le suggestion of a smile still
about the dead lips, but something terrible had happened to my
father's eyes. I know now that mere muscular contraction was
accountable for this, and not, as it seemed, sudden terror or pain.
But the effect of that contraction upon my lonely mind! ...

Well, I had two things to do, and with teeth set hard in my lower lip
I set to work to do them. With shaking hands I closed my father's
eyelids and drew the sheet over his face. Then I took the two letters
from the shelf and thrust them in the breast of my shirt.

Walking stiffly--it seemed to me very necessary that I should keep all
my muscles quite rigid--I left the ship, harnessed Jerry, and drove
off into the darkling bush towards Werrina. The sun had disappeared
before I left my father's side, and the track to Werrina was fifteen
miles long. A strange drive, and a queer little numbed driver,
creaking along through the ghostly bush, exactly as a somnambulist
might, the most of his faculties in abeyance. Three words kept shaping
themselves in my mind, I know, and then fading out again, like
shadows. They never were spoken. My lips did not move, I think, all
through the long, slow night drive. The three words were:

'Father is dead.'

YOUTH--AUSTRALIA

I

We wore no uniform at St. Peter's Orphanage, but there were plenty of
other reminders to keep us conscious that we were inmates of an
institution, and what is called a charitable institution at that. At
all events I, personally, was reminded of it often enough; but I would
not say that the majority of the boys thought much of the point. My
upbringing, so far, had not been a good training for institutional
life. And then, again, my ignorance of the Roman Catholic religion was
complete. I had not been particularly well posted perhaps regarding
the church of my fathers--the Church of England; but I had never set
foot in a Roman Catholic place of worship, nor set eyes upon an image
of the Virgin. Occasionally, my father had gone with me to church in
London; but, as a rule, the companion of my devotions had been a
servant. And in Australia neither my father nor I had visited any
church.

I gathered gradually that my father had once met and chatted with
Father O'Malley for a few minutes in Werrina, learning in that time of
the reverend father's supervisory connection with St. Peter's
Orphanage at Myall Creek, eleven miles down the coast. It is easy now
to understand how, pon