as a lord rolling
heavily, his hands in his pockets, his hat jauntily set on the back of
his head, bellowing the latest comic song, a lonely soul; then a dray,
piled high with cradles, pans, picks, shovels, swags, and a miscellaneous
cargo, on the top of which perched a bulky Irishwoman, going to the
diggings to make her fortune as the proprietress of the Forest Creek
Laundry. This and much more in the depths of a pathless forest, the grave
solitude of which was disturbed only for the moment as each jocund
company hastened on into the mysterious vastness ahead, or fell back into
the dense Bush that lay behind. That anybody could have a definite idea
whither he was going in this ocean of trees, that engulfed them all like
stones dropped into the sea, Done found it hard to believe.

'You're a curious kind of devil, Jim,' said Mike, who had been watching
Done closely during the last few minutes.

'How's that?'

'You don't talk. Worse still, you don't smoke.'

'No; in England I had neither mates nor friends, and smoking's a
convivial disease--a kid catches it from his companions.'

'I might have guessed you were bred a "hatter"; you're as dumb as a
mute.'

'Same reason, Mike; but I'm getting over it. I'm getting over a good many
things rather too suddenly. I'm sort of mentally breathless. A year ago
I'd have sworn that friendship and good-fellowship were impossible to me.'

'Go on!'

'And just now I'm feeling things too keenly to talk much about them.'

''Nough said, Jimmy; I ain't complaining.' Mike knocked the ashes from his
pipe on his boot. 'I s'pose I'd best get somethin' for breakfast,' he
said, rising and stretching himself.

'What, here?' Jim looked about him into the darkness.

'Here or hereabouts. Keep an eye on the swags. I won't be gone more'n an
hour at the outside.'

Micah Burton went off into the dense Bush, that to Jim looked grimly
unpromising, and the latter lay back upon the grass again, with quite a
luxurious sensation. The hard day's walking made this rest peculiarly
agreeable: he had eaten well, his mind was at peace--he no longer
concerned himself with psychological theories--he was content to live and
feel.

Sharply out of the silence came a ringing report. Jim was jerked to a
sitting posture, listening with all his ears. The report was repeated
several times, a fusillade of shots, followed by faint echoes of a voice
raised in anger. There was an interval of quiet, and when the sound