gunyahs, which gave a temporary shelter against wind or rain,
and could be left standing, or thrown down, when the tribe moved,
without loss. Small fires smouldered near each, and, round about, half a
dozen chocolate-coloured piccaninnies, innocent of clothes, ran and
played, laughing and chattering to one another. In the shade the men
were lounging, indolent and indifferent, wearing such cast-off clothes
as they had been able to beg or steal from station hands, and smoking
tobacco obtained by a similar process. In the heat and sunshine the
women worked at such tasks which need demanded--the search for edible
roots and grubs and the gathering of wood for the fires--or lounged, as
their lords and masters did, indolent and indifferent. An old man, whose
hair and beard were grizzled, and whose flesh was shrunk and withered,
sat in the shade of his gunyah, gazing dreamily and wearily at the
glowing ends of the sticks and the thin column of blue smoke which rose
so steadily in the still air from them.

He was the last of his generation; the last of the tribe who remembered
the days when first the white man came; the last to feel and sorrow for
the days when tribal law and tribal rite ruled the destinies of the
race. Very far back, when he was little more than a piccaninny, and long
before he was ripe for the ceremony which made him a "young man," he
recalled how his tribe had been perplexed by a story which had come to
them, by a tale of strange happenings brought from other tribes
somewhere away in the far distance. Later, when he was grown and had
been made a young man and a warrior, he learned the story in full, and
wonderful it seemed to him, as wonderful as it seemed to all his tribe,
old men and young men alike. For it meant the coming of that which would
explain and render clear all the mysteries treasured up by the wise men
and the old men, and shown, still in mystery and only in part, to the
young men as they passed through the stages of their initiation. In
short, it meant to him, and to his, the fulfilment of their religion,
the vindication of their faith, the perfecting of their creed.

In the matters of creeds and abstract faiths many men make many
methods. Some are fitted for the daily use of men counting into
millions; some touch only a minute few, and shrink from the common gaze;
some, again, serve the needs and lives of men having simple ways, and
some sustain a despot's power and hold the race as slaves: b