CHAPTER VII

The reader, however unruly under weaker management, is by this time made aware

of a power, beyond his own likes and dislikes, controlling the selection

and treatment of these informal annals. That power, in the nature of things,

resides napoleonically with myself, and has, I trust, been exercised toward

the information and edification of the few who fall under its jurisdiction--

suggesting, as it does, Tom Hood's idea of perfect rule: An angel from heaven,

and a despotism.

Encouraged by this assurance, and prompted, as usual, by a refinement which

some might construe into fastidiousness, I shall once more avail myself

of the prerogative hitherto so profitably sustained. The routine record

of March 9 is not a desirable text. It would merely call forth from

fitting oblivion the lambing-down of two stalwart fencers by a pimply old

shanty-keeper; and you know this sort of thing has been described ad sickenum

by other pens, less proper than mine--described, in fact, till you would think

that, in the back-country, drinking took the place of Conduct, as three-fourths

of life; whilst the remaining fourth consisted of fighting. Whereas,

outside the shearing season, you might travel a hundred miles, calling at

five shanties, without seeing a man the worse for drink; and you would be still

more likely to go a thousand miles, calling at fifty shanties, without seeing

any indication of a fight. Of course, there are some queer tragedies,

and many melancholy farces, enacted at the shanties; but speaking in a broad,

statistical way, the shanty-keeper gets such a miserably small percentage

of the money earned out-back that he usually lives in saint-like indigence,

and dies in the odour of very inferior liquor. Here and there, the exceptional

case of a shanty-keeper retiring on his Congealed Ability goes to show

the fatuity of the curse--hypothesis, rounding us up on the one unassailable

bit of standing-ground, namely, that such is life.

It would do you no good to hear how the old Major (he was an ex-officer

of the Imperial army) fawned on my officialship, and threw himself in rapport

with my gentlemanship--how his haggard, handsome wife leered at me

over his shoulder--how the open-hearted asses of fencers, in weary alternation,

confidentially told me fragmentary and idiotic yarns--how they shook hands

with me till I was tired, and wept over me till I was disgusted--how they

irrelevantly and profusely apologised for anything they might have said,

and abjectly besought me, if I felt anyway nasty, to take it out of their

(adj.) hides--I say, it would do you no good.

So, for this and two other reasons, I shall take as my text the entry of

March 28, and a portion of the following verse. This arbitrary departure

in dates will give you another glimpse of Alf Jones. Also, the peculiar

scythe-sweep of my style of narrative will take in a rencontre with

another person, to whom, in your helpless state as a reader, you have already

been introduced. And if you take it not patiently, the more is your mettle.

FRI. MARCH 28. Wilcannia shower. Jack the Shellback.

SAT. MARCH 29. To Runnymede. Tom Armstrong and mate.

I had spent the night of the 27th at Burke's camp, on Boottara; my horses

faring decently for the season. Burke, the regular station-contractor,

had been off work for a month, keeping his twenty horses and twenty-four

bullocks in the Abbotsford Paddock, and watering them daily at Granger's Tank.

The Abbotsford Paddock, having gone dry in the spring, had fair grass in it,

but, of course, no station stock.

In spite of all the loafing I could do, the season was telling on my horses.

Their hoofs were worn to the similitude of quoits; you could count their ribs

a quarter of a mile off; and they had acquired that crease down the hip

pathetically known as 'the poor man's stripe.' Cleopatra's bucking had become

feeble and mechanical, and so transparently stagey that I used to be ashamed

of it. Still, my aversion to lending the horse, or having him duffed,

compelled me to keep his performance up to the highest standard compatible

with justice to himself.

Runnymede homestead--to which that strange fatality was again driving me--

was thirty miles from Burke's camp; but, by losing a few miles in a

slight detour, I could make a twenty-mile stage to Alf Jones's, and, next day,

a fifteen-mile stage to the station. This rate of travelling, with frequent

holidays, was fast enough for a man without official hopes, or corresponding

fear of the sack. If Alf was gone, so much the better for himself; if he was

still in the old spot, so much the better for me. That was the way

I looked at it.

In view of the soul-destroying ignorance which saturates society,

it may be well to repeat that this central point of the universe,

Riverina Proper, consists of a wide promontory of open and level plain,

coming in from the south-west; broken, of course, by many pine ridges,

clumps of red box, patches of scrub or timber, and the inevitable red gum flats

which fringe the rivers. Eastward, the plain runs out irregularly into

open forests of white box, pine, and other timber. Northward--something over

a couple of hundred miles from the Murray--the tortuous frontier of boundless

scrub meets the plain with the abruptness of a wall. Boottara is half plain

and half scrub; Runnymede is practically all plain.

When I left Burke's camp, heading south-west for Alf's paddock, there was

a strong, dry, and--as it seemed to me then--useless, north-west wind

tearing through the tops of the trees. I thought it might lull before I left

the shelter of the scrub, but it only increased. The willowy foliage

of the scattered myalls on the plain stood out horizontally to leeward;

and an endless supply of lightly-bounding roley-poleys were chasing each other

across the level ground. I lashed my hat on with a handkerchief, one side

of the brim being turned down to keep some of the sand and dust out of

my weather-ear. The horses, with ears flattened backward and muzzles

slanted out to leeward, caught the storm on their polls, and, leaning sideways

against the still-increasing pressure, pushed on gallantly. They remembered

Alf's grass as well as I remembered his music.

About mid-day--having crossed the main track diagonally, without seeing it--

I came upon the portable engine and centrifugal pump belonging to Runnymede,

set up for work at Patagonia Tank.

On a well-managed station, like Runnymede, a tank is, whenever possible,

excavated on the margin of a swamp. The clay extracted is formed into

a strong wall, or enclosing embankment, a couple of yards back from the edge

of the excavation; and under this wall, an iron pipe connects the swamp

with the tank. The swamp being full, and the water in the tank having reached

the same level, the outer end of the pipe is closed, and the portable

pumping plant sent out to fill the space inside the wall, thus doubling

the capacity of the tank.

Three days before the time I speak of, a thunderstorm of a few miles' area

had filled the Patagonia Swamp; and Montgomery, dreading a rainless winter,

had seized the opportunity to secure a supply of water. The pumping plant

had been set-up on the evening before, but not started; and now the wind

had swept all the water to the other end of the swamp. The engine-driver

and his mate had struck their tent to prevent its being blown away, and were

lying in the lee of the tank wall, trying to get a smoke.

Young Mooney had come early from the station, to see how the pump started,

and had been drawn into a controversy with his half-broken colt; the point

in dispute being whether it was safe to go within forty yards of the engine.

Mooney had maintained the affirmative, and the colt, the negative.

The Pure Logic which the colt had opposed to Mooney's Applied Logic had

ultimately prevailed, and the narangy had withdrawn from the argument

on his ear, whilst the colt had disappeared through the rising dust-storm.

Now Mooney was sitting in the lee of the embankment, cursing the day

he elected to be a squatter rather than a clergyman.

I watered my horses and Pup at the tank, condoled with Mooney, joined the two

other chaps in severe criticism on the weather, replenished my water-bag,

and passed on. I may add that the pump was n't started on that occasion

at all; the water being blown clean out of the swamp, and scattered,

fine as dust, through the thirsty atmosphere.

The steady intensity of the shower augmented as I went on. It got under

my hat, and the next moment that product of German industry was flying

across the wilderness, for the good of trade. At last I had to give-in.

The increasing broadside pressure, with the sand and dust, was becoming

too much for the horses; and, in any case, I should have had to stop

on Pup's account. I turned Cleopatra's head to leeward, and began carefully

to dismount. But the wind ballooned the back of my coat and the right branch

of my other garment, and I went three yards through the air, like a bird shot

on the wing. Recovering foothold, I fought my way to Bunyip,

and relieved him of his pack. Then, with Cleopatra's rein over my arm,

I sat down on the ground to see it out. At this low elevation,

the air was thick with skipping crumbs of hard dirt, which rattled on my skull

like hail; in fact, everything not anchored to the ground was at racing speed,

and all in the same direction.

But this strong, thirsty wind, coming from the north-western deserts

with a clear fetch of a thousand miles, was not going to last many hours;

meantime, I set myself to work out scientifically its genesis, operation,

and hidden purpose. The first and second considerations were merely matters

of research and calculation; the third was largely speculative, admitting of

no more definite conclusion than that the time had come when hygienic

necessities required a thorough rousing and ridding-out of microbes, bacteria,

and other pests too minute to be worth particularising. But I was better

enlightened before another day had gone over my head.

Whilst engaged in these not unpleasing studies, I caught a momentary glimpse

of something, ten yards away to the left, which seemed to be moving slowly

against the wind. The volume of flying dust was, of course, far from uniform

in density; and presently I caught sight of the object again. It was a man,

creeping slowly and painfully across the stubbly knobs of cotton-bush

on his hands and knees. I hailed him in a voice that took the skin off

my throat, but another glimpse showed him still travelling; his head bent

almost to the ground. I rose carefully to my feet, facing the shower,

but only to be hurled down on top of the faithful Pup, and savagely snapped at.

Then I went like a quadruped till I reached the wayfarer, and caught him

by the ankle. He looked round; I beckoned, and crept back to my former seat,

whilst he followed close behind. Then a bearded, haggard, resolute face,

framed by an old hat tied down over the ears, confronted me.

"You look like some worn and weary brother, pulling hard against the stream,"

I shouted.

The dry, cracked lips moved without speech, and the bloodshot eyes left my face

to scan the pack-saddle beside me.

"Water?" I suggested.

He nodded. Cleopatra was close behind me, propped against the wind.

I drew myself up by the near stirrup, till I could unbuckle the water-bag

from the cantle. Though filled with half a gallon of water not two hours

before, it was now half-empty. I drew the cork; my visitor clasped the cool,

damp canvas between his trembling hands, and, with fine self-control,

barely wetted his lips again and again. At last he took a moderate drink.

"Making for Patagonia Tank," he hoarsely remarked.

"You were going past it. It 's about a mile and a half straight across there.

I've just come from it."

"Disappointed of water last night," he continued. "It was dark when I struck

the little tank I was making for, and I found her dry; and my throat

like a lime-kiln. Too dog-tired to go any further, so I rested till morning,

and then struck for the Patagonia, with a devil of a headache to help me along.

I knew of another tank nearer, but I would n't trust myself to find her

in the dust. I helped to sink the Patagonia. Fine tank--ain't she?"

"First-class. Have you no swag?"

"I had a very good one a few hours ago, but Lord knows where she is now.

I left her behind when the wind put me on all-fours. Kept pretty well

in the same quarter, I think?"

"About the same."

"That'll be a bit of a guide. You'll be staying here till she slackens-down?'

"There's nothing else I can do."

"Well, I'll stay with you. If you shoot me straight for the swamp I'll be

right. I'll spell to-night at the tank, and then have a try for my swag."

"You'll find two very decent coves camped at the tank, with the engine

and pump. They'll put you on your feet."

"Good again."

"Which way are you travelling?" I asked.

"Any way. Work's scarce; contractors camped for want of water; too late

for burr-cutting; nothing doing. I wish to God the rabbits would come

something worth while."

And so the profitless conversation (conversation is generally profitless)

went on by fits and starts, till the sand and dirt-pellets ceased to drift.

Half-an-hour later, it was an almost perfect calm, though the air was still

charged with dust.

By this time, I had re-packed, and was ready to start. My guest was now

on his feet, but shaky enough. With Bligh-like impartiality, I meted out

half a pint of water to him, the same quantity to Pup, and the remaining

quarter-pint to myself.

"Got a bit of tobacco to spare?" he asked. "Mine's all in my swag."

"Certainly," I replied. "Are you hard-up? Because I can lend you five bob

till we meet again."

