, the woman must be ravin' mad," I says. "Whatever did yer say to
her this time, Dave? Yer allers gettin' inter hot water with her."

"I didn't say nothin'," says Dave. "I jest went up laughin' like, an'
says, `How are yer, Mrs Hardwick?' an' she ups an' lets me have a dish
of dirty wash-up water, an' then on top of that she let fly with a
dipper of scaldin'-hot, greasy water outer the boiler. She's gone clean
ravin' mad, I think."

"She's as mad as a hatter, right enough, Dave," says Billy Grimshaw.
"Don't you go there no more, Dave, it ain't safe." An' we lent Dave a
hat an' a clean shirt, an' he went on inter town. "You ought to have
humoured her," says Billy, as Dave rode away. "You ought to have told
her to put a wet bag over her chimbly an' hang the fish inside to
smoke." But Dave was too stunned to ketch on. He went on inter the town
an' got on a howlin' spree. An' while he was soberin' up the thing began
to dawn on him. An' the nex' time he met Billy they had a fight. An'
Dave got another woman to speak to Mrs Hardwick, an' Mrs Hardwick
ketched young Tommy goin' past her place one day an' bailed him up an'
scared the truth out of him.

"Look here!" she says to him, "I want the truth, the whole truth, an'
nothin' but the truth about them fish, an' if I don't get it outer you
I'll wring yer young neck for tryin' to poison me, an' save yer from the
gallust!" she says to Tommy.

So he told her the whole truth, swelp him, an' got away; an' he
respected Mrs Hardwick arter that.

An' next time we come past with the teams we seen Dave's horse hangin'
up outside Mrs Hardwick's, an' we went some miles further along the road
an' camped in a new place where we'd be more comfortable. An' ever arter
that we used to always whip up an' drive past her place as if we didn't
know her.

"SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER?"

God's preacher, of churches unheeded,
God's vineyard, though barren the sod,
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed,
Rough link 'twixt the Bushman and God.
The Christ of the Never.

TOLD BY JOE WILSON

I never told you about Peter M'Laughlan. He was a sort of bush
missionary up-country and out back in Australia, and before he died he
was known from Riverina down south in New South Wales to away up through
the Never-Never country in western Queensland.

His past was a mystery, so, of course, there were all sorts of yarns
about him. He was s