omas were in the bar,
and Jack had a glass before him.

"Come on, Joe, you old bounder," said Jack, "come and have a
whisky-and-soda; it will straighten you up."

"What's that you're drinking, Jack?" I asked.

"Oh, don't be a fool!" said Jack. "One drink won't hurt me. Do you think
I'm going on the booze? Have a soda and straighten up; we must make a
start directly."

I remember we had two or three whiskies, and then suddenly I tackled
Thomas, and Jack was holding me back, and laughing and swearing at me
at the same time, and I had a tussle with him; and then I was suddenly
calmer and sensible, and we were shaking hands all round, and Jack was
talking about just one more spree for the sake of old times.

"A bit of a booze won't hurt me, Joe, you old fool," he said. "We'll
have one more night of it, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, and start
at daylight in the morning. You go and see to the horses, it will
straighten you up. Take the saddle off and hobble 'em out."

But I insisted on starting at once, and Jack promised he would. We were
gloriously happy for an hour or so, and then I went to sleep.

When I woke it was late in the afternoon. I was very giddy and shaky;
the girl brought me a whisky-and-soda, and that steadied me. Some more
shearers had arrived, and Jack was playing cards with two of them on top
of a cask in the bar. Thomas was dead drunk on the floor, or pretending
to be so, and his wife was behind the bar. I went out to see to the
horses; I found them in a bush yard at the back. The packhorse was
rolling in the mud with the pack-saddle and saddlebags on. One of the
chaps helped me take off the saddles and put them in the harness-room
behind the kitchen.

I'll pass over that night. It wouldn't be very edifying to the great,
steady-living, sober majority, and the others, the never-do-wells, the
rovers, wrecks and failures, will understand only too well without being
told--only too well, God help them!

When I woke in the morning I couldn't have touched a drink to save my
life. I was fearfully shaky, and swimming about the head, but I put my
head over a tub under the pump and got the girl to pump for a while, and
then I drank a pint of tea and managed to keep it down, and felt better.

All through the last half of the night I'd kept saying, in a sort of
drink nightmare, "I'll go for Peter M'Laughlan in the morning. I'll go
for Peter as soon as I can stand!" and repeating Clara Barnes's words,
"Ride