ways just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger always
calm. He expected trouble; when trouble came he was unmoved; he might
have said with Singleton, "_I told you so_": he was content with
thinking, "_Just as I expected_." On the fall of these last thunderbolts
he bore himself like a person only distantly interested in the event,
pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took
ship and came to Sydney. Some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so
it was with Norris. Eighteen days after he landed his quarter's
allowance was all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of
strangers in what is called a new country he began to besiege offices
and apply for all manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last
of all from his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced,
in a very elegant suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the
degraded outcasts of the city.

In this strait he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his allowance.

"Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. Carthew," said the
lawyer. "It is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar
position in which you stand. _Remittance men_, as we call them here, are
not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act upon a system. I
make you a present of a sovereign--here it is. Every day you choose to
call my clerk will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my office
is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half-a-crown. My conditions are
these. That you do not come to me, but to my clerk, that you do not come
here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and
have signed a receipt.--I wish you a good morning."

"I have to thank you, I suppose," said Carthew. "My position is so
wretched that I cannot even refuse this starvation allowance."

"Starvation!" said the lawyer, smiling. "No man will starve here on a
shilling a day. I had on my hands another young gentleman who remained
continuously intoxicated for six years on the same allowance." And he
once more busied himself with his papers.

In the time that followed, the image of the smiling lawyer haunted
Carthew's memory. "That three minutes' talk was all the education I ever
had worth talking of," says he. "It was all life in a nutshell. Confound
it," I thought, "have I got to the point of envying that ancient
fossil?"

Every morning for the next two or three weeks the stroke of ten found
Norris, unkempt and hagga