for a burning stick to light his pipe--"MAKE
it!"

"To drown THEIR troubles!" continued Joe, in a tone of impatient
contempt. "The Oracle must be well on towards the sixties; he can take
his glass with any man, but you never saw him drunk."

"What's the Oracle to do with it?"

"Did you ever hear his history?"

"No. Do you know it?"

"Yes, though I don't think he has any idea that I do. Now, we were
talking about the Oracle a little while ago. We know he's an old ass;
a good many outsiders consider that he's a bit soft or ratty, and,
as we're likely to be mates together for some time on that fencing
contract, if we get it, you might as well know what sort of a man he is
and was, so's you won't get uneasy about him if he gets deaf for a while
when you're talking, or does funny things with his pipe or pint-pot, or
walks up and down by himself for an hour or so after tea, or sits on a
log with his head in his hands, or leans on the fence in the gloaming
and keeps looking in a blank sort of way, straight ahead, across the
clearing. For he's gazing at something a thousand miles across country,
south-east, and about twenty years back into the past, and no doubt he
sees himself (as a young man), and a Gippsland girl, spooning under the
stars along between the hop-gardens and the Mitchell River. And, if you
get holt of a fiddle or a concertina, don't rasp or swank too much
on old tunes, when he's round, for the Oracle can't stand it. Play
something lively. He'll be down there at that surveyor's camp yarning
till all hours, so we'll have plenty of time for the story--but don't
you ever give him a hint that you know.

"My people knew him well; I got most of the story from them--mostly from
Uncle Bob, who knew him better than any. The rest leaked out through the
women--you know how things leak out amongst women?"

Mitchell dropped his head and scratched the back of it. HE knew.

"It was on the Cudgegong River. My Uncle Bob was mates with him on one
of those 'rushes' along there--the 'Pipeclay', I think it was, or the
'Log Paddock'. The Oracle was a young man then, of course, and so was
Uncle Bob (he was a match for most men). You see the Oracle now, and you
can imagine what he was when he was a young man. Over six feet, and as
straight as a sapling, Uncle Bob said, clean-limbed, and as fresh as
they made men in those days; carried his hands behind him, as he does
now, when he hasn't got the swag--but his shoulders were ba