, and stepped out briskly along the
track leading towards Milton, and away from Werrina.

That was the simple fashion of my outsetting into the world, and for a
time I gave literally no thought at all to its real significance. My
recognition of it as the beginning of the great adventure of
independent life was temporarily obscured by my preoccupation with its
detail.

At the end of a silent hour or two, when I suppose half a dozen miles
lay between myself and the Orphanage, the reflective faculties came
into play again. I began to see my affair more clearly, and to see it
whole, or pretty nearly so. From that point onward, I put in quite a
good deal of steady thinking with regard to the future. I had two or
three definite objects in view, and the first of these was to reach as
quickly as possible some point not less than about fifty miles distant
from Myall Creek, at which I could feel safe from any likely encounter
with a chance traveller from that district.

So much accomplished my plans represented in effect a pedestrian
journey to Sydney. But I recognised that the journey might occupy some
time, since, in the course of it, I was to earn money and then learn
shorthand; the money, by way of working capital and insurance against
accidents; the shorthand, to furnish my stock-in-trade and passport in
the metropolitan world. So mine was not to be exactly a holiday
walking tour. Yet I do not think any one could have set out upon a
holiday tour with more of zest than I brought to my tramping. My mood
was not of gaiety, rather it was one attuned to high and almost solemn
emprise; but, yes, I was full of zest in my walking.

An hour or so before daybreak I lay down on some dead fern at the foot
of a huge and sombre red mahogany tree, where the track forked. It was
partly that I wanted a rest, and partly that I was uncertain which
track led to the township of Milton, where I purposed buying some food
before any chance word of my flight from the Orphanage could have
travelled so far. The authorities at the Orphanage were little likely
to trouble themselves greatly over a runaway orphan; but I cherished a
hazy idea that in my case the matter might be somehow a little
different, in the same way that I had not been farmed out to any one
in the district, possibly because in receiving me St. Peter's had also
received some money, certainly more than could be represented by the
cost of my maintenance. In any case, I did not want t