was sitting down. It was just midnight. The night was half over before I
thought of coming in. So when she came in and seated herself near me on
the sofa I heard the clock strike twelve, and most of the men who were
walking about the hall began to clear out.

Somehow, when you've been living at a place for a goodish while, and
done well there, and had friends as has stuck by you, as we had at the
Turon, you feel sorry to leave it. What you've done you're sure of,
no matter how it mayn't suit you in some ways, nor how much better you
expect to be off where you are going to. You had that and had the good
of it. What the coming time may bring you can't reckon on. All kinds of
cross luck and accidents may happen. What's the use of money to a man if
he smashes his hip and has to walk with a crutch all his days? I've seen
a miner with a thousand a month coming in, but he'd been crushed pretty
near to death with a fall of earth, and about half of him was dead.
What's a good dinner to a man that his doctor only allows him one slice
of meat, a bit of bread, and some toast and water? I've seen chaps like
them, and I'd sooner a deal be the poorest splitter, slogging away with
a heavy maul, and able, mind you, to swing it like a man, than one of
those broken-down screws. We'd had a good time there, Jim and I.
We always had a kind spot in our hearts for Turon and the diggings
afterwards. Hard work, high pay, good friends that would stick to a man
back and edge, and a safe country to lie in plant in as ever was seen.
We was both middlin' sorry, in a manner of speaking, to clear out. Not
as Jim said much about it on account of Jeanie; but he thought it all
the same.

Well, of course, Kate and I got talkin' and talkin', first about the
diggings, and then about other things, till we got to old times in
Melbourne, and she began to look miserable and miserabler whenever she
spoke about marrying the old man, and wished she'd drownded herself
first. She made me take a whisky--a stiffish one that she mixed
herself--for a parting glass, and I felt it took a bit of effect upon
me. I'd been having my whack during the day. I wasn't no ways drunk; but
I must have been touched more or less, because I felt myself to be so
sober.

'You're going at last, Dick,' says she; 'and I suppose we shan't meet
again in a hurry. It was something to have a look at you now and then.
It reminded me of the happy old times at St. Kilda.'

'Oh, come, Kate,' I sai