the great Granite Peak,
glaring like a molten mass.

The people didn't like to go inside out of the heat and sit down before
the minister came. The wretched hut was a rough school, sometimes with a
clay fire-place where the teacher cooked, and a corner screened off with
sacking where he had his bunk; it was a camp for tramps at other times,
or lizards and possums, but to-day it was a house of God, and as such
the people respected it.

The town parson didn't turn up. Perhaps he was unwell, or maybe the hot,
dusty ten-mile drive was too much for him to face. One of the farmers,
who had tried to conduct service on a previous occasion on which the
ordained minister had failed us, had broken down in the middle of it,
so he was out of the question. We waited for about an hour, and then who
should happen to ride along but Peter M'Laughlan, and one or two of the
elder men asked him to hold service. He was on his way to see a sick
friend at a sheep station over the ridges, but he said that he could
spare an hour or two. (Nearly every man who was sick, either in stomach
or pocket, was a friend of Peter M'Laughlan.) Peter tied up his horse
under a bush shed at the back of the hut, and we followed him in.

The "school" had been furnished with a rough deal table and a wooden
chair for "the teacher," and with a few rickety desks and stools cadged
from an old "provisional" school in town when the new public school
was built; and the desks and stools had been fastened to the floor to
strengthen them; they had been made for "infant" classes, and youth out
our way ran to length. But when grown men over six feet high squeezed
in behind the desks and sat down on the stools the effect struck me as
being ridiculous. In fact, I am afraid that on the first occasion it
rather took my attention from the sermon, and I remember being made
very uncomfortable by a school chum, Jack Barnes, who took a delight in
catching my eye and winking or grinning. He could wink without changing
a solemn line in his face and grin without exploding, and I couldn't.
The boys usually sat on seats, slabs on blocks of wood, along the wall
at the far end of the room, which was comfortable, for they had a rest
for their backs. One or two of the boys were nearing six feet high, so
they could almost rest their chins on their knees as they sat. But
I squatted with some of my tribe on a stool along the wall by the
teacher's table, and so could see most of the congregation