o back home without a cheque, and, what's more,
I never will; but the cheque days are past. Look at that boot! If we
were down among the settled districts we'd be called tramps and beggars;
and what's the difference? I've been a fool, I know, but I've paid for
it; and now there's nothing for it but to tramp, tramp, tramp for your
tucker, and keep tramping till you get old and careless and dirty, and
older, and more careless and dirtier, and you get used to the dust and
sand, and heat, and flies, and mosquitoes, just as a bullock does, and
lose ambition and hope, and get contented with this animal life, like
a dog, and till your swag seems part of yourself, and you'd be lost and
uneasy and light-shouldered without it, and you don't care a damn if
you'll ever get work again, or live like a Christian; and you go on like
this till the spirit of a bullock takes the place of the heart of a man.
Who cares? If we hadn't found the track yesterday we might have lain and
rotted in that lignum, and no one been any the wiser--or sorrier--who
knows? Somebody might have found us in the end, but it mightn't have
been worth his while to go out of his way and report us. Damn the world,
say I!"

He smoked for a while in savage silence; then he knocked the ashes out
of his pipe, felt for his tobacco with a sigh, and said:

"Well, I am a bit out of sorts to-night. I've been thinking.... I think
we'd best turn in, old man; we've got a long, dry stretch before us
to-morrow."

They rolled out their swags on the sand, lay down, and wrapped
themselves in their blankets. Mitchell covered his face with a piece of
calico, because the moonlight and wind kept him awake.

"BRUMMY USEN"

We caught up with an old swagman crossing the plain, and tramped along
with him till we came to good shade to have a smoke in. We had got
yarning about men getting lost in the bush or going away and being
reported dead.

"Yes," said the old 'whaler', as he dropped his swag in the shade, sat
down on it, and felt for his smoking tackle, "there's scarcely an old
bushman alive--or dead, for the matter of that--who hasn't been dead a
few times in his life--or reported dead, which amounts to the same thing
for a while. In my time there was as many live men in the bush who
was supposed to be dead as there was dead men who was supposed to be
alive--though it's the other way about now--what with so many jackaroos
tramping about out back and getting lost in the