"No, thank-you. I 've got a couple or three notes left, and even if I hadn't,

I'd think twice before I touched your money. Money's a peculiar thing."

"Especially in the sense of being peculiar to certain sections of society,"

I replied. "Now strike straight across there, and you'll fetch the tank

in a mile and a half."

"What's your name?" he demanded, as I placed my foot in the stirrup.

"Collins."

"Well, so-long!"

"So-long."

My horses went off freely. I struck the wicket-gate with accuracy and

bowled on toward the declining sun, which showed dull and coppery through

suspended dust; till, just at that hour which calls the faithful Mussulman

to prayer, and the no less faithful sundowner to the station store,

I reached my destination.

One glance was enough. Two strange horses were in the paddock;

the kerosene-tins still stood in the sheltered angle by the chimney,

but the flowers were dead; the smooth-trodden radius round the door

was no longer swept except by the winds of heaven, and was becoming a midden

whence antiquaries of future ages might sift out priceless relics

with unpronounceable names. A strange dog came to the door-step, gave a

single bark, and re-entered; then Jack the Shellback appeared, and,

recognising me, got a larger quantity of profanity and indecency into

his cordial welcome than you might think possible. Scarce as water was,

he cursed me into washing the sand out of my hair with two consecutive goes

of the precious liquid, whilst he swore the saddles of my horses,

and obscene-languaged some supper for me. Even before the shower,

the whole area of my mortal shrine, back from high-water mark round neck

and wrists, had been pistol-proof with a thousand samples of dust,

patiently collected over the same number of miles; but that did n't trouble me.

I could get rid of it--along with much moral and mental virtue,

unfortunately--possibly at the Runnymede swimming-hole, or failing that,

at the place where the Lachlan had been.

"Stiff little breeze we had," I remarked, as I sat down to supper.

"Well, no," replied Jack, in reluctant and compassionate negative;

and this was the only part of his long reply fit to place before

the sanctimonious reader. He went on to tell me, in the vulgar tongue,

that if I had ever been at sea, I would think nothing of a whiff like that.

He told me of storms he had weathered--particularly, one off Christiana Cooner,

a solitary island in the south Atlantic--and the effect of his discourse

is that I have ever since been careful, in the company of sailors,

to avoid speaking of the winds I have encountered.

"I'll fix you up for a hat," he continued, in language of matchless force

and piquancy. "Bend her; she'll about fit you. I dropped across her one day

I was in the road-paddock."

'She' was a drab belltopper, in perfect preservation, with a crown

nothing less than a foot and a half high, and a narrow, wavy brim.

She proved a perfect fit when I 'bent' her. I wore her afterward for many

a week, till one night she rolled away from my camp, and I saw her no more,

though I sought her diligently. Take her for all in all, I shall not

look upon her like again.

"Now, if you'd a pair o' skylights athort your cutwater, you'd be set up

for a professor of phrenology, or doxology, or any other ology,"

suggested Jack, with one oath, two unseemly expletives, and two obscenities.

"How is that for high?" I asked, putting on a pair of large, round,

clouded lenses, which my experience of ophthalmia has warned me to carry

continually. Then, without interrupting my good host's torrent of unrepeatable

congratulation, I turned aside and unstrapped a portion of Bunyip's pack.

Presently I advanced and resumed my seat, with the ancestor of all pipes

pendent from my mouth. The hat, glasses, and pipe chorded (if I may use

that expression) so perfectly that Jack's merriment died-away in

a reverent petition to be struck dead.

The pipe has already been referred-to in these annals. It was probably

the most artistic, the most opulent-looking, the most scholarly,

the most imposing, and, from a Darwinian point of view, the most

highly specialised, meerschaum ever seen on earth. It was a pipe such as

no smoker parts with during life, but bequeaths to his best-beloved son--

a pipe such as would make any man wish to have a Benjamin, but for the fear

that the heir-presumptive might be exposed to unfair temptation,

and the old man himself to grave peril.

This nonpareil lies before me now, on an old, cracked dinner-plate,

with my knife and tobacco. Its head, ideally perfect as that goddess

who rose from similar material, carries, in spite of its vast size,

no suggestion of the colossal, but rather of the majestic. Its aspect

would be overpowering but for the soothing and reassuring effect of colour--

as where, at point of contact, the opaque snow of the upper half,

with cirrhus-like edge, overlies rather than meets the indescribable wealth

of lucent and fathomless umber, which soul-satisfying colour intensifies

toward the rounded heel, softening to a paler tint in its serene re-ascent,

till the meerschaum terminates in a heavy, semi-cylindrical collar,

of almost audacious simplicity. Then a thick, flexible, silk-chequered stem

takes up the wondrous tale, in its turn extending, with a most magnanimous

restraint, barely four inches ere transferring its glories to the worthy

keeping of such a piece of Baltic amber as you shall not match in any

democratic community. The slight silver mounting hints a princely concession

to the great pipe family; and the two little red crackers, depending

from the junction of mouthpiece and stem, whilst giving no encouragement

to presumptuous rivalry, soften the austere, unapproachable, super-Phidian

perfection of the whole ongsomble.

Here it occurs to the subtle critic that this is something like what a novelist

would write. A novelist is always able to bring forth out of his imagination

the very thing required by the exigencies of his story--just as he unmasks

the villian at the critical moment, and, for the young hero's benefit,

gently shifts the amiable old potterer to a better land in the very nick

of time. Such is not life. And to avoid any shadow of the imputation

in which that incident-begging novelist wallows, I must now turn aside

for one moment to tell how I came into possession of such a pipe as no other

Australian bushman ever owned. As for the digression--well, I suppose

even the most insubordinate reader is by this time educated up to my style.

Shortly before the previous wool-season, I had found myself, on a rather

chilly night, drawing toward the western boundary of Gunbah, on the track

from Hillston to Hay. A spark of red fire, miles ahead, told of someone

camped at a clump on Illilliwa, just about the spot I had marked out

as my own destination--there being grass anywhere inside the boundary

of Illilliwa, and none in the road-paddocks of Gunbah. As I drew nearer,

the impotent tinkle of one of those hemispherical horse-bells indicated

a new-chum's camp.

I casually noticed a man sitting before the fire, though he vanished before

I arrived, leaving an empty camp-stool. As I unsaddled my horses,

he reappeared out of the darkness--a large, blonde, heavily-moustached

young fellow, with a light rifle in the hollow of his arm, Being too hungry

for conversation, I merely tendered about three words of civil remark

whilst raking out some coals for my quart-pot; and he resumed his seat

in silence, watching me across the fire.

But during my ample repast--the second one of the day--I introduced myself

more fully, and partly won my way through the suspicious reserve of

the strong man armed. By the time my supper-service was re-packed,

and I was stretched in Aboriginal contentment beside the fire, I had noticed,

by the uncertain light, an eight-by-six tent, which seemed to contain

two camp-bedsteads, on one of which lay a sleeping man. Some yards behind

the tent stood a spring-cart.

My new acquaintance, becoming quite frank and cordial, supported his end

of the conversation in rather laboured English, with a slight foreign accent.

Gold-mining was the topic which had risen to the surface; and, as an hour

--two hours--passed, I was fairly abashed by the extent and accuracy

of his information. He talked so confidently, so scientifically, and,

as far as my knowledge went, so veraciously, not only of the principal

Australian gold-fields, but of the different notable claims, that curiosity

broke through ceremony, and I asked him how long he had been out.

Just three weeks, he told me. His name, he added, with an inimitable bow,

was Franz von Swammerbrunck, very much at my service. His friend, Schloss,

and himself, fellow-students, had left Frankfort only three months before.

"Frankfort-on-the-Main, or Frankfort-on-the-Oder?" I asked, veiling a mild

and inoffensive pedantry under the guise of friendly interest.

His courteous reply tailed-off naturally into such a volume of condensed

information as re-impressed on my mind a fact which we are, perhaps,

too prone to lose sight of--namely, the existence of a civilisation

north of Torres Straits. Desiring, of course, to avail myself of some few rays

of this boreal light, I tried to steer the conversation in the direction

of bainting and boetry (for such subjects go well at camp-fires),

but Franz hung so persistently on one rein that I had to give him his head,

and he edged back to gold-mining. Turn the discourse whatever way I would,

that wearisome topic was adroitly made to occur as if of its own accord.

"But don't let me be keeping you out of bed," I remarked, at length.

"Tear Mr. Tongcollin, you haf dot impertinence perpetrate nefer,"

replied my companion earnestly. "Dis schall pe mine period mit der

sentry-vatch. Dot molestation to youzelluf solitary vill pe, unt von apology

ver despicable iss to me reqvire ass der conseqvence. Bot you magnificent

superb garrulity mos peen to der strange-alien-isolate in dot platty dilemma

mit Schloss unt minezelluf, invaluable unt moch velcome. Dot gootdefine

kevartz reef, by instance, vich you loquacious-delineate, mit der visible golt

destitute-by tam! he schall mine eyes from der skleep fly-away mit der

enchantment-glitter! Ach Gott! Nefer py vhite man vitness, you schall say,

pefore fife unt seex yare pass-gone, unt by pushmen diminutive nomber

unt platty few altogedder. Bot der localisation-topography unt der route

you schall py der map mit you gross magnanimity indicate, unt Gott pless!

Tousand pig tank you, Mr. Tongcollin! For von trifle-moment, you ver

munificent reprieve"----

He entered the tent, and spoke to the sleeper, with suppressed eagerness

in his voice. The watch below attired himself and came forth; then followed

a formal introduction; and in another couple of hours--such was the clearness

and receptivity of these young men's minds--I had made them acquainted

with all I knew of the geology of Upper Riverina. And not less remarkable

than their infatuation for non-auriferous reefs was their vivid interest

in bushrangers and blackfellows; but whereas they received my crude geological

information with the attention which its frankness certainly merited,

it was plain that their idea of prospecting the back-blocks with the pick

in one hand and the rifle in the other, remained unshaken by my repeated

assurances of peace and safety. That was all right. The topography

of the wilderness was the thing they wanted; they would manage the peace

and safety for themselves. Schloss, in particular, was almost as eager

for the inevitable brush with outlaw or savage as he was for the

no less inevitable golden reef.

In due time, the stars paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility,

and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong

grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away.

I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the leash.

Therefore, whilst I dozed off to sleep, they packed up their elaborate camp,

and harnessed their horse in the spring-cart. They would stop for breakfast

after a few hours' travelling; meantime, they had a cup of coffee.

I roused myself to reiterate the directions I had already given respecting

the locality of half a dozen reefs in the back-blocks; then my friends

stowed away their maps and diagrams, and shook hands with me

so affectionately--so Germanly, in fact--that I called up a certain sardonic

expression of face, as the best safeguard against possible kissing.

Finally, when they were seated side by side under the tilt of the spring-cart,

Swammerbrunck said, whilst his blue eyes twinkled with merriment,

"Vit Mr. Spreenfeldt shall you peen von acquaintance?"

Yes; I was slightly acquainted with Mr. Springfield. He was the landlord

of a hotel in Hay.

"Vill you said, mit you proximate-ensuing interview, dot der two Yarman

moreprogues schall peen ass pig fools ass efer!"

I promised to deliver the message, whereupon the wise men of the north

laughed heartily. Then the three of us raised our hats with aristocratic

gravity; and the vehicle moved away toward the land of Disillusionment.

As I lay down again, I heard the poor fellows burst into unintelligible song;

and, after the spring-cart had jogged a quarter of a mile, one of the

adventurers looked past the edge of the tilt toward me, and waved

his handkerchief. Not having any similar article on me at the time,

I half-rose and returned the farewell with my hat.

As big fools as ever! Between asleep and awake, I pondered on the quantity

and quality of Australian-novel lore which had found utterance there.

