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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Children of the Bush, by Henry Lawson
+
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+Title: Children of the Bush
+
+Author: Henry Lawson
+
+Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7065]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 5, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE BUSH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geoffrey Cowling; gcowling@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au
+[ Transcriber's notes:  The year of first magazine publication is
+shown in the table of contents below.  Additional transcriber's
+notes, including a glossary, are included at the end of the EBook. ]
+
+
+
+
+Children of the Bush  by Henry Lawson
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+Send Round the Hat:               1901
+The Pretty Girl in the Army:      1901
+"Lord Douglas":                   1901
+The Blindness of One-eyed Brogan: 1901
+The Sundowners:                   1901
+A Sketch of Mateship:             1902
+On the Tucker Track:              1897
+A Bush Publican's Lament:         1901
+The Shearer's Dream:              1902
+The Lost Souls' Hotel:            1902
+The Boozers' Home:                1899
+The Sex Problem Again:            1898
+The Romance of the Swag:          1901
+"Buckholts' Gate":                1901
+The Bush-Fire:                    1901
+The House that Was Never Built:   1901
+"Barney, Take me home Again":     1901
+A Droving Yarn:                   1899
+Gettin' Back on Dave Regan:       1901
+"Shall We Gather at the River":   1901
+His Brother's Keeper:             1901
+The Ghosts of Many Christmases:   1901
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SEND ROUND THE HAT
+
+
+    Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush--
+    Should be simple and plain to a dunce:
+    "If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hat
+    Were he jail-bird or gentleman once."
+
+
+
+"Is it any harm to wake yer?"
+
+It was about nine o'clock in the morning, and, though it was Sunday
+morning, it was no harm to wake me; but the shearer had mistaken me
+for a deaf jackaroo, who was staying at the shanty and was something
+like me, and had good-naturedly shouted almost at the top of his
+voice, and he woke the whole shanty.  Anyway he woke three or four
+others who were sleeping on beds and stretchers, and one on a
+shake-down on the floor, in the same room.  It had been a wet night,
+and the shanty was full of shearers from Big Billabong Shed which had
+cut out the day before.  My room mates had been drinking and gambling
+overnight, and they swore luridly at the intruder for disturbing them.
+
+He was six-foot-three or thereabout.  He was loosely built, bony,
+sandy-complexioned and grey eyed.  He wore a good-humoured grin at
+most times, as I noticed later on; he was of a type of bushman that I
+always liked--the sort that seem to get more good-natured the longer
+they grow, yet are hard-knuckled and would accommodate a man who
+wanted to fight, or thrash a bully in a good-natured way.  The sort
+that like to carry somebody's baby round, and cut wood, carry water
+and do little things for overworked married bushwomen.  He wore a
+saddle-tweed sac suit two sizes too small for him, and his face, neck,
+great hands and bony wrists were covered with sun-blotches and
+freckles.
+
+"I hope I ain't disturbin' yer," he shouted, as he bent over my
+bunk, "but there's a cove--"
+
+"You needn't shout!" I interrupted, "I'm not deaf."
+
+"Oh--I beg your pardon!" he shouted.  "I didn't know I was yellin'.
+I thought you was the deaf feller."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," I said.  "What's the trouble?"
+
+"Wait till them other chaps is done swearin' and I'll tell yer," he
+said.  He spoke with a quiet, good-natured drawl, with something of
+the nasal twang, but tone and drawl distinctly Australian--altogether
+apart from that of the Americans.
+
+"Oh, spit it out for Christ's sake, Long'un!" yelled One-eyed Bogan,
+who had been the worst swearer in a rough shed, and he fell back on
+his bunk as if his previous remarks had exhausted him.
+
+"It's that there sick jackaroo that was pickin'-up at Big
+Billabong," said the Giraffe.  "He had to knock off the first week,
+an' he's been here ever since.  They're sendin' him away to the
+hospital in Sydney by the speeshall train.  They're just goin' to take
+him up in the wagonette to the railway station, an' I thought I might
+as well go round with the hat an' get him a few bob.  He's got a
+missus and kids in Sydney."
+
+"Yer always goin' round with yer gory hat!" growled Bogan.  "Yer'd
+blanky well take it round in hell!"
+
+"That's what he's doing, Bogan," muttered Gentleman Once, on the
+shake-down, with his face to the wall.
+
+The hat was a genuine "cabbage-tree," one of the sort that "last a
+lifetime."  It was well coloured, almost black in fact with weather
+and age, and it had a new strap round the base of the crown.  I looked
+into it and saw a dirty pound note and some silver.  I dropped in half
+a crown, which was more than I could spare, for I had only been a
+green-hand at Big Billabong.
+
+"Thank yer!" he said.  "Now then, you fellers!"
+
+"I wish you'd keep your hat on your head, and your money in your
+pockets and your sympathy somewhere else," growled Jack Moonlight as
+he raised himself painfully on his elbow, and felt under his pillow
+for two half-crowns.  "Here," he said, "here's two half-casers.
+Chuck 'em in and let me sleep for God's sake!"
+
+Gentleman Once, the gambler, rolled round on his shake-down, bringing
+his good-looking, dissipated face from the wall.  He had turned in in
+his clothes and, with considerable exertion he shoved his hand down
+into the pocket of his trousers, which were a tight fit.  He brought
+up a roll of pound notes and could find no silver.
+
+"Here," he said to the Giraffe, "I might as well lay a quid.  I'll
+chance it anyhow.  Chuck it in."
+
+"You've got rats this mornin', Gentleman Once," growled the
+Bogan.  "It ain't a blanky horse race."
+
+"P'r'aps I have," said Gentleman Once, and he turned to the
+wall again with his head on his arm.
+
+"Now, Bogan, yer might as well chuck in somethin ," said the
+Giraffe.
+
+"What's the matter with the --- jackaroo?" asked the Bogan, tugging his
+trousers from under the mattress.
+
+Moonlight said something in a low tone.
+
+"The --- he has!" said Bogan.  "Well, I pity the ---!  Here, I'll chuck in
+half a --- quid!" and he dropped half a sovereign into the hat.
+
+The fourth man, who was known to his face as "Barcoo-Rot," and
+behind his back as "The Mean Man," had been drinking all night, and
+not even Bogan's stump-splitting adjectives could rouse him.  So Bogan
+got out of bed, and calling on us (as blanky female cattle) to witness
+what he was about to do, he rolled the drunkard over, prospected his
+pockets till he made up five shillings (or a "caser" in bush
+language), and "chucked" them into the hat.
+
+And Barcoo-Rot is probably unconscious to this day that he was ever
+connected with an act of charity.  The Giraffe struck the deaf
+jackaroo in the neat room.  I heard the chaps cursing "Long-'un" for
+waking them, and "Deaf-'un" for being, as they thought at first, the
+indirect cause of the disturbance.  I heard the Giraffe and his hat
+being condemned in other rooms and cursed along the veranda where more
+shearers were sleeping; and after a while I turned out.
+
+The Giraffe was carefully fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor
+of a wagonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was
+carried out and lifted into the trap.
+
+As the wagonette started, the shanty-keeper--a fat, soulless-looking
+man--put his hand in his pocket and dropped a quid into the hat which
+was still going round, in the hands of the Giraffe's mate, little
+Teddy Thompson, who was as far below medium height as the Giraffe was
+above it.
+
+The Giraffe took the horse's head and led him along on the most level
+parts of the road towards the railway station, and two or three chaps
+went along to help get the sick man into the train.
+
+The shearing-season was over in that district, but I got a job of
+house-painting, which was my trade, at the Great Western Hotel (a
+two-story brick place), and I stayed in Bourke for a couple of months.
+
+
+The Giraffe was a Victorian native from Bendigo.  He was well known in
+Bourke and to many shearers who came through the great dry scrubs from
+hundreds of miles round.  He was stakeholder, drunkard's banker,
+peacemaker where possible, referee or second to oblige the chaps when
+a fight was on, big brother or uncle to most of the children in town,
+final court of appeal when the youngsters had a dispute over a
+foot-race at the school picnic, referee at their fights, and he was
+the stranger's friend.
+
+"The feller as knows can battle around for himself," he'd say.
+"But I always like to do what I can for a hard-up stranger cove.  I
+was a green-hand jackaroo once meself, and I know what it is."
+
+"You're always bothering about other people, Giraffe," said Tom
+Hall, the shearers' union secretary, who was only a couple of inches
+shorter than the Giraffe.  "There's nothing in it, you can take it
+from me--I ought to know."
+
+"Well, what's a feller to do?" said the Giraffe.  "I'm only hangin'
+round here till shearin' starts agen, an' a cove might as well be
+doin' something.  Besides, it ain't as if I was like a cove that had
+old people or a wife an' kids to look after.  I ain't got no
+responsibilities.  A feller can't be doin' nothin'.  Besides, I like
+to lend a helpin' hand when I can."
+
+"Well, all I've got to say," said Tom, most of whose screw went in
+borrowed quids, etc.  "All I've got to say is that you'll get no
+thanks, and you might blanky well starve in the end."
+
+"There ain't no fear of me starvin' so long as I've got me hands
+about me; an' I ain't a cove as wants thanks," said the Giraffe.
+
+He was always helping someone or something.  Now it was a bit of a
+"darnce" that we was gettin' up for the girls; again it was Mrs
+Smith, the woman whose husban' was drowned in the flood in the Began
+River lars' Crismas, or that there poor woman down by the
+Billabong--her husband cleared out and left her with a lot o' kids.
+Or Bill Something, the bullocky, who was run over by his own wagon,
+while he was drunk, and got his leg broke.
+
+Toward the end of his spree One-eyed Began broke loose and smashed
+nearly all the windows of the Carriers' Arms, and next morning he was
+fined heavily at the police court.  About dinner-time I encountered
+the Giraffe and his hat, with two half-crowns in it for a start.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble yer," he said, "but One-eyed Bogan carn't pay
+his fine, an' I thought we might fix it up for him.  He ain't half a
+bad sort of feller when he ain't drinkin'.  It's only when he gets too
+much booze in him."
+
+After shearing, the hat usually started round with the
+Giraffe's own dirty crumpled pound note in the bottom of it as a
+send-off, later on it was half a sovereign, and so on down to half a
+crown and a shilling, as he got short of stuff; till in the end he
+would borrow a "few bob"--which he always repaid after next
+shearing-"just to start the thing goin'."
+
+There were several yarns about him and his hat.  'Twas said that the
+hat had belonged to his father, whom he resembled in every respect,
+and it had been going round for so many years that the crown was worn
+as thin as paper by the quids, half-quids, casers, half-casers, bobs
+and tanners or sprats--to say nothing of the scrums--that had been
+chucked into it in its time and shaken up.
+
+They say that when a new governor visited Bourke the Giraffe happened
+to be standing on the platform close to the exit, grinning
+good-humouredly, and the local toady nudged him urgently and said in
+an awful whisper, "Take off your hat!  Why don't you take off your
+hat?"
+
+"Why?" drawled the Giraffe, "he ain't hard up, is he?"
+
+And they fondly cherish an anecdote to the effect that, when the
+One-Man-One-Vote Bill was passed (or Payment of Members, or when the
+first Labour Party went in--I forget on which occasion they said it
+was) the Giraffe was carried away by the general enthusiasm, got a few
+beers in him, "chucked" a quid into his hat, and sent it round.  The
+boys contributed by force of habit, and contributed largely, because
+of the victory and the beer.  And when the hat came back to the
+Giraffe, he stood holding it in front of him with both hands and
+stared blankly into it for a while.  Then it dawned on him.
+
+"Blowed if I haven't bin an' gone an' took up a bloomin' collection
+for meself!" he said.
+
+ He was almost a teetotaller, but he stood his shout in reason.  He
+mostly drank ginger beer.
+
+"I ain't a feller that boozes, but I ain't got nothin' agen chaps
+enjoyin' themselves, so long as they don't go too far."
+
+It was common for a man on the spree to say to him:
+
+"Here!  here's five quid.  Look after it for me, Giraffe, will yer,
+till I git off the booze.
+
+"His real name was Bob Brothers, and his bush names, 'Long-'un,'
+'The Giraffe,' 'Send-round-the-hat,' 'Chuck-in-a-bob,' and
+'Ginger-ale.'"
+
+Some years before, camels and Afghan drivers had been imported to the
+Bourke district; the camels did very well in the dry country, they
+went right across country and carried everything from sardines to
+flooring-boards.  And the teamsters loved the Afghans nearly as much
+as Sydney furniture makers love the cheap Chinese in the same line.
+They love 'em even as union shearers on strike love blacklegs brought
+up-country to take their places.
+
+Now the Giraffe was a good, straight unionist, but in cases of
+sickness or trouble he was as apt to forget his unionism, as all
+bushmen are, at all times (and for all time), to forget their creed.
+So, one evening, the Giraffe blundered into the Carriers' Arms--of all
+places in the world--when it was full of teamsters; he had his hat in
+his hand and some small silver and coppers in it.
+
+"I say, you fellers, there's a poor, sick Afghan in the camp down
+there along the---"
+
+A big, brawny bullock-driver took him firmly by the shoulders, or,
+rather by the elbows, and ran him out before any damage was done.  The
+Giraffe took it as he took most things, good-humouredly; but, about
+dusk, he was seen slipping down towards the Afghan camp with a billy
+of soup.
+
+"I believe," remarked Tom Hall, "that when the Giraffe goes to
+heaven--and he's the only one of us, as far as I can see, that has a
+ghost of a show--I believe that when he goes to heaven, the first
+thing he'll do will be to take his infernal hat round amongst the
+angels--getting up a collection for this damned world that he left
+behind."
+
+"Well, I don't think there's so much to his credit, after all," said
+Jack Mitchell, shearer.  "You see, the Giraffe is ambitious; he likes
+public life, and that accounts for him shoving himself forward with
+his collections.  As for bothering about people in trouble, that's
+only common curiosity; he's one of those chaps that are always shoving
+their noses into other people's troubles.  And, as for looking after
+sick men--why! there's nothing the Giraffe likes better than pottering
+round a sick man, and watching him and studying him.  He's awfully
+interested in sick men, and they're pretty scarce out here.  I tell
+you there's nothing he likes better--except, maybe, it's pottering
+round a corpse.  I believe he'd ride forty miles to help and
+sympathize and potter round a funeral.  The fact of the matter is that
+the Giraffe is only enjoying himself with other people's
+troubles--that's all it is.  It's only vulgar curiosity and
+selfishness.  I set it down to his ignorance; the way he was brought
+up."
+
+A few days after the Afghan incident the Giraffe and his hat had a run
+of luck.  A German, one of a party who were building a new wooden
+bridge over the Big Billabong, was helping unload some girders from a
+truck at the railway station, when a big log slipped on the skids and
+his leg was smashed badly.  They carried him to the Carriers' Arms,
+which was the nearest hotel, and into a bedroom behind the bar, and
+sent for the doctor.  The Giraffe was in evidence as usual.
+
+"It vas not that at all," said German Charlie, when they asked him
+if he was in much pain.  "It vas not that at all.  I don't cares a
+damn for der bain; but dis is der tird year--und I vas going home dis
+year--after der gontract--und der gontract yoost commence!"`
+
+That was the burden of his song all through, between his groans.
+There were a good few chaps sitting quietly about the bar and veranda
+when the doctor arrived.  The Giraffe was sitting at the end of the
+counter, on which he had laid his hat while he wiped his face, neck,
+and forehead with a big speckled "sweatrag." It was a very hot day.
+
+The doctor, a good-hearted young Australian, was heard saying
+something.  Then German Charlie, in a voice that rung with pain:
+
+"Make that leg right, doctor--quick!  Dis is der tird pluddy
+year--und I must go home!"
+
+The doctor asked him if he was in great pain.  "Neffer mind der
+pluddy bain, doctor!  Neffer mind der pluddy bain!  Dot vas nossing.
+Make dat leg well quick, doctor.  Dis vas der last gontract, and I vas
+going home dis year." Then the words jerked out of him by physical
+agony: "Der girl vas vaiting dree year, und--by Got!  I must go
+home."
+
+The publican--Watty Braithwaite, known as "Watty Broadweight," or,
+more familiarly, "Watty Bothways"--turned over the Giraffe's hat in
+a tired, bored sort of way, dropped a quid into it, and nodded
+resignedly at the Giraffe.
+
+The Giraffe caught up the hint and the hat with alacrity.  The hat
+went all round town, so to speak; and, as soon as his leg was firm
+enough not to come loose on the road German Charlie went home.
+
+It was well known that I contributed to the Sydney _Bulletin_ and
+several other papers.  The Giraffe's bump of reverence was very large,
+and swelled especially for sick men and poets.  He treated me with
+much more respect than is due from a bushman to a man, and with an odd
+sort of extra gentleness I sometimes fancied.  But one day he rather
+surprised me.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble yer," he said in a shamefaced way.  "I don't
+know as you go in for sportin', but One-eyed Bogan an' Barcoo-Rot is
+goin' to have a bit of a scrap down the Billybong this evenin',
+an'---"
+
+"A bit of a what?" I asked.
+
+"A bit of fight to a finish," he said apologetically.  "An' the
+chaps is tryin' to fix up a fiver to put some life into the thing.
+There's bad blood between One-eyed Bogan and Barcoo-Rot, an' it won't
+do them any harm to have it out."
+
+It was a great fight, I remember.  There must have been a couple of
+score blood-soaked handkerchiefs (or "sweat-rags") buried in a hole
+on the field of battle, and the Giraffe was busy the rest of the
+evening helping to patch up the principals.  Later on he took up a
+small collection for the loser, who happened to be Barcoo-Rot in spite
+of the advantage of an eye.
+
+The Salvation Army lassie, who went round with the _War Cry_,
+nearly always sold the Giraffe three copies.
+
+A new-chum parson, who wanted a subscription to build or enlarge a
+chapel, or something, sought the assistance of the Giraffe's influence
+with his mates.
+
+"Well," said the Giraffe, "I ain't a churchgoer meself.  I ain't
+what you might call a religious cove, but I'll be glad to do what I
+can to help yer.  I don't suppose I can do much.  I ain't been to
+church since I was a kiddy."
+
+The parson was shocked, but later on he learned to appreciate the
+Giraffe and his mates, and to love Australia for the bushman's sake,
+and it was he who told me the above anecdote.
+
+The Giraffe helped fix some stalls for a Catholic Church bazaar, and
+some of the chaps chaffed him about it in the union office.
+
+"You'll be taking up a collection for a joss-house down in the
+Chinamen's camp next," said Tom Hall in conclusion.
+
+"Well, I ain't got nothin' agen the Roming Carflics," said the
+Giraffe.  "An' Father O'Donovan's a very decent sort of cove.  He
+stuck up for the unions all right in the strike anyway."  ("He
+wouldn't be Irish if he wasn't," someone commented.)  "I carried
+swags once for six months with a feller that was a Carflick, an' he
+was a very straight feller.  And a girl I knowed turned Carflick to
+marry a chap that had got her into trouble, an' she was always jes'
+the same to me after as she was before.  Besides, I like to help
+everything that's goin' on."
+
+Tom Hall and one or two others went out hurriedly to have a drink.
+But we all loved the Giraffe.
+
+He was very innocent and very humorous, especially when he meant to be
+most serious and philosophical.
+
+"Some of them bush girls is regular tomboys," he said to me solemnly
+one day.  "Some of them is too cheeky altogether.  I remember once I
+was stoppin' at a place--they was sort of relations o' mine--an' they
+put me to sleep in a room off the verander, where there was a glass
+door an' no blinds.  An' the first mornin' the girls--they was sort o'
+cousins o' mine--they come gigglin' and foolin' round outside the door
+on the verander, an' kep' me in bed till nearly ten o'clock.  I had to
+put me trowsis on under the bed-clothes in the end.  But I got back on
+'em the next night," he reflected.
+
+"How did you do that, Bob?" I asked.
+
+"Why, I went to bed in me trowsis!"
+
+
+One day I was on a plank, painting the ceiling of the bar of the Great
+Western Hotel.  I was anxious to get the job finished.  The work had
+been kept back most of the day by chaps handing up long beers to me,
+and drawing my attention to the alleged fact that I was putting on the
+paint wrong side out.  I was slapping it on over the last few boards
+when:
+
+"I'm very sorry to trouble yer; I always seem to be troublin' yer;
+but there's that there woman and them girls---"
+
+I looked down--about the first time I had looked down on him--and
+there was the Giraffe, with his hat brim up on the plank and two
+half-crowns in it.
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Bob," I said, and I dropped in half a crown.
+
+There were shearers in the bar, and presently there was some
+barracking.  It appeared that that there woman and them girls were
+strange women, in the local as well as the Biblical sense of the word,
+who had come from Sydney at the end of the shearing-season, and had
+taken a cottage on the edge of the scrub on the outskirts of the town.
+There had been trouble this week in connection with a row at their
+establishment, and they had been fined, warned off by the police, and
+turned out by their landlord.
+
+"This is a bit too red-hot, Giraffe," said one of the shearers.
+"Them ---s has made enough out of us coves.  They've got plenty of
+stuff, don't you fret.  Let 'em go to ---!  I'm blanked if I give a
+sprat."
+
+"They ain't got their fares to Sydney," said the Giraffe.  "An',
+what's more, the little 'un is sick, an' two of them has kids in
+Sydney."
+
+"How the --- do you know?"
+
+"Why, one of 'em come to me an' told me all about it."
+
+There was an involuntary guffaw.
+
+"Look here, Bob," said Billy Woods, the rouseabouts' secretary,
+kindly.  "Don't you make a fool of yourself.  You'll have all the
+chaps laughing at you.  Those girls are only working you for all
+you're worth.  I suppose one of 'em came crying and whining to you.
+Don't you bother about 'em.  _You_ don't know 'em; they can pump
+water at a moment's notice.  You haven't had any experience with women
+yet, Bob."
+
+"She didn't come whinin' and cryin' to me," said the Giraffe, dropping
+his twanging drawl a little.  "She looked me straight in the face an'
+told me all about it."
+
+"I say, Giraffe," said Box-o'-Tricks, "what have you been doin'?
+You've bin down there on the nod.  I'm surprised at yer, Giraffe."
+
+"An' he pretends to be so gory soft an' innocent, too," growled the
+Bogan.  "We know all about you, Giraffe."
+
+"Look here, Giraffe," said Mitchell the shearer.  "I'd never have
+thought it of you.  We all thought you were the only virgin youth west
+the river; I always thought you were a moral young man.  You mustn't
+think that because your conscience is pricking you everyone else's
+is."
+
+"I ain't had anythin' to do with them," said the Giraffe, drawling
+again.  "I ain't a cove that goes in for that sort of thing.  But
+other chaps has, and I think they might as well help 'em out of their
+fix."
+
+"They're a rotten crowd," said Billy Woods.  "You don't know them,
+Bob.  Don't bother about them-they're not worth it.  Put your money in
+your pocket.  You'll find a better use for it before next shearing."
+
+"Better shout, Giraffe," said Box-o'-Tricks.
+
+Now in spite of the Giraffe's softness he was the hardest man in
+Bourke to move when he'd decided on what he thought was "the fair
+thing to do."  Another peculiarity of his was that on occasion, such
+for instance as "sayin' a few words" at a strike meeting, he would
+straighten himself, drop the twang, and rope in his drawl, so to
+speak.
+
+"Well, look here, you chaps," he said now.  "I don't know anything
+about them women.  I s'pose they're bad, but I don't suppose they're
+worse than men has made them.  All I know is that there's four women
+turned out, without any stuff, and every woman in Bourke, an' the
+police, an' the law agen 'em.  An' the fact that they is women is
+agenst 'em most of all.  You don't expect 'em to hump their swags to
+Sydney!  Why, only I ain't got the stuff I wouldn't trouble yer.  I'd
+pay their fares meself.  Look," he said, lowering his voice, "there
+they are now, an' one of the girls is cryin'.  Don't let 'em see yer
+lookin'."
+
+I dropped softly from the plank and peeped out with the rest.
+
+They stood by the fence on the opposite side of the street, a bit up
+towards the railway station, with their portmanteaux and bundles at
+their feet.  One girl leant with her arms on the fence rail and her
+face buried in them, another was trying to comfort her.  The third
+girl and the woman stood facing our way.  The woman was good-looking;
+she had a hard face, but it might have been made hard.  The third girl
+seemed half defiant, half inclined to cry.  Presently she went to the
+other side of the girl who was crying on the fence and put her arm
+round her shoulder.  The woman suddenly turned her back on us and
+stood looking away over the paddocks.
+
+The hat went round.  Billy Woods was first, then Box-o'-Tricks, and
+then Mitchell.
+
+Billy contributed with eloquent silence.  "I was only jokin',
+Giraffe," said Box-o'-Tricks, dredging his pockets for a couple of
+shillings.  It was some time after the shearing, and most of the chaps
+were hard up.  "Ah, well," sighed Mitchell.  "There's no help for
+it.  If the Giraffe would take up a collection to import some decent
+girls to this God-forgotten hole there might be some sense in
+it. . . .  It's bad enough for the Giraffe to undermine our religious
+prejudices, and tempt us to take a morbid interest in sick Chows and
+Afghans, and blacklegs and widows; but when he starts mixing us up
+with strange women it's time to buck."  And he prospected his pockets
+and contributed two shillings, some odd pennies, and a pinch of
+tobacco dust.
+
+"I don't mind helping the girls, but I'm damned if I'll give a penny
+to help the old---," said Tom Hall.
+
+"Well, she was a girl once herself," drawled the Giraffe.
+
+The Giraffe went round to the other pubs and to the union offices, and
+when he returned he seemed satisfied with the plate, but troubled
+about something else.
+
+"I don't know what to do for them for to-night," he said.  "None of
+the pubs or boardin'-houses will hear of them, an' there ain't no
+empty houses, an' the women is all agen 'em."
+
+"Not all," said Alice, the big, handsome barmaid from Sydney.
+"Come here, Bob."  She gave the Giraffe half a sovereign and a look
+for which some of us would have paid him ten pounds--had we had the
+money, and had the look been transferable.
+
+"Wait a minute, Bob," she said, and she went in to speak to the
+landlord.
+
+"There's an empty bedroom at the end of the store in the yard," she
+said when she came back.  "They can camp there for to-night if they
+behave themselves.  You'd better tell 'em, Bob."
+
+"Thank yer, Alice," said the Giraffe.
+
+Next day, after work, the Giraffe and I drifted together and down by
+the river in the cool of the evening, and sat on the edge of the
+steep, drought-parched bank.
+
+"I heard you saw your lady friends off this morning, Bob," I said,
+and was sorry I said it, even before he answered.
+
+"Oh, they ain't no friends of mine," he said.  "Only four' poor
+devils of women.  I thought they mightn't like to stand waitin' with
+the crowd on the platform, so I jest offered to get their tickets an'
+told 'em to wait round at the back of the station till the bell
+rung. . . .  An' what do yer think they did, Harry?" he went on, with
+an exasperatingly unintelligent grin.  "Why, they wanted to kiss me."
+
+"Did they?"
+
+"Yes.  An' they would have done it, too, if I hadn't been so
+long. . . .  Why, I'm blessed if they didn't kiss me hands."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"God's truth.  Somehow I didn't like to go on the platform with them
+after that; besides, they was cryin', and I can't stand women cryin'.
+But some of the chaps put them into an empty carriage."  He thought a
+moment.  Then:
+
+"There's some terrible good-hearted fellers in the world," he
+reflected.
+
+I thought so too.  "Bob," I said, "you're a single man.  Why don't
+you get married and settle down?"
+
+"Well," he said, "I ain't got no wife an' kids, that's a fact.  But
+it ain't my fault."
+
+He may have been right about the wife.  But I thought of the look that
+Alice had given him, and---
+
+"Girls seem to like me right enough," he said, "but it don't go no
+further than that.  The trouble is that I'm so long, and I always seem
+to get shook after little girls.  At least there was one little girl
+in Bendigo that I was properly gone on."
+
+"And wouldn't she have you?"
+
+"Well, it seems not."
+
+"Did you ask her?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I asked her right enough."
+
+"Well, and what did she say?"
+
+"She said it would be redicilus for her to be seen trottin' alongside
+of a chimbley like me."
+
+"Perhaps she didn't mean that.  There are any amount of little women
+who like tall men."
+
+"I thought of that too--afterwards.  P'r'aps she didn't mean it that
+way.  I s'pose the fact of the matter was that she didn't cotton on to
+me, and wanted to let me down easy.  She didn't want to hurt me
+feelin's, if yer understand--she was a very good-hearted little girl.
+There's some terrible tall fellers where I come from, and I know two
+as married little girls."
+
+He seemed a hopeless case.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "sometimes I wish that I wasn't so blessed
+long."
+
+"There's that there deaf jackaroo," he reflected presently.  "He's
+something in the same fig about girls as I am.  He's too deaf and I'm
+too long."
+
+"How do you make that out?" I asked.  "He's got three girls, to my
+knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in
+the town, and knows more of what's going on than old Mother Brindle
+the washerwoman."
+
+"Well, look at that now!" said the Giraffe, slowly.  "Who'd have
+thought it?  He never told me he had three girls, an' as for hearin'
+news, I always tell him anything that's goin' on that I think he
+doesn't catch.  He told me his trouble was that whenever he went out
+with a girl people could hear what they was sayin'--at least they
+could hear what she was sayin' to him, an' draw their own conclusions,
+he said.  He said he went out one night with a girl, and some of the
+chaps foxed 'em an' heard her sayin' `don't' to him, an' put it all
+round town."
+
+"What did she say `don't' for?" I asked.
+
+"He didn't tell me that, but I s'pose he was kissin' her or huggin'
+her or something."
+
+"Bob," I said presently, "didn't you try the little girl in Bendigo
+a second time?"
+
+"No," he said.  "What was the use.  She was a good little girl, and I
+wasn't goin' to go botherin' her.  I ain't the sort of cove that goes
+hangin' round where he isn't wanted.  But somehow I couldn't stay
+about Bendigo after she gave me the hint, so I thought I'd come over
+an' have a knock round on this side for a year or two."
+
+"And you never wrote to her?"
+
+"No.  What was the use of goin' pesterin' her with letters?  I know
+what trouble letters give me when I have to answer one.  She'd have
+only had to tell me the straight truth in a letter an' it wouldn't
+have done me any good.  But I've pretty well got over it by this
+time."
+
+A few days later I went to Sydney.  The Giraffe was the last I shook
+hands with from the carriage window, and he slipped something in a
+piece of newspaper into my hand.
+
+"I hope yer won't be offended," he drawled, "but some of the chaps
+thought you mightn't be too flush of stuff--you've been shoutin' a
+good deal; so they put a quid or two together.  They thought it might
+help yer to have a bit of a fly round in Sydney."
+
+I was back in Bourke before next shearing.  On the evening of my
+arrival I ran against the Giraffe; he seemed strangely shaken over
+something, but he kept his hat on his head.
+
+"Would yer mind takin' a stroll as fur as the Billerbong?" he said.
+"I got something I'd like to tell yer."
+
+His big, brown, sunburnt hands trembled and shook as he took a letter
+from his pocket and opened it.
+
+"I've just got a letter," he said.  "A letter from that little girl
+at Bendigo.  It seems it was all a mistake.  I'd like you to read it.
+Somehow I feel as if I want to talk to a feller, and I'd rather talk
+to you than any of them other chaps."
+
+It was a good letter, from a big-hearted little girl.  She had been
+breaking her heart for the great ass all these months.  It seemed that
+he had left Bendigo without saying good-bye to her.  "Somehow I
+couldn't bring meself to it," he said, when I taxed him with it.  She
+had never been able to get his address until last week; then she got
+it from a Bourke man who had gone south.  She called him "an awful
+long fool," which he was, without the slightest doubt, and she
+implored him to write, and come back to her.
+
+"And will you go back, Bob?" I asked.
+
+"My oath!  I'd take the train to-morrer only I ain't got the stuff.
+But I've got a stand in Big Billerbong Shed an' I'll soon knock a few
+quid together.  I'll go back as soon as ever shearin's over.  I'm
+goin' to write away to her to-night."
+
+
+The Giraffe was the "ringer" of Big Billabong Shed that season.  His
+tallies averaged a hundred and twenty a day.  He only sent his hat
+round once during shearing, and it was noticed that he hesitated at
+first and only contributed half a crown.  But then it was a case of a
+man being taken from the shed by the police for wife desertion.
+
+"It's always that way," commented Mitchell.  "Those soft,
+good-hearted fellows always end by getting hard and selfish.  The
+world makes 'em so.  It's the thought of the soft fools they've been
+that finds out sooner or later and makes 'em repent.  Like as not the
+Giraffe will be the meanest man out back before he's done."
+
+When Big Billabong cut out, and we got back to Bourke with our dusty
+swags and dirty cheques, I spoke to Tom Hall:
+
+"Look here, Tom," I said.  "That long fool, the Giraffe, has been
+breaking his heart for a little girl in Bendigo ever since he's been
+out back, and she's been breaking her heart for him, and the ass
+didn't know it till he got a letter from her just before Big Billabong
+started.  He's going to-morrow morning."
+
+That evening Tom stole the Giraffe's hat.  "I s'pose it'll turn up in
+the mornin'," said the Giraffe.  "I don't mind a lark," he added,
+"but it does seem a bit red hot for the chaps to collar a cove's hat
+and a feller goin' away for good, p'r'aps, in the mornin'."
+
+Mitchell started the thing going with a quid.
+
+"It's worth it," he said, "to get rid of him.  We'll have some
+peace now.  There won't be so many accidents or women in trouble when
+the Giraffe and his blessed hat are gone.  Any way, he's an eyesore in
+the town, and he's getting on my nerves for one. . . .  Come on, you
+sinners!  Chuck 'em in; we're only taking quids and half-quids."
+
+About daylight next morning Tom Hall slipped into the Giraffe's room
+at the Carriers' Arms.  The Giraffe was sleeping peacefully.  Tom put
+the hat on a chair by his side.  The collection had been a record one,
+and, besides the packet of money in the crown of the hat, there was a
+silver-mounted pipe with case--the best that could be bought in
+Bourke, a gold brooch, and several trifles--besides an ugly valentine
+of a long man in his shirt walking the room with a twin on each arm.
+
+Tom was about to shake the Giraffe by the shoulder, when he noticed a
+great foot, with about half a yard of big-boned ankle and shank,
+sticking out at the bottom of the bed.  The temptation was too great.
+Tom took up the hair-brush, and, with the back of it, he gave a smart
+rap on the point of an in-growing toe-nail, and slithered.
+
+We heard the Giraffe swearing good-naturedly for a while, and then
+there was a pregnant silence.  He was staring at the hat we supposed.
+
+We were all up at the station to see him off.  It was rather a long
+wait.  The Giraffe edged me up to the other end of the platform.
+
+He seemed overcome.
+
+"There's--there's some terrible good-hearted fellers in this world,"
+he said.  "You mustn't forgit 'em, Harry, when you make a big name
+writin'.  I'm--well, I'm blessed if I don't feel as if I was jist
+goin' to blubber!"
+
+I was glad he didn't.  The Giraffe blubberin' would have been a
+spectacle.  I steered him back to his friends.
+
+"Ain't you going to kiss me, Bob?" said the Great Western's big,
+handsome barmaid, as the bell rang.
+
+"Well, I don't mind kissin' you, Alice," he said, wiping his mouth.
+"But I'm goin' to be married, yer know."  And he kissed her fair on
+the mouth.
+
+"There's nothin' like gettin' into practice," he said, grinning
+round.
+
+We thought he was improving wonderfully; but at the last moment
+something troubled him.
+
+"Look here, you chaps," he said, hesitatingly, with his hand in his
+pocket, "I don't know what I'm going to do with all this stuff.
+There's that there poor washerwoman that scalded her legs liftin' the
+boiler of clothes off the fire---"
+
+We shoved him into the carriage.  He hung--about half of him--out the
+window, wildly waving his hat, till the train disappeared in the
+scrub.
+
+And, as I sit here writing by lamplight at midday, in the midst of a
+great city of shallow social sham, of hopeless, squalid poverty, of
+ignorant selfishness, cultured or brutish, and of noble and heroic
+endeavour frowned down or callously neglected, I am almost aware of a
+burst of sunshine in the room, and a long form leaning over my chair,
+and:
+
+"Excuse me for troublin' yer; I'm always troublin' yer; but there's
+that there poor woman. . . ."
+
+And I wish I could immortalize him!
+
+
+
+
+THAT PRETTY GIRL IN THE ARMY
+
+
+    Now I often sit at Watty's, when the night is very near,
+    With a head that's full of jingles--and the fumes of bottled beer;
+    For I always have a fancy that, if I am over there
+    When the Army prays for Watty, I'm included in the prayer.
+    It would take a lot of praying, lots of thumping on the drum,
+    To prepare our sinful, straying, erring souls for Kingdom Come.
+    But I love my fellow-sinners! and I hope, upon the whole,
+    That the Army gets a hearing when it prays for Watty's soul.
+                                             -When the World was Wide.
+
+
+The Salvation Army does good business in some of the outback towns of
+the great pastoral wastes of Australia.  There's the thoughtless,
+careless generosity of the bushman, whose pockets don't go far enough
+down his trousers (that's what's the matter with him), and who
+contributes to anything that comes along, without troubling to ask
+questions, like long Bob Brothers of Bourke, who, chancing to be "a
+Protestant by rights," unwittingly subscribed towards the erection of
+a new Catholic church, and, being chaffed for his mistake, said:
+
+"Ah, well, I don't suppose it'll matter a hang in the end, anyway it
+goes.  I ain't got nothink agenst the Roming Carflicks."
+
+There's the shearer, fresh with his cheque from a cut-out shed,
+gloriously drunk and happy, in love with all the world, and ready to
+subscribe towards any creed and shout for all hands--including Old
+Nick if he happened to come along.  There's the shearer, half-drunk
+and inclined to be nasty, who has got the wrong end of all things with
+a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back
+conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation
+Army ring.  Then he glares round to see if he can catch anybody
+winking behind his back.  There's the cynical joker, a queer mixture,
+who contributes generously and tempts the reformed boozer afterwards.
+There's the severe-faced old station-hand--in clean shirt and
+neckerchief and white moleskins--in for his annual or semi-annual
+spree, who contributes on principle, and then drinks religiously until
+his cheque is gone and the horrors are come.  There's the shearer,
+feeling mighty bad after a spree, and in danger of seeing things when
+he tries to go to sleep.  He has dropped ten or twenty pounds over bar
+counters and at cards, and he now "chucks" a repentant shilling into
+the ring, with a very private and rather vague sort of feeling that
+something might come of it.  There's the stout, contented,
+good-natured publican, who tips the Army as if it were a barrel-organ.
+And there are others and other reasons--black sheep and
+ne'er-do-wells--and faint echoes of other times in Salvation Army
+tunes.
+
+Bourke, the metropolis of the Great Scrubs, on the banks of the
+Darling River, about five hundred miles from Sydney, was suffering
+from a long drought when I was there in ninety-two; and the heat may
+or may not have been another cause contributing to the success, from a
+business point of view, of the Bourke garrison.  There was much beer
+boozing--and, besides, it was vaguely understood (as most things are
+vaguely understood out there in the drought-haze) that the place the
+Army came to save us from was hotter than Bourke.  We didn't hanker to
+go to a hotter place than Bourke.  But that year there was an
+extraordinary reason for the Army's great financial success there.
+
+She was a little girl, nineteen or twenty, I should judge, the
+prettiest girl I ever saw in the Army, and one of the prettiest I've
+ever seen out of it.  She had the features of an angel, but her
+expression was wonderfully human, sweet and sympathetic.  Her big grey
+eyes were sad with sympathy for sufferers and sinners, and her poke
+bonnet was full of bunchy, red-gold hair.  Her first appearance was
+somewhat dramatic--perhaps the Army arranged it so.
+
+The Army used to pray, and thump the drum, and sing, and take up
+collections every evening outside Watty Bothways' Hotel, the Carriers'
+Arms.  They performed longer and more often outside Watty's than any
+other pub in town--perhaps because Watty was considered the most
+hopeless publican and his customers the hardest crowd of boozers in
+Bourke.  The band generally began to play about dusk.  Watty would
+lean back comfortably in a basket easy-chair on his wide veranda, and
+clasp his hands, in a calm, contented way, while the Army banged the
+drum and got steam up, and whilst, perhaps, there was a barney going
+on in the bar, or a bloodthirsty fight in the backyard.  On such
+occasions there was something like an indulgent or fatherly expression
+on his fat and usually emotionless face.  And by and by he'd move his
+head gently and doze.  The banging and the singing seemed to soothe
+him, and the praying, which was often very personal, never seemed to
+disturb him in the least.
+
+Well, it was about dusk one day; it had been a terrible day, a hundred
+and something startling in the shade, but there came a breeze after
+sunset.  There had been several dozen of buckets of water thrown on
+the veranda floor and the ground outside.  Watty was seated in his
+accustomed place when the Army arrived.  There was no barney in the
+bar because there was a fight in the backyard, and that claimed the
+attention of all the customers.
+
+The Army prayed for Watty and his clients; then a reformed drunkard
+started to testify against publicans and all their works.  Watty
+settled himself comfortably, folded his hands, and leaned back and
+dozed.
+
+The fight was over, and the chaps began to drop round to the bar.  The
+man who was saved waved his arms, and danced round and howled.
+
+"Ye-es!" he shouted hoarsely.  "The publicans, and boozers, and
+gamblers, and sinners may think that Bourke is hot, but hell is a
+thousand times hotter! I tell you"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Mitchell, the shearer, and he threw a penny into
+the ring.
+
+"Ye-es! I tell you that hell is a million times hotter than Bourke!
+I tell you---"
+
+"Oh, look here," said a voice from the background, "that won't
+wash.  Why, don't you know that when the Bourke people die they send
+back for their blankets?"
+
+The saved brother glared round.
+
+"I hear a freethinker speaking, my friends," he said.  Then, with
+sudden inspiration and renewed energy, "I hear the voice of a
+freethinker.  Show me the face of a freethinker," he yelled, glaring
+round like a hunted, hungry man.  "Show me the face of a freethinker,
+and I'll tell you what he is."
+
+Watty hitched himself into a more comfortable position and clasped his
+hands on his knee and closed his eyes again.
+
+"Ya-a-a-s!" shrieked the brand.  "I tell you, my friends, I can
+tell a freethinker by his face.  Show me the face of a---"
+
+At this point there was an interruption.  One-eyed, or Wall-eyed,
+Bogan, who had a broken nose, and the best side of whose face was
+reckoned the ugliest and most sinister--One-eyed Bogan thrust his face
+forward from the ring of darkness into the torchlight of salvation.
+He had got the worst of a drawn battle; his nose and mouth were
+bleeding, and his good eye was damaged.
+
+"Look at my face!" he snarled, with dangerous earnestness.  "Look
+at my face!  That's the face of a freethinker, and I don't care who
+knows it.  Now!  what have you got to say against my face,
+`Man-without-a-Shirt?'"
+
+The brother drew back.  He had been known in the northwest in his
+sinful days as "Man-without-a-Shirt," alias "Shirty," or "The
+Dirty Man," and was flabbergasted at being recognized in speech.
+Also, he had been in a shearing-shed and in a shanty orgy with
+One-eyed Bogan, and knew the man.
+
+Now most of the chaps respected the Army, and, indeed, anything that
+looked like religion, but the Bogan's face, as representing
+free-thought, was a bit too sudden for them.  There were sounds on the
+opposite side of the ring as from men being smitten repeatedly and
+rapidly below the belt, and long Tom Hall and one or two others got
+away into the darkness in the background, where Tom rolled helplessly
+on the grass and sobbed.
+
+It struck me that Bogan's face was more the result of free speech than
+anything else.
+
+The Army was about to pray when the Pretty Girl stepped forward, her
+eyes shining with indignation and enthusiasm.  She had arrived by the
+evening train, and had been standing shrinkingly behind an Army lass
+of fifty Australian summers, who was about six feet high, flat and
+broad, and had a square face, and a mouth like a joint in boiler
+plates.
+
+The Pretty Girl stamped her pretty foot on the gravel, and her eyes
+flashed in the torchlight.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," she said.  "Great big men
+like you to be going on the way you are.  If you were ignorant or
+poor, as I've seen people, there might be some excuse for you.
+Haven't you got any mothers, or sisters, or wives to think of?  What
+sort of a life is this you lead?  Drinking, and gambling, and
+fighting, and swearing your lives away!  Do you ever think of God and
+the time when you were children?  Why don't you make homes?  Look at
+that man's face!" (she pointed suddenly at Bogan, who collapsed and
+sidled behind his mates out of the light).  "Look at that man's face!
+Is it a face for a Christian?  And you help and encourage him to
+fight.  You're worse than he is.  Oh, it's brutal.  It's--it's wicked.
+Great big men like you, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
+
+Long Bob Brothers--about six-foot-four--the longest and most innocent
+there, shrunk down by the wall and got his inquiring face out of the
+light.  The Pretty Girl fluttered on for a few moments longer, greatly
+excited, and then stepped back, seemingly much upset, and was taken
+under the wing of the woman with the boiler-plate mouth.
+
+It was a surprise, and very sudden.  Bogan slipped round to the
+backyard, and was seen bathing his battered features at the pump.  The
+rest wore the expression of men who knew that something unusual has
+happened, but don't know what, and are waiting vacantly for
+developments.--Except Tom Hall, who had recovered and returned.  He
+stood looking over the head of the ring of bushmen, and apparently
+taking the same critical interest in the girl as he would in a
+fight--his expression was such as a journalist might wear who is
+getting exciting copy.
+
+The Army had it all their own way for the rest of the evening, and
+made a good collection.  The Pretty Girl stood smiling round with
+shining eyes as the bobs and tanners dropped in, and then, being
+shoved forward by the flat woman, she thanked us sweetly, and said we
+were good fellows, and that she was sorry for some things she'd said
+to us.  Then she retired, fluttering and very much flushed, and hid
+herself behind the hard woman--who, by the way, had an excrescence on
+her upper lip which might have stood for a rivet.
+
+Presently the Pretty Girl came from behind the big woman and stood
+watching things with glistening eyes.  Some of the chaps on the
+opposite side of the ring moved a little to one side and all were
+careful not to meet her eye--not to be caught looking at her--lest she
+should be embarrassed.  Watty had roused himself a little at the sound
+of a strange voice in the Army (and such a clear, sweet voice too!)
+and had a look; then he settled back peacefully again, but it was
+noticed that he didn't snore that evening.
+
+And when the Army prayed, the Pretty Girl knelt down with the rest on
+the gravel.  One or two tall bushmen bowed their heads as if they had
+to, and One-eyed Bogan, with the blood washed from his face, stood
+with his hat off, glaring round to see if he could catch anyone
+sniggering.
+
+Mitchell, the shearer, said afterwards that the whole business made
+him feel for the moment like he felt sometimes in the days when he
+used to feel things.
+
+The town discussed the Pretty Girl in the Army that night and for many
+days thereafter, but no one could find out who she was or where she
+belonged to--except that she came from Sydney last.  She kept her
+secret, if she had one, very close--or else the other S.-A.  women
+were not to be pumped.  She lived in skillion-rooms at the back of the
+big weather-board Salvation Army barracks with two other "lassies,"
+who did washing and sewing and nursing, and went shabby, and half
+starved themselves, and were baked in the heat, like scores of women
+in the bush, and even as hundreds of women, suffering from religious
+mania, slave and stint in city slums, and neglect their homes,
+husbands and children--for the glory of Booth.
+
+The Pretty Girl was referred to as Sister Hannah by the Army people,
+and came somehow to be known by sinners as "Miss Captain."  I don't
+know whether that was her real name or what rank she held in the Army,
+if indeed she held any.
+
+She sold _War Crys_, and the circulation doubled in a day.
+One-eyed Bogan, being bailed up unexpectedly, gave her "half a
+caser" for a _Cry_, and ran away without the paper or the
+change.  Jack Mitchell bought a _Cry_ for the first time in his
+life, and read it.  He said he found some of the articles intensely
+realistic, and many of the statements were very interesting.  He said
+he read one or two things in the _Cry_ that he didn't know
+before.  Tom Hall, taken unawares, bought three _Crys_ from the
+Pretty Girl, and blushed to find it fame.
+
+Little Billy Woods, the Labourers' Union secretary--who had a poetic
+temperament and more than the average bushman's reverence for higher
+things--Little Billy Woods told me in a burst of confidence that he
+generally had two feelings, one after the other, after encountering
+that girl.  One was that unfathomable far-away feeling of loneliness
+and longing, that comes at odd times to the best of married men, with
+the best of wives and children--as Billy had.  The other feeling,
+which came later on, and was a reaction in fact, was the feeling of a
+man who thinks he's been twisted round a woman's little finger for the
+benefit of somebody else.  Billy said that he couldn't help being
+reminded by the shy, sweet smile and the shy, sweet "thank you" of
+the Pretty Girl in the Army, of the shy, sweet smile and the shy,
+sweet gratitude of a Sydney private barmaid, who had once roped him
+in, in the days before he was married.  Then he'd reckon that the Army
+lassie had been sent out back to Bourke as a business speculation.
+
+Tom Hall was inclined to reckon so too--but that was after he'd been
+chaffed for a month about the three _War Crys_.
+
+The Pretty Girl was discussed from psychological points of view; not
+forgetting the sex problem.  Donald Macdonald--shearer, union leader
+and labour delegate to other colonies on occasion--Donald Macdonald
+said that whenever he saw a circle of plain or ugly, dried-up women or
+girls round a shepherd, evangelist or a Salvation Army drum, he'd say
+"sexually starved!"  They were hungry for love.  Religious mania was
+sexual passion dammed out of its course.  Therefore he held that
+morbidly religious girls were the most easily seduced.
+
+But this couldn't apply to Pretty Girl in the Army.  Mitchell reckoned
+that she'd either had a great sorrow--a lot of trouble, or a
+disappointment in love (the "or" is Mitchell's); but they couldn't
+see how a girl like her could possibly be disappointed in love--unless
+the chap died or got into jail for life.  Donald decided that her soul
+had been starved somehow.
+
+Mitchell suggested that it might be only a craving for notoriety, the
+same thing that makes women and girls go amongst lepers, and out to
+the battlefield, and nurse ugly pieces of men back to life again; the
+same thing that makes some women and girls swear ropes round men's
+necks.  The Pretty Girl might be the daughter of well-to-do
+people--even aristocrats, said Mitchell--she was pretty enough and
+spoke well enough.  "Every woman's a barmaid at heart," as the
+_Bulletin_ puts it, said Mitchell.
+
+But not even one of the haggard women of Bourke ever breathed a
+suspicion of scandal against her.  They said she was too good and too
+pretty to be where she was.  You see it was not as in an old settled
+town where hags blacken God's world with their tongues.  Bourke was
+just a little camping town in a big land, where free, good-hearted
+democratic Australians, and the best of black sheep from the old world
+were constantly passing through; where husband's were often obliged to
+be away from home for twelve months, and the storekeepers had to trust
+the people, and mates trusted each other, and the folks were
+broad-minded.  The mind's eye had a wide range.
+
+After her maiden speech the Pretty Girl seldom spoke, except to return
+thanks for collections--and she never testified.  She had a sweet
+voice and used to sing.
+
+Now, if I were writing pure fiction, and were not cursed with an
+obstinate inclination to write the truth, I might say that, after the
+advent of the Pretty Girl, the morals of Bourke improved suddenly and
+wonderfully.  That One-eyed Bogan left off gambling and drinking and
+fighting and swearing, and put on a red coat and testified and fought
+the devil only; that Mitchell dropped his mask of cynicism; that
+Donald Macdonald ate no longer of the tree of knowledge and ceased to
+worry himself with psychological problems, and was happy; and that Tom
+Hall was no longer a scoffer.  That no one sneaked round through the
+scrub after dusk to certain necessary establishments in weather-board
+cottages on the outskirts of the town; and that the broad-minded and
+obliging ladies thereof became Salvation Army lassies.
+
+But none of these things happened.  Drunks quieted down or got out of
+the way if they could when the Pretty Girl appeared on the scene,
+fights and games of "headin' 'em" were adjourned, and weak, ordinary
+language was used for the time being, and that was about all.
+
+Nevertheless, most of the chaps were in love with that Pretty Girl in
+the Army--all those who didn't _worship_ her privately.  Long Bob
+Brothers hovered round in hopes, they said, that she'd meet with an
+accident--get run over by a horse or something--and he'd have to carry
+her in; he scared the women at the barracks by dropping firewood over
+the fence after dark.  Barcoo-Rot, the meanest man in the back
+country, was seen to drop a threepenny bit into the ring, and a rumour
+was industriously circulated (by Tom Hall) to the effect that One-eyed
+Bogan intended to shave and join the Army disguised as a lassie.
+
+Handsome Jake Boreham (_alias_ Bore-'em), a sentimental shearer
+from New Zealand, who had read Bret Harte, made an elaborate attempt
+for the Pretty Girl, by pretending to be going to the dogs headlong,
+with an idea of first winning her sorrowful interest and sympathy, and
+then making an apparently hard struggle to straighten up for her sake.
+He related his experience with the cheerful and refreshing absence of
+reserve which was characteristic of him, and is of most bushmen.
+
+"I'd had a few drinks," he said, "and was having a spell under a
+gum by the river, when I saw the Pretty Girl and another Army woman
+coming down along the bank.  It was a blazing hot day.  I thought of
+Sandy and the Schoolmistress in Bret Harte, and I thought it would be
+a good idea to stretch out in the sun and pretend to be helpless; so I
+threw my hat on the ground and lay down, with my head in the blazing
+heat, in the most graceful position I could get at, and I tried to put
+a look of pained regret on my face, as if I was dreaming of my lost
+boyhood and me mother.  I thought, perhaps, the Girl would pity me,
+and I felt sure she'd stoop and pick up my hat and put it gently over
+my poor troubled head.  Then I was going to become conscious for a
+moment, and look hopelessly round, and into her eyes, and then start
+and look sorrowful and ashamed, and stagger to my feet, taking off my
+hat like the Silver King does to the audience when he makes his first
+appearance drunk on the stage; and then I was going to reel off,
+trying to walk as straight as I could.  And next day I was going to
+clean up my teeth and nails and put on a white shirt, and start to be
+a new man henceforth.
