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plan of the building: he was building the unfinished parts of the
foundation walls up to the required height. He had bricklayer's tools,
a bag of lime, and a heap of sand, and had worked up a considerable
quantity of mortar. It was a rubble foundation: he was knocking off the
thin end of a piece of stone to make it fit, and the clanging of the
trowel prevented his hearing my footsteps.

"Good day, mate," I said, close beside him.

I half expected he'd start when I spoke, but he didn't: he looked round
slowly, but with a haunted look in his eyes as if I might have been one
of his ghosts. He was a tall man, gaunt and haggard-eyed, as many men
are in the bush; he may have been but little past middle age, and grey
before his time.

"Good day," he said, and he set the stone in its place, carefully flush
with the outer edge of the wall, before he spoke again. Then he looked
at the sun, which was low, laid down his trowel, and asked me to come
to the tent-fire. "It's turning chilly," he said. It was a model camp,
everything clean and neat both inside the tent and out; he had made a
stone fireplace with a bark shelter over it, and a table and bench
under another little shed, with shelves for his tin cups and plates
and cooking utensils. He put a box in front of the fire and folded a
flour-bag on top of it for a seat for me, and hung the billy over the
fire. He sat on his heels and poked the burning sticks, abstractedly I
thought, or to keep his hands and thoughts steady.

"I see you're doing a bit of building," I said.

"Yes," he said, keeping his eyes on the fire; "I'm getting on with it
slowly."

I don't suppose he looked at me half a dozen times the whole while I was
in his camp. When he spoke he talked just as if he were sitting yarning
in a row of half a dozen of us. Presently he said suddenly, and giving
the fire a vicious dig with his poker:

"That house must be finished by Christmas."

"Why?" I asked, taken by surprise. "What's the hurry?"

"Because," he said, "I'm going to be married in the New Year--to the
best and dearest girl in the bush."

There was an awkward pause on my part, but presently I pulled myself
together.

"You'll never finish it by yourself," I said. "Why don't you put on some
men?"

"Because," he said, "I can't trust them. Besides, how am I to get
bricklayers and carpenters in a place like this?"

I noticed all through that his madness or the past in his mind was mixed
up with the