+felt hat, and a pair of 'lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of
+a station manager as well as that of a housewife and mother. And her
+cheeks were getting thin, and her colour was going: I thought of the
+gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I
+knew--and some of them not much older than Mary.
+
+When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at
+the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the
+harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain. When I was going, Bob said,
+'Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary's with the horses: if
+the collars don't fit I'll fix up a pair of makeshifts, and alter the
+others.' I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual, but that
+might have been the beer.
+
+     * 'Shout', to buy a round of drinks.--A. L., 1997.
+
+
+
+
+IV. The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+I 'whipped the cat' a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I
+thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money
+until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world
+again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray--there'd be
+some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had
+the buggy she wouldn't be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the
+Bush; and the Sydney trips needn't be off either. I could drive down to
+Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the
+buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by
+the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive.
+I thought best to tell Mary's sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told
+her I'd keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered
+into the spirit of the thing, and said she'd give the world to be able
+to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw
+it; but she couldn't go, on account of a new baby she had. I was rather
+glad she couldn't, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought.
+I wanted that all to myself.
+
+I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I'd finished
+telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn't bring the
+cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James, out on a log
+of the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and
+told him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said--
+
+'But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for?
+Why can't you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She's been pretty
+miserable since you've been away this trip.'
+
+'I want it to be a surprise,' I said.
+
+'Well, I've got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like
+this; but it 'ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary
+about taking the two horses in? I'll only want one to bring the cart
+out, and she's sure to ask.'
+
+'Tell her you're going to get yours shod.'
+
+'But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much
+about horses as we do. I don't mind telling a lie so long as a chap has
+only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so
+many questions.'
+
+'Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you
+go.'
+
+'Yes. And she'll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I'll fix
+her--YOU needn't worry.'
+
+'And, James,' I said, 'get a chamois leather and sponge--we'll want 'em
+anyway--and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek, coming
+home. It's sure to be covered with dust.'
+
+'Oh!--orlright.'
+
+'And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening,
+or just about sunset.'
+
+'What for?'
+
+I'd thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool
+of the evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over
+it--better than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as
+at noon, and we'd have the long broiling day before us.
+
+'What do you want me to come at sunset for?' asked James. 'Do you want
+me to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?'
+
+'Oh well,' I said, 'get here at midnight if you like.'
+
+We didn't say anything for a while--just sat and puffed at our pipes.
+Then I said,--
+
+'Well, what are you thinking about?'
+
+I'm thinking it's time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in
+through your old one too much,' and he got out of my reach and went to
+see about penning the calves. Before we turned in he said,--
+
+'Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?'
+
+He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in
+Cudgeegong had--one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said,--
+
+'How much does Franca want for that gun?'
+
+'Five-ten; but I think he'd take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can
+squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.'
+(Phil was his bosom chum.)
+
+'All right,' I said. 'Make the best bargain you can.'
+
+He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get
+clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to
+give him overnight. He took his gun with him.
+
+I'd always thought that a man was a fool who couldn't keep a secret
+from his wife--that there was something womanish about him. I found out.
+Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever
+spent in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything;
+and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the
+harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning,
+I rode up the ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I
+hurried home that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there
+before me.
+
+At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
+
+'What's the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?' I asked. 'There's only
+room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go
+out together?'
+
+'We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can
+always fold up a blanket or 'possum rug for them to sit on.'
+
+But she didn't take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would
+have taken at any other time, when I didn't want her to. Women are
+aggravating that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and
+both the children were cross. She did look knocked up.
+
+'We'll give the buggy a rest, Joe,' she said. (I thought I heard it
+coming then.) 'It seems as far off as ever. I don't know why you want to
+harp on it to-day. Now, don't look so cross, Joe--I didn't mean to hurt
+you. We'll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you're so set on
+it. There'll be plenty of time when we're better off.'
+
+After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she'd washed up, we sat
+outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking
+and watching the track up the creek.
+
+'Why don't you talk, Joe?' asked Mary. 'You scarcely ever speak to me
+now: it's like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What
+makes you so cross, Joe?'
+
+'Well, I've got nothing to say.'
+
+'But you should find something. Think of me--it's very miserable for me.
+Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell
+me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making
+both our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you
+expect me to understand?'
+
+I said there was nothing the matter.
+
+'But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking,
+Joe--or gambling?'
+
+I asked her what she'd accuse me of next.
+
+'And another thing I want to speak to you about,' she went on. 'Now,
+don't knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient----'
+
+'Well, what is it?'
+
+'I wish you wouldn't swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little
+Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn't run
+right, and--and----'
+
+'Well, what did he say?'
+
+'He--he' (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)--'he said
+"damn it!"'
+
+I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.
+
+'Never mind, old woman,' I said, putting an arm round her, for her
+mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. 'It won't be
+always like this. Just wait till we're a bit better off.'
+
+Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)
+came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going
+to hit him--poor little devil! I never did.
+
+'What is it, Harry?' said Mary.
+
+'Buggy comin', I bin thinkit.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+He pointed up the creek.
+
+'Sure it's a buggy?'
+
+'Yes, missus.'
+
+'How many horses?'
+
+'One--two.'
+
+We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary
+went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes--though the sun
+had gone--and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the
+stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down
+and came running in.
+
+'There's some one coming in a buggy, Joe!' she cried, excitedly. 'And
+both my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down
+to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It's lucky I kept those
+new sheets packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting
+grinning like that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry--Why! It's
+only James--by himself.'
+
+She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.
+
+'Joe!' she said, 'whose buggy is that?'
+
+'Well, I suppose it's yours,' I said.
+
+She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again.
+James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to
+the house.
+
+'Oh, Joe! what have you done?' cried Mary. 'Why, it's a new double
+buggy!' Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. 'Why didn't you tell
+me, Joe? You poor old boy!--and I've been nagging at you all day!' and
+she hugged me again.
+
+James got down and started taking the horses out--as if it was an
+everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under
+the seat. He'd stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that's what made
+him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as
+usual, and breathing hard--taking the buggy in.
+
+James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and
+went down to the dam for a drink. 'You'd better look under the seats,'
+growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.
+
+Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer
+in a candle-box from Galletly--James said that Galletly's men had a
+gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they
+cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a 'little bit of a
+ham' from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he'd 'cured
+himself'--it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of
+baker's bread, a cake, and a dozen yards of something 'to make up for
+the children', from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water
+cod, that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie
+river, and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit
+for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of
+preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) ('for the lil' boy'), and
+a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle ('for lil' girl') from Sun Tong
+Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong--James was chummy with Sun Tong Lee,
+and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick when he was short of
+money. And James said that the people would have loaded the buggy with
+'rubbish' if he'd waited. They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting
+on--and these things did me good.
+
+We got the things inside, and I don't think either of us knew what we
+were saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in
+and said, in a very injured tone,--
+
+'What about my tea? I ain't had anything to speak of since I left
+Cudgeegong. I want some grub.'
+
+Then Mary pulled herself together.
+
+'You'll have your tea directly,' she said. 'Pick up that harness at
+once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back
+that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it
+presently--and we'll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to
+keep the sun off. And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the
+cart,--we can't have that buggy to knock about in.'
+
+'All right,' said James--'anything! Only get me some grub.'
+
+Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn't keep till the morning, and
+rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot--James growling
+all the time--and got out some crockery she had packed away that had
+belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James
+uncomfortable.
+
+'I want some grub--not a blooming banquet!' he said. And he growled a
+lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, 'and that
+sort of Tommy-rot.' When he'd finished he took his gun, and the black
+boy, and the dogs, and went out 'possum-shooting.
+
+When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and
+made me get up alongside her. We hadn't had such a comfortable seat for
+years; but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to
+feel like a pair of fools up there.
+
+Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked
+more than we'd done for years--and there was a good deal of 'Do you
+remember?' in it--and I think we got to understand each other better
+that night.
+
+And at last Mary said, 'Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night
+just--just like I did the day we were married.'
+
+And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.
+
+
+
+
+The Writer Wants to Say a Word.
+
+
+In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened
+to be 'Brighten's Sister-in-law', I had an idea of making Joe Wilson a
+strong character. Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems
+to me that the man's natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature,
+'softness', or weakness--call it which you like--developed as I wrote
+on.
+
+I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the
+day he brought the double buggy to Lahey's Creek. I met him in Sydney
+the other day. Tall and straight yet--rather straighter than he had
+been--dressed in a comfortable, serviceable sac suit of 'saddle-tweed',
+and wearing a new sugar-loaf, cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the
+hurrying street people calmly as though they were sheep of which he was
+not in charge, and which were not likely to get 'boxed' with his. Not
+the worst way in which to regard the world.
+
+He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush. He is a
+young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary a
+long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head, and the process
+would leave him pretty bald.
+
+In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete the
+story of his life.
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+
+
+
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+
+
+Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an 'old hand' (transported convict)
+some said. The prefix 'mother' in Australia mostly means 'old hag',
+and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from
+old diggers, that Mother Middleton--in common with most other 'old
+hands'--had been sent out for 'knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.' We
+had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper
+when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on
+most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly
+as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had
+pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a
+heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler.
+She said that he had insulted her.
+
+She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any
+Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's; she had
+often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he'd be
+putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to
+do--because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see
+how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and 'tailings',
+and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of
+her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second
+row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden
+Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly
+greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the 'rough crowd'
+(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she
+went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or
+'poor-man's' goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock
+goldfield 'broke out', adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove
+the truth of the old digger's saying, that no matter how thoroughly
+ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.
+
+Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
+in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the
+river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in
+the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.
+Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the
+effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was
+unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and
+was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then
+lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did
+sewing and washing for single diggers.
+
+I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried
+on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly
+slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
+
+'Why don't you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on
+good land, Peter Olsen? You're only slaving your stomach out here.' (She
+didn't say stomach.)
+
+*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). 'But then
+you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn't like to take
+her out in the Bush.'
+
+*Mrs Middleton*. 'Delicate, be damned! she's only shamming!' (at her
+loudest.) 'Why don't you kick her off the bed and the book out of her
+hand, and make her go to work? She's as delicate as I am. Are you a man,
+Peter Olsen, or a----?'
+
+This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
+
+Long Paddock was 'petering'. There were a few claims still being worked
+down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and
+gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;
+and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over
+the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time
+lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with
+their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet
+'mullock'.
+
+Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few
+prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the
+ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
+
+Dave Regan--lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently--a bit of a 'Flash
+Jack'; and Andy Page--a character like what 'Kit' (in the 'Old Curiosity
+Shop') might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial
+experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for
+it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down
+pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the
+sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.
+
+Dave had theories--'ideers' or 'notions' he called them; Jim Bently laid
+claim to none--he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy
+Page--by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan--was
+simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be
+obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had
+reverence for higher things.
+
+Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next
+morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the
+cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub,
+about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post
+from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging
+indications. They 'drove' (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the
+fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were 'making tucker';
+a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom
+sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving,
+brownish, rotten rock.
+
+Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave's drive,
+lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
+James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave
+was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been
+conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet
+here.
+
+Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
+timbering--i.e., putting in a sapling prop--here and there where he
+worked wide; but the 'payable dirt' ran in under the cemetery, and in no
+other direction.
+
+Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes
+after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
+sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to
+tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
+
+This was Dave's theory--drawn from a little experience and many long
+yarns with old diggers:--
+
+He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with
+clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of
+from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running
+into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks
+of 'wash' or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich
+at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich 'lead' which was
+supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich
+lead round there somewhere. 'There's gold in them ridges yet--if a man
+can only git at it,' says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
+
+Dave might strike a ledge, 'pocket', or 'pot-hole' holding wash rich
+with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found
+no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had
+prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few 'colours', and the
+bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards
+which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across
+the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty
+feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under
+the cemetery was rich--maybe the richest in the district. The old
+gravediggers had not been gold-diggers--besides, the graves, being six
+feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There
+was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced
+diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and
+racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of
+which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put
+through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded 'payable
+gold'. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a
+case of this kind.
+
+Dave reckoned to strike the 'lead', or a shelf or ledge with a good
+streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the
+cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory
+in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old
+volcanic disturbances--'the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that
+sort of old thing--upset everything. You might follow good gold along
+a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the
+continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.
+
+Had the 'ground' in the cemetery been 'open' Dave would have gone to the
+point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and
+worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way--it
+would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets
+of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But
+it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open
+the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich
+goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers
+and their backers--which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He
+wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old
+clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back
+of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or
+even a rush of wild diggers.
+
+'We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
+
+He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim
+grumbled, in conclusion,--
+
+'Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It's the shortest and
+straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
+
+Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of
+the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such
+an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave
+had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it
+down a deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and
+might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys
+'possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.
+
+There was supposed to exist--and it has since been proved--another, a
+second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried
+for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in 'duffers',
+trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth
+of from eighty to a hundred feet--on solid rock, I suppose. This
+watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in
+person, and whenever he came to a little 'colour'-showing shelf, or
+false bottom, thirty or forty feet down--he'd go rooting round and spoil
+the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that
+he hadn't the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second
+bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other
+bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
+He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the
+last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a
+sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a
+deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I'm
+right off the line again.
+
+'Old Pinter', Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms
+ran as follows:--
+
+'Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an' grass
+on it, that we're livin' on, has got nothin' to do with us. This here
+bottom in the shaller sinkin's that we're workin' on is the slope to the
+bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was
+missin' links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said
+to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
+SECON' bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about
+the time when men was frogs. Now----'
+
+But it's with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the
+friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they
+would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
+
+'We'll give out we're tryin' for the second bottom,' said Dave Regan.
+'We'll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don't want air in
+shallow sinkings.'
+
+'And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the
+bottom,' said Jim Bently.
+
+'We must keep 'em away,' said Dave. 'Tar the bottom, or cover it with
+tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won't see it. There's not
+many diggers left, and the rest are going; they're chucking up the
+claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the
+rest and they wouldn't come near me. The farmers ain't in love with
+us diggers, so they won't bother us. No man has a right to come poking
+round another man's claim: it ain't ettykit--I'll root up that old
+ettykit and stand to it--it's rather worn out now, but that's no matter.
+We'll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes
+nosing round on Sunday. They'll think we're only some more second-bottom
+lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We're going to get our
+fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me
+till you're born again with brains.'
+
+Dave's schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often
+came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,
+bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a
+new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is
+to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of
+rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken
+up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.
+
+'It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can't
+afford them just yet,' said Dave.
+
+But I'm a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery,
+finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton's box
+appeared in the top corner of the 'face' (the working end) of the drive.
+They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the
+shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might
+disturb the mound above; they puddled--i.e., rammed--stiff clay up round
+the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given
+the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather
+under, an unpleasant matter.
+
+Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a
+good deal. 'Blowed if I ever thought I'd be rooting for gold down among
+the blanky dead men,' he said. But the dirt panned out better every
+dish they washed, and Dave worked the 'wash' out right and left as they
+drove.
+
+But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man
+whom Dave wished to see round there--'Old Pinter' (James Poynton),
+Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He'd been
+prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder--threaded
+through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that
+hung behind--and his gold-dish under his arm.
+
+I mightn't get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what
+gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape
+of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
+dish we used for setting milk--I don't know whether the same is used
+here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You
+get it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge
+of the water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just
+below its own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak
+a while, then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay
+dissolves, dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to
+wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till
+all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean
+gravel in the bottom of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning
+the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it. It
+requires some practice. The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by
+its own weight. At last there is only a little half-moon of sand or fine
+gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish--you work the dish slanting
+from you. Presently the gold, if there was any in the dirt, appears in
+'colours', grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of
+sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is,
+the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of
+gravel, without losing a 'colour', by just working the water round and
+off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold
+in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover practically
+every colour.
+
+The gold-washing 'cradle' is a box, shaped something like a boot, and
+the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby's cradle,
+and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you'll put your foot
+into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and
+gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked
+smartly. The finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a
+sloping board covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the
+gold. The dish was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash
+dirt was put through the horse-power 'puddling-machine', which there
+isn't room to describe here.
+
+''Ello, Dave!' said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size
+of Dave's waste-heap. 'Tryin' for the second bottom?'
+
+'Yes,' said Dave, guttural.
+
+Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap
+and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he
+resembled. Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his
+knees, he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
+
+Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
+over the graveyard.
+
+'Tryin' for a secon' bottom,' he reflected absently. 'Eh, Dave?'
+
+Dave only stood and looked black.
+
+Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his
+chin-feathers, which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held
+horizontally.
+
+'Kullers is safe,' reflected Pinter.
+
+'All right?' snapped Dave. 'I suppose we must let him into it.'
+
+'Kullers' was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter's mate for
+some time--Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was that
+Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
+
+Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
+Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his
+shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along
+the other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.
+He lost no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and
+started to drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which
+Dave was making; he gave out that he had bottomed on good 'indications'
+running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the
+fence. Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan--partly for the sake of appearances,
+but mainly because his and Jim's lively imaginations made the air in the
+drive worse than it really was. A 'fan' is a thing like a paddle-wheel
+rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of
+a shoe, but rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the
+axle of the fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is
+carried over this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden
+driving-wheel rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle
+to turn. That's how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless
+pillow-slip, made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of
+the fan-box, and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive--this
+carries the fresh air into the workings.
+
+Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning
+a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to
+work. He felt mad that it hadn't struck him sooner.
+
+Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet
+place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while
+Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their
+tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into
+Pinter's hole and saw at a glance what he was up to.
+
+After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the
+thuds of Pinter's and Kullers' picks drawing nearer. They would strike
+his tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only
+knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw
+themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours' sleep. Pinter had
+practical experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time.
+The two parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking
+terms. Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal
+like--at least Dave and Jim did. They'd start if a horse stumbled
+through the Bush, and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at
+any moment and hear him ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five
+feet when, one Saturday afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave
+and Jim got drunk. The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning
+they felt too shaky to come to work and had more drink. On Monday
+afternoon, Kullers, whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the
+face of his drive into the wall of Dave's, about four feet from the end
+of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.
+They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the
+offensive.
+
+Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim
+went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the
+spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close
+to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness
+in the air. He started picking away at the 'face' and scraping the clay
+back from under his feet, and didn't hear Kullers come to work. Kullers
+came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his
+great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling
+horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw--
+
+''Ullo! you dar'?'
+
+No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker
+than Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes,
+and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked Dave. 'Have you seen a ghost?'
+
+'I've seen the--the devil!' gasped Jim. 'I'm--I'm done with this here
+ghoul business.'
+
+The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim's
+language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till
+the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for
+goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or
+otherwise--so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they joined
+forces and became 'Poynton, Regan, & Party'. They agreed to work the
+ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead, irrespective
+of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as possible before
+the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of 'payable dirt',
+and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers. They timbered
+up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and brown
+paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper with
+difficulty and talked of hard times.
+
+But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got
+a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they
+were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should
+march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was
+a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and
+her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,
+she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink
+to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had
+a stride like a grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her
+footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured
+three feet from toe to heel.
+
+She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of
+flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down
+on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt
+beneath her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart
+on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
+
+It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just
+deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in
+the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped
+down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if
+there was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
+
+'What's up now?' demanded Dave apprehensively.
+
+'Mother Middleton,' said Jim; 'she's blind mad drunk, and she's got a
+bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she's bringing
+out for some one.'
+
+'How the hell did she drop to it?' exclaimed Pinter.
+
+'Dunno,' said Jim. 'Anyway she's coming for us. Listen to her!'
+
+They didn't have to listen hard. The language which came down the
+shaft--they weren't sure which one--and along the drives was enough to
+scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.
+
+'Why didn't you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,
+instead of giving her a lead here?' asked Dave.
+
+Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
+
+Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft--it was Pinter's--and
+they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of
+themselves, for they knew she couldn't hurt them from the surface, and
+that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn't fill
+both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
+
+'I wonder which shaf' she'll come down,' asked Kullers in a tone
+befitting the place and occasion.
+
+'You'd better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,' said Dave, 'and Jim and
+I'll watch mine.'
+
+'I--I won't,' said Pinter hurriedly. 'I'm--I'm a modest man.'
+
+Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter's shaft.
+
+'She's thrown her bottle down,' said Dave.
+
+Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned
+hurriedly.
+
+'She's broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe
+she's coming down.'
+
+'Her crinoline'll handicap her,' said Pinter vacantly, 'that's a
+comfort.'
+
+'She's took it off!' said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter's
+drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped
+stocking, then a section of scarlet petticoat.
+
+'Lemme out!' roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming
+motion with his hands in the direction of Dave's drive. Kullers
+was already gone, and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward,
+scrambled up the shaft last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering
+she had the darkness to face and didn't know the workings, and when Dave
+reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood
+ran from a nasty scratch. But he didn't wait to argue over the price of
+a new pair of trousers. He made off through the Bush in the direction of
+an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.
+
+'She's too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,' said Dave. 'But
+to-morrow she'll bring the neighbourhood down on us.'
+
+'And she's enough, without the neighbourhood,' reflected Pinter.
+
+Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
+and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn't carry,
+they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
+
+
+
+
+The Chinaman's Ghost.
+
+
+'Simple as striking matches,' said Dave Regan, Bushman; 'but it gave me
+the biggest scare I ever had--except, perhaps, the time I stumbled in
+the dark into a six-feet digger's hole, which might have been eighty
+feet deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feet
+shaft left open close by.)
+
+'It was the night of the day after the Queen's birthday. I was sinking a
+shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, and
+we camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that was
+held at Peter Anderson's pub., about four miles across the ridges, on
+Queen's birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and
+we'd disgusted him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he
+stayed at home and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic
+book. (He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare
+time.)
+
+'Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after the
+races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me--I don't
+remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight
+each other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight if we weren't stopped. I
+remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight
+him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver,
+used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn't hate each
+other so much when we were tight and truthful.
+
+'Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
+early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been
+carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.
+
+'Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I'd
+lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he'd worn
+on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair,
+and fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask of
+whisky to help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long dark
+gully called Murderer's Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap,
+and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flats
+were covered with blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in the
+moonlight, and I was pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and a
+mouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle,
+and then to sing: I never used to sing unless I thought I was a couple
+of miles out of earshot of any one.
+
+'Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course it
+was haunted. Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark; and
+even me, when I'd grown up, I'd hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,
+and walk quick going along there at night-time. We're all afraid of
+ghosts, but we won't let on.
+
+'Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the
+track, and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses
+laid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. All
+of a sudden a great 'old man' kangaroo went across the track with a
+thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked,
+white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree, where some one had
+stripped off a sheet of bark, started out from a bend in the track in a
+shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky before
+I started. There was a Chinaman's grave close by the track on the top
+of the gap. An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years, and
+fossicked on the old diggings, and one day he was found dead in the
+hut, and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was a
+nipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese
+because the bones hadn't been sent home to China. It was a lonely,
+ghostly place enough.
+
+'It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the
+flats and up the gully--not a breath of air; but now as I got higher I
+saw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day, and felt the breath
+of a warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap the
+first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the
+spot where the Chinaman's grave was, and I stood staring at it with
+both eyes. It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it was
+a white bullock, and I felt relieved. I'd hardly felt relieved when, all
+at once, there came a "pat-pat-pat" of running feet close behind me!
+I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood
+staring all ways for Sunday, there came a "pat-pat", then a pause, and
+then "pat-pat-pat-pat" behind me again: it was like some one dodging and
+running off that time. I started to walk down the track pretty fast,
+but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat", it was close behind me
+again. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going. There
+was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush to
+the right. It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs; there
+was a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, and
+was making across a spur to the main road, when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat,
+pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it began
+to run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me all the time. I hadn't time to look
+round. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road
+I went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea that
+I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams", and that frightened me more
+than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and
+saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering
+on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I'd broken both
+my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and
+listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor
+see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when
+"pat-pat!" it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half
+altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to
+the camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up
+in my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The
+footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and
+I stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn't noticed at Peter
+Anderson's--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat
+of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose
+ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long
+as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails
+didn't flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were
+still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat
+on the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being
+tight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw
+sounded loud of course.
+
+'I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool
+down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long
+drink of water.
+
+'"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mighty
+thirsty. Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"
+
+'I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my
+bunk, and had a good rest.'
+
+
+
+
+The Loaded Dog.
+
+
+Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony
+Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist
+in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the
+vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
+beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck some
+pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the
+old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse. They'd make a sausage or
+cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the
+mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the cartridge
+in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as
+possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with
+stiff clay and broken brick. Then they'd light the fuse and get out of
+the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom
+of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
+
+There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
+and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
+Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a 'nibble'
+or a 'bite' now and then--say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was
+always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more
+than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn't
+bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes,
+from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an
+average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling
+out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones
+till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes
+growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you'd know
+it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and
+went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew
+it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it
+too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and
+down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and
+kept him awake for two nights--only the toothache pain had a 'burred
+edge', Dave said.
+
+Dave got an idea.
+
+'Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?' he
+said. 'I'll try it.'
+
+He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put
+Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the
+blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren't.
+
+He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the
+rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the
+river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a
+six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of
+the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge
+in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on
+the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted
+bees'-wax to make it water-tight. 'We'll have to leave it some time
+before we light it,' said Dave, 'to give the fish time to get over their
+scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we'll want it
+well water-tight.'
+
+Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip of sail
+canvas--that they used for making water-bags--to increase the force of
+the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper--on
+the plan of the sort of fireworks we called 'gun-crackers'. He let the
+paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses
+of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout
+fishing-line. Dave's schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his
+inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough
+now--a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed
+on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow,
+twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it
+in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd
+know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he
+went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their
+jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave
+and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.
+
+They had a big black young retriever dog--or rather an overgrown pup, a
+big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
+and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a
+stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin
+of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world,
+his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He'd retrieve
+anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw
+away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good
+distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat,
+after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp,
+and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make
+its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff
+suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise.
+He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he'd jump in after
+them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them,
+and scratch their naked bodies with his paws. They loved him for his
+good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a
+swim they had to tie him up in camp.
+
+He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the
+cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon
+he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to
+come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of
+mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with
+their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till
+dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something
+he seemed to have missed.
+
+Andy's brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the
+glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him
+that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay,
+sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He
+may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion
+looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in
+their 'damned silliness'. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin--the
+sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the
+convenience of pouring out the treacle--and it struck him that this
+would have made the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had
+to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and
+seal it with bees'-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when
+Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing--and
+bolted. He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan
+spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim
+Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still,
+staring after them.
+
+'Run, Andy! run!' they shouted back at him. 'Run!!! Look behind you, you
+fool!' Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was
+the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth--wedged into his broadest
+and silliest grin. And that wasn't all. The dog had come round the fire
+to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the
+burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end
+of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.
+
+Andy's legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,
+and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy.
+
+Dave and Jim were good runners--Jim the best--for a short distance; Andy
+was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.
+The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find
+his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim kept shouting
+back, 'Don't foller us! don't foller us, you coloured fool!' but Andy
+kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any
+more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave
+keeping in Jim's track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the
+dog circling round Andy--the live fuse swishing in all directions and
+hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow
+him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction--to 'spread out',
+and Andy roaring at the dog to go home. Then Andy's brain began to work,
+stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but
+the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the
+dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he'd made a mistake about
+Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of
+mind to think that the fuse's time wasn't up yet, made a dive and a grab
+for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched
+the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog
+immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at
+the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim,
+who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native
+bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn't safely get more than ten
+or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully
+as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and
+leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that
+this was part of the lark--he was all right now--it was Jim who was out
+for a spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim
+tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his
+feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took
+but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger's hole, about ten feet deep,
+and dropped down into it--landing on soft mud--and was safe. The dog
+grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he
+thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
+
+'Go away, Tommy,' said Jim feebly, 'go away.'
+
+The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy
+had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly
+remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of
+Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a
+newly-arrived shell.
+
+There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not
+far from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in
+his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the
+shanty. There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the
+bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. 'My dog!'
+he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, 'the blanky
+retriever--he's got a live cartridge in his mouth----'
+
+The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded
+round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway
+leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse
+spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one
+and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends
+with everybody.
+
+The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
+There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
+on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.
+Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door--the publican
+cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and
+wanting to know what the hell he came here for.
+
+The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily
+for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking
+and nursing his nastiness under there--a sneaking, fighting, thieving
+canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy
+saw his danger--he'd had experience from this dog--and started out and
+across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across
+the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the
+cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog
+followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.
+
+Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the
+buildings--spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep-
+and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs--that slip after you in
+the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining--and yapping,
+yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty
+yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had
+found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the
+cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when----
+
+It was very good blasting powder--a new brand that Dave had recently got
+up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy
+was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as
+the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.
+
+Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When
+the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog
+were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had
+been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust
+under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
+Several saddle-horses, which had been 'hanging-up' round the verandah,
+were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken
+bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every
+point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them
+went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and
+reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards
+evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was
+trying to walk on two legs, and most of 'em looked more or less singed;
+and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of
+hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad
+that he'd saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it
+now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years
+afterwards, who couldn't stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it
+was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in
+the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind
+side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn't wait to bring
+his solitary eye to bear--he'd take to the Bush and stay out all night.
+
+For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen
+round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or
+rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There
+were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing
+aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding
+his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to 'hold up for my
+sake, Mary, or I'll lam the life out of ye.'
+
+Dave decided to apologise later on, 'when things had settled a bit,' and
+went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, 'Tommy', the great,
+idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his
+legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest,
+longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for
+one afternoon with the fun he'd had.
+
+Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave
+went to help Jim out of the hole.
+
+And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going
+Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and
+with just a hint of the nasal twang--
+
+''El-lo, Da-a-ve! How's the fishin' getting on, Da-a-ve?'
+
+
+
+
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+
+
+
+
+I. Dave Regan's Yarn.
+
+
+'When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,'
+said Dave Regan, Bushman, 'me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a
+turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a
+big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.
+
+'We couldn't get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our
+money, like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border,
+where they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses
+and pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our
+riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and
+by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.
+
+'Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob
+of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They
+had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther
+with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to
+pay them off, and they were waiting for him.
+
+'"And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us," said one of them.
+
+'Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp
+towards Mulgatown. He was called "Poisonous Jimmy" perhaps on account
+of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a
+station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had
+a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side
+and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he'd say to the girl,
+"Run and get your best frock on, Mary! Here's the shearers comin'." And
+if a chequeman wouldn't drink he'd try to get him into his bar and shout
+for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.
+
+'"But he won't get us," said another of the drovers. "I'm going to ride
+straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I
+get it."
+
+'"You've always said that, Jack," said the first drover.
+
+'We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our
+horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and
+parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings
+to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and
+dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was
+west of the sixpenny-line at that time--all drinks were a shilling along
+here.
+
+'Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.
+
+'"We'll plant our swags in the scrub," I said to Jim.
+
+'"What for?" said Jim.
+
+'"Never mind--you'll see," I said.
+
+'So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the
+side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our
+horses to the verandah posts.
+
+'"Poisonous" came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made
+anybody home-sick.
+
+'He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he
+looked as if he'd be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight--he
+wasn't the sort of man you'd care to try and swindle a second time.
+He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and
+stubble--like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose,
+and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye
+that seemed fixed. If you didn't know him well you might talk to him for
+five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover
+that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the
+time. It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal
+with in a fight.
+
+'"Good day, mates," he said.
+
+'"Good day," we said.
+
+'"It's hot."
+
+'"It's hot."
+
+'We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
+
+'"What are you going to have?" he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a
+rag.
+
+'We had two long-beers.
+
+'"Never mind that," said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
+"it's my shout. I don't suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in
+to Mulgatown this morning."
+
+'"No, he ain't back," I said; "I wish he was. We're getting tired of
+waiting for him. We'll give him another hour, and then some of us will
+have to ride in to see whether he's got on the boose, and get hold of
+him if he has."
+
+'"I suppose you're waiting for your cheques?" he said, turning to fix
+some bottles on the shelf.
+
+'"Yes," I said, "we are;" and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as
+solemn as an owl.
+
+'Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we'd been on the
+track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand
+now an' then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he
+was trying to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered
+accordingly.
+
+'"Have another drink," he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
+"It's up to me," and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
+as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and
+screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or
+unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart
+frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
+
+'"Have you had dinner?" she asked. We could have done with a good meal,
+but it was too risky--the drovers' boss might come along while we were
+at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we'd had
+dinner.
+
+'Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
+
+'"I wish the boss would come," said Jim with a yawn. "I want to get into
+Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go
+in. I ain't got a decent rag to me back. I don't suppose there's ten bob
+amongst the lot of us."
+
+'There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers' camp.
+
+'"Oh, go to the store and get what you want," said Poisonous, taking a
+sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. "You can fix
+it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along."
+
+'"Thank you," said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping
+it into his pocket.
+
+'"Well, Jim," I said, "suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
+are getting on?"
+
+'"All right," said Jim.
+
+'"Tell them to come down and get a drink," said Poisonous; "or, wait,
+you can take some beer along to them if you like," and he gave us half
+a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with
+Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
+
+'We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
+to where our swags were.
+
+'"I say," said Jim, when we'd strapped the swags to the saddles,
+"suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it's meant for them, and
+it's only a fair thing, anyway--we've got as much as we can hold till we
+get into Mulgatown."
+
+'"It might get them into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps.
+Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along
+will think there's angels in the Bush."
+
+'"Oh! what's a row?" said Jim. "They can take care of themselves;
+they'll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take
+the can back and it comes to explanations. I'll ride back to them."
+
+'So Jim rode back to the drovers' camp with the beer, and when he came
+back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank
+good luck to him.
+
+'We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the
+road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy
+some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
+about seven miles on the safe side of the town.'
+
+
+
+
+II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+
+
+'Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We'd
+brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
+We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin' for the
+station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode
+on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin' back, though in
+the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But
+while we was waitin' there come along two fellers that had been drovin'
+up north. They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's
+place, an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of
+beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy's little
+games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we
+drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When
+the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks, we
+started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous's place an' handed
+the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah. Poisonous come
+out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
+
+'"Good day, boys!" he says.
+
+'"Good day, Poisonous," we says.
+
+'"It's hot," he says.
+
+'"It's blanky hot," I says.
+
+'He seemed to expect us to get down. "Where are you off to?" he says.
+
+'"Mulgatown," I says. "It will be cooler there," and we sung out,
+"So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.
+
+'He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi
+there!" after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on. When we looked
+back last he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
+
+'We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when
+we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back we saw it was
+Poisonous.
+
+'He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with
+us a bit gasping: then he burst out.
+
+'"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.
+
+'"What other two?" I asked. "We're all here. What's the matter with you
+anyway?"
+
+'"All here!" he yelled. "You're a lurid liar! What the flamin' sheol do
+you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?
+without as much as thank yer! D'yer think I'm a flamin'----!"
+
+'Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
+
+'"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps, puttin'
+his hand in his pocket. "We didn't want yer slush. It tasted as if it
+had been used before."
+
+'"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy. "I'll----well take it out of one of yer
+bleedin' hides!"
+
+'We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
+He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool
+as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one
+squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an', even if you knowed
+him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye--it was no good
+watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have
+managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight. The boss was a big,
+quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.
+
+'"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles)--"Now,
+look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"
+
+'"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen. "Why, two
+fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an' put up
+half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign, an' got a can o' beer on
+the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin' for you--an' I
+want my crimson money out o' some one!"
+
+'"What was they like?" asks the boss.
+
+'"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time. "One was a blanky
+long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with
+black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the
+blanky billy o' beer."
+
+'"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.
+
+'So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
+
+'I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed, but I
+never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he'd been
+left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those
+fellers, just once, before he died.
+
+'He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along
+the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark
+feller; but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back. He
+said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two
+fellers till he could give 'em in charge.
+
+'They fined him ten bob.'
+
+
+
+
+The Ghostly Door.
+
+Told by one of Dave's mates.
+
+
+
+Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making
+for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one
+of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to
+cut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we
+just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our
+shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and
+our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the
+track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working
+bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled
+down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a
+tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a
+consultation.
+
+It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was
+either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached to an abandoned
+sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped
+our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make
+sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
+there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled
+off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the
+catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the
+swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through
+the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the
+partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been
+lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some
+timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last; and
+there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
+
+We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put
+the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the
+stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
+to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I
+hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in
+it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it
+grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw
+a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
+and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a
+weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with
+the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and
+meat with clasp-knives.
+
+'I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, 'but this is the "whare"* where the
+murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was
+to come along now and look in he'd get scared.' Then after a while he
+looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched
+his ear, and said, 'That looks very much like a blood-stain under your
+stool, doesn't it, Jim?'
+
+     * 'Whare', 'whorrie', Maori name for house.
+
+I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the
+fire--it was too hot.
+
+I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
+would have minded--he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to
+mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more
+than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he'd mistook
+him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.
+
+Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two
+stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked
+comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in
+particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting
+up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and
+a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out
+again; and the door closed behind it.
+
+Dave scratched his ear. 'That's rum,' he said. 'I could have sworn I
+fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.'
+
+'It looks like it,' I said. 'Neither of us has been on the boose
+lately.'
+
+He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.
+
+The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.
+Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the
+door, and called, 'Puss--puss--puss!' but the cat wouldn't come. He shut
+the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got into
+bed again.
+
+He'd scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat
+walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as
+the door closed smartly.
+
+I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back
+of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared
+about the head.
+
+He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,
+sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there.
+Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn't see the
+cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently
+the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she'd been outside
+the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed
+against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way.
+He had a weakness for cats. I'd seen him kick a dog, and hammer a
+horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any
+one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave
+was round, he'd see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair
+surplus. He said once to me, 'I can understand a man kicking a dog, or
+hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can't understand a man hurting
+a cat.'
+
+He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close
+to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a
+key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and
+the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum
+going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her
+he'd meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled
+down again.
+
+We had some books of the 'Deadwood Dick' school. Dave was reading 'The
+Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch', and I had 'The Dismembered Hand',
+or 'The Disembowelled Corpse', or some such names. They were first-class
+preparation for a ghost.
+
+I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and
+saw Dave's frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on
+the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.
+And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never
+felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and
+I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We
+waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching
+for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one
+end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
+
+'You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,' I said, as he caught hold of the
+door--like one grabs a craw-fish.
+
+'I'll swear I didn't,' said Dave. But he'd already turned the key a
+couple of times, so he couldn't be sure. He shut and locked the door
+again. 'Now, get out and see for yourself,' he said.
+
+I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.
+Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
+
+I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck
+him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the
+door.
+
+'What are you doing that for?' I asked.
+
+'If there's a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of
+his funny business, we'll hear him if he tries to come in while we're
+asleep,' says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves
+with the 'Haunted Gulch' and 'The Disembowelled Corpse', and after a
+while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell
+from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous
+clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did
+Dave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little
+way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick,
+skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle,
+and the door wouldn't come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave's face
+began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire,
+and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the
+other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way
+slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and
+found it locked.
+
+'It muster gone by the winder,' whispered Dave. I noticed that he said
+'it' instead of 'he'. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only
+needed that to scare me bad.
+
+We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.
+Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the
+floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of
+them, and started to roll up his swag.
+
+'What are you going to do, Dave?' I asked.
+
+'I'm going to take the track,' says Dave, 'and camp somewhere farther
+on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.'
+
+I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the
+tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any
+noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.
+
+'That comes of camping in a deserted house,' said Dave, when we were
+safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned
+homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks
+ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.
+
+It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.
+
+We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the
+sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a
+landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we
+got it started we knocked the wet bark off 'manuka' sticks and logs and
+piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little
+drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and
+the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the
+night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, 'I'm going back to
+that house.'
+
+'What for?' I said.
+
+'I'm going to find out what's the matter with that crimson door. If I
+don't I'll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long
+as I live.'
+
+So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by
+daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built
+of odds and ends and badly fitted. It 'gave' in the wind in almost any
+direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to
+throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to
+bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame
+was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of
+it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung
+to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose
+it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by
+accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind
+must have accounted for the variations of the door's movements--and
+maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.
+
+Dave scratched his head a good bit.
+
+'I never lived in a house yet,' he said, as we came away--'I never lived
+in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good
+tent.'
+
+
+
+
+A Wild Irishman.
+
+
+About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to
+Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town
+called Pahiatua, which meaneth the 'home of the gods', and is situated
+in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a
+pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not
+originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the
+tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of
+a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don't remember
+which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to
+think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the
+scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
+
+Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks.
+While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I
+anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after
+paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the
+little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns
+of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon,
+he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called 'The Flour
+of Wheat', and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever
+and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made
+me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no
+matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I'd ask him
+if he knew the 'Flour of Wheat', and hear what he had to say.
+
+I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can't be
+done in writing.
+
+
+'There's the little red Irishman,' said the shoemaker, who was Irish
+himself, 'who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and
+there's the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and
+fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together;
+and there's the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a
+combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the
+first amongst the boys at Th' Canary as the Flour o' Wheat, but no one
+knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not
+F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on
+wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man's character
+by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without
+understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the
+Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might
+have worked in a mill. But we've had enough of that. It's the man--not
+the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked
+hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn't swear. No man had ever heard
+him swear (except once); all things were 'lovely' with him. He was
+always lucky. He got gold and threw it away.
+
+'The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with
+some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn't matter:
+there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that
+knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the
+trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man
+who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were
+soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made
+them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he'd walk restlessly to and
+fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him
+with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and
+muttering, as though in explanation to himself--
+
+'"Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!--Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!--Oi
+must be walkin' or foightin'!"
+
+'They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was
+done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they
+put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.
+
+'There's no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on
+the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept
+by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a
+place called "Th' Canary". I remember the first time I saw the Flour.
+
+'I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th' Canary, and one evening I was
+standing outside Brady's (the Flour's cousin's place) with Tom Lyons and
+Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on
+his back.
+
+'"B' God, there's the Flour o' Wheat comin' this minute," says Dinny
+Murphy to Tom, "an' no one else."
+
+'"B' God, ye're right!" says Tom.
+
+'There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and
+dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny--
+
+'"Dinny, I'll bet you a quid an' the Flour'll run against some of those
+new chums before he's an hour on the spot."
+
+'But Dinny wouldn't take him up. He knew the Flour.
+
+'"Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!"
+
+'"Good day to you, Flour!"
+
+'I was introduced.
+
+'"Well, boys, come along," says the Flour.
+
+'And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then
+he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was
+dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced
+to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn't please
+the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair
+an' flat on his back.
+
+'"Take that," he says. "Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an' lay
+there! You can't dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to
+dance when ye can't dance?"
+
+'He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought
+the new chums all night, and in the morning he said--
+
+'"Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with
+me."
+
+'And of course they went in and had a drink with him.
+
+     *****
+
+'Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a
+drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the "Nipper".
+
+'"Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o' Wheat!" says she.
+
+'"Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!" says the Flour.
+
+'And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed
+him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens!
+
+'A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a
+witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with
+his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a
+corner of his mouth on duty.
+
+'"It's nothing at all, your Honour," he said to the S.M.; "only a
+pin-scratch--it's nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to speak
+to the lovely woman at all."
+
+'But they didn't let it pass,--they fined her a quid.
+
+'And the Flour paid the fine.
+
+'But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those
+days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn't do a woman
+a good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted
+there was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys
+who knew the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried
+too far in some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour--nor to
+those who laughed too loud or grinned too long.
+
+     *****
+
+'The Flour's cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got "stiff".
+He hadn't any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got
+a blank summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he
+wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up
+and took it to his cousin.
+
+'"What d'ye think of that?" he says, handing the summons across the bar.
+"What d'ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?"
+
+'"Why, what's this all about?"
+
+'"That's what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a
+fortnight ago when I was drunk, an' now he sends me that."
+
+'"Well, I never would have dream'd that of Dinny," says the cousin,
+scratching his head and blinking. "What's come over him at all?"
+
+'"That's what I want to know."
+
+'"What have you been doing to the man?"
+
+'"Divil a thing that I'm aware of."
+
+'The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.
+
+'"Well, what am I to do about it?" asked the Flour impatiently.
+
+'"Do? Pay the man, of course?"
+
+'"How can I pay the lovely man when I haven't got the price of a drink
+about me?"
+
+'The cousin scratched his chin.
+
+'"Well--here, I'll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go and
+pay the man, and get back to work."
+
+'And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a
+howling spree together up at Brady's, the opposition pub. And the cousin
+said he thought all the time he was being had.
+
+    .   .   .   .   .
+
+'He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance,
+he'd come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and
+walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just
+when a big event was coming off he'd pass within earshot of some
+committee men--who had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the
+thing up and make it a success--saying to himself--
+
+'"Where's the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don't see
+them! Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?"
+
+'Or he'd pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of
+some sort,--
+
+'"No gamblin' for the Flour. I don't believe in their little shwindles.
+It ought to be shtopped. Leadin' young people ashtray."
+
+'Or he'd pass an Englishman he didn't like,--
+
+'"Look at Jinneral Roberts! He's a man! He's an Irishman! England has
+to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the
+marshes of Candyhar!"
+
+     *****
+
+'They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year's Day--except
+once--and old Duncan was always there,--never missed it till the day he
+died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted "hard-case". They all
+knew "old Duncan".
+
+'But one New Year's Eve he didn't turn up, and was missed at once.
+"Where's old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?" "Oh, he'll turn up
+alright." They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn't come.
+
+'Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came
+from Duffers, but they hadn't seen him for two days. They had fully
+expected to find him at the creek. He wasn't at Aliaura nor Notown. They
+inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn't there.
+
+'"There's something happened to the lovely man," said the Flour of Wheat
+at last. "Some of us had better see about it."
+
+'Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out
+over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the
+Flour.
+
+
+'The door of Duncan's "whare" was closed--BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The Flour
+noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in. The
+hut was tidied up and swept out--even the fireplace. Duncan had "lifted
+the boxes" and "cleaned up", and his little bag of gold stood on a
+shelf by his side--all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean
+neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly
+and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his
+arms lying crossed on his chest, and one foot--with a boot on--resting
+on the ground. He had his "clean things" on, and was dressed except for
+one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease.
+
+'"Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads," said the Flour. "Here's
+the lovely man lying dead in his bunk."
+
+'There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the
+crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on
+old Duncan's account, but the Flour said he'd see to that.
+
+'One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were
+no sports.
+
+'And the Flour used to say, afterwards, "Ah, but it was a grand time we
+had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers."
+
+    .   .   .   .   .
+
+'The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from
+Th' Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad--the man was
+dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a spare
+bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.
+
+'"Inside there--come out!"
+
+'The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the
+matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front
+of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little
+pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.
+
+'"There's me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry," says the
+Flour, "and you've got to fix him up and bring him round."
+
+'Then he shook his fist in the doctor's face and said--
+
+'"If you let that lovely man die--look out!"
+
+'The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at
+his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some
+order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round
+as he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said--
+
+'"If you let that lovely man die--mind!"
+
+'In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a
+barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.
+
+'"There," he said, "pour that into the lovely man."
+
+'Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible,
+and said--
+
+'"If you let that lovely man die--look out!"
+
+'They were used to hard-cases, and didn't take much notice of him, but
+he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day
+and night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe,
+and then he'd say, "Ah, well, I'll have to go up and see how me lovely
+mate's getting on."
+
+'And every time he'd go up he'd shake his fist at the hospital in
+general and threaten to murder 'em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.
+
+'Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the
+doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and
+knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.
+
+'"Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper," said the Flour of Wheat; "you
+let that lovely man die!"
+
+'The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were
+waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the
+hospital, and stood it on end by the doorway.
+
+'"I've come for me lovely mate!" he said to the scared staff--or as much
+of it as he baled up and couldn't escape him. "Hand him over. He's going
+back to be buried with his friends at Th' Canary. Now, don't be sneaking
+round and sidling off, you there; you needn't be frightened; I've
+settled with the doctor."
+
+'But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and
+between them--and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the
+premises--they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn't ready yet; there were
+papers to sign; it wouldn't be decent to the dead; he had to be
+prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and
+comfortable. Anyway, they'd have him ready in an hour, or take the
+consequences.
+
+'The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as
+well and better by the boys at Th' Canary. "However," he said, "I'll
+be round in an hour, and if you haven't got me lovely mate ready--look
+out!" Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said--
+
+'"I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there's e'er a pin-scratch
+on me mate's body--look out! If there's a pairin' of Dinny's toe-nail
+missin'--look out!"
+
+'Then he went out--taking the coffin with him.
+
+'And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the
+coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on
+his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as
+dead drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked
+air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the
+Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the
+bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,
+and departed several ways to put the "boys" up to it. And about midnight
+the "boys" gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and
+somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong
+Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to
+plead in changed and awful tones--
+
+'"Pray for me soul, boys--pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones
+between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour's in
+Purgatory!"
+
+'Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing
+over a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour
+was heard to swear. And he swore then.
+
+'They didn't pray for him--they gave him a month. And, when he came
+out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he--to his
+credit, perhaps--came the other half. They had a drink together, and
+the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for a
+pin.
+
+'"It was the will o' God, after all, doctor," said the Flour. "It was
+the will o' God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand,
+doctor.... Good-bye."
+
+'Then he left for Th' Canary.'
+
+
+
+
+The Babies in the Bush.
+
+
+    'Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright--
+       That only the Bushmen know--
+    Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
+    Or carry them up through the starry night,
+       Where the Bush-lost babies go.'
+
+
+He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the
+Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and
+professions (and of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile,
+the smile is either mechanical or bitter as a rule--cynical. They seldom
+talk. The sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority--and
+without reason or evidence--as being proud, hard, and selfish,--'too
+mean to live, and too big for their boots.'
+
+But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and
+very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in
+sitting on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and
+gloom. He was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes--haunted grey eyes
+sometimes--and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not
+above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with
+their hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
+The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed
+men who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and
+die respectably in their beds.
+
+His name was Head--Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland
+routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to
+travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales,
+with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney
+market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)--a rover, of
+course, and a ne'er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a
+thin skin--worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I
+went by the name of 'Jack Ellis' this trip,--not because the police
+were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack
+Ellis--and so the chaps nicknamed me.
+
+The Boss spoke little to the men: he'd sit at tucker or with his pipe
+by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the
+big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky
+starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more
+confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party. There was a
+something of sympathy between us--I can't explain what it was. It seemed
+as though it were an understood thing between us that we understood each
+other. He sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of
+explanation--so I thought--had he said them to any other of the party.
+He'd often, after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off
+with 'You know, Jack.' And somehow I understood, without being able to
+explain why. We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
+His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy,
+and never drank a glass nor 'shouted' on the trip: he was reckoned a
+'mean boss', and rather a nigger-driver.
+
+He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who
+shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon's poems on the
+route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked
+me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but
+by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
+'Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren't
+they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his
+briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as
+often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn't enjoy it: an empty
+pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.)
+'Those are great lines,' he'd say--
+
+    '"In Collins Street standeth a statue tall--
+         A statue tall on a pillar of stone--
+      Telling its story to great and small
+       Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
+
+         *****
+
+    Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
+       Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
+    He lay on the desert a dying man,
+       Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go."
+
+     That's a grand thing, Jack.  How does it go?--
+    "With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
+       And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,
+     He saw the sun go down on the sand,"'--
+
+    The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn--
+    '"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
+    --speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.
+    Then maybe he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
+    with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
+
+    '"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,
+       The blighted herbage or blackened log,
+    The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
+       Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"
+
+They don't matter much, do they, Jack?'
+
+'Damned if I think they do, Boss!' I'd say.
+
+    '"The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
+       But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
+    That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms' food
+       Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
+
+Once he repeated the poem containing the lines--
+
+    '"Love, when we wandered here together,
+    Hand in hand through the sparkling weather--
+    God surely loved us a little then."
+
+Beautiful lines those, Jack.
+
+    "Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
+       And the blue sea over the white sand rolled--
+     Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur'--
+
+How does it go, Jack?' He stood up and turned his face to the light, but
+not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth
+are mostly women's eyes, but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were
+just then.
+
+It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon's sea poems to
+his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem
+was that one of Gordon's with the lines--
+
+    'I would that with sleepy soft embraces
+       The sea would fold me, would find me rest
+    In the luminous depths of its secret places,
+       Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
+
+He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp; but
+after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly
+with, 'Well, it's time to turn in,' or, 'It's time to turn out,' or he'd
+give me an order in connection with the cattle. He had been a well-to-do
+squatter on the Lachlan river-side, in New South Wales, and had been
+ruined by the drought, they said. One night in camp, and after smoking
+in silence for nearly an hour, he asked--
+
+'Do you know Fisher, Jack--the man that owns these bullocks?'
+
+'I've heard of him,' I said. Fisher was a big squatter, with stations
+both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
+
+'Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in
+his pocket, or decent rag to his back, or a crust in his tucker-bag, and
+I gave him a job. He's my boss now. Ah, well! it's the way of Australia,
+you know, Jack.'
+
+The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him; he
+was 'bred' on the Boss's station, they said, and had been with him
+practically all his life. His name was 'Andy'. I forget his other name,
+if he really had one. Andy had charge of the 'droving-plant' (a tilted
+two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
+and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for
+figures. Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in
+between. His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big
+grey eyes also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or
+he theirs, I don't know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think,
+the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
+Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
+about the Boss.
+
+'The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.'
+
+'Think so?' I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
+
+'I'm sure of it. It's very seldom HE takes to any one.'
+
+I said nothing.
+
+Then after a while Andy said suddenly--
+
+'Look here, Jack, I'm glad of it. I'd like to see him make a chum of
+some one, if only for one trip. And don't you make any mistake about the
+Boss. He's a white man. There's precious few that know him--precious few
+now; but I do, and it'll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn
+with.' And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.
+
+The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains--big
+clearings rather--and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we reached
+Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that
+we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,--as I
+suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
+
+The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one
+long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we'd finished the
+boss said to me--
+
+'Look here, Jack, you're going on to Sydney, aren't you?'
+
+'Yes; I'm going down to have a fly round.'
+
+'Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He's going
+down in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It
+won't be so comfortable as the passenger; but you'll save your fare, and
+you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You've only got to have a
+look at 'em every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the
+trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren't you?'
+
+I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed
+anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
+I felt really sorry to part with him. I'd had to work as hard as any
+of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He'd
+struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and
+I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
+
+'Come and have a drink, Boss,' I said. The agent had paid us off during
+the day.
+
+He turned into a hotel with me.
+
+'I don't drink, Jack,' he said; 'but I'll take a glass with you.'
+
+'I didn't know you were a teetotaller, Boss,' I said. I had not been
+surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now
+that it was over it was a different thing.
+
+'I'm not a teetotaller, Jack,' he said. 'I can take a glass or leave
+it.' And he called for a long beer, and we drank 'Here's luck!' to each
+other.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I wish I could take a glass or leave it.' And I meant
+it.
+
+Then the Boss spoke as I'd never heard him speak before. I thought for
+the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before
+the night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a
+man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. 'Jack!'
+he said, 'there's worse things than drinking, and there's worse things
+than heavy smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on
+him that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it's a heavy load.
+And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no
+comfort in liquor, then it's deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.'
+
+He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if
+impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet
+tone--
+
+'But you're only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won't ask you to take
+the second drink. You don't want it; and, besides, I know the signs.'
+
+He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter, and
+looking down between his arms at the floor. He stood that way thinking
+for a while; then he suddenly straightened up, like a man who'd made up
+his mind to something.
+
+'I want you to come along home with me, Jack,' he said; 'we'll fix you a
+shake-down.'
+
+I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.
+
+'But won't it put Mrs Head about?'
+
+'Not at all. She's expecting you. Come along; there's nothing to see in
+Bathurst, and you'll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney. Come on,
+we'll just be in time for tea.'
+
+He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town--an
+old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses, like you see in some
+of those old settled districts. There was, I remember, the stump of a
+tree in front, covered with ivy till it looked like a giant's club with
+the thick end up.
+
+When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the
+gate. He'd been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the
+bullocks.
+
+'Jack,' he said, 'I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble at
+one time. We--we lost our two children. It does her good to talk to a
+stranger now and again--she's always better afterwards; but there's very
+few I care to bring. You--you needn't notice anything strange. And agree
+with her, Jack. You know, Jack.'
+
+'That's all right, Boss,' I said. I'd knocked about the Bush too long,
+and run against too many strange characters and things, to be surprised
+at anything much.
+
+The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms. I saw by the
+light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman's hair was grey, and
+I reckoned that he had his mother living with him. And--we do have odd
+thoughts at odd times in a flash--and I wondered how Mrs Head and her
+mother-in-law got on together. But the next minute I was in the room,
+and introduced to 'My wife, Mrs Head,' and staring at her with both
+eyes.
+
+It was his wife. I don't think I can describe her. For the first minute
+or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the
+lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman--one of those
+fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies--who dressed young, wore
+false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head's
+impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so grey as
+I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it was like
+dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and
+it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her
+face--her nose and chin--I fancied, and something that you couldn't
+describe. She had big dark eyes--dark-brown, I thought, though they
+might have been hazel: they were a bit too big and bright for me, and
+now and again, when she got excited, the white showed all round the
+pupils--just a little, but a little was enough.
+
+She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit
+of a gusher.
+
+'Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Mr Ellis,' she said, giving my hand a
+grip. 'Walter--Mr Head--has been speaking to me about you. I've been
+expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready
+presently. Don't you find it a bit chilly?' She shivered. It was a bit
+chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea,
+and set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished
+even for a lucky boss drover's home; the furniture looked as if it had
+belonged to a tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first,
+sitting down to tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable
+tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room. But she knew a lot
+about the Bush, and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip,
+and soon put me at my ease. You see, for the last year or two I'd
+taken my tucker in my hands,--hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife
+mostly,--sitting on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.
+
+There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called
+'Auntie'. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round
+herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea.
+
+Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of
+thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and
+movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too--a womanly
+girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about
+her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the
+fire and Andy and I on the other--Andy a little behind me at the corner
+of the table.
+
+'Walter--Mr Head--tells me you've been out on the Lachlan river, Mr
+Ellis?' she said as soon as she'd settled down, and she leaned forward,
+as if eager to hear that I'd been there.
+
+'Yes, Mrs Head. I've knocked round all about out there.'
+
+She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her
+forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had--she often did
+it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what
+she'd said last.
+
+She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.
+
+'Oh, I'm so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,'
+she said. 'Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of
+talking to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same
+faces. You don't know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face
+and talk to a stranger.'
+
+'I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,' I said. And so I could. I never
+stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.
+
+She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss
+straightened up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and
+then put his arm round her shoulders. This brought her back.
+
+'You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever
+tell you about the time we lived there?'
+
+'No,' I said, glancing at the Boss. 'I know you had a station there;
+but, you know, the Boss doesn't talk much.'
+
+'Tell Jack, Maggie,' said the Boss; 'I don't mind.'
+
+She smiled. 'You know Walter, Mr Ellis,' she said. 'You won't mind him.
+He doesn't like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me,
+but that's foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.' She
+leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: 'I've been
+wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me
+about you. I knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These
+town people don't understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we
+lost our children out on the station. The fairies took them. Did Walter
+ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?'
+
+This was a facer. 'I--I beg pardon,' I commenced, when Andy gave me a
+dig in the back. Then I saw it all.
+
+'No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn't tell me about that.'
+
+'You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,' she said, her big
+eyes fixed on my face--'the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones
+that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are
+not found? You've surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that
+I've spoken to. Maybe you've seen them? Andy there has?' Andy gave me
+another dig.
+
+'Of course I've heard of them, Mrs Head,' I said; 'but I can't swear
+that I've seen one.'
+
+'Andy has. Haven't you, Andy?'
+
+'Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn't I tell you all about it the last
+time we were home?'
+
+'And didn't you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?'
+
+'Of course he did!' I said, coming to Andy's rescue; 'I remember it now.
+You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.'
+
+'Of course!' said Andy.
+
+'Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy; 'I told him all about that.'
+
+'And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,
+and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.'
+
+'Yes,' I said; 'that's what Andy told me.'
+
+'And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?' asked Mrs Head, fixing
+her eyes on his face.
+
+'Like. It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs
+Head,' said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big
+innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling
+lies. 'It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture
+we had at home on the station--the right-hand one in blue.'
+
+She smiled. You couldn't call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish
+smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy
+childish smile.
+
+'I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot
+of trouble,' she said. 'Of course it never struck me, until afterwards,
+that the fairies had taken the children.'
+
+She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and
+sat so for a while; then she roused herself again--
+
+'But what am I thinking about? I haven't started to tell you about the
+children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children's portraits, will you,
+please? You'll find them on my dressing-table.'
+
+The old woman seemed to hesitate.
+
+'Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,' said Mrs Head. 'Don't be
+foolish. You know I'm all right now.'
+
+'You mustn't take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,' she said with a
+smile, while the old woman's back was turned. 'Poor old body, she's a
+bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn't like me to get
+talking about the children. She's got an idea that if I do I'll start
+talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were
+lost. I was very foolish then, wasn't I, Walter?'
+
+'You were, Maggie,' said the Boss. 'But that's all past. You mustn't
+think of that time any more.'
+
+'You see,' said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, 'at first nothing would
+drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they
+perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would
+let them do that.'
+
+'You were very foolish, Maggie,' said the Boss; 'but don't think about
+that.'
+
+The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl:
+they must have been very pretty children.
+
+'You see,' said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them
+to me one by one, 'we had these taken in Sydney some years before the
+children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally's is not a good
+portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That's him standing on
+the chair. Isn't the pose good? See, he's got one hand and one little
+foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark,
+and you've got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that
+the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait
+he's sitting on the chair--he's just settled himself to enjoy the fun.
+But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was
+holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally
+had just turned two.'
+
+She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
+
+'Let me see; Wally (that's little Walter, you know)--Wally was five and
+little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren't they, Walter?'
+
+'Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss.
+
+'You were away, Walter, when it happened.'
+
+'Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss--cheerfully, it seemed to me--'I was away.'
+
+'And we couldn't find you, Walter. You see,' she said to me, 'Walter--Mr
+Head--was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn't find his address.
+It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the
+break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It
+was a lonely place; there wasn't much bush cleared round the homestead,
+just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the
+edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles--fifty or a hundred
+miles in some directions without a break; didn't they, Walter?'
+
+'Yes, Maggie.'
+
+'I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who
+used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the
+run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't you, Andy?'
+
+'Yes, Mrs Head.'
+
+'I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because
+if they once got into the edge of the scrub they'd be lost; but this
+morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down
+under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather
+buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?'
+
+'I remember, Maggie.'
+
+'"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said. I
+could see Old Peter--an old shepherd and station-hand we had--I could
+see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down
+there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?'
+
+'Of course I do, Maggie.'
+
+'I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told
+little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister's hand and go straight
+down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.'
+
+She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me
+all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
+
+'The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands
+holding fast their straw hats. "In case a bad wind blowed," as little
+Maggie said. I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the
+last that any one saw of them.'
+
+'Except the fairies, Maggie,' said the Boss quickly.
+
+'Of course, Walter, except the fairies.'
+
+She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
+
+'It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers' camp
+that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam
+and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the
+house, and before the children got near him. They either followed
+him for some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or
+butterflies----' She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, 'Do you
+think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?'
+
+The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
+
+'No. I'm sure they wouldn't, Mrs Head,' I said--'at least not from what
+I know of them.'
+
+She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless
+puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather
+mechanically, it seemed to me--
+
+'The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour
+afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said--I
+said, "O my God! where's the children?"' Her fingers fluttered up to her
+temples.
+
+'Don't mind about that, Maggie,' said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her
+head. 'Tell Jack about the fairies.'
+
+'You were away at the time, Walter?'
+
+'Yes, Maggie.'
+
+'And we couldn't find you, Walter?'
+
+'No, Maggie,' very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin
+on his hand, and looked into the fire.
+
+'It wasn't your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think
+the fairies would have taken the children?'
+
+'Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.'
+
+'And they're bringing the children home next year?'
+
+'Yes, Maggie--next year.'
+
+She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
+before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost
+children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards
+where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The
+hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time
+for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old
+Peter's ride to the musterers' camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no
+time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this, and no matter
+how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all
+directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother mad with
+anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch through
+the night; starting up at every sound of a horse's hoof, and reading
+the worst in one glance at the rider's face. The systematic work of the
+search-parties next day and the days following. How those days do fly
+past. The women from the next run or selection, and some from the town,
+driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay with and try to
+comfort the mother. ('Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I must go to that
+poor woman!') Comforting her with improbable stories of children who had
+been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when they were
+found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers. Search-parties
+cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting signal-fires. The
+reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the Boss himself,
+wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two
+others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given
+up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me as
+Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were in another
+room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to the fairies
+again.
+
+'It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after--months after, I
+think--I'd insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for
+the children. I'd stand there and call "Maggie!" and "Wally!" until
+Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter!
+But of course I didn't know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was
+really out of my mind for a time.'
+
+'No wonder you were, Mrs Head,' I said. 'It was terrible trouble.'
+
+'Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it's all
+right now, Walter,' she said, rumpling the Boss's hair. 'I'll never be
+so foolish again.'
+
+'Of course you won't, Maggie.'
+
+'We're very happy now, aren't we, Walter?'
+
+'Of course we are, Maggie.'
+
+'And the children are coming back next year.'
+
+'Next year, Maggie.'
+
+He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
+
+'You mustn't take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,' she went on. 'Poor Walter
+is away so much that I'm afraid I make a little too much of him when he
+does come home.'
+
+She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said
+quickly--
+
+'They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but
+they were no friends of mine. I shouldn't have listened to them, Walter.
+You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.'
+
+'Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?' I asked.
+
+'The Voices,' she said; 'you know about the Voices, Walter?'
+
+'Yes, Maggie. But you don't hear the Voices now, Maggie?' he asked
+anxiously. 'You haven't heard them since I've been away this time, have
+you, Maggie?'
+
+'No, Walter. They've gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes,
+but they're the Bush Fairies' voices. I hear them calling Maggie and
+Wally to come with them.' She paused again. 'And sometimes I think I
+hear them call me. But of course I couldn't go away without you, Walter.
+But I'm foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr
+Ellis. They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then,
+if the fairies hadn't taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black
+trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them at once.'
+
+'Of course they could, Mrs Head,' I said.
+
+'They said that the trackers couldn't track them because there was rain
+a few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It
+was only a thunderstorm.'
+
+'Why!' I said, 'I've known the blacks to track a man after a week's
+heavy rain.'
+
+She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it
+was in a scared way.
+
+'Oh, Walter!' she said, clutching the Boss's arm; 'whatever have I been
+talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me
+talk like that?'
+
+He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up.
+
+'Where are you going, Mr Ellis?' she asked hurriedly. 'You're not going
+to-night. Auntie's made a bed for you in Andy's room. You mustn't mind
+me.'
+
+'Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,' said the Boss.
+'They'll be in to supper. We'll have a yarn, Maggie.'
+
+'Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,' she said. 'I really don't
+know what you must think of me,--I've been talking all the time.'
+
+'Oh, I've enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,' I said; and Andy hooked me out.
+
+'She'll have a good cry and be better now,' said Andy when we got away
+from the house. 'She might be better for months. She has been fairly
+reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he
+came back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns
+now and again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a
+longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her
+good. The doctor's against it, but doctors don't know everything.'
+
+'It's all true about the children, then?' I asked.
+
+'It's cruel true,' said Andy.
+
+'And were the bodies never found?'
+
+'Yes;' then, after a long pause, 'I found them.'
+
+'You did!'
+
+'Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either--and in a
+fairly clear space. It's a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it
+often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and
+came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were
+lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss's sake. You see, in
+a case like this, and when the bodies aren't found, the parents never
+quite lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush
+to-night (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst,
+or cold. That mad idea haunts 'em all their lives. It's the same, I
+believe, with friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a
+long while with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and
+drifting round in the water.'
+
+'And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?'
+
+'Not for a long time. It wouldn't have done any good. She was raving
+mad for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne--to the best
+doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold
+the station--sacrificed everything, and took her to England.'
+
+'To England?'
+
+'Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He'd offer a
+thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She
+got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the
+children. The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent
+all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a
+nurse, and trying to get her cured; that's why he's droving now. She was
+restless in Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there
+till the fairies brought the children home. She'd been getting the fairy
+idea into her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the
+station was sold, and he couldn't have lived there anyway without going
+mad himself. He'd married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got
+friends and relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He
+persuaded her that the fairies were going to bring the children here.
+Everybody's very kind to them. I think it's a mistake to run away from a
+town where you're known, in a case like this, though most people do it.
+It was years before he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet--after
+she's been fairly well for a longish time.'
+
+'And you never tried telling her that the children were found?'
+
+'Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river at
+first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so
+he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near
+the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they
+go out. It's all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had
+thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were
+against it; but he couldn't rest till he tried it. He took her out, and
+explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the
+names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions
+about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite
+sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back
+on the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so
+then he let it be. I think it's better as it is. Now and again, at her
+best, she seems to understand that the children were found dead, and
+buried, and she'll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet
+way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave
+next time he's down. But it doesn't last long, and she's always worse
+afterwards.'
+
+We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy
+'shouted' in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer a
+thought struck me.
+
+'The Boss was away when the children were lost?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy.
+
+'Strange you couldn't find him.'
+
+'Yes, it was strange; but HE'LL have to tell you about that. Very likely
+he will; it's either all or nothing with him.'
+
+'I feel damned sorry for the Boss,' I said.
+
+'You'd be sorrier if you knew all,' said Andy. 'It's the worst trouble
+that can happen to a man. It's like living with the dead. It's--it's
+like a man living with his dead wife.'
+
+When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and
+cheerful, bustling round. You'd have thought her one of the happiest and
+brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the
+fairies. She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips. She told
+some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I'd spent for a
+long time.
+
+'Good night, Mr Ellis,' she said brightly, shaking hands with me when
+Andy and I were going to turn in. 'And don't forget your pipe. Here it
+is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn
+in. Walter smokes in bed. I don't mind. You can smoke all night if you
+like.'
+
+'She seems all right,' I said to Andy when we were in our room.
+
+He shook his head mournfully. We'd left the door ajar, and we could hear
+the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very
+clear voice.
+
+'Yes, I'll tell you the truth, Walter. I've been deceiving you, Walter,
+all the time, but I did it for the best. Don't be angry with me, Walter!
+The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you
+to come back! They haven't come since you've been home, Walter. You
+must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and
+telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself;
+they told me it was all my own fault--that I killed the children. They
+said I was a drag on you, and they'd laugh--Ha! ha! ha!--like that.
+They'd say, "Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie." They told me to come to
+the river, Walter.'
+
+Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.
+
+We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months
+and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground
+or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn't too tired to pull
+them down, and my saddle for a pillow.
+
+But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I've never
+since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably
+he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;
+perhaps he wanted me to understand--maybe he was weakening as he grew
+older, and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.
+
+When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but
+Andy roused me out about four o'clock. The old woman that they called
+Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee
+ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and
+had our breakfast quietly.
+
+'The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say
+Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,' said the
+Boss. 'I'm going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made
+up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don't forget it.'
+
+Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
+which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
+without speaking. He didn't seem sociable this morning, or any way
+sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
+
+But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at
+last I made a swallow and blurted out--
+
+'Look here, Boss, old chap! I'm damned sorry!'
+
+Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was
+over the Bathurst plains.
+
+We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly--
+
+'I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling
+spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I'd tell her I had to
+go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When
+the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly
+drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush--a sly grog-shop. The old
+brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the
+lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn't
+seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They
+were mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three
+policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the
+country.'
+
+I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could
+do for him.
+
+'Good-bye, Jack!' he said at the door of the brake-van. 'Good-bye,
+Andy!--keep those bullocks on their feet.'
+
+The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat
+silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a
+coal-stove in the centre of the van.
+
+'Does the boss never go to Sydney?' I asked.
+
+'Very seldom,' said Andy, 'and then only when he has to, on business.
+When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out
+to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.'
+
+After a while I said, 'He told me about the drink, Andy--about his being
+on the spree when the children were lost.'
+
+'Well, Jack,' said Andy, 'that's the thing that's been killing him ever
+since, and it happened over ten years ago.'
+
+
+
+
+A Bush Dance.
+
+
+
+'Tap, tap, tap, tap.'
+
+The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly
+in the midst of the 'close', solid blackness of that moonless December
+night, when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought
+haze.
+
+It was the evening of the school children's 'Feast'. That is to say that
+the children had been sent, and 'let go', and the younger ones 'fetched'
+through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,
+and raced--sometimes in couples tied together by the legs--and caked,
+and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got
+rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and
+tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea
+was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better
+things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been
+taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
+
+On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
+more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
+
+On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat
+about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
+
+It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls
+spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.
+Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you
+would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness
+and to swear.
+
+'Tap, tap, tap.'
+
+The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces
+nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
+
+'Tap--tap.'
+
+The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher's
+residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it
+was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour--more like that of
+warm cheap glue than anything else.
+
+In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever
+one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,
+all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then
+withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse's step all eyes and ears
+were on the door, till some one muttered, 'It's only the horses in the
+paddock.'
+
+Some of the girls' eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the
+belle of the party--a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain
+girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with
+blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands,
+rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in
+a hurry by two sympathetic and rather 'upset' girl friends, and as she
+passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically--
+
+'Oh, I can't help it! I did want to dance! It's a sh-shame! I can't help
+it! I--I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance--and--and I want to
+dance!'
+
+A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the
+girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and
+other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from
+the outside--being man comforted--
+
+'I can't help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I--I had such--such--a
+job--to get mother--and--and father to let me come--and--and now!'
+
+The two girl friends came back. 'He sez to leave her to him,' they
+whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.
+
+'It's--it's no use, Jack!' came the voice of grief. 'You don't know
+what--what father and mother--is. I--I won't--be able--to ge-get
+away--again--for--for--not till I'm married, perhaps.'
+
+The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. 'I'll take
+her into my room and make her lie down,' she whispered to her sister,
+who was staying with her. 'She'll start some of the other girls
+presently--it's just the weather for it,' and she passed out quietly.
+That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.
+
+A final 'tap-tap' from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a
+hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in
+that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like
+'damn!' and hopelessness settled down.
+
+A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the
+girls rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the
+darkness--
+
+'It's two horses, I tell you!'
+
+'It's three, you----!'
+
+'Lay you----!'
+
+'Put the stuff up!'
+
+A clack of gate thrown open.
+
+'Who is it, Tom?'
+
+Voices from gatewards, yelling, 'Johnny Mears! They've got Johnny
+Mears!'
+
+Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
+
+Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the
+table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which
+he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight;
+and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms, as a
+football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of
+his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick, the concertina shot out into
+the blackness, from which was projected, in return, first a short,
+sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring and the other covered by
+an enormous brick-coloured hand, and a voice that wanted to know who
+shot 'that lurid loaf of bread?'
+
+But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews,
+M.C.,--
+
+'Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They've got Johnny
+Mears with his fiddle!'
+
+
+
+
+The Buck-Jumper.
+
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them lanky
+and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel on the
+edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster's camp) when Cob & Co.'s
+mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding from round Crown Ridge,
+in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage. Some wiry,
+ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings about the
+place. The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard close to the
+shanty. As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek at the foot of
+the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves from verandah posts,
+from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah and the rough slab
+wall against which they'd been resting, and joined a group of four or
+five who stood round one. He stood with his back to the corner post
+of the stock-yard, his feet well braced out in front of him, and
+contemplated the toes of his tight new 'lastic-side boots and whistled
+softly. He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords,
+leggings, and a blue sash; he was Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed, and
+his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim of a new
+cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.
+
+'Do it for a quid, Jack?' asked one.
+
+'Damned if I will, Jim!' said the young man at the post. 'I'll do it for
+a fiver--not a blanky sprat less.'
+
+Jim took off his hat and 'shoved' it round, and 'bobs' were 'chucked'
+into it. The result was about thirty shillings.
+
+Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.
+
+'Not me!' he said, showing some emotion for the first time. 'D'yer think
+I'm going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement for thirty
+blanky bob. I'll ride the blanky horse for a fiver, and I'll feel the
+blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.'
+
+Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty. There
+were about twenty passengers aboard--inside, on the box-seat, on the
+tail-board, and hanging on to the roof--most of them Sydney men going up
+to the Mudgee races. They got down and went inside with the driver for
+a drink, while the stablemen changed horses. The Bushmen raised their
+voices a little and argued.
+
+One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man--a good-hearted,
+sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands. He had
+a round red face and a white cork hat. 'What's those chaps got on
+outside?' he asked the publican.
+
+'Oh, it's a bet they've got on about riding a horse,' replied the
+publican. 'The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the
+horse-breaker; and they reckon they've got the champion outlaw in the
+district out there--that chestnut horse in the yard.'
+
+The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the
+Bushmen.
+
+'Well, chaps! what have you got on here?' he asked cheerily.
+
+'Oh,' said Jim carelessly, 'it's only a bit of a bet about ridin'
+that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.' He indicated an
+ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles
+in a corner of the stock-yard. 'Flash Jack there--he reckons he's the
+champion horse-breaker round here--Flash Jack reckons he can take it out
+of that horse first try.'
+
+'What's up with the horse?' inquired the big, red-faced man. 'It looks
+quiet enough. Why, I'd ride it myself.'
+
+'Would yer?' said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up, and an
+innocent, inquiring expression. 'Looks quiet, does he? YOU ought to know
+more about horses than to go by the looks of 'em. He's quiet enough just
+now, when there's no one near him; but you should have been here an
+hour ago. That horse has killed two men and put another chap's shoulder
+out--besides breaking a cove's leg. It took six of us all the morning to
+run him in and get the saddle on him; and now Flash Jack wants to back
+out of it.'
+
+'Euraliar!' remarked Flash Jack cheerfully. 'I said I'd ride that blanky
+horse out of the yard for a fiver. I ain't goin' to risk my blanky neck
+for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.'
+
+'He said he'd ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,' said Jim.
+
+'And get smashed against the rails!' said Flash Jack. 'I would be a
+fool. I'd rather take my chance outside in the scrub--and it's rough
+country round here.'
+
+'Well, how much do you want?' asked the man in the mushroom hat.
+
+'A fiver, I said,' replied Jack indifferently. 'And the blanky stuff in
+my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.'
+
+'Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?' inquired one
+of the passengers who had gathered round.
+
+'I'm frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,'
+said Flash Jack. 'I know that horse; he's got a mouth like iron. I might
+be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with
+my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?'
+
+'You wouldn't want 'em then,' suggested a passenger. 'Or, say!--we'd
+leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.'
+
+Flash Jack ignored that passenger. He eyed his boots and softly whistled
+a tune.
+
+'All right!' said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his
+pocket. 'I'll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.'
+
+The five pounds were got together.
+
+'I'll lay a quid to half a quid he don't stick on ten minutes!' shouted
+Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off. The
+passengers also betted amongst themselves. Flash Jack, after putting the
+money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails and led the horse into
+the middle of the yard.
+
+'Quiet as an old cow!' snorted a passenger in disgust. 'I believe it's a
+sell!'
+
+'Wait a bit,' said Jim to the passenger, 'wait a bit and you'll see.'
+
+They waited and saw.
+
+Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard, and
+trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub, which
+swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.
+
+Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack
+to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty; then
+they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses,
+while they laughed.
+
+At the hotel there was just time for another drink. The driver climbed
+to his seat and shouted, 'All aboard!' in his usual tone. The passengers
+climbed to their places, thinking hard. A mile or so along the road the
+man with the cork hat remarked, with much truth--
+
+'Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.'
+
+     *****
+
+The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of
+sight, and proceeded to 'knock down' the fiver.
+
+
+
+
+Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+
+
+The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia) kept Daniel
+Myers--licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors--in drink and
+the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time he lay
+hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man would
+care to see--or hear when it gave forth sound. 'Good accommodation
+for man and beast'; but few shanties save his own might, for a
+consideration, have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers
+had become towards the end of his career. But at last the eccentric Bush
+doctor, 'Doc' Wild' (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without
+its having any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him
+awake and cynical), pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried
+legally; so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out, and the
+sign altered to read, 'Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.', and continued to
+conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years, with the
+joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer a human pig and
+pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm. Most of the regular
+patrons of the Half-way House could have their horrors decently, and,
+comparatively, quietly--or otherwise have them privately--in the Big
+Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been one of that sort.
+
+Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily, at
+the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so. She was
+a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid in the droughts of
+Out-Back without losing her good looks, and had put up with a hard life,
+and Myers, all those years without losing her good humour and nature.
+Probably, had her husband been the opposite kind of man, she would have
+been different--haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible--for
+of such is woman. But then it might be taken into consideration that she
+had been practically a widow during at least the last five years of her
+husband's alleged life.
+
+Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed
+that she was not to be caught.
+
+'It would be a grand thing,' one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog
+would say to his mates, 'for one of us to have his name up on a pub.; it
+would save a lot of money.'
+
+'It wouldn't save you anything, Bill, if I got it,' was the retort. 'You
+needn't come round chewing my lug then. I'd give you one drink and no
+more.'
+
+The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers,
+even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos, tried their
+luck in vain. In answer to the suggestion that she ought to have a man
+to knock round and look after things, she retorted that she had had one,
+and was perfectly satisfied. Few trav'lers on those tracks but tried
+'a bit of bear-up' in that direction, but all to no purpose. Chequemen
+knocked down their cheques manfully at the Half-way House--to get
+courage and goodwill and 'put it off' till, at the last moment, they
+offered themselves abjectly to the landlady; which was worse than bad
+judgment on their part--it was very silly, and she told them so.
+
+One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith
+in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much
+that they 'broke out' and went on record-breaking sprees.
+
+About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra
+coat of paint on the 'Margaret', whereat suitors looked hopeless.
+
+One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big
+Scrub--anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the
+horrors. But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing
+the opportunity when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell
+asleep, went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher's
+gallows--having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea of
+leaving the world as naked as he came into it. He climbed the pole, sat
+astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell--a yell
+of drunken triumph--before he dropped, and woke his mates.
+
+They cut him down and brought him to. Next day he apologised to Mrs
+Myers, said, 'Ah, well! So long!' to the rest, and departed--cured of
+drink and love apparently. The verdict was that the blanky fool should
+have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed, and it
+began to look as though, if she wished to continue to live on happily
+and comfortably for a few years longer at the fixed age of thirty-nine,
+she would either have to give up the pub. or get married.
+
+Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was
+mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the
+camp-fire.
+
+About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw,
+widower--otherwise known as 'Old Jimmy', though he was little past
+middle age--had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up,
+and tackled afresh (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts)
+ever since the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was
+a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a
+certain 'cleanness' about the shape of his limbs which suggested the
+old jockey or hostler. There were two strong theories in connection with
+Jimmy--one was that he had had a university education, and the other
+that he couldn't write his own name. Not nearly such a ridiculous nor
+simple case Out-Back as it might seem.
+
+Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the 'heard tells' in
+connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his
+contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, 'I'll go up to Tinned
+Dog next week and try my luck.'
+
+His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to
+laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian
+actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to
+think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an
+imaginary table and exclaimed--
+
+'By God! Jimmy'll do it.' (Applause.)
+
+     *****
+
+So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
+runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a
+clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
+greased-bluchered--altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was
+served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the
+river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
+
+A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a
+clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, 'Is that
+trav'ler there yet, Mary?'
+
+'Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.'
+
+The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when
+limited for 'stuff' or wondering whether a section has been cut
+wrong--or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn't been a 'clean
+pfellar'. She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
+across the clearing.
+
+'Good-day, mister,' she said, seeming to become aware of him for the
+first time.
+
+'Good-day, missus!'
+
+'Hot!'
+
+'Hot!'
+
+Pause.
+
+'Trav'lin'?'
+
+'No, not particular!'
+
+She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he
+wasn't raving. But the swagman smoked on.
+
+'Have a drink?' she suggested, to keep her end up.
+
+'No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take more
+than two a-day--one before breakfast, if I can get it, and a night-cap.'
+
+What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
+
+'Come and have some tea; it's ready.'
+
+'Thank you. I don't mind if I do.'
+
+They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him
+except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,
+and was 'just having a look at the country.' He politely declined a
+'shake-down', saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out
+this weather. She got his name with a 'by-the-way', as he rose to leave,
+and he went back to camp.
+
+He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning, and
+got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon
+pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of
+nails.
+
+And, well--to make it short--when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,
+and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed
+by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words--
+
+            HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,
+                     BY
+               JAMES GRIMSHAW.
+                Good Stabling.
+
+The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.
+
+
+
+
+At Dead Dingo.
+
+
+It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board
+and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where
+there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called
+'Roasted', and other times 'Potted Dingo'--nicknames suggested by the
+everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned
+Dog.
+
+From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running
+right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red
+sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust,
+and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
+
+There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year's Day.
+There weren't many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar--the
+coolest place in the shanty--reading 'Deadwood Dick'. On a worn and torn
+and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better
+days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms
+twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death
+of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim--shearer and rouseabout--sat at a table
+playing cards. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and they had
+been gambling since nine--and the greater part of the night before--so
+they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps
+physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
+
+Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a
+sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
+
+Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an
+oath that would have been savage if it hadn't been drawled.
+
+'Stumped?' inquired Jim.
+
+'Not a blanky, lurid deener!' drawled Bill.
+
+Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and
+hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the
+eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking
+in a strange place.
+
+'Got anything?' asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
+
+Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and
+spat out on to the verandah floor.
+
+'That's all I got,' he drawled. 'It's gone now.'
+
+Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the
+dog.
+
+'That there dog yours?' he asked, brightening.
+
+They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each
+other as Bushmen can be.
+
+Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke
+suddenly to a flea fact.
+
+'Yes,' drawled Bill, 'he's mine.'
+
+'Well, I'm going Out-Back, and I want a dog,' said Jim, gathering the
+cards briskly. 'Half a quid agin the dog?'
+
+'Half a quid be----!' drawled Bill. 'Call it a quid?'
+
+'Half a blanky quid!'
+
+'A gory, lurid quid!' drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his
+swag.
+
+But Jim's hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
+
+'Alright. Call it a---- quid.'
+
+The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died
+again. Remember this, it might come in useful.
+
+Bill sat down to the table once more.
+
+Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned 'Ah, well!' and
+shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his
+foot, unwound the chain, said 'Ah, well--so long!' and drifted out and
+along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail
+down.
+
+Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,
+shouldered his swag, said, 'So long, Mary!' and drifted out and along
+the road towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
+
+     *****
+
+A long, drowsy, half hour passed--the sort of half hour that is as long
+as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold
+about as much as days do in other places.
+
+The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a
+moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his
+elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and
+came back to life gradually.
+
+He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and
+formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words--
+
+'Put up a drink?'*
+
+     * 'Put up a drink'--i.e., 'Give me a drink on credit', or
+     'Chalk it up'.
+
+She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
+
+He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress
+signals with hand, eyes, and mouth.
+
+'No!' she snapped. 'I means no when I says no! You've had too many last
+drinks already, and the boss says you ain't to have another. If you
+swear again, or bother me, I'll call him.'
+
+He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his
+swag, and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round,
+whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
+through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and
+started through to the back-door.
+
+'What the devil do you want now?' demanded the girl, interrupted in her
+reading for the third time by him. 'Stampin' all over the house. You
+can't go through there! It's privit! I do wish to goodness you'd git!'
+
+'Where the blazes is that there dog o' mine got to?' he muttered. 'Did
+you see a dog?'
+
+'No! What do I want with your dog?'
+
+He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back
+with a decided step and tone.
+
+'Look here! that there dog was lyin' there agin the wall when I went
+to sleep. He wouldn't stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn't
+dragged. He's been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn'ter lost
+him for a fiver. Are you sure you ain't seen a dog?' then suddenly, as
+the thought struck him: 'Where's them two chaps that was playin' cards
+when I wenter sleep?'
+
+'Why!' exclaimed the girl, without thinking, 'there was a dog, now I
+come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
+Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.'
+
+He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.
+
+'What sort of a dog was it?'
+
+Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
+
+He scowled at her darkly.
+
+'Now, look here,' he said; 'you've allowed gamblin' in this bar--your
+boss has. You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog.
+Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your
+boss? I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and
+I don't care if you lose your licence. I ain't goin' to lose my dog. I
+wouldn'ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I----'
+
+She was filling a pewter hastily.
+
+'Here! for God's sake have a drink an' stop yer row.'
+
+He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and
+scowled out the door.
+
+'Which blanky way did them chaps go?' he growled.
+
+'The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.'
+
+'And I'll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
+lose me shed! Here!' jerking the empty pewter across the bar, 'fill that
+up again; I'm narked properly, I am, and I'll take twenty-four blanky
+hours to cool down now. I wouldn'ter lost that dog for twenty quid.'
+
+He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,
+muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the
+track to Tinned Dog.
+
+               *****
+
+Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite
+settled it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it
+to you.
+
+
+
+
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+
+
+Most Bushmen who hadn't 'known Bob Baker to speak to', had 'heard tell
+of him'. He'd been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie
+river in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and
+had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to
+Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a
+pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob
+Baker went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager
+in charge.
+
+He'd been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he'd been
+a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for
+they had to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of
+vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed. It's very nice to hear the
+chaps sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow', but you've mostly got to pay
+for it twice--first in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the
+chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place
+and they were giving me a send-off. It thrilled me, and brought a warm
+gush to my eyes; but, all the same, I wished I had half the money I'd
+lent them, and spent on 'em, and I wished I'd used the time I'd wasted
+to be a jolly good fellow.
+
+When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great
+north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on
+the Sydney side. He was going north to new country round by the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle, on a two years' trip; and I and
+my mate, Andy M'Culloch, engaged to go with him. We wanted to have a
+look at the Gulf Country.
+
+After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me that the Boss
+was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs. Andy had been
+with him on another trip, and he told me that the Boss was only going
+this way lately. Andy knew Mrs Baker well, and seemed to think a deal of
+her. 'She's a good little woman,' said Andy. 'One of the right stuff. I
+worked on their station for a while when I was a nipper, and I know.
+She was always a damned sight too good for the Boss, but she believed in
+him. When I was coming away this time she says to me, "Look here, Andy,
+I'm afraid Robert is drinking again. Now I want you to look after him
+for me, as much as you can--you seem to have as much influence with him
+as any one. I want you to promise me that you'll never have a drink with
+him."
+
+'And I promised,' said Andy, 'and I'll keep my word.' Andy was a chap
+who could keep his word, and nothing else. And, no matter how the Boss
+persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him, Andy would never drink with him.
+
+It got worse and worse: the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at a
+shanty, and sometimes he'd be days behind us; and when he'd catch up to
+us his temper would be just about as much as we could stand. At last he
+went on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles
+north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow with a flash
+barmaid there--one of those girls who are engaged, by the publicans up
+country, as baits for chequemen.
+
+He went mad over that girl. He drew an advance cheque from the
+stock-owner's agent there, and knocked that down; then he raised some
+more money somehow, and spent that--mostly on the girl.
+
+We did all we could. Andy got him along the track for a couple of
+stages, and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the
+night and went back.
+
+We had two other men with us, but had the devil's own bother on account
+of the cattle. It was a mixed-up job all round. You see it was all big
+runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks moving along the route
+all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass. The agent wasn't
+going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock until
+the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass on the route or the
+travelling-stock reserves or camps, so we had to keep travelling for
+grass.
+
+The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle have
+to go through--that's the law of the stock-routes. So the agent wired
+to the owners, and, when he got their reply, he sacked the Boss and sent
+the cattle on in charge of another man. The new Boss was a drover coming
+south after a trip; he had his two brothers with him, so he didn't want
+me and Andy; but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged,
+between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to
+us--the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.
+
+We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober,
+mad or sane, good or bad, it isn't Bush religion to desert a mate in a
+hole; and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.
+
+We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with
+us as much as possible, and did all we could for him.
+
+'How could I face his wife if I went home without him?' asked Andy, 'or
+any of his old mates?'
+
+The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was, and
+then he'd hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow, and fight,
+and get knocked about. He was an awful object by this time, wild-eyed
+and gaunt, and he hadn't washed or shaved for days.
+
+Andy got the constable in charge of the police station to lock him up
+for a night, but it only made him worse: we took him back to the camp
+next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes he
+slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started to hang
+himself to a leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope. We got to
+him just in time.
+
+Then Andy wired to the Boss's brother Ned, who was fighting the drought,
+the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border.
+Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
+
+Perhaps the Boss hadn't been quite right in his head before he started
+drinking--he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of
+it; maybe he'd got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his
+troubles--anyway he died in the horrors within the week.
+
+His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought he was the
+devil, and grappled with him. It took the three of us to hold the Boss
+down sometimes.
+
+Sometimes, towards the end, he'd be sensible for a few minutes and talk
+about his 'poor wife and children'; and immediately afterwards he'd
+fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils. He cursed
+everything; he cursed his wife and children, and yelled that they were
+dragging him down to hell. He died raving mad. It was the worst case of
+death in the horrors of drink that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
+
+Ned saw to the funeral: it was very hot weather, and men have to be
+buried quick who die out there in the hot weather--especially men who
+die in the state the Boss was in. Then Ned went to the public-house
+where the barmaid was and called the landlord out. It was a desperate
+fight: the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man; but
+Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who will carry a thing
+through to death when they make up their minds. He gave that publican
+nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved. The constable in charge of
+the station backed Ned, while another policeman picked up the publican.
+Sounds queer to you city people, doesn't it?
+
+Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at
+Ned Baker's station on the border, and then started on our
+three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so
+we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned's place at dusk.
+He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet,
+done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob's
+pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we'd gone a
+piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and
+a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. 'Poor old Ned,' said
+Andy to me. 'He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married,
+but she picked the wrong man--girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together
+on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he's been
+up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you
+something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of
+fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he
+died easy--and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she
+is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I'll have
+to go and see her when we get to Solong; there's no getting out of it,
+I'll have to face her--and you'll have to come with me.'
+
+'Damned if I will!' I said.
+
+'But you'll have to,' said Andy. 'You'll have to stick to me; you're
+surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I'll
+have to lie like hell--I'll have to lie as I never lied to a woman
+before; and you'll have to back me and corroborate every lie.'
+
+I'd never seen Andy show so much emotion.
+
+'There's plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,' said Andy. He said no
+more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss's name casually,
+until we were within about a day's ride of Solong; then Andy told me the
+yarn he'd made up about the Boss's death.
+
+'And I want you to listen, Jack,' he said, 'and remember every word--and
+if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it
+was like this: the Boss wasn't too well when he crossed the border. He
+complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back
+of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,--but that doesn't matter; it's
+lucky I ain't supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck
+to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as
+easy as we could for him. He'd just take it easy, and ride on from camp
+to camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did,
+if you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a
+while, but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give
+up. A squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up
+at the best hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for
+him--put him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for
+Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day
+and got there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off
+his head some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards
+the end and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and
+told us to tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children's
+sake. How does that sound?'
+
+I'd been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.
+
+'Why not let her know the truth?' I asked. 'She's sure to hear of
+it sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken
+blackguard she might get over it all the sooner.'
+
+'You don't know women, Jack,' said Andy quietly. 'And, anyway, even if
+she is a sensible woman, we've got a dead mate to consider as well as a
+living woman.'
+
+'But she's sure to hear the truth sooner or later,' I said, 'the Boss
+was so well known.'
+
+'And that's just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,' said
+Andy. 'If he wasn't well known--and nobody could help liking him, after
+all, when he was straight--if he wasn't so well known the truth might
+leak out unawares. She won't know if I can help it, or at least not yet
+a while. If I see any chaps that come from the North I'll put them up
+to it. I'll tell M'Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he's a straight
+man--he'll keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker's sisters
+is staying with her, and I'll give her a hint so that she can warn off
+any women that might get hold of a yarn. Besides, Mrs Baker is sure to
+go and live in Sydney, where all her people are--she was a Sydney girl;
+and she's not likely to meet any one there that will tell her the truth.
+I can tell her that it was the last wish of the Boss that she should
+shift to Sydney.'
+
+We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called a
+'happy thought'. He went to his saddle-bags and got out the small canvas
+packet that Ned had given him: it was sewn up with packing-thread, and
+Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.
+
+'What are you doing, Andy?' I asked.
+
+'Ned's an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,' said Andy. 'I
+guess he hasn't looked through the Boss's letters, and I'm just going to
+see that there's nothing here that will make liars of us.'
+
+He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire. There
+were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband, also a portrait of her
+and the children; these Andy put aside. But there were other letters
+from barmaids and women who were not fit to be seen in the same street
+with the Boss's wife; and there were portraits--one or two flash ones.
+There were two letters from other men's wives too.
+
+'And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!' said Andy, in
+a tone of disgust.
+
+He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss's
+pocket-book and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on
+them, and burnt them too. Then he sewed up the packet again and put it
+away in his saddle-bag.
+
+'Such is life!' said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.
+
+We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a
+paddock, and put up at M'Grath's pub. until such time as we made up our
+minds as to what we'd do or where we'd go. We had an idea of waiting
+until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big
+sheds.
+
+Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker. 'We'll go after
+dinner,' said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink, and felt
+sleepy--we weren't used to big dinners of roast-beef and vegetables and
+pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather--so we decided to have a
+snooze and then go. When we woke up it was late in the afternoon, so we
+thought we'd put it off till after tea. 'It wouldn't be manners to walk
+in while they're at tea,' said Andy--'it would look as if we only came
+for some grub.'
+
+But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs
+Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we'd call
+up as soon as possible. You see, in those small towns you can't move
+without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.
+
+'We'll have to face the music now!' said Andy, 'and no get out of it.'
+He seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite
+where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to
+Andy--
+
+'Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in
+there an hour or two.'
+
+'You don't want another drink,' said Andy, rather short. 'Why, you seem
+to be going the same way as the Boss!' But it was Andy that edged off
+towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker's place. 'All right!' he
+said. 'Come on! We'll have this other drink, since you want it so bad.'
+
+We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the
+road--we'd bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit. Half-way
+across Andy grabbed my arm and asked--
+
+'How do you feel now, Jack?'