+
+"Well, as I lay there with my eyes shut, I heard the footsteps come
+up and stop, and heard 'em whisper, and I thought I heard the Pretty
+Girl say `Poor fellow!' or something that sounded like that; and just
+then I got a God-almighty poke in the ribs with an umbrella--at least
+I suppose it was aimed for my ribs; but women are bad shots, and the
+point of the umbrella caught me in the side, just between the bottom
+rib and the hip-bone, and I sat up with a click, like the blade of a
+pocketknife.
+
+"The other lassie was the big square-faced woman.  The Pretty Girl
+looked rather more frightened and disgusted than sentimental, but she
+had plenty of pluck, and soon pulled herself together.  She said I
+ought to be ashamed of myself, a great big man like me, lying there
+in the dust like a drunken tramp--an eyesore and a disgrace to all the
+world.  She told me to go to my camp, wherever that was, and sleep
+myself sober.  The square-jawed woman said I looked like a fool
+sitting there.  I did feel ashamed, and I reckon I did look like
+a fool--a man generally does in a fix like that.  I felt like one,
+anyway.  I got up and walked away, and it hurt me so much that I went
+over to West Bourke and went to the dogs properly for a fortnight, and
+lost twenty quid on a game of draughts against a blindfold player.
+Now both those women had umbrellas, but I'm not sure to this day which
+of 'em it was that gave me the poke.  It wouldn't have mattered much
+anyway.  I haven't borrowed one of Bret Harte's books since."
+
+Jake reflected a while.  "The worst of it was," he said ruefully,
+"that I wasn't sure that the girl or the woman didn't see through me,
+and that worried me a bit.  You never can tell how much a woman
+suspects, and that's the worst of 'em.  I found that out after I got
+married."
+
+The Pretty Girl in the Army grew pale and thin and bigger-eyed.  The
+women said it was a shame, and that she ought to be sent home to her
+friends, wherever they were.  She was laid up for two or three days,
+and some of the women cooked delicacies and handed 'em over the
+barracks fence, and offered to come in and nurse her; but the square
+woman took washing home and nursed the girl herself.
+
+The Pretty Girl still sold _War Crys_ and took up collections,
+but in a tired, listless, half shamed-faced way.  It was plain that
+she was tired of the Army, and growing ashamed of the Salvationists.
+Perhaps she had come to see things too plainly.
+
+You see, the Army does no good out back in Australia--except from a
+business point of view.  It is simply there to collect funds for
+hungry headquarters.  The bushmen are much too intelligent for the
+Army.  There was no poverty in Bourke--as it is understood in the
+city; there was plenty of food; and camping out and roughing it come
+natural to the bushmen.  In cases of sickness, accident, widows or
+orphans, the chaps sent round the hat, without banging a drum or
+testifying, and that was all right.  If a chap was hard up he borrowed
+a couple of quid from his mate.  If a strange family arrived without a
+penny, someone had to fix 'em up, and the storekeepers helped them
+till the man got work.  For the rest, we work out our own salvation,
+or damnation--as the case is--in the bush, with no one to help us,
+except a mate, perhaps.  The Army can't help us, but a fellow-sinner
+can, sometimes, who has been through it all himself.  The Army is only
+a drag on the progress of Democracy, because it attracts many who
+would otherwise be aggressive Democrats--and for other reasons.
+
+Besides, if we all reformed the Army would get deuced little from us
+for its city mission.
+
+The Pretty Girl went to service for a while with the stock inspector's
+wife, who could get nothing out of her concerning herself or her
+friends.  She still slept at the barracks, stuck to the Army, and
+attended its meetings.
+
+
+It was Christmas morning, and there was peace in Bourke and goodwill
+towards all men.  There hadn't been a fight since yesterday evening,
+and that had only been a friendly one, to settle an argument
+concerning the past ownership, and, at the same time, to decide as to
+the future possession of a dog.
+
+It had been a hot, close night, and it ended in a suffocating sunrise.
+The free portion of the male population were in the habit of taking
+their blankets and sleeping out in "the Park," or town square, in
+hot weather; the wives and daughters of the town slept, or tried to
+sleep, with bedroom windows and doors open, while husbands lay outside
+on the verandas.  I camped in a corner of the park that night, and the
+sun woke me.
+
+As I sat up I caught sight of a swagman coming along the white, dusty
+road from the direction of the bridge, where the cleared road ran
+across west and on, a hundred and thirty miles, through the barren,
+broiling mulga scrubs, to Hungerford, on the border of Sheol.  I knew
+that swagman's walk.  It was John Merrick (Jack Moonlight), one-time
+Shearers' Union secretary at Coonamble, and generally "Rep"
+(shearers' representative) in any shed where he sheared.  He was a
+"better-class shearer," one of those quiet, thoughtful men of whom
+there are generally two or three in the roughest of rough sheds, who
+have great influence, and give the shed a good name from a Union point
+of view.  Not quiet with the resentful or snobbish reserve of the
+educated Englishman, but with a sad or subdued sort of quietness that
+has force in it--as if they fully realized that their intelligence is
+much higher than the average, that they have suffered more real
+trouble and heartbreak than the majority of their mates, and that
+their mates couldn't possibly understand them if they spoke as they
+felt and couldn't see things as they do--yet men who understand and
+are intensely sympathetic in their loneliness and sensitive reserve.
+
+I had worked in a shed with Jack Moonlight, and had met him in Sydney,
+and to be mates with a bushman for a few weeks is to know him
+well--anyway, I found it so.  He had taken a trip to Sydney the
+Christmas before last, and when he came back there was something
+wanting.  He became more silent, he drank more, and sometimes alone,
+and took to smoking heavily.  He dropped his mates, took little or no
+interest in Union matters, and travelled alone, and at night.
+
+The Australian bushman is born with a mate who sticks to him through
+life--like a mole.  They may be hundreds of miles apart sometimes, and
+separated for years, yet they are mates for life.  A bushman may have
+many mates in his roving, but there is always one his mate, "my
+mate;" and it is common to hear a bushman, who is, in every way, a
+true mate to the man he happens to be travelling with, speak of _his
+mate's mate_--"Jack's mate"--who might be in Klondyke or South
+Africa.  A bushman has always a mate to comfort him and argue with
+him, and work and tramp and drink with him, and lend him quids when
+he's hard up, and call him a b--- fool, and fight him sometimes; to
+abuse him to his face and defend his name behind his back; to bear
+false witness and perjure his soul for his sake; to lie to the girl
+for him if he's single, and to his wife if he's married; to secure a
+"pen" for him at a shed where he isn't on the spot, or, if the mate
+is away in New Zealand or South Africa, to write and tell him if it's
+any good coming over this way.  And each would take the word of the
+other against all the world, and each believes that the other is the
+straightest chap that ever lived-"a white man!" And next best to
+your old mate is the man you're tramping, riding, working, or drinking
+with.
+
+About the first thing the cook asks you when you come along to a
+shearers' hut is, "Where's your mate?"  I travelled alone for a
+while one time, and it seemed to me sometimes, by the tone of the
+inquiry concerning the whereabouts of my mate, that the bush had an
+idea that I might have done away with him and that the thing ought to
+be looked into.
+
+When a man drops mateship altogether and takes to "hatting" in the
+bush, it's a step towards a convenient tree and a couple of
+saddle-straps buckled together.
+
+I had an idea that I, in a measure, took the place of Jack Moonlight's
+mate about this time.
+
+"'Ullo, Jack!" I hailed as he reached the corner of the park.
+
+"Good morning, Harry!" said Jack, as if he'd seen me last yesterday
+evening instead of three months ago.  "How are you getting on?"
+
+We walked together towards the Union Office, where I had a camp in the
+skillion-room at the back.  Jack was silent.  But there's no place in
+the world where a man's silence is respected so much (within
+reasonable bounds) as in the Australian bush, where every man has a
+past more or less sad, and every man a ghost--perhaps from other lands
+that we know nothing of, and speaking in a foreign tongue.  They say
+in the bush, "Oh, Jack's only thinking!"  And they let him think.
+Generally you want to think as much as your mate; and when you've been
+together some time it's quite natural to travel all day without
+exchanging a word.  In the morning Jim says, "Well, I think I made a
+bargain with that horse, Bill," and some time late in the afternoon,
+say twenty miles farther on, it occurs to Bill to "rejoin," "Well,
+I reckon the blank as sold it to you had yer proper!"
+
+I like a good thinking mate, and I believe that thinking in company is
+a lot more healthy and more comfortable, as well as less risky, than
+thinking alone.
+
+On the way to the Union Office Jack and I passed the Royal Hotel, and
+caught a glimpse, through the open door, of a bedroom off the veranda,
+of the landlord's fresh, fair, young Sydney girl-wife, sleeping
+prettily behind the mosquito-net, like a sleeping beauty, while the
+boss lay on a mattress outside on the veranda, across the open door.
+(He wasn't necessary for publication, but an evidence of good faith.)
+
+I glanced at Jack for a grin, but didn't get one.  He wore
+the pained expression of a man who is suddenly hit hard with the
+thought of something that might have been.
+
+I boiled the billy and fried a pound of steak.
+
+"Been travelling all night, .Tack?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Jack.  "I camped at Emus yesterday."
+
+He didn't eat.  I began to reckon that he was brooding too much for
+his health.  He was much thinner than when I saw him last, and pretty
+haggard, and he had something of the hopeless, haggard look that I'd
+seen in Tom Hall's eyes after the last big shearing strike, when Tom
+had worked day and night to hold his mates up all through the hard,
+bitter struggle, and the battle was lost.
+
+"Look here, Jack!" I said at last.  "What's up?"
+
+"Nothing's up, Harry," said Jack.  "What made you think so?"
+
+"Have you got yourself into any fix?" I asked.  "What's the
+Hungerford track been doing to you?"
+
+"No, Harry," he said, "I'm all right.  How are you?"  And he
+pulled some string and papers and a roll of dusty pound notes from his
+pocket and threw them on the bunk.
+
+I was hard up just then, so I took a note and the billy to go to the
+Royal and get some beer.  I thought the beer might loosen his mind a
+bit.
+
+"Better take a couple of quid," said Jack.  "You look as if you
+want some new shirts and things." But a pound was enough for me, and
+I think he had reason to be glad of that later on, as it turned out.
+
+"Anything new in Bourke?" asked Jack as we drank the beer.
+
+"No," I said, "not a thing--except there's a pretty girl in the
+Salvation Army."
+
+"And it's about time," growled Jack.
+
+"Now, look here, Jack," I said presently, "what's come over you
+lately at all?  I might be able to help you.  It's not a bit of use
+telling me that there's nothing the matter.  When a man takes to
+brooding and travelling alone it's a bad sign, and it will end in a
+leaning tree and a bit of clothes-line as likely as not.  Tell me what
+the trouble is.  Tell us all about it.  There's a ghost, isn't
+there?"
+
+"Well, I suppose so," said Jack.  "We've all got our ghosts for
+that matter.  But never you mind, Harry; I'm all right.  I don't go
+interfering with your ghosts, and I don't see what call you've got to
+come haunting mine.  Why, it's as bad as kicking a man's dog."  And
+he gave the ghost of a grin.
+
+"Tell me, Jack," I said,  "is it a woman?"
+
+"Yes," said Jack, "it's a woman.  Now, are you satisfied?"
+
+"Is it a girl?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+So there was no more to be said.  I'd thought it might have been a lot
+worse than a girl.  I'd thought he might have got married somewhere,
+sometime, and made a mess of it.
+
+We had dinner at Billy Woods's place, and a sensible Christmas dinner
+it was--everything cold, except the vegetables, with the hose going on
+the veranda in spite of the by-laws, and Billy's wife and her sister,
+fresh and cool-looking and jolly, instead of being hot and brown and
+cross like most Australian women who roast themselves over a blazing
+fire in a hot kitchen on a broiling day, all the morning, to cook
+scalding plum pudding and redhot roasts, for no other reason than that
+their grandmothers used to cook hot Christmas dinners in England.
+
+And in the afternoon we went for a row on the river, pulling easily up
+the anabranch and floating down with the stream under the shade of the
+river timber--instead of going to sleep and waking up helpless and
+soaked in perspiration, to find the women with headaches, as many do
+on Christmas Day in Australia.
+
+Mrs Woods tried to draw Jack out, but it was no use, and in the
+evening he commenced drinking, and that made Billy uneasy.  "I'm
+afraid Jack's on the wrong track," he said.
+
+After tea most of us collected about Watty's veranda.  Most things
+that happened in Bourke happened at Watty's pub, or near it.
+
+If a horse bolted with a buggy or cart, he was generally stopped
+outside Watty's, which seemed to suggest, as Mitchell said, that most
+of the heroes drank at Watty's--also that the pluckiest men were found
+amongst the hardest drinkers.  (But sometimes the horse fetched up
+against Watty's sign and lamppost--which was a stout one of
+"iron-bark"--and smashed the trap.)  Then Watty's was the Carriers'
+Arms, a union pub; and Australian teamsters are mostly hard cases:
+while there was something in Watty's beer which made men argue
+fluently, and the best fights came off in his backyard.  Watty's dogs
+were the most quarrelsome in town, and there was a dog-fight there
+every other evening, followed as often as not by a man-fight.  If a
+bushman's horse ran away with him the chances were that he'd be thrown
+on to Watty's veranda, if he wasn't pitched into the bar; and victims
+of accidents, and sick, hard-up shearers, were generally carried to
+Watty's pub, as being the most convenient and comfortable for them.
+Mitchell denied that it was generosity or good nature on Watty's part,
+he said it was all business--advertisement.  Watty knew what he was
+doing.  He was very deep, was Watty.  Mitchell further hinted that if
+he was sick _he_ wouldn't be carried to Watty's, for Watty knew
+what a thirsty business a funeral was.  Tom Hall reckoned that Watty
+bribed the Army on the quiet.
+
+I was sitting on a stool along the veranda wall with Donald Macdonald,
+Bob Brothers (the Giraffe) and Mitchell, and one or two others, and
+Jack Moonlight sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his hat
+well down over his eyes.  The Army came along at the usual time, but
+we didn't see the Pretty Girl at first--she was a bit late.  Mitchell
+said he liked to be at Watty's when the Army prayed and the Pretty
+Girl was there; he had no objection to being prayed for by a girl like
+that, though he reckoned that nothing short of a real angel could save
+him now.  He said his old grandmother used to pray for him every night
+of her life and three times on Sunday, with Christmas Day extra when
+Christmas Day didn't fall on a Sunday; but Mitchell reckoned that the
+old lady couldn't have had much influence because he became more
+sinful every year, and went deeper in ways of darkness, until finally
+he embarked on a career of crime.
+
+The Army prayed, and then a thin "ratty" little woman bobbed up in
+the ring; she'd gone mad on religion as women do on woman's rights and
+hundreds of other things.  She was so skinny in the face, her jaws so
+prominent, and her mouth so wide, that when she opened it to speak it
+was like a ventriloquist's dummy and you could almost see the cracks
+open down under her ears.
+
+"They say I'm cracked!" she screamed in a shrill, cracked voice.
+"But I'm not cracked--I'm only cracked on the Lord Jesus Christ!
+That's all I'm cracked on---."  And just then the Amen man of the
+Army--the Army groaner we called him, who was always putting both feet
+in it--just then he blundered forward, rolled up his eyes, threw his
+hands up and down as if he were bouncing two balls, and said, with
+deep feeling:
+
+"Thank the Lord she's got a crack in the right place!"
+
+Tom Hall doubled up, and most of the other sinners seemed to think
+there was something very funny about it.  And the Army, too, seemed
+struck with an idea that there was something wrong somewhere, for they
+started a hymn.
+
+A big American negro, who'd been a night watchman in Sydney, stepped
+into the ring and waved his arms and kept time, and as he got excited
+he moved his hands up and down rapidly, as if he was hauling down a
+rope in a great hurry through a pulley block above, and he kept
+saying, "Come down, Lord!" all through the hymn, like a bass
+accompaniment, "Come down, Lord; come down, Lord; come down, Lord;
+come down, Lord!" and the quicker be said it the faster he hauled.
+He was as good as a drum.  And, when the hymn was over, he started to
+testify.
+
+"My frens!" he said, "I was once black as der coals in der mined!
+I was once black as der ink in der ocean of sin!  But now--thank an'
+bless the Lord!--I am whiter dan der dribben snow!"
+
+Tom Hall sat down on the edge of the veranda and leaned his head
+against a post and cried.  He had contributed a bob this evening, and
+he was getting his money's worth.
+
+Then the Pretty Girl arrived and was pushed forward into the ring.
+She looked thinner and whiter than I'd ever seen her, and there was a
+feverish brightness in her eyes that I didn't like.
+
+"Men!" she said, "this is Christmas Day-."  I didn't hear any more
+for, at the sound of her voice, Jack Moonlight jumped up as if he'd
+sat on a baby.  He started forward, stared at her for a moment as if
+he couldn't believe his eyes, and then said, "Hannah!" short and
+sharp.  She started as if she was shot, gave him a wild look, and
+stumbled forward; the next moment he had her in his arms and was
+steering for the private parlour.
+
+I heard Mrs Bothways calling for water and smelling-salts; she was as
+fat as Watty, and very much like him in the face, but she was
+emotional and sympathetic.  Then presently I heard, through the open
+window, the Pretty Girl say to Jack, "Oh, Jack, Jack!  Why did you go
+away and leave me like that?  It was cruel!"
+
+"But you told me to go, Hannah," said Jack.
+
+"That-that didn't make any difference.  Why didn't you write?"
+she sobbed.
+
+"Because you never wrote to me, Hannah," he said.
+
+"That--that was no excuse!" she said.  "It was so k-k-k-cruel of you,
+Jack."
+
+Mrs Bothways pulled down the window.  A new-comer asked Watty what the
+trouble was, and he said that the Army girl had only found her chap,
+or husband, or long-lost brother or something, but the missus was
+looking after the business; then he dozed again.
+
+And then we adjourned to the Royal and took the Army with us.
+
+"That's the way of it," said Donald Macdonald.  "With a woman it's
+love or religion; with a man it's love or the devil."
+
+"Or with a man," said Mitchell, presently, "it's love and the devil
+both, sometimes, Donald."
+
+I looked at Mitchell hard, but for all his face expressed he might
+only have said, "I think it's going to rain."
+
+
+
+"LORD DOUGLAS"
+
+    They hold him true, who's true to one,
+    However false he be.
+                          -The Rouseabout of Rouseabouts.
+
+
+The Imperial Hotel was rather an unfortunate name for an out-back town
+pub, for out back is the stronghold of Australian democracy; it was
+the out-back vote and influence that brought about "One Man One
+Vote," "Payment of Members," and most of the democratic legislation
+of late years, and from out back came the overwhelming vote in favour
+of Australian as Imperial Federation.
+
+The name Royal Hotel is as familiar as that of the Railway Hotel, and
+passes unnoticed and ungrowled at, even by bush republicans.  The
+Royal Hotel at Bourke was kept by an Irishman, one O'Donohoo, who was
+Union to the backbone, loudly in favour of "Australia for the
+Australians," and, of course, against even the democratic New South
+Wales Government of the time.  He went round town all one St Patrick's
+morning with a bunch of green ribbon fastened to his coat-tail with a
+large fish-hook, and wasn't aware of the fact till he sat down on the
+point of it.  But that's got nothing to do with it.
+
+The Imperial Hotel at Bourke was unpopular from the first.  It was
+said that the very existence of the house was the result of a swindle.
+It had been built with money borrowed on certain allotments in the
+centre of the town and on the understanding that it should be built on
+the mortgaged land, whereas it was erected on a free allotment.  Which
+fact was discovered, greatly to its surprise, by the building society
+when it came to foreclose on the allotments some years later.  While
+the building was being erected the Bourke people understood, in a
+vague way, that it was to be a convent (perhaps the building society
+thought so, too), and when certain ornaments in brick and cement in
+the shape of a bishop's mitre were placed over the corners of the
+walls the question seemed decided.  But when the place was finished a
+bar was fitted up, and up went the sign, to the disgust of the other
+publicans, who didn't know a licence had been taken out--for licensing
+didn't go by local option in those days.  It was rumoured that the
+place belonged to, and the whole business was engineered by, a priest.
+And priests are men of the world.
+
+The Imperial Hotel was patronized by the pastoralists, the civil
+servants, the bank manager and clerks--all the scrub aristocracy; it
+was the headquarters of the Pastoralists' Union in Bourke; a barracks
+for blacklegs brought up from Sydney to take the place of Union
+shearers on strike; and the new Governor, on his inevitable visit to
+Bourke, was banqueted at the Imperial Hotel.  The editor of the local
+"capitalistic rag" stayed there; the pastoralists' member was
+elected mostly by dark ways and means devised at the Imperial Hotel,
+and one of its managers had stood as a dummy candidate to split the
+Labour vote; the management of the hotel was his reward.  In short, it
+was there that most of the plots were hatched to circumvent Freedom,
+and put away or deliver into the clutches of law and order certain
+sons of Light and Liberty who believed in converting blacklegs into
+jellies by force of fists when bribes, gentle persuasion and pure
+Australian language failed to convert them to clean Unionism.  The
+Imperial Hotel was called the "Squatters' Pub," the "Scabbery,"
+and other and more expressive names.
+
+The hotel became still more unpopular after Percy Douglas.  had
+managed it for a while.  He was an avowed enemy of Labour Unionists.
+He employed Chinese cooks, and that in the height of the anti-Chinese
+agitation in Australia, and he was known to have kindly feelings
+towards the Afghans who, with their camels, were running white
+carriers off the roads.  If an excited Unionist called a man a
+"blackleg" or "scab" in the Imperial bar he was run out--sometimes
+with great difficulty, and occasionally as far as the lock-up.
+
+Percy Douglas was a fine-looking man, "wid a chest on him an' well
+hung--a fine fee-_gure_ of a man," as O'Donohoo pronounced it.
+He was tall and erect, he dressed well, wore small side-whiskers, had
+an eagle nose, and looked like an aristocrat.  Like many of his type,
+who start sometimes as billiard-markers and suddenly become hotel
+managers in Australia, nothing was known of his past.  Jack Mitchell
+reckoned, by the way he treated his employees and spoke to workmen,
+that he was the educated son of an English farmer--gone wrong and sent
+out to Australia.  Someone called him "Lord Douglas," and the
+nickname caught on.
+
+He made himself well hated.  He got One-eyed Bogan "three months'
+hard" for taking a bottle of whisky off the Imperial bar counter
+because he (Bogan) was drunk and thirsty and had knocked down his
+cheque, and because there was no one minding the bar at the moment.
+
+Lord Douglas dismissed the barmaid, and, as she was leaving, he had
+her boxes searched and gave her in charge for stealing certain
+articles belonging to the hotel.  The chaps subscribed to defend the
+case, and subsequently put a few pounds together for the girl.  She
+proved her gratitude by bringing a charge of a baby against one of the
+chaps--but that was only one of the little ways of the world, as
+Mitchell said.  She joined a Chinese camp later on.
+
+Lord Douglas employed a carpenter to do some work about the hotel, and
+because the carpenter left before the job was finished, Lord Douglas
+locked his tools in an outhouse and refused to give them up; and when
+the carpenter, with the spirit of an Australian workman, broke the
+padlock and removed his tool-chest, the landlord gave him in charge
+for breaking and entering.  The chaps defended the case and won it,
+and hated Lord Douglas as much as if he were their elder brother.
+Mitchell was the only one to put in a word for him.
+
+"I've been puzzling it out," said Mitchell, as he sat nursing his
+best leg in the Union Office, "and, as far as I can see, it all
+amounts to this--we're all mistaken in Lord Douglas.  We don't know
+the man.  He's all right.  We don't understand him.  He's really a
+sensitive, good-hearted man who's been shoved a bit off the track by
+the world.  It's the world's fault--he's not to blame.  You see, when
+he was a youngster he was the most good-natured kid in the school; he
+was always soft, and, consequently, he was always being imposed upon,
+and bullied, and knocked about.  Whenever he got a penny to buy
+lollies he'd count 'em out carefully and divide 'em round amongst his
+schoolmates and brothers and sisters.  He was the only one that worked
+at home, and consequently they all hated him.  His father respected
+him, but didn't love him, because he wasn't a younger son, and wasn't
+bringing his father's grey hairs down in sorrow to the grave.  If it
+was in Australia, probably Lord Douglas was an elder son and had to do
+all the hard graft, and teach himself at night, and sleep in a bark
+skillion while his younger brothers benefited--they were born in the
+new brick house and went to boarding-schools.  His mother had a
+contempt for him because he wasn't a black sheep and a prodigal, and,
+when the old man died, the rest of the family got all the stuff and
+Lord Douglas was kicked out because they could do without him now.
+And the family hated him like poison ever afterwards (especially his
+mother), and spread lies about him--because they had treated him
+shamefully and because his mouth was shut--they knew he wouldn't
+speak.  Then probably he went in for Democracy and worked for Freedom,
+till Freedom trod on him once too often with her hob-nailed boots.
+Then the chances are, in the end, he was ruined by a girl or woman,
+and driven, against his will, to take refuge in pure individualism.
+He's all right, only we don't appreciate him.  He's only fighting
+against his old ideals--his old self that comes up sometimes--and
+that's what makes him sweat his barmaids and servants, and hate us,
+and run us in; and perhaps when he cuts up extra rough it's because
+his conscience kicks him when he thinks of the damned soft fool he
+used to be.  He's all right--take my word for it.  It's all a mask.
+Why, he might be one of the kindest-hearted men in Bourke
+underneath."
+
+Tom Hall rubbed his head and blinked, as if he was worried by an idea
+that there might be some facts in Mitchell's theories.
+
+"You're allers findin' excuses for blacklegs an' scabs, Mitchell,"
+said Barcoo-Rot, who took Mitchell seriously (and who would have taken
+a laughing jackass seriously).  "Why, you'd find a white spot on a
+squatter.  I wouldn't be surprised if you blacklegged yourself in the
+end."
+
+This was an unpardonable insult, from a Union point of view, and the
+chaps half-unconsciously made room on the floor for Barcoo-Rot to fall
+after Jack Mitchell hit him.  But Mitchell took the insult
+philosophically.
+
+"Well, Barcoo-Rot," he said, nursing the other leg, "for the matter
+of that, I did find a white spot on a squatter once.  He lent me a
+quid when I was hard up.  There's white spots on the blackest
+characters if you only drop prejudice and look close enough.  I
+suppose even Jack-the-Ripper's character was speckled.  Why, I can
+even see spots on your character, sometimes, Barcoo-Rot.  I've known
+white spots to spread on chaps' characters until they were little
+short of saints.  Sometimes I even fancy I can feel my own wings
+sprouting.  And as for turning blackleg--well, I suppose I've got a
+bit of the crawler in my composition (most of us have), and a man
+never knows what might happen to his principles."
+
+"Well," said Barcoo-Rot, "I beg yer pardon--ain't that enough?"
+
+"No," said Mitchell, "you ought to wear a three-bushel bag and
+ashes for three months, and drink water; but since the police would
+send you to an asylum if you did that, I think the best thing we can
+do is to go out and have a drink."
+
+
+Lord Douglas married an Australian girl somewhere, somehow, and
+brought her to Bourke, and there were two little girls--regular little
+fairies.  She was a gentle, kind-hearted little woman, but she didn't
+seem to improve him much, save that he was very good to her.
+
+"It's mostly that way," commented Mitchell.  "When a boss gets
+married and has children he thinks he's got a greater right to grind
+his fellowmen and rob their wives and children.  I'd never work for a
+boss with a big family--it's hard enough to keep a single boss
+nowadays in this country."
+
+After one stormy election, at the end of a long and bitter shearing
+strike, One-eyed Bogan, his trusty enemy, Barcoo-Rot, and one or two
+other enthusiastic reformers were charged with rioting, and got from
+one to three months' hard.  And they had only smashed three windows of
+the Imperial Hotel and chased the Chinese cook into the river.
+
+"I used to have some hopes for Democracy," commented Mitchell, "but
+I've got none now.  How can you expect Liberty, Equality or
+Fraternity--how can you expect Freedom and Universal Brotherhood and
+Equal Rights in a country where Sons of Light get three months' hard
+for breaking windows and bashing a Chinaman?  It almost makes me long
+to sail away in a gallant barque."
+
+There were other cases in connection with the rotten-egging of
+Capitalistic candidates on the Imperial Hotel balcony, and it was
+partly on the evidence of Douglas and his friends that certain
+respectable Labour leaders got heavy terms of imprisonment for rioting
+and "sedition" and "inciting," in connection with organized
+attacks on blacklegs and their escorts.
+
+Retribution, if it was retribution, came suddenly and in a most
+unexpected manner to Lord Douglas.
+
+It seems he employed a second carpenter for six months to repair and
+make certain additions to the hotel, and put him off under various
+pretences until he owed him a hundred pounds or thereabout.  At last,
+immediately after an exciting interview with Lord Douglas, the
+carpenter died suddenly of heart disease.  The widow, a strong-minded
+bushwoman, put a bailiff in the hotel on a very short notice--and
+against the advice of her lawyer, who thought the case hopeless--and
+the Lord Douglas bubble promptly burst.  He had somehow come to be
+regarded as the proprietor of the hotel, but now the real proprietors
+or proprietor--he was still said to be a priest--turned Douglas out
+and put in a new manager.  The old servants were paid after some
+trouble.  The local storekeepers and one or two firms in Sydney, who
+had large accounts against the Imperial Hotel (and had trusted it,
+mainly because it was patronized by Capitalism and Fat), were never
+paid.
+
+Lord Douglas cleared out to Sydney, leaving his wife and children, for
+the present, with her brother, a hay-and-corn storekeeper, who also
+had a large and hopeless account against the hotel; and when the
+brother went broke and left the district she rented a two-roomed
+cottage and took in dressmaking.
+
+Dressmaking didn't pay so well in the bush then as it did in the old
+diggings days when sewing-machines were scarce and the possession of
+one meant an independent living to any girl--when diggers paid ten
+shillings for a strip of "flannen" doubled over and sewn together,
+with holes for arms and head, and called a shirt.  Mrs Douglas had a
+hard time, with her two little girls, who were still better and more
+prettily dressed than any other children in Bourke.  One grocer
+still called on her for orders and pretended to be satisfied to wait
+"till Mr Douglas came back," and when she would no longer order what
+he considered sufficient provisions for her and the children, and
+commenced buying sugar, etc., by the pound, for cash, he one day
+sent a box of groceries round to her.  He pretended it was a mistake.
+
+"However," he said, "I'd be very much obliged if you could use 'em,
+Mrs Douglas.  I'm overstocked now; haven't got room for another tin of
+sardines in the shop.  Don't you worry about bills, Mrs Douglas; I can
+wait till Douglas comes home.  I did well enough out of the Imperial
+Hotel when your husband had it, and a pound's worth of groceries won't
+hurt me now.  I'm only too glad to get rid of some of the stock."
+
+She cried a little, thought of the children, and kept the groceries.
+
+"I suppose I'll be sold up soon meself if things don't git
+brighter," said that grocer to a friend, "so it doesn't matter
+much."
+
+The same with Foley the butcher, who had a brogue with a sort of
+drawling groan in it, and was a cynic of the Mitchell school.
+
+"You see," he said, "she's as proud as the devil, but when I send
+round a bit o' rawst, or porrk, or the undercut o' the blade-bawn, she
+thinks o' the little gur-r-rls before she thinks o' sendin' it back to
+me.  That's where I've got the pull on her."
+
+The Giraffe borrowed a horse and tip-dray one day at the beginning of
+winter and cut a load of firewood in the bush, and next morning, at
+daylight, Mrs Douglas was nearly startled out of her life by a crash
+at the end of the cottage, which made her think that the chimney had
+fallen in, or a tree fallen on the house; and when she slipped on a
+wrapper and looked out, she saw a load of short-cut wood by the
+chimney, and caught a glimpse of the back view of the Giraffe, who
+stood in the dray with his legs wide apart and was disappearing into
+the edge of the scrub; and soon the rapid clock-clock-clock of the
+wheels died away in the west, as if he were making for West Australia.
+
+The next we heard of Lord Douglas he had got two years' hard for
+embezzlement in connection with some canvassing he had taken up.  Mrs
+Douglas fell ill--a touch of brain-fever--and one of the labourers'
+wives took care of the children while two others took turns in
+nursing.  While she was recovering, Bob Brothers sent round the hat,
+and, after a conclave in the Union Office--as mysterious as any
+meeting ever called with the object of downing bloated Capitalism--it
+was discovered that one of the chaps--who didn't wish his name to be
+mentioned--had borrowed just twenty-five pounds from Lord Douglas in
+the old days and now wished to return it to Mrs Douglas.  So the thing
+was managed, and if she had any suspicions she kept them to herself.
+She started a little fancy goods shop and got along fairly
+comfortable.
+
+Douglas, by the way, was, publicly, supposed, for her sake and because
+of the little girls, to be away in West Australia on the goldfields.
+
+
+Time passes without much notice out back, and one hot day, when the
+sun hung behind the fierce sandstorms from the northwest as dully
+lurid as he ever showed in a London fog, Lord Douglas got out of the
+train that had just finished its five-hundred-miles' run, and not
+seeing a new-chum porter, who started forward by force of habit to
+take his bag, he walked stiffly off the platform and down the main
+street towards his wife's cottage.
+
+He was very gaunt, and his eyes, to those who passed him closely,
+seemed to have a furtive, hunted expression.  He had let his beard
+grow, and it had grown grey.
+
+It was within a few days of Christmas--the same Christmas that we lost
+the Pretty Girl in the Salvation Army.  As a rule the big
+shearing-sheds within a fortnight of Bourke cut out in time for the
+shearers to reach the town and have their Christmas dinners and
+sprees--and for some of them to be locked up over Christmas
+Day--within sound of a church-going bell.  Most of the chaps gathered
+in the Shearers' Union Office on New Year's Eve and discussed Douglas
+amongst other things.
+
+"I vote we kick the cow out of the town!" snarled One-eyed Bogan,
+viciously.
+
+"We can't do that," said Bob Brothers (the Giraffe), speaking more
+promptly than usual.  "There's his wife and youngsters to consider,
+yer know."
+
+"He something well deserted his wife," snarled Began, "an' now he
+comes crawlin' back to her to keep him."
+
+"Well," said Mitchell, mildly, "but we ain't all got as much
+against him as you have, Began."
+
+"He made a crimson jail-bird of me!" snapped Bogan.  "Well," said
+Mitchell, "that didn't hurt you much, anyway; it rather improved your
+character if anything.  Besides, he made a jail-bird of himself
+afterwards, so you ought to have a fellow-feeling--a feathered
+feeling, so to speak.  Now you needn't be offended, Bogan, we're all
+jail-birds at heart, only we haven't all got the pluck."
+
+"I'm in favour of blanky well tarrin' an' featherin' him an' kickin'
+him out of the town!" shouted Bogan.  "It would be a good turn to
+his wife, too; she'd be well rid of the---."
+
+"Perhaps she's fond of him," suggested Mitchell; "I've known such
+cases before.  I saw them sitting together on the veranda last night
+when they thought no one was looking."
+
+"He deserted her," said One-eyed Bogan, in a climbing-down tone,
+"and left her to starve."
+
+"Perhaps the police were to blame for that," said Mitchell.  "You
+know you deserted all your old mates once for three months, Bogan, and
+it wasn't your fault."
+
+"He seems to be a crimson pet of yours, Jack Mitchell," said Bogan,
+firing up.
+
+"Ah, well, all I know," said Mitchell, standing up and stretching
+himself wearily, "all I know is that he looked like a gentleman once,
+and treated us like a gentleman, and cheated us like a gentleman, and
+ran some of us in like a gentleman, and, as far as I can see, he's
+served his time like a gentleman and come back to face us and live
+himself down like a man.  I always had a sneaking regard for a
+gentleman."
+
+"Why, Mitchell, I'm beginning to think you are a gentleman
+yourself," said Jake Boreham.
+
+"Well," said Mitchell, "I used to have a suspicion once that I had
+a drop of blue blood in me somewhere, and it worried me a lot; but I
+asked my old mother about it one day, and she scalded me--God bless
+her!--and father chased me with a stockwhip, so I gave up making
+inquiries."
+
+"You'll join the bloomin' Capitalists next," sneered One-eyed Bogan.
+
+"I wish I could, Bogan," said Mitchell.  "I'd take a trip to Paris
+and see for myself whether the Frenchwomen are as bad as they're made
+out to be, or go to Japan.  But what are we going to do about
+Douglas?"
+
+"Kick the skunk out of town, or boycott him!" said one or two.  "He
+ought to be tarred and feathered and hanged."
+
+"Couldn't do worse than hang him," commented Jake Boreham, cheerfully.
+
+"Oh, yes, we could," said Mitchell, sitting down, resting his elbows
+on his knees, and marking his points with one forefinger on the other.
+"For instance, we might boil him slow in tar.  We might skin him
+alive.  We might put him in a cage and poke him with sticks, with his
+wife and children in another cage to look on and enjoy the fun."
+
+The chaps, who had been sitting quietly listening to Mitchell, and
+grinning, suddenly became serious and shifted their positions
+uneasily.
+
+"But I can tell you what would hurt his feelings more than anything
+else we could do," said Mitchell.
+
+"Well, what is it, Jack?" said Tom Hall, rather impatiently.
+
+"Send round the hat and take up a collection for him," said
+Mitchell, "enough to let him get away with his wife and children and
+start life again in some less respectable town than Bourke.  You
+needn't grin, I'm serious about it."
+
+There was a thoughtful pause, and one or two scratched their heads.
+"His wife seems pretty sick," Mitchell went on in a reflective tone.
+"I passed the place this morning and saw him scrubbing out the floor.
+He's been doing a bit of house-painting for old Heegard to-day.  I
+suppose he learnt it in jail.  I saw him at work and touched my hat to
+him."
+
+"What!" cried Tom Hall, affecting to shrink from Mitchell in horror.
+
+"Yes," said Mitchell, "I'm not sure that I didn't take my hat off.
+Now I know it's not bush religion for a man to touch his hat, except
+to a funeral, or a strange roof or woman sometimes; but when I meet a
+braver man than myself I salute him.  I've only met two in my life."
+
+"And who were they, Jack?" asked Jake Boreham.
+
+"One," said Mitchell--"one is Douglas, and the other--well, the
+other was the man I used to be.  But that's got nothing to do with
+it."
+
+"But perhaps Douglas thought you were crowing over him when you took
+off your hat to him--sneerin' at him, like, Mitchell," reflected Jake
+Boreham.
+
+"No, Jake," said Mitchell, growing serious suddenly.  "There are ways
+of doing things that another man understands."
+
+They all thought for a while.
+
+"Well," said Tom Hall, "supposing we do take up a collection for
+him, he'd be too damned proud to take it."
+
+"But that's where we've got the pull on him," said Mitchell,
+brightening up.  "I heard Dr Morgan say that Mrs Douglas wouldn't
+live if she wasn't sent away to a cooler place, and Douglas knows it;
+and, besides, one of the little girls is sick.  We've got him in a
+corner and he'll have to take the stuff.  Besides, two years in jail
+takes a lot of the pride out of a man."
+
+"Well, I'm damned if I'll give a sprat to help the man who tried
+his best to crush the Unions!" said One-eyed Bogan.
+
+"Damned if I will either!" said Barcoo-Rot.
+
+"Now, look here, One-eyed Bogan," said Mitchell, "I don't like to
+harp on old things, for I know they bore you, but when you returned to
+public life that time no one talked of kicking you out of the town.
+In fact, I heard that the chaps put a few pounds together to help you
+get away for a while till you got over your modesty."
+
+No one spoke.
+
+"I passed Douglas's place on my way here from my camp to-night,"
+Mitchell went on musingly, "and I saw him walking up and down in the
+yard with his sick child in his arms.  You remember that little girl,
+Bogan?  I saw her run and pick up your hat and give it to you one day
+when you were trying to put it on with your feet.  You remember,
+Bogan?  The shock nearly sobered you."
+
+There was a very awkward pause.  The position had become too
+psychological altogether and had to be ended somehow.  The awkward
+silence had to be broken, and Bogan broke it.  He turned up Bob
+Brothers's hat, which was lying on the table, and "chucked" in a
+"quid," qualifying the hat and the quid, and disguising his feelings
+with the national oath of the land.
+
+"We've had enough of this gory, maudlin, sentimental tommy-rot," he
+said.  "Here, Barcoo, stump up or I'll belt it out of your hide!
+I'll--I'll take yer to pieces!"
+
+But Douglas didn't leave the town.  He sent his wife and children to
+Sydney until the heat wave was past, built a new room on to the
+cottage, and started a book and newspaper shop, and a poultry farm in
+the back paddock, and flourished.
+
+They called him Mr Douglas for a while, then Douglas, then Percy
+Douglas, and now he is well-known as Old Daddy Douglas, and the Sydney
+_Worker_, _Truth_, and _Bulletin_, and other democratic
+rags are on sale at his shop.  He is big with schemes for locking the
+Darling River, and he gets his drink at O'Donohoo's.  He is scarcely
+yet regarded as a straight-out democrat.  He was a gentleman once,
+Mitchell said, and the old blood was not to be trusted.  But, last
+elections, Douglas worked quietly for Unionism, and gave the leaders
+certain hints, and put them up to various electioneering dodges which
+enabled them to return, in the face of Monopoly, a Labour member who
+is as likely to go straight as long as any other Labour member.
+
+
+
+THE BLINDNESS OF ONE-EYED BOGAN
+
+    They judge not and they are not judged--'tis their philosophy--
+    (There's something wrong with every ship that sails upon the sea).
+                                     -The Ballad of the Rouseabout.
+
+"And what became of One-eyed Bogan?" I asked Tom Hall when I met him
+and Jack Mitchell down in Sydney with their shearing cheques the
+Christmas before last.
+
+"You'd better ask Mitchell, Harry," said Tom.  "He can tell you
+about Bogan better than I can.  But first, what about the drink we're
+going to have?"
+
+We turned out of Pitt Street into Hunter Street, and across George
+Street, where a double line of fast electric tramway was running, into
+Margaret Street and had a drink at Pfahlert's Hotel, where a counter
+lunch--as good as many dinners you get for a shilling--was included
+with a sixpenny drink.  "Get a quiet corner," said Mitchell, "I
+like to bear myself cackle."  So we took our beer out in the fernery
+and got a cool place at a little table in a quiet corner amongst the
+fern boxes.
+
+"Well, One-eyed Bogan was a hard case, Mitchell," I said.  "Wasn't
+he?"
+
+"Yes," said Mitchell, putting down his "long-beer" glass, "he
+was."
+
+"Rather a bad egg?"
+
+"Yes, a regular bad egg," said Mitchell, decidedly.
+
+"I heard he got caught cheating at cards," I said.
+
+"Did you?" said Mitchell.  "Well, I believe he did.  Ah, well," he
+added reflectively, after another long pull, "One-eyed Bogan won't
+cheat at cards any more."
+
+"Why?" I said.  "Is he dead then?"
+
+"No," said Mitchell, "he's blind."
+
+"Good God!" I said, "how did that happen?"
+
+"He lost the other eye," said Mitchell, and he took another drink.
+"Ah, well, he won't cheat at cards any more--unless there's cards
+invented for the blind."
+
+"How did it happen?" I asked.
+
+"Well," said Mitchell, "you see, Harry, it was this way.  Bogan
+went pretty free in Bourke after the shearing before last, and in the
+end he got mixed up in a very ugly-looking business: he was accused of
+doing two new-chum jackaroos out of their stuff by some sort of
+confidence trick."
+
+"Confidence trick," I said.  "I'd never have thought that One-eyed
+Bogan had the brains to go in for that sort of thing."
+
+"Well, it seems he had, or else he used somebody else's brains;
+there's plenty of broken-down English gentlemen sharpers knocking
+about out back, you know, and Bogan might have been taking lessons
+from one.  I don't know the rights of the case, it was hushed up, as
+you'll see presently; but, anyway, the jackaroos swore that Bogan had
+done 'em out of ten quid.  They were both Cockneys and I suppose they
+reckoned themselves smart, but bushmen have more time to think.
+Besides, Bogan's one eye was in his favour.  You see he always kept
+his one eye fixed strictly on whatever business he had in hand; if
+he'd had another eye to rove round and distract his attention and look
+at things on the outside, the chances are he would never have got into
+trouble."
+
+"Never mind that, Jack," said Tom Hall.  "Harry wants to hear the
+yarn."
+
+"Well, to make it short, one of the jackaroos went to the police and
+Bogan cleared out.  His character was pretty bad just then, so there
+was a piece of blue paper out for him.  Bogan didn't seem to think the
+thing was so serious as it was, for he only went a few miles down the
+river and camped with his horses on a sort of island inside an
+anabranch, till the thing should blow over or the new chums leave
+Bourke.
+
+"Bogan's old enemy, Constable Campbell, got wind of Bogan's camp, and
+started out after him.  He rode round the outside track and came in on
+to the river just below where the anabranch joins it, at the lower end
+of the island and right opposite Bogan's camp.  You know what those
+billabongs are: dry gullies till the river rises from the Queensland
+rains and backs them up till the water runs round into the river again
+and makes anabranches of 'em--places that you thought were hollows
+you'll find above water, and you can row over places you thought were
+hills.  There's no water so treacherous and deceitful as you'll find
+in some of those billabongs.  A man starts to ride across a place
+where he thinks the water is just over the grass, and blunders into a
+deep channel--that wasn't there before--with a steady undercurrent
+with the whole weight of the Darling River funnelled into it; and if
+he can't swim and his horse isn't used to it--or sometimes if he can
+swim--it's a case with him, and the Darling River cod hold an inquest
+on him, if they have time, before he's buried deep in Darling River
+mud for ever.  And somebody advertises in the missing column for Jack
+Somebody who was last heard of in Australia."
+
+"Never mind that, Mitchell, go on," I said.
+
+"Well, Campbell knew the river and saw that there was a stiff current
+there, so he hailed Bogan.
+
+"'Good day, Campbell,' shouted Bogan.
+
+"`I want you, Bogan,' said Campbell.  `Come across and bring your
+horses.'
+
+"`I'm damned if I will,' says Bogan.  `I'm not going to catch me
+death o' cold to save your skin.  If you want me you'll have to bloody
+well come and git me.'  Bogan was a good strong swimmer, and he had
+good horses, but he didn't try to get away--I suppose he reckoned he'd
+have to face the music one time or another--and one time is as good as
+another out back.
+
+"Campbell was no swimmer; he had no temptation to risk his life--you
+see it wasn't as in war with a lot of comrades watching ready to
+advertise a man as a coward for staying alive--so he argued with Bogan
+and tried to get him to listen to reason, and swore at him.  `I'll
+make it damned hot for you, Bogan,' he said, `if I have to come over
+for you.'
+
+"`Two can play at that game,' says Bogan.
+
+"`Look here, Bogan," said Campbell, `I'll tell you what I'll do.
+If you give me your word that you'll come up to the police station
+to-morrow I'll go back and say nothing about it.  You can say you
+didn't know a warrant was out after you.  It will be all the better
+for you in the end.  Better give me your word, man.'
+
+"Perhaps Campbell knew Bogan better than any of us.
+
+"`Now then, Bogan,' he said, `don't be a fool.  Give your word like
+a sensible man, and I'll go back.  I'll give you five minutes to make
+up your mind.' And he took out his watch.
+
+"But Bogan was nasty and wouldn't give his word, so there was
+nothing for it but for Campbell to make a try for him.
+
+"Campbell had plenty of pluck, or obstinacy, which amounts to the
+same thing.  He put his carbine and revolver under a log, out of the
+rain that was coming on, saw to his handcuffs, and then spurred his
+horse into the water.  Bogan lit his pipe with a stick from his
+camp-fire--so Campbell said afterwards--and sat down on his heels and
+puffed away, and waited for him.
+
+"Just as Campbell's horse floundered into the current Bogan shouted
+to go back, but Campbell thought it was a threat and kept on.  But
+Bogan had caught sight of a log coming down the stream, end on, with a
+sharp, splintered end, and before Campbell knew where he was, the
+sharp end of the log caught the horse in the flank.  The horse started
+to plunge and struggle sideways, with all his legs, and Campbell got
+free of him as quick as he could.  Now, you know, in some of those
+Darling River reaches the current will seem to run steadily far a
+while, and then come with a rush.  (I was caught in one of those
+rushes once, when I was in swimming, and would have been drowned if I
+hadn't been born to be hanged.)  Well, a rush came along just as
+Campbell got free from his horse, and he went down-stream one side of
+a snag and his horse the other.  Campbell's pretty stout, you know,
+and his uniform was tight, and it handicapped him.
+
+"Just as he was being washed past the lower end of the snag he caught
+hold of a branch that stuck out of the water and held on.  He swung
+round and saw Bogan running down to the point opposite him.  Now, you
+know there was always a lot of low cunning about Bogan, and I suppose
+he reckoned that if he pulled Campbell out he'd stand a good show of
+getting clear of his trouble; anyway, if he didn't save Campbell it
+might be said that he killed him--besides, Bogan was a good swimmer,
+so there wasn't any heroism about it anyhow.  Campbell was only a few
+feet from the bank, but Bogan started to strip--to make the job look
+as big as possible, I suppose.  He shouted to Campbell to say he was
+coming, and to hold on.  Campbell said afterwards that Bogan seemed an
+hour undressing.  The weight of the current was forcing down the bough
+that Campbell was hanging on to, and suddenly, he said, he felt a
+great feeling of helplessness take him by the shoulders.  He yelled to
+Bogan and let go.
+
+"Now, it happened that Jake Boreham and I were passing away the time
+between shearings, and we were having a sort of fishing and shooting
+loaf down the river in a boat arrangement that Jake had made out of
+boards and tarred canvas.  We called her the _Jolly Coffin_.  We
+were just poking up the bank in the slack water, a few hundred yards
+below the billabong, when Jake said, `Why, there's a horse or
+something in the river.'  Then he shouted, `No, by God, it's a man,'
+and we poked the _Coffin_ out into the stream for all she was
+worth.  `Looks like two men fighting in the water,' Jake shouts
+presently.  `Hurry up, or they'll drown each other.'
+
+"We hailed 'em, and Bogan shouted for help.  He was treading water
+and holding Campbell up in front of him now in real professional
+style.  As soon as he heard us he threw up his arms and splashed a
+bit--I reckoned he was trying to put as much style as he could into
+that rescue.  But I caught a crab, and, before we could get to them,
+they were washed past into the top of a tree that stood well below
+flood-mark.  I pulled the boat's head round and let her stern down
+between the branches.  Bogan had one arm over a limb and was holding
+Campbell with the other, and trying to lift him higher out of the
+water.  I noticed Bogan's face was bleeding--there was a dead limb
+stuck in the tree with nasty sharp points on it, and I reckoned he'd
+run his face against one of them.  Campbell was gasping like a codfish
+out of water, and he was the whitest man I ever saw (except one, and
+_he'd_ been drowned for a week).  Campbell had the sense to keep
+still.  We asked Bogan if he could hold on, and he said he could, but
+he couldn't hold Campbell any longer.  So Jake took the oars and I
+leaned over the stern and caught hold of Campbell, and Jake ran the
+boat into the bank, and we got him ashore; then we went back for Bogan
+and landed him.
+
+"We had some whisky and soon brought Campbell round; but Bogan was
+bleeding like a pig from a nasty cut over his good eye, so we bound
+wet handkerchiefs round his eyes and led him to a log and he sat down
+for a while, holding his hand to his eye and groaning.  He kept
+saying, `I'm blind, mates, I'm blind!  I've lost me other eye!' but we
+didn't dream it was so bad as that: we kept giving him whisky.  We got
+some dry boughs and made a big fire.  Then Bogan stood up and held his
+arms stiff down to his sides, opening and shutting his hands as if he
+was in great pain.  And I've often thought since what a different man
+Bogan seemed without his clothes and with the broken bridge of his
+nose and his eyes covered by the handkerchiefs.  He was clean shaven,
+and his mouth and chin are his best features, and he's clean limbed
+and well hung.  I often thought afterwards that there was something of
+a blind god about him as he stood there naked by the fire on the day
+he saved Campbell's life--something that reminded me of a statue I saw
+once in the Art Gallery.  (Pity the world isn't blinder to a man's
+worst points.)
+
+"Presently Jake listened and said, `By God, that's lucky!' and we
+heard a steamer coming up-river and presently we saw her coming round
+the point with a couple of wool-barges in tow.  We got Bogan aboard
+and got some clothes on him, and took him ashore at Bourke to the new
+hospital.  The doctors did all they knew, but Bogan was blind for
+life.  He never saw anything again--except `a sort of dull white
+blur,' as he called it--or his past life sometimes, I suppose.
+Perhaps he saw that for the first time.  Ah, well!
+
+"Bogan's old enemy, Barcoo-Rot, went to see him in the hospital, and
+Bogan said, `Well, Barcoo, I reckon we've had our last fight.  I owe
+you a hiding, but I don't see how I'm going to pay you.'  `Never mind
+that, Bogan, old man,' says Barcoo.  `I'll take it from anyone yer
+likes to appoint, if that worries yer; and, look here, Bogan, if I
+can't fight you I can fight for you--and don't you forget it!'  And
+Barcoo used to lead Bogan round about town in his spare time and tell
+him all that was going on; and I believe he always had an ear cocked
+in case someone said a word against Bogan--as if any of the chaps
+would say a word against a blind man.
+
+"Bogan's case was hushed up.  The police told us to fix it up the
+best way we could.  One of the jackaroos, who reckoned that Bogan had
+swindled him, was a gentleman, and he was the first to throw a quid in
+the Giraffe's hat when it went round for Bogan, but the other jackaroo
+was a cur: he said he wanted the money that Bogan had robbed him of.
+There were two witnesses, but we sent 'em away, and Tom Hall, there,
+scared the jackaroo.  You know Tom was always the best hand we had at
+persuading witnesses in Union cases to go home to see their mothers."
+
+"How did you scare that jackaroo, Tom?"  I asked.
+
+"Tell you about it some other time," said Tom.