The outlawed bushrangers; the lurking blackfellows; the squatter's lovely

Diana-daughter, awaiting the well-bred greenhorn (for even she had cropped-up

in conversation)--how these things recalled my reading! And yet they were

quite as reasonable as the discovery of the rich reef by the soft-handed,

fastidious young gentleman-digger.

I had only wasted time in asseverating that barren reefs are twice as plentiful

as half-tucker reefs; ten times as plentiful as wages reefs; and a hundred

times as plentiful as pile reefs. Both margraves had listened with polite

toleration when I compassionately added that the pile reef is always

discovered by an ungrammatical person, named Old Brummy, or Sydney Bob,

or Squinty-eyed Pete, or something to the same general effect; and this

because few 'gentlemen' can stoop low enough, and long enough,

and doggedly enough, to conquer; whereas Brummy &c., does n't require to stoop

at all--and his show is little better than Buckley's.

Also, the barons had derived keen enjoyment from my honest suggestion,

that the 'gentlemans'' best show is to discover the discoverer,

and prevail upon the latter, per medium of fire-water and blarney,

to affix his illegible signature to some expropriating document. And yet

those visionaries were highly informed men--at least, as far as schools,

lecturerooms, laboratories, museums, and the whole admirable machinery

of modern academic and technical training could take them. This, let me add,

is the record of an actual occurrence. It will just show you how much

the novelist has to answer for; following, as he does, the devices and desires

of his own heart; telling the lies he ought not to have told, and leaving

untold the lies that he ought to have told.

I am not forgetting the pipe. Leaving the camp at about ten in the forenoon,

I noticed, lying among the tussocks where the spring-cart had stood,

something which, at the first glance, I took for the sumptuous holster

of an overgrown navy revolver. I need say no more. It may have been

the landgraves' pipe-case, or, on the other hand, it may not. At all events,

regarding the article as treasure-trove, within the meaning of the Act,

I formally took possession under 6 Hen. III., c. 17, sec. 34;

holding myself prepared at any time to surrender the property to anyone

clever enough to sneak it, and cunning enough to keep it; though a sense

of delicacy might prevent me chasing the Kronprinzes round the country,

as if they had stolen something. When the pipe had eaten its magnificent

head off in tobacco, then, of course, I sold it to pay expenses,

and bought it in myself. So I have it still. And if the censorious reader

has detected here and there in these pages a tendency toward

the Higher Criticism, or a leaning to State Socialism, or any passage

that seemed to indicate a familiarity with cuneiform inscriptions,

or with the history and habits of Pre-Adamite Man, he may be assured that,

at the time of writing such passage, I had been smoking the mighty pipe--

or rather, the mighty pipe had been smoking me--and the unlawful erudition

had effervesced per motion of my scholastic ally.

"I can better that yet," remarked Jack unprintably. "I'll swap you coats.

Yours ain't a bad one, but your arms goes a foot too fur through the sleeves,

an' she 's ridiculous short in the tail. She'll jist about fit my soul-case;

an' I got an alpacar one here, made a-purpose for some clipper built

(individual) like you. I would n't 'a' speculated in her, on'y she was

the last the hawker had left. She's never bin bent." He produced

a slate-coloured alpaca coat, which, when I tried it on, extended down

to my knuckles and knees, trailing clouds of glory where there was none before.

"You'll do a bit o' killin' at the station, in that rig-out," continued

my host, with a lewd reference to some person who shall be nameless.

"By-the-way, what's come of Alf Jones?" I asked, as we resumed our seats.

"Gone to (sheol)," replied his successor tersely. Alf, it appeared,

had left the station six or eight weeks before, bound for no one knew where.

Jack's opinion was that in so doing he had made a slippery-hitch.

I spoke of Alf's singing; and Jack told me how the fellows at the station

had persuaded him to give them a couple or three songs before he left.

"Was n't he something wonderful?" I remarked.

"Well, no," Jack replied, deferentially but positively; "nothing like what

you 'd hear in a fo'c'sl."

In fact, according to Jack's account, he used to be reputed a middling singer

himself. And he straightway rendered a mawkishly sentimental song,

and a couple of extremely unchaste ones, in a voice which made the

tea-embrowned pannikins on the table rattle in sympathy.

I remembered Alf's minstrelsy, and the contrast was painful. Jack noticed

a depression creeping over me, and, with the intuition of true hospitality,

exerted his conversational powers for my entertainment. His discourse ran

exclusively on a topic which, sad to say, furnishes, in all grades

of masculine society, the motif of nearly every joke worth telling.

In this line, Jack was a discriminating anthologist, and, moreover,

a judicious adapter--all his gestes being related in the first-person-singular.

His autobiographical record was a staggerer; but I happened to recognise

amongst his affaires de coeur several very old acquaintances, and made

allowance accordingly. If he had been a truthful man, the floor of the hut

would have opened that night and swallowed him alive; but his vain-glorious

emulation of St. Paul's chief-of-sinners hyperbole covered as with a mantle

his multitude of bonâ-fide transgressions, and preserved him for better things.

Yes; better things. For, mind you, beyond this rollicking blackguard

there stood a second Jack, a soft-hearted, self-sacrificing other-phase,

chivalrous to quixotism, yet provokingly reticent touching any act

or sentiment which reflected real credit on himself. Not that every blackguard

is a Bayard, any more than every wife-beater is a coward; but almost all moral

and immoral qualities are in reality independent of each other. And Jack,

for one thing, was eminently religious--as indeed were those greater geniuses

and equally hard cases, Dick Steele and Henry Fielding. Says the First Lord

(neither of the Admiralty nor the Treasury), 'The web of our life is of

a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults

whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished

by our virtues.'

"I always make a bit of a prayer before turnin'-in," remarked Jack,

in appendix to a story which Chaucer or Boccaccio would have rejected

with horror; then the poor fellow laid his pipe on the table, and, kneeling

by his bedside, repeated in a firm, reverent voice an almost unrecognisable

version of the Lord's Prayer, and an unconscious parody on Ken's

Evening Hymn:--'Glory to Thee, my God, this night.'

"See, it's this way with me," he continued, rising from his knees

and re-lighting his pipe--"las' time I seen my pore mother--widow-woman,

she was, for my ole man he 'd shipped bo'sun o' the Raglan, las' time

she weighed--'Jack,' says the ole woman to me, an' the tears rollin' down

her face--it'lI be goin' on five year ago now--'Jack,' says she; 'promise me

you'll always make a bit of a prayer before turnin'-in; for the Lord says

anybody that 's ashamed o' Him, He'll be ashamed o' him at the day

o' judgment.' Awful--ain't it? Course, I promised, but it went in o' one ear,

an' out o' the other, till about two year after, when I got word she was dead.

I was on Runnymede then--for I come straight here when I bolted from the ship--

an' I begun to bethink myself that she could see how I was keepin' my promise;

so I braced-up, an' laid a bit closer. Lord knows, I gev her worry enough

while she was alive, without follerin' her up any furder." I have taken

some trouble in weeding the language of Jack's confession, so as not to destroy

its consecutiveness.

And, co-existing in the worthy fellow's mind with this childlike simplicity,

was a really fine store of the best kind of knowledge, namely, that acquired

from observation and experience. It is surprising how much a landsman,

however well-informed, may gather from a sailor when he listens like

a three-years' child, and the mariner hath his will. I only wish I was

as well posted up in devil-fish, stingarees, krakens, and other marine

commonplaces, as I am--thanks to Jack's information--in the man-o'-war hawk

and the penguin. It came about in this way:

The door was left open for ventilation when we retired to rest,

Jack in his bunk, and I on the floor. We were both asleep, when I became aware

of an icy touch on my face, accompanied by a breath strongly suggesting

to my scientific nose the hydro-carburetted oxy-chloro-phosphate

of dead bullock. Drowsily opening one eye, I saw Pup standing by my side.

He had thought I was dead; but, finding his mistake, he walked away through

the gloom with an injured and dissatisfied air, and began trying to root

the lid off Jack's camp-oven with his pointed nose. One peculiarity

of the kangaroo-dog is, that though he has no faculty of scent at the service

of his master, he can smell food through half-inch boilerplate; and he rivals

Trenck or Monte Cristo in making way through any obstacle which may stand

between him and the object of his desires.

The clattering of the oven-lid roused Jack. He looked up, and then

left his bed.

"Pore creature's hungry," is near enough what he said. He opened a sort

of safe, and took out all the cooked mutton, which he divided into two

unequal portions, then gave the smaller share to his own dog, and the larger

to Pup. "Bit evener on your keel after you've stowed that in your hold,"

he soliloquised profanely.

"Thank-you, Jack!" said I. "Would you just see that everything's safe

from him before you turn-in again. There's always a siege of Jerusalem

going on in his inside. The kangaroo-dog's the hungriest subject

in the animal kingdom."

"Well, no," replied Jack forbearingly, as he returned to his bed;

"he ain't in it with the man-o'-war hawk. That's the hungriest subject goin';

though, strictly speakin', he don't belong to no kingdom in particular;

he belongs to the high seas. If you'd 'a' had a chance to study man-o'-war

hawks, like I've had, you'd never think a kangaroo-dog was half hungry.

Why, he dunno what proper hunger is."

Then he gave me such a description of this afflicted bird as, in the interests

of science, I have great pleasure in laying before the intelligent public.

I must, however, use my own language. Jack's rhetoric, though lucid

and forcible, would look so bad on paper that the police might interfere

with its publication.

The man-o'-war hawk, it appears, utters a thrilling squeal of hunger

the moment his beak emerges from the shell; and this hunger dogs him--

kangaroo-dogs him, you might say--through life. At adult age, he consists

chiefly of wings; but, in addition to these, he has a pair of eager,

sleepless eyes, endowed with a power of something like 200 diameters;

and he has also a perennially empty stomach--the sort of vacuum, by the way,

which Nature particularly abhors. He can eat nothing but fish; and,

since he suffers under the disadvantage of being unable to dive, wade,

or swim, some one else must catch the fish for him. The penguin does this,

and does it with a listless ease which would excite the envy of the man-o'-war

hawk if the unceasing anguish of hunger allowed the latter any respite

for thought.

The penguin also lives on fish, but there the resemblance happily ends.

In every other respect he presents a pointed antithesis to the man-o'-war hawk;

and that is the only pointed thing about him, for he consists wholly

of a comfortable body, a blunt neb, and a pair of small, sleepy eyes.

He has no neck, for he never requires to look round; no wings, for he never

requires to fly; no feet, for he stands firmly on one end, like a 50lb. bag

of flour, which, indeed, he closely resembles. His life is unadventurous;

some might call it monotonous. He takes his position on a smooth rock,

protected from cold by the beautiful padded surtout which clothes him

from neb to base, and from heat by the cool, limpid wave, softly lap-lapping

against the impenetrable feathers. He feels like a stove in the winter,

and like a water-bag in the summer. When, from a sort of drowsy, felicitous

wantonness--for he never requires to act either on reason or impulse--

he desires to visit an adjacent island, he simply allows the tide to encircle

him to about two-thirds his total altitude; then, by the floatative property

of his peerless physique, and by the mere volition of will, he transports

himself whither he lists.

He has few wants, and no ambition. Dreaming the happy hours away--that is

his idea. He knows barely enough to be aware that with much wisdom cometh

much sorrow; therefore, no Pierian spring, no tree of knowledge, thank you

all the same. He is right enough as he is; the perpetual sabbath of absolute

negation is good enough for him. His motto is, 'Happy the bird that has

no history.' Once a day, he experiences a crisp, triumphant appetite,

which differs from hunger as melody differs from discord; then he slowly

half-unveils his currant-like eyes, and selects from the finny multitudes

swimming around him, such a fish as for size, flavour, and general

applicability, will best administer to his bodily requirements,

and gratify his epicurean taste.

