ot, and chewed his pipe.

"What's up, Jack?" I asked. "Have you got the blues?"

"Well, yes, Harry," he said. "I'm generally dull the first day on
the track. The first day is generally the worst, anywhere or
anytime--except, perhaps, when you're married.... I got--well, I got
thinking of the time when a woman's word could have hurt me."

Just then one of the "travellers" who were camped a bit up the creek
suddenly commenced to sing. It was a song called "The Shearer's Dream,"
and I suppose the buggy of girls, or the conversation they started,
reminded him of it. He started his verses and most of his lines with
a howl; and there were unexpected howls all through the song, and it
wailed off, just as unexpectedly, in places where there was no pathos
that I could see:

Oh, I dreamt I shore in a shearer's shed, and it was a dream of joy,
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy--
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen--
They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair--and every shade between.

"Every" with sudden and great energy, a long drop on to "shade," and a
wail of intense sadness and regret running on into "between," the dirge
reaching its wailsomest in the "tween" in every case.

The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every "shoot";
The pens was of polished ma-ho-gany, and ev'rything else to suit;
The huts was fixed with spring-mattresses, and the tucker was
simply grand,
And every night by the biller-bong we darnced to a German band.

"_Chorus, boys!"_

There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls,
and the handsomest ever seen
They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and hevery size
between.
Our pay was the wool on the jumbucks' backs, so we shore till all
was blue
The sheep was washed afore they was shore (and the rams was scented
too);
And we all of us cried when the shed cut out, in spite of the
long, hot days,
For hevery hour them girls waltzed in with whisky and beer on
tr-a-a-a-ys!

"_Chorus_! _you_ ----!"

They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the
grandest ever seen
They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery
shape be-tw-e-e-n.
There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they
could be--

"Ow!