wards. I thought it one of the most cruel
things I had ever seen.

"Gentleman Once found that he could not stand the routine of office work
and the dull life in that place. He commenced to drink again, and went
on till he lost his billet. They had a little boy, a bright little boy,
yet the father drank.

"The last spree was a terrible one. He was away from home a fortnight,
and in that fortnight he got down as deep as a man could get. Then
another man got hold of him and set him on his feet, and straightened
him up. The other man was a ruined doctor, a wreck whose devil was
morphia. I don't hold that a man's salvation is always in his own hands;
I've seen mates pull mates out of hell too often to think that.

"Then Gentleman Once saw the past as he had never seen it before--he saw
hope for the future with it. And he swore an oath that he felt he would
keep.

"He suffered from reaction on his way home, and, as he neared the town,
a sudden fear, born of his nervous state, no doubt, sent a cold, sick
emptiness through him: `Was it too late?'

"As he turned into the street where he lived, he noticed a little group
of bush larrikins standing at the corner. And they moved uneasily when
they caught sight of him, and, as he passed, they touched and lifted
their hats to him. Now he knew that he had lost the respect even of bush
larrikins; and he knew enough of the bush to know that a bushman never
lifts his hat to a man--only to death, and a woman sometimes. He hurried
home and read the truth in his wife's eyes. His little boy was dead. He
went down under the blow, and she held his head to her breast and kept
saying. `My poor boy, my poor boy!'

"It was he that she meant, not the boy she had lost. She knew him, she
understood him better than he did himself, and, heart-broken as she was,
she knew how he was going to suffer, and comforted him. `My poor boy, my
poor, foolish boy!'

"He mended the past, as far as he could, during the next two years, and
she seemed happy. He was very gentle, he was very kind to her. He was
happy, too, in a new, strange way. But he had learned what it was to
suffer through his own fault, and now he was to learn what it was to
suffer through no fault of his own, and without the consolation of
saying `I was wrong! I was to blame!' At the end of the two years there
was another child, and his wife died."

The four sat silently smoking until Jack Barnes asked:

"And what did he do then, Peter?"