e!"

Displeased at such horseplay, Mahony stepped sharply back--his first
thought was of Ned having unexpectedly returned from Mount Ararat. Then
recognising the voice, he exclaimed incredulously: "YOU, Dickybird?
You!"

"Dick, old man.... I say, Dick! Yes, it's me right enough, and not my
ghost. The old bad egg come back to roost!"

The blind was raised; and the friends, who had last met in the dingy
bush hut on the night of the Stockade, stood face to face. And now
ensued a babel of greeting, a quick fire of question and answer, the
two voices going in and out and round each other, singly and together,
like the voices in a duet. Tears rose to Polly's eyes as she listened;
it made her heart glow to see Richard so glad. But when, forgetting her
presence, Purdy cried: "And I must confess, Dick.... I took a kiss from
Mrs. Polly. Gad, old man, how she's come on!" Polly hastily retired to
the kitchen.

At table the same high spirits prevailed: it did not often happen that
Richard was brought out of his shell like this, thought Polly
gratefully, and heaped her visitor's plate to the brim. His first
hunger stilled, Purdy fell to giving a slapdash account of his
experiences. He kept to no orderly sequence, but threw them out just as
they occurred to him: a rub with bushrangers in the Black Forest, his
adventures as a long-distance drover in the Mildura, the trials of a
week he had spent in a boiling-down establishment on the Murray: "Where
the stink wa so foul, you two, that I vomited like a dog every day!"
Under the force of this Odyssey husband and wife gradually dropped into
silence, which they broke only by single words of astonishment and
sympathy; while the child Trotty spooned in her pudding without seeing
it, her round, solemn eyes fixed unblinkingly on this new uncle, who
was like a wonderful story-book come alive.

In Mahony's feelings for Purdy at this moment, there was none of the
old intolerant superiority. He had been dependent for so long on a mere
surface acquaintance with his fellows, that he now felt to the full how
precious the tie was that bound him to Purdy. Here came one for whom he
was not alone the reserved, struggling practitioner, the rather moody
man advancing to middle-age; but also the Dick of his boyhood and early
youth.

He had often imagined the satisfaction it would be to confide his
troubles to Purdy. Compared, however, with the hardships the latter had
undergone, these seemed of small