d clock-clock-clock of the wheels died away in the west, as
if he were making for West Australia.

The next we heard of Lord Douglas he had got two years' hard for
embezzlement in connection with some canvassing he had taken up. Mrs
Douglas fell ill--a touch of brain-fever--and one of the labourers'
wives took care of the children while two others took turns in nursing.
While she was recovering, Bob Brothers sent round the hat, and, after a
conclave in the Union Office--as mysterious as any meeting ever called
with the object of downing bloated Capitalism--it was discovered that
one of the chaps--who didn't wish his name to be mentioned--had borrowed
just twenty-five pounds from Lord Douglas in the old days and now wished
to return it to Mrs Douglas. So the thing was managed, and if she had
any suspicions she kept them to herself. She started a little fancy
goods shop and got along fairly comfortable.

Douglas, by the way, was, publicly, supposed, for her sake and because
of the little girls, to be away in West Australia on the goldfields.

Time passes without much notice out back, and one hot day, when the sun
hung behind the fierce sandstorms from the northwest as dully lurid as
he ever showed in a London fog, Lord Douglas got out of the train that
had just finished its five-hundred-miles' run, and not seeing a new-chum
porter, who started forward by force of habit to take his bag, he walked
stiffly off the platform and down the main street towards his wife's
cottage.

He was very gaunt, and his eyes, to those who passed him closely, seemed
to have a furtive, hunted expression. He had let his beard grow, and it
had grown grey.

It was within a few days of Christmas--the same Christmas that we lost
the Pretty Girl in the Salvation Army. As a rule the big shearing-sheds
within a fortnight of Bourke cut out in time for the shearers to reach
the town and have their Christmas dinners and sprees--and for some of
them to be locked up over Christmas Day--within sound of a church-going
bell. Most of the chaps gathered in the Shearers' Union Office on New
Year's Eve and discussed Douglas amongst other things.

"I vote we kick the cow out of the town!" snarled One-eyed Bogan,
viciously.

"We can't do that," said Bob Brothers (the Giraffe), speaking more
promptly than usual. "There's his wife and youngsters to consider, yer
know."

"He something well deserted his wife," snarled Began, "an' now he comes
crawlin' back t