in--

'You, Tom-may!' (Tommy.)

Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.

'Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!'

'Ye-e-s!' shrill shriek from across the creek.

'Didn't I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want
any meat or any think?' in one long screech.

'Well--I karnt find the horse.'

'Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.
And-don't-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi'son-that-mother'll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.'

I didn't feel like going to the woman's house that night. I felt--and
the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart--that this was what Mary
would come to if I left her here.

I turned and started to walk home, fast. I'd made up my mind. I'd take
Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning--I forgot about the load I
had to take to the sheep station. I'd say, 'Look here, Girlie' (that's
what I used to call her), 'we'll leave this wretched life; we'll leave
the Bush for ever! We'll go to Sydney, and I'll be a man! and work my
way up.' And I'd sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.

When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene
lamp, a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms
washed out--to James's disgust, for he had to move the furniture and
boxes about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had
laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf--a slab on two pegs over the
fireplace--and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of
the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American
oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.

'How does that look, Joe? We'll soon get things ship-shape.'

I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the
kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.

Somehow I didn't feel satisfied with the way things had gone.

II. 'Past Carin''.

Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter
in the morning--more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in
most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the
lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades,
and then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to
ashes--it is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old
things too, that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can't
understand. I often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to
new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the