cidedly frivolous. At any other time Swampy
would have put it down to a "touch o' the sun," but now he felt a
growing conviction that Brummy knew what he'd been up to the last three
nights, and the more he thought of it the more it pained him--till at
last he could stand it no longer.

"Look here, Brummy," he said frankly, "where the hell do you keep that
flamin' stuff o' yourn? I been tryin' to git at it ever since we left
West-o'-Sunday."

"I know you have, Swampy," said Brummy, affectionately--as if he
considered that Swampy had done his best in the interests of mateship.

"I _knowed_ yer knowed!" exclaimed Swampy, triumphantly. "But where the
blazes did yer put it?"

"Under _your_ head, Swampy, old man," said Brummy, cheerfully.

Swampy was hurt now. He commented in the language that used to be used
by the bullock-punchers of the good days as they pranced up and down by
their teams and lammed into the bullocks with saplings and crow-bars,
and called on them to lift a heavy load out of a bog in the bed of a
muddy creek.

"Never mind, Swampy!" said Brummy, soothingly, as his mate paused and
tried to remember worse oaths. "It wasn't your fault."

But they parted at Bourke. Swampy had allers acted straight ter
Brummy--share 'n' share alike. He'd do as much for a mate as any other
man, an' put up with as much from a mate. He had put up with a lot from
Brummy: he'd picked him up on the track and learned him all he knowed;
Brummy would have starved many a time if it hadn't been for Swampy;
Swampy had learned him how to "battle." He'd stick to Brummy yet, but he
couldn't stand ingratitude. He hated low cunnin' an' suspicion, and when
a gory mate got suspicious of his own old mate and wouldn't trust him,
an' took to plantin' his crimson money--it was time to leave him.

A SKETCH OF MATESHIP

Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the
Queensland side. They were horsemen and had two packhorses. At the last
camp before Bourke Jim's packhorse got disgusted and home-sick during
the night and started back for the place where he was foaled. Jim was
little more than a new-chum jackaroo; he was no bushman and generally
got lost when he went down the next gully. Bill was a bushman, so it was
decided that he should go back to look for the horse.

Now Bill was going to sell his packhorse, a well-bred mare, in Bourke,
and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales
were o