Australia Felix

ey threw their legs over their saddles and rode down the steep slope by the Camp Reserve. The hoofs of the horses pounded the plank br

ive with the rich, strong whistling of magpies, Purdy halted to look back and wave his hat in farewell. Mahony also half-turned in the saddle. There it lay — the scattered, yet congested, unlovely wood and canvas settlement that was Ballarat. At this distance, and from this height, it resembled nothing so much as a col

rdy. Barely stretched on his palliasse he had been routed out to attend to Long Jim, who had missed his footing and pitched into a shaft. The poor old tipsy idiot hauled up — luck

d have pinched himself to see whether he waked or slept. Had anyone told him, three years previously, that the day was coming when he would weigh out soap and sugar, and hand them over a counter in exchange for money, he would have held the prophet ripe for Bedlam. Yet here he was, a full-blown tradesman, and as greedy of gain as any tallow-chandler. Extraordinary, aye, and distressing, too, the ease with which the human organism adapted itself; it was just a case of the g

obstacles. At one time it ran down a gully that was almost a ravine, to mount straight up the opposite side among boulders that reached to the belly-bands. At others, it led through a reed

midday, they reached a knot of weatherboard verandahed stores, smithies and public-houses, arranged at the four Corners of two cross-roads. Here they made a substantial luncheon;

he fact of his being obliged to spend a few years in the colony would, in the end, profit him, by widening his experience of the world and his fellow-men. It was possible to lead a sober, Godfearing life, no matter in what rude corner of the globe you were pitchforked.— And in this mood he was even willing to grant the landscape a certain charm. Since leaving Ballan the road had dipped up and down a succession of swelling rises, grass-grown and untimbered. From the top of these ridges

impulse and broke into a canter. As they began to climb again they fell naturally into one of those familiar talks, full of al

hich he had disposed of his tools, his stretcher-bed, and ot

ne at striking a bargain, my boy! What about:

d happened yesterday: how the sturdy little apple-cheeked English boy, with the comical English accent, had suddenly bobbed up at his sid

es, and the funk you were in for fear Spiny

young idiot

n for wishing to shake off his junior. Behind him, Mahony, when he reached home, closed the door of one of the largest houses in the mos

two cormorant throats. And the elder boy, long-limbed and lank, all wrist and ankle, had invariably been the hungrier of the two; for, on the glossy damask of the big house, often not enough food was set to satisfy the growing appetites of himself and his sisters.

ut he did not take part in the sport himself. He had not Mahony’s gift for recalling detail: to him past

tion, here was the boy now declaring openly that what he needed, and must have, was a fixed and steadily pa

idgeted; he took off his hat and looked inside it

oms. “Come, Dickybird

e fact is, Dick, I begin to t

istle. “Whew! A

ige yours truly by takin’

e purple stamp in one corner, and a red seal on the back. Opening it Mahony disc

of relief: composition, expression and penmanship, all met with his

ll there is, and she’s always on for a lark. I never met such girls for larks as her and ‘er sister. The very last time I was there, they took and hung up . . . me and some other fellers had been stoppin’ up a bit late the night before, and kickin’ up a bit of a shindy, and what did those

cud of a pleasant memory.—“Well, I for my part should be glad to

said Purdy, and vigorou

come to think of puttin’ my head in the noose, from now till dooms

trifling with the girl’s

make of ‘er. She’s AI ‘erself, but she’s got a mother. . . . By Job, Dick, if I t

ssion left by the letter — went far, indeed, to efface it. Still, he was loath to extend his absence by spending a night at Geelong, where, a,

de-glance at his companion, he volunteered:

ny, and burst out laughing. “

iving with ’em — a sort o’ poor relation, or something — and she’s a horse of quite an

nted vision of the wife-to-be which haunts every man’s youth. And, in ludicrous juxtaposition, he saw the women, the only women he had enco

ll Flannigan or one of her darlints yo

f — and ‘specially when she’s got a drop inside ‘er. Fuddle old Moll a bit, and she’d give you the very shift off her back.— Don’t I thank the Lord, that’s all, I’m not built like you! Why, the woman isn’t born I can’t get on with. All’s fish that comes to my net.— Oh, to be young, Dick, and to love the g

ung rep

u’ve got water

decent women and there’s no compa

d!— Dick, it’s my beli

ve. Aloud he said: “Well, look here, old man, I’ll lay you a wager. I bet you you’re not game, when y

“And I’ll have it in o

and being on a good piece of road between post-and-rail fences

STREETS WIDE AND NARROW, CRYING CO

of Melbourne were visible, the mastheads of the many vessels riding at anchor in Hobson’s Bay. Here, too, the briny scent of the sea, carrying up over grassy flats, met their nostrils, and set Mahony hungrily sniffing. The brief twilight came and went, and it was already night when they urged their weary beasts over the Moonee ponds, a winding chain of brackish waterholes. The horses shambled along the broad, hilly tracks of North Melbourne; warily picked their steps through the city itself. Dingy oil-lamps, set here and there at the corners of roads so broad that y