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.