o take any
unnecessary risks.

Two minutes after lying down I was asleep. When I waked the sun was
clear of the horizon, and I was partly covered over by dead bracken.
The dawn hours had been chilly, and evidently I had grappled the fern
leaves to me in my sleep, as one tugs a blanket over one's shoulder,
without waking, when cold. While I was chuckling to myself over this,
and picking the twigs from my clothes, I heard the pistol-like crack
of a bullock whip, and then, quite near at hand, the cries of a
'bullocky,' as they called the bullock-drivers thereabout, full of
morning-time vehemence.

'Woa, Darkey! Gee, Roan! Baldy, gee! Nigger! Strawberry! Gee, now,
Punch! I'll ----y well trim you in a minute, me gentleman. Gee, Baldy;
ye ----y cow, you!'

It was thus the unseen bushman discoursed to his cattle, and in a
minute or two the horns of his leaders, swaying slightly in their
yoke, appeared at the bend of the track, the bolt-heads in the yoke
shining like bosses of silver in the slanting rays of the new-risen
sun. Clearly the wagon had been loaded overnight, for the huge
tallow-wood log slung on it could hardly have been placed in its bed
since sun-up.

'I'm your ----y man, if it's Milton you want,' said the driver
good-humouredly, in response to my inquiries. 'I'm taking this stick into
the Milton saw-mill. ----y solid stick, eh? My oath, yes; there's not
enough pipe in that feller to stick a ----y needle in. No, he ought to
measure up pretty well, I reckon.' A pause for expectoration, and
then: 'Livin' in Milton?'

'No,' I told him, 'just travelling that way.' I flattered myself I had
put just the right note of nonchalance into what I knew was a
typically familiar sort of phrase. But the bullocky eyed me curiously,
all the same, and I instantly made up my mind to part company with him
at the earliest convenient moment.

'You travel ----y light, sonny,' he said; 'but I suppose that's the
easiest ----y way, when all's said.'

'Yes,' I agreed, with fluent mendacity; 'I got tired of the swag, and
I've not very far to go anyway.'

'Ah! Where might ye be makin' for, then?'
At this point I realised for the first time the grave disadvantages of
redundance in speech, of unnecessary verbiage. There had been no
earthly need for my last words, and now that my fatal fluency had
found me out, for the life of me I could not think of the name of a
likely place. At length, with clumsily affected carelessness, I had to