+
+'Oh, I'M all right,' I said.
+
+'For God's sake!' said Andy, 'don't put your foot in it and make a mess
+of it.'
+
+'I won't, if you don't.'
+
+Mrs Baker's cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a
+garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and
+whispered--
+
+'For God's sake stick to me now, Jack!'
+
+'I'll stick all right,' I said--'you've been having too much beer,
+Andy.'
+
+I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented
+sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss's shirts
+and things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is
+contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular
+about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like
+the ghost of herself. I wouldn't have recognised her at first. I never
+saw such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.
+
+Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes
+for the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four
+or twenty-five, and fresh and fair--not like the sun-browned women we
+were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick
+to understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had
+told me, and wrote stories for the Sydney 'Bulletin' and other Sydney
+papers. She had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and
+that took us back a bit at first.
+
+'It's very good of you to come,' said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice,
+when we first went in. 'I heard you were in town.'
+
+'We were just coming when we got your message,' said Andy. 'We'd have
+come before, only we had to see to the horses.'
+
+'It's very kind of you, I'm sure,' said Mrs Baker.
+
+They wanted us to have tea, but we said we'd just had it. Then Miss
+Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn't feel
+as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully
+just then.
+
+There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room,
+and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.
+
+'You mustn't mind me,' she said. 'I'll be all right presently, and then
+I want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It's seeing you, that saw the
+last of him, that set me off.'
+
+Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall,
+and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting
+Blucher on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture
+was there.
+
+The child was calling 'mumma', and Mrs Baker went in to it, and her
+sister came out. 'Best tell her all about it and get it over,' she
+whispered to Andy. 'She'll never be content until she hears all about
+poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died. Let me take your
+hats. Make yourselves comfortable.'
+
+She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine. I wished she'd let
+us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to, and nothing to do
+with our hands; and as for being comfortable, we were just about as
+comfortable as two cats on wet bricks.
+
+When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker, about
+four years old; he wanted to see Andy. He ran to Andy at once, and Andy
+took him up on his knee. He was a pretty child, but he reminded me too
+much of his father.
+
+'I'm so glad you've come, Andy!' said Bobby.
+
+'Are you, Bobby?'
+
+'Yes. I wants to ask you about daddy. You saw him go away, didn't you?'
+and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy's face.
+
+'Yes,' said Andy.
+
+'He went up among the stars, didn't he?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy.
+
+'And he isn't coming back to Bobby any more?'
+
+'No,' said Andy. 'But Bobby's going to him by-and-by.'
+
+Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her
+hand, tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister
+took her out of the room.
+
+Andy looked miserable. 'I wish to God I was off this job!' he whispered
+to me.
+
+'Is that the girl that writes the stories?' I asked.
+
+'Yes,' he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, 'and poems
+too.'
+
+'Is Bobby going up among the stars?' asked Bobby.
+
+'Yes,' said Andy--'if Bobby's good.'
+
+'And auntie?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And mumma?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Are you going, Andy?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy hopelessly.
+
+'Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy, 'I saw him go up.'
+
+'And he isn't coming down again any more?'
+
+'No,' said Andy.
+
+'Why isn't he?'
+
+'Because he's going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.'
+
+There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked--
+
+'Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?' with the same expression of
+innocent wonder in his eyes.
+
+Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand. 'Auntie' came in and told him
+he'd see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed, after he'd kissed
+us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker settled down to hear
+Andy's story.
+
+'Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,' whispered Andy to me
+just before they came in.
+
+'Poor Bob's brother Ned wrote to me,' said Mrs Baker, 'but he scarcely
+told me anything. Ned's a good fellow, but he's very simple, and never
+thinks of anything.'
+
+Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border.
+
+'I knew he was not well,' said Mrs Baker, 'before he left. I didn't want
+him to go. I tried hard to persuade him not to go this trip. I had a
+feeling that I oughtn't to let him go. But he'd never think of anything
+but me and the children. He promised he'd give up droving after this
+trip, and get something to do near home. The life was too much for
+him--riding in all weathers and camping out in the rain, and living like
+a dog. But he was never content at home. It was all for the sake of me
+and the children. He wanted to make money and start on a station again.
+I shouldn't have let him go. He only thought of me and the children! Oh!
+my poor, dear, kind, dead husband!' She broke down again and sobbed, and
+her sister comforted her, while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting
+Blucher on the field of Waterloo. I thought the artist had heaped up the
+dead a bit extra, and I thought that I wouldn't like to be trod on by
+horses, even if I was dead.
+
+'Don't you mind,' said Miss Standish, 'she'll be all right presently,'
+and she handed us the 'Illustrated Sydney Journal'. This was a great
+relief,--we bumped our heads over the pictures.
+
+Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down
+near Mulgatown. Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite
+me. Both of them kept their eyes on Andy's face: he sat, with his hair
+straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes
+fixed on Mrs Baker's face all the time he was speaking. I watched Miss
+Standish. I thought she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen; it was a
+bad case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me, and
+the case was hopeless. I began to feel pretty miserable, and to think
+back into the past: I just heard Andy droning away by my side.
+
+'So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets
+and coats and things,' Andy was saying, 'and the squatter started into
+Mulgatown.... It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn't it?' he asked,
+turning suddenly to me. He always looked so innocent that there were
+times when I itched to knock him down.
+
+'More like thirty-five,' I said, waking up.
+
+Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look at Wellington
+and Blucher.
+
+'They were all very good and kind to the Boss,' said Andy. 'They thought
+a lot of him up there. Everybody was fond of him.'
+
+'I know it,' said Mrs Baker. 'Nobody could help liking him. He was one
+of the kindest men that ever lived.'
+
+'Tanner, the publican, couldn't have been kinder to his own brother,'
+said Andy. 'The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only a young
+fellow, and Tanner hadn't much faith in him, so he wired for an older
+doctor at Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses to meet the
+doctor's buggy. Everything was done that could be done, I assure you,
+Mrs Baker.'
+
+'I believe it,' said Mrs Baker. 'And you don't know how it relieves me
+to hear it. And did the publican do all this at his own expense?'
+
+'He wouldn't take a penny, Mrs Baker.'
+
+'He must have been a good true man. I wish I could thank him.'
+
+'Oh, Ned thanked him for you,' said Andy, though without meaning more
+than he said.
+
+'I wouldn't have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,' said Mrs
+Baker. 'When I first heard of my poor husband's death, I thought perhaps
+he'd been drinking again--that worried me a bit.'
+
+'He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs
+Baker,' said Andy quickly.
+
+Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or
+twice, while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him;
+then she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head
+and looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn't like. Once or
+twice she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question, but I
+always looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington, or into
+the empty fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me. Then she
+asked Andy a question or two, in all innocence I believe now, but it
+scared him, and at last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp.
+Then she gave a little gasp and shut up like a steel trap.
+
+The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again. Mrs Baker went
+to it. We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring
+all over the place: presently Miss Standish excused herself, and went
+out of the room after her sister. She looked hard at Andy as she left
+the room, but he kept his eyes away.
+
+'Brace up now, Jack,' whispered Andy to me, 'the worst is coming.'
+
+When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.
+
+'He--he died very quietly,' said Andy, hitching round, and resting his
+elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his
+face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister.
+'He died very easy,' said Andy. 'He was a bit off his head at times, but
+that was while the fever was on him. He didn't suffer much towards the
+end--I don't think he suffered at all.... He talked a lot about you and
+the children.' (Andy was speaking very softly now.) 'He said that you
+were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children's sake.... It was the
+biggest funeral ever seen round there.'
+
+Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half out of his pocket,
+but shoved it back again.
+
+'The only thing that hurts me now,' says Mrs Baker presently, 'is to
+think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far
+from home. It's--cruel!' and she was sobbing again.
+
+'Oh, that's all right, Mrs Baker,' said Andy, losing his head a little.
+'Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down
+and buried in Sydney.' Which was about the first thing Andy had told her
+that evening that wasn't a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as
+he sold his wool.
+
+'It's very kind indeed of Ned,' sobbed Mrs Baker. 'I'd never have
+dreamed he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all
+along. And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?'
+
+'Yes,' said Andy--then one of his 'happy thoughts' struck him. 'Except
+that he hoped you'd shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you've got friends
+and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the children.
+He told me to tell you that.'
+
+'He was thoughtful up to the end,' said Mrs Baker. 'It was just like
+poor Robert--always thinking of me and the children. We are going to
+Sydney next week.'
+
+Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted
+to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up
+and bumped against each other, and got each other's hats, and promised
+Mrs Baker we'd come again.
+
+'Thank you very much for coming,' she said, shaking hands with us. 'I
+feel much better now. You don't know how much you have relieved me. Now,
+mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.'
+
+Andy caught her sister's eye and jerked his head towards the door to let
+her know he wanted to speak to her outside.
+
+'Good-bye, Mrs Baker,' he said, holding on to her hand. 'And don't you
+fret. You've--you've got the children yet. It's--it's all for the best;
+and, besides, the Boss said you wasn't to fret.' And he blundered out
+after me and Miss Standish.
+
+She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.
+
+'I want you to give that to her,' he said; 'it's his letters and papers.
+I hadn't the heart to give it to her, somehow.'
+
+'Tell me, Mr M'Culloch,' she said. 'You've kept something back--you
+haven't told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know.
+Was it an accident--or the drink?'
+
+'It was the drink,' said Andy. 'I was going to tell you--I thought it
+would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow,
+I couldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me.'
+
+'Tell me all,' she said. 'It would be better for me to know.'
+
+'Come a little farther away from the house,' said Andy. She came along
+the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he
+could.
+
+'I'll hurry her off to Sydney,' she said. 'We can get away this week as
+well as next.' Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly,
+her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She
+looked splendid.
+
+'I want to thank you for her sake,' she said quickly. 'You are good men!
+I like the Bushmen! They are grand men--they are noble! I'll probably
+never see either of you again, so it doesn't matter,' and she put her
+white hand on Andy's shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the
+mouth. 'And you, too!' she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had
+to stoop. 'Good-bye!' she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her
+hand to us. We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.
+
+I don't think it did either of us any harm.
+
+
+
+
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+
+
+This is a story--about the only one--of Job Falconer, Boss of the
+Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales in the early
+Eighties--when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs out of the
+hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.
+
+Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete, and as
+his family grew up he would become as angry as it was in his easy-going
+nature to become if reference were made to the incident in his presence.
+But his wife--little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer--often told the
+story (in the mysterious voice which women use in speaking of private
+matters amongst themselves--but with brightening eyes) to women friends
+over tea; and always to a new woman friend. And on such occasions she
+would be particularly tender towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his
+thin, sandy hair in a way that embarrassed him in company--made him look
+as sheepish as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned
+amongst the ewes. And the woman friend on parting would give Job's hand
+a squeeze which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she
+could love him.
+
+According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been
+tall, and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered. But he wasn't.
+He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy (his skin
+was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber), and his
+eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly, his arms were
+short, and his legs bowed to the saddle. Altogether he was an awkward,
+unlovely Bush bird--on foot; in the saddle it was different. He hadn't
+even a 'temper'.
+
+The impression on Job's mind which many years afterwards brought about
+the incident was strong enough. When Job was a boy of fourteen he saw
+his father's horse come home riderless--circling and snorting up by the
+stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on one of the snapped
+ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side with bruised
+pommel and knee-pad broken off.
+
+Job's father wasn't hurt much, but Job's mother, an emotional woman, and
+then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock for three months
+only. 'She wasn't quite right in her head,' they said, 'from the day
+the horse came home till the last hour before she died.' And, strange to
+say, Job's father (from whom Job inherited his seemingly placid nature)
+died three months later. The doctor from the town was of the opinion
+that he must have 'sustained internal injuries' when the horse threw
+him. 'Doc. Wild' (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job's father was
+hurt inside when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn't pull
+round. But doctors differ all over the world.
+
+
+Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way. He had been
+married a year, and had lately started wool-raising on a pastoral lease
+he had taken up at Talbragar: it was a new run, with new slab-and-bark
+huts on the creek for a homestead, new shearing-shed, yards--wife and
+everything new, and he was expecting a baby. Job felt brand-new himself
+at the time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman;
+but Gerty was a settler's daughter. The newness took away some of the
+loneliness, she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the
+scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight,
+as the bark and slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers.
+And there's nothing under God's sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as
+a deserted old home in the Bush.
+
+Job's wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the
+run, and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman
+from within the kicking radius in Lancashire--wife of a selector) was
+only seven miles away. She promised to be on hand, and came over two or
+three times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty's time drew near, and
+wished that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty
+miles away), as originally proposed. Gerty's mother, who lived in town,
+was coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with
+the town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a
+doctor who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty
+miles away.
+
+Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had
+more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan,
+and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of
+the district together--maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or
+he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions--or, perhaps, because he'd do
+things which no 'respectable practitioner' dared do. I've described him
+in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn't.
+There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank
+fearfully, and 'on his own', but was seldom incapable of performing an
+operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when
+perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had
+a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His
+movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be--in a town
+hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog
+shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's, or boundary-rider's hut;
+in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp--or, when the horrors were
+on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost
+all his things sometimes--even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin
+bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once;
+then he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him.
+
+His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he
+rode as far and fast to a squatter's home as to a swagman's camp. When
+nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and
+the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He
+had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by
+squatters for 'pulling round' their wives or children; but such offers
+always angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered
+a 10 Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no
+diploma; but the magistrate, on reading certain papers, suggested a
+settlement out of court, which both doctors agreed to--the other doctor
+apologising briefly in the local paper. It was noticed thereafter
+that the magistrate and town doctors treated Doc. Wild with great
+respect--even at his worst. The thing was never explained, and the case
+deepened the mystery which surrounded Doc. Wild.
+
+As Job Falconer's crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty
+on the main road, about half-way between Job's station and the town.
+(Township of Come-by-Chance--expressive name; and the shanty was the
+'Dead Dingo Hotel', kept by James Myles--known as 'Poisonous Jimmy',
+perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.) Job's
+brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel with instructions
+to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor didn't either drink
+himself into the 'D.T.'s' or get sober enough to become restless; to
+prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did; and to bring him
+to the station in about a week's time. Mac. (rather more careless,
+brighter, and more energetic than his brother) was carrying out these
+instructions while pretending, with rather great success, to be himself
+on the spree at the shanty.
+
+But one morning, early in the specified week, Job's uneasiness was
+suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy
+for the neighbour's wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance to hurry
+out Gerty's mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac. were
+getting on. On the arrival of the neighbour's wife, who drove over in a
+spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.
+
+'Don't be anxious, Job,' said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her. 'We'll
+be all right. Wait! you'd better take the gun--you might see those
+dingoes again. I'll get it for you.'
+
+The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep; and Job and
+Gerty had started three together close to the track the last time they
+were out in company--without the gun, of course. Gerty took the loaded
+gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall, carried it out,
+and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again and then rode
+off.
+
+It was a hot day--the beginning of a long drought, as Job found to his
+bitter cost. He followed the track for five or six miles through the
+thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off to make a short cut to the
+main road across a big ring-barked flat. The tall gum-trees had been
+ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out round the butts), or rather
+'sapped'--that is, a ring cut in through the sap--in order to kill them,
+so that the little strength in the 'poor' soil should not be drawn out
+by the living roots, and the natural grass (on which Australian stock
+depends) should have a better show. The hard, dead trees raised their
+barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches for three or four
+miles, and the grey and brown grass stood tall between, dying in the
+first breaths of the coming drought. All was becoming grey and ashen
+here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects, and the pale brassy
+dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with
+its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready
+(it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for
+shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was
+saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush
+fashion, hitched a little to one side--and I'm not sure that he didn't
+have a leg thrown up and across in front of the pommel of the saddle--he
+was riding along in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking
+fatherly thoughts in advance, perhaps, when suddenly a great black,
+greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the track amongst
+the dry tufts of grass and shreds of dead bark, and started up a
+sapling. 'It was a whopper,' Job said afterwards; 'must have been over
+six feet, and a foot across the body. It scared me nearly as much as the
+filly.'
+
+The filly shied off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively,
+as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the
+rein--lying loosely on the pommel--the filly 'fetched up' against a dead
+box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup
+to pocket. 'I felt the blood flare up,' he said, 'and I knowed that
+that'--(Job swore now and then in an easy-going way)--'I knowed that
+that blanky leg was broken alright. I threw the gun from me and freed
+my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall to the
+right, as the filly started off again.'
+
+What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer,
+and Job's own 'wanderings in his mind', as he called them. 'They took
+a blanky mean advantage of me,' he said, 'when they had me down and I
+couldn't talk sense.'
+
+The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring--as a mob of
+brumbies, when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke. Job's
+leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible. But he
+thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix. No doubt the scene at
+the lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him: his father's
+horse appeared riderless, and he saw the look in his mother's eyes.
+
+Now a Bushman's first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this is
+that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed, and the horse's
+tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there for days, for
+weeks--till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones. Job was on an
+old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for
+months, but he did not consider this. He crawled to his gun, then to a
+log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him. How he did it he doesn't
+know. Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log, took aim
+at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over and lay with his
+head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down, rested on his
+neck. He had fainted. The crows were interested, and the ants would come
+by-and-by.
+
+
+Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed,
+after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no
+other possible way. He often turned up where and when he was wanted
+above all men, and at no other time. He had gipsy blood, they said; but,
+anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had, and living
+the life he lived--and doing the things he did--it was quite probable
+that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world
+all round and between us, of which we only see distorted faces and hear
+disjointed utterances when we are 'suffering a recovery'--or going mad.
+
+On the morning of Job's accident, and after a long brooding silence,
+Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer--
+
+'Git the hosses, Mac. We'll go to the station.'
+
+Mac., used to the doctor's eccentricities, went to see about the horses.
+
+And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer--Job's mother-in-law--on
+her way from the town to the station. She stayed to have a cup of tea
+and give her horses a feed. She was square-faced, and considered a
+rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh, good
+sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes. She lived
+in the town comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband
+left in the bank. She drove an American waggonette with a good width
+and length of 'tray' behind, and on this occasion she had a pole and two
+horses. In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows, a generous
+pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries,
+delicacies, and luxuries. All round she was an excellent mother-in-law
+for a man to have on hand at a critical time.
+
+And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her
+right here. She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace
+and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home! Then it's
+'Write to Mother! Wire for Mother! Send some one to fetch Mother! I'll
+go and bring Mother!' and if she is not near: 'Oh, I wish Mother were
+here! If Mother were only near!' And when she is on the spot, the
+anxious son-in-law: 'Don't YOU go, Mother! You'll stay, won't you,
+Mother?--till we're all right? I'll get some one to look after your
+house, Mother, while you're here.' But Job Falconer was fond of his
+mother-in-law, all times.
+
+Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses. Mrs
+Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her about a mile
+before she reached the homestead track, which turned in through the
+scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
+
+Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along in
+the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat
+through the dead, naked branches. Mac. looked that way. The crows were
+hopping about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat,
+flopping down from branch to branch to the grass, then rising hurriedly
+and circling.
+
+'Dead beast there!' said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.
+
+'No--dying,' said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more
+intellect.
+
+'There's some steers of Job's out there somewhere,' muttered Mac. Then
+suddenly, 'It ain't drought--it's the ploorer at last! or I'm blanked!'
+
+Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, which
+was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto kept clear of
+Job's run.
+
+'We'll go and see, if you like,' suggested Doc. Wild.
+
+They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way amongst
+the dried tufts and fallen branches.
+
+'Theer ain't no sign o' cattle theer,' said the doctor; 'more likely a
+ewe in trouble about her lamb.'
+
+'Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,' said Mac. 'I wish we had a
+gun--might get a shot at them.'
+
+Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of
+a hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. 'In case I feel obliged to
+shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,' he explained once,
+whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly,
+without result.
+
+'We'd never git near enough for a shot,' said the doctor; then he
+commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost
+Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,--
+
+   '"The crows kept flyin' up, boys!
+       The crows kept flyin' up!
+    The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
+       Though he was but a pup."'
+
+'It must be something or other,' muttered Mac. 'Look at them blanky
+crows!'
+
+    '"The lost was found, we brought him round,
+       And took him from the place,
+    While the ants was swarmin' on the ground,
+       And the crows was sayin' grace!"'
+
+'My God! what's that?' cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode
+a tall horse.
+
+It was Job's filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as
+they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and
+her head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against
+the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write
+the reason of it there.
+
+The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat
+pocket, and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner;
+then something--professional instinct or the something supernatural
+about the doctor--led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass,
+where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly,
+which must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac.
+followed the doctor, shaking violently.
+
+'Oh, my God!' he cried, with the woman in his voice--and his face so
+pale that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said--'oh,
+my God! he's shot himself!'
+
+'No, he hasn't,' said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier
+position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then
+he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. 'He's got a
+broken leg,' said the doctor. Even then he couldn't resist making a
+characteristic remark, half to himself: 'A man doesn't shoot himself
+when he's going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he
+can see a long way into the future.' Then he took out his whisky-flask
+and said briskly to Mac., 'Leave me your water-bag' (Mac. carried a
+canvas water-bag slung under his horse's neck), 'ride back to the track,
+stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here. Tell her it's only a
+broken leg.'
+
+Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.
+
+As he worked the doctor muttered: 'He shot his horse. That's what gits
+me. The fool might have lain there for a week. I'd never have suspected
+spite in that carcass, and I ought to know men.'
+
+But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.
+
+'Where's the filly?' cried Job suddenly between groans.
+
+'She's all right,' said the doctor.
+
+'Stop her!' cried Job, struggling to rise--'stop her!--oh God! my leg.'
+
+'Keep quiet, you fool!'
+
+'Stop her!' yelled Job.
+
+'Why stop her?' asked the doctor. 'She won't go fur,' he added.
+
+'She'll go home to Gerty,' shouted Job. 'For God's sake stop her!'
+
+'O--h!' drawled the doctor to himself. 'I might have guessed that. And I
+ought to know men.'
+
+'Don't take me home!' demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval. 'Take me
+to Poisonous Jimmy's and tell Gerty I'm on the spree.'
+
+When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was in
+his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages. The
+lower half of Job's trouser-leg and his 'lastic-side boot lay on the
+ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched between
+two strips of bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows, and bound by
+saddle-straps.
+
+'That's all I kin do for him for the present.'
+
+Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived rather pale and
+a little shaky: nevertheless she called out, as soon as she got within
+earshot of the doctor--
+
+'What's Job been doing now?' (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable
+for doing anything.)
+
+'He's got his leg broke and shot his horse,' replied the doctor. 'But,'
+he added, 'whether he's been a hero or a fool I dunno. Anyway, it's a
+mess all round.'
+
+They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap,
+backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in. It was a
+ticklish job, but they had to manage it: Job, maddened by pain and heat,
+only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to
+them to stop his horse.
+
+'Lucky we got him before the ants did,' muttered the doctor. Then he had
+an inspiration--
+
+'You bring him on to the shepherd's hut this side the station. We must
+leave him there. Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him now and then;
+when the brandy's done pour whisky, then gin--keep the rum till the
+last' (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette at
+Poisonous Jimmy's). 'I'll take Mac.'s horse and ride on and send Peter'
+(the station hand) 'back to the hut to meet you. I'll be back myself if
+I can. THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.'
+
+Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's
+which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for--except in
+Doc. Wild's madness.
+
+He rode off at a gallop. The burden of Job's raving, all the way, rested
+on the dead filly--
+
+'Stop her! She must not go home to Gerty!... God help me shoot!...
+Whoa!--whoa, there!... "Cope--cope--cope"--Steady, Jessie, old girl....
+Aim straight--aim straight! Aim for me, God!--I've missed!... Stop her!'
+&c.
+
+'I never met a character like that,' commented the doctor afterwards,
+'inside a man that looked like Job on the outside. I've met men behind
+revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo'nia; but I've met a derned sight
+more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin, here in Australia.
+These lanky sawney Bushmen will do things in an easy-going way some day
+that'll make the old world sit up and think hard.'
+
+He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour
+later he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman--whom he saw
+reason to admire--and rode back to the hut to help Job, whom they soon
+fixed up as comfortably as possible.
+
+They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job's alleged
+phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger, and the truth
+less important, they told it to her. And so, instead of Job being
+pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born, Gerty
+Falconer herself took the child down to the hut, and so presented Uncle
+Job with my first and favourite cousin and Bush chum.
+
+Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the
+homestead, then he prepared to depart.
+
+'I'm sorry,' said Job, who was still weak--'I'm sorry for that there
+filly. I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should
+get about. I wouldn't have lost her for twenty quid.'
+
+'Never mind, Job,' said the doctor. 'I, too, once shot an animal I was
+fond of--and for the sake of a woman--but that animal walked on two legs
+and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.'
+
+And he left for Poisonous Jimmy's.
+
+
+
+
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia after
+many years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise things were
+drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged. There was the same old
+grant, comprising several thousands of acres of the richest land in the
+district, lying idle still, except for a few horses allowed to run there
+for a shilling a-head per week.
+
+There were the same old selections--about as far off as ever from
+becoming freeholds--shoved back among the barren ridges; dusty little
+patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps, and called farms,
+deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little dried-up
+family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was
+the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
+Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
+in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and
+yards, and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up
+the ground and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers--the
+only people there worthy of the name--toiling (men, women, and children)
+from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done; the
+elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
+
+The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
+was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
+and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever--it started three
+generations ago over a stray bull. The O'Dunn was still fighting for his
+great object in life, which was not to be 'onneighborly', as he put it.
+'I DON'T want to be onneighborly,' he said, 'but I'll be aven wid some
+of 'em yit. It's almost impossible for a dacent man to live in sich a
+neighborhood and not be onneighborly, thry how he will. But I'll be aven
+wid some of 'em yit, marruk my wurrud.'
+
+Jones's red steer--it couldn't have been the same red steer--was
+continually breaking into Rooney's 'whate an' bringin' ivery head av
+the other cattle afther him, and ruinin' him intirely.' The Rooneys and
+M'Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child, over the
+impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney's brother-in-law, by a
+distant relation of the M'Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
+
+The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
+in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion. The
+string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
+whirling into town, to 'service', through clouds of dust and broiling
+heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
+The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up
+their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun, and sat on their
+heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily concerning crops, fruit,
+trees, and vines, and horses and cattle; the drought and 'smut' and
+'rust' in wheat, and the 'ploorer' (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle,
+and other cheerful things; that there colt or filly, or that there
+cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or 'Jim's'). They always talked
+most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name was
+possible--except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening the old local
+relic of the golden days dropped in and announced that he intended to
+'put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where he'd been going to put
+it down twenty years ago--and every week since. It was nearly time that
+somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
+
+An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
+with her 'bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it. She still drove a long,
+bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling for a
+whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins. The floor of the
+dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always ahead of the
+other--or behind, according to which shaft was pulled. She wore, to all
+appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl, men's 'lastic sides, and
+white hood that she had on when the world was made. She still stopped
+just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly's on the way in for a yarn and
+a cup of tea--as she had always done, on the same days and at the same
+time within the memory of the hoariest local liar. However, she had a
+new clothes-line bent on to the old horse's front end--and we fancy that
+was the reason she didn't recognise us at first. She had never looked
+younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled
+face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines
+till there wasn't room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and
+twinkled with humour at times.
+
+She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires,
+droughts, hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all
+the things that God curses Australian settlers with. She had had two
+husbands, and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an
+honest day's work, or any good for himself or any one else. She had
+reared something under fifteen children, her own and others; and there
+was scarcely one of them that had not given her trouble. Her sons had
+brought disgrace on her old head over and over again, but she held up
+that same old head through it all, and looked her narrow, ignorant world
+in the face--and 'lived it down'. She had worked like a slave for fifty
+years; yet she had more energy and endurance than many modern city women
+in her shrivelled old body. She was a daughter of English aristocrats.
+
+And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities--we
+grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life is worth
+living or not.
+
+I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular
+sameness of things, but there was none. The railway station was about
+the only new building in town. The old signs even were as badly in need
+of retouching as of old. I picked up a copy of the local 'Advertiser',
+which newspaper had been started in the early days by a brilliant
+drunkard, who drank himself to death just as the fathers of our nation
+were beginning to get educated up to his style. He might have made
+Australian journalism very different from what it is. There was nothing
+new in the 'Advertiser'--there had been nothing new since the last time
+the drunkard had been sober enough to hold a pen. There was the same
+old 'enjoyable trip' to Drybone (whereof the editor was the hero), and
+something about an on-the-whole very enjoyable evening in some place
+that was tastefully decorated, and where the visitors did justice to the
+good things provided, and the small hours, and dancing, and our host and
+hostess, and respected fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang
+very nicely, and a young Mr Somebody favoured the company with a comic
+song.
+
+There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old
+subscriber, who said that 'he had said before and would say again', and
+he proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper when
+we first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old
+subscriber proceeded to 'maintain', and recalled attention to the fact
+that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few
+abstract, incoherent remarks about the 'surrounding district', and
+concluded by stating that he 'must now conclude', and thanking the
+editor for trespassing on the aforesaid valuable space.
+
+There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation was still
+carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence to both
+papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin--a place where no
+sane man ever had occasion to go.
+
+I took up the 'unreliable contemporary', but found nothing there except
+a letter from 'Parent', another from 'Ratepayer', a leader on the
+Government, and 'A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose was made in
+opposition to the trip to Drybone.
+
+There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable gang of
+city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway. They would have been
+a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than
+hopeless little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom
+came in on council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had
+always remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but
+on this occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had
+remembered something his grandfather (old time English alderman) had
+told him, and they were stirring up all the old local quarrels and
+family spite of the district over a motion, or an amendment on a motion,
+that a letter--from another enlightened body and bearing on an
+equally important matter (which letter had been sent through the
+post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary, handed to the
+chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times for
+private perusal)--over a motion that such letter be received.
+
+There was a maintenance case coming on--to the usual well-ventilated
+disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case
+differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming
+on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
+was not even brilliant in adultery.
+
+After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit
+it, and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with
+an address. Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away
+unnoticed in the general lunacy.
+
+
+
+
+The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+    By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
+     By railroad, coach, and track--
+    By lonely graves of our brave dead,
+     Up-Country and Out-Back:
+    To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
+     The dreamy plains expand--
+    My home lies wide a thousand miles
+     In the Never-Never Land.
+
+    It lies beyond the farming belt,
+     Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
+    A blazing desert in the drought,
+     A lake-land after rain;
+    To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
+     Or whirls the scorching sand--
+    A phantom land, a mystic land!
+     The Never-Never Land.
+
+    Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
+     Mounts Dreadful and Despair--
+    'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
+     In hopeless deserts there;
+    It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land--
+     Where clouds are seldom seen--
+    To where the cattle-stations lie
+     Three hundred miles between.
+
+    The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
+     The strange Gulf country know--
+    Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
+     The big lean bullocks go;
+    And camped by night where plains lie wide,
+     Like some old ocean's bed,
+    The watchmen in the starlight ride
+     Round fifteen hundred head.
+
+    And west of named and numbered days
+     The shearers walk and ride--
+    Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,
+     And the grey-beard side by side;
+    They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
+     And slumber on the sand--
+    Sad memories sleep as years go round
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+    By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
+     Through years of flood and drought,
+    The best of English black-sheep work
+     Their own salvation out:
+    Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown--
+     Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed--
+    They live the Dead Past grimly down!
+     Where boundary-riders ride.
+
+    The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
+     Then rose above his shame,
+    Tramps West in mateship with the man
+     Who cannot write his name.
+    'Tis there where on the barren track
+     No last half-crust's begrudged--
+    Where saint and sinner, side by side,
+     Judge not, and are not judged.
+
+    Oh rebels to society!
+     The Outcasts of the West--
+    Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
+     And broken hearts that jest!
+    The pluck to face a thousand miles--
+     The grit to see it through!
+    The communism perfected!--
+     And--I am proud of you!
+
+    The Arab to true desert sand,
+     The Finn to fields of snow;
+    The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
+     Where the seasons come and go;
+    And this old fact comes home to me--
+     And will not let me rest--
+    However barren it may be,
+     Your own land is the best!
+
+    And, lest at ease I should forget
+     True mateship after all,
+    My water-bag and billy yet
+     Are hanging on the wall;
+    And if my fate should show the sign,
+     I'd tramp to sunsets grand
+    With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+[End of original text.]
+
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+A Note on the Author and the Text:
+
+
+Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on 17
+June 1867. Although he has since become the most acclaimed Australian
+writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side"--his
+"real" work was whatever he could find, often painting houses, or
+doing rough carpentry. His writing was often taken from memories of his
+childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he
+states that many of his characters were taken from the better class of
+diggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time
+deeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number of
+descriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography and in
+his stories and poems. He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922. Much of his
+writing was for periodicals, and even his regular publications were
+so varied, including books originally released as one volume being
+reprinted as two, and vice versa, that the multitude of permutations
+cannot be listed here. However, the following should give a basic
+outline of his major works.
+
+
+  Books of Short Stories:
+    While the Billy Boils  (1896)
+    On the Track  (1900)
+    Over the Sliprails  (1900)
+    The Country I Come From  (1901)     | These works were first published
+    Joe Wilson and His Mates  (1901)    | in England, during or shortly after
+    Children of the Bush  (1902)        | Lawson's stay there.
+    Send Round the Hat  (1907)          | These two books were first published
+    The Romance of the Swag  (1907)     | as "Children of the Bush".
+    The Rising of the Court  (1910)
+
+  Poetry:
+    In the Days When the World Was Wide  (1896)
+    Verses Popular and Humorous  (1900)
+    When I Was King and Other Verses (1905)
+    The Skyline Riders (1910)
+    Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
+
+
+Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes,
+"Joe Wilson" and "Joe Wilson's Mates", which correspond to Parts I & II
+in Joe Wilson and His Mates. This work was first published in England,
+which may be evident from some of Lawson's comments in the text which
+are directed at English readers. For example, Lawson writes in 'The
+Golden Graveyard': "A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape
+of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
+dish we used for setting milk--I don't know whether the same is used
+here...."
+
+Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Henry Lawson
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Lawson
+
+Our 2nd etext by Henry Lawson.  See these Australian authors also:
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+Joe Wilson and His Mates
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+by Henry Lawson
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+August, 1997  [Etext #1036]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Lawson
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+
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+
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+
+Joe Wilson and his mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+
+
+
+
+[Note on text:  Italicized words or phrases are marked by tildes (~).
+
+Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Introduction:
+
+
+
+
+
+Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia
+
+on 17 June 1867.  Although he has since become the most acclaimed
+
+Australian writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side" --
+
+his "real" work was whatever he could find, often painting houses,
+
+or doing rough carpentry.  His writing was often taken
+
+from memories of his childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee.
+
+In his autobiography, he states that many of his characters
+
+were taken from the better class of diggers and bushmen he knew there.
+
+His experiences at this time deeply influenced his work,
+
+for it is interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases
+
+that are identical in his autobiography and in his stories and poems.
+
+He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922.  Much of his writing was for periodicals,
+
+and even his regular publications were so varied, including books
+
+originally released as one volume being reprinted as two, and vice versa,
+
+that the multitude of permutations cannot be listed here.
+
+However, the following should give a basic outline of his major works.
+
+
+
+
+
+  Books of Short Stories:
+
+    While the Billy Boils  (1896)
+
+    On the Track  (1900)
+
+    Over the Sliprails  (1900)
+
+    The Country I Come From  (1901)     | These works were first published
+
+    Joe Wilson and His Mates  (1901)    | in England, during or shortly after
+
+    Children of the Bush  (1902)        | Lawson's stay there.
+
+    Send Round the Hat  (1907)          | These two books were first published
+
+    The Romance of the Swag  (1907)     | as "Children of the Bush".
+
+    The Rising of the Court  (1910)
+
+
+
+  Poetry:
+
+    In the Days When the World Was Wide  (1896)
+
+    Verses Popular and Humorous  (1900)
+
+    When I Was King and Other Verses (1905)
+
+    The Skyline Riders (1910)
+
+    Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes,
+
+"Joe Wilson" and "Joe Wilson's Mates", which correspond to Parts I & II
+
+in Joe Wilson and His Mates.  This work was first published in England,
+
+which may be evident from some of Lawson's comments in the text
+
+which are directed at English readers.  For example, Lawson writes
+
+in `The Golden Graveyard':  "A gold washing-dish is a flat dish --
+
+nearer the shape of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else
+
+I have seen in England, or the dish we used for setting milk --
+
+I don't know whether the same is used here. . . ."
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and concepts
+
+which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
+
+
+
+
+
+"A house where they took in cards on a tray" (from Joe Wilson's Courtship):
+
+  An upper class house, with servants who would take a visitor's card
+
+  (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family was out,
+
+  to keep a record of the visit.
+
+
+
+Anniversary Day:  Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day.
+
+  It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement
+
+  in Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
+
+
+
+Gin:  An obvious abbreviation of "aborigine", it only refers
+
+  to *female* aborigines, and is now considered derogatory.
+
+  It was not considered derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
+
+
+
+Jackaroo:  At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a "new chum"
+
+  or newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
+
+  The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand.
+
+  A female station hand is a Jillaroo.  Variant:  Jackeroo.
+
+
+
+Old-fashioned child:  A child that acts old for their age.
+
+  Americans would say `Precocious'.
+
+
+
+'Possum:  In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally
+
+  mistaken for possums.  They are not especially related to the possums
+
+  of North and South America, other than both being marsupials.
+
+
+
+Public/Pub.:  The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel
+
+  with a "public" bar -- hence the name.  The modern pub has often
+
+  (not always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
+
+
+
+Tea:  In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean
+
+  a light snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served).
+
+  In particular, Morning Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM)
+
+  are nothing more than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal.
+
+  When just "Tea" is used, it usually means the evening meal.
+
+  Variant:  Tea-time.
+
+
+
+Tucker:  Food.
+
+
+
+Shout:  In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying drinks
+
+  for all the members of a group, etc.  The use of this term can be confusing,
+
+  so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
+
+
+
+Sly-grog-shop:  An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
+
+
+
+Station:  A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
+
+
+
+Store Bullock:  Lawson makes several references to these.
+
+  A bullock is a castrated bull.  Bullocks were used in Australia for work
+
+  that was too heavy for horses.  `Store' may refer to those cattle,
+
+  and their descendants, brought to Australia by the British government,
+
+  and sold to settlers from the `Store' -- hence, the standard draft animal.
+
+
+
+Also:  a hint with the seasons -- remember that the seasons are reversed
+
+  from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot,
+
+  but December is even hotter.  Australia is at a lower latitude
+
+  than the United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards,
+
+  and are not even mild in the north.  In fact, large parts of Australia
+
+  are governed more by "dry" versus "wet" than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
+
+
+
+
+
+     -- Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
+
+==============================================================================
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson and his mates
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+
+
+By Henry Lawson
+
+
+
+Author of "While the Billy Boils", "On the Track and Over the Sliprails",
+
+"When the World was Wide, and other verses", "Verses, Popular and Humorous",
+
+"Children of the Bush", "When I was King, and other verses", etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+~Some carry their swags in the Great North-West
+
+ Where the bravest battle and die,
+
+And a few have gone to their last long rest,
+
+ And a few have said "Good-bye!"
+
+The coast grows dim, and it may be long
+
+ Ere the Gums again I see;
+
+So I put my soul in a farewell song
+
+ To the chaps who barracked for me.
+
+
+
+Their days are hard at the best of times,
+
+ And their dreams are dreams of care --
+
+God bless them all for their big soft hearts,
+
+ And the brave, brave grins they wear!
+
+God keep me straight as a man can go,
+
+ And true as a man may be!
+
+For the sake of the hearts that were always so,
+
+ Of the men who had faith in me!
+
+
+
+And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps
+
+ Of the blood of the Don't-give-in!
+
+The world will call it a boast, perhaps --
+
+ But I'll win, if a man can win!
+
+And not for gold nor the world's applause --
+
+ Though ways to the end they be --
+
+I'll win, if a man might win, because
+
+ Of the men who believed in me.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Prefatory Verses --
+
+  The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part I.
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+
+Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+
+`Water Them Geraniums'.
+
+    I.  A Lonely Track.
+
+   II.  `Past Carin''.
+
+A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+
+    I.  Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+
+   II.  Joe Wilson's Luck.
+
+  III.  The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+
+   IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part II.
+
+
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+
+The Chinaman's Ghost.
+
+The Loaded Dog.
+
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+
+    I.  Dave Regan's Yarn.
+
+   II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+
+The Ghostly Door.
+
+A Wild Irishman.
+
+The Babies in the Bush.
+
+A Bush Dance.
+
+The Buck-Jumper.
+
+Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+
+At Dead Dingo.
+
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+
+
+
+Concluding Verses --
+
+  The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    ------------------------
+
+
+
+    JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+
+
+    ------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy.
+
+When he is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and `comes a man to-day,'
+
+as my little Jim used to say.  When they're cooking something at home
+
+that he likes.  When the `sandy-blight' or measles breaks out
+
+amongst the children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill
+
+-- or dies, it doesn't matter which -- `and there ain't no school.'
+
+When a boy is naked and in his natural state for a warm climate
+
+like Australia, with three or four of his schoolmates,
+
+under the shade of the creek-oaks in the bend where there's a good clear pool
+
+with a sandy bottom.  When his father buys him a gun, and he starts out
+
+after kangaroos or 'possums.  When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle,
+
+of his own.  When he has his arm in splints or a stitch in his head --
+
+he's proud then, the proudest boy in the district.
+
+
+
+I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy:  I reckon I was born for a poet
+
+by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the matter
+
+with me -- or the world -- but that's got nothing to do with it.
+
+
+
+There are times when a man is happy.  When he finds out
+
+that the girl loves him.  When he's just married.  When he's a lawful father
+
+for the first time, and everything is going on all right:
+
+some men make fools of themselves then -- I know I did.
+
+I'm happy to-night because I'm out of debt and can see clear ahead,
+
+and because I haven't been easy for a long time.
+
+
+
+But I think that the happiest time in a man's life is when
+
+he's courting a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him
+
+and hasn't a thought for any one else.  Make the most of your courting days,
+
+you young chaps, and keep them clean, for they're about the only days
+
+when there's a chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life.
+
+Make the best of them and you'll never regret it the longest day you live.
+
+They're the days that the wife will look back to, anyway,
+
+in the brightest of times as well as in the blackest,
+
+and there shouldn't be anything in those days that might hurt her
+
+when she looks back.  Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
+
+for they will never come again.
+
+
+
+A married man knows all about it -- after a while:  he sees the woman world
+
+through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment's
+
+pressure of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life,
+
+and is inclined to be cynical, the knowledge does him no good.
+
+It leads him into awful messes sometimes, for a married man,
+
+if he's inclined that way, has three times the chance with a woman
+
+that a single man has -- because the married man knows.  He is privileged;
+
+he can guess pretty closely what a woman means when she says something else;
+
+he knows just how far he can go; he can go farther in five minutes
+
+towards coming to the point with a woman than an innocent young man dares go
+
+in three weeks.  Above all, the married man is more decided with women;
+
+he takes them and things for granted.  In short he is --
+
+well, he is a married man.  And, when he knows all this,
+
+how much better or happier is he for it?  Mark Twain says
+
+that he lost all the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot's eye, --
+
+and there you have it.
+
+
+
+But it's all new to a young chap, provided he hasn't been a young blackguard.
+
+It's all wonderful, new, and strange to him.  He's a different man.
+
+He finds that he never knew anything about women.  He sees none of woman's
+
+little ways and tricks in his girl.  He is in heaven one day
+
+and down near the other place the next; and that's the sort of thing
+
+that makes life interesting.  He takes his new world for granted.
+
+And, when she says she'll be his wife ----!
+
+
+
+Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they've got
+
+a lot of influence on your married life afterwards -- a lot more
+
+than you'd think.  Make the best of them, for they'll never come any more,
+
+unless we do our courting over again in another world.  If we do,
+
+I'll make the most of mine.
+
+
+
+But, looking back, I didn't do so badly after all.  I never told you
+
+about the days I courted Mary.  The more I look back the more I come to think
+
+that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret
+
+in married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn't walk to and fro
+
+in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes,
+
+or lie awake some nights thinking. . . .  Ah well!
+
+
+
+I was between twenty-one and thirty then:  birthdays had never been
+
+any use to me, and I'd left off counting them.  You don't take much stock
+
+in birthdays in the Bush.  I'd knocked about the country for a few years,
+
+shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without getting
+
+anything for it.  I drank now and then, and made a fool of myself.
+
+I was reckoned `wild'; but I only drank because I felt less sensitive,
+
+and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder
+
+when I had a few drinks:  I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him.
+
+It's better to be thought `wild' than to be considered eccentric or ratty.
+
+Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank -- as far as I could see --
+
+first because he'd inherited the gambling habit from his father along with
+
+his father's luck:  he'd the habit of being cheated and losing very bad,
+
+and when he lost he drank.  Till drink got a hold on him.
+
+Jack was sentimental too, but in a different way.  I was sentimental
+
+about other people -- more fool I! -- whereas Jack was sentimental
+
+about himself.  Before he was married, and when he was recovering
+
+from a spree, he'd write rhymes about `Only a boy, drunk by the roadside',
+
+and that sort of thing; and he'd call 'em poetry, and talk about
+
+signing them and sending them to the `Town and Country Journal'.
+
+But he generally tore them up when he got better.  The Bush is breeding
+
+a race of poets, and I don't know what the country will come to in the end.
+
+
+
+Well.  It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed
+
+in the Big Scrubs.  Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong,
+
+and I was hanging round.  Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done
+
+and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place at Haviland,
+
+a few miles out of Solong.  Jack and I were good Bush carpenters,
+
+so we took the job to keep us going till something else turned up.
+
+`Better than doing nothing,' said Jack.
+
+
+
+`There's a nice little girl in service at Black's,' he said.
+
+`She's more like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant.
+
+She's a real good little girl, and good-looking into the bargain.
+
+I hear that young Black is sweet on her, but they say she won't have
+
+anything to do with him.  I know a lot of chaps that have tried for her,
+
+but they've never had any luck.  She's a regular little dumpling,
+
+and I like dumplings.  They call her 'Possum.  You ought to try a bear
+
+up in that direction, Joe.'
+
+
+
+I was always shy with women -- except perhaps some that I should have
+
+fought shy of; but Jack wasn't -- he was afraid of no woman,
+
+good, bad, or indifferent.  I haven't time to explain why,
+
+but somehow, whenever a girl took any notice of me I took it for granted
+
+that she was only playing with me, and felt nasty about it.
+
+I made one or two mistakes, but -- ah well!
+
+
+
+`My wife knows little 'Possum,' said Jack.  `I'll get her
+
+to ask her out to our place and let you know.'
+
+
+
+I reckoned that he wouldn't get me there then, and made a note
+
+to be on the watch for tricks.  I had a hopeless little love-story behind me,
+
+of course.  I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love;
+
+few marry the first flame.  Many a married man looks back and thinks
+
+it was damned lucky that he didn't get the girl he couldn't have.
+
+Jack had been my successful rival, only he didn't know it --
+
+I don't think his wife knew it either.  I used to think her
+
+the prettiest and sweetest little girl in the district.
+
+
+
+But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at Haviland.
+
+He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in love with her
+
+at first sight.  He took too many things for granted
+
+as far as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.
+
+
+
+`You let me alone, and I'll fix you up, Joe,' he said,
+
+as we rode up to the station.  `I'll make it all right with the girl.
+
+You're rather a good-looking chap.  You've got the sort of eyes
+
+that take with girls, only you don't know it; you haven't got the go.
+
+If I had your eyes along with my other attractions, I'd be in trouble
+
+on account of a woman about once a-week.'
+
+
+
+`For God's sake shut up, Jack,' I said.
+
+
+
+Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife?  Perhaps not
+
+in England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood;
+
+but it's different in Australia, where you may hail from
+
+two thousand miles away from where your wife was born, and yet she may be
+
+a countrywoman of yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too.
+
+I remember the first glimpse I got of Mary.
+
+
+
+It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all round,
+
+and a double row of pines down to the front gate.  Parallel at the back
+
+was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight rooms long,
+
+with a row of skillions at the back:  the place was used for kitchen,
+
+laundry, servants' rooms, &c.  This was the old homestead
+
+before the new house was built.  There was a wide, old-fashioned,
+
+brick-floored verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy
+
+climbing up the verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other,
+
+and a grape-vine near the chimney.  We rode up to the end of the verandah,
+
+and Jack called to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came
+
+trotting out; so it was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.
+
+
+
+More than once since then I've had a fancy to wonder
+
+whether the rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered 'em both
+
+in the end.  I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see.
+
+You do get strange fancies at odd times.
+
+
+
+Jack asked her if the boss was in.  He did all the talking.
+
+I saw a little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like
+
+a New England or Blue Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland
+
+in Victoria.  Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district.
+
+She had the biggest and brightest eyes I'd seen round there,
+
+dark hazel eyes, as I found out afterwards, and bright as a 'possum's.
+
+No wonder they called her `'Possum'.  I forgot at once
+
+that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest girl in the district.
+
+I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the fact that I was on horseback:
+
+most Bushmen look better on horseback.  It was a black filly,
+
+a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls as I was myself.
+
+I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice to see if she knew me;
+
+but, when she looked, the filly took all my attention.  Mary trotted in
+
+to tell old Black he was wanted, and after Jack had seen him,
+
+and arranged to start work next day, we started back to Solong.
+
+
+
+I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary -- but he didn't.
+
+He squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn't say anything
+
+for a long time, and then he started talking of other things.
+
+I began to feel wild at him.  He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way
+
+things were going.  He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now;
+
+but, as he didn't say so, I had no way of getting at him.
+
+I felt sure he'd go home and tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone
+
+on little 'Possum at Haviland.  That was all Jack's way.
+
+
+
+Next morning we started to work.  We were to build the buggy-house
+
+at the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down
+
+a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush
+
+before the old house was built.  There was a window in it,
+
+opposite the laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did
+
+was to take out the sash.  I'd noticed Jack yarning with 'Possum
+
+before he started work.  While I was at work at the window
+
+he called me round to the other end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone
+
+out of the way; and when we'd done it, he took the tips of my ear
+
+between his fingers and thumb and stretched it and whispered into it --
+
+
+
+`Don't hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood
+
+and hard to get off -- you'll have to take the sash out very carefully
+
+so as not to break the glass.'  Then he stretched my ear a little more
+
+and put his mouth closer --
+
+
+
+`Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,' he said.
+
+
+
+I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to puzzle out
+
+what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.
+
+
+
+That window reflected the laundry window:  the room was dark inside
+
+and there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary
+
+come to the laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back,
+
+thoughtfully watching me.  The laundry window had an old-fashioned
+
+hinged sash, and I like that sort of window -- there's more romance about it,
+
+I think.  There was thick dark-green ivy all round the window,
+
+and Mary looked prettier than a picture.  I squared up my shoulders
+
+and put my heels together and put as much style as I could into the work.
+
+I couldn't have turned round to save my life.
+
+
+
+Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.
+
+
+
+`Well?' he whispered.
+
+
+
+`You're a fool, Jack,' I said.  `She's only interested in the old house
+
+being pulled down.'
+
+
+
+`That's all right,' he said.  `I've been keeping an eye on the business
+
+round the corner, and she ain't interested when ~I'm~ round this end.'
+
+
+
+`You seem mighty interested in the business,' I said.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Jack.  `This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank
+
+in times of peace.'
+
+
+
+`What made you think of the window?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Oh, that's as simple as striking matches.  I'm up to all those dodges.
+
+Why, where there wasn't a window, I've fixed up a piece of looking-glass
+
+to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought
+
+I wasn't looking.'
+
+
+
+He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this time
+
+she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and bread-and-butter.
+
+I was prizing off the strips that held the sash, very carefully,
+
+and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any reference to me.
+
+I'd never felt like that before, except once or twice.
+
+It was just as if I'd swallowed some clockwork arrangement,
+
+unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning.
+
+I reckon it was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up.
+
+He had a quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want
+
+to hit him sometimes -- after you'd made an ass of yourself.
+
+
+
+I didn't hear Mary at first.  I hoped Jack would come round and help me
+
+out of the fix, but he didn't.
+
+
+
+`Mr -- Mr Wilson!' said Mary.  She had a sweet voice.
+
+
+
+I turned round.
+
+
+
+`I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, thank you!' I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry
+
+would help it.  I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my shin
+
+and I stumbled -- and that didn't help matters much.
+
+
+
+`Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?' cried Mary.
+
+
+
+`Hurt myself!  Oh no, not at all, thank you,' I blurted out.
+
+`It takes more than that to hurt me.'
+
+
+
+I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken
+
+at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so
+
+that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers.  I embarrassed her too,
+
+like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was,
+
+and it's a wonder we didn't spill the whole lot between us.
+
+I got away from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg
+
+with a chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him.
+
+I blundered round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he's just
+
+made an ass of himself in public.  The memory of that sort of thing
+
+hurts you worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently
+
+than the thought of a past crime would, I think.
+
+
+
+I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.
+
+
+
+`Here, Jack!' I said.  `I've struck something all right;
+
+here's some tea and brownie -- we'll hang out here all right.'
+
+
+
+Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it,
+
+just as if he'd paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that time.
+
+
+
+He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me
+
+wild at him.  Presently he said, as if he'd just thought of it --
+
+
+
+`That's a very pretty little girl, 'Possum, isn't she, Joe?
+
+Do you notice how she dresses? -- always fresh and trim.
+
+But she's got on her best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore
+
+with frills to it.  And it's ironing-day, too.  It can't be on your account.
+
+If it was Saturday or Sunday afternoon, or some holiday,
+
+I could understand it.  But perhaps one of her admirers is going to take her
+
+to the church bazaar in Solong to-night.  That's what it is.'
+
+
+
+He gave me time to think over that.
+
+
+
+`But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,' he said.  `Why didn't you offer
+
+to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in ahead of you?
+
+You miss all your chances, Joe.'
+
+
+
+Then a thought struck me.  I ought to have known Jack well enough
+
+to have thought of it before.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Jack,' I said.  `What have you been saying to that girl about me?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, not much,' said Jack.  `There isn't much to say about you.'
+
+
+
+`What did you tell her?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, nothing in particular.  She'd heard all about you before.'
+
+
+
+`She hadn't heard much good, I suppose,' I said.
+
+
+
+`Well, that's true, as far as I could make out.  But you've only got
+
+yourself to blame.  I didn't have the breeding and rearing of you.
+
+I smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.'
+
+
+
+`What did you tell her?' I said.  `That's what I want to know.'
+
+
+
+`Well, to tell the truth, I didn't tell her anything much.
+
+I only answered questions.'
+
+
+
+`And what questions did she ask?'
+
+
+
+`Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn't Joe Wilson;
+
+and I said it was, as far as I knew.  Then she said she heard
+
+that you wrote poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.'
+
+
+
+`Look here, Jack,' I said, `I've two minds to punch your head.'
+
+
+
+`And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,' said Jack,
+
+`and I said you was, a bit.  She said it seemed a pity.
+
+She asked me if it was true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said
+
+that I was sorry to say it was true.  She asked me if you had any friends,
+
+and I said none that I knew of, except me.  I said that you'd lost
+
+all your friends; they stuck to you as long as they could,
+
+but they had to give you best, one after the other.'
+
+
+
+`What next?'
+
+
+
+`She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough
+
+as fencing-wire.  She said you looked rather pale and thin,
+
+and asked me if you'd had an illness lately.  And I said no --
+
+it was all on account of the wild, dissipated life you'd led.
+
+She said it was a pity you hadn't a mother or a sister to look after you --
+
+it was a pity that something couldn't be done for you, and I said it was,
+
+but I was afraid that nothing could be done.  I told her that I was doing
+
+all I could to keep you straight.'
+
+
+
+I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true.
+
+And so she only pitied me after all.  I felt as if I'd been courting her
+
+for six months and she'd thrown me over -- but I didn't know anything
+
+about women yet.
+
+
+
+`Did you tell her I was in jail?' I growled.
+
+
+
+`No, by Gum!  I forgot that.  But never mind I'll fix that up all right.
+
+I'll tell her that you got two years' hard for horse-stealing.
+
+That ought to make her interested in you, if she isn't already.'
+
+
+
+We smoked a while.
+
+
+
+`And was that all she said?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Who? -- Oh! 'Possum,' said Jack rousing himself.  `Well -- no;
+
+let me think ----  We got chatting of other things -- you know
+
+a married man's privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl
+
+than a single man can.  I got talking nonsense about sweethearts,
+
+and one thing led to another till at last she said, "I suppose Mr Wilson's
+
+got a sweetheart, Mr Barnes?"'
+
+
+
+`And what did you say?' I growled.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,' said Jack.
+
+`You'd better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.'
+
+
+
+I wouldn't take back the tray -- but that didn't mend matters,
+
+for Jack took it back himself.
+
+
+
+I didn't see Mary's reflection in the window again, so I took the window out.
+
+I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,
+
+as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool
+
+for thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought,
+
+except by way of kindness.  Why! young Black and half a dozen
+
+better men than me were sweet on her, and young Black was to get
+
+his father's station and the money -- or rather his mother's money,
+
+for she held the stuff (she kept it close too, by all accounts).
+
+Young Black was away at the time, and his mother was dead against him
+
+about Mary, but that didn't make any difference, as far as I could see.
+
+I reckoned that it was only just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking,
+
+stand-far-off-and-worship affair, as far as I was concerned --
+
+like my first love affair, that I haven't told you about yet.
+
+I was tired of being pitied by good girls.  You see, I didn't know women then.
+
+If I had known, I think I might have made more than one mess of my life.
+
+
+
+Jack rode home to Solong every night.  I was staying at a pub
+
+some distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland.
+
+There were three or four wet days, and we didn't get on with the work.
+
+I fought shy of Mary till one day she was hanging out clothes
+
+and the line broke.  It was the old-style sixpenny clothes-line.
+
+The clothes were all down, but it was clean grass, so it didn't matter much.
+
+I looked at Jack.
+
+
+
+`Go and help her, you capital Idiot!' he said, and I made the plunge.
+
+
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!' said Mary, when I came to help.
+
+She had the broken end of the line and was trying to hold
+
+some of the clothes off the ground, as if she could pull it an inch
+
+with the heavy wet sheets and table-cloths and things on it,
+
+or as if it would do any good if she did.  But that's the way with women
+
+-- especially little women -- some of 'em would try to pull a store bullock
+
+if they got the end of the rope on the right side of the fence.
+
+I took the line from Mary, and accidentally touched her soft,
+
+plump little hand as I did so:  it sent a thrill right through me.
+
+She seemed a lot cooler than I was.
+
+
+
+Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit,
+
+you get hold of the loose end of the rope that's hanging from the post
+
+with one hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other,
+
+and try to pull 'em far enough together to make a knot.
+
+And that's about all you do for the present, except look like a fool.
+
+Then I took off the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork,
+
+and pulled, while Mary helped me with the prop.  I thought Jack
+
+might have come and taken the prop from her, but he didn't;
+
+he just went on with his work as if nothing was happening inside the horizon.
+
+
+
+She'd got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short now,
+
+so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down
+
+while she pegged a sheet she'd thrown over.  I'd made the plunge now,
+
+so I volunteered to help her.  I held down the line while she
+
+threw the things over and pegged out.  As we got near the post and higher
+
+I straightened out some ends and pegged myself.  Bushmen are handy
+
+at most things.  We laughed, and now and again Mary would say,
+
+`No, that's not the way, Mr Wilson; that's not right;
+
+the sheet isn't far enough over; wait till I fix it,' &c.
+
+I'd a reckless idea once of holding her up while she pegged,
+
+and I was glad afterwards that I hadn't made such a fool of myself.
+
+
+
+`There's only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,' I said.
+
+`You can't reach -- I'll fix 'em up.'
+
+
+
+She seemed to give a little gasp.
+
+
+
+`Oh, those things are not ready yet,' she said, `they're not rinsed,'
+
+and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me.
+
+The things looked the same to me as the rest on the line;
+
+they looked rinsed enough and blued too.  I reckoned that she didn't want me
+
+to take the trouble, or thought that I mightn't like to be seen
+
+hanging out clothes, and was only doing it out of kindness.
+
+
+
+`Oh, it's no trouble,' I said, `let me hang 'em out.  I like it.
+
+I've hung out clothes at home on a windy day,' and I made a reach
+
+into the basket.  But she flushed red, with temper I thought,
+
+and snatched the basket away.
+
+
+
+`Excuse me, Mr Wilson,' she said, `but those things are not ready yet!'
+
+and she marched into the wash-house.
+
+
+
+`Ah well! you've got a little temper of your own,' I thought to myself.
+
+
+
+When I told Jack, he said that I'd made another fool of myself.
+
+He said I'd both disappointed and offended her.  He said that my line
+
+was to stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.
+
+
+
+That evening when we'd started home, we stopped some time yarning with a chap
+
+we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary
+
+hanging out the rest of the things -- she thought that we were out of sight.
+
+Then I understood why those things weren't ready while we were round.
+
+
+
+For the next day or two Mary didn't take the slightest notice of me,
+
+and I kept out of her way.  Jack said I'd disillusioned her --
+
+and hurt her dignity -- which was a thousand times worse.
+
+He said I'd spoilt the thing altogether.  He said that she'd got an idea
+
+that I was shy and poetic, and I'd only shown myself
+
+the usual sort of Bush-whacker.
+
+
+
+I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice,
+
+and it made me miserable.  I got drunk two evenings running, and then,
+
+as it appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,
+
+when we were together --
+
+
+
+`Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?'
+
+
+
+`No,' said Jack.
+
+
+
+`Do you, Mr Wilson?' she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on me,
+
+and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said, `I do a little.'  Then there was a silence,
+
+and I had to say something else.
+
+
+
+`Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' she said, `but I can't get any one to play with me here of an evening,
+
+the men are generally playing cards or reading.'  Then she said,
+
+`It's very dull these long winter evenings when you've got nothing to do.
+
+Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he's away.'
+
+
+
+I saw Jack winking at me urgently.
+
+
+
+`I'll play a game with you, if you like,' I said, `but I ain't
+
+much of a player.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!  When shall you have an evening to spare?'
+
+
+
+We fixed it for that same evening.  We got chummy over the draughts.
+
+I had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away
+
+from the pub.
+
+
+
+Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black
+
+without committing herself.  Women have ways -- or perhaps Jack did it.
+
+Anyway, next day the Boss came round and said to me --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe, you've got no occasion to stay at the pub.
+
+Bring along your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house.
+
+You can have your tucker here.'
+
+
+
+He was a good sort, was Black the squatter:  a squatter of the old school,
+
+who'd shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn't see
+
+why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times
+
+with any of his old station hands that happened to come along.
+
+But he'd married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over,
+
+and she'd never got any Australian notions.
+
+
+
+Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed up
+
+for me.  I'm not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed
+
+that good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint.
+
+After tea I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap.
+
+I don't remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down first.
+
+There was about two feet between us.  We got very chummy and confidential.
+
+She told me about her childhood and her father.
+
+
+
+He'd been an old mate of Black's, a younger son of a well-to-do English family
+
+(with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia
+
+with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are,
+
+with more or less.  They think they're hard done by;
+
+they blue their thousand pounds in Melbourne or Sydney,
+
+and they don't make any more nowadays, for the Roarin' Days have been dead
+
+these thirty years.  I wish I'd had a thousand pounds to start on!
+
+
+
+Mary's mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected up there
+
+in the old days.  She had a will of her own as far as I could understand,
+
+and bossed the home till the day of her death.  Mary's father made money,
+
+and lost it, and drank -- and died.  Mary remembered him
+
+sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head,
+
+and singing a German song (the `Lorelei', I think it was) softly,
+
+as if to himself.  Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept
+
+out of the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round
+
+(there was a little money coming from England).
+
+
+
+Mary told me all about her girlhood.  She went first to live
+
+with a sort of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray,
+
+and then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first.
+
+I'd had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas
+
+of what the world ought to be, and she seemed interested.
+
+
+
+Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky
+
+until I remembered that I'd told her I had no one to care for me;
+
+then I suspected pity again.
+
+
+
+But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were dead,
+
+and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black,
+
+and things went on very satisfactorily.
+
+
+
+And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover
+
+and a looking-glass.
+
+
+
+I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was round,
+
+but Mary didn't seem aware of it.
+
+
+
+We got very chummy.  Mary wasn't comfortable at Haviland.
+
+Old Black was very fond of her and always took her part,
+
+but she wanted to be independent.  She had a great idea of going to Sydney
+
+and getting into the hospital as a nurse.  She had friends in Sydney,
+
+but she had no money.  There was a little money coming to her
+
+when she was twenty-one -- a few pounds -- and she was going to try and get it
+
+before that time.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Miss Brand,' I said, after we'd watched the moon rise.
+
+`I'll lend you the money.  I've got plenty -- more than I know
+
+what to do with.'
+
+
+
+But I saw I'd hurt her.  She sat up very straight for a while,
+
+looking before her; then she said it was time to go in,
+
+and said `Good-night, Mr Wilson.'
+
+
+
+I reckoned I'd done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards
+
+that she was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money
+
+might have been taken for a hint.  She didn't understand me yet,
+
+and I didn't know human nature.  I didn't say anything to Jack --
+
+in fact about this time I left off telling him about things.
+
+He didn't seem hurt; he worked hard and seemed happy.
+
+
+
+I really meant what I said to Mary about the money.  It was pure good nature.
+
+I'd be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps,
+
+if I'd never grown any more selfish than I was that night
+
+on the wood-heap with Mary.  I felt a great sympathy for her --
+
+but I got to love her.  I went through all the ups and downs of it.
+
+One day I was having tea in the kitchen, and Mary and another girl,
+
+named Sarah, reached me a clean plate at the same time:  I took Sarah's plate
+
+because she was first, and Mary seemed very nasty about it,
+
+and that gave me great hopes.  But all next evening she played draughts
+
+with a drover that she'd chummed up with.  I pretended to be interested
+
+in Sarah's talk, but it didn't seem to work.
+
+
+
+A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station.
+
+He had a good pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary
+
+to shoot at a target.  They seemed to get very chummy.
+
+I had a nice time for three or four days, I can tell you.
+
+I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with the pleuro.
+
+The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle.  Mary called `Mr Wilson'
+
+to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking.
+
+If it hadn't been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn't have minded so much.
+
+
+
+Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls
+
+went out 'possum-shooting.  Mary went.  I could have gone, but I didn't.
+
+I mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,
+
+and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer,
+
+and damned the world, and came home and went to bed.  I think that evening
+
+was the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper.
+
+I got so miserable that I enjoyed it.
+
+
+
+I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured.
+
+I ran against Mary accidentally and had to say something.
+
+
+
+`How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,' she said.  Then she asked,
+
+`How did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?'
+
+
+
+I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn't make anything out of it.
+
+Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something.
+
+But about this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room
+
+and turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table.
+
+I used to keep an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room.
+
+I straightened up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief
+
+got too dirty, and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash,
+
+I'd slip down to the river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day,
+
+and rub it up to look as if it hadn't been washed, and leave it on my table.
+
+I felt so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack,
+
+till one morning he remarked casually --
+
+
+
+`I see you've made a new mash, Joe.  I saw the half-caste cook
+
+tidying up your room this morning and taking your collars and things
+
+to the wash-house.'
+
+
+
+I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day,
+
+and I had such a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning
+
+to look the hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the evening before Anniversary Day.  Jack and I had put in
+
+a good day's work to get the job finished, and Jack was having
+
+a smoke and a yarn with the chaps before he started home.
+
+We sat on an old log along by the fence at the back of the house.
+
+There was Jimmy Nowlett the bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover,
+
+and big Jim Bullock the fencer, and one or two others.
+
+Mary and the station girls and one or two visitors were sitting under
+
+the old verandah.  The Jackaroo was there too, so I felt happy.
+
+It was the girls who used to bring the chaps hanging round.
+
+They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
+
+Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station:
+
+he was a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy:
+
+it was reckoned that there was foreign blood in him.
+
+He went by the name of Romany.  He was supposed to be shook after Mary too.
+
+He had the nastiest temper and the best violin in the district,
+
+and the chaps put up with him a lot because they wanted him to play
+
+at Bush dances.  The moon had risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky
+
+where we were.  We saw Romany loom up, riding in from the gate;
+
+he rode round the end of the coach-house and across towards where we were --
+
+I suppose he was going to tie up his horse at the fence;
+
+but about half-way across the grass he disappeared.  It struck me
+
+that there was something peculiar about the way he got down,
+
+and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.
+
+
+
+`What the hell's Romany trying to do?' said Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+`He couldn't have fell off his horse -- or else he's drunk.'
+
+
+
+A couple of chaps got up and went to see.  Then there was that waiting,
+
+mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark
+
+and nobody knows what it is.  I went over, and the thing dawned on me.
+
+I'd stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
+
+forgotten all about it for the moment.  Romany had no idea of the line,
+
+and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows
+
+and scraped him off his horse.  He was sitting on the grass,
+
+swearing in a surprised voice, and the horse looked surprised too.
+
+Romany wasn't hurt, but the sudden shock had spoilt his temper.
+
+He wanted to know who'd put up that bloody line.  He came over and sat
+
+on the log.  The chaps smoked a while.
+
+
+
+`What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?' asked Jim Bullock presently.
+
+`Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?'
+
+
+
+`Why didn't you ask the horse to go round?' asked Dave Regan.
+
+
+
+`I'd only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!' growled Romany.
+
+
+
+`Well,' said Jimmy Nowlett, `if we'd put up a sign to beware of the line
+
+you couldn't have seen it in the dark.'
+
+
+
+`Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,' said Dave Regan.
+
+`But why didn't you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along?
+
+It wouldn't have jolted yer so much.'
+
+
+
+All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes.
+
+But I didn't take any interest in it.  I was brooding over
+
+Mary and the Jackaroo.
+
+
+
+`I've heard of men getting down over their horse's head,' said Dave presently,
+
+in a reflective sort of way -- `in fact I've done it myself --
+
+but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse's rump.'
+
+
+
+But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him
+
+to play the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.
+
+
+
+Mary was singing an old song.  I always thought she had a sweet voice,
+
+and I'd have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn't been listening too.
+
+We listened in silence until she'd finished.
+
+
+
+`That gal's got a nice voice,' said Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+
+
+`Nice voice!' snarled Romany, who'd been waiting for a chance to be nasty.
+
+`Why, I've heard a tom-cat sing better.'
+
+
+
+I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet.
+
+The chaps didn't like Romany's talk about 'Possum at all.
+
+They were all fond of her:  she wasn't a pet or a tomboy,
+
+for she wasn't built that way, but they were fond of her in such a way
+
+that they didn't like to hear anything said about her.  They said nothing
+
+for a while, but it meant a lot.  Perhaps the single men didn't care to speak
+
+for fear that it would be said that they were gone on Mary.
+
+But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a big puff at his pipe and spoke --
+
+
+
+`I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, she tried it on, but it didn't go,' said Romany.
+
+`I've met her sort before.  She's setting her cap at that Jackaroo now.
+
+Some girls will run after anything with trousers on,' and he stood up.
+
+
+
+Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm,
+
+and whispered, `Sit still, Joe, damn you!  He's too good for you!'
+
+but I was on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down
+
+and wrenched me off the log and set me there.
+
+
+
+`You're a damned crawler, Romany!' I said.
+
+
+
+Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us
+
+before a blow got home.  `Hold on, you damned fools!' they said.
+
+`Keep quiet till we get away from the house!'  There was a little clear flat
+
+down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided
+
+to go down there and have it out.
+
+
+
+Now I never was a fighting man; I'd never learnt to use my hands.
+
+I scarcely knew how to put them up.  Jack often wanted to teach me,
+
+but I wouldn't bother about it.  He'd say, `You'll get into a fight some day,
+
+Joe, or out of one, and shame me;' but I hadn't the patience to learn.
+
+He'd wanted me to take lessons at the station after work,
+
+but he used to get excited, and I didn't want Mary to see him
+
+knocking me about.  Before he was married Jack was always getting
+
+into fights -- he generally tackled a better man and got a hiding;
+
+but he didn't seem to care so long as he made a good show --
+
+though he used to explain the thing away from a scientific point of view
+
+for weeks after.  To tell the truth, I had a horror of fighting;
+
+I had a horror of being marked about the face; I think I'd sooner
+
+stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him with fists;
+
+and then I think I would say, last thing, `Don't shoot me in the face!'
+
+Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man.  It seemed brutal to me.
+
+I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what the matter was.
+
+Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the river,
+
+and he couldn't help hanging out blue lights.
+
+
+
+`Why didn't you let me teach you to use your hands?' he said.
+
+`The only chance now is that Romany can't fight after all.
+
+If you'd waited a minute I'd have been at him.'  We were a bit
+
+behind the rest, and Jack started giving me points about lefts and rights,
+
+and `half-arms', and that sort of thing.  `He's left-handed,
+
+and that's the worst of it,' said Jack.  `You must only make as good a show
+
+as you can, and one of us will take him on afterwards.'
+
+
+
+But I just heard him and that was all.  It was to be my first fight
+
+since I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it -- sort of dulled.
+
+If the chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur.
+
+I thought of that, but it didn't make any difference with me then;
+
+I knew it was a thing they couldn't understand.  I knew I was reckoned
+
+pretty soft.  But I knew one thing that they didn't know.
+
+I knew that it was going to be a fight to a finish, one way or the other.
+
+I had more brains and imagination than the rest put together,
+
+and I suppose that that was the real cause of most of my trouble.
+
+I kept saying to myself, `You'll have to go through with it now, Joe, old man!
+
+It's the turning-point of your life.'  If I won the fight,
+
+I'd set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I'd leave the district for ever.
+
+A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I used to get excited
+
+over little things, because of the very paltriness of them,
+
+but I was mostly cool in a crisis -- Jack was the reverse.  I looked ahead:
+
+I wouldn't be able to marry a girl who could look back and remember
+
+when her husband was beaten by another man -- no matter what sort of brute
+
+the other man was.
+
+
+
+I never in my life felt so cool about a thing.  Jack kept
+
+whispering instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment,
+
+but it was all lost on me.
+
+
+
+Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it:
+
+Mary singing under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward
+
+going down to the river in the moonlight to fight for her.
+
+
+
+It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river.
+
+We took off our coats and were ready.  There was no swearing or barracking.
+
+It seemed an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round
+
+Jack would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else
+
+would fight Jack to square matters.  Jim Bullock wouldn't mind
+
+obliging for one; he was a mate of Jack's, but he didn't mind who he fought
+
+so long as it was for the sake of fair play -- or `peace and quietness',
+
+as he said.  Jim was very good-natured.  He backed Romany,
+
+and of course Jack backed me.
+
+
+
+As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one arm
+
+up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and then
+
+rush and lunge out.  But he had the weight and strength and length of reach,
+
+and my first lesson was a very short one.  I went down early in the round.
+
+But it did me good; the blow and the look I'd seen in Romany's eyes
+
+knocked all the sentiment out of me.  Jack said nothing, --
+
+he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first.
+
+Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me,
+
+and made a better show, but I went down in the end.
+
+
+
+I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.
+
+
+
+`How are you, Joe?' he whispered.
+
+
+
+`I'm all right,' I said.
+
+
+
+`It's all right,' whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be hanged,
+
+but it would soon be all over.  `He can't use his hands much more
+
+than you can -- take your time, Joe -- try to remember something I told you,
+
+for God's sake!'
+
+
+
+When two men fight who don't know how to use their hands,
+
+they stand a show of knocking each other about a lot.
+
+I got some awful thumps, but mostly on the body.  Jimmy Nowlett
+
+began to get excited and jump round -- he was an excitable little fellow.
+
+
+
+`Fight! you ----!' he yelled.  `Why don't you fight?  That ain't fightin'.
+
+Fight, and don't try to murder each other.  Use your crimson hands or, by God,
+
+I'll chip you!  Fight, or I'll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of you;'
+
+then his language got awful.  They said we went like windmills,
+
+and that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock
+
+if it had got home.  Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.
+
+
+
+Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head and
+
+didn't matter much -- I had a good thick skull.  And I had one good eye yet.
+
+
+
+`For God's sake, hit him!' whispered Jack -- he was trembling like a leaf.
+
+`Don't mind what I told you.  I wish I was fighting him myself!
+
+Get a blow home, for God's sake!  Make a good show this round
+
+and I'll stop the fight.'
+
+
+
+That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.
+
+
+
+I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn't going to be beaten
+
+while I could think.  I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight.
+
+There's nothing like a fight to teach a man.  I was thinking fast,
+
+and learning more in three seconds than Jack's sparring could have taught me
+
+in three weeks.  People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don't --
+
+not till afterwards.  I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn't altogether
+
+an animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.
+
+
+
+While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still air
+
+the sound of Mary's voice singing up at the house.  I thought hard
+
+into the future, even as I fought.  The fight only seemed
+
+something that was passing.
+
+
+
+I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out
+
+and felt such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped.
+
+I thought I'd put out my wrist and elbow.  And Romany was lying
+
+on the broad of his back.
+
+
+
+I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one.  He said nothing
+
+as he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating.
+
+He said afterwards that he didn't speak because he thought a word
+
+might spoil it.
+
+
+
+I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he ~felt~ I was all right
+
+when he lifted me.
+
+
+
+Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us.
+
+I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy
+
+the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
+
+
+
+`I've done,' he said.  `I've twisted my ankle.'  He'd caught his heel
+
+against a tuft of grass.
+
+
+
+`Shake hands,' yelled Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+
+
+I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
+
+
+
+`If yer don't shake hands with Wilson, I'll lamb yer!' howled Jimmy;
+
+but Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow
+
+and rode off.
+
+
+
+I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass,
+
+and heard him swear in surprise.  There was some whispering,
+
+and presently Jim said --
+
+
+
+`If I thought that, I'd kill him.'
+
+
+
+`What is it?' asked Jack.
+
+
+
+Jim held up a butcher's knife.  It was common for a man
+
+to carry a butcher's knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.
+
+
+
+`Why did you let your man fight with a butcher's knife in his belt?'
+
+asked Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+
+
+But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell,
+
+and we decided it that way.
+
+
+
+`Any way,' said Jimmy Nowlett, `if he'd stuck Joe in hot blood before us all
+
+it wouldn't be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back
+
+in the dark.  But you'd best keep an eye over yer shoulder
+
+for a year or two, Joe.  That chap's got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere.
+
+And now the best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut
+
+and keep all this dark from the gals.'
+
+
+
+Jack hurried me on ahead.  He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced at him
+
+I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes.  I said that Jack
+
+had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I'm sorry I said it.
+
+
+
+`What's up, Jack?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Nothing,' said Jack.
+
+
+
+`What's up, you old fool?' I said.
+
+
+
+`Nothing,' said Jack, `except that I'm damned proud of you, Joe, you old ass!'
+
+and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake.
+
+`I didn't know it was in you, Joe -- I wouldn't have said it before,
+
+or listened to any other man say it, but I didn't think you had the pluck --
+
+God's truth, I didn't.  Come along and get your face fixed up.'
+
+
+
+We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water,
+
+and told one of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.
+
+
+
+Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me.
+
+He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good many --
+
+he'd been mended himself so often.
+
+
+
+While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet
+
+amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room,
+
+and a girl's voice whispered, `Is he hurt?  Tell me.  I want to know, --
+
+I might be able to help.'
+
+
+
+It made my heart jump, I can tell you.  Jack went out at once,
+
+and there was some whispering.  When he came back he seemed wild.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Jack?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Oh, nothing,' he said, `only that damned slut of a half-caste cook
+
+overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany's knife
+
+got out of the sheath, and she's put a nice yarn round amongst the girls.
+
+There's a regular bobbery, but it's all right now.  Jimmy Nowlett's
+
+telling 'em lies at a great rate.'
+
+
+
+Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer
+
+with vinegar and brown paper was handed in.
+
+
+
+One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub,
+
+and we had a quiet little time in my room.  Jack wanted to stay all night,
+
+but I reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong,
+
+so he said he'd be round early in the morning, and went home.
+
+
+
+I felt the reaction pretty bad.  I didn't feel proud of the affair at all.
+
+I thought it was a low, brutal business all round.  Romany was a quiet chap
+
+after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him.  Perhaps he'd had
+
+a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn't know
+
+anything about.  He seemed a lonely man.  I'd gone through enough myself
+
+to teach me not to judge men.  I made up my mind to tell him
+
+how I felt about the matter next time we met.  Perhaps I made
+
+my usual mistake of bothering about `feelings' in another party
+
+that hadn't any feelings at all -- perhaps I didn't; but it's generally best
+
+to chance it on the kind side in a case like this.  Altogether I felt
+
+as if I'd made another fool of myself and been a weak coward.
+
+I drank the rest of the beer and went to sleep.
+
+
+
+About daylight I woke and heard Jack's horse on the gravel.
+
+He came round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door,
+
+and then, suddenly, a girl screamed out.  I pulled on
+
+my trousers and 'lastic-side boots and hurried out.  It was Mary herself,
+
+dressed, and sitting on an old stone step at the back of the kitchen
+
+with her face in her hands, and Jack was off his horse
+
+and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder.
+
+She kept saying, `I thought you were ----!  I thought you were ----!'
+
+I didn't catch the name.  An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun
+
+was lying in the grass at her feet.  It was the gun they used to keep
+
+loaded and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot
+
+at a cunning old hawk that they called `'Tarnal Death', and that used to be
+
+always after the chickens.
+
+
+
+When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper,
+
+and her eyes seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.
+
+
+
+`Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,' she gasped.  Then she gave
+
+a little ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I'm a little fool!' she said quickly.  `I thought I heard
+
+old 'Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing
+
+if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly so as
+
+not to wake Sarah.  And then you came round the corner and frightened me.
+
+I don't know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.'
+
+
+
+`Never mind,' said Jack.  `You go and have a sleep, or you won't be able
+
+to dance to-night.  Never mind the gun -- I'll put that away.'
+
+And he steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah
+
+where she slept with one of the other girls.
+
+
+
+`Well, that's a rum start!' I said.
+
+
+
+`Yes, it is,' said Jack; `it's very funny.  Well, how's your face
+
+this morning, Joe?'
+
+
+
+He seemed a lot more serious than usual.
+
+
+
+We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed
+
+and getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles,
+
+making seats, &c.  I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could.
+
+One side of my face was a sight and the other wasn't too classical.
+
+I felt as if I had been stung by a swarm of bees.
+
+
+
+`You're a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,'
+
+said Jimmy Nowlett -- he was going to play the accordion that night.
+
+`You ought to fetch the girls now, Joe.  But never mind,
+
+your face'll go down in about three weeks.  My lower jaw is crooked yet;
+
+but that fight straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked
+
+when I was a boy -- so I didn't lose much beauty by it.'
+
+
+
+When we'd done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe! if you won't come to the dance to-night -- and I can't say
+
+you'd ornament it -- I tell you what you'll do.  You get little Mary away
+
+on the quiet and take her out for a stroll -- and act like a man.
+
+The job's finished now, and you won't get another chance like this.'
+
+
+
+`But how am I to get her out?' I said.
+
+
+
+`Never you mind.  You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
+
+near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.'
+
+
+
+`What good'll that do?'
+
+
+
+`Never you mind.  You just do as you're told, that's all you've got to do,'
+
+said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.
+
+
+
+After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice.
+
+The first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious;
+
+and the second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude,
+
+and looking excited and happy.  I noticed that some of the girls,
+
+that I could see sitting on a stool along the opposite wall,
+
+whispered, and gave Mary black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past.
+
+It struck me pretty forcibly that I should have taken fighting lessons
+
+from him instead of from poor Romany.  I went away and walked about four miles
+
+down the river road, getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw
+
+any chap riding along.  I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was,
+
+and thought that there wasn't much to choose between us as far as
+
+happiness was concerned.  Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush,
+
+and feeling like I did.  I wished I could shake hands with him.
+
+
+
+But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
+
+and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree,
+
+looking at the rows of river-willows in the moonlight.
+
+I didn't expect anything, in spite of what Jack said.
+
+
+
+I didn't like the idea of hanging myself:  I'd been with a party who found
+
+a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round where he was.
+
+And I'd helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river in a flood,
+
+and they weren't sleeping beauties.  I thought it was a pity that a chap
+
+couldn't lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in the moonlight
+
+and die just by thinking of it -- and die with his eyes and mouth shut.
+
+But then I remembered that I wouldn't make a beautiful corpse, anyway it went,
+
+with the face I had on me.
+
+
+
+I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,
+
+and my heart gave a jump.  And I gave a start too.
+
+
+
+`Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?' said a timid little voice.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said.  `Is that you, Mary?'
+
+
+
+And she said yes.  It was the first time I called her Mary,
+
+but she did not seem to notice it.
+
+
+
+`Did I frighten you?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`No -- yes -- just a little,' she said.  `I didn't know
+
+there was any one ----' then she stopped.
+
+
+
+`Why aren't you dancing?' I asked her.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I'm tired,' she said.  `It was too hot in the wool-shed.  I thought
+
+I'd like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said, `it must be hot in the wool-shed.'
+
+
+
+She stood looking out over the willows.  Presently she said,
+
+`It must be very dull for you, Mr Wilson -- you must feel lonely.
+
+Mr Barnes said ----'  Then she gave a little gasp and stopped --
+
+as if she was just going to put her foot in it.
+
+
+
+`How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!' she said.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said, `doesn't it?  Supposing we have a stroll by the river.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson.  I'd like it very much.'
+
+
+
+I didn't notice it then, but, now I come to think of it,
+
+it was a beautiful scene:  there was a horseshoe of high blue hills
+
+round behind the house, with the river running round under the slopes,
+
+and in front was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges,
+
+and a soft blue peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.
+
+
+
+I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side
+
+turned to her.  We walked down by the river, and didn't say anything
+
+for a good while.  I was thinking hard.  We came to a white smooth log
+
+in a quiet place out of sight of the house.
+
+
+
+`Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,' I said.
+
+
+
+`If you like, Mr Wilson,' she said.
+
+
+
+There was about a foot of log between us.
+
+
+
+`What a beautiful night!' she said.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said, `isn't it?'
+
+
+
+Presently she said, `I suppose you know I'm going away next month, Mr Wilson?'
+
+
+
+I felt suddenly empty.  `No,' I said, `I didn't know that.'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' she said, `I thought you knew.  I'm going to try and get
+
+into the hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn't come off
+
+I'll get a place as assistant public-school teacher.'
+
+
+
+We didn't say anything for a good while.
+
+
+
+`I suppose you won't be sorry to go, Miss Brand?' I said.
+
+
+
+`I -- I don't know,' she said.  `Everybody's been so kind to me here.'
+
+
+
+She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened.
+
+I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn't seem to notice it.
+
+In fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.
+
+
+
+`So you think you'll be sorry to go away?' I said.
+
+
+
+`Yes, Mr Wilson.  I suppose I'll fret for a while.  It's been my home,
+
+you know.'
+
+
+
+I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn't pretend
+
+not to know it was there.  But she didn't seem to notice.
+
+
+
+`Ah, well,' I said, `I suppose I'll be on the wallaby again next week.'
+
+
+
+`Will you, Mr Wilson?' she said.  Her voice seemed very soft.
+
+
+
+I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm.  My heart was going
+
+like clockwork now.
+
+
+
+Presently she said --
+
+
+
+`Don't you think it's time to go back now, Mr Wilson?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, there's plenty of time!' I said.  I shifted up, and put my arm
+
+farther round, and held her closer.  She sat straight up,
+
+looking right in front of her, but she began to breathe hard.
+
+
+
+`Mary,' I said.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' she said.
+
+
+
+`Call me Joe,' I said.
+
+
+
+`I -- I don't like to,' she said.  `I don't think it would be right.'
+
+
+
+So I just turned her face round and kissed her.  She clung to me and cried.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I asked.
+
+
+
+She only held me tighter and cried.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I said.  `Ain't you well?  Ain't you happy?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Joe,' she said, `I'm very happy.'  Then she said, `Oh, your poor face!
+
+Can't I do anything for it?'
+
+
+
+`No,' I said.  `That's all right.  My face doesn't hurt me a bit now.'
+
+
+
+But she didn't seem right.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I said.  `Are you tired?  You didn't sleep
+
+last night ----'  Then I got an inspiration.
+
+
+
+`Mary,' I said, `what were you doing out with the gun this morning?'
+
+
+
+And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.
+
+
+
+`I couldn't sleep -- I was frightened.  Oh! I had such a terrible dream
+
+about you, Joe!  I thought Romany came back and got into your room
+
+and stabbed you with his knife.  I got up and dressed, and about daybreak
+
+I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the wall --
+
+and -- and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me.
+
+He's something like Romany, you know.'
+
+
+
+Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.
+
+
+
+And, oh, but wasn't I happy walking home with Mary that night!
+
+She was too little for me to put my arm round her waist,
+
+so I put it round her shoulder, and that felt just as good.
+
+I remember I asked her who'd cleaned up my room and washed my things,
+
+but she wouldn't tell.
+
+
+
+She wouldn't go back to the dance yet; she said she'd go into her room
+
+and rest a while.  There was no one near the old verandah;
+
+and when she stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level
+
+with my shoulder.
+
+
+
+`Mary,' I whispered, `put your arms round my neck and kiss me.'
+
+
+
+She put her arms round my neck, but she didn't kiss me; she only hid her face.
+
+
+
+`Kiss me, Mary!' I said.
+
+
+
+`I -- I don't like to,' she whispered.
+
+
+
+`Why not, Mary?'
+
+
+
+Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing.
+
+I'm not sure to this day which it was.
+
+
+
+`Why won't you kiss me, Mary?  Don't you love me?'
+
+
+
+`Because,' she said, `because -- because I -- I don't -- I don't think
+
+it's right for -- for a girl to -- to kiss a man unless she's going
+
+to be his wife.'
+
+
+
+Then it dawned on me!  I'd forgot all about proposing.
+
+
+
+`Mary,' I said, `would you marry a chap like me?'
+
+
+
+And that was all right.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things,
+
+and didn't take the slightest notice of the other girls' astonishment.
+
+
+
+But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same evening.
+
+I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on the quiet
+
+with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went away,
+
+I sat down.
+
+
+
+`Well, Joe,' said Black, `I see somebody's been spoiling your face
+
+for the dance.'  And after a bit he said, `Well, Joe, what is it?
+
+Do you want another job?  If you do, you'll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob'
+
+(Bob was his eldest son); `they're managing the station for me now, you know.'
+
+He could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.
+
+
+
+`No,' I said; `it's not that, Boss.'
+
+
+
+`Well, what is it, Joe?'
+
+
+
+`I -- well the fact is, I want little Mary.'
+
+
+
+He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.
+
+
+
+`What did you say, Boss?' I said.
+
+
+
+`Nothing, Joe,' he said.  `I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn't be
+
+any use.  My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.'
+
+
+
+I waited a good while for him to speak.
+
+
+
+`Well, Boss,' I said, `what about Mary?'
+
+
+
+`Oh! I suppose that's all right, Joe,' he said.  `I -- I beg your pardon.
+
+I got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales.  We used to say `on' Gulgong --
+
+and old diggers still talked of being `on th' Gulgong' --
+
+though the goldfield there had been worked out for years,
+
+and the place was only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs.
+
+Gulgong was about the last of the great alluvial `rushes'
+
+of the `roaring days' -- and dreary and dismal enough it looked
+
+when I was there.  The expression `on' came from being on
+
+the `diggings' or goldfield -- the workings or the goldfield
+
+was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ~on~ them --
+
+not in nor at 'em.
+
+
+
+Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came ----
+
+His name wasn't `Jim', by the way, it was `John Henry',
+
+after an uncle godfather; but we called him Jim from the first --
+
+(and before it) -- because Jim was a popular Bush name,
+
+and most of my old mates were Jims.  The Bush is full of good-hearted scamps
+
+called Jim.
+
+
+
+We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,
+
+and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong;
+
+and I did a bit of digging (`fossicking', rather), a bit of shearing,
+
+a bit of fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking, -- anything,
+
+just to keep the billy boiling.
+
+
+
+We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth.  He was bad
+
+with every one of them, and we had most of them lanced --
+
+couldn't pull him through without.  I remember we got one lanced
+
+and the gum healed over before the tooth came through,
+
+and we had to get it cut again.  He was a plucky little chap,
+
+and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor
+
+was lancing his gum:  he used to say `tar' afterwards,
+
+and want to bring the lance home with him.
+
+
+
+The first turn we got with Jim was the worst.  I had had the wife and Jim
+
+out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek;
+
+I had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,
+
+and I took Mary out to cook for us.  And it was lucky for us
+
+that the contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong,
+
+and within reach of a doctor, the day we did.  We were just camping
+
+in the house, with our goods and chattels anyhow, for the night;
+
+and we were hardly back home an hour when Jim took convulsions
+
+for the first time.
+
+
+
+Did you ever see a child in convulsions?  You wouldn't want to see it again:
+
+it plays the devil with a man's nerves.  I'd got the beds fixed up
+
+on the floor, and the billies on the fire -- I was going to make some tea,
+
+and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night -- when Jim
+
+(he'd been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to sleep) --
+
+Jim, he screamed out twice.  He'd been crying a good deal,
+
+and I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me)
+
+or I'd have noticed at once that there was something unusual
+
+in the way the child cried out:  as it was I didn't turn round
+
+till Mary screamed `Joe! Joe!'  You know how a woman cries out
+
+when her child is in danger or dying -- short, and sharp, and terrible.
+
+`Joe!  Look! look!  Oh, my God! our child!  Get the bath, quick! quick!
+
+it's convulsions!'
+
+
+
+Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother's arms,
+
+and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed -- a thing I saw twice afterwards,
+
+and don't want ever to see again.
+
+
+
+I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water,
+
+when the woman who lived next door rushed in.  She called to her husband
+
+to run for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary
+
+had got Jim into a hot bath and pulled him through.
+
+
+
+The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room,
+
+and stayed with Mary that night; but it was a long while
+
+before I got Jim and Mary's screams out of my head and fell asleep.
+
+
+
+You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
+
+for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
+
+there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
+
+to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise.
+
+Our wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire,
+
+and had to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn't so bad
+
+as the first, and we pulled him through.
+
+
+
+You never saw a child in convulsions?  Well, you don't want to.
+
+It must be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes;
+
+and half an hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
+
+or stretched out dead.  It shook me up a lot.  I was always
+
+pretty high-strung and sensitive.  After Jim took the first fit,
+
+every time he cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump:
+
+I was always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish,
+
+or feeling his limbs to see if he was `limp' yet.  Mary and I
+
+often laughed about it -- afterwards.  I tried sleeping in another room,
+
+but for nights after Jim's first attack I'd be just dozing off
+
+into a sound sleep, when I'd hear him scream, as plain as could be,
+
+and I'd hear Mary cry, `Joe! -- Joe!' -- short, sharp, and terrible --
+
+and I'd be up and into their room like a shot, only to find them
+
+sleeping peacefully.  Then I'd feel Jim's head and his breathing
+
+for signs of convulsions, see to the fire and water,
+
+and go back to bed and try to sleep.  For the first few nights
+
+I was like that all night, and I'd feel relieved when daylight came.
+
+I'd be in first thing to see if they were all right;
+
+then I'd sleep till dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work.
+
+But then I was run down about that time:  I was worried about some money
+
+for a wool-shed I put up and never got paid for; and, besides,
+
+I'd been pretty wild before I met Mary.
+
+
+
+I was fighting hard then -- struggling for something better.
+
+Both Mary and I were born to better things, and that's what made the life
+
+so hard for us.
+
+
+
+Jim got on all right for a while:  we used to watch him well,
+
+and have his teeth lanced in time.
+
+
+
+It used to hurt and worry me to see how -- just as he was getting fat and rosy
+
+and like a natural happy child, and I'd feel proud to take him out --
+
+a tooth would come along, and he'd get thin and white and pale
+
+and bigger-eyed and old-fashioned.  We'd say, `He'll be safe
+
+when he gets his eye-teeth':  but he didn't get them till he was two;
+
+then, `He'll be safe when he gets his two-year-old teeth':
+
+they didn't come till he was going on for three.
+
+
+
+He was a wonderful little chap -- Yes, I know all about parents thinking
+
+that their child is the best in the world.  If your boy is small for his age,
+
+friends will say that small children make big men; that he's a very bright,
+
+intelligent child, and that it's better to have a bright, intelligent child
+
+than a big, sleepy lump of fat.  And if your boy is dull and sleepy,
+
+they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest men --
+
+and all the rest of it.  I never took any notice of that sort of clatter --
+
+took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don't think I ever saw
+
+such a child as Jim was when he turned two.  He was everybody's favourite.
+
+They spoilt him rather.  I had my own ideas about bringing up a child.
+
+I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim.  She'd say, `Put that'
+
+(whatever it was) `out of Jim's reach, will you, Joe?' and I'd say,
+
+`No! leave it there, and make him understand he's not to have it.
+
+Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed
+
+at a regular hour,' I'd say.  Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim.
+
+She'd say that I forgot he was only a baby:  but I held that a baby
+
+could be trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.
+
+
+
+But, after all, what are you to do?  You'll see a boy that was
+
+brought up strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow
+
+(by the hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well.
+
+Then, again, when a child is delicate -- and you might lose him any day --
+
+you don't like to spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend,
+
+as delicate children often do.  Suppose you gave a child a hammering,
+
+and the same night he took convulsions, or something, and died --
+
+how'd you feel about it?  You never know what a child is going to take,
+
+any more than you can tell what some women are going to say or do.
+
+
+
+I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums.  Sometimes I'd sit and wonder
+
+what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he talked,
+
+he'd make me uneasy.  When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things,
+
+and I'd get him a clean new clay and he'd sit by my side,
+
+on the edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap,
+
+in the cool of the evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit
+
+when he saw me do it.  He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe
+
+wasn't quite the thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn't
+
+smoke tobacco yet:  he made the best he could of things.
+
+And if he broke a clay pipe he wouldn't have a new one, and there'd be a row;
+
+the old one had to be mended up, somehow, with string or wire.
