of those slight
active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean
shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots--"larstins," they
called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly
through their noses, the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly;
and ride like--like--well, they _could_ ride.

He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old
colonial school to which he belonged. They _had_ careless and forgetful
ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he'd come to
Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau,
a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin bog. I sat
beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he told me
all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting round to the other
side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He'd been kicked by a horse, he
said, and had been a little dull o' hearing on that side ever since.

He was as good as blind. "I can see the people near me," he said, "but
I can't make out their faces. I can just make out the pavement and the
houses close at hand, and all the rest is a sort of white blur." He
looked up: "That ceiling is a kind of white, ain't it? And this,"
tapping the wall and putting his nose close to it, "is a sort of green,
ain't it?" The ceiling might have been whiter. The prevalent tints of
the wall-paper had originally been blue and red, but it was mostly green
enough now--a damp, rotten green; but I was ready to swear that the
ceiling was snow and that the walls were as green as grass if it would
have made him feel more comfortable. His sight began to get bad about
six years before, he said; he didn't take much notice of it at first,
and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes worse. He had already the
manner of the blind--the touch of every finger, and even the gentleness
in his speech. He had a boy down with him--a "sorter cousin of his," and
the boy saw him round. "I'll have to be sending that youngster back,"
he said, "I think I'll send him home next week. He'll be picking up and
learning too much down here."

I happened to know the district he came from, and we would sit by the
hour and talk about the country, and chaps by the name of this and chaps
by the name of that--drovers mostly, whom we had met or had heard of.
He asked me if I'd ever heard of a chap by the name of Joe Scott--a big
sandy-complexioned chap, who might be