+
+"Well," said Mitchell, "Bogan was always a good woolsorter, so,
+next shearing, old Baldy Thompson--(you know Baldy Thompson, Harry, of
+West-o'-Sunday Station)--Baldy had a talk with some of the chaps, and
+took Bogan out in his buggy with him to West-o'-Sunday.  Bogan would
+sit at the end of the rolling tables, in the shearing-shed, with a boy
+to hand him the fleeces, and he'd feel a fleece and tell the boy what
+bin to throw it into; and by and by he began to learn to throw the
+fleeces into the bins himself.  And sometimes Baldy would have a sheep
+brought to him and get him to feel the fleece and tell him the quality
+of it.  And then again Baldy would talk, just loud enough for Bogan to
+overhear, and swear that he'd sooner have Bogan, blind as he was, than
+half a dozen scientific jackaroo experts with all their eyes about
+them.
+
+"Of course Bogan wasn't worth anything much to Baldy, but Baldy gave
+him two pounds a week out of his own pocket, and another quid that we
+made up between us; so he made enough to pull him through the rest of
+the year.
+
+"It was curious to see how soon he learned to find his way about the
+hut and manage his tea and tucker.  It was a rough shed, but everybody
+was eager to steer Bogan about--and, in fact, two of them had a fight
+about it one day.  Baldy and all of us---and especially visitors when
+they came--were mighty interested in Bogan; and I reckon we were
+rather proud of having a blind wool-sorter.  I reckon Bogan had thirty
+or forty pairs of eyes watching out for him in case he'd run against
+something or fall.  It irritated him to be messed round too much--he
+said a baby would never learn to walk if it was held all the time.  He
+reckoned he'd learn more in a year than a man who'd served a lifetime
+to blindness; but we didn't let him wander much--for fear he'd fall
+into the big rocky waterhole there, by accident.
+
+"And after the shearing-season Bogan's wife turned up in Bourke---"
+
+"Bogan's wife!" I exclaimed.  "Why, I never knew Bogan was
+married."
+
+"Neither did anyone else," said Mitchell.  "But he was.  Perhaps
+that was what accounted for Bogan.  Sometimes, in his sober moods, I
+used to have an idea that there must have been something behind the
+Bogan to account for him.  Perhaps he got trapped--or got married and
+found out that he'd made a mistake--which is about the worst thing a
+man can find out---"
+
+"Except that his wife made the mistake, Mitchell," said Tom Hall.
+
+"Or that both did," reflected Mitchell.  "Ah, well!--never
+mind--Bogan had been married two or three years.  Maybe he got married
+when he was on the spree--I knew that he used to send money to someone
+in Sydney and I suppose it was her.  Anyway, she turned up after he
+was blind.  She was a hard-looking woman--just the sort that might
+have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop.  But you can't judge
+between husband and wife, unless you've lived in the same house with
+them--and under the same roofs with their parents right back to Adam
+for that matter.  Anyway, she stuck to Bogan all right; she took a
+little two-roomed cottage and made him comfortable--she's got a
+sewing-machine and a mangle and takes in washing and sewing.  She
+brought a carrotty-headed youngster with her, and the first time I saw
+Bogan sitting on the veranda with that youngster on his knee I thought
+it was a good thing that he was blind."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because the youngster isn't his," said Mitchell.
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"By the look of it--and by the look on her face, once, when she
+caught me squinting from the kid's face to Bogan's."
+
+"And whose was it?" I asked, without thinking.
+
+"How am I to know?" said Mitchell.  "It might be yours for all I
+know--it's ugly enough, and you never had any taste in women.  But you
+mustn't speak of that in Bourke.  But there's another youngster
+coming, and I'll swear that'll be Bogan's all right.
+
+"A curious thing about Bogan is that he's begun to be fidgety about
+his personal appearance--and you know he wasn't a dood.  He wears a
+collar now, and polishes his boots; he wears elastic-sides, and
+polishes 'em himself--the only thing is that he blackens over the
+elastic.  He can do many things for himself, and he's proud of it.  He
+says he can see many things that he couldn't see when he had his eyes.
+You seldom hear him swear, save in a friendly way; he seems much
+gentler, but he reckons he would stand a show with Barcoo-Rot even
+now, if Barcoo would stand up in front of him and keep yelling---"
+
+"By the way," I asked, "how did Bogan lose the sight of his other
+eye?"
+
+"Sleeping out in the rain when he was drunk," said Mitchell.  "He
+got a cold in his eye."  Then he asked, suddenly:
+
+"Did you ever see a blind man cry?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"Well, I have," said Mitchell.
+
+"You know Bogan wears goggles to hide his eyes--his wife made him do
+that.  The chaps often used to drop round and have a yarn with Bogan
+and cheer him up, and one evening I was sitting smoking with him, and
+yarning about old times, when he got very quiet all of a sudden, and I
+saw a tear drop from under one of his shutters and roll down his
+cheek.  It wasn't the eye he lost saving Campbell--it was the old
+wall-eye he used to use in the days before he was called 'One-eyed
+Bogan.'  I suppose he thought it was dark and that I couldn't see his
+face.  (There's a good many people in this world who think you can't
+see because they can't.)  It made me feel like I used to feel
+sometimes in the days when I felt things---"
+
+"Come on, Mitchell," said Tom Hall, "you've had enough beer."
+
+"I think I have," said Mitchell.  "Besides, I promised to send a
+wire to Jake Boreham to tell him that his mother's dead.  Jake's
+shearing at West-o'-Sunday; shearing won't be over for three or four
+weeks, and Jake wants an excuse to get away without offending old
+Baldy and come down and have a fly round with us before the holidays
+are over."
+
+Down at the telegraph-office Mitchell took a form and filled it in
+very carefully: "Jacob Boreham.  West-o'-Sunday Station.  Bourke.
+Come home at once.  Mother is dead.  In terrible trouble.  Father
+dying.--MARY BOREHAM."
+
+"I think that will do," said Mitchell.  "It ought to satisfy Baldy,
+and it won't give Jake too much of a shock, because he hasn't got a
+sister or sister-in-law, and his father and mother's been dead over
+ten years."
+
+"Now, if I was running a theatre," said Mitchell, as we left the
+office, "I'd give five pounds a night for the face Jake'll have on
+him when he takes that telegram to Baldy Thompson."
+
+
+
+
+TWO SUNDOWNERS
+
+
+Sheep stations in Australia are any distance from twenty to a hundred
+miles apart, to keep well within the boundaries of truth and the great
+pastoral country.  Shearing at any one shed only lasts a few weeks in
+the year; the number of men employed is according to the size of the
+shed--from three to five men in the little bough-covered shed of the
+small "cockatoo," up to a hundred and fifty or two hundred hands all
+told in the big corrugated iron machine shed of a pastoral company.
+
+Shearing starts early up in northern Queensland, where you can get a
+"January shed;" and further south, in February, March or April
+sheds, and so on down into New South Wales, where shearing often lasts
+over Christmas.  Shearers travel from shed to shed; some go a travel
+season without getting a pen, and an unlucky shearer might ride or
+tramp for several seasons and never get hands in wool; and all this
+explains the existence of the "footman" with his swag and the horse
+man with his packhorse.  They have a rough life, and the Australian
+shearers are certainly the most democratic and perhaps the most
+independent, intelligent and generous body of workmen in the world.
+
+Shearers at a shed elect their own cook, pay him so much a head, and
+they buy their rations in the lump from the station store; and
+"travellers," i.e. shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work, are
+invited, as a matter of course, to sit down to the shearers' table.
+Also a certain allowance of tea, sugar, flour or meat is still made to
+travellers at most Western station stores; so it would be rather
+surprising if there weren't some who, travelled on the game.  The
+swagman loafer, or "bummer," times himself, especially in bad
+weather, to arrive at the shed just about sundown; he is then sure of
+"tea," shelter for the night, breakfast, and some tucker from the
+cook to take him on along the track.  Brummy and Swampy were
+sundowners.
+
+Swampy was a bummer born--and proud of it.  Brummy had drifted down to
+loaferdom, and his nature was soured and his spirit revengeful against
+the world because of the memory of early years wasted at hard work and
+in being honest.  Both were short and stout, and both had scrubby
+beards, but Brummy's beard was a dusty black and Swampy's fiery
+red--he indulged in a monkey-shave sometimes, but his lower face was
+mostly like a patch of coarse stubble with a dying hedge round it.
+They had travelled together for a long time.  They seemed at times to
+hate each other with a murderous hatred, but they were too lazy to
+fight.  Sometimes they'd tramp side, by side and growl at each other
+by the hour, other times they'd sulk for days; one would push on ahead
+and the other drop behind until there was a mile or two between them;
+but one always carried the billy, or the sugar, or something that was
+necessary to the comfort of the other, so they'd come together at
+sundown.  They had travelled together a long time, and perhaps that
+was why they hated each other.  They often agreed to part and take
+different tracks, and sometimes they parted--for a while.  They agreed
+in cadging, and cadged in turn.  They carried a spare set of
+tucker-bags, and if, for instance, they were out of sugar and had
+plenty flour and tea, Brummy or Swampy would go to the store,
+boundary-rider's hut, or selector's, with the sugar-bag in his hand
+and the other bags in his shirt front on spec.  He'd get the sugar
+first, and then, if it looked good enough, the flour-bag would come
+out, then the tea-bag.  And before he left he'd remark casually that
+he and his mate hadn't had a smoke for two days.  They never missed a
+chance.  And when they'd cadged more tucker than they could
+comfortably carry, they'd camp for a day or two and eat it down.
+Sometimes they'd have as much as a pound of tobacco, all in little
+"borrowed" bits, cut from the sticks or cakes of honest travellers.
+They never missed a chance.  If a stranger gave Swampy his cake of
+tobacco with instructions to "cut off a pipeful," Swampy would cut
+off as much as he thought judicious, talking to the stranger and
+watching his eye all the time, and hiding his palm as much as
+possible--and sometimes, when he knew he'd cut off more than he could
+cram into his pipe, he'd put his hand in his pocket for the pipe and
+drop some of the tobacco there.  Then he'd hand the plug to his mate,
+engage the stranger in conversation and try to hold his eye or detract
+his attention from Brummy so as to give Brummy a chance of cutting off
+a couple of pipefuls, and, maybe, nicking off a corner of the cake and
+slipping it into his pocket.  I once heard a bushman say that no one
+but a skunk would be guilty of this tobacco trick--that it is about
+the meanest trick a man could be capable of--_because it spoils the
+chances of the next hard-up swaggy who asks the victim for
+tobacco._
+
+When Brummy and Swampy came to a shed where shearing was in full
+swing, they'd inquire, first thing, and with some show of anxiety, if
+there was any chance of gettin' on; if the shed was full-handed they'd
+growl about hard times, wonder what the country was coming to; talk of
+their missuses and kids that they'd left in Sydney, curse the
+squatters and the Government, and, next morning, get a supply of
+rations from the cook and depart with looks of gloom.  If, on the
+other hand, there was room in the shed for one or both of them, and
+the boss told them to go to work in the morning, they'd keep it quiet
+from the cook if possible, and depart, after breakfast,
+unostentatiously.
+
+Sometimes, at the beginning of a drought, when the tall dead grass was
+like tinder for hundreds of miles and a carelessly-dropped match would
+set the whole country on fire, Swampy would strike a hard-faced
+squatter, manager or overseer with a cold eye, and the conversation
+would be somewhat as follows:
+
+Swampy: "Good day, boss!"
+
+Boss (shortly): "'Day."
+
+Swampy: "Any chance of a job?"
+
+Boss: "Naw.  Got all I want and we don't start for a fortnight."
+
+Swampy: "Can I git a bit o' meat?"
+
+Boss: "Naw!  Don't kill till Saturday."
+
+Swampy: "Pint o' flour?"
+
+Boss: "Naw.  Short ourselves."
+
+Swampy: "Bit o' tea or sugar, boss?"
+
+Boss: "Naw--what next?"
+
+Swampy: "Bit o' baccer, boss.  Ain't had a smoke for a week."
+
+Boss: "Naw. Ain't got enough for meself till the wagon comes out."
+
+Swampy: "Ah, well!  It's hot, ain't it, boss?"
+
+Boss: "Yes-it's hot."
+
+Swampy: "Country very dry?"
+
+Boss: "Yes.  Looks like it."
+
+Swampy: "A fire 'ud be very bad just now?"
+
+Boss: "Eh?"
+
+Swampy: "Yes.  Now I'm allers very careful with matches an' fire when
+I'm on the track."
+
+Boss "Are yer?"
+
+Swampy: "Yes.  I never lights a fire near the grass--allers in the
+middle of the track--it's the safest place yer can get.  An' I allers
+puts the fire out afore I leaves the camp.  If there ain't no water
+ter spare I covers the ashes with dirt.  An' some fellers are so
+careless with matches lightin' their pipes." (Reflective pause.)
+
+Boss: "Are they?"
+
+Swampy: "Yes.  Now, when I lights me pipe on the track in dry weather
+I allers rubs the match head up an' drops it in the dust.  I never
+drops a burnin' match.  But some travellers is so careless.  A chap
+might light his pipe an' fling the match away without thinkin' an' the
+match might fall in a dry tuft, an'-there yer are!" (with a wave of
+his arms).  "Hundreds of miles o' grass gone an' thousands o' sheep
+starvin'.  Some fellers is so careless--they never thinks. . . .  An'
+what's more, they don't care if they burn the whole country."
+
+Boss (scratching his head reflectively): "Ah-umph!  You can go up to
+the store and get a bit of tucker.  The storekeeper might let yer have
+a bit o' tobacco."
+
+
+On one occasion, when they were out of flour and meat; Brummy and
+Swampy came across two other pilgrims camped on a creek, who were also
+out of flour and meat.  One of them had tried a surveyors' camp a
+little further down, but without success.  The surveyors' cook had
+said that he was short of flour and meat himself.  Brummy tried
+him--no luck.  Then Swampy said he'd go and have a try.  As luck would
+have it, the surveyors' cook was just going to bake; he had got the
+flour out in the dish, put in the salt and baking powder, mixed it up,
+and had gone to the creek for a billy of water when Swampy arrived.
+While the cook was gone Swampy slipped the flour out of the dish into
+his bag, _wiped_ the dish, set it down again, and planted the bag
+behind a tree at a little distance.  Then he stood waiting, holding a
+spare empty bag in his hand.  When the cook came back he glanced at
+the dish, lowered the billy of water slowly to the ground, scratched
+his head, and looked at the dish again in a puzzled way.
+
+"Blanked if I didn't think I got that flour out!" he said.
+
+"What's that, mate?" asked Swampy.
+
+"Why!  I could have sworn I got the flour out in the dish and mixed
+it before I went for the water," said the cook, staring at the dish
+again.  "It's rum what tricks your memory plays on you sometimes."
+
+"Yes," said Swampy, showing interest, while the cook got some more
+flour out into the dish from a bag in the back of the tent.  "It is
+strange.  I've done the same, thing meself.  I suppose it's the heat
+that makes us all a bit off at times."
+
+"Do you cook, then?" asked the surveyors' cook.
+
+"Well, yes.  I've done a good bit of it in me time; but it's about
+played out.  I'm after stragglers now."  (Stragglers are stray sheep
+missed in the general muster and found about the out paddocks and
+shorn after the general shearing.)
+
+They had a yarn and Swampy "bit the cook's ear" for a "bit o' meat
+an' tea an' sugar," not forgetting "a handful of flour if yer can
+spare it."
+
+"Sorry," said the cook, "but I can only let you have about a pint.
+We're very short ourselves."
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" said Swampy, as he put the stuff into his
+spare bags.  "Thank you!  Good day!"
+
+"Good day," said the cook.  The cook went on with his work and
+Swampy departed, catching up the bag of flour from behind the tree as
+he passed it, and keeping the clump of timber well between him and the
+surveyors' camp, lest the cook should glance round, and, noticing the
+increased bulk of his load, get some new ideas concerning mental
+aberration.
+
+
+Nearly every bushman has at least one superstition, or
+notion, that lasts his time--as nearly every bushman has at least one
+dictionary word which lasts him all his life.  Brummy had a gloomy
+notion--Lord knows how he got it!--that he should 'a' gone on the
+boards if his people hadn't been so ignorant.  He reckoned that he had
+the face and cut of an actor, could mimic any man's voice, and had
+wonderful control over his features.  They came to a notoriously
+"hungry" station, where there was a Scottish manager and
+storekeeper.  Brummy went up to "government house" in his own proper
+person, had a talk with the storekeeper, spoke of a sick mate, and got
+some flour and meat.  They camped down the creek, and next morning
+Brummy started to shave himself.
+
+"Whatever are you a-doin' of, Brummy?" gasped Swampy in great
+astonishment.
+
+"Wait and see," growled Brummy, with awful impressiveness, as if he
+were going to cut Swampy's throat after he'd finished shaving.  He
+shaved off his beard and whiskers, put on a hat and coat belonging to
+Swampy, changed his voice, dropped his shoulders, and went limping up
+to the station on a game leg.  He saw the cook and got some
+"brownie," a bit of cooked meat and a packet of baking powder.  Then
+he saw the storekeeper and approached the tobacco question.  Sandy
+looked at him and listened with some slight show of interest, then he
+said:
+
+"Oh that's all right now!  But ye needn't ha' troublt shavin' yer
+beard--the cold weather's comin' on!  An' yer mate's duds don't suit
+ye--they 're too sma'; an' yer game leg doesn't fit ye either--it
+takes a lot o' practice.  Ha' ye got ony tea an' sugar?"
+
+Brummy must have touched something responsive in that old Scot
+somewhere, but his lack of emotion upset Brummy somewhat, or else an
+old deep-rooted superstition had been severely shaken.  Anyway he let
+Swampy do the cadging for several days thereafter.
+
+
+But one bad season they were very hard up indeed--even for Brummy and
+Swampy.  They'd tramped a long hungry track and had only met a few
+wretched jackaroos, driven out of the cities by hard times, and
+tramping hopelessly west.  They were out of tobacco, and their
+trousers were so hopelessly "gone" behind that when they went to
+cadge at a place where there was a woman they were moved to back and
+sidle and edge away again--and neither Brummy nor Swampy was over
+fastidious in matters of dress or personal appearance.  It was
+absolutely necessary to earn a pound or two, so they decided to go to
+work for a couple of weeks.  It wouldn't hurt them, and then there was
+the novelty of it.
+
+They struck West-o'-Sunday Station, and the boss happened to want a
+rouseabout to pick up wool and sweep the floor for the shearers.
+
+"I can put _one_ of you on," he said.  "Fix it up between
+yourselves and go to work in the morning."
+
+Brummy and Swampy went apart to talk it over.
+
+"Look here! Brum, old man," said Swampy, with great heartiness,
+"we've been mates for a long while now, an' shared an' shared alike.
+You've allers acted straight to me an' I want to do the fair thing by
+you.  _I_ don't want to stand in _your_ light.  You take the
+job an' I'll be satisfied with a pair of pants out of it and a bit o'
+tobacco now an' agen.  There yer are!  I can't say no fairer than
+that."
+
+"Yes," said Brummy, resentfully, "an' you'll always be thrown' it
+up to me afterwards that I done you out of a job!"
+
+"I'll swear I won't," said Swampy, hurriedly.  "But since you're
+so blasted touchy and suspicious about it, _you_ take this job an'
+I'll take the next that turns up.  How'll that suit you?"
+
+Brummy thought resentfully.
+
+"Look here!" he said presently, "let's settle it and have done with
+this damned sentimental tommy-rot.  I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll
+give you the job and take my chance.  The boss might want another man
+to-morrow.  Now, are you satisfied?"
+
+But Swampy didn't look grateful or happy.
+
+"Well," growled Brummy, "of all the --- I ever travelled with
+you're the ---.  What do you want anyway?  What'll satisfy you?
+That's all I want to know.  Hey?--can't yer speak?"
+
+"Let's toss up for it," said Swampy, sulkily.
+
+"All right," said Brummy, with a big oath, and he felt in his pocket
+for two old pennies he had.  But Swampy had got a suspicion somehow
+that one of those pennies had two heads on it, and he wasn't sure that
+the other hadn't two tails--also, he suspected Brummy of some skill in
+"palming," so he picked up a chip from the wood-heap, spat on it,
+and spun it into the air.  "Sing out!" he cried, "wet or dry?"
+
+"Dry," said Brummy, promptly.  He had a theory that the wet side of
+the chip, being presumably heaviest, was more likely to fall
+downwards; but this time it was "wet" up three times in succession.
+Brummy ignored Swampy's hand thrown out in hearty congratulation; and
+next morning he went to work in the shed.  Swampy camped down the
+river, and Brummy supplied him with a cheap pair of moleskin trousers,
+tucker and tobacco.  The shed cut out within three weeks and the two
+sundowners took the track again, Brummy with two pounds odd in his
+pocket--he having negotiated his cheque at the shed.
+
+But now there was suspicion, envy, and distrust in the hearts of those
+two wayfarers.  Brummy was now a bloated capitalist, and proud, and
+anxious to get rid of Swampy--at least Swampy thought so.  He thought
+that the least that Brummy might have done was to have shared the
+"stuff" with him.
+
+"Look here, Brummy," he said reproachfully, "we've shared and shared
+alike, and---"
+
+"We never shared money," said Brummy, decidedly.
+
+"Do you think I want yer blasted money?" retorted Swampy,
+indignantly.  "When did I ever ask yer for a sprat?  Tell me that!"
+
+"You wouldn't have got it if you had asked," said Brummy,
+uncompromisingly.  "Look here!"  with vehemence.  "Didn't I keep
+yer in tobacco and buy yer gory pants?  What are you naggin' about
+anyway?"
+
+"Well," said Swampy, "all I was goin' to say was that yer might let
+me carry one of them quids in case you lost one--yer know you're
+careless and lose things; or in case anything happened to you."
+
+"I ain't going to lose it--if that's all that's fretting you," said
+Brummy, "and there ain't nothing going to happen to me--and don't you
+forget it."
+
+"That's all the thanks I get for givin' yer my gory job," said
+Swampy, savagely.  "I won't be sick a soft fool agen, I can tell
+yer."
+
+Brummy was silent, and Swampy dropped behind.  He brooded darkly, and
+it's a bad thing for a man to brood in the bush.  He was reg'lar
+disgusted with Brummy.  He'd allers acted straight to him, and Brummy
+had acted like a "cow."  He'd stand it no longer; but he'd have some
+satisfaction.  He wouldn't be a fool.  If Brummy was mean skunk enough
+to act to a mate like that, Swampy would be even with him; he would
+wait till Brummy was asleep, collar the stuff, and clear.  It was his
+job, anyway, and the money was his by rights.  He'd have his rights.
+
+Brummy, who carried the billy, gave Swampy a long tramp before he
+camped and made a fire.  They had tea in silence, and smoked moodily
+apart until Brummy turned in.  They usually slept on the ground, with
+a few leaves under them, or on the sand where there was any, each
+wrapped in his own blankets, and with their spare clothes, or rags
+rather, for pillows.  Presently Swampy turned in and pretended to
+sleep, but he lay awake watching, and listening to Brummy's breathing.
+When he thought it was safe he moved cautiously and slipped his hand
+under Brummy's head, but Brummy's old pocket-book--in which he carried
+some dirty old letters in a woman's handwriting--was not there.  All
+next day Swampy watched Brummy sharply every time he put his hands
+into his pockets, to try and find out in which pocket he kept his
+money.  Brummy seemed very cheerful and sociable, even considerate, to
+his mate all day, and Swampy pretended to be happy.  They yarned more
+than they had done for many a day.  Brummy was a heavy sleeper, and
+that night Swampy went over him carefully and felt all his pockets,
+but without success.  Next day Brummy seemed in high spirits--they
+were nearing Bourke, where they intended to loaf round the pubs for a
+week or two.  On the third night Swampy waited till about midnight,
+and then searched Brummy, every inch of him he could get at, and
+tickled him, with a straw of grass till he turned over, and ran his
+hands over the other side of him, and over his feet (Brummy slept with
+his socks on), and looked in his boots, and in the billy and in the
+tucker-bags, and felt in every tuft of grass round the camp, and under
+every bush, and down a hollow stump, and up a hollow log: but there
+was no pocket-book.  Brummy couldn't have lost the money and kept it
+dark--he'd have gone back to look for it at once.  Perhaps he'd thrown
+away the book and sewn the money in his clothes somewhere.  Swampy
+crept back to him and felt the lining of his hat, and was running his
+hand over Brummy's chest when Brummy suddenly started to snore, and
+Swampy desisted without loss of time.  He crept back to bed, breathing
+short, and thought hard.  It struck him that there was something
+aggressive about that snore.  He began to suspect that Brummy was up
+to his little game, and it pained him.
+
+Next morning Brummy was decidedly frivolous.  At any other time Swampy
+would have put it down to a "touch o' the sun," but now he felt a
+growing conviction that Brummy knew what he'd been up to the last
+three nights, and the more he thought of it the more it pained
+him--till at last he could stand it no longer.
+
+"Look here, Brummy," he said frankly, "where the hell do you keep
+that flamin' stuff o' yourn?  I been tryin' to git at it ever since we
+left West-o'-Sunday."
+
+"I know you have, Swampy," said Brummy, affectionately--as if he
+considered that Swampy had done his best in the interests of mateship.
+
+"I _knowed_ yer knowed!" exclaimed Swampy, triumphantly.  "But
+where the blazes did yer put it?"
+
+"Under _your_ head, Swampy, old man," said Brummy, cheerfully.
+
+Swampy was hurt now.  He commented in the language that used to be
+used by the bullock-punchers of the good days as they pranced up and
+down by their teams and lammed into the bullocks with saplings and
+crow-bars, and called on them to lift a heavy load out of a bog in the
+bed of a muddy creek.
+
+"Never mind, Swampy!" said Brummy, soothingly, as his mate paused
+and tried to remember worse oaths.  "It wasn't your fault."
+
+But they parted at Bourke.  Swampy had allers acted straight
+ter Brummy--share 'n' share alike.  He'd do as much for a mate as any
+other man, an' put up with as much from a mate.  He had put up with a
+lot from Brummy: he'd picked him up on the track and learned him all
+he knowed; Brummy would have starved many a time if it hadn't been
+for Swampy; Swampy had learned him how to "battle."  He'd stick to
+Brummy yet, but he couldn't stand ingratitude.  He hated low cunnin'
+an' suspicion, and when a gory mate got suspicious of his own old
+mate and wouldn't trust him, an' took to plantin' his crimson
+money--it was time to leave him.
+
+
+
+A SKETCH OF MATESHIP
+
+
+Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the
+Queensland side.  They were horsemen and had two packhorses.  At the
+last camp before Bourke Jim's packhorse got disgusted and home-sick
+during the night and started back for the place where he was foaled.
+Jim was little more than a new-chum jackaroo; he was no bushman and
+generally got lost when he went down the next gully.  Bill was a
+bushman, so it was decided that he should go back to look for the
+horse.
+
+Now Bill was going to sell his packhorse, a well-bred mare, in Bourke,
+and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales
+were over; this was to be the last day of the sales.  Jim was the best
+"barracker" of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very
+entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a
+glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he
+should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill.
+Seven pounds, reserve.
+
+Next day Bill turned up with the missing horse and saw Jim standing
+against a veranda-post of the Carriers' Arms, with his hat down over
+his eyes, and thoughtfully spitting in the dust.  Bill rode over to
+him.
+
+"'Ullo, Jim."
+
+"'Ullo, Bill.  I see you got him."
+
+"Yes, I got him."
+
+Pause.
+
+"Where'd yer find him?"
+
+"'Bout ten mile back.  Near Ford's Bridge.  He was just feedin'
+along."
+
+Pause.  Jim shifted his feet and spat in the dust.
+
+"Well," said Bill at last.  "How did you get on, Jim?"
+
+"Oh, all right," said Jim.  "I sold the mare."
+
+"That's right," said Bill.  "How much did she fetch?"
+
+"Eight quid;" then, rousing himself a little and showing some
+emotion, "An' I could 'a' got ten quid for her if I hadn't been a
+dam' fool."
+
+"Oh, that's good enough," said Bill.
+
+"I could 'a' got ten quid if I'd 'a' waited."
+
+"Well, it's no use cryin'.  Eight quid is good enough.  Did you get
+the stuff?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  They parted all right.  If I hadn't been such a dam' fool
+an' rushed it, there was a feller that would 'a' given ten quid for
+that mare."
+
+"Well, don't break yer back about it," said Bill.  "Eight is good
+enough."
+
+"Yes.  But I could 'a' got ten," said Jim, languidly, putting his
+hand in his pocket.
+
+Pause.  Bill sat waiting for him to hand over the money; but Jim
+withdrew his hand empty, stretched, and said:
+
+"Ah, well, Bill, I done it in.  Lend us a couple o' notes."
+
+Jim had been drinking and gambling all night and he'd lost the eight
+pounds as well as his own money.
+
+Bill didn't explode.  What was the use?  He should have known that Jim
+wasn't to be trusted with money in town.  It was he who had been the
+fool.  He sighed and lent Jim a pound, and they went in to have a
+drink.
+
+Now it strikes me that if this had happened in a civilized country
+(like England) Bill would have had Jim arrested and jailed for larceny
+as a bailee, or embezzlement, or whatever it was.  And would Bill or
+Jim or the world have been any better for it?
+
+
+
+
+ON THE TUCKER TRACK: A STEELMAN STORY
+
+
+Steelman and Smith, professional wanderers from New Zealand, took a
+run over to Australia one year to have a look at the country, and
+drifted out back, and played cards and "headin' 'em" at the
+shearing-sheds (while pretending to be strangers to each other), and
+sold eye-water and unpatented medicine, and worked the tucker tracks.
+They struck a streak of bad luck at West-o'-Sunday Station, where they
+were advised (by the boss and about fifty excited shearers) to go
+east, and not to stop till they reached the coast.  They were tramping
+along the track towards Bourke; they were very hard up and had to
+"battle" for tucker and tobacco along the track.  They came to a
+lonely shanty, about two camps west of Bourke.
+
+"We'll turn off into the scrub and strike the track the other side of
+the shanty and come back to it," said Steelman.  "You see, if they
+see us coming into Bourke they'll say to themselves, `Oh, we're never
+likely to see these chaps again,' and they won't give us anything, or,
+perhaps, only a pinch of tea or sugar in a big lump of paper.  There's
+some women that can never see a tucker-bag, even if you hold it right
+under their noses.  But if they see us going out back they'll reckon
+that we'll get a shed likely as not, and we'll be sure to call there
+with our cheques coming back.  I hope the old man's got the lumbago,
+or sciatica, or something."
+
+"Why?" asked Smith.
+
+"Because whenever I see an old man poking round the place on a stick
+I always make for him straight and inquire about his trouble; and no
+matter what complaint he's got, my old man suffered from it for years.
+It's pretty hard graft listening to an old man with a pet leg, but I
+find it pays; and I always finish up by advising him to try St Jacob's
+oil.  Perhaps he's been trying it for years, but that doesn't matter;
+the consultation works out all right all the same, and there's never
+been a remedy tried yet but I've got another.
+
+"I've got a lot of Maori and blackfellow remedies in my mind, and
+when they fail I can fall back on the Chinese; and if that isn't
+enough I've got a list of my grandmother's remedies that she wrote
+down for me when I was leaving home, and I kept it for a curiosity.
+It took her three days to write them, and I reckon they'll fill the
+bill.
+
+"You don't want a shave.  You look better with that stubble on.  You
+needn't say anything; just stand by and wear your usual expression,
+and if they ask me what's the matter with my mate I'll fix up a
+disease for you to have, and get something extra on your account, poor
+beggar!
+
+"I wish we had a chap with us that could sing a bit and run the gamut
+on a fiddle or something.  With a sickly-looking fish like you to
+stand by and look interesting and die slowly of consumption all the
+time, and me to do the talking, we'd be able to travel from one end
+of the bush to the other and live on the fat of the land.  I wouldn't
+cure you for a hundred pounds:"
+
+They reached the shanty, and there, sure enough, was an old man
+pottering round with a list to starboard.  He was working with a hoe
+inside a low paling fence round a sort of garden.  Steelman and Smith
+stopped outside the fence.
+
+"Good day, boss!"
+
+"'Day."
+
+"It's hot."
+
+"It's hot."
+
+So far it was satisfactory.
+
+He was a little man, with a wiry, red beard.  He might have been a
+Scandinavian.
+
+"You seem to be a bit lame," said Steelman.  "Hurt your foot?"
+
+"Naw," said the old man.  "It's an old thing."
+
+"Ah!" said Steelman, "lumbago, I suppose?  My father suffered cruel
+from it for years."
+
+"Naw," said the old man, moving closer to the fence.  "It ain't in
+me back; the trouble's with me leg."
+
+"Oh!" said Steelman.  "One a bit shorter than the other?"
+
+"Well, yes.  It seems to be wearin' a bit shorter.  I must see to
+it."
+
+"Hip disease, perhaps?" said Steelman.  "A brother o' mine had---"
+
+"Naw, it's not in the hip," said the old man.  "My leg's gone at
+the knee."
+
+"Oh!  stiff joint; I know what that is.  Had a touch of it once
+myself.  An uncle of mine was nearly crippled with it.  He used to use
+St Jacob's oil.  Ever try St Jacob's oil?"
+
+"Naw," said the old man, "not that I know of.  I've used linseed
+oil though."
+
+"Linseed oil!" said Steelman; "I've never heard of that for stiff
+knee.  How do you use it?"
+
+"Use it raw," said the old man.  "Raw linseed oil; I've rubbed it
+in, and I've soaked me leg in it."
+
+"Soaked your leg in it!" said Steelman.  "And did it do it any
+good?"
+
+"Well, it seems to preserve it--keeps it from warping, and it wears
+better--and it makes it heavier.  It seemed a bit too light before."
+
+Steelman nudged Smith under cover of the palings.  The old man was
+evidently a bit ratty.
+
+"Well, I hope your leg will soon be all right, boss," said Steelman.
+
+"Thank you," said the old man, "but I don't think there's much
+hope.  I suppose you want some tucker?"
+
+"Well, yes," said Steelman, rather taken aback by the old man's
+sudden way of putting it.  "We're hard up."
+
+"Well, come along to the house and I'll see if I can get yer
+something," said the old man; and they walked along outside the
+fence, and he hobbled along inside, till he came to a little gate at
+the corner.  He opened the gate and stumped out.  He had a wooden leg.
+He wore his trouser-leg down over it, and the palings had hidden the
+bottom from Steelman and Smith.
+
+He wanted them to stay to dinner, but Steelman didn't feel
+comfortable, and thanked him, and said they'd rather be getting on
+(Steelman always spoke for Smith); so the old man gave them some
+cooked meat, bread, and a supply of tea and sugar.  Steelman watched
+his face very close, but he never moved a muscle.  But when they
+looked back he was leaning on his hoe, and seemed to be shaking.
+
+"Took you back a bit, Steely, didn't it?" suggested Smith.
+
+"How do you make that out?" snorted Steelman, turning on him
+suddenly.  "I knew a carpenter who used to soak his planes in raw
+linseed oil to preserve them and give them weight.  There's nothing
+funny about that."
+
+Smith rubbed his head.
+
+
+
+
+A BUSH PUBLICAN'S LAMENT
+
+    . . . For thirst is long and throats is short
+    Among the sons o' men.
+                                       M. J. C.
+
+I Wish I was spifflicated before I ever seen a pub!
+
+You see, it's this way.  Suppose a cove comes along on a blazin' hot
+day in the drought--an' _you_ ought to know how hell-hot it can
+be out here--an' he dumps his swag in the corner of the bar; an' he
+turns round an' he ses ter me, "Look here boss, I ain't got a lonely
+steever on me, an' God knows when I'll git one.  I've tramped ten mile
+this mornin', an' I'll have ter tramp another ten afore to-night.  I'm
+expectin' ter git on shearin' with of Baldy Thompson at West-o'-Sunday
+nex' week.  I got a thirst on me like a sun-struck bone, an', for God
+sake, put up a couple o' beers for me an' my mate, an' I'll fix it up
+with yer when I come back after shearin'."
+
+An' what's a feller ter do?  I bin there meself, an--I put it to you!
+I've known what it is to have a thirst on me.
+
+An' suppose a poor devil comes along in the jim-jams, with every inch
+on him jumpin' an' a look in his eyes like a man bein' murdered an'
+sent ter hell, an' a whine in his voice like a whipped cur, an' the
+snakes a-chasing of him; an' he hooks me with his finger ter the far
+end o' the bar--as if he was goin' ter tell me that the world was
+ended--an' he hangs over the bar an' chews me lug, an' tries to speak,
+an' breaks off inter a sort o' low shriek, like a terrified woman, an'
+he says, "For Mother o' Christ's sake, giv' me a drink!"  An' what
+am I to do?  I bin there meself.  I knows what the horrors is.  He
+mighter blued his cheque at the last shanty.  But what am I ter do?  I
+put it ter you.  If I let him go he might hang hisself ter the nex'
+leanin' tree.
+
+What's a drink? yer might arst--I don't mind a drink or two; but when
+it comes to half a dozen in a day it mounts up, I can tell yer.
+Drinks is sixpence here--I have to pay for it, an' pay carriage on it.
+It's all up ter me in the end.  I used sometimes ter think it was
+lucky I wasn't west o' the sixpenny line, where I'd lose a shillin' on
+every drink I give away.
+
+An' supposen a sundowner comes along smokin' tea-leaves, an' ses ter
+me, "Look her, boss! me an' my mate ain't had a smoke for three
+days!"  What's a man ter do?  I put it ter you!  I'm a heavy smoker
+meself, an' I've known what it is to be without a smoke on the track.
+But "nail-rod" is ninepence a stick out here, an' I have ter pay
+carriage.  It all mounts up, I can tell yer.
+
+An' supposen Ole King Billy an' his ole black gin comes round at
+holiday time and squats on the verander, an' blarneys an' wheedles and
+whines and argues like a hundred Jews an' ole Irishwomen put
+tergether, an' accuses me o' takin' his blarsted country from him, an'
+makes me an' the missus laugh; an' we gives him a bottl'er rum an' a
+bag of grub ter get rid of him an' his rotten ole scarecrow tribe--It
+all tells up.  I was allers soft on the blacks, an', beside, a ole gin
+nursed me an' me mother when I was born, an' saved me blessed
+life--not that that mounts to much.  But it all tells up, an' I got me
+licence ter pay.  An' some bloody skunk goes an' informs on me for
+supplyin' the haboriginalls with intossicatin' liquor, an' I have ter
+pay a fine an' risk me licence.  But what's a man ter do?
+
+An' three or four herrin'-gutted jackaroos comes along about
+dinner-time, when the table's set and the cookin' smellin' from the
+kichen, with their belts done up three holes, an' not the price of a
+feed on 'em.  What's a man ter do?  I've known what it is ter do a
+perish on the track meself.  It's not the tucker I think on.  I don't
+care a damn for that.  When the shearers come every one is free to
+go inter the kitchin an' forage for hisself when he feels hungry--so
+long as he pays for his drink.  But the jackaroos can't pay for
+drinks, an' I have ter pay carriage on the flour an' tea an' sugar an'
+groceries--an' it all tells up by the end o' the year.
+
+An' a straight chap that knows me gets a job to take a flock o' sheep
+or a mob o' cattle ter the bloomin' Gulf, or South Australia, or
+somewheers--an' loses one of his horses goin' out ter take charge, an'
+borrers eight quid from me ter buy another.  He'll turn up agen in a
+year or two an' most likely want ter make me take twenty quid for that
+eight--an' make everybody about the place blind drunk--but I've got
+ter wait, an' the wine an' sperit merchants an' the brewery won't.
+They know I can't do without liquor in the place.
+
+An' lars' rains Jimmy Nowlett, the bullick-driver, gets bogged over
+his axle-trees back there on the Blacksoil Plains between two flooded
+billerbongs, an' prays till the country steams an' his soul's busted,
+an' his throat like a lime-kiln.  He taps a keg o' rum or beer ter
+keep his throat in workin' order.  I don't mind that at all, but him
+an' his mates git flood-bound for near a week, an' broach more kegs,
+an' go on a howlin' spree in ther mud, an' spill mor'n they swipe, an'
+leave a tarpaulin off a load, an' the flour gets wet, an' the sugar
+runs out of the bags like syrup, an'-- What's a feller ter do?  Do yer
+expect me to set the law onter Jimmy?  I've knowed him all my life,
+an' he knowed my father afore I was born.  He's been on the roads this
+forty year, till he's as thin as a rat, and as poor as a myall black;
+an' he's got a family ter keep back there in Bourke.  No, I have ter
+pay for it in the end, an' it all mounts up, I can tell yer.
+
+An' suppose some poor devil of a new-chum black sheep comes along,
+staggerin' from one side of the track to the other, and spoutin'
+poetry; dyin' o' heat or fever, or heartbreak an' home-sickness, or a
+life o' disserpation he'd led in England, an' without a sprat on him,
+an' no claim on the bush; an' I ketches: him in me arms as he stumbles
+inter the bar, an' he wants me ter hold him up while he turns English
+inter Greek for me.  An' I put him ter bed, an' he gits worse, an' I
+have ter send the buggy twenty mile for a doctor--an' pay him.  An'
+the jackaroo gits worse, an' has ter be watched an' nursed an' held
+down sometimes; an' he raves about his home an' mother in England, an'
+the blarsted University that he was eddicated at--an' a woman--an'
+somethin' that sounds like poetry in French; an' he upsets my missus a
+lot, an' makes her blubber.  An' he dies, an' I have ter pay a man ter
+bury him (an' knock up a sort o' fence round the grave arterwards ter
+keep the stock out), an' send the buggy agen for a parson, an'--Well,
+what's a man ter do?  I couldn't let him wander away an' die like a
+dog in the scrub, an' be shoved underground like a dog, too, if his
+body was ever found.  The Government might pay ter bury him, but there
+ain't never been a pauper funeral from my house yet, an' there won't
+be one if I can help it--except it be meself.
+
+An' then there's the bother goin' through his papers to try an' find
+out who he was an' where his friends is.  An' I have ter get the
+missus to write a letter to his people, an' we have ter make up lies
+about how he died ter make it easier for 'em.  An' goin' through his
+letters, the missus comes across a portrait an' a locket of hair, an'
+letters from his mother an' sisters an' girl; an' they upset her, an'
+she blubbers agin, an' gits sentimental--like she useter long ago when
+we was first married.
+
+There was one bit of poetry--I forgit it now--that that there jackaroo
+kep' sayin' over an' over agen till it buzzed in me head; an', weeks
+after, I'd ketch the missus mutterin' it to herself in the kitchen
+till I thought she was goin' ratty.
+
+An' we gets a letter from the jackaroo's friends that puts us to a lot
+more bother.  I hate havin' anythin' to do with letters.  An'
+someone's sure to say he was lambed down an' cleaned out an' poisoned
+with bad bush liquor at my place.  It's almost enough ter make a man
+wish there _was_ a recorin' angel.
+
+An' what's the end of it?  I got the blazin' bailiff in the place now!
+I can't shot him out because he's a decent, hard-up, poor devil from
+Bourke, with consumption or somethin', an' he's been talkin' to the
+missus about his missus an' kids; an' I see no chance of gittin' rid
+of him, unless the shearers come along with their cheques from
+West-o'-Sunday nex' week and act straight by me.  Like as not I'll
+have ter roll up me swag an' take the track meself in the end.  They
+say publicans are damned, an' I think so, too; an' I wish I'd bin
+operated on before ever I seen a pub.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHEARER'S DREAM
+
+
+Mitchell and I rolled up our swags after New Year and started to tramp
+west.  It had been a very bad season after a long drought.  Old Baldy
+Thompson had only shorn a few bales of grass-seed and burrs, so he
+said, and thought of taking the track himself; but we hoped to get on
+shearing stragglers at West-o'-Sunday or one of the stations of the
+Hungerford track.
+
+It was very hot weather, so we started after sunset, intending to
+travel all night.  We crossed the big billabong, and were ploughing
+through the dust and sand towards West Bourke, when a buggy full of
+city girls and swells passed by.  They were part of a theatrical
+company on tour in the Back-Blocks, and some local Johnnies.  They'd
+been driven out to see an artesian bore, or wool-shed, or something.
+The horses swerved, and jerked a little squawk out of one of the
+girls.  Then another said:
+
+"Ow-w!  Two old swaggies.  He! he! he!"
+
+I glanced at Mitchell to see if he was hit, and caught his head down;
+but he pulled himself up and pretended to hitch his swag into an
+easier position.
+
+About a hundred yards further on he gave me a side look and said:
+
+"Did that touch you, Harry"
+
+"No," I said, and I laughed.
+
+"You see," reflected Mitchell, "they're more to be pitied than
+blamed.  It's their ignorance.  In the first place, we're not two old
+tramps, as they think.  We are professional shearers; and the
+Australian shearers are about the most independent and intelligent
+class of men in the world.  We've got more genius in one of our little
+fingers than there is in the whole of that wagonette-load of
+diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle and giggles.  Their intellects are on
+a level with the rotten dramas they travel with, and their lives about
+as false.  They are slaves to the public, and their home is the
+pub-parlour, with sickly, senseless Johnnies to shout suppers and
+drink for them and lend their men money.  If one of those girls is
+above the average, how she must despise those Johnnies--and the life!
+She must feel a greater contempt for them than the private-barmaid
+does for the boozer she cleans out.  He gets his drink and some
+enjoyment, anyhow.  And how she must loathe the life she leads!  And
+what's the end of it as often as not?  I remember once, when I was a
+boy, I was walking out with two aunts of mine--they're both dead now.
+God rest their fussy, innocent old souls!--and one of 'em said
+suddenly, 'Look! Quick, Jack!  There's Maggie So-and-So, the great
+actress.'  And I looked and saw a woman training vines in a porch.  It
+seemed like seeing an angel to me, and I never forgot her as she was
+then.  The diggers used to go miles out of town to meet the coach that
+brought her, and take the horses out and drag it in, and throw gold in
+her lap, and worship her.
+
+"The last time I was in Sydney I saw her sitting in the back parlour
+of a third-rate pub.  She was dying of dropsy and couldn't move from
+her chair.  She showed me a portrait of herself as I remembered her,
+and talked quite seriously about going on the stage again.
+
+"Now, our home is about two thousand miles wide, and the world's our
+stage.  If the worst comes to the worst we can always get tucker and
+wood and water for nothing.  If we're camping at a job in a tent
+there's no house-cleaning to bother us.  All we've got to do when the
+camp gets too dirty is to shift the tent to a fresh place.  We've got
+time to think and--we're free.
+
+"But then, agen," he reflected, "there's the world's point of view
+to be considered.  Some day I might be flashing past in a buggy or
+saloon-carriage--or, the chances are it will be you--and you might
+look out the window and see an old swaggy tramping along in the dust,
+or camped under a strip of calico in the rain in the scrub.
+(And it might be me--old Mitchell--that really wrote your books,
+only the world won't know it.)  And then you'll realize what a
+wretched, miserable life it was.  We never realize the miseries of
+life till we look back--the mistakes and miseries that had to be and
+couldn't be helped.  It's all luck--luck and chance."
+
+But those girls seemed to have gravelled Mitchell, and he didn't seem
+able to talk himself round.  He tramped on, brooding for a while, and
+then suddenly he said:
+
+"Look here, Harry!  Those girls are giving a dance to-night,
+and if I liked to go back to Bourke and tog up and go to the dance I
+could pick out the prettiest, dance with her all the evening, and
+take her for a stroll afterwards, old tramp as they thought me.  I've
+lived--but it wouldn't be worth my while now."
+
+I'd seen Jack in a mood like this before, and thought it best to say
+nothing.  Perhaps the terrible heat had affected him a little.  We
+walked on in silence until we came to the next billabong.  "Best boil
+the billy here, Harry," said Mitchell, "and have some tea before we
+go any further."
+
+I got some sticks together and made a fire and put the billy on.  The
+country looked wretched--like the ghost of a burnt-out land--in the
+moonlight.  The banks of the creek were like ashes, the thin, gnarled
+gum-bush seemed dry-rotting fast, and in many places the surface of
+the ground was cracked in squares where it had shrunk in the drought.
+In the bed of the creek was a narrow gutter of water that looked like
+bad milk.
+
+Mitchell sat on his swag, with his pint of tea on the ground by his
+foot, and chewed his pipe.
+
+"What's up, Jack?" I asked.  "Have you got the blues?"
+
+"Well, yes, Harry," he said.  "I'm generally dull the first day on
+the track.  The first day is generally the worst, anywhere or
+anytime--except, perhaps, when you're married. . . .  I got--well, I got
+thinking of the time when a woman's word could have hurt me."
+
+Just then one of the "travellers" who were camped a bit up the creek
+suddenly commenced to sing.  It was a song called "The Shearer's
+Dream," and I suppose the buggy of girls, or the conversation they
+started, reminded him of it.  He started his verses and most of his
+lines with a howl; and there were unexpected howls all through the
+song, and it wailed off, just as unexpectedly, in places where there
+was no pathos that I could see:
+
+    Oh, I dreamt I shore in a shearer's shed, and it was a dream of joy,
+    For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy--
+    Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen--
+    They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair--and every shade between.
+
+"Every" with sudden and great energy, a long drop on to "shade," and a
+wail of intense sadness and regret running on into "between," the
+dirge reaching its wailsomest in the "tween" in every case.
+
+    The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every "shoot";
+    The pens was of polished ma-ho-gany, and ev'rything else to suit;
+    The huts was fixed with spring-mattresses, and the tucker was
+         simply grand,
+    And every night by the biller-bong we darnced to a German band.
+
+   "_Chorus, boys!"_
+
+    There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls,
+         and the handsomest ever seen
+    They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and hevery size
+         between.
+    Our pay was the wool on the jumbucks' backs, so we shore till all
+         was blue
+    The sheep was washed afore they was shore (and the rams was scented
+         too);
+    And we all of us cried when the shed cut out, in spite of the
+         long, hot days,
+    For hevery hour them girls waltzed in with whisky and beer on
+         tr-a-a-a-ys!
+
+    "_Chorus_! _you_ ---!"
+
+    They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the
+         grandest ever seen
+    They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery
+         shape be-tw-e-e-n.
+    There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they
+         could be--
+
+"Ow! you ---"
+
+The singer's voice or memory seemed suddenly to have failed him at
+this point, but whether his mates hit him on the back of the head
+with a tomahawk, or only choked him, I do not know.  Mitchell was
+inclined to think, from the sound of it, that they choked him.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST SOULS' HOTEL
+
+
+
+Hunqerford Road, February.  One hundred and thirty miles of heavy
+reddish sand, bordered by dry, hot scrubs.  Dense cloud of hot dust.
+Four wool-teams passing through a gate in a "rabbit proof" fence
+which crosses the road.  Clock, clock, clock of wheels and rattle and
+clink of chains, crack of whips and explosions of Australian language.
+Bales and everything else coated with dust.  Stink of old axle-grease
+and tarpaulins.  Tyres hot enough to fry chops on: bows and chains so
+hot that it's a wonder they do not burn through the bullock's hides.
+Water lukewarm in blistered kegs slung behind the wagons.  Bullocks
+dragging along as only bullocks do.  Wheels ploughing through the deep
+sand, and the load lurching from side to side.  Half-way on a
+"dry-stretch" of seventeen miles.  Big "tank" full of good water
+through the scrub to the right, but it is a private tank and a
+boundary-rider is shepherding it.  Mulga scrub and sparse, spiky
+undergrowth.
+
+The carriers camp for dinner and boil their billies while the bullocks
+droop under their yokes in the blazing heat; one or two lie down and
+the leaders drag and twist themselves round under a dead tree, under
+the impression that there is shade there.  The carriers look like Red
+Indians, with the masks of red dust "bound" with sweat on their
+faces, but there is an unhealthy-looking, whitish space round their
+eyes, caused by wiping away the blinding dust, sweat, and flies.  The
+dry sticks burn with a pale flame and an almost invisible thin pale
+blue smoke.  The sun's heat dancing and dazzling across every white
+fence-post, sandhill, or light-coloured object in the distance.
+
+One man takes off his boot and sock, empties half a pint of sand out
+of them, and pulls up his trouser-leg.  His leg is sheathed to the
+knee in dust and sweat; he absently scrapes it with his knife, and
+presently he amuses himself by moistening a strip with his forefinger
+and shaving it, as if he were vaguely curious to see if he is still a
+white man.
+
+The Hungerford coach ploughs past in a dense cloud of dust.
+
+The teams drag on again like a "wounded snake that dies at sundown,"
+if a wounded snake that dies at sundown could revive sufficiently next
+morning to drag on again until another sun goes down.
+
+Hopeless-looking swagmen are met with during the afternoon, and one
+carrier--he of the sanded leg--lends them tobacco; his mates contribute
+"bits o'" tea, flour, and sugar.
+
+Sundown and the bullocks done up.  The teamsters unyoke them and drive
+them on to the next water--five miles--having previously sent a mate
+to reconnoitre and see that boundary-rider is not round, otherwise, to
+make terms with him, for it is a squatter's bore.  They hurry the
+bullocks down to the water and back in the twilight, and then, under
+cover of darkness, turn them into a clearing in the scrub off the
+road, where a sign in the grass might be seen--if you look close.  But
+the "bullockies" are better off than the horse-teamsters, for bad
+chaff is sold by the pound and corn is worth its weight in gold.
+
+
+Mitchell and I turned off the track at the rabbit-proof fence and made
+for the tank in the mulga.  We boiled the billy and had some salt
+mutton and damper.  We were making back for Bourke, having failed to
+get a cut in any of the sheds on the Hungerford track.  We sat under a
+clump of mulga saplings, with our backs to the trunks, and got out our
+pipes.  Usually, when the flies were very bad on the track, we had to
+keep twigs or wild-turkey=tail feathers going in front of our faces
+the whole time to keep the mad flies out of our eyes; and, when we
+camped, one would keep the feather going while the other lit his
+pipe--then the smoke would keep them away.  But the flies weren't so
+bad in a good shade or in a darkened hut.  Mitchell's pipe would have
+smoked out Old Nick; it was an ancient string-bound meerschaum, and
+strong enough to kill a blackfellow.  I had one smoke out of it, once
+when I felt bad in my inside and wanted to be sick, and the result was
+very satisfactory.
+
+Mitchell looked through his old pocket-book--more by force of habit
+than anything else--and turned up a circular from Tattersall's.  And
+that reminded him.
