ing with a rush
over my heart, and I laughed at myself for being so soft as to choose
a hard-working, pokey kind of life at the word of a slow fellow like
George, when I might be riding about the country on a fine horse, eating
and drinking of the best, and only doing what people said half the old
settlers had made their money by.

Poor Aileen told me afterwards that if she'd thought for a moment I
could be turned she'd have gone down on her knees and never got up till
I promised to keep straight and begin to work at honest daily labour
like a man--like a man who hoped to end his days in a good house, on a
good farm, with a good wife and nice children round him, and not in a
prison cell. Some people would call the first, after years of honest
work, and being always able to look every one in the face, being more
of a man than the other. But people have different ways and different
ideas.

'Come, Ailie,' I said, 'are you going to whine and cry all night? I
shall be afraid to come home if you're going to be like this. What's the
message from father?'

She wiped away her tears, and, putting her hand on my shoulder, looked
steadily into my face.

'Poor boy--poor, dear Dick,' she said, 'I feel as if I should see that
fresh face of yours looking very different some day or other. Something
tells me that there's bad luck before you. But never mind, you'll never
lose your sister if the luck's ever so bad. Father sent word you and Jim
were to meet him at Broken Creek and bring your whips with you.'

'What in the world's that for?' I said, half speaking to myself. 'It
looks as if there was a big mob to drive, and where's he to get a big
mob there in that mountainous, beastly place, where the cattle all bolt
like wallabies, and where I never saw twenty head together?'

'He's got some reason for it,' said Aileen sorrowfully. 'If I were you
I wouldn't go. It's no good, and father's trying now to drag you and Jim
into the bad ways he's been following these years.'

'How do you know it's so bad?' said I. 'How can a girl like you know?'

'I know very well,' she said. 'Do you think I've lived here all these
years and don't know things? What makes him always come home after dark,
and be that nervous every time he sees a stranger coming up you'd think
he was come out of gaol? Why has he always got money, and why does
mother look so miserable when he's at home, and cheer up when he goes
away?'

'He may get jobs of droving or somet