g to do with me," said Gentleman Once. "Now,
look here, Thomas; you can do pretty well what you like with us poor
devils, and you know it, but we draw the line at Peter M'Laughlan. If
you really itch for the thrashing, you deserve you must tempt someone
else to give it to you."

"What the ---- are you talking about?" snorted Thomas. "You're drunk or
ratty!"

"What's the trouble, M'Laughlan?" asked Gentleman Once, turning to
Peter. "No trouble at all, Gentleman Once," said Peter; "thank you all
the same. I've managed worse men than our friend Thomas. Now, Thomas,
don't you think it would pay you best to hand over the key of the
harness-room and have done with this nonsense? I'm a patient man--a very
patient man--but I've not always been so, and the old blood comes up
sometimes, you know."

Thomas couldn't stand this sort of language, because he couldn't
understand it. He threw the key on the bar and told us to clear out.

We were all three very quiet riding along the track that evening. Peter
gave Jack a nip now and again from the flask, and before we turned in
in camp he gave him what he called a soothing draught from a little
medicine chest that he carried in his saddle-bag. Jack seemed to have
got rid of his cough; he slept all night, and in the morning, after he'd
drunk a pint of mutton-broth that Peter had made in one of the billies,
he was all right--except that he was quiet and ashamed. I had never
known him to be so quiet, and for such a length of time, since we
were boys together. He had learned his own weakness; he'd lost all his
cocksureness. I know now just exactly how he felt. He felt as if his
sober year had been lost and he would have to live it all over again.

Peter didn't preach. He just jogged along and camped with us as if he
were an ordinary, every-day mate. He yarned about all sorts of things.
He could tell good yarns, and when he was fairly on you could listen to
him all night. He seemed to have been nearly all over the world. Peter
never preached except when he was asked to hold service in some bush
pub, station-homestead or bush church. But in a case like ours he had
a way of telling a little life story, with something in it that hit the
young man he wanted to reform, and hit him hard. He'd generally begin
quietly, when we were comfortable with our pipes in camp after tea,
with "I once knew a young man--" or "That reminds me of a young fellow I
knew--" and so on. You never knew when he was g