Whilst he is in the act of dipping his neb in the water to help himself

to the fish, a man-o'-war hawk espies him from a distance of, say, five miles.

Emitting a quivering shriek of hunger, the strong-winged sufferer cleaves

the intervening air with the speed of a telegram, and has siezed and swallowed

the fish before his own belated shriek arrives.

The penguin, living in total ignorance of the man-o'-war hawk's existence,

vaguely and half-amusedly apprehends his deprivation. In this way.

You have heard the boarding-house girl rap at your bedroom door,

and tell you that breakfast is on the table. You have thought to yourself:

Now I'm turning out; now I'm putting on my----; now, my socks; now--Why,

I'm in bed still, and no nearer breakfast than at first! Here we have

a reproduction of the penguin's train of thought, plus the slight shock

of surprise which marks your own relatively imperfect organisation.

The whole thing does n't amount to a crumpled rose-leaf beneath

the penguin's base; so he apathetically depresses his dreamy eyes

in casual quest of another fish.

Now if the feathered martyr could only wait one minute, he might obtain

the second morsel on the same terms as the first; but Nature has so

constructed him that, in his estimation, the most important of all economies

is the economy of time; and his Dollond eye has descried another penguin,

seven miles distant, in the very act of dipping for a fish. Can he make

the return trip? He must chance it. He negotiates with lightning speed

the interspace between his tortured stomach and the second penguin's provender,

whilst his own steam-siren screech of famine comes feebly halting after,

and blends with the desolate plop of his prey into the abysmal emptiness

of his ever-yearning epigastrium. Then, wheeling madly round--his Connemara

complaint freshly whetted by what he has taken--he sees the first penguin

dropping asleep as the fish he has just caught slides down head-foremost,

to be assimilated by the simple clockwork of his interior.

Too late, by full fifteen seconds! and the wild despair of lost opportunity

lends a horrid eeriness to the banshee utterance with which the man-o'-war hawk

greets this crushing discovery, barbed, as it is, by the prior knowledge

that every penguin within twenty miles is in Nirvana for the present.

Now he must wait--ah! heavens, wait!--while one with moderate haste might tell

a hundred. By that time, the bird beside him will have caught another fish;

and though it be only--By my faith, he must wait longer; for the penguin,

concluding that his own appetite will be more finely matured by another

half-hour's sleep, is just dozing off. Woe for the man-o'-war hawk!

he must decide on something without delay, and he must do that something

quickly--quickly--quickly--for there will be loafing enough in the grave,

as the great American moralist says.

But, five hundred miles away across the restless, hungry waste of waters

is another rock, where penguins steep themselves in sinless voluptuousness;

and, with one prolonged, ear-splitting yell, wrung from him by the

still-increasing torment of his fell disease, the unhappy bird expands

his Paradise-Lost pinions, and, with the speed of a comet passing its

perihelion, sweeps away to that rock; for, like Louis XVI., he knows geography.

After listening with much interest to the description here loosely paraphrased,

I fell asleep with the half-formed longing to be a penguin, and the liveliest

gratitude that I was not a man-o'-war hawk.

Next morning, whilst I caught and equipped my horses, Jack tailed his own two

into the catching-yard. Every Runnymede boundary man was expected

to find himself in horses; and Jack, on being rated, had purchased

the two quietest and most shapeless mokes on the station--or, indeed, off it.

'Mokes' is good in this connection. But in a week or two, lazy as the

mokes were, Jack could n't grapple either of them, stabbard or port,

in the open paddock; they had learned to await, and even approach him,

starn-on. So he had to pelt them into the little yard, where an ingeniously

devised adjustable crush, formed by one barbed wire, kept them broadside-on

till he caught the one he wanted for the day. Let Jack alone.

Having caught one of his mokes, he caparisoned the--(I forget his own

designation) with what in dearth of adequate superlative, I shall simply call

a second-hand English saddle, of more than ordinary capacity. The barrow-load

f firewood which had once formed the tree was all in splinters,

so that you could fold the saddle in any direction; and the panel had

from time to time been subjected to so much amateur repairing that,

when Jack mounted, he looked like a hen in a nest, so surrounded he was

with exuding tufts of wool, raw horse-hair, emus' feathers, and

the frayed edges of half a dozen plies of old blanket, of various colours.

But when he said it was the softest saddle on the station, though it would be

nothing the worse for a bit of an overhaul, I was bound to admit that

the statement and the reservation were equally reasonable.

We journeyed together as far as the western gate of Jack's paddock; and,

the conversation turning on saddles, he expressed himself in actionably

misdemeanant language on the folly of riding horses like Cleopatra and Satan

without a specially-rigged purchase. His idea of such a purchase was

simple enough--merely the ordinary saddle, with two standing bulkheads of,

say, thirty inches in height by eighteen in width, rigged thortships,

one forrid of the rider, and one aft, and each padded on the inside surface.

A couple or three rope-yarns, rove fore-and-aft on each side, would prevent

the rider listing to stabbard or port, while the vertical pitch would be

provided for by a lashing rove across each shoulder. If the horse reared

and fell back, you would just draw your head in, like a turtle, and let

the bulkheads carry the strain. With such a tackle (pr. tayckle),

Jack would undertake to ride the Evil One himself, let alone his namesake

at the station; whereas, there was Young Jack at work on the (horse)

for the last week, while the (horse) aforesaid, knowing the purchase

he had on his rider, would be a fool to give in. But these young Colonials

had nothing in them; and Jack's spirit was moved within him by reason

of their degeneracy.

After parting from this secret of England's greatness, I detected a certain

spontaneous self-complacency creeping over my soul, and slightly swelling

my head; a certain placid cockiness not to be fully accounted for

by the consciousness of birth, which naturally broadened as I approached

Runnymede. I thereupon resolved myself into a committee of inquiry, and,

applying the analytical system befitting these introspective investigations,

discovered, in the first place, furtively underlying my philosophy,

a latent ambition to be regarded as a final authority on things in general.

Hitherto this aspiration had fallen short, partly owing to the clinging

sediment of my congenital ignorance, but more especially because I lacked,

and knew I lacked, what is known as a 'presence.' Now, however, the high,

drab belltopper and long alpaca coat, happily seconded by large,

round glasses and a vast and scholarly pipe, seemed to get over the latter

and greater difficulty; and, for perhaps the first time in my life,

I enjoyed that experience so dear to some of my fellow-pilgrims--the

consciousness of being well-dressed. This would naturally come as a revelation

to one who had always been satisfied with any attire which kept him out of

the hands of the police. There was something in presenting an

academic-cum-capitalistic appearance even to the sordid sheep,

as they looked up from nibbling their cotton-bush stumps, and to the frivolous

galahs, sweeping in a changeably-tinted cloud over the plain, or studding

the trees of the pine-ridge like large pink and silver-grey blossoms,

set off by the rich green of the foliage. But outside all possible research

or divination lay the occult reason why my bosom's lord sat so lightly

on his throne. This will be explained in its proper place.

In the last sheep-paddock, just after clearing the pine-ridge, I met

Young Jack on Satan. Satan was an ornament to the station;

a magnificently beautiful cream-coloured horse, with silver mane and tail;

but unfortunately spoiled, a couple of years before, in the breaking-in.

Now the shallow, inattentive reader may not grasp all that is implied

in the remark that a specialist, unconscious of his own peculiar and

circumscribed greatness, and cheaply replaceable in case of extinction,

was exercising a seasoned colt, thoroughly spoiled beforehand. Your novelist,

availing himself of his prerogative, fancifully assigns this office

to the well-educated, well-nurtured, and, above all, well-born,

colonial-experiencer, fresh from the English rectory. But I am

a mere annalist, and a blunt, stolid, unimaginative one at that; therefore

not entirely lost to all sense of the fitness of things.

Listen, then: When, after an assiduous and inglorious apprenticeship,

you can wheel a galloping horse round in his own length, without paraboling

over his head, or turning him upside down--when you can take him safely

across any leap he is able to clear--when you can send him at his uttermost,

with perfect safety, through forest or scrub--you are scarcely one step nearer

to the successful riding of an equine artist that has sworn to get you off,

or perish. Scarcely one step nearer than you were at first,

unless you constitutionally possess certain qualifications, and are

at the same time distinguished by a plentiful lack of other gifts

and acquirements, for which, notwithstanding, you are fain to take credit.

This rather obscure apostrophe is written expressly for the benefit of such

imaginative litterateurs and conversational liars as it may concern.

For it should be known that the perfect rider 'nascitur, non fit',

to begin with; that his training must begin in early boyhood, and be

followed up sans intermission; that his system of horse-breaking must be

the Young-Australian, which is, beyond doubt, the most trying in the world;

that his skill is won by grassers innumerable; that, in short, there is

no royal road to the riding of a proper outlaw--a horse that, not with

any view of showing-off before girls, but with the confirmed intention

of flattening out his antagonist, plays such fantastic jigs before high heaven

as make the angels peep.

And yet, to be an ideal rider, man wants but little here below, nor is it

at all likely he will want that little long. He wants--or rather, needs--

a skull of best spring steel; a spinal column of standard Lowmoor;

limbs of gutta-percha; a hide of vulcanised india-rubber; and the less brains

he has, the better. Figuratively speaking, he should have no brains at all;

his thinking faculties should be so placed as to be in direct touch

with the only thing that concerns him, namely, the saddle. Yet his heart

must not be there; he must by no means be what the schoolboys call

a 'frightened beggar.'

Perfect horsemanship is usually the special accomplishment of the man

who is not otherwise worth his salt, by reason of being too lazy for

manual labour, and too slenderly upholstered on the mental side

for anything else. Sir Francis Head, one of the five exceptions to this

rule--Gordon being the second, 'Banjo' the third, 'Glenrowan' the fourth,

and the demurring reader the fifth--says the greatest art in riding

is knowing how to fall. And here we touch the very root of the matter.

It is the moral effect of that generally-fulfilled apprehension which makes

one salient difference between the cultivated, or spurious, rider,

and the ignorant, or true rider. In this case, Ignorance is not only bliss,

but usurps the place of Knowledge, as power.

Edward M. Curr knew as much of the Australian horse and his rider

as any writer ever did; and this is what he says of the back-country natives:--

'They are taciturn, shy, ignorant, and incurious; undemonstrative,

but orderly; hospitable, courageous, cool, and sensible. These men ride

like centaurs,' etc., etc.

Yes, yes--but why? Looking back along that string of well-selected adjectives,

does n't your own inductive faculty at once place its finger on Ignorance

as the key to the enigma? Notice, too, how Curr, being a bit of a sticker

himself, is thereby disqualified from knowing that the centaurs were

better constructed for firing other people over their heads than for

straddling their own backs.

Your true-rider must audibly and sanguineously challenge every unfamiliar

scientific fact; stated in conversation, and be prepared to stake

his rudimentary soul on the truth of anything read aloud from a book.

He must believe, with the ecclesiastics of yesterday, that the earth is flat

and square, like them, he must be a violent supporter of the geocentric theory;

unlike them, his aeschatological hypothesis must be that the fire we wot of

is only a man's own conscience--the wish, in his case, being father

to the thought. Above all, he must have no idea how fearfully and wonderfully

he is made. He must think upon himself as a good strong framework of bones,

cushioned and buffered with meat, and partly tubular for the reception

and retention of food; he must further regard it as a rather grave oversight

in his own architectural design that the calf of his leg is riot in front.

Just consider what advantages such a man enjoys in cultivating the art

of knowing how to fall. Why, a spill that perils neck or limb,

a simple buster is to him, and it is nothing more.