+
+If I got my hair cut, he'd want his cut too; and it always troubled him
+
+to see me shave -- as if he thought there must be something wrong somewhere,
+
+else he ought to have to be shaved too.  I lathered him one day,
+
+and pretended to shave him:  he sat through it as solemn as an owl,
+
+but didn't seem to appreciate it -- perhaps he had sense enough to know
+
+that it couldn't possibly be the real thing.  He felt his face,
+
+looked very hard at the lather I scraped off, and whimpered,
+
+`No blood, daddy!'
+
+
+
+I used to cut myself a good deal:  I was always impatient over shaving.
+
+
+
+Then he went in to interview his mother about it.  She understood his lingo
+
+better than I did.
+
+
+
+But I wasn't always at ease with him.  Sometimes he'd sit
+
+looking into the fire, with his head on one side, and I'd watch him and wonder
+
+what he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman
+
+was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:
+
+sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he'd glance round just as if to see
+
+what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.
+
+
+
+I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or Asiatic --
+
+something older than our civilisation or religion --
+
+about old-fashioned children.  Once I started to explain my idea
+
+to a woman I thought would understand -- and as it happened
+
+she had an old-fashioned child, with very slant eyes --
+
+a little tartar he was too.  I suppose it was the sight of him
+
+that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal theory, and set me off on it,
+
+without warning me.  Anyhow, it got me mixed up in an awful row
+
+with the woman and her husband -- and all their tribe.
+
+It wasn't an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row
+
+hasn't been fixed up yet.  There were some Chinamen in the district.
+
+
+
+I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,
+
+near Gulgong, and did well out of it.  The railway had got
+
+as far as the Cudgeegong river -- some twenty miles from Gulgong
+
+and two hundred from the coast -- and `carrying' was good then.
+
+I had a couple of draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays
+
+when I was tank-sinking, and one or two others running in the Bush.
+
+I bought a broken-down waggon cheap, tinkered it up myself --
+
+christened it `The Same Old Thing' -- and started carrying
+
+from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the bush roads and tracks
+
+that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the one-pub towns
+
+and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling wilderness.
+
+It wasn't much of a team.  There were the two heavy horses for `shafters';
+
+a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings;
+
+a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points
+
+like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with
+
+the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along
+
+in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time.  I had a couple there that didn't
+
+belong to me:  I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.
+
+And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself.
+
+It was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick,
+
+and freight rates were high.  So I got along.
+
+
+
+Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I'd sink a shaft somewhere,
+
+prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me
+
+out of that.
+
+
+
+I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm --
+
+that an old mate of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards
+
+chucked up -- about thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place
+
+called Lahey's Creek.  (The places were all called Lahey's Creek,
+
+or Spicer's Flat, or Murphy's Flat, or Ryan's Crossing, or some such name --
+
+round there.)  I reckoned I'd have a run for the horses and be able to grow
+
+a bit of feed.  I always had a dread of taking Mary and the children
+
+too far away from a doctor -- or a good woman neighbour;
+
+but there were some people came to live on Lahey's Creek,
+
+and besides, there was a young brother of Mary's -- a young scamp
+
+(his name was Jim, too, and we called him `Jimmy' at first
+
+to make room for our Jim -- he hated the name `Jimmy' or James).
+
+He came to live with us -- without asking -- and I thought he'd find
+
+enough work at Lahey's Creek to keep him out of mischief.
+
+He wasn't to be depended on much -- he thought nothing of riding off,
+
+five hundred miles or so, `to have a look at the country' --
+
+but he was fond of Mary, and he'd stay by her till I got some one else
+
+to keep her company while I was on the road.  He would be a protection
+
+against `sundowners' or any shearers who happened to wander that way
+
+in the `D.T.'s' after a spree.  Mary had a married sister come to live
+
+at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her and her husband
+
+but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or so --
+
+till we got settled down at Lahey's Creek.  They were newly married.
+
+
+
+Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart,
+
+at the end of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came
+
+she wasn't too well -- and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose,
+
+and I hadn't time to get them cut, so we let Jim's time run on
+
+a week or so longer, till I happened to come out through Gulgong
+
+from the river with a small load of flour for Lahey's Creek way.
+
+The roads were good, the weather grand -- no chance of it raining,
+
+and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did -- I would only camp out one night;
+
+so I decided to take Jim home with me.
+
+
+
+Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure.  He was so old-fashioned
+
+that he used to frighten me sometimes -- I'd almost think that there was
+
+something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took
+
+any notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.
+
+There's always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish either)
+
+who'll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks as,
+
+`You'll never rear that child -- he's too bright for his age.'
+
+To the devil with them! I say.
+
+
+
+But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age,
+
+and I often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let
+
+talk too much to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen
+
+who rode in and hung their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
+
+
+
+I don't believe in parents talking about their own children everlastingly --
+
+you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are generally little devils,
+
+and turn out larrikins as likely as not.
+
+
+
+But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,
+
+was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
+
+
+
+For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me
+
+all about his adventures at his auntie's.
+
+
+
+`But they spoilt me too much, dad,' he said, as solemn as a native bear.
+
+`An' besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!'
+
+
+
+I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up
+
+a good deal of Jim's time.
+
+
+
+Sometimes he'd jolt me, the way he talked; and other times
+
+I'd have to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses,
+
+to keep from laughing outright.  And once, when I was taken that way,
+
+he said --
+
+
+
+`What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting,
+
+and going on that way for, dad?  Why don't you tell me something?'
+
+
+
+`Tell you what, Jim?'
+
+
+
+`Tell me some talk.'
+
+
+
+So I told him all the talk I could think of.  And I had to brighten up,
+
+I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination --
+
+for Jim was a terror at cross-examination when the fit took him;
+
+and he didn't think twice about telling you when he thought
+
+you were talking nonsense.  Once he said --
+
+
+
+`I'm glad you took me home with you, dad.  You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+
+
+`What!' I said.
+
+
+
+`You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+
+
+`But don't I know you already?'
+
+
+
+`No, you don't.  You never has time to know Jim at home.'
+
+
+
+And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true.  I had known in my heart
+
+all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from Jim.
+
+You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so;
+
+and when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy,
+
+or too tired and worried, or full of schemes for the future,
+
+to take much notice of Jim.  Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes.
+
+`You never take notice of the child,' she'd say.  `You could surely find
+
+a few minutes of an evening.  What's the use of always worrying and brooding?
+
+Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it,
+
+it will teach you a lesson.  You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one,
+
+before you realise that you had a child once.  Then it will be too late.'
+
+
+
+This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her,
+
+because I knew it all too well.  I never worried for myself --
+
+only for Mary and the children.  And often, as the days went by,
+
+I said to myself, `I'll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,
+
+just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.'  And the hard days
+
+went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years ----  Ah, well!
+
+
+
+Mary used to say, when things would get worse, `Why don't you talk to me, Joe?
+
+Why don't you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself
+
+up in yourself and brooding -- eating your heart out?
+
+It's hard for me:  I get to think you're tired of me, and selfish.
+
+I might be cross and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble.
+
+How am I to know, if you don't tell me?'
+
+
+
+But I didn't think she'd understand.
+
+
+
+And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing
+
+over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and shade
+
+passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load,
+
+over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again --
+
+Jim and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges,
+
+some fifteen miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek
+
+for the night.  I got the horses out and took the harness off.
+
+Jim wanted badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load;
+
+for one of the horses -- a vicious, red-eyed chestnut -- was a kicker:
+
+he'd broken a man's leg.  I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts,
+
+and the chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round
+
+with their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,
+
+munching and switching their tails.  We use double shafts, you know,
+
+for horse-teams -- two pairs side by side, -- and prop them up,
+
+and stretch bags between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes.
+
+I threw the spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side,
+
+letting about half of it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making
+
+a floor and a break-wind.  I threw down bags and the blankets and 'possum rug
+
+against the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup,
+
+and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down,
+
+and made a good fire at a log close handy, and soon everything
+
+was comfortable.  Ryan's Crossing was a grand camp.  I stood with my pipe
+
+in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the fire,
+
+and took the country in.
+
+
+
+Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range:  the banks here
+
+were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
+
+boulders, and gravel.  Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those gnarled,
+
+grey-barked, dry-rotted `native apple-trees' (about as much like apple-trees
+
+as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road
+
+that I was always glad to get over in wet weather.  To the left
+
+on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking,
+
+and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended
+
+in steep `sidings' coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road
+
+that skirted them, running on west up over a `saddle' in the ridges
+
+and on towards Dubbo.  The road by Lahey's Creek to a place called Cobborah
+
+branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left,
+
+just beyond the crossing:  all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong
+
+were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line,
+
+and so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.'s coaches
+
+and the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.
+
+There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones
+
+over a deep water-hole just above the crossing.  The creek oaks
+
+have rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller,
+
+and higher to the branches -- and the leaves are reedy;
+
+Kendel, the Australian poet, calls them the `she-oak harps |Aeolian'.
+
+Those trees are always sigh-sigh-sighing -- more of a sigh
+
+than a sough or the `whoosh' of gum-trees in the wind.
+
+You always hear them sighing, even when you can't feel any wind.
+
+It's the same with telegraph wires:  put your head against a telegraph-post
+
+on a dead, still day, and you'll hear and feel the far-away roar of the wires.
+
+But then the oaks are not connected with the distance,
+
+where there might be wind; and they don't ~roar~ in a gale,
+
+only sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go
+
+above or below a certain pitch, -- like a big harp with all the strings
+
+the same.  I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind's voice
+
+telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.
+
+
+
+I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the tarpaulin,
+
+playing with the pup):  he was standing close beside me with his legs
+
+wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the fire.
+
+
+
+He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,
+
+wise expression in his big brown eyes -- just as if he'd been a child
+
+for a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks
+
+and understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
+
+
+
+`Dad!' he said presently -- `Dad! do you think I'll ever grow up to be a man?'
+
+
+
+`Wh--why, Jim?' I gasped.
+
+
+
+`Because I don't want to.'
+
+
+
+I couldn't think of anything against this.  It made me uneasy.
+
+But I remembered ~I~ used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
+
+
+
+`Jim,' I said, to break the silence, `do you hear what the she-oaks say?'
+
+
+
+`No, I don't.  Is they talking?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said, without thinking.
+
+
+
+`What is they saying?' he asked.
+
+
+
+I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea.
+
+I thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn't:
+
+when I got back to the fire he was again on the 'possum rug,
+
+comforting the pup.  I fried some bacon and eggs that I'd brought out with me.
+
+Jim sang out from the waggon --
+
+
+
+`Don't cook too much, dad -- I mightn't be hungry.'
+
+
+
+I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new flour-bag,
+
+in honour of Jim, and dished up.  He was leaning back on the rug
+
+looking at the pup in a listless sort of way.  I reckoned he was tired out,
+
+and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put his plate on it.
+
+But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said --
+
+
+
+`I ain't hungry, dad!  You'll have to eat it all.'
+
+
+
+It made me uneasy -- I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his food.
+
+They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid
+
+that that was upsetting him.  I was always against tinned muck.
+
+
+
+`Sick, Jim?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`No, dad, I ain't sick; I don't know what's the matter with me.'
+
+
+
+`Have some tea, sonny?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, dad.'
+
+
+
+I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I'd brought in a bottle
+
+from his aunt's for him.  He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot
+
+on the gin-case.
+
+
+
+`Jim's tired, dad,' he said.
+
+
+
+I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night.
+
+It had turned a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round --
+
+it was made to cover a high load, the flour in the waggon
+
+didn't come above the rail, so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground.
+
+I fixed Jim up a comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon:
+
+when I went to lift him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars
+
+in a half-dreamy, half-fascinated way that I didn't like.
+
+Whenever Jim was extra old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
+
+
+
+`How do you feel now, sonny?'
+
+
+
+It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
+
+
+
+`Jim's better, dad.'  Then he said something like, `The stars are looking
+
+at me.'  I thought he was half asleep.  I took off his jacket and boots,
+
+and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the night.
+
+
+
+`Kiss me 'night-night, daddy,' he said.
+
+
+
+I'd rather he hadn't asked me -- it was a bad sign.  As I was going
+
+to the fire he called me back.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Jim?'
+
+
+
+`Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.'
+
+
+
+I was scared now.  His things were some toys and rubbish he'd brought
+
+from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took
+
+all his toys and a kitten to bed with him.  And `'night-night' and `daddy'
+
+were two-year-old language to Jim.  I'd thought he'd forgotten those words --
+
+he seemed to be going back.
+
+
+
+`Are you quite warm enough, Jim?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, dad.'
+
+
+
+I started to walk up and down -- I always did this when I was extra worried.
+
+
+
+I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from myself.
+
+Presently he called me again.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Jim?'
+
+
+
+`Take the blankets off me, fahver -- Jim's sick!'  (They'd been teaching him
+
+to say father.)
+
+
+
+I was scared now.  I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die
+
+(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said --
+
+
+
+`Take the blankets off me, muvver -- I'm dying.'
+
+
+
+And I couldn't get that out of my head.
+
+
+
+I threw back a fold of the 'possum rug, and felt Jim's head --
+
+he seemed cool enough.
+
+
+
+`Where do you feel bad, sonny?'
+
+
+
+No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice
+
+as if he were talking in his sleep --
+
+
+
+`Put my boots on, please, daddy.  I want to go home to muvver!'
+
+
+
+I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept --
+
+in a restless, feverish sort of way.
+
+
+
+I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the fire;
+
+I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got it
+
+full of cold water and stood it handy.  I got the spade
+
+(we always carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather)
+
+and turned a corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin
+
+down into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst.
+
+I had a tin of mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim,
+
+if death came along.
+
+
+
+I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim.
+
+His head was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
+
+
+
+Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward
+
+between the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I'd heard Mary say
+
+the last time we fought for Jim:  `God! don't take my child!
+
+God! don't take my boy!'  I'd never had much faith in doctors,
+
+but, my God! I wanted one then.  The nearest was fifteen miles away.
+
+
+
+I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation;
+
+and -- Well, I don't ask you to take much stock in this,
+
+though most old Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night;
+
+and -- Now, it might have been that I was all unstrung,
+
+or it might have been a patch of sky outlined in the gently moving branches,
+
+or the blue smoke rising up.  But I saw the figure of a woman, all white,
+
+come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the trees, point on up the main road,
+
+and then float up and up and vanish, still pointing.  I thought Mary was dead!
+
+Then it flashed on me ----
+
+
+
+Four or five miles up the road, over the `saddle', was an old shanty
+
+that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line
+
+got round as far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads.
+
+A man named Brighten lived there.  He was a selector; did a little farming,
+
+and as much sly-grog selling as he could.  He was married --
+
+but it wasn't that:  I'd thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out,
+
+spiritless woman, and both were pretty `ratty' from hardship and loneliness --
+
+they weren't likely to be of any use to me.  But it was this:
+
+I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife
+
+who'd gone out to live with them lately:  she'd been a hospital matron
+
+in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her.  Some said
+
+she got the sack for exposing the doctors -- or carrying on with them --
+
+I didn't remember which.  The fact of a city woman going out to live
+
+in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women
+
+in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra
+
+about her, else Bushmen wouldn't have talked and carried her name so far;
+
+and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now.  I even reasoned this way,
+
+thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels
+
+of the waggon.
+
+
+
+I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack,
+
+following the team.  In a minute I had her saddled and bridled;
+
+I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end
+
+and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim;
+
+I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.
+
+
+
+The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank,
+
+clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up
+
+the opposite bank to the level.  The mare, as I told you, was an old racer,
+
+but broken-winded -- she must have run without wind after the first half mile.
+
+She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company
+
+I'd have to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst.
+
+She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode.
+
+She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then
+
+-- like a railway carriage -- when she settled down to it.
+
+
+
+The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose,
+
+and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way.
+
+Let the strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position
+
+for five minutes -- and Jim was fairly heavy.  But I never felt
+
+the ache in my arms that night -- it must have gone before I was in
+
+a fit state of mind to feel it.  And at home I'd often growled
+
+about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes.
+
+I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time.
+
+It was a ghostly moonlight night.  There's no timber in the world
+
+so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight -- or just about daybreak.
+
+The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs;
+
+the ghostly blue-white bark of the `white-box' trees;
+
+a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out
+
+here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road
+
+that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse
+
+laid out stark.  Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight --
+
+every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
+
+you have to trust to your horse then.  Sometimes the naked white trunk
+
+of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off,
+
+would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush.  And dew or frost
+
+glistening on these things, according to the season.  Now and again
+
+a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch
+
+down by the road, would start with a `thump-thump', and away up the siding.
+
+
+
+The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night -- all going my way --
+
+and being left behind by the mare.  Once I stopped to look at Jim:
+
+I just sat back and the mare `propped' -- she'd been a stock-horse,
+
+and was used to `cutting-out'.  I felt Jim's hands and forehead;
+
+he was in a burning fever.  I bent forward, and the old mare
+
+settled down to it again.  I kept saying out loud -- and Mary and me
+
+often laughed about it (afterwards):  `He's limp yet! -- Jim's limp yet!'
+
+(the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright) -- `He's limp yet!'
+
+till the mare's feet took it up.  Then, just when I thought
+
+she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward,
+
+like a cable tram gliding along on its own and the grip put on suddenly.
+
+It was just what she'd do when I'd be riding alone and a strange horse
+
+drew up from behind -- the old racing instinct.  I ~felt~ the thing too!
+
+I felt as if a strange horse ~was~ there!  And then --
+
+the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk -- I started saying,
+
+`Death is riding to-night! . . .  Death is racing to-night! . . .
+
+Death is riding to-night!' till the hoofs took that up.
+
+And I believe the old mare felt the black horse at her side
+
+and was going to beat him or break her heart.
+
+
+
+I was mad with anxiety and fright:  I remember I kept saying,
+
+`I'll be kinder to Mary after this!  I'll take more notice of Jim!'
+
+and the rest of it.
+
+
+
+I don't know how the old mare got up the last `pinch'.
+
+She must have slackened pace, but I never noticed it:
+
+I just held Jim up to me and gripped the saddle with my knees --
+
+I remember the saddle jerked from the desperate jumps of her till I thought
+
+the girth would go.  We topped the gap and were going down into a gully
+
+they called Dead Man's Hollow, and there, at the back of a ghostly clearing
+
+that opened from the road where there were some black-soil springs,
+
+was a long, low, oblong weatherboard-and-shingle building,
+
+with blind, broken windows in the gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof
+
+slanting down almost to the level of the window-sills -- there was something
+
+sinister about it, I thought -- like the hat of a jail-bird
+
+slouched over his eyes.  The place looked both deserted and haunted.
+
+I saw no light, but that was because of the moonlight outside.
+
+The mare turned in at the corner of the clearing to take a short cut
+
+to the shanty, and, as she struggled across some marshy ground,
+
+my heart kept jerking out the words, `It's deserted!  They've gone away!
+
+It's deserted!'  The mare went round to the back and pulled up
+
+between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen.  Some one shouted
+
+from inside --
+
+
+
+`Who's there?'
+
+
+
+`It's me.  Joe Wilson.  I want your sister-in-law -- I've got the boy --
+
+he's sick and dying!'
+
+
+
+Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins.  `What boy?' he asked.
+
+
+
+`Here, take him,' I shouted, `and let me get down.'
+
+
+
+`What's the matter with him?' asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang back.
+
+And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim's head went back
+
+over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and glistening
+
+in the moonlight.
+
+
+
+I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach -- but ~clear-headed~
+
+in a way:  strange, wasn't it?  I don't know why I didn't get down
+
+and rush into the kitchen to get a bath ready.  I only felt as if
+
+the worst had come, and I wished it were over and gone.
+
+I even thought of Mary and the funeral.
+
+
+
+Then a woman ran out of the house -- a big, hard-looking woman.
+
+She had on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare.
+
+She laid her hand on Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me
+
+and ran into the kitchen -- and me down and after her.
+
+As great good luck would have it, they had some dirty clothes on to boil
+
+in a kerosene tin -- dish-cloths or something.
+
+
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table,
+
+wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water,
+
+dish-cloths and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner,
+
+dashed that in, and felt the water with her hand -- holding Jim up to her hip
+
+all the time -- and I won't say how he looked.  She stood him in the tub
+
+and started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes
+
+between the splashes.
+
+
+
+`Here, that tin of mustard -- there on the shelf!' she shouted to me.
+
+
+
+She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub,
+
+and went on splashing and spanking Jim.
+
+
+
+It seemed an eternity.  And I?  Why, I never thought clearer in my life.
+
+I felt cold-blooded -- I felt as if I'd like an excuse to go outside
+
+till it was all over.  I thought of Mary and the funeral --
+
+and wished that that was past.  All this in a flash, as it were.
+
+I felt that it would be a great relief, and only wished the funeral
+
+was months past.  I felt -- well, altogether selfish.
+
+I only thought for myself.
+
+
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard -- hard enough
+
+to break his back I thought, and -- after about half an hour it seemed --
+
+the end came:  Jim's limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub,
+
+and the pupils of his eyes came down.  They seemed dull and expressionless,
+
+like the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.
+
+
+
+I dropped on the stool by the table.
+
+
+
+`It's all right,' she said.  `It's all over now.  I wasn't going
+
+to let him die.'  I was only thinking, `Well it's over now,
+
+but it will come on again.  I wish it was over for good.  I'm tired of it.'
+
+
+
+She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little fool
+
+of a woman, who'd been running in and out and whimpering all the time --
+
+
+
+`Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed.  And you, Brighten,
+
+take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in that hole there
+
+to stop the draught.'
+
+
+
+Brighten -- he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be seen
+
+for whiskers -- had been running in with sticks and back logs
+
+from the wood-heap.  He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack,
+
+and went inside and brought out a black bottle -- got a cup from the shelf,
+
+and put both down near my elbow.
+
+
+
+Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it was,
+
+ready.  She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily.  I noticed that
+
+all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins and the like,
+
+that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and salt-cellars),
+
+and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible.  She was all right
+
+at little things.  I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman
+
+who put her whole soul -- or all she'd got left -- into polishing old tins
+
+till they dazzled your eyes.
+
+
+
+I didn't feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail tea.
+
+So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn't looking,
+
+at Brighten's sister-in-law.  She was a big woman, her hands and feet
+
+were big, but well-shaped and all in proportion -- they fitted her.
+
+She was a handsome woman -- about forty I should think.
+
+She had a square chin, and a straight thin-lipped mouth --
+
+straight save for a hint of a turn down at the corners,
+
+which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a sign of weakness
+
+in the days before she grew hard.  There was no sign of weakness now.
+
+She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair.  She hadn't spoken yet.
+
+She didn't ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or who or what I was --
+
+at least not until the next evening at tea-time.
+
+
+
+She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her knees,
+
+with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him,
+
+and she just rocked him gently.
+
+
+
+She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I've seen
+
+a tired needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away
+
+back into the past.  And Jim might have been the work in her lap,
+
+for all she seemed to think of him.  Now and then she knitted her forehead
+
+and blinked.
+
+
+
+Suddenly she glanced round and said -- in a tone as if I was her husband
+
+and she didn't think much of me --
+
+
+
+`Why don't you eat something?'
+
+
+
+`Beg pardon?'
+
+
+
+`Eat something!'
+
+
+
+I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her.  I was beginning
+
+to feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour
+
+was coming back into his face, and he didn't look like an unnaturally
+
+stiff and staring corpse.  I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her.
+
+I sneaked another look at her.
+
+
+
+She was staring straight before her, -- I never saw a woman's face
+
+change so suddenly -- I never saw a woman's eyes so haggard and hopeless.
+
+Then her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,
+
+like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide open eyes
+
+down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone.  And in the firelight
+
+they seemed tinged with blood.
+
+
+
+I looked away quick, feeling full up myself.  And presently
+
+(I hadn't seen her look round) she said --
+
+
+
+`Go to bed.'
+
+
+
+`Beg pardon?'  (Her face was the same as before the tears.)
+
+
+
+`Go to bed.  There's a bed made for you inside on the sofa.'
+
+
+
+`But -- the team -- I must ----'
+
+
+
+`What?'
+
+
+
+`The team.  I left it at the camp.  I must look to it.'
+
+
+
+`Oh!  Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning --
+
+or send the half-caste.  Now you go to bed, and get a good rest.
+
+The boy will be all right.  I'll see to that.'
+
+
+
+I went out -- it was a relief to get out -- and looked to the mare.
+
+Brighten had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box,
+
+but she couldn't eat yet.  She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg
+
+and then the other, with her nose over the box -- and she sobbed.
+
+I put my arms round her neck and my face down on her ragged mane,
+
+and cried for the second time since I was a boy.
+
+
+
+--
+
+* Maize or Indian corn -- wheat is never called corn in Australia.
+
+--
+
+
+
+As I started to go in I heard Brighten's sister-in-law say,
+
+suddenly and sharply --
+
+
+
+`Take ~that~ away, Jessie.'
+
+
+
+And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black bottle.
+
+
+
+The moon had gone behind the range.  I stood for a minute
+
+between the house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.
+
+
+
+She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table.
+
+She bent over Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.
+
+
+
+I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon.  I woke just in time to hear
+
+the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten's sister-in-law.
+
+He was asking her out to our place and she promising to come.
+
+
+
+`And now,' says Jim, `I want to go home to "muffer" in "The Same Ol' Fling".'
+
+
+
+`What?'
+
+
+
+Jim repeated.
+
+
+
+`Oh!  "The Same Old Thing", -- the waggon.'
+
+
+
+The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
+
+looking at some `indications' (of the existence of gold) he had found.
+
+It was no use trying to `pump' him concerning his sister-in-law;
+
+Brighten was an `old hand', and had learned in the old Bush-ranging
+
+and cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people's business.
+
+And, by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen
+
+to a bad character, the more you lose your dislike for him.
+
+
+
+I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten's sister-in-law
+
+that evening.  She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least
+
+ten years younger.  She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready.
+
+She rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,
+
+and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there.  She propped Jim up
+
+with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl.
+
+She described Sydney and Sydney life as I'd never heard it described before;
+
+and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did.
+
+She kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.
+
+And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked.
+
+If she wanted to explain anything that we hadn't seen, she wouldn't say
+
+that it was `like a -- like a' -- and hesitate (you know what I mean);
+
+she'd hit the right thing on the head at once.  A squatter with a very round,
+
+flaming red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon:
+
+she said it was `like a mushroom on the rising moon.'
+
+She gave me a lot of good hints about children.
+
+
+
+But she was quiet again next morning.  I harnessed up, and she dressed Jim
+
+and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him on the load
+
+with the 'possum rug and a spare pillow.  She got up on the wheel
+
+to do it herself.  Then was the awkward time.  I'd half start to speak to her,
+
+and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and then make
+
+another false start to say good-bye.  At last she took Jim up in her arms
+
+and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his arms
+
+tight round her neck, and kissed her -- a thing Jim seldom did with anybody,
+
+except his mother, for he wasn't what you'd call an affectionate child, --
+
+he'd never more than offer his cheek to me, in his old-fashioned way.
+
+I'd got up the other side of the load to take him from her.
+
+
+
+`Here, take him,' she said.
+
+
+
+I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him.  Jim seldom cried nowadays --
+
+no matter how much he was hurt.  I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
+
+
+
+`You'd better make a start,' she said.  `You want to get home early
+
+with that boy.'
+
+
+
+I got down and went round to where she stood.  I held out my hand
+
+and tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel,
+
+and I gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.
+
+
+
+`That's all right,' she said; then tears came into her eyes,
+
+and she suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.
+
+`You be off -- you're only a boy yourself.  Take care of that boy;
+
+be kind to your wife, and take care of yourself.'
+
+
+
+`Will you come to see us?'
+
+
+
+`Some day,' she said.
+
+
+
+I started the horses, and looked round once more.  She was looking up at Jim,
+
+who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load.
+
+And I saw that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes
+
+in spite of the tears.
+
+
+
+
+
+I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to Mary --
+
+I didn't want to upset her.  But, some time after I brought Jim home
+
+from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,
+
+nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten's shanty
+
+and see Brighten's sister-in-law.  So James drove her over one morning
+
+in the spring-cart:  it was a long way, and they stayed
+
+at Brighten's overnight and didn't get back till late the next afternoon.
+
+I'd got the place in a pig-muck, as Mary said, `doing for' myself,
+
+and I was having a snooze on the sofa when they got back.
+
+The first thing I remember was some one stroking my head and kissing me,
+
+and I heard Mary saying, `My poor boy!  My poor old boy!'
+
+
+
+I sat up with a jerk.  I thought that Jim had gone off again.
+
+But it seems that Mary was only referring to me.  Then she started
+
+to pull grey hairs out of my head and put 'em in an empty match-box --
+
+to see how many she'd get.  She used to do this when she felt a bit soft.
+
+I don't know what she said to Brighten's sister-in-law
+
+or what Brighten's sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle
+
+for the next few days.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+`Water Them Geraniums'.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    I.  A Lonely Track.
+
+
+
+
+
+The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong
+
+to `settle on the land' at Lahey's Creek.
+
+
+
+I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
+
+and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load
+
+of rations and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station
+
+out that way.  Mary drove out in the spring-cart.  You remember
+
+we left little Jim with his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down.
+
+I'd sent James (Mary's brother) out the day before, on horseback,
+
+with two or three cows and some heifers and steers and calves we had,
+
+and I'd told him to clean up a bit, and make the hut
+
+as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary came.
+
+
+
+We hadn't much in the way of furniture.  There was the four-poster
+
+cedar bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was
+
+rather proud of it:  it had `turned' posts and joints that bolted together.
+
+There was a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her `ironing-table',
+
+upside down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets
+
+between the legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs --
+
+with apples painted on the hard board backs -- that we used for the parlour;
+
+there was a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails
+
+between the uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails);
+
+and there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
+
+stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.
+
+
+
+There was the little Wilcox & Gibb's sewing-machine -- my present to Mary
+
+when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!).
+
+There was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some pictures
+
+that were presents from Mary's friends and sister.  She had her
+
+mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away,
+
+in the linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask,
+
+and a box that had been Jim's cradle.  The live stock was a cat in one box,
+
+and in another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques,
+
+two against one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do
+
+all over the world.  I had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load
+
+-- I always had a pup that I gave away, or sold and didn't get paid for,
+
+or had `touched' (stolen) as soon as it was old enough.  James had
+
+his three spidery, sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him.
+
+I was taking out three months' provisions in the way of ration-sugar,
+
+tea, flour, and potatoes, &c.
+
+
+
+I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek,
+
+where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
+
+
+
+Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,
+
+for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me
+
+as much as possible.  I soon saw what was the matter.
+
+She'd been crying to herself coming along the road.  I thought it was all
+
+on account of leaving little Jim behind for the first time.  She told me
+
+that she couldn't make up her mind till the last moment to leave him,
+
+and that, a mile or two along the road, she'd have turned back for him,
+
+only that she knew her sister would laugh at her.  She was always
+
+terribly anxious about the children.
+
+
+
+We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way
+
+to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree flats.
+
+It was a dreary, hopeless track.  There was no horizon,
+
+nothing but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees
+
+in all directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground,
+
+save for the coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road,
+
+for it was a dry season:  there had been no rain for months,
+
+and I wondered what I should do with the cattle if there wasn't more grass
+
+on the creek.
+
+
+
+In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles
+
+without seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery.
+
+The new tracks were `blazed' -- that is, slices of bark cut off
+
+from both sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line,
+
+to mark the track until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain.
+
+A smart Bushman, with a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides.
+
+But a Bushman a little used to the country soon picks out
+
+differences amongst the trees, half unconsciously as it were,
+
+and so finds his way about.
+
+
+
+Mary and I didn't talk much along this track -- we couldn't have
+
+heard each other very well, anyway, for the `clock-clock' of the waggon
+
+and the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground.
+
+And I suppose we both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened.
+
+I'd noticed lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking
+
+to each other -- noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me
+
+(as vague things will irritate one) when I thought of it.  But then I thought,
+
+`It won't last long -- I'll make life brighter for her by-and-by.'
+
+
+
+As we went along -- and the track seemed endless -- I got brooding, of course,
+
+back into the past.  And I feel now, when it's too late, that Mary
+
+must have been thinking that way too.  I thought of my early boyhood,
+
+of the hard life of `grubbin'' and `milkin'' and `fencin'' and `ploughin''
+
+and `ring-barkin'', &c., and all for nothing.  The few months
+
+at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn't spell.
+
+The cursed ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy --
+
+ambition or craving for -- I didn't know what for!  For something
+
+better and brighter, anyhow.  And I made the life harder by reading at night.
+
+
+
+It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon,
+
+behind Mary in the spring-cart.  I thought of these old things
+
+more than I thought of her.  She had tried to help me to better things.
+
+And I tried too -- I had the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road
+
+clear before me, but shied at the first check.  Then I brooded,
+
+or dreamed of making a home -- that one might call a home -- for Mary --
+
+some day.  Ah, well! ----
+
+
+
+And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles?
+
+I never thought of that.  Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
+
+Of her girlhood.  Of her homes -- not the huts and camps she lived in with me.
+
+Of our future? -- she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our future
+
+-- but not lately.  These things didn't strike me at the time -- I was so deep
+
+in my own brooding.  Did she think now -- did she begin to feel now
+
+that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life,
+
+but must make the best of it?  This might have roused me, had I thought of it.
+
+But whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me,
+
+I'd think, `I'll soon win her back.  We'll be sweethearts again --
+
+when things brighten up a bit.'
+
+
+
+It's an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
+
+we had grown, what strangers we were to each other.  It seems, now,
+
+as though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted,
+
+and had never really met since.
+
+
+
+The sun was going down when Mary called out --
+
+
+
+`There's our place, Joe!'
+
+
+
+She hadn't seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to me,
+
+who had been out here several times.  Ahead, through the trees to the right,
+
+was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,
+
+darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge
+
+in the background.  Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter --
+
+a water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain),
+
+across on the other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat
+
+between the spur and the creek, and a little higher than this side.
+
+The land was much better than on our old selection, and there was good soil
+
+along the creek on both sides:  I expected a rush of selectors out here soon.
+
+A few acres round the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence
+
+of timber split from logs and saplings.  The man who took up this selection
+
+left it because his wife died here.
+
+
+
+It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it
+
+with shingles which he split in spare times.  There was no verandah,
+
+but I built one later on.  At the end of the house was a big
+
+slab-and-bark shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen,
+
+a skillion for tools, harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom
+
+partitioned off with sheets of bark and old chaff-bags.
+
+The house itself was floored roughly, with cracks between the boards;
+
+there were cracks between the slabs all round -- though he'd nailed
+
+strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over some of them;
+
+the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags
+
+with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper.  There was no ceiling,
+
+calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and battens,
+
+and the under ends of the shingles.  But ceilings make a hut hot
+
+and harbour insects and reptiles -- snakes sometimes.
+
+There was one small glass window in the `dining-room'
+
+with three panes and a sheet of greased paper, and the rest
+
+were rough wooden shutters.  There was a pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen,
+
+and -- that was about all.  There was no dam or tank (I made one later on);
+
+there was a water-cask, with the hoops falling off and the staves gaping,
+
+at the corner of the house, and spouting, made of lengths of bent tin,
+
+ran round under the eaves.  Water from a new shingle roof is wine-red
+
+for a year or two, and water from a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water
+
+for years.  In dry weather the selector had got his house water from a cask
+
+sunk in the gravel at the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek.
+
+And the longer the drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek
+
+for his water, with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink,
+
+if he had any.  Four, five, six, or seven miles -- even ten miles to water
+
+is nothing in some places.
+
+
+
+
+
+James hadn't found himself called upon to do more than milk old `Spot'
+
+(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night,
+
+make a fire in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough.
+
+He helped me unharness and water and feed the horses,
+
+and then started to get the furniture off the waggon and into the house.
+
+James wasn't lazy -- so long as one thing didn't last too long;
+
+but he was too uncomfortably practical and matter-of-fact for me.
+
+Mary and I had some tea in the kitchen.  The kitchen was permanently furnished
+
+with a table of split slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes
+
+driven into the ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood,
+
+and two long stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves)
+
+with auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
+
+The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
+
+was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole across,
+
+with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.
+
+
+
+Mary didn't seem able to eat.  She sat on the three-legged stool
+
+near the fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
+
+Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been:
+
+she was thinner now.  She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
+
+when she was pleased or excited.  I thought at times that there was something
+
+very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
+
+about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she spoke.
+
+There was nothing aristocratic about me.  Mary was German in figure and walk.
+
+I used sometimes to call her `Little Duchy' and `Pigeon Toes'.
+
+She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate knit
+
+in her forehead between the eyes.
+
+
+
+Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Mary?'
+
+
+
+She turned her face farther from me.  I felt tired, disappointed,
+
+and irritated -- suffering from a reaction.
+
+
+
+`Now, what is it, Mary?' I asked; `I'm sick of this sort of thing.
+
+Haven't you got everything you wanted?  You've had your own way.
+
+What's the matter with you now?'
+
+
+
+`You know very well, Joe.'
+
+
+
+`But I ~don't~ know,' I said.  I knew too well.
+
+
+
+She said nothing.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Mary,' I said, putting my hand on her shoulder,
+
+`don't go on like that; tell me what's the matter?'
+
+
+
+`It's only this,' she said suddenly, `I can't stand this life here;
+
+it will kill me!'
+
+
+
+I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
+
+
+
+`This is more than a man can stand!' I shouted.  `You know very well
+
+that it was you that dragged me out here.  You run me on to this!
+
+Why weren't you content to stay in Gulgong?'
+
+
+
+`And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?' asked Mary quietly.
+
+
+
+(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was.
+
+A wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield.
+
+One street, each side of the dusty main road; three or four
+
+one-storey square brick cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron
+
+that glared in the heat -- four rooms and a passage -- the police-station,
+
+bank-manager and schoolmaster's cottages, &c.  Half-a-dozen tumble-down
+
+weather-board shanties -- the three pubs., the two stores,
+
+and the post-office.  The town tailing off into weather-board boxes
+
+with tin tops, and old bark huts -- relics of the digging days --
+
+propped up by many rotting poles.  The men, when at home,
+
+mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about
+
+the verandah posts of the pubs., saying, `'Ullo, Bill!' or `'Ullo, Jim!' --
+
+or sometimes drunk.  The women, mostly hags, who blackened
+
+each other's and girls' characters with their tongues,
+
+and criticised the aristocracy's washing hung out on the line:
+
+`And the colour of the clothes!  Does that woman wash her clothes at all?
+
+or only soak 'em and hang 'em out?' -- that was Gulgong.)
+
+
+
+`Well, why didn't you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?' I asked Mary.
+
+
+
+`You know very well, Joe,' said Mary quietly.
+
+
+
+(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me.
+
+I had had an idea of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores
+
+-- I was a fair wool expert -- but Mary was afraid of the drink.
+
+I could keep well away from it so long as I worked hard in the Bush.
+
+I had gone to Sydney twice since I met Mary, once before we were married,
+
+and she forgave me when I came back; and once afterwards.
+
+I got a billet there then, and was going to send for her in a month.
+
+After eight weeks she raised the money somehow and came to Sydney
+
+and brought me home.  I got pretty low down that time.)
+
+
+
+`But, Mary,' I said, `it would have been different this time.
+
+You would have been with me.  I can take a glass now or leave it alone.'
+
+
+
+`As long as you take a glass there is danger,' she said.
+
+
+
+`Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for,
+
+if you can't stand it?  Why didn't you stay where you were?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Well,' she said, `why weren't you more decided?'
+
+
+
+I'd sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.
+
+
+
+`Good God!' I shouted, `this is more than any man can stand.
+
+I'll chuck it all up!  I'm damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.'
+
+
+
+`So am I, Joe,' said Mary wearily.
+
+
+
+We quarrelled badly then -- that first hour in our new home.
+
+I know now whose fault it was.
+
+
+
+I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek.
+
+I didn't feel bitter against Mary -- I had spoken too cruelly to her
+
+to feel that way.  Looking back, I could see plainly
+
+that if I had taken her advice all through, instead of now and again,
+
+things would have been all right with me.  I had come away and left her
+
+crying in the hut, and James telling her, in a brotherly way,
+
+that it was all her fault.  The trouble was that I never liked
+
+to `give in' or go half-way to make it up -- not half-way --
+
+it was all the way or nothing with our natures.
+
+
+
+`If I don't make a stand now,' I'd say, `I'll never be master.
+
+I gave up the reins when I got married, and I'll have to get them back again.'
+
+
+
+What women some men are!  But the time came, and not many years after,
+
+when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still;
+
+and, amongst other things, I kept saying, `I'll give in, Mary --
+
+I'll give in,' and then I'd laugh.  They thought that I was raving mad,
+
+and took me from the room.  But that time was to come.
+
+
+
+As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang
+
+in my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house
+
+that evening --
+
+
+
+`Why did I bring her here?'
+
+
+
+I was not fit to `go on the land'.  The place was only fit
+
+for some stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife,
+
+who had no ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place.
+
+I had only drifted here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.
+
+
+
+I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only neighbours --
+
+a wretched selector's family, about four miles down the creek, --
+
+and I thought I'd go on to the house and see if they had any fresh meat.
+
+
+
+A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in,
+
+on a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice
+
+of the selector's wife -- I had seen her several times:
+
+she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman, and, I supposed,
+
+the reason why she hadn't gone mad through hardship and loneliness
+
+was that she hadn't either the brains or the memory to go
+
+farther than she could see through the trunks of the `apple-trees'.
+
+
+
+`You, An-nay!'  (Annie.)
+
+
+
+`Ye-es' (from somewhere in the gloom).
+
+
+
+`Didn't I tell yer to water them geraniums!'
+
+
+
+`Well, didn't I?'
+
+
+
+`Don't tell lies or I'll break yer young back!'
+
+
+
+`I did, I tell yer -- the water won't soak inter the ashes.'
+
+
+
+Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.
+
+I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves
+
+behind some sticks against the bark wall near the door;
+
+and in spite of the sticks the fowls used to get in and scratch beds
+
+under the geraniums, and scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there
+
+-- with an idea of helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water,
+
+when fresh water was scarce -- till you might as well try to water
+
+a dish of fat.
+
+
+
+Then the woman's voice again --
+
+
+
+`You, Tom-may!'  (Tommy.)
+
+
+
+Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.
+
+
+
+`Y-o-u, T-o-m-~may!~'
+
+
+
+`Ye-e-s!' shrill shriek from across the creek.
+
+
+
+`Didn't I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want
+
+any meat or any think?' in one long screech.
+
+
+
+`Well -- I karnt find the horse.'
+
+
+
+`Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.  And-don't-forgit-
+
+to-tell-Mrs-Wi'son-that-mother'll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.'
+
+
+
+
+
+I didn't feel like going to the woman's house that night.
+
+I felt -- and the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart --
+
+that this was what Mary would come to if I left her here.
+
+
+
+I turned and started to walk home, fast.  I'd made up my mind.
+
+I'd take Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning --
+
+I forgot about the load I had to take to the sheep station.
+
+I'd say, `Look here, Girlie' (that's what I used to call her),
+
+`we'll leave this wretched life; we'll leave the Bush for ever!
+
+We'll go to Sydney, and I'll be a man! and work my way up.'
+
+And I'd sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.
+
+
+
+When I got to the hut it was lighted up.  Mary had the only kerosene lamp,
+
+a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going.  She had got
+
+both rooms washed out -- to James's disgust, for he had to move
+
+the furniture and boxes about.  She had a lot of things unpacked
+
+on the table; she had laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf --
+
+a slab on two pegs over the fireplace -- and put the little wooden clock
+
+in the centre and some of the ornaments on each side, and was tacking
+
+a strip of vandyked American oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.
+
+
+
+`How does that look, Joe?  We'll soon get things ship-shape.'
+
+
+
+I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks.  I went out in the kitchen,
+
+drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.
+
+
+
+Somehow I didn't feel satisfied with the way things had gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   II.  `Past Carin''.
+
+
+
+
+
+Next morning things looked a lot brighter.  Things always look brighter
+
+in the morning -- more so in the Australian Bush, I should think,
+
+than in most other places.  It is when the sun goes down
+
+on the dark bed of the lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire
+
+and then fades, and then glows out again, like a bank of coals,
+
+and then burns away to ashes -- it is then that old things come home to one.
+
+And strange, new-old things too, that haunt and depress you terribly,
+
+and that you can't understand.  I often think how, at sunset,
+
+the past must come home to new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia
+
+and drifted into the Bush.  I used to think that they couldn't have
+
+much brains, or the loneliness would drive them mad.
+
+
+
+I'd decided to let James take the team for a trip or two.
+
+He could drive alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt
+
+would manage better than me -- as long as the novelty lasted;
+
+and I'd stay at home for a week or so, till Mary got used to the place,
+
+or I could get a girl from somewhere to come and stay with her.
+
+The first weeks or few months of loneliness are the worst, as a rule,
+
+I believe, as they say the first weeks in jail are -- I was never there.
+
+I know it's so with tramping or hard graft*:  the first day or two
+
+are twice as hard as any of the rest.  But, for my part,
+
+I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the last days
+
+used to be the worst with me:  then I'd have to make a move, or drink.
+
+When you've been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,
+
+you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts -- provided you have
+
+any imagination at all.  You'll sometimes sit of an evening
+
+and watch the lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one
+
+that's never likely to come that way -- some one, or a stranger,
+
+that you can't and don't really expect to see.  I think that most men
+
+who have been alone in the Bush for any length of time --
+
+and married couples too -- are more or less mad.  With married couples it is
+
+generally the husband who is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come.
+
+The woman seems to stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own
+
+with strangers, as a rule.  It's only afterwards, and looking back,
+
+that you see how queer you got.  Shepherds and boundary-riders,
+
+who are alone for months, ~must~ have their periodical spree,
+
+at the nearest shanty, else they'd go raving mad.  Drink is the only break
+
+in the awful monotony, and the yearly or half-yearly spree
+
+is the only thing they've got to look forward to:  it keeps their minds fixed
+
+on something definite ahead.
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Graft', work.  The term is now applied, in Australia, to all sorts of work,
+
+  from bullock-driving to writing poetry.
+
+--
+
+
+
+But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of loneliness.
+
+~Weeks~, rather, I should say, for it wasn't as bad as it might have been
+
+farther up-country:  there was generally some one came of a Sunday afternoon
+
+-- a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe a family, --
+
+or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses.  On a quiet Sunday,
+
+after I'd brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and herself -- just the same
+
+as if we were in town -- and make me get up on one end and put on a collar
+
+and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.  She said she wanted
+
+to keep me civilised.  She tried to make a gentleman of me for years,
+
+but gave it up gradually.
+
+
+
+Well.  It was the first morning on the creek:  I was greasing
+
+the waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary
+
+hanging out clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood,
+
+when I heard her being hailed as `Hi, missus!' from the front slip-rails.
+
+
+
+It was a boy on horseback.  He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy
+
+of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs,
+
+especially his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged
+
+to a grown man.  He had a good face and frank grey eyes.
+
+An old, nearly black cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears,
+
+turning them out at right angles from his head, and rather dirty
+
+sprouts they were.  He wore a dirty torn Crimean shirt;
+
+and a pair of man's moleskin trousers rolled up above the knees,
+
+with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide belt.
+
+I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough for him,
+
+he always rolled 'em up above the knees when on horseback,
+
+for some reason of his own:  to suggest leggings, perhaps,
+
+for he had them rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn't have bothered
+
+to save them from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated.
+
+
+
+He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole
+
+of a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern
+
+something after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.*
+
+His colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey;
+
+and, one time, when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought
+
+it was some old shepherd's hut that I hadn't noticed there before.
+
+When he cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Humpy', a rough hut.
+
+--
+
+
+
+`Are you Mrs Wilson?' asked the boy.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Mary.
+
+
+
+`Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink.
+
+We killed lars' night, and I've fetched a piece er cow.'
+
+
+
+`Piece of ~what?~' asked Mary.
+
+
+
+He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy
+
+in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took it.
+
+It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a wood-axe,
+
+but it was fresh and clean.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad!' cried Mary.  She was always impulsive,
+
+save to me sometimes.  `I was just wondering where we were going to get
+
+any fresh meat.  How kind of your mother!  Tell her I'm very much
+
+obliged to her indeed.'  And she felt behind her for a poor little purse
+
+she had.  `And now -- how much did your mother say it would be?'
+
+
+
+The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.
+
+
+
+`How much will it be,' he repeated, puzzled.  `Oh -- how much does it weigh
+
+I-s'pose-yer-mean.  Well, it ain't been weighed at all -- we ain't got
+
+no scales.  A butcher does all that sort of think.  We just kills it,
+
+and cooks it, and eats it -- and goes by guess.  What won't keep
+
+we salts down in the cask.  I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it
+
+if yer wanter know.  Mother thought that if she sent any more
+
+it would go bad before you could scoff it.  I can't see ----'
+
+
+
+`Yes, yes,' said Mary, getting confused.  `But what I want to know is,
+
+how do you manage when you sell it?'
+
+
+
+He glared at her, and scratched his head.  `Sell it?
+
+Why, we only goes halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers
+
+to the butcher -- or maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors,
+
+or tank-sinkers, or them sorter people ----'
+
+
+
+`Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother
+
+for this?'
+
+
+
+`How much what?'
+
+
+
+`Money, of course, you stupid boy,' said Mary.  `You seem a very stupid boy.'
+
+
+
+Then he saw what she was driving at.  He began to fling his heels convulsively
+
+against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward and forward
+
+at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork machinery
+
+inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need repairing or oiling.
+
+
+
+`We ain't that sorter people, missus,' he said.  `We don't sell meat
+
+to new people that come to settle here.'  Then, jerking his thumb
+
+contemptuously towards the ridges, `Go over ter Wall's if yer wanter buy meat;
+
+they sell meat ter strangers.'  (Wall was the big squatter over the ridges.)
+
+
+
+`Oh!' said Mary, `I'm ~so~ sorry.  Thank your mother for me.  She ~is~ kind.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, that's nothink.  She said to tell yer she'll be up as soon as she can.
+
+She'd have come up yisterday evening -- she thought yer'd feel lonely
+
+comin' new to a place like this -- but she couldn't git up.'
+
+
+
+The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting.
+
+You almost heard the wooden joints ~creak~ as he lurched forward,
+
+like an old propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way;
+
+but at the sound of Mary's voice he settled back on his foundations again.
+
+It must have been a very poor selection that couldn't afford
+
+a better spare horse than that.
+
+
+
+`Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?' said the boy,
+
+and he pointed to one of my `spreads' (for the team-chains)
+
+that lay inside the fence.  `I'll fling it back agin over the fence
+
+when I git this ole cow started.'
+
+
+
+`But wait a minute -- I've forgotten your mother's name,' said Mary.
+
+
+
+He grabbed at his thatch impatiently.  `Me mother -- oh! --
+
+the old woman's name's Mrs Spicer.  (Git up, karnt yer!)'
+
+He twisted himself round, and brought the stretcher down
+
+on one of the horse's `points' (and he had many) with a crack
+
+that must have jarred his wrist.
+
+
+
+`Do you go to school?' asked Mary.  There was a three-days-a-week school
+
+over the ridges at Wall's station.
+
+
+
+`No!' he jerked out, keeping his legs going.  `Me -- why I'm going on
+
+fur fifteen.  The last teacher at Wall's finished me.
+
+I'm going to Queensland next month drovin'.'  (Queensland border
+
+was over three hundred miles away.)
+
+
+
+`Finished you?  How?' asked Mary.
+
+
+
+`Me edgercation, of course!  How do yer expect me to start this horse
+
+when yer keep talkin'?'
+
+
+
+He split the `spread' over the horse's point, threw the pieces over the fence,
+
+and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old saw-stool
+
+lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a canter.
+
+That horse wasn't a trotter.
+
+
+
+And next month he ~did~ start for Queensland.  He was a younger son
+
+and a surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection;
+
+and as there was `northin' doin'' in the district, his father
+
+(in a burst of fatherly kindness, I suppose) made him a present
+
+of the old horse and a new pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him
+
+an old saddle and a coat, and he started for the Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+And I'll bet he got there.  But I'm doubtful if the old horse did.
+
+
+
+Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don't think he had anything more
+
+except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.
+
+
+
+`Spicer's farm' was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native
+
+apple-tree scrub.  The clearing was fenced in by a light `dog-legged' fence
+
+(a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights),
+
+and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered
+
+with cattle-dung.  There was no attempt at cultivation
+
+when I came to live on the creek; but there were old furrow-marks
+
+amongst the stumps of another shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut.
+
+There was a wretched sapling cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail
+
+with one sheet of bark over it for shelter.  There was no dairy to be seen,
+
+and I suppose the milk was set in one of the two skillion rooms,
+
+or lean-to's behind the hut, -- the other was `the boys' bedroom'.
+
+The Spicers kept a few cows and steers, and had thirty or forty sheep.
+
+Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek once a-week, in her rickety
+
+old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter and eggs.  The hut was nearly
+
+as bare inside as it was out -- just a frame of `round-timber'
+
+(sapling poles) covered with bark.  The furniture was permanent
+
+(unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab table
+
+on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same way.
+
+Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark partitioned-off room
+
+(`mother's bedroom') were simply poles laid side by side on cross-pieces
+
+supported by stakes driven into the ground, with straw mattresses
+
+and some worn-out bed-clothes.  Mrs Spicer had an old patchwork quilt,
+
+in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said it was pitiful
+
+to see how these things would be spread over the beds --
+
+to hide them as much as possible -- when she went down there.
+
+A packing-case, with something like an old print skirt draped round it,
+
+and a cracked looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.
+
+There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe.  The boys' beds
+
+were three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights.
+
+The floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven
+
+with much sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked.
+
+Mrs Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets
+
+under as many of the leaks as she could.  The saucepans, kettles, and boilers
+
+were old kerosene-tins and billies.  They used kerosene-tins, too,
+
+cut longways in halves, for setting the milk in.  The plates and cups
+
+were of tin; there were two or three cups without saucers,
+
+and a crockery plate or two -- also two mugs, cracked and without handles,
+
+one with `For a Good Boy' and the other with `For a Good Girl' on it;
+
+but all these were kept on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company.
+
+They were the only ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock
+
+that hadn't gone for years.  Mrs Spicer had a superstition
+
+that she had `some things packed away from the children.'
+
+
+
+The pictures were cut from old copies of the `Illustrated Sydney News'
+
+and pasted on to the bark.  I remember this, because I remembered, long ago,
+
+the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy,
+
+had the walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations
+
+of the American Civil War, cut from illustrated London papers,
+
+and I used to `sneak' into `mother's bedroom' with Fred Spencer
+
+whenever we got the chance, and gloat over the prints.
+
+I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for taking me in there.
+
+
+
+I saw very little of Spicer.  He was a big, dark, dark-haired
+
+and whiskered man.  I had an idea that he wasn't a selector at all,
+
+only a `dummy' for the squatter of the Cobborah run.  You see,
+
+selectors were allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases.
+
+The squatters kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges
+
+and paltry persecution.  The squatter would get as much freehold
+
+as he could afford, `select' as much land as the law allowed one man
+
+to take up, and then employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land
+
+that he fancied about his run, and hold them for him.
+
+
+
+Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable.  He was seldom at home.
+
+He was generally supposed to be away shearin', or fencin', or workin'
+
+on somebody's station.  It turned out that the last six months he was away
+
+it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut out,
+
+found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he and his mates
+
+couldn't account for satisfactorily, while the squatter could.
+
+Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and treacle,
+
+or bread and dripping, and tea.  Every ounce of butter and every egg
+
+was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.
+
+Mary found that out, but couldn't help them much -- except by
+
+`stuffing' the children with bread and meat or bread and jam
+
+whenever they came up to our place -- for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride
+
+that lies down in the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.
+
+
+
+Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was hungry,
+
+she denied it -- but she looked it.  A ragged mite she had with her
+
+explained things.  The little fellow said --
+
+
+
+`Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked;
+
+but if yer give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an' say thenk yer,
+
+Mrs Wilson.'
+
+
+
+`I wouldn't 'a' told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,
+
+Mrs Wilson,' said Annie.  `Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+
+
+She was not a big woman.  She was gaunt and flat-chested,
+
+and her face was `burnt to a brick', as they say out there.
+
+She had brown eyes, nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times,
+
+and a sharp face -- ground sharp by hardship -- the cheeks drawn in.
+
+She had an expression like -- well, like a woman who had been
+
+very curious and suspicious at one time, and wanted to know
+
+everybody's business and hear everything, and had lost all her curiosity,
+
+without losing the expression or the quick suspicious movements of the head.
+
+I don't suppose you understand.  I can't explain it any other way.
+
+She was not more than forty.
+
+
+
+I remember the first morning I saw her.  I was going up the creek
+
+to look at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut
+
+to see if she had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none
+
+and was sick of `corned beef'.
+
+
+
+`Yes -- of -- course,' she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say,
+
+`Is there anything more you want while the shop's open?'
+
+I'd met just the same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag
+
+between the shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river,
+
+so I didn't turn on my heels and walk away.  I waited for her to speak again.
+
+
+
+`Come -- inside,' she said, `and sit down.  I see you've got
+
+the waggon outside.  I s'pose your name's Wilson, ain't it?
+
+You're thinkin' about takin' on Harry Marshfield's selection up the creek,
+
+so I heard.  Wait till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.'
+
+
+
+Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice
+
+coming out of a phonograph -- I heard one in Sydney the other day --
+
+and not like a voice coming out of her.  But sometimes when she got outside
+
+her everyday life on this selection she spoke in a sort of --
+
+in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
+
+
+
+She didn't talk much this time -- just spoke in a mechanical way
+
+of the drought, and the hard times, `an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down,
+
+an' her husban' an' eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it
+
+so hard for her.'
+
+
+
+I don't know how many children she had.  I never got a chance to count them,
+
+for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies,
+
+and used to run and hide when anybody came.  They were mostly nearly as black
+
+as piccaninnies too.  She must have averaged a baby a-year for years --
+
+and God only knows how she got over her confinements!  Once, they said,
+
+she only had a black gin with her.  She had an elder boy and girl,
+
+but she seldom spoke of them.  The girl, `Liza', was `in service in Sydney.'
+
+I'm afraid I knew what that meant.  The elder son was `away'.
+
+He had been a bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.
+
+
+
+Some one might ask her, `How's your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+or, `Heard of Jack lately? and where is he now?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, he's somewheres up country,' she'd say in the `groping' voice,
+
+or `He's drovin' in Queenslan',' or `Shearin' on the Darlin' the last time
+
+I heerd from him.'  `We ain't had a line from him since -- les' see --
+
+since Chris'mas 'fore last.'
+
+
+
+And she'd turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way
+
+towards the west -- towards `up-country' and `Out-Back'.*
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Out-Back' is always west of the Bushman, no matter how far out he be.
+
+--
+
+
+
+The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face
+
+and lines across her forehead:  she had an older expression than her mother.
+
+Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you.  The eldest son at home,
+
+Bill (older than Tommy), was `a bit wild.'
+
+
+
+I've passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December,
+
+when the droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust
+
+that rose in the warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work
+
+in the cow-yard, `bailing up' and leg-roping cows, milking,
+
+or hauling at a rope round the neck of a half-grown calf
+
+that was too strong for her (and she was tough as fencing-wire),
+
+or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the `poddies'
+
+(hand-fed calves) in the pen.  I'd get off the horse and give her
+
+a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow
+
+that wouldn't `bail-up' and threatened her with her horns.  She'd say --
+
+
+
+`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson.  Do yer think we're ever goin' to have any rain?'
+
+
+
+I've ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July,
+
+and seen her trudging about the yard -- that was ankle-deep
+
+in black liquid filth -- with an old pair of Blucher boots on,
+
+and an old coat of her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag
+
+over her shoulders.  I've seen her climbing on the roof
+
+by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying to stop a leak
+
+by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark.  And when I'd fixed the leak --
+
+
+
+`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson.  This drop of rain's a blessin'!
+
+Come in and have a dry at the fire and I'll make yer a cup of tea.'
+
+And, if I was in a hurry, `Come in, man alive!  Come in!
+
+and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds up.  Yer can't go home like this!
+
+Yer'll git yer death o' cold.'
+
+
+
+I've even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees
+
+by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs
+
+to feed the starving cattle.
+
+
+
+`Jist tryin' ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.'
+
+
+
+They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district
+
+and amongst her cattle she bled and physicked them herself,
+
+and fed those that were down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins
+
+(from a crop that had failed).
+
+
+
+`An', one day,' she told Mary, `there was a big barren heifer
+
+(that we called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer.
+
+She'd been down for four days and hadn't moved, when one mornin'
+
+I dumped some wheaten chaff -- we had a few bags that Spicer brought home --
+
+I dumped it in front of her nose, an' -- would yer b'lieve me, Mrs Wilson? --
+
+she stumbled onter her feet an' chased me all the way to the house!
+
+I had to pick up me skirts an' run!  Wasn't it redic'lus?'
+
+
+
+They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried Bushwomen.
+
+I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
+
+
+
+`We lost nearly all our milkers,' she told Mary.  `I remember one day
+
+Tommy came running to the house and screamed:  `Marther! [mother]
+
+there's another milker down with the ploorer!'  Jist as if it was great news.
+
+Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an' I giv' in.  I jist sat down
+
+to have a good cry, and felt for my han'kerchief -- it ~was~
+
+a rag of a han'kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash).
+
+Without seein' what I was doin' I put me finger through one hole
+
+in the han'kerchief an' me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers
+
+into me eyes, instead of wipin' them.  Then I had to laugh.'
+
+
+
+There's a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out
+
+all along the creek on Spicer's side, Wall's station hands
+
+were up above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary,
+
+and towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers:
+
+they saw smoke down that way.  Spicer was away from home,
+
+and they had a small crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
+
+
+
+`My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain't already!'
+
+shouted young Billy Wall.  `Come along, three or four of you chaps' --
+
+(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the station).
+
+
+
+They raced down the creek to Spicer's, and were just in time
+
+to save the wheat.  She had her sleeves tucked up, and was
+
+beating out the burning grass with a bough.  She'd been at it for an hour,
+
+and was as black as a gin, they said.  She only said when they'd turned
+
+the fire:  `Thenk yer!  Wait an' I'll make some tea.'
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked --
+
+
+
+`Don't you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?'
+
+
+
+`Well -- no, Mrs Wilson,' she said in the groping sort of voice.
+
+`I uster, once.  I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river --
+
+we lived in a brick house then -- the first time Spicer
+
+had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out.
+
+And he was only goin' shearin' for a month.  I muster bin a fool;
+
+but then we were only jist married a little while.  He's been away
+
+drovin' in Queenslan' as long as eighteen months at a time since then.
+
+But' (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) `I don't mind, --
+
+I somehow seem to have got past carin'.  Besides -- besides,
+
+Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now.
+
+He's got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.'
+
+
+
+Mary sat silent for a minute thinking.  Then Mrs Spicer roused herself --
+
+
+
+`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about!  You mustn't take any notice of me,
+
+Mrs Wilson, -- I don't often go on like this.  I do believe I'm gittin'
+
+a bit ratty at times.  It must be the heat and the dulness.'
+
+
+
+But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time `when Spicer was
+
+a different man to what he was now.'
+
+
+
+I walked home with her a piece along the creek.  She said nothing
+
+for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way.
+
+Then she said suddenly --
+
+
+
+`What-did-you-bring-her-here-for?  She's only a girl.'
+
+
+
+`I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about!  I b'lieve I'm gittin' ratty.
+
+You mustn't take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.'
+
+
+
+She wasn't much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with her,
+
+she'd start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking,
+
+which used to exasperate Mary.  But poor Mrs Spicer couldn't help it,
+
+and she seemed to hear all the same.
+
+
+
+Her great trouble was that she `couldn't git no reg'lar schoolin'
+
+for the children.'
+
+
+
+`I learns 'em at home as much as I can.  But I don't git a minute
+
+to call me own; an' I'm ginerally that dead-beat at night
+
+that I'm fit for nothink.'
+
+
+
+Mary had some of the children up now and then later on,
+
+and taught them a little.  When she first offered to do so,
+
+Mrs Spicer laid hold of the handiest youngster and said --
+
+
+
+`There -- do you hear that?  Mrs Wilson is goin' to teach yer,
+
+an' it's more than yer deserve!' (the youngster had been `cryin''
+
+over something).  `Now, go up an' say "Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson."
+
+And if yer ain't good, and don't do as she tells yer, I'll break every bone
+
+in yer young body!'
+
+
+
+The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
+
+
+
+The children were sent by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school.
+
+When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots,
+
+and there was no end of rows about them in the family --
+
+for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie,
+
+to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn.  There were only
+
+about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family,
+
+and these were saved for great occasions.  The children were always
+
+as clean and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
+
+
+
+And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God's earth
+
+is the children of very poor people made to appear well:  the broken
+
+worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string
+
+for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched threadbare frocks.
+
+Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand -- and no matter
+
+where they are -- I always see the worn face of the mother.
+
+
+
+Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.
+
+I'd sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back
+
+with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often.
+
+She came up several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand.
+
+She wouldn't sit down and condole with Mary, or waste her time
+
+asking questions, or talking about the time when she was ill herself.
+
+She'd take off her hat -- a shapeless little lump of black straw
+
+she wore for visiting -- give her hair a quick brush back
+
+with the palms of her hands, roll up her sleeves, and set to work
+
+to `tidy up'.  She seemed to take most pleasure in sorting out
+
+our children's clothes, and dressing them.  Perhaps she used to dress her own
+
+like that in the days when Spicer was a different man from what he was now.
+
+She seemed interested in the fashion-plates of some women's journals we had,
+
+and used to study them with an interest that puzzled me, for she was
+
+not likely to go in for fashion.  She never talked of her early girlhood;
+
+but Mary, from some things she noticed, was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer
+
+had been fairly well brought up.  For instance, Dr Balanfantie,
+
+from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall's wife, and drove up the creek
+
+to our place on his way back to see how Mary and the baby were getting on.
+
+Mary got out some crockery and some table-napkins that she had packed away
+
+for occasions like this; and she said that the way Mrs Spicer
+
+handled the things, and helped set the table (though she did it
+
+in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her that she had been
+
+used to table-napkins at one time in her life.
+
+
+
+Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer
+
+would say suddenly --
+
+
+
+`Oh, I don't think I'll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+
+
+`Because the visits doesn't do me any good.  I git the dismals afterwards.'
+
+
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?  What on earth do you mean?'
+
+
+
+`Oh,-I-don't-know-what-I'm-talkin'-about.  You mustn't take any notice of me.'
+
+And she'd put on her hat, kiss the children -- and Mary too, sometimes,
+
+as if she mistook her for a child -- and go.
+
+
+
+Mary thought her a little mad at times.  But I seemed to understand.
+
+
+
+Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again
+
+next day.  As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said --
+
+
+
+`I wish you wouldn't come down any more till I'm on me feet, Mrs Wilson.
+
+The children can do for me.'
+
+
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+
+
+`Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.'
+
+
+
+We were the aristocrats of Lahey's Creek.  Whenever we drove down
+
+on Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough
+
+for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we'd see the children
+
+running to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming --
+
+
+
+`Oh, marther!  Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.'
+
+
+
+And we'd see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the front door,
+
+and she'd lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of `broom-stuff'
+
+-- coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges -- with a stick
+
+stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round
+
+in front of the door perhaps.  The floor nearly always needed at least
+
+one flick of the broom on account of the fowls.  Or she'd catch a youngster
+
+and scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel
+
+round her finger and dig out his ears -- as if she was anxious
+
+to have him hear every word that was going to be said.
+
+
+
+No matter what state the house would be in she'd always say,
+
+`I was jist expectin' yer, Mrs Wilson.'  And she was original in that, anyway.
+
+
+
+She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to spread
+
+on the table when we were there, as a matter of course
+
+(`The others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson'),
+
+but I saw by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather
+
+a wonderful thing to them.  `I must really git some more knives an' forks
+
+next time I'm in Cobborah,' she'd say.  `The children break an' lose 'em
+
+till I'm ashamed to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.'
+
+
+
+She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather ghastly,
+
+but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.
+
+But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children
+
+to `Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,' or `Take yer maulies [hands]
+
+outer the sugar,' or `Don't touch Mrs Wilson's baby with them dirty maulies,'
+
+or `Don't stand starin' at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an' ears
+
+in that vulgar way.'
+
+
+
+Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children.  It was a habit,
+
+but they didn't seem to mind.  Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit.
+
+I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing,
+
+and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child
+
+from daylight till dark -- and after it.  Taking it all round,
+
+I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse
+
+on ordinary children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters,
+
+than the drinking habit in a father.
+
+
+
+One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew
+
+who used to go wrong in his head every now and again,
+
+and try to commit suicide.  Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him,
+
+had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable.
+
+The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking.  `They let him hang
+
+for a while,' said Mrs Spicer, `till he went black in the face
+
+and stopped kicking.  Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water
+
+over him.'
+
+
+
+`Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?' asked Mary.
+
+
+
+`To give him a good bellyful of it:  they thought it would cure him
+
+of tryin' to hang himself again.'
+
+
+
+`Well, that's the coolest thing I ever heard of,' said Mary.
+
+
+
+`That's jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,' said Mrs Spicer.
+
+
+
+`One morning,' said Mrs Spicer, `Spicer had gone off on his horse somewhere,
+
+and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the door and said --
+
+
+
+`"For God's sake, woman, give me a drink!"
+
+
+
+`Lord only knows where he came from!  He was dressed like a new chum --
+
+his clothes was good, but he looked as if he'd been sleepin' in them
+
+in the Bush for a month.  He was very shaky.  I had some coffee that mornin',
+
+so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his head
+
+till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said,
+
+"Thenk yer, mum."
+
+
+
+`I was so surprised that I didn't know what to say, so I jist said,
+
+"Would you like some more coffee?"
+
+
+
+`"Yes, thenk yer," he said -- "about two quarts."
+
+
+
+`I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head
+
+as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said,
+
+"Thenk yer, mum -- it's a fine day," and then he walked off.
+
+He had two saddle-straps in his hands.'
+
+
+
+`Why, what did he stand on his head for?' asked Mary.
+
+
+
+`To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the coffee.
+
+He had no hat.  I sent Tommy across to Wall's to tell them
+
+that there was a man wanderin' about the Bush in the horrors of drink,
+
+and to get some one to ride for the police.  But they was too late,
+
+for he hanged himself that night.'
+
+
+
+`O Lord!' cried Mary.
+
+
+
+`Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall's
+
+branches off.  Tommy found him while he was out after the cows.
+
+Hangin' to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.'
+
+
+
+Mary stared at her, speechless.
+
+
+
+`Tommy came home yellin' with fright.  I sent him over to Wall's at once.
+
+After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped away
+
+and went down there.  They came back screamin' at the tops of their voices.
+
+I did give it to them.  I reckon they won't want ter see a dead body again
+
+in a hurry.  Every time I'd mention it they'd huddle together,
+
+or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
+
+
+
+`"Yer'll go agen when I tell yer not to," I'd say.
+
+
+
+`"Oh no, mother," they'd howl.
+
+
+
+`"Yer wanted ter see a man hangin'," I said.
+
+
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother!  Don't talk about it."
+
+
+
+`"Yer wouldn't be satisfied till yer see it," I'd say;
+
+"yer had to see it or burst.  Yer satisfied now, ain't yer?"
+
+
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother!"
+
+
+
+`"Yer run all the way there, I s'pose?"
+
+
+
+`"Don't, mother!"
+
+
+
+`"But yer run faster back, didn't yer?"
+
+
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother."
+
+
+
+`But,' said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, `I'd been down to see it myself
+
+before they was up.'
+
+
+
+`And ain't you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible things?'
+
+asked Mary.
+
+
+
+`Well, no; I don't mind.  I seem to have got past carin' for anythink now.
+
+I felt it a little when Tommy went away -- the first time I felt anythink
+
+for years.  But I'm over that now.'
+
+
+
+`Haven't you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+
+
+`Oh yes.  There's me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother
+
+near Dubbo; he's got a station.  They wanted to take me an' the children
+
+between them, or take some of the younger children.  But I couldn't
+
+bring my mind to break up the home.  I want to keep the children together
+
+as much as possible.  There's enough of them gone, God knows.
+
+But it's a comfort to know that there's some one to see to them
+
+if anythink happens to me.'
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+One day -- I was on my way home with the team that day --
+
+Annie Spicer came running up the creek in terrible trouble.
+
+
+
+`Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl's happened at home!  A trooper'
+
+(mounted policeman -- they called them `mounted troopers' out there),
+
+`a trooper's come and took Billy!'  Billy was the eldest son at home.
+
+
+
+`What?'
+
+
+
+`It's true, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+
+
+`What for?  What did the policeman say?'
+
+
+
+`He -- he -- he said, "I -- I'm very sorry, Mrs Spicer;
+
+but -- I -- I want William."'
+
+
+
+It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse
+
+missed from Wall's station and sold down-country.
+
+
+
+`An' mother took on awful,' sobbed Annie; `an' now she'll only sit stock-still
+
+an' stare in front of her, and won't take no notice of any of us.
+
+Oh! it's awful, Mrs Wilson.  The policeman said he'd tell Aunt Emma'
+
+(Mrs Spicer's sister at Cobborah), `and send her out.
+
+But I had to come to you, an' I've run all the way.'
+
+
+
+James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
+
+
+
+Mary told me all about it when I came home.
+
+
+
+`I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my arms.
+
+Oh, Joe! it was awful!  She didn't cry like a woman.  I heard
+
+a man at Haviland cry at his brother's funeral, and it was just like that.
+
+She came round a bit after a while.  Her sister's with her now. . . .
+
+Oh, Joe! you must take me away from the Bush.'
+
+
+
+Later on Mary said --
+
+
+
+`How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!'
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+Next morning I rode across to Wall's station and tackled the old man;
+
+but he was a hard man, and wouldn't listen to me -- in fact,
+
+he ordered me off the station.  I was a selector, and that was enough for him.
+
+But young Billy Wall rode after me.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe!' he said, `it's a blanky shame.  All for the sake of a horse!
+
+And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn't got enough to put up with already!
+
+I wouldn't do it for twenty horses.  ~I'll~ tackle the boss,
+
+and if he won't listen to me, I'll walk off the run for the last time,
+
+if I have to carry my swag.'
+
+
+
+Billy Wall managed it.  The charge was withdrawn, and we got
+
+young Billy Spicer off up-country.
+
+
+
+But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that.  She seldom
+
+came up to our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak;
+
+and then she would talk of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits
+
+were painful to look forward to.
+
+
+
+`If it only could have been kep' quiet -- for the sake of the other children;
+
+they are all I think of now.  I tried to bring 'em all up decent,
+
+but I s'pose it was my fault, somehow.  It's the disgrace that's killin' me --
+
+I can't bear it.'
+
+
+
+I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl
+
+named Maggie Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall's station
+
+(I must tell you about her some other time; James was `shook after her'),
+
+and we got talkin' about Mrs Spicer.  Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
+
+
+
+`I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,' said Mary.  `She seems better lately.'
+
+
+
+`Why!' cried Maggie Charlsworth, `if that ain't Annie coming running up
+
+along the creek.  Something's the matter!'
+
+
+
+We all jumped up and ran out.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Annie?' cried Mary.
+
+
+
+`Oh, Mrs Wilson!  Mother's asleep, and we can't wake her!'
+
+
+
+`What?'
+
+
+
+`It's -- it's the truth, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+
+
+`How long has she been asleep?'
+
+
+
+`Since lars' night.'
+
+
+
+`My God!' cried Mary, `~since last night?~'
+
+
+
+`No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight
+
+this mornin'.  She called me and said she didn't feel well,
+
+and I'd have to manage the milkin'.'
+
+
+
+`Was that all she said?'
+
+
+
+`No.  She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and calves;
+
+and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.'
+
+
+
+Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn't let her.  James and I saddled our horses
+
+and rode down the creek.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did
+
+when I last saw her alive.  It was some time before we could believe
+
+that she was dead.  But she was `past carin'' right enough.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    I.  Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ever since we were married it had been Mary's great ambition to have a buggy.
+
+The house or furniture didn't matter so much -- out there in the Bush
+
+where we were -- but, where there were no railways or coaches, and the roads
+
+were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great thing.
+
+I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one then;
+
+but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a second-hand one
+
+that I'd had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at last she said,
+
+`Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I'll be satisfied.
+
+I'll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.
+
+Wait till we're better off.'
+
+
+
+After that, whenever I took a contract -- to put up a fence or wool-shed,
+
+or sink a dam or something -- Mary would say, `You ought to knock a buggy
+
+out of this job, Joe;' but something always turned up --
+
+bad weather or sickness.  Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up;
+
+and, another time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood
+
+before I finished it.  Then Mary would say, `Ah, well -- never mind, Joe.
+
+Wait till we are better off.'  But she felt it hard the time
+
+I built a wool-shed and didn't get paid for it, for we'd as good as settled
+
+about another second-hand buggy then.
+
+
+
+I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools.
+
+I made a spring-cart -- body and wheels -- in spare time,
+
+out of colonial hardwood, and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork;
+
+I painted the cart myself.  It wasn't much lighter than one of the tip-drays
+
+I had, but it ~was~ a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it:
+
+anyway, I didn't hear any more of the buggy for a while.
+
+
+
+I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener
+
+who wanted a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush.
+
+It was just before our first youngster came:  I told Mary
+
+that I wanted the money in case of extra expense -- and she didn't fret much
+
+at losing that cart.  But the fact was, that I was going to make another try
+
+for a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born.
+
+I thought of getting the turn-out while she was laid up,
+
+keeping it dark from her till she was on her feet again,
+
+and then showing her the buggy standing in the shed.  But she had a bad time,
+
+and I had to have the doctor regularly, and get a proper nurse,
+
+and a lot of things extra; so the buggy idea was knocked on the head.
+
+I was set on it, too:  I'd thought of how, when Mary was up
+
+and getting strong, I'd say one morning, `Go round and have a look
+
+in the shed, Mary; I've got a few fowls for you,' or something like that --
+
+and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw the buggy.
+
+I never told Mary about that -- it wouldn't have done any good.
+
+
+
+Later on I got some good timber -- mostly scraps that were given to me --
+
+and made a light body for a spring-cart.  Galletly, the coach-builder
+
+at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels
+
+up from Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair
+
+for cost price and carriage.  I got him to iron the cart,
+
+and he put it through the paint-shop for nothing.  He sent it out, too,
+
+at the tail of Tom Tarrant's big van -- to increase the surprise.
+
+We were swells then for a while; I heard no more of a buggy
+
+until after we'd been settled at Lahey's Creek for a couple of years.
+
+
+
+I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection
+
+at Lahey's Creek -- for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed --
+
+and shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong,
+
+with Mary's young scamp of a brother James to keep them company
+
+while I was on the road.  The first year I did well enough carrying,
+
+but I never cared for it -- it was too slow; and, besides,
+
+I was always anxious when I was away from home.  The game was right enough
+
+for a single man -- or a married one whose wife had got the nagging habit
+
+(as many Bushwomen have -- God help 'em!), and who wanted
+
+peace and quietness sometimes.  Besides, other small carriers started
+
+(seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver at Cudgeegong,
+
+had another heavy spring-van built, and put it on the roads,
+
+and he took a lot of the light stuff.
+
+
+
+The second year I made a rise -- out of `spuds', of all the things
+
+in the world.  It was Mary's idea.  Down at the lower end of our selection --
+
+Mary called it `the run' -- was a shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek,
+
+dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two;
+
+and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek,
+
+was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side -- about three acres.
+
+The flat was fairly clear when I came to the selection --
+
+save for a few logs that had been washed up there in some big `old man' flood,
+
+way back in black-fellows' times; and one day, when I had a spell at home,
+
+I got the horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together --
+
+those that wouldn't split for fencing timber -- and burnt them off.
+
+I had a notion to get the flat ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it.
+
+There was a good water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend,
+
+and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and boiler down there
+
+in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes
+
+under the shade of the trees -- it was cooler, and saved carrying water
+
+to the house.  And one evening after she'd done the washing she said to me --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea:
+
+they don't seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand
+
+what the market is going to be like -- they just go on farming
+
+the same old way and putting in the same old crops year after year.
+
+They sow wheat, and, if it comes on anything like the thing,
+
+they reap and thresh it; if it doesn't, they mow it for hay --
+
+and some of 'em don't have the brains to do that in time.
+
+Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck me
+
+that it wouldn't be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,
+
+and have the land ploughed -- old Corny George would do it cheap --
+
+and get them put in at once.  Potatoes have been dear all round
+
+for the last couple of years.'
+
+
+
+I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for potatoes,
+
+and the whole district was too dry.  `Everybody I know has tried it,
+
+one time or another, and made nothing of it,' I said.
+
+
+
+`All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,' said Mary.
+
+`Just try one crop.  It might rain for weeks, and then you'll be sorry
+
+you didn't take my advice.'
+
+
+
+`But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,' I said.
+
+
+
+`How do you know?  You haven't sown any there yet.'
+
+
+
+`But I've turned up the surface and looked at it.  It's not rich enough,
+
+and too dry, I tell you.  You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes.
+
+Do you think I don't know land when I see it?'
+
+
+
+`But you haven't ~tried~ to grow potatoes there yet, Joe.
+
+How do you know ----'
+
+
+
+I didn't listen to any more.  Mary was obstinate when she got an idea
+
+into her head.  It was no use arguing with her.  All the time I'd be talking
+
+she'd just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,
+
+on the track she'd started, -- just as if I wasn't there, --
+
+and it used to make me mad.  She'd keep driving at me till I took her advice
+
+or lost my temper, -- I did both at the same time, mostly.
+
+
+
+I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
+
+
+
+A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team
+
+down to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out;
+
+and after I'd kissed Mary good-bye, she said --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes,
+
+James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek
+
+would bring his plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little.
+
+We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.'
+
+
+
+I thought she'd forgotten all about it.  There was no time to argue --
+
+I'd be sure to lose my temper, and then I'd either have to waste an hour
+
+comforting Mary or go off in a `huff', as the women call it,
+
+and be miserable for the trip.  So I said I'd see about it.  She gave me
+
+another hug and a kiss.  `Don't forget, Joe,' she said as I started.
+
+`Think it over on the road.'  I reckon she had the best of it that time.
+
+
+
+About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road,
+
+I heard some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack.
+
+I got a start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home.
+
+I remember, the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first
+
+five or six miles I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back --
+
+only I thought she'd laugh at me.
+
+
+
+`What is it, James?' I shouted, before he came up -- but I saw
+
+he was grinning.
+
+
+
+`Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.'
+
+
+
+`You clear off home!' I said, `or I'll lay the whip about your young hide;
+
+and don't come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.'
+
+
+
+`Well, you needn't get shirty with me!' he said.  `~I~ don't want to have
+
+anything to do with a hoe.'  And he rode off.
+
+
+
+I ~did~ get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn't meant to.
+
+I knew of an independent man in that district who'd made his money
+
+out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring 'Fifties
+
+-- '54 -- when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight
+
+(in Sydney), on account of the gold rush.  We might get good rain now,
+
+and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in.
+
+If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket;
+
+if the crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary
+
+next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping,
+
+and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy.
+
+
+
+I got a couple of bags of potatoes -- we could use those that were left over;
+
+and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the blacksmith
+
+had lying in his yard and let me have cheap -- only about a pound more
+
+than I told Mary I gave for them.  When I took advice, I generally made
+
+the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding notions of my own.
+
+It was vanity, I suppose.  If the crop came on well I could claim
+
+the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway.  (It didn't strike me
+
+that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow against me,
+
+for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen shillings.)
+
+Anyway, I'd want a plough and harrow later on, and I might as well get it now;
+
+it would give James something to do.
+
+
+
+I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home;
+
+and the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat.
+
+And Mary was down on the bank superintending.  She'd got James
+
+with the trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off
+
+every stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in.
+
+Old Corny looked pretty grumpy on it -- he'd broken all his ploughshares
+
+but one, in the roots; and James didn't look much brighter.
+
+Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair of 'lastic-side boots of mine on,
+
+and the boots were covered with clay, for she'd been down hustling James
+
+to get a rotten old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round
+
+with his next furrow.
+
+
+
+`I thought I'd make the boots easy for you, Joe,' said Mary.
+
+
+
+`It's all right, Mary,' I said.  `I'm not going to growl.'  Those boots
+
+were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off
+
+before I got home.
+
+
+
+Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,
+
+but I said that would be all right -- we'd want a plough anyway.
+
+
+
+`I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,' she said.
+
+
+
+`I never said so.'
+
+
+
+`But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in,
+
+you didn't say you wouldn't bring it,' she said.
+
+
+
+I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing.
+
+When Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got
+
+a stump or two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end
+
+and added nearly an acre, and ploughed that.  James was all right
+
+at most Bushwork:  he'd bullock so long as the novelty lasted;
+
+he liked ploughing or fencing, or any graft he could make a show at.
+
+He didn't care for grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails.
+
+We sliced the potatoes of an evening -- and there was trouble
+
+between Mary and James over cutting through the `eyes'.
+
+There was no time for the hoe -- and besides it wasn't a novelty to James --
+
+so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me,
+
+and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground.
+
+I think I hilled those spuds, too, with furrows -- or a crop of Indian corn
+
+I put in later on.
+
+
+
+It rained heavens-hard for over a week:  we had regular showers all through,
+
+and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the district.
+
+I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak
+
+to see if the potatoes were up; and she'd write to me about them, on the road.
+
+I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes
+
+in the district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to
+
+twelve and fifteen shillings a hundredweight in that district.
+
+I made a few quid out of mine -- and saved carriage too,
+
+for I could take them out on the waggon.  Then Mary began to hear
+
+(through James) of a buggy that some one had for sale cheap, or a dogcart
+
+that somebody else wanted to get rid of -- and let me know about it,
+
+in an offhand way.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   II.  Joe Wilson's Luck.
+
+
+
+
+
+There was good grass on the selection all the year.  I'd picked up
+
+a small lot -- about twenty head -- of half-starved steers
+
+for next to nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully,
+
+and my brother-in-law (Mary's sister's husband), who was running a butchery
+
+at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them.  His carts ran out
+
+twenty or thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on
+
+at th' Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal,
+
+and those places round there, and he was doing well.
+
+
+
+Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went --
+
+a tray-body arrangement, and she thought she'd do with that.
+
+`It would be better than the buggy, Joe,' she said --
+
+`there'd be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take
+
+butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.'
+
+Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector --
+
+who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way --
+
+wanted to get rid of.  James reckoned he could get them
+
+for less than half-a-crown a-head.  We'd had a heavy shower of rain,
+
+that came over the ranges and didn't seem to go beyond our boundaries.
+
+Mary said, `It's a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe.
+
+Better get those sheep and try your luck with them.  Leave some money with me,
+
+and I'll send James over for them.  Never mind about the buggy --
+
+we'll get that when we're on our feet.'
+
+
+
+So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain
+
+with that unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home.
+
+There were about two hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young
+
+and looked a good breed too, but so poor they could scarcely travel;
+
+they soon picked up, though.  The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back,
+
+and I think that my corner of the ridges was the only place
+
+where there was any grass to speak of.  We had another shower or two,
+
+and the grass held out.  Chaps began to talk of `Joe Wilson's luck'.
+
+
+
+I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn't time
+
+to get a shed or anything ready -- along towards Christmas
+
+there was a bit of a boom in the carrying line.  Wethers in wool were going
+
+as high as thirteen to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney,
+
+so I arranged to truck the sheep down from the river by rail,
+
+with another small lot that was going, and I started James off with them.
+
+He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James
+
+with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock,
+
+or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them
+
+as he reckoned I'd get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents
+
+and the auctioneer.  James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me.
+
+He was all there where riding was concerned.  I told him to let the sheep go.
+
+James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
+
+
+
+I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks -- one in James's name,
+
+to encourage him with the fencing.  There was a good slice of land
+
+in an angle between the range and the creek, farther down,
+
+which everybody thought belonged to Wall, the squatter,
+
+but Mary got an idea, and went to the local land office and found out
+
+that it was `unoccupied Crown land', and so I took it up on pastoral lease,
+
+and got a few more sheep -- I'd saved some of the best-looking ewes
+
+from the last lot.
+
+
+
+One evening -- I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire
+
+for myself -- Mary said, --
+
+
+
+`Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?'
+
+
+
+The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road,
+
+and I didn't think much of them.  The sons were all `bad-eggs',
+
+though the old woman and girls were right enough.
+
+
+
+`Well, what of that?' I said.  `They're up to their neck in debt,
+
+and camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy.  They do well
+
+to go flashing round in a double buggy.'
+
+
+
+`But that isn't what I was going to say,' said Mary.  `They want to sell
+
+their old single buggy, James says.  I'm sure you could get it
+
+for six or seven pounds; and you could have it done up.'
+
+
+
+`I wish James to the devil!' I said.  `Can't he find anything better to do
+
+than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?'
+
+
+
+`Well,' said Mary, `it was James who got the steers and the sheep.'
+
+
+
+Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn't mean --
+
+but couldn't forget in a hurry.  I remember I said something about Mary
+
+always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water
+
+and struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her,
+
+and she spoke of the `homes' she'd had since she was married.
+
+And that cut me deep.
+
+
+
+It was about the worst quarrel we had.  When she began to cry
+
+I got my hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek.
+
+I hated anything that looked like injustice -- I was so sensitive about it
+
+that it made me unjust sometimes.  I tried to think I was right,
+
+but I couldn't -- it wouldn't have made me feel any better
+
+if I could have thought so.  I got thinking of Mary's first year
+
+on the selection and the life she'd had since we were married.
+
+
+
+When I went in she'd cried herself to sleep.  I bent over and, `Mary,'
+
+I whispered.
+
+
+
+She seemed to wake up.
+
+
+
+`Joe -- Joe!' she said.
+
+
+
+`What is it Mary?' I said.
+
+
+
+`I'm pretty well sure that old Spot's calf isn't in the pen.
+
+Make James go at once!'
+
+
+
+Old Spot's last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her sleep,
+
+and dreaming she was back in her first year.
+
+
+
+We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn't feel
+
+like laughing just then.
+
+
+
+Later on in the night she called out in her sleep, --
+
+
+
+`Joe -- Joe!  Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister
+
+the varnish!'
+
+
+
+I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to Mary.
+
+
+
+Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea,
+
+and took Mary's breakfast in to her -- like I used to do, sometimes,
+
+when we were first married.  She didn't say anything --
+
+just pulled my head down and kissed me.
+
+
+
+When I was ready to start Mary said, --
+
+
+
+`You'd better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres
+
+cut and set.  They're ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up
+
+till he's tired of it.  The last time I was out with the children
+
+I had to knock one of them back with a stone:  there'll be an accident yet.'
+
+
+
+So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon,
+
+and mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way.
+
+It suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down
+
+in front of him.
+
+
+
+It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless --
+
+and I got thinking of old things.  Everything was going all right with me,
+
+but that didn't keep me from brooding sometimes -- trying to hatch out stones,
+
+like an old hen we had at home.  I think, taking it all round,
+
+I used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up -- and more generous.
+
+When I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said,
+
+`Lend me a pound-note, Joe,' than when I had fifty; ~then~ I fought shy
+
+of careless chaps -- and lost mates that I wanted afterwards --
+
+and got the name of being mean.  When I got a good cheque
+
+I'd be as miserable as a miser over the first ten pounds I spent;
+
+but when I got down to the last I'd buy things for the house.
+
+And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a pound on anything.
+
+But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear
+
+I had of it -- and, besides, there was always before us all
+
+the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty
+
+as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks.
+
+
+
+I had a long yarn with Mary's sister and her husband that night in Gulgong,
+
+and it brightened me up.  I had a fancy that that sort of a brother-in-law
+
+made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one,
+
+and he said it was sympathy.  But while we were yarning
+
+I couldn't help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek,
+
+with no one to talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home,
+
+or Black Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy's father and mother),
+
+who weren't oversentimental.  Or maybe a selector's wife (the nearest
+
+was five miles away), who could talk only of two or three things --
+
+`lambin'' and `shearin'' and `cookin' for the men', and what she said
+
+to her old man, and what he said to her -- and her own ailments --
+
+over and over again.
+
+
+
+It's a wonder it didn't drive Mary mad! -- I know I could never listen
+
+to that woman more than an hour.  Mary's sister said, --
+
+
+
+`Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in
+
+with the children oftener.  Then she wouldn't feel the loneliness so much.'
+
+
+
+I said `Good night' then and turned in.  There was no getting away
+
+from that buggy.  Whenever Mary's sister started hinting about a buggy,
+
+I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  III.  The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly's coach-shop to leave the cart.
+
+The Galletlys were good fellows:  there were two brothers --
+
+one was a saddler and harness-maker.  Big brown-bearded men --
+
+the biggest men in the district, 'twas said.
+
+
+
+Their old man had died lately and left them some money;
+
+they had men, and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined,
+
+or there was a special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen.
+
+I went into the painter's shop to have a look at a double buggy
+
+that Galletly had built for a man who couldn't pay cash for it
+
+when it was finished -- and Galletly wouldn't trust him.
+
+
+
+There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used
+
+to keep out the dust when they were varnishing.  It was a first-class
+
+piece of work -- pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete.
+
+If you only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in
+
+the shafts, and there you were.  There was a tilt over the front seat;
+
+if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back seat,
+
+and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy.  It would go
+
+near fifty pounds.
+
+
+
+While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the back.
+
+
+
+`Now, there's a chance for you, Joe!' he said.  `I saw you
+
+rubbing your head round that buggy the last time you were in.
+
+You wouldn't get a better one in the colonies, and you won't see
+
+another like it in the district again in a hurry -- for it doesn't pay
+
+to build 'em.  Now you're a full-blown squatter, and it's time
+
+you took little Mary for a fly round in her own buggy now and then,
+
+instead of having her stuck out there in the scrub, or jolting
+
+through the dust in a cart like some old Mother Flourbag.'
+
+
+
+He called her `little Mary' because the Galletly family had known her
+
+when she was a girl.
+
+
+
+I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again.  It was a great temptation.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Joe,' said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone.
+
+`I'll tell you what I'll do.  I'll let ~you~ have the buggy.
+
+You can take it out and send along a bit of a cheque
+
+when you feel you can manage it, and the rest later on, --
+
+a year will do, or even two years.  You've had a hard pull,
+
+and I'm not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.'
+
+
+
+They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men.
+
+I happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn't let the man
+
+he built the buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down,
+
+though he was a big-bug round there.  But that didn't make it easier for me.
+
+
+
+Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop.  He was rather quieter
+
+than his brother, but the two were very much alike.
+
+
+
+`Look here, Bob,' said Bill; `here's a chance for you
+
+to get rid of your harness.  Joe Wilson's going to take that buggy
+
+off my hands.'
+
+
+
+Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his pockets,
+
+rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his hand,
+
+and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did
+
+when he was thinking.  Presently he took his foot down,
+
+put his hand back in his pocket, and said to me, `Well, Joe, I've got
+
+a double set of harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy,
+
+and if you like I'll let you have it.  I suppose when Bill there
+
+has squeezed all he can out of you I'll stand a show of getting something.
+
+He's a regular Shylock, he is.'
+
+
+
+I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared
+
+at the buggy.
+
+
+
+`Come across to the Royal, Joe,' said Bob.
+
+
+
+But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said
+
+I'd get the wool up to the station first and think it over,
+
+and have a drink when I came back.
+
+
+
+I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn't seem good enough.
+
+I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to be fenced in,
+
+and the instalments on the selections.  I wanted lots of things
+
+that I couldn't well do without.  Then, again, the farther I got away
+
+from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it.
+
+I had two horses that would do; but I'd have to get another later on,
+
+and altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds.
+
+Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands.
+
+Besides, I wanted a spell.  If I got the buggy it would only mean
+
+an extra turn of hard graft for me.  No, I'd take Mary for a trip to Sydney,
+
+and she'd have to be satisfied with that.
+
+
+
+I'd got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white gates
+
+to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the station
+
+in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver
+
+and a lot of portmanteaus and rugs and things.  They were going
+
+to do the grand in Sydney over Christmas.  Now it was young Black
+
+who was so shook after Mary when she was in service with the Blacks
+
+before the old man died, and if I hadn't come along --
+
+and if girls never cared for vagabonds -- Mary would have been
+
+mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on her;
+
+and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there.
+
+She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up
+
+at the old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for,
+
+and seeing a play every night.  And I'd have been knocking around
+
+amongst the big stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death
+
+at the shanties.
+
+
+
+The Blacks didn't see me as I went by, ragged and dusty,
+
+and with an old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes.
+
+I didn't care a damn for them, or any one else, at most times,
+
+but I had moods when I felt things.
+
+
+
+One of Black's big wool teams was just coming away from the shed,
+
+and the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him,
+
+didn't seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the road.
+
+I stopped my horses and waited.  He looked at me and I looked at him -- hard.
+
+Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses.
+
+I'd given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn't forgotten it.
+
+And I felt then as if I wouldn't mind trying to give some one a hiding.
+
+
+
+The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that day.
+
+I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren creek
+
+in the Bush -- for it was little better -- with no one to speak to
+
+except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her on Sunday.
+
+I thought of the hardships she went through in the first year --
+
+that I haven't told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I away,
+
+and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and Jim sick;
+
+and of the loneliness she fought through out there.  I thought of Mary,
+
+outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a felt hat,
+
+and a pair of 'lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of a station manager
+
+as well as that of a housewife and mother.  And her cheeks were getting thin,
+
+and her colour was going:  I thought of the gaunt, brick-brown,
+
+saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I knew -- and some of them
+
+not much older than Mary.
+
+
+
+When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly
+
+at the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,*
+
+and I took the harness.  Then I shouted, to wet the bargain.
+
+When I was going, Bob said, `Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary's
+
+with the horses:  if the collars don't fit I'll fix up a pair of makeshifts,
+
+and alter the others.'  I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual,
+
+but that might have been the beer.
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Shout', to buy a round of drinks.  -- A. L., 1997.
+
+--
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+
+
+
+I `whipped the cat' a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I thought,
+
+what did it matter?  What was the use of grinding to save money
+
+until we were too old to enjoy it.  If we had to go down in the world again,
+
+we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray --
+
+there'd be some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy.
+
+When Mary had the buggy she wouldn't be tied down so much
+
+to that wretched hole in the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn't be off either.
