on which he had
first set foot on Ballarat.

"It's 'ell for white men--'ell, that's what it is!"

"'Ere, 'ave another drink, matey, and fergit yer bloody troubles."

His re-filled pannikin drained, he grew warmer round the heart; and
sang the praises of his former life. He had been a lamplighter in the
old country, and for many years had known no more arduous task than
that of tramping round certain streets three times daily, ladder on
shoulder, bitch at heel, to attend the little flames that helped to
dispel the London dark. And he might have jogged on at this up to three
score years and ten, had he never lent an ear to the tales that were
being told of a wonderful country, where, for the mere act of stooping,
and with your naked hand, you could pick up a fortune from the ground.
Might the rogues who had spread these lies be damned to all eternity!
Then, he had swallowed them only too willingly; and, leaving the old
woman wringing her hands, had taken every farthing of his savings and
set sail for Australia. That was close on three years ago. For all he
knew, his wife might be dead and buried by this time; or sitting in the
almshouse. She could not write, and only in the early days had an
occasional newspaper reached him, on which, alongside the Queen's head,
she had put the mark they had agreed on, to show that she was still
alive. He would probably never see her again, but would end his days
where he was. Well, they wouldn't be many; this was not a place that
made old bones. And, as he sat, worked on by grief and liquor, he was
seized by a desperate homesickness for the old country. Why had he ever
been fool enough to leave it? He shut his eyes, and all the well-known
sights and sounds of the familiar streets came back to him. He saw
himself on his rounds of a winter's afternoon, when each lamp had a
halo in the foggy air; heard the pit-pat of his four-footer behind him,
the bump of the ladder against the prong of the lamp-post. His friend
the policeman's glazed stovepipe shone out at the corner; from the
distance came the tinkle of the muffin-man's bell, the cries of the
buy-a-brooms. He remembered the glowing charcoal in the stoves of the
chestnut and potato sellers; the appetising smell of the cooked-fish
shops; the fragrant steam of the hot, dark coffee at the twopenny
stall, when he had turned shivering out of bed; he sighed for the
lights and jollity of the "Hare and Hounds" on a Saturday night. He
would ne