roused me out about four o'clock. The old woman that they called
Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee
ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and
had our breakfast quietly.

'The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say
Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,' said the
Boss. 'I'm going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made
up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don't forget it.'

Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
without speaking. He didn't seem sociable this morning, or any way
sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.

But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at
last I made a swallow and blurted out--

'Look here, Boss, old chap! I'm damned sorry!'

Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was
over the Bathurst plains.

We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly--

'I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling
spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I'd tell her I had to
go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When
the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly
drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush--a sly grog-shop. The old
brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the
lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn't
seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They
were mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three
policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the
country.'

I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could
do for him.

'Good-bye, Jack!' he said at the door of the brake-van. 'Good-bye,
Andy!--keep those bullocks on their feet.'

The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat
silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a
coal-stove in the centre of the van.

'Does the boss never go to Sydney?' I asked.

'Very seldom,' said Andy, 'and then only when he has to, on business.
When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out
to Waverley Cemetery perhaps,