+
+I could drive down to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary
+
+had some people, and leave the buggy and horses there,
+
+and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by the old coach-road,
+
+over the Blue Mountains:  it would be a grand drive.
+
+I thought best to tell Mary's sister at Gulgong about the buggy;
+
+I told her I'd keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home.
+
+She entered into the spirit of the thing, and said she'd give the world
+
+to be able to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes
+
+when she saw it; but she couldn't go, on account of a new baby she had.
+
+I was rather glad she couldn't, for it would spoil the surprise a little,
+
+I thought.  I wanted that all to myself.
+
+
+
+I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I'd finished
+
+telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn't
+
+bring the cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James,
+
+out on a log of the wood-heap, where we generally had
+
+our smokes and interviews, and told him all about the buggy.
+
+He whistled, then he said --
+
+
+
+`But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for?
+
+Why can't you tell Mary now?  It will cheer her up.  She's been
+
+pretty miserable since you've been away this trip.'
+
+
+
+`I want it to be a surprise,' I said.
+
+
+
+`Well, I've got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like this;
+
+but it 'ud take a lot to surprise me.  What am I to say to Mary
+
+about taking the two horses in?  I'll only want one to bring the cart out,
+
+and she's sure to ask.'
+
+
+
+`Tell her you're going to get yours shod.'
+
+
+
+`But he had a set of slippers only the other day.  She knows as much
+
+about horses as we do.  I don't mind telling a lie so long as a chap
+
+has only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it.
+
+But Mary asks so many questions.'
+
+
+
+`Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you go.'
+
+
+
+`Yes.  And she'll want to know what I want with two bridles.
+
+But I'll fix her -- ~you~ needn't worry.'
+
+
+
+`And, James,' I said, `get a chamois leather and sponge --
+
+we'll want 'em anyway -- and you might give the buggy a wash down
+
+in the creek, coming home.  It's sure to be covered with dust.'
+
+
+
+`Oh! -- orlright.'
+
+
+
+`And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening,
+
+or just about sunset.'
+
+
+
+`What for?'
+
+
+
+I'd thought it would be better to have the buggy there
+
+in the cool of the evening, when Mary would have time
+
+to get excited and get over it -- better than in the blazing hot morning,
+
+when the sun rose as hot as at noon, and we'd have the long broiling day
+
+before us.
+
+
+
+`What do you want me to come at sunset for?' asked James.  `Do you want me
+
+to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?'
+
+
+
+`Oh well,' I said, `get here at midnight if you like.'
+
+
+
+We didn't say anything for a while -- just sat and puffed at our pipes.
+
+Then I said, --
+
+
+
+`Well, what are you thinking about?'
+
+
+
+I'm thinking it's time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in
+
+through your old one too much,' and he got out of my reach and went to see
+
+about penning the calves.  Before we turned in he said, --
+
+
+
+`Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?'
+
+
+
+He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith
+
+in Cudgeegong had -- one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said, --
+
+
+
+`How much does Franca want for that gun?'
+
+
+
+`Five-ten; but I think he'd take my single barrel off it.
+
+Anyway, I can squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert
+
+for the single barrel.'  (Phil was his bosom chum.)
+
+
+
+`All right,' I said.  `Make the best bargain you can.'
+
+
+
+He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning,
+
+to get clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten
+
+to give him overnight.  He took his gun with him.
+
+
+
+I'd always thought that a man was a fool who couldn't keep a secret
+
+from his wife -- that there was something womanish about him.  I found out.
+
+Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever spent
+
+in my life.  It made me scotty with every one and everything;
+
+and poor Mary had to suffer for it.  I put in the time
+
+patching up the harness and mending the stockyard and the roof,
+
+and, the third morning, I rode up the ridges to look for trees
+
+for fencing-timber.  I remember I hurried home that afternoon
+
+because I thought the buggy might get there before me.
+
+
+
+At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
+
+
+
+`What's the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?' I asked.
+
+`There's only room for two, and what are you going to do with the children
+
+when we go out together?'
+
+
+
+`We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do.
+
+I can always fold up a blanket or 'possum rug for them to sit on.'
+
+
+
+But she didn't take half so much interest in buggy talk
+
+as she would have taken at any other time, when I didn't want her to.
+
+Women are aggravating that way.  But the poor girl was tired
+
+and not very well, and both the children were cross.  She did look knocked up.
+
+
+
+`We'll give the buggy a rest, Joe,' she said.  (I thought I heard it
+
+coming then.)  `It seems as far off as ever.  I don't know why
+
+you want to harp on it to-day.  Now, don't look so cross, Joe --
+
+I didn't mean to hurt you.  We'll wait until we can get a double buggy,
+
+since you're so set on it.  There'll be plenty of time when we're better off.'
+
+
+
+After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she'd washed up,
+
+we sat outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing,
+
+and I smoking and watching the track up the creek.
+
+
+
+`Why don't you talk, Joe?' asked Mary.  `You scarcely ever speak to me now:
+
+it's like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you.
+
+What makes you so cross, Joe?'
+
+
+
+`Well, I've got nothing to say.'
+
+
+
+`But you should find something.  Think of me -- it's very miserable for me.
+
+Have you anything on your mind?  Is there any new trouble?
+
+Better tell me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding
+
+and making both our lives miserable.  If you never tell one anything,
+
+how can you expect me to understand?'
+
+
+
+I said there was nothing the matter.
+
+
+
+`But there must be, to make you so unbearable.  Have you been drinking, Joe --
+
+or gambling?'
+
+
+
+I asked her what she'd accuse me of next.
+
+
+
+`And another thing I want to speak to you about,' she went on.
+
+`Now, don't knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient ----'
+
+
+
+`Well, what is it?'
+
+
+
+`I wish you wouldn't swear in the hearing of the children.
+
+Now, little Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart
+
+and it wouldn't run right, and -- and ----'
+
+
+
+`Well, what did he say?'
+
+
+
+`He -- he' (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh) --
+
+`he said "damn it!"'
+
+
+
+I had to laugh.  Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.
+
+
+
+`Never mind, old woman,' I said, putting an arm round her,
+
+for her mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing.
+
+`It won't be always like this.  Just wait till we're a bit better off.'
+
+
+
+Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)
+
+came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going
+
+to hit him -- poor little devil!  I never did.
+
+
+
+`What is it, Harry?' said Mary.
+
+
+
+`Buggy comin', I bin thinkit.'
+
+
+
+`Where?'
+
+
+
+He pointed up the creek.
+
+
+
+`Sure it's a buggy?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, missus.'
+
+
+
+`How many horses?'
+
+
+
+`One -- two.'
+
+
+
+We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could.
+
+Mary went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes --
+
+though the sun had gone -- and peered through between
+
+the eternal grey trunks of the stunted trees on the flat across the creek.
+
+Presently she jumped down and came running in.
+
+
+
+`There's some one coming in a buggy, Joe!' she cried, excitedly.
+
+`And both my white table-cloths are rough dry.  Harry! put two flat-irons
+
+down to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood.  It's lucky
+
+I kept those new sheets packed away.  Get up out of that, Joe!
+
+What are you sitting grinning like that for?  Go and get on another shirt.
+
+Hurry --  Why!  It's only James -- by himself.'
+
+
+
+She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.
+
+
+
+`Joe!' she said, `whose buggy is that?'
+
+
+
+`Well, I suppose it's yours,' I said.
+
+
+
+She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again.
+
+James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up
+
+close to the house.
+
+
+
+`Oh, Joe! what have you done?' cried Mary.  `Why, it's a new double buggy!'
+
+Then she rushed at me and hugged my head.  `Why didn't you tell me, Joe?
+
+You poor old boy! -- and I've been nagging at you all day!'
+
+and she hugged me again.
+
+
+
+James got down and started taking the horses out -- as if it was
+
+an everyday occurrence.  I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out
+
+from under the seat.  He'd stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose
+
+that's what made him grumpy.  Mary stood on the verandah,
+
+with her eyes twice as big as usual, and breathing hard --
+
+taking the buggy in.
+
+
+
+James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves
+
+and went down to the dam for a drink.  `You'd better look under the seats,'
+
+growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.
+
+
+
+Mary dived for the buggy.  There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer
+
+in a candle-box from Galletly -- James said that Galletly's men
+
+had a gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant
+
+they cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a `little bit of a ham'
+
+from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he'd `cured himself' --
+
+it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of baker's bread,
+
+a cake, and a dozen yards of something `to make up for the children',
+
+from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water cod,
+
+that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie river,
+
+and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit
+
+for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was
+
+a jar of preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) (`for the lil' boy'),
+
+and a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle (`for lil' girl')
+
+from Sun Tong Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong -- James was chummy
+
+with Sun Tong Lee, and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick
+
+when he was short of money.  And James said that the people
+
+would have loaded the buggy with `rubbish' if he'd waited.
+
+They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting on -- and these things
+
+did me good.
+
+
+
+We got the things inside, and I don't think either of us knew
+
+what we were saying or doing for the next half-hour.
+
+Then James put his head in and said, in a very injured tone, --
+
+
+
+`What about my tea?  I ain't had anything to speak of since I left Cudgeegong.
+
+I want some grub.'
+
+
+
+Then Mary pulled herself together.
+
+
+
+`You'll have your tea directly,' she said.  `Pick up that harness at once,
+
+and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back that buggy
+
+under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it presently --
+
+and we'll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to keep the sun off.
+
+And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the cart, --
+
+we can't have that buggy to knock about in.'
+
+
+
+`All right,' said James -- `anything!  Only get me some grub.'
+
+
+
+Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn't keep till the morning,
+
+and rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot -- James growling
+
+all the time -- and got out some crockery she had packed away
+
+that had belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style
+
+that made James uncomfortable.
+
+
+
+`I want some grub -- not a blooming banquet!' he said.  And he growled a lot
+
+because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife,
+
+`and that sort of Tommy-rot.'  When he'd finished he took his gun,
+
+and the black boy, and the dogs, and went out 'possum-shooting.
+
+
+
+When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and made me
+
+get up alongside her.  We hadn't had such a comfortable seat for years;
+
+but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to feel
+
+like a pair of fools up there.
+
+
+
+Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked more
+
+than we'd done for years -- and there was a good deal of `Do you remember?'
+
+in it -- and I think we got to understand each other better that night.
+
+
+
+And at last Mary said, `Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night just --
+
+just like I did the day we were married.'
+
+
+
+And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Writer Wants to Say a Word.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened to be
+
+`Brighten's Sister-in-law', I had an idea of making Joe Wilson
+
+a strong character.  Whether he is or not, the reader must judge.
+
+It seems to me that the man's natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature,
+
+`softness', or weakness -- call it which you like -- developed as I wrote on.
+
+
+
+I know Joe Wilson very well.  He has been through deep trouble
+
+since the day he brought the double buggy to Lahey's Creek.
+
+I met him in Sydney the other day.  Tall and straight yet --
+
+rather straighter than he had been -- dressed in a comfortable,
+
+serviceable sac suit of `saddle-tweed', and wearing a new sugar-loaf,
+
+cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the hurrying street people calmly
+
+as though they were sheep of which he was not in charge,
+
+and which were not likely to get `boxed' with his.  Not the worst way
+
+in which to regard the world.
+
+
+
+He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush.
+
+He is a young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary
+
+a long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head,
+
+and the process would leave him pretty bald.
+
+
+
+In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete
+
+the story of his life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an `old hand' (transported convict)
+
+some said.  The prefix `mother' in Australia mostly means `old hag',
+
+and is applied in that sense.  In early boyhood we understood,
+
+from old diggers, that Mother Middleton -- in common with most other
+
+`old hands' -- had been sent out for `knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.'
+
+We had never seen a donkey.  She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper
+
+when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees,
+
+and swore on most occasions.  There was a fearsome yarn,
+
+which impressed us greatly as boys, to the effect that once,
+
+in her best (or worst) days, she had pulled a mounted policeman off his horse,
+
+and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle, which she used
+
+for poking down clothes in her boiler.  She said that he had insulted her.
+
+
+
+She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any Bushman;
+
+she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's;
+
+she had often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband,
+
+when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate,
+
+as he often had to do -- because of her mainly.  Old diggers said
+
+that it was lovely to see how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket
+
+full of clay and `tailings', and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist.
+
+Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough
+
+to seek a second row with Mother Middleton.  Her voice could be heard
+
+right across Golden Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument
+
+or in friendly greeting.  She came to the old Pipeclay diggings
+
+with the `rough crowd' (mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays
+
+were worked out, she went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last
+
+of the great alluvial or `poor-man's' goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay
+
+when the Log Paddock goldfield `broke out', adjacent to the old fields,
+
+and so helped prove the truth of the old digger's saying,
+
+that no matter how thoroughly ground has been worked, there is always room
+
+for a new Ballarat.
+
+
+
+Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
+
+in the little old cemetery -- appertaining to the old farming town
+
+on the river, about four miles away -- which adjoined the district racecourse,
+
+in the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat.  She conducted the funeral.
+
+Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the effect
+
+that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think,
+
+was unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way,
+
+and was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him.
+
+She then lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank,
+
+and did sewing and washing for single diggers.
+
+
+
+I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation,
+
+carried on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen,
+
+who was hopelessly slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
+
+
+
+`Why don't you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle
+
+on good land, Peter Olsen?  You're only slaving your stomach out here.'
+
+(She didn't say stomach.)
+
+
+
+~Peter Olsen~ (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife).  `But then
+
+you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton.  I wouldn't like to take her
+
+out in the Bush.'
+
+
+
+~Mrs Middleton~.  `Delicate, be damned! she's only shamming!'
+
+(at her loudest.)  `Why don't you kick her off the bed and the book
+
+out of her hand, and make her go to work?  She's as delicate as I am.
+
+Are you a man, Peter Olsen, or a ----?'
+
+
+
+This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
+
+
+
+Long Paddock was `petering'.  There were a few claims still being worked
+
+down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps
+
+of clay and gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes,
+
+advertised deep sinking; and little, yellow, clay-stained streams,
+
+running towards the creek over the drought-parched surface, told of trouble
+
+with the water below -- time lost in baling and extra expense in timbering.
+
+And diggers came up with their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy,
+
+and dripping with wet `mullock'.
+
+
+
+Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were
+
+a few prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst
+
+the ridges round Pipeclay.  Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
+
+
+
+Dave Regan -- lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently --
+
+a bit of a `Flash Jack'; and Andy Page -- a character like
+
+what `Kit' (in the `Old Curiosity Shop') might have been
+
+after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial experience.
+
+These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for it was all
+
+shallow sinking where they worked.  They were poking down pot-holes
+
+in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the sinking
+
+was from ten to fifteen feet.
+
+
+
+Dave had theories -- `ideers' or `notions' he called them; Jim Bently
+
+laid claim to none -- he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog.
+
+Andy Page -- by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan --
+
+was simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions,
+
+he was apt to be obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest,
+
+and he had reverence for higher things.
+
+
+
+Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon,
+
+and next morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole
+
+as close to the cemetery fence as he dared.  It was a nice quiet spot
+
+in the thick scrub, about three panels along the fence
+
+from the farthest corner post from the road.  They bottomed here at nine feet,
+
+and found encouraging indications.  They `drove' (tunnelled) inwards
+
+at right angles to the fence, and at a point immediately beneath it
+
+they were `making tucker'; a few feet farther and they were making wages.
+
+The old alluvial bottom sloped gently that way.  The bottom here, by the way,
+
+was shelving, brownish, rotten rock.
+
+
+
+Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave's drive,
+
+lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
+
+James Middleton, with older graves close at each end.  A grave was supposed
+
+to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been conscientious.
+
+The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.
+
+
+
+Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
+
+timbering -- i.e., putting in a sapling prop -- here and there
+
+where he worked wide; but the `payable dirt' ran in under the cemetery,
+
+and in no other direction.
+
+
+
+Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after tea,
+
+as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
+
+sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim,
+
+and started to tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
+
+
+
+This was Dave's theory -- drawn from a little experience and many long yarns
+
+with old diggers: --
+
+
+
+He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course,
+
+covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains
+
+to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter
+
+running into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying
+
+patches and streaks of `wash' or gold-bearing dirt.  If he went on
+
+he might strike it rich at any stroke of his pick; he might strike
+
+the rich `lead' which was supposed to exist round there.
+
+(There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere.
+
+`There's gold in them ridges yet -- if a man can only git at it,'
+
+says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
+
+
+
+Dave might strike a ledge, `pocket', or `pot-hole' holding wash
+
+rich with gold.  He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery,
+
+found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.
+
+He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few `colours',
+
+and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery
+
+towards which all indications were now leading him.  He had sunk shafts
+
+across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking
+
+twenty feet and not a colour of gold.  Probably the whole of the ground
+
+under the cemetery was rich -- maybe the richest in the district.
+
+The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers -- besides,
+
+the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched
+
+the alluvial bottom.  There was nothing strange in the fact
+
+that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district
+
+had thought of the cemetery and racecourse.  Old brick chimneys and houses,
+
+the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from
+
+sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill
+
+in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'.  Fossicking Chinamen
+
+were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.
+
+
+
+Dave reckoned to strike the `lead', or a shelf or ledge
+
+with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet
+
+within the cemetery.  But a theory in alluvial gold-mining
+
+was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects.
+
+The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic disturbances --
+
+`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that sort of old thing --
+
+upset everything.  You might follow good gold along a ledge,
+
+just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be
+
+a hundred feet or so under your nose.
+
+
+
+Had the `ground' in the cemetery been `open' Dave would have gone to the point
+
+under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked
+
+the ground.  It would have been the quickest and easiest way -- it would have
+
+saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along
+
+a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence.  But it was very doubtful
+
+if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
+
+even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,
+
+and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --
+
+which last was what Dave wished for least of all.  He wanted,
+
+above all things, to keep the thing shady.  Then, again,
+
+the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,
+
+rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong
+
+for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.
+
+
+
+`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
+
+
+
+He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.
+
+Jim grumbled, in conclusion, --
+
+
+
+`Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton.  It's the shortest
+
+and straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
+
+
+
+Then there was another trouble.  How were they to account
+
+for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be
+
+the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel
+
+for shallow sinkings?  Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt
+
+away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;
+
+but that would double the labour, and might lead to detection
+
+sooner than anything else.  There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats
+
+every night.  Then Dave got an idea.
+
+
+
+There was supposed to exist -- and it has since been proved --
+
+another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,
+
+and several had tried for it.  One, the town watchmaker,
+
+had sunk all his money in `duffers', trying for the second bottom.
+
+It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --
+
+on solid rock, I suppose.  This watchmaker, an Italian,
+
+would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever
+
+he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf, or false bottom,
+
+thirty or forty feet down -- he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,
+
+and then start to sink another.  It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense
+
+to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom,
+
+and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms,
+
+or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
+
+He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him.
+
+And the last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground
+
+like a sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place
+
+to put down a deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore.
+
+But I'm right off the line again.
+
+
+
+`Old Pinter', Ballarat digger -- his theory on second and other bottoms
+
+ran as follows: --
+
+
+
+`Ye see, ~this~ here grass surface -- this here surface with
+
+trees an' grass on it, that we're livin' on, has got nothin' to do with us.
+
+This here bottom in the shaller sinkin's that we're workin' on
+
+is the slope to the bed of the ~new~ crick that was on the surface
+
+about the time that men was missin' links.  The false bottoms,
+
+thirty or forty feet down, kin be said to have been on the surface
+
+about the time that men was monkeys.  The ~secon'~ bottom --
+
+eighty or a hundred feet down -- was on the surface about the time
+
+when men was frogs.  Now ----'
+
+
+
+But it's with the missing-link surface we have to do,
+
+and had the friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to
+
+they would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
+
+
+
+`We'll give out we're tryin' for the second bottom,' said Dave Regan.
+
+`We'll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don't want air
+
+in shallow sinkings.'
+
+
+
+`And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole
+
+and see the bottom,' said Jim Bently.
+
+
+
+`We must keep 'em away,' said Dave.  `Tar the bottom, or cover it
+
+with tarred canvas, to make it black.  Then they won't see it.
+
+There's not many diggers left, and the rest are going;
+
+they're chucking up the claims in Log Paddock.  Besides, I could get drunk
+
+and pick rows with the rest and they wouldn't come near me.
+
+The farmers ain't in love with us diggers, so they won't bother us.
+
+No man has a right to come poking round another man's claim:
+
+it ain't ettykit -- I'll root up that old ettykit and stand to it --
+
+it's rather worn out now, but that's no matter.  We'll shift the tent
+
+down near the claim and see that no one comes nosing round on Sunday.
+
+They'll think we're only some more second-bottom lunatics,
+
+like Francea [the mining watchmaker].  We're going to get our fortune
+
+out from under that old graveyard, Jim.  You leave it all to me
+
+till you're born again with brains.'
+
+
+
+Dave's schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often
+
+came to the ground.  He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,
+
+bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass,
+
+which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party
+
+(that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down
+
+about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated exertion,
+
+until the slack was taken up and the rope lifted the bucket
+
+from the shallow bottom.
+
+
+
+`It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse,
+
+but we can't afford them just yet,' said Dave.
+
+
+
+But I'm a little behind.  They drove straight in under the cemetery,
+
+finding good wash all the way.  The edge of Jimmy Middleton's box
+
+appeared in the top corner of the `face' (the working end) of the drive.
+
+They went under the butt-end of the grave.  They shoved up
+
+the end of the shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident
+
+which might disturb the mound above; they puddled -- i.e., rammed --
+
+stiff clay up round the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down;
+
+and having given the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar,
+
+they got over, or rather under, an unpleasant matter.
+
+
+
+Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below,
+
+and grumbled a good deal.  `Blowed if I ever thought I'd be rooting for gold
+
+down among the blanky dead men,' he said.  But the dirt panned out better
+
+every dish they washed, and Dave worked the `wash' out right and left
+
+as they drove.
+
+
+
+But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man
+
+whom Dave wished to see round there -- `Old Pinter' (James Poynton),
+
+Californian and Victorian digger of the old school.  He'd been prospecting
+
+down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder -- threaded through the eye
+
+in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that hung behind --
+
+and his gold-dish under his arm.
+
+
+
+I mightn't get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish
+
+and what gold-washing is.  A gold washing-dish is a flat dish --
+
+nearer the shape of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else
+
+I have seen in England, or the dish we used for setting milk --
+
+I don't know whether the same is used here:  the gold-dish measures,
+
+say, eighteen inches across the top.  You get it full of wash dirt,
+
+squat down at a convenient place at the edge of the water-hole,
+
+where there is a rest for the dish in the water just below its own depth.
+
+You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak a while,
+
+then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay dissolves,
+
+dish it off as muddy water or mullock.  You are careful
+
+to wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them.
+
+And so till all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing
+
+but clean gravel in the bottom of the dish.  You work this off carefully,
+
+turning the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it.
+
+It requires some practice.  The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish,
+
+by its own weight.  At last there is only a little half-moon
+
+of sand or fine gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish --
+
+you work the dish slanting from you.  Presently the gold,
+
+if there was any in the dirt, appears in `colours', grains, or little nuggets
+
+along the base of the half-moon of sand.  The more gold there is in the dirt,
+
+or the coarser the gold is, the sooner it appears.  A practised digger
+
+can work off the last speck of gravel, without losing a `colour',
+
+by just working the water round and off in the dish.  Also a careful digger
+
+could throw a handful of gold in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off
+
+in dishfuls, recover practically every colour.
+
+
+
+The gold-washing `cradle' is a box, shaped something like a boot,
+
+and the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby's cradle,
+
+and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you'll put your foot
+
+into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom;
+
+the clay and gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it,
+
+and the cradle rocked smartly.  The finer gravel and the mullock
+
+goes through and down over a sloping board covered with blanket,
+
+and with ledges on it to catch the gold.  The dish was mostly used
+
+for prospecting; large quantities of wash dirt was put through
+
+the horse-power `puddling-machine', which there isn't room to describe here.
+
+
+
+`'Ello, Dave!' said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise
+
+at the size of Dave's waste-heap.  `Tryin' for the second bottom?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Dave, guttural.
+
+
+
+Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap
+
+and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he resembled.
+
+Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his knees,
+
+he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
+
+
+
+Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
+
+over the graveyard.
+
+
+
+`Tryin' for a secon' bottom,' he reflected absently.  `Eh, Dave?'
+
+
+
+Dave only stood and looked black.
+
+
+
+Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his chin-feathers,
+
+which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held horizontally.
+
+
+
+`Kullers is safe,' reflected Pinter.
+
+
+
+`All right?' snapped Dave.  `I suppose we must let him into it.'
+
+
+
+`Kullers' was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter's mate
+
+for some time -- Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant
+
+was that Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
+
+
+
+Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
+
+Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his shoulders.
+
+Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along the other fence,
+
+the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.  He lost no time
+
+for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and started to drive
+
+straight for the point under the cemetery for which Dave was making;
+
+he gave out that he had bottomed on good `indications'
+
+running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the fence.
+
+Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan -- partly for the sake of appearances,
+
+but mainly because his and Jim's lively imaginations made the air
+
+in the drive worse than it really was.  A `fan' is a thing
+
+like a paddle-wheel rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle,
+
+and something the shape of a shoe, but rounded over the top.
+
+There is a small grooved wheel on the axle of the fan outside,
+
+and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is carried over this wheel
+
+and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden driving-wheel
+
+rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle to turn.
+
+That's how the thing is driven.  A wind-chute, like an endless pillow-slip,
+
+made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of the fan-box,
+
+and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive --
+
+this carries the fresh air into the workings.
+
+
+
+Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning
+
+a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to work.
+
+He felt mad that it hadn't struck him sooner.
+
+
+
+Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet place
+
+in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning,
+
+while Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently
+
+to watch their tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred,
+
+and then dropped down into Pinter's hole and saw at a glance
+
+what he was up to.
+
+
+
+After that Dave lost no time:  he drove straight on,
+
+encouraged by the thuds of Pinter's and Kullers' picks drawing nearer.
+
+They would strike his tunnel at right angles.  Both parties worked long hours,
+
+only knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy,
+
+and throw themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours' sleep.
+
+Pinter had practical experience and a line clear of graves,
+
+and he made good time.  The two parties now found it more comfortable
+
+to be not on speaking terms.  Individually they grew furtive,
+
+and began to feel criminal like -- at least Dave and Jim did.
+
+They'd start if a horse stumbled through the Bush, and expected to see
+
+a mounted policeman ride up at any moment and hear him ask questions.
+
+They had driven about thirty-five feet when, one Saturday afternoon,
+
+the strain became too great, and Dave and Jim got drunk.
+
+The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning they felt too shaky
+
+to come to work and had more drink.  On Monday afternoon, Kullers,
+
+whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the face of his drive
+
+into the wall of Dave's, about four feet from the end of it:
+
+the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.
+
+They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party
+
+take the offensive.
+
+
+
+Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky.
+
+Jim went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it
+
+in the spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close
+
+to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness
+
+in the air.  He started picking away at the `face' and scraping the clay
+
+back from under his feet, and didn't hear Kullers come to work.
+
+Kullers came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff.
+
+He stuck his great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes
+
+rolling horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw --
+
+
+
+`'Ullo! you dar'?'
+
+
+
+No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him
+
+quicker than Jim came out of his.  He scrambled up the shaft
+
+by the foot-holes, and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
+
+
+
+`What's the matter?' asked Dave.  `Have you seen a ghost?'
+
+
+
+`I've seen the -- the devil!' gasped Jim.  `I'm -- I'm done with this here
+
+ghoul business.'
+
+
+
+The parties got on speaking terms again.  Dave was very warm,
+
+but Jim's language was worse.  Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively
+
+till the other party cooled.  There was no appealing to the Commissioner
+
+for goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields
+
+or otherwise -- so they did the only thing possible and sensible,
+
+they joined forces and became `Poynton, Regan, & Party'.
+
+They agreed to work the ground from the separate shafts,
+
+and decided to go ahead, irrespective of appearances, and get as much dirt
+
+out and cradled as possible before the inevitable exposure came along.
+
+They found plenty of `payable dirt', and soon the drive ended in
+
+a cluster of roomy chambers.  They timbered up many coffins of various ages,
+
+burnt tarred canvas and brown paper, and kept the fan going.
+
+Outside they paid the storekeeper with difficulty and talked of hard times.
+
+
+
+But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership,
+
+they got a bad scare.  Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt
+
+for all they were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who
+
+should march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself.
+
+She was a hard woman to look at.  She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline
+
+and her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,
+
+she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink
+
+to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row.
+
+She had a stride like a grenadier.  A digger had once measured her step
+
+by her footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter:
+
+it measured three feet from toe to heel.
+
+
+
+She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy
+
+bunch of flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man
+
+banging his fist down on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out.
+
+The diggers were dirt beneath her feet.  Presently they heard her drive on
+
+in her spring-cart on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
+
+
+
+It was afternoon.  Dave and Pinter were feeling tired,
+
+and were just deciding to knock off work for that day
+
+when they heard a scuffling in the direction of the different shafts,
+
+and both Jim and Kullers dropped down and bundled in in a great hurry.
+
+Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if there was something funny,
+
+and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
+
+
+
+`What's up now?' demanded Dave apprehensively.
+
+
+
+`Mother Middleton,' said Jim; `she's blind mad drunk,
+
+and she's got a bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other,
+
+that she's bringing out for some one.'
+
+
+
+`How the hell did she drop to it?' exclaimed Pinter.
+
+
+
+`Dunno,' said Jim.  `Anyway she's coming for us.  Listen to her!'
+
+
+
+They didn't have to listen hard.  The language which came down the shaft --
+
+they weren't sure which one -- and along the drives was enough
+
+to scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.
+
+
+
+`Why didn't you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,
+
+instead of giving her a lead here?' asked Dave.
+
+
+
+Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
+
+
+
+Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft -- it was Pinter's --
+
+and they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin
+
+in spite of themselves, for they knew she couldn't hurt them from the surface,
+
+and that, though she had been a working digger herself,
+
+she couldn't fill both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
+
+
+
+`I wonder which shaf' she'll come down,' asked Kullers
+
+in a tone befitting the place and occasion.
+
+
+
+`You'd better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,' said Dave,
+
+`and Jim and I'll watch mine.'
+
+
+
+`I -- I won't,' said Pinter hurriedly.  `I'm -- I'm a modest man.'
+
+
+
+Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter's shaft.
+
+
+
+`She's thrown her bottle down,' said Dave.
+
+
+
+Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity,
+
+and returned hurriedly.
+
+
+
+`She's broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive,
+
+and I believe she's coming down.'
+
+
+
+`Her crinoline'll handicap her,' said Pinter vacantly, `that's a comfort.'
+
+
+
+`She's took it off!' said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter's drive,
+
+they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped stocking,
+
+then a section of scarlet petticoat.
+
+
+
+`Lemme out!' roared Pinter, lurching forward and making
+
+a swimming motion with his hands in the direction of Dave's drive.
+
+Kullers was already gone, and Jim well on the way.  Dave, lanky and awkward,
+
+scrambled up the shaft last.  Mrs Middleton made good time,
+
+considering she had the darkness to face and didn't know the workings,
+
+and when Dave reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins,
+
+and the blood ran from a nasty scratch.  But he didn't wait to argue
+
+over the price of a new pair of trousers.  He made off through the Bush
+
+in the direction of an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.
+
+
+
+`She's too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,' said Dave.
+
+`But to-morrow she'll bring the neighbourhood down on us.'
+
+
+
+`And she's enough, without the neighbourhood,' reflected Pinter.
+
+
+
+Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
+
+and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn't carry,
+
+they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Chinaman's Ghost.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+`Simple as striking matches,' said Dave Regan, Bushman;
+
+`but it gave me the biggest scare I ever had -- except, perhaps,
+
+the time I stumbled in the dark into a six-feet digger's hole,
+
+which might have been eighty feet deep for all I knew when I was falling.
+
+(There was an eighty-feet shaft left open close by.)
+
+
+
+`It was the night of the day after the Queen's birthday.
+
+I was sinking a shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page
+
+on the old Redclay goldfield, and we camped in a tent on the creek.
+
+Jim and me went to some races that was held at Peter Anderson's pub.,
+
+about four miles across the ridges, on Queen's birthday.
+
+Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and we'd disgusted him
+
+the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he stayed at home
+
+and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic book.
+
+(He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare time.)
+
+
+
+`Jim and me had a pretty high time.  We all got pretty tight after the races,
+
+and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me --
+
+I don't remember which.  We were old chums, and we nearly always
+
+wanted to fight each other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight
+
+if we weren't stopped.  I remember once Jim got maudlin drunk
+
+and begged and prayed of me to fight him, as if he was praying for his life.
+
+Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver, used to say that Jim and me must be related,
+
+else we wouldn't hate each other so much when we were tight and truthful.
+
+
+
+`Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
+
+early in the evening.  My dog went home with him too; I must have been
+
+carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.
+
+
+
+`Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home.
+
+I'd lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his,
+
+that he'd worn on Ballarat he said:  it was a hard, straw, flat,
+
+broad-brimmed affair, and fitted my headache pretty tight.
+
+Peter gave me a small flask of whisky to help me home.  I had to go
+
+across some flats and up a long dark gully called Murderer's Gully,
+
+and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap, and down the ridge and gullies
+
+to Redclay Creek.  The lonely flats were covered with blue-grey gum bush,
+
+and looked ghostly enough in the moonlight, and I was pretty shaky,
+
+but I had a pull at the flask and a mouthful of water at a creek and felt
+
+right enough.  I began to whistle, and then to sing:  I never used to sing
+
+unless I thought I was a couple of miles out of earshot of any one.
+
+
+
+`Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course
+
+it was haunted.  Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark;
+
+and even me, when I'd grown up, I'd hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,
+
+and walk quick going along there at night-time.  We're all afraid of ghosts,
+
+but we won't let on.
+
+
+
+`Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the track,
+
+and it gave me a jump, I promise you.  It looked like two corpses
+
+laid out naked.  I finished the whisky and started up over the gap.
+
+All of a sudden a great `old man' kangaroo went across the track
+
+with a thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me.
+
+Then the naked, white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree,
+
+where some one had stripped off a sheet of bark, started out
+
+from a bend in the track in a shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk.
+
+I was pretty shaky before I started.  There was a Chinaman's grave
+
+close by the track on the top of the gap.  An old chow had lived
+
+in a hut there for many years, and fossicked on the old diggings,
+
+and one day he was found dead in the hut, and the Government
+
+gave some one a pound to bury him.  When I was a nipper
+
+we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese
+
+because the bones hadn't been sent home to China.  It was a lonely,
+
+ghostly place enough.
+
+
+
+`It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the flats
+
+and up the gully -- not a breath of air; but now as I got higher
+
+I saw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day, and felt the breath
+
+of a warm breeze on my face.  When I got into the top of the gap
+
+the first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes
+
+over the spot where the Chinaman's grave was, and I stood staring at it
+
+with both eyes.  It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it
+
+was a white bullock, and I felt relieved.  I'd hardly felt relieved when,
+
+all at once, there came a "pat-pat-pat" of running feet close behind me!
+
+I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood
+
+staring all ways for Sunday, there came a "pat-pat", then a pause,
+
+and then "pat-pat-pat-pat" behind me again:  it was like some one
+
+dodging and running off that time.  I started to walk down the track
+
+pretty fast, but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat",
+
+it was close behind me again.  I jerked my eyes over my shoulder
+
+but kept my legs going.  There was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw
+
+something slip into the Bush to the right.  It must have been the moonlight
+
+on the moving boughs; there was a good breeze blowing now.  I got down
+
+to a more level track, and was making across a spur to the main road,
+
+when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again.
+
+Then I began to run -- and it began to run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me
+
+all the time.  I hadn't time to look round.  Over the spur and down the siding
+
+and across the flat to the road I went as fast as I could split my legs apart.
+
+I had a scared idea that I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams",
+
+and that frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done.
+
+I stumbled a few times, and saved myself, but, just before I reached the road,
+
+I fell slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel.
+
+I thought I'd broken both my wrists.  I stayed for a moment
+
+on my hands and knees, quaking and listening, squinting round
+
+like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor see anything.  I picked myself up,
+
+and had hardly got on one end, when "pat-pat!" it was after me again.
+
+I must have run a mile and a half altogether that night.
+
+It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the camp,
+
+and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up in my throat.
+
+I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster.  The footsteps stopped,
+
+then something about the hat touched my fingers, and I stared at it --
+
+and the thing dawned on me.  I hadn't noticed at Peter Anderson's --
+
+my head was too swimmy to notice anything.  It was an old hat of the style
+
+that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose ribbon ends,
+
+three or four inches long, from the band behind.  As long as I walked quietly
+
+through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails didn't flap,
+
+but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were still
+
+according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat on the brim.
+
+And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being tight on my head,
+
+the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw sounded loud of course.
+
+
+
+`I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool down,
+
+and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had
+
+a long drink of water.
+
+
+
+`"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mighty thirsty.
+
+Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"
+
+
+
+`I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my bunk,
+
+and had a good rest.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Loaded Dog.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek
+
+in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist
+
+in the vicinity.  There is always a rich reef supposed to exist
+
+in the vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
+
+beneath the surface, and in which direction.  They had struck
+
+some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling.
+
+They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.
+
+They'd make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder
+
+in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound
+
+round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the cartridge in melted tallow
+
+to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible,
+
+drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram
+
+with stiff clay and broken brick.  Then they'd light the fuse
+
+and get out of the hole and wait.  The result was usually an ugly pot-hole
+
+in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
+
+
+
+There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
+
+and tailers.  The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
+
+Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged
+
+by a `nibble' or a `bite' now and then -- say once in twenty minutes.
+
+The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish
+
+when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter,
+
+and these fish wouldn't bite.  However, the creek was low,
+
+just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it
+
+to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet,
+
+and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up
+
+the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface.
+
+There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head,
+
+and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said.  Andy took off his boots,
+
+tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud
+
+with his feet, and he knew it.  Dave scooped one out with his hand
+
+and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed
+
+up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said,
+
+like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights --
+
+only the toothache pain had a `burred edge', Dave said.
+
+
+
+Dave got an idea.
+
+
+
+`Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?' he said.
+
+`I'll try it.'
+
+
+
+He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.
+
+Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable,
+
+or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates
+
+if they weren't.
+
+
+
+He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock.
+
+Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river.
+
+The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot
+
+piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag
+
+firmly to it with whipcord.  The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water
+
+with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface,
+
+ready for lighting.  Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees'-wax
+
+to make it water-tight.  `We'll have to leave it some time
+
+before we light it,' said Dave, `to give the fish time
+
+to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again;
+
+so we'll want it well water-tight.'
+
+
+
+Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip
+
+of sail canvas -- that they used for making water-bags --
+
+to increase the force of the explosion, and round that he pasted
+
+layers of stiff brown paper -- on the plan of the sort of fireworks
+
+we called `gun-crackers'.  He let the paper dry in the sun,
+
+then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses of canvas over it,
+
+and bound the thing from end to end with stout fishing-line.  Dave's schemes
+
+were elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to nothing.
+
+The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now -- a formidable bomb;
+
+but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure.  Andy sewed on another layer of canvas,
+
+dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire
+
+round it as an afterthought, dipped it in tallow again,
+
+and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd know where to find it,
+
+and wound the fuse loosely round it.  Then he went to the camp-fire
+
+to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a billy,
+
+and to see about frying some chops for dinner.  Dave and Jim were at work
+
+in the claim that morning.
+
+
+
+They had a big black young retriever dog -- or rather an overgrown pup,
+
+a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
+
+and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip.
+
+Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of appreciation
+
+of his own silliness.  He seemed to take life, the world,
+
+his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke.
+
+He'd retrieve anything:  he carted back most of the camp rubbish
+
+that Andy threw away.  They had a cat that died in hot weather,
+
+and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning
+
+the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so,
+
+and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps,
+
+where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise
+
+and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere
+
+of the summer sunrise.  He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming;
+
+he'd jump in after them, and take their hands in his mouth,
+
+and try to swim out with them, and scratch their naked bodies with his paws.
+
+They loved him for his good-heartedness and his foolishness,
+
+but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.
+
+
+
+He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge,
+
+and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon
+
+he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on,
+
+and to come home to dinner with them.  Andy saw them coming,
+
+and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire.  Andy was cook to-day;
+
+Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do
+
+in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be ready.
+
+The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.
+
+
+
+Andy's brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught
+
+by the glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes,
+
+and it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink the cartridge
+
+packed with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to increase
+
+the force of the explosion.  He may have been all out,
+
+from a scientific point of view, but the notion looked all right to him.
+
+Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in their `damned silliness'.
+
+Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin -- the sort with the little
+
+tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the convenience of pouring out
+
+the treacle -- and it struck him that this would have made
+
+the best kind of cartridge-case:  he would only have had
+
+to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck,
+
+and cork and seal it with bees'-wax.  He was turning to suggest this to Dave,
+
+when Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing --
+
+and bolted.  He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan
+
+spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning.
+
+Jim Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave.  Andy stood stock-still,
+
+staring after them.
+
+
+
+`Run, Andy! run!' they shouted back at him.  `Run!!!  Look behind you,
+
+you fool!'  Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him,
+
+was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth -- wedged into
+
+his broadest and silliest grin.  And that wasn't all.
+
+The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse
+
+had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze;
+
+Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well,
+
+and now it was hissing and spitting properly.
+
+
+
+Andy's legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,
+
+and he made after Dave and Jim.  And the dog followed Andy.
+
+
+
+Dave and Jim were good runners -- Jim the best -- for a short distance;
+
+Andy was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.
+
+The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be
+
+to find his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic.  Dave and Jim
+
+kept shouting back, `Don't foller us! don't foller us, you coloured fool!'
+
+but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged.  They could never explain,
+
+any more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran,
+
+Dave keeping in Jim's track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave,
+
+and the dog circling round Andy -- the live fuse swishing in all directions
+
+and hissing and spluttering and stinking.  Jim yelling to Dave
+
+not to follow him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction --
+
+to `spread out', and Andy roaring at the dog to go home.
+
+Then Andy's brain began to work, stimulated by the crisis:
+
+he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged;
+
+he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again.
+
+The retriever saw that he'd made a mistake about Andy,
+
+and left him and bounded after Dave.  Dave, who had the presence of mind
+
+to think that the fuse's time wasn't up yet, made a dive and a grab
+
+for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round
+
+snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could:
+
+the dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it.
+
+Dave roared and cursed at the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended,
+
+left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead.  Jim swung to a sapling
+
+and went up it like a native bear; it was a young sapling,
+
+and Jim couldn't safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the ground.
+
+The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it was a kitten,
+
+at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round
+
+under Jim.  The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark --
+
+he was all right now -- it was Jim who was out for a spree.
+
+The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute.
+
+Jim tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked.
+
+Jim fell on his feet and ran.  The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed.
+
+It all took but a very few moments.  Jim ran to a digger's hole,
+
+about ten feet deep, and dropped down into it -- landing on soft mud --
+
+and was safe.  The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge,
+
+for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark
+
+to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
+
+
+
+`Go away, Tommy,' said Jim feebly, `go away.'
+
+
+
+The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now;
+
+Andy had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face,
+
+having suddenly remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war
+
+with a circle of Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed)
+
+round a newly-arrived shell.
+
+
+
+There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road,
+
+not far from the claim.  Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster
+
+in his stimulated imagination than it did in reality,
+
+so he made for the shanty.  There were several casual Bushmen
+
+on the verandah and in the bar; Dave rushed into the bar,
+
+banging the door to behind him.  `My dog!' he gasped,
+
+in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, `the blanky retriever --
+
+he's got a live cartridge in his mouth ----'
+
+
+
+The retriever, finding the front door shut against him,
+
+had bounded round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling
+
+in the doorway leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth
+
+and the fuse spluttering.  They burst out of that bar.
+
+Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young dog,
+
+he tried to make friends with everybody.
+
+
+
+The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
+
+There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
+
+on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.
+
+Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door --
+
+the publican cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones,
+
+and wanting to know what the hell he came here for.
+
+
+
+The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles,
+
+but, luckily for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog
+
+sulking and nursing his nastiness under there -- a sneaking, fighting,
+
+thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison.
+
+Tommy saw his danger -- he'd had experience from this dog --
+
+and started out and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge.
+
+Half-way across the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him.
+
+Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush.
+
+The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back
+
+to see what he had dropped.
+
+
+
+Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners
+
+and under the buildings -- spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs,
+
+mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs --
+
+that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish
+
+without explaining -- and yapping, yelping small fry.
+
+They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog,
+
+for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something
+
+which might be good for a dog to eat.  He sniffed at the cartridge twice,
+
+and was just taking a third cautious sniff when ----
+
+
+
+It was very good blasting powder -- a new brand that Dave had recently got
+
+up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made.
+
+Andy was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy
+
+as the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.
+
+
+
+Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again.
+
+When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog
+
+were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if
+
+he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust
+
+under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
+
+Several saddle-horses, which had been `hanging-up' round the verandah,
+
+were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust,
+
+with broken bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts,
+
+from every point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs.
+
+Two of them went home, to the place where they were born,
+
+thirty miles away, and reached it the same night and stayed there;
+
+it was not till towards evening that the rest came back cautiously
+
+to make inquiries.  One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of 'em
+
+looked more or less singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog,
+
+who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of him along on one leg,
+
+had reason to be glad that he'd saved up the other leg all those years,
+
+for he needed it now.  There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty
+
+for years afterwards, who couldn't stand the smell of a gun being cleaned.
+
+He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog,
+
+in the cartridge.  Bushmen said that it was amusing
+
+to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose:
+
+he wouldn't wait to bring his solitary eye to bear --
+
+he'd take to the Bush and stay out all night.
+
+
+
+For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen
+
+round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall,
+
+or rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking.
+
+There were two white women in hysterics at the house,
+
+and a half-caste rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water.
+
+The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her squawks,
+
+to `hold up for my sake, Mary, or I'll lam the life out of ye.'
+
+
+
+Dave decided to apologise later on, `when things had settled a bit,'
+
+and went back to camp.  And the dog that had done it all,
+
+`Tommy', the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave
+
+and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him,
+
+smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability,
+
+and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he'd had.
+
+
+
+Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops,
+
+while Dave went to help Jim out of the hole.
+
+
+
+And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen,
+
+riding lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl
+
+and with just a hint of the nasal twang --
+
+
+
+`'El-lo, Da-a-ve!  How's the fishin' getting on, Da-a-ve?'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    I.  Dave Regan's Yarn.
+
+
+
+
+
+`When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,'
+
+said Dave Regan, Bushman, `me and my mate, Jim Bently,
+
+decided to take a turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover,
+
+overland with a big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.
+
+
+
+`We couldn't get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our money,
+
+like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border, where they
+
+had a flash barmaid from Brisbane.  We sold our pack-horses and pack-saddles,
+
+and rode out of that town with our swags on our riding-horses in front of us.
+
+We had another spree at another place, and by the time we got
+
+near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.
+
+
+
+`Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on
+
+a big mob of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek.
+
+They had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther
+
+with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques
+
+to pay them off, and they were waiting for him.
+
+
+
+`"And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us," said one of them.
+
+
+
+`Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp
+
+towards Mulgatown.  He was called "Poisonous Jimmy" perhaps
+
+on account of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes
+
+on a station in the Bogan scrubs at one time.  He was a sharp publican.
+
+He had a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side
+
+and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he'd say to the girl,
+
+"Run and get your best frock on, Mary!  Here's the shearers comin'."
+
+And if a chequeman wouldn't drink he'd try to get him into his bar
+
+and shout for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.
+
+
+
+`"But he won't get us," said another of the drovers.  "I'm going to ride
+
+straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post
+
+as soon as I get it."
+
+
+
+`"You've always said that, Jack," said the first drover.
+
+
+
+`We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim
+
+got on our horses and rode on.  We were burned to bricks
+
+and ragged and dusty and parched up enough, and so were our horses.
+
+We only had a few shillings to carry us four or five hundred miles home,
+
+but it was mighty hot and dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink
+
+at the shanty.  This was west of the sixpenny-line at that time --
+
+all drinks were a shilling along here.
+
+
+
+`Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.
+
+
+
+`"We'll plant our swags in the scrub," I said to Jim.
+
+
+
+`"What for?" said Jim.
+
+
+
+`"Never mind -- you'll see," I said.
+
+
+
+`So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub
+
+by the side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down,
+
+and hung our horses to the verandah posts.
+
+
+
+`"Poisonous" came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made
+
+anybody home-sick.
+
+
+
+`He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said;
+
+he looked as if he'd be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight --
+
+he wasn't the sort of man you'd care to try and swindle a second time.
+
+He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and stubble --
+
+like a bush fence round a stubble-field.  He had a broken nose,
+
+and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye
+
+that seemed fixed.  If you didn't know him well you might talk to him
+
+for five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover
+
+that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the time.
+
+It was awful embarrassing.  It must have made him awkward to deal with
+
+in a fight.
+
+
+
+`"Good day, mates," he said.
+
+
+
+`"Good day," we said.
+
+
+
+`"It's hot."
+
+
+
+`"It's hot."
+
+
+
+`We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
+
+
+
+`"What are you going to have?" he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a rag.
+
+
+
+`We had two long-beers.
+
+
+
+`"Never mind that," said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
+
+"it's my shout.  I don't suppose your boss is back yet?
+
+I saw him go in to Mulgatown this morning."
+
+
+
+`"No, he ain't back," I said; "I wish he was.  We're getting tired
+
+of waiting for him.  We'll give him another hour, and then some of us
+
+will have to ride in to see whether he's got on the boose,
+
+and get hold of him if he has."
+
+
+
+`"I suppose you're waiting for your cheques?" he said, turning to fix
+
+some bottles on the shelf.
+
+
+
+`"Yes," I said, "we are;" and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back
+
+as solemn as an owl.
+
+
+
+`Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we'd been on the track,
+
+and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now an' then,
+
+as for the sake of conversation.  We could see that he was trying to get
+
+at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.
+
+
+
+`"Have another drink," he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
+
+"It's up to me," and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
+
+as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers,
+
+and screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered
+
+an innocent or unconscious expression.  The girl began to sidle in and out
+
+with a smart frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
+
+
+
+`"Have you had dinner?" she asked.  We could have done with a good meal,
+
+but it was too risky -- the drovers' boss might come along
+
+while we were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous.
+
+So we said we'd had dinner.
+
+
+
+`Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
+
+
+
+`"I wish the boss would come," said Jim with a yawn.  "I want to get
+
+into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things
+
+before I go in.  I ain't got a decent rag to me back.  I don't suppose
+
+there's ten bob amongst the lot of us."
+
+
+
+`There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers' camp.
+
+
+
+`"Oh, go to the store and get what you want," said Poisonous,
+
+taking a sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter.
+
+"You can fix it up with me when your boss comes.  Bring your mates along."
+
+
+
+`"Thank you," said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping it
+
+into his pocket.
+
+
+
+`"Well, Jim," I said, "suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
+
+are getting on?"
+
+
+
+`"All right," said Jim.
+
+
+
+`"Tell them to come down and get a drink," said Poisonous;
+
+"or, wait, you can take some beer along to them if you like,"
+
+and he gave us half a gallon of beer in a billy-can.  He knew
+
+what the first drink meant with Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
+
+
+
+`We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
+
+to where our swags were.
+
+
+
+`"I say," said Jim, when we'd strapped the swags to the saddles,
+
+"suppose we take the beer back to those chaps:  it's meant for them,
+
+and it's only a fair thing, anyway -- we've got as much as we can hold
+
+till we get into Mulgatown."
+
+
+
+`"It might get them into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps.
+
+Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along
+
+will think there's angels in the Bush."
+
+
+
+`"Oh! what's a row?" said Jim.  "They can take care of themselves;
+
+they'll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous
+
+when they take the can back and it comes to explanations.
+
+I'll ride back to them."
+
+
+
+`So Jim rode back to the drovers' camp with the beer,
+
+and when he came back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised,
+
+but they drank good luck to him.
+
+
+
+`We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out
+
+on the road again on the Mulgatown side:  we only stayed at Mulgatown
+
+to buy some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
+
+about seven miles on the safe side of the town.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+
+
+
+
+
+`Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him.
+
+We'd brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
+
+We camped about seven miles the other side of the town,
+
+waitin' for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock,
+
+while the boss rode on into town to draw our money.  Some of us
+
+was goin' back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown
+
+and had a boose up with the boss.  But while we was waitin'
+
+there come along two fellers that had been drovin' up north.
+
+They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's place,
+
+an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of beer
+
+that he said Poisonous had sent for us.  We all knew Jimmy's little games --
+
+the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place;
+
+but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards.
+
+When the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks,
+
+we started into Mulgatown.  We stopped outside Poisonous's place
+
+an' handed the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah.
+
+Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
+
+
+
+`"Good day, boys!" he says.
+
+
+
+`"Good day, Poisonous," we says.
+
+
+
+`"It's hot," he says.
+
+
+
+`"It's blanky hot," I says.
+
+
+
+`He seemed to expect us to get down.  "Where are you off to?" he says.
+
+
+
+`"Mulgatown," I says.  "It will be cooler there," and we sung out,
+
+"So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.
+
+
+
+`He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi there!"
+
+after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on.  When we looked back last
+
+he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
+
+
+
+`We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown,
+
+when we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back
+
+we saw it was Poisonous.
+
+
+
+`He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode
+
+along with us a bit gasping:  then he burst out.
+
+
+
+`"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.
+
+
+
+`"What other two?" I asked.  "We're all here.  What's the matter
+
+with you anyway?"
+
+
+
+`"All here!" he yelled.  "You're a lurid liar!  What the flamin' sheol
+
+do you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?
+
+without as much as thank yer!  D'yer think I'm a flamin' ----!"
+
+
+
+`Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
+
+
+
+`"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps,
+
+puttin' his hand in his pocket.  "We didn't want yer slush.
+
+It tasted as if it had been used before."
+
+
+
+`"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy.  "I'll ---- well take it
+
+out of one of yer bleedin' hides!"
+
+
+
+`We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
+
+He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands,
+
+and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off:
+
+besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye,
+
+an', even if you knowed him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye --
+
+it was no good watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands,
+
+and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight.
+
+The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.
+
+
+
+`"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles) --
+
+"Now, look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"
+
+
+
+`"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen.
+
+"Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place
+
+an' put up half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign,
+
+an' got a can o' beer on the strength of their cheques.
+
+They sez they was waitin' for you -- an' I want my crimson money
+
+out o' some one!"
+
+
+
+`"What was they like?" asks the boss.
+
+
+
+`"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time.  "One was a blanky long,
+
+sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair.
+
+Your blanky men knows all about them because they had
+
+the blanky billy o' beer."
+
+
+
+`"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.
+
+
+
+`So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
+
+
+
+`I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed,
+
+but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw
+
+how he'd been left.  It was enough to split stumps.  He said he wanted
+
+to see those fellers, just once, before he died.
+
+
+
+`He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along the road
+
+with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;
+
+but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back.  He said
+
+he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers
+
+till he could give 'em in charge.
+
+
+
+`They fined him ten bob.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Ghostly Door.
+
+
+
+  Told by one of Dave's mates.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand,
+
+making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught
+
+in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough
+
+to cut off a man's legs.  Camping out was not to be thought of,
+
+so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between
+
+our shoulder-blades -- from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags --
+
+and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track.
+
+We were settled to it -- to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks
+
+till we came to somewhere -- when, just before darkness settled down,
+
+we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill,
+
+back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.
+
+
+
+It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill,
+
+and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached
+
+to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere.  The windows were boarded up.
+
+We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door,
+
+to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
+
+there was light enough to see that the place was empty.
+
+Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane,
+
+clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in.
+
+I handed in the swags to him.  The room was very draughty;
+
+the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs,
+
+so we tried the partitioned-off room -- the bedroom -- and that was better.
+
+It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left
+
+by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;
+
+and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
+
+
+
+We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire,
+
+and put the billy on.  We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets
+
+on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
+
+to dry.  There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed.
+
+I hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it
+
+like an ill-used fibre brush -- a beard that got redder the longer it grew;
+
+he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man
+
+so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
+
+and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs.  We must have looked
+
+a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools,
+
+with the billy and the tucker on the box between us,
+
+and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.
+
+
+
+`I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, `but this is the "whare"*
+
+where the murder was that we heard about along the road.
+
+I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'
+
+Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet,
+
+and scratched his ear, and said, `That looks very much like a blood-stain
+
+under your stool, doesn't it, Jim?'
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Whare', `whorrie', Maori name for house.
+
+--
+
+
+
+I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire --
+
+it was too hot.
+
+
+
+I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
+
+would have minded -- he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush
+
+to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything;
+
+besides, he was more than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards
+
+that he'd mistook him for some one else:  he must have been
+
+a very short-sighted murderer.
+
+
+
+Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had,
+
+on the two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in,
+
+and filled up and smoked comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again
+
+about nothing in particular.  Once I happened to look across at Dave,
+
+and saw him sitting up a bit and watching the door.  The door opened
+
+very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me,
+
+then at Dave, and walked out again; and the door closed behind it.
+
+
+
+Dave scratched his ear.  `That's rum,' he said.  `I could have sworn
+
+I fastened that door.  They must have left the cat behind.'
+
+
+
+`It looks like it,' I said.  `Neither of us has been on the boose lately.'
+
+
+
+He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.
+
+
+
+The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.
+
+Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the door,
+
+and called, `Puss -- puss -- puss!' but the cat wouldn't come.
+
+He shut the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught,
+
+and got into bed again.
+
+
+
+He'd scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat
+
+walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out
+
+as the door closed smartly.
+
+
+
+I looked at Dave and he looked at me -- hard; then he scratched
+
+the back of his head.  I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face
+
+and scared about the head.
+
+
+
+He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,
+
+sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open.  There was no one there.
+
+Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn't see the cat.
+
+He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat
+
+answered him and came in from somewhere -- she'd been outside the window,
+
+I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against
+
+his hairy shin.  Dave could generally bring a cat that way.  He had a weakness
+
+for cats.  I'd seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse -- brutally,
+
+I thought -- but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it.
+
+Dave was good to cats:  if a cat had a family where Dave was round,
+
+he'd see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus.
+
+He said once to me, `I can understand a man kicking a dog,
+
+or hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can't understand a man
+
+hurting a cat.'
+
+
+
+He gave this cat something to eat.  Then he went and held the light
+
+close to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it.
+
+He found a key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door.
+
+He got into bed again, and the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot
+
+and started her old drum going, like shot in a sieve.
+
+Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her he'd meant no harm
+
+when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled down again.
+
+
+
+We had some books of the `Deadwood Dick' school.  Dave was reading
+
+`The Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch', and I had `The Dismembered Hand',
+
+or `The Disembowelled Corpse', or some such names.  They were first-class
+
+preparation for a ghost.
+
+
+
+I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement
+
+and saw Dave's frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it
+
+on the wall.  He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.
+
+And that door was opening again -- slowly -- and Dave had locked it!
+
+I never felt anything so creepy:  the foot of my bunk was behind the door,
+
+and I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so.
+
+We waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe,
+
+watching for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly,
+
+and up on one end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
+
+
+
+`You shot the bolt ~outside~ the catch,' I said, as he caught hold of the door
+
+-- like one grabs a craw-fish.
+
+
+
+`I'll swear I didn't,' said Dave.  But he'd already turned the key
+
+a couple of times, so he couldn't be sure.  He shut and locked the door again.
+
+`Now, get out and see for yourself,' he said.
+
+
+
+I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.
+
+Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
+
+
+
+I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him.
+
+He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.
+
+
+
+`What are you doing that for?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`If there's a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying
+
+any of his funny business, we'll hear him if he tries to come in while
+
+we're asleep,' says Dave.  Then he got back into bed.  We composed our nerves
+
+with the `Haunted Gulch' and `The Disembowelled Corpse',
+
+and after a while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off
+
+when the stick fell from the door against my big toe and then to the ground
+
+with tremendous clatter.  I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk,
+
+and so did Dave -- the cat went over the partition.  That door opened,
+
+only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly.  Dave got out,
+
+grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob
+
+as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn't come! -- it was fast and locked!
+
+Then Dave's face began to look as frightened as his hair.
+
+He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him;
+
+he unlocked the door and we went into the other room,
+
+Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his feet.
+
+The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.
+
+
+
+`It muster gone by the winder,' whispered Dave.  I noticed that he said `it'
+
+instead of `he'.  I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only needed that
+
+to scare me bad.
+
+
+
+We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.
+
+Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the floor,
+
+laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of them,
+
+and started to roll up his swag.
+
+
+
+`What are you going to do, Dave?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`I'm going to take the track,' says Dave, `and camp somewhere farther on.
+
+You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.'
+
+
+
+I started to roll up my swag at once.  We dressed and fastened on
+
+the tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making
+
+any noise.  We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.
+
+
+
+`That comes of camping in a deserted house,' said Dave, when we were safe
+
+on the track.  No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned homestead,
+
+or even near it -- probably because a deserted home looks ghostlier
+
+in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.
+
+
+
+It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.
+
+
+
+We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped
+
+on the sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole
+
+where there had been a landslip.  We used all our candle-ends
+
+to get a fire alight, but once we got it started we knocked the wet bark
+
+off ~manuka~ sticks and logs and piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire.
+
+When the ground got a little drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers
+
+with some sticks and the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee
+
+and got through the night pretty comfortably.  In the morning Dave said,
+
+`I'm going back to that house.'
+
+
+
+`What for?' I said.
+
+
+
+`I'm going to find out what's the matter with that crimson door.
+
+If I don't I'll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door
+
+so long as I live.'
+
+
+
+So we went back.  It was still blowing.  The thing was simple enough
+
+by daylight -- after a little watching and experimenting.
+
+The house was built of odds and ends and badly fitted.  It `gave' in the wind
+
+in almost any direction -- not much, not more than an inch or so,
+
+but just enough to throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square
+
+in such a way as to bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch
+
+(the door-frame was of scraps joined).  Then the door swung open
+
+according to the hang of it; and when the gust was over the house gave back,
+
+and the door swung to -- the frame easing just a little in another direction.
+
+I suppose it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about
+
+by accident.  The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind
+
+must have accounted for the variations of the door's movements --
+
+and maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.
+
+
+
+Dave scratched his head a good bit.
+
+
+
+`I never lived in a house yet,' he said, as we came away --
+
+`I never lived in a house yet without there was something wrong with it.
+
+Gimme a good tent.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Wild Irishman.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington,
+
+the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called Pahiatua,
+
+which meaneth the `home of the gods', and is situated
+
+in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district.
+
+They have a pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district
+
+was not originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes,
+
+but by the tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire,
+
+in the eyes of a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last --
+
+I don't remember which -- upon the scene.  He was the discoverer, I suppose,
+
+now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named.
+
+Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
+
+
+
+Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks.
+
+While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper --
+
+which, I anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left
+
+(after paying board) to take me away somewhere -- I spent many hours
+
+in the little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger;
+
+and he told me yarns of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island.
+
+And, ever and anon, he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast,
+
+called `The Flour of Wheat', and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead.
+
+And ever and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured)
+
+made me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger --
+
+no matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober --
+
+I'd ask him if he knew the `Flour of Wheat', and hear what he had to say.
+
+
+
+I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue --
+
+it can't be done in writing.
+
+
+
+
+
+`There's the little red Irishman,' said the shoemaker, who was Irish himself,
+
+`who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and there's
+
+the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and fights at a spree
+
+than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; and there's the cheerful
+
+easy-going Irishman.  Now the Flour was a combination of all three and several
+
+other sorts.  He was known from the first amongst the boys at Th' Canary
+
+as the Flour o' Wheat, but no one knew exactly why.  Some said
+
+that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not F-l-o-u-r,
+
+and that he was called that because there was no flower on wheat.
+
+The name might have been a compliment paid to the man's character
+
+by some one who understood and appreciated it -- or appreciated it
+
+without understanding it.  Or it might have come of some chance saying
+
+of the Flour himself, or his mates -- or an accident with bags of flour.
+
+He might have worked in a mill.  But we've had enough of that.  It's the man
+
+-- not the name.  He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger.
+
+He worked hard, drank hard, fought hard -- and didn't swear.
+
+No man had ever heard him swear (except once); all things were `lovely'
+
+with him.  He was always lucky.  He got gold and threw it away.
+
+
+
+`The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with
+
+some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something.  The date doesn't matter:
+
+there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody,
+
+that knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the trouble
+
+-- provided he was there at the time.  I heard all this from a man
+
+who knew him in Australia.  The relatives that he was sent out to
+
+were soon very anxious to see the end of him.  He was as wild
+
+as they made them in Ireland.  When he had a few drinks, he'd walk restlessly
+
+to and fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him
+
+with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery,
+
+and muttering, as though in explanation to himself --
+
+
+
+`"Oi must be walkin' or foightin'! --  Oi must be walkin' or foightin'! --
+
+Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!"
+
+
+
+`They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was done;
+
+and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree,
+
+they put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.
+
+
+
+`There's no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up
+
+on the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub.
+
+kept by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow)
+
+at a place called "Th' Canary".  I remember the first time I saw the Flour.
+
+
+
+`I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th' Canary, and one evening
+
+I was standing outside Brady's (the Flour's cousin's place)
+
+with Tom Lyons and Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat
+
+with a swag on his back.
+
+
+
+`"B' God, there's the Flour o' Wheat comin' this minute,"
+
+says Dinny Murphy to Tom, "an' no one else."
+
+
+
+`"B' God, ye're right!" says Tom.
+
+
+
+`There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back,
+
+drinking and dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny --
+
+
+
+`"Dinny, I'll bet you a quid an' the Flour'll run against
+
+some of those new chums before he's an hour on the spot."
+
+
+
+`But Dinny wouldn't take him up.  He knew the Flour.
+
+
+
+`"Good day, Tom!  Good day, Dinny!"
+
+
+
+`"Good day to you, Flour!"
+
+
+
+`I was introduced.
+
+
+
+`"Well, boys, come along," says the Flour.
+
+
+
+`And so we went inside with him.  The Flour had a few drinks,
+
+and then he went into the back-room where the new chums were.
+
+One of them was dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him
+
+and commenced to dance too.  And presently the new chum made a step
+
+that didn't please the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes,
+
+and knocked him down -- fair an' flat on his back.
+
+
+
+`"Take that," he says.  "Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an' lay there!
+
+You can't dance.  How dare ye stand up in front of me face to dance
+
+when ye can't dance?"
+
+
+
+`He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang,
+
+and fought the new chums all night, and in the morning he said --
+
+
+
+`"Well, boys, we had a grand time last night.  Come and have a drink with me."
+
+
+
+`And of course they went in and had a drink with him.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+`Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a drunken,
+
+disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the "Nipper".
+
+
+
+`"Good ~morning~, me lovely Flour o' Wheat!" says she.
+
+
+
+`"Good ~morning~, me lovely Nipper!" says the Flour.
+
+
+
+`And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress,
+
+and smashed him across the face with it.  Broke the bottle to smithereens!
+
+
+
+`A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour
+
+as a witness, whether he liked it or not.  And a lovely sight he looked,
+
+with his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye
+
+and a corner of his mouth on duty.
+
+
+
+`"It's nothing at all, your Honour," he said to the S.M.;
+
+"only a pin-scratch -- it's nothing at all.  Let it pass.
+
+I had no right to speak to the lovely woman at all."
+
+
+
+`But they didn't let it pass, -- they fined her a quid.
+
+
+
+`And the Flour paid the fine.
+
+
+
+`But, alas for human nature!  It was pretty much the same even in those days,
+
+and amongst those men, as it is now.  A man couldn't do a woman a good turn
+
+without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted there was something
+
+between them.  It was a great joke amongst the boys who knew the Flour,
+
+and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried too far in some quarters,
+
+it got to be no joke to the Flour -- nor to those who laughed too loud
+
+or grinned too long.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+`The Flour's cousin thought he was a sharp man.  The Flour got "stiff".
+
+He hadn't any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got
+
+a blank summons from one of the police he knew.  He pretended
+
+that he wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money.
+
+Then he filled it up and took it to his cousin.
+
+
+
+`"What d'ye think of that?" he says, handing the summons across the bar.
+
+"What d'ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?"
+
+
+
+`"Why, what's this all about?"
+
+
+
+`"That's what I want to know.  I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him
+
+a fortnight ago when I was drunk, an' now he sends me that."
+
+
+
+`"Well, I never would have dream'd that of Dinny," says the cousin,
+
+scratching his head and blinking.  "What's come over him at all?"
+
+
+
+`"That's what I want to know."
+
+
+
+`"What have you been doing to the man?"
+
+
+
+`"Divil a thing that I'm aware of."
+
+
+
+`The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.
+
+
+
+`"Well, what am I to do about it?" asked the Flour impatiently.
+
+
+
+`"Do?  Pay the man, of course?"
+
+
+
+`"How can I pay the lovely man when I haven't got the price of a drink
+
+about me?"
+
+
+
+`The cousin scratched his chin.
+
+
+
+`"Well -- here, I'll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two.
+
+Go and pay the man, and get back to work."
+
+
+
+`And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them
+
+had a howling spree together up at Brady's, the opposition pub.
+
+And the cousin said he thought all the time he was being had.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+`He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk.  For instance,
+
+he'd come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing
+
+and walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear;
+
+and just when a big event was coming off he'd pass within earshot
+
+of some committee men -- who had been bursting themselves for weeks
+
+to work the thing up and make it a success -- saying to himself --
+
+
+
+`"Where's the Orewell sports that I hear so much about?  I don't see them!
+
+Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?"
+
+
+
+`Or he'd pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business
+
+of some sort, --
+
+
+
+`"No gamblin' for the Flour.  I don't believe in their little shwindles.
+
+It ought to be shtopped.  Leadin' young people ashtray."
+
+
+
+`Or he'd pass an Englishman he didn't like, --
+
+
+
+`"Look at Jinneral Roberts!  He's a man!  He's an Irishman!
+
+England has to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals!  Luk at Jinneral Roberts
+
+in the marshes of Candyhar!"
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+`They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year's Day -- except once --
+
+and old Duncan was always there, -- never missed it till the day he died.
+
+He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted "hard-case".
+
+They all knew "old Duncan".
+
+
+
+`But one New Year's Eve he didn't turn up, and was missed at once.
+
+"Where's old Duncan?  Any one seen old Duncan?"  "Oh, he'll turn up alright."
+
+They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn't come.
+
+
+
+`Duncan was working at Duffers.  The boys inquired of fellows
+
+who came from Duffers, but they hadn't seen him for two days.
+
+They had fully expected to find him at the creek.  He wasn't at
+
+Aliaura nor Notown.  They inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek,
+
+but Duncan wasn't there.
+
+
+
+`"There's something happened to the lovely man," said the Flour of Wheat
+
+at last.  "Some of us had better see about it."
+
+
+
+`Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out
+
+over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning,
+
+headed by the Flour.
+
+
+
+
+
+`The door of Duncan's "whare" was closed -- ~but not padlocked~.
+
+The Flour noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in.
+
+The hut was tidied up and swept out -- even the fireplace.
+
+Duncan had "lifted the boxes" and "cleaned up", and his little bag of gold
+
+stood on a shelf by his side -- all ready for his spree.
+
+On the table lay a clean neckerchief folded ready to tie on.
+
+The blankets had been folded neatly and laid on the bunk, and on them
+
+was stretched Old Duncan, with his arms lying crossed on his chest,
+
+and one foot -- with a boot on -- resting on the ground.
+
+He had his "clean things" on, and was dressed except for one boot,
+
+the necktie, and his hat.  Heart disease.
+
+
+
+`"Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads," said the Flour.
+
+"Here's the lovely man lying dead in his bunk."
+
+
+
+`There were no sports at Orewell that New Year.  Some one said
+
+that the crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed
+
+on old Duncan's account, but the Flour said he'd see to that.
+
+
+
+`One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them
+
+and there were no sports.
+
+
+
+`And the Flour used to say, afterwards, "Ah, but it was a grand time
+
+we had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers."
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+`The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in
+
+from Th' Canary to the hospital on his back.  Dinny was very bad --
+
+the man was dying of the dysentery or something.  The Flour laid him down
+
+on a spare bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.
+
+
+
+`"Inside there -- come out!"
+
+
+
+`The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the matter.
+
+The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front of him
+
+between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little pair
+
+of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.
+
+
+
+`"There's me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry," says the Flour,
+
+"and you've got to fix him up and bring him round."
+
+
+
+`Then he shook his fist in the doctor's face and said --
+
+
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- look out!"
+
+
+
+`The doctor was startled.  He backed off at first; then he took
+
+a puff at his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny,
+
+and gave some order to the attendants.  The Flour went to the door,
+
+turned half round as he went out, and shook his fist at them again,
+
+and said --
+
+
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- mind!"
+
+
+
+`In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a barrow.
+
+He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.
+
+
+
+`"There," he said, "pour that into the lovely man."
+
+
+
+`Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible,
+
+and said --
+
+
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- look out!"
+
+
+
+`They were used to hard-cases, and didn't take much notice of him,
+
+but he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there
+
+all hours of the day and night; he would go down town,
+
+have a few drinks and a fight maybe, and then he'd say, "Ah, well,
+
+I'll have to go up and see how me lovely mate's getting on."
+
+
+
+`And every time he'd go up he'd shake his fist at the hospital in general
+
+and threaten to murder 'em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.
+
+
+
+`Well, Dinny Murphy died one night.  The next morning the Flour met the doctor
+
+in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes,
+
+and knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.
+
+
+
+`"Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper," said the Flour of Wheat;
+
+"you let that lovely man die!"
+
+
+
+`The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were
+
+waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the hospital,
+
+and stood it on end by the doorway.
+
+
+
+`"I've come for me lovely mate!" he said to the scared staff --
+
+or as much of it as he baled up and couldn't escape him.
+
+"Hand him over.  He's going back to be buried with his friends at Th' Canary.
+
+Now, don't be sneaking round and sidling off, you there;
+
+you needn't be frightened; I've settled with the doctor."
+
+
+
+`But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour,
+
+and between them -- and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse
+
+on the premises -- they persuaded him to wait.  Dinny wasn't ready yet;
+
+there were papers to sign; it wouldn't be decent to the dead;
+
+he had to be prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up
+
+decent and comfortable.  Anyway, they'd have him ready in an hour,
+
+or take the consequences.
+
+
+
+`The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done
+
+equally as well and better by the boys at Th' Canary.  "However," he said,
+
+"I'll be round in an hour, and if you haven't got me lovely mate ready --
+
+look out!"  Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said --
+
+
+
+`"I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there's e'er
+
+a pin-scratch on me mate's body -- look out!  If there's
+
+a pairin' of Dinny's toe-nail missin' -- look out!"
+
+
+
+`Then he went out -- taking the coffin with him.
+
+
+
+`And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the coffin
+
+on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on his back,
+
+with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom.  He was as dead drunk
+
+as any man could get to be and still be alive.  They knocked air-holes
+
+in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the Flour, and all
+
+to the local lock-up.  They laid their burden down on the bare,
+
+cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,
+
+and departed several ways to put the "boys" up to it.  And about midnight
+
+the "boys" gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited,
+
+and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl,
+
+as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour
+
+was heard to plead in changed and awful tones --
+
+
+
+`"Pray for me soul, boys -- pray for me soul!  Let bygones be bygones
+
+between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul!  The lovely Flour's
+
+in Purgatory!"
+
+
+
+`Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel
+
+passing over a packing-case. . . .  That was the only time on record
+
+that the Flour was heard to swear.  And he swore then.
+
+
+
+`They didn't pray for him -- they gave him a month.  And, when he came out,
+
+he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he --
+
+to his credit, perhaps -- came the other half.  They had a drink together,
+
+and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold
+
+for a pin.
+
+
+
+`"It was the will o' God, after all, doctor," said the Flour.
+
+"It was the will o' God.  Let bygones be bygones between us;
+
+gimme your hand, doctor. . . .  Good-bye."
+
+
+
+`Then he left for Th' Canary.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Babies in the Bush.
+
+
+
+    `Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright --
+
+       That only the Bushmen know --
+
+    Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
+
+    Or carry them up through the starry night,
+
+       Where the Bush-lost babies go.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+He was one of those men who seldom smile.  There are many
+
+in the Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures
+
+of all stations and professions (and of none), and from all the world.
+
+Or, if they do smile, the smile is either mechanical or bitter
+
+as a rule -- cynical.  They seldom talk.  The sort of men who, as bosses,
+
+are set down by the majority -- and without reason or evidence --
+
+as being proud, hard, and selfish, -- `too mean to live,
+
+and too big for their boots.'
+
+
+
+But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle,
+
+and very sad.  I have seen him smile down on a little child
+
+who persisted in sitting on his knee and prattling to him,
+
+in spite of his silence and gloom.  He was tall and gaunt,
+
+with haggard grey eyes -- haunted grey eyes sometimes --
+
+and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey.  He was not above forty-five.
+
+He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their hair
+
+thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
+
+The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men
+
+who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented,
+
+and die respectably in their beds.
+
+
+
+His name was Head -- Walter Head.  He was a boss drover
+
+on the overland routes.  I engaged with him at a place
+
+north of the Queensland border to travel down to Bathurst,
+
+on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, with something over
+
+a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney market.
+
+I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience) -- a rover, of course,
+
+and a ne'er-do-well, I suppose.  I was born with brains and a thin skin --
+
+worse luck!  It was in the days before I was married, and I went by
+
+the name of `Jack Ellis' this trip, -- not because the police were after me,
+
+but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack Ellis --
+
+and so the chaps nicknamed me.
+
+
+
+The Boss spoke little to the men:  he'd sit at tucker or with his pipe
+
+by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch
+
+round the big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks
+
+camped on the dusky starlit plain.  I believe that from the first he spoke
+
+oftener and more confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party.
+
+There was a something of sympathy between us -- I can't explain what it was.
+
+It seemed as though it were an understood thing between us
+
+that we understood each other.  He sometimes said things to me
+
+which would have needed a deal of explanation -- so I thought --
+
+had he said them to any other of the party.  He'd often, after brooding
+
+a long while, start a sentence, and break off with `You know, Jack.'
+
+And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why.
+
+We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
+
+His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss:  he was too gloomy,
+
+and never drank a glass nor `shouted' on the trip:  he was reckoned
+
+a `mean boss', and rather a nigger-driver.
+
+
+
+He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet
+
+who shot himself, and so was I.  I lost an old copy of Gordon's poems
+
+on the route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on
+
+he asked me if I liked Gordon.  We got to it rather sheepishly at first,
+
+but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
+
+`Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers,
+
+aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather
+
+the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word.
+
+(He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied
+
+he didn't enjoy it:  an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him
+
+just as well, it seemed to me.)  `Those are great lines,' he'd say --
+
+  
+
+    `"In Collins Street standeth a statue tall --
+
+       A statue tall on a pillar of stone --
+
+    Telling its story to great and small
+
+       Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
+
+  
+
+         .    .    .    .    .
+
+  
+
+    Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
+
+       Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
+
+    He lay on the desert a dying man,
+
+       Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go."
+
+  
+
+That's a grand thing, Jack.  How does it go? --
+
+  
+
+    "With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
+
+       And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,
+
+    He saw the sun go down on the sand,"' --
+
+  
+
+The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn --
+
+  
+
+    `"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
+
+  
+
+-- speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.  Then maybe
+
+he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
+
+with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
+
+  
+
+    `"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,
+
+       The blighted herbage or blackened log,
+
+    The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
+
+       Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"
+
+  
+
+They don't matter much, do they, Jack?'
+
+
+
+`Damned if I think they do, Boss!' I'd say.
+
+  
+
+    `"The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
+
+       But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
+
+    That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms' food
+
+       Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
+
+
+
+Once he repeated the poem containing the lines --
+
+  
+
+    `"Love, when we wandered here together,
+
+    Hand in hand through the sparkling weather --
+
+       God surely loved us a little then."
+
+  
+
+Beautiful lines those, Jack.
+
+  
+
+    "Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
+
+       And the blue sea over the white sand rolled --
+
+    Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur' --
+
+  
+
+How does it go, Jack?'  He stood up and turned his face to the light,
+
+but not before I had a glimpse of it.  I think that the saddest eyes on earth
+
+are mostly women's eyes, but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were
+
+just then.
+
+
+
+It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon's sea poems
+
+to his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did.  I fancy his favourite poem
+
+was that one of Gordon's with the lines --
+
+  
+
+    `I would that with sleepy soft embraces
+
+       The sea would fold me, would find me rest
+
+    In the luminous depths of its secret places,
+
+       Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
+
+
+
+He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp;
+
+but after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly with,
+
+`Well, it's time to turn in,' or, `It's time to turn out,'
+
+or he'd give me an order in connection with the cattle.
+
+He had been a well-to-do squatter on the Lachlan river-side,
+
+in New South Wales, and had been ruined by the drought, they said.
+
+One night in camp, and after smoking in silence for nearly an hour,
+
+he asked --
+
+
+
+`Do you know Fisher, Jack -- the man that owns these bullocks?'
+
+
+
+`I've heard of him,' I said.  Fisher was a big squatter,
+
+with stations both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
+
+
+
+`Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago
+
+without a penny in his pocket, or decent rag to his back,
+
+or a crust in his tucker-bag, and I gave him a job.  He's my boss now.
+
+Ah, well! it's the way of Australia, you know, Jack.'
+
+
+
+The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him;
+
+he was `bred' on the Boss's station, they said, and had been with him
+
+practically all his life.  His name was `Andy'.  I forget his other name,
+
+if he really had one.  Andy had charge of the `droving-plant' (a tilted
+
+two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
+
+and he did the cooking and kept accounts.  The Boss had no head for figures.
+
+Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in between.
+
+His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big grey eyes
+
+also had an inquiring expression.  His weakness was girls, or he theirs,
+
+I don't know which (half-castes not barred).  He was, I think,
+
+the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
+
+Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
+
+about the Boss.
+
+
+
+`The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.'
+
+
+
+`Think so?' I said.  I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
+
+
+
+`I'm sure of it.  It's very seldom ~he~ takes to any one.'
+
+
+
+I said nothing.
+
+
+
+Then after a while Andy said suddenly --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Jack, I'm glad of it.  I'd like to see him make a chum
+
+of some one, if only for one trip.  And don't you make any mistake
+
+about the Boss.  He's a white man.  There's precious few that know him --
+
+precious few now; but I do, and it'll do him a lot of good
+
+to have some one to yarn with.'  And Andy said no more on the subject
+
+for that trip.
+
+
+
+The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains
+
+-- big clearings rather -- and through the sweltering hot scrubs,
+
+and we reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks
+
+and months that we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,
+
+-- as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
+
+
+
+The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney.
+
+We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks,
+
+and when we'd finished the boss said to me --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Jack, you're going on to Sydney, aren't you?'
+
+
+
+`Yes; I'm going down to have a fly round.'
+
+
+
+`Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning?  He's going down
+
+in charge of the cattle.  The cattle-train starts about daylight.
+
+It won't be so comfortable as the passenger; but you'll save your fare,
+
+and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle.  You've only got
+
+to have a look at 'em every other station, and poke up any that fall down
+
+in the trucks.  You and Andy are mates, aren't you?'
+
+
+
+I said it would just suit me.  Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious
+
+to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
+
+I felt really sorry to part with him.  I'd had to work as hard
+
+as any of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me.
+
+He'd struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble,
+
+and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
+
+
+
+`Come and have a drink, Boss,' I said.  The agent had paid us off
+
+during the day.
+
+
+
+He turned into a hotel with me.
+
+
+
+`I don't drink, Jack,' he said; `but I'll take a glass with you.'
+
+
+
+`I didn't know you were a teetotaller, Boss,' I said.
+
+I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink
+
+on the trip; but now that it was over it was a different thing.
+
+
+
+`I'm not a teetotaller, Jack,' he said.  `I can take a glass or leave it.'
+
+And he called for a long beer, and we drank `Here's luck!' to each other.
+
+
+
+`Well,' I said, `I wish I could take a glass or leave it.'  And I meant it.
+
+
+
+Then the Boss spoke as I'd never heard him speak before.  I thought
+
+for the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood
+
+before the night was over.  He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip
+
+like a man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds.
+
+`Jack!' he said, `there's worse things than drinking, and there's worse things
+
+than heavy smoking.  When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on him
+
+that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it's a heavy load.
+
+And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find
+
+no comfort in liquor, then it's deep trouble.  Take my tip for it, Jack.'
+
+
+
+He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head,
+
+as if impatient with himself; then presently he spoke
+
+in his usual quiet tone --
+
+
+
+`But you're only a boy yet, Jack.  Never mind me.  I won't ask you
+
+to take the second drink.  You don't want it; and, besides, I know the signs.'
+
+
+
+He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter,
+
+and looking down between his arms at the floor.  He stood that way
+
+thinking for a while; then he suddenly straightened up,
+
+like a man who'd made up his mind to something.
+
+
+
+`I want you to come along home with me, Jack,' he said;
+
+`we'll fix you a shake-down.'
+
+
+
+I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.
+
+
+
+`But won't it put Mrs Head about?'
+
+
+
+`Not at all.  She's expecting you.  Come along; there's nothing to see
+
+in Bathurst, and you'll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney.
+
+Come on, we'll just be in time for tea.'
+
+
+
+He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town --
+
+an old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses,
+
+like you see in some of those old settled districts.  There was,
+
+I remember, the stump of a tree in front, covered with ivy
+
+till it looked like a giant's club with the thick end up.
+
+
+
+When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the gate.
+
+He'd been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the bullocks.
+
+
+
+`Jack,' he said, `I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble
+
+at one time.  We -- we lost our two children.  It does her good
+
+to talk to a stranger now and again -- she's always better afterwards;
+
+but there's very few I care to bring.  You -- you needn't notice
+
+anything strange.  And agree with her, Jack.  You know, Jack.'
+
+
+
+`That's all right, Boss,' I said.  I'd knocked about the Bush too long,
+
+and run against too many strange characters and things,
+
+to be surprised at anything much.
+
+
+
+The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms.
+
+I saw by the light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman's hair
+
+was grey, and I reckoned that he had his mother living with him.
+
+And -- we do have odd thoughts at odd times in a flash -- and I wondered
+
+how Mrs Head and her mother-in-law got on together.  But the next minute
+
+I was in the room, and introduced to `My wife, Mrs Head,'
+
+and staring at her with both eyes.
+
+
+
+It was his wife.  I don't think I can describe her.  For the first
+
+minute or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes
+
+got used to the lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman
+
+-- one of those fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies --
+
+who dressed young, wore false teeth, and aped the giddy girl.
+
+But this was because of Mrs Head's impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair.
+
+The hair was not so grey as I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light
+
+behind it:  it was like dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour.
+
+She wore it short, and it became her that way.  There was something
+
+aristocratic about her face -- her nose and chin -- I fancied,
+
+and something that you couldn't describe.  She had big dark eyes --
+
+dark-brown, I thought, though they might have been hazel:
+
+they were a bit too big and bright for me, and now and again,
+
+when she got excited, the white showed all round the pupils -- just a little,
+
+but a little was enough.
+
+
+
+She seemed extra glad to see me.  I thought at first
+
+that she was a bit of a gusher.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Mr Ellis,' she said, giving my hand a grip.
+
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- has been speaking to me about you.
+
+I've been expecting you.  Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis;
+
+tea will be ready presently.  Don't you find it a bit chilly?'
+
+She shivered.  It was a bit chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains.
+
+The table was set for tea, and set rather in swell style.
+
+The cottage was too well furnished even for a lucky boss drover's home;
+
+the furniture looked as if it had belonged to a tony homestead at one time.
+
+I felt a bit strange at first, sitting down to tea, and almost wished that
+
+I was having a comfortable tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room.
+
+But she knew a lot about the Bush, and chatted away,
+
+and asked questions about the trip, and soon put me at my ease.
+
+You see, for the last year or two I'd taken my tucker in my hands, --
+
+hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife mostly, -- sitting on my heel
+
+in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.
+
+
+
+There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called `Auntie'.
+
+She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round herself
+
+most of the time, helping us.  Andy came in to tea.
+
+
+
+Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of
+
+a woman of thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was.
+
+She had the figure and movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness
+
+and expression too -- a womanly girl; but sometimes I fancied
+
+there was something very childish about her face and talk.  After tea
+
+she and the Boss sat on one side of the fire and Andy and I on the other --
+
+Andy a little behind me at the corner of the table.
+
+
+
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- tells me you've been out on the Lachlan river,
+
+Mr Ellis?' she said as soon as she'd settled down, and she leaned forward,
+
+as if eager to hear that I'd been there.
+
+
+
+`Yes, Mrs Head.  I've knocked round all about out there.'
+
+
+
+She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side
+
+of her forehead and knitted her brows.  This was a trick she had --
+
+she often did it during the evening.  And when she did that
+
+she seemed to forget what she'd said last.
+
+
+
+She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.
+
+
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,' she said.
+
+`Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of talking
+
+to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same faces.
+
+You don't know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face
+
+and talk to a stranger.'
+
+
+
+`I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,' I said.  And so I could.
+
+I never stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.
+
+
+
+She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think.  The Boss straightened up
+
+and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and then put his arm
+
+round her shoulders.  This brought her back.
+
+
+
+`You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis.
+
+Did Walter ever tell you about the time we lived there?'
+
+
+
+`No,' I said, glancing at the Boss.  `I know you had a station there;
+
+but, you know, the Boss doesn't talk much.'
+
+
+
+`Tell Jack, Maggie,' said the Boss; `I don't mind.'
+
+
+
+She smiled.  `You know Walter, Mr Ellis,' she said.  `You won't mind him.
+
+He doesn't like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me,
+
+but that's foolish:  it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.'
+
+She leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly:
+
+`I've been wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter
+
+spoke to me about you.  I knew you would understand directly I saw your face.
+
+These town people don't understand.  I like to talk to a Bushman.
+
+You know we lost our children out on the station.  The fairies took them.
+
+Did Walter ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?'
+
+
+
+This was a facer.  `I -- I beg pardon,' I commenced, when Andy gave me
+
+a dig in the back.  Then I saw it all.
+
+
+
+`No, Mrs Head.  The Boss didn't tell me about that.'
+
+
+
+`You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,' she said,
+
+her big eyes fixed on my face -- `the Bush Fairies that look after
+
+the little ones that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush
+
+if they are not found?  You've surely heard of them, Mr Ellis?
+
+Most Bushmen have that I've spoken to.  Maybe you've seen them?
+
+Andy there has?'  Andy gave me another dig.
+
+
+
+`Of course I've heard of them, Mrs Head,' I said; `but I can't swear
+
+that I've seen one.'
+
+
+
+`Andy has.  Haven't you, Andy?'
+
+
+
+`Of course I have, Mrs Head.  Didn't I tell you all about it
+
+the last time we were home?'
+
+
+
+`And didn't you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?'
+
+
+
+`Of course he did!' I said, coming to Andy's rescue; `I remember it now.
+
+You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.'
+
+
+
+`Of course!' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy; `I told him all about that.'
+
+
+
+`And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,
+
+and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' I said; `that's what Andy told me.'
+
+
+
+`And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?' asked Mrs Head,
+
+fixing her eyes on his face.
+
+
+
+`Like.  It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs Head,'
+
+said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big
+
+innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling lies.
+
+`It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture
+
+we had at home on the station -- the right-hand one in blue.'
+
+
+
+She smiled.  You couldn't call it an idiotic smile,
+
+nor the foolish smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people.
+
+It was more of a happy childish smile.
+
+
+
+`I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors
+
+a lot of trouble,' she said.  `Of course it never struck me, until afterwards,
+
+that the fairies had taken the children.'
+
+
+
+She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead,
+
+and sat so for a while; then she roused herself again --
+
+
+
+`But what am I thinking about?  I haven't started to tell you
+
+about the children at all yet.  Auntie! bring the children's portraits,
+
+will you, please?  You'll find them on my dressing-table.'
+
+
+
+The old woman seemed to hesitate.
+
+
+
+`Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,' said Mrs Head.  `Don't be foolish.
+
+You know I'm all right now.'
+
+
+
+`You mustn't take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,' she said with a smile,
+
+while the old woman's back was turned.  `Poor old body,
+
+she's a bit crotchety at times, as old women are.  She doesn't like me to get
+
+talking about the children.  She's got an idea that if I do
+
+I'll start talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year
+
+after the children were lost.  I was very foolish then, wasn't I, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`You were, Maggie,' said the Boss.  `But that's all past.
+
+You mustn't think of that time any more.'
+
+
+
+`You see,' said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, `at first
+
+nothing would drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about
+
+until they perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush.  As if the Bush Fairies
+
+would let them do that.'
+
+
+
+`You were very foolish, Maggie,' said the Boss; `but don't think about that.'
+
+
+
+The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl:
+
+they must have been very pretty children.
+
+
+
+`You see,' said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them to me
+
+one by one, `we had these taken in Sydney some years before the children
+
+were lost; they were much younger then.  Wally's is not a good portrait;
+
+he was teething then, and very thin.  That's him standing on the chair.
+
+Isn't the pose good?  See, he's got one hand and one little foot forward,
+
+and an eager look in his eyes.  The portrait is very dark,
+
+and you've got to look close to see the foot.  He wants a toy rabbit
+
+that the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh.  In the next portrait
+
+he's sitting on the chair -- he's just settled himself to enjoy the fun.
+
+But see how happy little Maggie looks!  You can see my arm
+
+where I was holding her in the chair.  She was six months old then,
+
+and little Wally had just turned two.'
+
+
+
+She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
+
+
+
+`Let me see; Wally (that's little Walter, you know) --
+
+Wally was five and little Maggie three and a half when we lost them.
+
+Weren't they, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss.
+
+
+
+`You were away, Walter, when it happened.'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss -- cheerfully, it seemed to me -- `I was away.'
+
+
+
+`And we couldn't find you, Walter.  You see,' she said to me,
+
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn't find
+
+his address.  It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm,
+
+and just after the break-up of the drought.  The grass was knee-high
+
+all over the run.  It was a lonely place; there wasn't much bush cleared
+
+round the homestead, just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs
+
+ran back from the edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles --
+
+fifty or a hundred miles in some directions without a break;
+
+didn't they, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had,
+
+who used to help me with the housework and the children.
+
+Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't you, Andy?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Mrs Head.'
+
+
+
+`I used to watch the children close as they got to run about,
+
+because if they once got into the edge of the scrub they'd be lost;
+
+but this morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister
+
+down under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock
+
+to gather buttercups.  You remember that clump of gums, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`I remember, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said.
+
+I could see Old Peter -- an old shepherd and station-hand we had --
+
+I could see him working on a dam we were making across a creek
+
+that ran down there.  You remember Old Peter, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Of course I do, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children;
+
+so I told little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister's hand
+
+and go straight down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.'
+
+
+
+She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee,
+
+and telling me all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
+
+
+
+`The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands holding fast
+
+their straw hats.  "In case a bad wind blowed," as little Maggie said.
+
+I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the last
+
+that any one saw of them.'
+
+
+
+`Except the fairies, Maggie,' said the Boss quickly.
+
+
+
+`Of course, Walter, except the fairies.'
+
+
+
+She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
+
+
+
+`It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers' camp
+
+that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam
+
+and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back
+
+into the house, and before the children got near him.  They either
+
+followed him for some distance or wandered into the Bush
+
+after flowers or butterflies ----'  She broke off, and then suddenly asked me,
+
+`Do you think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?'
+
+
+
+The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
+
+
+
+`No.  I'm sure they wouldn't, Mrs Head,' I said -- `at least
+
+not from what I know of them.'
+
+
+
+She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless
+
+puzzled way.  Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather mechanically,
+
+it seemed to me --
+
+
+
+`The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house
+
+about an hour afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children.
+
+I said -- I said, "O my God! where's the children?"'  Her fingers
+
+fluttered up to her temples.
+
+
+
+`Don't mind about that, Maggie,' said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her head.
+
+`Tell Jack about the fairies.'
+
+
+
+`You were away at the time, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`And we couldn't find you, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`No, Maggie,' very gently.  He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin
+
+on his hand, and looked into the fire.
+
+
+
+`It wasn't your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home
+
+do you think the fairies would have taken the children?'
+
+
+
+`Of course they would, Maggie.  They had to:  the children were lost.'
+
+
+
+`And they're bringing the children home next year?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie -- next year.'
+
+
+
+She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
+
+before she went on again.  There was no need to tell me
+
+about the lost children.  I could see it all.  She and the half-caste
+
+rushing towards where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them.
+
+The hurried search in the nearer scrub.  The mother calling all the time
+
+for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past.
+
+Old Peter's ride to the musterers' camp.  Horsemen seeming to turn up
+
+in no time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this,
+
+and no matter how lonely the district.  Bushmen galloping through the scrub
+
+in all directions.  The hurried search the first day, and the mother
+
+mad with anxiety as night came on.  Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch
+
+through the night; starting up at every sound of a horse's hoof,
+
+and reading the worst in one glance at the rider's face.
+
+The systematic work of the search-parties next day and the days following.
+
+How those days do fly past.  The women from the next run or selection,
+
+and some from the town, driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps,
+
+to stay with and try to comfort the mother.  (`Put the horse to the cart, Jim:
+
+I must go to that poor woman!')  Comforting her with improbable stories
+
+of children who had been lost for days, and were none the worse for it
+
+when they were found.  The mounted policemen out with the black trackers.
+
+Search-parties cooeeing to each other about the Bush,
+
+and lighting signal-fires.  The reckless break-neck rides
+
+for news or more help.  And the Boss himself, wild-eyed and haggard,
+
+riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two others perhaps,
+
+and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given up
+
+all hope of finding the children alive.  All this passed before me
+
+as Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were
+
+in another room; and when I roused myself to listen,
+
+she was on to the fairies again.
+
+
+
+`It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis.  Weeks after -- months after, I think --
+
+I'd insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for the children.