But it is a great deal more to one who has been nourishing a youth sublime

with the curious facts of Science and the thousand-and-one items of general

information necessary to any person who, like the fantastical duke

of dark corners, above all other strifes contends especially to know himself;

and that physically, as well as morally. To him it is a nasty scrunch

of the two hundred and twenty-six bones forming his own admirably designed

osseous structure; a dull, sickening wallop of his exquisitely composed

cellular, muscular, and nervous tissues; a general squash of his

beautifully mapped vascular system; a pitiless stoush of membranes, ligaments,

cartilages, and what not; a beastly squelch of gastric and pancreatic juices

and secretions of all imaginable descriptions--biliary, glandular,

and so forth. And all for what? Why, for the sake of emulating

the Jack Frosts of real life in their own line!

My contention simply is, that the Hamlet-man is only too well seized

of the important fact that his bones cost too much in the breeding

to play at heels-over-tip with them. And I further maintain that, for reasons

above specified, the man of large discourse, looking before an after (ah! that

is where the mischief lies!) never, in spite of his severest self-scrutiny,

knows what a frightened beggar he is till he finds himself placing his foot

in the stirrup, preparatory to mounting a recognised performer.

Just take yourself as an example. You remember the time you were passing

the old cattle-yards in the flat, and saw four fellows of your acquaintance

putting the bridle on a black colt in the crush? You remember how the chaps

inspected your saddle, and, the concurrence of opinion being that it was

the best on the ground, how they asked the loan of it for an hour?

You lent it with pleasure, you will remember, and assisted them to girth it on.

You liked to be at the second backing of a colt--not as the central figure,

of course, but in the capacity of critic and adviser. There was

the probability of some decent riding; also the probability of a catastrophe.

You may, perhaps, further remember that whilst the ceremony of saddling

was in progress, you casually related one of your most ornate and unassailable

anecdotes--how, with that very saddle, you had once backed a roan filly that

on the preceding day had broken a circus man's collar-bone? For reasons of

your own, you located the performance a hundred miles away; and for proof, you

pointed to the saddle itself. Yes; I see you remember it all like yesterday.

The colt, with a handkerchief across his eyes, was led out of the yard

to some nice level ground; then a dead-lock supervened. The chap who had

backed him on the previous evening for a couple of hours, and was to have

ridden him again, did n't like the set of your saddle, now that he saw it

girthed-on. The owner of the colt, speaking for himself, frankly admitted

that he never pretended to be a sticker. The third fellow, whilst modestly

glancing at his own unrivalled record, regretted he was sworn with a book-oath

against backing colts for the current year. The fourth was also out of it.

Owing to a boil, which kept him standing in the stirrups even on his own

old crock, he was compelled to forego the one transcendant joy of his life.

But you----

Well, to begin with, there was your own saddle on the colt; secondly,

your conversation had not been that of a man who did n't pretend to be

a sticker; thirdly, the book-oath expedient was simply out of the question;

and fourthly, it was too late in the day to allege a boil. What was the use

of your remarking that the first backing of a colt is nothing--that,

in this case, it is the second step that costs? The four fellows knew

as well as you did--everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows--that

in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water;

stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing

that he is ready to contest the question of fitness for survival;

he has had time to think the matter over, and to note the one-sidedness

of the alliance. Again, there is a large difference between riding a colt

upon a warm evening, and doing the same thing on a cold, dry, gusty morning,

when his hair inclines to stand on end. But there was your own reminiscence

of the roan filly staring you in the face.

One of the fellows holds the blindfolded colt, whilst another rubs the saddle

all over with a wet handkerchief. The colt stands still and composed,

with one ear warily cocked, the other indifferently slouched; with his back

slightly arched, and--ah! the saints preserve us!--with his tail jammed

hard down. Carelessly humming a little tune, you hang your coat on the fence;

and in the saying of two credos (note the appositeness of

Cervantes' expression here), you are in the saddle--the same saddle,

by the way, with which you took the flashness out of the roan filly

that had broken the circus man's collar-bone. What! have I pinch'd you,

signior Gremio?

The chap should have let the colt go at once, for, in situations like yours,

a person keeps breaking-up as the moments pass. But no----

"Ready, Tom?"

"Yes."

"You're sure you're ready?"

"Yes."

"I think he'll buck middlin' hard."

Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that looks into the bottom of your woe?

We'll see presently. Meantime, console yourself with the recollection

of the roan filly that had broken the circus man's collar-bone.

"You've got the off stirrup all right, Tom?"

"Yes."

"I'm goin' to let the beggar rip."

"Go ahead."

"Look out now"----

"Right." But your voice is not what it ought to be, and the soles of your boots

are rattling on the flat part of the stirrup-irons.

The chap draws the handkerchief from the colt's eyes, and walks backward.

The colt catches sight of your left foot, and skips three yards to the right.

In doing so, he catches sight of the other foot, and skips to the left.

Then everything disappears from in front of the saddle--the wicked ears,

now laid level backward--the black, tangled mane--the shining neck

with the sweeping curve of a circular saw--the clean, oblique shoulders--they

have all disappeared, and there is nothing in front of the saddle

but a precipice. There is something underneath it, though.

How distinctly you note the grunting of the colt, the thumping of his feet

on the ground, and the gratuitous counsel addressed to you in four

calmly critical voices:--

"Lean back a bit more, Tom, and give with him."

"Don't ride so loose if you can help it, Tom."

"Hold yourself well down with the reins, and stick to him, Tom."

"Stick to him, Tom, whatever you do."

Ay! stick to him! Stick to the lever of a steam hammer, when the ram kicks

the safety-trigger! Stick to the two-man tug-of-war rope, when an Irish

quarryman, named Bamey, has hold of the other end! Stick to him,

quotha! Easier said than done--is it not? And yet you've been riding

all manner of horses, on and off (mark the significance of that expression)

since you were a mere kiddie. However, you have stuck to him for a good solid

sixty seconds; now, one of your knees has slipped over the pad,

and your stirrup is swinging loose. Good night, sweet prince.

And away circles the colt, slapping at the bit with his front feet,

whilst your historic saddle shines in the sun, and the stirrup-irons

occasionally meet high in the air. And away in chase go two of the chaps

on their bits of stuff. Meanwhile, you explain to the other two that the spill

serves you right for riding so carelessly; and that, though your soul lusts

to have it out with the colt, a stringent appointment in the township

will force you to clear as soon as you can get your saddle. Such is life.

Satan approached, carrying his negatively gifted rider, at a free,

flying canter; his gregarious instinct prompting him to join my horses.

His tawny skin was streaked with foam, and his off flank slightly stained

from the repeated puncture of Jack's spur. Ten yards from where

I had pulled up, he suddenly sulked, and stood.

"Good morning, Jack."

"Well, I be dash! Did n't know you from a crow! Reckoned some member

o' Parliament, or bishop, or somebody, had bin swappin' horses with you.

You are comin' out! Oh, I say! Nosey give me the letter,

with the three notes in it; but I couldn't make head or tail of it

about the saddle. No more could n't Moriarty."

"I'll explain all that to you some time. How are you getting on with Satan?"

"Bad," replied Jack humbly. "You can easy enough steady him down, but then,

the swine, he wants a spell; an' when he gits a spell, you jist got to

steady him down agen. Always got some new idear in his head. There!"--

hastily rooting the horse's side with his spur--"he's goin' to laydown,

an' make chips o' the saddle. Up! you swine"--and, lying backward,

he reached down to grip the sensitive membrane connecting the swine's hind-leg

with his body. The maddened beast shot past me like a yellow streak

for another ten yards; then, with a flaring bound and a snort that was

between a whistle and a shriek, spun half-round in the air, and alighted

rigidly on his front feet, his ears between his knees, and his neck and back

describing a vertical semicircle, with the saddle and Jack on the centre

of its forward curve.

"Jist his style," continued Jack dejectedly. "Never be worth a dash

for general"----I lost the next word or two, for the young fellow's face

was buried in the mass of silver mane, as the horse reared rampant

to the balancing point; and the next word, again, was dislocated by a blow

from the crupper buckle, just below the speaker's shoulder-blade.

"An' Magomery wants a person to make a lady's hack out o' sich an outlawr

as him!" he continued, in hopeless protest, whilst the 'outlawr'

exerted his iron muscles to the utmost, and the saddle creaked like a basket.

"Nummin' good horse, too; on'y spoiled with--Jist look at that!" Satan had

suddenly gathered his lithe, powerful limbs, and was tearing across toward

the adjacent pine-ridge, spinning round, every thirty yards, in two or three

terrific bucks. "I don't want to sawr his mouth," shouted Jack

over his shoulder, in polite apology--"I'll see you agen by-'n'-by----

"Away on the evergreen shore, probably," I soliloquised, resuming my journey.

But, turning in the saddle, and pushing up my glasses out of the way,

I watched the receding contest. I saw Jack wrench the horse aside

from the timber; whereupon the animal reared rather too rashly, and just saved

himself from falling backward by dropping on his quarters and flapping down

on one side. When his broadside touched ground, Jack was standing beside him;

and when he leaped to his feet, Jack was in the saddle. Exeunt fighting.

Toby, with his bare feet and brown, good-humoured face, was the only person

visible on the station premises as I rode up.

"Gosh, I didn't know you till I seen you side-on, when you was shuttin'

the Red Gate," he remarked. (The Red Gate was about a mile and a half

distant). "I thought you was somebody comin' to buy the the station.

Magomery, he's buzznackin' roun' the run as usual," he continued, helping me

to unsaddle. "Butler, he's laid up with the bung blight in both eyes.

All the other fellers is out. Mrs. Bodysark"--and his grin deepened--

"she 's all right. Moriarty, of course, he 's loafin' in the store;

lis'n him now, laughin' fit to break his neck at some of his own

gosh foolishness. I'll shove your horses in the paddick. I say!

ain't they fell-away awful?"

"Yes; the season's telling on them. Now will you look after Pup,

like a good chap? Here's his chain. I want to keep him fresh for travelling."

"Right. I don't wish you no harm, Collins; but I would n't mind if you

was in heaven, s'posen you left me that dog."

I went across to the store, and looked in. Moriarty's laughing suddenly

ceased, as his eye fell on me; and he respectfully rose to his feet.

"Wherefore that crackling of thorns under a pot? " I asked sternly,

as I removed my belltopper and placed it on the counter. "Don't you see

the spirits of the wise sitting in the clouds and mocking you?"

"Well, I'll be dashed!" he exclaimed admiringly. "You are coming out

in blossom. Now you only want the upper half of your head shaved, and you

could start a Loan and Discount bank, with a capital of half a million."

"Thanks, worthy peer," I replied, with dignity. "But, talking of finance,

I trust you have n't forgotten the trifle that there is between us,

and the terms of our agreement?"

"I'm not likely to forget. Take that chair. I've got such fun here."

He had sliced some corks into flat discs; into the centre of each disc

he had stuck a slender piece of pine, about two inches in height,

and spatulated at the upper end, like a paddle. Then to the flat part

of each upright he had attached a blow-fly, by means of a touch of gum

on the insect's back, and had placed in the grasp of each fly a piece of pine

an inch long, cut into the shape of a rifle. The walking motion of

the fly's feet twirled and balanced the stick in rather droll burlesque

of musketry drill; and a dozen of these insects-at-arms, disposed

in open order on the counter, were ministering to the young fool's mirth.

"Just you notice the gravity of the beggars," he laughed. "Not a smile

on them. Solemn as Presbyterians. 'Tention! Present! Recover! Not a lazy

bone in their bodies. I say, Collins: a person could make a perpetual motion,

with a fly on a sort of a treadmill? Ah! but then it would n't pass muster

unless it went of its own accord--would it? Perpetual motion's a thing

I've been giving my attention to lately. You remember you advised me

to study mechanics? Well, I 've been thinking of arranging a clock

so as to wind itself up as it went on. That 's one idea. Another

is a little more complicated. It 's a water-wheel, driving a pump that throws

a stream into the race that feeds the water-wheel, so that you use

the same water over and over again, and the whole concern's self-acting.

