he. 'I'm going your way, and I promised
George Storefield I'd call and give you a lift home. I'm glad to see you
out again, and there's a few more round Rocky Flat that's the same.'

We had a long drive--many a mile to go before we were near home. I
couldn't talk; I didn't know what to say, for one thing. I could only
feel as if I was being driven along the road to heaven after coming from
the other place. I couldn't help wondering whether it was possible that
I was a free man going back to life and friends and happiness. Was it
possible? Could I ever be happy again? Surely it must be a dream that
would all melt away, and I'd wake up as I'd done hundreds of times and
find myself on the floor of the cell, with the bare walls all round me.

When we got nearer the old place I began to feel that queer and strange
that I didn't know which way to look. It was coming on for spring, and
there'd been a middling drop of rain, seemingly, that had made the grass
green and everything look grand. What a time had passed over since I
thought whether it was spring, or summer, or winter! It didn't make much
odds to me in there, only to drive me wild now and again with thinkin'
of what was goin' on outside, and how I was caged up and like to be for
months and years.

Things began little by little to look the way they used to do long and
long ago. Now it was an old overhanging limb that had arched over the
road since we were boys; then there was a rock with a big kurrajong tree
growing near it. When we came to the turn off where we could see Nulla
Mountain everything came back to me. I seemed to have had two lives; the
old one--then a time when I was dead, or next door to it--now this new
life. I felt as if I was just born.

'We'll get down here now,' I said, when we came near the dividing fence;
'it ain't far to walk. That's your road.'

'I'll run you up to the door,' says he, 'it isn't far; you ain't used to
walking much.'

He let out his horse and we trotted through the paddock up to the old
hut.

'The garden don't look bad,' says he. 'Them peaches always used to bear
well in the old man's time, and the apples and quinces too. Some one's
had it took care on and tidied up a bit. There, you've got a friend or
two left, old man. And I'm one, too,' says he, putting out his hand and
giving mine a shake. 'There ain't any one in these parts as 'll cast it
up to you as long as you keep straight. You can look 'em all in the face
now, an