+
+"Do you know what I'd do, Harry," he said, if I won Tattersall's
+big sweep, or was to come into fifty or a hundred thousand pounds, or,
+better still, a million?"
+
+"Nothing I suppose," I said, "except to get away to Sydney or some
+cooler place than this."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Mitchell, talking round his pipe.
+"I'd build a Swagman's Rest right here."
+
+"A Swagman's Rest?"
+
+"Yes.  Right here on this very God-forsaken spot.  I'd build a
+Swagman's Rest and call it the Lost Souls' Hotel, or the Sundowners'
+Arms, or the Half-way House to ---, or some such name that would take
+the bushmen's fancy.  I'd have it built on the best plans for coolness
+in a hot country; bricks, and plenty of wide verandas with brick
+floors, and balconies, and shingles, in the old Australian style.  I
+wouldn't have a sheet of corrugated iron about the place.  And I'd
+have old-fashioned hinged sashes with small panes and vines round 'em;
+they look cooler and more homely and romantic than the glaring sort
+that shove up.
+
+"And I'd dig a tank or reservoir for surface water as big as a lake,
+and bore for artesian water--and get it, too, if I had to bore right
+through to England; and I'd irrigate the ground and make it grow
+horse-feed and fruit, and vegetables too, if I had to cart manure from
+Bourke.  And every teamster's bullock or horse, and every shearer's
+hack, could burst itself free, but I'd make travelling stock pay--for
+it belongs to the squatters and capitalists.  All carriers could camp
+for one night only.  And I'd--no, I wouldn't have any flowers; they
+might remind some heart-broken, new-chum black sheep of the house
+where he was born, and the mother whose heart he broke--and the father
+whose grey hairs he brought down in sorrow to the grave--and break him
+up altogether."
+
+"But what about the old-fashioned windows and the vines?" I asked.
+
+"Oh!" said Mitchell, "I forgot them.  On second thought, I think I
+would have some flowers; and maybe a bit of ivy-green.  The new chum
+might be trying to work out his own salvation, and the sight of the
+roses and ivy would show him that he hadn't struck such a
+God-forgotten country after all, and help strengthen the hope for
+something better that's in the heart of every vagabond till he dies."
+
+Puff, puff, puff, slowly and reflectively.
+
+"Until he dies," repeated Mitchell.  "And, maybe," he said,
+rousing himself, "I'd have a little room fixed up like a corner of a
+swell restaurant, with silver and napkins on the table, and I'd fix up
+a waiter, so that when a broken-down University wreck came along he
+might feel, for an hour or so, something like the man he used to be.
+But I suppose," Mitchell reflected, "he wouldn't feel completely his
+old self without a lady friend sitting opposite to him.  I might fix
+up a black gin for him, but I suppose he'd draw the colour line.  But
+that's nonsense.
+
+"All teamsters and travellers could camp there for one night only.
+I'd have shower-baths; but I wouldn't force any man to have a bath
+against his will.  They could sit down to a table and have a feed off
+a table-cloth, and sleep in sheets, and feel like they did before
+their old mothers died, or before they ran away from home."
+
+"Who?  The mothers?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, in some cases," said Mitchell.  "And I'd have a nice, cool
+little summer-house down near the artificial lake, out of earshot of
+the house, where the bullock-drivers could sit with their pipes after
+tea, and tell yarns, and talk in their own language.  And I'd have
+boats on the lake, too, in case an old Oxford or Cambridge man, or an
+old sailor came along--it might put years on to his life to have a
+pull at the oars.  You remember that old sailor we saw in charge of
+the engine back there at the government tank?  You saw how he had the
+engine?--clean and bright as a new pin--everything spick-and-span and
+shipshape, and his hut fixed up like a ship's cabin.  I believe he
+thinks he's at sea half his time, and shoving her through it, instead
+of pumping muddy water out of a hole in the baking scrubs for starving
+stock.  Or maybe he reckons he's keeping her afloat."
+
+"And would you have fish in this lake of yours?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mitchell, "and any ratty old shepherd or sundowner,
+that's gone mad of heat and loneliness--like the old codger we met
+back yonder--he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and
+fish to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream
+he's playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his
+native village in England about fifty years ago.  It would seem more
+real than fishing in the dust as some mad old bushmen do."
+
+"But you'd draw the line somewhere?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Mitchell, "not even at poets.  I'd try to cure them,
+too, with good wholesome food and plenty of physical exercise.  The
+Lost Souls' Hotel would be a refuge for men who'd been jail-birds once
+as well as men who were gentlemen once, and for physical wrecks and
+ruined drunkards as well as healthy honest shearers.  I'd sit down and
+talk to the boozer or felon just as if I thought he was as good a man
+as me--and he might be, for that matter--God knows.
+
+"The sick man would be kept till he recovered, or died; and the
+boozer, suffering from a recovery, I'd keep him till he was on his
+legs again."
+
+"Then you'd have to have a doctor," I said.
+
+"Yes," said Mitchell, "I'd fix that up all right.  I wouldn't
+bother much about a respectable medical practitioner from the city.
+I'd get a medical wreck who had a brilliant career before him once in
+England and got into disgrace, and cleared out to the colonies--a man
+who knows what the d.t.'s is--a man who's been through it all and
+knows it all."
+
+"Then you'd want a manager, or a clerk or secretary," I suggested.
+
+"I suppose I would," said Mitchell.  "I've got no head for figures.
+I suppose I'd have to advertise for him.  If an applicant came with
+the highest testimonials of character, and especially if one was
+signed by a parson, I'd tell him to call again next week; and if a
+young man could prove that he came of a good Christian family, and
+went to church regularly, and sang in the choir, and taught
+Sunday-school, I'd tell him that he needn't come again, that the
+vacancy was filled, for I couldn't trust, him.  The man who's been
+extra religious and honest and hard-working in his young days is most
+likely to go wrong afterwards.  I'd sooner trust some poor old devil
+of a clerk who'd got into the hands of a woman or racing men when he
+was young, and went wrong, and served his time for embezzlement;
+anyway, I'd take him out and give him another chance."
+
+"And what about woman's influence?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, I suppose there'd have to be a woman, if only to keep the doctor
+on the line.  I'd get a woman with a past, one that hadn't been any
+better than she should have been, they're generally the most
+kind-hearted in the end.  Say an actress who'd come down in the world,
+or an old opera-singer who'd lost her voice but could still sing a
+little.  A woman who knows what trouble is.  And I'd get a girl to
+keep her company, a sort of housemaid, with a couple of black gins or
+half-castes to help her.  I'd get hold of some poor girl who'd been
+deceived and deserted: and a baby or two wouldn't be an objection--the
+kids would amuse the chaps and help humanize the place."
+
+"And what if the manageress fell in love with the doctor?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I couldn't provide against love," said Mitchell.  "I fell in
+love myself more than once--and I don't suppose I'd have been any
+worse off if I'd have stayed in love.  Ah, well!  But suppose she did
+fall in love with the doctor and marry him, or suppose she fell in
+love with him and didn't marry him, for that matter--and suppose the
+girl fell in love with the secretary?  There wouldn't be any harm
+done; it would only make them more contented with the home and bind
+them to it.  They'd be a happy family, and the Lost Souls' Hotel would
+be more cheerful and homelike than ever."
+
+"But supposing they all fell in love with each other and cleared
+out," I said.
+
+"I don't see what they'd have to clear out for," said Mitchell.
+"But suppose they did.  There's more than one medical wreck in
+Australia, and more than one woman with a past, and more than one
+broken old clerk who went wrong and was found out, and who steadied
+down in jail, and there's more than one poor girl that's been
+deceived.  I could easily replace 'em.  And the Lost Souls' Hotel
+might be the means of patching up many wrecked lives in that
+way--giving people with pasts the chance of another future, so to
+speak."
+
+"I suppose you'd have music and books and pictures?" I said.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mitchell.  "But I wouldn't have any bitter or
+sex-problem books.  They do no good.  Problems have been the curse of
+the world ever since it started.  I think one noble, kindly, cheerful
+character in a book does more good than all the clever villains or
+romantic adventurers ever invented.  And I think a man ought to get
+rid of his maudlin sentiment in private, or when he's drunk.  It's a
+pity that every writer couldn't put all his bitterness into one book
+and then burn it.
+
+"No; I'd have good cheerful books of the best and brightest sides of
+human nature--Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, and Bret Harte, and
+those men.  And I'd have all Australian pictures--showing the
+brightest and best side of Australian life.  And I'd have all
+Australian songs.  I wouldn't have `Swannie Ribber,' or `Home, Sweet
+Home,' or `Annie Laurie,' or any of those old songs sung at the Lost
+Souls' Hotel--they're the cause of more heartbreaks and drink and
+suicide in the bush than anything else.  And if a jackaroo got up to
+sing, `Just before the battle, mother,' or, `Mother bit me in me
+sleep,' he'd find it was just before the battle all right.  He'd have
+to go out and sleep in the scrub, where the mosquitoes and bulldog
+ants would bite him out of his sleep.  I hate the man who's always
+whining about his mother through his nose, because, as a rule, he
+never cared a rap for his old mother, nor for anyone else, except his
+own paltry, selfish little self.
+
+"I'd have intellectual and elevating conversation for those that---"
+
+"Who'd take charge of that department?" I inquired hurriedly.
+
+"Well," reflected Mitchell, "I did have an idea of taking it on
+myself for a while anyway; but, come to think of it, the doctor or the
+woman with the past would have more experience; and I could look after
+that part of the business at a pinch.  Of course you're not in a
+position to judge as to my ability in the intellectual line; you see,
+I've had no one to practise on since I've been with you.  But no
+matter--- There'd be intellectual conversation for the benefit of
+black-sheep new chums.  And any broken-down actors that came along
+could get up a play if they liked--it would brighten up things and
+help elevate the bullock-drivers and sundowners.  I'd have a stage
+fixed up and a bit of scenery.  I'd do all I could to attract shearers
+to the place after shearing, and keep them from rushing to the next
+shanty with their cheques, or down to Sydney, to be cleaned out by
+barmaids.
+
+"And I'd have the hero squashed in the last act for a selfish sneak,
+and marry the girl to the villain--he'd be more likely to make her
+happy in the end."
+
+
+"And what about the farm?" I asked.  "I suppose you'd get some
+expert from the agricultural college to manage that?"
+
+"No," said Mitchell.  "I'd get some poor drought-ruined selector
+and put him in charge of the vegetation.  Only, the worst of it is,"
+he reflected, "if you take a selector who has bullocked all his life
+to raise crops on dusty, stony patches in the scrubs, and put him on
+land where there's plenty of water and manure, and where he's only got
+to throw the seed on the ground and then light his pipe and watch it
+grow, he's apt to get disheartened.  But that's human nature.
+
+"And, of course, I'd have to have a `character' about the place--a
+sort of identity and joker to brighten up things.  I wouldn't get a
+man who'd been happy and comfortable all his life; I'd get hold of
+some old codger whose wife had nagged him till she died, and who'd
+been sold off many times, and run in for drowning his sorrows, and who
+started as an undertaker and failed at that, and finally got a job
+pottering round--gardener, or gatekeeper, or something--in a lunatic
+asylum.  I'd get him.  He'd most likely be a humorist and a
+philosopher, and he'd help cheer up the Lost Souls' Hotel.  I reckon
+the lost souls would get very fond of him."
+
+"And would you have drink at Lost Souls'?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Mitchell.  "I'd have the best beer and spirits and wine
+to be had.  After tea I'd let every man have just enough to make him
+feel comfortable and happy, and as good and clever, and innocent and
+honest as any other man, but no more.  But if a poor devil came along
+in the horrors, with every inch of him jumping, and snakes, and
+green-eyed yahoos, and flaming-nosed bunyips chasing him, we'd take
+him in and give him soothing draughts, and nurse him, and watch him,
+and clear him out with purgatives, and keep giving him nips of good
+whisky, and, above all, we'd sympathize with him, and tell him that we
+were worse than he was many a time.  We wouldn't tell him what a weak,
+selfish man he was, or harp on his ruined life.  We'd try to make him
+out a good deal better morally than he really was.  It's remorse that
+hurries most men to hell--especially in the Bush.  When a man firmly
+believes he is a hopeless case, then there's no hope for him: but let
+him have doubts and there's a chance.  Make him believe that there are
+far worse cases than his.  We wouldn't preach the sin of dissipation
+to him, no--but we'd try to show him the _folly_ of a wasted
+life.  I ought to be able to preach that, God knows.
+
+"And, above all, we'd try to drive out of his head the cursed old
+popular idea that it's hard to reform--that a man's got to fight a
+hard battle with himself to get away from drink--pity drunkards can't
+believe how easy it is.  And we'd put it to him straight whether his
+few hours' enjoyment were worth the days he had to suffer hell for
+it."
+
+"And, likely as not," I said, "when you'd put him on his feet he'd
+take the nearest track to the next shanty, and go on a howling spree,
+and come back to Lost Souls' in a week, raving aid worse than ever.
+What would you do then?"
+
+"We'd take him in again, and build him up some more; and a third or
+fourth time if necessary.  I believe in going right on with a thing
+once I take it in hand.  And if he didn't turn up after the last spree
+we'd look for him up the scrub and bring him in and let him die on a
+bed, and make his death as comfortable as possible.  I've seen one man
+die on the ground, and found one dead in the bush.  We'd bury him
+under a gum and put `Sacred to the Memory of a Man who Died.  (Let him
+R.I.P.)' over him.  I'd have a nice little graveyard, with gums for
+tombstones--and I'd have some original epitaphs--I promise you."
+
+"And how much gratitude would you expect to get out of the Lost
+Souls' Hotel?" I asked.
+
+"None," said Mitchell, promptly.  "It wouldn't be a Gratitude
+Discovery Syndicate.  People might say that the Lost Souls' Hotel was
+a den for kidnapping women and girls to be used as decoys for the
+purpose of hocussing and robbing bushmen, and the law and retribution
+might come after me--but I'd fight the thing out.  Or they might want
+to make a K.C.M.G., or a god of me, and worship me before they hung
+me.  I reckon a philanthropist or reformer is lucky if he escapes with
+a whole skin in the end, let alone his character--- But there!---
+Talking of gratitude: it's the fear of ingratitude that keeps
+thousands from doing good.  It's just as paltry and selfish and
+cowardly as any other fear that curses the world--it's rather more
+selfish than most fears, in fact--take the fear of being thought a
+coward, or being considered eccentric, or conceited, or affected, or
+too good, or too bad, for instance.  The man that's always canting
+about the world's ingratitude has no gratitude owing to him as a
+rule--generally the reverse--he ought to be grateful to the world for
+being let live.  He broods over the world's ingratitude until he gets
+to be a cynic.  He sees the world like the outside of a window, as it
+were, with the blind drawn and the dead, cold moonlight shining on it,
+and he passes on with a sour face; whereas, if he took the trouble to
+step inside he'd most likely find a room full of ruddy firelight, and
+sympathy and cheerfulness, and kindness, and love, and gratitude.
+Sometimes, when he's right down on his uppers, and forced to go
+amongst people and hustle for bread, he gets a lot of surprises at the
+amount of kindness he keeps running against in the world--and in
+places where he'd never have expected to find it.  But--ah, well! I'm
+getting maudlin."
+
+"And you've forgot all about the Lost Souls' Hotel," I said.
+
+"No, I haven't," said Mitchell; "I'd fix that up all right.  As
+soon as I'd got things going smoothly under a man I could trust, I'd
+tie up every penny I had for the benefit of the concern; get some
+`white men' for trustees, and take the track again.  I'm getting too
+old to stay long in one place--(I'm a lost soul that always got along
+better in another place).  I'm so used to the track that if I was shut
+up in a house I'd get walking up and down in my room of nights and
+disturb the folk; and, besides, I'd feel lost and light-shouldered
+without the swag."
+
+"So you'd put all your money in the concern?"
+
+"Yes--except a pound or two to go on the track with--for, who knows,
+I might come along there, dusty and tired, and ragged and hard up and
+old, some day, and be very glad of a night's rest at the Lost Souls'
+Hotel.  But I wouldn't let on that I was old Mitchell, the
+millionaire, who founded Lost Souls'.  They might be too officious,
+and I hate fuss. . . .  But it's time to take the track, Harry."
+
+There came a cool breeze with sunset; we stood up stiffly, shouldered
+our swags and tucker-bags, and pushed on, for we had to make the next
+water before we camped.  We were out of tobacco, so we borrowed some
+from one of the bullock-drivers.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOZERS' HOME
+
+
+"A dipsomaniac," said Mitchell, "needs sympathy and commonsense
+treatment.  (Sympathy's a grand and glorious thing, taking it all
+round and looking at it any way you will: a little of it makes a man
+think that the world's a good world after all, and there's room and
+hope for sinners, and that life's worth living; enough of it makes him
+sure of it: and an overdose of sympathy makes a man _feel_ weak
+and ashamed of himself, and so moves him to stop whining--and
+wining--and buck up.)
+
+"Now, I'm not taking the case of a workman who goes on the spree on
+pay night and sweats the drink out of himself at work next day, nor a
+slum-bred brute who guzzles for the love of it; but a man with brains,
+who drinks to drown his intellect or his memory.  He's generally a man
+under it all, and a sensitive, generous, gentle man with finer
+feelings as often as not.  The best and cleverest and whitest men in
+the world seem to take to drink mostly.  It's an awful pity.  Perhaps
+it's because they're straight and the world's crooked and they can see
+things too plain.  And I suppose in the bush the loneliness and the
+thoughts of the girl-world they left behind help to sink 'em.
+
+"Now a drunkard seldom reforms at home, because he's always
+surrounded by the signs of the ruin and misery he has brought on the
+home; and the sight and thought of it sets him off again before he's
+had time to recover from the last spree.  Then, again, the noblest
+wife in the world mostly goes the wrong way to work with a drunken
+husband--nearly everything she does is calculated to irritate him.
+If, for instance, he brings a bottle home from the pub, it shows that
+he wants to stay at home and not go back to the pub any more; but the
+first thing the wife does is to get hold of the bottle and plant it,
+or smash it before his eyes, and that maddens him in the state he is
+in then.
+
+"No.  A dipsomaniac needs to be taken away from home for a while.  I
+knew a man that got so bad that the way he acted at home one night
+frightened him, and next morning he went into an inebriate home of his
+own accord--to a place where his friends had been trying to get him
+for a year past.  For the first day or two he was nearly dead with
+remorse and shame--mostly shame; and he didn't know what they were
+going to do to him next--and he only wanted them to kill him quick and
+be done with it.  He reckons he felt as bad as if he was in jail.  But
+there were ten other patients there, and one or two were worse than he
+was, and that comforted him a lot.  They compared notes and
+sympathized and helped each other.  They discovered that all their
+wives were noble women.  He struck one or two surprises too--one of
+the patients was a doctor who'd attended him one time, and another was
+an old boss of his, and they got very chummy.  And there was a man
+there who was standing for Parliament--he was supposed to be having a
+rest down the coast. . . .  Yes, my old mate felt very bad for the first
+day or two; it was all Yes, Nurse, and Thank you, Nurse, and Yes,
+Doctor, and No, Doctor, and Thank you, Doctor.  But, inside a week, he
+was calling the doctor 'Ol' Pill-Box' behind his back, and making love
+to one of the nurses.
+
+"But he said it was pitiful when women relatives came to visit
+patients the first morning.  It shook the patients up a lot, but I
+reckon it did 'em good.  There were well-bred old lady mothers in
+black, and hard-working, haggard wives and loving daughters--and the
+expressions of sympathy and faith and hope in those women's faces!  My
+old mate said it was enough in itself to make a man swear off drink
+for ever. . . .  Ah, God--what a world it is!
+
+"Reminds me how I once went with the wife of another old mate of mine
+to see him.  He was in a lunatic asylum.  It was about the worst hour
+I ever had in my life, and I've had some bad ones.  The way she tried
+to coax him back to his old self.  She thought she could do it when
+all the doctors had failed.  But I'll tell you about him some other
+time.
+
+"The old mate said that the principal part of the treatment was
+supposed to be injection of bi-chloride of gold or something, and it
+was supposed to be a secret.  It might have been water and sugar for
+all he knew, and he thought it was.  You see, when patients got better
+they were allowed out, two by two, on their honour--one to watch the
+other--and it worked.  But it was necessary to have an extra hold on
+them; so they were told that if they were a minute late for
+`treatment,' or missed one injection, all the good would be undone.
+This was dinged into their ears all the time.  Same as many things are
+done in the Catholic religion--to hold the people.  My old mate said
+that, as far as the medical treatment was concerned, he could do all
+that was necessary himself.  But it was the sympathy that counted,
+especially the sympathy between the patients themselves.  They always
+got hold of a new patient and talked to him and cheered him up; he
+nearly always came in thinking he was the most miserable wretch in
+this world.  And it comforts a man and strengthens him and makes him
+happier to meet another man who's worse off or sicker, or has been
+worse swindled than he has been.  That's human nature. . . .  And a man
+will take draughts from a nurse and eat for her when he wouldn't do it
+for his own wife--not even though she had been a trained nurse
+herself.  And if a patient took a bad turn in the night at the
+Boozers' Home and got up to hunt the snakes out of his room, he
+wouldn't be sworn at, or laughed at, or held down; no, they'd help him
+shoo the snakes out and comfort him.  My old mate said that, when he
+got better, one of the new patients reckoned that he licked St
+Pathrick at managing snakes.  And when he came out he didn't feel a
+bit ashamed of his experience.  The institution didn't profess to cure
+anyone of drink, only to mend up shattered nerves and build up wrecked
+constitutions; give them back some will-power if they weren't too far
+gone.  And they set my old mate on his feet all right.  When he went
+in his life seemed lost, he had the horror of being sober, he couldn't
+start the day without a drink or do any business without it.  He
+couldn't live for more than two hours without a drink; but when he
+came out he didn't feel as if he wanted it.  He reckoned that those
+six weeks in the institution were the happiest he'd ever spent in his
+life, and he wished the time had been longer; he says he'd never met
+with so much sympathy and genius, and humour and human nature under
+one roof before.  And he said it was nice and novel to be looked after
+and watched and physicked and bossed by a pretty nurse in uniform--but
+I don't suppose he told his wife that.  And when he came out he never
+took the trouble to hide the fact that he'd been in.  If any of his
+friends had a drunkard in the family, he'd recommend the institution
+and do his best to get him into it.  But when he came out he firmly
+believed that if he took one drink he'd be a lost man.  He made a
+mania of that.  One curious effect was that, for some time after he
+left the institution, he'd sometimes feel suddenly in high
+spirits--with nothing to account for it--something like he used to
+feel when he had half a dozen whiskies in him; then suddenly he'd feel
+depressed and sort of hopeless--with nothing to account for that
+either--just as if he was suffering a recovery.  But those moods never
+lasted long and he soon grew out of them altogether.  He didn't flee
+temptation.  He'd knock round the pubs on Saturday nights with his old
+mates, but never drank anything but soft stuff--he was always careful
+to smell his glass for fear of an accident or trick.  He drank gallons
+of ginger beer, milk-and-soda, and lemonade; and he got very fond of
+sweets, too--he'd never liked them before.  He said he enjoyed the
+novelty of the whole thing and his mates amused him at first; but he
+found he had to leave them early in the evening, and, after a while,
+he dropped them altogether.  They seemed such fools when they were
+drunk (they'd never seemed fools to him before).  And, besides, as
+they got full, they'd get suspicious of him, and then mad at him,
+because he couldn't see things as they could.  That reminds me that it
+nearly breaks a man's heart when his old drinking chum turns
+teetotaller--it's worse than if he got married or died.  When two
+mates meet and one is drunk and the other sober there is only one of
+two things for them to do if they want to hit it together--either the
+drunken mate must get sober or the sober mate drunk.  And that reminds
+me: Take the case of two old mates who've been together all their
+lives, say they always had their regular sprees together and went
+through the same stages of drunkenness together, and suffered their
+recoveries and sobered up together, and each could stand about the
+same quantity of drink and one never got drunker than the other.
+Each, when he's boozing, reckons his mate the cleverest man and the
+hardest case in the world--second to himself.  But one day it happens,
+by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances, that Bill, being
+sober, meets Jim very drunk, and pretty soon Bill is the most
+disgusted man in this world.  He never would have dreamed that his old
+mate could make such a fool and such a public spectacle of himself.
+And Bill's disgust intensifies all the time he is helping Jim home,
+and Jim arguing with him and wanting to fight him, and slobbering over
+him and wanting to love him by turns, until Bill swears he'll give Jim
+a hammering as soon as ever he's able to stand steady on his feet."
+
+"I suppose your old boozing mate's wife was very happy when he
+reformed," I said to Mitchell.
+
+"Well, no," said Mitchell, rubbing his head rather ruefully.  "I
+suppose it was an exceptional case.  But I knew her well, and the fact
+is that she got more discontented and thinner, and complained and
+nagged him worse than she'd ever done in his drinking days.  And she'd
+never been afraid of him.  Perhaps it was this way: She loved and
+married a careless, good-natured, drinking scamp, and when he reformed
+and became a careful, hard-working man, and an honest and respected
+fellow-townsman, she was disappointed in him.  He wasn't the man that
+won her heart when she was a girl.  Or maybe he was only company for
+her when he was half drunk.  Or maybe lots of things.  Perhaps he'd
+killed the love in her before he reformed--and reformed too late.  I
+wonder how a man feels when he finds out for the first time that his
+wife doesn't love him any longer?  But my old mate wasn't the nature
+to find out that sort of thing.  Ah, well!  If a woman caused all our
+trouble, my God! women have suffered for it since--and they suffer
+like martyrs mostly and with the patience of working bullocks.  Anyway
+it goes, if I'm the last man in the world, and the last woman is the
+worst, and there's only room for one more in Heaven, I'll step down at
+once and take my chances in Blazes."
+
+
+
+
+THE SEX PROBLEM AGAIN
+
+
+It was Mitchell's habit to take an evening off now and then from
+yarning or reflecting, and proceed, in a most methodical manner, to
+wash his spare shirts and patch his pants.  I was in the habit of
+contributing to some Sydney papers, and every man is an editor at
+heart, so, at other times, Mitchell would take another evening off,
+and root out my swag, and go through my papers in the same methodical
+manner, and make alterations and additions without comment or
+reference to me; and sometimes he'd read a little thing of my own
+which didn't meet his views, and accidentally drop it into the fire;
+and at other times he'd get hold of some rhyme or sketch that was
+troubling me, and wrap it up and give it to a passing mailman
+unbeknown to me.  The unexpected appearance of such articles in the
+paper, as well as the effects of the involuntary collaboration in
+other pieces, gave me several big surprises.
+
+It was in camp on a fencing contract west of Bourke.  We had a book
+which we'd borrowed from a library at Bourke for a year or two--never
+mind the name of it--it was in ninety-one or ninety-two, and the sex
+problem was booming then.  I had been surreptitiously tearing some
+carefully-written slips of manuscript--leaves taken from an old
+pocket-book--into small pieces; I dropped them, with apparent
+carelessness, into the fire and stood with my back to it.
+
+"I'll bet five pounds," said Mitchell, suddenly, "that you've been
+trying your hand on a sex-problem story."
+
+I shifted uneasily and brought my hands from behind me into my
+pockets.  "Well, to tell you the truth," I admitted, "I have."
+
+"I thought so," exclaimed Mitchell.  "We'll be put to the expense
+of sending you to Sydney for medical treatment yet.  You've been
+having too easy times lately, plenty of hard graft and no anxiety
+about tucker or the future.  What are the symptoms?"
+
+"Well," I said, taking a hand out to scratch the back of my head,
+"the plot looked all right--at first sight."
+
+"So there's a plot, is there?  Well, in the first place, a plot is a
+problem.  Well, what's the plot? . . .  Come on, you needn't be
+frightened to tell an old mate like me."
+
+"Well," I said, "the yarn looked all right at first sight; that
+article of `T's' in the _Bulletin_ turned me off it; listen and
+see what you think of it: There was a young fellow, a bit of a
+genius---"
+
+"Just so, it's the geniuses that build the sex problems.  It's an
+autobiography.  Go on."
+
+"Well, he married a girl."
+
+Mitchell (sotto voce): "God help her."
+
+"He loved her, and she loved him: but after they'd been married a
+while he found out that, although he understood her, she didn't and
+couldn't possibly ever understand him."
+
+"Yes," commented Mitchell, "and if he hadn't caught the sex
+problem, nor been reading about it, he would never have found that
+out."
+
+"It was a terrible disappointment," I continued--I had got into the
+habit of taking Mitchell's interruptions and comments as matters of
+course--"He saw that his life would be a hell with her---"
+
+Mitchell: "Didn't strike him that her life would be a hell with
+him?"
+
+"They had no thought in common."
+
+Mitchell: "She was in her right mind then."
+
+"But he couldn't leave her because he loved her, and because he knew
+that she loved him and would break her heart if he left her."
+
+"Must have been a pretty cocksure sort of a fellow," remarked
+Mitchell, "but all geniuses are."
+
+"When he was with her he saw all her obstinacy, unreason, and
+selfishness; but when he was away he only saw her good points."
+
+Mitchell: "Pity such men don't stop away."
+
+"He thought and thought, and brooded over it till his life was a
+hell---"
+
+Mitchell: "Jes-so: thanks to the problemaniacs."
+
+"He thought of killing her and himself, and so taking her with him"
+
+"Where?" asked Mitchell.  "He must have loved her a lot. . . .  Good
+Lord!  That shows the awful effects of the sex problem on the mind of
+a healthy young man like you;" and Mitchell stood up.
+
+"He lay awake by her side at nights thinking and fighting the thing
+out."
+
+"And you've been lying awake, thinking, with me and `the Oracle' by
+your side.  We'll have to plant the tommy-hawk, and watch you by turns
+at night till you get over this."
+
+"One night he rested on his elbow, and watched her sleeping, and
+tried to reconstruct his ideal out of her, and, just when he was
+getting into a happier frame of mind, her mouth fell open, and she
+snored. . . .  I didn't get any further than the snore," I said.
+
+"No, of course you didn't," said Mitchell, "and none of the sex
+problemers ever will--unless they get as far as `blanky.'  You might
+have made the snore cure him; did it?"
+
+"No, it was making things worse in my idea of the yarn.  He fell back
+and lay staring at the ceiling in a hopeless kind of a way."
+
+"Then he was a fit case for the lunatic asylum. . . .  Now, look here,
+Harry, you're a good-natured, soft old fool when you're in your right
+mind; just you go on being a good-natured, soft old fool, and don't
+try to make a problem out of yourself or anybody else, or you'll come
+to a bad end.  A pocket-book's to keep your accounts in, not to take
+notes in (you take them in your head and use 'em in your arms), not to
+write sex-problem rot in--that's spoilt many a good pocket-book, and
+many a good man.  You've got a girl you're talking about going back to
+as soon as we've finished this contract.  Don't you make a problem of
+her; make a happy wife and mother of her. . . .  I was very clever when
+I was young"--and here Mitchell's voice took a tinge of bitterness, or
+sadness.  "I used to make problems out of things. . . .  I ain't much to
+boast of now. . . .  Seems to me that a good many men want to make angels
+of their wives without first taking trouble of making saints of
+themselves.  We want to make women's ways our ways--it would be just
+as fair to make our ways theirs.  Some men want to be considered gods
+in their own homes; you'll generally find that sort of men very small
+potatoes outside; if they weren't they wouldn't bother so much about
+being cocks on their own little dunghills. . . .  And again, old mates
+seldom quarrel, because they understand each other's moods.  Now, if
+you went brooding round for any length of time I'd say to you.  `Now
+then, Harry, what have I been doing to you?  Spit it out, old man.'
+And you'd do the same by me; but how many men would take even that
+much trouble with their wives?"
+
+A breeze stirred the mulga and brought the sound of a good voice
+singing in the surveyors' camp:
+
+    Should old acquaintance be forgot
+      And never brought to min'?
+    Should old acquaintance be forgot
+      And the days of Auld Lang Syne?
+
+"That damned old tune will upset the Oracle for the rest of the
+night," I said.
+
+"Now, there's the Oracle," said Mitchell.  "He was wronged by a woman
+as few men are wronged; his life was ruined--but he isn't the man to
+take any stock in sex problems on account of her.  He thinks he's
+great on problems, but he isn't.  It all amounts to this--that he's
+sorry for most men and all women and tries to act up to it to the best
+of his ability; and if he ain't a Christian, God knows what is--I don't.
+No matter what a woman does to you, or what you think she does to you,
+there come times, sooner or later, when you feel sorry for her--deep
+down in your heart--that is if you're a man.  And, no matter what action
+or course you might take against her, and no matter how right or
+justified you might seem in doing it, there comes a time when, deep
+down in your heart, you feel mean and doubtful about your own part.
+You can take that as a general thing as regards men against women,
+and man against man, I think.  And I believe that deep-down feeling
+of being doubtful, or mean, or sorry, that comes afterwards, when you
+are cooler and know more about the world, is a right and natural thing,
+and we ought to act more in accordance with it."
+
+Came the refrain from the surveyors' camp:
+
+    We twa hae run about the braes,
+      An' pu'd the gowans fine;
+    But we've wandered mony a weary foot
+      Sin' Auld Lang Syne.
+
+"We feel sorry for our quarrels with our worst enemy when we see him
+lying still and quiet--dead.  Why can't we try and feel a bit sorry
+beforehand?"
+
+        For Auld Lang Syne.
+    We twa ha' padl't i' the burn,
+      Fra mornin' sun till dine;
+    But seas between us braid ha' roar'd
+      Sin' Auld Lang Syne.
+
+"I used to feel blazing bitter against things one time but it never
+hurt anybody but myself in the end.  I argued and quarrelled with a
+girl once--and made a problem of the thing and went away.  She's
+married to a brute now, and I'm what I am.  I made a problem of a good
+home or the world once, and went against the last man in God's world
+that I should have gone against, and turned my back on his hand, and
+left him.  His hand was very cold the next time I took it in mine.  We
+don't want problems to make us more bitter against the world than we
+get sometimes."
+
+    And here's a han' my trusty frien',
+      An' gie's a han' o' thine,
+    We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
+      For Auld Lang Syne.
+
+"And that song's the answer of all problems," said Mitchell.  But it
+was I who lay awake and thought that night.
+
+[Children of the Bush by Henry Lawson II]
+
+
+
+THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG
+
+The Australian swag fashion is the easiest way in the world of
+carrying a load.  I ought to know something about carrying loads: I've
+carried babies, which are the heaviest and most awkward and
+heartbreaking loads in this world for a boy or man to carry, I fancy.
+God remember mothers who slave about the housework (and do sometimes a
+man's work in addition in the bush) with a heavy, squalling kid on one
+arm!  I've humped logs on the selection, "burning-off," with loads of
+fencing-posts and rails and palings out of steep, rugged gullies (and
+was happier then, perhaps); I've carried a shovel, crowbar, heavy
+"rammer," a dozen insulators on an average (strung round my shoulders
+with raw flax)-to say nothing of soldiering kit, tucker-bag, billy and
+climbing spurs--all day on a telegraph line in rough country in New
+Zealand, and in places where a man had to manage his load with one
+hand and help himself climb with the other; and I've helped hump and
+drag telegraph-poles up cliffs and sidings where the horses couldn't
+go.  I've carried a portmanteau on the hot dusty roads in green old
+jackaroo days.  Ask any actor who's been stranded and had to count
+railway sleepers from one town to another! he'll tell you what sort of
+an awkward load a portmanteau is, especially if there's a
+broken-hearted man underneath it.  I've tried knapsack fashion--one of
+the least healthy and most likely to give a man sores; I've carried my
+belongings in a three-bushel sack slung over my shoulder--blankets,
+tucker, spare boots and poetry all lumped together.  I tried carrying
+a load on my head, and got a crick in my neck and spine for days.
+I've carried a load on my mind that should have been shared by editors
+and publishers.  I've helped hump luggage and furniture up to, and
+down from, a top flat in London.  And I've carried swag for months out
+back in Australia--and it was life, in spite of its "squalidness" and
+meanness and wretchedness and hardship, and in spite of the fact that
+the world would have regarded us as "tramps"--and a free life amongst
+_men_ from all the world!
+
+The Australian swag was born of Australia and no other land--of the
+Great Lone Land of magnificent distances and bright heat; the land of
+self-reliance, and never-give-in, and help-your-mate.  The grave of
+many of the world's tragedies and comedies--royal and otherwise.  The
+land where a man out of employment might shoulder his swag in Adelaide
+and take the track, and years later walk into a hut on the Gulf, or
+never be heard of any more, or a body be found in the bush and buried
+by the mounted police, or never found and never buried--what does it
+matter?
+
+The land I love above all others--not because it was kind to me, but
+because I was born on Australian soil, and because of the foreign
+father who died at his work in the ranks of Australian pioneers, and
+because of many things.  Australia!  My country!  Her very name is
+music to me.  God bless Australia! for the sake of the great hearts of
+the heart of her!  God keep her clear of the old-world shams and
+social lies and mockery, and callous commercialism, and sordid shame!
+And heaven send that, if ever in my time her sons are called upon to
+fight for her young life and honour, I die with the first rank of them
+and be buried in Australian ground.
+
+But this will probably be called false, forced or "maudlin
+sentiment" here in England, where the mawkish sentiment of the
+music-halls, and the popular applause it receives, is enough to make
+a healthy man sick, and is only equalled by music-hall vulgarity.
+So I'll get on.
+
+In the old digging days the knapsack, or straps-across-the chest
+fashion, was tried, but the load pressed on a man's chest and impeded
+his breathing, and a man needs to have his bellows free on long tracks
+in hot, stirless weather.  Then the "horse-collar," or rolled
+military overcoat style--swag over one shoulder and under the other
+arm--was tried, but it was found to be too hot for the Australian
+climate, and was discarded along with Wellington boots and leggings.
+Until recently, Australian city artists and editors--who knew as much
+about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in
+general--seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence;
+and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of
+civilization with an eye on the backyard and a fear of the dog.
+English artists, by the way, seem firmly convinced that the Australian
+bushman is born in Wellington boots with a polish on 'em you could
+shave yourself by.
+
+The swag is usually composed of a tent "fly" or strip of calico (a
+cover for the swag and a shelter in bad weather--in New Zealand it is
+oilcloth or waterproof twill), a couple of blankets, blue by custom
+and preference, as that colour shows the dirt less than any other
+(hence the name "bluey" for swag), and the core is composed of spare
+clothing and small personal effects.  To make or "roll up" your
+swag: lay the fly or strip of calico on the ground, blueys on top of
+it; across one end, with eighteen inches or so to spare, lay your
+spare trousers and shirt, folded, light boots tied together by the
+laces toe to heel, books, bundle of old letters, portraits, or
+whatever little knick-knacks you have or care to carry, bag of
+needles, thread, pen and ink, spare patches for your pants, and
+bootlaces.  Lay or arrange the pile so that it will roll evenly with
+the swag (some pack the lot in an old pillowslip or canvas bag), take
+a fold over of blanket and calico the whole length on each side, so as
+to reduce the width of the swag to, say, three feet, throw the spare
+end, with an inward fold, over the little pile of belongings, and then
+roll the whole to the other end, using your knees and judgment to make
+the swag tight, compact and artistic; when within eighteen inches of
+the loose end take an inward fold in that, and bring it up against the
+body of the swag.  There is a strong suggestion of a roley-poley in a
+rag about the business, only the ends of the swag are folded in, in
+rings, and not 'tied.  Fasten the swag with three or four straps,
+according to judgment and the supply of straps.  To the top strap, for
+the swag is carried (and eased down in shanty bars and against walls
+or veranda-posts when not on the track) in a more or less vertical
+position--to the top strap, and lowest, or lowest but one, fasten the
+ends of the shoulder strap (usually a towel is preferred as being
+softer to the shoulder), your coat being carried outside the swag at
+the back, under the straps.  To the top strap fasten the string of the
+nose-bag, a calico bag about the size of a pillowslip, containing the
+tea, sugar and flour bags, bread, meat, baking-powder and salt, and
+brought, when the swag is carried from the left shoulder, over the
+right on to the chest, and so balancing the swag behind.  But a
+swagman can throw a heavy swag in a nearly vertical position against
+his spine, slung from one shoulder only and without any balance, and
+carry it as easily as you might wear your overcoat.  Some bushmen
+arrange their belongings so neatly and conveniently, with swag straps
+in a sort of harness, that they can roll up the swag in about a
+minute, and unbuckle it and throw it out as easily as a roll of
+wall-paper, and there's the bed ready on the ground with the wardrobe
+for a pillow.  The swag is always used for a seat on the track; it is
+a soft seat, so trousers last a long time.  And, the dust being mostly
+soft and silky on the long tracks out back, boots last marvellously.
+Fifteen miles a day is the average with the swag, but you must travel
+according to the water: if the next bore or tank is five miles on, and
+the next twenty beyond, you camp at the five-mile water to-night and
+do the twenty next day.  But if it's thirty miles you have to do it.
+Travelling with the swag in Australia is variously and picturesquely
+described as "humping bluey," "walking Matilda," "humping
+Matilda," "humping your drum," "being on the wallaby," "jabbing
+trotters," and "tea and sugar burglaring," but most travelling
+shearers now call themselves trav'lers, and say simply "on the
+track," or "carrying swag."
+
+And there you have the Australian swag.  Men from all the world have
+carried it--lords and low-class Chinamen, saints and world martyrs,
+and felons, thieves, and murderers, educated gentlemen and boors who
+couldn't sign their mark, gentlemen who fought for Poland and convicts
+who fought the world, women, and more than one woman disguised as a
+man.  The Australian swag has held in its core letters and papers in
+all languages, the honour of great houses, and more than one national
+secret, papers that would send well-known and highly-respected men to
+jail, and proofs of the innocence of men going mad in prisons, life
+tragedies and comedies, fortunes and papers that secured titles and
+fortunes, and the last pence of lost fortunes, life secrets, portraits
+of mothers and dead loves, pictures of fair women, heart-breaking old
+letters written long ago by vanished hands, and the pencilled
+manuscript of more than one book which will be famous yet.
+
+The weight of the swag varies from the light rouseabout's swag,
+containing one blanket and a clean shirt, to the "royal Alfred,"
+with tent and all complete, and weighing part of a ton.  Some old
+sundowners have a mania for gathering, from selectors' and shearers'
+huts, and dust-heaps, heart-breaking loads of rubbish which can never
+be of any possible use to them or anyone else.  Here is an inventory
+of the contents of the swag of an old tramp who was found dead on the
+track, lying on his face on the sand, with his swag on top of him, and
+his arms stretched straight out as if he were embracing the mother
+earth, or had made, with his last movement, the sign of the cross to
+the blazing heavens:
+
+
+Rotten old tent in rags.  Filthy blue blanket, patched with squares of
+red and calico.  Half of "white blanket" nearly black now, patched
+with pieces of various material and sewn to half of red blanket.
+Three-bushel sack slit open.  Pieces of sacking.  Part of a woman's
+skirt.  Two rotten old pairs of moleskin trousers.  One leg of a pair
+of trousers.  Back of a shirt.  Half a waistcoat.  Two tweed coats,
+green, old and rotting, and patched with calico.  Blanket, etc.  Large
+bundle of assorted rags for patches, all rotten.  Leaky billy-can,
+containing fishing-line, papers, suet, needles and cotton, etc.
+Jam-tin, medicine bottles, corks on strings, to hang to his hat to
+keep the flies off (a sign of madness in the bush, for the corks would
+madden a sane man sooner than the flies could).  Three boots of
+different sizes, all belonging to the right foot, and a left slipper.
+Coffee-pot, without handle or spout, and quart-pot full of
+rubbish--broken knives and forks, with the handles burnt off, spoons,
+etc., picked up on rubbish-heaps; and many rusty nails, to be used as
+buttons, I suppose.
+
+Broken saw blade, hammer, broken crockery, old pannikins, small rusty
+frying-pan without a handle, children's old shoes, many bits of old
+bootleather and greenhide, part of yellowback novel, mutilated English
+dictionary, grammar and arithmetic book, a ready reckoner, a cookery
+book, a bulgy anglo-foreign dictionary, part of a Shakespeare, book in
+French and book in German, and a book on etiquette and courtship.  A
+heavy pair of blucher boots, with uppers parched and cracked, and
+soles so patched (patch over patch) with leather, boot protectors,
+hoop iron and hobnails that they were about two inches thick, and the
+boots weighed over five pounds.  (If you don't believe me go into the
+Melbourne Museum, where, in a glass case in a place of honour, you
+will see a similar, perhaps the same, pair of bluchers labelled "An
+example of colonial industry.")  And in the core of the swag was a
+sugar-bag tied tightly with a whip-lash, and containing another old
+skirt, rolled very tight and fastened with many turns of a length of
+clothes-line, which last, I suppose, he carried to hang himself with
+if he felt that way.  The skirt was rolled round a small packet of old
+portraits and almost indecipherable letters--one from a woman who had
+evidently been a sensible woman and a widow, and who stated in the
+letter that she did not intend to get married again as she had enough
+to do already, slavin' her finger-nails off to keep a family, without
+having a second husband to keep.  And her answer was "final for good
+and all," and it wasn't no use comin' "bungfoodlin'" round her
+again.  If he did she'd set Satan on to him.  "Satan" was a dog, I
+suppose.
+
+The letter was addressed to "Dear Bill," as were others.  There were
+no envelopes.  The letters were addressed from no place in particular,
+so there weren't any means of identifying the dead man.  The police
+buried him under a gum, and a young trooper cut on the tree the words:
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
+  BILL
+WHO DIED.
+
+
+
+
+"BUCKOLTS' GATE"
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+Old Abel Albury had a genius for getting the bull by the tail with a
+tight grip, and holding on with both hands and an obstinacy born of
+ignorance--and not necessarily for the sake of self-preservation or
+selfishness--while all the time the bull might be, so to speak,
+rooting up life-long friendships and neighbourly relations, and
+upsetting domestic customs and traditions with his horns.
+
+Yes, Uncle Abel was always grasping the wrong end of things, and
+sticking to it with that human mulishness which is often stronger, and
+more often wearies and breaks down the opposition than an intelligent
+man's arguments.  He was---or professed to be, the family said--unable
+for a long time to distinguish between his two grand-nephews, one of
+whom was short and fat, while the other was tall and thin, the only
+points of resemblance between them being that each possessed the old
+family nose and eyes.  When they were boys he used to lay the strap
+about one in mistake for the other.  They had a saying that Uncle Abel
+saw with ten squinting eyes.
+
+Also, he could never-or would not, as the family said--remember names.
+He referred to Mrs Porter, a thin, haggard selector's wife, as "Mrs
+Stout" and he balanced matters by calling Mrs Southwick "Mrs
+Porterwicket"--when he didn't address her as "Mrs What's-the-
+woman's-name"--and he succeeded in deeply offending both ladies.
+
+Uncle Abel was Mrs Carey's uncle.
+
+Down at the lower end of Carey's selection at Rocky Rises, in the
+extreme corner of the lower or outer paddock, were sliprails opening
+into the main road, which ran down along the siding, round the foot of
+a spur from ridge, and out west.  These sliprails were called "The
+Lower Sliprails" by the family, and it occurred to Uncle Abel to refer
+to them as "Buckolts' Gate," for no other reason apparently than that
+Buckolts' farm lay in that direction.  The farm was about a mile
+further on, on the other side of the creek, and the gate leading to it
+from the main road was round the spur, out of sight of Carey's
+selection.  It is quite possible that Uncle Abel reasoned the thing
+out for days, for of such material are some human brains.  Sliprails,
+or a slip-panel, is a panel of fencing of which the rails are made to
+be slipped out of the mortise holes in the posts so as to give passage
+to horses, vehicles and cattle.  I suppose Abel called it a gate,
+because he was always going to hang a proper gate there some day.  The
+family were unaware of his new name for the Lower Sliprails, and after
+he had, on one or two occasions, informed the boys that they would
+find a missing cow or horse at the Buckolts' Gate, and they had found
+it calmly camped at the Lower Sliprails, and after he had made several
+appointments to meet parties at Buckolts' Gate, and had been found
+leaning obstinately on the fence by the Lower Sliprails with no
+explanation to offer other than that he _was_ waiting at Buckolts'
+Gate, they began to fear that he was becoming weak in his mind.
+
+ACT I
+
+It was New Year's Eve at Rocky Rises.  There was no need for fireworks
+nor bonfires, for the bush-fires were out all along the ranges to the
+east, and, as night came on, lines and curves of lights--clear lights,
+white lights, and, in the nearer distance, red lights and smoky
+lights--marked the sidings and ridges of a western spur of the Blue
+Mountain Range, and seemed suspended against a dark sky, for the stars
+and the loom of the hills were hidden by smoke and drought haze.
+
+
+There was a dance at Careys'.  Old Carey was a cheerful, broad-minded
+bushman, haunted at times by the memories of old days, when he was the
+beau of the bush balls, and so when he built his new slab-and-bark
+barn he had it properly floored with hard-wood, and the floor
+well-faced "to give the young people a show when they wanted a
+dance," he said.  The floor had a spring in it, and bush boys and
+girls often rode twenty miles and more to dance on that floor.  The
+girls said it was a lovely floor.
+
+On this occasion Carey had stacked his wheat outside until after the
+New Year.  Spring-carts, and men and girls on horseback came in from
+miles round.  "Sperm" candles had been cut up and thrown on the
+floor during the afternoon, and rubbed over by feet cased tightly in
+'lastic-sides; and hoops were hung horizontally from the tie-beams,
+with candles stuck round them.  There were fresh-faced girls, and
+sweet, freckled-faced girls, and jolly girls, and shy girls--all sorts
+of girls except sulky, "toney" girls--and lanky chaps, most of them
+sawney, and weird, whiskered agriculturists, who watched the dancers
+with old, old time-worn smiles, or stood, or sat on their heels
+yarning, with their pipes, outside, where two boilers were slung over
+a log-fire to boil water for tea; and there were leathery women, with
+complexions like dried apples, who gossiped--for the first time in
+months perhaps--and watched the young people, and thought at times, no
+doubt, of other days--of other days when they were girls.  (And not so
+far distant either, in some cases, for women dry quickly in the bush.)
+
+
+And there were one or two old soldiers and their wives, whose eyes
+glistened when Jim Bullock played "The Girl I Left Behind Me."
+
+Jim Bullock was there with his concertina.  He sat on a stool in front
+of a bench, on which was a beer-keg, piles of teacups and saucers,
+several big tin teapots, and plates of sandwiches, sponge-cakes, and
+tarts.  Jim sat in his shirt-sleeves, with his flat-brimmed,
+wire-bound, "hard-hitter" hat on, slanting over his weaker eye.  He
+held one leg loosely and the other rigid, with the concertina on his
+knee, and swanked away at the instrument by the hour, staring straight
+in front of him with the expression of a cod-fish, and never moving a
+muscle except the muscles of his great hairy arms and big chapped and
+sun-blotched hands; while chaps in tight "larstins" (elastic-side
+boots), slop suits of black, bound with braid, and with coats too
+short in the neck and arms, and trousers bell-mouthed at the bottoms,
+and some with paper collars, narrow red ribbon ties, or scarfs through
+walnut shells, held their partners rigidly, and went round the room
+with their eyes--most of them--cocked at the rafters in semi-idiotic
+ecstasy.
+
+But there was tall, graceful, pink-and-white Bertha Buckolt, blue-eyed
+and blue-black-haired, and little Mary Carey with the kind, grey eyes
+and red-gold hair; there was Mary's wild brother Jim, with curly black
+hair and blue eyes and dimples of innocence; and there was Harry Dale,
+the drover, Jim's shearing and droving mate, a tall, good-looking,
+brown-eyed and brown-haired young fellow, a "better-class" bushman
+and the best dancer in the district.  Uncle Abel usurped the position
+of M.C., and roared "Now then! take yer partners!" and bawled
+instructions and interrupted and tangled up the dancers, until they
+got used to taking no notice of his bull voice.  Mary Carey was too
+shy--because she loved him, and secretly and fondly hoped and doubted
+that he cared for her--to be seen dancing more than once with Harry
+Dale, so he shared Bertha Buckolt, the best girl dancer there, with
+Jim Carey, who danced with his sister when Harry was dancing with
+Bertha Buckolt, and who seemed, for some reason best known to himself,
+to be perfectly satisfied with the arrangement.  Poor little Mary
+began to fret presently, and feel a little jealous of Bertha, her old
+schoolmate.  She was little and couldn't dance like Bertha, and she
+couldn't help noticing how well Bertha looked to-night, and what a
+well-matched pair she and Harry made; and so, when twelve o'clock came
+and they all went outside to watch the Old Year out and the New Year
+in--with a big bonfire on the distant ridge where the grass fires had
+reached a stretch of dry scrub--and to join hands all round and sing
+"Auld Lang Syne," little Mary was not to be found, for she was
+sitting on a log round behind the cow-yard, crying softly to herself.
+
+And when about three o'clock they all started home, Mary gave Bertha
+her cheek to kiss instead of her mouth, and that hurt Bertha, who had
+_her_ cry riding home, to the astonishment and irritation of her
+brother Jack, who rode home with her.  But when they were all gone
+Mary was missing again and when her mother called her, and, after a
+pause, the voice of Harry Dale said, respectfully, in the darkness,
+"She's here, Mrs Carey, she's all right," the two were discovered
+sitting on a convenient log of the wood-heap, with an awkward and
+overacted interval of log between them.
+
+Old Carey liked Harry Dale, and seemed very well satisfied with the
+way things appeared to be going.  He pressed Harry to stay at the
+selection overnight.  "The missus will make you a shake-down on the
+floor," he said.  Harry had no appointments, and stayed cheerfully,
+and old Carey, having had a whisky or two, insisted on Mary making the
+shake-down, and the old folks winked at each other behind the young
+folks' backs to see how poor little Mary spread a spare mattress, with
+redhot, averted face, and found an extra pillow and a spare pair of
+ironed sheets for the shake-down.
+
+At sunrise she stole out to milk the cows, which was her regular duty;
+there was no other way out from her room than through the dining-room,
+where Harry lay on his back, with his arms folded, resting peacefully.
+He seemed sound asleep and safe for a good two hours, so she ventured.
