e to be arrested on warrant, and there were lots
of chaps, like us, that were 'wanted', on the far-out north stations.
Once we sighted the waters of the Warrego we should feel ourselves more
than half free.

Then there was Jim, poor old Jim! He wrote to say he was just starting
for Melbourne, and very queer he felt about leaving his wife and boy.
Such a fine little chap as he'd grown too. He'd just got his head
down, he said, and taken to the pulling (he meant working) like our old
near-side poler, and he was as happy as a king, going home to Jeanie at
night, and having his three pounds every Saturday. Now he was going away
ever so far by land and sea, and God knows when he might see either of
'em again. If it wasn't for the fear he had of being pitched upon by
the police any day, and the long sentence he was sure to get, he'd stay
where he was. He wasn't sure whether he wouldn't do so now.

After that Aileen had a letter, a short one, from Jeanie. Jim had gone.
She had persuaded him for the sake of the boy, though both their hearts
were nearly broken. She didn't know whether she'd done right. Perhaps
she never might see him again. The poor fellow had forfeited his coach
fare once, and come back to stay another day with her. When he did go he
looked the picture of misery, and something told her it was their last
parting.

Well, we struck the river about ten miles this side of Cunnamulla, where
there was a roadside inn, a small, miserable kind of place, just one
of those half-shanties, half-public-houses, fit for nothing but to trap
bushmen, and where the bad grog kills more men in a year than a middling
break-out of fever.

Somewhere about here I expected to hear of the other two. We'd settled
to meet a few miles one side or the other of the township. It didn't
much matter which. So I began to look about in case I might get word of
either of 'em, even if they didn't turn up to the time.

Somewhere about dinner time (twelve o'clock) we got the cattle on to the
river and let 'em spread over the flat. Then the man in charge rode up
to the inn, the Traveller's Rest, a pretty long rest for some of 'em (as
a grave here and there with four panels of shickery two-rail fence round
it showed), and shouted nobblers round for us.

While we was standing up at the bar, waiting for the cove to serve it
out, a flash-looking card he was, and didn't hurry himself, up rides
a tall man to the door, hangs up his horse, and walks in. H