which as I have
said, he was wont to sleep. So he drew himself up on his knees and to
his feet, with the instinctive intention of getting down to (say) put
some chaff and corn in the feed-bags stretched across the shafts for
the horses; for he intended, by instinct, to make an early start. Which
shows how instinct can never be trusted to travel with memory, but
will get ahead of it--or behind it. (Say it was instinct mixed with
or adulterated by drink.) He got a long, hairy leg over and felt
(instinctively) for the hub of the wheel; his foot found and rested on
the projecting ledge of the balcony floor outside, and that, to him,
was the hub all right. He swung his other leg over and expected to drop
lightly on to the grass or dust of the camp; but, being instinctively
rigid, he fell heavily some fifteen feet into a kerbed gutter.

As a result of his howls lights soon flickered in windows and fanlights;
and with prompt, eager, anxious, and awed bush first-aid and assistance,
they carried a very sober, battered and blasphemous driver inside and
spread mattresses on the floor. And, some six weeks afterwards, an
image, mostly of plaster-of-Paris and bandages, reclined, much against
its will, on a be-cushioned cane lounge on the hospital veranda; and,
from the only free and workable corner of its mouth, when
the pipe was removed, came shockingly expressed opinions of
them--newfangled--two-story--! "night houses" (as it called them).
And, thereafter, when he had a load on, or the weather was too bad for
sleeping in or under his wagon, the veranda of a one-storied shanty (if
he could get to it) was good enough for MacSomething, the carrier.

THE HYPNOTIZED TOWNSHIP

They said that Harry Chatswood, the mail contractor would do anything
for Cobb & Co., even to stretching fencing-wire across the road in a
likely place: but I don't believe that--Harry was too good-hearted
to risk injuring innocent passengers, and he had a fellow feeling for
drivers, being an old coach driver on rough out-back tracks himself. But
he did rig up fencing-wire for old Mac, the carrier, one night, though
not across the road. Harry, by the way, was a city-born bushman, who
had been everything for some years. Anything from six-foot-six to
six-foot-nine, fourteen stone, and a hard case. He is a very successful
coach-builder now, for he knows the wood, the roads, and the weak parts
in a coach.

It was in the good seasons when competition was