The idea came into my head like an inspiration. Mind, I'm telling you

in confidence, for there 's a thousand notes hanging on to it."

"Moriarty," said I sadly; "you 're worse than ever. Try something else.

You're not a born mechanician."

"If I'm not, I'd like to know who the devil is?" replied the young fellow

hotly. "Possibly, your own self? Was n't my father a foreman in one

of the largest machine-shops in Victoria, in his day? I know what 's

the matter with you. Jealousy."

"It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well," said I hopelessly.

"But supposing you are a born mechanician, you have neither the theoretical

nor the practical training. Do you know for instance, the use of

the brass slide you often see on a carpenter's rule?"

"Of course I do! Why I could calculate with that slide before I was

ten years old."

One to Moriarty. I should have remembered that his abnormal breadth

across the temples qualified him to do a sum in his head, in ten seconds,

that I could n't do on a slate in ten hours, nor for that matter, in ten years.

No accounts in Riverina were better kept than those of Runnymede.

"Good, so far," I replied benevolently. "But how much do you know

of prismoidal formulae, or logarithmic secants?--not to speak of segmental

ordinates, or the cycloidal calculus; or even of adiabatic expansion,

or torsional resistance, or the hydrostatic paradox, or the coefficient

of friction? Now, these things are the very A B C of mechanics,

as you'll find to your utter confusion."

Moriarty's countenance fell; but happening to glance at the performing flies,

he laughed himself weak and empty. "Just look at the beggars," he murmured,

wiping his eyes.

"Business first," said I. "How about my scandal?"

"It's going grand!" replied Moriarty, beaming with new pleasure.

"I carried out your suggestions to the letter. First, I took Mooney

and Nelson into my confidence; and we arranged to meet accidentally,

one evening after dusk, under that willow beside her bed-room.

At last we sat down, with our backs against the weatherboard wall,

and talked about"----

"Day, chaps," said a stranger, appearing at the door of the store.

"Got any pickles in stock, Moriarty?"

"Lots. Half-a-crown a bottle."

"Say three bottles," replied the stranger, seating himself on the counter.

"And--let 's see--a pound of tobacco; a dozen of matches; a tin

of baking-powder; and a couple of hobble-chains. I'll make that do

till I get as far as Hay. My chaps are squealing for pickles," he continued,

turning to me. "I did n't know you at the first glance. Your name's

Collins--is n't it? You might remember me passing by you last spring,

a few miles back along the track here, where you 'd been helping

Steve Thompson and a big, gipsy-looking fellow to load up some wool

on a Sydney-pattern wagon? So that chestnut was a stolen horse, after all.

Smart bit of work. Another devil of a season--isn't it? I've been trying

to shift 900 head of forward stores from Mamarool to Vic.; but I advised

the owner to give it best, though it was money out of my pocket,

when I had none in it to begin with. Managed to arrange for them

on Wooloomburra till the winter comes on."

Whilst speaking, he had opened his knife and removed the capsule and cork

from one of the bottles of pickles; then, after drinking some of the vinegar

out of the way, he began harpooning the contents of the bottle,

and eating them with a relish that was pleasant to see.

I made a suitable reply, whilst Moriarty, having made up his order,

noted the items and price on the paper which contained the tobacco.

"I see Alf Jones is gone, Moriarty," I remarked, after a pause--the stranger

being occupied with his pickles. "Wisest thing he could do."

"Foolishest thing he could do," replied the storekeeper. "Nosey was a fixture

on Runnymede; he was one of Montgomery's pets; and if he thinks he can

better that in Australia, he's got a lot to learn. And what a hurry he was in,

to get out of the best billet he'll ever have, poor beggar! with his shyness

and his disfigurement. But he's been on the pea, like a good many more.

Let's see--it was just the day after you went away that he came to Montgomery,

and said he must go. That'll be six or eight weeks ago now. Montgomery went

a lot out of his way to persuade him to stop, but it was no use; he was like

a hen on a hot griddle till he got away. Decent chap, too; and, by gosh!

can't he sing and play! We found afterward that he had given his books

to the station library, with the message that we were to think kindly of him

when he was gone. I felt sort of melancholy to see him drifting away

to beggary, with his fiddle-case across the front of his saddle,

and his spare horse in his hand. He knew no more where he was going

than the man in the moon."

"Don't you believe it," I replied. "These cranky fellows have always

sane spots in their heads; and Alf is particularly lucky in that respect.

There's not above two--or, at the most, three--lobes of that fellow's brain

in bad working order. Just you watch the weekly papers, and you'll get news

of him in his proper sphere. He's gone to Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne,

to do something better than boundary riding."

"No; he's gone to Western Queensland," remarked the stranger,

who had been watching Moriarty's flies, without the trace of a smile

on his saturnine face. "I met him sixty or eighty mile beyond the Darling,

on the Thargomindah track, three weeks ago."

"Not the same fellow, surely?" I suggested.

"Well," replied the stranger tolerantly, "the young chap I'm speaking of

had some disfigurement of the face, so far as I could distinguish

through a short crape veil; and he was carrying a box that he evidently

would n't trust on his pack-horse, but whether it was a violin-case

or a child's coffin, I was n't rude enough to ask. Old-fashioned Manton

single-barrel slung on his back. Good-looking black-and-tan dog.

Brown saddle-horse; small star; WD conjoined, near shoulder; C or G,

near flank. Bay mare, packed; JS, off shoulder; white hind-foot.

Horses in rattling condition; and he was taking his time. He'd been

boundary riding in the Bland country before coming here. Peculiar habit

of giving his head a little toss sometimes when he spoke."

"That's him, right enough," said Moriarty. "Had you a yarn with him?"

"Not much of a yarn certainly," replied the stranger, holding his bottle up

to the light while he speared a gherkin with his knife. "It was coming on

evening when I met him; and, says he, 'I 'm making for the Old-man Gilgie--

haven't you come past it?' So I told him if he wanted to camp on water,

he'd have to turn back five mile, and come with me to where I knew of

a brackish dam. I'd just been disappointed of water, myself,

at the Old-man Gilgie. It had been half-full a few days before, but a dozen

of Elder's camels had called there, carrying tucker to Mount Brown;

and each of them had scoffed the full of a 400-gallon tank. Talk about camels

doing without water!"--Just here, though the stranger's ordinary language

was singularly quotable in character, he digressed into a searching

and comprehensive curse, extending, inclusively, from Sir Thomas Elder

away back along the vanishing vista of Time to the first man who had conceived

the idea of utilising the camel as a beast of burthen.

"So we camped late at night," he resumed, in a relieved tone; "and this friend

of yours cleared-off early in the morning. He was n't interested in anything

but the Diamantina track, and I was nasty over the gilgie,

so we did n't yarn much. However, that chap 's no more off his head than I am.

Bit odd, I daresay; but that's nothing. I often find myself a bit odd--

negligent, and forgetful, and sort of imbecile--but that's a very different

thing from being off your head. Why, just now, I saw your two horses

in the paddock as I came up; and, if I was to be lagged for it,

I could n't think where I had seen them before--in fact, not till I recognised

you. Want of sleep, I blame it on. Well, if I don't shift, there won't be

many pickles left for my chaps. They were to boil the billy at the Balahs.

Better give us another bottle." He handed Moriarty the money for the goods,

and stowed them in a small flour-bag. "So-long, boys--see you again some day."

And the imbecile stranger trailed his four-inch spurs from our presence.

"Do you know him, Moriarty?" I asked.

"I can't say I do," replied the storekeeper. "One day, last winter,

I happened to be out at the main road when he passed with 400 head of fats;

and somehow I knew that his name was Spooner. Never saw him again till now.

But how about Nosey Alf--was n't I right for once?--and were n't you wrong

for once?"

"So it appears," I replied. "But you haven't told me how you worked

the scandal. You were sitting with your backs against the wall--Go on"----

"Sitting with our backs against the wall," repeated my agent complacently.

"Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps

on account of Jack the Shellback being picked to take Nosey's place;

and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening

you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer

in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even

quoted a remark Mrs. Beaudesart had made about you, only a couple of hours

before. She had said that, though you were such a wonderful talker,

you were surprisingly reticent respecting your own former life,

and your family connections, and the place you came from. We commented on

this remark, and laughed a bit, not at you, but at her. Clever engineering--

was n't it?"

"Not unless she was in her room, with her ear against the wall."

"Trust her," replied my ambassador confidently. "She saw us sitting down

as she went across the yard; and we counted on her. We knew her meanness

in the matter of listening."

"Don't say 'meanness,'" I remonstrated. "I must take her part there.

You can't judge even a high-minded woman by the standard of a moderately mean

man, in this particular phase of character. Our deepest student

of human nature makes his favourite Beatrice, on receiving a hint,

run down the garden like a lapwing, to do a bit of deliberate eavesdropping;

whilst her masculine counterpart, Benedick, has to hear his share

of the disclosure inadvertently and reluctantly. Similarly,

in Love's Labour Lost, when the mis-delivered letter is handed to Lord Boyet

to read, he says:--

This letter is mistook; it importeth none here;

It is writ to Jaquenetta.

That, of course, settles the matter in his mind; but the Princess,

true to her sex, says eagerly, and with a perfectly clear conscience:--

We will read it, I swear;

Break the neck of the wax, and let every one give ear.

"Don't let us judge women by our standard here, for we can't afford

to be judged by their standard in some other"----

"Hear, hear; loud applause; much laughter," interrupted the delegate

flippantly. "Well, we were yarning and laughing over Mrs. Beaudesart's

simplicity; and it came out that Nelson and Mooney knew there was some reason

why you dare n't go back to where you were known; but they had never heard

the story; so I put them on their honour, and told them the whole affair."

"How did the story run?" I asked.

My vicar repeated it. (Which is more than I can do.)

"Well, that ought to drum me out of her esteem," I remarked, with the feeling

of a man respited on the scaffold. "And it hangs together fairly well

for a fabrication. But I'm honestly sorry to have been forced to put

such an office on you, Moriarty. Indeed, I wonder how you could have the nerve

to tell such a yarn in a woman's hearing."

"Friendship, old man," replied my factor wammly. "But it ain't a fabrication.

I found I couldn't invent anything with the proper ring of truth about it;

so, the evening before the disclosure, when Jack the Shellback was in the store

getting some things to take out with him, I asked him what was the most

blackguardly prank he ever got off with; and that was the yarn he told me.

Of course, I altered it a bit to suit you."

"And Mrs. Beaudesart believes it?" I queried hopefully.

"I don't see what else she can do, considering the way the thing came-off.

She would have to be like one of the ancient prophets."

"And you think it has the proper effect?"

"No effect at all," replied the nuncio decidedly. "Her manner's just the same

when she hears you talked about promiscuously; and she does n't take it

any way ill to overhear a quiet joke about the thing that's supposed to be

coming-off some time soon. It's a failure so far as that goes.

Certain as life."

"Well, Moriarty, if dishonour has no effect, we must try disgrace."

"Why, they're the same. You better go back to school, Collins."

"They're entirely independent of each other--if you insist on bringing

me back to school, to waste my time over one barren pupil. Poverty,

for instance, is disgrace without dishonour; Michael-and-Georgeship

is dishonour without disgrace. In cases like mine, the dishonour lies

in the fact, and the disgrace in the publicity. You must set the whole station

commenting on your scandal."