+
+I'd stand there and call "Maggie!" and "Wally!" until Walter took me inside;
+
+sometimes he had to force me inside.  Poor Walter!  But of course
+
+I didn't know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis.  I was really out of my mind
+
+for a time.'
+
+
+
+`No wonder you were, Mrs Head,' I said.  `It was terrible trouble.'
+
+
+
+`Yes, and I made it worse.  I was so selfish in my trouble.
+
+But it's all right now, Walter,' she said, rumpling the Boss's hair.
+
+`I'll never be so foolish again.'
+
+
+
+`Of course you won't, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`We're very happy now, aren't we, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Of course we are, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`And the children are coming back next year.'
+
+
+
+`Next year, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
+
+
+
+`You mustn't take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,' she went on.
+
+`Poor Walter is away so much that I'm afraid I make a little too much of him
+
+when he does come home.'
+
+
+
+She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again.
+
+Then she said quickly --
+
+
+
+`They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies,
+
+but they were no friends of mine.  I shouldn't have listened to them, Walter.
+
+You told me not to.  But then I was really not in my right mind.'
+
+
+
+`Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`The Voices,' she said; `you know about the Voices, Walter?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, Maggie.  But you don't hear the Voices now, Maggie?' he asked anxiously.
+
+`You haven't heard them since I've been away this time, have you, Maggie?'
+
+
+
+`No, Walter.  They've gone away a long time.  I hear voices now sometimes,
+
+but they're the Bush Fairies' voices.  I hear them calling Maggie and Wally
+
+to come with them.'  She paused again.  `And sometimes I think
+
+I hear them call me.  But of course I couldn't go away without you, Walter.
+
+But I'm foolish again.  I was going to ask you about the other voices,
+
+Mr Ellis.  They used to say that it was madness about the fairies;
+
+but then, if the fairies hadn't taken the children, Black Jimmy,
+
+or the black trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them
+
+at once.'
+
+
+
+`Of course they could, Mrs Head,' I said.
+
+
+
+`They said that the trackers couldn't track them because there was rain
+
+a few hours after the children were lost.  But that was ridiculous.
+
+It was only a thunderstorm.'
+
+
+
+`Why!' I said, `I've known the blacks to track a man
+
+after a week's heavy rain.'
+
+
+
+She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up
+
+it was in a scared way.
+
+
+
+`Oh, Walter!' she said, clutching the Boss's arm; `whatever have I been
+
+talking about?  What must Mr Ellis think of me?  Oh! why did you let me
+
+talk like that?'
+
+
+
+He put his arm round her.  Andy nudged me and got up.
+
+
+
+`Where are you going, Mr Ellis?' she asked hurriedly.
+
+`You're not going to-night.  Auntie's made a bed for you in Andy's room.
+
+You mustn't mind me.'
+
+
+
+`Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,' said the Boss.
+
+`They'll be in to supper.  We'll have a yarn, Maggie.'
+
+
+
+`Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,' she said.  `I really don't know
+
+what you must think of me, -- I've been talking all the time.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, I've enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,' I said; and Andy hooked me out.
+
+
+
+`She'll have a good cry and be better now,' said Andy when we got away
+
+from the house.  `She might be better for months.  She has been
+
+fairly reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad
+
+when he came back this time.  It upset him a lot, I can tell you.
+
+She has turns now and again, and always ends up like she did just now.
+
+She gets a longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger;
+
+it seems to do her good.  The doctor's against it, but doctors
+
+don't know everything.'
+
+
+
+`It's all true about the children, then?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`It's cruel true,' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`And were the bodies never found?'
+
+
+
+`Yes;' then, after a long pause, `I found them.'
+
+
+
+`You did!'
+
+
+
+`Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either --
+
+and in a fairly clear space.  It's a wonder the search-parties missed it;
+
+but it often happens that way.  Perhaps the little ones
+
+wandered a long way and came round in a circle.  I found them
+
+about two months after they were lost.  They had to be found,
+
+if only for the Boss's sake.  You see, in a case like this,
+
+and when the bodies aren't found, the parents never quite lose the idea
+
+that the little ones are wandering about the Bush to-night
+
+(it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst, or cold.
+
+That mad idea haunts 'em all their lives.  It's the same, I believe,
+
+with friends drowned at sea.  Friends ashore are haunted for a long while
+
+with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and drifting round
+
+in the water.'
+
+
+
+`And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?'
+
+
+
+`Not for a long time.  It wouldn't have done any good.
+
+She was raving mad for months.  He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne --
+
+to the best doctors he could find in Australia.  They could do no good,
+
+so he sold the station -- sacrificed everything, and took her to England.'
+
+
+
+`To England?'
+
+
+
+`Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there.
+
+He'd offer a thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty.  It was no good.
+
+She got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia
+
+and find the children.  The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did.
+
+He spent all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins,
+
+and a nurse, and trying to get her cured; that's why he's droving now.
+
+She was restless in Sydney.  She wanted to go back to the station
+
+and wait there till the fairies brought the children home.
+
+She'd been getting the fairy idea into her head slowly all the time.
+
+The Boss encouraged it.  But the station was sold, and he couldn't
+
+have lived there anyway without going mad himself.  He'd married her
+
+from Bathurst.  Both of them have got friends and relations here,
+
+so he thought best to bring her here.  He persuaded her that the fairies
+
+were going to bring the children here.  Everybody's very kind to them.
+
+I think it's a mistake to run away from a town where you're known,
+
+in a case like this, though most people do it.  It was years before
+
+he gave up hope.  I think he has hopes yet -- after she's been fairly well
+
+for a longish time.'
+
+
+
+`And you never tried telling her that the children were found?'
+
+
+
+`Yes; the Boss did.  The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river
+
+at first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush,
+
+so he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery
+
+near the sea.  He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie
+
+when they go out.  It's all the ground he owns in wide Australia,
+
+and once he had thousands of acres.  He took her to the grave one day.
+
+The doctors were against it; but he couldn't rest till he tried it.
+
+He took her out, and explained it all to her.  She scarcely seemed interested.
+
+She read the names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone,
+
+and asked questions about how the children were found and brought here.
+
+She seemed quite sensible, and very cool about it.  But when he got her home
+
+she was back on the fairy idea again.  He tried another day,
+
+but it was no use; so then he let it be.  I think it's better as it is.
+
+Now and again, at her best, she seems to understand that the children
+
+were found dead, and buried, and she'll talk sensibly about it,
+
+and ask questions in a quiet way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney
+
+to see the grave next time he's down.  But it doesn't last long,
+
+and she's always worse afterwards.'
+
+
+
+We turned into a bar and had a beer.  It was a very quiet drink.
+
+Andy `shouted' in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer
+
+a thought struck me.
+
+
+
+`The Boss was away when the children were lost?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`Strange you couldn't find him.'
+
+
+
+`Yes, it was strange; but ~he'll~ have to tell you about that.
+
+Very likely he will; it's either all or nothing with him.'
+
+
+
+`I feel damned sorry for the Boss,' I said.
+
+
+
+`You'd be sorrier if you knew all,' said Andy.  `It's the worst trouble
+
+that can happen to a man.  It's like living with the dead.
+
+It's -- it's like a man living with his dead wife.'
+
+
+
+When we went home supper was ready.  We found Mrs Head, bright and cheerful,
+
+bustling round.  You'd have thought her one of the happiest and brightest
+
+little women in Australia.  Not a word about children or the fairies.
+
+She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips.
+
+She told some good Bush stories too.  It was the pleasantest hour I'd spent
+
+for a long time.
+
+
+
+`Good night, Mr Ellis,' she said brightly, shaking hands with me
+
+when Andy and I were going to turn in.  `And don't forget your pipe.
+
+Here it is!  I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two
+
+when they turn in.  Walter smokes in bed.  I don't mind.
+
+You can smoke all night if you like.'
+
+
+
+`She seems all right,' I said to Andy when we were in our room.
+
+
+
+He shook his head mournfully.  We'd left the door ajar,
+
+and we could hear the Boss talking to her quietly.  Then we heard her speak;
+
+she had a very clear voice.
+
+
+
+`Yes, I'll tell you the truth, Walter.  I've been deceiving you, Walter,
+
+all the time, but I did it for the best.  Don't be angry with me, Walter!
+
+The Voices did come back while you were away.  Oh, how I longed
+
+for you to come back!  They haven't come since you've been home, Walter.
+
+You must stay with me a while now.  Those awful Voices kept calling me,
+
+and telling me lies about the children, Walter!  They told me to kill myself;
+
+they told me it was all my own fault -- that I killed the children.
+
+They said I was a drag on you, and they'd laugh -- Ha! ha! ha! -- like that.
+
+They'd say, "Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie."  They told me
+
+to come to the river, Walter.'
+
+
+
+Andy closed the door.  His face was very miserable.
+
+
+
+We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed
+
+after months and months of sleeping out at night, between watches,
+
+on the hard ground or the sand, or at best on a few boughs
+
+when I wasn't too tired to pull them down, and my saddle for a pillow.
+
+
+
+But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two.
+
+I've never since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home.
+
+Probably he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;
+
+perhaps he wanted me to understand -- maybe he was weakening as he grew older,
+
+and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.
+
+
+
+When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but Andy
+
+roused me out about four o'clock.  The old woman that they called Auntie
+
+was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee ready
+
+in the detached kitchen at the back.  We moved about on tiptoe
+
+and had our breakfast quietly.
+
+
+
+`The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast
+
+and say Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,'
+
+said the Boss.  `I'm going to walk down as far as the station with you.
+
+She made up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy.
+
+Don't forget it.'
+
+
+
+Andy went on ahead.  The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
+
+which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
+
+without speaking.  He didn't seem sociable this morning,
+
+or any way sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
+
+
+
+But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest,
+
+and at last I made a swallow and blurted out --
+
+
+
+`Look here, Boss, old chap!  I'm damned sorry!'
+
+
+
+Our hands came together and gripped.  The ghostly Australian daybreak
+
+was over the Bathurst plains.
+
+
+
+We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly --
+
+
+
+`I was away when the children were lost, Jack.  I used to go
+
+on a howling spree every six or nine months.  Maggie never knew.  I'd tell her
+
+I had to go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock.
+
+When the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after,
+
+I was beastly drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush --
+
+a sly grog-shop.  The old brute that kept it was too true to me.
+
+He thought that the story of the lost children was a trick to get me home,
+
+and he swore that he hadn't seen me.  He never told me.
+
+I could have found those children, Jack.  They were mostly new chums and fools
+
+about the run, and not one of the three policemen was a Bushman.
+
+I knew those scrubs better than any man in the country.'
+
+
+
+I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip.  That was all I could do
+
+for him.
+
+
+
+`Good-bye, Jack!' he said at the door of the brake-van.  `Good-bye, Andy! --
+
+keep those bullocks on their feet.'
+
+
+
+The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains.  Andy and I sat silent
+
+for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a coal-stove
+
+in the centre of the van.
+
+
+
+`Does the boss never go to Sydney?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Very seldom,' said Andy, `and then only when he has to, on business.
+
+When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run
+
+out to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.'
+
+
+
+After a while I said, `He told me about the drink, Andy --
+
+about his being on the spree when the children were lost.'
+
+
+
+`Well, Jack,' said Andy, `that's the thing that's been killing him ever since,
+
+and it happened over ten years ago.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Bush Dance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+`Tap, tap, tap, tap.'
+
+
+
+The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly
+
+in the midst of the `close', solid blackness of that moonless December night,
+
+when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought haze.
+
+
+
+It was the evening of the school children's `Feast'.  That is to say
+
+that the children had been sent, and `let go', and the younger ones `fetched'
+
+through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,
+
+and raced -- sometimes in couples tied together by the legs -- and caked,
+
+and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got rid of.
+
+The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and tied,
+
+the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside.
+
+Tea was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread
+
+better things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters,
+
+had been taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
+
+
+
+On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
+
+more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
+
+
+
+On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall,
+
+sat about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
+
+
+
+It was evident that something was seriously wrong.  None of the girls
+
+spoke above a hushed whisper.  None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.
+
+Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them
+
+you would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness
+
+and to swear.
+
+
+
+`Tap, tap, tap.'
+
+
+
+The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces nervously
+
+towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
+
+
+
+`Tap -- tap.'
+
+
+
+The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher's residence,
+
+and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made:
+
+it was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour --
+
+more like that of warm cheap glue than anything else.
+
+
+
+In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening.
+
+Whenever one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,
+
+all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye,
+
+and then withdrawn hopelessly.  At the sound of a horse's step
+
+all eyes and ears were on the door, till some one muttered,
+
+`It's only the horses in the paddock.'
+
+
+
+Some of the girls' eyes began to glisten suspiciously,
+
+and at last the belle of the party -- a great, dark-haired,
+
+pink-and-white Blue Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute
+
+staring before her, with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered
+
+her face with her hands, rose, and started blindly from the room,
+
+from which she was steered in a hurry by two sympathetic and rather `upset'
+
+girl friends, and as she passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically --
+
+
+
+`Oh, I can't help it!  I did want to dance!  It's a sh-shame!
+
+I can't help it!  I -- I want to dance!  I rode twenty miles to dance --
+
+and -- and I want to dance!'
+
+
+
+A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed
+
+the girl out.  The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses,
+
+and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl
+
+from the outside -- being man comforted --
+
+
+
+`I can't help it, Jack!  I did want to dance!  I -- I had such --
+
+such -- a job -- to get mother -- and -- and father to let me come --
+
+and -- and now!'
+
+
+
+The two girl friends came back.  `He sez to leave her to him,' they whispered,
+
+in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.
+
+
+
+`It's -- it's no use, Jack!' came the voice of grief.  `You don't know what --
+
+what father and mother -- is.  I -- I won't -- be able -- to ge-get away --
+
+again -- for -- for -- not till I'm married, perhaps.'
+
+
+
+The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls.  `I'll take her
+
+into my room and make her lie down,' she whispered to her sister,
+
+who was staying with her.  `She'll start some of the other girls presently --
+
+it's just the weather for it,' and she passed out quietly.
+
+That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.
+
+
+
+A final `tap-tap' from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk
+
+of a hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room
+
+turned quickly in that direction and brightened.  But there came a bang
+
+and a sound like `damn!' and hopelessness settled down.
+
+
+
+A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the girls
+
+rose and hurried out.  Fragments of conversation heard in the darkness --
+
+
+
+`It's two horses, I tell you!'
+
+
+
+`It's three, you ----!'
+
+
+
+`Lay you ----!'
+
+
+
+`Put the stuff up!'
+
+
+
+A clack of gate thrown open.
+
+
+
+`Who is it, Tom?'
+
+
+
+Voices from gatewards, yelling, `Johnny Mears!  They've got Johnny Mears!'
+
+
+
+Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
+
+
+
+Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the table,
+
+where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina,
+
+which he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight;
+
+and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms,
+
+as a football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly
+
+on the toe of his riding-boot.  It was a beautiful kick,
+
+the concertina shot out into the blackness, from which was projected,
+
+in return, first a short, sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring
+
+and the other covered by an enormous brick-coloured hand,
+
+and a voice that wanted to know who shot `that lurid loaf of bread?'
+
+
+
+But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice
+
+of Joe Matthews, M.C., --
+
+
+
+`Take yer partners!  Hurry up!  Take yer partners!  They've got Johnny Mears
+
+with his fiddle!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Buck-Jumper.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+
+
+There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them
+
+lanky and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel
+
+on the edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster's camp)
+
+when Cob & Co.'s mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding
+
+from round Crown Ridge, in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage.
+
+Some wiry, ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings
+
+about the place.  The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard
+
+close to the shanty.  As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek
+
+at the foot of the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves
+
+from verandah posts, from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah
+
+and the rough slab wall against which they'd been resting,
+
+and joined a group of four or five who stood round one.
+
+He stood with his back to the corner post of the stock-yard,
+
+his feet well braced out in front of him, and contemplated
+
+the toes of his tight new 'lastic-side boots and whistled softly.
+
+He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords,
+
+leggings, and a blue sash; he was Gr|aeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed,
+
+and his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim
+
+of a new cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.
+
+
+
+`Do it for a quid, Jack?' asked one.
+
+
+
+`Damned if I will, Jim!' said the young man at the post.
+
+`I'll do it for a fiver -- not a blanky sprat less.'
+
+
+
+Jim took off his hat and `shoved' it round, and `bobs' were `chucked' into it.
+
+The result was about thirty shillings.
+
+
+
+Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.
+
+
+
+`Not me!' he said, showing some emotion for the first time.
+
+`D'yer think I'm going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement
+
+for thirty blanky bob.  I'll ride the blanky horse for a fiver,
+
+and I'll feel the blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.'
+
+
+
+Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty.
+
+There were about twenty passengers aboard -- inside, on the box-seat,
+
+on the tail-board, and hanging on to the roof -- most of them Sydney men
+
+going up to the Mudgee races.  They got down and went inside
+
+with the driver for a drink, while the stablemen changed horses.
+
+The Bushmen raised their voices a little and argued.
+
+
+
+One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man --
+
+a good-hearted, sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands.
+
+He had a round red face and a white cork hat.  `What's those chaps
+
+got on outside?' he asked the publican.
+
+
+
+`Oh, it's a bet they've got on about riding a horse,' replied the publican.
+
+`The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the horse-breaker;
+
+and they reckon they've got the champion outlaw in the district out there --
+
+that chestnut horse in the yard.'
+
+
+
+The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+`Well, chaps! what have you got on here?' he asked cheerily.
+
+
+
+`Oh,' said Jim carelessly, `it's only a bit of a bet about ridin'
+
+that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.'  He indicated
+
+an ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles
+
+in a corner of the stock-yard.  `Flash Jack there -- he reckons
+
+he's the champion horse-breaker round here -- Flash Jack reckons
+
+he can take it out of that horse first try.'
+
+
+
+`What's up with the horse?' inquired the big, red-faced man.
+
+`It looks quiet enough.  Why, I'd ride it myself.'
+
+
+
+`Would yer?' said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up,
+
+and an innocent, inquiring expression.  `Looks quiet, does he?
+
+~You~ ought to know more about horses than to go by the looks of 'em.
+
+He's quiet enough just now, when there's no one near him;
+
+but you should have been here an hour ago.  That horse has killed two men
+
+and put another chap's shoulder out -- besides breaking a cove's leg.
+
+It took six of us all the morning to run him in and get the saddle on him;
+
+and now Flash Jack wants to back out of it.'
+
+
+
+`Euraliar!' remarked Flash Jack cheerfully.  `I said I'd ride
+
+that blanky horse out of the yard for a fiver.  I ain't goin' to risk
+
+my blanky neck for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.'
+
+
+
+`He said he'd ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,' said Jim.
+
+
+
+`And get smashed against the rails!' said Flash Jack.  `I would be a fool.
+
+I'd rather take my chance outside in the scrub -- and it's rough country
+
+round here.'
+
+
+
+`Well, how much do you want?' asked the man in the mushroom hat.
+
+
+
+`A fiver, I said,' replied Jack indifferently.  `And the blanky stuff
+
+in my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.'
+
+
+
+`Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?'
+
+inquired one of the passengers who had gathered round.
+
+
+
+`I'm frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,'
+
+said Flash Jack.  `I know that horse; he's got a mouth like iron.
+
+I might be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes
+
+with my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?'
+
+
+
+`You wouldn't want 'em then,' suggested a passenger.  `Or, say! --
+
+we'd leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.'
+
+
+
+Flash Jack ignored that passenger.  He eyed his boots and softly whistled
+
+a tune.
+
+
+
+`All right!' said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his pocket.
+
+`I'll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.'
+
+
+
+The five pounds were got together.
+
+
+
+`I'll lay a quid to half a quid he don't stick on ten minutes!'
+
+shouted Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off.
+
+The passengers also betted amongst themselves.  Flash Jack,
+
+after putting the money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails
+
+and led the horse into the middle of the yard.
+
+
+
+`Quiet as an old cow!' snorted a passenger in disgust.
+
+`I believe it's a sell!'
+
+
+
+`Wait a bit,' said Jim to the passenger, `wait a bit and you'll see.'
+
+
+
+They waited and saw.
+
+
+
+Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard,
+
+and trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub,
+
+which swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.
+
+
+
+Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack
+
+to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty;
+
+then they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses,
+
+while they laughed.
+
+
+
+At the hotel there was just time for another drink.  The driver
+
+climbed to his seat and shouted, `All aboard!' in his usual tone.
+
+The passengers climbed to their places, thinking hard.
+
+A mile or so along the road the man with the cork hat remarked,
+
+with much truth --
+
+
+
+`Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.'
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of sight,
+
+and proceeded to `knock down' the fiver.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia)
+
+kept Daniel Myers -- licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors --
+
+in drink and the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time
+
+he lay hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man
+
+would care to see -- or hear when it gave forth sound.  `Good accommodation
+
+for man and beast'; but few shanties save his own might, for a consideration,
+
+have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers had become
+
+towards the end of his career.  But at last the eccentric Bush doctor,
+
+`Doc' Wild' (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without its having
+
+any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him awake and cynical),
+
+pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried legally;
+
+so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out,
+
+and the sign altered to read, `Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.',
+
+and continued to conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years,
+
+with the joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer
+
+a human pig and pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm.
+
+Most of the regular patrons of the Half-way House could have
+
+their horrors decently, and, comparatively, quietly -- or otherwise
+
+have them privately -- in the Big Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been
+
+one of that sort.
+
+
+
+Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily,
+
+at the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so.
+
+She was a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid
+
+in the droughts of Out-Back without losing her good looks,
+
+and had put up with a hard life, and Myers, all those years
+
+without losing her good humour and nature.  Probably, had her husband been
+
+the opposite kind of man, she would have been different --
+
+haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible -- for of such is woman.
+
+But then it might be taken into consideration that she had been practically
+
+a widow during at least the last five years of her husband's alleged life.
+
+
+
+Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed
+
+that she was not to be caught.
+
+
+
+`It would be a grand thing,' one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog
+
+would say to his mates, `for one of us to have his name up on a pub.;
+
+it would save a lot of money.'
+
+
+
+`It wouldn't save you anything, Bill, if I got it,' was the retort.
+
+`You needn't come round chewing my lug then.  I'd give you one drink
+
+and no more.'
+
+
+
+The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers,
+
+even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos,
+
+tried their luck in vain.  In answer to the suggestion
+
+that she ought to have a man to knock round and look after things,
+
+she retorted that she had had one, and was perfectly satisfied.
+
+Few trav'lers on those tracks but tried `a bit of bear-up' in that direction,
+
+but all to no purpose.  Chequemen knocked down their cheques manfully
+
+at the Half-way House -- to get courage and goodwill and `put it off' till,
+
+at the last moment, they offered themselves abjectly to the landlady;
+
+which was worse than bad judgment on their part -- it was very silly,
+
+and she told them so.
+
+
+
+One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith
+
+in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much
+
+that they `broke out' and went on record-breaking sprees.
+
+
+
+About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra
+
+coat of paint on the `Margaret', whereat suitors looked hopeless.
+
+
+
+One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big Scrub --
+
+anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the horrors.
+
+But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing the opportunity
+
+when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell asleep,
+
+went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher's gallows --
+
+having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea
+
+of leaving the world as naked as he came into it.  He climbed the pole,
+
+sat astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell --
+
+a yell of drunken triumph -- before he dropped, and woke his mates.
+
+
+
+They cut him down and brought him to.  Next day he apologised to Mrs Myers,
+
+said, `Ah, well!  So long!' to the rest, and departed --
+
+cured of drink and love apparently.  The verdict was that the blanky fool
+
+should have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed,
+
+and it began to look as though, if she wished to continue
+
+to live on happily and comfortably for a few years longer
+
+at the fixed age of thirty-nine, she would either have to
+
+give up the pub. or get married.
+
+
+
+Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman
+
+whose name was mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts,
+
+and round the camp-fire.
+
+
+
+About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw, widower --
+
+otherwise known as `Old Jimmy', though he was little past middle age --
+
+had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up, and tackled afresh
+
+(with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts) ever since
+
+the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone.  He was a practical,
+
+square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a certain `cleanness'
+
+about the shape of his limbs which suggested the old jockey or hostler.
+
+There were two strong theories in connection with Jimmy -- one was that
+
+he had had a university education, and the other that he couldn't write
+
+his own name.  Not nearly such a ridiculous nor simple case Out-Back
+
+as it might seem.
+
+
+
+Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the `heard tells'
+
+in connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night,
+
+at the end of his contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly,
+
+`I'll go up to Tinned Dog next week and try my luck.'
+
+
+
+His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to laugh,
+
+and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian actor
+
+would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to think,
+
+with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an imaginary table
+
+and exclaimed --
+
+
+
+`By God!  Jimmy'll do it.'  (Applause.)
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
+
+runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour,
+
+when a clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
+
+greased-bluchered -- altogether a model or stage swagman came up,
+
+was served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way
+
+to the river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
+
+
+
+A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah,
+
+smoking a clean clay pipe.  Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked,
+
+`Is that trav'ler there yet, Mary?'
+
+
+
+`Yes, missus.  Clean pfellar that.'
+
+
+
+The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do
+
+when limited for `stuff' or wondering whether a section has been cut wrong --
+
+or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn't been a `clean pfellar'.
+
+She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
+
+across the clearing.
+
+
+
+`Good-day, mister,' she said, seeming to become aware of him
+
+for the first time.
+
+
+
+`Good-day, missus!'
+
+
+
+`Hot!'
+
+
+
+`Hot!'
+
+
+
+Pause.
+
+
+
+`Trav'lin'?'
+
+
+
+`No, not particular!'
+
+
+
+She waited for him to explain.  Myers was always explaining
+
+when he wasn't raving.  But the swagman smoked on.
+
+
+
+`Have a drink?' she suggested, to keep her end up.
+
+
+
+`No, thank you, missus.  I had one an hour or so ago.  I never take
+
+more than two a-day -- one before breakfast, if I can get it,
+
+and a night-cap.'
+
+
+
+What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
+
+
+
+`Come and have some tea; it's ready.'
+
+
+
+`Thank you.  I don't mind if I do.'
+
+
+
+They got on very slowly, but comfortably.  She got little out of him
+
+except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,
+
+and was `just having a look at the country.'  He politely declined
+
+a `shake-down', saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out
+
+this weather.  She got his name with a `by-the-way', as he rose to leave,
+
+and he went back to camp.
+
+
+
+He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning,
+
+and got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon
+
+pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of nails.
+
+
+
+And, well -- to make it short -- when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,
+
+and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed
+
+by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words --
+
+
+
+            HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,
+
+                     BY
+
+               JAMES GRIMSHAW.
+
+               ~Good Stabling.~
+
+
+
+The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+At Dead Dingo.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside
+
+the weather-board and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road,
+
+where there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes
+
+called `Roasted', and other times `Potted Dingo' -- nicknames suggested
+
+by the everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township
+
+of Tinned Dog.
+
+
+
+From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road,
+
+running right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep
+
+in the red sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest
+
+blue-grey bush, dust, and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
+
+
+
+There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year's Day.
+
+There weren't many more in the county.  The girl sat behind the bar
+
+-- the coolest place in the shanty -- reading `Deadwood Dick'.
+
+On a worn and torn and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen
+
+cooler places and better days, lay an awful and healthy example,
+
+a bearded swagman, with his arms twisted over his head and his face
+
+to the wall, sleeping off the death of the dead drunk.  Bill and Jim
+
+-- shearer and rouseabout -- sat at a table playing cards.
+
+It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and they had been gambling
+
+since nine -- and the greater part of the night before -- so they were,
+
+probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps physically)
+
+than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
+
+
+
+Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail,
+
+lay a sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
+
+
+
+Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath
+
+that would have been savage if it hadn't been drawled.
+
+
+
+`Stumped?' inquired Jim.
+
+
+
+`Not a blanky, lurid deener!' drawled Bill.
+
+
+
+Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went
+
+slowly and hopelessly round the room and out the door.
+
+There was something in the eyes of both, except when on the card-table,
+
+of the look of a man waking in a strange place.
+
+
+
+`Got anything?' asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
+
+
+
+Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty,
+
+and spat out on to the verandah floor.
+
+
+
+`That's all I got,' he drawled.  `It's gone now.'
+
+
+
+Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the dog.
+
+
+
+`That there dog yours?' he asked, brightening.
+
+
+
+They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each other
+
+as Bushmen can be.
+
+
+
+Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog.
+
+The dog woke suddenly to a flea fact.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' drawled Bill, `he's mine.'
+
+
+
+`Well, I'm going Out-Back, and I want a dog,' said Jim,
+
+gathering the cards briskly.  `Half a quid agin the dog?'
+
+
+
+`Half a quid be ----!' drawled Bill.  `Call it a quid?'
+
+
+
+`Half a blanky quid!'
+
+
+
+`A gory, lurid quid!' drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his swag.
+
+
+
+But Jim's hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
+
+
+
+`Alright.  Call it a ---- quid.'
+
+
+
+The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died again.
+
+Remember this, it might come in useful.
+
+
+
+Bill sat down to the table once more.
+
+
+
+Jim rose first, winner of the dog.  He stretched, yawned `Ah, well!'
+
+and shouted drinks.  Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up
+
+with his foot, unwound the chain, said `Ah, well -- so long!'
+
+and drifted out and along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following
+
+with head and tail down.
+
+
+
+Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,
+
+shouldered his swag, said, `So long, Mary!' and drifted out and along the road
+
+towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
+
+
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+
+A long, drowsy, half hour passed -- the sort of half hour
+
+that is as long as an hour in the places where days are as long as years,
+
+and years hold about as much as days do in other places.
+
+
+
+The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild
+
+for a moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor,
+
+rested his elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands,
+
+and came back to life gradually.
+
+
+
+He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar,
+
+and formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words --
+
+
+
+`Put up a drink?'*
+
+
+
+--
+
+* `Put up a drink' -- i.e., `Give me a drink on credit', or `Chalk it up'.
+
+--
+
+
+
+She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
+
+
+
+He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress signals
+
+with hand, eyes, and mouth.
+
+
+
+`No!' she snapped.  `I means no when I says no!  You've had too many
+
+last drinks already, and the boss says you ain't to have another.
+
+If you swear again, or bother me, I'll call him.'
+
+
+
+He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his swag,
+
+and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily.  Then he blinked round,
+
+whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
+
+through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again.
+
+He turned and started through to the back-door.
+
+
+
+`What the devil do you want now?' demanded the girl,
+
+interrupted in her reading for the third time by him.
+
+`Stampin' all over the house.  You can't go through there!
+
+It's privit!  I do wish to goodness you'd git!'
+
+
+
+`Where the blazes is that there dog o' mine got to?' he muttered.
+
+`Did you see a dog?'
+
+
+
+`No!  What do I want with your dog?'
+
+
+
+He whistled out in front again, and round each corner.  Then he came back
+
+with a decided step and tone.
+
+
+
+`Look here! that there dog was lyin' there agin the wall when I went to sleep.
+
+He wouldn't stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn't dragged.
+
+He's been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn'ter lost him for a fiver.
+
+Are you sure you ain't seen a dog?' then suddenly, as the thought struck him:
+
+`Where's them two chaps that was playin' cards when I wenter sleep?'
+
+
+
+`Why!' exclaimed the girl, without thinking, `there was a dog,
+
+now I come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
+
+Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.'
+
+
+
+He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.
+
+
+
+`What sort of a dog was it?'
+
+
+
+Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
+
+
+
+He scowled at her darkly.
+
+
+
+`Now, look here,' he said; `you've allowed gamblin' in this bar --
+
+your boss has.  You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog.
+
+Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your boss?
+
+I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away,
+
+and I don't care if you lose your licence.  I ain't goin' to lose my dog.
+
+I wouldn'ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog!  I ----'
+
+
+
+She was filling a pewter hastily.
+
+
+
+`Here! for God's sake have a drink an' stop yer row.'
+
+
+
+He drank with satisfaction.  Then he hung on the bar with one elbow
+
+and scowled out the door.
+
+
+
+`Which blanky way did them chaps go?' he growled.
+
+
+
+`The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.'
+
+
+
+`And I'll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
+
+lose me shed!  Here!' jerking the empty pewter across the bar,
+
+`fill that up again; I'm narked properly, I am, and I'll take
+
+twenty-four blanky hours to cool down now.  I wouldn'ter lost that dog
+
+for twenty quid.'
+
+
+
+He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,
+
+muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the track
+
+to Tinned Dog.
+
+
+
+                         --------------------
+
+
+
+Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite settled it
+
+in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog.  I leave it to you.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Most Bushmen who hadn't `known Bob Baker to speak to',
+
+had `heard tell of him'.  He'd been a squatter, not many years before,
+
+on the Macquarie river in New South Wales, and had made money
+
+in the good seasons, and had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding,
+
+and long trips to Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace.
+
+So after a pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands
+
+on his runs, Bob Baker went under, and the bank took over his station
+
+and put a manager in charge.
+
+
+
+He'd been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that
+
+he'd been a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned,
+
+for they had to suffer for it in the end.  Such generosity
+
+is often born of vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed.  It's very nice
+
+to hear the chaps sing `For he's a jolly good fellow', but you've mostly
+
+got to pay for it twice -- first in company, and afterwards alone.
+
+I once heard the chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow,
+
+when I was leaving a place and they were giving me a send-off.
+
+It thrilled me, and brought a warm gush to my eyes; but, all the same,
+
+I wished I had half the money I'd lent them, and spent on 'em,
+
+and I wished I'd used the time I'd wasted to be a jolly good fellow.
+
+
+
+When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great
+
+north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong
+
+on the Sydney side.  He was going north to new country
+
+round by the Gulf of Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle,
+
+on a two years' trip; and I and my mate, Andy M`Culloch,
+
+engaged to go with him.  We wanted to have a look at the Gulf Country.
+
+
+
+After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me
+
+that the Boss was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs.
+
+Andy had been with him on another trip, and he told me
+
+that the Boss was only going this way lately.  Andy knew Mrs Baker well,
+
+and seemed to think a deal of her.  `She's a good little woman,' said Andy.
+
+`One of the right stuff.  I worked on their station for a while
+
+when I was a nipper, and I know.  She was always a damned sight too good
+
+for the Boss, but she believed in him.  When I was coming away this time
+
+she says to me, "Look here, Andy, I'm afraid Robert is drinking again.
+
+Now I want you to look after him for me, as much as you can --
+
+you seem to have as much influence with him as any one.
+
+I want you to promise me that you'll never have a drink with him."
+
+
+
+`And I promised,' said Andy, `and I'll keep my word.'
+
+Andy was a chap who could keep his word, and nothing else.
+
+And, no matter how the Boss persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him,
+
+Andy would never drink with him.
+
+
+
+It got worse and worse:  the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at
+
+a shanty, and sometimes he'd be days behind us; and when he'd catch up to us
+
+his temper would be just about as much as we could stand.  At last he went
+
+on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles
+
+north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow
+
+with a flash barmaid there -- one of those girls who are engaged,
+
+by the publicans up country, as baits for chequemen.
+
+
+
+He went mad over that girl.  He drew an advance cheque
+
+from the stock-owner's agent there, and knocked that down;
+
+then he raised some more money somehow, and spent that -- mostly on the girl.
+
+
+
+We did all we could.  Andy got him along the track for a couple of stages,
+
+and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the night
+
+and went back.
+
+
+
+We had two other men with us, but had the devil's own bother
+
+on account of the cattle.  It was a mixed-up job all round.
+
+You see it was all big runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks
+
+moving along the route all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass.
+
+The agent wasn't going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock
+
+until the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass
+
+on the route or the travelling-stock reserves or camps,
+
+so we had to keep travelling for grass.
+
+
+
+The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle
+
+have to go through -- that's the law of the stock-routes.
+
+So the agent wired to the owners, and, when he got their reply,
+
+he sacked the Boss and sent the cattle on in charge of another man.
+
+The new Boss was a drover coming south after a trip;
+
+he had his two brothers with him, so he didn't want me and Andy;
+
+but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged,
+
+between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to us --
+
+the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.
+
+
+
+We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober,
+
+mad or sane, good or bad, it isn't Bush religion to desert a mate in a hole;
+
+and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.
+
+
+
+We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with us
+
+as much as possible, and did all we could for him.
+
+
+
+`How could I face his wife if I went home without him?' asked Andy,
+
+`or any of his old mates?'
+
+
+
+The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was,
+
+and then he'd hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow,
+
+and fight, and get knocked about.  He was an awful object by this time,
+
+wild-eyed and gaunt, and he hadn't washed or shaved for days.
+
+
+
+Andy got the constable in charge of the police station
+
+to lock him up for a night, but it only made him worse:  we took him back
+
+to the camp next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes
+
+he slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started
+
+to hang himself to a leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope.
+
+We got to him just in time.
+
+
+
+Then Andy wired to the Boss's brother Ned, who was fighting the drought,
+
+the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border.
+
+Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
+
+
+
+Perhaps the Boss hadn't been quite right in his head before he
+
+started drinking -- he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of it;
+
+maybe he'd got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his troubles --
+
+anyway he died in the horrors within the week.
+
+
+
+His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought
+
+he was the devil, and grappled with him.  It took the three of us
+
+to hold the Boss down sometimes.
+
+
+
+Sometimes, towards the end, he'd be sensible for a few minutes
+
+and talk about his `poor wife and children'; and immediately afterwards
+
+he'd fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils.
+
+He cursed everything; he cursed his wife and children,
+
+and yelled that they were dragging him down to hell.  He died raving mad.
+
+It was the worst case of death in the horrors of drink
+
+that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
+
+
+
+Ned saw to the funeral:  it was very hot weather, and men have to be
+
+buried quick who die out there in the hot weather -- especially men
+
+who die in the state the Boss was in.  Then Ned went to the public-house
+
+where the barmaid was and called the landlord out.  It was a desperate fight:
+
+the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man;
+
+but Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who
+
+will carry a thing through to death when they make up their minds.
+
+He gave that publican nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved.
+
+The constable in charge of the station backed Ned, while another policeman
+
+picked up the publican.  Sounds queer to you city people, doesn't it?
+
+
+
+Next morning we three started south.  We stayed a couple of days
+
+at Ned Baker's station on the border, and then started
+
+on our three-hundred-mile ride down-country.  The weather was still very hot,
+
+so we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned's place at dusk.
+
+He parted from us at the homestead gate.  He gave Andy a small packet,
+
+done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained
+
+Bob's pocket-book, letters, and papers.  We looked back,
+
+after we'd gone a piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing
+
+by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked.  Ned was a bachelor.
+
+`Poor old Ned,' said Andy to me.  `He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker
+
+before she got married, but she picked the wrong man -- girls mostly do.
+
+Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left
+
+when his brother married, and he's been up in these God-forsaken scrubs
+
+ever since.  Look, I want to tell you something, Jack:
+
+Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever,
+
+and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he died easy --
+
+and all that sort of thing.  Ned sent her some money,
+
+and she is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died.
+
+Now I'll have to go and see her when we get to Solong;
+
+there's no getting out of it, I'll have to face her --
+
+and you'll have to come with me.'
+
+
+
+`Damned if I will!' I said.
+
+
+
+`But you'll have to,' said Andy.  `You'll have to stick to me;
+
+you're surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this?
+
+I'll have to lie like hell -- I'll have to lie as I never lied
+
+to a woman before; and you'll have to back me and corroborate every lie.'
+
+
+
+I'd never seen Andy show so much emotion.
+
+
+
+`There's plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,' said Andy.  He said no more
+
+about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss's name casually,
+
+until we were within about a day's ride of Solong; then Andy told me
+
+the yarn he'd made up about the Boss's death.
+
+
+
+`And I want you to listen, Jack,' he said, `and remember every word --
+
+and if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards.
+
+Now it was like this:  the Boss wasn't too well when he crossed the border.
+
+He complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain
+
+in the back of his neck, and he had dysentery bad, -- but that doesn't matter;
+
+it's lucky I ain't supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms.
+
+The Boss stuck to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle
+
+and made it as easy as we could for him.  He'd just take it easy,
+
+and ride on from camp to camp, and rest.  One night I rode to a town
+
+off the route (or you did, if you like) and got some medicine for him;
+
+that made him better for a while, but at last, a day or two
+
+this side of Mulgatown, he had to give up.  A squatter there
+
+drove him into town in his buggy and put him up at the best hotel.
+
+The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for him --
+
+put him in the best room and wired for another doctor.
+
+We wired for Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was,
+
+and Ned rode night and day and got there three days before the Boss died.
+
+The Boss was a bit off his head some of the time with the fever,
+
+but was calm and quiet towards the end and died easy.  He talked a lot
+
+about his wife and children, and told us to tell the wife not to fret
+
+but to cheer up for the children's sake.  How does that sound?'
+
+
+
+I'd been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.
+
+
+
+`Why not let her know the truth?' I asked.  `She's sure to hear of it
+
+sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken blackguard
+
+she might get over it all the sooner.'
+
+
+
+`You don't know women, Jack,' said Andy quietly.  `And, anyway,
+
+even if she is a sensible woman, we've got a dead mate to consider
+
+as well as a living woman.'
+
+
+
+`But she's sure to hear the truth sooner or later,' I said,
+
+`the Boss was so well known.'
+
+
+
+`And that's just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,' said Andy.
+
+`If he wasn't well known -- and nobody could help liking him,
+
+after all, when he was straight -- if he wasn't so well known
+
+the truth might leak out unawares.  She won't know if I can help it,
+
+or at least not yet a while.  If I see any chaps that come from the North
+
+I'll put them up to it.  I'll tell M`Grath, the publican at Solong, too:
+
+he's a straight man -- he'll keep his ears open and warn chaps.
+
+One of Mrs Baker's sisters is staying with her, and I'll give her a hint
+
+so that she can warn off any women that might get hold of a yarn.  Besides,
+
+Mrs Baker is sure to go and live in Sydney, where all her people are --
+
+she was a Sydney girl; and she's not likely to meet any one there
+
+that will tell her the truth.  I can tell her that it was
+
+the last wish of the Boss that she should shift to Sydney.'
+
+
+
+We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called
+
+a `happy thought'.  He went to his saddle-bags and got out
+
+the small canvas packet that Ned had given him:  it was sewn up
+
+with packing-thread, and Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.
+
+
+
+`What are you doing, Andy?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Ned's an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,' said Andy.
+
+`I guess he hasn't looked through the Boss's letters, and I'm just going
+
+to see that there's nothing here that will make liars of us.'
+
+
+
+He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire.
+
+There were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband,
+
+also a portrait of her and the children; these Andy put aside.
+
+But there were other letters from barmaids and women who were not fit
+
+to be seen in the same street with the Boss's wife; and there were portraits
+
+-- one or two flash ones.  There were two letters from other men's wives too.
+
+
+
+`And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!' said Andy,
+
+in a tone of disgust.
+
+
+
+He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss's pocket-book
+
+and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on them,
+
+and burnt them too.  Then he sewed up the packet again and put it away
+
+in his saddle-bag.
+
+
+
+`Such is life!' said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.
+
+
+
+We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a paddock,
+
+and put up at M`Grath's pub. until such time as we made up our minds
+
+as to what we'd do or where we'd go.  We had an idea of waiting
+
+until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big sheds.
+
+
+
+Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker.
+
+`We'll go after dinner,' said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink,
+
+and felt sleepy -- we weren't used to big dinners of roast-beef
+
+and vegetables and pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather --
+
+so we decided to have a snooze and then go.  When we woke up
+
+it was late in the afternoon, so we thought we'd put it off till after tea.
+
+`It wouldn't be manners to walk in while they're at tea,' said Andy --
+
+`it would look as if we only came for some grub.'
+
+
+
+But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message
+
+that Mrs Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged
+
+if we'd call up as soon as possible.  You see, in those small towns
+
+you can't move without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.
+
+
+
+`We'll have to face the music now!' said Andy, `and no get out of it.'
+
+He seemed to hang back more than I did.  There was another pub. opposite
+
+where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to Andy --
+
+
+
+`Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy?  We might be kept in there
+
+an hour or two.'
+
+
+
+`You don't want another drink,' said Andy, rather short.
+
+`Why, you seem to be going the same way as the Boss!'  But it was Andy
+
+that edged off towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker's place.
+
+`All right!' he said.  `Come on!  We'll have this other drink,
+
+since you want it so bad.'
+
+
+
+We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the road --
+
+we'd bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit.
+
+Half-way across Andy grabbed my arm and asked --
+
+
+
+`How do you feel now, Jack?'
+
+
+
+`Oh, ~I'm~ all right,' I said.
+
+
+
+`For God's sake!' said Andy, `don't put your foot in it
+
+and make a mess of it.'
+
+
+
+`I won't, if you don't.'
+
+
+
+Mrs Baker's cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a garden.
+
+When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and whispered --
+
+
+
+`For God's sake stick to me now, Jack!'
+
+
+
+`I'll stick all right,' I said -- `you've been having too much beer, Andy.'
+
+
+
+I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful,
+
+contented sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting
+
+the Boss's shirts and things ready when we started North.
+
+Just the sort of woman that is contented with housework and the children,
+
+and with nothing particular about her in the way of brains.
+
+But now she sat by the fire looking like the ghost of herself.
+
+I wouldn't have recognised her at first.  I never saw such a change
+
+in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.
+
+
+
+Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker
+
+I had eyes for the sister and no one else.  She was a Sydney girl,
+
+about twenty-four or twenty-five, and fresh and fair --
+
+not like the sun-browned women we were used to see.  She was a pretty,
+
+bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick to understand, and very sympathetic.
+
+She had been educated, Andy had told me, and wrote stories
+
+for the Sydney `Bulletin' and other Sydney papers.  She had her hair done
+
+and was dressed in the city style, and that took us back a bit at first.
+
+
+
+`It's very good of you to come,' said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice,
+
+when we first went in.  `I heard you were in town.'
+
+
+
+`We were just coming when we got your message,' said Andy.
+
+`We'd have come before, only we had to see to the horses.'
+
+
+
+`It's very kind of you, I'm sure,' said Mrs Baker.
+
+
+
+They wanted us to have tea, but we said we'd just had it.  Then Miss Standish
+
+(the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn't feel
+
+as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully
+
+just then.
+
+
+
+There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room,
+
+and the sister went to see to it.  Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.
+
+
+
+`You mustn't mind me,' she said.  `I'll be all right presently,
+
+and then I want you to tell me all about poor Bob.  It's seeing you,
+
+that saw the last of him, that set me off.'
+
+
+
+Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall,
+
+and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting Blucher
+
+on the opposite wall.  I thought it was lucky that that picture was there.
+
+
+
+The child was calling `mumma', and Mrs Baker went in to it,
+
+and her sister came out.  `Best tell her all about it and get it over,'
+
+she whispered to Andy.  `She'll never be content until she hears
+
+all about poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died.
+
+Let me take your hats.  Make yourselves comfortable.'
+
+
+
+She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine.
+
+I wished she'd let us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to,
+
+and nothing to do with our hands; and as for being comfortable,
+
+we were just about as comfortable as two cats on wet bricks.
+
+
+
+When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker,
+
+about four years old; he wanted to see Andy.  He ran to Andy at once,
+
+and Andy took him up on his knee.  He was a pretty child,
+
+but he reminded me too much of his father.
+
+
+
+`I'm so glad you've come, Andy!' said Bobby.
+
+
+
+`Are you, Bobby?'
+
+
+
+`Yes.  I wants to ask you about daddy.  You saw him go away, didn't you?'
+
+and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy's face.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`He went up among the stars, didn't he?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`And he isn't coming back to Bobby any more?'
+
+
+
+`No,' said Andy.  `But Bobby's going to him by-and-by.'
+
+
+
+Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her hand,
+
+tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister took her
+
+out of the room.
+
+
+
+Andy looked miserable.  `I wish to God I was off this job!'
+
+he whispered to me.
+
+
+
+`Is that the girl that writes the stories?' I asked.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, `and poems too.'
+
+
+
+`Is Bobby going up among the stars?' asked Bobby.
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy -- `if Bobby's good.'
+
+
+
+`And auntie?'
+
+
+
+`Yes.'
+
+
+
+`And mumma?'
+
+
+
+`Yes.'
+
+
+
+`Are you going, Andy?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy hopelessly.
+
+
+
+`Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy, `I saw him go up.'
+
+
+
+`And he isn't coming down again any more?'
+
+
+
+`No,' said Andy.
+
+
+
+`Why isn't he?'
+
+
+
+`Because he's going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.'
+
+
+
+There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked --
+
+
+
+`Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?' with the same expression
+
+of innocent wonder in his eyes.
+
+
+
+Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand.  `Auntie' came in and told him
+
+he'd see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed,
+
+after he'd kissed us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker
+
+settled down to hear Andy's story.
+
+
+
+`Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,' whispered Andy to me
+
+just before they came in.
+
+
+
+`Poor Bob's brother Ned wrote to me,' said Mrs Baker,
+
+`but he scarcely told me anything.  Ned's a good fellow, but he's very simple,
+
+and never thinks of anything.'
+
+
+
+Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border.
+
+
+
+`I knew he was not well,' said Mrs Baker, `before he left.
+
+I didn't want him to go.  I tried hard to persuade him
+
+not to go this trip.  I had a feeling that I oughtn't to let him go.
+
+But he'd never think of anything but me and the children.  He promised
+
+he'd give up droving after this trip, and get something to do near home.
+
+The life was too much for him -- riding in all weathers and camping out
+
+in the rain, and living like a dog.  But he was never content at home.
+
+It was all for the sake of me and the children.  He wanted
+
+to make money and start on a station again.  I shouldn't have let him go.
+
+He only thought of me and the children!  Oh! my poor, dear, kind,
+
+dead husband!'  She broke down again and sobbed, and her sister comforted her,
+
+while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting Blucher
+
+on the field of Waterloo.  I thought the artist had heaped up the dead
+
+a bit extra, and I thought that I wouldn't like to be trod on by horses,
+
+even if I was dead.
+
+
+
+`Don't you mind,' said Miss Standish, `she'll be all right presently,'
+
+and she handed us the `Illustrated Sydney Journal'.  This was a great relief,
+
+-- we bumped our heads over the pictures.
+
+
+
+Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down
+
+near Mulgatown.  Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite me.
+
+Both of them kept their eyes on Andy's face:  he sat, with his hair
+
+straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes
+
+fixed on Mrs Baker's face all the time he was speaking.
+
+I watched Miss Standish.  I thought she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen;
+
+it was a bad case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me,
+
+and the case was hopeless.  I began to feel pretty miserable,
+
+and to think back into the past:  I just heard Andy droning away by my side.
+
+
+
+`So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets
+
+and coats and things,' Andy was saying, `and the squatter started
+
+into Mulgatown. . . .  It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn't it?' he asked,
+
+turning suddenly to me.  He always looked so innocent that there were times
+
+when I itched to knock him down.
+
+
+
+`More like thirty-five,' I said, waking up.
+
+
+
+Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look
+
+at Wellington and Blucher.
+
+
+
+`They were all very good and kind to the Boss,' said Andy.
+
+`They thought a lot of him up there.  Everybody was fond of him.'
+
+
+
+`I know it,' said Mrs Baker.  `Nobody could help liking him.
+
+He was one of the kindest men that ever lived.'
+
+
+
+`Tanner, the publican, couldn't have been kinder to his own brother,'
+
+said Andy.  `The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only
+
+a young fellow, and Tanner hadn't much faith in him, so he wired
+
+for an older doctor at Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses
+
+to meet the doctor's buggy.  Everything was done that could be done,
+
+I assure you, Mrs Baker.'
+
+
+
+`I believe it,' said Mrs Baker.  `And you don't know how it relieves me
+
+to hear it.  And did the publican do all this at his own expense?'
+
+
+
+`He wouldn't take a penny, Mrs Baker.'
+
+
+
+`He must have been a good true man.  I wish I could thank him.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, Ned thanked him for you,' said Andy, though without meaning
+
+more than he said.
+
+
+
+`I wouldn't have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,' said Mrs Baker.
+
+`When I first heard of my poor husband's death, I thought perhaps
+
+he'd been drinking again -- that worried me a bit.'
+
+
+
+`He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs Baker,'
+
+said Andy quickly.
+
+
+
+Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or twice,
+
+while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him;
+
+then she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head
+
+and looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn't like.
+
+Once or twice she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question,
+
+but I always looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington,
+
+or into the empty fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me.
+
+Then she asked Andy a question or two, in all innocence I believe now,
+
+but it scared him, and at last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp.
+
+Then she gave a little gasp and shut up like a steel trap.
+
+
+
+The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again.  Mrs Baker went to it.
+
+We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring
+
+all over the place:  presently Miss Standish excused herself,
+
+and went out of the room after her sister.  She looked hard at Andy
+
+as she left the room, but he kept his eyes away.
+
+
+
+`Brace up now, Jack,' whispered Andy to me, `the worst is coming.'
+
+
+
+When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.
+
+
+
+`He -- he died very quietly,' said Andy, hitching round, and resting
+
+his elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his face
+
+away from the light.  Miss Standish put her arm round her sister.
+
+`He died very easy,' said Andy.  `He was a bit off his head at times,
+
+but that was while the fever was on him.  He didn't suffer much
+
+towards the end -- I don't think he suffered at all. . . .  He talked a lot
+
+about you and the children.'  (Andy was speaking very softly now.)  `He said
+
+that you were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children's sake. . . .
+
+It was the biggest funeral ever seen round there.'
+
+
+
+Mrs Baker was crying softly.  Andy got the packet half out of his pocket,
+
+but shoved it back again.
+
+
+
+`The only thing that hurts me now,' says Mrs Baker presently,
+
+`is to think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush,
+
+so far from home.  It's -- cruel!' and she was sobbing again.
+
+
+
+`Oh, that's all right, Mrs Baker,' said Andy, losing his head a little.
+
+`Ned will see to that.  Ned is going to arrange to have him
+
+brought down and buried in Sydney.'  Which was about the first thing
+
+Andy had told her that evening that wasn't a lie.  Ned had said he would do it
+
+as soon as he sold his wool.
+
+
+
+`It's very kind indeed of Ned,' sobbed Mrs Baker.  `I'd never have dreamed
+
+he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful.  I misjudged him all along.
+
+And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?'
+
+
+
+`Yes,' said Andy -- then one of his `happy thoughts' struck him.
+
+`Except that he hoped you'd shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker,
+
+where you've got friends and relations.  He thought it would be better
+
+for you and the children.  He told me to tell you that.'
+
+
+
+`He was thoughtful up to the end,' said Mrs Baker.  `It was just like
+
+poor Robert -- always thinking of me and the children.  We are going to Sydney
+
+next week.'
+
+
+
+Andy looked relieved.  We talked a little more, and Miss Standish
+
+wanted to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses.
+
+We got up and bumped against each other, and got each other's hats,
+
+and promised Mrs Baker we'd come again.
+
+
+
+`Thank you very much for coming,' she said, shaking hands with us.
+
+`I feel much better now.  You don't know how much you have relieved me.
+
+Now, mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.'
+
+
+
+Andy caught her sister's eye and jerked his head towards the door
+
+to let her know he wanted to speak to her outside.
+
+
+
+`Good-bye, Mrs Baker,' he said, holding on to her hand.  `And don't you fret.
+
+You've -- you've got the children yet.  It's -- it's all for the best;
+
+and, besides, the Boss said you wasn't to fret.'  And he blundered out
+
+after me and Miss Standish.
+
+
+
+She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.
+
+
+
+`I want you to give that to her,' he said; `it's his letters and papers.
+
+I hadn't the heart to give it to her, somehow.'
+
+
+
+`Tell me, Mr M`Culloch,' she said.  `You've kept something back --
+
+you haven't told her the truth.  It would be better and safer for me to know.
+
+Was it an accident -- or the drink?'
+
+
+
+`It was the drink,' said Andy.  `I was going to tell you --
+
+I thought it would be best to tell you.  I had made up my mind to do it,
+
+but, somehow, I couldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me.'
+
+
+
+`Tell me all,' she said.  `It would be better for me to know.'
+
+
+
+`Come a little farther away from the house,' said Andy.
+
+She came along the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her
+
+as much of the truth as he could.
+
+
+
+`I'll hurry her off to Sydney,' she said.  `We can get away this week
+
+as well as next.'  Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly,
+
+her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight.
+
+She looked splendid.
+
+
+
+`I want to thank you for her sake,' she said quickly.  `You are good men!
+
+I like the Bushmen!  They are grand men -- they are noble!
+
+I'll probably never see either of you again, so it doesn't matter,'
+
+and she put her white hand on Andy's shoulder and kissed him fair and square
+
+on the mouth.  `And you, too!' she said to me.  I was taller than Andy,
+
+and had to stoop.  `Good-bye!' she said, and ran to the gate and in,
+
+waving her hand to us.  We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.
+
+
+
+I don't think it did either of us any harm.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This is a story -- about the only one -- of Job Falconer,
+
+Boss of the Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales
+
+in the early Eighties -- when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs
+
+out of the hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.
+
+
+
+Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete,
+
+and as his family grew up he would become as angry as it was
+
+in his easy-going nature to become if reference were made to the incident
+
+in his presence.  But his wife -- little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer --
+
+often told the story (in the mysterious voice which women use
+
+in speaking of private matters amongst themselves -- but with
+
+brightening eyes) to women friends over tea; and always to a new woman friend.
+
+And on such occasions she would be particularly tender
+
+towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his thin, sandy hair in a way
+
+that embarrassed him in company -- made him look as sheepish
+
+as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned amongst the ewes.
+
+And the woman friend on parting would give Job's hand a squeeze
+
+which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she could love him.
+
+
+
+According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been tall,
+
+and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered.  But he wasn't.
+
+He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy
+
+(his skin was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber),
+
+and his eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly,
+
+his arms were short, and his legs bowed to the saddle.
+
+Altogether he was an awkward, unlovely Bush bird -- on foot;
+
+in the saddle it was different.  He hadn't even a `temper'.
+
+
+
+The impression on Job's mind which many years afterwards
+
+brought about the incident was strong enough.  When Job was a boy of fourteen
+
+he saw his father's horse come home riderless -- circling and snorting
+
+up by the stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on
+
+one of the snapped ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side
+
+with bruised pommel and knee-pad broken off.
+
+
+
+Job's father wasn't hurt much, but Job's mother, an emotional woman,
+
+and then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock
+
+for three months only.  `She wasn't quite right in her head,' they said,
+
+`from the day the horse came home till the last hour before she died.'
+
+And, strange to say, Job's father (from whom Job inherited
+
+his seemingly placid nature) died three months later.
+
+The doctor from the town was of the opinion that he must have
+
+`sustained internal injuries' when the horse threw him.
+
+`Doc. Wild' (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job's father was hurt inside
+
+when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn't pull round.
+
+But doctors differ all over the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way.
+
+He had been married a year, and had lately started wool-raising
+
+on a pastoral lease he had taken up at Talbragar:  it was a new run,
+
+with new slab-and-bark huts on the creek for a homestead,
+
+new shearing-shed, yards -- wife and everything new, and he was
+
+expecting a baby.  Job felt brand-new himself at the time, so he said.
+
+It was a lonely place for a young woman; but Gerty was a settler's daughter.
+
+The newness took away some of the loneliness, she said, and there was truth
+
+in that:  a Bush home in the scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets,
+
+and ghostlier in the twilight, as the bark and slabs whiten,
+
+or rather grow grey, in fierce summers.  And there's nothing under God's sky
+
+so weird, so aggressively lonely, as a deserted old home in the Bush.
+
+
+
+Job's wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the run,
+
+and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman
+
+from within the kicking radius in Lancashire -- wife of a selector)
+
+was only seven miles away.  She promised to be on hand,
+
+and came over two or three times a-week; but Job grew restless
+
+as Gerty's time drew near, and wished that he had insisted on sending her
+
+to the nearest town (thirty miles away), as originally proposed.
+
+Gerty's mother, who lived in town, was coming to see her over her trouble;
+
+Job had made arrangements with the town doctor, but prompt attendance
+
+could hardly be expected of a doctor who was very busy,
+
+who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty miles away.
+
+
+
+Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there,
+
+had more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan,
+
+and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors
+
+of the district together -- maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him,
+
+or he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions -- or, perhaps,
+
+because he'd do things which no `respectable practitioner' dared do.
+
+I've described him in another story.  Some said he was a quack,
+
+and some said he wasn't.  There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him
+
+in the Bush.  He drank fearfully, and `on his own', but was seldom incapable
+
+of performing an operation.  Experienced Bushmen preferred him
+
+three-quarters drunk:  when perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky.
+
+He was tall, gaunt, had a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows,
+
+and piercing black eyes.  His movements were eccentric.  He lived
+
+where he happened to be -- in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead,
+
+in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's,
+
+or boundary-rider's hut; in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp --
+
+or, when the horrors were on him, by a log in the lonely Bush.
+
+It seemed all one to him.  He lost all his things sometimes --
+
+even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin bag which contained
+
+his surgical instruments and papers.  Except once; then he gave the blacks
+
+5 Pounds to find it for him.
+
+
+
+His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy;
+
+and he rode as far and fast to a squatter's home as to a swagman's camp.
+
+When nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand,
+
+and the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds.
+
+He had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds
+
+by squatters for `pulling round' their wives or children;
+
+but such offers always angered him.  When he asked for 5 Pounds
+
+he resented being offered a 10 Pound cheque.  He once sued a doctor
+
+for alleging that he held no diploma; but the magistrate, on reading
+
+certain papers, suggested a settlement out of court, which both doctors
+
+agreed to -- the other doctor apologising briefly in the local paper.
+
+It was noticed thereafter that the magistrate and town doctors
+
+treated Doc. Wild with great respect -- even at his worst.
+
+The thing was never explained, and the case deepened the mystery
+
+which surrounded Doc. Wild.
+
+
+
+As Job Falconer's crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty
+
+on the main road, about half-way between Job's station and the town.
+
+(Township of Come-by-Chance -- expressive name; and the shanty was
+
+the `Dead Dingo Hotel', kept by James Myles -- known as `Poisonous Jimmy',
+
+perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.)
+
+Job's brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel
+
+with instructions to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor
+
+didn't either drink himself into the `D.T.'s' or get sober enough
+
+to become restless; to prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did;
+
+and to bring him to the station in about a week's time.
+
+Mac. (rather more careless, brighter, and more energetic than his brother)
+
+was carrying out these instructions while pretending,
+
+with rather great success, to be himself on the spree at the shanty.
+
+
+
+But one morning, early in the specified week, Job's uneasiness
+
+was suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy
+
+for the neighbour's wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance
+
+to hurry out Gerty's mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac.
+
+were getting on.  On the arrival of the neighbour's wife, who drove over
+
+in a spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.
+
+
+
+`Don't be anxious, Job,' said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her.
+
+`We'll be all right.  Wait! you'd better take the gun --
+
+you might see those dingoes again.  I'll get it for you.'
+
+
+
+The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep;
+
+and Job and Gerty had started three together close to the track
+
+the last time they were out in company -- without the gun, of course.
+
+Gerty took the loaded gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall,
+
+carried it out, and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again
+
+and then rode off.
+
+
+
+It was a hot day -- the beginning of a long drought, as Job found
+
+to his bitter cost.  He followed the track for five or six miles
+
+through the thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off
+
+to make a short cut to the main road across a big ring-barked flat.
+
+The tall gum-trees had been ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out
+
+round the butts), or rather `sapped' -- that is, a ring cut in through the sap
+
+-- in order to kill them, so that the little strength in the `poor' soil
+
+should not be drawn out by the living roots, and the natural grass
+
+(on which Australian stock depends) should have a better show.  The hard,
+
+dead trees raised their barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches
+
+for three or four miles, and the grey and brown grass stood tall between,
+
+dying in the first breaths of the coming drought.  All was becoming
+
+grey and ashen here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects,
+
+and the pale brassy dome of the sky cloudless over all,
+
+the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the sky.
+
+Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader,
+
+one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled),
+
+and he kept an eye out for dingoes.  He was saving his horse for a long ride,
+
+jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to one side --
+
+and I'm not sure that he didn't have a leg thrown up and across
+
+in front of the pommel of the saddle -- he was riding along
+
+in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking fatherly thoughts in advance,
+
+perhaps, when suddenly a great black, greasy-looking iguana
+
+scuttled off from the side of the track amongst the dry tufts of grass
+
+and shreds of dead bark, and started up a sapling.  `It was a whopper,'
+
+Job said afterwards; `must have been over six feet, and a foot
+
+across the body.  It scared me nearly as much as the filly.'
+
+
+
+The filly shied off like a rocket.  Job kept his seat instinctively,
+
+as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein --
+
+lying loosely on the pommel -- the filly `fetched up' against a dead box-tree,
+
+hard as cast-iron, and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup to pocket.
+
+`I felt the blood flare up,' he said, `and I knowed that that'
+
+-- (Job swore now and then in an easy-going way) -- `I knowed
+
+that that blanky leg was broken alright.  I threw the gun from me
+
+and freed my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall
+
+to the right, as the filly started off again.'
+
+
+
+What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer,
+
+and Job's own `wanderings in his mind', as he called them.
+
+`They took a blanky mean advantage of me,' he said, `when they had me down
+
+and I couldn't talk sense.'
+
+
+
+The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring -- as a mob of brumbies,
+
+when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke.
+
+Job's leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible.
+
+But he thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix.
+
+No doubt the scene at the lonely Bush home of his boyhood
+
+started up before him:  his father's horse appeared riderless,
+
+and he saw the look in his mother's eyes.
+
+
+
+Now a Bushman's first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this
+
+is that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed,
+
+and the horse's tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there
+
+for days, for weeks -- till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones.
+
+Job was on an old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion
+
+to come for months, but he did not consider this.  He crawled to his gun,
+
+then to a log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him.  How he did it
+
+he doesn't know.  Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log,
+
+took aim at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over
+
+and lay with his head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down,
+
+rested on his neck.  He had fainted.  The crows were interested,
+
+and the ants would come by-and-by.
+
+
+
+
+
+Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed,
+
+after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no other
+
+possible way.  He often turned up where and when he was wanted above all men,
+
+and at no other time.  He had gipsy blood, they said;
+
+but, anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had,
+
+and living the life he lived -- and doing the things he did --
+
+it was quite probable that he was more nearly in touch than we
+
+with that awful invisible world all round and between us,
+
+of which we only see distorted faces and hear disjointed utterances
+
+when we are `suffering a recovery' -- or going mad.
+
+
+
+On the morning of Job's accident, and after a long brooding silence,
+
+Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer --
+
+
+
+`Git the hosses, Mac.  We'll go to the station.'
+
+
+
+Mac., used to the doctor's eccentricities, went to see about the horses.
+
+
+
+And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer -- Job's mother-in-law --
+
+on her way from the town to the station.  She stayed to have a cup of tea
+
+and give her horses a feed.  She was square-faced, and considered
+
+a rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh,
+
+good sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes.
+
+She lived in the town comfortably on the interest of some money
+
+which her husband left in the bank.  She drove an American waggonette
+
+with a good width and length of `tray' behind, and on this occasion she had
+
+a pole and two horses.  In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows,
+
+a generous pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries,
+
+delicacies, and luxuries.  All round she was an excellent mother-in-law
+
+for a man to have on hand at a critical time.
+
+
+
+And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her
+
+right here.  She is universally considered a nuisance
+
+in times of peace and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home!
+
+Then it's `Write to Mother!  Wire for Mother!  Send some one to fetch Mother!
+
+I'll go and bring Mother!' and if she is not near:  `Oh, I wish Mother
+
+were here!  If Mother were only near!'  And when she is on the spot,
+
+the anxious son-in-law:  `Don't ~you~ go, Mother!  You'll stay,
+
+won't you, Mother? -- till we're all right?  I'll get some one
+
+to look after your house, Mother, while you're here.'  But Job Falconer
+
+was fond of his mother-in-law, all times.
+
+
+
+Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses.
+
+Mrs Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her
+
+about a mile before she reached the homestead track, which turned in
+
+through the scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
+
+
+
+Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along
+
+in the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat
+
+through the dead, naked branches.  Mac. looked that way.
+
+The crows were hopping about the branches of a tree way out
+
+in the middle of the flat, flopping down from branch to branch to the grass,
+
+then rising hurriedly and circling.
+
+
+
+`Dead beast there!' said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.
+
+
+
+`No -- dying,' said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more intellect.
+
+
+
+`There's some steers of Job's out there somewhere,' muttered Mac.
+
+Then suddenly, `It ain't drought -- it's the ploorer at last! or I'm blanked!'
+
+
+
+Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia,
+
+which was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto
+
+kept clear of Job's run.
+
+
+
+`We'll go and see, if you like,' suggested Doc. Wild.
+
+
+
+They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way
+
+amongst the dried tufts and fallen branches.
+
+
+
+`Theer ain't no sign o' cattle theer,' said the doctor;
+
+`more likely a ewe in trouble about her lamb.'
+
+
+
+`Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,' said Mac.  `I wish we had a gun --
+
+might get a shot at them.'
+
+
+
+Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore,
+
+free of a hip-pocket.  He always carried a revolver.  `In case I feel obliged
+
+to shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,' he explained once,
+
+whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly,
+
+without result.
+
+
+
+`We'd never git near enough for a shot,' said the doctor; then he commenced
+
+to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost Bushman
+
+in the last stages of death by thirst, --
+
+  
+
+    `"The crows kept flyin' up, boys!
+
+       The crows kept flyin' up!
+
+    The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
+
+       Though he was but a pup."'
+
+
+
+`It must be something or other,' muttered Mac.  `Look at them blanky crows!'
+
+
+
+    `"The lost was found, we brought him round,
+
+       And took him from the place,
+
+    While the ants was swarmin' on the ground,
+
+       And the crows was sayin' grace!"'
+
+
+
+`My God! what's that?' cried Mac., who was a little in advance
+
+and rode a tall horse.
+
+
+
+It was Job's filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet
+
+(as they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest,
+
+and her head full of kangaroo-shot.  She was feebly rocking her head
+
+against the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof,
+
+as if trying to write the reason of it there.
+
+
+
+The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat pocket,
+
+and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner;
+
+then something -- professional instinct or the something supernatural
+
+about the doctor -- led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass,
+
+where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly,
+
+which must have staggered off some little way after being shot.
+
+Mac. followed the doctor, shaking violently.
+
+
+
+`Oh, my God!' he cried, with the woman in his voice -- and his face so pale
+
+that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said -- `oh, my God!
+
+he's shot himself!'
+
+
+
+`No, he hasn't,' said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier position
+
+with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air:
+
+then he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned.
+
+`He's got a broken leg,' said the doctor.  Even then he couldn't resist
+
+making a characteristic remark, half to himself:  `A man doesn't shoot himself
+
+when he's going to be made a lawful father for the first time,
+
+unless he can see a long way into the future.'  Then he took out
+
+his whisky-flask and said briskly to Mac., `Leave me your water-bag'
+
+(Mac. carried a canvas water-bag slung under his horse's neck),
+
+`ride back to the track, stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here.
+
+Tell her it's only a broken leg.'
+
+
+
+Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.
+
+
+
+As he worked the doctor muttered:  `He shot his horse.  That's what gits me.
+
+The fool might have lain there for a week.  I'd never have suspected spite
+
+in that carcass, and I ought to know men.'
+
+
+
+But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.
+
+
+
+`Where's the filly?' cried Job suddenly between groans.
+
+
+
+`She's all right,' said the doctor.
+
+
+
+`Stop her!' cried Job, struggling to rise -- `stop her! -- oh God! my leg.'
+
+
+
+`Keep quiet, you fool!'
+
+
+
+`Stop her!' yelled Job.
+
+
+
+`Why stop her?' asked the doctor.  `She won't go fur,' he added.
+
+
+
+`She'll go home to Gerty,' shouted Job.  `For God's sake stop her!'
+
+
+
+`O--h!' drawled the doctor to himself.  `I might have guessed that.
+
+And I ought to know men.'
+
+
+
+`Don't take me home!' demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval.
+
+`Take me to Poisonous Jimmy's and tell Gerty I'm on the spree.'
+
+
+
+When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was
+
+in his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages.
+
+The lower half of Job's trouser-leg and his 'lastic-side boot
+
+lay on the ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched
+
+between two strips of bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows,
+
+and bound by saddle-straps.
+
+
+
+`That's all I kin do for him for the present.'
+
+
+
+Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived
+
+rather pale and a little shaky:  nevertheless she called out,
+
+as soon as she got within earshot of the doctor --
+
+
+
+`What's Job been doing now?'  (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable
+
+for doing anything.)
+
+
+
+`He's got his leg broke and shot his horse,' replied the doctor.
+
+`But,' he added, `whether he's been a hero or a fool I dunno.
+
+Anyway, it's a mess all round.'
+
+
+
+They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap,
+
+backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in.  It was
+
+a ticklish job, but they had to manage it:  Job, maddened by pain and heat,
+
+only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to them
+
+to stop his horse.
+
+
+
+`Lucky we got him before the ants did,' muttered the doctor.
+
+Then he had an inspiration --
+
+
+
+`You bring him on to the shepherd's hut this side the station.
+
+We must leave him there.  Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him
+
+now and then; when the brandy's done pour whisky, then gin -- keep the rum
+
+till the last' (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette
+
+at Poisonous Jimmy's).  `I'll take Mac.'s horse and ride on and send Peter'
+
+(the station hand) `back to the hut to meet you.  I'll be back myself
+
+if I can.  ~This business will hurry up things at the station.~'
+
+
+
+Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's
+
+which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for --
+
+except in Doc. Wild's madness.
+
+
+
+He rode off at a gallop.  The burden of Job's raving, all the way,
+
+rested on the dead filly --
+
+
+
+`Stop her!  She must not go home to Gerty! . . .  God help me shoot! . . .
+
+Whoa! -- whoa, there! . . .  "Cope -- cope -- cope" --  Steady, Jessie,
+
+old girl. . . .  Aim straight -- aim straight!  Aim for me, God! --
+
+I've missed! . . .  Stop her!' &c.
+
+
+
+`I never met a character like that,' commented the doctor afterwards,
+
+`inside a man that looked like Job on the outside.  I've met men
+
+behind revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo'nia; but I've met
+
+a derned sight more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin,
+
+here in Australia.  These lanky sawney Bushmen will do things
+
+in an easy-going way some day that'll make the old world
+
+sit up and think hard.'
+
+
+
+He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour later
+
+he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman --
+
+whom he saw reason to admire -- and rode back to the hut to help Job,
+
+whom they soon fixed up as comfortably as possible.
+
+
+
+They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job's alleged
+
+phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger,
+
+and the truth less important, they told it to her.  And so, instead of Job
+
+being pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born,
+
+Gerty Falconer herself took the child down to the hut,
+
+and so presented Uncle Job with my first and favourite cousin and Bush chum.
+
+
+
+Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the homestead,
+
+then he prepared to depart.
+
+
+
+`I'm sorry,' said Job, who was still weak -- `I'm sorry for that there filly.
+
+I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should get about.
+
+I wouldn't have lost her for twenty quid.'
+
+
+
+`Never mind, Job,' said the doctor.  `I, too, once shot an animal
+
+I was fond of -- and for the sake of a woman -- but that animal
+
+walked on two legs and wore trousers.  Good-bye, Job.'
+
+
+
+And he left for Poisonous Jimmy's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia
+
+after many years.  The railway had reached it, but otherwise
+
+things were drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged.
+
+There was the same old grant, comprising several thousands of acres
+
+of the richest land in the district, lying idle still,
+
+except for a few horses allowed to run there for a shilling a-head per week.
+
+
+
+There were the same old selections -- about as far off as ever
+
+from becoming freeholds -- shoved back among the barren ridges;
+
+dusty little patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps,
+
+and called farms, deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little
+
+dried-up family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more.  There was
+
+the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
+
+Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
+
+in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and yards,
+
+and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up the ground
+
+and raise a crop.  And along the creek the German farmers --
+
+the only people there worthy of the name -- toiling (men, women, and children)
+
+from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done;
+
+the elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
+
+
+
+The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
+
+was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
+
+and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever -- it started
+
+three generations ago over a stray bull.  The O'Dunn was still fighting
+
+for his great object in life, which was not to be `onneighborly',
+
+as he put it.  `I ~don't~ want to be onneighborly,' he said,
+
+`but I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit.  It's almost impossible
+
+for a dacent man to live in sich a neighborhood and not be onneighborly,
+
+thry how he will.  But I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit, marruk my wurrud.'
+
+
+
+Jones's red steer -- it couldn't have been the same red steer --
+
+was continually breaking into Rooney's `whate an' bringin'
+
+ivery head av the other cattle afther him, and ruinin' him intirely.'
+
+The Rooneys and M`Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child,
+
+over the impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney's brother-in-law,
+
+by a distant relation of the M`Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
+
+
+
+The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
+
+in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion.
+
+The string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
+
+whirling into town, to `service', through clouds of dust and broiling heat,
+
+on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
+
+The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old,
+
+and hung up their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun,
+
+and sat on their heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily
+
+concerning crops, fruit, trees, and vines, and horses and cattle;
+
+the drought and `smut' and `rust' in wheat, and the `ploorer'
+
+(pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, and other cheerful things; that there
+
+colt or filly, or that there cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or `Jim's').
+
+They always talked most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name
+
+was possible -- except by Germans and Chinamen.  Towards evening
+
+the old local relic of the golden days dropped in and announced
+
+that he intended to `put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where
+
+he'd been going to put it down twenty years ago -- and every week since.
+
+It was nearly time that somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
+
+
+
+An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
+
+with her `bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it.  She still drove
+
+a long, bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling
+
+for a whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins.
+
+The floor of the dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always
+
+ahead of the other -- or behind, according to which shaft was pulled.
+
+She wore, to all appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl,
+
+men's 'lastic sides, and white hood that she had on when the world was made.
+
+She still stopped just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly's on the way in
+
+for a yarn and a cup of tea -- as she had always done, on the same days
+
+and at the same time within the memory of the hoariest local liar.
+
+However, she had a new clothes-line bent on to the old horse's front end --
+
+and we fancy that was the reason she didn't recognise us at first.
+
+She had never looked younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man.
+
+Her shrivelled face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed
+
+with lines till there wasn't room for any more.  But her eyes were bright yet,
+
+and twinkled with humour at times.
+
+
+
+She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires, droughts,
+
+hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all the things
+
+that God curses Australian settlers with.  She had had two husbands,
+
+and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an honest day's work,
+
+or any good for himself or any one else.  She had reared something under
+
+fifteen children, her own and others; and there was scarcely one of them
+
+that had not given her trouble.  Her sons had brought disgrace on her old head
+
+over and over again, but she held up that same old head through it all,
+
+and looked her narrow, ignorant world in the face -- and `lived it down'.
+
+She had worked like a slave for fifty years; yet she had more
+
+energy and endurance than many modern city women in her shrivelled old body.
+
+She was a daughter of English aristocrats.
+
+
+
+And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities --
+
+we grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life
+
+is worth living or not.
+
+
+
+I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular
+
+sameness of things, but there was none.  The railway station
+
+was about the only new building in town.  The old signs even
+
+were as badly in need of retouching as of old.  I picked up
+
+a copy of the local `Advertiser', which newspaper had been started
+
+in the early days by a brilliant drunkard, who drank himself to death
+
+just as the fathers of our nation were beginning to get educated up
+
+to his style.  He might have made Australian journalism very different
+
+from what it is.  There was nothing new in the `Advertiser' -- there had been
+
+nothing new since the last time the drunkard had been sober enough
+
+to hold a pen.  There was the same old `enjoyable trip' to Drybone
+
+(whereof the editor was the hero), and something about an on-the-whole
+
+very enjoyable evening in some place that was tastefully decorated,
+
+and where the visitors did justice to the good things provided,
+
+and the small hours, and dancing, and our host and hostess,
+
+and respected fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang very nicely,
+
+and a young Mr Somebody favoured the company with a comic song.
+
+
+
+There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old subscriber,
+
+who said that `he had said before and would say again',
+
+and he proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper
+
+when we first heard our father reading it to our mother.
+
+Farther on the old subscriber proceeded to `maintain',
+
+and recalled attention to the fact that it was just exactly as he had said.
+
+After which he made a few abstract, incoherent remarks
+
+about the `surrounding district', and concluded by stating
+
+that he `must now conclude', and thanking the editor for trespassing on
+
+the aforesaid valuable space.
+
+
+
+There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation
+
+was still carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence
+
+to both papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin --
+
+a place where no sane man ever had occasion to go.
+
+
+
+I took up the `unreliable contemporary', but found nothing there
+
+except a letter from `Parent', another from `Ratepayer',
+
+a leader on the Government, and `A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose
+
+was made in opposition to the trip to Drybone.
+
+
+
+There was nothing new in the town.  Even the almost inevitable
+
+gang of city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway.
+
+They would have been a relief.  There was the monotonous aldermanic row,
+
+and the worse than hopeless little herd of aldermen,
+
+the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on council days
+
+in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always remembered them.
+
+They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this occasion they had risen
+
+above themselves, for one of them had remembered something his grandfather
+
+(old time English alderman) had told him, and they were stirring up
+
+all the old local quarrels and family spite of the district over a motion,
+
+or an amendment on a motion, that a letter -- from another enlightened body
+
+and bearing on an equally important matter (which letter had been
+
+sent through the post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary,
+
+handed to the chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times
+
+for private perusal) -- over a motion that such letter be received.
+
+
+
+There was a maintenance case coming on -- to the usual well-ventilated disgust
+
+of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed
+
+in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on
+
+and going off in my time.  It was not at all romantic.  The local youth
+
+was not even brilliant in adultery.
+
+
+
+After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit it,
+
+and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with an address.
+
+Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away unnoticed
+
+in the general lunacy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+~By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
+
+ By railroad, coach, and track --
+
+By lonely graves of our brave dead,
+
+ Up-Country and Out-Back:
+
+To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
+
+ The dreamy plains expand --
+
+My home lies wide a thousand miles
+
+ In the Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+It lies beyond the farming belt,
+
+ Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
+
+A blazing desert in the drought,
+
+ A lake-land after rain;
+
+To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
+
+ Or whirls the scorching sand --
+
+A phantom land, a mystic land!
+
+ The Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
+
+ Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
+
+'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
+
+ In hopeless deserts there;
+
+It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land --
+
+ Where clouds are seldom seen --
+
+To where the cattle-stations lie
+
+ Three hundred miles between.
+
+
+
+The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
+
+ The strange Gulf country know --
+
+Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
+
+ The big lean bullocks go;
+
+And camped by night where plains lie wide,
+
+ Like some old ocean's bed,
+
+The watchmen in the starlight ride
+
+ Round fifteen hundred head.
+
+
+
+And west of named and numbered days
+
+ The shearers walk and ride --
+
+Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,
+
+ And the grey-beard side by side;
+
+They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
+
+ And slumber on the sand --
+
+Sad memories sleep as years go round
+
+ In Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
+
+ Through years of flood and drought,
+
+The best of English black-sheep work
+
+ Their own salvation out:
+
+Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown --
+
+ Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed --
+
+They live the Dead Past grimly down!
+
+ Where boundary-riders ride.
+
+
+
+The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
+
+ Then rose above his shame,
+
+Tramps West in mateship with the man
+
+ Who cannot write his name.
+
+'Tis there where on the barren track
+
+ No last half-crust's begrudged --
+
+Where saint and sinner, side by side,
+
+ Judge not, and are not judged.
+
+
+
+Oh rebels to society!
+
+ The Outcasts of the West --
+
+Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
+
+ And broken hearts that jest!
+
+The pluck to face a thousand miles --
+
+ The grit to see it through!
+
+The communism perfected! --
+
+ And -- I am proud of you!
+
+
+
+The Arab to true desert sand,
+
+ The Finn to fields of snow;
+
+The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
+
+ Where the seasons come and go;
+
+And this old fact comes home to me --
+
+ And will not let me rest --
+
+However barren it may be,
+
+ Your own land is the best!
+
+
+
+And, lest at ease I should forget
+
+ True mateship after all,
+
+My water-bag and billy yet
+
+ Are hanging on the wall;
+
+And if my fate should show the sign,
+
+ I'd tramp to sunsets grand
+
+With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
+
+ In Never-Never Land.~
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this etext of Joe Wilson and his mates, by Henry Lawson.
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Lawson
+Our 2nd etext by Henry Lawson.
+
+See these other Australian authors also:
+A. B. `Banjo' Paterson, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall.
+
+
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+Joe Wilson and His Mates
+
+by Henry Lawson
+
+September, 1997  [Etext #1036]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Lawson
+*****This file should be named jwahm11.txt or jwahm11.zip******
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+a low rate of errors in the text -- often lower than in the original.
+Special thanks go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland,
+for his assistance in procuring a copy of the original text,
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was entered twice (manually) and electronically compared,
+by Alan R. Light (alight@mercury.interpath.net).  This method assures
+a low rate of errors in the text -- often lower than in the original.
+Special thanks go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland,
+for his assistance in procuring a copy of the original text,
+and to the readers of soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books
+(USENET newsgroups) for their help in preparing the glossary.
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson and his mates, by Henry Lawson
+
+
+[Note on text:  Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
+Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
+
+
+==============================================================================
+An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and concepts
+which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
+
+
+"A house where they took in cards on a tray" (from Joe Wilson's Courtship):
+  An upper class house, with servants who would take a visitor's card
+  (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family was out,
+  to keep a record of the visit.
+
+Anniversary Day:  Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day.
+  It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement
+  in Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
+
+Gin:  An obvious abbreviation of "aborigine", it only refers
+  to *female* aborigines, and is now considered derogatory.
+  It was not considered derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
+
+Jackaroo:  At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a "new chum"
+  or newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
+  The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand.
+  A female station hand is a Jillaroo.  Variant:  Jackeroo.
+
+Old-fashioned child:  A child that acts old for their age.
+  Americans would say `Precocious'.
+
+'Possum:  In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally
+  mistaken for possums.  They are not especially related to the possums
+  of North and South America, other than both being marsupials.
+
+Public/Pub.:  The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel
+  with a "public" bar -- hence the name.  The modern pub has often
+  (not always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
+
+Tea:  In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean
+  a light snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served).
+  In particular, Morning Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM)
+  are nothing more than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal.
+  When just "Tea" is used, it usually means the evening meal.
+  Variant:  Tea-time.
+
+Tucker:  Food.
+
+Shout:  In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying drinks
+  for all the members of a group, etc.  The use of this term can be confusing,
+  so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
+
+Sly-grog-shop:  An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
+
+Station:  A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
+
+Store Bullock:  Lawson makes several references to these.
+  A bullock is a castrated bull.  Bullocks were used in Australia for work
+  that was too heavy for horses.  `Store' may refer to those cattle,
+  and their descendants, brought to Australia by the British government,
+  and sold to settlers from the `Store' -- hence, the standard draft animal.
+
+Also:  a hint with the seasons -- remember that the seasons are reversed
+  from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot,
+  but December is even hotter.  Australia is at a lower latitude
+  than the United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards,
+  and are not even mild in the north.  In fact, large parts of Australia
+  are governed more by "dry" versus "wet" than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
+
+  -- A. L.
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson and his mates
+
+
+
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+By Henry Lawson
+
+Author of "While the Billy Boils", "On the Track and Over the Sliprails",
+"When the World was Wide, and other verses", "Verses, Popular and Humorous",
+"Children of the Bush", "When I was King, and other verses", etc.
+
+
+
+
+  The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+
+    Some carry their swags in the Great North-West
+     Where the bravest battle and die,
+    And a few have gone to their last long rest,
+     And a few have said "Good-bye!"
+    The coast grows dim, and it may be long
+     Ere the Gums again I see;
+    So I put my soul in a farewell song
+     To the chaps who barracked for me.
+
+    Their days are hard at the best of times,
+     And their dreams are dreams of care --
+    God bless them all for their big soft hearts,
+     And the brave, brave grins they wear!
+    God keep me straight as a man can go,
+     And true as a man may be!
+    For the sake of the hearts that were always so,
+     Of the men who had faith in me!
+
+    And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps
+     Of the blood of the Don't-give-in!
+    The world will call it a boast, perhaps --
+     But I'll win, if a man can win!
+    And not for gold nor the world's applause --
+     Though ways to the end they be --
+    I'll win, if a man might win, because
+     Of the men who believed in me.
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Prefatory Verses --
+  The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen.
+
+
+        Part I.
+
+Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+`Water Them Geraniums'.
+    I.  A Lonely Track.
+   II.  `Past Carin''.
+A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+    I.  Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+   II.  Joe Wilson's Luck.
+  III.  The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+   IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+        Part II.
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+The Chinaman's Ghost.
+The Loaded Dog.
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+    I.  Dave Regan's Yarn.
+   II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+The Ghostly Door.
+A Wild Irishman.
+The Babies in the Bush.
+A Bush Dance.
+The Buck-Jumper.
+Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+At Dead Dingo.
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+Concluding Verses --
+  The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+
+
+    ------------------------
+
+    JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES
+
+    ------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part I.
+
+
+
+
+
+Joe Wilson's Courtship.
+
+
+
+There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy.
+When he is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and `comes a man to-day,'
+as my little Jim used to say.  When they're cooking something at home
+that he likes.  When the `sandy-blight' or measles breaks out
+amongst the children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill
+-- or dies, it doesn't matter which -- `and there ain't no school.'
+When a boy is naked and in his natural state for a warm climate
+like Australia, with three or four of his schoolmates,
+under the shade of the creek-oaks in the bend where there's a good clear pool
+with a sandy bottom.  When his father buys him a gun, and he starts out
+after kangaroos or 'possums.  When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle,
+of his own.  When he has his arm in splints or a stitch in his head --
+he's proud then, the proudest boy in the district.
+
+I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy:  I reckon I was born for a poet
+by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the matter
+with me -- or the world -- but that's got nothing to do with it.
+
+There are times when a man is happy.  When he finds out
+that the girl loves him.  When he's just married.  When he's a lawful father
+for the first time, and everything is going on all right:
+some men make fools of themselves then -- I know I did.
+I'm happy to-night because I'm out of debt and can see clear ahead,
+and because I haven't been easy for a long time.
+
+But I think that the happiest time in a man's life is when
+he's courting a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him
+and hasn't a thought for any one else.  Make the most of your courting days,
+you young chaps, and keep them clean, for they're about the only days
+when there's a chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life.
+Make the best of them and you'll never regret it the longest day you live.
+They're the days that the wife will look back to, anyway,
+in the brightest of times as well as in the blackest,
+and there shouldn't be anything in those days that might hurt her
+when she looks back.  Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
+for they will never come again.
+
+A married man knows all about it -- after a while:  he sees the woman world
+through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment's
+pressure of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life,
+and is inclined to be cynical, the knowledge does him no good.
+It leads him into awful messes sometimes, for a married man,
+if he's inclined that way, has three times the chance with a woman
+that a single man has -- because the married man knows.  He is privileged;
+he can guess pretty closely what a woman means when she says something else;
+he knows just how far he can go; he can go farther in five minutes
+towards coming to the point with a woman than an innocent young man dares go
+in three weeks.  Above all, the married man is more decided with women;
+he takes them and things for granted.  In short he is --
+well, he is a married man.  And, when he knows all this,
+how much better or happier is he for it?  Mark Twain says
+that he lost all the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot's eye, --
+and there you have it.
+
+But it's all new to a young chap, provided he hasn't been a young blackguard.
+It's all wonderful, new, and strange to him.  He's a different man.
+He finds that he never knew anything about women.  He sees none of woman's
+little ways and tricks in his girl.  He is in heaven one day
+and down near the other place the next; and that's the sort of thing
+that makes life interesting.  He takes his new world for granted.
+And, when she says she'll be his wife ----!
+
+Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they've got
+a lot of influence on your married life afterwards -- a lot more
+than you'd think.  Make the best of them, for they'll never come any more,
+unless we do our courting over again in another world.  If we do,
+I'll make the most of mine.
+
+But, looking back, I didn't do so badly after all.  I never told you
+about the days I courted Mary.  The more I look back the more I come to think
+that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret
+in married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn't walk to and fro
+in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes,
+or lie awake some nights thinking. . . .  Ah well!
+
+I was between twenty-one and thirty then:  birthdays had never been
+any use to me, and I'd left off counting them.  You don't take much stock
+in birthdays in the Bush.  I'd knocked about the country for a few years,
+shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without getting
+anything for it.  I drank now and then, and made a fool of myself.
+I was reckoned `wild'; but I only drank because I felt less sensitive,
+and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder
+when I had a few drinks:  I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him.
+It's better to be thought `wild' than to be considered eccentric or ratty.
+Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank -- as far as I could see --
+first because he'd inherited the gambling habit from his father along with
+his father's luck:  he'd the habit of being cheated and losing very bad,
+and when he lost he drank.  Till drink got a hold on him.
+Jack was sentimental too, but in a different way.  I was sentimental
+about other people -- more fool I! -- whereas Jack was sentimental
+about himself.  Before he was married, and when he was recovering
+from a spree, he'd write rhymes about `Only a boy, drunk by the roadside',
+and that sort of thing; and he'd call 'em poetry, and talk about
+signing them and sending them to the `Town and Country Journal'.
+But he generally tore them up when he got better.  The Bush is breeding
+a race of poets, and I don't know what the country will come to in the end.
+
+Well.  It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed
+in the Big Scrubs.  Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong,
+and I was hanging round.  Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done
+and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place at Haviland,
+a few miles out of Solong.  Jack and I were good Bush carpenters,
+so we took the job to keep us going till something else turned up.
+`Better than doing nothing,' said Jack.
+
+`There's a nice little girl in service at Black's,' he said.
+`She's more like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant.
+She's a real good little girl, and good-looking into the bargain.
+I hear that young Black is sweet on her, but they say she won't have
+anything to do with him.  I know a lot of chaps that have tried for her,
+but they've never had any luck.  She's a regular little dumpling,
+and I like dumplings.  They call her 'Possum.  You ought to try a bear
+up in that direction, Joe.'
+
+I was always shy with women -- except perhaps some that I should have
+fought shy of; but Jack wasn't -- he was afraid of no woman,
+good, bad, or indifferent.  I haven't time to explain why,
+but somehow, whenever a girl took any notice of me I took it for granted
+that she was only playing with me, and felt nasty about it.
+I made one or two mistakes, but -- ah well!
+
+`My wife knows little 'Possum,' said Jack.  `I'll get her
+to ask her out to our place and let you know.'
+
+I reckoned that he wouldn't get me there then, and made a note
+to be on the watch for tricks.  I had a hopeless little love-story behind me,
+of course.  I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love;
+few marry the first flame.  Many a married man looks back and thinks
+it was damned lucky that he didn't get the girl he couldn't have.
+Jack had been my successful rival, only he didn't know it --
+I don't think his wife knew it either.  I used to think her
+the prettiest and sweetest little girl in the district.
+
+But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at Haviland.
+He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in love with her
+at first sight.  He took too many things for granted
+as far as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.
+
+`You let me alone, and I'll fix you up, Joe,' he said,
+as we rode up to the station.  `I'll make it all right with the girl.
+You're rather a good-looking chap.  You've got the sort of eyes
+that take with girls, only you don't know it; you haven't got the go.
+If I had your eyes along with my other attractions, I'd be in trouble
+on account of a woman about once a-week.'
+
+`For God's sake shut up, Jack,' I said.
+
+Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife?  Perhaps not
+in England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood;
+but it's different in Australia, where you may hail from
+two thousand miles away from where your wife was born, and yet she may be
+a countrywoman of yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too.
+I remember the first glimpse I got of Mary.
+
+It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all round,
+and a double row of pines down to the front gate.  Parallel at the back
+was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight rooms long,
+with a row of skillions at the back:  the place was used for kitchen,
+laundry, servants' rooms, &c.  This was the old homestead
+before the new house was built.  There was a wide, old-fashioned,
+brick-floored verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy
+climbing up the verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other,
+and a grape-vine near the chimney.  We rode up to the end of the verandah,
+and Jack called to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came
+trotting out; so it was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.
+
+More than once since then I've had a fancy to wonder
+whether the rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered 'em both
+in the end.  I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see.
+You do get strange fancies at odd times.
+
+Jack asked her if the boss was in.  He did all the talking.
+I saw a little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like
+a New England or Blue Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland
+in Victoria.  Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district.
+She had the biggest and brightest eyes I'd seen round there,
+dark hazel eyes, as I found out afterwards, and bright as a 'possum's.
+No wonder they called her `'Possum'.  I forgot at once
+that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest girl in the district.
+I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the fact that I was on horseback:
+most Bushmen look better on horseback.  It was a black filly,
+a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls as I was myself.
+I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice to see if she knew me;
+but, when she looked, the filly took all my attention.  Mary trotted in
+to tell old Black he was wanted, and after Jack had seen him,
+and arranged to start work next day, we started back to Solong.
+
+I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary -- but he didn't.
+He squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn't say anything
+for a long time, and then he started talking of other things.
+I began to feel wild at him.  He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way
+things were going.  He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now;
+but, as he didn't say so, I had no way of getting at him.
+I felt sure he'd go home and tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone
+on little 'Possum at Haviland.  That was all Jack's way.
+
+Next morning we started to work.  We were to build the buggy-house
+at the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down
+a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush
+before the old house was built.  There was a window in it,
+opposite the laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did
+was to take out the sash.  I'd noticed Jack yarning with 'Possum
+before he started work.  While I was at work at the window
+he called me round to the other end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone
+out of the way; and when we'd done it, he took the tips of my ear
+between his fingers and thumb and stretched it and whispered into it --
+
+`Don't hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood
+and hard to get off -- you'll have to take the sash out very carefully
+so as not to break the glass.'  Then he stretched my ear a little more
+and put his mouth closer --
+
+`Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,' he said.
+
+I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to puzzle out
+what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.
+
+That window reflected the laundry window:  the room was dark inside
+and there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary
+come to the laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back,
+thoughtfully watching me.  The laundry window had an old-fashioned
+hinged sash, and I like that sort of window -- there's more romance about it,
+I think.  There was thick dark-green ivy all round the window,
+and Mary looked prettier than a picture.  I squared up my shoulders
+and put my heels together and put as much style as I could into the work.
+I couldn't have turned round to save my life.
+
+Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.
