r of the woman with a pillow, were he not prevented by
sound anatomical reasons.

"You look reg'lerly tuckered out, Ben," he said, "an' yer horse could do
with a spell too. Git down, man, and have a pint er tea and a bite."

Ben got down wearily and knew at once how knocked up he was. He sat
right down on the hard ground, embracing and drawing up his knees, and
felt as if he'd like never to get up again: while Jimmy shook some chaff
and corn that he carried for his riding hack into a box for the horse,
and his travelling mate, Billy Grimshaw, lifted his big namesake half
full of cold tea, on to the glowing coals by the burning log--looking
just like an orang-outang in a Crimean shirt.

Ben got a fresh horse at Alfred Gentle's farm under the shadow of
Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the roaring
days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a farming
township. Here he roused and told the storekeeper. Then up the creek to
Home Rule, dreariest of deserted diggings.

He struck across the ages-haunted bush, and up Chinaman's Creek, past
"the Chinamen's Graves," and through the scrub and over the ridges for
the Talbragar Road. For he had to see Jack Denver home from start to
finish.

Glaring, hot and dusty, lay the long, white road; coated with dust that
felt greasy to the touch and taste. The coffin was in a four-wheeled
trap, for the solitary hearse that Mudgee boasted then was to meet them
some three miles out of town--at the racecourse, as it happened, by
one of those eternal ironies of fate. (Jones, the undertaker, had had
another job that morning.) The long string of buggies and carts and
horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen drawn respectfully back
amongst the trees here and there along the route; male hats off and
held rigidly vertical with right ears as the coffin passed; and drivers
waiting for a chance to draw into the line.

Think of it; up early on the first morning, a long day at the races, a
long journey home, awake and up all night with grief and sympathy. Some
of the men had ridden till daylight; the women, worn out and exhausted,
had perhaps an hour or so of sleep towards morning--yet they were all
there, except Ben Duggan, on the long, hot, dusty road back, heads
swimming in the heat and faces and hands coated with perspiration and
dust--and never, never once breaking out of a slow walk. It would
have been the same had it been pouring with rain. I hav