long upon the barbarous sufferings his
brother had endured, drawing upon his affection for Mike Burton to
stimulate his fading emotions; but he failed to lift himself out of the
slough of despond into which he had fallen.

Jim fled from his nurses too early, and the trials he subsequently
endured served to retard his restoration. He had pretty good health,
without either strength of body or spirit. Half an hour's work at the
windlass wearied him, and this weariness irritated him with a dull,
abiding anger. He spent much of his time when not at work lying on his
bunk. The life on the field was not different from that which had
delighted him at Diamond Gully; there was the same cheerfulness amongst
the men, the shanties flared at night, and the diggers roared, and
gambled, and drank with no less enthusiasm. He alone was changed.

These moods and the manner of life he was leading fostered a most
unhealthy habit of introspection. He was for ever examining his emotions.
He thought much about Lucy Woodrow, and of the love he had borne her, but
without sorrow for the loss of her. He tried to account for the fact that
there was no grief in his heart on Lucy's accounts whilst keeping Aurora
jealously in the background. He was unconsciously dishonest to himself in
these self-examinings, and one day this dawned upon him. He laughed over
the discovery, laughed aloud at himself, but the amusement was grim.

'So, then, it is Aurora I need after all,' he said in satirical
soliloquy, 'and my soul has been playing the hypocrite these few weeks.
What a marvel of constancy is man! Lucy is lost to me, and secretly the
baffled heart sneaks back to the other love.'

Behind all this was a fretful longing for the past happiness to which the
new country, the new conditions, Aurora Mike, and his own abounding
vitality, had contributed. He shunned the conditions, and was angry
because the object eluded him. Done, in his sick desire to know himself
ceased to be truly himself. Had he been content with the fact that he
loved Aurora and needed her--needed her love, her beauty, her fine
joyousness and splendid vitality--the rest would have been easy.

He had written from Ballarat to Mike Burton's family in New South Wales,
and at about this time there came a letter from a relative, asking his
assistance in Melbourne to secure the money lying to Burton's credit in
the bank. Jim went to Melbourne, and a quiet trip and the change improved
him consid