+As she passed out she paused a moment looking down on him with all the
+lovelight in her eyes, and, obeying a sudden impulse, she stooped
+softly and touched his forehead with her lips, then she slipped out.
+Harry stretched, opened his eyes, winked solemnly at the ceiling, and
+then, after a decent interval, he got up, dressed, and went out to
+help her to milk.
+
+
+
+Harry Dale and Jim Carey were going out to take charge of a mob of
+bullocks going north-west, away up in Queensland.  And as they had
+lost a day and night to be at the dance, they decided to start in the
+cool of the evening and travel all night.  Mary walked from the
+homestead to the Lower Sliprails between her brother, who
+rode--because he was her brother--and led a packhorse on the other
+side, and Harry, who walked and led his horse--because he was her
+sweetheart, avowed only since last night.
+
+There were thunderstorms about, and Mary had repented sufficiently
+with regard to Bertha Buckolt to wear on her shoulders a cape which
+Bertha had left behind her last night.
+
+When they reached the Lower Sliprails Jim said he'd go on and that
+Harry needn't hurry: he stooped over his horse's neck, kissed his
+sister, promised to keep away from the drink, not to touch a card,
+and to leave off fighting, and rode on.  And when he rounded the Spur
+he saw a tall, graceful figure slipping through the trees from the
+creek towards Buckolts' Gate.
+
+Then came the critical time at the Lower Sliprails.  The shadows from
+the setting sun lengthened quickly on the siding, and then the sun
+slipped out of sight over a "saddle" in the ridges, and all was soon
+dusk save the sunlit peaks of the Blue Mountains away to the east over
+the sweeps of blue-grey bush.
+
+"Ah, well! Mary," said Harry, "I must make a start now."
+
+"You'll--you'll look after Jim, won't you, Harry?" said Mary.
+
+"I will, Mary, for your sake."
+
+Her mouth began to twitch, her chin to tremble, and her eyes brimmed
+suddenly.
+
+"You must cheer up, Mary," he said with her in his arms.  "I'll be
+back before you know where you are, and then we'll be married right
+off at once and settle down for life."
+
+She smiled bravely.
+
+"Good-bye, Mary!"
+
+"Good-bye, Harry!"
+
+He led his horse through the rails and lifted them, with trembling
+hands, and shot them home.  Another kiss across the top rail and he
+got on his horse.  She mounted the lower rail, and he brought his
+horse close alongside the fence and stooped to kiss her again.
+
+"Cheer up, Mary!" he said.  "I'll tell you what I'll do--when I come
+back I'll whistle when I reach the Spur and you be here to let the
+sliprails down for me.  I'll time myself to get here about sundown.
+I'll whistle `Willie Riley,' so you'll know it's me.  Good-bye, little
+girl!  I must go now.  Don't fret--the time will soon go by."
+
+He turned, swung his horse, and rode slowly down the track, turning
+now and again to wave his hand to her, with a farewell flourish of his
+hat as he rounded the Spur.  His track, five hundred miles, or perhaps
+a thousand, into the great north-west; his time, six months, or
+perhaps a year.  Hers a hundred yards or so back to the dusty, dreary
+drudgery of selection life.  The daylight faded into starlight, the
+sidings grew very dim, and a faint white figure blurred against the
+bars of the slip-panel.
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+It was the last day of the threshing--shortly after New Year--at Rocky
+Rises.  The green boughs, which had been lashed to the veranda-posts
+on Christmas Eve, had withered and been used for firewood.  The
+travelling steamer had gone with its gang of men, and the family sat
+down to tea, the men tired with hard work and heat, and with prickly
+heat and irritating wheaten chaff and dust under their clothes--and
+with smut (for the crop had been a smutty one) "up their brains" as
+Uncle Abel said--the women worn out with cooking for a big gang of
+shearers.
+
+Good-humoured Aunt Emma--who was Uncle Abel's niece
+--recovered first, and started the conversation.  There were one or two
+neighbours' wives who bad lent crockery and had come over to help with
+the cooking in their turns.  Jim Carey's name came up incidentally, but
+was quickly dropped, for ill reports of Jim had come home.  Then Aunt
+Emma mentioned Harry Dale, and glanced meaningly at Mary, whose face
+flamed as she bent over her plate.
+
+"Never mind, Mary," said Aunt Emma, "it's nothing to be ashamed of.
+We were all girls once.  There's many a girl would jump at Harry."
+
+"Who says I'm ashamed?" said Mary, straightening up indignantly.
+
+"Don't tease her, Emma," said Mrs Carey, mildly.
+
+"I'll tell yer what," said young Tom Carey, frankly, "Mary got a
+letter from him to-day.  I seen her reading it behind the house."
+
+Mary's face flamed again and went down over her plate.
+
+
+"Mary," said her mother, with sudden interest, "did Harry say anything
+of Jim?"
+
+"No, mother," said Mary.  "And that's why I didn't tell you
+about the letter."
+
+There was a pause.  Then Tommy said, with that delightful tact which
+usually characterizes young Tommies:
+
+"Well, Mary needn't be so cocky about Harry Dale, anyhow.  I seen him
+New Year's Eve when we had the dance.  I seen him after the dance
+liftin' Bertha Buckolt onter her horse in the dark--as if she couldn't
+get on herself--she's big enough.  I seen him lift her on, an' he took
+her right up an' lifted her right inter the saddle, 'stead of holdin'
+his hand for her to tread on like that new-chum jackaroo we had.  An',
+what's more, I seen him hug her an' give her a kiss before he lifted
+her on.  He told her he was as good as her brother."
+
+"What did he mean by that, Tommy?" asked Mrs Porter, to break an
+awkward pause.
+
+"How'm I ter know what he means?" said Tommy, politely.
+
+"And, Tommy, I seen Harry Dale give young Tommy Carey a lick with a
+strap the day before New Year's Eve for throwing his sister's cat into
+the dam," said Aunt Emma, coming to poor Mary's rescue.  "Never
+mind, Mary, my dear, he said goodbye to you last."
+
+"No, _he didn't_!" roared Uncle Abel.
+
+They were used to Uncle Abel's sudden bellowing, but it startled them
+this time.
+
+"Why, Uncle Abel," cried both Aunt Emma and Mrs Carey, "whatever do
+you mean?"
+
+"What I means is that I ain't a-goin' to have the feelin's of a niece
+of mine trifled with.  What I means is that I seen Harry Dale with
+Bertha Buckolt on New Year's night after he left here.  That's what I
+means--"
+
+"Don't speak so loud, Abel, we're not deaf," interrupted Carey, as
+Mary started up white-faced.  "What do you want to always shout
+for?"
+
+"I speak loud because I want people to hear me!" roared Uncle Abel,
+turning on him.
+
+"Go on, Uncle Abel," said Mary, "tell me what you mean."
+
+"I mean," said Uncle Abel, lowering his voice a little, "that I
+seen Harry Dale and Bertha Buckolt at Buckolts' Gate that night--I
+seen it all--"
+
+"At _Buckolts_' Gate!" cried Mary.
+
+"_Yes_! at Buckolts' Gate!  Ain't I speakin' loud enough?"
+
+"And where were you?"
+
+"Never mind wheers I was.  I was comin' home along the ridges, and
+I seen them.  I seen them say good-bye; I seen them hug an' kiss--"
+
+"Uncle Abel!" exclaimed Aunt Emma.
+
+"It's no use Uncle Abelin' me.  What I sez I sez.  I ain't a-goin' to
+have a niece of mine bungfoodled--"
+
+"Uncle Abel," cried Mary, staring at him wild-eyed, "do be careful
+what you say.  You must have made a mistake.  Are you sure it was
+Bertha and Harry?"
+
+"Am I sure my head's on me neck?" roared Uncle Abel.  "Would I see
+'em if I didn't see 'em?  I tell you--"
+
+"Now wait a moment, Uncle Abel," interrupted Mary, with dangerous
+calmness.  "Listen to me.  Harry Dale and I are engaged to be
+married, and--"
+
+"Have you got the writings!" shouted Uncle Abel.
+
+"The what?" said Mary.
+
+"The writings."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+"Then that's where you are," said Uncle Abel, triumphantly.  "If
+you had the writings you could sue him for breach of contract."
+
+Uncle Abel, who couldn't read, had no faith whatever in verbal
+agreements (he wouldn't sign one, he said), all others he referred
+to as "writings."
+
+"Now, listen to me, Uncle Abel," said Mary, trembling now.  "Are you
+sure you saw Harry Dale and Bertha Buckolt at Buckolts' Gate after he
+left here that night?"
+
+"Yes.  An' what's more, I seen young Tommy there ridin' on his pony
+along by the Spur a little while after, an' he muster seen them too,
+if he's got a tongue."
+
+Mary turned quickly to her brother.
+
+"Well, all I can say," said Tommy, quietened now, "is that I seen
+_her_ at Buckolts' Gate that night.  I was comin' home from
+Two-Mile Flat, and I met Jim with his packhorse about a mile the other
+side of Buckolts', and while we was talkin' Harry Dale caught up, so I
+jist said 'So-long' an' left 'em.  And when I got to Buckolt's Gate I
+seen Bertha Buckolt.  She was standin' under a tree, and she looked as
+if she was cryin"'
+
+But Mary got her bonnet and started out.
+
+"Where are you going to, Mary?" asked her mother, starting up
+nervously.
+
+"I'm going across to Buckolts' to find out the truth," said Mary,
+and she went out.
+
+"Better let her go, Lizzie," said Aunt Emma, detaining her sister.
+
+"You've done it now, Uncle Abel."
+
+"Well, why didn't she get the writings?" retorted Uncle Abel.
+
+Half-way to Buckolts' Mary met Bertha Buckolt herself, coming over to
+the selection for the first time since the night of the party.  Bertha
+started forward to kiss Mary, but stopped short as Mary stood
+stock-still and faced her, with her hands behind her back.
+
+"Why! whatever is the matter, Mary?"  exclaimed Bertha.
+
+"You know very well, Bertha."
+
+"Why!  Whatever do you mean?  What have I done?"
+
+"What haven't you done?  You've--you've broken my heart."
+
+"Good gracious me!  Whatever are you talking about?  Tell me what it
+is, Mary?"
+
+"You met him at your gate that night?"
+
+"I know I did."
+
+"Oh, Bertha!  How could you be so mean and deceitful?"
+
+"Mean and deceitful!  What do you mean by that?  Whatever are you
+talking about?  I suppose I've got as good a right to meet him as
+anyone else."
+
+"No, you haven't," retorted Mary, "you're only stringing him on.
+You only did it to spite me.  You helped him to deceive me.
+You ought to be ashamed to look me in the face."
+
+"Good gracious!  Whatever are you talking about?  Ain't I good enough
+for him!  I ought to be, God knows!  I suppose he can marry who he
+likes, and if I'm poor fool enough to love him and marry him, what
+then?  Mary, you ought to be the last to speak--speak to--to me like
+that."
+
+"Yes.  He can marry all, the girls in the country for all I care.
+I never want to see either him or you any more.  You're a cruel,
+deceitful, brazen-faced hussy, and he's a heartless, deceiving
+blackguard."
+
+"Mary!  I believe you're mad," said Bertha, firmly.  "How dare you
+speak to me like that!  And as for him being a blackguard.  Why, you
+ought to be the last in the world to say such a thing; you ought to be
+the last to say a word against him.  Why, I don't believe you ever
+cared a rap for him in spite of all your pretence.  He could go to the
+devil for all you cared."
+
+"That's enough, Bertha Buckolt!" cried Mary.  "_You_--you!
+Why, you're a barefaced girl, that's what you are!  I don't want to
+see your brazen face again."  With that she turned and stumbled
+blindly in the direction of home.
+
+"Send back my cape," cried Bertha as she too turned away.
+
+Mary walked wildly home and fled to her room and locked the door.
+Bertha did likewise.
+
+Mary let Aunt Emma in after a while, ceased sobbing and allowed
+herself to be comforted a little.  Next morning she was out milking at
+the usual time, but there were dark hollows under her eyes, and her
+little face was white and set.  After breakfast she rolled the cape up
+very tight in a brown-paper parcel, addressed it severely to
+
+MISS BERTHA BUCKOLT,
+
+Eurunderee Creek,
+
+and sent it home by one of the school-children.  She wrote to Harry
+Dale and told him that she knew all about it (not stating what), but
+she forgave him and hoped he'd be happy.  She never wanted to see his
+face again, and enclosed his portrait.
+
+Harry, who was as true and straight as a bushman could be, puzzled it
+out and decided that some one of his old love affairs must have come
+to Mary's ears, and wrote demanding an explanation.
+
+She never answered that letter.
+
+
+ACT III
+
+It was Christmas Day at Rocky Rises.  The plum puddings had been made,
+as usual, weeks beforehand, and hung in rags to the tie-beams and
+taken down and boiled again.  Poultry had been killed and plucked and
+cooked, and all the toil had been gone through, and every preparation
+made for a red-hot dinner on a blazing hot day--and for no other
+reason than that our great-grandmothers used to do it in a cold
+climate at Christmas-times that came in mid-winter.  Merry men hadn't
+gone forth to the wood to gather in the mistletoe (if they ever did in
+England, in the olden days, instead of sending shivering, wretched
+vassals in rags to do it); but Uncle Abel had gone gloomily up the
+ridge on Christmas Eve, with an axe on his shoulder (and Tommy
+unwillingly in tow, scowling and making faces behind his back), and
+had cut young pines and dragged them home and lashed them firmly to
+the veranda-posts, which was the custom out there.
+
+There was little goodwill or peace between the three or four farms
+round Rocky Rises that Christmas Day, and Uncle Abel had been the
+cause of most of the ill-feeling, though they didn't know, and he was
+least aware of it of any.
+
+It all came about in this way.
+
+Shortly after last New Year Ryan's bull had broken loose and gone
+astray for two days and nights, breaking into neighbours' paddocks and
+filling himself with hay and damaging other bulls, and making love by
+night and hiding in the scrub all day.  On the second night he broke
+through and jumped over Reid's fences, and destroyed about an acre of
+grape-vines and adulterated Reid's stock, besides interfering with
+certain heifers which were not of a marriageable age.  There was a L5
+penalty on a stray bull.  Reid impounded the bull and claimed heavy
+damages.  Ryan, a small selector of little account, was always pulling
+some neighbour to court when he wasn't being "pulled" himself, so he
+went to court over this case.
+
+Now, it appears that the bull, on his holiday, had spent a part of the
+first night in Carey's lower paddock, and Uncle Abel (who was out
+mooching about the bush at all hours, "havin' a look at some timber"
+or some "indercations" [of gold], or on some mysterious business or
+fad, the mystery of which was of his own making)--Uncle Abel saw the
+bull in the paddock at daylight and turned it out the sliprails, and
+talked about it afterwards, referring to the sliprails as "Buckolts'
+Gate," of course, and spoke mysteriously of the case, and put on an
+appearance of great importance, and allowed people to get an idea that
+he knew a lot if he only liked to speak; and finally he got himself
+"brought up" as a witness for Ryan.
+
+He had a lot of beer in town before he went to the courthouse.  All he
+knew would have been of no use to either party, but he swore that he
+had seen Ryan's bull inside Buckolts' Gate at daylight (on the day
+which wasn't in question) and had turned him out.  Uncle Abel mixed up
+the court a good deal, and roared like the bull, and became more
+obstinate the more he was cross-examined, and narrowly escaped being
+committed for contempt of court.
+
+Ryan, who had a high opinion of the breed of his bull, got an idea
+that the Buckolts had enticed or driven the bull into their paddock
+for stock-raising purposes, instead of borrowing it honestly or
+offering to pay for the use of it.  Then Ryan wanted to know why Abel
+had driven his bull out of Buckolts' Gate, and the Buckolts wanted to
+know what business Abel Albury had to drive Ryan's bull out of their
+paddock, if the bull had really ever been there.  And so it went on
+till Rocky Rises was ripe for a tragedy.
+
+The breach between the Careys and the Buckolts was widened, the
+quarrel between Ryan and Reid intensified.  Ryan got a down on the
+Careys because he reckoned that Uncle Abel had deliberately spoilt his
+case with his evidence; and the Reids and Careys were no longer on
+speaking terms, because nothing would convince old Reid that Abel
+hadn't tried to prove that Ryan's bull had never been in Reid's
+paddock at all.
+
+
+Well, it was Christmas Day, and the Carey family and Aunt Emma sat
+down to dinner.  Jim was present, having arrived overnight, with no
+money, as usual, and suffering a recovery.  The elder brother, Bob
+(who had a selection up-country), and his wife were there.  Mrs Carey
+moved round with watchful eyes and jealous ears, lest there should be
+a word or a look which might hurt the feelings of her wild son--for of
+such are mothers.
+
+
+Dinner went on very moodily, in spite of Aunt Emma, until at last Jim
+spoke--almost for the first time, save for a long-whispered and, on his
+part, repentant conversation with his mother.
+
+"Look here, Mary!" said Jim.  "What did you throw Harry Dale over
+for?"
+
+"Don't ask me, Jim."
+
+"Rot!  What did he do to you?  I'm your brother" (with a glance
+at Bob), "and I ought to know."
+
+"Well, then, ask Bertha Buckolt.  She saw him last."
+
+"What!" cried Jim.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Jim!  You'll make her cry," said Aunt Emma.
+
+"Well, what's it all about, anyway?" demanded Jim.  "All I know is
+that Mary wrote to Harry and threw him over, and he ain't been the
+same man since.  He swears he'll never come near the district again."
+
+"Tell Jim, Aunt Emma," said Mary.  And Aunt Emma started to tell the
+story as far as she knew.
+
+"Saw her at Buckolt's sliprails!" cried Jim, starting up.  "Well,
+he couldn't have had time to more than say good-bye to her, for I was
+with her there myself, and Harry caught up to me within a mile of the
+gate--and I rode pretty fast."
+
+"He had a jolly long good-bye with her," shouted Uncle Abel.
+"Look here, Jim!  I ain't goin' to stand by and see a nephew of mine
+bungfoodled by no girl; an', I tell you I seen 'em huggin' and kissin'
+and canoodlin' for half an hour at Buckolts' Gate!"
+
+"It's a--a-- Look here, Uncle Abel, be careful what you say.  You've
+got the bull by the tail again, that's what it is!"  Jim's face grew
+whiter--and it had been white enough on account of the drink.  "How
+did you know it was them?  You're always mistaking people.  It might
+have been someone else."
+
+"I know Harry Dale on horseback two miles off!" roared Uncle Abel.
+"And I knowed her by her cape."
+
+It was Mary's turn to gasp and stare at Uncle Abel.
+
+"Uncle Abel," she managed to say, "Uncle Abel!  Wasn't it at our
+Lower Sliprails you saw them and not Buckolts' Gate?"
+
+"Well!" bellowed Uncle Abel.  "You might call 'em the `Lower
+Sliprails,' but I calls 'em Buckolts' Gate!  They lead to'r'ds
+Buckolts', don't they?  Hey?  Them other sliprails"--jerking his arms
+in the direction of the upper paddock "them theer other sliprails
+that leads outer Reid's lane I calls Reid's Sliprails.  I don't know
+nothing about no upper or lower, or easter or wester, or any other
+la-di-dah names you like to call 'em."
+
+"Oh, uncle," cried Mary, trembling like a leaf, "why didn't you
+explain this before?  Why didn't you tell us?"
+
+"What cause have I got to tell any of you everything I sez or does or
+thinks?  It 'ud take me all me time.  Ain't you got any more brains
+than Ryan's bull, any of you?  Hey!--You've got heads, but so has
+cabbages.  Explain!  Why, if the world wasn't stuffed so full of
+jumped-up fools there'd be never no need for explainin'."
+
+Mary left the table.
+
+"What is it, Mary?" cried Aunt Emma.
+
+"I'm going across to Bertha," said Mary, putting on her hat with
+trembling hands.  "It was me Uncle Abel saw.  I had Bertha's cape on
+that night."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Abel," cried Aunt Emma, "whatever have you done?"
+
+"Well," said Uncle Abel, "why didn't she get the writin's as I told
+her?  It's to be hoped she won't make such a fool of herself next
+time."
+
+
+Half an hour later, or thereabouts, Mary sat on Bertha Buckolt's bed,
+with Bertha beside her and Bertha's arm round her, and they were
+crying and laughing by turns.
+
+"But-but-why didn't you _tell_ me it was Jim?" said
+Mary.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me it was Harry, Mary?" asked Bertha.  "It
+would have saved all this year of misery.
+
+"I didn't see Harry Dale at all that night," said Bertha.  "I was--I
+was crying when Jim left me, and when Harry came along I slipped
+behind a tree until he was past.  And now, look here, Mary, I can't
+marry Jim until he steadies down, but I'll give him another chance.
+But, Mary, I'd sooner lose him than you."
+
+Bertha walked home with Mary, and during the afternoon she took
+Jim aside and said:
+
+"Look here, Jim, I'll give you another chance--for a year.  Now I
+want you to ride into town and send a telegram to Harry Dale.  How
+long would it take him to get here?"
+
+"He couldn't get here before New Year," said Jim.
+
+"That will do," said Bertha, and Jim went to catch his horse.
+Next day Harry's reply came: "Coming"
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+New Year's Eve.  The dance was at Buckolts' this year, but Bertha
+didn't dance much; she was down by the gate most of the time with
+little Mary Carey, waiting, and watching the long, white road, and
+listening for horses' feet, and disappointed often as other horsemen
+rode by or turned up to the farm.
+
+And in the hot sunrise that morning, within a hundred 'miles of Rocky
+Rises, a tired, dusty drover camped in the edge of a scrub, boiled his
+quart-pot, broiled a piece of mutton on the coals, and lay down on the
+sand to rest an hour or so before pushing on to a cattle station he
+knew to try and borrow fresh horses.  He had ridden all night.
+
+Old Buckolt and Carey and Reid smoked socially under the grape-vines,
+with bottles of whisky and glasses, and nudged each other and coughed
+when they wanted to laugh at Old Abel Albury, who was, for about the
+first time in his life, condescending to explain.  He was explaining
+to them what thund'rin' fools they had been.
+
+Later on they sent a boy on horseback with a bottle of whisky and a
+message to Ryan, who turned up in time to see the New Year in with
+them and contradict certain slanders concerning the breed of his bull.
+
+
+Meanwhile Bertha comforted Mary, and at last persuaded her to go home.
+"He's sure to be here to-morrow, Mary," she said, "and you need to
+look fresh and happy."
+
+But Mary didn't sleep that night; she was up before daylight, had the
+kettle on and some chops ready to fry, and at daybreak she was down by
+the sliprails again.  She was turning away for the second time when
+she heard a clear whistle round the Spur--then the tune of "Willie
+Riley," and the hobble-chains and camp-ware on the packhorse jingling
+to the tune.
+
+She pulled out the rails with eager, trembling hands and leaned
+against the tree.  An hour later a tired drover lay on his back, in
+his ragged, track-worn clothes and dusty leggings, on Mary's own
+little bed in the skillion off the living-room, and rested.  Mary
+bustled round getting breakfast ready, and singing softly to herself;
+once she slipped in, bent over Harry and kissed him gently on the
+lips, and ran out as he stirred.
+
+"Why, who's that?" exclaimed Uncle Abel, poking round early and
+catching a glimpse of Harry through the open door.
+
+
+"It's only Harry, Uncle Abel," said Mary.
+
+Uncle Abel peered in again to make sure.
+
+"Well, be sure you git the writin's this time," he said.
+
+
+
+THE BUSH-FIRE
+
+I
+
+SQUATTER AND SELECTOR
+
+Wall was a squatter and a hard man.  There had been long years of
+drought and loss, and then came the rabbit pest--the rabbits swarmed
+like flies over his run, and cropped the ground bare where even the
+poor grass might have saved thousands of sheep--and the rabbits cost
+the squatter hundreds of pounds in "rabbit-proof" fences, trappers'
+wages, etc., just to keep them down.  Then came arrangements with the
+bank.  And then Wall's wife died.  Wall started to brood over other
+days, and the days that had gone between, and developed a temper which
+drove his children from home one by one, till only Mary was left.  She
+managed the lonely home with the help of a half-caste.  Then in good
+seasons came the selectors.
+
+Men remembered Wall as a grand boss and a good fellow, but that was in
+the days before rabbits and banks, and syndicates and "pastoralists"
+or pastoral companies instead of good squatters.  Runs were mostly
+pastoral leases for which the squatter paid the Government so much per
+square mile (almost a nominal rent).  Selections were small holdings
+taken up by farmers under residential and other conditions and paid
+for by instalments.  If you were not ruined by the drought, and paid
+up long enough, the land became freehold.  The writer is heir to a
+dusty patch of three hundred acres or so in the scrub which was taken
+up thirty years ago and isn't freehold yet.
+
+
+Selectors were allowed to take up land on runs or pastoral leases as
+well as on unoccupied Crown lands, and as they secured the best bits
+of land, and on water frontages if they could, and as, of course,
+selections reduced the area of the run, the squatters loved selectors
+like elder brothers.  One man is allowed to select only a certain
+amount of land, and required by law to live on it, so the squatters
+bought as much freehold about the homestead as they could afford,
+selected as much as they are allowed to by law, and sometimes employed
+"dummy" selectors to take up choice bits about the runs and hold
+them for them.  They fought selectors in many various ways, and, in
+some cases, annoyed and persecuted them with devilish ingenuity.
+
+Ross was a selector, and a very hard man physically.  He was a short,
+nuggety man with black hair and frill beard (a little dusty), bushy
+black eyebrows, piercing black eyes, horny knotted hands, and the
+obstinacy or pluck of a dozen men to fight drought and the squatter.
+Ross selected on Wall's run, in a bend of Sandy Creek, a nice bit of
+land with a black soil, flat and red soil sidings from the ridges,
+which no one had noticed before, and with the help of his boys he got
+the land cleared and fenced in a year or two--taking bush contracts
+about the district between whiles to make "tucker" for the family
+until he got his first crop off.
+
+Wall was never accused of employing dummies, or underhanded methods in
+dealings with selectors, but he had been through so much and had
+brooded so long that he had grown very hard and bitter and suspicious,
+and the reverse of generous--as many men do who start out in life too
+soft and goodhearted and with too much faith in human nature.  He was
+a tall, dark man.  He ordered Ross's boys off the run, impounded
+Ross's stock--before Ross had got his fencing finished, summoned Ross
+for trespass, and Ross retaliated as well as he could, until at last
+it mightn't have been safe for one of those men to have met the other
+with a gun.  The impounding of the selector's cattle led to the last
+bad quarrel between Wall and his son Billy, who was a tall,
+good-natured Cornstalk, and who reckoned that Australia was big enough
+for all of us.  One day in the drought, and in an extra bitter mood,
+Wall heard that some of his sheep had been dogged in the vicinity of
+Ross's selection, and he ordered Billy to take a station-hand and
+watch Ross's place all night, and, if Ross's cattle put their noses
+over the boundary, to drive them to the pound, fifteen miles away;
+also to lay poisoned baits for the dogs all round the selection.  And
+Billy flatly refused.
+
+"I know Ross and the boys," he said, "and I don't believe they
+dogged the sheep.  Why, they've only got a Newfoundland pup, and an
+old lame, one-eyed sheep-dog that couldn't hurt a flea.  Now, father,
+this sort of thing has been going on long enough.  What difference
+does a few paltry acres make to us?  The country is big enough, God
+knows!  Ross is a straight man and--for God's sake, give the man a
+chance to get his ground fenced in; he's doing it as fast as he can,
+and he can't watch his cattle day and night."
+
+"Are you going to do as I tell you, or are you not?" shouted Wall.
+
+"Well, if it comes to that, I'm not," said Billy.  "I'm not
+going to sneak round a place all night and watch for a chance to pound
+a poor man's cows."
+
+It was an awful row, down behind the wool-shed, and things looked so
+bad that old Peter, the station-hand, who was a witness, took off his
+coat and rolled up his sleeves, ready, as he said afterwards, "to
+roll into" either the father or the son if one raised a hand against
+the other.
+
+"Father!" said Billy, though rather sobered by the sight of his
+father's trembling, choking passion, "do you call yourself an
+Englishman?"
+
+"Yes!" yelled Wall, furiously. "What the hell do you call
+yourself?"
+
+"If it comes to that I'm an Australian," said Billy, and he turned
+away and went to catch his horse.  He went up-country and knocked
+about in the north-west for a year or two.
+
+
+II
+
+ROMEO AND JULIET
+
+Mary Wall was twenty-five.  She was an Australian bush girl, every
+inch of her five-foot-nine; she had a pink-and-white complexion, dark
+blue eyes, blue-black hair, and "the finest figure in the district,"
+on horseback or afoot.  She was the best girlrider too (saddle or
+bare-back), and they say that when she was a tomboy she used to tuck
+her petticoats under her and gallop man-fashion through the scrub
+after horses or cattle.  She said she was going to be an old maid.
+
+There came a jackaroo on a visit to the station.  He was related to
+the bank with which Wall had relations.  He was a dude, with an
+expensive education and no brains.  He was very vain of his education
+and prospects.  He regarded Mary with undisguised admiration, and her
+father had secret hopes.  One evening the jackaroo was down by the
+homestead-gate when Mary came cantering home on her tall chestnut.
+The gate was six feet or more, and the jackaroo raised his hat and
+hastened to open it, but Mary reined her horse back a few yards and
+the "dood" had barely time to jump aside when there was a scuffle of
+hoofs on the road, a "Ha-ha-ha!" in mid-air, a landing thud, and the
+girl was away up the home-track in a cloud of dust.
+
+A few days later the jackaroo happened to be at Kelly's, a wayside
+shanty, watching a fight between two bushmen, when Mary rode up.  She
+knew the men.  She whipped her horse in between them and struck at
+first one and then the other with her riding-whip.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" she said; "and both married
+men, too!"
+
+It evidently struck them that way, for after a bit they shook hands
+and went home.
+
+"And I wouldn't have married that girl for a thousand pounds," said
+the jackaroo, relating the incidents to some friends in Sydney.
+
+Mary said she wanted a man, if she could get one.
+
+
+There was no life at home nowadays, so Mary went to all the bush
+dances in the district.  She thought nothing of riding twenty or
+thirty miles to a dance, dancing all night, and riding home again next
+morning.  At one of these dances she met young Robert Ross, a
+clean-limbed, good-looking young fellow about her own age.  She danced
+with him and liked him, and danced with him again, and he rode part of
+the way home with her.  The subject of the quarrel between the two
+homes came up gradually.
+
+"The boss," said Robert, meaning his father, "the boss is always
+ready to let bygones be bygones.  It's a pity it couldn't be fixed
+up."
+
+"Yes," said Mary, looking at him (Bob looked very well on
+horseback), "it is a pity."
+
+They met several times, and next Prince of Wales's birthday they rode
+home from the races together.  Both had good horses, and they happened
+to be far ahead of the others on the wide, straight clear road that
+ran between the walls of the scrub.  Along, about dusk, they became
+very confidential indeed--Mary had remarked what a sad and beautiful
+sunset it was.  The horses got confidential, too, and shouldered
+together, and touched noses, and, after a long interval in the
+conversation, during which Robert, for one, began to breathe quickly,
+he suddenly leaned over, put his arm round her waist and made to kiss
+her.  She jerked her body away, threw up her whiphand, and Robert
+ducked instinctively; but she brought her whip down on her horse's
+flank instead, and raced ahead.  Robert followed--or, rather, his
+horse did: he thought it was a race, and took the bit in his teeth.
+Robert kept calling, appealing:
+
+"Wait a while, Mary!  I want to explain!  I want to apologize!  For
+God's sake listen to me, Mary!"
+
+But Mary didn't hear him.  Perhaps she misunderstood the reason of the
+chase and gave him credit for a spice of the devil in his nature.  But
+Robert grew really desperate; he felt that the thing must be fixed up
+now or never, and gave his horse a free rein.  Her horse was the
+fastest, and Robert galloped in the dust from his heels for about a
+mile and a half; then at the foot of a rise Mary's horse stumbled and
+nearly threw her over his head, and then he stopped like the good
+horse he was.
+
+Robert got down feeling instinctively that he might best make his
+peace on foot, and approached Mary with a face of misery--she had
+dropped her whip.
+
+"Oh, Bob!" she said, "I'm knocked out;" and she slipped down into
+his arms and stayed there a while.
+
+They sat on a log and rested, while their horses made inquiries of
+each other's noses, and compared notes.
+
+And after a good while Mary said "No, Bob, it's no use talking of
+marrying just yet.  I like you, Bob, but I could never marry you while
+things are as they are between your father and mine.  Now, that'll do.
+Let me get on my horse, Bob.  I'll be safer there."
+
+"Why?" asked Bob.
+
+
+"Come on, Bob, and don't be stupid."
+
+She met him often and "liked" him.
+
+
+III
+
+A TRAMP'S MATCH AND WHAT IT DID
+
+It was Christmas Eve at Wall's, but there was no score or so of
+buggies and horses and dozens of strange dogs round the place as of
+old.  The glasses and decanters were dusty on the heavy old-fashioned
+sideboard in the dining-room; and there was only a sullen, brooding
+man leaning over the hurdles and looking at his rams in the yard, and
+a sullen, brooding half-caste at work in the kitchen.  Mary had ridden
+away that morning to visit a girl chum.
+
+It was towards the end of a long drought, and the country was like
+tinder for hundreds of miles round--the ground for miles and miles in
+the broiling scrubs "as bare as your hand," or covered with coarse,
+dry tufts.  There was feed grass in places, but you had to look close
+to see it.
+
+Shearing had finished the day before, but there was a black boy and a
+station-hand or two about the yards and six or eight shearers and
+rouseabouts, and a teamster camped in the men's huts--they were
+staying over the holidays to shear stragglers and clean up generally.
+Old Peter and a jackaroo were out on the run watching a bush-fire
+across Sandy Creek.
+
+A swagman had happened to call at the station that morning; he asked
+for work and then for tucker.  He irritated Wall, who told him to
+clear out.  It was the first time that a swagman had been turned away
+from the station without tucker.
+
+Swaggy went along the track some miles, brooding over his wrongs, and
+crossed Sandy Creek.  He struck a match and dropped it into a
+convenient tuft of grass in a likely patch of tufts, with dead grass
+running from it up into the scrubby ridges--then he hurried on.
+
+
+Did you ever see a bush-fire?  Not sheets of flame sweeping and
+roaring from tree-top to tree-top, but the snaky, hissing grass-fire
+of hardwood country.
+
+The whole country covered with thin blue smoke so that you never know
+in what direction the fire is travelling.  At night you see it like
+the lighted streets of cities, in the distant ranges.  It roars up the
+hollows of dead trees and gives them the appearance of factory
+chimneys in the dusk.  It climbs, by shreds of bark, the trunks of old
+dead white-box and blue-gums--solid and hard as cast-iron--and cuts
+off the limbs.  And where there's a piece of recently ringbarked
+country, with the dead leaves still on the trees, the fire will roar
+from bough to bough--a fair imitation of a softwood forest fire.  The
+bush-fire travels through the scrubs for hundreds of miles, taking the
+grass to the roots, scorching the living bush but leaving it
+alive--for gumbush is hardest of any to kill.  Where there is no
+undergrowth, and the country seems bare as a road for miles, the fire
+will cross, licking up invisible straws of grass, dusty leaves, twigs
+and shreds of bark on the hard ground already baking in the drought.
+You hear of a fire miles away, and next day, riding across the head of
+a gully, you hear a hissing and crackling and there is the fire
+running over the ground in lines and curves of thin blue smoke,
+snakelike, with old logs blazing on the blackened ground behind.  Did
+you ever _hear_ a fire where a fire should not be?  There is
+something hellish in the sound of it.  When the breeze is, say, from
+the east the fire runs round western spurs, up sheltered
+gullies--helped by an "eddy" in the wind perhaps--and appears along
+the top of the ridge, ready, with a change in the wind, to come down
+on farms and fields of ripe wheat, with a "front" miles long.
+
+A selector might be protected by a wide sandy creek in front and wide
+cleared roads behind, and, any hour in the day or night, a shout from
+the farther end of the wheat paddock, and--"Oh, my God! the wheat!"
+
+Wall didn't mind this fire much; most of his sheep were on their way
+out back, to a back run where there was young grass; and the dry
+ridges along the creek would be better for a burning-off--only he had
+to watch his fences.
+
+But, about dusk, Mary came galloping home in her usual breakneck
+fashion.
+
+"Father," she cried, "turn out the men and send them at once.  The
+fire is all down by Ross's farm, and he has ten acres of wheat
+standing, and no one at home but him and Bob."
+
+"How do you know?" growled Wall.  Then suddenly and suspiciously,
+"Have you been there?"
+
+"I came home that way."
+
+"Well--let Ross look after his own," snarled the father.
+
+"But he can't, father.  They're fighting the fire now, and they'll be
+burnt out before the morning if they don't get help--for God's sake,
+father, act like a Christian and send the men.  Remember it is
+Christmas-time, father.  You're surely not going to see a neighbour
+burnt out."
+
+"Yes, I am," shouted Wall.  "I'd like to see every selector in the
+country burnt out, hut and all!  Get off that horse and go inside.  If
+a man leaves the station to-night he needn't come back."  (This last
+for the benefit of the men's hut.)
+
+"But, father--"
+
+"Get off that horse and go inside," roared Wall.
+
+"I--I won't."
+
+"What!"  He darted forward as though to drag her from the saddle,
+but she swung her horse away.
+
+"Stop!  Where are you going?"
+
+"To help Ross," said Mary.  "He had no one to send for help."
+
+"Then go the same way as your brother!" roared her father; "and
+if you show your nose back again I'll horse-whip you off the run!"
+
+"I'll go, father," said Mary, and she was away.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE FIRE AT ROSS'S FARM
+
+Ross's farm was in a corner between the ridges and the creek.  The
+fire had come down from the creek, but the siding on that side was
+fairly clear, and they had stopped the fire there.  It went behind the
+ridge and ran up and over.  The ridge was covered thickly with scrub
+and dead grass; the wheat-field went well up the siding, and along the
+top was a bush face with only a narrow bridle-track between it and the
+long dead grass.  Everything depended on the wind.  Mary saw Ross and
+Mrs Ross and the daughter Jenny, well up the siding above the fence,
+working desperately, running to and fro, and beating out the fire with
+green boughs.  Mary left her horse, ran into the hut, and looked
+hurriedly round for something to wear in place of her riding-skirt.
+She only saw a couple of light print dresses.  She stepped into a
+skillion room, which happened to be Bob's room, and there caught sight
+of a pair of trousers and a coat hanging on the wall.
+
+Bob Ross, beating desperately along a line of fire that curved
+down-hill to his right, and half-choked and blinded with the smoke,
+almost stumbled against a figure which was too tall to be his father.
+
+"Why! who's that?" he gasped.
+
+"It's only me, Bob," said Mary, and she lifted her bough again.
+
+Bob stared.  He was so astonished that he almost forgot the fire
+and the wheat.  Bob was not thin--but--
+
+"Don't look at me, Bob!"  said Mary, hurriedly.  "We're going to
+be married, so it doesn't matter.  Let us save the wheat."
+
+There was no time to waste; there was a breeze now from over the
+ridges, light, but enough to bear the fire down on them.  Once, when
+they had breathing space, Mary ran to the creek for a billy of water.
+They beat out the fire all along the siding to where a rib of granite
+came down over the ridge to the fence, and then they thought the wheat
+was safe.  They came together here, and Ross had time to look and see
+who the strange man was; then he stared at Mary from under his black,
+bushy eyebrows.  Mary, choking and getting her breath after her
+exertions, suddenly became aware, said "Oh!" and fled round the
+track beyond the point of granite.  She felt a gust of wind and looked
+up the ridge.  The bush fence ended here in a corner, where it was met
+by a new wire fence running up from the creek.  It was a blind gully
+full of tall dead grass, and, glancing up, Mary saw the flames coming
+down fast.  She ran back.
+
+"Come on!" she cried, "come on!  The fire's the other side of the
+rocks!"
+
+
+Back at the station, Wall walked up and down till he cooled.  He went
+inside and sat down, but it was no use.  He lifted his head and saw
+his dead wife's portrait on the wall.  Perhaps his whole life ran
+before him in detail--but this is not a psychological study.
+
+There were only two tracks open to him now: either to give in, or go
+on as he was going--to shut himself out from human nature and become
+known as "Mean Wall," "Hungry Wall," or "Mad Wall, the Squatter."
+He was a tall, dark man of strong imagination and more than ordinary
+intelligence.  And it was the great crisis of his ruined life.
+He walked to the top of a knoll near the homestead and saw the fire
+on the ridges above Ross's farm.  As he turned back he saw a
+horseman ride up and dismount by the yard.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?"
+
+"Yes, boss.  The fences is all right."
+
+"Been near Ross's?"
+
+"No.  He's burnt out by this time."
+
+Wall walked to and fro for a few minutes longer.  Then he suddenly
+stopped and called, "Peter!"
+
+"Ay, ay!" from the direction of the huts.
+
+"Turn out the men!" and Wall went into a shed and came out with his
+saddle on his arm.
+
+
+The fire rushed down the blind gully.  Showers of sparks fell on
+the bush fence, it caught twice, and they put it out, but the third
+time it blazed and roared and a fire-engine could not have stopped it.
+
+
+"The wheat must go," said Ross.  "We've done our best," and he
+threw down the blackened bough and leaned against a tree, and covered
+his eyes with a grimy hand.
+
+The wheat was patchy in that corner--there were many old stumps of
+trees, and there were bare strips where the plough had gone on each
+side of them.  Mary saw a chance, and climbed the fence.
+
+"Come on, Bob," she cried, "we might save it ye.  Mr Ross, pull out
+the fence along there," and she indicated a point beyond the fire.
+They tramped down and tore up the wheat where it ran between the
+stumps--the fire was hissing and crackling round and through it, and
+just as it ran past them in one place there was a shout, a clatter of
+horses' hoofs on the stones, and Mary saw her father riding up the
+track with a dozen men behind him.  She gave a shriek and ran straight
+down, through the middle of the wheat, towards the hut.
+
+Wall and his men jumped to the ground, wrenched green boughs from the
+saplings, and, after twenty minutes' hard fighting, the crop was
+saved--save for a patchy acre or so.  When it was all over Ross sat
+down on a log and rested his head on his hands, and his shoulders
+shook.  Presently he felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up, and saw
+Wall.
+
+"Shake hands, Ross," he said.
+
+And it was Christmas Day.
+
+
+But in after years they used to nearly chaff the life out of Mary.
+"You were in a great hurry to put on the breeches, weren't you,
+Mary?"  "Bob's best Sunday-go-meetin's, too, wasn't they, Mary?"
+"Rather tight fit, wasn't they, Mary?"  "Couldn't get 'em on now,
+could you, Mary?"
+
+"But," reflected old Peter apart to some cronies, "it ain't every
+young chap as gits an idea of the shape of his wife afore he marries
+her--is it?  An' that's sayin' somethin"'
+
+And old Peter was set down as being an innercent sort of ole cove.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE THAT WAS NEVER BUILT
+
+
+There had been heavy rain and landslips all along the branch railway
+which left the Great Western Line from Sydney just beyond the Blue
+Mountains, and ran through thick bush and scrubby ridgy country and
+along great alluvial sidings--were the hills on the opposite side of
+the wide valleys (misty in depths) faded from deep blue into the pale
+azure of the sky--and over the ends of western spurs to the little
+farming, mining and pastoral town of Solong, situated in a circle of
+blue hills on the banks of the willow-fringed Cudgegong River.
+
+The line was hopelessly blocked, and some publicans at Solong had put
+on the old coach-road a couple of buggies, a wagonette, and an old
+mail coach--relic of the days of Cobb & Co., which had been
+resurrected from some backyard and tinkered up--to bring the train
+passengers on from the first break in the line over the remaining
+distance of forty miles or so.  Capertee Station (old time, "Capertee
+Camp"--a teamster's camp) was the last station before the first
+washout, and there the railway line and the old road parted company
+for the last time before reaching Solong--the one to run round by the
+ends of the western spurs that spread fanlike, and the other to go
+through and over, the rough country.
+
+The train reached Capertee about midnight in broad moonlight that was
+misty in the valleys and round the blue of Crown Ridge.  I got a
+"box-seat" beside the driver on the old coach.  It was a grand old
+road--one of the old main coach-roads of New South Wales--broad and
+white, metalled nearly all the way, and in nearly as good condition as
+on the day when the first passenger train ran into Solong and the
+last-used section of the old road was abandoned.  It dated back to the
+bushranging days--right back to convict times: it ran through tall
+dark bush, up over gaps or "saddles" in high ridges, down across
+deep dark gullies, and here and there across grey, marshy,
+curlew-haunted flats.  Cobb & Co's coach-and-six, with "Royal Mail"
+gilded on the panels, had dashed over it in ten and twelve-mile stages
+in the old days, the three head-lamps flashing on the wild dark bush
+at night, and maybe twenty-four passengers on board.  The biggest
+rushes to richest goldfields in the west had gone over this old road
+on coaches, on carts, on drays, on horse and bullock wagons, on
+horseback, and on foot; new chums from all the world and from all
+stations in life.
+
+    When many a step was on the mountains,
+    Marching west to the land of gold.
+
+And a few came back rich--red, round-faced and jolly--on the box-seat
+of Cobb & Co's, treating the driver and all hands, "going home" to
+sweethearts or families.  (Home people will never feel the meaning of
+those two words, "going home," as it is felt in a new land.) And
+many came back broken men, tramping in rags, and carrying their swags
+through the dusty heat of the drought in December or the bitter,
+pelting rain in the mountains in June.  Some came back grey who went
+as boys; and there were many who never came back.
+
+I remembered the old mile-trees, with a section of bark cut away and
+the distances cut in Roman letters in the hardened sap--the distance
+from Bowenfels, the railway terminus then.  It was a ghostly old road,
+and if it wasn't haunted it should have been.  There was an old
+decaying and nearly deserted coaching town or two; there were
+abandoned farms and halfway inns, built of stone, with the roofs gone
+and nettles growing high between the walls; the remains of an orchard
+here and there--a few gnarled quince-trees--and the bush reclaiming
+its own again.  It was a haunted ride for me, because I had last
+ridden over this old road long ago when I was young--going to see the
+city for the first time--and because I was now on my way to attend the
+funeral of one of my father's blood from whom t had parted in anger.
+
+We slowly climbed, and almost as slowly descended, the steep siding of
+a great hill called Aaron's Pass, and about a mile beyond the foot of
+the hill I saw a spot I remembered passing on the last journey down,
+long ago.  Rising back from the road, and walled by heavy bush, was a
+square clearing, and in the background I saw plainly, by the broad
+moonlight, the stone foundations for a large house; from the front an
+avenue of grown pines came down to the road.
+
+"Why!" I exclaimed, turning to the driver, "was that house burnt
+down?"
+
+"No," he said slowly.  "That house was never built."
+
+I stared at the place again and caught sight of a ghostly-looking
+light between the lines of the foundations, which I presently made out
+to be a light in a tent.
+
+"There's someone camping there," I said.
+
+"Yes," said the driver, "some old swaggy or `hatter.'  I seen him
+comin' down.  I don't know nothing about that there place."  (I
+hadn't "shouted" for him yet.)
+
+I thought and remembered.  I remembered myself, as a boy, being sent a
+coach journey along this road to visit some relatives in Sydney.  We
+passed this place, and the women in the coach began to talk of the
+fine house that was going to be built there.  The ground was being
+levelled for the foundations, and young pines had been planted, with
+stakes round them to protect them from the cattle.  I remembered being
+mightily interested in the place, for the women said that the house
+was to be a two-storied one.  I thought it would be a wonderful thing
+to see a two-storied house there in the bush.  The height of my
+ambition was to live in a house with stairs in it.  The women said
+that this house was being built for young Brassington, the son of the
+biggest squatter then in the district, who was going to marry the
+daughter of the next biggest squatter.  That was all I remember
+hearing the women say.
+
+Three or four miles along the road was a public-house, with a post
+office, general store, and blacksmith shop attached, as is usual in
+such places--all that was left of the old pastoral and coaching town
+of Ilford.  I "shouted" for the driver at the shanty, but got
+nothing further out of him concerning the fate of the house that was
+never built.  I wanted that house for a story.
+
+However, while yarning with some old residents at Solong, I mentioned
+the Brassingtons, and picked up a few first links in the story.  The
+young couple were married and went to Sydney for their honeymoon.  The
+story went that they intended to take a trip to the old country and
+Paris, to be away a twelve-month, and the house was to be finished and
+ready for them on their return.  Young Brassington himself had a big
+sheep-run round there.  The railway wasn't thought of in those days,
+or if it was, no Brassington could have dreamed that the line could
+have been brought to Solong in any other direction than through the
+property of the "Big Brassingtons," as they were called.  Well, the
+young couple went to Sydney, but whether they went farther the old
+residents did not know.  All they knew was that within a few weeks,
+and before the stone foundations for the brick walls of the house were
+completed, the building contract was cancelled, the workmen were
+dismissed, and the place was left as I last saw it; only the
+ornamental pines had now grown to trees.  The Brassingtons and the
+bride's people were English families and reserved.  They kept the
+story, if there was a story, to themselves.  The girl's people left
+the district and squatted on new stations up-country.  The Big
+Brassingtons came down in the world and drifted to the city, as many
+smaller people do, more and more every year.  Neither young
+Brassington nor his wife was ever again seen or heard of in the
+district.
+
+I attended my relative's funeral, and next day started back for
+Sydney.
+
+Just as we reached Ilford, as it happened, the pin of the fore
+under-carriage of the coach broke, and it took the blacksmith several
+hours to set it right.  The place was dull, the publican was not
+communicative--or else he harped on the old local grievance of the
+railway not having come that way--so about half an hour before I
+thought the coach would be ready, I walked on along the road to
+stretch by legs.  I walked on and on until I came, almost unaware, to
+the site of the house that was never built.  The tent was still there,
+in fact, it was a permanent camp, and I was rather surprised to see
+the man working with a trowel on a corner of the unfinished
+foundations of the house.  At first I thought he was going to build a
+stone hut in the corner, but when I got close to him I saw that he was
+working carefully on the original plan of the building: he was
+building the unfinished parts of the foundation walls up to the
+required height.  He had bricklayer's tools, a bag of lime, and a
+heap of sand, and had worked up a considerable quantity of mortar.  It
+was a rubble foundation: he was knocking off the thin end of a piece
+of stone to make it fit, and the clanging of the trowel prevented his
+hearing my footsteps.
+
+"Good day, mate," I said, close beside him.
+
+I half expected he'd start when I spoke, but he didn't: he looked
+round slowly, but with a haunted look in his eyes as if I might have
+been one of his ghosts.  He was a tall man, gaunt and haggard-eyed, as
+many men are in the bush; he may have been but little past middle age,
+and grey before his time.
+
+"Good day," he said, and he set the stone in its place, carefully
+flush with the outer edge of the wall, before he spoke again.  Then he
+looked at the sun, which was low, laid down his trowel, and asked me
+to come to the tent-fire.  "It's turning chilly," he said.  It was a
+model camp, everything clean and neat both inside the tent and out; he
+had made a stone fireplace with a bark shelter over it, and a table
+and bench under another little shed, with shelves for his tin cups and
+plates and cooking utensils.  He put a box in front of the fire and
+folded a flour-bag on top of it for a seat for me, and hung the billy
+over the fire.  He sat on his heels and poked the burning sticks,
+abstractedly I thought, or to keep his hands and thoughts steady.
+
+"I see you're doing a bit of building," I said.
+
+"Yes," he said, keeping his eyes on the fire; "I'm getting on with
+it slowly."
+
+I don't suppose he looked at me half a dozen times the whole while I
+was in his camp.  When he spoke he talked just as if he were sitting
+yarning in a row of half a dozen of us.  Presently he said suddenly,
+and giving the fire a vicious dig with his poker:
+
+"That house must be finished by Christmas."
+
+"Why?" I asked, taken by surprise.  "What's the hurry?"
+
+"Because," he said, "I'm going to be married in the New
+Year--to the best and dearest girl in the bush."
+
+There was an awkward pause on my part, but presently I pulled myself
+together.
+
+"You'll never finish it by yourself," I said.  "Why don't you put
+on some men?"
+
+"Because," he said, "I can't trust them.  Besides, how am I to
+get bricklayers and carpenters in a place like this?"
+
+I noticed all through that his madness or the past in his mind was
+mixed up with the real and the present.
+
+"Couldn't you postpone the marriage?" I asked.
+
+"No!" he exclaimed, starting to his feet.  "No!" and he looked
+round wildly on the darkening bush.  There was madness in his tone
+that time, the last "No!" sounding as if from a man who was begging
+for his life.
+
+"Couldn't you run up a shanty then, to live in until the house is
+ready?" I suggested, to soothe him.
+
+He gave his arm an impatient swing.  "Do you think I'd ask that girl
+to live in a hut?" he said.  "She ought to live in a palace!"
+
+There seemed no way out of it, so I said nothing: he turned his back
+and stood looking away over the dark, low-lying sweep of bush towards
+sunset.  He folded his arms tight, and seemed to me to be holding
+himself.  After a while he let fall his arms and turned and blinked at
+me and the fire like a man just woke from a doze or rousing himself
+out of a deep reverie.
+
+"Oh, I almost forgot the billy!" he said.  "I'll make some tea--you
+must be hungry."
+
+He made the tea and fried a couple of slices of ham; he laid the
+biggest slice on a thick slice of white baker's bread on a tin plate,
+and put it and a pint-pot full of tea on a box by my side.  "Have it
+here, by the fire," he said; "it's warmer and more comfortable."
+
+I took the plate on my knee, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed that
+meal.  The bracing mountain air and the walk had made me hungry.  The
+hatter had his meal standing up, cutting his ham on a slice of bread
+with a clasp-knife.  It was bush fashion, and set me thinking of some
+old times.  He ate very little, and, as far as I saw, he didn't smoke.
+Non-smokers are very scarce in the bush.
+
+I saw by the way his tent was pitched and his camp arranged generally,
+and by the way he managed the cooking, that he must have knocked about
+the bush for some years.
+
+He put the plates and things away and came and sat down on the other
+empty gin-case by my side, and fell to poking the fire again.  He
+never showed the least curiosity as to who I was, or where I came
+from, or what I was doing on this deserted track: he seemed to take me
+as a matter of course--but all this was in keeping with bush life in
+general.