+
+`Well?' he whispered.
+
+`You're a fool, Jack,' I said.  `She's only interested in the old house
+being pulled down.'
+
+`That's all right,' he said.  `I've been keeping an eye on the business
+round the corner, and she ain't interested when I'M round this end.'
+
+`You seem mighty interested in the business,' I said.
+
+`Yes,' said Jack.  `This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank
+in times of peace.'
+
+`What made you think of the window?' I asked.
+
+`Oh, that's as simple as striking matches.  I'm up to all those dodges.
+Why, where there wasn't a window, I've fixed up a piece of looking-glass
+to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought
+I wasn't looking.'
+
+He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this time
+she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and bread-and-butter.
+I was prizing off the strips that held the sash, very carefully,
+and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any reference to me.
+I'd never felt like that before, except once or twice.
+It was just as if I'd swallowed some clockwork arrangement,
+unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning.
+I reckon it was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up.
+He had a quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want
+to hit him sometimes -- after you'd made an ass of yourself.
+
+I didn't hear Mary at first.  I hoped Jack would come round and help me
+out of the fix, but he didn't.
+
+`Mr -- Mr Wilson!' said Mary.  She had a sweet voice.
+
+I turned round.
+
+`I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.'
+
+`Oh, thank you!' I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry
+would help it.  I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my shin
+and I stumbled -- and that didn't help matters much.
+
+`Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?' cried Mary.
+
+`Hurt myself!  Oh no, not at all, thank you,' I blurted out.
+`It takes more than that to hurt me.'
+
+I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken
+at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so
+that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers.  I embarrassed her too,
+like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was,
+and it's a wonder we didn't spill the whole lot between us.
+I got away from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg
+with a chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him.
+I blundered round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he's just
+made an ass of himself in public.  The memory of that sort of thing
+hurts you worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently
+than the thought of a past crime would, I think.
+
+I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.
+
+`Here, Jack!' I said.  `I've struck something all right;
+here's some tea and brownie -- we'll hang out here all right.'
+
+Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it,
+just as if he'd paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that time.
+
+He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me
+wild at him.  Presently he said, as if he'd just thought of it --
+
+`That's a very pretty little girl, 'Possum, isn't she, Joe?
+Do you notice how she dresses? -- always fresh and trim.
+But she's got on her best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore
+with frills to it.  And it's ironing-day, too.  It can't be on your account.
+If it was Saturday or Sunday afternoon, or some holiday,
+I could understand it.  But perhaps one of her admirers is going to take her
+to the church bazaar in Solong to-night.  That's what it is.'
+
+He gave me time to think over that.
+
+`But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,' he said.  `Why didn't you offer
+to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in ahead of you?
+You miss all your chances, Joe.'
+
+Then a thought struck me.  I ought to have known Jack well enough
+to have thought of it before.
+
+`Look here, Jack,' I said.  `What have you been saying to that girl about me?'
+
+`Oh, not much,' said Jack.  `There isn't much to say about you.'
+
+`What did you tell her?'
+
+`Oh, nothing in particular.  She'd heard all about you before.'
+
+`She hadn't heard much good, I suppose,' I said.
+
+`Well, that's true, as far as I could make out.  But you've only got
+yourself to blame.  I didn't have the breeding and rearing of you.
+I smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.'
+
+`What did you tell her?' I said.  `That's what I want to know.'
+
+`Well, to tell the truth, I didn't tell her anything much.
+I only answered questions.'
+
+`And what questions did she ask?'
+
+`Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn't Joe Wilson;
+and I said it was, as far as I knew.  Then she said she heard
+that you wrote poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.'
+
+`Look here, Jack,' I said, `I've two minds to punch your head.'
+
+`And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,' said Jack,
+`and I said you was, a bit.  She said it seemed a pity.
+She asked me if it was true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said
+that I was sorry to say it was true.  She asked me if you had any friends,
+and I said none that I knew of, except me.  I said that you'd lost
+all your friends; they stuck to you as long as they could,
+but they had to give you best, one after the other.'
+
+`What next?'
+
+`She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough
+as fencing-wire.  She said you looked rather pale and thin,
+and asked me if you'd had an illness lately.  And I said no --
+it was all on account of the wild, dissipated life you'd led.
+She said it was a pity you hadn't a mother or a sister to look after you --
+it was a pity that something couldn't be done for you, and I said it was,
+but I was afraid that nothing could be done.  I told her that I was doing
+all I could to keep you straight.'
+
+I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true.
+And so she only pitied me after all.  I felt as if I'd been courting her
+for six months and she'd thrown me over -- but I didn't know anything
+about women yet.
+
+`Did you tell her I was in jail?' I growled.
+
+`No, by Gum!  I forgot that.  But never mind I'll fix that up all right.
+I'll tell her that you got two years' hard for horse-stealing.
+That ought to make her interested in you, if she isn't already.'
+
+We smoked a while.
+
+`And was that all she said?' I asked.
+
+`Who? -- Oh! 'Possum,' said Jack rousing himself.  `Well -- no;
+let me think ----  We got chatting of other things -- you know
+a married man's privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl
+than a single man can.  I got talking nonsense about sweethearts,
+and one thing led to another till at last she said, "I suppose Mr Wilson's
+got a sweetheart, Mr Barnes?"'
+
+`And what did you say?' I growled.
+
+`Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,' said Jack.
+`You'd better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.'
+
+I wouldn't take back the tray -- but that didn't mend matters,
+for Jack took it back himself.
+
+I didn't see Mary's reflection in the window again, so I took the window out.
+I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,
+as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool
+for thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought,
+except by way of kindness.  Why! young Black and half a dozen
+better men than me were sweet on her, and young Black was to get
+his father's station and the money -- or rather his mother's money,
+for she held the stuff (she kept it close too, by all accounts).
+Young Black was away at the time, and his mother was dead against him
+about Mary, but that didn't make any difference, as far as I could see.
+I reckoned that it was only just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking,
+stand-far-off-and-worship affair, as far as I was concerned --
+like my first love affair, that I haven't told you about yet.
+I was tired of being pitied by good girls.  You see, I didn't know women then.
+If I had known, I think I might have made more than one mess of my life.
+
+Jack rode home to Solong every night.  I was staying at a pub
+some distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland.
+There were three or four wet days, and we didn't get on with the work.
+I fought shy of Mary till one day she was hanging out clothes
+and the line broke.  It was the old-style sixpenny clothes-line.
+The clothes were all down, but it was clean grass, so it didn't matter much.
+I looked at Jack.
+
+`Go and help her, you capital Idiot!' he said, and I made the plunge.
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!' said Mary, when I came to help.
+She had the broken end of the line and was trying to hold
+some of the clothes off the ground, as if she could pull it an inch
+with the heavy wet sheets and table-cloths and things on it,
+or as if it would do any good if she did.  But that's the way with women
+-- especially little women -- some of 'em would try to pull a store bullock
+if they got the end of the rope on the right side of the fence.
+I took the line from Mary, and accidentally touched her soft,
+plump little hand as I did so:  it sent a thrill right through me.
+She seemed a lot cooler than I was.
+
+Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit,
+you get hold of the loose end of the rope that's hanging from the post
+with one hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other,
+and try to pull 'em far enough together to make a knot.
+And that's about all you do for the present, except look like a fool.
+Then I took off the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork,
+and pulled, while Mary helped me with the prop.  I thought Jack
+might have come and taken the prop from her, but he didn't;
+he just went on with his work as if nothing was happening inside the horizon.
+
+She'd got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short now,
+so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down
+while she pegged a sheet she'd thrown over.  I'd made the plunge now,
+so I volunteered to help her.  I held down the line while she
+threw the things over and pegged out.  As we got near the post and higher
+I straightened out some ends and pegged myself.  Bushmen are handy
+at most things.  We laughed, and now and again Mary would say,
+`No, that's not the way, Mr Wilson; that's not right;
+the sheet isn't far enough over; wait till I fix it,' &c.
+I'd a reckless idea once of holding her up while she pegged,
+and I was glad afterwards that I hadn't made such a fool of myself.
+
+`There's only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,' I said.
+`You can't reach -- I'll fix 'em up.'
+
+She seemed to give a little gasp.
+
+`Oh, those things are not ready yet,' she said, `they're not rinsed,'
+and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me.
+The things looked the same to me as the rest on the line;
+they looked rinsed enough and blued too.  I reckoned that she didn't want me
+to take the trouble, or thought that I mightn't like to be seen
+hanging out clothes, and was only doing it out of kindness.
+
+`Oh, it's no trouble,' I said, `let me hang 'em out.  I like it.
+I've hung out clothes at home on a windy day,' and I made a reach
+into the basket.  But she flushed red, with temper I thought,
+and snatched the basket away.
+
+`Excuse me, Mr Wilson,' she said, `but those things are not ready yet!'
+and she marched into the wash-house.
+
+`Ah well! you've got a little temper of your own,' I thought to myself.
+
+When I told Jack, he said that I'd made another fool of myself.
+He said I'd both disappointed and offended her.  He said that my line
+was to stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.
+
+That evening when we'd started home, we stopped some time yarning with a chap
+we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary
+hanging out the rest of the things -- she thought that we were out of sight.
+Then I understood why those things weren't ready while we were round.
+
+For the next day or two Mary didn't take the slightest notice of me,
+and I kept out of her way.  Jack said I'd disillusioned her --
+and hurt her dignity -- which was a thousand times worse.
+He said I'd spoilt the thing altogether.  He said that she'd got an idea
+that I was shy and poetic, and I'd only shown myself
+the usual sort of Bush-whacker.
+
+I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice,
+and it made me miserable.  I got drunk two evenings running, and then,
+as it appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,
+when we were together --
+
+`Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?'
+
+`No,' said Jack.
+
+`Do you, Mr Wilson?' she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on me,
+and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.
+
+`Yes,' I said, `I do a little.'  Then there was a silence,
+and I had to say something else.
+
+`Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+`Yes,' she said, `but I can't get any one to play with me here of an evening,
+the men are generally playing cards or reading.'  Then she said,
+`It's very dull these long winter evenings when you've got nothing to do.
+Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he's away.'
+
+I saw Jack winking at me urgently.
+
+`I'll play a game with you, if you like,' I said, `but I ain't
+much of a player.'
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!  When shall you have an evening to spare?'
+
+We fixed it for that same evening.  We got chummy over the draughts.
+I had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away
+from the pub.
+
+Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black
+without committing herself.  Women have ways -- or perhaps Jack did it.
+Anyway, next day the Boss came round and said to me --
+
+`Look here, Joe, you've got no occasion to stay at the pub.
+Bring along your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house.
+You can have your tucker here.'
+
+He was a good sort, was Black the squatter:  a squatter of the old school,
+who'd shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn't see
+why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times
+with any of his old station hands that happened to come along.
+But he'd married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over,
+and she'd never got any Australian notions.
+
+Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed up
+for me.  I'm not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed
+that good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint.
+After tea I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap.
+I don't remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down first.
+There was about two feet between us.  We got very chummy and confidential.
+She told me about her childhood and her father.
+
+He'd been an old mate of Black's, a younger son of a well-to-do English family
+(with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia
+with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are,
+with more or less.  They think they're hard done by;
+they blue their thousand pounds in Melbourne or Sydney,
+and they don't make any more nowadays, for the Roarin' Days have been dead
+these thirty years.  I wish I'd had a thousand pounds to start on!
+
+Mary's mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected up there
+in the old days.  She had a will of her own as far as I could understand,
+and bossed the home till the day of her death.  Mary's father made money,
+and lost it, and drank -- and died.  Mary remembered him
+sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head,
+and singing a German song (the `Lorelei', I think it was) softly,
+as if to himself.  Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept
+out of the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round
+(there was a little money coming from England).
+
+Mary told me all about her girlhood.  She went first to live
+with a sort of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray,
+and then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first.
+I'd had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas
+of what the world ought to be, and she seemed interested.
+
+Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky
+until I remembered that I'd told her I had no one to care for me;
+then I suspected pity again.
+
+But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were dead,
+and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black,
+and things went on very satisfactorily.
+
+And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover
+and a looking-glass.
+
+I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was round,
+but Mary didn't seem aware of it.
+
+We got very chummy.  Mary wasn't comfortable at Haviland.
+Old Black was very fond of her and always took her part,
+but she wanted to be independent.  She had a great idea of going to Sydney
+and getting into the hospital as a nurse.  She had friends in Sydney,
+but she had no money.  There was a little money coming to her
+when she was twenty-one -- a few pounds -- and she was going to try and get it
+before that time.
+
+`Look here, Miss Brand,' I said, after we'd watched the moon rise.
+`I'll lend you the money.  I've got plenty -- more than I know
+what to do with.'
+
+But I saw I'd hurt her.  She sat up very straight for a while,
+looking before her; then she said it was time to go in,
+and said `Good-night, Mr Wilson.'
+
+I reckoned I'd done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards
+that she was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money
+might have been taken for a hint.  She didn't understand me yet,
+and I didn't know human nature.  I didn't say anything to Jack --
+in fact about this time I left off telling him about things.
+He didn't seem hurt; he worked hard and seemed happy.
+
+I really meant what I said to Mary about the money.  It was pure good nature.
+I'd be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps,
+if I'd never grown any more selfish than I was that night
+on the wood-heap with Mary.  I felt a great sympathy for her --
+but I got to love her.  I went through all the ups and downs of it.
+One day I was having tea in the kitchen, and Mary and another girl,
+named Sarah, reached me a clean plate at the same time:  I took Sarah's plate
+because she was first, and Mary seemed very nasty about it,
+and that gave me great hopes.  But all next evening she played draughts
+with a drover that she'd chummed up with.  I pretended to be interested
+in Sarah's talk, but it didn't seem to work.
+
+A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station.
+He had a good pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary
+to shoot at a target.  They seemed to get very chummy.
+I had a nice time for three or four days, I can tell you.
+I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with the pleuro.
+The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle.  Mary called `Mr Wilson'
+to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking.
+If it hadn't been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn't have minded so much.
+
+Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls
+went out 'possum-shooting.  Mary went.  I could have gone, but I didn't.
+I mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,
+and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer,
+and damned the world, and came home and went to bed.  I think that evening
+was the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper.
+I got so miserable that I enjoyed it.
+
+I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured.
+I ran against Mary accidentally and had to say something.
+
+`How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?' I asked.
+
+`Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,' she said.  Then she asked,
+`How did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?'
+
+I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn't make anything out of it.
+Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something.
+But about this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room
+and turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table.
+I used to keep an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room.
+I straightened up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief
+got too dirty, and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash,
+I'd slip down to the river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day,
+and rub it up to look as if it hadn't been washed, and leave it on my table.
+I felt so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack,
+till one morning he remarked casually --
+
+`I see you've made a new mash, Joe.  I saw the half-caste cook
+tidying up your room this morning and taking your collars and things
+to the wash-house.'
+
+I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day,
+and I had such a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning
+to look the hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.
+
+
+It was the evening before Anniversary Day.  Jack and I had put in
+a good day's work to get the job finished, and Jack was having
+a smoke and a yarn with the chaps before he started home.
+We sat on an old log along by the fence at the back of the house.
+There was Jimmy Nowlett the bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover,
+and big Jim Bullock the fencer, and one or two others.
+Mary and the station girls and one or two visitors were sitting under
+the old verandah.  The Jackaroo was there too, so I felt happy.
+It was the girls who used to bring the chaps hanging round.
+They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.
+Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station:
+he was a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy:
+it was reckoned that there was foreign blood in him.
+He went by the name of Romany.  He was supposed to be shook after Mary too.
+He had the nastiest temper and the best violin in the district,
+and the chaps put up with him a lot because they wanted him to play
+at Bush dances.  The moon had risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky
+where we were.  We saw Romany loom up, riding in from the gate;
+he rode round the end of the coach-house and across towards where we were --
+I suppose he was going to tie up his horse at the fence;
+but about half-way across the grass he disappeared.  It struck me
+that there was something peculiar about the way he got down,
+and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.
+
+`What the hell's Romany trying to do?' said Jimmy Nowlett.
+`He couldn't have fell off his horse -- or else he's drunk.'
+
+A couple of chaps got up and went to see.  Then there was that waiting,
+mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark
+and nobody knows what it is.  I went over, and the thing dawned on me.
+I'd stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had
+forgotten all about it for the moment.  Romany had no idea of the line,
+and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows
+and scraped him off his horse.  He was sitting on the grass,
+swearing in a surprised voice, and the horse looked surprised too.
+Romany wasn't hurt, but the sudden shock had spoilt his temper.
+He wanted to know who'd put up that bloody line.  He came over and sat
+on the log.  The chaps smoked a while.
+
+`What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?' asked Jim Bullock presently.
+`Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?'
+
+`Why didn't you ask the horse to go round?' asked Dave Regan.
+
+`I'd only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!' growled Romany.
+
+`Well,' said Jimmy Nowlett, `if we'd put up a sign to beware of the line
+you couldn't have seen it in the dark.'
+
+`Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,' said Dave Regan.
+`But why didn't you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along?
+It wouldn't have jolted yer so much.'
+
+All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes.
+But I didn't take any interest in it.  I was brooding over
+Mary and the Jackaroo.
+
+`I've heard of men getting down over their horse's head,' said Dave presently,
+in a reflective sort of way -- `in fact I've done it myself --
+but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse's rump.'
+
+But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him
+to play the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.
+
+Mary was singing an old song.  I always thought she had a sweet voice,
+and I'd have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn't been listening too.
+We listened in silence until she'd finished.
+
+`That gal's got a nice voice,' said Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+`Nice voice!' snarled Romany, who'd been waiting for a chance to be nasty.
+`Why, I've heard a tom-cat sing better.'
+
+I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet.
+The chaps didn't like Romany's talk about 'Possum at all.
+They were all fond of her:  she wasn't a pet or a tomboy,
+for she wasn't built that way, but they were fond of her in such a way
+that they didn't like to hear anything said about her.  They said nothing
+for a while, but it meant a lot.  Perhaps the single men didn't care to speak
+for fear that it would be said that they were gone on Mary.
+But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a big puff at his pipe and spoke --
+
+`I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?'
+
+`Oh, she tried it on, but it didn't go,' said Romany.
+`I've met her sort before.  She's setting her cap at that Jackaroo now.
+Some girls will run after anything with trousers on,' and he stood up.
+
+Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm,
+and whispered, `Sit still, Joe, damn you!  He's too good for you!'
+but I was on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down
+and wrenched me off the log and set me there.
+
+`You're a damned crawler, Romany!' I said.
+
+Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us
+before a blow got home.  `Hold on, you damned fools!' they said.
+`Keep quiet till we get away from the house!'  There was a little clear flat
+down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided
+to go down there and have it out.
+
+Now I never was a fighting man; I'd never learnt to use my hands.
+I scarcely knew how to put them up.  Jack often wanted to teach me,
+but I wouldn't bother about it.  He'd say, `You'll get into a fight some day,
+Joe, or out of one, and shame me;' but I hadn't the patience to learn.
+He'd wanted me to take lessons at the station after work,
+but he used to get excited, and I didn't want Mary to see him
+knocking me about.  Before he was married Jack was always getting
+into fights -- he generally tackled a better man and got a hiding;
+but he didn't seem to care so long as he made a good show --
+though he used to explain the thing away from a scientific point of view
+for weeks after.  To tell the truth, I had a horror of fighting;
+I had a horror of being marked about the face; I think I'd sooner
+stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him with fists;
+and then I think I would say, last thing, `Don't shoot me in the face!'
+Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man.  It seemed brutal to me.
+I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what the matter was.
+Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the river,
+and he couldn't help hanging out blue lights.
+
+`Why didn't you let me teach you to use your hands?' he said.
+`The only chance now is that Romany can't fight after all.
+If you'd waited a minute I'd have been at him.'  We were a bit
+behind the rest, and Jack started giving me points about lefts and rights,
+and `half-arms', and that sort of thing.  `He's left-handed,
+and that's the worst of it,' said Jack.  `You must only make as good a show
+as you can, and one of us will take him on afterwards.'
+
+But I just heard him and that was all.  It was to be my first fight
+since I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it -- sort of dulled.
+If the chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur.
+I thought of that, but it didn't make any difference with me then;
+I knew it was a thing they couldn't understand.  I knew I was reckoned
+pretty soft.  But I knew one thing that they didn't know.
+I knew that it was going to be a fight to a finish, one way or the other.
+I had more brains and imagination than the rest put together,
+and I suppose that that was the real cause of most of my trouble.
+I kept saying to myself, `You'll have to go through with it now, Joe, old man!
+It's the turning-point of your life.'  If I won the fight,
+I'd set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I'd leave the district for ever.
+A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I used to get excited
+over little things, because of the very paltriness of them,
+but I was mostly cool in a crisis -- Jack was the reverse.  I looked ahead:
+I wouldn't be able to marry a girl who could look back and remember
+when her husband was beaten by another man -- no matter what sort of brute
+the other man was.
+
+I never in my life felt so cool about a thing.  Jack kept
+whispering instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment,
+but it was all lost on me.
+
+Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it:
+Mary singing under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward
+going down to the river in the moonlight to fight for her.
+
+It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river.
+We took off our coats and were ready.  There was no swearing or barracking.
+It seemed an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round
+Jack would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else
+would fight Jack to square matters.  Jim Bullock wouldn't mind
+obliging for one; he was a mate of Jack's, but he didn't mind who he fought
+so long as it was for the sake of fair play -- or `peace and quietness',
+as he said.  Jim was very good-natured.  He backed Romany,
+and of course Jack backed me.
+
+As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one arm
+up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and then
+rush and lunge out.  But he had the weight and strength and length of reach,
+and my first lesson was a very short one.  I went down early in the round.
+But it did me good; the blow and the look I'd seen in Romany's eyes
+knocked all the sentiment out of me.  Jack said nothing, --
+he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first.
+Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me,
+and made a better show, but I went down in the end.
+
+I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.
+
+`How are you, Joe?' he whispered.
+
+`I'm all right,' I said.
+
+`It's all right,' whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be hanged,
+but it would soon be all over.  `He can't use his hands much more
+than you can -- take your time, Joe -- try to remember something I told you,
+for God's sake!'
+
+When two men fight who don't know how to use their hands,
+they stand a show of knocking each other about a lot.
+I got some awful thumps, but mostly on the body.  Jimmy Nowlett
+began to get excited and jump round -- he was an excitable little fellow.
+
+`Fight! you ----!' he yelled.  `Why don't you fight?  That ain't fightin'.
+Fight, and don't try to murder each other.  Use your crimson hands or, by God,
+I'll chip you!  Fight, or I'll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of you;'
+then his language got awful.  They said we went like windmills,
+and that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock
+if it had got home.  Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.
+
+Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head and
+didn't matter much -- I had a good thick skull.  And I had one good eye yet.
+
+`For God's sake, hit him!' whispered Jack -- he was trembling like a leaf.
+`Don't mind what I told you.  I wish I was fighting him myself!
+Get a blow home, for God's sake!  Make a good show this round
+and I'll stop the fight.'
+
+That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.
+
+I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn't going to be beaten
+while I could think.  I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight.
+There's nothing like a fight to teach a man.  I was thinking fast,
+and learning more in three seconds than Jack's sparring could have taught me
+in three weeks.  People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don't --
+not till afterwards.  I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn't altogether
+an animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.
+
+While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still air
+the sound of Mary's voice singing up at the house.  I thought hard
+into the future, even as I fought.  The fight only seemed
+something that was passing.
+
+I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out
+and felt such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped.
+I thought I'd put out my wrist and elbow.  And Romany was lying
+on the broad of his back.
+
+I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one.  He said nothing
+as he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating.
+He said afterwards that he didn't speak because he thought a word
+might spoil it.
+
+I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all right
+when he lifted me.
+
+Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us.
+I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy
+the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
+
+`I've done,' he said.  `I've twisted my ankle.'  He'd caught his heel
+against a tuft of grass.
+
+`Shake hands,' yelled Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
+
+`If yer don't shake hands with Wilson, I'll lamb yer!' howled Jimmy;
+but Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow
+and rode off.
+
+I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass,
+and heard him swear in surprise.  There was some whispering,
+and presently Jim said --
+
+`If I thought that, I'd kill him.'
+
+`What is it?' asked Jack.
+
+Jim held up a butcher's knife.  It was common for a man
+to carry a butcher's knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.
+
+`Why did you let your man fight with a butcher's knife in his belt?'
+asked Jimmy Nowlett.
+
+But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell,
+and we decided it that way.
+
+`Any way,' said Jimmy Nowlett, `if he'd stuck Joe in hot blood before us all
+it wouldn't be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back
+in the dark.  But you'd best keep an eye over yer shoulder
+for a year or two, Joe.  That chap's got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere.
+And now the best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut
+and keep all this dark from the gals.'
+
+Jack hurried me on ahead.  He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced at him
+I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes.  I said that Jack
+had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I'm sorry I said it.
+
+`What's up, Jack?' I asked.
+
+`Nothing,' said Jack.
+
+`What's up, you old fool?' I said.
+
+`Nothing,' said Jack, `except that I'm damned proud of you, Joe, you old ass!'
+and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake.
+`I didn't know it was in you, Joe -- I wouldn't have said it before,
+or listened to any other man say it, but I didn't think you had the pluck --
+God's truth, I didn't.  Come along and get your face fixed up.'
+
+We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water,
+and told one of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.
+
+Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me.
+He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good many --
+he'd been mended himself so often.
+
+While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet
+amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room,
+and a girl's voice whispered, `Is he hurt?  Tell me.  I want to know, --
+I might be able to help.'
+
+It made my heart jump, I can tell you.  Jack went out at once,
+and there was some whispering.  When he came back he seemed wild.
+
+`What is it, Jack?' I asked.
+
+`Oh, nothing,' he said, `only that damned slut of a half-caste cook
+overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany's knife
+got out of the sheath, and she's put a nice yarn round amongst the girls.
+There's a regular bobbery, but it's all right now.  Jimmy Nowlett's
+telling 'em lies at a great rate.'
+
+Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer
+with vinegar and brown paper was handed in.
+
+One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub,
+and we had a quiet little time in my room.  Jack wanted to stay all night,
+but I reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong,
+so he said he'd be round early in the morning, and went home.
+
+I felt the reaction pretty bad.  I didn't feel proud of the affair at all.
+I thought it was a low, brutal business all round.  Romany was a quiet chap
+after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him.  Perhaps he'd had
+a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn't know
+anything about.  He seemed a lonely man.  I'd gone through enough myself
+to teach me not to judge men.  I made up my mind to tell him
+how I felt about the matter next time we met.  Perhaps I made
+my usual mistake of bothering about `feelings' in another party
+that hadn't any feelings at all -- perhaps I didn't; but it's generally best
+to chance it on the kind side in a case like this.  Altogether I felt
+as if I'd made another fool of myself and been a weak coward.
+I drank the rest of the beer and went to sleep.
+
+About daylight I woke and heard Jack's horse on the gravel.
+He came round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door,
+and then, suddenly, a girl screamed out.  I pulled on
+my trousers and 'lastic-side boots and hurried out.  It was Mary herself,
+dressed, and sitting on an old stone step at the back of the kitchen
+with her face in her hands, and Jack was off his horse
+and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder.
+She kept saying, `I thought you were ----!  I thought you were ----!'
+I didn't catch the name.  An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun
+was lying in the grass at her feet.  It was the gun they used to keep
+loaded and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot
+at a cunning old hawk that they called `'Tarnal Death', and that used to be
+always after the chickens.
+
+When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper,
+and her eyes seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.
+
+`Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,' she gasped.  Then she gave
+a little ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.
+
+`Oh, I'm a little fool!' she said quickly.  `I thought I heard
+old 'Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing
+if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly so as
+not to wake Sarah.  And then you came round the corner and frightened me.
+I don't know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.'
+
+`Never mind,' said Jack.  `You go and have a sleep, or you won't be able
+to dance to-night.  Never mind the gun -- I'll put that away.'
+And he steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah
+where she slept with one of the other girls.
+
+`Well, that's a rum start!' I said.
+
+`Yes, it is,' said Jack; `it's very funny.  Well, how's your face
+this morning, Joe?'
+
+He seemed a lot more serious than usual.
+
+We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed
+and getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles,
+making seats, &c.  I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could.
+One side of my face was a sight and the other wasn't too classical.
+I felt as if I had been stung by a swarm of bees.
+
+`You're a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,'
+said Jimmy Nowlett -- he was going to play the accordion that night.
+`You ought to fetch the girls now, Joe.  But never mind,
+your face'll go down in about three weeks.  My lower jaw is crooked yet;
+but that fight straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked
+when I was a boy -- so I didn't lose much beauty by it.'
+
+When we'd done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said --
+
+`Look here, Joe! if you won't come to the dance to-night -- and I can't say
+you'd ornament it -- I tell you what you'll do.  You get little Mary away
+on the quiet and take her out for a stroll -- and act like a man.
+The job's finished now, and you won't get another chance like this.'
+
+`But how am I to get her out?' I said.
+
+`Never you mind.  You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
+near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.'
+
+`What good'll that do?'
+
+`Never you mind.  You just do as you're told, that's all you've got to do,'
+said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.
+
+After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice.
+The first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious;
+and the second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude,
+and looking excited and happy.  I noticed that some of the girls,
+that I could see sitting on a stool along the opposite wall,
+whispered, and gave Mary black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past.
+It struck me pretty forcibly that I should have taken fighting lessons
+from him instead of from poor Romany.  I went away and walked about four miles
+down the river road, getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw
+any chap riding along.  I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was,
+and thought that there wasn't much to choose between us as far as
+happiness was concerned.  Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush,
+and feeling like I did.  I wished I could shake hands with him.
+
+But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
+and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree,
+looking at the rows of river-willows in the moonlight.
+I didn't expect anything, in spite of what Jack said.
+
+I didn't like the idea of hanging myself:  I'd been with a party who found
+a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round where he was.
+And I'd helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river in a flood,
+and they weren't sleeping beauties.  I thought it was a pity that a chap
+couldn't lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in the moonlight
+and die just by thinking of it -- and die with his eyes and mouth shut.
+But then I remembered that I wouldn't make a beautiful corpse, anyway it went,
+with the face I had on me.
+
+I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,
+and my heart gave a jump.  And I gave a start too.
+
+`Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?' said a timid little voice.
+
+`Yes,' I said.  `Is that you, Mary?'
+
+And she said yes.  It was the first time I called her Mary,
+but she did not seem to notice it.
+
+`Did I frighten you?' I asked.
+
+`No -- yes -- just a little,' she said.  `I didn't know
+there was any one ----' then she stopped.
+
+`Why aren't you dancing?' I asked her.
+
+`Oh, I'm tired,' she said.  `It was too hot in the wool-shed.  I thought
+I'd like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.'
+
+`Yes,' I said, `it must be hot in the wool-shed.'
+
+She stood looking out over the willows.  Presently she said,
+`It must be very dull for you, Mr Wilson -- you must feel lonely.
+Mr Barnes said ----'  Then she gave a little gasp and stopped --
+as if she was just going to put her foot in it.
+
+`How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!' she said.
+
+`Yes,' I said, `doesn't it?  Supposing we have a stroll by the river.'
+
+`Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson.  I'd like it very much.'
+
+I didn't notice it then, but, now I come to think of it,
+it was a beautiful scene:  there was a horseshoe of high blue hills
+round behind the house, with the river running round under the slopes,
+and in front was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges,
+and a soft blue peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.
+
+I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side
+turned to her.  We walked down by the river, and didn't say anything
+for a good while.  I was thinking hard.  We came to a white smooth log
+in a quiet place out of sight of the house.
+
+`Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,' I said.
+
+`If you like, Mr Wilson,' she said.
+
+There was about a foot of log between us.
+
+`What a beautiful night!' she said.
+
+`Yes,' I said, `isn't it?'
+
+Presently she said, `I suppose you know I'm going away next month, Mr Wilson?'
+
+I felt suddenly empty.  `No,' I said, `I didn't know that.'
+
+`Yes,' she said, `I thought you knew.  I'm going to try and get
+into the hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn't come off
+I'll get a place as assistant public-school teacher.'
+
+We didn't say anything for a good while.
+
+`I suppose you won't be sorry to go, Miss Brand?' I said.
+
+`I -- I don't know,' she said.  `Everybody's been so kind to me here.'
+
+She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened.
+I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn't seem to notice it.
+In fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.
+
+`So you think you'll be sorry to go away?' I said.
+
+`Yes, Mr Wilson.  I suppose I'll fret for a while.  It's been my home,
+you know.'
+
+I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn't pretend
+not to know it was there.  But she didn't seem to notice.
+
+`Ah, well,' I said, `I suppose I'll be on the wallaby again next week.'
+
+`Will you, Mr Wilson?' she said.  Her voice seemed very soft.
+
+I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm.  My heart was going
+like clockwork now.
+
+Presently she said --
+
+`Don't you think it's time to go back now, Mr Wilson?'
+
+`Oh, there's plenty of time!' I said.  I shifted up, and put my arm
+farther round, and held her closer.  She sat straight up,
+looking right in front of her, but she began to breathe hard.
+
+`Mary,' I said.
+
+`Yes,' she said.
+
+`Call me Joe,' I said.
+
+`I -- I don't like to,' she said.  `I don't think it would be right.'
+
+So I just turned her face round and kissed her.  She clung to me and cried.
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I asked.
+
+She only held me tighter and cried.
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I said.  `Ain't you well?  Ain't you happy?'
+
+`Yes, Joe,' she said, `I'm very happy.'  Then she said, `Oh, your poor face!
+Can't I do anything for it?'
+
+`No,' I said.  `That's all right.  My face doesn't hurt me a bit now.'
+
+But she didn't seem right.
+
+`What is it, Mary?' I said.  `Are you tired?  You didn't sleep
+last night ----'  Then I got an inspiration.
+
+`Mary,' I said, `what were you doing out with the gun this morning?'
+
+And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.
+
+`I couldn't sleep -- I was frightened.  Oh! I had such a terrible dream
+about you, Joe!  I thought Romany came back and got into your room
+and stabbed you with his knife.  I got up and dressed, and about daybreak
+I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the wall --
+and -- and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me.
+He's something like Romany, you know.'
+
+Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.
+
+And, oh, but wasn't I happy walking home with Mary that night!
+She was too little for me to put my arm round her waist,
+so I put it round her shoulder, and that felt just as good.
+I remember I asked her who'd cleaned up my room and washed my things,
+but she wouldn't tell.
+
+She wouldn't go back to the dance yet; she said she'd go into her room
+and rest a while.  There was no one near the old verandah;
+and when she stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level
+with my shoulder.
+
+`Mary,' I whispered, `put your arms round my neck and kiss me.'
+
+She put her arms round my neck, but she didn't kiss me; she only hid her face.
+
+`Kiss me, Mary!' I said.
+
+`I -- I don't like to,' she whispered.
+
+`Why not, Mary?'
+
+Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing.
+I'm not sure to this day which it was.
+
+`Why won't you kiss me, Mary?  Don't you love me?'
+
+`Because,' she said, `because -- because I -- I don't -- I don't think
+it's right for -- for a girl to -- to kiss a man unless she's going
+to be his wife.'
+
+Then it dawned on me!  I'd forgot all about proposing.
+
+`Mary,' I said, `would you marry a chap like me?'
+
+And that was all right.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things,
+and didn't take the slightest notice of the other girls' astonishment.
+
+But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same evening.
+I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on the quiet
+with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went away,
+I sat down.
+
+`Well, Joe,' said Black, `I see somebody's been spoiling your face
+for the dance.'  And after a bit he said, `Well, Joe, what is it?
+Do you want another job?  If you do, you'll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob'
+(Bob was his eldest son); `they're managing the station for me now, you know.'
+He could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.
+
+`No,' I said; `it's not that, Boss.'
+
+`Well, what is it, Joe?'
+
+`I -- well the fact is, I want little Mary.'
+
+He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.
+
+`What did you say, Boss?' I said.
+
+`Nothing, Joe,' he said.  `I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn't be
+any use.  My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.'
+
+I waited a good while for him to speak.
+
+`Well, Boss,' I said, `what about Mary?'
+
+`Oh! I suppose that's all right, Joe,' he said.  `I -- I beg your pardon.
+I got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.'
+
+
+
+
+Brighten's Sister-In-Law.
+
+
+
+Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales.  We used to say `on' Gulgong --
+and old diggers still talked of being `on th' Gulgong' --
+though the goldfield there had been worked out for years,
+and the place was only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs.
+Gulgong was about the last of the great alluvial `rushes'
+of the `roaring days' -- and dreary and dismal enough it looked
+when I was there.  The expression `on' came from being on
+the `diggings' or goldfield -- the workings or the goldfield
+was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them --
+not in nor at 'em.
+
+Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came ----
+His name wasn't `Jim', by the way, it was `John Henry',
+after an uncle godfather; but we called him Jim from the first --
+(and before it) -- because Jim was a popular Bush name,
+and most of my old mates were Jims.  The Bush is full of good-hearted scamps
+called Jim.
+
+We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,
+and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong;
+and I did a bit of digging (`fossicking', rather), a bit of shearing,
+a bit of fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking, -- anything,
+just to keep the billy boiling.
+
+We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth.  He was bad
+with every one of them, and we had most of them lanced --
+couldn't pull him through without.  I remember we got one lanced
+and the gum healed over before the tooth came through,
+and we had to get it cut again.  He was a plucky little chap,
+and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor
+was lancing his gum:  he used to say `tar' afterwards,
+and want to bring the lance home with him.
+
+The first turn we got with Jim was the worst.  I had had the wife and Jim
+out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek;
+I had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,
+and I took Mary out to cook for us.  And it was lucky for us
+that the contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong,
+and within reach of a doctor, the day we did.  We were just camping
+in the house, with our goods and chattels anyhow, for the night;
+and we were hardly back home an hour when Jim took convulsions
+for the first time.
+
+Did you ever see a child in convulsions?  You wouldn't want to see it again:
+it plays the devil with a man's nerves.  I'd got the beds fixed up
+on the floor, and the billies on the fire -- I was going to make some tea,
+and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night -- when Jim
+(he'd been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to sleep) --
+Jim, he screamed out twice.  He'd been crying a good deal,
+and I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me)
+or I'd have noticed at once that there was something unusual
+in the way the child cried out:  as it was I didn't turn round
+till Mary screamed `Joe! Joe!'  You know how a woman cries out
+when her child is in danger or dying -- short, and sharp, and terrible.
+`Joe!  Look! look!  Oh, my God! our child!  Get the bath, quick! quick!
+it's convulsions!'
+
+Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother's arms,
+and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed -- a thing I saw twice afterwards,
+and don't want ever to see again.
+
+I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water,
+when the woman who lived next door rushed in.  She called to her husband
+to run for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary
+had got Jim into a hot bath and pulled him through.
+
+The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room,
+and stayed with Mary that night; but it was a long while
+before I got Jim and Mary's screams out of my head and fell asleep.
+
+You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
+for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
+there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
+to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise.
+Our wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire,
+and had to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn't so bad
+as the first, and we pulled him through.
+
+You never saw a child in convulsions?  Well, you don't want to.
+It must be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes;
+and half an hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
+or stretched out dead.  It shook me up a lot.  I was always
+pretty high-strung and sensitive.  After Jim took the first fit,
+every time he cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump:
+I was always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish,
+or feeling his limbs to see if he was `limp' yet.  Mary and I
+often laughed about it -- afterwards.  I tried sleeping in another room,
+but for nights after Jim's first attack I'd be just dozing off
+into a sound sleep, when I'd hear him scream, as plain as could be,
+and I'd hear Mary cry, `Joe! -- Joe!' -- short, sharp, and terrible --
+and I'd be up and into their room like a shot, only to find them
+sleeping peacefully.  Then I'd feel Jim's head and his breathing
+for signs of convulsions, see to the fire and water,
+and go back to bed and try to sleep.  For the first few nights
+I was like that all night, and I'd feel relieved when daylight came.
+I'd be in first thing to see if they were all right;
+then I'd sleep till dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work.
+But then I was run down about that time:  I was worried about some money
+for a wool-shed I put up and never got paid for; and, besides,
+I'd been pretty wild before I met Mary.
+
+I was fighting hard then -- struggling for something better.
+Both Mary and I were born to better things, and that's what made the life
+so hard for us.
+
+Jim got on all right for a while:  we used to watch him well,
+and have his teeth lanced in time.
+
+It used to hurt and worry me to see how -- just as he was getting fat and rosy
+and like a natural happy child, and I'd feel proud to take him out --
+a tooth would come along, and he'd get thin and white and pale
+and bigger-eyed and old-fashioned.  We'd say, `He'll be safe
+when he gets his eye-teeth':  but he didn't get them till he was two;
+then, `He'll be safe when he gets his two-year-old teeth':
+they didn't come till he was going on for three.
+
+He was a wonderful little chap -- Yes, I know all about parents thinking
+that their child is the best in the world.  If your boy is small for his age,
+friends will say that small children make big men; that he's a very bright,
+intelligent child, and that it's better to have a bright, intelligent child
+than a big, sleepy lump of fat.  And if your boy is dull and sleepy,
+they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest men --
+and all the rest of it.  I never took any notice of that sort of clatter --
+took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don't think I ever saw
+such a child as Jim was when he turned two.  He was everybody's favourite.
+They spoilt him rather.  I had my own ideas about bringing up a child.
+I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim.  She'd say, `Put that'
+(whatever it was) `out of Jim's reach, will you, Joe?' and I'd say,
+`No! leave it there, and make him understand he's not to have it.
+Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed
+at a regular hour,' I'd say.  Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim.
+She'd say that I forgot he was only a baby:  but I held that a baby
+could be trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.
+
+But, after all, what are you to do?  You'll see a boy that was
+brought up strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow
+(by the hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well.
+Then, again, when a child is delicate -- and you might lose him any day --
+you don't like to spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend,
+as delicate children often do.  Suppose you gave a child a hammering,
+and the same night he took convulsions, or something, and died --
+how'd you feel about it?  You never know what a child is going to take,
+any more than you can tell what some women are going to say or do.
+
+I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums.  Sometimes I'd sit and wonder
+what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he talked,
+he'd make me uneasy.  When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things,
+and I'd get him a clean new clay and he'd sit by my side,
+on the edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap,
+in the cool of the evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit
+when he saw me do it.  He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe
+wasn't quite the thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn't
+smoke tobacco yet:  he made the best he could of things.
+And if he broke a clay pipe he wouldn't have a new one, and there'd be a row;
+the old one had to be mended up, somehow, with string or wire.
+If I got my hair cut, he'd want his cut too; and it always troubled him
+to see me shave -- as if he thought there must be something wrong somewhere,
+else he ought to have to be shaved too.  I lathered him one day,
+and pretended to shave him:  he sat through it as solemn as an owl,
+but didn't seem to appreciate it -- perhaps he had sense enough to know
+that it couldn't possibly be the real thing.  He felt his face,
+looked very hard at the lather I scraped off, and whimpered,
+`No blood, daddy!'
+
+I used to cut myself a good deal:  I was always impatient over shaving.
+
+Then he went in to interview his mother about it.  She understood his lingo
+better than I did.
+
+But I wasn't always at ease with him.  Sometimes he'd sit
+looking into the fire, with his head on one side, and I'd watch him and wonder
+what he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman
+was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:
+sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he'd glance round just as if to see
+what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.
+
+I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or Asiatic --
+something older than our civilisation or religion --
+about old-fashioned children.  Once I started to explain my idea
+to a woman I thought would understand -- and as it happened
+she had an old-fashioned child, with very slant eyes --
+a little tartar he was too.  I suppose it was the sight of him
+that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal theory, and set me off on it,
+without warning me.  Anyhow, it got me mixed up in an awful row
+with the woman and her husband -- and all their tribe.
+It wasn't an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row
+hasn't been fixed up yet.  There were some Chinamen in the district.
+
+I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,
+near Gulgong, and did well out of it.  The railway had got
+as far as the Cudgeegong river -- some twenty miles from Gulgong
+and two hundred from the coast -- and `carrying' was good then.
+I had a couple of draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays
+when I was tank-sinking, and one or two others running in the Bush.
+I bought a broken-down waggon cheap, tinkered it up myself --
+christened it `The Same Old Thing' -- and started carrying
+from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the bush roads and tracks
+that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the one-pub towns
+and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling wilderness.
+It wasn't much of a team.  There were the two heavy horses for `shafters';
+a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings;
+a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points
+like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with
+the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along
+in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time.  I had a couple there that didn't
+belong to me:  I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.
+And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself.
+It was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick,
+and freight rates were high.  So I got along.
+
+Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I'd sink a shaft somewhere,
+prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me
+out of that.
+
+I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm --
+that an old mate of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards
+chucked up -- about thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place
+called Lahey's Creek.  (The places were all called Lahey's Creek,
+or Spicer's Flat, or Murphy's Flat, or Ryan's Crossing, or some such name --
+round there.)  I reckoned I'd have a run for the horses and be able to grow
+a bit of feed.  I always had a dread of taking Mary and the children
+too far away from a doctor -- or a good woman neighbour;
+but there were some people came to live on Lahey's Creek,
+and besides, there was a young brother of Mary's -- a young scamp
+(his name was Jim, too, and we called him `Jimmy' at first
+to make room for our Jim -- he hated the name `Jimmy' or James).
+He came to live with us -- without asking -- and I thought he'd find
+enough work at Lahey's Creek to keep him out of mischief.
+He wasn't to be depended on much -- he thought nothing of riding off,
+five hundred miles or so, `to have a look at the country' --
+but he was fond of Mary, and he'd stay by her till I got some one else
+to keep her company while I was on the road.  He would be a protection
+against `sundowners' or any shearers who happened to wander that way
+in the `D.T.'s' after a spree.  Mary had a married sister come to live
+at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her and her husband
+but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or so --
+till we got settled down at Lahey's Creek.  They were newly married.
+
+Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart,
+at the end of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came
+she wasn't too well -- and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose,
+and I hadn't time to get them cut, so we let Jim's time run on
+a week or so longer, till I happened to come out through Gulgong
+from the river with a small load of flour for Lahey's Creek way.
+The roads were good, the weather grand -- no chance of it raining,
+and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did -- I would only camp out one night;
+so I decided to take Jim home with me.
+
+Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure.  He was so old-fashioned
+that he used to frighten me sometimes -- I'd almost think that there was
+something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took
+any notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.
+There's always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish either)
+who'll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks as,
+`You'll never rear that child -- he's too bright for his age.'
+To the devil with them! I say.
+
+But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age,
+and I often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let
+talk too much to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen
+who rode in and hung their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
+
+I don't believe in parents talking about their own children everlastingly --
+you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are generally little devils,
+and turn out larrikins as likely as not.
+
+But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,
+was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
+
+For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me
+all about his adventures at his auntie's.
+
+`But they spoilt me too much, dad,' he said, as solemn as a native bear.
+`An' besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!'
+
+I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up
+a good deal of Jim's time.
+
+Sometimes he'd jolt me, the way he talked; and other times
+I'd have to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses,
+to keep from laughing outright.  And once, when I was taken that way,
+he said --
+
+`What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting,
+and going on that way for, dad?  Why don't you tell me something?'
+
+`Tell you what, Jim?'
+
+`Tell me some talk.'
+
+So I told him all the talk I could think of.  And I had to brighten up,
+I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination --
+for Jim was a terror at cross-examination when the fit took him;
+and he didn't think twice about telling you when he thought
+you were talking nonsense.  Once he said --
+
+`I'm glad you took me home with you, dad.  You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+`What!' I said.
+
+`You'll get to know Jim.'
+
+`But don't I know you already?'
+
+`No, you don't.  You never has time to know Jim at home.'
+
+And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true.  I had known in my heart
+all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from Jim.
+You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so;
+and when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy,
+or too tired and worried, or full of schemes for the future,
+to take much notice of Jim.  Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes.
+`You never take notice of the child,' she'd say.  `You could surely find
+a few minutes of an evening.  What's the use of always worrying and brooding?
+Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it,
+it will teach you a lesson.  You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one,
+before you realise that you had a child once.  Then it will be too late.'
+
+This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her,
+because I knew it all too well.  I never worried for myself --
+only for Mary and the children.  And often, as the days went by,
+I said to myself, `I'll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,
+just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.'  And the hard days
+went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years ----  Ah, well!
+
+Mary used to say, when things would get worse, `Why don't you talk to me, Joe?
+Why don't you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself
+up in yourself and brooding -- eating your heart out?
+It's hard for me:  I get to think you're tired of me, and selfish.
+I might be cross and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble.
+How am I to know, if you don't tell me?'
+
+But I didn't think she'd understand.
+
+And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing
+over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and shade
+passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load,
+over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again --
+Jim and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges,
+some fifteen miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek
+for the night.  I got the horses out and took the harness off.
+Jim wanted badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load;
+for one of the horses -- a vicious, red-eyed chestnut -- was a kicker:
+he'd broken a man's leg.  I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts,
+and the chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round
+with their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,
+munching and switching their tails.  We use double shafts, you know,
+for horse-teams -- two pairs side by side, -- and prop them up,
+and stretch bags between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes.
+I threw the spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side,
+letting about half of it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making
+a floor and a break-wind.  I threw down bags and the blankets and 'possum rug
+against the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup,
+and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down,
+and made a good fire at a log close handy, and soon everything
+was comfortable.  Ryan's Crossing was a grand camp.  I stood with my pipe
+in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the fire,
+and took the country in.
+
+Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range:  the banks here
+were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
+boulders, and gravel.  Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those gnarled,
+grey-barked, dry-rotted `native apple-trees' (about as much like apple-trees
+as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road
+that I was always glad to get over in wet weather.  To the left
+on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking,
+and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended
+in steep `sidings' coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road
+that skirted them, running on west up over a `saddle' in the ridges
+and on towards Dubbo.  The road by Lahey's Creek to a place called Cobborah
+branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left,
+just beyond the crossing:  all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong
+were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line,
+and so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.'s coaches
+and the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.
+There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones
+over a deep water-hole just above the crossing.  The creek oaks
+have rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller,
+and higher to the branches -- and the leaves are reedy;
+Kendel, the Australian poet, calls them the `she-oak harps Aeolian'.
+Those trees are always sigh-sigh-sighing -- more of a sigh
+than a sough or the `whoosh' of gum-trees in the wind.
+You always hear them sighing, even when you can't feel any wind.
+It's the same with telegraph wires:  put your head against a telegraph-post
+on a dead, still day, and you'll hear and feel the far-away roar of the wires.
+But then the oaks are not connected with the distance,
+where there might be wind; and they don't ROAR in a gale,
+only sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go
+above or below a certain pitch, -- like a big harp with all the strings
+the same.  I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind's voice
+telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.
+
+I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the tarpaulin,
+playing with the pup):  he was standing close beside me with his legs
+wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the fire.
+
+He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,
+wise expression in his big brown eyes -- just as if he'd been a child
+for a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks
+and understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
+
+`Dad!' he said presently -- `Dad! do you think I'll ever grow up to be a man?'
+
+`Wh--why, Jim?' I gasped.
+
+`Because I don't want to.'
+
+I couldn't think of anything against this.  It made me uneasy.
+But I remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
+
+`Jim,' I said, to break the silence, `do you hear what the she-oaks say?'
+
+`No, I don't.  Is they talking?'
+
+`Yes,' I said, without thinking.
+
+`What is they saying?' he asked.
+
+I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea.
+I thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn't:
+when I got back to the fire he was again on the 'possum rug,
+comforting the pup.  I fried some bacon and eggs that I'd brought out with me.
+Jim sang out from the waggon --
+
+`Don't cook too much, dad -- I mightn't be hungry.'
+
+I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new flour-bag,
+in honour of Jim, and dished up.  He was leaning back on the rug
+looking at the pup in a listless sort of way.  I reckoned he was tired out,
+and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put his plate on it.
+But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said --
+
+`I ain't hungry, dad!  You'll have to eat it all.'
+
+It made me uneasy -- I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his food.
+They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid
+that that was upsetting him.  I was always against tinned muck.
+
+`Sick, Jim?' I asked.
+
+`No, dad, I ain't sick; I don't know what's the matter with me.'
+
+`Have some tea, sonny?'
+
+`Yes, dad.'
+
+I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I'd brought in a bottle
+from his aunt's for him.  He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot
+on the gin-case.
+
+`Jim's tired, dad,' he said.
+
+I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night.
+It had turned a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round --
+it was made to cover a high load, the flour in the waggon
+didn't come above the rail, so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground.
+I fixed Jim up a comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon:
+when I went to lift him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars
+in a half-dreamy, half-fascinated way that I didn't like.
+Whenever Jim was extra old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
+
+`How do you feel now, sonny?'
+
+It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
+
+`Jim's better, dad.'  Then he said something like, `The stars are looking
+at me.'  I thought he was half asleep.  I took off his jacket and boots,
+and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the night.
+
+`Kiss me 'night-night, daddy,' he said.
+
+I'd rather he hadn't asked me -- it was a bad sign.  As I was going
+to the fire he called me back.
+
+`What is it, Jim?'
+
+`Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.'
+
+I was scared now.  His things were some toys and rubbish he'd brought
+from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took
+all his toys and a kitten to bed with him.  And `'night-night' and `daddy'
+were two-year-old language to Jim.  I'd thought he'd forgotten those words --
+he seemed to be going back.
+
+`Are you quite warm enough, Jim?'
+
+`Yes, dad.'
+
+I started to walk up and down -- I always did this when I was extra worried.
+
+I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from myself.
+Presently he called me again.
+
+`What is it, Jim?'
+
+`Take the blankets off me, fahver -- Jim's sick!'  (They'd been teaching him
+to say father.)
+
+I was scared now.  I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die
+(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said --
+
+`Take the blankets off me, muvver -- I'm dying.'
+
+And I couldn't get that out of my head.
+
+I threw back a fold of the 'possum rug, and felt Jim's head --
+he seemed cool enough.
+
+`Where do you feel bad, sonny?'
+
+No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice
+as if he were talking in his sleep --
+
+`Put my boots on, please, daddy.  I want to go home to muvver!'
+
+I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept --
+in a restless, feverish sort of way.
+
+I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the fire;
+I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got it
+full of cold water and stood it handy.  I got the spade
+(we always carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather)
+and turned a corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin
+down into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst.
+I had a tin of mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim,
+if death came along.
+
+I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim.
+His head was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
+
+Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward
+between the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I'd heard Mary say
+the last time we fought for Jim:  `God! don't take my child!
+God! don't take my boy!'  I'd never had much faith in doctors,
+but, my God! I wanted one then.  The nearest was fifteen miles away.
+
+I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation;
+and -- Well, I don't ask you to take much stock in this,
+though most old Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night;
+and -- Now, it might have been that I was all unstrung,
+or it might have been a patch of sky outlined in the gently moving branches,
+or the blue smoke rising up.  But I saw the figure of a woman, all white,
+come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the trees, point on up the main road,
+and then float up and up and vanish, still pointing.  I thought Mary was dead!
+Then it flashed on me ----
+
+Four or five miles up the road, over the `saddle', was an old shanty
+that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line
+got round as far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads.
+A man named Brighten lived there.  He was a selector; did a little farming,
+and as much sly-grog selling as he could.  He was married --
+but it wasn't that:  I'd thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out,
+spiritless woman, and both were pretty `ratty' from hardship and loneliness --
+they weren't likely to be of any use to me.  But it was this:
+I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife
+who'd gone out to live with them lately:  she'd been a hospital matron
+in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her.  Some said
+she got the sack for exposing the doctors -- or carrying on with them --
+I didn't remember which.  The fact of a city woman going out to live
+in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women
+in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra
+about her, else Bushmen wouldn't have talked and carried her name so far;
+and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now.  I even reasoned this way,
+thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels
+of the waggon.
+
+I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack,
+following the team.  In a minute I had her saddled and bridled;
+I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end
+and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim;
+I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.
+
+The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank,
+clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up
+the opposite bank to the level.  The mare, as I told you, was an old racer,
+but broken-winded -- she must have run without wind after the first half mile.
+She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company
+I'd have to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst.
+She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode.
+She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then
+-- like a railway carriage -- when she settled down to it.
+
+The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose,
+and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way.
+Let the strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position
+for five minutes -- and Jim was fairly heavy.  But I never felt
+the ache in my arms that night -- it must have gone before I was in
+a fit state of mind to feel it.  And at home I'd often growled
+about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes.
+I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time.
+It was a ghostly moonlight night.  There's no timber in the world
+so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight -- or just about daybreak.
+The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs;
+the ghostly blue-white bark of the `white-box' trees;
+a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out
+here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road
+that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse
+laid out stark.  Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight --
+every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
+you have to trust to your horse then.  Sometimes the naked white trunk
+of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off,
+would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush.  And dew or frost
+glistening on these things, according to the season.  Now and again
+a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch
+down by the road, would start with a `thump-thump', and away up the siding.
+
+The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night -- all going my way --
+and being left behind by the mare.  Once I stopped to look at Jim:
+I just sat back and the mare `propped' -- she'd been a stock-horse,
+and was used to `cutting-out'.  I felt Jim's hands and forehead;
+he was in a burning fever.  I bent forward, and the old mare
+settled down to it again.  I kept saying out loud -- and Mary and me
+often laughed about it (afterwards):  `He's limp yet! -- Jim's limp yet!'
+(the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright) -- `He's limp yet!'
+till the mare's feet took it up.  Then, just when I thought
+she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward,
+like a cable tram gliding along on its own and the grip put on suddenly.
+It was just what she'd do when I'd be riding alone and a strange horse
+drew up from behind -- the old racing instinct.  I FELT the thing too!
+I felt as if a strange horse WAS there!  And then --
+the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk -- I started saying,
+`Death is riding to-night! . . .  Death is racing to-night! . . .
+Death is riding to-night!' till the hoofs took that up.
+And I believe the old mare felt the black horse at her side
+and was going to beat him or break her heart.
+
+I was mad with anxiety and fright:  I remember I kept saying,
+`I'll be kinder to Mary after this!  I'll take more notice of Jim!'
+and the rest of it.
+
+I don't know how the old mare got up the last `pinch'.
+She must have slackened pace, but I never noticed it:
+I just held Jim up to me and gripped the saddle with my knees --
+I remember the saddle jerked from the desperate jumps of her till I thought
+the girth would go.  We topped the gap and were going down into a gully
+they called Dead Man's Hollow, and there, at the back of a ghostly clearing
+that opened from the road where there were some black-soil springs,
+was a long, low, oblong weatherboard-and-shingle building,
+with blind, broken windows in the gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof
+slanting down almost to the level of the window-sills -- there was something
+sinister about it, I thought -- like the hat of a jail-bird
+slouched over his eyes.  The place looked both deserted and haunted.
+I saw no light, but that was because of the moonlight outside.
+The mare turned in at the corner of the clearing to take a short cut
+to the shanty, and, as she struggled across some marshy ground,
+my heart kept jerking out the words, `It's deserted!  They've gone away!
+It's deserted!'  The mare went round to the back and pulled up
+between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen.  Some one shouted
+from inside --
+
+`Who's there?'
+
+`It's me.  Joe Wilson.  I want your sister-in-law -- I've got the boy --
+he's sick and dying!'
+
+Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins.  `What boy?' he asked.
+
+`Here, take him,' I shouted, `and let me get down.'
+
+`What's the matter with him?' asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang back.
+And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim's head went back
+over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and glistening
+in the moonlight.
+
+I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach -- but CLEAR-HEADED
+in a way:  strange, wasn't it?  I don't know why I didn't get down
+and rush into the kitchen to get a bath ready.  I only felt as if
+the worst had come, and I wished it were over and gone.
+I even thought of Mary and the funeral.
+
+Then a woman ran out of the house -- a big, hard-looking woman.
+She had on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare.
+She laid her hand on Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me
+and ran into the kitchen -- and me down and after her.
+As great good luck would have it, they had some dirty clothes on to boil
+in a kerosene tin -- dish-cloths or something.
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table,
+wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water,
+dish-cloths and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner,
+dashed that in, and felt the water with her hand -- holding Jim up to her hip
+all the time -- and I won't say how he looked.  She stood him in the tub
+and started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes
+between the splashes.
+
+`Here, that tin of mustard -- there on the shelf!' she shouted to me.
+
+She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub,
+and went on splashing and spanking Jim.
+
+It seemed an eternity.  And I?  Why, I never thought clearer in my life.
+I felt cold-blooded -- I felt as if I'd like an excuse to go outside
+till it was all over.  I thought of Mary and the funeral --
+and wished that that was past.  All this in a flash, as it were.
+I felt that it would be a great relief, and only wished the funeral
+was months past.  I felt -- well, altogether selfish.
+I only thought for myself.
+
+Brighten's sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard -- hard enough
+to break his back I thought, and -- after about half an hour it seemed --
+the end came:  Jim's limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub,
+and the pupils of his eyes came down.  They seemed dull and expressionless,
+like the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.
+
+I dropped on the stool by the table.
+
+`It's all right,' she said.  `It's all over now.  I wasn't going
+to let him die.'  I was only thinking, `Well it's over now,
+but it will come on again.  I wish it was over for good.  I'm tired of it.'
+
+She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little fool
+of a woman, who'd been running in and out and whimpering all the time --
+
+`Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed.  And you, Brighten,
+take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in that hole there
+to stop the draught.'
+
+Brighten -- he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be seen
+for whiskers -- had been running in with sticks and back logs
+from the wood-heap.  He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack,
+and went inside and brought out a black bottle -- got a cup from the shelf,
+and put both down near my elbow.
+
+Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it was,
+ready.  She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily.  I noticed that
+all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins and the like,
+that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and salt-cellars),
+and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible.  She was all right
+at little things.  I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman
+who put her whole soul -- or all she'd got left -- into polishing old tins
+till they dazzled your eyes.
+
+I didn't feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail tea.
+So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn't looking,
+at Brighten's sister-in-law.  She was a big woman, her hands and feet
+were big, but well-shaped and all in proportion -- they fitted her.
+She was a handsome woman -- about forty I should think.
+She had a square chin, and a straight thin-lipped mouth --
+straight save for a hint of a turn down at the corners,
+which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a sign of weakness
+in the days before she grew hard.  There was no sign of weakness now.
+She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair.  She hadn't spoken yet.
+She didn't ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or who or what I was --
+at least not until the next evening at tea-time.
+
+She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her knees,
+with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him,
+and she just rocked him gently.
+
+She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I've seen
+a tired needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away
+back into the past.  And Jim might have been the work in her lap,
+for all she seemed to think of him.  Now and then she knitted her forehead
+and blinked.
+
+Suddenly she glanced round and said -- in a tone as if I was her husband
+and she didn't think much of me --
+
+`Why don't you eat something?'
+
+`Beg pardon?'
+
+`Eat something!'
+
+I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her.  I was beginning
+to feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour
+was coming back into his face, and he didn't look like an unnaturally
+stiff and staring corpse.  I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her.
+I sneaked another look at her.
+
+She was staring straight before her, -- I never saw a woman's face
+change so suddenly -- I never saw a woman's eyes so haggard and hopeless.
+Then her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,
+like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide open eyes
+down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone.  And in the firelight
+they seemed tinged with blood.
+
+I looked away quick, feeling full up myself.  And presently
+(I hadn't seen her look round) she said --
+
+`Go to bed.'
+
+`Beg pardon?'  (Her face was the same as before the tears.)
+
+`Go to bed.  There's a bed made for you inside on the sofa.'
+
+`But -- the team -- I must ----'
+
+`What?'
+
+`The team.  I left it at the camp.  I must look to it.'
+
+`Oh!  Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning --
+or send the half-caste.  Now you go to bed, and get a good rest.
+The boy will be all right.  I'll see to that.'
+
+I went out -- it was a relief to get out -- and looked to the mare.
+Brighten had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box,
+but she couldn't eat yet.  She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg
+and then the other, with her nose over the box -- and she sobbed.
+I put my arms round her neck and my face down on her ragged mane,
+and cried for the second time since I was a boy.
+
+--
+* Maize or Indian corn -- wheat is never called corn in Australia.
+--
+
+As I started to go in I heard Brighten's sister-in-law say,
+suddenly and sharply --
+
+`Take THAT away, Jessie.'
+
+And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black bottle.
+
+The moon had gone behind the range.  I stood for a minute
+between the house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.
+
+She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table.
+She bent over Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.
+
+I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon.  I woke just in time to hear
+the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten's sister-in-law.
+He was asking her out to our place and she promising to come.
+
+`And now,' says Jim, `I want to go home to "muffer" in "The Same Ol' Fling".'
+
+`What?'
+
+Jim repeated.
+
+`Oh!  "The Same Old Thing", -- the waggon.'
+
+The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,
+looking at some `indications' (of the existence of gold) he had found.
+It was no use trying to `pump' him concerning his sister-in-law;
+Brighten was an `old hand', and had learned in the old Bush-ranging
+and cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people's business.
+And, by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen
+to a bad character, the more you lose your dislike for him.
+
+I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten's sister-in-law
+that evening.  She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least
+ten years younger.  She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready.
+She rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,
+and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there.  She propped Jim up
+with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl.
+She described Sydney and Sydney life as I'd never heard it described before;
+and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did.
+She kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.
+And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked.
+If she wanted to explain anything that we hadn't seen, she wouldn't say
+that it was `like a -- like a' -- and hesitate (you know what I mean);
+she'd hit the right thing on the head at once.  A squatter with a very round,
+flaming red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon:
+she said it was `like a mushroom on the rising moon.'
+She gave me a lot of good hints about children.
+
+But she was quiet again next morning.  I harnessed up, and she dressed Jim
+and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him on the load
+with the 'possum rug and a spare pillow.  She got up on the wheel
+to do it herself.  Then was the awkward time.  I'd half start to speak to her,
+and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and then make
+another false start to say good-bye.  At last she took Jim up in her arms
+and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his arms
+tight round her neck, and kissed her -- a thing Jim seldom did with anybody,
+except his mother, for he wasn't what you'd call an affectionate child, --
+he'd never more than offer his cheek to me, in his old-fashioned way.
+I'd got up the other side of the load to take him from her.
+
+`Here, take him,' she said.
+
+I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him.  Jim seldom cried nowadays --
+no matter how much he was hurt.  I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
+
+`You'd better make a start,' she said.  `You want to get home early
+with that boy.'
+
+I got down and went round to where she stood.  I held out my hand
+and tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel,
+and I gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.
+
+`That's all right,' she said; then tears came into her eyes,
+and she suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.
+`You be off -- you're only a boy yourself.  Take care of that boy;
+be kind to your wife, and take care of yourself.'
+
+`Will you come to see us?'
+
+`Some day,' she said.
+
+I started the horses, and looked round once more.  She was looking up at Jim,
+who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load.
+And I saw that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes
+in spite of the tears.
+
+
+I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to Mary --
+I didn't want to upset her.  But, some time after I brought Jim home
+from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,
+nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten's shanty
+and see Brighten's sister-in-law.  So James drove her over one morning
+in the spring-cart:  it was a long way, and they stayed
+at Brighten's overnight and didn't get back till late the next afternoon.
+I'd got the place in a pig-muck, as Mary said, `doing for' myself,
+and I was having a snooze on the sofa when they got back.
+The first thing I remember was some one stroking my head and kissing me,
+and I heard Mary saying, `My poor boy!  My poor old boy!'
+
+I sat up with a jerk.  I thought that Jim had gone off again.
+But it seems that Mary was only referring to me.  Then she started
+to pull grey hairs out of my head and put 'em in an empty match-box --
+to see how many she'd get.  She used to do this when she felt a bit soft.
+I don't know what she said to Brighten's sister-in-law
+or what Brighten's sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle
+for the next few days.
+
+
+
+
+`Water Them Geraniums'.
+
+
+
+    I.  A Lonely Track.
+
+
+The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong
+to `settle on the land' at Lahey's Creek.
+
+I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
+and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load
+of rations and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station
+out that way.  Mary drove out in the spring-cart.  You remember
+we left little Jim with his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down.
+I'd sent James (Mary's brother) out the day before, on horseback,
+with two or three cows and some heifers and steers and calves we had,
+and I'd told him to clean up a bit, and make the hut
+as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary came.
+
+We hadn't much in the way of furniture.  There was the four-poster
+cedar bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was
+rather proud of it:  it had `turned' posts and joints that bolted together.
+There was a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her `ironing-table',
+upside down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets
+between the legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs --
+with apples painted on the hard board backs -- that we used for the parlour;
+there was a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails
+between the uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails);
+and there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
+stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.
+
+There was the little Wilcox & Gibb's sewing-machine -- my present to Mary
+when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!).
+There was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some pictures
+that were presents from Mary's friends and sister.  She had her
+mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away,
+in the linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask,
+and a box that had been Jim's cradle.  The live stock was a cat in one box,
+and in another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques,
+two against one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do
+all over the world.  I had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load
+-- I always had a pup that I gave away, or sold and didn't get paid for,
+or had `touched' (stolen) as soon as it was old enough.  James had
+his three spidery, sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him.
+I was taking out three months' provisions in the way of ration-sugar,
+tea, flour, and potatoes, &c.
+
+I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek,
+where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
+
+Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,
+for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me
+as much as possible.  I soon saw what was the matter.
+She'd been crying to herself coming along the road.  I thought it was all
+on account of leaving little Jim behind for the first time.  She told me
+that she couldn't make up her mind till the last moment to leave him,
+and that, a mile or two along the road, she'd have turned back for him,
+only that she knew her sister would laugh at her.  She was always
+terribly anxious about the children.
+
+We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way
+to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree flats.
+It was a dreary, hopeless track.  There was no horizon,
+nothing but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees
+in all directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground,
+save for the coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road,
+for it was a dry season:  there had been no rain for months,
+and I wondered what I should do with the cattle if there wasn't more grass
+on the creek.
+
+In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles
+without seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery.
+The new tracks were `blazed' -- that is, slices of bark cut off
+from both sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line,
+to mark the track until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain.
+A smart Bushman, with a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides.
+But a Bushman a little used to the country soon picks out
+differences amongst the trees, half unconsciously as it were,
+and so finds his way about.
+
+Mary and I didn't talk much along this track -- we couldn't have
+heard each other very well, anyway, for the `clock-clock' of the waggon
+and the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground.
+And I suppose we both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened.
+I'd noticed lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking
+to each other -- noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me
+(as vague things will irritate one) when I thought of it.  But then I thought,
+`It won't last long -- I'll make life brighter for her by-and-by.'
+
+As we went along -- and the track seemed endless -- I got brooding, of course,
+back into the past.  And I feel now, when it's too late, that Mary
+must have been thinking that way too.  I thought of my early boyhood,
+of the hard life of `grubbin'' and `milkin'' and `fencin'' and `ploughin''
+and `ring-barkin'', &c., and all for nothing.  The few months
+at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn't spell.
+The cursed ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy --
+ambition or craving for -- I didn't know what for!  For something
+better and brighter, anyhow.  And I made the life harder by reading at night.
+
+It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon,
+behind Mary in the spring-cart.  I thought of these old things
+more than I thought of her.  She had tried to help me to better things.
+And I tried too -- I had the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road
+clear before me, but shied at the first check.  Then I brooded,
+or dreamed of making a home -- that one might call a home -- for Mary --
+some day.  Ah, well! ----
+
+And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles?
+I never thought of that.  Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
+Of her girlhood.  Of her homes -- not the huts and camps she lived in with me.
+Of our future? -- she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our future
+-- but not lately.  These things didn't strike me at the time -- I was so deep
+in my own brooding.  Did she think now -- did she begin to feel now
+that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life,
+but must make the best of it?  This might have roused me, had I thought of it.
+But whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me,
+I'd think, `I'll soon win her back.  We'll be sweethearts again --
+when things brighten up a bit.'
+
+It's an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
+we had grown, what strangers we were to each other.  It seems, now,
+as though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted,
+and had never really met since.
+
+The sun was going down when Mary called out --
+
+`There's our place, Joe!'
+
+She hadn't seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to me,
+who had been out here several times.  Ahead, through the trees to the right,
+was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,
+darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge
+in the background.  Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter --
+a water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain),
+across on the other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat
+between the spur and the creek, and a little higher than this side.
+The land was much better than on our old selection, and there was good soil
+along the creek on both sides:  I expected a rush of selectors out here soon.
+A few acres round the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence
+of timber split from logs and saplings.  The man who took up this selection
+left it because his wife died here.
+
+It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it
+with shingles which he split in spare times.  There was no verandah,
+but I built one later on.  At the end of the house was a big
+slab-and-bark shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen,
+a skillion for tools, harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom
+partitioned off with sheets of bark and old chaff-bags.
+The house itself was floored roughly, with cracks between the boards;
+there were cracks between the slabs all round -- though he'd nailed
+strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over some of them;
+the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags
+with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper.  There was no ceiling,
+calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and battens,
+and the under ends of the shingles.  But ceilings make a hut hot
+and harbour insects and reptiles -- snakes sometimes.
+There was one small glass window in the `dining-room'
+with three panes and a sheet of greased paper, and the rest
+were rough wooden shutters.  There was a pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen,
+and -- that was about all.  There was no dam or tank (I made one later on);
+there was a water-cask, with the hoops falling off and the staves gaping,
+at the corner of the house, and spouting, made of lengths of bent tin,
+ran round under the eaves.  Water from a new shingle roof is wine-red
+for a year or two, and water from a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water
+for years.  In dry weather the selector had got his house water from a cask
+sunk in the gravel at the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek.
+And the longer the drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek
+for his water, with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink,
+if he had any.  Four, five, six, or seven miles -- even ten miles to water
+is nothing in some places.
+
+
+James hadn't found himself called upon to do more than milk old `Spot'
+(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night,
+make a fire in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough.
+He helped me unharness and water and feed the horses,
+and then started to get the furniture off the waggon and into the house.
+James wasn't lazy -- so long as one thing didn't last too long;
+but he was too uncomfortably practical and matter-of-fact for me.
+Mary and I had some tea in the kitchen.  The kitchen was permanently furnished
+with a table of split slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes
+driven into the ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood,
+and two long stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves)
+with auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
+The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
+was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole across,
+with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.
+
+Mary didn't seem able to eat.  She sat on the three-legged stool
+near the fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
+Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been:
+she was thinner now.  She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
+when she was pleased or excited.  I thought at times that there was something
+very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
+about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she spoke.
+There was nothing aristocratic about me.  Mary was German in figure and walk.
+I used sometimes to call her `Little Duchy' and `Pigeon Toes'.
+She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate knit
+in her forehead between the eyes.
+
+Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
+
+`What is it, Mary?'
+
+She turned her face farther from me.  I felt tired, disappointed,
+and irritated -- suffering from a reaction.
+
+`Now, what is it, Mary?' I asked; `I'm sick of this sort of thing.
+Haven't you got everything you wanted?  You've had your own way.
+What's the matter with you now?'
+
+`You know very well, Joe.'
+
+`But I DON'T know,' I said.  I knew too well.
+
+She said nothing.
+
+`Look here, Mary,' I said, putting my hand on her shoulder,
+`don't go on like that; tell me what's the matter?'
+
+`It's only this,' she said suddenly, `I can't stand this life here;
+it will kill me!'
+
+I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
+
+`This is more than a man can stand!' I shouted.  `You know very well
+that it was you that dragged me out here.  You run me on to this!
+Why weren't you content to stay in Gulgong?'
+
+`And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?' asked Mary quietly.
+
+(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was.
+A wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield.
+One street, each side of the dusty main road; three or four
+one-storey square brick cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron
+that glared in the heat -- four rooms and a passage -- the police-station,
+bank-manager and schoolmaster's cottages, &c.  Half-a-dozen tumble-down
+weather-board shanties -- the three pubs., the two stores,
+and the post-office.  The town tailing off into weather-board boxes
+with tin tops, and old bark huts -- relics of the digging days --
+propped up by many rotting poles.  The men, when at home,
+mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about
+the verandah posts of the pubs., saying, `'Ullo, Bill!' or `'Ullo, Jim!' --
+or sometimes drunk.  The women, mostly hags, who blackened
+each other's and girls' characters with their tongues,
+and criticised the aristocracy's washing hung out on the line:
+`And the colour of the clothes!  Does that woman wash her clothes at all?
+or only soak 'em and hang 'em out?' -- that was Gulgong.)
+
+`Well, why didn't you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?' I asked Mary.
+
+`You know very well, Joe,' said Mary quietly.
+
+(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me.
+I had had an idea of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores
+-- I was a fair wool expert -- but Mary was afraid of the drink.
+I could keep well away from it so long as I worked hard in the Bush.
+I had gone to Sydney twice since I met Mary, once before we were married,
+and she forgave me when I came back; and once afterwards.
+I got a billet there then, and was going to send for her in a month.
+After eight weeks she raised the money somehow and came to Sydney
+and brought me home.  I got pretty low down that time.)
+
+`But, Mary,' I said, `it would have been different this time.
+You would have been with me.  I can take a glass now or leave it alone.'
+
+`As long as you take a glass there is danger,' she said.
+
+`Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for,
+if you can't stand it?  Why didn't you stay where you were?' I asked.
+
+`Well,' she said, `why weren't you more decided?'
+
+I'd sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.
+
+`Good God!' I shouted, `this is more than any man can stand.
+I'll chuck it all up!  I'm damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.'
+
+`So am I, Joe,' said Mary wearily.
+
+We quarrelled badly then -- that first hour in our new home.
+I know now whose fault it was.
+
+I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek.
+I didn't feel bitter against Mary -- I had spoken too cruelly to her
+to feel that way.  Looking back, I could see plainly
+that if I had taken her advice all through, instead of now and again,
+things would have been all right with me.  I had come away and left her
+crying in the hut, and James telling her, in a brotherly way,
+that it was all her fault.  The trouble was that I never liked
+to `give in' or go half-way to make it up -- not half-way --
+it was all the way or nothing with our natures.
+
+`If I don't make a stand now,' I'd say, `I'll never be master.
+I gave up the reins when I got married, and I'll have to get them back again.'
+
+What women some men are!  But the time came, and not many years after,
+when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still;
+and, amongst other things, I kept saying, `I'll give in, Mary --
+I'll give in,' and then I'd laugh.  They thought that I was raving mad,
+and took me from the room.  But that time was to come.
+
+As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang
+in my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house
+that evening --
+
+`Why did I bring her here?'
+
+I was not fit to `go on the land'.  The place was only fit
+for some stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife,
+who had no ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place.
+I had only drifted here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.
+
+I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only neighbours --
+a wretched selector's family, about four miles down the creek, --
+and I thought I'd go on to the house and see if they had any fresh meat.
+
+A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in,
+on a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice
+of the selector's wife -- I had seen her several times:
+she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman, and, I supposed,
+the reason why she hadn't gone mad through hardship and loneliness
+was that she hadn't either the brains or the memory to go
+farther than she could see through the trunks of the `apple-trees'.
+
+`You, An-nay!'  (Annie.)
+
+`Ye-es' (from somewhere in the gloom).
+
+`Didn't I tell yer to water them geraniums!'
+
+`Well, didn't I?'
+
+`Don't tell lies or I'll break yer young back!'
+
+`I did, I tell yer -- the water won't soak inter the ashes.'
+
+Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.
+I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves
+behind some sticks against the bark wall near the door;
+and in spite of the sticks the fowls used to get in and scratch beds
+under the geraniums, and scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there
+-- with an idea of helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water,
+when fresh water was scarce -- till you might as well try to water
+a dish of fat.
+
+Then the woman's voice again --
+
+`You, Tom-may!'  (Tommy.)
+
+Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.
+
+`Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!'
+
+`Ye-e-s!' shrill shriek from across the creek.
+
+`Didn't I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want
+any meat or any think?' in one long screech.
+
+`Well -- I karnt find the horse.'
+
+`Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.  And-don't-forgit-
+to-tell-Mrs-Wi'son-that-mother'll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.'
+
+
+I didn't feel like going to the woman's house that night.
+I felt -- and the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart --
+that this was what Mary would come to if I left her here.
+
+I turned and started to walk home, fast.  I'd made up my mind.
+I'd take Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning --
+I forgot about the load I had to take to the sheep station.
+I'd say, `Look here, Girlie' (that's what I used to call her),
+`we'll leave this wretched life; we'll leave the Bush for ever!
+We'll go to Sydney, and I'll be a man! and work my way up.'
+And I'd sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.
+
+When I got to the hut it was lighted up.  Mary had the only kerosene lamp,
+a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going.  She had got
+both rooms washed out -- to James's disgust, for he had to move
+the furniture and boxes about.  She had a lot of things unpacked
+on the table; she had laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf --
+a slab on two pegs over the fireplace -- and put the little wooden clock
+in the centre and some of the ornaments on each side, and was tacking
+a strip of vandyked American oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.
+
+`How does that look, Joe?  We'll soon get things ship-shape.'
+
+I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks.  I went out in the kitchen,
+drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.
+
+Somehow I didn't feel satisfied with the way things had gone.
+
+
+
+   II.  `Past Carin''.
+
+
+Next morning things looked a lot brighter.  Things always look brighter
+in the morning -- more so in the Australian Bush, I should think,
+than in most other places.  It is when the sun goes down
+on the dark bed of the lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire
+and then fades, and then glows out again, like a bank of coals,
+and then burns away to ashes -- it is then that old things come home to one.
+And strange, new-old things too, that haunt and depress you terribly,
+and that you can't understand.  I often think how, at sunset,
+the past must come home to new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia
+and drifted into the Bush.  I used to think that they couldn't have
+much brains, or the loneliness would drive them mad.
+
+I'd decided to let James take the team for a trip or two.
+He could drive alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt
+would manage better than me -- as long as the novelty lasted;
+and I'd stay at home for a week or so, till Mary got used to the place,
+or I could get a girl from somewhere to come and stay with her.
+The first weeks or few months of loneliness are the worst, as a rule,
+I believe, as they say the first weeks in jail are -- I was never there.
+I know it's so with tramping or hard graft*:  the first day or two
+are twice as hard as any of the rest.  But, for my part,
+I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the last days
+used to be the worst with me:  then I'd have to make a move, or drink.
+When you've been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,
+you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts -- provided you have
+any imagination at all.  You'll sometimes sit of an evening
+and watch the lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one
+that's never likely to come that way -- some one, or a stranger,
+that you can't and don't really expect to see.  I think that most men
+who have been alone in the Bush for any length of time --
+and married couples too -- are more or less mad.  With married couples it is
+generally the husband who is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come.
+The woman seems to stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own
+with strangers, as a rule.  It's only afterwards, and looking back,
+that you see how queer you got.  Shepherds and boundary-riders,
+who are alone for months, MUST have their periodical spree,
+at the nearest shanty, else they'd go raving mad.  Drink is the only break
+in the awful monotony, and the yearly or half-yearly spree
+is the only thing they've got to look forward to:  it keeps their minds fixed
+on something definite ahead.
+
+--
+* `Graft', work.  The term is now applied, in Australia, to all sorts of work,
+  from bullock-driving to writing poetry.
+--
+
+But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of loneliness.
+WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn't as bad as it might have been
+farther up-country:  there was generally some one came of a Sunday afternoon
+-- a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe a family, --
+or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses.  On a quiet Sunday,
+after I'd brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and herself -- just the same
+as if we were in town -- and make me get up on one end and put on a collar
+and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.  She said she wanted
+to keep me civilised.  She tried to make a gentleman of me for years,
+but gave it up gradually.
+
+Well.  It was the first morning on the creek:  I was greasing
+the waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary
+hanging out clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood,
+when I heard her being hailed as `Hi, missus!' from the front slip-rails.
+
+It was a boy on horseback.  He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy
+of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs,
+especially his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged
+to a grown man.  He had a good face and frank grey eyes.
+An old, nearly black cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears,
+turning them out at right angles from his head, and rather dirty
+sprouts they were.  He wore a dirty torn Crimean shirt;
+and a pair of man's moleskin trousers rolled up above the knees,
+with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide belt.
+I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough for him,
+he always rolled 'em up above the knees when on horseback,
+for some reason of his own:  to suggest leggings, perhaps,
+for he had them rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn't have bothered
+to save them from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated.
+
+He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole
+of a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern
+something after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.*
+His colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey;
+and, one time, when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought
+it was some old shepherd's hut that I hadn't noticed there before.
+When he cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.
+
+--
+* `Humpy', a rough hut.
+--
+
+`Are you Mrs Wilson?' asked the boy.
+
+`Yes,' said Mary.
+
+`Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink.
+We killed lars' night, and I've fetched a piece er cow.'
+
+`Piece of WHAT?' asked Mary.
+
+He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy
+in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took it.
+It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a wood-axe,
+but it was fresh and clean.
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad!' cried Mary.  She was always impulsive,
+save to me sometimes.  `I was just wondering where we were going to get
+any fresh meat.  How kind of your mother!  Tell her I'm very much
+obliged to her indeed.'  And she felt behind her for a poor little purse
+she had.  `And now -- how much did your mother say it would be?'
+
+The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.
+
+`How much will it be,' he repeated, puzzled.  `Oh -- how much does it weigh
+I-s'pose-yer-mean.  Well, it ain't been weighed at all -- we ain't got
+no scales.  A butcher does all that sort of think.  We just kills it,
+and cooks it, and eats it -- and goes by guess.  What won't keep
+we salts down in the cask.  I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it
+if yer wanter know.  Mother thought that if she sent any more
+it would go bad before you could scoff it.  I can't see ----'
+
+`Yes, yes,' said Mary, getting confused.  `But what I want to know is,
+how do you manage when you sell it?'
+
+He glared at her, and scratched his head.  `Sell it?
+Why, we only goes halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers
+to the butcher -- or maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors,
+or tank-sinkers, or them sorter people ----'
+
+`Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother
+for this?'
+
+`How much what?'
+
+`Money, of course, you stupid boy,' said Mary.  `You seem a very stupid boy.'
+
+Then he saw what she was driving at.  He began to fling his heels convulsively
+against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward and forward
+at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork machinery
+inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need repairing or oiling.
+
+`We ain't that sorter people, missus,' he said.  `We don't sell meat
+to new people that come to settle here.'  Then, jerking his thumb
+contemptuously towards the ridges, `Go over ter Wall's if yer wanter buy meat;
+they sell meat ter strangers.'  (Wall was the big squatter over the ridges.)
+
+`Oh!' said Mary, `I'm SO sorry.  Thank your mother for me.  She IS kind.'
+
+`Oh, that's nothink.  She said to tell yer she'll be up as soon as she can.
+She'd have come up yisterday evening -- she thought yer'd feel lonely
+comin' new to a place like this -- but she couldn't git up.'
+
+The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting.
+You almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward,
+like an old propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way;
+but at the sound of Mary's voice he settled back on his foundations again.
+It must have been a very poor selection that couldn't afford
+a better spare horse than that.
+
+`Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?' said the boy,
+and he pointed to one of my `spreads' (for the team-chains)
+that lay inside the fence.  `I'll fling it back agin over the fence
+when I git this ole cow started.'
+
+`But wait a minute -- I've forgotten your mother's name,' said Mary.
+
+He grabbed at his thatch impatiently.  `Me mother -- oh! --
+the old woman's name's Mrs Spicer.  (Git up, karnt yer!)'
+He twisted himself round, and brought the stretcher down
+on one of the horse's `points' (and he had many) with a crack
+that must have jarred his wrist.
+
+`Do you go to school?' asked Mary.  There was a three-days-a-week school
+over the ridges at Wall's station.
+
+`No!' he jerked out, keeping his legs going.  `Me -- why I'm going on
+fur fifteen.  The last teacher at Wall's finished me.
+I'm going to Queensland next month drovin'.'  (Queensland border
+was over three hundred miles away.)
+
+`Finished you?  How?' asked Mary.
+
+`Me edgercation, of course!  How do yer expect me to start this horse
+when yer keep talkin'?'
+
+He split the `spread' over the horse's point, threw the pieces over the fence,
+and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old saw-stool
+lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a canter.
+That horse wasn't a trotter.
+
+And next month he DID start for Queensland.  He was a younger son
+and a surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection;
+and as there was `northin' doin'' in the district, his father
+(in a burst of fatherly kindness, I suppose) made him a present
+of the old horse and a new pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him
+an old saddle and a coat, and he started for the Never-Never Country.
+
+And I'll bet he got there.  But I'm doubtful if the old horse did.
+
+Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don't think he had anything more
+except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.
+
+`Spicer's farm' was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native
+apple-tree scrub.  The clearing was fenced in by a light `dog-legged' fence
+(a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights),
+and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered
+with cattle-dung.  There was no attempt at cultivation
+when I came to live on the creek; but there were old furrow-marks
+amongst the stumps of another shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut.
+There was a wretched sapling cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail
+with one sheet of bark over it for shelter.  There was no dairy to be seen,
+and I suppose the milk was set in one of the two skillion rooms,
+or lean-to's behind the hut, -- the other was `the boys' bedroom'.
+The Spicers kept a few cows and steers, and had thirty or forty sheep.
+Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek once a-week, in her rickety
+old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter and eggs.  The hut was nearly
+as bare inside as it was out -- just a frame of `round-timber'
+(sapling poles) covered with bark.  The furniture was permanent
+(unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab table
+on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same way.
+Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark partitioned-off room
+(`mother's bedroom') were simply poles laid side by side on cross-pieces
+supported by stakes driven into the ground, with straw mattresses
+and some worn-out bed-clothes.  Mrs Spicer had an old patchwork quilt,
+in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said it was pitiful
+to see how these things would be spread over the beds --
+to hide them as much as possible -- when she went down there.
+A packing-case, with something like an old print skirt draped round it,
+and a cracked looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.
+There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe.  The boys' beds
+were three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights.
+The floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven
+with much sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked.
+Mrs Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets
+under as many of the leaks as she could.  The saucepans, kettles, and boilers
+were old kerosene-tins and billies.  They used kerosene-tins, too,
+cut longways in halves, for setting the milk in.  The plates and cups
+were of tin; there were two or three cups without saucers,
+and a crockery plate or two -- also two mugs, cracked and without handles,
+one with `For a Good Boy' and the other with `For a Good Girl' on it;
+but all these were kept on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company.
+They were the only ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock
+that hadn't gone for years.  Mrs Spicer had a superstition
+that she had `some things packed away from the children.'
+
+The pictures were cut from old copies of the `Illustrated Sydney News'
+and pasted on to the bark.  I remember this, because I remembered, long ago,
+the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy,
+had the walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations
+of the American Civil War, cut from illustrated London papers,
+and I used to `sneak' into `mother's bedroom' with Fred Spencer
+whenever we got the chance, and gloat over the prints.
+I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for taking me in there.
+
+I saw very little of Spicer.  He was a big, dark, dark-haired
+and whiskered man.  I had an idea that he wasn't a selector at all,
+only a `dummy' for the squatter of the Cobborah run.  You see,
+selectors were allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases.
+The squatters kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges
+and paltry persecution.  The squatter would get as much freehold
+as he could afford, `select' as much land as the law allowed one man
+to take up, and then employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land
+that he fancied about his run, and hold them for him.
+
+Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable.  He was seldom at home.
+He was generally supposed to be away shearin', or fencin', or workin'
+on somebody's station.  It turned out that the last six months he was away
+it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut out,
+found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he and his mates
+couldn't account for satisfactorily, while the squatter could.
+Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and treacle,
+or bread and dripping, and tea.  Every ounce of butter and every egg
+was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.
+Mary found that out, but couldn't help them much -- except by
+`stuffing' the children with bread and meat or bread and jam
+whenever they came up to our place -- for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride
+that lies down in the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.
+
+Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was hungry,
+she denied it -- but she looked it.  A ragged mite she had with her
+explained things.  The little fellow said --
+
+`Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked;
+but if yer give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an' say thenk yer,
+Mrs Wilson.'
+
+`I wouldn't 'a' told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,
+Mrs Wilson,' said Annie.  `Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+She was not a big woman.  She was gaunt and flat-chested,
+and her face was `burnt to a brick', as they say out there.
+She had brown eyes, nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times,
+and a sharp face -- ground sharp by hardship -- the cheeks drawn in.
+She had an expression like -- well, like a woman who had been
+very curious and suspicious at one time, and wanted to know
+everybody's business and hear everything, and had lost all her curiosity,
+without losing the expression or the quick suspicious movements of the head.
+I don't suppose you understand.  I can't explain it any other way.
+She was not more than forty.
+
+I remember the first morning I saw her.  I was going up the creek
+to look at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut
+to see if she had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none
+and was sick of `corned beef'.
+
+`Yes -- of -- course,' she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say,
+`Is there anything more you want while the shop's open?'
+I'd met just the same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag
+between the shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river,
+so I didn't turn on my heels and walk away.  I waited for her to speak again.
+
+`Come -- inside,' she said, `and sit down.  I see you've got
+the waggon outside.  I s'pose your name's Wilson, ain't it?
+You're thinkin' about takin' on Harry Marshfield's selection up the creek,
+so I heard.  Wait till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.'
+
+Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice
+coming out of a phonograph -- I heard one in Sydney the other day --
+and not like a voice coming out of her.  But sometimes when she got outside
+her everyday life on this selection she spoke in a sort of --
+in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
+
+She didn't talk much this time -- just spoke in a mechanical way
+of the drought, and the hard times, `an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down,
+an' her husban' an' eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it
+so hard for her.'
+
+I don't know how many children she had.  I never got a chance to count them,
+for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies,
+and used to run and hide when anybody came.  They were mostly nearly as black
+as piccaninnies too.  She must have averaged a baby a-year for years --
+and God only knows how she got over her confinements!  Once, they said,
+she only had a black gin with her.  She had an elder boy and girl,
+but she seldom spoke of them.  The girl, `Liza', was `in service in Sydney.'
+I'm afraid I knew what that meant.  The elder son was `away'.
+He had been a bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.
+
+Some one might ask her, `How's your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?'
+or, `Heard of Jack lately? and where is he now?'
+
+`Oh, he's somewheres up country,' she'd say in the `groping' voice,
+or `He's drovin' in Queenslan',' or `Shearin' on the Darlin' the last time
+I heerd from him.'  `We ain't had a line from him since -- les' see --
+since Chris'mas 'fore last.'
+
+And she'd turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way
+towards the west -- towards `up-country' and `Out-Back'.*
+
+--
+* `Out-Back' is always west of the Bushman, no matter how far out he be.
+--
+
+The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face
+and lines across her forehead:  she had an older expression than her mother.
+Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you.  The eldest son at home,
+Bill (older than Tommy), was `a bit wild.'
+
+I've passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December,
+when the droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust
+that rose in the warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work
+in the cow-yard, `bailing up' and leg-roping cows, milking,
+or hauling at a rope round the neck of a half-grown calf
+that was too strong for her (and she was tough as fencing-wire),
+or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the `poddies'
+(hand-fed calves) in the pen.  I'd get off the horse and give her
+a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow
+that wouldn't `bail-up' and threatened her with her horns.  She'd say --
+
+`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson.  Do yer think we're ever goin' to have any rain?'
+
+I've ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July,
+and seen her trudging about the yard -- that was ankle-deep
+in black liquid filth -- with an old pair of Blucher boots on,
+and an old coat of her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag
+over her shoulders.  I've seen her climbing on the roof
+by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying to stop a leak
+by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark.  And when I'd fixed the leak --
+
+`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson.  This drop of rain's a blessin'!
+Come in and have a dry at the fire and I'll make yer a cup of tea.'
+And, if I was in a hurry, `Come in, man alive!  Come in!
+and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds up.  Yer can't go home like this!
+Yer'll git yer death o' cold.'
+
+I've even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees
+by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs
+to feed the starving cattle.
+
+`Jist tryin' ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.'
+
+They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district
+and amongst her cattle she bled and physicked them herself,
+and fed those that were down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins
+(from a crop that had failed).
+
+`An', one day,' she told Mary, `there was a big barren heifer
+(that we called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer.
+She'd been down for four days and hadn't moved, when one mornin'
+I dumped some wheaten chaff -- we had a few bags that Spicer brought home --
+I dumped it in front of her nose, an' -- would yer b'lieve me, Mrs Wilson? --
+she stumbled onter her feet an' chased me all the way to the house!
+I had to pick up me skirts an' run!  Wasn't it redic'lus?'
+
+They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried Bushwomen.
+I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
+
+`We lost nearly all our milkers,' she told Mary.  `I remember one day
+Tommy came running to the house and screamed:  `Marther! [mother]
+there's another milker down with the ploorer!'  Jist as if it was great news.
+Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an' I giv' in.  I jist sat down
+to have a good cry, and felt for my han'kerchief -- it WAS
+a rag of a han'kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash).
+Without seein' what I was doin' I put me finger through one hole
+in the han'kerchief an' me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers
+into me eyes, instead of wipin' them.  Then I had to laugh.'
+
+There's a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out
+all along the creek on Spicer's side, Wall's station hands
+were up above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary,
+and towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers:
+they saw smoke down that way.  Spicer was away from home,
+and they had a small crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
+
+`My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain't already!'
+shouted young Billy Wall.  `Come along, three or four of you chaps' --
+(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the station).
+
+They raced down the creek to Spicer's, and were just in time
+to save the wheat.  She had her sleeves tucked up, and was
+beating out the burning grass with a bough.  She'd been at it for an hour,
+and was as black as a gin, they said.  She only said when they'd turned
+the fire:  `Thenk yer!  Wait an' I'll make some tea.'
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked --
+
+`Don't you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?'
+
+`Well -- no, Mrs Wilson,' she said in the groping sort of voice.
+`I uster, once.  I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river --
+we lived in a brick house then -- the first time Spicer
+had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out.
+And he was only goin' shearin' for a month.  I muster bin a fool;
+but then we were only jist married a little while.  He's been away
+drovin' in Queenslan' as long as eighteen months at a time since then.
+But' (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) `I don't mind, --
+I somehow seem to have got past carin'.  Besides -- besides,
+Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now.
+He's got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.'
+
+Mary sat silent for a minute thinking.  Then Mrs Spicer roused herself --
+
+`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about!  You mustn't take any notice of me,
+Mrs Wilson, -- I don't often go on like this.  I do believe I'm gittin'
+a bit ratty at times.  It must be the heat and the dulness.'
