hing was not to be shaken.

Well, comforts galore should be hers some day, he hoped. The practice
was shaping satisfactorily. His attendance at Dandaloo had proved a key
to many doors: folk of the Glendinnings' and Urquharts' standing could
make a reputation or mar it as they chose. It had got abroad, he knew,
that at whatever hour of the day or night he was sent for, he could be
relied on to be sober; and that unfortunately was not always the case
with some of his colleagues. In addition his fellow-practitioners
showed signs of waking up to his existence. He had been called in
lately to a couple of consultations; and the doyen of the profession on
Ballarat, old Munce himself, had praised his handling of a difficult
case of version.

The distances to be covered--that was what made the work stiff. And he
could not afford to neglect a single summons, no matter where it led
him. Still, he would not have grumbled, had only the money not been so
hard to get in. But the fifty thousand odd souls on Ballarat formed,
even yet, anything but a stable population: a patient you attended one
day might be gone the next, and gone where no bill could reach him. Or
he had been sold off at public auction; or his wooden shanty had gone
up in a flare--hardly a night passed without a fire somewhere. In these
and like accidents the unfortunate doctor might whistle for his fee. It
seldom happened nowadays that he was paid in cash. Money was growing as
scarce here as anywhere else. Sometimes, it was true, he might have
pocketed his fee on the spot, had he cared to ask for it. But the
presenting of his palm professionally was a gesture that was denied
him. And this stand-offishness drove from people's minds the thought
that he might be in actual need of money. Afterwards he sat at home and
racked his brains how to pay butcher and grocer. Others of the
fraternity were by no means so nice. He knew of some who would not stir
a yard unless their fee was planked down before them--old stagers
these, who at one time had been badly bitten and were now grown
cynically distrustful. Or tired. And indeed who could blame a man for
hesitating of a pitch-dark night in the winter rains, or on a blazing
summer day, whether or no he should set out on a twenty-mile ride for
which he might never see the ghost of a remuneration?

Reflecting thus, Mahony caught at a couple of hard, spicy, grey-green
leaves, to chew as he went: the gums, on which the old bark hung i