r, was about my own age. He thought a
lot of what I'd done for her, and years afterwards I threatened to punch
his head if he said anything more about it. He laughed, and held out his
hand.

'You and I might have been better friends lately,' says he; 'but don't
you forget you've got another brother besides Jim--one that will stick
to you, too, fair weather or foul.'

I always had a great belief in George, though we didn't get on over
well, and often had fallings out. He was too steady and hardworking
altogether for Jim and me. He worked all day and every day, and saved
every penny he made. Catch him gaffing!--no, not for a sixpence. He
called the Dalys and Jacksons thieves and swindlers, who would be locked
up, or even hanged, some day, unless they mended themselves. As for
drinking a glass of grog, you might just as soon ask him to take a
little laudanum or arsenic.

'Why should I drink grog,' he used to say--'such stuff, too, as you
get at that old villain Grimes's--with a good appetite and a good
conscience? I'm afraid of no man; the police may come and live on my
ground for what I care. I work all day, have a read in the evening, and
sleep like a top when I turn in. What do I want more?'

'Oh, but you never see any life,' Jim said; 'you're just like an old
working bullock that walks up to the yoke in the morning and never stops
hauling till he's let go at night. This is a free country, and I don't
think a fellow was born for that kind of thing and nothing else.'

'This country's like any other country, Jim,' George would say, holding
up his head, and looking straight at him with his steady gray eyes; 'a
man must work and save when he's young if he don't want to be a beggar
or a slave when he's old. I believe in a man enjoying himself as well as
you do, but my notion of that is to have a good farm, well stocked and
paid for, by and by, and then to take it easy, perhaps when my back is a
little stiffer than it is now.'

'But a man must have a little fun when he is young,' I said. 'What's the
use of having money when you're old and rusty, and can't take pleasure
in anything?'

'A man needn't be so very old at forty,' he says then, 'and twenty
years' steady work will put all of us youngsters well up the ladder.
Besides, I don't call it fun getting half-drunk with a lot of
blackguards at a low pothouse or a shanty, listening to the stupid
talk and boasting lies of a pack of loafers and worse. They're fit for
not