+
+But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time `when Spicer was
+a different man to what he was now.'
+
+I walked home with her a piece along the creek.  She said nothing
+for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way.
+Then she said suddenly --
+
+`What-did-you-bring-her-here-for?  She's only a girl.'
+
+`I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.'
+
+`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about!  I b'lieve I'm gittin' ratty.
+You mustn't take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.'
+
+She wasn't much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with her,
+she'd start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking,
+which used to exasperate Mary.  But poor Mrs Spicer couldn't help it,
+and she seemed to hear all the same.
+
+Her great trouble was that she `couldn't git no reg'lar schoolin'
+for the children.'
+
+`I learns 'em at home as much as I can.  But I don't git a minute
+to call me own; an' I'm ginerally that dead-beat at night
+that I'm fit for nothink.'
+
+Mary had some of the children up now and then later on,
+and taught them a little.  When she first offered to do so,
+Mrs Spicer laid hold of the handiest youngster and said --
+
+`There -- do you hear that?  Mrs Wilson is goin' to teach yer,
+an' it's more than yer deserve!' (the youngster had been `cryin''
+over something).  `Now, go up an' say "Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson."
+And if yer ain't good, and don't do as she tells yer, I'll break every bone
+in yer young body!'
+
+The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
+
+The children were sent by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school.
+When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots,
+and there was no end of rows about them in the family --
+for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie,
+to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn.  There were only
+about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family,
+and these were saved for great occasions.  The children were always
+as clean and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
+
+And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God's earth
+is the children of very poor people made to appear well:  the broken
+worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string
+for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched threadbare frocks.
+Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand -- and no matter
+where they are -- I always see the worn face of the mother.
+
+Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.
+I'd sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back
+with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often.
+She came up several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand.
+She wouldn't sit down and condole with Mary, or waste her time
+asking questions, or talking about the time when she was ill herself.
+She'd take off her hat -- a shapeless little lump of black straw
+she wore for visiting -- give her hair a quick brush back
+with the palms of her hands, roll up her sleeves, and set to work
+to `tidy up'.  She seemed to take most pleasure in sorting out
+our children's clothes, and dressing them.  Perhaps she used to dress her own
+like that in the days when Spicer was a different man from what he was now.
+She seemed interested in the fashion-plates of some women's journals we had,
+and used to study them with an interest that puzzled me, for she was
+not likely to go in for fashion.  She never talked of her early girlhood;
+but Mary, from some things she noticed, was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer
+had been fairly well brought up.  For instance, Dr Balanfantie,
+from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall's wife, and drove up the creek
+to our place on his way back to see how Mary and the baby were getting on.
+Mary got out some crockery and some table-napkins that she had packed away
+for occasions like this; and she said that the way Mrs Spicer
+handled the things, and helped set the table (though she did it
+in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her that she had been
+used to table-napkins at one time in her life.
+
+Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer
+would say suddenly --
+
+`Oh, I don't think I'll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+`Because the visits doesn't do me any good.  I git the dismals afterwards.'
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?  What on earth do you mean?'
+
+`Oh,-I-don't-know-what-I'm-talkin'-about.  You mustn't take any notice of me.'
+And she'd put on her hat, kiss the children -- and Mary too, sometimes,
+as if she mistook her for a child -- and go.
+
+Mary thought her a little mad at times.  But I seemed to understand.
+
+Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again
+next day.  As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said --
+
+`I wish you wouldn't come down any more till I'm on me feet, Mrs Wilson.
+The children can do for me.'
+
+`Why, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+`Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.'
+
+We were the aristocrats of Lahey's Creek.  Whenever we drove down
+on Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough
+for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we'd see the children
+running to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming --
+
+`Oh, marther!  Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.'
+
+And we'd see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the front door,
+and she'd lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of `broom-stuff'
+-- coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges -- with a stick
+stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round
+in front of the door perhaps.  The floor nearly always needed at least
+one flick of the broom on account of the fowls.  Or she'd catch a youngster
+and scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel
+round her finger and dig out his ears -- as if she was anxious
+to have him hear every word that was going to be said.
+
+No matter what state the house would be in she'd always say,
+`I was jist expectin' yer, Mrs Wilson.'  And she was original in that, anyway.
+
+She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to spread
+on the table when we were there, as a matter of course
+(`The others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson'),
+but I saw by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather
+a wonderful thing to them.  `I must really git some more knives an' forks
+next time I'm in Cobborah,' she'd say.  `The children break an' lose 'em
+till I'm ashamed to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.'
+
+She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather ghastly,
+but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.
+But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children
+to `Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,' or `Take yer maulies [hands]
+outer the sugar,' or `Don't touch Mrs Wilson's baby with them dirty maulies,'
+or `Don't stand starin' at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an' ears
+in that vulgar way.'
+
+Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children.  It was a habit,
+but they didn't seem to mind.  Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit.
+I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing,
+and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child
+from daylight till dark -- and after it.  Taking it all round,
+I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse
+on ordinary children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters,
+than the drinking habit in a father.
+
+One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew
+who used to go wrong in his head every now and again,
+and try to commit suicide.  Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him,
+had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable.
+The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking.  `They let him hang
+for a while,' said Mrs Spicer, `till he went black in the face
+and stopped kicking.  Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water
+over him.'
+
+`Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?' asked Mary.
+
+`To give him a good bellyful of it:  they thought it would cure him
+of tryin' to hang himself again.'
+
+`Well, that's the coolest thing I ever heard of,' said Mary.
+
+`That's jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,' said Mrs Spicer.
+
+`One morning,' said Mrs Spicer, `Spicer had gone off on his horse somewhere,
+and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the door and said --
+
+`"For God's sake, woman, give me a drink!"
+
+`Lord only knows where he came from!  He was dressed like a new chum --
+his clothes was good, but he looked as if he'd been sleepin' in them
+in the Bush for a month.  He was very shaky.  I had some coffee that mornin',
+so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his head
+till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said,
+"Thenk yer, mum."
+
+`I was so surprised that I didn't know what to say, so I jist said,
+"Would you like some more coffee?"
+
+`"Yes, thenk yer," he said -- "about two quarts."
+
+`I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head
+as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said,
+"Thenk yer, mum -- it's a fine day," and then he walked off.
+He had two saddle-straps in his hands.'
+
+`Why, what did he stand on his head for?' asked Mary.
+
+`To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the coffee.
+He had no hat.  I sent Tommy across to Wall's to tell them
+that there was a man wanderin' about the Bush in the horrors of drink,
+and to get some one to ride for the police.  But they was too late,
+for he hanged himself that night.'
+
+`O Lord!' cried Mary.
+
+`Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall's
+branches off.  Tommy found him while he was out after the cows.
+Hangin' to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.'
+
+Mary stared at her, speechless.
+
+`Tommy came home yellin' with fright.  I sent him over to Wall's at once.
+After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped away
+and went down there.  They came back screamin' at the tops of their voices.
+I did give it to them.  I reckon they won't want ter see a dead body again
+in a hurry.  Every time I'd mention it they'd huddle together,
+or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
+
+`"Yer'll go agen when I tell yer not to," I'd say.
+
+`"Oh no, mother," they'd howl.
+
+`"Yer wanted ter see a man hangin'," I said.
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother!  Don't talk about it."
+
+`"Yer wouldn't be satisfied till yer see it," I'd say;
+"yer had to see it or burst.  Yer satisfied now, ain't yer?"
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother!"
+
+`"Yer run all the way there, I s'pose?"
+
+`"Don't, mother!"
+
+`"But yer run faster back, didn't yer?"
+
+`"Oh, don't, mother."
+
+`But,' said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, `I'd been down to see it myself
+before they was up.'
+
+`And ain't you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible things?'
+asked Mary.
+
+`Well, no; I don't mind.  I seem to have got past carin' for anythink now.
+I felt it a little when Tommy went away -- the first time I felt anythink
+for years.  But I'm over that now.'
+
+`Haven't you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?'
+
+`Oh yes.  There's me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother
+near Dubbo; he's got a station.  They wanted to take me an' the children
+between them, or take some of the younger children.  But I couldn't
+bring my mind to break up the home.  I want to keep the children together
+as much as possible.  There's enough of them gone, God knows.
+But it's a comfort to know that there's some one to see to them
+if anythink happens to me.'
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+One day -- I was on my way home with the team that day --
+Annie Spicer came running up the creek in terrible trouble.
+
+`Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl's happened at home!  A trooper'
+(mounted policeman -- they called them `mounted troopers' out there),
+`a trooper's come and took Billy!'  Billy was the eldest son at home.
+
+`What?'
+
+`It's true, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+`What for?  What did the policeman say?'
+
+`He -- he -- he said, "I -- I'm very sorry, Mrs Spicer;
+but -- I -- I want William."'
+
+It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse
+missed from Wall's station and sold down-country.
+
+`An' mother took on awful,' sobbed Annie; `an' now she'll only sit stock-still
+an' stare in front of her, and won't take no notice of any of us.
+Oh! it's awful, Mrs Wilson.  The policeman said he'd tell Aunt Emma'
+(Mrs Spicer's sister at Cobborah), `and send her out.
+But I had to come to you, an' I've run all the way.'
+
+James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
+
+Mary told me all about it when I came home.
+
+`I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my arms.
+Oh, Joe! it was awful!  She didn't cry like a woman.  I heard
+a man at Haviland cry at his brother's funeral, and it was just like that.
+She came round a bit after a while.  Her sister's with her now. . . .
+Oh, Joe! you must take me away from the Bush.'
+
+Later on Mary said --
+
+`How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!'
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+Next morning I rode across to Wall's station and tackled the old man;
+but he was a hard man, and wouldn't listen to me -- in fact,
+he ordered me off the station.  I was a selector, and that was enough for him.
+But young Billy Wall rode after me.
+
+`Look here, Joe!' he said, `it's a blanky shame.  All for the sake of a horse!
+And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn't got enough to put up with already!
+I wouldn't do it for twenty horses.  I'LL tackle the boss,
+and if he won't listen to me, I'll walk off the run for the last time,
+if I have to carry my swag.'
+
+Billy Wall managed it.  The charge was withdrawn, and we got
+young Billy Spicer off up-country.
+
+But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that.  She seldom
+came up to our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak;
+and then she would talk of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits
+were painful to look forward to.
+
+`If it only could have been kep' quiet -- for the sake of the other children;
+they are all I think of now.  I tried to bring 'em all up decent,
+but I s'pose it was my fault, somehow.  It's the disgrace that's killin' me --
+I can't bear it.'
+
+I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl
+named Maggie Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall's station
+(I must tell you about her some other time; James was `shook after her'),
+and we got talkin' about Mrs Spicer.  Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
+
+`I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,' said Mary.  `She seems better lately.'
+
+`Why!' cried Maggie Charlsworth, `if that ain't Annie coming running up
+along the creek.  Something's the matter!'
+
+We all jumped up and ran out.
+
+`What is it, Annie?' cried Mary.
+
+`Oh, Mrs Wilson!  Mother's asleep, and we can't wake her!'
+
+`What?'
+
+`It's -- it's the truth, Mrs Wilson.'
+
+`How long has she been asleep?'
+
+`Since lars' night.'
+
+`My God!' cried Mary, `SINCE LAST NIGHT?'
+
+`No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight
+this mornin'.  She called me and said she didn't feel well,
+and I'd have to manage the milkin'.'
+
+`Was that all she said?'
+
+`No.  She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and calves;
+and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.'
+
+Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn't let her.  James and I saddled our horses
+and rode down the creek.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did
+when I last saw her alive.  It was some time before we could believe
+that she was dead.  But she was `past carin'' right enough.
+
+
+
+
+A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek.
+
+
+
+    I.  Spuds, and a Woman's Obstinacy.
+
+
+Ever since we were married it had been Mary's great ambition to have a buggy.
+The house or furniture didn't matter so much -- out there in the Bush
+where we were -- but, where there were no railways or coaches, and the roads
+were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great thing.
+I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one then;
+but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a second-hand one
+that I'd had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at last she said,
+`Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I'll be satisfied.
+I'll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.
+Wait till we're better off.'
+
+After that, whenever I took a contract -- to put up a fence or wool-shed,
+or sink a dam or something -- Mary would say, `You ought to knock a buggy
+out of this job, Joe;' but something always turned up --
+bad weather or sickness.  Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up;
+and, another time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood
+before I finished it.  Then Mary would say, `Ah, well -- never mind, Joe.
+Wait till we are better off.'  But she felt it hard the time
+I built a wool-shed and didn't get paid for it, for we'd as good as settled
+about another second-hand buggy then.
+
+I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools.
+I made a spring-cart -- body and wheels -- in spare time,
+out of colonial hardwood, and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork;
+I painted the cart myself.  It wasn't much lighter than one of the tip-drays
+I had, but it WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it:
+anyway, I didn't hear any more of the buggy for a while.
+
+I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener
+who wanted a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush.
+It was just before our first youngster came:  I told Mary
+that I wanted the money in case of extra expense -- and she didn't fret much
+at losing that cart.  But the fact was, that I was going to make another try
+for a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born.
+I thought of getting the turn-out while she was laid up,
+keeping it dark from her till she was on her feet again,
+and then showing her the buggy standing in the shed.  But she had a bad time,
+and I had to have the doctor regularly, and get a proper nurse,
+and a lot of things extra; so the buggy idea was knocked on the head.
+I was set on it, too:  I'd thought of how, when Mary was up
+and getting strong, I'd say one morning, `Go round and have a look
+in the shed, Mary; I've got a few fowls for you,' or something like that --
+and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw the buggy.
+I never told Mary about that -- it wouldn't have done any good.
+
+Later on I got some good timber -- mostly scraps that were given to me --
+and made a light body for a spring-cart.  Galletly, the coach-builder
+at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels
+up from Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair
+for cost price and carriage.  I got him to iron the cart,
+and he put it through the paint-shop for nothing.  He sent it out, too,
+at the tail of Tom Tarrant's big van -- to increase the surprise.
+We were swells then for a while; I heard no more of a buggy
+until after we'd been settled at Lahey's Creek for a couple of years.
+
+I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection
+at Lahey's Creek -- for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed --
+and shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong,
+with Mary's young scamp of a brother James to keep them company
+while I was on the road.  The first year I did well enough carrying,
+but I never cared for it -- it was too slow; and, besides,
+I was always anxious when I was away from home.  The game was right enough
+for a single man -- or a married one whose wife had got the nagging habit
+(as many Bushwomen have -- God help 'em!), and who wanted
+peace and quietness sometimes.  Besides, other small carriers started
+(seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver at Cudgeegong,
+had another heavy spring-van built, and put it on the roads,
+and he took a lot of the light stuff.
+
+The second year I made a rise -- out of `spuds', of all the things
+in the world.  It was Mary's idea.  Down at the lower end of our selection --
+Mary called it `the run' -- was a shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek,
+dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two;
+and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek,
+was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side -- about three acres.
+The flat was fairly clear when I came to the selection --
+save for a few logs that had been washed up there in some big `old man' flood,
+way back in black-fellows' times; and one day, when I had a spell at home,
+I got the horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together --
+those that wouldn't split for fencing timber -- and burnt them off.
+I had a notion to get the flat ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it.
+There was a good water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend,
+and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and boiler down there
+in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes
+under the shade of the trees -- it was cooler, and saved carrying water
+to the house.  And one evening after she'd done the washing she said to me --
+
+`Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea:
+they don't seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand
+what the market is going to be like -- they just go on farming
+the same old way and putting in the same old crops year after year.
+They sow wheat, and, if it comes on anything like the thing,
+they reap and thresh it; if it doesn't, they mow it for hay --
+and some of 'em don't have the brains to do that in time.
+Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck me
+that it wouldn't be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,
+and have the land ploughed -- old Corny George would do it cheap --
+and get them put in at once.  Potatoes have been dear all round
+for the last couple of years.'
+
+I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for potatoes,
+and the whole district was too dry.  `Everybody I know has tried it,
+one time or another, and made nothing of it,' I said.
+
+`All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,' said Mary.
+`Just try one crop.  It might rain for weeks, and then you'll be sorry
+you didn't take my advice.'
+
+`But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,' I said.
+
+`How do you know?  You haven't sown any there yet.'
+
+`But I've turned up the surface and looked at it.  It's not rich enough,
+and too dry, I tell you.  You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes.
+Do you think I don't know land when I see it?'
+
+`But you haven't TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe.
+How do you know ----'
+
+I didn't listen to any more.  Mary was obstinate when she got an idea
+into her head.  It was no use arguing with her.  All the time I'd be talking
+she'd just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,
+on the track she'd started, -- just as if I wasn't there, --
+and it used to make me mad.  She'd keep driving at me till I took her advice
+or lost my temper, -- I did both at the same time, mostly.
+
+I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
+
+A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team
+down to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out;
+and after I'd kissed Mary good-bye, she said --
+
+`Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes,
+James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek
+would bring his plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little.
+We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.'
+
+I thought she'd forgotten all about it.  There was no time to argue --
+I'd be sure to lose my temper, and then I'd either have to waste an hour
+comforting Mary or go off in a `huff', as the women call it,
+and be miserable for the trip.  So I said I'd see about it.  She gave me
+another hug and a kiss.  `Don't forget, Joe,' she said as I started.
+`Think it over on the road.'  I reckon she had the best of it that time.
+
+About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road,
+I heard some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack.
+I got a start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home.
+I remember, the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first
+five or six miles I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back --
+only I thought she'd laugh at me.
+
+`What is it, James?' I shouted, before he came up -- but I saw
+he was grinning.
+
+`Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.'
+
+`You clear off home!' I said, `or I'll lay the whip about your young hide;
+and don't come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.'
+
+`Well, you needn't get shirty with me!' he said.  `*I* don't want to have
+anything to do with a hoe.'  And he rode off.
+
+I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn't meant to.
+I knew of an independent man in that district who'd made his money
+out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring 'Fifties
+-- '54 -- when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight
+(in Sydney), on account of the gold rush.  We might get good rain now,
+and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in.
+If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket;
+if the crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary
+next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping,
+and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy.
+
+I got a couple of bags of potatoes -- we could use those that were left over;
+and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the blacksmith
+had lying in his yard and let me have cheap -- only about a pound more
+than I told Mary I gave for them.  When I took advice, I generally made
+the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding notions of my own.
+It was vanity, I suppose.  If the crop came on well I could claim
+the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway.  (It didn't strike me
+that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow against me,
+for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen shillings.)
+Anyway, I'd want a plough and harrow later on, and I might as well get it now;
+it would give James something to do.
+
+I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home;
+and the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat.
+And Mary was down on the bank superintending.  She'd got James
+with the trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off
+every stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in.
+Old Corny looked pretty grumpy on it -- he'd broken all his ploughshares
+but one, in the roots; and James didn't look much brighter.
+Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair of 'lastic-side boots of mine on,
+and the boots were covered with clay, for she'd been down hustling James
+to get a rotten old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round
+with his next furrow.
+
+`I thought I'd make the boots easy for you, Joe,' said Mary.
+
+`It's all right, Mary,' I said.  `I'm not going to growl.'  Those boots
+were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off
+before I got home.
+
+Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,
+but I said that would be all right -- we'd want a plough anyway.
+
+`I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,' she said.
+
+`I never said so.'
+
+`But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in,
+you didn't say you wouldn't bring it,' she said.
+
+I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing.
+When Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got
+a stump or two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end
+and added nearly an acre, and ploughed that.  James was all right
+at most Bushwork:  he'd bullock so long as the novelty lasted;
+he liked ploughing or fencing, or any graft he could make a show at.
+He didn't care for grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails.
+We sliced the potatoes of an evening -- and there was trouble
+between Mary and James over cutting through the `eyes'.
+There was no time for the hoe -- and besides it wasn't a novelty to James --
+so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me,
+and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground.
+I think I hilled those spuds, too, with furrows -- or a crop of Indian corn
+I put in later on.
+
+It rained heavens-hard for over a week:  we had regular showers all through,
+and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the district.
+I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak
+to see if the potatoes were up; and she'd write to me about them, on the road.
+I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes
+in the district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to
+twelve and fifteen shillings a hundredweight in that district.
+I made a few quid out of mine -- and saved carriage too,
+for I could take them out on the waggon.  Then Mary began to hear
+(through James) of a buggy that some one had for sale cheap, or a dogcart
+that somebody else wanted to get rid of -- and let me know about it,
+in an offhand way.
+
+
+
+   II.  Joe Wilson's Luck.
+
+
+There was good grass on the selection all the year.  I'd picked up
+a small lot -- about twenty head -- of half-starved steers
+for next to nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully,
+and my brother-in-law (Mary's sister's husband), who was running a butchery
+at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them.  His carts ran out
+twenty or thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on
+at th' Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal,
+and those places round there, and he was doing well.
+
+Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went --
+a tray-body arrangement, and she thought she'd do with that.
+`It would be better than the buggy, Joe,' she said --
+`there'd be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take
+butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.'
+Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector --
+who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way --
+wanted to get rid of.  James reckoned he could get them
+for less than half-a-crown a-head.  We'd had a heavy shower of rain,
+that came over the ranges and didn't seem to go beyond our boundaries.
+Mary said, `It's a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe.
+Better get those sheep and try your luck with them.  Leave some money with me,
+and I'll send James over for them.  Never mind about the buggy --
+we'll get that when we're on our feet.'
+
+So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain
+with that unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home.
+There were about two hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young
+and looked a good breed too, but so poor they could scarcely travel;
+they soon picked up, though.  The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back,
+and I think that my corner of the ridges was the only place
+where there was any grass to speak of.  We had another shower or two,
+and the grass held out.  Chaps began to talk of `Joe Wilson's luck'.
+
+I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn't time
+to get a shed or anything ready -- along towards Christmas
+there was a bit of a boom in the carrying line.  Wethers in wool were going
+as high as thirteen to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney,
+so I arranged to truck the sheep down from the river by rail,
+with another small lot that was going, and I started James off with them.
+He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James
+with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock,
+or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them
+as he reckoned I'd get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents
+and the auctioneer.  James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me.
+He was all there where riding was concerned.  I told him to let the sheep go.
+James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
+
+I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks -- one in James's name,
+to encourage him with the fencing.  There was a good slice of land
+in an angle between the range and the creek, farther down,
+which everybody thought belonged to Wall, the squatter,
+but Mary got an idea, and went to the local land office and found out
+that it was `unoccupied Crown land', and so I took it up on pastoral lease,
+and got a few more sheep -- I'd saved some of the best-looking ewes
+from the last lot.
+
+One evening -- I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire
+for myself -- Mary said, --
+
+`Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?'
+
+The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road,
+and I didn't think much of them.  The sons were all `bad-eggs',
+though the old woman and girls were right enough.
+
+`Well, what of that?' I said.  `They're up to their neck in debt,
+and camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy.  They do well
+to go flashing round in a double buggy.'
+
+`But that isn't what I was going to say,' said Mary.  `They want to sell
+their old single buggy, James says.  I'm sure you could get it
+for six or seven pounds; and you could have it done up.'
+
+`I wish James to the devil!' I said.  `Can't he find anything better to do
+than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?'
+
+`Well,' said Mary, `it was James who got the steers and the sheep.'
+
+Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn't mean --
+but couldn't forget in a hurry.  I remember I said something about Mary
+always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water
+and struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her,
+and she spoke of the `homes' she'd had since she was married.
+And that cut me deep.
+
+It was about the worst quarrel we had.  When she began to cry
+I got my hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek.
+I hated anything that looked like injustice -- I was so sensitive about it
+that it made me unjust sometimes.  I tried to think I was right,
+but I couldn't -- it wouldn't have made me feel any better
+if I could have thought so.  I got thinking of Mary's first year
+on the selection and the life she'd had since we were married.
+
+When I went in she'd cried herself to sleep.  I bent over and, `Mary,'
+I whispered.
+
+She seemed to wake up.
+
+`Joe -- Joe!' she said.
+
+`What is it Mary?' I said.
+
+`I'm pretty well sure that old Spot's calf isn't in the pen.
+Make James go at once!'
+
+Old Spot's last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her sleep,
+and dreaming she was back in her first year.
+
+We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn't feel
+like laughing just then.
+
+Later on in the night she called out in her sleep, --
+
+`Joe -- Joe!  Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister
+the varnish!'
+
+I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to Mary.
+
+Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea,
+and took Mary's breakfast in to her -- like I used to do, sometimes,
+when we were first married.  She didn't say anything --
+just pulled my head down and kissed me.
+
+When I was ready to start Mary said, --
+
+`You'd better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres
+cut and set.  They're ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up
+till he's tired of it.  The last time I was out with the children
+I had to knock one of them back with a stone:  there'll be an accident yet.'
+
+So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon,
+and mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way.
+It suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down
+in front of him.
+
+It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless --
+and I got thinking of old things.  Everything was going all right with me,
+but that didn't keep me from brooding sometimes -- trying to hatch out stones,
+like an old hen we had at home.  I think, taking it all round,
+I used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up -- and more generous.
+When I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said,
+`Lend me a pound-note, Joe,' than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy
+of careless chaps -- and lost mates that I wanted afterwards --
+and got the name of being mean.  When I got a good cheque
+I'd be as miserable as a miser over the first ten pounds I spent;
+but when I got down to the last I'd buy things for the house.
+And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a pound on anything.
+But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear
+I had of it -- and, besides, there was always before us all
+the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty
+as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks.
+
+I had a long yarn with Mary's sister and her husband that night in Gulgong,
+and it brightened me up.  I had a fancy that that sort of a brother-in-law
+made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one,
+and he said it was sympathy.  But while we were yarning
+I couldn't help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek,
+with no one to talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home,
+or Black Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy's father and mother),
+who weren't oversentimental.  Or maybe a selector's wife (the nearest
+was five miles away), who could talk only of two or three things --
+`lambin'' and `shearin'' and `cookin' for the men', and what she said
+to her old man, and what he said to her -- and her own ailments --
+over and over again.
+
+It's a wonder it didn't drive Mary mad! -- I know I could never listen
+to that woman more than an hour.  Mary's sister said, --
+
+`Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in
+with the children oftener.  Then she wouldn't feel the loneliness so much.'
+
+I said `Good night' then and turned in.  There was no getting away
+from that buggy.  Whenever Mary's sister started hinting about a buggy,
+I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
+
+
+
+  III.  The Ghost of Mary's Sacrifice.
+
+
+When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly's coach-shop to leave the cart.
+The Galletlys were good fellows:  there were two brothers --
+one was a saddler and harness-maker.  Big brown-bearded men --
+the biggest men in the district, 'twas said.
+
+Their old man had died lately and left them some money;
+they had men, and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined,
+or there was a special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen.
+I went into the painter's shop to have a look at a double buggy
+that Galletly had built for a man who couldn't pay cash for it
+when it was finished -- and Galletly wouldn't trust him.
+
+There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used
+to keep out the dust when they were varnishing.  It was a first-class
+piece of work -- pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete.
+If you only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in
+the shafts, and there you were.  There was a tilt over the front seat;
+if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back seat,
+and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy.  It would go
+near fifty pounds.
+
+While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the back.
+
+`Now, there's a chance for you, Joe!' he said.  `I saw you
+rubbing your head round that buggy the last time you were in.
+You wouldn't get a better one in the colonies, and you won't see
+another like it in the district again in a hurry -- for it doesn't pay
+to build 'em.  Now you're a full-blown squatter, and it's time
+you took little Mary for a fly round in her own buggy now and then,
+instead of having her stuck out there in the scrub, or jolting
+through the dust in a cart like some old Mother Flourbag.'
+
+He called her `little Mary' because the Galletly family had known her
+when she was a girl.
+
+I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again.  It was a great temptation.
+
+`Look here, Joe,' said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone.
+`I'll tell you what I'll do.  I'll let YOU have the buggy.
+You can take it out and send along a bit of a cheque
+when you feel you can manage it, and the rest later on, --
+a year will do, or even two years.  You've had a hard pull,
+and I'm not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.'
+
+They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men.
+I happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn't let the man
+he built the buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down,
+though he was a big-bug round there.  But that didn't make it easier for me.
+
+Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop.  He was rather quieter
+than his brother, but the two were very much alike.
+
+`Look here, Bob,' said Bill; `here's a chance for you
+to get rid of your harness.  Joe Wilson's going to take that buggy
+off my hands.'
+
+Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his pockets,
+rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his hand,
+and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did
+when he was thinking.  Presently he took his foot down,
+put his hand back in his pocket, and said to me, `Well, Joe, I've got
+a double set of harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy,
+and if you like I'll let you have it.  I suppose when Bill there
+has squeezed all he can out of you I'll stand a show of getting something.
+He's a regular Shylock, he is.'
+
+I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared
+at the buggy.
+
+`Come across to the Royal, Joe,' said Bob.
+
+But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said
+I'd get the wool up to the station first and think it over,
+and have a drink when I came back.
+
+I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn't seem good enough.
+I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to be fenced in,
+and the instalments on the selections.  I wanted lots of things
+that I couldn't well do without.  Then, again, the farther I got away
+from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it.
+I had two horses that would do; but I'd have to get another later on,
+and altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds.
+Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands.
+Besides, I wanted a spell.  If I got the buggy it would only mean
+an extra turn of hard graft for me.  No, I'd take Mary for a trip to Sydney,
+and she'd have to be satisfied with that.
+
+I'd got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white gates
+to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the station
+in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver
+and a lot of portmanteaus and rugs and things.  They were going
+to do the grand in Sydney over Christmas.  Now it was young Black
+who was so shook after Mary when she was in service with the Blacks
+before the old man died, and if I hadn't come along --
+and if girls never cared for vagabonds -- Mary would have been
+mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on her;
+and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there.
+She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up
+at the old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for,
+and seeing a play every night.  And I'd have been knocking around
+amongst the big stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death
+at the shanties.
+
+The Blacks didn't see me as I went by, ragged and dusty,
+and with an old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes.
+I didn't care a damn for them, or any one else, at most times,
+but I had moods when I felt things.
+
+One of Black's big wool teams was just coming away from the shed,
+and the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him,
+didn't seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the road.
+I stopped my horses and waited.  He looked at me and I looked at him -- hard.
+Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses.
+I'd given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn't forgotten it.
+And I felt then as if I wouldn't mind trying to give some one a hiding.
+
+The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that day.
+I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren creek
+in the Bush -- for it was little better -- with no one to speak to
+except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her on Sunday.
+I thought of the hardships she went through in the first year --
+that I haven't told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I away,
+and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and Jim sick;
+and of the loneliness she fought through out there.  I thought of Mary,
+outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a felt hat,
+and a pair of 'lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of a station manager
+as well as that of a housewife and mother.  And her cheeks were getting thin,
+and her colour was going:  I thought of the gaunt, brick-brown,
+saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I knew -- and some of them
+not much older than Mary.
+
+When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly
+at the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,*
+and I took the harness.  Then I shouted, to wet the bargain.
+When I was going, Bob said, `Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary's
+with the horses:  if the collars don't fit I'll fix up a pair of makeshifts,
+and alter the others.'  I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual,
+but that might have been the beer.
+
+--
+* `Shout', to buy a round of drinks.  -- A. L., 1997.
+--
+
+
+
+   IV.  The Buggy Comes Home.
+
+
+I `whipped the cat' a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I thought,
+what did it matter?  What was the use of grinding to save money
+until we were too old to enjoy it.  If we had to go down in the world again,
+we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray --
+there'd be some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy.
+When Mary had the buggy she wouldn't be tied down so much
+to that wretched hole in the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn't be off either.
+I could drive down to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary
+had some people, and leave the buggy and horses there,
+and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by the old coach-road,
+over the Blue Mountains:  it would be a grand drive.
+I thought best to tell Mary's sister at Gulgong about the buggy;
+I told her I'd keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home.
+She entered into the spirit of the thing, and said she'd give the world
+to be able to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes
+when she saw it; but she couldn't go, on account of a new baby she had.
+I was rather glad she couldn't, for it would spoil the surprise a little,
+I thought.  I wanted that all to myself.
+
+I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I'd finished
+telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn't
+bring the cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James,
+out on a log of the wood-heap, where we generally had
+our smokes and interviews, and told him all about the buggy.
+He whistled, then he said --
+
+`But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for?
+Why can't you tell Mary now?  It will cheer her up.  She's been
+pretty miserable since you've been away this trip.'
+
+`I want it to be a surprise,' I said.
+
+`Well, I've got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like this;
+but it 'ud take a lot to surprise me.  What am I to say to Mary
+about taking the two horses in?  I'll only want one to bring the cart out,
+and she's sure to ask.'
+
+`Tell her you're going to get yours shod.'
+
+`But he had a set of slippers only the other day.  She knows as much
+about horses as we do.  I don't mind telling a lie so long as a chap
+has only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it.
+But Mary asks so many questions.'
+
+`Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you go.'
+
+`Yes.  And she'll want to know what I want with two bridles.
+But I'll fix her -- YOU needn't worry.'
+
+`And, James,' I said, `get a chamois leather and sponge --
+we'll want 'em anyway -- and you might give the buggy a wash down
+in the creek, coming home.  It's sure to be covered with dust.'
+
+`Oh! -- orlright.'
+
+`And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening,
+or just about sunset.'
+
+`What for?'
+
+I'd thought it would be better to have the buggy there
+in the cool of the evening, when Mary would have time
+to get excited and get over it -- better than in the blazing hot morning,
+when the sun rose as hot as at noon, and we'd have the long broiling day
+before us.
+
+`What do you want me to come at sunset for?' asked James.  `Do you want me
+to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?'
+
+`Oh well,' I said, `get here at midnight if you like.'
+
+We didn't say anything for a while -- just sat and puffed at our pipes.
+Then I said, --
+
+`Well, what are you thinking about?'
+
+I'm thinking it's time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in
+through your old one too much,' and he got out of my reach and went to see
+about penning the calves.  Before we turned in he said, --
+
+`Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?'
+
+He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith
+in Cudgeegong had -- one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said, --
+
+`How much does Franca want for that gun?'
+
+`Five-ten; but I think he'd take my single barrel off it.
+Anyway, I can squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert
+for the single barrel.'  (Phil was his bosom chum.)
+
+`All right,' I said.  `Make the best bargain you can.'
+
+He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning,
+to get clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten
+to give him overnight.  He took his gun with him.
+
+I'd always thought that a man was a fool who couldn't keep a secret
+from his wife -- that there was something womanish about him.  I found out.
+Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever spent
+in my life.  It made me scotty with every one and everything;
+and poor Mary had to suffer for it.  I put in the time
+patching up the harness and mending the stockyard and the roof,
+and, the third morning, I rode up the ridges to look for trees
+for fencing-timber.  I remember I hurried home that afternoon
+because I thought the buggy might get there before me.
+
+At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
+
+`What's the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?' I asked.
+`There's only room for two, and what are you going to do with the children
+when we go out together?'
+
+`We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do.
+I can always fold up a blanket or 'possum rug for them to sit on.'
+
+But she didn't take half so much interest in buggy talk
+as she would have taken at any other time, when I didn't want her to.
+Women are aggravating that way.  But the poor girl was tired
+and not very well, and both the children were cross.  She did look knocked up.
+
+`We'll give the buggy a rest, Joe,' she said.  (I thought I heard it
+coming then.)  `It seems as far off as ever.  I don't know why
+you want to harp on it to-day.  Now, don't look so cross, Joe --
+I didn't mean to hurt you.  We'll wait until we can get a double buggy,
+since you're so set on it.  There'll be plenty of time when we're better off.'
+
+After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she'd washed up,
+we sat outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing,
+and I smoking and watching the track up the creek.
+
+`Why don't you talk, Joe?' asked Mary.  `You scarcely ever speak to me now:
+it's like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you.
+What makes you so cross, Joe?'
+
+`Well, I've got nothing to say.'
+
+`But you should find something.  Think of me -- it's very miserable for me.
+Have you anything on your mind?  Is there any new trouble?
+Better tell me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding
+and making both our lives miserable.  If you never tell one anything,
+how can you expect me to understand?'
+
+I said there was nothing the matter.
+
+`But there must be, to make you so unbearable.  Have you been drinking, Joe --
+or gambling?'
+
+I asked her what she'd accuse me of next.
+
+`And another thing I want to speak to you about,' she went on.
+`Now, don't knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient ----'
+
+`Well, what is it?'
+
+`I wish you wouldn't swear in the hearing of the children.
+Now, little Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart
+and it wouldn't run right, and -- and ----'
+
+`Well, what did he say?'
+
+`He -- he' (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh) --
+`he said "damn it!"'
+
+I had to laugh.  Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.
+
+`Never mind, old woman,' I said, putting an arm round her,
+for her mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing.
+`It won't be always like this.  Just wait till we're a bit better off.'
+
+Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)
+came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going
+to hit him -- poor little devil!  I never did.
+
+`What is it, Harry?' said Mary.
+
+`Buggy comin', I bin thinkit.'
+
+`Where?'
+
+He pointed up the creek.
+
+`Sure it's a buggy?'
+
+`Yes, missus.'
+
+`How many horses?'
+
+`One -- two.'
+
+We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could.
+Mary went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes --
+though the sun had gone -- and peered through between
+the eternal grey trunks of the stunted trees on the flat across the creek.
+Presently she jumped down and came running in.
+
+`There's some one coming in a buggy, Joe!' she cried, excitedly.
+`And both my white table-cloths are rough dry.  Harry! put two flat-irons
+down to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood.  It's lucky
+I kept those new sheets packed away.  Get up out of that, Joe!
+What are you sitting grinning like that for?  Go and get on another shirt.
+Hurry --  Why!  It's only James -- by himself.'
+
+She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.
+
+`Joe!' she said, `whose buggy is that?'
+
+`Well, I suppose it's yours,' I said.
+
+She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again.
+James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up
+close to the house.
+
+`Oh, Joe! what have you done?' cried Mary.  `Why, it's a new double buggy!'
+Then she rushed at me and hugged my head.  `Why didn't you tell me, Joe?
+You poor old boy! -- and I've been nagging at you all day!'
+and she hugged me again.
+
+James got down and started taking the horses out -- as if it was
+an everyday occurrence.  I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out
+from under the seat.  He'd stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose
+that's what made him grumpy.  Mary stood on the verandah,
+with her eyes twice as big as usual, and breathing hard --
+taking the buggy in.
+
+James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves
+and went down to the dam for a drink.  `You'd better look under the seats,'
+growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.
+
+Mary dived for the buggy.  There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer
+in a candle-box from Galletly -- James said that Galletly's men
+had a gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant
+they cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a `little bit of a ham'
+from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he'd `cured himself' --
+it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of baker's bread,
+a cake, and a dozen yards of something `to make up for the children',
+from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water cod,
+that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie river,
+and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit
+for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was
+a jar of preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) (`for the lil' boy'),
+and a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle (`for lil' girl')
+from Sun Tong Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong -- James was chummy
+with Sun Tong Lee, and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick
+when he was short of money.  And James said that the people
+would have loaded the buggy with `rubbish' if he'd waited.
+They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting on -- and these things
+did me good.
+
+We got the things inside, and I don't think either of us knew
+what we were saying or doing for the next half-hour.
+Then James put his head in and said, in a very injured tone, --
+
+`What about my tea?  I ain't had anything to speak of since I left Cudgeegong.
+I want some grub.'
+
+Then Mary pulled herself together.
+
+`You'll have your tea directly,' she said.  `Pick up that harness at once,
+and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back that buggy
+under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it presently --
+and we'll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to keep the sun off.
+And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the cart, --
+we can't have that buggy to knock about in.'
+
+`All right,' said James -- `anything!  Only get me some grub.'
+
+Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn't keep till the morning,
+and rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot -- James growling
+all the time -- and got out some crockery she had packed away
+that had belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style
+that made James uncomfortable.
+
+`I want some grub -- not a blooming banquet!' he said.  And he growled a lot
+because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife,
+`and that sort of Tommy-rot.'  When he'd finished he took his gun,
+and the black boy, and the dogs, and went out 'possum-shooting.
+
+When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and made me
+get up alongside her.  We hadn't had such a comfortable seat for years;
+but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to feel
+like a pair of fools up there.
+
+Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked more
+than we'd done for years -- and there was a good deal of `Do you remember?'
+in it -- and I think we got to understand each other better that night.
+
+And at last Mary said, `Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night just --
+just like I did the day we were married.'
+
+And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.
+
+
+
+
+The Writer Wants to Say a Word.
+
+
+
+In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened to be
+`Brighten's Sister-in-law', I had an idea of making Joe Wilson
+a strong character.  Whether he is or not, the reader must judge.
+It seems to me that the man's natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature,
+`softness', or weakness -- call it which you like -- developed as I wrote on.
+
+I know Joe Wilson very well.  He has been through deep trouble
+since the day he brought the double buggy to Lahey's Creek.
+I met him in Sydney the other day.  Tall and straight yet --
+rather straighter than he had been -- dressed in a comfortable,
+serviceable sac suit of `saddle-tweed', and wearing a new sugar-loaf,
+cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the hurrying street people calmly
+as though they were sheep of which he was not in charge,
+and which were not likely to get `boxed' with his.  Not the worst way
+in which to regard the world.
+
+He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush.
+He is a young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary
+a long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head,
+and the process would leave him pretty bald.
+
+In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete
+the story of his life.
+
+
+
+
+
+        Part II.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Golden Graveyard.
+
+
+
+Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an `old hand' (transported convict)
+some said.  The prefix `mother' in Australia mostly means `old hag',
+and is applied in that sense.  In early boyhood we understood,
+from old diggers, that Mother Middleton -- in common with most other
+`old hands' -- had been sent out for `knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.'
+We had never seen a donkey.  She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper
+when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees,
+and swore on most occasions.  There was a fearsome yarn,
+which impressed us greatly as boys, to the effect that once,
+in her best (or worst) days, she had pulled a mounted policeman off his horse,
+and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle, which she used
+for poking down clothes in her boiler.  She said that he had insulted her.
+
+She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any Bushman;
+she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's;
+she had often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband,
+when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate,
+as he often had to do -- because of her mainly.  Old diggers said
+that it was lovely to see how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket
+full of clay and `tailings', and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist.
+Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough
+to seek a second row with Mother Middleton.  Her voice could be heard
+right across Golden Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument
+or in friendly greeting.  She came to the old Pipeclay diggings
+with the `rough crowd' (mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays
+were worked out, she went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last
+of the great alluvial or `poor-man's' goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay
+when the Log Paddock goldfield `broke out', adjacent to the old fields,
+and so helped prove the truth of the old digger's saying,
+that no matter how thoroughly ground has been worked, there is always room
+for a new Ballarat.
+
+Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
+in the little old cemetery -- appertaining to the old farming town
+on the river, about four miles away -- which adjoined the district racecourse,
+in the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat.  She conducted the funeral.
+Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the effect
+that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think,
+was unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way,
+and was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him.
+She then lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank,
+and did sewing and washing for single diggers.
+
+I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation,
+carried on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen,
+who was hopelessly slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
+
+`Why don't you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle
+on good land, Peter Olsen?  You're only slaving your stomach out here.'
+(She didn't say stomach.)
+
+*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife).  `But then
+you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton.  I wouldn't like to take her
+out in the Bush.'
+
+*Mrs Middleton*.  `Delicate, be damned! she's only shamming!'
+(at her loudest.)  `Why don't you kick her off the bed and the book
+out of her hand, and make her go to work?  She's as delicate as I am.
+Are you a man, Peter Olsen, or a ----?'
+
+This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
+
+Long Paddock was `petering'.  There were a few claims still being worked
+down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps
+of clay and gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes,
+advertised deep sinking; and little, yellow, clay-stained streams,
+running towards the creek over the drought-parched surface, told of trouble
+with the water below -- time lost in baling and extra expense in timbering.
+And diggers came up with their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy,
+and dripping with wet `mullock'.
+
+Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were
+a few prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst
+the ridges round Pipeclay.  Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
+
+Dave Regan -- lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently --
+a bit of a `Flash Jack'; and Andy Page -- a character like
+what `Kit' (in the `Old Curiosity Shop') might have been
+after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial experience.
+These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for it was all
+shallow sinking where they worked.  They were poking down pot-holes
+in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the sinking
+was from ten to fifteen feet.
+
+Dave had theories -- `ideers' or `notions' he called them; Jim Bently
+laid claim to none -- he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog.
+Andy Page -- by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan --
+was simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions,
+he was apt to be obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest,
+and he had reverence for higher things.
+
+Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon,
+and next morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole
+as close to the cemetery fence as he dared.  It was a nice quiet spot
+in the thick scrub, about three panels along the fence
+from the farthest corner post from the road.  They bottomed here at nine feet,
+and found encouraging indications.  They `drove' (tunnelled) inwards
+at right angles to the fence, and at a point immediately beneath it
+they were `making tucker'; a few feet farther and they were making wages.
+The old alluvial bottom sloped gently that way.  The bottom here, by the way,
+was shelving, brownish, rotten rock.
+
+Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave's drive,
+lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
+James Middleton, with older graves close at each end.  A grave was supposed
+to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been conscientious.
+The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.
+
+Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
+timbering -- i.e., putting in a sapling prop -- here and there
+where he worked wide; but the `payable dirt' ran in under the cemetery,
+and in no other direction.
+
+Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after tea,
+as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
+sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim,
+and started to tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
+
+This was Dave's theory -- drawn from a little experience and many long yarns
+with old diggers: --
+
+He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course,
+covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains
+to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter
+running into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying
+patches and streaks of `wash' or gold-bearing dirt.  If he went on
+he might strike it rich at any stroke of his pick; he might strike
+the rich `lead' which was supposed to exist round there.
+(There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere.
+`There's gold in them ridges yet -- if a man can only git at it,'
+says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
+
+Dave might strike a ledge, `pocket', or `pot-hole' holding wash
+rich with gold.  He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery,
+found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard.
+He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few `colours',
+and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery
+towards which all indications were now leading him.  He had sunk shafts
+across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking
+twenty feet and not a colour of gold.  Probably the whole of the ground
+under the cemetery was rich -- maybe the richest in the district.
+The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers -- besides,
+the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched
+the alluvial bottom.  There was nothing strange in the fact
+that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district
+had thought of the cemetery and racecourse.  Old brick chimneys and houses,
+the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from
+sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill
+in subsequent years and had yielded `payable gold'.  Fossicking Chinamen
+were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.
+
+Dave reckoned to strike the `lead', or a shelf or ledge
+with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet
+within the cemetery.  But a theory in alluvial gold-mining
+was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects.
+The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic disturbances --
+`the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that sort of old thing --
+upset everything.  You might follow good gold along a ledge,
+just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be
+a hundred feet or so under your nose.
+
+Had the `ground' in the cemetery been `open' Dave would have gone to the point
+under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked
+the ground.  It would have been the quickest and easiest way -- it would have
+saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along
+a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence.  But it was very doubtful
+if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery
+even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it,
+and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers --
+which last was what Dave wished for least of all.  He wanted,
+above all things, to keep the thing shady.  Then, again,
+the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town,
+rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong
+for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.
+
+`We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
+
+He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent.
+Jim grumbled, in conclusion, --
+
+`Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton.  It's the shortest
+and straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
+
+Then there was another trouble.  How were they to account
+for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be
+the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel
+for shallow sinkings?  Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt
+away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by;
+but that would double the labour, and might lead to detection
+sooner than anything else.  There were boys 'possum-hunting on those flats
+every night.  Then Dave got an idea.
+
+There was supposed to exist -- and it has since been proved --
+another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field,
+and several had tried for it.  One, the town watchmaker,
+had sunk all his money in `duffers', trying for the second bottom.
+It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet --
+on solid rock, I suppose.  This watchmaker, an Italian,
+would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever
+he came to a little `colour'-showing shelf, or false bottom,
+thirty or forty feet down -- he'd go rooting round and spoil the shaft,
+and then start to sink another.  It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense
+to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom,
+and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms,
+or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
+He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him.
+And the last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground
+like a sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place
+to put down a deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore.
+But I'm right off the line again.
+
+`Old Pinter', Ballarat digger -- his theory on second and other bottoms
+ran as follows: --
+
+`Ye see, THIS here grass surface -- this here surface with
+trees an' grass on it, that we're livin' on, has got nothin' to do with us.
+This here bottom in the shaller sinkin's that we're workin' on
+is the slope to the bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface
+about the time that men was missin' links.  The false bottoms,
+thirty or forty feet down, kin be said to have been on the surface
+about the time that men was monkeys.  The SECON' bottom --
+eighty or a hundred feet down -- was on the surface about the time
+when men was frogs.  Now ----'
+
+But it's with the missing-link surface we have to do,
+and had the friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to
+they would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
+
+`We'll give out we're tryin' for the second bottom,' said Dave Regan.
+`We'll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don't want air
+in shallow sinkings.'
+
+`And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole
+and see the bottom,' said Jim Bently.
+
+`We must keep 'em away,' said Dave.  `Tar the bottom, or cover it
+with tarred canvas, to make it black.  Then they won't see it.
+There's not many diggers left, and the rest are going;
+they're chucking up the claims in Log Paddock.  Besides, I could get drunk
+and pick rows with the rest and they wouldn't come near me.
+The farmers ain't in love with us diggers, so they won't bother us.
+No man has a right to come poking round another man's claim:
+it ain't ettykit -- I'll root up that old ettykit and stand to it --
+it's rather worn out now, but that's no matter.  We'll shift the tent
+down near the claim and see that no one comes nosing round on Sunday.
+They'll think we're only some more second-bottom lunatics,
+like Francea [the mining watchmaker].  We're going to get our fortune
+out from under that old graveyard, Jim.  You leave it all to me
+till you're born again with brains.'
+
+Dave's schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often
+came to the ground.  He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,
+bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass,
+which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party
+(that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down
+about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated exertion,
+until the slack was taken up and the rope lifted the bucket
+from the shallow bottom.
+
+`It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse,
+but we can't afford them just yet,' said Dave.
+
+But I'm a little behind.  They drove straight in under the cemetery,
+finding good wash all the way.  The edge of Jimmy Middleton's box
+appeared in the top corner of the `face' (the working end) of the drive.
+They went under the butt-end of the grave.  They shoved up
+the end of the shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident
+which might disturb the mound above; they puddled -- i.e., rammed --
+stiff clay up round the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down;
+and having given the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar,
+they got over, or rather under, an unpleasant matter.
+
+Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below,
+and grumbled a good deal.  `Blowed if I ever thought I'd be rooting for gold
+down among the blanky dead men,' he said.  But the dirt panned out better
+every dish they washed, and Dave worked the `wash' out right and left
+as they drove.
+
+But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man
+whom Dave wished to see round there -- `Old Pinter' (James Poynton),
+Californian and Victorian digger of the old school.  He'd been prospecting
+down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder -- threaded through the eye
+in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that hung behind --
+and his gold-dish under his arm.
+
+I mightn't get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish
+and what gold-washing is.  A gold washing-dish is a flat dish --
+nearer the shape of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else
+I have seen in England, or the dish we used for setting milk --
+I don't know whether the same is used here:  the gold-dish measures,
+say, eighteen inches across the top.  You get it full of wash dirt,
+squat down at a convenient place at the edge of the water-hole,
+where there is a rest for the dish in the water just below its own depth.
+You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak a while,
+then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay dissolves,
+dish it off as muddy water or mullock.  You are careful
+to wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them.
+And so till all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing
+but clean gravel in the bottom of the dish.  You work this off carefully,
+turning the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it.
+It requires some practice.  The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish,
+by its own weight.  At last there is only a little half-moon
+of sand or fine gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish --
+you work the dish slanting from you.  Presently the gold,
+if there was any in the dirt, appears in `colours', grains, or little nuggets
+along the base of the half-moon of sand.  The more gold there is in the dirt,
+or the coarser the gold is, the sooner it appears.  A practised digger
+can work off the last speck of gravel, without losing a `colour',
+by just working the water round and off in the dish.  Also a careful digger
+could throw a handful of gold in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off
+in dishfuls, recover practically every colour.
+
+The gold-washing `cradle' is a box, shaped something like a boot,
+and the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby's cradle,
+and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you'll put your foot
+into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom;
+the clay and gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it,
+and the cradle rocked smartly.  The finer gravel and the mullock
+goes through and down over a sloping board covered with blanket,
+and with ledges on it to catch the gold.  The dish was mostly used
+for prospecting; large quantities of wash dirt was put through
+the horse-power `puddling-machine', which there isn't room to describe here.
+
+`'Ello, Dave!' said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise
+at the size of Dave's waste-heap.  `Tryin' for the second bottom?'
+
+`Yes,' said Dave, guttural.
+
+Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap
+and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he resembled.
+Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his knees,
+he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
+
+Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
+over the graveyard.
+
+`Tryin' for a secon' bottom,' he reflected absently.  `Eh, Dave?'
+
+Dave only stood and looked black.
+
+Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his chin-feathers,
+which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held horizontally.
+
+`Kullers is safe,' reflected Pinter.
+
+`All right?' snapped Dave.  `I suppose we must let him into it.'
+
+`Kullers' was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter's mate
+for some time -- Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant
+was that Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
+
+Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
+Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his shoulders.
+Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along the other fence,
+the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.  He lost no time
+for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and started to drive
+straight for the point under the cemetery for which Dave was making;
+he gave out that he had bottomed on good `indications'
+running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the fence.
+Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan -- partly for the sake of appearances,
+but mainly because his and Jim's lively imaginations made the air
+in the drive worse than it really was.  A `fan' is a thing
+like a paddle-wheel rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle,
+and something the shape of a shoe, but rounded over the top.
+There is a small grooved wheel on the axle of the fan outside,
+and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is carried over this wheel
+and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden driving-wheel
+rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle to turn.
+That's how the thing is driven.  A wind-chute, like an endless pillow-slip,
+made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of the fan-box,
+and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive --
+this carries the fresh air into the workings.
+
+Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning
+a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to work.
+He felt mad that it hadn't struck him sooner.
+
+Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet place
+in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning,
+while Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently
+to watch their tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred,
+and then dropped down into Pinter's hole and saw at a glance
+what he was up to.
+
+After that Dave lost no time:  he drove straight on,
+encouraged by the thuds of Pinter's and Kullers' picks drawing nearer.
+They would strike his tunnel at right angles.  Both parties worked long hours,
+only knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy,
+and throw themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours' sleep.
+Pinter had practical experience and a line clear of graves,
+and he made good time.  The two parties now found it more comfortable
+to be not on speaking terms.  Individually they grew furtive,
+and began to feel criminal like -- at least Dave and Jim did.
+They'd start if a horse stumbled through the Bush, and expected to see
+a mounted policeman ride up at any moment and hear him ask questions.
+They had driven about thirty-five feet when, one Saturday afternoon,
+the strain became too great, and Dave and Jim got drunk.
+The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning they felt too shaky
+to come to work and had more drink.  On Monday afternoon, Kullers,
+whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the face of his drive
+into the wall of Dave's, about four feet from the end of it:
+the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.
+They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party
+take the offensive.
+
+Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky.
+Jim went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it
+in the spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close
+to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness
+in the air.  He started picking away at the `face' and scraping the clay
+back from under his feet, and didn't hear Kullers come to work.
+Kullers came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff.
+He stuck his great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes
+rolling horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw --
+
+`'Ullo! you dar'?'
+
+No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him
+quicker than Jim came out of his.  He scrambled up the shaft
+by the foot-holes, and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
+
+`What's the matter?' asked Dave.  `Have you seen a ghost?'
+
+`I've seen the -- the devil!' gasped Jim.  `I'm -- I'm done with this here
+ghoul business.'
+
+The parties got on speaking terms again.  Dave was very warm,
+but Jim's language was worse.  Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively
+till the other party cooled.  There was no appealing to the Commissioner
+for goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields
+or otherwise -- so they did the only thing possible and sensible,
+they joined forces and became `Poynton, Regan, & Party'.
+They agreed to work the ground from the separate shafts,
+and decided to go ahead, irrespective of appearances, and get as much dirt
+out and cradled as possible before the inevitable exposure came along.
+They found plenty of `payable dirt', and soon the drive ended in
+a cluster of roomy chambers.  They timbered up many coffins of various ages,
+burnt tarred canvas and brown paper, and kept the fan going.
+Outside they paid the storekeeper with difficulty and talked of hard times.
+
+But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership,
+they got a bad scare.  Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt
+for all they were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who
+should march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself.
+She was a hard woman to look at.  She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline
+and her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,
+she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink
+to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row.
+She had a stride like a grenadier.  A digger had once measured her step
+by her footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter:
+it measured three feet from toe to heel.
+
+She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy
+bunch of flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man
+banging his fist down on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out.
+The diggers were dirt beneath her feet.  Presently they heard her drive on
+in her spring-cart on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
+
+It was afternoon.  Dave and Pinter were feeling tired,
+and were just deciding to knock off work for that day
+when they heard a scuffling in the direction of the different shafts,
+and both Jim and Kullers dropped down and bundled in in a great hurry.
+Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if there was something funny,
+and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
+
+`What's up now?' demanded Dave apprehensively.
+
+`Mother Middleton,' said Jim; `she's blind mad drunk,
+and she's got a bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other,
+that she's bringing out for some one.'
+
+`How the hell did she drop to it?' exclaimed Pinter.
+
+`Dunno,' said Jim.  `Anyway she's coming for us.  Listen to her!'
+
+They didn't have to listen hard.  The language which came down the shaft --
+they weren't sure which one -- and along the drives was enough
+to scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.
+
+`Why didn't you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,
+instead of giving her a lead here?' asked Dave.
+
+Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
+
+Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft -- it was Pinter's --
+and they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin
+in spite of themselves, for they knew she couldn't hurt them from the surface,
+and that, though she had been a working digger herself,
+she couldn't fill both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
+
+`I wonder which shaf' she'll come down,' asked Kullers
+in a tone befitting the place and occasion.
+
+`You'd better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,' said Dave,
+`and Jim and I'll watch mine.'
+
+`I -- I won't,' said Pinter hurriedly.  `I'm -- I'm a modest man.'
+
+Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter's shaft.
+
+`She's thrown her bottle down,' said Dave.
+
+Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity,
+and returned hurriedly.
+
+`She's broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive,
+and I believe she's coming down.'
+
+`Her crinoline'll handicap her,' said Pinter vacantly, `that's a comfort.'
+
+`She's took it off!' said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter's drive,
+they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped stocking,
+then a section of scarlet petticoat.
+
+`Lemme out!' roared Pinter, lurching forward and making
+a swimming motion with his hands in the direction of Dave's drive.
+Kullers was already gone, and Jim well on the way.  Dave, lanky and awkward,
+scrambled up the shaft last.  Mrs Middleton made good time,
+considering she had the darkness to face and didn't know the workings,
+and when Dave reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins,
+and the blood ran from a nasty scratch.  But he didn't wait to argue
+over the price of a new pair of trousers.  He made off through the Bush
+in the direction of an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.
+
+`She's too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,' said Dave.
+`But to-morrow she'll bring the neighbourhood down on us.'
+
+`And she's enough, without the neighbourhood,' reflected Pinter.
+
+Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
+and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn't carry,
+they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
+
+
+
+
+The Chinaman's Ghost.
+
+
+
+`Simple as striking matches,' said Dave Regan, Bushman;
+`but it gave me the biggest scare I ever had -- except, perhaps,
+the time I stumbled in the dark into a six-feet digger's hole,
+which might have been eighty feet deep for all I knew when I was falling.
+(There was an eighty-feet shaft left open close by.)
+
+`It was the night of the day after the Queen's birthday.
+I was sinking a shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page
+on the old Redclay goldfield, and we camped in a tent on the creek.
+Jim and me went to some races that was held at Peter Anderson's pub.,
+about four miles across the ridges, on Queen's birthday.
+Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and we'd disgusted him
+the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he stayed at home
+and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic book.
+(He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare time.)
+
+`Jim and me had a pretty high time.  We all got pretty tight after the races,
+and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me --
+I don't remember which.  We were old chums, and we nearly always
+wanted to fight each other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight
+if we weren't stopped.  I remember once Jim got maudlin drunk
+and begged and prayed of me to fight him, as if he was praying for his life.
+Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver, used to say that Jim and me must be related,
+else we wouldn't hate each other so much when we were tight and truthful.
+
+`Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
+early in the evening.  My dog went home with him too; I must have been
+carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.
+
+`Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home.
+I'd lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his,
+that he'd worn on Ballarat he said:  it was a hard, straw, flat,
+broad-brimmed affair, and fitted my headache pretty tight.
+Peter gave me a small flask of whisky to help me home.  I had to go
+across some flats and up a long dark gully called Murderer's Gully,
+and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap, and down the ridge and gullies
+to Redclay Creek.  The lonely flats were covered with blue-grey gum bush,
+and looked ghostly enough in the moonlight, and I was pretty shaky,
+but I had a pull at the flask and a mouthful of water at a creek and felt
+right enough.  I began to whistle, and then to sing:  I never used to sing
+unless I thought I was a couple of miles out of earshot of any one.
+
+`Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course
+it was haunted.  Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark;
+and even me, when I'd grown up, I'd hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,
+and walk quick going along there at night-time.  We're all afraid of ghosts,
+but we won't let on.
+
+`Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the track,
+and it gave me a jump, I promise you.  It looked like two corpses
+laid out naked.  I finished the whisky and started up over the gap.
+All of a sudden a great `old man' kangaroo went across the track
+with a thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me.
+Then the naked, white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree,
+where some one had stripped off a sheet of bark, started out
+from a bend in the track in a shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk.
+I was pretty shaky before I started.  There was a Chinaman's grave
+close by the track on the top of the gap.  An old chow had lived
+in a hut there for many years, and fossicked on the old diggings,
+and one day he was found dead in the hut, and the Government
+gave some one a pound to bury him.  When I was a nipper
+we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese
+because the bones hadn't been sent home to China.  It was a lonely,
+ghostly place enough.
+
+`It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the flats
+and up the gully -- not a breath of air; but now as I got higher
+I saw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day, and felt the breath
+of a warm breeze on my face.  When I got into the top of the gap
+the first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes
+over the spot where the Chinaman's grave was, and I stood staring at it
+with both eyes.  It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it
+was a white bullock, and I felt relieved.  I'd hardly felt relieved when,
+all at once, there came a "pat-pat-pat" of running feet close behind me!
+I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood
+staring all ways for Sunday, there came a "pat-pat", then a pause,
+and then "pat-pat-pat-pat" behind me again:  it was like some one
+dodging and running off that time.  I started to walk down the track
+pretty fast, but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat",
+it was close behind me again.  I jerked my eyes over my shoulder
+but kept my legs going.  There was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw
+something slip into the Bush to the right.  It must have been the moonlight
+on the moving boughs; there was a good breeze blowing now.  I got down
+to a more level track, and was making across a spur to the main road,
+when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again.
+Then I began to run -- and it began to run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me
+all the time.  I hadn't time to look round.  Over the spur and down the siding
+and across the flat to the road I went as fast as I could split my legs apart.
+I had a scared idea that I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams",
+and that frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done.
+I stumbled a few times, and saved myself, but, just before I reached the road,
+I fell slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel.
+I thought I'd broken both my wrists.  I stayed for a moment
+on my hands and knees, quaking and listening, squinting round
+like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor see anything.  I picked myself up,
+and had hardly got on one end, when "pat-pat!" it was after me again.
+I must have run a mile and a half altogether that night.
+It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the camp,
+and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up in my throat.
+I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster.  The footsteps stopped,
+then something about the hat touched my fingers, and I stared at it --
+and the thing dawned on me.  I hadn't noticed at Peter Anderson's --
+my head was too swimmy to notice anything.  It was an old hat of the style
+that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose ribbon ends,
+three or four inches long, from the band behind.  As long as I walked quietly
+through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails didn't flap,
+but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were still
+according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat on the brim.
+And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being tight on my head,
+the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw sounded loud of course.
+
+`I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool down,
+and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had
+a long drink of water.
+
+`"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mighty thirsty.
+Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"
+
+`I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my bunk,
+and had a good rest.'
+
+
+
+
+The Loaded Dog.
+
+
+
+Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek
+in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist
+in the vicinity.  There is always a rich reef supposed to exist
+in the vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
+beneath the surface, and in which direction.  They had struck
+some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling.
+They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.
+They'd make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder
+in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound
+round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the cartridge in melted tallow
+to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible,
+drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram
+with stiff clay and broken brick.  Then they'd light the fuse
+and get out of the hole and wait.  The result was usually an ugly pot-hole
+in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
+
+There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
+and tailers.  The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
+Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged
+by a `nibble' or a `bite' now and then -- say once in twenty minutes.
+The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish
+when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter,
+and these fish wouldn't bite.  However, the creek was low,
+just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it
+to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet,
+and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up
+the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface.
+There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head,
+and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said.  Andy took off his boots,
+tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud
+with his feet, and he knew it.  Dave scooped one out with his hand
+and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed
+up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said,
+like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights --
+only the toothache pain had a `burred edge', Dave said.
+
+Dave got an idea.
+
+`Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?' he said.
+`I'll try it.'
+
+He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.
+Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable,
+or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates
+if they weren't.
+
+He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock.
+Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river.
+The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot
+piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag
+firmly to it with whipcord.  The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water
+with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface,
+ready for lighting.  Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees'-wax
+to make it water-tight.  `We'll have to leave it some time
+before we light it,' said Dave, `to give the fish time
+to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again;
+so we'll want it well water-tight.'
+
+Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip
+of sail canvas -- that they used for making water-bags --
+to increase the force of the explosion, and round that he pasted
+layers of stiff brown paper -- on the plan of the sort of fireworks
+we called `gun-crackers'.  He let the paper dry in the sun,
+then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses of canvas over it,
+and bound the thing from end to end with stout fishing-line.  Dave's schemes
+were elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to nothing.
+The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now -- a formidable bomb;
+but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure.  Andy sewed on another layer of canvas,
+dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire
+round it as an afterthought, dipped it in tallow again,
+and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd know where to find it,
+and wound the fuse loosely round it.  Then he went to the camp-fire
+to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a billy,
+and to see about frying some chops for dinner.  Dave and Jim were at work
+in the claim that morning.
+
+They had a big black young retriever dog -- or rather an overgrown pup,
+a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
+and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip.
+Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of appreciation
+of his own silliness.  He seemed to take life, the world,
+his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke.
+He'd retrieve anything:  he carted back most of the camp rubbish
+that Andy threw away.  They had a cat that died in hot weather,
+and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning
+the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so,
+and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps,
+where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise
+and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere
+of the summer sunrise.  He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming;
+he'd jump in after them, and take their hands in his mouth,
+and try to swim out with them, and scratch their naked bodies with his paws.
+They loved him for his good-heartedness and his foolishness,
+but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.
+
+He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge,
+and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon
+he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on,
+and to come home to dinner with them.  Andy saw them coming,
+and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire.  Andy was cook to-day;
+Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do
+in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be ready.
+The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.
+
+Andy's brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught
+by the glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes,
+and it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink the cartridge
+packed with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to increase
+the force of the explosion.  He may have been all out,
+from a scientific point of view, but the notion looked all right to him.
+Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in their `damned silliness'.
+Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin -- the sort with the little
+tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the convenience of pouring out
+the treacle -- and it struck him that this would have made
+the best kind of cartridge-case:  he would only have had
+to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck,
+and cork and seal it with bees'-wax.  He was turning to suggest this to Dave,
+when Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing --
+and bolted.  He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan
+spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning.
+Jim Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave.  Andy stood stock-still,
+staring after them.
+
+`Run, Andy! run!' they shouted back at him.  `Run!!!  Look behind you,
+you fool!'  Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him,
+was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth -- wedged into
+his broadest and silliest grin.  And that wasn't all.
+The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse
+had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze;
+Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well,
+and now it was hissing and spitting properly.
+
+Andy's legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,
+and he made after Dave and Jim.  And the dog followed Andy.
+
+Dave and Jim were good runners -- Jim the best -- for a short distance;
+Andy was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.
+The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be
+to find his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic.  Dave and Jim
+kept shouting back, `Don't foller us! don't foller us, you coloured fool!'
+but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged.  They could never explain,
+any more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran,
+Dave keeping in Jim's track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave,
+and the dog circling round Andy -- the live fuse swishing in all directions
+and hissing and spluttering and stinking.  Jim yelling to Dave
+not to follow him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction --
+to `spread out', and Andy roaring at the dog to go home.
+Then Andy's brain began to work, stimulated by the crisis:
+he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged;
+he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again.
+The retriever saw that he'd made a mistake about Andy,
+and left him and bounded after Dave.  Dave, who had the presence of mind
+to think that the fuse's time wasn't up yet, made a dive and a grab
+for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round
+snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could:
+the dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it.
+Dave roared and cursed at the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended,
+left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead.  Jim swung to a sapling
+and went up it like a native bear; it was a young sapling,
+and Jim couldn't safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the ground.
+The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it was a kitten,
+at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round
+under Jim.  The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark --
+he was all right now -- it was Jim who was out for a spree.
+The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute.
+Jim tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked.
+Jim fell on his feet and ran.  The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed.
+It all took but a very few moments.  Jim ran to a digger's hole,
+about ten feet deep, and dropped down into it -- landing on soft mud --
+and was safe.  The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge,
+for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark
+to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
+
+`Go away, Tommy,' said Jim feebly, `go away.'
+
+The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now;
+Andy had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face,
+having suddenly remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war
+with a circle of Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed)
+round a newly-arrived shell.
+
+There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road,
+not far from the claim.  Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster
+in his stimulated imagination than it did in reality,
+so he made for the shanty.  There were several casual Bushmen
+on the verandah and in the bar; Dave rushed into the bar,
+banging the door to behind him.  `My dog!' he gasped,
+in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, `the blanky retriever --
+he's got a live cartridge in his mouth ----'
+
+The retriever, finding the front door shut against him,
+had bounded round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling
+in the doorway leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth
+and the fuse spluttering.  They burst out of that bar.
+Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young dog,
+he tried to make friends with everybody.
+
+The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
+There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
+on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.
+Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door --
+the publican cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones,
+and wanting to know what the hell he came here for.
+
+The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles,
+but, luckily for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog
+sulking and nursing his nastiness under there -- a sneaking, fighting,
+thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison.
+Tommy saw his danger -- he'd had experience from this dog --
+and started out and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge.
+Half-way across the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him.
+Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush.
+The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back
+to see what he had dropped.
+
+Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners
+and under the buildings -- spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs,
+mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs --
+that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish
+without explaining -- and yapping, yelping small fry.
+They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog,
+for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something
+which might be good for a dog to eat.  He sniffed at the cartridge twice,
+and was just taking a third cautious sniff when ----
+
+It was very good blasting powder -- a new brand that Dave had recently got
+up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made.
+Andy was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy
+as the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.
+
+Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again.
+When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog
+were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if
+he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust
+under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
+Several saddle-horses, which had been `hanging-up' round the verandah,
+were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust,
+with broken bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts,
+from every point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs.
+Two of them went home, to the place where they were born,
+thirty miles away, and reached it the same night and stayed there;
+it was not till towards evening that the rest came back cautiously
+to make inquiries.  One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of 'em
+looked more or less singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog,
+who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of him along on one leg,
+had reason to be glad that he'd saved up the other leg all those years,
+for he needed it now.  There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty
+for years afterwards, who couldn't stand the smell of a gun being cleaned.
+He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog,
+in the cartridge.  Bushmen said that it was amusing
+to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose:
+he wouldn't wait to bring his solitary eye to bear --
+he'd take to the Bush and stay out all night.
+
+For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen
+round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall,
+or rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking.
+There were two white women in hysterics at the house,
+and a half-caste rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water.
+The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her squawks,
+to `hold up for my sake, Mary, or I'll lam the life out of ye.'
+
+Dave decided to apologise later on, `when things had settled a bit,'
+and went back to camp.  And the dog that had done it all,
+`Tommy', the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave
+and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him,
+smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability,
+and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he'd had.
+
+Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops,
+while Dave went to help Jim out of the hole.
+
+And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen,
+riding lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl
+and with just a hint of the nasal twang --
+
+`'El-lo, Da-a-ve!  How's the fishin' getting on, Da-a-ve?'
+
+
+
+
+Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.
+
+
+
+    I.  Dave Regan's Yarn.
+
+
+`When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,'
+said Dave Regan, Bushman, `me and my mate, Jim Bently,
+decided to take a turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover,
+overland with a big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.
+
+`We couldn't get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our money,
+like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border, where they
+had a flash barmaid from Brisbane.  We sold our pack-horses and pack-saddles,
+and rode out of that town with our swags on our riding-horses in front of us.
+We had another spree at another place, and by the time we got
+near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.
+
+`Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on
+a big mob of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek.
+They had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther
+with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques
+to pay them off, and they were waiting for him.
+
+`"And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us," said one of them.
+
+`Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp
+towards Mulgatown.  He was called "Poisonous Jimmy" perhaps
+on account of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes
+on a station in the Bogan scrubs at one time.  He was a sharp publican.
+He had a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side
+and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he'd say to the girl,
+"Run and get your best frock on, Mary!  Here's the shearers comin'."
+And if a chequeman wouldn't drink he'd try to get him into his bar
+and shout for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.
+
+`"But he won't get us," said another of the drovers.  "I'm going to ride
+straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post
+as soon as I get it."
+
+`"You've always said that, Jack," said the first drover.
+
+`We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim
+got on our horses and rode on.  We were burned to bricks
+and ragged and dusty and parched up enough, and so were our horses.
+We only had a few shillings to carry us four or five hundred miles home,
+but it was mighty hot and dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink
+at the shanty.  This was west of the sixpenny-line at that time --
+all drinks were a shilling along here.
+
+`Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.
+
+`"We'll plant our swags in the scrub," I said to Jim.
+
+`"What for?" said Jim.
+
+`"Never mind -- you'll see," I said.
+
+`So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub
+by the side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down,
+and hung our horses to the verandah posts.
+
+`"Poisonous" came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made
+anybody home-sick.
+
+`He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said;
+he looked as if he'd be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight --
+he wasn't the sort of man you'd care to try and swindle a second time.
+He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and stubble --
+like a bush fence round a stubble-field.  He had a broken nose,
+and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye
+that seemed fixed.  If you didn't know him well you might talk to him
+for five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover
+that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the time.
+It was awful embarrassing.  It must have made him awkward to deal with
+in a fight.
+
+`"Good day, mates," he said.
+
+`"Good day," we said.
+
+`"It's hot."
+
+`"It's hot."
+
+`We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
+
+`"What are you going to have?" he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a rag.
+
+`We had two long-beers.
+
+`"Never mind that," said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
+"it's my shout.  I don't suppose your boss is back yet?
+I saw him go in to Mulgatown this morning."
+
+`"No, he ain't back," I said; "I wish he was.  We're getting tired
+of waiting for him.  We'll give him another hour, and then some of us
+will have to ride in to see whether he's got on the boose,
+and get hold of him if he has."
+
+`"I suppose you're waiting for your cheques?" he said, turning to fix
+some bottles on the shelf.
+
+`"Yes," I said, "we are;" and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back
+as solemn as an owl.
+
+`Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we'd been on the track,
+and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now an' then,
+as for the sake of conversation.  We could see that he was trying to get
+at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.
+
+`"Have another drink," he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
+"It's up to me," and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
+as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers,
+and screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered
+an innocent or unconscious expression.  The girl began to sidle in and out
+with a smart frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
+
+`"Have you had dinner?" she asked.  We could have done with a good meal,
+but it was too risky -- the drovers' boss might come along
+while we were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous.
+So we said we'd had dinner.
+
+`Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
+
+`"I wish the boss would come," said Jim with a yawn.  "I want to get
+into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things
+before I go in.  I ain't got a decent rag to me back.  I don't suppose
+there's ten bob amongst the lot of us."
+
+`There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers' camp.
+
+`"Oh, go to the store and get what you want," said Poisonous,
+taking a sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter.
+"You can fix it up with me when your boss comes.  Bring your mates along."
+
+`"Thank you," said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping it
+into his pocket.
+
+`"Well, Jim," I said, "suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
+are getting on?"
+
+`"All right," said Jim.
+
+`"Tell them to come down and get a drink," said Poisonous;
+"or, wait, you can take some beer along to them if you like,"
+and he gave us half a gallon of beer in a billy-can.  He knew
+what the first drink meant with Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
+
+`We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
+to where our swags were.
+
+`"I say," said Jim, when we'd strapped the swags to the saddles,
+"suppose we take the beer back to those chaps:  it's meant for them,
+and it's only a fair thing, anyway -- we've got as much as we can hold
+till we get into Mulgatown."
+
+`"It might get them into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps.
+Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along
+will think there's angels in the Bush."
+
+`"Oh! what's a row?" said Jim.  "They can take care of themselves;
+they'll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous
+when they take the can back and it comes to explanations.
+I'll ride back to them."
+
+`So Jim rode back to the drovers' camp with the beer,
+and when he came back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised,
+but they drank good luck to him.
+
+`We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out
+on the road again on the Mulgatown side:  we only stayed at Mulgatown
+to buy some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
+about seven miles on the safe side of the town.'
+
+
+
+   II.  Told by One of the Other Drovers.
+
+
+`Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him.
+We'd brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
+We camped about seven miles the other side of the town,
+waitin' for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock,
+while the boss rode on into town to draw our money.  Some of us
+was goin' back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown
+and had a boose up with the boss.  But while we was waitin'
+there come along two fellers that had been drovin' up north.
+They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's place,
+an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of beer
+that he said Poisonous had sent for us.  We all knew Jimmy's little games --
+the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place;
+but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards.
+When the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks,
+we started into Mulgatown.  We stopped outside Poisonous's place
+an' handed the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah.
+Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
+
+`"Good day, boys!" he says.
+
+`"Good day, Poisonous," we says.
+
+`"It's hot," he says.
+
+`"It's blanky hot," I says.
+
+`He seemed to expect us to get down.  "Where are you off to?" he says.
+
+`"Mulgatown," I says.  "It will be cooler there," and we sung out,
+"So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.
+
+`He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi there!"
+after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on.  When we looked back last
+he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
+
+`We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown,
+when we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back
+we saw it was Poisonous.
+
+`He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode
+along with us a bit gasping:  then he burst out.
+
+`"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.
+
+`"What other two?" I asked.  "We're all here.  What's the matter
+with you anyway?"
+
+`"All here!" he yelled.  "You're a lurid liar!  What the flamin' sheol
+do you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?
+without as much as thank yer!  D'yer think I'm a flamin' ----!"
+
+`Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
+
+`"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps,
+puttin' his hand in his pocket.  "We didn't want yer slush.
+It tasted as if it had been used before."
+
+`"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy.  "I'll ---- well take it
+out of one of yer bleedin' hides!"
+
+`We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
+He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands,
+and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off:
+besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye,
+an', even if you knowed him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye --
+it was no good watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands,
+and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight.
+The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.
+
+`"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles) --
+"Now, look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"
+
+`"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen.
+"Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place
+an' put up half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign,
+an' got a can o' beer on the strength of their cheques.
+They sez they was waitin' for you -- an' I want my crimson money
+out o' some one!"
+
+`"What was they like?" asks the boss.
+
+`"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time.  "One was a blanky long,
+sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair.
+Your blanky men knows all about them because they had
+the blanky billy o' beer."
+
+`"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.
+
+`So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
+
+`I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed,
+but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw
+how he'd been left.  It was enough to split stumps.  He said he wanted
+to see those fellers, just once, before he died.
+
+`He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along the road
+with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;
+but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back.  He said
+he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers
+till he could give 'em in charge.
+
+`They fined him ten bob.'
+
+
+
+
+The Ghostly Door.
+
+  Told by one of Dave's mates.
+
+
+
+Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand,
+making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught
+in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough
+to cut off a man's legs.  Camping out was not to be thought of,
+so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between
+our shoulder-blades -- from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags --
+and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track.
+We were settled to it -- to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks
+till we came to somewhere -- when, just before darkness settled down,
+we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill,
+back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.
+
+It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill,
+and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached
+to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere.  The windows were boarded up.
+We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door,
+to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
+there was light enough to see that the place was empty.
+Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane,
+clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in.
+I handed in the swags to him.  The room was very draughty;
+the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs,
+so we tried the partitioned-off room -- the bedroom -- and that was better.
+It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left
+by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;
+and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
+
+We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire,
+and put the billy on.  We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets
+on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
+to dry.  There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed.
+I hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it
+like an ill-used fibre brush -- a beard that got redder the longer it grew;
+he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man
+so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
+and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs.  We must have looked
+a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools,
+with the billy and the tucker on the box between us,
+and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.
+
+`I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, `but this is the "whare"*
+where the murder was that we heard about along the road.
+I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'
+Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet,
+and scratched his ear, and said, `That looks very much like a blood-stain
+under your stool, doesn't it, Jim?'
+
+--
+* `Whare', `whorrie', Maori name for house.
+--
+
+I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire --
+it was too hot.
+
+I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
+would have minded -- he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush
+to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything;
+besides, he was more than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards
+that he'd mistook him for some one else:  he must have been
+a very short-sighted murderer.
+
+Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had,
+on the two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in,
+and filled up and smoked comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again
+about nothing in particular.  Once I happened to look across at Dave,
+and saw him sitting up a bit and watching the door.  The door opened
+very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me,
+then at Dave, and walked out again; and the door closed behind it.
+
+Dave scratched his ear.  `That's rum,' he said.  `I could have sworn
+I fastened that door.  They must have left the cat behind.'
+
+`It looks like it,' I said.  `Neither of us has been on the boose lately.'
+
+He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.
+
+The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.
+Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the door,
+and called, `Puss -- puss -- puss!' but the cat wouldn't come.
+He shut the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught,
+and got into bed again.
+
+He'd scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat
+walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out
+as the door closed smartly.
+
+I looked at Dave and he looked at me -- hard; then he scratched
+the back of his head.  I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face
+and scared about the head.
+
+He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,
+sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open.  There was no one there.
+Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn't see the cat.
+He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat
+answered him and came in from somewhere -- she'd been outside the window,
+I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against
+his hairy shin.  Dave could generally bring a cat that way.  He had a weakness
+for cats.  I'd seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse -- brutally,
+I thought -- but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it.
+Dave was good to cats:  if a cat had a family where Dave was round,
+he'd see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus.
+He said once to me, `I can understand a man kicking a dog,
+or hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can't understand a man
+hurting a cat.'
+
+He gave this cat something to eat.  Then he went and held the light
+close to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it.
+He found a key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door.
+He got into bed again, and the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot
+and started her old drum going, like shot in a sieve.
+Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her he'd meant no harm
+when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled down again.
+
+We had some books of the `Deadwood Dick' school.  Dave was reading
+`The Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch', and I had `The Dismembered Hand',
+or `The Disembowelled Corpse', or some such names.  They were first-class
+preparation for a ghost.
+
+I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement
+and saw Dave's frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it
+on the wall.  He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.
+And that door was opening again -- slowly -- and Dave had locked it!
+I never felt anything so creepy:  the foot of my bunk was behind the door,
+and I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so.
+We waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe,
+watching for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly,
+and up on one end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.
+
+`You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,' I said, as he caught hold of the door
+-- like one grabs a craw-fish.
+
+`I'll swear I didn't,' said Dave.  But he'd already turned the key
+a couple of times, so he couldn't be sure.  He shut and locked the door again.
+`Now, get out and see for yourself,' he said.
+
+I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.
+Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.
+
+I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him.
+He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.
+
+`What are you doing that for?' I asked.
+
+`If there's a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying
+any of his funny business, we'll hear him if he tries to come in while
+we're asleep,' says Dave.  Then he got back into bed.  We composed our nerves
+with the `Haunted Gulch' and `The Disembowelled Corpse',
+and after a while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off
+when the stick fell from the door against my big toe and then to the ground
+with tremendous clatter.  I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk,
+and so did Dave -- the cat went over the partition.  That door opened,
+only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly.  Dave got out,
+grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob
+as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn't come! -- it was fast and locked!
+Then Dave's face began to look as frightened as his hair.
+He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him;
+he unlocked the door and we went into the other room,
+Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his feet.
+The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.
+
+`It muster gone by the winder,' whispered Dave.  I noticed that he said `it'
+instead of `he'.  I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only needed that
+to scare me bad.
+
+We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.
+Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the floor,
+laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of them,
+and started to roll up his swag.
+
+`What are you going to do, Dave?' I asked.
+
+`I'm going to take the track,' says Dave, `and camp somewhere farther on.
+You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.'
+
+I started to roll up my swag at once.  We dressed and fastened on
+the tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making
+any noise.  We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.
+
+`That comes of camping in a deserted house,' said Dave, when we were safe
+on the track.  No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned homestead,
+or even near it -- probably because a deserted home looks ghostlier
+in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.
+
+It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.
+
+We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped
+on the sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole
+where there had been a landslip.  We used all our candle-ends
+to get a fire alight, but once we got it started we knocked the wet bark
+off `manuka' sticks and logs and piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire.
+When the ground got a little drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers
+with some sticks and the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee
+and got through the night pretty comfortably.  In the morning Dave said,
+`I'm going back to that house.'
+
+`What for?' I said.
+
+`I'm going to find out what's the matter with that crimson door.
+If I don't I'll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door
+so long as I live.'
+
+So we went back.  It was still blowing.  The thing was simple enough
+by daylight -- after a little watching and experimenting.
+The house was built of odds and ends and badly fitted.  It `gave' in the wind
+in almost any direction -- not much, not more than an inch or so,
+but just enough to throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square
+in such a way as to bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch
+(the door-frame was of scraps joined).  Then the door swung open
+according to the hang of it; and when the gust was over the house gave back,
+and the door swung to -- the frame easing just a little in another direction.
+I suppose it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about
+by accident.  The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind
+must have accounted for the variations of the door's movements --
+and maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.
+
+Dave scratched his head a good bit.
+
+`I never lived in a house yet,' he said, as we came away --
+`I never lived in a house yet without there was something wrong with it.
+Gimme a good tent.'
+
+
+
+
+A Wild Irishman.
+
+
+
+About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington,
+the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called Pahiatua,
+which meaneth the `home of the gods', and is situated
+in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district.
+They have a pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district
+was not originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes,
+but by the tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire,
+in the eyes of a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last --
+I don't remember which -- upon the scene.  He was the discoverer, I suppose,
+now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named.
+Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
+
+Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks.
+While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper --
+which, I anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left
+(after paying board) to take me away somewhere -- I spent many hours
+in the little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger;
+and he told me yarns of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island.
+And, ever and anon, he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast,
+called `The Flour of Wheat', and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead.
+And ever and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured)
+made me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger --
+no matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober --
+I'd ask him if he knew the `Flour of Wheat', and hear what he had to say.
+
+I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue --
+it can't be done in writing.
+
+
+`There's the little red Irishman,' said the shoemaker, who was Irish himself,
+`who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and there's
+the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and fights at a spree
+than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; and there's the cheerful
+easy-going Irishman.  Now the Flour was a combination of all three and several
+other sorts.  He was known from the first amongst the boys at Th' Canary
+as the Flour o' Wheat, but no one knew exactly why.  Some said
+that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not F-l-o-u-r,
+and that he was called that because there was no flower on wheat.
+The name might have been a compliment paid to the man's character
+by some one who understood and appreciated it -- or appreciated it
+without understanding it.  Or it might have come of some chance saying
+of the Flour himself, or his mates -- or an accident with bags of flour.
+He might have worked in a mill.  But we've had enough of that.  It's the man
+-- not the name.  He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger.
+He worked hard, drank hard, fought hard -- and didn't swear.
+No man had ever heard him swear (except once); all things were `lovely'
+with him.  He was always lucky.  He got gold and threw it away.
+
+`The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with
+some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something.  The date doesn't matter:
+there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody,
+that knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the trouble
+-- provided he was there at the time.  I heard all this from a man
+who knew him in Australia.  The relatives that he was sent out to
+were soon very anxious to see the end of him.  He was as wild
+as they made them in Ireland.  When he had a few drinks, he'd walk restlessly
+to and fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him
+with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery,
+and muttering, as though in explanation to himself --
+
+`"Oi must be walkin' or foightin'! --  Oi must be walkin' or foightin'! --
+Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!"
+
+`They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was done;
+and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree,
+they put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.
+
+`There's no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up
+on the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub.
+kept by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow)
+at a place called "Th' Canary".  I remember the first time I saw the Flour.
+
+`I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th' Canary, and one evening
+I was standing outside Brady's (the Flour's cousin's place)
+with Tom Lyons and Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat
+with a swag on his back.
+
+`"B' God, there's the Flour o' Wheat comin' this minute,"
+says Dinny Murphy to Tom, "an' no one else."
+
+`"B' God, ye're right!" says Tom.
+
+`There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back,
+drinking and dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny --
+
+`"Dinny, I'll bet you a quid an' the Flour'll run against
+some of those new chums before he's an hour on the spot."
+
+`But Dinny wouldn't take him up.  He knew the Flour.
+
+`"Good day, Tom!  Good day, Dinny!"
+
+`"Good day to you, Flour!"
+
+`I was introduced.
+
+`"Well, boys, come along," says the Flour.
+
+`And so we went inside with him.  The Flour had a few drinks,
+and then he went into the back-room where the new chums were.
+One of them was dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him
+and commenced to dance too.  And presently the new chum made a step
+that didn't please the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes,
+and knocked him down -- fair an' flat on his back.
+
+`"Take that," he says.  "Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an' lay there!
+You can't dance.  How dare ye stand up in front of me face to dance
+when ye can't dance?"
+
+`He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang,
+and fought the new chums all night, and in the morning he said --
+
+`"Well, boys, we had a grand time last night.  Come and have a drink with me."
+
+`And of course they went in and had a drink with him.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+`Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a drunken,
+disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the "Nipper".
+
+`"Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o' Wheat!" says she.
+
+`"Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!" says the Flour.
+
+`And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress,
+and smashed him across the face with it.  Broke the bottle to smithereens!
+
+`A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour
+as a witness, whether he liked it or not.  And a lovely sight he looked,
+with his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye
+and a corner of his mouth on duty.
+
+`"It's nothing at all, your Honour," he said to the S.M.;
+"only a pin-scratch -- it's nothing at all.  Let it pass.
+I had no right to speak to the lovely woman at all."
+
+`But they didn't let it pass, -- they fined her a quid.
+
+`And the Flour paid the fine.
+
+`But, alas for human nature!  It was pretty much the same even in those days,
+and amongst those men, as it is now.  A man couldn't do a woman a good turn
+without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted there was something
+between them.  It was a great joke amongst the boys who knew the Flour,
+and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried too far in some quarters,
+it got to be no joke to the Flour -- nor to those who laughed too loud
+or grinned too long.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+`The Flour's cousin thought he was a sharp man.  The Flour got "stiff".
+He hadn't any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got
+a blank summons from one of the police he knew.  He pretended
+that he wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money.
+Then he filled it up and took it to his cousin.
+
+`"What d'ye think of that?" he says, handing the summons across the bar.
+"What d'ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?"
+
+`"Why, what's this all about?"
+
+`"That's what I want to know.  I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him
+a fortnight ago when I was drunk, an' now he sends me that."
+
+`"Well, I never would have dream'd that of Dinny," says the cousin,
+scratching his head and blinking.  "What's come over him at all?"
+
+`"That's what I want to know."
+
+`"What have you been doing to the man?"
+
+`"Divil a thing that I'm aware of."
+
+`The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.
+
+`"Well, what am I to do about it?" asked the Flour impatiently.
+
+`"Do?  Pay the man, of course?"
+
+`"How can I pay the lovely man when I haven't got the price of a drink
+about me?"
+
+`The cousin scratched his chin.
+
+`"Well -- here, I'll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two.
+Go and pay the man, and get back to work."
+
+`And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them
+had a howling spree together up at Brady's, the opposition pub.
+And the cousin said he thought all the time he was being had.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+`He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk.  For instance,
+he'd come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing
+and walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear;
+and just when a big event was coming off he'd pass within earshot
+of some committee men -- who had been bursting themselves for weeks
+to work the thing up and make it a success -- saying to himself --
+
+`"Where's the Orewell sports that I hear so much about?  I don't see them!
+Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?"
+
+`Or he'd pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business
+of some sort, --
+
+`"No gamblin' for the Flour.  I don't believe in their little shwindles.
+It ought to be shtopped.  Leadin' young people ashtray."
+
+`Or he'd pass an Englishman he didn't like, --
+
+`"Look at Jinneral Roberts!  He's a man!  He's an Irishman!
+England has to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals!  Luk at Jinneral Roberts
+in the marshes of Candyhar!"
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+`They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year's Day -- except once --
+and old Duncan was always there, -- never missed it till the day he died.
+He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted "hard-case".
+They all knew "old Duncan".
+
+`But one New Year's Eve he didn't turn up, and was missed at once.
+"Where's old Duncan?  Any one seen old Duncan?"  "Oh, he'll turn up alright."
+They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn't come.
+
+`Duncan was working at Duffers.  The boys inquired of fellows
+who came from Duffers, but they hadn't seen him for two days.
+They had fully expected to find him at the creek.  He wasn't at
+Aliaura nor Notown.  They inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek,
+but Duncan wasn't there.
+
+`"There's something happened to the lovely man," said the Flour of Wheat
+at last.  "Some of us had better see about it."
+
+`Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out
+over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning,
+headed by the Flour.
+
+
+`The door of Duncan's "whare" was closed -- BUT NOT PADLOCKED.
+The Flour noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in.
+The hut was tidied up and swept out -- even the fireplace.
+Duncan had "lifted the boxes" and "cleaned up", and his little bag of gold
+stood on a shelf by his side -- all ready for his spree.
+On the table lay a clean neckerchief folded ready to tie on.
+The blankets had been folded neatly and laid on the bunk, and on them
+was stretched Old Duncan, with his arms lying crossed on his chest,
+and one foot -- with a boot on -- resting on the ground.
+He had his "clean things" on, and was dressed except for one boot,
+the necktie, and his hat.  Heart disease.
+
+`"Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads," said the Flour.
+"Here's the lovely man lying dead in his bunk."
+
+`There were no sports at Orewell that New Year.  Some one said
+that the crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed
+on old Duncan's account, but the Flour said he'd see to that.
+
+`One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them
+and there were no sports.
+
+`And the Flour used to say, afterwards, "Ah, but it was a grand time
+we had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers."
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+`The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in
+from Th' Canary to the hospital on his back.  Dinny was very bad --
+the man was dying of the dysentery or something.  The Flour laid him down
+on a spare bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.
+
+`"Inside there -- come out!"
+
+`The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the matter.
+The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front of him
+between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little pair
+of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.
+
+`"There's me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry," says the Flour,
+"and you've got to fix him up and bring him round."
+
+`Then he shook his fist in the doctor's face and said --
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- look out!"
+
+`The doctor was startled.  He backed off at first; then he took
+a puff at his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny,
+and gave some order to the attendants.  The Flour went to the door,
+turned half round as he went out, and shook his fist at them again,
+and said --
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- mind!"
+
+`In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a barrow.
+He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.
+
+`"There," he said, "pour that into the lovely man."
+
+`Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible,
+and said --
+
+`"If you let that lovely man die -- look out!"
+
+`They were used to hard-cases, and didn't take much notice of him,
+but he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there
+all hours of the day and night; he would go down town,
+have a few drinks and a fight maybe, and then he'd say, "Ah, well,
+I'll have to go up and see how me lovely mate's getting on."
+
+`And every time he'd go up he'd shake his fist at the hospital in general
+and threaten to murder 'em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.
+
+`Well, Dinny Murphy died one night.  The next morning the Flour met the doctor
+in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes,
+and knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.
+
+`"Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper," said the Flour of Wheat;
+"you let that lovely man die!"
+
+`The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were
+waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the hospital,
+and stood it on end by the doorway.
+
+`"I've come for me lovely mate!" he said to the scared staff --
+or as much of it as he baled up and couldn't escape him.
+"Hand him over.  He's going back to be buried with his friends at Th' Canary.
+Now, don't be sneaking round and sidling off, you there;
+you needn't be frightened; I've settled with the doctor."
+
+`But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour,
+and between them -- and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse
+on the premises -- they persuaded him to wait.  Dinny wasn't ready yet;
+there were papers to sign; it wouldn't be decent to the dead;
+he had to be prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up
+decent and comfortable.  Anyway, they'd have him ready in an hour,
+or take the consequences.
+
+`The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done
+equally as well and better by the boys at Th' Canary.  "However," he said,
+"I'll be round in an hour, and if you haven't got me lovely mate ready --
+look out!"  Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said --
+
+`"I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there's e'er
+a pin-scratch on me mate's body -- look out!  If there's
+a pairin' of Dinny's toe-nail missin' -- look out!"
+
+`Then he went out -- taking the coffin with him.
+
+`And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the coffin
+on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on his back,
+with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom.  He was as dead drunk
+as any man could get to be and still be alive.  They knocked air-holes
+in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the Flour, and all
+to the local lock-up.  They laid their burden down on the bare,
+cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,
+and departed several ways to put the "boys" up to it.  And about midnight
+the "boys" gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited,
+and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl,
+as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour
+was heard to plead in changed and awful tones --
+
+`"Pray for me soul, boys -- pray for me soul!  Let bygones be bygones
+between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul!  The lovely Flour's
+in Purgatory!"
+
+`Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel
+passing over a packing-case. . . .  That was the only time on record
+that the Flour was heard to swear.  And he swore then.
+
+`They didn't pray for him -- they gave him a month.  And, when he came out,
+he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he --
+to his credit, perhaps -- came the other half.  They had a drink together,
+and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold
+for a pin.
+
+`"It was the will o' God, after all, doctor," said the Flour.
+"It was the will o' God.  Let bygones be bygones between us;
+gimme your hand, doctor. . . .  Good-bye."
+
+`Then he left for Th' Canary.'
+
+
+
+
+The Babies in the Bush.
