inflated again in reciting his woes--"I'm one o' your hopeless
cases, just as surely as if I was being eaten up by a cancer or a
consumption. To mend me, you doctors 'ud need to start me afresh--from
the mother-egg."

"You exaggerate, I'm sure."

"It's that--knowin' one's played out, with by rights still a good third
of one's life to run--that's what puts the sleep away. In the daylight
it's none so hard to keep the black thoughts under; themselves they're
not so daresome; and there's one's pipe, and the haver o' the young
fry. But night's the time! Then they come tramplin' along, a whole army
of 'em, carryin' banners with letters a dozen feet high, so's you
shan't miss rememberin' what you'd give your soul to forget. And so
it'll go on, et cetera and ad lib., till it pleases the old Joker who
sits grinnin' up aloft to put His heel down--as you or me would squash
a bull-ant or a scorpion."

"You speak bitterly, Mr. Tangye. Does a night like this not bring you
calmer, clearer thoughts?" and Mahony waved his arm in a large, loose
gesture at the sky.

His words passed unheeded. The man he addressed spun round and faced
him, with a rusty laugh. "Hark at that!" he cried. "Just hark at it!
Why, in all the years I've been in this God-forsaken place--long as
I've been here--I've never yet heard my own name properly spoken.
You're the first, doctor. You shall have the medal."

"But, man alive, you surely don't let that worry you? Why, I've the
same thing to put up with every day of my life. I smile at it." And
Mahony believed what he said, forgetting, in the antagonism such spleen
roused in him, the annoyance the false stressing of his own name could
sometimes cause him.

"So did I, once," said Tangye, and wagged his head. "But the day came
when it seemed the last straw; a bit o' mean spite on the part o' this
hell of a country itself."

"You dislike the colony, it appears, intensely?"

"You like it?" The counter question came tip for tap.

"I can be fair to it, I hope, and appreciate its good sides." As
always, the mere hint of an injustice made Mahony passionately just.

"Came 'ere of your own free will, did you? Weren't crowded out at home?
Or bamboozled by a pack o' lying tales?" Tangye's voice was husky with
eagerness.

"That I won't say either. But it is entirely my own choice that I
remain here."

"Well, I say to you, think twice of it! If you have the chance of
gettin' away, take it. It's no place this,