Australia Felix

long holes to their brim. Tents and huts stood white and forsaken in the moonlight: their owners were either gathered on Bakery Hill, or had repaired to one of the g

momentary irritation. As if it mattered a doit what trash these foreigners talked! No thinking person took their bombast seriously; the autho

increasing relish for the limelight, for theatrical effect — see the cunning with which he had made capital out of a bandaged ankle and dirty dress! At this rate, and with his engaging ways, he would soon stand for a little god to the rough, artless crowd. No, he must leave the diggings — and Mahony rolled various schemes in his mind. He had it! In the course of the next week or two business would make a journey to Me

ed. It was on a par with the houses you lived in — these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, “for the time being”— was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could say Jack Robinson; whole townships shot up over-night, to be deserted the moment the soil ceased to yield; the people you knew were here to-day, and gone

ngenial occupations offered: from chopping the week’s wood — a clean and wholesome task, which he gladly performed — through the pages of an engrossing book to a botanica

he live red patches contrasted oddly with the pale ardour of the moon. Lights twinkled over all the township, but were brightest in Main Street, the course of which they followed like a rope of fireflies, and at the Government Camp on the steep western slope, where no doubt, as young Purdy had impudently averred, the officials still sat over the

h a guilty air from the back of the house, where the old shaft stood that served to hold refuse. Mahony put him on the chain, and was just ab

wo, a nuggetty little man who carried his ar

hy, Tom, that you? Back already, my boy?”— this to a loutish, loose-limb

to spit the juice from a plug. “I’ve got suthin’ better to do as to l

d, who stood sheepishly shifting hi

d that reminds me, doc, young Smith’ll git ‘imself inter the devil of a mess one o’ these days, if you don’t look after ’im

l, youth’s youth, sir, and comes but once in a lifetime. And y

world starts out again to muddle through it for ‘imself, in ‘is own way. And that things ‘as got to go on like this, just the same, for ever and ever — why, it makes me fair tired to think of it. My father didn’t ‘old with youth: ‘e knocked it out of us by thrashin’, just like

, don’t be too h

ith your leave or by your leave. Too lonely for ‘is lordship it was. Missed the sound o’ wimmin’s petticoats, ‘e did.” He turned fiercely

ardly bear the sight of ’im, doc.— disgracin’ me as ‘e ‘as done. ‘Im a father, and not eighteen till June! A son o’ mine, who

rse, of

ly one . . . if it weren’t for ‘Enry — Johnny, ‘e can’t pass the dri

ads, I’m sure of it. They’re

ow no h’oa

our place, to make it a bit more homelike,” said Mahony, ca

o ‘er daddy soon as ever th’ol’ woman kicks the bucket.— D

og. Did his old neighbour once get launched on the subject of his w

r. — By gum! and that reminds me I come ’ere special to see you to-nig

one and offered it to Mahony. Mahony led the way indoors,

mped to the Ovens, taking with him all he could cram into a spring-cart, and disposing of the remainder for what he could get. The agent in Melbourne refused to be held responsible for the loss, and threatened to prosecute, if payment for the goods

of a great quill pen stiffly traced the address of his

‘Enry, doc. ‘Enry’

t, he gave the man — a stupid clodhopper, but honest and attached — instructions how to manage during his abs

ve before, having followed the trace from bowling-alley to Chinese cook-shop, from the “Adelphi”