+
+    `Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright --
+       That only the Bushmen know --
+    Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
+    Or carry them up through the starry night,
+       Where the Bush-lost babies go.'
+
+
+
+He was one of those men who seldom smile.  There are many
+in the Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures
+of all stations and professions (and of none), and from all the world.
+Or, if they do smile, the smile is either mechanical or bitter
+as a rule -- cynical.  They seldom talk.  The sort of men who, as bosses,
+are set down by the majority -- and without reason or evidence --
+as being proud, hard, and selfish, -- `too mean to live,
+and too big for their boots.'
+
+But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle,
+and very sad.  I have seen him smile down on a little child
+who persisted in sitting on his knee and prattling to him,
+in spite of his silence and gloom.  He was tall and gaunt,
+with haggard grey eyes -- haunted grey eyes sometimes --
+and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey.  He was not above forty-five.
+He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their hair
+thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
+The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men
+who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented,
+and die respectably in their beds.
+
+His name was Head -- Walter Head.  He was a boss drover
+on the overland routes.  I engaged with him at a place
+north of the Queensland border to travel down to Bathurst,
+on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, with something over
+a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney market.
+I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience) -- a rover, of course,
+and a ne'er-do-well, I suppose.  I was born with brains and a thin skin --
+worse luck!  It was in the days before I was married, and I went by
+the name of `Jack Ellis' this trip, -- not because the police were after me,
+but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack Ellis --
+and so the chaps nicknamed me.
+
+The Boss spoke little to the men:  he'd sit at tucker or with his pipe
+by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch
+round the big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks
+camped on the dusky starlit plain.  I believe that from the first he spoke
+oftener and more confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party.
+There was a something of sympathy between us -- I can't explain what it was.
+It seemed as though it were an understood thing between us
+that we understood each other.  He sometimes said things to me
+which would have needed a deal of explanation -- so I thought --
+had he said them to any other of the party.  He'd often, after brooding
+a long while, start a sentence, and break off with `You know, Jack.'
+And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why.
+We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
+His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss:  he was too gloomy,
+and never drank a glass nor `shouted' on the trip:  he was reckoned
+a `mean boss', and rather a nigger-driver.
+
+He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet
+who shot himself, and so was I.  I lost an old copy of Gordon's poems
+on the route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on
+he asked me if I liked Gordon.  We got to it rather sheepishly at first,
+but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
+`Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers,
+aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather
+the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word.
+(He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied
+he didn't enjoy it:  an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him
+just as well, it seemed to me.)  `Those are great lines,' he'd say --
+  
+    `"In Collins Street standeth a statue tall --
+       A statue tall on a pillar of stone --
+    Telling its story to great and small
+       Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
+  
+         .    .    .    .    .
+  
+    Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
+       Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
+    He lay on the desert a dying man,
+       Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go."
+  
+That's a grand thing, Jack.  How does it go? --
+  
+    "With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
+       And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,
+    He saw the sun go down on the sand,"' --
+  
+The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn --
+  
+    `"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
+  
+-- speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.  Then maybe
+he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
+with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
+  
+    `"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,
+       The blighted herbage or blackened log,
+    The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
+       Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"
+  
+They don't matter much, do they, Jack?'
+
+`Damned if I think they do, Boss!' I'd say.
+  
+    `"The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
+       But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
+    That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms' food
+       Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
+
+Once he repeated the poem containing the lines --
+  
+    `"Love, when we wandered here together,
+    Hand in hand through the sparkling weather --
+       God surely loved us a little then."
+  
+Beautiful lines those, Jack.
+  
+    "Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
+       And the blue sea over the white sand rolled --
+    Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur' --
+  
+How does it go, Jack?'  He stood up and turned his face to the light,
+but not before I had a glimpse of it.  I think that the saddest eyes on earth
+are mostly women's eyes, but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were
+just then.
+
+It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon's sea poems
+to his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did.  I fancy his favourite poem
+was that one of Gordon's with the lines --
+  
+    `I would that with sleepy soft embraces
+       The sea would fold me, would find me rest
+    In the luminous depths of its secret places,
+       Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
+
+He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp;
+but after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly with,
+`Well, it's time to turn in,' or, `It's time to turn out,'
+or he'd give me an order in connection with the cattle.
+He had been a well-to-do squatter on the Lachlan river-side,
+in New South Wales, and had been ruined by the drought, they said.
+One night in camp, and after smoking in silence for nearly an hour,
+he asked --
+
+`Do you know Fisher, Jack -- the man that owns these bullocks?'
+
+`I've heard of him,' I said.  Fisher was a big squatter,
+with stations both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
+
+`Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago
+without a penny in his pocket, or decent rag to his back,
+or a crust in his tucker-bag, and I gave him a job.  He's my boss now.
+Ah, well! it's the way of Australia, you know, Jack.'
+
+The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him;
+he was `bred' on the Boss's station, they said, and had been with him
+practically all his life.  His name was `Andy'.  I forget his other name,
+if he really had one.  Andy had charge of the `droving-plant' (a tilted
+two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
+and he did the cooking and kept accounts.  The Boss had no head for figures.
+Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in between.
+His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big grey eyes
+also had an inquiring expression.  His weakness was girls, or he theirs,
+I don't know which (half-castes not barred).  He was, I think,
+the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
+Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
+about the Boss.
+
+`The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.'
+
+`Think so?' I said.  I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
+
+`I'm sure of it.  It's very seldom HE takes to any one.'
+
+I said nothing.
+
+Then after a while Andy said suddenly --
+
+`Look here, Jack, I'm glad of it.  I'd like to see him make a chum
+of some one, if only for one trip.  And don't you make any mistake
+about the Boss.  He's a white man.  There's precious few that know him --
+precious few now; but I do, and it'll do him a lot of good
+to have some one to yarn with.'  And Andy said no more on the subject
+for that trip.
+
+The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains
+-- big clearings rather -- and through the sweltering hot scrubs,
+and we reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks
+and months that we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,
+-- as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
+
+The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney.
+We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks,
+and when we'd finished the boss said to me --
+
+`Look here, Jack, you're going on to Sydney, aren't you?'
+
+`Yes; I'm going down to have a fly round.'
+
+`Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning?  He's going down
+in charge of the cattle.  The cattle-train starts about daylight.
+It won't be so comfortable as the passenger; but you'll save your fare,
+and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle.  You've only got
+to have a look at 'em every other station, and poke up any that fall down
+in the trucks.  You and Andy are mates, aren't you?'
+
+I said it would just suit me.  Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious
+to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
+I felt really sorry to part with him.  I'd had to work as hard
+as any of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me.
+He'd struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble,
+and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
+
+`Come and have a drink, Boss,' I said.  The agent had paid us off
+during the day.
+
+He turned into a hotel with me.
+
+`I don't drink, Jack,' he said; `but I'll take a glass with you.'
+
+`I didn't know you were a teetotaller, Boss,' I said.
+I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink
+on the trip; but now that it was over it was a different thing.
+
+`I'm not a teetotaller, Jack,' he said.  `I can take a glass or leave it.'
+And he called for a long beer, and we drank `Here's luck!' to each other.
+
+`Well,' I said, `I wish I could take a glass or leave it.'  And I meant it.
+
+Then the Boss spoke as I'd never heard him speak before.  I thought
+for the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood
+before the night was over.  He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip
+like a man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds.
+`Jack!' he said, `there's worse things than drinking, and there's worse things
+than heavy smoking.  When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on him
+that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it's a heavy load.
+And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find
+no comfort in liquor, then it's deep trouble.  Take my tip for it, Jack.'
+
+He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head,
+as if impatient with himself; then presently he spoke
+in his usual quiet tone --
+
+`But you're only a boy yet, Jack.  Never mind me.  I won't ask you
+to take the second drink.  You don't want it; and, besides, I know the signs.'
+
+He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter,
+and looking down between his arms at the floor.  He stood that way
+thinking for a while; then he suddenly straightened up,
+like a man who'd made up his mind to something.
+
+`I want you to come along home with me, Jack,' he said;
+`we'll fix you a shake-down.'
+
+I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.
+
+`But won't it put Mrs Head about?'
+
+`Not at all.  She's expecting you.  Come along; there's nothing to see
+in Bathurst, and you'll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney.
+Come on, we'll just be in time for tea.'
+
+He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town --
+an old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses,
+like you see in some of those old settled districts.  There was,
+I remember, the stump of a tree in front, covered with ivy
+till it looked like a giant's club with the thick end up.
+
+When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the gate.
+He'd been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the bullocks.
+
+`Jack,' he said, `I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble
+at one time.  We -- we lost our two children.  It does her good
+to talk to a stranger now and again -- she's always better afterwards;
+but there's very few I care to bring.  You -- you needn't notice
+anything strange.  And agree with her, Jack.  You know, Jack.'
+
+`That's all right, Boss,' I said.  I'd knocked about the Bush too long,
+and run against too many strange characters and things,
+to be surprised at anything much.
+
+The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms.
+I saw by the light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman's hair
+was grey, and I reckoned that he had his mother living with him.
+And -- we do have odd thoughts at odd times in a flash -- and I wondered
+how Mrs Head and her mother-in-law got on together.  But the next minute
+I was in the room, and introduced to `My wife, Mrs Head,'
+and staring at her with both eyes.
+
+It was his wife.  I don't think I can describe her.  For the first
+minute or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes
+got used to the lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman
+-- one of those fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies --
+who dressed young, wore false teeth, and aped the giddy girl.
+But this was because of Mrs Head's impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair.
+The hair was not so grey as I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light
+behind it:  it was like dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour.
+She wore it short, and it became her that way.  There was something
+aristocratic about her face -- her nose and chin -- I fancied,
+and something that you couldn't describe.  She had big dark eyes --
+dark-brown, I thought, though they might have been hazel:
+they were a bit too big and bright for me, and now and again,
+when she got excited, the white showed all round the pupils -- just a little,
+but a little was enough.
+
+She seemed extra glad to see me.  I thought at first
+that she was a bit of a gusher.
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Mr Ellis,' she said, giving my hand a grip.
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- has been speaking to me about you.
+I've been expecting you.  Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis;
+tea will be ready presently.  Don't you find it a bit chilly?'
+She shivered.  It was a bit chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains.
+The table was set for tea, and set rather in swell style.
+The cottage was too well furnished even for a lucky boss drover's home;
+the furniture looked as if it had belonged to a tony homestead at one time.
+I felt a bit strange at first, sitting down to tea, and almost wished that
+I was having a comfortable tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room.
+But she knew a lot about the Bush, and chatted away,
+and asked questions about the trip, and soon put me at my ease.
+You see, for the last year or two I'd taken my tucker in my hands, --
+hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife mostly, -- sitting on my heel
+in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.
+
+There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called `Auntie'.
+She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round herself
+most of the time, helping us.  Andy came in to tea.
+
+Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of
+a woman of thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was.
+She had the figure and movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness
+and expression too -- a womanly girl; but sometimes I fancied
+there was something very childish about her face and talk.  After tea
+she and the Boss sat on one side of the fire and Andy and I on the other --
+Andy a little behind me at the corner of the table.
+
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- tells me you've been out on the Lachlan river,
+Mr Ellis?' she said as soon as she'd settled down, and she leaned forward,
+as if eager to hear that I'd been there.
+
+`Yes, Mrs Head.  I've knocked round all about out there.'
+
+She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side
+of her forehead and knitted her brows.  This was a trick she had --
+she often did it during the evening.  And when she did that
+she seemed to forget what she'd said last.
+
+She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.
+
+`Oh, I'm so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,' she said.
+`Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of talking
+to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same faces.
+You don't know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face
+and talk to a stranger.'
+
+`I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,' I said.  And so I could.
+I never stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.
+
+She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think.  The Boss straightened up
+and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and then put his arm
+round her shoulders.  This brought her back.
+
+`You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis.
+Did Walter ever tell you about the time we lived there?'
+
+`No,' I said, glancing at the Boss.  `I know you had a station there;
+but, you know, the Boss doesn't talk much.'
+
+`Tell Jack, Maggie,' said the Boss; `I don't mind.'
+
+She smiled.  `You know Walter, Mr Ellis,' she said.  `You won't mind him.
+He doesn't like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me,
+but that's foolish:  it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.'
+She leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly:
+`I've been wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter
+spoke to me about you.  I knew you would understand directly I saw your face.
+These town people don't understand.  I like to talk to a Bushman.
+You know we lost our children out on the station.  The fairies took them.
+Did Walter ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?'
+
+This was a facer.  `I -- I beg pardon,' I commenced, when Andy gave me
+a dig in the back.  Then I saw it all.
+
+`No, Mrs Head.  The Boss didn't tell me about that.'
+
+`You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,' she said,
+her big eyes fixed on my face -- `the Bush Fairies that look after
+the little ones that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush
+if they are not found?  You've surely heard of them, Mr Ellis?
+Most Bushmen have that I've spoken to.  Maybe you've seen them?
+Andy there has?'  Andy gave me another dig.
+
+`Of course I've heard of them, Mrs Head,' I said; `but I can't swear
+that I've seen one.'
+
+`Andy has.  Haven't you, Andy?'
+
+`Of course I have, Mrs Head.  Didn't I tell you all about it
+the last time we were home?'
+
+`And didn't you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?'
+
+`Of course he did!' I said, coming to Andy's rescue; `I remember it now.
+You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.'
+
+`Of course!' said Andy.
+
+`Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy; `I told him all about that.'
+
+`And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,
+and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.'
+
+`Yes,' I said; `that's what Andy told me.'
+
+`And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?' asked Mrs Head,
+fixing her eyes on his face.
+
+`Like.  It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs Head,'
+said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big
+innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling lies.
+`It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture
+we had at home on the station -- the right-hand one in blue.'
+
+She smiled.  You couldn't call it an idiotic smile,
+nor the foolish smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people.
+It was more of a happy childish smile.
+
+`I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors
+a lot of trouble,' she said.  `Of course it never struck me, until afterwards,
+that the fairies had taken the children.'
+
+She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead,
+and sat so for a while; then she roused herself again --
+
+`But what am I thinking about?  I haven't started to tell you
+about the children at all yet.  Auntie! bring the children's portraits,
+will you, please?  You'll find them on my dressing-table.'
+
+The old woman seemed to hesitate.
+
+`Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,' said Mrs Head.  `Don't be foolish.
+You know I'm all right now.'
+
+`You mustn't take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,' she said with a smile,
+while the old woman's back was turned.  `Poor old body,
+she's a bit crotchety at times, as old women are.  She doesn't like me to get
+talking about the children.  She's got an idea that if I do
+I'll start talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year
+after the children were lost.  I was very foolish then, wasn't I, Walter?'
+
+`You were, Maggie,' said the Boss.  `But that's all past.
+You mustn't think of that time any more.'
+
+`You see,' said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, `at first
+nothing would drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about
+until they perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush.  As if the Bush Fairies
+would let them do that.'
+
+`You were very foolish, Maggie,' said the Boss; `but don't think about that.'
+
+The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl:
+they must have been very pretty children.
+
+`You see,' said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them to me
+one by one, `we had these taken in Sydney some years before the children
+were lost; they were much younger then.  Wally's is not a good portrait;
+he was teething then, and very thin.  That's him standing on the chair.
+Isn't the pose good?  See, he's got one hand and one little foot forward,
+and an eager look in his eyes.  The portrait is very dark,
+and you've got to look close to see the foot.  He wants a toy rabbit
+that the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh.  In the next portrait
+he's sitting on the chair -- he's just settled himself to enjoy the fun.
+But see how happy little Maggie looks!  You can see my arm
+where I was holding her in the chair.  She was six months old then,
+and little Wally had just turned two.'
+
+She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
+
+`Let me see; Wally (that's little Walter, you know) --
+Wally was five and little Maggie three and a half when we lost them.
+Weren't they, Walter?'
+
+`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss.
+
+`You were away, Walter, when it happened.'
+
+`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss -- cheerfully, it seemed to me -- `I was away.'
+
+`And we couldn't find you, Walter.  You see,' she said to me,
+`Walter -- Mr Head -- was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn't find
+his address.  It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm,
+and just after the break-up of the drought.  The grass was knee-high
+all over the run.  It was a lonely place; there wasn't much bush cleared
+round the homestead, just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs
+ran back from the edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles --
+fifty or a hundred miles in some directions without a break;
+didn't they, Walter?'
+
+`Yes, Maggie.'
+
+`I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had,
+who used to help me with the housework and the children.
+Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't you, Andy?'
+
+`Yes, Mrs Head.'
+
+`I used to watch the children close as they got to run about,
+because if they once got into the edge of the scrub they'd be lost;
+but this morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister
+down under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock
+to gather buttercups.  You remember that clump of gums, Walter?'
+
+`I remember, Maggie.'
+
+`"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said.
+I could see Old Peter -- an old shepherd and station-hand we had --
+I could see him working on a dam we were making across a creek
+that ran down there.  You remember Old Peter, Walter?'
+
+`Of course I do, Maggie.'
+
+`I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children;
+so I told little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister's hand
+and go straight down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.'
+
+She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee,
+and telling me all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
+
+`The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands holding fast
+their straw hats.  "In case a bad wind blowed," as little Maggie said.
+I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the last
+that any one saw of them.'
+
+`Except the fairies, Maggie,' said the Boss quickly.
+
+`Of course, Walter, except the fairies.'
+
+She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
+
+`It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers' camp
+that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam
+and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back
+into the house, and before the children got near him.  They either
+followed him for some distance or wandered into the Bush
+after flowers or butterflies ----'  She broke off, and then suddenly asked me,
+`Do you think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?'
+
+The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
+
+`No.  I'm sure they wouldn't, Mrs Head,' I said -- `at least
+not from what I know of them.'
+
+She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless
+puzzled way.  Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather mechanically,
+it seemed to me --
+
+`The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house
+about an hour afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children.
+I said -- I said, "O my God! where's the children?"'  Her fingers
+fluttered up to her temples.
+
+`Don't mind about that, Maggie,' said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her head.
+`Tell Jack about the fairies.'
+
+`You were away at the time, Walter?'
+
+`Yes, Maggie.'
+
+`And we couldn't find you, Walter?'
+
+`No, Maggie,' very gently.  He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin
+on his hand, and looked into the fire.
+
+`It wasn't your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home
+do you think the fairies would have taken the children?'
+
+`Of course they would, Maggie.  They had to:  the children were lost.'
+
+`And they're bringing the children home next year?'
+
+`Yes, Maggie -- next year.'
+
+She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
+before she went on again.  There was no need to tell me
+about the lost children.  I could see it all.  She and the half-caste
+rushing towards where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them.
+The hurried search in the nearer scrub.  The mother calling all the time
+for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past.
+Old Peter's ride to the musterers' camp.  Horsemen seeming to turn up
+in no time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this,
+and no matter how lonely the district.  Bushmen galloping through the scrub
+in all directions.  The hurried search the first day, and the mother
+mad with anxiety as night came on.  Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch
+through the night; starting up at every sound of a horse's hoof,
+and reading the worst in one glance at the rider's face.
+The systematic work of the search-parties next day and the days following.
+How those days do fly past.  The women from the next run or selection,
+and some from the town, driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps,
+to stay with and try to comfort the mother.  (`Put the horse to the cart, Jim:
+I must go to that poor woman!')  Comforting her with improbable stories
+of children who had been lost for days, and were none the worse for it
+when they were found.  The mounted policemen out with the black trackers.
+Search-parties cooeeing to each other about the Bush,
+and lighting signal-fires.  The reckless break-neck rides
+for news or more help.  And the Boss himself, wild-eyed and haggard,
+riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two others perhaps,
+and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given up
+all hope of finding the children alive.  All this passed before me
+as Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were
+in another room; and when I roused myself to listen,
+she was on to the fairies again.
+
+`It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis.  Weeks after -- months after, I think --
+I'd insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for the children.
+I'd stand there and call "Maggie!" and "Wally!" until Walter took me inside;
+sometimes he had to force me inside.  Poor Walter!  But of course
+I didn't know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis.  I was really out of my mind
+for a time.'
+
+`No wonder you were, Mrs Head,' I said.  `It was terrible trouble.'
+
+`Yes, and I made it worse.  I was so selfish in my trouble.
+But it's all right now, Walter,' she said, rumpling the Boss's hair.
+`I'll never be so foolish again.'
+
+`Of course you won't, Maggie.'
+
+`We're very happy now, aren't we, Walter?'
+
+`Of course we are, Maggie.'
+
+`And the children are coming back next year.'
+
+`Next year, Maggie.'
+
+He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
+
+`You mustn't take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,' she went on.
+`Poor Walter is away so much that I'm afraid I make a little too much of him
+when he does come home.'
+
+She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again.
+Then she said quickly --
+
+`They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies,
+but they were no friends of mine.  I shouldn't have listened to them, Walter.
+You told me not to.  But then I was really not in my right mind.'
+
+`Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?' I asked.
+
+`The Voices,' she said; `you know about the Voices, Walter?'
+
+`Yes, Maggie.  But you don't hear the Voices now, Maggie?' he asked anxiously.
+`You haven't heard them since I've been away this time, have you, Maggie?'
+
+`No, Walter.  They've gone away a long time.  I hear voices now sometimes,
+but they're the Bush Fairies' voices.  I hear them calling Maggie and Wally
+to come with them.'  She paused again.  `And sometimes I think
+I hear them call me.  But of course I couldn't go away without you, Walter.
+But I'm foolish again.  I was going to ask you about the other voices,
+Mr Ellis.  They used to say that it was madness about the fairies;
+but then, if the fairies hadn't taken the children, Black Jimmy,
+or the black trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them
+at once.'
+
+`Of course they could, Mrs Head,' I said.
+
+`They said that the trackers couldn't track them because there was rain
+a few hours after the children were lost.  But that was ridiculous.
+It was only a thunderstorm.'
+
+`Why!' I said, `I've known the blacks to track a man
+after a week's heavy rain.'
+
+She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up
+it was in a scared way.
+
+`Oh, Walter!' she said, clutching the Boss's arm; `whatever have I been
+talking about?  What must Mr Ellis think of me?  Oh! why did you let me
+talk like that?'
+
+He put his arm round her.  Andy nudged me and got up.
+
+`Where are you going, Mr Ellis?' she asked hurriedly.
+`You're not going to-night.  Auntie's made a bed for you in Andy's room.
+You mustn't mind me.'
+
+`Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,' said the Boss.
+`They'll be in to supper.  We'll have a yarn, Maggie.'
+
+`Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,' she said.  `I really don't know
+what you must think of me, -- I've been talking all the time.'
+
+`Oh, I've enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,' I said; and Andy hooked me out.
+
+`She'll have a good cry and be better now,' said Andy when we got away
+from the house.  `She might be better for months.  She has been
+fairly reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad
+when he came back this time.  It upset him a lot, I can tell you.
+She has turns now and again, and always ends up like she did just now.
+She gets a longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger;
+it seems to do her good.  The doctor's against it, but doctors
+don't know everything.'
+
+`It's all true about the children, then?' I asked.
+
+`It's cruel true,' said Andy.
+
+`And were the bodies never found?'
+
+`Yes;' then, after a long pause, `I found them.'
+
+`You did!'
+
+`Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either --
+and in a fairly clear space.  It's a wonder the search-parties missed it;
+but it often happens that way.  Perhaps the little ones
+wandered a long way and came round in a circle.  I found them
+about two months after they were lost.  They had to be found,
+if only for the Boss's sake.  You see, in a case like this,
+and when the bodies aren't found, the parents never quite lose the idea
+that the little ones are wandering about the Bush to-night
+(it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst, or cold.
+That mad idea haunts 'em all their lives.  It's the same, I believe,
+with friends drowned at sea.  Friends ashore are haunted for a long while
+with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and drifting round
+in the water.'
+
+`And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?'
+
+`Not for a long time.  It wouldn't have done any good.
+She was raving mad for months.  He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne --
+to the best doctors he could find in Australia.  They could do no good,
+so he sold the station -- sacrificed everything, and took her to England.'
+
+`To England?'
+
+`Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there.
+He'd offer a thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty.  It was no good.
+She got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia
+and find the children.  The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did.
+He spent all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins,
+and a nurse, and trying to get her cured; that's why he's droving now.
+She was restless in Sydney.  She wanted to go back to the station
+and wait there till the fairies brought the children home.
+She'd been getting the fairy idea into her head slowly all the time.
+The Boss encouraged it.  But the station was sold, and he couldn't
+have lived there anyway without going mad himself.  He'd married her
+from Bathurst.  Both of them have got friends and relations here,
+so he thought best to bring her here.  He persuaded her that the fairies
+were going to bring the children here.  Everybody's very kind to them.
+I think it's a mistake to run away from a town where you're known,
+in a case like this, though most people do it.  It was years before
+he gave up hope.  I think he has hopes yet -- after she's been fairly well
+for a longish time.'
+
+`And you never tried telling her that the children were found?'
+
+`Yes; the Boss did.  The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river
+at first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush,
+so he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery
+near the sea.  He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie
+when they go out.  It's all the ground he owns in wide Australia,
+and once he had thousands of acres.  He took her to the grave one day.
+The doctors were against it; but he couldn't rest till he tried it.
+He took her out, and explained it all to her.  She scarcely seemed interested.
+She read the names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone,
+and asked questions about how the children were found and brought here.
+She seemed quite sensible, and very cool about it.  But when he got her home
+she was back on the fairy idea again.  He tried another day,
+but it was no use; so then he let it be.  I think it's better as it is.
+Now and again, at her best, she seems to understand that the children
+were found dead, and buried, and she'll talk sensibly about it,
+and ask questions in a quiet way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney
+to see the grave next time he's down.  But it doesn't last long,
+and she's always worse afterwards.'
+
+We turned into a bar and had a beer.  It was a very quiet drink.
+Andy `shouted' in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer
+a thought struck me.
+
+`The Boss was away when the children were lost?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+`Strange you couldn't find him.'
+
+`Yes, it was strange; but HE'LL have to tell you about that.
+Very likely he will; it's either all or nothing with him.'
+
+`I feel damned sorry for the Boss,' I said.
+
+`You'd be sorrier if you knew all,' said Andy.  `It's the worst trouble
+that can happen to a man.  It's like living with the dead.
+It's -- it's like a man living with his dead wife.'
+
+When we went home supper was ready.  We found Mrs Head, bright and cheerful,
+bustling round.  You'd have thought her one of the happiest and brightest
+little women in Australia.  Not a word about children or the fairies.
+She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips.
+She told some good Bush stories too.  It was the pleasantest hour I'd spent
+for a long time.
+
+`Good night, Mr Ellis,' she said brightly, shaking hands with me
+when Andy and I were going to turn in.  `And don't forget your pipe.
+Here it is!  I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two
+when they turn in.  Walter smokes in bed.  I don't mind.
+You can smoke all night if you like.'
+
+`She seems all right,' I said to Andy when we were in our room.
+
+He shook his head mournfully.  We'd left the door ajar,
+and we could hear the Boss talking to her quietly.  Then we heard her speak;
+she had a very clear voice.
+
+`Yes, I'll tell you the truth, Walter.  I've been deceiving you, Walter,
+all the time, but I did it for the best.  Don't be angry with me, Walter!
+The Voices did come back while you were away.  Oh, how I longed
+for you to come back!  They haven't come since you've been home, Walter.
+You must stay with me a while now.  Those awful Voices kept calling me,
+and telling me lies about the children, Walter!  They told me to kill myself;
+they told me it was all my own fault -- that I killed the children.
+They said I was a drag on you, and they'd laugh -- Ha! ha! ha! -- like that.
+They'd say, "Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie."  They told me
+to come to the river, Walter.'
+
+Andy closed the door.  His face was very miserable.
+
+We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed
+after months and months of sleeping out at night, between watches,
+on the hard ground or the sand, or at best on a few boughs
+when I wasn't too tired to pull them down, and my saddle for a pillow.
+
+But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two.
+I've never since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home.
+Probably he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;
+perhaps he wanted me to understand -- maybe he was weakening as he grew older,
+and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.
+
+When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but Andy
+roused me out about four o'clock.  The old woman that they called Auntie
+was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee ready
+in the detached kitchen at the back.  We moved about on tiptoe
+and had our breakfast quietly.
+
+`The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast
+and say Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,'
+said the Boss.  `I'm going to walk down as far as the station with you.
+She made up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy.
+Don't forget it.'
+
+Andy went on ahead.  The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
+which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
+without speaking.  He didn't seem sociable this morning,
+or any way sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
+
+But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest,
+and at last I made a swallow and blurted out --
+
+`Look here, Boss, old chap!  I'm damned sorry!'
+
+Our hands came together and gripped.  The ghostly Australian daybreak
+was over the Bathurst plains.
+
+We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly --
+
+`I was away when the children were lost, Jack.  I used to go
+on a howling spree every six or nine months.  Maggie never knew.  I'd tell her
+I had to go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock.
+When the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after,
+I was beastly drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush --
+a sly grog-shop.  The old brute that kept it was too true to me.
+He thought that the story of the lost children was a trick to get me home,
+and he swore that he hadn't seen me.  He never told me.
+I could have found those children, Jack.  They were mostly new chums and fools
+about the run, and not one of the three policemen was a Bushman.
+I knew those scrubs better than any man in the country.'
+
+I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip.  That was all I could do
+for him.
+
+`Good-bye, Jack!' he said at the door of the brake-van.  `Good-bye, Andy! --
+keep those bullocks on their feet.'
+
+The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains.  Andy and I sat silent
+for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a coal-stove
+in the centre of the van.
+
+`Does the boss never go to Sydney?' I asked.
+
+`Very seldom,' said Andy, `and then only when he has to, on business.
+When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run
+out to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.'
+
+After a while I said, `He told me about the drink, Andy --
+about his being on the spree when the children were lost.'
+
+`Well, Jack,' said Andy, `that's the thing that's been killing him ever since,
+and it happened over ten years ago.'
+
+
+
+
+A Bush Dance.
+
+
+
+`Tap, tap, tap, tap.'
+
+The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly
+in the midst of the `close', solid blackness of that moonless December night,
+when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought haze.
+
+It was the evening of the school children's `Feast'.  That is to say
+that the children had been sent, and `let go', and the younger ones `fetched'
+through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,
+and raced -- sometimes in couples tied together by the legs -- and caked,
+and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got rid of.
+The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and tied,
+the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside.
+Tea was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread
+better things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters,
+had been taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
+
+On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
+more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
+
+On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall,
+sat about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
+
+It was evident that something was seriously wrong.  None of the girls
+spoke above a hushed whisper.  None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.
+Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them
+you would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness
+and to swear.
+
+`Tap, tap, tap.'
+
+The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces nervously
+towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
+
+`Tap -- tap.'
+
+The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher's residence,
+and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made:
+it was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour --
+more like that of warm cheap glue than anything else.
+
+In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening.
+Whenever one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,
+all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye,
+and then withdrawn hopelessly.  At the sound of a horse's step
+all eyes and ears were on the door, till some one muttered,
+`It's only the horses in the paddock.'
+
+Some of the girls' eyes began to glisten suspiciously,
+and at last the belle of the party -- a great, dark-haired,
+pink-and-white Blue Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute
+staring before her, with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered
+her face with her hands, rose, and started blindly from the room,
+from which she was steered in a hurry by two sympathetic and rather `upset'
+girl friends, and as she passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically --
+
+`Oh, I can't help it!  I did want to dance!  It's a sh-shame!
+I can't help it!  I -- I want to dance!  I rode twenty miles to dance --
+and -- and I want to dance!'
+
+A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed
+the girl out.  The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses,
+and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl
+from the outside -- being man comforted --
+
+`I can't help it, Jack!  I did want to dance!  I -- I had such --
+such -- a job -- to get mother -- and -- and father to let me come --
+and -- and now!'
+
+The two girl friends came back.  `He sez to leave her to him,' they whispered,
+in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.
+
+`It's -- it's no use, Jack!' came the voice of grief.  `You don't know what --
+what father and mother -- is.  I -- I won't -- be able -- to ge-get away --
+again -- for -- for -- not till I'm married, perhaps.'
+
+The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls.  `I'll take her
+into my room and make her lie down,' she whispered to her sister,
+who was staying with her.  `She'll start some of the other girls presently --
+it's just the weather for it,' and she passed out quietly.
+That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.
+
+A final `tap-tap' from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk
+of a hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room
+turned quickly in that direction and brightened.  But there came a bang
+and a sound like `damn!' and hopelessness settled down.
+
+A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the girls
+rose and hurried out.  Fragments of conversation heard in the darkness --
+
+`It's two horses, I tell you!'
+
+`It's three, you ----!'
+
+`Lay you ----!'
+
+`Put the stuff up!'
+
+A clack of gate thrown open.
+
+`Who is it, Tom?'
+
+Voices from gatewards, yelling, `Johnny Mears!  They've got Johnny Mears!'
+
+Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
+
+Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the table,
+where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina,
+which he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight;
+and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms,
+as a football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly
+on the toe of his riding-boot.  It was a beautiful kick,
+the concertina shot out into the blackness, from which was projected,
+in return, first a short, sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring
+and the other covered by an enormous brick-coloured hand,
+and a voice that wanted to know who shot `that lurid loaf of bread?'
+
+But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice
+of Joe Matthews, M.C., --
+
+`Take yer partners!  Hurry up!  Take yer partners!  They've got Johnny Mears
+with his fiddle!'
+
+
+
+
+The Buck-Jumper.
+
+
+
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them
+lanky and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel
+on the edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster's camp)
+when Cob & Co.'s mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding
+from round Crown Ridge, in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage.
+Some wiry, ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings
+about the place.  The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard
+close to the shanty.  As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek
+at the foot of the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves
+from verandah posts, from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah
+and the rough slab wall against which they'd been resting,
+and joined a group of four or five who stood round one.
+He stood with his back to the corner post of the stock-yard,
+his feet well braced out in front of him, and contemplated
+the toes of his tight new 'lastic-side boots and whistled softly.
+He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords,
+leggings, and a blue sash; he was Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed,
+and his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim
+of a new cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.
+
+`Do it for a quid, Jack?' asked one.
+
+`Damned if I will, Jim!' said the young man at the post.
+`I'll do it for a fiver -- not a blanky sprat less.'
+
+Jim took off his hat and `shoved' it round, and `bobs' were `chucked' into it.
+The result was about thirty shillings.
+
+Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.
+
+`Not me!' he said, showing some emotion for the first time.
+`D'yer think I'm going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement
+for thirty blanky bob.  I'll ride the blanky horse for a fiver,
+and I'll feel the blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.'
+
+Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty.
+There were about twenty passengers aboard -- inside, on the box-seat,
+on the tail-board, and hanging on to the roof -- most of them Sydney men
+going up to the Mudgee races.  They got down and went inside
+with the driver for a drink, while the stablemen changed horses.
+The Bushmen raised their voices a little and argued.
+
+One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man --
+a good-hearted, sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands.
+He had a round red face and a white cork hat.  `What's those chaps
+got on outside?' he asked the publican.
+
+`Oh, it's a bet they've got on about riding a horse,' replied the publican.
+`The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the horse-breaker;
+and they reckon they've got the champion outlaw in the district out there --
+that chestnut horse in the yard.'
+
+The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the Bushmen.
+
+`Well, chaps! what have you got on here?' he asked cheerily.
+
+`Oh,' said Jim carelessly, `it's only a bit of a bet about ridin'
+that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.'  He indicated
+an ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles
+in a corner of the stock-yard.  `Flash Jack there -- he reckons
+he's the champion horse-breaker round here -- Flash Jack reckons
+he can take it out of that horse first try.'
+
+`What's up with the horse?' inquired the big, red-faced man.
+`It looks quiet enough.  Why, I'd ride it myself.'
+
+`Would yer?' said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up,
+and an innocent, inquiring expression.  `Looks quiet, does he?
+YOU ought to know more about horses than to go by the looks of 'em.
+He's quiet enough just now, when there's no one near him;
+but you should have been here an hour ago.  That horse has killed two men
+and put another chap's shoulder out -- besides breaking a cove's leg.
+It took six of us all the morning to run him in and get the saddle on him;
+and now Flash Jack wants to back out of it.'
+
+`Euraliar!' remarked Flash Jack cheerfully.  `I said I'd ride
+that blanky horse out of the yard for a fiver.  I ain't goin' to risk
+my blanky neck for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.'
+
+`He said he'd ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,' said Jim.
+
+`And get smashed against the rails!' said Flash Jack.  `I would be a fool.
+I'd rather take my chance outside in the scrub -- and it's rough country
+round here.'
+
+`Well, how much do you want?' asked the man in the mushroom hat.
+
+`A fiver, I said,' replied Jack indifferently.  `And the blanky stuff
+in my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.'
+
+`Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?'
+inquired one of the passengers who had gathered round.
+
+`I'm frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,'
+said Flash Jack.  `I know that horse; he's got a mouth like iron.
+I might be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes
+with my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?'
+
+`You wouldn't want 'em then,' suggested a passenger.  `Or, say! --
+we'd leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.'
+
+Flash Jack ignored that passenger.  He eyed his boots and softly whistled
+a tune.
+
+`All right!' said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his pocket.
+`I'll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.'
+
+The five pounds were got together.
+
+`I'll lay a quid to half a quid he don't stick on ten minutes!'
+shouted Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off.
+The passengers also betted amongst themselves.  Flash Jack,
+after putting the money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails
+and led the horse into the middle of the yard.
+
+`Quiet as an old cow!' snorted a passenger in disgust.
+`I believe it's a sell!'
+
+`Wait a bit,' said Jim to the passenger, `wait a bit and you'll see.'
+
+They waited and saw.
+
+Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard,
+and trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub,
+which swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.
+
+Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack
+to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty;
+then they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses,
+while they laughed.
+
+At the hotel there was just time for another drink.  The driver
+climbed to his seat and shouted, `All aboard!' in his usual tone.
+The passengers climbed to their places, thinking hard.
+A mile or so along the road the man with the cork hat remarked,
+with much truth --
+
+`Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.'
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of sight,
+and proceeded to `knock down' the fiver.
+
+
+
+
+Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing.
+
+
+
+The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia)
+kept Daniel Myers -- licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors --
+in drink and the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time
+he lay hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man
+would care to see -- or hear when it gave forth sound.  `Good accommodation
+for man and beast'; but few shanties save his own might, for a consideration,
+have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers had become
+towards the end of his career.  But at last the eccentric Bush doctor,
+`Doc' Wild' (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without its having
+any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him awake and cynical),
+pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried legally;
+so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out,
+and the sign altered to read, `Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.',
+and continued to conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years,
+with the joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer
+a human pig and pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm.
+Most of the regular patrons of the Half-way House could have
+their horrors decently, and, comparatively, quietly -- or otherwise
+have them privately -- in the Big Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been
+one of that sort.
+
+Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily,
+at the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so.
+She was a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid
+in the droughts of Out-Back without losing her good looks,
+and had put up with a hard life, and Myers, all those years
+without losing her good humour and nature.  Probably, had her husband been
+the opposite kind of man, she would have been different --
+haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible -- for of such is woman.
+But then it might be taken into consideration that she had been practically
+a widow during at least the last five years of her husband's alleged life.
+
+Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed
+that she was not to be caught.
+
+`It would be a grand thing,' one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog
+would say to his mates, `for one of us to have his name up on a pub.;
+it would save a lot of money.'
+
+`It wouldn't save you anything, Bill, if I got it,' was the retort.
+`You needn't come round chewing my lug then.  I'd give you one drink
+and no more.'
+
+The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers,
+even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos,
+tried their luck in vain.  In answer to the suggestion
+that she ought to have a man to knock round and look after things,
+she retorted that she had had one, and was perfectly satisfied.
+Few trav'lers on those tracks but tried `a bit of bear-up' in that direction,
+but all to no purpose.  Chequemen knocked down their cheques manfully
+at the Half-way House -- to get courage and goodwill and `put it off' till,
+at the last moment, they offered themselves abjectly to the landlady;
+which was worse than bad judgment on their part -- it was very silly,
+and she told them so.
+
+One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith
+in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much
+that they `broke out' and went on record-breaking sprees.
+
+About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra
+coat of paint on the `Margaret', whereat suitors looked hopeless.
+
+One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big Scrub --
+anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the horrors.
+But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing the opportunity
+when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell asleep,
+went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher's gallows --
+having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea
+of leaving the world as naked as he came into it.  He climbed the pole,
+sat astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell --
+a yell of drunken triumph -- before he dropped, and woke his mates.
+
+They cut him down and brought him to.  Next day he apologised to Mrs Myers,
+said, `Ah, well!  So long!' to the rest, and departed --
+cured of drink and love apparently.  The verdict was that the blanky fool
+should have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed,
+and it began to look as though, if she wished to continue
+to live on happily and comfortably for a few years longer
+at the fixed age of thirty-nine, she would either have to
+give up the pub. or get married.
+
+Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman
+whose name was mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts,
+and round the camp-fire.
+
+About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw, widower --
+otherwise known as `Old Jimmy', though he was little past middle age --
+had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up, and tackled afresh
+(with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts) ever since
+the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone.  He was a practical,
+square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a certain `cleanness'
+about the shape of his limbs which suggested the old jockey or hostler.
+There were two strong theories in connection with Jimmy -- one was that
+he had had a university education, and the other that he couldn't write
+his own name.  Not nearly such a ridiculous nor simple case Out-Back
+as it might seem.
+
+Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the `heard tells'
+in connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night,
+at the end of his contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly,
+`I'll go up to Tinned Dog next week and try my luck.'
+
+His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to laugh,
+and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian actor
+would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to think,
+with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an imaginary table
+and exclaimed --
+
+`By God!  Jimmy'll do it.'  (Applause.)
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day
+runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour,
+when a clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,
+greased-bluchered -- altogether a model or stage swagman came up,
+was served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way
+to the river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
+
+A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah,
+smoking a clean clay pipe.  Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked,
+`Is that trav'ler there yet, Mary?'
+
+`Yes, missus.  Clean pfellar that.'
+
+The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do
+when limited for `stuff' or wondering whether a section has been cut wrong --
+or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn't been a `clean pfellar'.
+She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
+across the clearing.
+
+`Good-day, mister,' she said, seeming to become aware of him
+for the first time.
+
+`Good-day, missus!'
+
+`Hot!'
+
+`Hot!'
+
+Pause.
+
+`Trav'lin'?'
+
+`No, not particular!'
+
+She waited for him to explain.  Myers was always explaining
+when he wasn't raving.  But the swagman smoked on.
+
+`Have a drink?' she suggested, to keep her end up.
+
+`No, thank you, missus.  I had one an hour or so ago.  I never take
+more than two a-day -- one before breakfast, if I can get it,
+and a night-cap.'
+
+What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
+
+`Come and have some tea; it's ready.'
+
+`Thank you.  I don't mind if I do.'
+
+They got on very slowly, but comfortably.  She got little out of him
+except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,
+and was `just having a look at the country.'  He politely declined
+a `shake-down', saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out
+this weather.  She got his name with a `by-the-way', as he rose to leave,
+and he went back to camp.
+
+He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning,
+and got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon
+pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of nails.
+
+And, well -- to make it short -- when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,
+and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed
+by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words --
+
+            HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,
+                     BY
+               JAMES GRIMSHAW.
+                Good Stabling.
+
+The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.
+
+
+
+
+At Dead Dingo.
+
+
+
+It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside
+the weather-board and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road,
+where there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes
+called `Roasted', and other times `Potted Dingo' -- nicknames suggested
+by the everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township
+of Tinned Dog.
+
+From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road,
+running right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep
+in the red sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest
+blue-grey bush, dust, and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
+
+There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year's Day.
+There weren't many more in the county.  The girl sat behind the bar
+-- the coolest place in the shanty -- reading `Deadwood Dick'.
+On a worn and torn and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen
+cooler places and better days, lay an awful and healthy example,
+a bearded swagman, with his arms twisted over his head and his face
+to the wall, sleeping off the death of the dead drunk.  Bill and Jim
+-- shearer and rouseabout -- sat at a table playing cards.
+It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and they had been gambling
+since nine -- and the greater part of the night before -- so they were,
+probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps physically)
+than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
+
+Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail,
+lay a sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
+
+Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath
+that would have been savage if it hadn't been drawled.
+
+`Stumped?' inquired Jim.
+
+`Not a blanky, lurid deener!' drawled Bill.
+
+Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went
+slowly and hopelessly round the room and out the door.
+There was something in the eyes of both, except when on the card-table,
+of the look of a man waking in a strange place.
+
+`Got anything?' asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
+
+Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty,
+and spat out on to the verandah floor.
+
+`That's all I got,' he drawled.  `It's gone now.'
+
+Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the dog.
+
+`That there dog yours?' he asked, brightening.
+
+They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each other
+as Bushmen can be.
+
+Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog.
+The dog woke suddenly to a flea fact.
+
+`Yes,' drawled Bill, `he's mine.'
+
+`Well, I'm going Out-Back, and I want a dog,' said Jim,
+gathering the cards briskly.  `Half a quid agin the dog?'
+
+`Half a quid be ----!' drawled Bill.  `Call it a quid?'
+
+`Half a blanky quid!'
+
+`A gory, lurid quid!' drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his swag.
+
+But Jim's hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
+
+`Alright.  Call it a ---- quid.'
+
+The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died again.
+Remember this, it might come in useful.
+
+Bill sat down to the table once more.
+
+Jim rose first, winner of the dog.  He stretched, yawned `Ah, well!'
+and shouted drinks.  Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up
+with his foot, unwound the chain, said `Ah, well -- so long!'
+and drifted out and along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following
+with head and tail down.
+
+Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,
+shouldered his swag, said, `So long, Mary!' and drifted out and along the road
+towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .
+
+A long, drowsy, half hour passed -- the sort of half hour
+that is as long as an hour in the places where days are as long as years,
+and years hold about as much as days do in other places.
+
+The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild
+for a moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor,
+rested his elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands,
+and came back to life gradually.
+
+He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar,
+and formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words --
+
+`Put up a drink?'*
+
+--
+* `Put up a drink' -- i.e., `Give me a drink on credit', or `Chalk it up'.
+--
+
+She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
+
+He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress signals
+with hand, eyes, and mouth.
+
+`No!' she snapped.  `I means no when I says no!  You've had too many
+last drinks already, and the boss says you ain't to have another.
+If you swear again, or bother me, I'll call him.'
+
+He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his swag,
+and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily.  Then he blinked round,
+whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
+through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again.
+He turned and started through to the back-door.
+
+`What the devil do you want now?' demanded the girl,
+interrupted in her reading for the third time by him.
+`Stampin' all over the house.  You can't go through there!
+It's privit!  I do wish to goodness you'd git!'
+
+`Where the blazes is that there dog o' mine got to?' he muttered.
+`Did you see a dog?'
+
+`No!  What do I want with your dog?'
+
+He whistled out in front again, and round each corner.  Then he came back
+with a decided step and tone.
+
+`Look here! that there dog was lyin' there agin the wall when I went to sleep.
+He wouldn't stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn't dragged.
+He's been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn'ter lost him for a fiver.
+Are you sure you ain't seen a dog?' then suddenly, as the thought struck him:
+`Where's them two chaps that was playin' cards when I wenter sleep?'
+
+`Why!' exclaimed the girl, without thinking, `there was a dog,
+now I come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
+Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.'
+
+He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.
+
+`What sort of a dog was it?'
+
+Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
+
+He scowled at her darkly.
+
+`Now, look here,' he said; `you've allowed gamblin' in this bar --
+your boss has.  You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog.
+Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your boss?
+I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away,
+and I don't care if you lose your licence.  I ain't goin' to lose my dog.
+I wouldn'ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog!  I ----'
+
+She was filling a pewter hastily.
+
+`Here! for God's sake have a drink an' stop yer row.'
+
+He drank with satisfaction.  Then he hung on the bar with one elbow
+and scowled out the door.
+
+`Which blanky way did them chaps go?' he growled.
+
+`The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.'
+
+`And I'll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
+lose me shed!  Here!' jerking the empty pewter across the bar,
+`fill that up again; I'm narked properly, I am, and I'll take
+twenty-four blanky hours to cool down now.  I wouldn'ter lost that dog
+for twenty quid.'
+
+He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,
+muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the track
+to Tinned Dog.
+
+                         --------------------
+
+Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite settled it
+in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog.  I leave it to you.
+
+
+
+
+Telling Mrs Baker.
+
+
+
+Most Bushmen who hadn't `known Bob Baker to speak to',
+had `heard tell of him'.  He'd been a squatter, not many years before,
+on the Macquarie river in New South Wales, and had made money
+in the good seasons, and had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding,
+and long trips to Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace.
+So after a pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands
+on his runs, Bob Baker went under, and the bank took over his station
+and put a manager in charge.
+
+He'd been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that
+he'd been a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned,
+for they had to suffer for it in the end.  Such generosity
+is often born of vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed.  It's very nice
+to hear the chaps sing `For he's a jolly good fellow', but you've mostly
+got to pay for it twice -- first in company, and afterwards alone.
+I once heard the chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow,
+when I was leaving a place and they were giving me a send-off.
+It thrilled me, and brought a warm gush to my eyes; but, all the same,
+I wished I had half the money I'd lent them, and spent on 'em,
+and I wished I'd used the time I'd wasted to be a jolly good fellow.
+
+When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great
+north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong
+on the Sydney side.  He was going north to new country
+round by the Gulf of Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle,
+on a two years' trip; and I and my mate, Andy M`Culloch,
+engaged to go with him.  We wanted to have a look at the Gulf Country.
+
+After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me
+that the Boss was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs.
+Andy had been with him on another trip, and he told me
+that the Boss was only going this way lately.  Andy knew Mrs Baker well,
+and seemed to think a deal of her.  `She's a good little woman,' said Andy.
+`One of the right stuff.  I worked on their station for a while
+when I was a nipper, and I know.  She was always a damned sight too good
+for the Boss, but she believed in him.  When I was coming away this time
+she says to me, "Look here, Andy, I'm afraid Robert is drinking again.
+Now I want you to look after him for me, as much as you can --
+you seem to have as much influence with him as any one.
+I want you to promise me that you'll never have a drink with him."
+
+`And I promised,' said Andy, `and I'll keep my word.'
+Andy was a chap who could keep his word, and nothing else.
+And, no matter how the Boss persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him,
+Andy would never drink with him.
+
+It got worse and worse:  the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at
+a shanty, and sometimes he'd be days behind us; and when he'd catch up to us
+his temper would be just about as much as we could stand.  At last he went
+on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles
+north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow
+with a flash barmaid there -- one of those girls who are engaged,
+by the publicans up country, as baits for chequemen.
+
+He went mad over that girl.  He drew an advance cheque
+from the stock-owner's agent there, and knocked that down;
+then he raised some more money somehow, and spent that -- mostly on the girl.
+
+We did all we could.  Andy got him along the track for a couple of stages,
+and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the night
+and went back.
+
+We had two other men with us, but had the devil's own bother
+on account of the cattle.  It was a mixed-up job all round.
+You see it was all big runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks
+moving along the route all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass.
+The agent wasn't going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock
+until the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass
+on the route or the travelling-stock reserves or camps,
+so we had to keep travelling for grass.
+
+The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle
+have to go through -- that's the law of the stock-routes.
+So the agent wired to the owners, and, when he got their reply,
+he sacked the Boss and sent the cattle on in charge of another man.
+The new Boss was a drover coming south after a trip;
+he had his two brothers with him, so he didn't want me and Andy;
+but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged,
+between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to us --
+the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.
+
+We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober,
+mad or sane, good or bad, it isn't Bush religion to desert a mate in a hole;
+and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.
+
+We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with us
+as much as possible, and did all we could for him.
+
+`How could I face his wife if I went home without him?' asked Andy,
+`or any of his old mates?'
+
+The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was,
+and then he'd hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow,
+and fight, and get knocked about.  He was an awful object by this time,
+wild-eyed and gaunt, and he hadn't washed or shaved for days.
+
+Andy got the constable in charge of the police station
+to lock him up for a night, but it only made him worse:  we took him back
+to the camp next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes
+he slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started
+to hang himself to a leaning tree with a piece of clothes-line rope.
+We got to him just in time.
+
+Then Andy wired to the Boss's brother Ned, who was fighting the drought,
+the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border.
+Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
+
+Perhaps the Boss hadn't been quite right in his head before he
+started drinking -- he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of it;
+maybe he'd got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his troubles --
+anyway he died in the horrors within the week.
+
+His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought
+he was the devil, and grappled with him.  It took the three of us
+to hold the Boss down sometimes.
+
+Sometimes, towards the end, he'd be sensible for a few minutes
+and talk about his `poor wife and children'; and immediately afterwards
+he'd fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils.
+He cursed everything; he cursed his wife and children,
+and yelled that they were dragging him down to hell.  He died raving mad.
+It was the worst case of death in the horrors of drink
+that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
+
+Ned saw to the funeral:  it was very hot weather, and men have to be
+buried quick who die out there in the hot weather -- especially men
+who die in the state the Boss was in.  Then Ned went to the public-house
+where the barmaid was and called the landlord out.  It was a desperate fight:
+the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man;
+but Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who
+will carry a thing through to death when they make up their minds.
+He gave that publican nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved.
+The constable in charge of the station backed Ned, while another policeman
+picked up the publican.  Sounds queer to you city people, doesn't it?
+
+Next morning we three started south.  We stayed a couple of days
+at Ned Baker's station on the border, and then started
+on our three-hundred-mile ride down-country.  The weather was still very hot,
+so we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned's place at dusk.
+He parted from us at the homestead gate.  He gave Andy a small packet,
+done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained
+Bob's pocket-book, letters, and papers.  We looked back,
+after we'd gone a piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing
+by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked.  Ned was a bachelor.
+`Poor old Ned,' said Andy to me.  `He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker
+before she got married, but she picked the wrong man -- girls mostly do.
+Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left
+when his brother married, and he's been up in these God-forsaken scrubs
+ever since.  Look, I want to tell you something, Jack:
+Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever,
+and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he died easy --
+and all that sort of thing.  Ned sent her some money,
+and she is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died.
+Now I'll have to go and see her when we get to Solong;
+there's no getting out of it, I'll have to face her --
+and you'll have to come with me.'
+
+`Damned if I will!' I said.
+
+`But you'll have to,' said Andy.  `You'll have to stick to me;
+you're surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this?
+I'll have to lie like hell -- I'll have to lie as I never lied
+to a woman before; and you'll have to back me and corroborate every lie.'
+
+I'd never seen Andy show so much emotion.
+
+`There's plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,' said Andy.  He said no more
+about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss's name casually,
+until we were within about a day's ride of Solong; then Andy told me
+the yarn he'd made up about the Boss's death.
+
+`And I want you to listen, Jack,' he said, `and remember every word --
+and if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards.
+Now it was like this:  the Boss wasn't too well when he crossed the border.
+He complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain
+in the back of his neck, and he had dysentery bad, -- but that doesn't matter;
+it's lucky I ain't supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms.
+The Boss stuck to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle
+and made it as easy as we could for him.  He'd just take it easy,
+and ride on from camp to camp, and rest.  One night I rode to a town
+off the route (or you did, if you like) and got some medicine for him;
+that made him better for a while, but at last, a day or two
+this side of Mulgatown, he had to give up.  A squatter there
+drove him into town in his buggy and put him up at the best hotel.
+The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for him --
+put him in the best room and wired for another doctor.
+We wired for Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was,
+and Ned rode night and day and got there three days before the Boss died.
+The Boss was a bit off his head some of the time with the fever,
+but was calm and quiet towards the end and died easy.  He talked a lot
+about his wife and children, and told us to tell the wife not to fret
+but to cheer up for the children's sake.  How does that sound?'
+
+I'd been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.
+
+`Why not let her know the truth?' I asked.  `She's sure to hear of it
+sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken blackguard
+she might get over it all the sooner.'
+
+`You don't know women, Jack,' said Andy quietly.  `And, anyway,
+even if she is a sensible woman, we've got a dead mate to consider
+as well as a living woman.'
+
+`But she's sure to hear the truth sooner or later,' I said,
+`the Boss was so well known.'
+
+`And that's just the reason why the truth might be kept from her,' said Andy.
+`If he wasn't well known -- and nobody could help liking him,
+after all, when he was straight -- if he wasn't so well known
+the truth might leak out unawares.  She won't know if I can help it,
+or at least not yet a while.  If I see any chaps that come from the North
+I'll put them up to it.  I'll tell M`Grath, the publican at Solong, too:
+he's a straight man -- he'll keep his ears open and warn chaps.
+One of Mrs Baker's sisters is staying with her, and I'll give her a hint
+so that she can warn off any women that might get hold of a yarn.  Besides,
+Mrs Baker is sure to go and live in Sydney, where all her people are --
+she was a Sydney girl; and she's not likely to meet any one there
+that will tell her the truth.  I can tell her that it was
+the last wish of the Boss that she should shift to Sydney.'
+
+We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called
+a `happy thought'.  He went to his saddle-bags and got out
+the small canvas packet that Ned had given him:  it was sewn up
+with packing-thread, and Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.
+
+`What are you doing, Andy?' I asked.
+
+`Ned's an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned,' said Andy.
+`I guess he hasn't looked through the Boss's letters, and I'm just going
+to see that there's nothing here that will make liars of us.'
+
+He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire.
+There were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband,
+also a portrait of her and the children; these Andy put aside.
+But there were other letters from barmaids and women who were not fit
+to be seen in the same street with the Boss's wife; and there were portraits
+-- one or two flash ones.  There were two letters from other men's wives too.
+
+`And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!' said Andy,
+in a tone of disgust.
+
+He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss's pocket-book
+and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on them,
+and burnt them too.  Then he sewed up the packet again and put it away
+in his saddle-bag.
+
+`Such is life!' said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.
+
+We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a paddock,
+and put up at M`Grath's pub. until such time as we made up our minds
+as to what we'd do or where we'd go.  We had an idea of waiting
+until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big sheds.
+
+Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker.
+`We'll go after dinner,' said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink,
+and felt sleepy -- we weren't used to big dinners of roast-beef
+and vegetables and pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather --
+so we decided to have a snooze and then go.  When we woke up
+it was late in the afternoon, so we thought we'd put it off till after tea.
+`It wouldn't be manners to walk in while they're at tea,' said Andy --
+`it would look as if we only came for some grub.'
+
+But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message
+that Mrs Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged
+if we'd call up as soon as possible.  You see, in those small towns
+you can't move without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.
+
+`We'll have to face the music now!' said Andy, `and no get out of it.'
+He seemed to hang back more than I did.  There was another pub. opposite
+where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to Andy --
+
+`Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy?  We might be kept in there
+an hour or two.'
+
+`You don't want another drink,' said Andy, rather short.
+`Why, you seem to be going the same way as the Boss!'  But it was Andy
+that edged off towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker's place.
+`All right!' he said.  `Come on!  We'll have this other drink,
+since you want it so bad.'
+
+We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the road --
+we'd bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit.
+Half-way across Andy grabbed my arm and asked --
+
+`How do you feel now, Jack?'
+
+`Oh, I'M all right,' I said.
+
+`For God's sake!' said Andy, `don't put your foot in it
+and make a mess of it.'
+
+`I won't, if you don't.'
+
+Mrs Baker's cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a garden.
+When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and whispered --
+
+`For God's sake stick to me now, Jack!'
+
+`I'll stick all right,' I said -- `you've been having too much beer, Andy.'
+
+I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful,
+contented sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting
+the Boss's shirts and things ready when we started North.
+Just the sort of woman that is contented with housework and the children,
+and with nothing particular about her in the way of brains.
+But now she sat by the fire looking like the ghost of herself.
+I wouldn't have recognised her at first.  I never saw such a change
+in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.
+
+Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker
+I had eyes for the sister and no one else.  She was a Sydney girl,
+about twenty-four or twenty-five, and fresh and fair --
+not like the sun-browned women we were used to see.  She was a pretty,
+bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick to understand, and very sympathetic.
+She had been educated, Andy had told me, and wrote stories
+for the Sydney `Bulletin' and other Sydney papers.  She had her hair done
+and was dressed in the city style, and that took us back a bit at first.
+
+`It's very good of you to come,' said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice,
+when we first went in.  `I heard you were in town.'
+
+`We were just coming when we got your message,' said Andy.
+`We'd have come before, only we had to see to the horses.'
+
+`It's very kind of you, I'm sure,' said Mrs Baker.
+
+They wanted us to have tea, but we said we'd just had it.  Then Miss Standish
+(the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn't feel
+as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully
+just then.
+
+There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room,
+and the sister went to see to it.  Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.
+
+`You mustn't mind me,' she said.  `I'll be all right presently,
+and then I want you to tell me all about poor Bob.  It's seeing you,
+that saw the last of him, that set me off.'
+
+Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall,
+and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting Blucher
+on the opposite wall.  I thought it was lucky that that picture was there.
+
+The child was calling `mumma', and Mrs Baker went in to it,
+and her sister came out.  `Best tell her all about it and get it over,'
+she whispered to Andy.  `She'll never be content until she hears
+all about poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died.
+Let me take your hats.  Make yourselves comfortable.'
+
+She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine.
+I wished she'd let us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to,
+and nothing to do with our hands; and as for being comfortable,
+we were just about as comfortable as two cats on wet bricks.
+
+When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker,
+about four years old; he wanted to see Andy.  He ran to Andy at once,
+and Andy took him up on his knee.  He was a pretty child,
+but he reminded me too much of his father.
+
+`I'm so glad you've come, Andy!' said Bobby.
+
+`Are you, Bobby?'
+
+`Yes.  I wants to ask you about daddy.  You saw him go away, didn't you?'
+and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy's face.
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+`He went up among the stars, didn't he?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy.
+
+`And he isn't coming back to Bobby any more?'
+
+`No,' said Andy.  `But Bobby's going to him by-and-by.'
+
+Mrs Baker had been leaning back in her chair, resting her head on her hand,
+tears glistening in her eyes; now she began to sob, and her sister took her
+out of the room.
+
+Andy looked miserable.  `I wish to God I was off this job!'
+he whispered to me.
+
+`Is that the girl that writes the stories?' I asked.
+
+`Yes,' he said, staring at me in a hopeless sort of way, `and poems too.'
+
+`Is Bobby going up among the stars?' asked Bobby.
+
+`Yes,' said Andy -- `if Bobby's good.'
+
+`And auntie?'
+
+`Yes.'
+
+`And mumma?'
+
+`Yes.'
+
+`Are you going, Andy?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy hopelessly.
+
+`Did you see daddy go up amongst the stars, Andy?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy, `I saw him go up.'
+
+`And he isn't coming down again any more?'
+
+`No,' said Andy.
+
+`Why isn't he?'
+
+`Because he's going to wait up there for you and mumma, Bobby.'
+
+There was a long pause, and then Bobby asked --
+
+`Are you going to give me a shilling, Andy?' with the same expression
+of innocent wonder in his eyes.
+
+Andy slipped half-a-crown into his hand.  `Auntie' came in and told him
+he'd see Andy in the morning and took him away to bed,
+after he'd kissed us both solemnly; and presently she and Mrs Baker
+settled down to hear Andy's story.
+
+`Brace up now, Jack, and keep your wits about you,' whispered Andy to me
+just before they came in.
+
+`Poor Bob's brother Ned wrote to me,' said Mrs Baker,
+`but he scarcely told me anything.  Ned's a good fellow, but he's very simple,
+and never thinks of anything.'
+
+Andy told her about the Boss not being well after he crossed the border.
+
+`I knew he was not well,' said Mrs Baker, `before he left.
+I didn't want him to go.  I tried hard to persuade him
+not to go this trip.  I had a feeling that I oughtn't to let him go.
+But he'd never think of anything but me and the children.  He promised
+he'd give up droving after this trip, and get something to do near home.
+The life was too much for him -- riding in all weathers and camping out
+in the rain, and living like a dog.  But he was never content at home.
+It was all for the sake of me and the children.  He wanted
+to make money and start on a station again.  I shouldn't have let him go.
+He only thought of me and the children!  Oh! my poor, dear, kind,
+dead husband!'  She broke down again and sobbed, and her sister comforted her,
+while Andy and I stared at Wellington meeting Blucher
+on the field of Waterloo.  I thought the artist had heaped up the dead
+a bit extra, and I thought that I wouldn't like to be trod on by horses,
+even if I was dead.
+
+`Don't you mind,' said Miss Standish, `she'll be all right presently,'
+and she handed us the `Illustrated Sydney Journal'.  This was a great relief,
+-- we bumped our heads over the pictures.
+
+Mrs Baker made Andy go on again, and he told her how the Boss broke down
+near Mulgatown.  Mrs Baker was opposite him and Miss Standish opposite me.
+Both of them kept their eyes on Andy's face:  he sat, with his hair
+straight up like a brush as usual, and kept his big innocent grey eyes
+fixed on Mrs Baker's face all the time he was speaking.
+I watched Miss Standish.  I thought she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen;
+it was a bad case of love at first sight, but she was far and away above me,
+and the case was hopeless.  I began to feel pretty miserable,
+and to think back into the past:  I just heard Andy droning away by my side.
+
+`So we fixed him up comfortable in the waggonette with the blankets
+and coats and things,' Andy was saying, `and the squatter started
+into Mulgatown. . . .  It was about thirty miles, Jack, wasn't it?' he asked,
+turning suddenly to me.  He always looked so innocent that there were times
+when I itched to knock him down.
+
+`More like thirty-five,' I said, waking up.
+
+Miss Standish fixed her eyes on me, and I had another look
+at Wellington and Blucher.
+
+`They were all very good and kind to the Boss,' said Andy.
+`They thought a lot of him up there.  Everybody was fond of him.'
+
+`I know it,' said Mrs Baker.  `Nobody could help liking him.
+He was one of the kindest men that ever lived.'
+
+`Tanner, the publican, couldn't have been kinder to his own brother,'
+said Andy.  `The local doctor was a decent chap, but he was only
+a young fellow, and Tanner hadn't much faith in him, so he wired
+for an older doctor at Mackintyre, and he even sent out fresh horses
+to meet the doctor's buggy.  Everything was done that could be done,
+I assure you, Mrs Baker.'
+
+`I believe it,' said Mrs Baker.  `And you don't know how it relieves me
+to hear it.  And did the publican do all this at his own expense?'
+
+`He wouldn't take a penny, Mrs Baker.'
+
+`He must have been a good true man.  I wish I could thank him.'
+
+`Oh, Ned thanked him for you,' said Andy, though without meaning
+more than he said.
+
+`I wouldn't have fancied that Ned would have thought of that,' said Mrs Baker.
+`When I first heard of my poor husband's death, I thought perhaps
+he'd been drinking again -- that worried me a bit.'
+
+`He never touched a drop after he left Solong, I can assure you, Mrs Baker,'
+said Andy quickly.
+
+Now I noticed that Miss Standish seemed surprised or puzzled, once or twice,
+while Andy was speaking, and leaned forward to listen to him;
+then she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head
+and looked at him, with half-shut eyes, in a way I didn't like.
+Once or twice she looked at me as if she was going to ask me a question,
+but I always looked away quick and stared at Blucher and Wellington,
+or into the empty fireplace, till I felt that her eyes were off me.
+Then she asked Andy a question or two, in all innocence I believe now,
+but it scared him, and at last he watched his chance and winked at her sharp.
+Then she gave a little gasp and shut up like a steel trap.
+
+The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again.  Mrs Baker went to it.
+We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring
+all over the place:  presently Miss Standish excused herself,
+and went out of the room after her sister.  She looked hard at Andy
+as she left the room, but he kept his eyes away.
+
+`Brace up now, Jack,' whispered Andy to me, `the worst is coming.'
+
+When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.
+
+`He -- he died very quietly,' said Andy, hitching round, and resting
+his elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his face
+away from the light.  Miss Standish put her arm round her sister.
+`He died very easy,' said Andy.  `He was a bit off his head at times,
+but that was while the fever was on him.  He didn't suffer much
+towards the end -- I don't think he suffered at all. . . .  He talked a lot
+about you and the children.'  (Andy was speaking very softly now.)  `He said
+that you were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children's sake. . . .
+It was the biggest funeral ever seen round there.'
+
+Mrs Baker was crying softly.  Andy got the packet half out of his pocket,
+but shoved it back again.
+
+`The only thing that hurts me now,' says Mrs Baker presently,
+`is to think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush,
+so far from home.  It's -- cruel!' and she was sobbing again.
+
+`Oh, that's all right, Mrs Baker,' said Andy, losing his head a little.
+`Ned will see to that.  Ned is going to arrange to have him
+brought down and buried in Sydney.'  Which was about the first thing
+Andy had told her that evening that wasn't a lie.  Ned had said he would do it
+as soon as he sold his wool.
+
+`It's very kind indeed of Ned,' sobbed Mrs Baker.  `I'd never have dreamed
+he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful.  I misjudged him all along.
+And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?'
+
+`Yes,' said Andy -- then one of his `happy thoughts' struck him.
+`Except that he hoped you'd shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker,
+where you've got friends and relations.  He thought it would be better
+for you and the children.  He told me to tell you that.'
+
+`He was thoughtful up to the end,' said Mrs Baker.  `It was just like
+poor Robert -- always thinking of me and the children.  We are going to Sydney
+next week.'
+
+Andy looked relieved.  We talked a little more, and Miss Standish
+wanted to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses.
+We got up and bumped against each other, and got each other's hats,
+and promised Mrs Baker we'd come again.
+
+`Thank you very much for coming,' she said, shaking hands with us.
+`I feel much better now.  You don't know how much you have relieved me.
+Now, mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.'
+
+Andy caught her sister's eye and jerked his head towards the door
+to let her know he wanted to speak to her outside.
+
+`Good-bye, Mrs Baker,' he said, holding on to her hand.  `And don't you fret.
+You've -- you've got the children yet.  It's -- it's all for the best;
+and, besides, the Boss said you wasn't to fret.'  And he blundered out
+after me and Miss Standish.
+
+She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.
+
+`I want you to give that to her,' he said; `it's his letters and papers.
+I hadn't the heart to give it to her, somehow.'
+
+`Tell me, Mr M`Culloch,' she said.  `You've kept something back --
+you haven't told her the truth.  It would be better and safer for me to know.
+Was it an accident -- or the drink?'
+
+`It was the drink,' said Andy.  `I was going to tell you --
+I thought it would be best to tell you.  I had made up my mind to do it,
+but, somehow, I couldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me.'
+
+`Tell me all,' she said.  `It would be better for me to know.'
+
+`Come a little farther away from the house,' said Andy.
+She came along the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her
+as much of the truth as he could.
+
+`I'll hurry her off to Sydney,' she said.  `We can get away this week
+as well as next.'  Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly,
+her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight.
+She looked splendid.
+
+`I want to thank you for her sake,' she said quickly.  `You are good men!
+I like the Bushmen!  They are grand men -- they are noble!
+I'll probably never see either of you again, so it doesn't matter,'
+and she put her white hand on Andy's shoulder and kissed him fair and square
+on the mouth.  `And you, too!' she said to me.  I was taller than Andy,
+and had to stoop.  `Good-bye!' she said, and ran to the gate and in,
+waving her hand to us.  We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.
+
+I don't think it did either of us any harm.
+
+
+
+
+A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.
+
+
+
+This is a story -- about the only one -- of Job Falconer,
+Boss of the Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales
+in the early Eighties -- when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs
+out of the hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.
+
+Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete,
+and as his family grew up he would become as angry as it was
+in his easy-going nature to become if reference were made to the incident
+in his presence.  But his wife -- little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer --
+often told the story (in the mysterious voice which women use
+in speaking of private matters amongst themselves -- but with
+brightening eyes) to women friends over tea; and always to a new woman friend.
+And on such occasions she would be particularly tender
+towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his thin, sandy hair in a way
+that embarrassed him in company -- made him look as sheepish
+as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned amongst the ewes.
+And the woman friend on parting would give Job's hand a squeeze
+which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she could love him.
+
+According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been tall,
+and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered.  But he wasn't.
+He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy
+(his skin was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber),
+and his eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly,
+his arms were short, and his legs bowed to the saddle.
+Altogether he was an awkward, unlovely Bush bird -- on foot;
+in the saddle it was different.  He hadn't even a `temper'.
+
+The impression on Job's mind which many years afterwards
+brought about the incident was strong enough.  When Job was a boy of fourteen
+he saw his father's horse come home riderless -- circling and snorting
+up by the stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on
+one of the snapped ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side
+with bruised pommel and knee-pad broken off.
+
+Job's father wasn't hurt much, but Job's mother, an emotional woman,
+and then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock
+for three months only.  `She wasn't quite right in her head,' they said,
+`from the day the horse came home till the last hour before she died.'
+And, strange to say, Job's father (from whom Job inherited
+his seemingly placid nature) died three months later.
+The doctor from the town was of the opinion that he must have
+`sustained internal injuries' when the horse threw him.
+`Doc. Wild' (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job's father was hurt inside
+when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn't pull round.
+But doctors differ all over the world.
+
+
+Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way.
+He had been married a year, and had lately started wool-raising
+on a pastoral lease he had taken up at Talbragar:  it was a new run,
+with new slab-and-bark huts on the creek for a homestead,
+new shearing-shed, yards -- wife and everything new, and he was
+expecting a baby.  Job felt brand-new himself at the time, so he said.
+It was a lonely place for a young woman; but Gerty was a settler's daughter.
+The newness took away some of the loneliness, she said, and there was truth
+in that:  a Bush home in the scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets,
+and ghostlier in the twilight, as the bark and slabs whiten,
+or rather grow grey, in fierce summers.  And there's nothing under God's sky
+so weird, so aggressively lonely, as a deserted old home in the Bush.
+
+Job's wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the run,
+and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman
+from within the kicking radius in Lancashire -- wife of a selector)
+was only seven miles away.  She promised to be on hand,
+and came over two or three times a-week; but Job grew restless
+as Gerty's time drew near, and wished that he had insisted on sending her
+to the nearest town (thirty miles away), as originally proposed.
+Gerty's mother, who lived in town, was coming to see her over her trouble;
+Job had made arrangements with the town doctor, but prompt attendance
+could hardly be expected of a doctor who was very busy,
+who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty miles away.
+
+Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there,
+had more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan,
+and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors
+of the district together -- maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him,
+or he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions -- or, perhaps,
+because he'd do things which no `respectable practitioner' dared do.
+I've described him in another story.  Some said he was a quack,
+and some said he wasn't.  There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him
+in the Bush.  He drank fearfully, and `on his own', but was seldom incapable
+of performing an operation.  Experienced Bushmen preferred him
+three-quarters drunk:  when perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky.
+He was tall, gaunt, had a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows,
+and piercing black eyes.  His movements were eccentric.  He lived
+where he happened to be -- in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead,
+in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's,
+or boundary-rider's hut; in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp --
+or, when the horrors were on him, by a log in the lonely Bush.
+It seemed all one to him.  He lost all his things sometimes --
+even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin bag which contained
+his surgical instruments and papers.  Except once; then he gave the blacks
+5 Pounds to find it for him.
+
+His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy;
+and he rode as far and fast to a squatter's home as to a swagman's camp.
+When nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand,
+and the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds.
+He had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds
+by squatters for `pulling round' their wives or children;
+but such offers always angered him.  When he asked for 5 Pounds
+he resented being offered a 10 Pound cheque.  He once sued a doctor
+for alleging that he held no diploma; but the magistrate, on reading
+certain papers, suggested a settlement out of court, which both doctors
+agreed to -- the other doctor apologising briefly in the local paper.
+It was noticed thereafter that the magistrate and town doctors
+treated Doc. Wild with great respect -- even at his worst.
+The thing was never explained, and the case deepened the mystery
+which surrounded Doc. Wild.
+
+As Job Falconer's crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty
+on the main road, about half-way between Job's station and the town.
+(Township of Come-by-Chance -- expressive name; and the shanty was
+the `Dead Dingo Hotel', kept by James Myles -- known as `Poisonous Jimmy',
+perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.)
+Job's brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel
+with instructions to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor
+didn't either drink himself into the `D.T.'s' or get sober enough
+to become restless; to prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did;
+and to bring him to the station in about a week's time.
+Mac. (rather more careless, brighter, and more energetic than his brother)
+was carrying out these instructions while pretending,
+with rather great success, to be himself on the spree at the shanty.
+
+But one morning, early in the specified week, Job's uneasiness
+was suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy
+for the neighbour's wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance
+to hurry out Gerty's mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac.
+were getting on.  On the arrival of the neighbour's wife, who drove over
+in a spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.
+
+`Don't be anxious, Job,' said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her.
+`We'll be all right.  Wait! you'd better take the gun --
+you might see those dingoes again.  I'll get it for you.'
+
+The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep;
+and Job and Gerty had started three together close to the track
+the last time they were out in company -- without the gun, of course.
+Gerty took the loaded gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall,
+carried it out, and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again
+and then rode off.
+
+It was a hot day -- the beginning of a long drought, as Job found
+to his bitter cost.  He followed the track for five or six miles
+through the thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off
+to make a short cut to the main road across a big ring-barked flat.
+The tall gum-trees had been ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out
+round the butts), or rather `sapped' -- that is, a ring cut in through the sap
+-- in order to kill them, so that the little strength in the `poor' soil
+should not be drawn out by the living roots, and the natural grass
+(on which Australian stock depends) should have a better show.  The hard,
+dead trees raised their barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches
+for three or four miles, and the grey and brown grass stood tall between,
+dying in the first breaths of the coming drought.  All was becoming
+grey and ashen here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects,
+and the pale brassy dome of the sky cloudless over all,
+the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the sky.
+Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader,
+one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled),
+and he kept an eye out for dingoes.  He was saving his horse for a long ride,
+jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to one side --
+and I'm not sure that he didn't have a leg thrown up and across
+in front of the pommel of the saddle -- he was riding along
+in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking fatherly thoughts in advance,
+perhaps, when suddenly a great black, greasy-looking iguana
+scuttled off from the side of the track amongst the dry tufts of grass
+and shreds of dead bark, and started up a sapling.  `It was a whopper,'
+Job said afterwards; `must have been over six feet, and a foot
+across the body.  It scared me nearly as much as the filly.'
+
+The filly shied off like a rocket.  Job kept his seat instinctively,
+as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein --
+lying loosely on the pommel -- the filly `fetched up' against a dead box-tree,
+hard as cast-iron, and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup to pocket.
+`I felt the blood flare up,' he said, `and I knowed that that'
+-- (Job swore now and then in an easy-going way) -- `I knowed
+that that blanky leg was broken alright.  I threw the gun from me
+and freed my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall
+to the right, as the filly started off again.'
+
+What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer,
+and Job's own `wanderings in his mind', as he called them.
+`They took a blanky mean advantage of me,' he said, `when they had me down
+and I couldn't talk sense.'
+
+The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring -- as a mob of brumbies,
+when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke.
+Job's leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible.
+But he thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix.
+No doubt the scene at the lonely Bush home of his boyhood
+started up before him:  his father's horse appeared riderless,
+and he saw the look in his mother's eyes.
+
+Now a Bushman's first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this
+is that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed,
+and the horse's tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there
+for days, for weeks -- till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones.
+Job was on an old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion
+to come for months, but he did not consider this.  He crawled to his gun,
+then to a log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him.  How he did it
+he doesn't know.  Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log,
+took aim at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over
+and lay with his head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down,
+rested on his neck.  He had fainted.  The crows were interested,
+and the ants would come by-and-by.
+
+
+Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed,
+after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no other
+possible way.  He often turned up where and when he was wanted above all men,
+and at no other time.  He had gipsy blood, they said;
+but, anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had,
+and living the life he lived -- and doing the things he did --
+it was quite probable that he was more nearly in touch than we
+with that awful invisible world all round and between us,
+of which we only see distorted faces and hear disjointed utterances
+when we are `suffering a recovery' -- or going mad.
+
+On the morning of Job's accident, and after a long brooding silence,
+Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer --
+
+`Git the hosses, Mac.  We'll go to the station.'
+
+Mac., used to the doctor's eccentricities, went to see about the horses.
+
+And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer -- Job's mother-in-law --
+on her way from the town to the station.  She stayed to have a cup of tea
+and give her horses a feed.  She was square-faced, and considered
+a rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh,
+good sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes.
+She lived in the town comfortably on the interest of some money
+which her husband left in the bank.  She drove an American waggonette
+with a good width and length of `tray' behind, and on this occasion she had
+a pole and two horses.  In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows,
+a generous pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries,
+delicacies, and luxuries.  All round she was an excellent mother-in-law
+for a man to have on hand at a critical time.
+
+And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her
+right here.  She is universally considered a nuisance
+in times of peace and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home!
+Then it's `Write to Mother!  Wire for Mother!  Send some one to fetch Mother!
+I'll go and bring Mother!' and if she is not near:  `Oh, I wish Mother
+were here!  If Mother were only near!'  And when she is on the spot,
+the anxious son-in-law:  `Don't YOU go, Mother!  You'll stay,
+won't you, Mother? -- till we're all right?  I'll get some one
+to look after your house, Mother, while you're here.'  But Job Falconer
+was fond of his mother-in-law, all times.
+
+Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses.
+Mrs Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her
+about a mile before she reached the homestead track, which turned in
+through the scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
+
+Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along
+in the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat
+through the dead, naked branches.  Mac. looked that way.
+The crows were hopping about the branches of a tree way out
+in the middle of the flat, flopping down from branch to branch to the grass,
+then rising hurriedly and circling.
+
+`Dead beast there!' said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.
+
+`No -- dying,' said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more intellect.
+
+`There's some steers of Job's out there somewhere,' muttered Mac.
+Then suddenly, `It ain't drought -- it's the ploorer at last! or I'm blanked!'
+
+Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia,
+which was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto
+kept clear of Job's run.
+
+`We'll go and see, if you like,' suggested Doc. Wild.
+
+They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way
+amongst the dried tufts and fallen branches.
+
+`Theer ain't no sign o' cattle theer,' said the doctor;
+`more likely a ewe in trouble about her lamb.'
+
+`Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,' said Mac.  `I wish we had a gun --
+might get a shot at them.'
+
+Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore,
+free of a hip-pocket.  He always carried a revolver.  `In case I feel obliged
+to shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,' he explained once,
+whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly,
+without result.
+
+`We'd never git near enough for a shot,' said the doctor; then he commenced
+to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost Bushman
+in the last stages of death by thirst, --
+  
+    `"The crows kept flyin' up, boys!
+       The crows kept flyin' up!
+    The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
+       Though he was but a pup."'
+
+`It must be something or other,' muttered Mac.  `Look at them blanky crows!'
+
+    `"The lost was found, we brought him round,
+       And took him from the place,
+    While the ants was swarmin' on the ground,
+       And the crows was sayin' grace!"'
+
+`My God! what's that?' cried Mac., who was a little in advance
+and rode a tall horse.
+
+It was Job's filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet
+(as they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest,
+and her head full of kangaroo-shot.  She was feebly rocking her head
+against the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof,
+as if trying to write the reason of it there.
+
+The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat pocket,
+and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner;
+then something -- professional instinct or the something supernatural
+about the doctor -- led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass,
+where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly,
+which must have staggered off some little way after being shot.
+Mac. followed the doctor, shaking violently.
+
+`Oh, my God!' he cried, with the woman in his voice -- and his face so pale
+that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said -- `oh, my God!
+he's shot himself!'
+
+`No, he hasn't,' said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier position
+with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air:
+then he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned.
+`He's got a broken leg,' said the doctor.  Even then he couldn't resist
+making a characteristic remark, half to himself:  `A man doesn't shoot himself
+when he's going to be made a lawful father for the first time,
+unless he can see a long way into the future.'  Then he took out
+his whisky-flask and said briskly to Mac., `Leave me your water-bag'
+(Mac. carried a canvas water-bag slung under his horse's neck),
+`ride back to the track, stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here.
+Tell her it's only a broken leg.'
+
+Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.
+
+As he worked the doctor muttered:  `He shot his horse.  That's what gits me.
+The fool might have lain there for a week.  I'd never have suspected spite
+in that carcass, and I ought to know men.'
+
+But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.
+
+`Where's the filly?' cried Job suddenly between groans.
+
+`She's all right,' said the doctor.
+
+`Stop her!' cried Job, struggling to rise -- `stop her! -- oh God! my leg.'
+
+`Keep quiet, you fool!'
+
+`Stop her!' yelled Job.
+
+`Why stop her?' asked the doctor.  `She won't go fur,' he added.
+
+`She'll go home to Gerty,' shouted Job.  `For God's sake stop her!'
+
+`O--h!' drawled the doctor to himself.  `I might have guessed that.
+And I ought to know men.'
+
+`Don't take me home!' demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval.
+`Take me to Poisonous Jimmy's and tell Gerty I'm on the spree.'
+
+When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was
+in his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages.
+The lower half of Job's trouser-leg and his 'lastic-side boot
+lay on the ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched
+between two strips of bark, with grass stuffed in the hollows,
+and bound by saddle-straps.
+
+`That's all I kin do for him for the present.'
+
+Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived
+rather pale and a little shaky:  nevertheless she called out,
+as soon as she got within earshot of the doctor --
+
+`What's Job been doing now?'  (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable
+for doing anything.)
+
+`He's got his leg broke and shot his horse,' replied the doctor.
+`But,' he added, `whether he's been a hero or a fool I dunno.
+Anyway, it's a mess all round.'
+
+They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap,
+backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in.  It was
+a ticklish job, but they had to manage it:  Job, maddened by pain and heat,
+only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to them
+to stop his horse.
+
+`Lucky we got him before the ants did,' muttered the doctor.
+Then he had an inspiration --
+
+`You bring him on to the shepherd's hut this side the station.
+We must leave him there.  Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him
+now and then; when the brandy's done pour whisky, then gin -- keep the rum
+till the last' (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette
+at Poisonous Jimmy's).  `I'll take Mac.'s horse and ride on and send Peter'
+(the station hand) `back to the hut to meet you.  I'll be back myself
+if I can.  THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.'
+
+Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's
+which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for --
+except in Doc. Wild's madness.
+
+He rode off at a gallop.  The burden of Job's raving, all the way,
+rested on the dead filly --
+
+`Stop her!  She must not go home to Gerty! . . .  God help me shoot! . . .
+Whoa! -- whoa, there! . . .  "Cope -- cope -- cope" --  Steady, Jessie,
+old girl. . . .  Aim straight -- aim straight!  Aim for me, God! --
+I've missed! . . .  Stop her!' &c.
+
+`I never met a character like that,' commented the doctor afterwards,
+`inside a man that looked like Job on the outside.  I've met men
+behind revolvers and big mustarshes in Califo'nia; but I've met
+a derned sight more men behind nothing but a good-natured grin,
+here in Australia.  These lanky sawney Bushmen will do things
+in an easy-going way some day that'll make the old world
+sit up and think hard.'
+
+He reached the station in time, and twenty minutes or half an hour later
+he left the case in the hands of the Lancashire woman --
+whom he saw reason to admire -- and rode back to the hut to help Job,
+whom they soon fixed up as comfortably as possible.
+
+They humbugged Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job's alleged
+phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger,
+and the truth less important, they told it to her.  And so, instead of Job
+being pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born,
+Gerty Falconer herself took the child down to the hut,
+and so presented Uncle Job with my first and favourite cousin and Bush chum.
+
+Doc. Wild stayed round until he saw Job comfortably moved to the homestead,
+then he prepared to depart.
+
+`I'm sorry,' said Job, who was still weak -- `I'm sorry for that there filly.
+I was breaking her in to side-saddle for Gerty when she should get about.
+I wouldn't have lost her for twenty quid.'
+
+`Never mind, Job,' said the doctor.  `I, too, once shot an animal
+I was fond of -- and for the sake of a woman -- but that animal
+walked on two legs and wore trousers.  Good-bye, Job.'
+
+And he left for Poisonous Jimmy's.
+
+
+
+
+The Little World Left Behind.
+
+
+
+I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia
+after many years.  The railway had reached it, but otherwise
+things were drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged.
+There was the same old grant, comprising several thousands of acres
+of the richest land in the district, lying idle still,
+except for a few horses allowed to run there for a shilling a-head per week.
+
+There were the same old selections -- about as far off as ever
+from becoming freeholds -- shoved back among the barren ridges;
+dusty little patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps,
+and called farms, deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little
+dried-up family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more.  There was
+the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
+Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
+in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and yards,
+and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up the ground
+and raise a crop.  And along the creek the German farmers --
+the only people there worthy of the name -- toiling (men, women, and children)
+from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done;
+the elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
+
+The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
+was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
+and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever -- it started
+three generations ago over a stray bull.  The O'Dunn was still fighting
+for his great object in life, which was not to be `onneighborly',
+as he put it.  `I DON'T want to be onneighborly,' he said,
+`but I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit.  It's almost impossible
+for a dacent man to live in sich a neighborhood and not be onneighborly,
+thry how he will.  But I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit, marruk my wurrud.'
+
+Jones's red steer -- it couldn't have been the same red steer --
+was continually breaking into Rooney's `whate an' bringin'
+ivery head av the other cattle afther him, and ruinin' him intirely.'
+The Rooneys and M`Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child,
+over the impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney's brother-in-law,
+by a distant relation of the M`Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
+
+The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
+in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion.
+The string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
+whirling into town, to `service', through clouds of dust and broiling heat,
+on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
+The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old,
+and hung up their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun,
+and sat on their heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily
+concerning crops, fruit, trees, and vines, and horses and cattle;
+the drought and `smut' and `rust' in wheat, and the `ploorer'
+(pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, and other cheerful things; that there
+colt or filly, or that there cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or `Jim's').
+They always talked most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name
+was possible -- except by Germans and Chinamen.  Towards evening
+the old local relic of the golden days dropped in and announced
+that he intended to `put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where
+he'd been going to put it down twenty years ago -- and every week since.
+It was nearly time that somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
+
+An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
+with her `bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it.  She still drove
+a long, bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling
+for a whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins.
+The floor of the dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always
+ahead of the other -- or behind, according to which shaft was pulled.
+She wore, to all appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl,
+men's 'lastic sides, and white hood that she had on when the world was made.
+She still stopped just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly's on the way in
+for a yarn and a cup of tea -- as she had always done, on the same days
+and at the same time within the memory of the hoariest local liar.
+However, she had a new clothes-line bent on to the old horse's front end --
+and we fancy that was the reason she didn't recognise us at first.
+She had never looked younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man.
+Her shrivelled face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed
+with lines till there wasn't room for any more.  But her eyes were bright yet,
+and twinkled with humour at times.
+
+She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires, droughts,
+hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all the things
+that God curses Australian settlers with.  She had had two husbands,
+and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an honest day's work,
+or any good for himself or any one else.  She had reared something under
+fifteen children, her own and others; and there was scarcely one of them
+that had not given her trouble.  Her sons had brought disgrace on her old head
+over and over again, but she held up that same old head through it all,
+and looked her narrow, ignorant world in the face -- and `lived it down'.
+She had worked like a slave for fifty years; yet she had more
+energy and endurance than many modern city women in her shrivelled old body.
+She was a daughter of English aristocrats.
+
+And we who live our weak lives of fifty years or so in the cities --
+we grow maudlin over our sorrows (and beer), and ask whether life
+is worth living or not.
+
+I sought in the farming town relief from the general and particular
+sameness of things, but there was none.  The railway station
+was about the only new building in town.  The old signs even
+were as badly in need of retouching as of old.  I picked up
+a copy of the local `Advertiser', which newspaper had been started
+in the early days by a brilliant drunkard, who drank himself to death
+just as the fathers of our nation were beginning to get educated up
+to his style.  He might have made Australian journalism very different
+from what it is.  There was nothing new in the `Advertiser' -- there had been
+nothing new since the last time the drunkard had been sober enough
+to hold a pen.  There was the same old `enjoyable trip' to Drybone
+(whereof the editor was the hero), and something about an on-the-whole
+very enjoyable evening in some place that was tastefully decorated,
+and where the visitors did justice to the good things provided,
+and the small hours, and dancing, and our host and hostess,
+and respected fellow-townsmen; also divers young ladies sang very nicely,
+and a young Mr Somebody favoured the company with a comic song.
+
+There was the same trespassing on the valuable space by the old subscriber,
+who said that `he had said before and would say again',
+and he proceeded to say the same things which he said in the same paper
+when we first heard our father reading it to our mother.
+Farther on the old subscriber proceeded to `maintain',
+and recalled attention to the fact that it was just exactly as he had said.
+After which he made a few abstract, incoherent remarks
+about the `surrounding district', and concluded by stating
+that he `must now conclude', and thanking the editor for trespassing on
+the aforesaid valuable space.
+
+There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation
+was still carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence
+to both papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin --
+a place where no sane man ever had occasion to go.
+
+I took up the `unreliable contemporary', but found nothing there
+except a letter from `Parent', another from `Ratepayer',
+a leader on the Government, and `A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose
+was made in opposition to the trip to Drybone.
+
+There was nothing new in the town.  Even the almost inevitable
+gang of city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway.
+They would have been a relief.  There was the monotonous aldermanic row,
+and the worse than hopeless little herd of aldermen,
+the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on council days
+in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always remembered them.
+They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this occasion they had risen
+above themselves, for one of them had remembered something his grandfather
+(old time English alderman) had told him, and they were stirring up
+all the old local quarrels and family spite of the district over a motion,
+or an amendment on a motion, that a letter -- from another enlightened body
+and bearing on an equally important matter (which letter had been
+sent through the post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary,
+handed to the chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times
+for private perusal) -- over a motion that such letter be received.
+
+There was a maintenance case coming on -- to the usual well-ventilated disgust
+of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed
+in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on
+and going off in my time.  It was not at all romantic.  The local youth
+was not even brilliant in adultery.
+
+After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit it,
+and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with an address.
+Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away unnoticed
+in the general lunacy.
+
+
+
+
+  The Never-Never Country.
+
+
+
+    By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
+     By railroad, coach, and track --
+    By lonely graves of our brave dead,
+     Up-Country and Out-Back:
+    To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
+     The dreamy plains expand --
+    My home lies wide a thousand miles
+     In the Never-Never Land.
+
+    It lies beyond the farming belt,
+     Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
+    A blazing desert in the drought,
+     A lake-land after rain;
+    To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
+     Or whirls the scorching sand --
+    A phantom land, a mystic land!
+     The Never-Never Land.
+
+    Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
+     Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
+    'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
+     In hopeless deserts there;
+    It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land --
+     Where clouds are seldom seen --
+    To where the cattle-stations lie
+     Three hundred miles between.
+
+    The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
+     The strange Gulf country know --
+    Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
+     The big lean bullocks go;
+    And camped by night where plains lie wide,
+     Like some old ocean's bed,
+    The watchmen in the starlight ride
+     Round fifteen hundred head.
+
+    And west of named and numbered days
+     The shearers walk and ride --
+    Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,
+     And the grey-beard side by side;
+    They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
+     And slumber on the sand --
+    Sad memories sleep as years go round
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+    By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
+     Through years of flood and drought,
+    The best of English black-sheep work
+     Their own salvation out:
+    Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown --
+     Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed --
+    They live the Dead Past grimly down!
+     Where boundary-riders ride.
+
+    The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
+     Then rose above his shame,
+    Tramps West in mateship with the man
+     Who cannot write his name.
+    'Tis there where on the barren track
+     No last half-crust's begrudged --
+    Where saint and sinner, side by side,
+     Judge not, and are not judged.
+
+    Oh rebels to society!
+     The Outcasts of the West --
+    Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
+     And broken hearts that jest!
+    The pluck to face a thousand miles --
+     The grit to see it through!
+    The communism perfected! --
+     And -- I am proud of you!
+
+    The Arab to true desert sand,
+     The Finn to fields of snow;
+    The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
+     Where the seasons come and go;
+    And this old fact comes home to me --
+     And will not let me rest --
+    However barren it may be,
+     Your own land is the best!
+
+    And, lest at ease I should forget
+     True mateship after all,
+    My water-bag and billy yet
+     Are hanging on the wall;
+    And if my fate should show the sign,
+     I'd tramp to sunsets grand
+    With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
+     In Never-Never Land.
+
+
+
+
+
+[End of original text.]
+
+
+
+
+==============================================================================
+A Note on the Author and the Text:
+
+
+Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia
+on 17 June 1867.  Although he has since become the most acclaimed
+Australian writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side" --
+his "real" work was whatever he could find, often painting houses,
+or doing rough carpentry.  His writing was often taken
+from memories of his childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee.
+In his autobiography, he states that many of his characters
+were taken from the better class of diggers and bushmen he knew there.
+His experiences at this time deeply influenced his work,
+for it is interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases
+that are identical in his autobiography and in his stories and poems.
+He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922.  Much of his writing was for periodicals,
+and even his regular publications were so varied, including books
+originally released as one volume being reprinted as two, and vice versa,
+that the multitude of permutations cannot be listed here.
+However, the following should give a basic outline of his major works.
+
+
+  Books of Short Stories:
+    While the Billy Boils  (1896)
+    On the Track  (1900)
+    Over the Sliprails  (1900)
+    The Country I Come From  (1901)     | These works were first published
+    Joe Wilson and His Mates  (1901)    | in England, during or shortly after
+    Children of the Bush  (1902)        | Lawson's stay there.
+    Send Round the Hat  (1907)       | These two books were first published
+    The Romance of the Swag  (1907)  | as "Children of the Bush".
+    The Rising of the Court  (1910)
+
+  Poetry:
+    In the Days When the World Was Wide  (1896)
+    Verses Popular and Humorous  (1900)
+    When I Was King and Other Verses (1905)
+    The Skyline Riders (1910)
+    Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
+
+
+Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes,
+"Joe Wilson" and "Joe Wilson's Mates", which correspond to Parts I & II
+in Joe Wilson and His Mates.  This work was first published in England,
+which may be evident from some of Lawson's comments in the text
+which are directed at English readers.  For example, Lawson writes
+in `The Golden Graveyard':  "A gold washing-dish is a flat dish --
+nearer the shape of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else
+I have seen in England, or the dish we used for setting milk --
+I don't know whether the same is used here. . . ."
+
+
+ Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Joe Wilson and His Mates, by Lawson
+
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