"That's just what the whole station is doing at the present time,"

replied my legate unctuously. "Surprising how these things spread

of themselves, when they 're once fairly started. And everybody believes the

yarn; bar Mooney, and Nelson, and myself; and you can depend your life on us

to keep it jigging. No, I'm wrong; Montgomery's got the inside crook on us."

"Montgomery?" said I inquiringly.

"Yes. I got a fright over that," explained the diplomatist.

"The other morning, I was at some correspondence here, and I heard

a quick step, and when I looked up, who should I see but Montgomery,

as black as thunder.

"'Moriarty!' says he, in a voice that made me jump; 'what is this story

I hear of Collins? Now, no shuffling,' says he; 'I've traced it home to you,

and I want your authority. I always looked upon Collins as a decent

sort of oddity,' says he; 'and I'm determined to sift this matter thoroughly.'

Frightened me out of a year's growth." Moriarty paused, and drew a long breath.

"Well?" said I, hazily; wondering whether this piteous wreckage of plot

was owing to some defect in my own strategy, or to bad lieutenantry

in the working out.

"So I had to make a clean breast of it," continued the plenipotentiary,

in a reluctant and apologetic tone. "No use talking. It was impossible

to stand to the yarn, when Montgomery's eye was on me--let alone being taken

by surprise. It was dragged from me by a sort of hypodermic influence;

and all the fun seemed to have died out of it, till it sounded mean and small

and unmanly. Yes; I had to tell him the fix you were in, and the commission

you had given me, and everything from first to last; bar that infernal wager.

Well, you know, Montgomery never laughs; but I saw his face twitching,

once or twice; and before I had done, he wheeled round and stood looking

out of the door, as if I was n't worth listening to. Then he went away,

coughing fit to break his neck."

"I may thank him for being tree'd, in the first place; and he knows it,"

I remarked, with a sourness which appears pardonable even at this distance

of time.

"What had he got to do with it?" asked Moriarty.

"How the tempus does fugit!" I replied. For the mid-day bell was ringing

at the hut.

"Best sound since breakfast-time," said Moriarty, rising. "Come on to lunch."

As we left the store, half-a-dozen representatives of the lower classes

were stringing-in from different directions toward the hut, to attend

to the most ancient and eminent of human institutions--the institution

which predicates and affirms the brotherhood of our race as positively,

and, to the philosophic mind, as touchingly, as death itself; being recognised

and remembered by the aristocrat who forgets his own personal dirt-origin

and dirt-destination; by the woman who forgets the date of her birth;

by the friend who forgets the insulting language he used to you when he was

under the influence; and by the boy who forgets his catechism.

The meal-signal is the real Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame; the Greek invocation

which calls fools into a circle as surely as wise men; for neither folly

nor wisdom is proof against its spell.

Just then, two swagmen on foot came into the yard, and approached Moriarty

and me. I fixed my belltopper, adjusted my specs, and assumed my stately pipe,

whilst my soul went forth in psalms of thanksgiving. Here was the true key

to the Wilcannia shower; here was the under-side of my imagined precaution

against ophthalmia; here was the hidden purpose of that repetitional picking

and sorting of the hawker's stock which had left Jack the Shellback

his Hobson's choice in coats; here was a Wesleyan converging of the whole vast

order of the universe toward the happiest issue. For here was Tom Armstrong

at last; and I stood prepared to force a temporary renewal--albeit for double

the original amount--of the bill, drawn by me on the Royal Inevitable,

and now about to be presented by the legitimate holder.

"Is the bose at hame?" asked the holder briskly, turning first to Moriarty

and then to me. "Losh! it's no Tam M'Callum!"--he swung his swag

to the ground, and extended his hand--"Mony 's the thocht A had o' ye, mun.

Ma certie, A kent weel we wad forgather ir lang. An' hoo're ye farin' syne?"

"Excellent, i' faith--of the chameleon's dish," I replied, with winning

politeness, and a hearty hand-grip, though I felt like a man in the act

of parrying a rifle bullet. "I have a wretched memory for faces,

yet yours seems familiar; and I 'm certain I've heard your voice before.

Pardon me if I ask your name?"

"Tam Airmstrang," replied my creditor, in an altered tone.

"Now, where have we met before?" I pondered. "Armstrong? I know several

of the name in Riverina, and several in Victoria. Wait a moment--Did we meet

at the Caledonian Sports, in Echuca, two years ago, past? No! Well,

perhaps--yes--didn't we have a drink together, at Ivanhoe, three or four

months ago?"

"Od sink 't," muttered the honest fellow, in vexation; "A thocht ye was

yin Tam M'Callum, frae Selkirksheer."

"I'm a Victorian myself, and my people are Irish," I remarked gently.

"But my name's Collins," I continued, brightening up; "and Collins sounds

something like M'Callum."

"Ye 'se no be the mon A thocht ye was," replied Tam decidedly--and the

unconscious double-meaning of his words sank into my heart--"Bit hae ye

onything tae dae wi' Rinnymede?"

"No; I 'm only a caller, like yourself. Moriarty, here, is the storekeeper."

"D' ye want ony han's?" continued Tam, addressing Moriarty.

"I think we do," replied the young fellow, moving toward the barracks.

"The boss was saying there was a few burrs that would have to be looked after

at once. Call again in the evening, and see him."

"Yon wad fit mysen like auld breeks," persisted Tam; "bit A'm takkin' thocht

o' Andraw here. Puir body's sicht's nae fit fir sic wark; an' A mauna pairt

wi' him the noo. An ye henna onythin' firbye birrkittin', we maun

gang fairther ava."

He resumed his swag. I made a sign, perceptible only to Moriarty,

and the latter hesitated a moment.

By virtue of a fine tradition, or unwritten law, handed down from the time

of Montgomery's father, a subaltern officer of Runnymede had power to send

any decent-looking swagman--or a couple of them, for that matter--to the hut

for a feed. Certain conditions, however, had formulated themselves

around this prerogative: first, the stranger must of necessity be

a decent-looking man; second, he must be within the precincts of the homestead

at the ringing of the bell; third, the officer must walk down to the hut

with him, as a testimony; fourth, no particular sub must make a trade of it.

The prerogative was something like one enjoyed by abbots, and other

ecclesiastical dignitaries, in the ages of faith; namely, the right to extend

the jurisdiction and protection of the Church over any secular prisoner

accidentally met on his way to execution--a prerogative, the existence

of which depended on its not being abused. And though Moriarty was only

on the Commissariat, and was therefore unmercifully sat-on by the vulgar

whenever he presumed to give orders, he held this right through a series

of forerunners extending back to the time when Montgomery I. had been

his own storekeeper. Don't you believe the yarns your enthusiast tells

of the squatter's free-and-easy hospitality toward the swagman.

Such things were, and are; but I would n't advise you to count upon

the institution as a neat and easy escape from the Adamic penalty.

You might fall-in. Hence Moriarty's personal reluctance in the matter

was perfectly natural. The meal at the hut, and the pannikin of dust

at the store, are two widely different things. But a faithful

and exhaustive inquiry into the ethics of station hospitality would fill

many pages, for the question has more than one aspect.

"Go down to the hut, and have some dinner," said Moriarty, turning back;

and we preceded the two men on their way. "Can you make room for these chaps,

Matt?" he asked, looking into the hut.

The cook growled assent; and the two strangers took their places at the table.

"Scotty thought he knew you," observed Moriarty, with characteristic

profundity, as we turned again toward the barracks. The remark broke a spell

that was coming over me.

"And I thought I knew his mate, though I can't manage to locate him,"

I replied. "But, as I was telling Scotty, I have the worst memory

in the world for faces."

"Ay, that poor wreck would n't fetch much in the yard," remarked Moriarty,

referring to Tam's mate. "When a fellow comes to his state, he ought to be

turned out for the summer in a swamp paddock, with the leeches on his legs;

then you ought to sell him to Cobb and Co., to get the last kick out of him.

Or else poll-axe the beggar."

"Very good system, Moriarty. Apply it to yourself also. You're not dead yet."

"But I'll never come to that state of affairs."

"Assuredly you will, sonny--just for the remark you've made. But I 'd like

to see that fellow again. Go on to the barracks; I'll be after you

in two minutes."

Confused identity seemed to be in the air. Had I seen that weary looking

figure, and that weather-worn face, before? I could n't determine;

and I can't determine now--but the question has nothing to do with this record.

At all events, impelled partly by a desire to have another look at the man,

and partly, perhaps, by a morbid longing to flaunt myself before Tam,

I grandly dipped my lofty belltopper under the doorway of the hut,

and, without removing it, helped myself to a pannikin of tea from the bucket

by the hearth, and sat down opposite the silent swagman. Farther along

the table, Tam was already breast-deep in the stream of conversation.

In answer to some question, he was replying that he had been only twelve months

in the colonies.

"And what part of the Land o' Cakes are you from?" I asked, wantonly,

but civilly.

"A'm frae Dumfriessheer--frae a spote they ca' Ecchelfechan," he replied

complacently. "Bit, de'il tak't, wha' gar'd ye jalouse A was a Scoatsman?"

"What the (sheol) was the name o' that (adj.) place you come from?"

asked the station bullock driver, with interest.

"Ecchelfechan."

"Nobody 's got any business to come from a place with sich a (adj.) name"

"An' wha' fir no?" demanded Tam sternly. "Haud tae ye 'se hae ony siccan

a historic name in yir ain domd kintra. D'ye ken wha, firbye mysen,

was boarn in Ecchelfechan syne? Vinna fash yirsel' aboot"--

"I say, Scotty," interposed Toby; "Egglefeggan 's the place where they eat

brose--ain't it?"

"A'll haud nae deeskission wi' the produc' o' hauf-a-dizzen generations

o' slavery," replied Tam haughtily. "A dinna attreebute ony blame

tae yir ain sel', laddie; bit ye canna owrecam the kirse o' Canaan."

"Cripes! do you take me for a (adj.) mulatter?" growled the descendant

of a thousand kings. "Why, properly speaking, I own this here (adj.) country,

as fur as the eye can reach."

"Od, ye puir, glaikit, misleart remlet o' a perishin' race," retorted Tam--

"air ye no the mair unsicker? Air ye no feart ye'se aiblins see yon day

gin ye 'se thole waur fare nir a wamefu' o' gude brose? Heh!"

"Oh, speak English, you (adj.) bawbee-hunter!" muttered H.R.H. "Why,

they 're a cut above brose in China--ain't they, Sling?"

"Eatee lice in China," replied the gardener, with national pride.

"Plenty lice--good cookee--welly ni'."

"By gummies! Hi seed the time Hi'd 'a' stopped yer jorrin', Dave!"

said a quavering voice, dominating some argument at the other end of the table.

"Hi seed me fightin' in a sawr-pit f'r tew hewrs an' sebmteen minits,

by the watch; an' fetched 'ome in a barrer. Now wot's the hupshot?

Did 'n' Hi say, 'Look hout! we'll git hit to rights'?"

"But you (adv.) well thought we'd get rain," persisted the old man's

antagonist--an open-mouthed, fresh-faced rouseabout, who was just undergoing

that colonising process so much dreaded by mothers and deplored by the clergy.

"'Ow the (fourfold expletive) do you hundertake to know wot Hi thort?

But wot war the hupshot? 'Look hout!' ses Hi; 'we'll git hit to rights!'

An' did we, hor did we not? Straight, now, Dave?"

"You're like Cassandra, Jack," I observed, to fill up the pause which marked

Dave's discomfiture.

"That bloke as spoke las', 'e's got more hunder 'is 'at nor a

six-'underd-an'-fo'ty-hacre paddick full o' sich soojee speciments

as you fellers," said the old man impressively. "Wich o' you knows hanythink

about Cassandra? Hin 'twenty-six hit war, an' hit seems like las' week.