+
+Presently he got up and stood looking upwards over the place where the
+house should have been.
+
+"I think now," he said slowly, "I made a mistake in not having the
+verandas carried all round the house."
+
+"I--I beg pardon!"
+
+"I should have had the balcony all round instead of on two sides
+only, as the man who made the plan suggested; it would have looked
+better and made the house cooler in summer."
+
+I thought as I listened, and presently I saw that it was a case of
+madness within madness, so to speak: he was mad on the idea that he
+could build the house himself, and then he had moods when he imagined
+that the house had been built and he had been married and had reared a
+family.
+
+"You could easily get the balcony carried round," I said; "it
+wouldn't cost much--you can get good carpenters at Solong."
+
+"Yes," he said.  "I'll have it done after Christmas."  Then he
+turned from the house and blinked down at me.  "I am sorry," he
+said, "that there's no one at home.  I sent the wife and family to
+Sydney for a change.  I've got the two boys at the Sydney Grammar
+School.  I think I'll send the eldest to King's School at Parramatta.
+The girls will have to get along with a governess at home and learn to
+help their mother--"
+
+And so he went on talking away just as a man who has made money in the
+bush, and is married and settled down, might yarn to an old bachelor
+bush mate.
+
+"I suppose I'll have to get a good piano," he went on.  "The girls
+must have some amusement: there'll be no end of balls and parties.  I
+suppose the boys will soon be talking of getting `fivers' and
+`tenners' out of the `guvner' or `old man.'  It's the way of the
+world.  And they'll marry and leave us.  It's the way of the world--"
+
+It was awful to hear him go on like this, the more so because he never
+smiled--just talked on as if he had said the same thing over and over
+again.  Presently he stopped, and his eyes and hands began to wander:
+he sat down on his heel to the fire again and started poking it.  I
+began to feel uneasy; I didn't know what other sides there might be to
+his madness, and wished the coach would come along.
+
+"You've knocked about the bush a good deal?" I asked.  I couldn't
+think of anything else to say, and I thought he might break loose if I
+let him brood too long.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have."
+
+"Been in Queensland and the Gulf country, I suppose?"
+
+"I have."
+
+His tone and manner seemed a bit more natural.  He had knocked about
+pretty well all over Australia, and had been in many places where I
+had been.  I had got him on the right track, and after a bit he
+started telling bush yarns and experiences, some of them awful, some
+of them very funny, and all of them short and good; and now and then,
+looking at the side of his face, which was all he turned to me, I
+thought I detected the ghost of a smile.
+
+One thing I noticed about him; when he spoke as a madman, he talked
+like a man who had been fairly well educated (or sometimes, I fancied,
+like a young fellow who was studying to be a school-teacher); his
+speech was deliberate and his grammar painfully correct--far more so
+than I have made it; but when he spoke as an old bushman, he dropped
+his g's and often turned his grammar back to front.  But that reminds
+me that I have met English college men who did the same thing after
+being a few years in the bush; either they dropped their particular
+way of speaking because it was mimicked, because they were laughed and
+chaffed out of it, or they fell gradually into the habit of talking as
+rough bushmen do (they learnt Australian), as clean-mouthed men fall,
+in spite of themselves, into the habit of swearing in the heat and
+hurry and rough life of a shearing-shed.  And, coming back into
+civilized life, these men, who had been well brought up, drop into
+their old manner and style of speaking as readily as the
+foulest-mouthed man in a shed or camp--who, amongst his fellows,
+cannot say three words without an oath--can, when he finds himself in
+a decent home in the woman-and-girl world, yarn by the hour without
+letting slip a solitary little damn.
+
+The hatter warmed up the tea-billy again, got out some currant buns,
+which he had baked himself in the camp-oven, and we were yarning
+comfortably like two old bushmen, and I had almost forgotten that he
+was "ratty," when we heard the coach coming.  I jumped up to hurry
+down to the road.  This seemed to shake him up.  He gripped my hand
+hard and glanced round in his frightened, haunted way.  I never saw
+the eyes of a man look so hopeless and helpless as his did just then.
+
+"I'm sorry you're going," he said, in a hurried way.  "I'm sorry
+you're going.  But--but they all go.  Come again, come again--we'll
+all be glad to see you."
+
+I had to hurry off and leave him.  "We all," I suppose, meant
+himself and his ghosts.
+
+I ran down between the two rows of pines and reached the road just as
+the coach came up.  I found the publican from Ilford aboard--he was
+taking a trip to Sydney.  As the coach went on I looked up the
+clearing and saw the hatter standing straight behind the fire, with
+his arms folded and his face turned in our direction.  He looked
+ghastly in the firelight, and at that distance his face seemed to have
+an expression of listening blindness.  I looked round on the dark
+bush, with, away to the left, the last glow of sunset fading from the
+bed of it, like a bed of reddening coals, and I looked up at the black
+loom of Aaron's Pass, and thought that never a man, sane or mad, was
+left in such a depth of gloomy loneliness.
+
+"I see you've been yarning with him yonder," said the publican, who
+seemed to have relaxed wonderfully.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You know these parts, don't you?"
+
+"Yes.  I was about here as a boy."
+
+He asked me what my name might be.  I told him it was Smith.  He
+blinked a while.
+
+"I never heard of anyone by the name of Smith in the district," he
+said.
+
+Neither had I.  I told him that we lived at Solong, and didn't stay
+long.  It saved time.
+
+"Ever heard of the Big Brassingtons?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ever heard the yarn of the house that wasn't built?"
+
+I told him how much I had heard of it.
+
+"And that's about all any on 'em knows.  Have you any idea who that
+man back yonder is?"
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+"Well, who do you think it is?"
+
+"He is, or rather he was, young Brassington."
+
+"You've hit it!" said the publican.  "I know--and a few others."
+
+"And do you know what became of his wife?" I asked.
+
+"I do," said the shanty-keeper, who had a generous supply of whisky
+with him, and seemed to have begun to fill himself up for the trip.
+
+He said no more for a while, and when I had remained silent long
+enough, he went on, very deliberately and impressively:
+
+"One yarn is that the girl wasn't any good; that when she was married
+to Brassington, and as soon as they got to Sydney, she met a chap
+she'd been carrying on with before she married Brassington (or that
+she'd been married to in secret), an' she cleared off with him,
+leaving her fortnight-old husband.  That was one yarn."
+
+"Was it?" I said.
+
+"Yes," said the publican.  "That yarn was a lie." He opened a
+flask of whisky and passed it round.
+
+"There was madness in the family," he said, after a nip.
+
+"Whose?" I asked.  "Brassington's?"
+
+"No," said the publican, in a tone that implied contempt at my
+ignorance, in spite of its innocence, "the girl's.  Her mother had
+been in a 'sylum, and so had her grandmother.  It was--it was
+heridited.  Some madnesses is heridited, an' some comes through worry
+and hard graft (that's mine), an' some comes through drink, and some
+through worse, and, but as far as I've heard, all madnesses is pretty
+much the same.  My old man was a warder in a 'sylum.  They have their
+madnesses a bit different, the same as boozers has their d.t.'s
+different; but, takin' it by the lump, it's pretty much all the
+same.  The difference is accordin' to their natures when they're sane.
+All men are--"
+
+"But about young Mrs Brassington," I interrupted.
+
+"Young Mrs Brassington?  Rosy Webb she was, daughter of Webb the
+squatter.  Rosy was the brightest, best, good-heartedest, an' most
+ladylike little girl in the district, an' the heriditry business come
+on her in Sydney, about a week after she was married to young
+Brassington.  She was only twenty.  Here--"  He passed the flask round.
+
+
+"And what happened?"  I asked.
+
+"What happened?" he repeated.  Then he pulled himself together, as
+if conscious that he had shown signs of whisky.  "Everything was
+done, but it was no use.  She died in a year in a 'sylum."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"How do I know that?" he repeated in a tone of contempt.  "How do I
+know that?  Well, I'll tell you how.  _My old wife_ was in
+service at Brassington's station at the time--the oldest servant--an'
+young Brassington wired to her from Sydney to come and help him in his
+trouble.  Old Mrs Brassington was bedridden, an' they kep' it from
+her."
+
+"And about young Brassington?"
+
+"About young Brassington?  He took a swag an' wandered through the
+bush.  We've had him at our place several times all these years, but
+he always wandered off again.  My old woman tried everything with him,
+but it was all no use.  Years ago she used to get him to talk of
+things as they was, in hopes of bringin' his mind back, but he was
+always worse after.  She does all she can for him even now, but he's
+mighty independent.  The last five or six years he's been taken with
+the idea of buildin' that cursed house.  He'll stay there till he gets
+short of money, an' then he'll go out back, shearin', stock-ridin',
+drovin', cookin', fencin'--anything till he gets a few pounds.  Then
+he'll settle down and build away at that bloody house.  He's knocked
+about so much that he's a regular old bushman.  While he's an old
+bushman he's all right an' amusin' an' good company;--but when he's
+Brassington he's mad--Don't you ever let on to my old woman that I told
+you.  I allers let my tongue run a bit when I get out of that hole
+we're living in.  We've kept the secret all these years, but what does
+it matter now?--I ask you."
+
+"It doesn't matter much," I said.
+
+"Nothing matters much, it seems to me, nothing matters a damn.  The
+Big Brassingtons come down years ago; the old people's gone, and the
+young scattered God knows where or how.  The Webbs (the girl's people)
+are away up in new country, an' the girls (they was mostly all girls)
+are married an' settled down by this time.  We kept the secret, an'
+the Webbs kept the secret--even when the dirty yarns was goin'
+round--so's not to spoil the chances of the other girls.  What about the
+chances of their husbands?  Some on 'em might be in the same hell as
+Brassington for all I know.  The Brassingtons kept the secret because
+I suppose they reckoned it didn't matter much.  Nothing matters much
+in this world--"
+
+But I was thinking of another young couple who had
+married long ago, whose married life was twenty long years of shameful
+quarrels, of useless brutal recrimination--not because either was bad,
+but because their natures were too much alike; of the house that was
+built, of the family that was reared, of the sons and daughters who
+"went wrong," of the father and mother separated after twenty years,
+of the mother dead of a broken heart, of the father (in a lunatic
+asylum), whose mania was not to build houses, but to obtain and
+secrete matches for the purpose of burning houses down.
+
+
+
+"BARNEY, TAKE ME HOME AGAIN"
+
+This is a sketch of one of the many ways in which a young married
+woman, who is naturally thick-skinned and selfish--as most women
+are--and who thinks she loves her husband, can spoil his life because
+he happens to be good-natured, generous, sensitive, weak or soft,
+whichever you like to call it.
+
+Johnson went out to Australia a good many years ago with his young
+wife and two children, as assisted emigrants.  He should have left his
+wife and children with her mother, in a street off City Road, N., and
+gone out by himself and got settled down comfortably and strengthened
+in the glorious climate and democratic atmosphere of Australia, and in
+the knowledge that he could worry along a while without his wife,
+before sending for her.  That bit of knowledge would have done her
+good also, and it would have been better for both of them.  But no man
+knows the future, and few can prescribe for their own wives.  If we
+saw our married lives as others see them, half of us would get
+divorced.  But Johnson was sentimental, he could not bear to part from
+his wife for a little while.  Moreover, man is instinctively against
+leaving his wife behind; it may be either a natural or a cowardly
+instinct-but we won't argue that.  I don't believe that Johnson was a
+coward in that direction; I believe that he trusted his wife
+implicitly, or rather that he never dreamed of such a thing--as is the
+way with most married men.  Sentiment is selfishness, perhaps, but we
+won't argue that, such arguments come to nothing.
+
+I heard from a fellow-passenger of Johnson's that he had "a hell of a
+voyage" because of his young wife's ignorant selfishness and his own
+sensitiveness; he bribed stewards for better food and accommodation
+for his wife and children, paid the stewardess to help with the
+children, got neither rest, nor peace, nor thanks for himself, and
+landed in Sydney a nervous wreck, with five pounds out of the ten he
+started with.
+
+Johnson was a carpenter.  He got work from a firm of contractors in
+Sydney, who, after giving him a fortnight's trial, sent him up-country
+to work on the railway station buildings, at the little pastoral
+mining and farming town of Solong.  The railway having come to Solong,
+things were busy in the building line, and Johnson settled there.
+
+Johnson was thin when he came to Solong; he had landed a living
+skeleton, he said, but he filled out later on.  The democratic
+atmosphere soothed his mind and he soon loved the place for its
+unconventional hospitality.  He worked hard and seemed to have plenty
+of energy--he said he got it in Australia.  He said that another year
+of the struggle in London would have driven him mad.  He fished in the
+river on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and, perhaps for the first
+month or so, he thought that he had found peace.  Johnson's wife was a
+rather stout, unsympathetic-looking young woman, with the knit of
+obstinacy in her forehead; she had that stamp of "hardness" on her
+face which is the rule amongst English and the exception amongst
+Australian women.  We of Solong thought her hard, selfish and
+narrow-minded, and paltry; later on we thought she was a "bit
+touched;" but local people often think that of strangers.
+
+By her voice and her habit of whining she should have been a thin,
+sharp-faced, untidy, draggled-tailed woman in a back street in London,
+or a worn-out selector's wife in the bush.  She whined about the
+climate.  "It will kill the children!  It will kill the children!
+We'll never rear them here!"  She whined about the "wretched hole in
+the bush" that her husband had brought her to; and to the women whom
+she condescended to visit--because a woman must have a woman to talk
+to--she exaggerated the miseries of the voyage until the thing became
+a sing-song from repetition.  Later on she settled down to endless
+accounts of her home in London, of her mother and sisters, of the way
+they lived.  "And I'll never see it any more.  I'll never see them
+any more."
+
+The Solong climate was reckoned the best in Australia; the "wretched
+hole" was a pretty little town on the banks of a clear,
+willow-bordered river, with vineyards on the slopes, and surrounded by
+a circle of blue hills and peaks.  We knew nothing of London, so she
+had her own way there.
+
+
+"She'll feel a bit lonely at first, but she'll soon get used to
+Australia," said Johnson.  He seemed to me to go out of his way to
+excuse his wife.
+
+Johnson had had a few contracts in England at one time; they had been
+in "better circumstances"--that was the time she looked back to in
+England; the last two years of bitter, black struggle at "home"
+seemed a blank in her mind--but that's how women jump over facts when
+they have a selfish fad.
+
+Johnson rented a cottage and garden on the bank of the sunny river.
+He said he took the place because there was ivy growing on the
+cottage, and it might cheer his wife; but he had lost sight of the
+fact that, while he had been born in an English village, his wife had
+been born and bred in London, and had probably never noticed ivy.  She
+said it was worse than living in a slum.
+
+Johnson was clever at his trade, and at many other things, but his
+wife didn't seem aware of it.  He was well liked, he grew to be
+popular, but she didn't seem proud of the fact; she never seemed
+interested in him or his prospects.  She only wanted him to take her
+home again.  We mustn't forget that while he had a rush of work to
+occupy his mind she had not.
+
+But Johnson grew stouter and prospered in spite of his wife--for a
+year or so.  New schools were being built in the district and the town
+was practically re-built.  Johnson took contracts for brickwork,
+plumbing and house-painting, as well as carpentering, and had at one
+time as many as ten men in his employ.  He was making money.
+
+I was working at my trade then, house-painting, and worked for
+Johnson.  I lodged at his cottage for a while, but soon got tired of
+hearing about London, and Mrs Johnson's mother and sisters, and the
+house they lived in, and the street it was in, and the parks where
+they used to take their babies, and the shopping on Saturday
+afternoon.  That woman was terrible.  She was at Johnson all the time
+about taking her home.  "We'll surely be able to go home this year,
+Will."  "You promised to take me home by the end of the year."
+"Mother says in her last letter, that Jack says there's more building
+going on about London than ever."  "You'll do just as well in London
+as you'll do here."  "What chance have the children got in a hole
+like this?"  And the rest of it--every night.  When he took a new
+contract, it would be, "What did you want to take that new contract
+for, Will, when we're going home?  You know you promised me you
+wouldn't take any more contracts."  First he'd try to cheer her, then
+he'd argue; but she'd only sit with the knit in her forehead deep,
+looking as obstinate as a mule.  Then she'd sit down to a little
+harmonium he'd bought her and play and sing "Barney, take me Home
+again," and "The Old Folks at Home," and "Swannie Ribber," till I
+felt like hanging myself--and I wasn't an exile.  Sometimes Johnson
+would flare up and there'd be a row and he'd go to the pub.  Gentle
+persuasion, argument, or swearing, it was all the same with her.
+
+Bosses and men were different towards each other in Solong to what
+they are in London; besides, when I wasn't Johnson's sub-contractor I
+was his foreman--so we often had a few drinks together; and one night
+over a beer (and after a breeze at home, I think) he said to me:
+
+"I can't make it out, Harry; there was nothing but struggle and worry
+and misery for us in England, and London was smothering me, my chest
+was bad and the wife was always in ill-health; but I suppose I'll have
+to take her home in the end or else she'll go melancholy mad!"  And
+he drew a breath that was more like a gasp than a sigh.
+
+"Why not send her home for a trip, or a year or so, boss?" I asked.
+"As likely as not she'll be just as eager to get back; and that will
+be the end of it."
+
+"I couldn't do that, Harry," said Johnson.  "I couldn't stay here
+and work alone.  It would be like beginning life again; I've started
+twice and couldn't start the third time.  You'll understand when
+you're married, Harry."
+
+Well, in the end, she wore Johnson out--or wore into him rather.  He
+drank more, and once or twice I saw him drinking alone.  Sometimes
+he'd "round on us" at work for nothing at all, and at other times
+he'd take no interest in the jobs--he'd let the work go on anyhow.
+Some thought that Johnson was getting too big for his boots, that's
+how men are misjudged.  He grew moody and melancholy and thin again.
+Johnson was homesick himself.  No doubt it was the misery of his
+domestic life in Australia that made him so.
+
+Towards the end of the third or fourth year Johnson threw up a couple
+of contracts he had on hand, sacrificed a piece of land which he had
+bought and on which he had built a cottage in the short time he had
+been in Solong, and, one lovely day in June, when the skies were their
+fairest, the hills their bluest, the river its widest and clearest,
+and the grass was waving waist high after rain--one blue and green and
+golden day the Johnsons left Solong, with the trunks they had brought
+out with them, for Sydney, _en route_ for smoky London.
+
+Mrs Johnson was a woman transformed--she was happy and looked it.  The
+last few weeks she had seemed in every way the opposite of the woman
+we had known: cheerful, kind to neighbours in sickness and trouble,
+even generous; she made many small presents in the way of mantelshelf
+ornaments, pictures, and house-linen.  But then it was Johnson who had
+to pay for that in the end.
+
+He looked worn and worried at the railway station--more like himself
+as he was when he first came to Solong--and as the train moved off I
+thought he looked--well, frightened.
+
+That must have been nearly twenty years ago.
+
+
+London last winter.  It was one of those days when London's lurid sun
+shows up for a little while like a smoky danger signal.  The snow had
+melted from the house-tops and the streets were as London streets are
+after the first fall of snow of the season.  But I could stand the
+flat no longer, I had to go out and walk.  I was sun-sick--I was
+heart-sick for the sun, for the sunny South--for grassy plains, blue
+mountains, sweeps of mountain bush and sunny ocean beaches.  I walked
+hard; I walked till I was mud-splashed to the shoulders; I walked
+through the squalid, maddening sameness of miles of dingy,
+grimy-walled blocks and rows of four-storied houses till I felt
+smothered--jailed, hopelessly.  "Best get home and in, and draw the
+blinds on it," I said, "or my brain will turn."
+
+I was about to ask a policeman where I was when I saw, by the name on
+a corner of the buildings, that I was in City Road, North.  All the
+willow-fringed rivers and the sunny hills of Solong flashed before me
+at the sight of the name of that street.  I had not been able to
+recall the name of the street off City Road in which the Johnsons
+lived, though I had heard it often enough in the old days from the
+tongue of Mrs Johnson.
+
+I felt it would be a relief to see anyone who had been in Australia.
+"Now," I thought, "if I walk along City Road and see the name of
+that street I'll remember it"--and I did.  It was a blind street,
+like the long, narrow yard of a jail, walled by dark houses, all
+alike.  The next door but one to that at which I knocked to inquire
+was where the Johnsons lived; they lived in a four-storied house, or
+rather a narrow section of a four-storied terrace.  I found later on
+that they paid the land-lord, or nearly paid him, by letting lodgings.
+They lived in one room with the use of the parlour and the kitchen
+when the lodgers weren't using them, and the son shared a room with a
+lodger.  The back windows looked out on the dead wall of a poorhouse
+of some kind, the front on rows of similar windows opposite--rows of
+the same sort of windows that run for miles and miles in London.  In
+one a man sat smoking in his shirtsleeves, from another a slavey
+leaned out watching a fourwheeler that had stopped next door, in a
+third a woman sat sewing, and in a fourth a woman was ironing, with a
+glimpse of a bedstead behind her.  And all outside was gloom and soot
+and slush.
+
+I would never have recognized the Johnsons.  I have visited them
+several times since and their faces are familiar to me now, but I
+don't know whether any traces of the old likenesses worked up in my
+memory.  I found Johnson an old man--old and grey before his time.  He
+had a grizzly stubble round his chin and cheeks towards the end of the
+week, because he could only afford a shave on Saturday afternoon.  He
+was working at some branch of his trade "in the shop" I understood,
+but he said he felt the work come heavier on him every winter.  "I've
+felt very poorly this last winter or two," he said, "very poorly
+indeed."  He was very sad and gentle.
+
+Mrs Johnson was old and thin-looking, but seemed cheerful and
+energetic.  Some chest trouble kept her within doors most of the
+winter.
+
+"I don't mind so long as I can manage," she said, "but Johnson gets
+so depressed."
+
+They seemed very kind towards each other; they spoke little of
+Australia, and then only as an incident in their lives which was not
+of any importance--had long been past and done with.  It was all
+"before we went to Australia" or "after we came back from
+Australia," with Mrs Johnson.
+
+The son, whom I remembered as a bright, robust little fellow, was now
+a tall, white-faced, clean-shaven young man, a clerk on thirty
+shillings a week.  He wore, on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, a tall
+hat and a frock coat and overcoat made cheaply in the latest fashion,
+so he couldn't afford to help the old folk much.
+
+"David is very extravagant," said the old man, gently.  "He won't
+wear anything when once the gloss is off it.  But," with a sad smile,
+"I get the left-off overcoats."
+
+He took me across to see his daughter.  She had married a tradesman
+and they were having a hard struggle in three rooms in a workman's
+dwelling.  She was twenty-five, thin, yellow, and looking ten years
+older.
+
+There were other children who had died.  "I think we might have done
+better for the children in Australia," said the old man to me, sadly,
+when we got outside, "but we did our best."
+
+We went into a hotel and had a drink.  Johnson had treated last
+time--twenty years before.  We call treating "shouting" in
+Australia.  Presently Johnson let fall a word or two of Australian
+slang, and brightened up wonderfully; we got back out into Australia
+at once and stayed there an hour or so.  Being an old man, Johnson's
+memory for the long ago was better than mine, and I picked up links;
+and, in return, I told him what Solong was like now, and how some men
+he knew, who were going up, had gone down, and others, who were going
+to the dogs in his time, had gone up--and we philosophized.  About one
+he'd say, "Ah, well!  who'd have thought it!  I never thought that
+boy would come to any good;" about another, "Ah, well!  and he might
+have been an independent man."  How familiar that expression
+sounded!--I think it is used more often in Australia than in any other
+country: "He might have been an independent man."
+
+When I left Johnson I felt less lonely in London, and rather humbled
+in spirit.  He seemed so resigned--I had never seen such gentle
+sadness in a man's eyes, nor heard it in a man's voice.  I could get
+back to Australia somehow and start life again, but Johnson's day had
+been dead for many years.  "Besides, assisted emigration's done away
+with now," he said, with his sad, sad smile.
+
+I saw the Johnsons again later on.  "Things have been going very
+sadly with us, very sadly indeed," said the old man, when we'd
+settled down.  He had broken down at the beginning of the winter, he
+had dragged himself out of bed and to work and back again until he
+could do so no longer; he had been laid up most of the winter.  Mrs
+Johnson had not been outside the door for months.
+
+"It comes very hard on us," she said, "and I'm so poorly, and David
+out of work, too.  I wouldn't mind if I could get about.  But," she
+went on in her energetic manner, "we've had the house full all the
+winter; we've had very good luck with the lodgers, all respectable
+people, and one of them answers the door and that keeps me away from
+the draught--so it might be worse, mightn't it?  But Johnson doesn't
+seem to mend at all, and he gets so terribly depressed.  But the warm
+weather coming on, etc."
+
+They and the Lord only knew how they managed to live, for they are
+honest people and the lodgers scarcely pay the rent of the house.
+There was only David between them and the poorhouse, as far as I could
+see.
+
+Johnson came out with me a piece and we had a drink or two
+together--his was gin hot.  He talked a good deal about Australia, but
+sadly and regretfully on this occasion.
+
+"We could have done well in Australia," he said, "very well indeed.
+I might have been independent and the children well started in life.
+But we did things for the best.  Mrs Johnson didn't like Australia,
+you know.  It was a pity we didn't stay there, a great pity.  We would
+have done far better than in England.  I'd go out again now if I had
+the money, but I'm getting too old."
+
+"Would Mrs Johnson go out?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes.  But I'm afraid she wouldn't stand the voyage. . . .  Things
+have been very sad with us ever since we came back to England, very
+sad indeed."  And after a while he suddenly caught his breath.
+
+"It takes me that way sometimes," he said.  "I catch my breath just
+as if I was going to lose it."
+
+
+
+A DROVING YARN
+
+
+Andy Maculloch had heard that old Bill Barker, the well-known overland
+drover, had died over on the Westralian side, and Dave Regan told a
+yarn about Bill.
+
+"Bill Barker," said Dave, talking round his pipe stem, "was the
+_quintessence_ of a drover--"
+
+"The whatter, Dave?" came the voice of Jim Bentley, in startled
+tones, from the gloom on the far end of the veranda.
+
+"The quintessence," said Dave, taking his pipe out of his mouth.
+"You shut up, Jim.  As I said, Bill Barker was the quintessence of
+a drover.  He'd been at the game ever since he was a nipper.  He run
+away from home when he was fourteen and went up into Queensland.
+He's been all over Queensland and New South Wales and most of South
+Australia, and a good deal of the Western, too: over the great stock
+routes from one end to the other, Lord knows how many times.
+No man could keep up with him riding out, and no one could bring a
+mob of cattle or a flock of sheep through like him.  He knew every
+trick of the game; if there was grass to be had Bill'd get it,
+no matter whose run it was on.  One of his games in a dry season was
+to let his mob get boxed with the station stock on a run where there
+was grass, and before Bill's men and the station-hands could cut 'em
+out, the travelling stock would have a good bellyful to carry them on
+the track.  Billy was the daddy of the drovers.  Some said that he
+could ride in his sleep, and that he had one old horse that could jog
+along in his sleep too, and that--travelling out from home to take
+charge of a mob of bullocks or a flock of sheep--Bill and his horse
+would often wake up at daylight and blink round to see where they
+were and how far they'd got.  Then Bill would make a fire and boil
+his quart-pot, and roast a bit of mutton, while his horse had a
+mouthful of grass and a spell.
+
+"You remember Bill, Andy?  Big dark man, and a joker of the loud
+sort.  Never slept with a blanket over him--always folded under him on
+the sand or grass.  Seldom wore a coat on the route--though he always
+carried one with him, in case he came across a bush ball or a funeral.
+Moleskins, flannel waistcoat, cabbage-tree hat and 'lastic-side boots.
+When it was roasting hot on the plains and the men swore at the heat,
+Jim would yell, `Call this hot?  Why, you blanks, I'm freezin'!
+Where's me overcoat?'  When it was raining and hailing and freezing on
+Bell's Line in the Blue Mountains in winter, and someone shivered and
+asked, `Is it cold enough for yer now, Bill?'  `Cold!'  Bill would
+bellow, `I'm sweatin'!'
+
+"I remember it well.  I was little more than a youngster then--Bill
+Barker came past our place with about a thousand fat sheep for the
+Homebush sale-yards at Sydney, and he gave me a job to help him down
+with them on Bell's Line over the mountains, and mighty proud I was to
+go with him, I can tell you.  One night we camped on the Cudgegong
+River.  The country was dry and pretty close cropped and we'd been
+"sweating" the paddocks all along there for our horses.  You see,
+where there weren't sliprails handy we'd just take the tomahawk and
+nick the top of a straight-grained fence-post, just above the mortise,
+knock out the wood there, lift the top rail out and down, and jump the
+horses in over the lower one--it was all two-rail fences around there
+with sheep wires under the lower rail.  And about daylight we'd have
+the horses out, lift back the rail, and fit in the chock that we'd
+knocked out.  Simple as striking matches, wasn't it?
+
+"Well, the horses were getting a good bellyful in the police horse
+paddock at night, and Bill took the first watch with the sheep.  It
+was very cold and frosty on the flat and he thought the sheep might
+make back for the ridges, it's always warmer up in the ridges in
+winter out of the frost.  Bill roused me out about midnight.  `There's
+the sheep,' he says, pointing to a white blur.  `They've settled down.
+I think they'll be quiet till daylight.  Don't go round them; there's
+no occasion to go near 'em.  You can stop by the fire and keep an eye
+on 'em.'
+
+"The night seemed very long.  I watched and smoked and toasted my
+shins, and warmed the billy now and then, and thought up pretty much
+the same sort of old things that fellers on night watch think over all
+over the world.  Bill lay on his blanket, with his back to the fire
+and his arm under his head--freezing on one side and roasting on the
+other.  He never moved.  I itched once or twice to turn him over and
+bake the front of him--I reckoned he was about done behind.
+
+"At last daylight showed.  I took the billy and started down to the
+river to get some water to make coffee; but half-way down, near the
+sheep camp, I stopped and stared, I was never so surprised in my life.
+The white blur of sheep had developed into a couple of acres of long
+dead silver grass!
+
+"I woke Bill, and he swore as I never heard a man swear before--nor
+since.  He swore at the sheep, and the grass, and at me; but it would
+have wasted time, and besides I was too sleepy and tired to fight.
+But we found those sheep scattered over a scrubby ridge about seven
+miles back, so they must have slipped away back of the grass and
+started early in Bill's watch, and Bill must have watched that blessed
+grass for the first half of the night and then set me to watch it.  He
+couldn't get away from that.
+
+"I wondered what the chaps would say if it got round that Bill
+Barker, the boss overland drover, had lost a thousand sheep in clear
+country with fences all round; and I suppose he thought that way too,
+for he kept me with him right down to Homebush, and when he paid me
+off he threw in an extra quid, and he said:
+
+"`Now, listen here, Dave!  If I ever hear a word from anyone about
+watching that gory grass, I'll find you, Dave, and murder you, if
+you're in wide Australia.  I'll screw your neck, so look out.'
+
+"But he's dead now, so it doesn't matter."
+
+
+There was silence for some time after Dave had finished.  The chaps
+made no comment on the yarn, either one way or the other, but sat
+smoking thoughtfully, and in a vague atmosphere as of sadness--as if
+they'd just heard of their mother's death and had not been listening
+to an allegedly humorous yarn.
+
+Then the voice of old Peter, the station-hand, was heard to growl from
+the darkness at the end of the hut, where he sat on a three-bushel bag
+on the ground with his back to the slabs.
+
+"What's old Peter growlin' about?" someone asked.
+
+"He wants to know where Dave got that word," someone else replied.
+
+"What word?"
+
+"_Quint-essents_."
+
+There was a chuckle.
+
+"He got it out back, Peter," said Mitchell, the shearer.  "He got
+it from a new chum."
+
+"How much did yer give for it, Dave?" growled Peter.
+
+"Five shillings, Peter," said Dave, round his pipe stem.  "And
+stick of tobacco thrown in."
+
+Peter seemed satisfied, for he was heard no more that evening.
+
+
+
+
+GETTIN' BACK ON DAVE REGAN
+
+A RATHER FISHY YARN FROM THE BUSH
+
+(AS TOLD BY JAMES NOWLETT, BULLOCK-DRIVER)
+
+
+You might work this yarn up.  I've often thought of doin' it meself,
+but I ain't got the words.  I knowed a lot of funny an' rum yarns
+about the bush, an' I often wished I had the gift o' writin'.  I could
+tell a lot better yarns than the rot they put in books sometimes, but
+I never had no eddication.  But you might be able to work this yarn
+up--as yer call it.
+
+There useter be a teamster's camp six or seven miles out of Mudgee, at
+a place called th' Old Pipeclay, in the days before the railroad went
+round to Dubbo, an' most of us bullickies useter camp there for the
+night.  There was always good water in the crick, an' sometimes we'd
+turn the bullicks up in the ridge, an' gullies behind for grass, an'
+camp there for a few days, and do our washin' an' mendin', and make
+new yokes perhaps, an tinker up the wagons.
+
+There was a woman livin' on a farm there named Mrs Hardwick--an' she
+_was_ a hard wick.  Her husban', Jimmy Hardwick was throwed from
+his horse agenst a stump one day when he was sober, an' he was
+killed--an' she was a widder.  She had a tidy bit o' land, an' a nice
+bit of a orchard an' vineyard, an some cattle, an' they say she had a
+tidy bit o' money in the bank.  She had the worst tongue in the
+district, no one's character was safe with her; but she wasn't old, an'
+she wasn't bad-lookin'--only hard--so there was some fellers hangin'
+round arter her.  An' Dave Regan's horse was hangin' up outside her
+place as often as anybody else's.  Dave was a native an' a bushy, an'
+drover an' a digger, an' he was a bit soft in them days--he got hard
+enough arterwards.
+
+Mrs Hardwick hated bullick-drivers--she had a awful down on
+bullickies--I dunno why.  We never interfered with her fowls, an' as
+for swearin'! why, she could swear herself.  Jimmy Hardwick was a
+bullick-driver when she married him, an' p'r'aps that helped to
+account for it.  She wouldn't let us boil our billies at her kitchen
+fire, same as any other bushwoman, an' if one of our bullicks put his
+nose under her fence for a mouthful of grass, she'd set her dogs onter
+him.  An' one of her dogs got something what disagreed with him one
+day, an' she accused us of layin' poisoned baits.  An', arter that,
+she 'pounded some of our bullicks that got into her lucerne paddick
+one night when we was on the spree in Mudgee, an' put heavy damages on
+'em.  She'd left the sliprails down on purpose, I believe.  She talked
+of puttin' the police onter us, jest as if we was a sly-grog shop.
+(If _she'd_ kept a sly-grog shop she'd have had a different
+opinion about bullick-drivers.)  An' all the bullick-drivers hated her
+because she hated bullickies.
+
+Well, one wet season half a dozen of us chaps was camped there for a
+fortnight, because the roads was too boggy to travel, an' one night
+they got up a darnce at Peter Anderson's shanty acrost the ridges, an'
+a lot of gals an' fellers turned up from all round about in spite of
+the pourin' rain.  Someone had kidded Dave Regan that Mother Hardwick
+was comin', an' he turned up, of course, in spite of a ragin'
+toothache he had.  He was always ridin' the high horse over us
+bullickies.  It was a very cold night, enough to cut the face an'
+hands off yer, so we had a roarin' fire in the big bark-an'-slab
+kitchen where the darncin' was.  It was one of them big,
+old-fashioned, clay-lined fire-places that goes right acrost the end
+of the room, with a twenty-five foot slab-an'-tin chimbly outside.
+
+Dave Regan was pretty wild about being had, an' we copped all the gals
+for darncin'; he couldn't get one that night, an' when he wasn't
+proddin' out his tooth with a red-hot wire some one was chaffin' him
+about Mrs Hardwick.  So at last he got disgusted an' left; but before
+he went he got a wet three-bushel flour-bag an' climbed up very
+quietly onter the roof by the battens an' log weights an' riders, an'
+laid the wet bag very carefully acrost the top of the chimbly flue.
+
+An' we was a mortal hour tryin' to find out what was the matter with
+that infernal chimbly, and tackin' bits o' tin an' baggin' acrost the
+top of the fire-place under the mantelshelf to try an' stop it from
+smokin', an' all the while the gals set there with the water runnin'
+out of their eyes.  We took the green back log out an' fetched in a
+dry one, but that chimbly smoked worse than ever, an' we had to put
+the fire out altogether, an' the gals set there shiverin' till the
+rain held up a bit an' the sky cleared, an' then someone goes out an'
+looks up an' sings out, "Why, there's somethin' acrost the top of the
+blazin' chimbly!" an' someone else climbs up an' fetches down the
+bag.  But the darnce was spoilt, an' the gals was so disgusted that
+they went off with their fellers while the weather held up.  They
+reckoned some of us bullickies did it for a lark.
+
+An' arter that Dave'd come ridin' past, an' sing out to know if we
+knew of a good cure for a smokin' chimbly, an' them sorter things.
+But he always got away before we could pull him off of his horse.
+Three of us chased him on horseback one day, but we didn't ketch him.
+
+So we made up our minds to git back on Dave some way or other, an' it
+come about this way.
+
+About six months arter the smoked-out darnce, four or five of us same
+fellers was campin' on th' Pipeclay agen, an' it was a dry season.  It
+was dryer an' hotter than it was cold 'n' wet the larst time.  Dave
+was still hangin' round Mrs Hardwick's an' doin' odd jobs for her.
+Well, one very hot day we seen Dave ridin' past into Mudgee, an' we
+knowed he'd have a spree in town that night, an' call at Mrs
+Hardwick's for sympathy comin' out next day; an' arter he'd been gone
+an hour or two, Tom Tarrant comes drivin' past on his mail-coach, an'
+drops some letters an' papers an' a bag o' groceries at our camp.
+
+Tom was a hard case.  I remember wonst I was drivin' along a lonely
+bit o' track, an' it was a grand mornin', an' I felt great, an' I got
+singin' an' practisin' a recitation that I allers meant to give at a
+bush darnce some night.  (I never sung or spouted poetry unless I was
+sure I was miles away from anyone.)  An' I got worked up, an' was
+wavin' me arms about an' throwin' it off of me chest, when Tom's coach
+comes up behind, round a bend in the road, an' took me by surprise.
+An' Tom looked at me very hard an' he says, "What are yer shoutin'
+an' swearin' an' darncin' an' goin' on at the bullicks like that for,
+Jimmy?  They seem to be workin' all right."  It took me back, I can
+tell yer.  The coach was full of grinnin' passengers, an' the worst of
+it was that I didn't know how long Tom had been drivin' slow behind me
+an' takin' me out of windin'.  There's nothin' upsets a cove as can't
+sing so much as to be caught singin' or spoutin' poetry when he thinks
+he's privit'.
+
+An' another time I remember Tom's coach broke down on the track, an'
+he had to ride inter town with the mails on horseback; an' he left a
+couple of greenhides, for Skinner the tanner at Mudgee, for me to take
+on in the wagon, an' a bag of potatoes for Murphy the storekeeper at
+Home Rule, an' a note that said: "Render unto Murphy the things which
+is murphies, and unto Skinner them things which is skins."  Tom was a
+hard case.
+
+Well, this day, when Tom handed down the tucker an' letters, he got
+down to stretch his legs and give the horses a breathe.  The coach was
+full of passengers, an' I noticed they all looked extra glum and
+sulky, but I reckoned it was the heat an' dust.  Tom looked extra
+solemn, too, an' no one was talkin'.  Then I suddenly began to notice
+something in the atmosphere, as if there was a dead beast not far
+away, an' my mates started sniffin' too.  An' that reminds me, it's
+funny why some people allers sniff hard instead of keepin' their noses
+shut when there's a stink; the more it stinks the more they sniff.
+Tom spit in the dust an' thought a while; then he took a parcel out of
+the boot an' put it on the corner post of the fence.  "There," he
+said, "There's some fresh fish that come up from Sydney by train an'
+Cobb & Co's coach larst night.  They're meant for White the publican
+at Gulgong, but they won't keep this weather till I git out there.
+Pity to waste them! you chaps might as well have a feed of 'em.  I'll
+tell White they went bad an' I had to throw them out," says Tom.
+Then he got on to the coach agen an' drove off in a cloud of dust.  We
+undone the brown paper, an' the fish was in a small deal box, with a
+lid fastened by a catch.  We nicked back the catch an' the lid flew
+open, an' then we knowed where the smell comed from all right.  There
+wasn't any doubt about that!  We didn't have to put our noses in the
+box to see if the fish was bad.  They was packed in salt, but that
+made no difference.
+
+You know how a smell will start sudden in the bush on a hot, still
+day, an' then seem to take a spell, an' then get to work agen stronger
+than ever.  You might be clost alongside of a horse that has been dead
+a fortnight an' smell nothin' particular till you start to walk away,
+an' the further you go the worse it stinks.  It seems to smell most
+round in a circle of a hundred yards or so.  But these fish smelt from
+the centre right out.  Tom Tarrant told us arterwards that them fish
+started to smell as soon as he left Mudgee.  At first they reckoned it
+was a dead horse by the road; but arter a while the passengers
+commenced squintin' at each other suspicious like, an' the
+conversation petered out, an' Tom thought he felt all their eyes on
+his back, an' it was very uncomfortable; an' he sat tight an' tried to
+make out where the smell come from; an' it got worse every hundred
+yards--like as if the track was lined with dead horses, an' every one
+dead longer than the last--till it was like drivin' a funeral.  An'
+Tom never thought of the fish till he got down to stretch his legs and
+fetched his nose on a level with the boot.
+
+Well, we shut down the lid of that box quick an' took it an' throwed
+it in the bushes a good way away from the camp, but next mornin',
+while we was havin' breakfast, Billy Grimshaw got an idea, an' arter
+breakfast he wetted a canvas bag he had an' lit up his pipe, an' went
+an' got that there box o' fish, an' put it in the wet bag, an' wrapped
+it tight round it an' tied it up tight with string.  Billy had a
+nipper of a nephew with him, about fourteen, named Tommy, an' he was a
+sharp kid if ever there was one.  So Billy says, "Look here, Tommy,
+you take this fish up to Mrs Hardwick's an' tell her that Dave Regan
+sent 'em with his compliments, an' he hopes she'll enjoy 'em.  Tell
+her that Dave fetched 'em from Mudgee, but he's gone back to look for
+a pound note that he dropped out of a hole in his pocket somewheers
+along the road, an' he asked you to take the fish up."  So Tommy
+takes the fish an' goes up to the house with 'em.  When he come back
+he says that Mrs Hardwick smiled like a parson an' give him a
+shillin'--an' he didn't wait.  We watched the house, an' about half an
+hour arterwards we seen her run out of the kitchen with the open box
+in her hand, an' run a good way away from the house an' throw the fish
+inter the bushes, an' then go back quick, holdin' her nose.
+
+An' jest then, as luck would have it, we seen Dave Regan ridin' up
+from the creek towards the house.  He got down an' went into the
+kitchen, an' then come backin' out agen in a hurry with her in front
+of him.  We could hear her voice from where we was, but we couldn't
+hear what she said.  But we could see her arms wavin' as if she was
+drivin' fowls, an' Dave backed all the way to his horse and gets on
+an' comes ridin' away quick, she screamin' arter him all the time.
+When he got down opposite the camp we sung out to know what was the
+matter.  "What have you been doin' to Mrs Hardwick, Dave?" we says.
+"We heerd her goin' for yer proper jest now."  "Damned if I know,"
+says Dave.  "I ain't done nothin' to her that I knows of.  She's
+called me everything she can lay her tongue to, an' she's ravin' about
+my stinkin' fish, or somethin'.  I can't make it out at all.  I
+believe she's gone ratty."
+
+"But you _must_ have been doin' somethin' to the woman," we
+says, "or else she wouldn't have gone on at yer like that."
+
+But Dave swore he hadn't, an' we talked it over for a while an'
+couldn't make head nor tail of it, an' we come to the conclusion that
+it was only a touch o' the sun.
+
+
+"Never mind, Dave," we says.  "Go up agen in a day or two, when she's
+cooled down, an' find out what the matter is.  Or write to her.  It
+might only have been someone makin' mischief.  That's what it is."
+
+But Dave only sat an' rubbed his head, an' presently he started home
+to wherever he was hangin' out.  He wanted a quiet week to think.
+
+"Her chimbly might have been smokin', Dave," we shouted arter him,
+but he was too dazed like to ketch on.
+
+Well, in a month or two we was campin' there agen, an' we found she'd
+fenced in a lane to the crick she had no right to, an' we had to take
+the bullicks a couple o' miles round to grass an' water.  Well, the
+first mornin' we seen her down in the corner of her paddick near the
+camp drivin' some heifers, an' Billy Grimshaw went up to the fence an'
+spoke to her.  Billy was the only one of us that dared face her and he
+was the only one she was ever civil to--p'r'aps because Billy had a
+squint an' a wall eye and that put her out of countenance.
+
+Billy took off his hat very respectful an' sings out, "Mrs
+Hardwick."  (It was Billy's bullicks she'd "pounded," by the way.)
+
+"What is it?" she says.
+
+"I want to speak to you, Mrs Hardwick," says Billy.
+
+"Well, speak," she says.  "I've got no time to waste talkin' to
+bullick-drivers."
+
+"Well, the fact is, Mrs Hardwick," says Billy, "that I want to
+explain somethin', an' apologize for that young scamp of a nephew o'
+mine, young Tommy.  He ain't here or I'd make him beg your pardon
+hisself, or I'd cut him to pieces with the bullick-whip.  I heard all
+about Dave Regan sendin' you that stinkin' fish, an' I think it was a
+damned mean, dirty thing to do--to send stinkin' fish to a woman, an'
+especially to a widder an' an unprotected woman like you, Mrs
+Hardwick.  I've had mothers an' sisters of me own.  An' I want to tell
+you that I'm sorry a relation o' mine ever had anythin' to do with it.
+As soon as I heerd of it I give young Tommy a lambastin' he won't
+forgot in a hurry."
+
+"Did Tommy know the fish was bad?" she says.
+
+"It doesn't matter a rap," says Billy; "he had no right to go
+takin' messages from nobody to nobody."
+
+
+Mrs Hardwick thought a while.  Then she says: "P'r'aps arter all Dave
+Regan didn't know the fish was bad.  I've often thought I might have
+been in too much of a hurry.  Things goes bad so quick out here in
+this weather.  An' Dave was always very friendly.  I can't understand
+why he'd do a dirty thing on me like that.  I never done anything to
+Dave."
+
+Now I forgot to tell you that Billy had a notion that Dave helped
+drive his bullicks to pound that time, though I didn't believe it.  So
+Billy says:
+
+"Don't you believe that for a minute, Mrs Hardwick.  Dave knew what
+he was a-doin' of all right; an' if I ketch him _I'll_ give him a
+beltin' for it if no one else is man enough to stand up for a woman!"
+says Billy.
+
+"How d'yer know Dave knew?" says Mrs Hardwick.
+
+"Know!" says Billy.  "Why, he talked about it all over the
+district."
+
+"What!" she screamed out, an' I moved away from that there fence,
+for she had a stick to drive them heifers with.  But Billy stood his
+ground.  "Is that the truth, Billy Grimshaw?" she screams.
+
+"Yes;" he says.  "I'll-take me oath on it.  He blowed about it all
+over the district, as if it was very funny, an' he says--" An' Billy
+stopped.
+
+"What did he say?" she shouted.
+
+"Well, the fact is," says Billy, "that I hardly like to tell it to
+a lady.  I wouldn't like to tell yer, Mrs Hardwick."
+
+"But you'll have to tell me, Billy Grimshaw," she screams.  "I have
+a right to know.  If you don't tell me I'll pull him next week an'
+have it dragged out of you in the witness-box!" she says.  "An' I'll
+have satisfaction out of him in the felon's dock of a court of law!"
+she says.  "What did the villain say?" she screams.
+
+
+"Well," says Billy, "if yer must have it--an', anyway, I'm hanged
+if I'm goin' to stand by an' see a woman scandalized behind her
+back--if yer must have it I'll tell yer.  Dave said that the fish
+didn't smell no worse than your place anyway."
+
+We got away from there then.  She cut up too rough altogether.  I
+can't tell you what she said--I ain't got the words.  She went up to
+the house, an' we seen the farm-hand harnessin' up the horse, an' we
+reckoned she was goin' to drive into town straight away an' take out a
+summons agenst Dave Regan.  An' jest then Dave hisself comes ridin'
+past--jest when he was most wanted, as usual.  He always rode fast
+past Mrs Hardwick's nowadays, an' never stopped there, but Billy
+shouted after him:
+
+"Hullo, Dave!  I want to speak to yer," shouts Billy.  An' Dave
+yanks his horse round.
+
+"What is it, Billy?" he says.
+
+"Look here, Dave," says Billy.  "You had your little joke about the
+chimbly, an' we had our little joke about the fish an' Mrs Hardwick,
+so now we'll call it quits.  A joke's a joke, but it can go too far,
+an' this one's gettin' too red-hot altogether.  So we've fixed it up
+with Mrs Hardwick."
+
+"What fish an' what joke?"  says Dave, rubbin' his head.  "An' what
+have yer fixed up with Mrs Hardwick?  Whatever are yer talkin' about,
+Billy?"
+
+So Billy told him all about us sendin' the stinkin' fish to Mrs
+Hardwick by Tommy, an' sayin' Dave sent 'em--Dave rubbin' the back of
+his neck an' starin' at Billy all the time.  "An' now," says Billy,
+"I won't say anything about them bullicks; but I went up and seen Mrs
+Hardwick this mornin', an' told her the whole truth about them fish,
+an' how you knowed nothin' about it, an' I apologized an' told her we
+was very sorry; an' she says she was very sorry too on your account,
+an' wanted to see yer.  I promised to tell yer as soon as I seen yer.
+It ought to be fixed up.  You ought to go right up to the house an'
+see her now.  She's awfully cut up about it."
+
+"All right," says Dave, brightenin' up.  "It was a dirty, mean
+trick anyway to play on a cove; but I'll go up an' see her."  An' he
+went there 'n' then.
+
+An' about fifteen minutes arterwards he comes boltin' back from the
+house one way an' his horse the other.  The horse acted as if it had a
+big scare, an' so did Dave.  Billy went an' ketched Dave's horse for
+him, an' I got Dave a towel to wipe the dirty dish-water off of his
+face an' out of his hair an' collar, an' I give him a piece of soap to
+rub on the places where he'd been scalded.
+
+"Why, the woman must be ravin' mad," I says.  "Whatever did yer say
+to her this time, Dave?  Yer allers gettin' inter hot water with
+her."
+
+"I didn't say nothin'," says Dave.  "I jest went up laughin' like,
+an' says, `How are yer, Mrs Hardwick?'  an' she ups an' lets me have a
+dish of dirty wash-up water, an' then on top of that she let fly with
+a dipper of scaldin'-hot, greasy water outer the boiler.  She's gone
+clean ravin' mad, I think."
+
+"She's as mad as a hatter, right enough, Dave," says Billy Grimshaw.
+"Don't you go there no more, Dave, it ain't safe."  An' we lent Dave
+a hat an' a clean shirt, an' he went on inter town.  "You ought to
+have humoured her," says Billy, as Dave rode away.  "You ought to
+have told her to put a wet bag over her chimbly an' hang the fish
+inside to smoke."  But Dave was too stunned to ketch on.  He went on
+inter the town an' got on a howlin' spree.  An' while he was soberin'
+up the thing began to dawn on him.  An' the nex' time he met Billy
+they had a fight.  An' Dave got another woman to speak to Mrs
+Hardwick, an' Mrs Hardwick ketched young Tommy goin' past her place
+one day an' bailed him up an' scared the truth out of him.
+
+"Look here!" she says to him, "I want the truth, the whole truth,
+an' nothin' but the truth about them fish, an' if I don't get it outer
+you I'll wring yer young neck for tryin' to poison me, an' save yer
+from the gallust!" she says to Tommy.
+
+So he told her the whole truth, swelp him, an' got away; an' he
+respected Mrs Hardwick arter that.
+
+An' next time we come past with the teams we seen Dave's horse hangin'
+up outside Mrs Hardwick's, an' we went some miles further along the
+road an' camped in a new place where we'd be more comfortable.  An'
+ever arter that we used to always whip up an' drive past her place as
+if we didn't know her.
+
+
+
+"SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER?"
+
+    God's preacher, of churches unheeded,
+    God's vineyard, though barren the sod,
+    Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed,
+    Rough link 'twixt the Bushman and God.
+                             The Christ of the Never.
+
+         TOLD BY JOE WILSON
+
+
+I never told you about Peter M'Laughlan.  He was a sort of bush
+missionary up-country and out back in Australia, and before he died he
+was known from Riverina down south in New South Wales to away up
+through the Never-Never country in western Queensland.
+
+His past was a mystery, so, of course, there were all sorts of yarns
+about him.  He was supposed to be a Scotchman from London, and some
+said that he had got into trouble in his young days and had had to
+clear out of the old country; or, at least, that he had been a
+ne'e-er-do-well and had been sent out to Australia on the remittance
+system.  Some said he'd studied for the law, some said he'd studied
+for a doctor, while others believed that he was, or had been, an
+ordained minister.  I remember one man who swore (when he was
+drinking) that he had known Peter M'Laughlan as a medical student in a
+big London hospital, and that he had started in practice for himself
+somewhere near Gray's Inn Road in London.  Anyway, as I got to know
+him he struck me as being a man who had looked into the eyes of so
+much misery in his life that some of it had got into his own.
+
+He was a tall man, straight and well built, and about forty or
+forty-five, when I first saw him.  He had wavy dark hair, and a close,
+curly beard.  I once heard a woman say that he had a beard like you
+see in some Bible pictures of Christ.  Peter M'Laughlan seldom smiled;
+there was something in his big dark brown eyes that was scarcely
+misery, nor yet sadness--a sort of haunted sympathy.
+
+He must have had money, or else he got remittances from home, for he
+paid his way and helped many a poor devil.  They said that he gave
+away most of his money.  Sometimes he worked for a while himself as
+bookkeeper at a shearing-shed, wool-sorter, shearer, even rouseabout;
+he'd work at anything a bushman could get to do.  Then he'd go out
+back to God-forgotten districts and preach to bushmen in one place,
+and get a few children together in another and teach them to read.  He
+could take his drink, and swear a little when he thought it necessary.
