won't try to
persuade him one way or the other. Let him take his own line; I don't
believe in preaching and old women's talk. Let a man act and think for
himself.'

'You'll break my heart and poor mother's, too,' said Aileen, suddenly
taking both my hands in hers. 'What has she done but love us ever since
we were born, and what does she live for? You know she has no pleasure
of any kind, you know she's afraid every morning she wakes that the
police will get father for some of his cross doings; and now you and Jim
are going the same wild way, and what ever--what ever will be the end of
it?'

Here she let go my hands, and sobbed and cried as if she was a child
again, much as I remember her doing one day when my kangaroo dog killed
her favourite cat. And Aileen was a girl that didn't cry much generally,
and never about anything that happened to herself; it was always about
somebody else and their misfortunes. She was a quiet girl, too, very
determined, and not much given to talking about what she was going to
do; but when she made up her mind she was sure to stick to it. I used to
think she was more like father than any of us. She had his coloured hair
and eyes, and his way of standing and looking, as if the whole world
wouldn't shift him. But she'd mother's soft heart for all that, and I
took the more notice of her crying and whimpering this time because it
was so strange for her.

If any one could have seen straight into my heart just then I was
regularly knocked over, and had two minds to go inside to Jim and tell
him we'd take George's splitting job, and start to tackle it first thing
to-morrow morning; but just then one of those confounded night-hawks
flitted on a dead tree before us and began his 'hoo-ho', as if it was
laughing at me. I can see the place now--the mountain black and dismal,
the moon low and strange-looking, the little waterhole glittering in the
half-light, and this dark bird hooting away in the night. An odd feeling
seemed to come over my mind, and if it had been the devil himself
standing on the dead limb it could not have had a worse effect on me as
I stopped there, uncertain whether to turn to the right or the left.

We don't often know in this world sometimes whether we are turning off
along a road where we shall never come back from, or whether we can go
just a little way and look at the far-off hills and new rivers, and come
home safe.

I remember the whole lot of bad-meaning thoughts com