"as if he'd been dead:" "And no wonder," as Pepper always remarked. The
only clue I could get to the cause of his illness was a shy confession,
about a week afterwards, that he had eaten a few mushrooms. Fenwick's
idea of a few of anything was generally a liberal notion. I questioned
him narrowly as to what he had had for supper the night he was taken
ill, and this was his bill of fare:--

"Well, you see, mum, I wasn't rightly hungry: it must have been them
gripses coming on. So I only had a shoulder (of mutton, _bien entendu_;
when Fenwick had really a good appetite he regarded anything less than a
whole leg of a sheep as an insult) that night, half-a-dozen slap jacks,
and a trifle of mushrooms." "How big were the mushrooms?" I asked. "Oh,
they was rather fine ones, mum, I won't deny: they might have been the
bigness of a plate." Now even supposing them to have been perfectly
wholesome, a few dozen mushrooms of that size, eaten half raw with
a whole shoulder of mutton, are quite enough to my ignorant mind to
account for so severe a fit of the "choleraics."

Chapter XVII: Odds and ends.

My nerves had hardly recovered the shock of having the care of such a
huge patient thrust on me; for, seriously speaking, Fenwick took a good
deal of nursing and attention before he got well again, when we had
another night alarm. Our beautiful summer weather was breaking up; high
nor'-westers had blown down the gorges for days, and now a cold wet
gale was coming up in heavy banks of fleecy clouds from the sou'-west.
Everything looked cold and wretched out of doors, but the sheep-farmers
were thankful and pleased. Their "mobs" could find excellent shelter for
themselves, for it takes _very_ bad weather to hurt a Merino sheep, and
the creeks had been running rather low. "We shall have a splendid autumn
after this is over," said all the squatters gleefully, "with lots of
feed: there's Tyler's creek coming down beautifully."

So I was fain to be content, though my fowls looked draggled and
wretched, and my pet patch of mignonette became a miniature desert, its
fragrance being all blown and rain-beaten away. Good fires of lignite
and wood made the house cheery, and we went to bed, hoping for fine
weather next day. In the middle of the night everyone was awakened by
a tremendous, echoing noise outside, whilst the frail wooden house
vibrated perceptibly. It could not be caused by the wind: for, although
the rain kept pouring steadi