+On one occasion, at a rough shearing-shed, he called his beloved
+brethren "damned fools" for drinking their cheques.
+
+Towards the end of his life if he went into a "rough" shed or shanty
+west of the Darling River--and some of them _were_ rough--there
+would be a rest in the language and drinking, even a fight would be
+interrupted, and there would be more than one who would lift their
+hats to Peter M'Laughlan.  A bushman very rarely lifts his hat to a
+man, yet the worst characters of the West have listened bareheaded to
+Peter when he preached.
+
+It was said in our district that Peter only needed to hint to the
+squatter that he wanted fifty or a hundred pounds to help someone or
+something, and the squatter would give it to him without question or
+hesitation.
+
+He'd nurse sick boundary-riders, shearers, and station-hands, often
+sitting in the desolate hut by the bedside of a sick man night after
+night.  And, if he had time, he'd look up the local blacks and see how
+they were getting on.  Once, on a far outback sheep station, he sat
+for three nights running, by the bedside of a young Englishman, a
+B.A. they said he was, who'd been employed as tutor at the homestead
+and who died a wreck, the result of five years of life in London and
+Paris.  The poor fellow was only thirty.  And the last few hours of
+his life he talked to Peter in French, nothing but French.  Peter
+understood French and one or two other languages, besides English and
+Australian; but whether the young wreck was raving or telling the
+story of a love, or his life, none of us ever knew, for Peter never
+spoke of it.  But they said that at the funeral Peter's eyes seemed
+haunted more than usual.
+
+There's the yarn about Peter and the dying cattle at Piora Station one
+terrible drought, when the surface was as bare as your hand for
+hundreds of miles, and the heat like the breath of a furnace, and the
+sheep and cattle were perishing by thousands.  Peter M'Laughlan was
+out on the run helping the station-hands to pull out cattle that had
+got bogged in the muddy waterholes and were too weak to drag
+themselves out, when, about dusk, a gentlemanly "piano-fingered"
+parson, who had come to the station from the next town, drove out in
+his buggy to see the men.  He spoke to Peter M'Laughlan.
+
+"Brother," he said, "do you not think we should offer up a
+prayer?"
+
+"What for?" asked Peter, standing in his shirt sleeves, a rope in his
+hands and mud from head to foot.
+
+"For?  Why, for rain, brother," replied the parson, a bit surprised.
+
+Peter held up his finger and said "Listen!"
+
+Now, with a big mob of travelling stock camped on the plain at night,
+there is always a lowing, soughing or moaning sound, a sound like that
+of the sea on the shore at a little distance; and, altogether, it
+might be called the sigh or yawn of a big mob in camp.  But the long,
+low moaning of cattle dying of hunger and thirst on the hot barren
+plain in a drought is altogether different, and, at night there is
+something awful about it--you couldn't describe it.  This is what
+Peter M'Laughlan heard.
+
+"Do you hear that?" he asked the other preacher.
+
+The little parson said he did.  Perhaps _he_ only heard the weak
+lowing of cattle.
+
+"Do you think that God will hear us when He does not hear
+_that_?" asked Peter.
+
+The parson stared at him for a moment and then got into his buggy and
+drove away, greatly shocked and deeply offended.  But, later on, over
+tea at the homestead, he said that he felt sure that that
+"unfortunate man," Peter M'Laughlan, was not in his right mind; that
+his wandering, irregular life, or the heat, must have affected him.
+
+I well remember the day when I first heard Peter M'Laughlan preach.  I
+was about seventeen then.  We used sometimes to attend service held on
+Sunday afternoon, about once a month, in a little slab-and-bark
+school-house in the scrub off the main road, three miles or so from
+our selection, in a barren hole amongst the western ridges of the
+Great Dividing Range.  School was held in this hut for a few weeks or
+a few months now and again, when a teacher could be got to stay there
+and teach, and cook for himself, for a pound a week, more or less
+contributed by the parents.  A parson from the farming town to the
+east, or the pastoral town over the ridges to the west, used to come
+in his buggy when it didn't rain and wasn't too hot to hold the
+service.
+
+I remember this Sunday.  It was a blazing hot day towards the end of a
+long and fearful drought which ruined many round there.  The parson
+was expected, and a good few had come to "chapel" in spring-carts,
+on horseback, and on foot; farmers and their wives and sons and
+daughters.  The children had been brought here to Sunday-school,
+taught by some of the girls, in the morning.  I can see it all now
+quite plain: The one-roomed hut, for it was no more, with the stunted
+blue-grey gum, scrub all round.  The white, dusty road, so hot that
+you could cook eggs in the dust.  The horses tied up, across the road,
+in the supposed shade under clumps of scraggy saplings along by the
+fence of a cattle-run.  The little crowd outside the hut: selectors in
+washed and mended tweeds, some with paper collars, some wearing
+starched and ironed white coats, and in blucher boots, greased or
+blackened, or the young men wearing "larstins" (elastic-side boots).
+The women and girls in prints and cottons (or cheap "alpaca," etc.),
+and a bright bit of ribbon here and there amongst the girls.  The
+white heat blazed everywhere, and "dazzled" across light-coloured
+surfaces--dead white trees, fence-posts, and sand-heaps, like an
+endless swarm of bees passing in the sun's glare.  And over above the
+dry boxscrub-covered ridges, the great Granite Peak, glaring like a
+molten mass.
+
+The people didn't like to go inside out of the heat and sit down
+before the minister came.  The wretched hut was a rough school,
+sometimes with a clay fire-place where the teacher cooked, and a
+corner screened off with sacking where he had his bunk; it was a camp
+for tramps at other times, or lizards and possums, but to-day it was a
+house of God, and as such the people respected it.
+
+The town parson didn't turn up.  Perhaps he was unwell, or maybe the
+hot, dusty ten-mile drive was too much for him to face.  One of the
+farmers, who had tried to conduct service on a previous occasion on
+which the ordained minister had failed us, had broken down in the
+middle of it, so he was out of the question.  We waited for about an
+hour, and then who should happen to ride along but Peter M'Laughlan,
+and one or two of the elder men asked him to hold service.  He was on
+his way to see a sick friend at a sheep station over the ridges, but
+he said that he could spare an hour or two.  (Nearly every man who was
+sick, either in stomach or pocket, was a friend of Peter M'Laughlan.)
+Peter tied up his horse under a bush shed at the back of the hut, and
+we followed him in.
+
+The "school" had been furnished with a rough deal table and a wooden
+chair for "the teacher," and with a few rickety desks and stools
+cadged from an old "provisional" school in town when the new public
+school was built; and the desks and stools had been fastened to the
+floor to strengthen them; they had been made for "infant" classes,
+and youth out our way ran to length.  But when grown men over six feet
+high squeezed in behind the desks and sat down on the stools the
+effect struck me as being ridiculous.  In fact, I am afraid that on
+the first occasion it rather took my attention from the sermon, and I
+remember being made very uncomfortable by a school chum, Jack Barnes,
+who took a delight in catching my eye and winking or grinning.  He
+could wink without changing a solemn line in his face and grin without
+exploding, and I couldn't.  The boys usually sat on seats, slabs on
+blocks of wood, along the wall at the far end of the room, which was
+comfortable, for they had a rest for their backs.  One or two of the
+boys were nearing six feet high, so they could almost rest their chins
+on their knees as they sat.  But I squatted with some of my tribe on a
+stool along the wall by the teacher's table, and so could see most of
+the congregation.
+
+Above us bare tie-beams and the round sapling rafters (with the bark
+still on), and the inner sides of the sheets of stringybark that
+formed the roof.  The slabs had been lined with sacking at one time,
+but most of it had fallen or dry-rotted away; there were wide cracks
+between the slabs and we could see the white glare of sunlight
+outside, with a strip of dark shade, like a deep trench in the white
+ground, by the back wall.  Someone had brought a canvas water-bag and
+hung it to the beam on the other side of the minister's table, with a
+pint-pot over the tap, and the drip, drip from the bag made the whole
+place seem cooler.
+
+I studied Peter M`Laughlan first.  He was dressed in washed and mended
+tweed vest and trousers, and had on a long, lightcoloured coat of a
+material which we called "Chinese silk."  He wore a "soft" cotton
+shirt with collar attached, and blucher boots.  He gave out a hymn in
+his quiet, natural way, said a prayer, gave out another hymn, read a
+chapter from the Bible, and then gave out another hymn.  They liked to
+sing, out in those places.  The Southwicks used to bring a cranky
+little harmonium in the back of their old dog-cart, and Clara
+Southwick used to accompany the hymns.  She was a very pretty girl,
+fair, and could play and sing well.  I used to think she had the
+sweetest voice I ever heard.  But--ah, well---
+
+Peter didn't sing himself, at first.  I got an idea that he couldn't.
+While they were singing he stood loosely, with one hand in his
+trouser-pocket, scratching his beard with his hymn-book, and looking
+as if he were thinking things over, and only rousing himself to give
+another verse.  He forgot to give it once or twice, but we got through
+all right.  I noticed the wife of one of the men who had asked Peter
+to preach looking rather black at her husband, and I reckoned that
+he'd get it hotter than the weather on the way home.
+
+Then Peter stood up and commenced to preach.  He stood with both hands
+in his pockets, at first, his coat ruffled back, and there was the
+stem of a clay pipe sticking out of his waistcoat pocket.  The pipe
+fascinated me for a while, but after that I forgot the pipe and was
+fascinated by the man.  Peter's face was one that didn't strike you at
+first with its full strength, it grew on you; it grew on me, and
+before he had done preaching I thought it was the noblest face I had
+ever seen.
+
+He didn't preach much of hope in this world.  How could he?  The
+drought had been blazing over these districts for nearly a year, with
+only a shower now and again, which was a mockery--scarcely darkening
+the baked ground.  Wheat crops came up a few inches and were parched
+by the sun or mown for hay, or the cattle turned on them; and last
+year there had been rust and smut in the wheat.  And, on top of it
+all, the dreadful cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, had somehow been
+introduced into the district.  One big farmer had lost fifty milkers
+in a week.
+
+Peter M'Laughlan didn't preach much of hope in this world; how could
+he?  There were men there who had slaved for twenty, thirty, forty
+years; worked as farmers have to work in few other lands--first to
+clear the stubborn bush from the barren soil, then to fence the
+ground, and manure it, and force crops from it--and for what?  There
+was Cox, the farmer, starved off his selection after thirty years and
+going out back with his drays to work at tank-sinking for a squatter.
+There was his eldest son going shearing or droving--anything he could
+get to do--a stoop-shouldered, young-old man of thirty.  And behind
+them, in the end, would be a dusty patch in the scrub, a fencepost
+here and there, and a pile of chimney-stones and a hardwood slab or
+two where the but was--for thirty hard years of the father's life and
+twenty of the son's.
+
+I forget Peter's text, if he had a text; but the gist of his sermon
+was that there was a God--there was a heaven!  And there were men
+there listening who needed to believe these things.  There was old
+Ross from across the creek, old, but not sixty, a hard man.  Only last
+week he had broken down and fallen on his knees on the baked sods in
+the middle of his ploughed ground and prayed for rain.  His frightened
+boys had taken him home, and later on, the same afternoon, when they
+brought news of four more cows down with "the pleuro" in an outer
+paddock, he had stood up outside his own door and shaken his fist at
+the brassy sky and cursed high heaven to the terror of his family,
+till his brave, sun-browned wife dragged him inside and soothed him.
+And Peter M'Laughlan knew all about this.
+
+Ross's family had the doctor out to him, and persuaded him to come to
+church this Sunday.  The old man sat on the front seat, stooping
+forward, with his elbow resting on the desk and his chin on his hand,
+bunching up his beard over his mouth with his fingers and staring
+gloomily at Peter with dark, piercing eyes from under bushy eyebrows,
+just as I've since seen a Scotchman stare at Max O'Rell all through a
+humorous lecture called "A nicht wi' Sandy."
+
+Ross's right hand resting on the desk was very eloquent: horny,
+scarred and knotted at every joint, with broken, twisted nails, and
+nearly closed, as though fitted to the handle of an axe or a spade.
+Ross was an educated man (he had a regular library of books at home),
+and perhaps that's why he suffered so much.
+
+Peter preached as if he were speaking quietly to one person only, but
+every word was plain and every sentence went straight to someone.  I
+believe he looked every soul in the eyes before he had done.  Once he
+said something and caught my eye, and I felt a sudden lump in my
+throat.  There was a boy there, a pale, thin, sensitive boy who was
+eating his heart out because of things he didn't understand.  He was
+ambitious and longed for something different from this life; he'd
+written a story or two and some rhymes for the local paper; his
+companions considered him a "bit ratty" and the grown-up people
+thought him a "bit wrong in his head," idiotic, or at least
+"queer."  And during his sermon Peter spoke of "unsatisfied
+longings," of the hope of something better, and said that one had to
+suffer much and for long years before he could preach or write; and
+then he looked at that boy.  I knew the boy very well; he has risen in
+the world since then.
+
+Peter spoke of the life we lived, of the things we knew, and used
+names and terms that we used.  "I don't know whether it was a blanky
+sermon or a blanky lecture," said long swanky Jim Bullock afterwards,
+"but it was straight and hit some of us hard.  It hit me once or
+twice, I can tell yer."  Peter spoke of our lives: "And there is
+beauty--even in this life and in this place," he said.  "Nothing is
+wasted--nothing is without reason.  There is beauty even in this
+place---"
+
+I noticed something like a hint of a hard smile on Ross's face; he
+moved the hand on the desk and tightened it.
+
+"Yes," said Peter, as if in answer to Ross's expression and the
+movement of his hand, "there is beauty in this life here.  After a
+good season, and when the bush is tall and dry, when the bush-fires
+threaten a man's crop of ripened wheat, there are tired men who run
+and ride from miles round to help that man, and who fight the fire all
+night to save his wheat--and some of them may have been wrangling with
+him for years.  And in the morning, when the wheat is saved and the
+danger is past, when the fire is beaten out or turned, there are
+blackened, grimy hands that come together and grip-hands that have not
+joined for many a long day."
+
+Old Palmer, Ross's neighbour, moved uneasily.  He had once helped Ross
+to put a fire out, but they had quarrelled again since.  Ross still
+sat in the same position, looking the hard man he was.  Peter glanced
+at Ross, looked down and thought a while, and then went on again:
+
+"There is beauty even in this life and in this place.  When a man
+loses his farm, or his stock, or his crop, through no fault of his
+own, there are poor men who put their hands into their pockets to help
+him."
+
+Old Kurtz, over the ridge, had had his stacked crop of wheat in sheaf
+burned--some scoundrel had put a match to it at night--and the farmers
+round had collected nearly fifty pounds for him.
+
+"There is beauty even in this life and in this place.  In the blazing
+drought, when the cattle lie down and cannot rise from weakness,
+neighbours help neighbours to lift them.  When one man has hay or
+chaff and no stock, he gives it or sells it cheaply to the poor man
+who has starving cattle and no fodder."
+
+I only knew one or two instances of this kind; but Peter was preaching
+of what man should do as well as what they did.
+
+"When a man meets with an accident, or dies, there are young men who
+go with their ploughs and horses and plough the ground for him or his
+widow and put in the crop."
+
+Jim Bullock and one or two other young men squirmed.  They had
+ploughed old Leonard's land for him when he met with an accident in
+the shape of a broken leg got by a kick from a horse.  They had also
+ploughed the ground for Mrs Phipps when her husband died, working, by
+the way, all Saturday afternoon and Sunday, for they were very busy at
+home at that time.
+
+"There is beauty even in this life and in this place.  There are
+women who were friends in girlhood and who quarrelled bitterly over a
+careless word, an idle tale, or some paltry thing, who live within a
+mile of each other and have not spoken for years; yet let one fall
+ill, or lose husband or child, and the other will hurry across to her
+place and take off her bonnet and tuck up her sleeves, and set to work
+to help straighten things, and they will kiss, and cry in each other's
+arms, and be sisters again."
+
+I saw tears in the eyes of two hard and hard-faced women I knew; but
+they were smiling to each other through their tears.
+
+"And now," said Peter, "I want to talk to you about some other
+things.  I am not preaching as a man who has been taught to preach
+comfortably, but as a man who has learned in the world's school.  I
+know what trouble is.  Men," he said, still speaking quietly, "and
+women too!  I have been through trouble as deep as any of
+yours--perhaps deeper.  I know how you toil and suffer, I know what
+battles you fight, I know.  I too fought a battle, perhaps as hard as
+any you fight.  I carry a load and am fighting a battle still."  His
+eyes were very haggard just them.  "But this is not what I wanted to
+talk to you about.  I have nothing to say against a young man going
+away from this place to better himself, but there are young men who go
+out back shearing or droving, young men who are goodhearted but
+careless, who make cheques, and spend their money gambling or drinking
+and never think of the old folk at home until it is too late.  They
+never think of the old people, alone, perhaps, in a desolate but on a
+worked-out farm in the scrub."
+
+Jim Bullock squirmed again.  He had gone out back last season and made
+a cheque, and lost most of it on horse-racing and cards.
+
+"They never think--they cannot think how, perhaps, long years agone
+in the old days, the old father, as a young man, and his brave young
+wife, came out here and buried themselves in the lonely bush and
+toiled for many years, trying--it does not matter whether they failed
+or not--trying to make homes for their children; toiled till the young
+man was bowed and grey, and the young wife brown and wrinkled and worn
+out.  Exiles they were in the early days--boy-husbands and girl-wives
+some of them, who left their native lands, who left all that was dear,
+that seemed beautiful, that seemed to make life worth living, and
+sacrificed their young lives in drought and utter loneliness to make
+homes for their children.  I want you young men to think of this.
+Some of them came from England, Ireland, Bonnie Scotland."  Ross
+straightened up and let his hands fall loosely on his knees.  "Some
+from Europe--your foreign fathers--some from across the Rhine in
+Germany."  We looked at old Kurtz.  He seemed affected.
+
+Then Peter paused for a moment and blinked thoughtfully at Ross, then
+he took a drink of water.  I can see now that the whole thing was a
+battle between Peter M'Laughlan and Robert Ross--Scot met Scot.  "It
+seemed to me," Jim Bullock said afterwards, "that Peter was only
+tryin' to make some of us blanky well blubber."
+
+"And there are men," Peter went on, "who have struggled and
+suffered and failed, and who have fought and failed again till their
+tempers are spoiled, until they grow bitter.  They go in for
+self-pity, and self-pity leads to moping and brooding and madness;
+self-pity is the most selfish and useless thing on the face of God's
+earth.  It is cruel, it is deadly, both to the man and to those who
+love him, and whom he ought to love.  His load grows heavier daily in
+his imagination, and he sinks down until it is in him to curse God and
+die.  He ceases to care for or to think of his children who are
+working to help him."  (Ross's sons were good, steady, hard-working
+boys.)  "Or the brave wife who has been so true to him for many hard
+years, who left home and friends and country for his sake.  Who bears
+up in the blackest of times, and persists in looking at the bright
+side of things for his sake; who has suffered more than he if he only
+knew it, and suffers now, through him and because of him, but who is
+patient and bright and cheerful while her heart is breaking.  He
+thinks she does not suffer, that she cannot suffer as a man does.  My
+God! he doesn't know.  He has forgotten in her the bright,
+fresh-faced, loving lassie he loved and won long years agone--long
+years agone---"
+
+There was a sob, like the sob of an over-ridden horse as it sinks down
+broken-hearted, and Ross's arms went out on the desk in front of him,
+and his head went down on them.  He was beaten.
+
+He was steered out gently with his wife on one side of him and his
+eldest son on the other.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, my friends," said Peter, standing by the
+water-bag with one hand on the tap and the pannikin in the other.
+"Mr Ross has not been well lately, and the heat has been too much for
+him."  And he went out after Ross.  They took him round under the
+bush shed behind the hut, where it was cooler.
+
+When Peter came back to his place he seemed to have changed his whole
+manner and tone.  "Our friend, Mr Ross, is much better," he said.
+"We will now sing"--he glanced at Clara Southwick at the
+harmonium--"we will now sing `Shall We Gather at the River?'"  We
+all knew that hymn; it was an old favourite round there, and Clara
+Southwick played it well in spite of the harmonium.
+
+And Peter sang--the first and last time I ever heard him sing.
+I never had an ear for music; but I never before nor since heard
+a man's voice that stirred me as Peter M'Laughlan's.  We stood like
+emus, listening to him all through one verse, then we pulled
+ourselves together.
+
+    Shall we gather at the River,
+      Where bright angels' feet have trod--
+
+The only rivers round there were barren creeks, the best of them only
+strings of muddy waterholes, and across the ridge, on the sheep-runs,
+the creeks were dry gutters, with baked banks and beds, and perhaps a
+mudhole every mile or so, and dead beasts rotting and stinking every
+few yards.
+
+    Gather with the saints at the River,
+      That flows by the throne of God.
+
+Peter's voice trembled and broke.  He caught his breath, and his eyes
+filled.  But he smiled then--he stood smiling at us through his tears.
+
+    The beautiful, the beautiful River,
+      That flows by the throne of God.
+
+Outside I saw women kiss each other who had been at daggers drawn ever
+since I could remember, and men shake hands silently who had hated
+each other for years.  Every family wanted Peter to come home to tea,
+but he went across to Ross's, and afterwards down to Kurtz's place,
+and bled and inoculated six cows or so in a new way, and after tea he
+rode off over the gap to see his friend.
+
+
+
+HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER
+
+    By his paths through the parched desolation,
+      Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
+    By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
+      Of his work in the furthermost camps;
+
+    By his worth in the light that shall search men
+      And prove--ay! and justify each--
+    I place him in front of all Churchmen
+      Who feel not, who _know_ not--but preach!
+                                  --The Christ of the Never.
+
+I told you about Peter M'Laughlan, the bush missionary, and how he
+preached in the little slab-and-bark school-house in the scrub on
+Ross's Creek that blazing hot Sunday afternoon long ago, when the
+drought was ruining the brave farmers all round there and breaking
+their hearts.  And how hard old Ross, the selector, broke down at the
+end of the sermon, and blubbered, and had to be taken out of church.
+
+I left home and drifted to Sydney, and "back into the Great
+North-West where all the rovers go," and knocked about the country
+for six or seven years before I met Peter M'Laughlan again.  I was
+young yet, but felt old at times, and there were times, in the hot,
+rough, greasy shearing-shed on blazing days, or in the bare "men's
+hut" by the flicker of the stinking slush-lamp at night, or the
+wretched wayside shanty with its drink-madness and blasphemy, or
+tramping along the dusty, endless track--there were times when I
+wished I could fall back with all the experience I'd got, and sit once
+more in the little slab-and-bark "chapel" on Ross's Creek and hear
+Peter M'Laughlan and the poor, struggling selectors sing "Shall We
+Gather at the River?" and then go out and start life afresh.
+
+My old school chum and bush mate, Jack Barnes, had married pretty
+little Clara Southwick, who used to play the portable harmonium in
+chapel.  I nearly broke my heart when they were married, but then I
+was a young fool.  Clara was a year or so older than I, and I could
+never get away from a boyish feeling of reverence for her, as if she
+were something above and out of my world.  And so, while I was
+worshipping her in chapel once a month, and at picnics and parties in
+between, and always at a distance, Jack used to ride up to Southwick's
+place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and on other days, and hang
+his horse up outside, or turn it in the paddock, and argue with old
+Southwick, and agree with the old woman, and court Clara on the sly.
+And he got her.
+
+It was at their wedding that I first got the worse for drink.
+
+Jack was a blue-eyed, curly black-haired, careless, popular young
+scamp; as good-hearted as he was careless.  He could ride like a
+circus monkey, do all kinds of bush work, add two columns of figures
+at once, and write like copper-plate.
+
+Jack was given to drinking, gambling and roving.  He steadied up when
+he got married and started on a small selection of his own; but within
+the year Clara was living in a back skillion of her father's house and
+Jack was up-country shearing.  He was "ringer" of the shed at Piora
+Station one season and made a decent cheque; and within a fortnight
+after the shed "cut out" he turned up at home in a very bad state
+from drink and with about thirty shillings in his pockets.  He had
+fallen from his horse in the creek near Southwick's, and altogether he
+was a nice sort of young husband to go home to poor, heart-broken
+Clara.
+
+I remember that time well.  She stopped me one day as I was riding
+past to ask me if I'd seen Jack, and I got off my horse.  Her chin and
+mouth began to twitch and tremble and I saw her eyes filling with
+tears.  She laid her hand on my arm and asked me to promise not to
+drink with Jack if I met him, but to try and persuade him to come
+home.  And--well, have you, as a man, ever, with the one woman that
+you can't have, and no matter at what time or place, felt a sudden mad
+longing to take her in your arms and kiss her--and damn the world?  I
+got on my horse again.  She must have thought me an ignorant brute,
+but I felt safer there.  And when I thought how I had nearly made a
+fool of myself, and been a cowardly brute, and a rotten mate to my
+mate, I rode ten miles to find Jack and get him home.
+
+He straightened up again after a bit and went out and got another
+shed, and they say that Peter M'Laughlan got hold of him there.  I
+don't know what Peter did to him then--Jack never spoke of it, even to
+me, his old mate; but, anyway, at the end of the shearing season
+Jack's cheque came home to Clara in a registered envelope, addressed
+in Peter's hand-writing, and about a week later Jack turned up a
+changed man.
+
+He got work as a temporary clerk in the branch government land office
+at Solong, a pretty little farming town in a circle of blue hills on
+the banks of a clear, willow-fringed river, where there were rich,
+black-soil, river-flat farms, and vineyards on the red soil slopes,
+and blue peaks in the distance.  It was a great contrast to Ross's
+Creek.  Jack paid a deposit on an allotment of land, a bit out of
+town, on the river bank, and built a little weather-board box of a
+cottage in spare times, and planted roses and grape-vines to hide its
+ugliness by and by.  It wasn't much of a place, but Clara was mighty
+proud of it because it was "our house."  They were very happy, and
+she was beginning to feel sure of Jack.  She seemed to believe that
+the miserable old time was all past and gone.
+
+When the work at the land's office gave out, Jack did all sorts of
+jobs about town, and at last, one shearing season, when there was a
+heavy clip of wool, and shearers were getting L1 a hundred, he decided
+to go out back.  I know that Clara was against it, but he argued that
+it was the only chance for him, and she persuaded herself that she
+could trust him.  I was knocking about Solong at the time, and Jack
+and I decided to go out together and share his packhorse between us.
+He wrote to Beenaway Shed, about three hundred: miles north-west in
+the Great Scrubs, and got pens for both of us.
+
+It was a fine fresh morning when we started; it was in a good season
+and the country looked grand.  When I rode up to Jack's place I saw
+his horse and packhorse tied up outside the gate.  He had wanted me to
+come up the evening before and have tea with them and camp at his
+place for the night.  "Come up! man alive!" he said.  "We'll make
+you a shake-down!"  But I wouldn't; I said I had to meet a chap.
+Jack wouldn't have understood.  I had been up before, but when I saw
+him and Clara so happy and comfortable, and thought of the past and my
+secret, and thought of myself, a useless, purposeless, restless,
+homeless sort of fellow, hanging out at a boarding-house, it nearly
+broke me up, and I had to have a drink or two afterwards.  I often
+wonder if Clara guessed and understood.  You never know how much a
+woman knows; but--ah, well!
+
+Jack had taken my things home with him and he and Clara had packed
+them.  I found afterwards that she had washed, dried and ironed some
+collars and handkerchiefs of mine during the night.  Clara and Jack
+came out to the gate, and as I wouldn't go in to have a cup of tea
+there was nothing for it but to say good-bye.  She was dressed in a
+fresh-looking print blouse and dark skirt, and wore a white hood that
+fell back from her head; she was a little girl, with sweet, small,
+freckled features, and red-gold hair, and kind, sympathetic grey eyes.
+I thought her the freshest, and fairest, and daintiest little woman in
+the district.
+
+I was Jack's mate, so she always treated me as a sort of
+brother-in-law, and called me by my Christian name.  Mates are closer
+than brothers in the bush.
+
+I turned my back and pretended to tighten the straps and girths on the
+packhorse while she said good-bye to Jack.  I heard her speaking
+earnestly to him, and once I heard her mention Peter M`Laughlan's
+name.  I thought Jack answered rather impatiently.  "Oh, that's all
+right, Clara," he said, "that's all over--past and gone.  I wish you
+would believe it.  You promised never to speak of that any more."
+
+I know how it was.  Jack never cared to hear about Peter; he was too
+ashamed of the past, perhaps; besides, deep down, we feel a sort of
+resentment towards any reference to a man who has helped or saved us
+in the past.  It's human nature.
+
+Then they spoke in low tones for a while, and then Jack laughed, and
+kissed her, and said, "Oh, I'll be back before the time's up."  Then
+he ran into the house to say good-bye to Mary's sister, who was
+staying with her, and who was laid up with a sprained ankle.
+
+Then Clara stepped up to me and laid her fingers on my shoulder.
+I trembled from head to foot and hoped she didn't notice it.
+
+"Joe," she said, looking at me with her big, searching grey eyes,
+"I believe I can trust you.  I want you to look after Jack.  You know
+why.  Never let him have one drink if you can help it.  One drink--the
+first drink will do it.  I want you to promise me that you will never
+have a drink with Jack, no matter what happens or what he says."
+
+"I never will," I said, and I meant it.
+
+"It's the first time he's been away from me since he gave up
+drinking, and if he comes back all right this time I will be sure of
+him and contented.  But, Joe, if he comes back wrong it will kill me;
+it will break my heart.  I want you to promise that if anything
+happens you will ride or wire for Peter M'Laughlan.  I hear he's
+wool-sorting this year at Beenaway Station.  Promise me that if
+anything happens you will ride for Peter M'Laughlan and tell him, no
+matter what Jack says."
+
+"I promise," I said.
+
+She half-held out her hand to me, but I kept both mine behind my back.
+I suppose she thought I didn't notice that she wanted to shake hands
+on the bargain; but the truth was that my hands shook so, and I didn't
+want her to notice _that_.
+
+I got on my horse and felt steadier.  Then, "Good-bye,
+Clara"--"Good-bye, Jack."  She bore up bravely, but I saw her eyes
+brimming.  Jack got on his horse, and I bent over and shook hands with
+her.  Jack bent down and kissed her while she stood on tiptoe.
+"Good-bye, little woman," he said.  "Cheer up, and I'll be back
+before you know where you are!  You mustn't fret--you know why."
+
+"Good-bye, Jack!"--she was breaking down.
+
+"Come on, Jack!" I said, and we rode off, turning and waving our
+hats to her as she stood by the gate, looking a desolate little thing,
+I thought, till we turned down a bend of the road into the river.
+
+As we jogged along with the packhorse trotting behind us, and the
+quart-pots and hobble-chains jingling on the packsaddle, I pictured
+Clara running inside, to cry a while in her sister's arms, and then to
+bustle round and cheer up, for Jack's sake--and for the sake of
+something else.
+
+
+"I'll christen him after you, Joe," said Jack, later on, when we'd
+got confidential over our pipes after tea in our first camp.  It never
+seemed to enter his head that there was the ghost of a chance that it
+might be a girl.  "I'm glad he didn't come along when I was
+drinking," he said.
+
+And as we lay rolled in our blankets under the stars I swore a big
+oath to myself.
+
+We got along comfortably and reached Beenaway Station in about a week,
+the day before the shearers' roll-call.  Jack never showed the
+slightest inclination to go into a shanty; and several times we talked
+about old times and what damned fools we'd been throwing away our
+money over shanty bars shouting for loafers and cadgers.  "Isn't this
+ever so-much better, Joe!" said Jack, as we lay on our blankets
+smoking one moonlight night.  "There's nothing in boozing, Joe, you
+can take it from me.  Just you sling it for a year and then look back;
+you won't want to touch it again.  You've been straight for a couple
+of months.  Sling it for good, Joe, before it gets a hold on you, like
+it did on me."
+
+
+It was the morning after cut-out at Beenaway Shed, and we were glad.
+We were tired of the rush and roar and rattle and heat and grease and
+blasphemy of the big, hot, iron machine shed in that dusty patch in
+the barren scrubs.  Swags were rolled up, saddle-bags packed, horses
+had been rounded up and driven in, the shearers' cook and his mate had
+had their fight, and about a hundred men--shearers, rouseabouts, and
+wool-washers--were waiting round the little iron office to get their
+cheques.
+
+We were about half through when one bushman said to another: "Stop
+your damned swearin', Jim.  Here's Peter M'Laughlan!"  Peter walked
+up and the men made way for him and he went into the office.  There
+was always considerably less swearing for a few feet round about where
+Peter M'Laughlan happened to be working in a shearing-shed.  It seemed
+to be an understood thing with the men.  He took no advantages, never
+volunteered to preach at a shed where he was working, and only spoke
+on union subjects when the men asked him to.  He was "rep."
+(Shearers' Union representative) at this shed, but squatters and
+station managers respected him as much as the men did.
+
+He seemed much greyer now, but still stood square and straight.  And
+his eyes still looked one through.
+
+When Peter came out and the crowd had cleared away he took Jack aside
+and spoke to him in a low voice for a few minutes.  I heard Jack say,
+"Oh, that's all right, Peter!  You have my word for it," and he got
+on his horse.  I heard Peter say the one word, "Remember!"  "Oh,
+that's all right," said Jack, and he shook hands with Peter, shouted,
+"Come on, Joe!" and started off with the packhorse after him.
+
+"I wish I were going down with you, Joe," said Peter to me, "but I can't
+get away till to-morrow.  I've got that sick rouseabout on my hands,
+and I'll have to see him fixed up somehow and started off to the
+hospital" (the nearest was a hundred miles away).  "And, by the way,
+I've taken up a collection for him; I want a few shillings from you,
+Joe.  I nearly forgot you.  The poor fellow only got in about a
+fortnight's work, and there's a wife and youngsters in Sydney.  I'll
+be down after you to-morrow.  I promised to go to Comesomehow* and get
+the people together and start an agitation for a half-time school
+there.  Anyway, I'll be there by the end of the week.  Good-bye, Joe.  I
+must get some more money for the rouser from some of those chaps
+before they start."
+
+[ *  There is a postal district in new South Wales called "Come-by-Chance"]
+
+Comesomehow was a wretched cockatoo settlement, a bit off the track,
+about one hundred and fifty miles on our road home, where the settlers
+lived like savages and the children ran wild.  I reckoned that Peter
+would have his work cut out to start a craving for education in that
+place.
+
+By saying he'd be there I think he intended to give me a hint, in case
+anything happened.  I believe now that Jack's wife had got anxious and
+had written to him.
+
+We jogged along comfortably and happily for three or four days, and as
+we passed shanty after shanty, and town after town, without Jack
+showing the slightest inclination to pull up at any of them, I began
+to feel safe about him.
+
+Then it happened, in the simplest way, as most things of this sort
+happen if you don't watch close.
+
+The third night it rained, rained heavens-hard, and rainy nights can
+be mighty cold out on those plains, even in midsummer.  Jack and I
+rigged up a strip of waterproof stuff we had to cover the swags on the
+packhorse, but the rain drove in, almost horizontally, and we got wet
+through, blankets, clothes and all.  Jack got a bad cold and coughed
+fit to break himself; so about daylight, when the rain held up a bit,
+we packed up and rode on to the next pub, a wretched little
+weather-board place in the scrub.
+
+Jack reckoned he'd get some stuff for his cold there.  I didn't like
+to speak, but before we reached the place I said, "You won't touch a
+drink, Jack."
+
+"Do you think I'm a blanky fool?" said Jack, and I shut up.
+
+The shanty was kept by a man who went by the name of Thomas, a
+notorious lamber-down,* as I found out afterwards.  He was a big,
+awkward bullock of a man, a selfish, ignorant brute, as anyone might
+have seen by his face; but he had a loud voice, and adopted a careless,
+rollicking, hail-fellow-well-met! come-in-and-sit-down-man-alive!
+clap-you-on-the-back style, which deceived a good many, or which a
+good many pretended to believe in.  His "missus" was an animal of his
+own species, but she was duller and didn't bellow.
+
+[ *  "Lamber-down," a shanty keeper who entices cheque-men to drink. ]
+
+He had a rather good-looking girl there--I don't know
+whether she was his daughter or not.  They said that when he saw the
+shearers coming he'd say, "Run and titivate yourself, Mary; here comes
+the shearers!"
+
+But what surprised me was that Jack Barnes didn't seem able to see
+through Thomas; he thought that he was all right, "a bit of a rough
+diamond."  There are any amount of scoundrels and swindlers knocking
+about the world disguised as rough diamonds.
+
+Jack had a fit of coughing when we came in.
+
+"Why, Jack!" bellowed Thomas, "that's a regular churchyarder you've
+got.  Go in to the kitchen fire and I'll mix you a stiff toddy."
+
+"No, thank you, Thomas," said Jack, glancing at me rather
+sheepishly, I thought.  "I'll have a hot cup of coffee presently,
+that'll do me more good."
+
+"Why, man alive, one drink won't hurt you!" said Thomas.  "I know
+you're on the straight, and you know I'm the last man that 'ud try to
+get you off it.  But you want something for that cold.  You don't want
+to die on the track, do you?  What would your missus say?  That cough
+of yours is enough to bust a bullock."
+
+"Jack isn't drinking, Thomas," I said rather shortly, "and neither
+am I."
+
+"I'll have a cup of coffee at breakfast," said Jack; "thank you all
+the same, Thomas."
+
+"Right you are, Jack!" said Thomas.  "Mary!" he roared at the girl,
+"chuck yerself about and get breakfast, and make a strong cup of
+coffee; and I say, missus" (to his wife), "git some honey and
+vinegar in a cup, will yer? or see if there's any of that cough stuff
+left in the bottle.  Go into the kitchen, you chaps, and dry
+yourselves at the fire, you're wringing wet."
+
+Jack went through into the kitchen.  I stepped out to see if the
+horses were all right, and as I came in again through the bar, Thomas,
+who had slipped behind the counter, crooked his finger at me and
+poured out a stiff whisky.  "I thought you might like to have it on
+the quiet," he whispered, with a wink.
+
+Now, there was this difference between Jack and me.  When I was on the
+track, and healthy and contented, I could take a drink, or two drinks,
+and then leave it; or at other times I could drink all day, or all
+night, and be as happy as a lord, and be mighty sick and repentant all
+next day, and then not touch drink for a week; but if Jack once
+started, he was a lost man for days, for weeks, for, months--as long
+as his cash or credit lasted.  I felt a cold coming on me this
+morning, and wanted a whisky, so I had a drink with Thomas.  Then, of
+course, I shouted in my turn, keeping an eye out in case Jack should
+come in.  I went into the kitchen and steamed with Jack for a while in
+front of a big log fire, taking care to keep my breath away from him.
+Then we went in to breakfast.  Those two drinks were all I meant to
+have, and we were going right on after breakfast.
+
+It was a good breakfast, ham and eggs, and we enjoyed it.  The two
+whiskies had got to work.  I hadn't touched drink for a long time.  I
+shouldn't like to say that Thomas put anything in the drink he gave
+me.  Before we started breakfast he put a glass down in front of me
+and said:
+
+"There's a good ginger-ale, it will warm you up."
+
+I tasted it; it was rum, hot.  I said nothing.  What could I say?
+
+There was some joke about Jack being married and settled and steadied
+down, and me, his old mate, still on the wallaby; and Mrs Thomas said
+that I ought to follow Jack's example.  And just then I felt a touch
+of that loneliness that some men feel when an old drinking mate turns
+teetotaller.
+
+Jack started coughing again, like an old cow with the pleuro.
+
+"That cough will kill you, Jack," said Thomas.  "Let's put a drop
+of brandy in your coffee, that won't start you, anyhow; it's real
+`Three Star.'"  And he reached a bottle from the side-table.
+
+I should have stood up then, for my manhood, for my mate, and for
+little Clara, but I half rose from my chair, and Jack laughed and said,
+"Sit down, Joe, you old fool, you're tanked.  I know all about your
+seeing about the horses and your ginger-ales.  It's all right, old man.
+Do you think I'm going on the booze?  Why, I'll have to hold you on the
+horse all day."
+
+"Here's luck, Joe!"  said Jack, laughing, and lifting up his cup of
+coffee with the brandy in it.  "Here's luck, Joe."
+
+Then suddenly, and as clearly as I ever heard it, came Clara's voice
+to my ear: "Promise me, whatever you do, that you will never have a
+drink with Jack."  And I felt cold and sick to the stomach.
+
+I got up and went out.  They thought that the drink had made me sick,
+but if I'd stayed there another minute I would have tackled Thomas;
+and I knew that I needed a clear head to tackle a bullock like him.  I
+walked about a bit, and when I came in again Jack and Thomas were in
+the bar, and Jack had a glass before him.
+
+"Come on, Joe, you old bounder," said Jack, "come and have a
+whisky-and-soda; it will straighten you up."
+
+"What's that you're drinking, Jack?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, don't be a fool!" said Jack.  "One drink won't hurt me.  Do
+you think I'm going on the booze?  Have a soda and straighten up; we
+must make a start directly."
+
+I remember we had two or three whiskies, and then suddenly I tackled
+Thomas, and Jack was holding me back, and laughing and swearing at me
+at the same time, and I had a tussle with him; and then I was suddenly
+calmer and sensible, and we were shaking hands all round, and Jack was
+talking about just one more spree for the sake of old times.
+
+"A bit of a booze won't hurt me, Joe, you old fool," he said.
+"We'll have one more night of it, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, and
+start at daylight in the morning.  You go and see to the horses, it
+will straighten you up.  Take the saddle off and hobble 'em out."
+
+But I insisted on starting at once, and Jack promised he would.  We
+were gloriously happy for an hour or so, and then I went to sleep.
+
+When I woke it was late in the afternoon.  I was very giddy and shaky;
+the girl brought me a whisky-and-soda, and that steadied me.  Some
+more shearers had arrived, and Jack was playing cards with two of them
+on top of a cask in the bar.  Thomas was dead drunk on the floor, or
+pretending to be so, and his wife was behind the bar.  I went out to
+see to the horses; I found them in a bush yard at the back.  The
+packhorse was rolling in the mud with the pack-saddle and saddlebags
+on.  One of the chaps helped me take off the saddles and put them in
+the harness-room behind the kitchen.
+
+I'll pass over that night.  It wouldn't be very edifying to the great,
+steady-living, sober majority, and the others, the never-do-wells, the
+rovers, wrecks and failures, will understand only too well without
+being told--only too well, God help them!
+
+When I woke in the morning I couldn't have touched a drink to save my
+life.  I was fearfully shaky, and swimming about the head, but I put
+my head over a tub under the pump and got the girl to pump for a
+while, and then I drank a pint of tea and managed to keep it down, and
+felt better.
+
+All through the last half of the night I'd kept saying, in a sort of
+drink nightmare, "I'll go for Peter M'Laughlan in the morning.  I'll
+go for Peter as soon as I can stand!"  and repeating Clara Barnes's
+words, "Ride for Peter if anything happens.  Ride for Peter
+M'Laughlan."
+
+There were drunken shearers, horsemen and swagmen sleeping all over
+the place, and in all sorts of odd positions; some on the veranda with
+their heads on their swags, one sitting back against the wall, and one
+on the broad of his back with his head on the bare boards and his
+mouth open.  There was another horse rolling in its saddle, and I took
+the saddle off.  The horse belonged to an English University man.
+
+I went in to see how Jack was.  He was lying in the parlour on a
+little, worn-out, horse-hair sofa, that might have seen better days in
+some clean home in the woman-and-girl world.  He had been drinking and
+playing cards till early that morning, and he looked awful--he looked
+as if he'd been boozing for a month.
+
+"See what you've done!" he said, sitting up and glaring at me; then
+he said, "Bring me a whisky-and-soda, Joe, for God's sake!"
+
+I got a whisky-and-soda from the girl and took it to him.
+
+I talked to him for a while, and at last he said, "Well, go and get
+the horses and we'll start."
+
+I got the horses ready and brought them round to the front, but by
+that time he'd had more drink, and he said he wanted to sleep before
+he started.  Next he was playing cards with one of the chaps, and
+asked me to wait till he'd finished that game.  I knew he'd keep
+promising and humbugging me till there was a row, so at last I got him
+aside and said:
+
+"Look here, Jack, I'm going for Peter M'Laughlan---"
+
+"Go to hell!" said Jack.
+
+I put the other horses back in the yard, the saddles in the skillion,
+got on my horse and rode off.  Thomas and the others asked me no
+questions, they took no notice.  In a place like that a man could
+almost do anything, short of hanging himself, without anyone
+interfering or being surprised.  And probably, if he did hang himself,
+they'd let him swing for a while to get a taste of it.
+
+Comesomehow was about fifteen miles back on a track off the main road.
+I reckoned that I could find Peter and bring him on by the afternoon,
+and I rode hard, sick as I was.  I was too sick to smoke.
+
+As it happened, Peter had started early from his last camp and I
+caught him just as he was turning off into Comesomehow track.
+
+"What's up, Joe?" he asked as I rode up to him--but he could see.
+
+"Jack Barnes is on the booze at Thomas's," I said.
+
+Peter just looked right through me.  Then he turned his horse's head
+without a word, and rode back with me.  And, after a while, he said,
+as if to himself:
+
+"Poor Clara!  Poor little lassie!"
+
+By the time we reached the shanty it was well on in the afternoon.  A
+fight was stopped in the first round and voices lowered when the chaps
+caught sight of us.  As Peter walked into the bar one or two drunks
+straightened themselves and took off their hats with drunken
+sentiment.
+
+"Where is Jack Barnes, Thomas?" asked Peter, quietly.
+
+"He's in there if you want to see him," said Thomas, jerking his
+head towards the parlour.
+
+We went in, and when Peter saw Jack lying there I noticed that swift,
+haunted look came into his eyes, as if he'd seen a ghost of the past.
+He sat down by the sofa to wait until Jack woke.  I thought as he sat
+there that his eyes were like a woman's for sympathy and like a dog's
+for faithfulness.  I was very shaky.
+
+Presently Thomas looked in.  "Is there anything I can do for you,
+M'Laughlan?" he asked in as civil a tone as he could get to.
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "bring me a flask of your best whisky--your own,
+mind--and a glass.
+
+"We shall need the whisky for him on the track, Joe," said Peter,
+when the flask came.  "Get another glass and a bottle of soda; you
+want a nip." He poured out a drink for himself.
+
+"The first thing we've got to do is to get him away; then I'll soon
+put him on his feet.  But we'll let him sleep a while longer.  I find
+I've got business near Solong, and I'm going down with you."
+
+By and by Jack woke up and glared round, and when he caught sight of
+Peter he just reached for his hands and said, "Peter!  Thank God
+you've come!"  Then he said, "But I must have a drink first, Peter."
+
+"All right, Jack, you shall have a drink," said Peter; and he gave
+him a stiff nobblerq.  It steadied Jack a bit.
+
+"Now listen to me, Jack," said Peter.  "How much money have you got
+left?"
+
+"I--I can't think," said Jack.  "I've got a cheque for twenty pounds
+here, sewn inside my shirt."
+
+"Yes; but you drew thirty-six in three cheques.  Where's the rest?"
+
+"Thomas has ten," said Jack, "and the six--well, the six is gone.
+I was playing cards last night."
+
+Peter stepped out into the bar.
+
+"Look here, Thomas," he said quietly, "you've got a ten-pound
+cheque from Barnes."
+
+"I know I have."
+
+"Well, how much of it does he owe you?"
+
+"The whole, and more."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that?  He has only been here since yesterday
+morning."
+
+"Yes; but he's been shoutin' all round.  Look at all these chaps
+here."
+
+"They only came yesterday afternoon," said Peter.  "Here, you had
+best take this and give me the cheque;" and Peter laid a five-pound
+note on the bar.  Thomas bucked at first, but in the end he handed over
+the cheque--he had had several warnings from the police.  Then he
+suddenly lost all control over himself; he came round from behind the
+bar and faced Peter.
+
+"Now, look here, you mongrel parson!" he said.  "What the --- do
+you mean by coming into my bar and, interfering with me.  Who the ---
+are you anyway?  A ---!"  He used the worst oaths that were used in
+the bush.  "Take off your --- coat!" he roared at last, shaping up
+to Peter.
+
+Peter stepped back a pace and buttoned his coat and threw back his
+head.
+
+"No need to take off my coat, Thomas," he said, "I am ready."
+
+He said it very quietly, but there was a danger-signal--a red light in
+his eyes.  He was quiet-voiced but hard-knuckled, as some had reason
+to know.
+
+Thomas balked like a bull at a spread umbrella.  Jack lurched past me
+as I stood in the parlour door, but I caught him and held him back;
+and almost at the same moment a wretched old boozer that we called
+"Awful Example," who had been sitting huddled, a dirty bundle of
+rags and beard and hair, in the corner of the bar, struggled to his
+feet, staggered forward and faced Thomas, looking once again like
+something that might have been a man.  He snatched a thick glass
+bottle from the counter and held it by the neck in his right hand.
+
+
+"Stand back, Thomas!" he shouted.  "Lay a hand--lay a finger on
+Peter M'Laughlan, and I'll smash your head, as sure as there's a God
+above us and I'm a ruined man!"
+
+Peter took "Awful" gently by the shoulders and sat him down.  "You
+keep quiet, old man," he said; "nothing is going to happen."
+Thomas went round behind the bar muttering something about it not
+being worth his while to, etc.
+
+"You go and get the horses ready, Joe," said Peter to me; "and you
+sit down, Jack, and keep quiet."
+
+"He can get the horses," growled Thomas, from behind the bar, "but
+I'm damned if he gets the saddles.  I've got them locked up, and I'll
+something well keep them till Barnes is sober enough to pay me what he
+owes me."
+
+Just then a tall, good-looking chap, with dark-blue eyes and a long,
+light-coloured moustache, stepped into the bar from the crowd on the
+veranda.
+
+"What's all this, Thomas?" he asked.
+
+"What's that got to do with you, Gentleman Once?" shouted Thomas.
+
+"I think it's got something to do with me," said Gentleman Once.
+"Now, look here, Thomas; you can do pretty well what you like with us
+poor devils, and you know it, but we draw the line at Peter
+M'Laughlan.  If you really itch for the thrashing, you deserve you
+must tempt someone else to give it to you."
+
+"What the --- are you talking about?" snorted Thomas.  "You're drunk
+or ratty!"
+
+"What's the trouble, M'Laughlan?" asked Gentleman Once, turning to
+Peter.  "No trouble at all, Gentleman Once," said Peter; "thank you
+all the same.  I've managed worse men than our friend Thomas.  Now,
+Thomas, don't you think it would pay you best to hand over the key of
+the harness-room and have done with this nonsense?  I'm a patient
+man--a very patient man--but I've not always been so, and the old
+blood comes up sometimes, you know."
+
+Thomas couldn't stand this sort of language, because he couldn't
+understand it.  He threw the key on the bar and told us to clear out.
+
+We were all three very quiet riding along the track that evening.
+Peter gave Jack a nip now and again from the flask, and before we
+turned in in camp he gave him what he called a soothing draught from a
+little medicine chest that he carried in his saddle-bag.  Jack seemed
+to have got rid of his cough; he slept all night, and in the morning,
+after he'd drunk a pint of mutton-broth that Peter had made in one of
+the billies, he was all right--except that he was quiet and ashamed.
+I had never known him to be so quiet, and for such a length of time,
+since we were boys together.  He had learned his own weakness; he'd
+lost all his cocksureness.  I know now just exactly how he felt.  He
+felt as if his sober year had been lost and he would have to live it
+all over again.
+
+Peter didn't preach.  He just jogged along and camped with us as if he
+were an ordinary, every-day mate.  He yarned about all sorts of
+things.  He could tell good yarns, and when he was fairly on you could
+listen to him all night.  He seemed to have been nearly all over the
+world.  Peter never preached except when he was asked to hold service
+in some bush pub, station-homestead or bush church.  But in a case
+like ours he had a way of telling a little life story, with something
+in it that hit the young man he wanted to reform, and hit him hard.
+He'd generally begin quietly, when we were comfortable with our pipes
+in camp after tea, with "I once knew a young man--" or "That
+reminds me of a young fellow I knew--" and so on.  You never knew
+when he was going to begin; or when he was going to hit you.  In our
+last camp, before we reached Solong, he told two of his time-fuse
+yarns.  I haven't time to tell them now, but one stuffed up my pipe
+for a while, and made Jack's hand tremble when he tried to light his.
+I'm glad it was too dark to see our faces.  We lay a good while
+afterwards, rolled in our blankets, and couldn't get to sleep for
+thinking; but Peter seemed to fall asleep as soon as he turned in.
+
+Next day he told Jack not to tell Clara that he'd come down with us.
+He said he wouldn't go right into Solong with us; he was going back
+along another road to stay a day or two with an old friend of his.
+
+When we reached Solong we stopped on the river-bank just out of sight
+of Jack's house.  Peter took the ten-pound cheque from his pocket and
+gave it to Jack.  Jack hadn't seen Peter give the shanty-keeper the
+five-pound note.
+
+"But I owed Thomas something," said Jack, staring.  "However did
+you manage to get the cheque out of him?"
+
+"Never mind, Jack, I managed," said Peter.
+
+Jack sat silent for a while, then he began to breathe hard.
+
+"I don't know what to say, Peter."
+
+"Say nothing, Jack.  Only promise me that you will give Clara the
+cheques as soon as you go home, and let her take care of the cash for
+a while."
+
+"I will," said Jack.
+
+Jack looked down at the ground for a while, then he lifted his head
+and looked Peter in the eyes.
+
+"Peter," he said, "I can't speak.  I'm ashamed to make a promise;
+I've broken so many. I'll try to thank you in a year's time from now."
+
+"I ask for no promises," said Peter, and he held out his hand.  Jack
+gripped it.
+
+"Aren't you coming home with me, Joe?" he asked.
+
+"No," I said; "I'll go into town.  See you in the morning."
+
+Jack rode on.  When he got along a piece Peter left his horse and
+moved up to the head of the lane to watch Jack, and I followed.  As
+Jack neared the cottage we saw a little figure in a cloak run out to
+the front gate.  She had heard the horses and the jingle of the
+camp-ware on the pack-saddle.  We saw Jack jump down and take her in
+his arms.  I looked at Peter, and as he watched them, something, that
+might have been a strange look of the old days, came into his eyes.
