ne
the old lady left her and can be independent of him if she chooses.
There's nothing to prevent her living any kind of life that pleases
her--except me, and I'm ready and willing to clear out of the show. One
thing I'm sorry for now, and that is having torn up the draft she sent
to pay me back her passage money, and putting the bits in an envelope
and posting them to her without a word. I suppose it should have been
done through a lawyer, with all the proper palaver. Perhaps she didn't
tell you about that. I somehow fancy she didn't. But I know that it
would have hurt her--I knew that when I did it. And perhaps that is why
I did it. You are right. I haven't acted the part of a gentleman all
through this miserable business. But what could you expect?

For you see, my father worked his own way up, and my grandfather was a
crofter--and I haven't got the blood of Irish kings, on the other side,
behind me.

Now I'm being nasty, as you used to say in the old Bungroopim days when
I wouldn't play. YOU were my Ideal, in those days, Joan--before you
went and got married. I've been an unlucky devil all round.

Well there! I had to try and arrange things for an overdraft with the
Bank in Leichardt's Town, but I went down chiefly to consult lawyers
about the divorce question, so that it should be done with as little
publicity and unpleasantness as possible. It appeared that it could be
done all right--as I wrote you. What would have been the good of my
havering in that letter over my own feelings and the bad times I had
struck? It never was my habit to whine over what couldn't be helped.

Luck was up against me down there too. I got pitched off a buckjumper
at a horse-dealers', Bungroopim way. I had been 'blowing,' Australian
fashion, that I could handle that colt if nobody else was able to. The
end of it was that the buckjumper got home, not me. I was laid up in
hospital for close on two months, with a broken leg and complications.
The complications were that old spear wound, which inflamed, and they
found that a splinter from the jagged tip had been left in.
Blood-poisoning was the next thing; and when I came out of that
hospital I was more like the used up bit of soap you'll see by the
COOLIBAH* outside a shepherd's hut on ration-bringing day, than
anything else I can think of.

[*Coolibah--a basin made from the scooped out excrescence of a tree.]

As soon as I could sit a horse again I went to work at Moongarr. I had
fo