"last a
lifetime." It was well coloured, almost black in fact with weather and
age, and it had a new strap round the base of the crown. I looked into
it and saw a dirty pound note and some silver. I dropped in half
a crown, which was more than I could spare, for I had only been a
green-hand at Big Billabong.

"Thank yer!" he said. "Now then, you fellers!"

"I wish you'd keep your hat on your head, and your money in your pockets
and your sympathy somewhere else," growled Jack Moonlight as he raised
himself painfully on his elbow, and felt under his pillow for two
half-crowns. "Here," he said, "here's two half-casers. Chuck 'em in and
let me sleep for God's sake!"

Gentleman Once, the gambler, rolled round on his shake-down, bringing
his good-looking, dissipated face from the wall. He had turned in in his
clothes and, with considerable exertion he shoved his hand down into the
pocket of his trousers, which were a tight fit. He brought up a roll of
pound notes and could find no silver.

"Here," he said to the Giraffe, "I might as well lay a quid. I'll chance
it anyhow. Chuck it in."

"You've got rats this mornin', Gentleman Once," growled the Bogan. "It
ain't a blanky horse race."

"P'r'aps I have," said Gentleman Once, and he turned to the wall again
with his head on his arm.

"Now, Bogan, yer might as well chuck in somethin," said the Giraffe.

"What's the matter with the ---- jackaroo?" asked the Bogan, tugging his
trousers from under the mattress.

Moonlight said something in a low tone.

"The ---- he has!" said Bogan. "Well, I pity the ----! Here, I'll chuck
in half a ---- quid!" and he dropped half a sovereign into the hat.

The fourth man, who was known to his face as "Barcoo-Rot," and behind
his back as "The Mean Man," had been drinking all night, and not even
Bogan's stump-splitting adjectives could rouse him. So Bogan got out of
bed, and calling on us (as blanky female cattle) to witness what he was
about to do, he rolled the drunkard over, prospected his pockets till
he made up five shillings (or a "caser" in bush language), and "chucked"
them into the hat.

And Barcoo-Rot is probably unconscious to this day that he was ever
connected with an act of charity. The Giraffe struck the deaf jackaroo
in the neat room. I heard the chaps cursing "Long-'un" for waking them,
and "Deaf-'un" for being, as they thought at first, the indirect cause
of the disturbance. I heard the Giraffe and his hat being cond