+
+He shook hands with me.  "Good-bye, Joe."
+
+He rode across the river again.  He took the track that ran
+along the foot of the spurs by the river, and up over a gap in the
+curve of blue hills, and down and out west towards the Big Scrubs.
+And as he rounded the last spur, with his packhorse trotting after
+him, I thought he must have felt very lonely.  And I felt lonely too.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF "GENTLEMAN ONCE"
+
+    They learn the world from black-sheep,
+    Who know it all too well.
+                            -Out Back.
+
+Peter M'Laughlan, bush missionary, Joe Wilson and his mate, Jack
+Barnes, shearers for the present, and a casual swagman named Jack
+Mitchell, were camped at Cox's Crossing in a bend of Eurunderee Creek.
+
+It was a grassy little flat with gum-trees standing clear and clean
+like a park.  At the back was the steep grassy siding of a ridge, and
+far away across the creek to the south a spur from the Blue Mountain
+range ran west, with a tall, blue granite peak showing clear in the
+broad moonlight, yet dream-like and distant over the sweeps of dark
+green bush.
+
+There was the jingle of hobble-chains and a crunching at the grass
+where the horses moved in the soft shadows amongst the trees.  Up the
+creek on the other side was a surveyors' camp, and from there now and
+again came the sound of a good voice singing verses of old songs; and
+later on the sound of a violin and a cornet being played, sometimes
+together and sometimes each on its own.
+
+Wilson and Barnes were on their way home from shearing out back in the
+great scrubs at Beenaway Shed.  They had been rescued by Peter
+M`Laughlan from a wayside shanty where they had fallen, in spite of
+mutual oaths and past promises, sacred and profane, because they had
+got wringing wet in a storm on the track and caught colds, and had
+been tempted to take just one drink.
+
+They were in a bad way, and were knocking down their cheques
+beautifully when Peter M'Laughlan came along.  He rescued them and
+some of their cash from the soulless shanty keeper, and was riding
+home with them, on some pretence, because he had known them as boys,
+because Joe Wilson had a vein of poetry in him--a something in
+sympathy with something in Peter; because Jack Barnes had a dear
+little girl-wife who was much too good for him, and who was now
+anxiously waiting for him in the pretty little farming town of Solong
+amongst the western spurs.  Because, perhaps, of something in Peter's
+early past which was a mystery.  Simply and plainly because Peter
+M'Laughlan was the kindest, straightest and truest man in the West--
+a "white man."
+
+They all knew Mitchell and welcomed him heartily when he turned up in
+their camp, because he was a pathetic humorist and a kindly cynic--a
+"joker" or "hard case" as the bushmen say.
+
+Peter was about fifty and the other three were young men.
+
+There was another man in camp who didn't count and was supposed to be
+dead.  Old Danny Quinn, champion "beer-chewer" of the district, was
+on his way out, after a spree, to one of Rouse's stations, where, for
+the sake of past services--long past--and because of old times, he was
+supposed to be working.  He had spent his last penny a week before and
+had clung to his last-hope hotel until the landlord had taken him in
+one hand and his swag in the other and lifted them clear of the
+veranda.  Danny had blundered on, this far, somehow; he was the last
+in the world who could have told how, and had managed to light a fire;
+then he lay with his head on his swag and enjoyed nips of whisky in
+judicious doses and at reasonable intervals, and later on a tot of
+mutton-broth, which he made in one of the billies.
+
+It was after tea.  Peter sat on a log by the fire with Joe and Jack
+Mitchell on one side and Jack Barnes on the other.  Jack Mitchell sat
+on the grass with his back to the log, his knees drawn up, and his
+arms abroad on them: his most comfortable position and one which
+seemed to favour the flow of his philosophy.  They talked of bush
+things or reflected, sometimes all three together, sometimes by turns.
+
+From the surveyors' camp:
+
+    I remember, I remember,
+      The house where I was born,
+    The little window where the sun
+      Came peeping in at morn---
+
+The breeze from the west strengthened and the voice was blown
+away.
+
+"That chap seems a bit sentimental but he's got a good voice,"
+said Mitchell.  Then presently he remarked, round his pipe:
+
+"I wonder if old Danny remembers?"  And presently Peter said
+quietly, as if the thought had just occurred to him:
+
+"By the way, Mitchell, I forgot to ask after your old folk.  I knew
+your father, you know."
+
+"Oh, they're all right, Peter, thank you."
+
+"Heard from them lately?" asked Peter, presently, in a lazy tone.
+
+Mitchell straightened himself up.  "N--no.  To tell the truth, Peter, I
+haven't written for--I don't know how long."
+
+Peter smoked reflectively.
+
+"I remember your father well, Jack," he said.  "He was a big-hearted man."
+
+Old Danny was heard remonstrating loudly with spirits from a warmer
+clime than Australia, and Peter stepped over to soothe him.
+
+"I thought I'd get it, directly after I opened my mouth," said
+Mitchell.  "I suppose it will be your turn next, Joe."
+
+"I suppose so," said Joe, resignedly.
+
+The wind fell.
+
+    I remember, I remember,
+      And it gives me little joy,
+    To think I'm further off from heaven,
+      Than when I was a boy!
+
+When Peter came back another thought seemed to have occurred to him.
+
+"How's your mother getting on, Joe?" he asked.  "She shifted to
+Sydney after your father died, didn't she?"
+
+"Oh, she's getting on all right!" said Joe, without elaboration.
+
+"Keeping a boarding-house, isn't she?"
+
+"Yes," said Joe.
+
+"Hard to make ends meet, I suppose?" said Peter.  "It's almost a
+harder life than it could have been on the old selection, and there's
+none of the old independence about it.  A woman like your mother must
+feel it, Joe."
+
+"Oh, she's all right," said Joe.  "She's used to it by this time.
+I manage to send her a few pounds now and again.  I send her all I
+can," he added resentfully.
+
+Peter sat corrected for a few moments.  Then he seemed to change the
+subject.
+
+"It's some time since you were in Sydney last, isn't it, Joe?'
+
+"Yes, Peter," said Joe.  "I haven't been there for two years.  I
+never did any good there.  I'm far better knocking about out back."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Some men seem to get on better in one place, some in another,"
+reflected Mitchell, lazily.  "For my part, I seem to get on better in
+another."
+
+Peter blinked, relit his pipe with a stick from the fire and
+reflected.
+
+The surveyor's song had been encored:
+
+    I remember, I remember---
+
+Perhaps Peter remembered.  Joe did, but there were no vines round the
+house where he was born, only drought and dust, and raspy voices
+raised in recrimination, and hardship most times.
+
+"I remember," said Peter, quietly, "I remember a young fellow at
+home in the old country.  He had every advantage.  He had a
+first-class education, a great deal more money than he needed--almost
+as much as he asked for, and nearly as much freedom as he wanted.  His
+father was an English gentleman and his mother an English lady.  They
+were titled people, if I remember rightly.  The old man was proud, but
+fond of his son; he only asked him to pay a little duty or respect now
+and again.  We don't understand these things in Australia--they seem
+formal and cold to us.  The son paid his respects to his father
+occasionally--a week or so before he'd be wanting money, as a rule.
+The mother was a dear lady.  She idolized her son.  She only asked for
+a little show of affection from him, a few days or a week of his
+society at home now and then--say once in three months.  But he
+couldn't spare her even that--his time was taken up so much in
+fashionable London and Paris and other places.  He would give the
+world to be able to take his proud, soft old father's hand now and
+look into his eyes as one man who understands another.  He would be
+glad and eager to give his mother twelve months out of the year if he
+thought it would make her happier.  It has been too late for more than
+twenty years."
+
+Old Danny called for Peter.
+
+Mitchell jerked his head approvingly and gave a sound like a sigh
+and chuckle conjoined, the one qualifying the other.
+
+"I told you you'd get it, Joe," he said.
+
+"I don't see how it hits me," said Joe.
+
+"But it hit all the same, Joe."
+
+"Well, I suppose it did," said Joe, after a short pause.
+
+"He wouldn't have hit you so hard if you hadn't tried to parry,"
+reflected Mitchell.  "It's your turn now, Jack."
+
+Jack Barnes said nothing.
+
+"Now I know that Peter would do anything for a woman or child, or an
+honest, straight, hard-up chap," said Mitchell, straightening out his
+legs and folding his arms, "but I can't quite understand his being so
+partial to drunken scamps and vagabonds, black sheep and
+never-do-wells.  He's got a tremendous sympathy for drunks.  He'd do
+anything to help a drunken man.  Ain't it marvellous?  It's my private
+opinion that Peter must have been an awful boozer and scamp in his
+time."
+
+The other two only thought.  Mitchell was privileged.  He was a young
+man of freckled, sandy complexion, and quizzical grey eyes.  "Sly
+Joker" "could take a rise out of anyone on the quiet;" "You could
+never tell when he was getting at you;" "Face of a born comedian,"
+as bushmen said of Mitchell.  But he would probably have been a dead
+and dismal failure on any other stage than that of wide Australia.
+
+Peter came back and they sat and smoked, and maybe they reflected
+along four very different back-tracks for a while.
+
+The surveyor started to sing again:
+
+    I have heard the mavis singing
+      Her love-song to the morn.
+    I have seen the dew-drop clinging
+      To the rose just newly born.
+
+They smoked and listened in silence all through to the end.  It was
+very still.  The full moon was high.  The long white slender branches
+of a box-tree stirred gently overhead; the she-oaks in the creek
+sighed as they are always sighing, and the southern peak seemed ever
+so far away.
+
+    That has made me thine for ever!
+      Bonny Mary of Argyle.
+
+"Blarst my pipe!" exclaimed Mitchell, suddenly.  "I beg your
+pardon, Peter.  My pipe's always getting stuffed up," and he
+proceeded to shell out and clear his pipe.
+
+The breeze had changed and strengthened.  They heard the violin
+playing "Annie Laurie."
+
+"They must be having a Scotch night in that camp tonight," said
+Mitchell.  The voice came again:
+
+    Maxwelton Braes are bonny--
+      Where early fa's the dew,
+    For 'twas there that Annie Laurie
+      Gie me her promise true---
+
+Mitchell threw out his arm impatiently.  "I wish they wouldn't play
+and sing those old songs," he said.  "They make you think of damned
+old things.  I beg your pardon, Peter."
+
+Peter sat leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his
+hands fingering his cold pipe nervously.  His sad eyes had grown
+haggard and haunted.  It is in the hearts of exiles in new lands that
+the old songs are felt.
+
+"Take no thought of the morrow, Mitchell," said Peter, abstractedly.
+"I beg your pardon, Mitchell.  I mean---"
+
+"That's all right, Peter," said Mitchell.  "You're right; to-morrow
+is the past, as far as I'm concerned."
+
+ Peter blinked down at him as if he were a new species.
+
+"You're an odd young man, Mitchell," he said.  "You'll have to take
+care of that head of yours or you'll be found hanging by a
+saddle-strap to a leaning tree on a lonely track, or find yourself in
+a lunatic asylum before you're forty-five."
+
+"Or else I'll be a great man," said Mitchell.  "But--ah, well!"
+
+Peter turned his eyes to the fire and smiled sadly.  "Not enjoyment
+and not sorrow, is our destined end or way," he repeated to the fire.
+
+"But we get there just the same," said Mitchell, "destined or
+not."
+
+    But to live, that each to-morrow,
+      Finds us further than to-day!
+
+"Why, that just fits my life, Peter," said Mitchell.  "I might have
+to tramp two or three hundred miles before I get a cut* or a job,
+and if to-morrow didn't find me nearer than to-day I'd starve or die
+of thirst on a dry stretch."
+
+[ *  Cut--a pen or "stand" in a shearing shed ]
+
+"Why don't you get married and settle down, Mitchell?"  asked Peter,
+a little tired.  "You're a teetotaller."
+
+"If I got married I couldn't settle down," said Mitchell.  "I
+reckon I'd be the loneliest man in Australia."  Peter gave him a
+swift glance.  "I reckon I'd be single no matter how much married I
+might be.  I couldn't get the girl I wanted, and--ah, well!"
+
+Mitchell's expression was still quaintly humorous round the lower part
+of his face, but there was a sad light in his eyes.  The strange light
+as of the old dead days, and he was still young.
+
+The cornet had started in the surveyors' camp.
+
+"Their blooming tunes seem to fit in just as if they knew what we were
+talking about," remarked Mitchell.
+
+The cornet:
+
+    You'll break my heart, you little bird,
+    That sings upon the flowering thorn
+    Thou mind'st me of departed joys,
+    Departed never to return.
+
+"Damn it all," said Mitchell, sitting up, "I'm getting
+sentimental."  Then, as if voicing something that was troubling him,
+"Don't you think a woman pulls a man down as often as she lifts him
+up, Peter?"
+
+"Some say so," said Peter.
+
+"Some say so, and they write it, too," said Mitchell.
+
+"Sometimes it seems to me as if women were fated to drag a man down
+ever since Adam's time.  If Adam hadn't taken his wife's advice--but
+there, perhaps he took her advice a good many times and found it good,
+and, just because she happened to be wrong this time, and to get him
+into a hole, the sons of Adam have never let the daughters of Eve hear
+the last of it.  That's human nature."
+
+Jack Barnes, the young husband, who was suffering a recovery, had been
+very silent all the evening.  "I think a man's a fool to always
+listen to his wife's advice," he said, with the unreasonable
+impatience of a man who wants to think while others are talking.
+"She only messes him up, and drives him to the devil as likely as
+not, and gets a contempt for him in the end."
+
+Peter gave him a surprised, reproachful look, and stood up.  He paced
+backwards and forwards on the other side of the fire, with his hands
+behind his back for a while; then he came and settled himself on the
+log again and filled his pipe.
+
+"Yes," he said, "a man can always find excuses for himself when his
+conscience stings him.  He puts mud on the sting.  Man at large is
+beginning all over the world to rake up excuses for himself; he
+disguises them as `Psychological studies,' and thinks he is clean and
+clever and cultured, or he calls 'em problems--the sex problem, for
+instance, and thinks he is brave and fearless."
+
+Danny was in trouble again, and Peter went to him.  He complained that
+when he lay down he saw the faces worse, and he wanted to be propped
+up somehow, so Peter got a pack-saddle and propped the old man's
+shoulders up with that.
+
+"I remember," Peter began, when he came back to the fire, "I remember
+a young man who got married---"
+
+Mitchell hugged himself.  He knew Jack Barnes.  He knew that Jack had
+a girl-wife who was many times too good for him; that Jack had been
+wild, and had nearly broken her heart, and he had guessed at once that
+Jack had broken out again, and that Peter M'Laughlan was shepherding
+him home.  Mitchell had worked as mates with Jack, and liked him
+because of the good heart that was in him in spite of all; and,
+because he liked him, he was glad that Jack was going to get a
+kicking, so to speak, which might do him good. Mitchell saw it coming,
+as he said afterwards, and filled his pipe, and settled himself
+comfortably to listen.
+
+"I remember the case of a naturally selfish young man who got
+married" said Peter.  "He didn't know he was selfish; in fact, he
+thought he was too much the other way--but that doesn't matter now.
+His name was--well, we'll call him--we'll call him, `Gentleman Once.'"
+
+"Do you mean Gentleman Once that we saw drinking back at Thomas's
+shanty?" asked Joe.
+
+"No," said Peter, "not him.  There have been more than one in the
+bush who went by the nickname of `Gentleman Once.'  I knew one or two.
+It's a big clan, the clan of Gentleman Once, and scattered all over
+the world."
+
+"By the way," said Mitchell--"excuse me for interrupting,
+Peter--but wasn't old Danny, there, a gentleman once?  I've heard
+chaps say he was."
+
+"I know he was," said Peter.
+
+"Gentleman Once!  Who's talking about Gentleman Once?" said an awful
+voice, suddenly and quickly.  "About twenty or thirty years ago I was
+called Gentleman Once or Gentleman Jack, I don't know which--Get out!
+_Get out_, I say!  It's all lies, and you're the devil.  There's
+four devils sitting by the fire.  I see them."
+
+Two of the four devils by the fire looked round, rather startled.
+
+Danny was sitting up, his awful bloodshot eyes glaring in the
+firelight, and his ruined head looking like the bloated head of a
+hairy poodle that had been drowned and dried.  Peter went to the old
+man and soothed him by waving off the snakes and devils with his
+hands, and telling them to go.
+
+"I've heard Danny on the Gentleman Once racket before," remarked
+Mitchell.
+
+"Seems funny, doesn't it, for a man to be proud of the fact that he
+was called `Gentleman Once' about twenty years ago?"
+
+"Seems more awful than funny to me," said Joe.
+
+"You're right, Joe," said Mitchell.  "But the saddest things are
+often funny."
+
+When Peter came back he went on with his story, and was
+only interrupted once or twice by Danny waking up and calling him to
+drive off the snakes, and green and crimson dogs with crocodile heads,
+and devils with flaming tails, and those unpleasant sorts of things
+that force their company on boozers and madmen.
+
+"Gentleman Once," said Peter, "he came from the old country with a
+good education and no character.  He disgraced himself and family
+once too often and came, or was sent, out to Australia to reform.
+It's a great mistake.  If a man is too far gone, or hasn't the strength
+to live the past down and reform at home, he won't do it in a new
+country, unless a combination of circumstances compels him to it.
+A man rises by chance; just as often he falls by chance.  Some men
+fall into the habit of keeping steady and stick to it, for the
+novelty of it, until they are on their feet and in their sane minds
+and can look at the past, present and future sensibly.  I knew one
+case--But that's got nothing to do with the story.
+
+"Gentleman Once came out on the remittance system.  That system is
+fatal in nine cases out of ten.  The remittance system is an insult to
+any manhood that may be left in the black sheep, and an insult to the
+land he is sent to.  The cursed quarterly allowance is a stone round
+his neck which will drag him down deeper in a new land than he would
+have fallen at home.  You know that remittance men are regarded with
+such contempt in the bush that a man seldom admits he is one, save
+when he's drunk and reckless and wants money or credit.  When a
+ne'er-do-well lands in Melbourne or Sydney without a penny he will
+probably buck-up and do something for himself.  When he lands with
+money he will probably spend it all in the first few months and then
+straighten up, because he has to.  But when he lands on the remittance
+system he drinks, first to drown homesickness.  He decides that he'll
+wait till he gets his next quarter's allowance and then look round.
+He persuades himself that it's no use trying to do anything: that, in
+fact, he can't do anything until he gets his money.  When he gets it
+he drifts into one `last' night with chums he has picked up in second
+and third-rate hotels.  He drinks from pure selfishness.  No matter
+what precautions his friends at home take, he finds means of getting
+credit or drawing on his allowance before it is due--until he is two
+or three quarters behind.  He drinks because he feels happy and jolly
+and clever and good-natured and brave and honest while he is drinking.
+Later on he drinks because he feels the reverse of all these things
+when he is sober.  He drinks to drown the past and repentance.  He
+doesn't know that a healthy-minded man doesn't waste time in
+repenting.  He doesn't know how easy it is to reform, and is too
+weak-willed to try.  He gets a muddled idea that the past can't be
+mended.  He finds it easy to get drink and borrow money on the
+strength of his next quarter's allowance, so he soon gets a quarter or
+two behind, and sometimes gets into trouble connected with borrowed
+money.  He drifts to the bush and drinks, to drown the past only.  The
+past grows blacker and blacker until it is a hell without repentance;
+and often the black sheep gets to that state when a man dreads his
+sober hours.  And the end?  Well, you see old Danny there, and you saw
+old Awful Example back at Thomas's shanty--he's worse than Danny, if
+anything.  Sometimes the end comes sooner.  I saw a young
+new-land-new-leaf man dying in a cheap lodging-house in Sydney.  He
+was a schoolmate of mine, by the way.  For six weeks he lay on his
+back and suffered as I never saw a man suffer in this world; and I've
+seen some bad cases.  They had to chloroform him every time they
+wanted to move him.  He had affected to be hard and cynical, and I
+must say that he played it out to the end.  It was a strong character,
+a strong mind sodden and diseased with drink.  He never spoke of home
+and his people except when he was delirious.  He never spoke, even to
+me, of his mental agony.  That was English home training.  You young
+Australians wouldn't understand it; most bushmen are poets and
+emotional.
+
+"My old schoolmate was shifted to the Sydney Hospital at last, and
+consented to the amputation of one leg.  But it was too late.  He was
+gone from the hips down.  Drink--third-rate hotel and bush shanty
+drink--and low debauchery."
+
+Jack Barnes drew up his leg and rubbed it surreptitiously.  He had
+"pins and needles." Mitchell noticed and turned a chuckle into a
+grunt.
+
+"Gentleman Once was a remittance man," continued Peter.  "But
+before he got very far he met an Australian girl in a boarding-house.
+Her mother was the landlady.  They were bush people who had drifted to
+the city.  The girl was pretty, intelligent and impulsive.  She pitied
+him and nursed him.  He wasn't known as Gentleman Once then, he hadn't
+got far enough to merit the nickname."
+
+Peter paused.  Presently he jerked his head, as if he felt a spasm of
+pain, and leaned forward to get a stick from the fire to light his
+pipe.
+
+"Now, there's the girl who marries a man to reform him, and when she
+has reformed him never lets him hear the last of it.  Sometimes, as a
+woman, she drives him back again.  But this was not one of that sort
+of girls.  I once held a theory that sometimes a girl who has married
+a man and reformed him misses in the reformed man the something which
+attracted her in the careless scamp, the something which made her love
+him--and so she ceases to love him, and their married life is a far
+more miserable one than it would have been had he continued drinking.
+I hold no theory of that kind now.  Such theories ruin many married
+lives."
+
+Peter jerked his head again as if impatient with a thought, and
+reached for a fire-stick.
+
+"But that's got nothing to do with the story.  When Gentleman Once
+reformed his natural selfishness came back.  He saw that he had
+made a mistake.  It's a terrible thing for a young man, a few months,
+perhaps a few weeks after his marriage, to ask himself the question,
+`Have I made a mistake?'  But Gentleman Once wasn't to be pitied.
+He discovered that he had married beneath him in intellect and
+education.  Home training again.  He couldn't have discovered that
+he had married beneath him as far as birth was concerned, for his
+wife's father had been a younger son of an older and greater family
+than his own--But Gentleman Once wouldn't have been cad enough to
+bother about birth.  I'll do him that much justice.  He discovered,
+or thought he did, that he and his wife could never have one thought
+in common; that she couldn't possibly understand him.  I'll tell you
+later on whether he was mistaken or not.  He was gloomy most times,
+and she was a bright, sociable, busy little body.  When she tried to
+draw him out of himself he grew irritable.  Besides, having found
+that they couldn't have a thought in common he ceased to bother to
+talk to her.  There are many men who don't bother talking to their
+wives; they don't think their wives feel it--because the wives cease
+to complain after a while; they grow tired of trying to make the man
+realize how they suffer.  Gentleman Once tried his best--according to
+his lights--and weakness.  Then he went in for self-pity and all the
+problems.  He liked to brood, and his poor little wife's energy and
+cheerfulness were wearying to him.  He wanted to be left alone.
+They were both high-spirited, in different ways; she was highly strung
+and so was he--because of his past life mostly. They quarrelled badly
+sometimes.  Then he drank again and she stuck to him.  Perhaps the
+only time he seemed cheerful and affectionate was when he had a few
+drinks in him.  It was a miserable existence--a furnished room in a
+cheap lodging-house, and the use of the kitchen.
+
+"He drank alone.
+
+"Now a dipsomaniac mostly thinks he is in the right--except, perhaps,
+after he has been forced to be sober for a week.  The noblest woman in
+the world couldn't save him--everything she does to reform him
+irritates him; but a strong friend can save him sometimes--a man who
+has been through it himself.  The poor little wife of Gentleman Once
+went through it all.  And she stuck to him.  She went into low pubs
+after him."
+
+Peter shuddered again.  "She went through it all.  He swore promises.
+He'd come home sober and fill her with hope of future happiness, and
+swear that he'd never take another glass.  `And we'll be happy yet, my
+poor boy,' she'd say, `we'll be happy yet.  I believe you, I trust
+you' (she used to call him her `bonny boy' when they were first
+married).  And next night he'd come home worse than ever.  And one day
+he--he struck her!"
+
+Peter shuddered, head and shoulders, like a man who had accidentally
+smashed his finger.
+
+"And one day he struck her.  He was sober when he did it--anyhow he
+had not taken drink for a week.  A man is never sober who gets drunk
+more than once a week, though he might think he is.  I don't know how
+it happened, but anyway he struck her, and that frightened him.  He
+got a billet in the Civil Service up-country.  No matter in what town
+it was.  The little wife hoped for six months.
+
+"I think it's a cruel thing that a carelessly selfish young man
+cannot realize how a sensitive young wife suffers for months after he
+has reformed.  How she hopes and fears, how she dreads the moment he
+has to leave her, and frets every hour he is away from home--and
+suffers mental agony when he is late.  How the horror of the wretched
+old past time grows upon her until she dares not think of it.  How she
+listens to his step and voice and watches his face, when he comes
+home, for a sign of drink.  A young man, a mate of mine, who drank
+hard and reformed, used to take a delight in pretending for a few
+minutes to be drunk when he came home.  He was good-hearted, but
+dense.  He said he only did it to give his wife a pleasant surprise
+afterwards.  I thought it one of the most cruel things I had ever
+seen.
+
+"Gentleman Once found that he could not stand the routine of office
+work and the dull life in that place.  He commenced to drink again,
+and went on till he lost his billet.  They had a little boy, a bright
+little boy, yet the father drank.
+
+"The last spree was a terrible one.  He was away from home a
+fortnight, and in that fortnight he got down as deep as a man could
+get.  Then another man got hold of him and set him on his feet, and
+straightened him up.  The other man was a ruined doctor, a wreck whose
+devil was morphia.  I don't hold that a man's salvation is always in
+his own hands; I've seen mates pull mates out of hell too often to
+think that.
+
+"Then Gentleman Once saw the past as he had never seen it before--he
+saw hope for the future with it.  And he swore an oath that he felt he
+would keep.
+
+"He suffered from reaction on his way home, and, as he neared the
+town, a sudden fear, born of his nervous state, no doubt, sent a cold,
+sick emptiness through him: `Was it too late?'
+
+"As he turned into the street where he lived, he noticed a little
+group of bush larrikins standing at the corner.  And they moved
+uneasily when they caught sight of him, and, as he passed, they
+touched and lifted their hats to him.  Now he knew that he had lost
+the respect even of bush larrikins; and he knew enough of the bush to
+know that a bushman never lifts his hat to a man--only to death, and a
+woman sometimes.  He hurried home and read the truth in his wife's
+eyes.  His little boy was dead.  He went down under the blow, and she
+held his head to her breast and kept saying.  `My poor boy, my poor
+boy!'
+
+"It was he that she meant, not the boy she had lost.  She knew him,
+she understood him better than he did himself, and, heart-broken as
+she was, she knew how he was going to suffer, and comforted him.  `My
+poor boy, my poor, foolish boy!'
+
+"He mended the past, as far as he could, during the next two years,
+and she seemed happy.  He was very gentle, he was very kind to her.
+He was happy, too, in a new, strange way.  But he had learned what it
+was to suffer through his own fault, and now he was to learn what it
+was to suffer through no fault of his own, and without the consolation
+of saying `I was wrong!  I was to blame!'  At the end of the two years
+there was another child, and his wife died."
+
+The four sat silently smoking until Jack Barnes asked:
+
+"And what did he do then, Peter?"
+
+"Who?" said Peter, abstractedly.
+
+"Why, Gentleman Once."
+
+Peter roused himself.
+
+"Well, I've told the story, and it is about time to turn in," he
+said.  "I can't say exactly what Gentleman Once did when his wife
+died.  He might have gone down to a deeper depth than Danny's.  He
+might have risen higher than he had ever been before.  From what I
+knew of his character he would never have gone down an easy slope as
+Danny has done.  He might have dropped plump at first and then climbed
+up.  Anyway, he had the memory of the last two years to help him.
+
+"Then there's the reformed drunkard who has trained himself to take a
+drink when he needs it, to drink in moderation--he's the strongest
+character of all, I think--but it's time to turn in."
+
+The cornet up the creek was playing a march.
+
+Peter walked across and looked at Danny, who seemed to be sleeping as
+peacefully as could be expected of him.
+
+Jack Barnes got up and walked slowly down the creek in the moonlight.
+He wanted to think.
+
+Peter rolled out his blankets on the grass and arranged his
+saddle-bags for a pillow.  Before he turned in Mitchell shook hands
+with him, a most unusual and unnecessary proceeding in camp.  But
+there's something in the bush grip which means "I know," or "I
+understand."
+
+Joe Wilson rolled out his blankets close to Mitchell's camp; he wanted
+to enjoy some of Mitchell's quiet humour before he went to sleep, but
+Mitchell wasn't in a philosophical mood.  He wanted to reflect.
+
+"I wonder who Gentleman Once was?" said Joe to Mitchell.  "Could he
+have been Danny, or old Awful Example back there at the shanty?"
+
+"Dunno," said Mitchell.  He puffed three long puffs at his pipe, and
+then said, reflectively:
+
+"I've heard men tell their own stories before to-night Joe."
+
+It was Joe who wanted to think now.
+
+
+About four o'clock Mitchell woke and stood up.  Peter was lying rolled
+in his blanket with his face turned to the west.  The moon was low,
+the shadows had shifted back, and the light was on Peter's face.
+Mitchell stood looking at him reverently, as a grown son might who
+sees his father asleep for the first time.  Then Mitchell quietly got
+some boughs and stuck them in the ground at a little distance from
+Peter's head, to shade his face from the bright moonlight; and then he
+turned in again to sleep till the sun woke him.
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOSTS OF MANY CHRISTMASES
+
+
+Did you ever trace back your Christmas days?--right back to the days
+when you were innocent and Santa Claus was real.  At times you thought
+you were very wicked, but you never realize how innocent you were
+until you've grown up and knocked about the world.
+
+Let me think!
+
+Christmas in an English village, with bare hedges and trees, and
+leaden skies that lie heavy on our souls as we walk, with overcoat and
+umbrella, sons of English exiles and exiles in England, and think of
+bright skies and suns overhead, and sweeps of country disappearing
+into the haze, and blue mountain ranges melting into the azure of
+distant lower skies, and curves of white and yellow sand beaches, and
+runs of shelving yellow sandstone sea-walls--and the glorious Pacific!
+Sydney Harbour at sunrise, and the girls we took to Manly Beach.
+
+Christmas in a London flat.  Gloom and slush and soot.  It is not the
+cold that affects us Australians so much, but the horrible gloom.  We
+get heart-sick for the sun.
+
+Christmas at sea--three Christmases, in fact--one going saloon from
+Sydney to Westralia early in the Golden Nineties with funds; and one,
+the Christmas after next, coming back steerage with nothing but the
+clothes we'd slept in.  All of which was bad judgment on our part--the
+order and manner of our going and coming should have been reversed.
+
+Christmas in a hessian tent in "th' Westren," with so many old mates
+from the East that it was just old times over again.  We had five
+pounds of corned beef and a kerosene-tin to boil it in; and while we
+were talking of old things the skeleton of a kangaroo-dog grabbed the
+beef out of the boiling water and disappeared into the scrub--which
+made it seem more like old times than ever.
+
+Christmas going to New Zealand, with experience, by the s.s.
+_Tasmania_.  We had plum duff, but it was too "soggy" for
+us to eat.  We dropped it overboard, lest it should swamp the
+boat--and it sank to the ooze.  The Tasmania was saved on that
+occasion, but she foundered next year outside Gisborne.  Perhaps the
+cook had made more duff.  There was a letter from a sweetheart of mine
+amongst her mails when she went down; but that's got nothing to do
+with it, though it made some difference in my life.
+
+Christmas on a new telegraph line with a party of lining gangmen in
+New Zealand.  There was no duff nor roast because there was no
+firewood within twenty miles.  The cook used to pile armfuls of
+flax-sticks under the billies, and set light to them when the last man
+arrived in camp.
+
+Christmas in Sydney, with a dozen invitations out to dinner.  The one
+we accepted was to a sensible Australian Christmas dinner; a typical
+one, as it should be, and will be before the Commonwealth is many
+years old.  Everything cold except the vegetables, the hose playing on
+the veranda and vines outside, the men dressed in sensible pyjama-like
+suits, and the women and girls fresh and cool and jolly, instead of
+being hot and cross and looking like boiled carrots, and feeling like
+boiled rags, and having headaches after dinner, as would have been the
+case had they broiled over the fire in a hot kitchen all the blazing
+forenoon to cook a scalding, indigestible dinner, as many Australian
+women do, and for no other reason than that it was the fashion in
+England.  One of those girls was very pretty and--ah, well!--
+
+Christmas dinner in a greasy Sydney sixpenny restaurant, that opened a
+few days before with brass band going at full blast at the door by way
+of advertisement.  "Roast-beef, one!  Cabbage and potatoes, one!
+Plum pudding, two!"  (That was the first time I dined to music.)  The
+Christmas dinner was a good one, but my appetite was spoilt by the
+expression of the restaurant keeper, a big man with a heavy jowl, who
+sat by the door with a cold eye on the sixpences, and didn't seem to
+have much confidence in human nature.
+
+
+Christmas--no, that was New Year--on the Warrego River, out back (an
+alleged river with a sickly stream that looked like bad milk).  We
+spent most of that night hunting round in the dark and feeling on the
+ground for camel and horse droppings with which to build fires and
+make smoke round our camp to keep off the mosquitoes.  The mosquitoes
+started at sunset and left off at daybreak, when the flies got to work
+again.
+
+Christmas dinner under a brush shearing-shed.  Mutton and plum
+pudding--and fifty miles from beer!
+
+An old bush friend of mine, one Jimmy Nowlett, who ranked as a
+bullock-driver, told me of a Christmas time he had.  He was cut off by
+the floods with his team, and had nothing to eat for four days but
+potatoes and honey.  He said potatoes dipped in honey weren't so bad;
+but he had to sleep on bullock yokes laid on the ground to keep him
+out of the water, and he got a toothache that paralysed him all down
+one side.
+
+And speaking of plum pudding, I consider it one of the most barbarous
+institutions of the British.  It is a childish, silly, savage
+superstition; it must have been a savage inspiration, looking at it
+all round--but then it isn't so long since the British were savages.
+
+I got a letter last year from a mate of mine in Western
+Australia--prospecting the awful desert out beyond White
+Feather--telling me all about a "perish" he did on plum pudding.  He
+and his mates were camped at the Boulder Soak with some three or four
+hundred miles--mostly sand and dust--between them and the nearest
+grocer's shop.  They ordered a case of mixed canned provisions from
+Perth to reach them about Christmas.  They didn't believe in plum
+pudding--there are a good many British institutions that bushmen don't
+believe in but the cook was a new chum, and he said he'd go home to
+his mother if he didn't have plum pudding for Christmas, so they
+ordered a can for him.  Meanwhile, they hung out on kangaroo and
+damper and the knowledge that it couldn't last for ever.  It was in a
+terrible drought, and the kangaroos used to come into the "Soak" for
+water, and they were too weak to run.  Later on, when wells were dug,
+the kangaroos used to commit suicide in them--there was generally a
+kangaroo in the well in the morning.
+
+The storekeeper packed the case of tinned dog, etc., but by some
+blunder he or his man put the label on the wrong box, and it went per
+rail, per coach, per camel, and the last stage per boot, and reached
+my friends' camp on Christmas Eve, to their great joy.  My friend
+broke the case open by the light of the camp-fire.
+
+"Here, Jack!" he said, tossing out a can, "here's your plum
+pudding."
+
+He held the next can in his hand a moment longer and read the label
+twice.
+
+"Why! he's sent two," he said, "and I'm sure I only ordered one.
+Never mind--Jack'll have a tuck-out."
+
+He held the next can close to the fire and blinked at it hard.  "I'm
+damned if he hasn't sent three tins of plum pudding.  Never mind,
+we'll manage to scoff some of it between us.  You're in luck's way
+this trip, Jack, and no mistake."
+
+He looked harder still at the fourth can; then he read the labels on
+the other tins again to see if he'd made a mistake.
+
+He didn't tell me what he said then, but a milder mate suggested that
+the storekeeper had sent half a dozen tins by mistake.  But when they
+reached the seventh can the language was not even fit to be written
+down on a piece of paper and handed up to the magistrate.  The
+storekeeper had sent them an unbroken case of canned plum pudding, and
+probably by this time he was wondering what had become of that blanky
+case of duff.
+
+The kangaroos disappeared about this time and my friend tells me that
+he and his mates had to live for a mortal fortnight on canned plum
+pudding.  They tried it cold and they tried it boiled, they tried it
+baked, they had it fried, and they had it toasted, they had it for
+breakfast, dinner and tea.  They had nothing else to think, or talk,
+or argue and quarrel about; and they dreamed about it every night, my
+friend says.  It wasn't a joke--it gave them the nightmare and
+day-horrors.
+
+They tried it with salt.  They picked as many of the raisins out as
+they could and boiled it with salt kangaroo.  They tried to make
+Yorkshire pudding out of it; but it was too rich.
+
+My friend was experimenting and trying to discover a simple process
+for separating the ingredients of plum pudding when a fresh supply of
+provisions came along.  He says he was never so sick of anything in
+his life, and he has had occasion to be sick of a good many things.
+
+The new-chum jackaroo is still alive, but he won't ever eat plum
+pudding any more, he says.  It cured him of homesickness.  He wouldn't
+eat it even if his bride made it.
+
+
+Christmas on the goldfields in the last of the roaring days, in the
+palmy days of Gulgong and those fields.  Let's see! it must be nearly
+thirty years ago! Oh, how the time goes by!
+
+Santa Claus, young, fresh-faced and eager; Santa Claus, blonde and
+flaxen; Santa Claus, dark; Santa Claus with a brogue and Santa Claus
+speaking broken English; Santa Claus as a Chinaman (Sun Tong Lee &
+Co. storekeepers), with strange, delicious sweets that melted in our
+mouths, and rum toys and Chinese dolls for the children.
+
+
+Lucky diggers who were with difficulty restrained from putting pound
+notes and nuggets and expensive lockets and things into the little
+ones' stockings.  Santa Claus in flannel shirt and clay-covered
+moleskins.  Diggers who bought lollies by the pound and sent the
+little ones home with as much as they could carry.
+
+Diggers who gave a guinea or more for a toy for a child that reminded
+them of some other child at home.  Diggers who took as many children
+as they could gather on short notice into a store, slapped a
+five-pound note down on the counter and told the little ones to call
+for whatever they wanted.  Who set a family of poor children side by
+side on the counter and called for a box of mixed children's
+boots--the best--and fitted them on with great care and anxiety and
+frequent inquiries as to whether they pinched.  Who stood little girls
+and boys on the counter and called for the most expensive frocks, the
+latest and best in sailor suits, and the brightest ribbons; and things
+came long distances by bullock dray and were expensive in those days.
+Impressionable diggers--and most of them were--who threw nuggets to
+singers, and who, sometimes, slipped a parcel into the hands of a
+little boy or girl, with instructions to give it to an elder sister
+(or young mother, perhaps) whom the digger had never spoken to, only
+worshipped from afar off.  And the elder sister or young mother,
+opening the parcel, would find a piece of jewellery or a costly
+article of dress, and wonder who sent it.
+
+Ah, the wild generosity of luck-intoxicated diggers of those days!
+and the reckless generosity of the drinkers.  "We thought it was
+going to last for ever!"
+
+"If I don't spend it on the bairns I'll spend it on the drink,"
+Sandy Burns used to say.  "I ha' nane o' me own, an' the lass who was
+to gi' me bairns, she couldn't wait."
+
+Sandy had kept steady and travelled from one end of the world to the
+other, and roughed it and toiled for five years, and the very day he
+bottomed his golden hole on the Brown Snake Lead at Happy Valley he
+got a letter from his girl in Scotland to say she had grown tired of
+waiting and was married.  Then he drank, and drink and luck went
+together.
+
+Gulgong on New Year's Eve!  Rows and rows of lighted tents and
+camp-fires, with a clear glow over it all.  Bonfires on the hills and
+diggers romping round them like big boys.  Tin kettling--gold dishes
+and spoons, and fiddles, and hammers on pointing anvils, and sticks
+and empty kerosene-tins (they made a row); concertinas and cornets,
+shot-guns, pistols and crackers, all sorts of instruments, and "Auld
+Lang Syne" in one mighty chorus.  And now--a wretched little pastoral
+town; a collection of glaring corrugated-iron hip-roofs, and maybe a
+rotting propped-up bark or weather-board humpy or two--relics of the
+roaring days; a dried-up storekeeper and some withered hags; a waste
+of caved-in holes with rain-washed mullock heaps and quartz and gravel
+glaring in the sun; thistles and burrs where old bars were; drought,
+dryness, desolation and goats.
+
+Lonely graves in the bush and grey old diggers here and there,
+anywhere in the world, doing anything for a living, lonely yet because
+of the girls who couldn't wait, but prospecting and fossicking here
+and there, and dreaming still.
+
+They thought it was going to last for ever.
+
+
+Christmas at Eurunderee Creek, amongst the old selection farms in the
+western spurs of the Blue Mountains.  They used to call it "Th'
+Pipeclay" thirty years ago, but the old black names have been
+restored.  They make plum puddings yet, weeks beforehand, and boil
+them for hours and hang them in cloths to the rafters to petrify; then
+they take them down and boil them again.  On Christmas Eve the boys
+cut boughs or young pines on the hills, and drag them home and lash
+them to the veranda-posts.
+
+Ted has turned up with his wife and children from his selection out
+back.  The wheat is in and shearing is over on the big stations.
+Tom--steady-going old Tom--clearing or fencing or dam-sinking
+up-country, hides his tools in the scrub and gets his horse and rides
+home.  Aunt Emma (to everyone's joy) has arrived from Sydney with
+presents (astonishing bargains in frocks, etc.) and marvellous
+descriptions of town life.
+
+Joe, "poor" Mary's husband, who has been droving in Queensland since
+the Christmas before last--while poor Mary, who is afraid to live
+alone, shared a skillion and the family quarrels at home--Joe rides
+day and night and reaches home at sunrise on Christmas morning, tired
+and dusty, gaunt and haggard, but with his last cheque intact.  He
+kisses his wife and child and throws himself on the bed to sleep till
+dinner-time, while Mary moves round softly, hushes the baby, dresses
+it and herself, lays out Joe's clean things, and bends over him now
+and then, and kisses him, perhaps, as he sleeps.
+
+In the morning the boys and some of the men go down to the creek for a
+swim in the big shady pool, under the she-oaks and take their Sunday
+clothes with them and dress there.
+
+Some of them ride into town to church, and some of the women and
+children drive in in spring-carts--the children to go to Sunday
+school, leaving mother and the eldest daughter--usually a hard-worked,
+disappointed, short-tempered girl--at home to look after the cooking.
+
+There is some anxiety (mostly on mother's part) about Jim, who is
+"wild," and is supposed to be somewhere out back.  There was "a
+piece of blue paper" out for Jim on account of sweating (illegally
+using) a horse, but his mother or father has got a hint--given in a
+kindly way by the police-sergeant--that Jim is free to come home and
+stay at home if he behaves himself.  (There is usually a horse missing
+when Jim goes out back.)
+
+Jim turns up all right--save that he has no money--and is welcomed
+with tearful affection by his favourite sister Mary, shakes hands
+silently with his father, and has a long whispered conversation with
+his mother, which leaves him very subdued.  His brothers forbear to
+sneer at him, partly because it is Christmas, partly on mother's
+account, and thirdly, because Jim can use his hands.  Aunt Emma, who
+is fond of him, cheers him up wonderfully.
+
+The family sit down to dinner.  "An old mate of your father's"--a
+bearded old digger--has arrived and takes the place of honour.  ("I
+knowed yer father, sonny, on the diggings long afore any of you was
+ever thought on.")
+
+The family have only been a few hours together, yet there is an
+undercurrent of growling, that, to the stranger, mysterious yet
+evident undercurrent of nastiness and resentment which goes on in all
+families and drags many a promising young life down.  But Aunt Emma
+and the old mate make things brighter, and so the dinner--of hot roast
+and red-hot plum pudding--passes off fairly well.
+
+The men sleep the afternoon away and wake up bathed in perspiration
+and helpless; some of the women have headaches.  After tea they gather
+on the veranda in the cool of the evening, and that's the time when
+the best sides of their natures and the best parts of the past have a
+chance of coming uppermost, and perhaps they begin to feel a bit sorry
+that they are going to part again.
+
+The local races or "sports" on Boxing Day.  There is nothing to keep
+the boys home over New Year.  Ted and his wife go back to their lonely
+life on their selection; Tom returns to his fencing or tank-sinking
+contract; Jim, who has borrowed "a couple of quid" from Tom, goes
+out back with strong resolutions for the New Year, and shears
+"stragglers," breaks in horses, cooks and clerks for survey parties,
+and gambles and drinks, and gets into trouble again.  Maybe Joe
+"knocks about" the farm a bit before going into the Great North-West
+with another mob of cattle.
+
+The last time I saw the Old Year out at Eurunderee the bushfires were
+burning all over the ranges, and looked like great cities lighted up.
+No need for bonfires then.  Christmas in Bourke, the metropolis of the
+great pastoral scrubs and plains, five hundred miles west, with the
+thermometer one-hundred-and-something-scarey in the shade.  The rough,
+careless shearers come in from stations many dusty miles out in the
+scrubs to have their Christmas sprees, to drink and "shout" and
+fight--and have the horrors some of them--and be run in and locked up
+with difficulty, within sound of a church-going bell.
+
+The Bourke Christmas is a very beery and exciting one.  The hotels
+shut up in front on Christmas Day to satisfy the law (or out of
+consideration for the feelings of the sergeant in charge of the police
+station), and open behind to satisfy the public, who are supposed to
+have made the law.
+
+Sensible cold dinners are the fashion in Bourke, I think, with the
+hose going, and free-and-easy costumes.
+
+The free males take their blankets and sleep in the "park;" the
+women sleep with doors and windows open, and the married men on
+mattresses on the verandas across the open doors--in case of
+accidents.
+
+Christmas in Sydney, though Christmas holidays are not so popular as
+Easter, or even Anniversary Day, in the Queen city of the South.
+Buses, electric, cable and the old steam trams crowded with
+holiday-makers with baskets.  Harbour boats loaded down to the water's
+edge with harbour picnic-parties.  "A trip round the harbour and to
+the head of Middle Harbour one shilling return!"  Strings of tourist
+trains running over the Blue Mountains and the Great Zigzag, and up
+the coast to Gosford and Brisbane Water, and down the south coast to
+beautiful Illawarra, until after New Year.  Hundreds of young fellows
+going out with tents to fish in lonely bays or shoot in the mountains,
+and rough it properly like bushmen--not with deck chairs, crockery, a
+piano and servants.  For you can camp in the grand and rugged solitude
+of the bush within a stone's throw of the city, so to speak.
+
+Jolly camps and holiday parties all round the beautiful bays of the
+harbour, and up and down the coast, and all close to home.  Camps in
+the moonlight on sandy beaches under great dark bluffs and headlands,
+where yellow, shelving, sandstone cliffs run, broken only by
+sandy-beached bays, and where the silver-white breakers leap and roar.
+
+And Manly Beach on a holiday!  Thousands of people in fresh summer
+dress, hundreds of bare-legged, happy children running where the
+"blue sea over the white sand rolls," racing in and out with the
+rollers, playing with the glorious Pacific.  Manly--"Our Village"
+--Manly Beach, where we used to take our girls, with the most
+beautiful harbour in the world on one side, and the width of the
+grandest ocean on the other.  Ferny gullies and "fairy dells" to
+north and south, and every shady nook its merry party or happy couple.
+
+Manly Beach--I remember five years ago (oh, how the time goes
+by!)--and two names that were written together in the sand when the
+tide was coming in.  And the boat home in the moonlight, past the
+Heads, where we felt the roll of the ocean, and the moonlit
+harbour--and the harbour lights of Sydney--the grandest of them all.
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Henry Lawson  17th June 1867 - 2nd September 1922.
+
+These stories were first published as a collection in 1902.
+Republished as "Send Round the Hat" and "The Romance of
+the Swag" in 1907.
+
+
+
+Notes on Australianisms. Based on my own speech over the years, with
+some checking in the dictionaries, e.g. "Macquarie Book of Slang"
+(2000), Oxford English Dictionary.  Not all of these are peculiar to
+Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry
+overtones.
+
+
+ anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream.
+   The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then
+   rejoins.  See billabong.
+ Barcoo-rot. "Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands,
+   and often originating in abrasions".  (Morris, Australian
+   English).  Barcoo is a river in Queensland.
+ billabong.  Based on an aboriginal word.  Sometimes used for an
+   anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts
+   especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream.
+   It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.
+ blackfellow: condescending for Australian Aboriginal
+ blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to
+   break a workers' strike.  As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up
+   on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never
+   cross a picket line.  Also scab.
+ blanky or  --- :  Fill in your own favourite word.  Usually however used
+   for "bloody"--see crimson/gory.
+ blooming: actually used in speech instead of "bloody" (see crimson).
+ bluey: swag.  Explanation in Lawson's "The romance of the Swag" here.
+ bob: one shilling
+ bullocky: Bullock driver.  A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to
+   wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions.  Proverbially rough and
+   foul mouthed.
+ bummer:  A cadger or bludger.  Someone who begs for food.  Interesting
+   Americanism already.  Also, tramp. (Different meaning today)
+ bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert
+   regions (cf. `mulga' and `mallee'), and hence equivalent to
+   "outback".  Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the
+   bush") and scrubby forest.
+ bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires.
+ bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from
+   cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy")
+ bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the `bush'--
+   scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks.
+   Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned
+   Kelly--but usually very violent.
+ bunyip: Aboriginal monster, inhabiting waterholes, billabongs
+   particularly.  Adopted into European legends.
+ caser: Five shillings (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the
+   pound ("quid")).  As a coin, a crown piece.
+ chaffing: teasing, mocking good-humouredly
+ churchyarder: Sounding as if dying--ready for the churchyard = cemetery
+ crimson = gory: literary substitutes for "bloody"--the "colonial oath",
+   unacceptable in polite company.  Why, is a complete mystery.
+   Popularly explained as contraction of "by Our Lady".   Unproved.
+   In reproducing (badly) a German's pronunciation of Australian,
+   Lawson retains the word, but spells it "pluddy".
+ dood: Dude.  A classy/cool dresser.
+ drover: one who "droves"
+ droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were
+   fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.
+ fiver: a five pound note
+ gory, see crimson
+ Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney
+ humpy: rough shack
+ half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence.  As a coin, a half-crown.
+ jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early
+   days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a
+   sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".)
+ jim-jams: the horrors, d.t.'s
+ jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: "where's that
+   jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag".)
+ larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member
+   of a gang ("push").  Was considered a major social problem in
+   Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The _Bulletin_, a magazine in
+   which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the "aggressive,
+   soft-hatted stoush brigade".  Anyone today who is disrespectful of
+   authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the
+   Australian character.
+ lucerne: Alfalfa in US
+ mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under
+   harsh rainfall conditions.  Usually many stems emerging from the
+   ground, creating a low thicket.
+ mateship: See Lawson story, "Mateship".  A heavily romanticised,
+   but nevertheless very practical form of (male) loyalty to a (male)
+   companion who travels with/works with him.  A "mate" provides not
+   only companionship, but help in emergencies.  Typical of an
+   Australian in the "outback"--or "Never-Never", or under war
+   conditions.  A man without a mate was a "hatter"--"his hat
+   covers his family".  Such a person might go "ratty" (see further
+   in The romance of the Swag).
+   Equivalent to the "buddy system" in SCUBA diving.
+ metalled: of a road, covered in crushed rock (e.g. "blue metal")
+ mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura;
+   growing in semi-desert conditions.  Used as a description of such
+   a harsh region.
+ mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed.  In Lawson
+   generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock
+ myall: aboriginal living in a traditional--pre-conquest--manner
+ nobbler: a drink
+ nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled
+ pastoralist: OED sees it a equivalent to "squatter", but in
+   Lawson someone often someone managing a large cattle/sheep
+   "station"  for a "pastoral company" rather than an individual.
+   Seen as ultimate capitalist oppression.
+ pluddy: see crimson
+ quid: monetary unit; one pound
+ ratty: insane--or, very eccentric, "cranky".
+ ringer: the champion sheep shearer in a shed that season
+ rouseabout: Labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed.  Considered to be,
+   as far as any work is, unskilled labour.
+ sawney: silly, gormless
+ scab: see blackleg
+ shout: In a group; to stand (pay for) a round of drinks.  Bad form
+   to leave before your turn comes around.  Much peer pressure to
+   drink more than one wished.  One can also "shout" for everyone
+   in the pub.
+ skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of
+   some other building, with separate roof.
+ spifflicated: punished, thrashed without mercy.
+ spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks.
+ squatter: Someone who took up large areas of land, originally without
+   official permission ("squatted"), for sheep especially.  Became
+   the "landed aristocracy" of Australia.
+   ("Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred")
+ steever: Originally a Dutch coin.  Used here like "penny"--or brass razoo.
+ sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a
+   "handout".  Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who
+   turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for "tea" i.e. the
+   evening meal. Line (2494) of actual text (not counting
+   P.G. matter).
+ swagman (swaggy):  Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback"
+   with  a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag".)   Lawson also
+   restricts  it at times  to those whom he considers to be tramps,
+   not  looking for work but for "handouts".  In view of the Great
+   Depression  (1890->.  In 1892 it was reckoned 1/3 men were out of
+   work)  perhaps unfairly.  Perhaps because he _was_ there.
+   See `travellers'.
+ Tattersalls: The earliest public lottery in Australia. (1881)
+ tenner: a ten pound note.
+ tin-kettling: making noise by striking metal pots/pans.  May be
+   celebratory (weddings--in this collection, New Year's Eve), or may
+   indicate extreme social disapproval of someone.
+ travellers:  "shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work" (Lawson).
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Children of the Bush, by Henry Lawson
+
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