as henceforward beyond all question.

There were no coaches running to Nyalong, and, as Philip's poverty
did not permit him to purchase a horse, and he had scruples about
stealing one, he packed up his swag and set out on foot. It may be
mentioned as bearing on nothing in particular that, after Philip had
taken leave of Miss Edgeworth, she stood at a window, flattened her
little nose against one of the panes, and watched him trudging away
as long as he was in sight. Then she said to Mrs. Martin:

"Ain't it a pity that so respectable a young man should be tramping
through the bush like a pedlar with a pack?"

"No, indeed, miss, not a bit of it," replied Mrs. Martin; "nearly
every man in the country has had to travel with his swag one time or
another. We are all used to it; and it ain't no use of your looking
after him that way, for most likely you'll never see him again." But
she did.

About two miles from the Waterholes Philip overtook another swagman,
a man of middle age, who was going to Nyalong to look for work. He
had tried the diggings, and left them for want of luck, and Philip,
having himself been an unlucky digger, had a fellow feeling for the
stranger. He was an old soldier named Summers.

"I am three and fifty years old," he said, "and I 'listed when I was
twenty. I was in all the wars in India for nineteen years, and never
was hit but once, and that was on the top of my head. Look here," he
took off his hat and pointed to a ridge made by the track of a
bullet, "if I had been an inch taller I shouldn't be here now. And
maybe it would have been all the better. I have been too long at the
fighting to learn another trade now. When I 'listed I was told my
pay would be a shilling a day and everything found. A shilling a day
is seven shillings a week, and I thought I should live like a
fighting cock, plenty to eat and a shilling a day for drink or sport.
But I found out the difference when it was too late. They kept a
strict account against every man; it was full of what they called
deductions, and we had to pay for so many things out of that shilling
that sometimes for months together I hadn't the price of a pint o'
threepenny with a trop o' porter through it."

"What was the biggest battle you ever were in?" enquired Philip.

"Well, I had some close shaves, but the worst was when we took a
stockade from the Burmans. My regiment was the 47th, and one company
of ours, sixty-five, rank and file,