Hermit sadly. "And even for him I had to swim; he
obligingly chose a watery grave just to spite me, I believe. He wasn't
much of a duck either. After I had stripped and swum for him, dressed
again, prepared the duck, cooked him, and finally sat down to dinner,
there was so little of him that he only amounted to half a meal, and was
tough at that!"

"So was your luck," observed Wally.

"Uncommonly tough," agreed the Hermit. "However, these things are the
fortunes of war, and one has to put up with them, grin, and play the
game. It's surprising how much tougher things look if you once begin to
grumble. I've had so much bad luck in the bush that I've really got
quite used to it."

"How's that?" asked Harry.

"Why," said the Hermit, "if it wasn't one thing, it was mostly another.
I beg your pardon, Miss Norah, let me help you over this log. I've had
my tucker stolen again and again, several times by birds, twice by
swaggies, and once by a couple of black fellows pilgrimaging through the
bush I don't know whither. They happened on my camp, and helped
themselves; I reckoned myself very lucky that they only took food,
though I've no doubt they would have taken more if I hadn't arrived on
the scene in the nick of time and scared them almost out of their wits."

"How did you do that?" asked Norah; "tell us about it, Mr. Hermit!"

The Hermit smiled down at Norah's eager face.

"Oh, that's hardly a yarn, Miss Norah," he said, his eyes twinkling in a
way that made them look astonishingly young, despite his white hair and
his wrinkles. "That was only a small happening, though it capped a day
of bad luck. I had been busy in camp all the morning cooking, and had
laid in quite a supply of tucker, for me. I'd cooked some wild duck, and
roasted a hare, boiled a most splendid plum-duff and finally baked a big
damper, and I can tell you I was patting myself on the back because I
need not do any more cooking for nearly a week, unless it were fish--I'm
not a cook by nature, and pretty often go hungry rather than prepare a
meal.

"After dinner I thought I'd go down to the creek and try my luck--it was
a perfect day for fishing, still and grey. So I dug some worms--and
broke my spade in doing so--and started off.

"The promise of the day held good. I went to my favourite spot, and the
fish just rushed me--the worms must have been very tempting, or else the
fish larder was scantily supplied. At any rate, they bit splendidly, and
soo