five years later, from the Never Never. It was
early in the morning--I had ridden since midnight. I didn't think the
old man would be up and about; and, besides, I wanted to get on home,
and have a look at the old folk, and the mates I'd left behind--and the
girl. But I hadn't got far past the point where Howlett's track joined
the road, when I happened to look back, and saw him on horseback,
stumbling down the track. I waited till he came up.

He was riding the old grey draught horse this time, and it looked very
much broken down. I thought it would have come down every step, and
fallen like an old rotten humpy in a gust of wind. And the old man was
not much better off. I saw at once that he was a very sick man. His face
was drawn, and he bent forward as if he was hurt. He got down stiffly
and awkwardly, like a hurt man, and as soon as his feet touched the
ground he grabbed my arm, or he would have gone down like a man who
steps off a train in motion. He hung towards the bank of the road,
feeling blindly, as it were, for the ground, with his free hand, as I
eased him down. I got my blanket and calico from the pack saddle to make
him comfortable.

"Help me with my back agen the tree," he said. "I must sit up--it's no
use lyin' me down."

He sat with his hand gripping his side, and breathed painfully.

"Shall I run up to the hut and get the wife?" I asked.

"No." He spoke painfully. "No!" Then, as if the words were jerked out of
him by a spasm: "She ain't there."

I took it that she had left him.

"How long have you been bad? How long has this been coming on?"

He took no notice of the question. I thought it was a touch of rheumatic
fever, or something of that sort. "It's gone into my back and sides
now--the pain's worse in me back," he said presently.

I had once been mates with a man who died suddenly of heart disease,
while at work. He was washing a dish of dirt in the creek near a claim
we were working; he let the dish slip into the water, fell back, crying,
"O, my back!" and was gone. And now I felt by instinct that it was poor
old Howlett's heart that was wrong. A man's heart is in his back as well
as in his arms and hands.

The old man had turned pale with the pallor of a man who turns faint in
a heat wave, and his arms fell loosely, and his hands rocked helplessly
with the knuckles in the dust. I felt myself turning white, too, and the
sick, cold, empty feeling in my stomach, for I knew the signs. Bus