Hi druv ole Major Learm'th to them races, Hi did; an' wen the 'osses comes hin,

'e looks roun' an' ses to 'is labour, a-stannin' aside the kerridge,

'Cassandra fust,' ses 'e, 'an' the rest nowheers,' ses 'e.

Now what's the hupshot? Collings'll see the day. Them's ole Jack Goldsmith's

words, an' jis' you mark 'em. Collings'll see the day! Yes, Dave,"

continued the heart of the old man to the Psalmist; "Hi won ten bob

on Cassandra that day; an' ten bob war ten bob them times," &c., &c.

All this while, I had been observing the silent swagman, who seemed to grow

uneasy under my notice.

"I was remarking to a friend just now that I fancied I had seen you before,"

I explained.

"Well, they ain't actilly sore, so much as sort o' dazzly and dim,"

replied the man, in evident relief. "I been tryin' mostly everything

this last four year, but I got better hopes now nor ever I had before.

A boundary man he give me a little bottle o' stuff the other day; an' it seems

to be about the correct thing. Jist feels like a spoonful o' red-hot ashes

in your eye; an' if a drop falls outside, it tums your skin black.

That ought to cut away the sort o' glassy phlegm off o' the optic nerve?"

"No; you want none of these burning quack remedies; you want three months'

careful treatment"----

"I ain't denyin' it," interrupted the man, sadly and sullenly. "An' I don't

thank Tom for bein' so fast," he continued, raising his voice in attempted

anger. "He ain't the man I took him for--an' I'm sayin' it to his face."

The general conversation dropped, and Tam, pannikin in hand, rose and advanced

to his mate's side.

"An' wha' is't ye're sayin' till ma face, Andraw?" he asked loudly,

but with gentleness and commiseratiom "Puir body's haird o' hearin',"

he explained to the company.

"I'm sayin' you'd no right to go blurtin' out about a man gittin' a stretch

for a thing o' that sort. Seems like as if there was a job for one of us

on this station, an' you was takin' a mean advantage to collar it.

It ain't like you"----

"Od, whisht! ye puir thrawart body! " interrupted Tam hastily.

"You might 'a' went about it a bit more manly," continued the other,

with the querulousness of a sick child. "I don't deny I done three months;

but so help"----

"Whisht! ye daft"----

"So help me God, I never deserved it. I knowed no more about it nor

the babe unborn, till I got it off o' the bobby that nabbed me."

"But how could you (adj.) well get three months for a thing you (adj.) well

knew nothing about?" asked the catechumen rouseabout. (Henceforth,

the reader will have to supply from his own imagination the clumsy

and misplaced expletive which preceded each verb used by this young fellow.)

"Ye moight foine it dang aisy yeerself, Dave," observed a middle-aged diner

significantly.

"I been a misfortunate man, there's no denyin'," continued the swagman;

"but I never done a injury to nobody in my life, so fur as I'm aware about."

"What did he get the three months for?" asked Dave, turning to Tam.

"Gin ye speer onythin' frae me," replied Carlyle's townie, after slowly

surveying his questioner from head to foot, "A maun inform ye A ken naethin'

bit gude o' Andraw; an' A hae warkit wi' him mair nir fowr minth. 'Deed,

the puir body taks owre muckle thocht fir ithers, an' disna' spare himsel' ava.

A ken naethin' aboot yon three minth; yon 's atween Andsaw an's Makker;

an' A'll nae jidge onybody, sin' we maun a' be judgit by Ane wha jidgeth

iprightly. Bit as lang's A hae a pickle siller, Andraw'll no want."

And Tam returned to his seat.

"What would I want of burnin' a stack?" remonstrated Andrew, blinking

defiantly round the table. "Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute"--

he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin--"It was this way: I was

jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine,

on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when up comes a trooper.

"'What's your name?' says he.

"'Andrew Glover,' says I.

"'Well, Andrew Glover, you're my prisoner--charged with burnin' a stack,'

says he. 'I must fetch you along,' says he. So he gives me the usual warnin',

an' walks me off to the logs."

"And how did it go?" shouted Dave, who had shifted his pannikin and plate

to Andrew's side.

"Well, the Court day it come roun'; an' when my case was called,

the prosecutor he steps down off the bench, an' gives evidence;

an' I foun' him sayin' somethin' about not wantin' to press the charge;

an' there was a bit of a confab; an' then I foun' the Bench askin' me

if I'd sooner be dealt with summary, or be kep' for the Sessions;

an' I said summary by all means; so they give me three months."

"What was the prosecutor's name? "shouted Dave.

"Waterman."

"So called because he opens the carriage-doors," I remarked involuntarily.

"Do you know him, Collins?" persisted Dave.

"I neither know him nor do I feel any aching void in consequence," I replied,

pointedly interpolating, in two places, the quidnunc's flowers of speech.

"How did the evidence go, mate?" asked the young fellow greedily.

"Eh?"

"How did the evidence go?"

"Oh yes! Well, I'm a bit hard o' hearin'--I dunno if you notice it on me,

but I am--an' sometimes I'm worse nor other times; so I did n't ketch most

o' what went on; an' the prosecutor he was a good bit off o' me; an' there was

a sort o' echo. But I foun' one o' the magistrates sayin', 'Quite so,

Mr. Waterman--quite so, Mr. Waterman,' every now an' agen; an' I was

on'y too glad to git off with three months. I'd 'a' got twelve,

if I'd bin remanded for a proper trial. The jailer told me after--he told me

this Waterman come out real manly. Seems, he got the charge altered

to Careless Use o' Fire. So I can't help giving him credit, in a manner

o' speakin'. But, so help me God, I never burned no stack."

"Did you know this Waterman?" interrogated Dave. "Was you ever on his place?"

"Well, yes; I was on his place, askin' him for work, as it might be

this mornin'; an' he give me rats for campin' so near his place, as it might be

las' night. Seems, it was nex' mornin' his stack was burnt,

jist after sunrise. But, so help me God, I never done it."

"(Adj.) shaky sort o' yarn," commented the bullock driver, in grave pity.

"Let it drop, Dave."

"Divil a shaky," interposed the hon. member for Tipperary. "Arrah,

fwy wud the chap call on the Daity? Fishper--did ye iver foine justice

in a coort? Be me sowl, Oi'd take the man's wurrd agin all the coorts

in Austhrillia. An' more betoken--divil blasht the blame Oi'd blame him

fur sthrekin a match, whin dhruv to that same."

"Shoosteece iss (adj.) goot, mais revahnsh iss (adj.) bat,"

remarked another foreigner--a contractor's cook, who had come to the homestead

for a supply of rations. "Vhere iss de (adj.) von?--vhere is de (adj.) autre?

All mix--eh? De cohnseerashohn iss--I not know vat you vill call him

ohn Angleesh, mais ve vill call him ohn Frahnsh, (adj.) cohnplecat."

"Much the same in English, Theophile," I observed.

"You vill barn de (adj.) snack," continued Theophile, turning politely to me;

"you vill call him shoosteece; mineself, I vill call him revahnsh.

Mineself, I vill not barn de (adj.) snack; I vill be too (adj.) flash.

I vill go to (sheol)."

"Not for your principles, Theophile," I replied, with a courteous inclination

of my belltopper.

"Course, it's all in a man's lifetime," pursued Andrew resignedly.

"Same time, it seems sort a' hard lines when a man's shoved in the logs

for the best three months in the year for a thing he never done. 'Sides,

I was on for a good long job with two as decent a fellers as you'd meet

in a day's walk. I'd met one o' them ten mile up the river, as it might be

this afternoon; an' the fire it took place as it might be to-morrow mornin'."

"But where was you when the fire broke-out?--that's the question,"

demanded Dave, with a pleasant side-glance round the table.

"Eh?"

"You'll be bumpin' up agen a snag some o' these times, young feller,"

muttered the bullock driver.

"I was only askin' him where he was when the fire broke out," protested

Somebody's Darling; then in a louder voice he repeated his question.

"Dunno. Somewhere close handy," replied the swagman hopelessly. "Anyhow,

I never done it. Well, then, I'd jist got well started to work

on Monday mornin', when up comes the bobby, an' grabs me. 'S'pose

you'll have to go,' says the missus--for the bosses was both away at another

place they got. 'S'pose so,' says I. 'Better take my swag with me anyhow.'

Course, by the time my three months was up, things was at the slackest;

an' I could n't go straight back to a decent place, an' me fresh out o' chokey.

Fact, I can't go back to that district no more. But as luck would have it,

I runs butt agen the very man I'd ratherest meet of anybody in the country."

The swagman paused, and slowly turned toward me, in evident trouble of mind--

"He did n't tell you two blokes I was logged for stack-burnin'?"

And the poor fellow's flickering eyes sought my face appealingly.

"Indeed he did n't, mate."

"Why, you let the cat out of the bag yourself!" exclaimed Dave triumphantly.

Then the conversation took a more general turn.

By this time, I had provisionally accounted for my vaguely-fancied recognition

of the man. With the circumspection of a seasoned speculatist,

I had bracketed two independent hypotheses, either of which would supply

a satisfactory solution. One of these simply attributed the whole matter

to unconscious cerebration. But here a question arose: If one half

of my brain had been more alert than its duplicate when the object

first presented itself--so that the observation of the vigilant half

instantaneously appeared as an intangible memory to the judgment

of the apathetic half--it still remained to be determined which of the halves

might be said to be in a normal condition. Was one half unduly

and wastefully excited?--or was the other half unhealthily dormant?

The thing would have to be seen into, at some fitting time.

But this hypothesis of unconscious cerebration seemed scarcely as satisfactory

as the other-namely, that, having at a former time heard Terrible Tommy

mention the name of Andrew Glover, my educated instinct of Nomenology,

rising to the very acme of efficiency, had accurately, though unconsciously,

snap-shotted a corresponding apparition on the retina of my mind's eye.

Then there were lessons to be gathered from Tom Armstrongs's prompt acceptance

of such alibi evidence, touching myself, as would have merely tended

to unfathomable speculations on metempsychosis in an ether-poised Hamlet-mind.

Tom, though crushing for a couple of ounces, was one of your practical,

decided, cocksure men; guided by unweighed, unanalysed phenomena,

and governed by conviction alone--the latter being based simply,

though solidly, upon itself. These men are deaf to the symphony

of the Silences; blind to the horizonless areas of the Unknown;

unresponsive to the touch of the Impalpable; oblivious to the machinery

of the Moral Universe--in a word, indifferent to the mysterious Motive

of Nature's all-pervading Soul. In such mental organisms, opinion,

once deflected tangentially from the central Truth, acquires an independent

and stubborn orbit of its own. But the Absolute Truth is so large,

and human opinion so small, that the latter cannot get away altogether,

however eccentric its course may be; indeed, the more elongated the orbit

of Error, the greater chance of its being swallowed up by the scorching Truth,

on its return trip. In the present instance, my own ready co-operation

with a marvellously conducive Providential legislation had been sufficient

unto the deflection of Tom's opinion; and I was content to let

the still-impending collision take thought for itself, particularly as

Mrs. Beaudesart's conjunction was just about falling due. Then I rose to go.

"Here, mate," said I, fearlessly removing my clouded glasses, and handing them,

with their case, to Andrew; "you'll find the advantage of these."

There was no trace of recognition in Tom's look of gratitude as his eyes

rested on my face. But I sighed to reflect that he was still looking out

for the tracks of that miserable impostor from the braes o' Yarra.

Now I had to enact the Cynic philosopher to Moriarty and Butler,

and the aristocratic man with a 'past' to Mrs. Beaudesart;

with the satisfaction of knowing that each of these was acting a part to me.

Such is life, my fellow-mummers--just like a poor player, that bluffs

and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity.

But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story

is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky, signifying--nothing.

THE END.