thought she cared for me till
then. Mother and the girls made me swear never to go away any more; and
they kept watching me, and hardly let me go outside for fear I'd--"

"Get drunk?"

"No--you're smart--for fear I'd clear. At last I swore on the Bible that
I'd never leave home while the old folks were alive; and then mother
seemed easier in her mind."

He rolled the pup over and examined his feet. "I expect I'll have to
carry him a bit--his feet are sore. Well, he's done pretty well this
morning, and anyway he won't drink so much when he's carried."

"You broke your promise about leaving home," said his mate.

Mitchell stood up, stretched himself, and looked dolefully from his
heavy swag to the wide, hot, shadeless cotton-bush plain ahead.

"Oh, yes," he yawned, "I stopped at home for a week, and then they began
to growl because I couldn't get any work to do."

The mate guffawed and Mitchell grinned. They shouldered the swags, with
the pup on top of Mitchell's, took up their billies and water-bags,
turned their unshaven faces to the wide, hazy distance, and left the
timber behind them.

IN A DRY SEASON

Draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep
running away from the train. Then you'll have the bush all along the New
South Wales western line from Bathurst on.

The railway towns consist of a public house and a general store, with a
square tank and a school-house on piles in the nearer distance. The tank
stands at the end of the school and is not many times smaller than the
building itself. It is safe to call the pub "The Railway Hotel," and the
store "The Railway Stores," with an "s." A couple of patient, ungroomed
hacks are probably standing outside the pub, while their masters
are inside having a drink--several drinks. Also it's safe to draw a
sundowner sitting listlessly on a bench on the veranda, reading the
_Bulletin_. The Railway Stores seem to exist only in the shadow of the
pub, and it is impossible to conceive either as being independent of
the other. There is sometimes a small, oblong weather-board
building--unpainted, and generally leaning in one of the eight possible
directions, and perhaps with a twist in another--which, from its
half-obliterated sign, seems to have started as a rival to the Railway
Stores; but the shutters are up and the place empty.

The only town I saw that differed much from the above consisted of a
box-bark humpy with a clay chimney, and