ed ourselves together.

Shall we gather at the River,
Where bright angels' feet have trod--

The only rivers round there were barren creeks, the best of them only
strings of muddy waterholes, and across the ridge, on the sheep-runs,
the creeks were dry gutters, with baked banks and beds, and perhaps a
mudhole every mile or so, and dead beasts rotting and stinking every few
yards.

Gather with the saints at the River,
That flows by the throne of God.

Peter's voice trembled and broke. He caught his breath, and his eyes
filled. But he smiled then--he stood smiling at us through his tears.

The beautiful, the beautiful River,
That flows by the throne of God.

Outside I saw women kiss each other who had been at daggers drawn ever
since I could remember, and men shake hands silently who had hated each
other for years. Every family wanted Peter to come home to tea, but he
went across to Ross's, and afterwards down to Kurtz's place, and bled
and inoculated six cows or so in a new way, and after tea he rode off
over the gap to see his friend.

HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER

By his paths through the parched desolation,
Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the furthermost camps;

By his worth in the light that shall search men
And prove--ay! and justify each--
I place him in front of all Churchmen
Who feel not, who _know_ not--but preach!
--The Christ of the Never.

I told you about Peter M'Laughlan, the bush missionary, and how he
preached in the little slab-and-bark school-house in the scrub on Ross's
Creek that blazing hot Sunday afternoon long ago, when the drought was
ruining the brave farmers all round there and breaking their hearts. And
how hard old Ross, the selector, broke down at the end of the sermon,
and blubbered, and had to be taken out of church.

I left home and drifted to Sydney, and "back into the Great North-West
where all the rovers go," and knocked about the country for six or seven
years before I met Peter M'Laughlan again. I was young yet, but felt old
at times, and there were times, in the hot, rough, greasy shearing-shed
on blazing days, or in the bare "men's hut" by the flicker of the
stinking slush-lamp at night, or the wretched wayside shanty with
its drink-madness and blasphemy, or tramping along the dusty, endless
track--there wer