for one night only. I'd
have shower-baths; but I wouldn't force any man to have a bath
against his will. They could sit down to a table and have a feed off a
table-cloth, and sleep in sheets, and feel like they did before their
old mothers died, or before they ran away from home."

"Who? The mothers?" I asked.

"Yes, in some cases," said Mitchell. "And I'd have a nice, cool little
summer-house down near the artificial lake, out of earshot of the house,
where the bullock-drivers could sit with their pipes after tea, and tell
yarns, and talk in their own language. And I'd have boats on the lake,
too, in case an old Oxford or Cambridge man, or an old sailor came
along--it might put years on to his life to have a pull at the oars. You
remember that old sailor we saw in charge of the engine back there at
the government tank? You saw how he had the engine?--clean and bright as
a new pin--everything spick-and-span and shipshape, and his hut fixed up
like a ship's cabin. I believe he thinks he's at sea half his time, and
shoving her through it, instead of pumping muddy water out of a hole in
the baking scrubs for starving stock. Or maybe he reckons he's keeping
her afloat."

"And would you have fish in this lake of yours?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," said Mitchell, "and any ratty old shepherd or sundowner,
that's gone mad of heat and loneliness--like the old codger we met back
yonder--he could sit by the lagoon in the cool of the evening and fish
to his heart's content with a string and a bent pin, and dream he's
playing truant from school and fishing in the brook near his native
village in England about fifty years ago. It would seem more real than
fishing in the dust as some mad old bushmen do."

"But you'd draw the line somewhere?" I asked.

"No," said Mitchell, "not even at poets. I'd try to cure them, too, with
good wholesome food and plenty of physical exercise. The Lost Souls'
Hotel would be a refuge for men who'd been jail-birds once as well
as men who were gentlemen once, and for physical wrecks and ruined
drunkards as well as healthy honest shearers. I'd sit down and talk to
the boozer or felon just as if I thought he was as good a man as me--and
he might be, for that matter--God knows.

"The sick man would be kept till he recovered, or died; and the boozer,
suffering from a recovery, I'd keep him till he was on his legs again."

"Then you'd have to have a doctor," I said.

"Yes," said Mitchell, "I'd fix that up a