no man living would ever
have been the better for.

'Glad you take it so quiet,' Jim says, after holding his tongue longer
than he did mostly. 'She's a bad, cold-hearted jade, though she is
Jeanie's sister. If I thought my girl was like her she'd never have
another thought from me, but she isn't, and never was. The worse luck
I've had the closer she's stuck to me, like a little brick as she is.
I'd give all I ever had in the world if I could go to her and say, "Here
I am, Jim Marston, without a penny in the world, but I can look every
man in the face, and we'll work our way along the road of life cheerful
and loving together." But I CAN'T say it, Dick, that's the devil of
it, and it makes me so wild sometimes that I could knock my brains out
against the first ironbark tree I come across.'

I didn't say anything, but I took hold of Jim's hand and shook it.
We looked in each other's eyes for a minute; there was no call to say
anything. We always understood one another, Jim and I.

As we were safe to stop in the Hollow for long spells at a time we took
a good look over it, as far as we could do on foot. We found a rum sort
of place at the end of a long gully that went easterly from the main
flat. In one way you'd think the whole valley had been an arm of the sea
some time or other. It was a bit like Sydney Harbour in shape, with one
principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies running off from
it, and winding about in all directions. Even the sandstone walls, by
which the whole affair, great and small, was hemmed in, were just like
the cliff about South Head; there were lines, too, on the face of them,
Jim and I made out, just like where the waves had washed marks and
levels on the sea-rock. We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part
of it. Whatever might have been there once, it grew stunning fine grass
now, and there was beautiful clear fresh water in all the creeks that
ran through it.

Well, we rambled up the long, crooked gully that I was talking about
till about half-way up it got that narrow that it seemed stopped by a
big rock that had tumbled down from the top and blocked the path. It was
pretty well grown over with wild raspberries and climbers.

'No use going farther,' says Jim; 'there's nothing to see.'

'I don't know that. Been a track here some time. Let's get round and
see.'

When we got round the rock the track was plain again; it had been well
worn once, though neither foot nor hoof