say, 'Oh, just down south a bit from Milton.'

'H'm! Port Lawson way, like?' suggested the curious bullocky.

'Yes, that's it,' I said hurriedly. 'Port Lawson way.'

'Ah, well, I've got a brother works in the ----y saw-mills there.
Ye'll maybe know him--Jim Gray; big, slab-sided chap he is, with his
nose sorter twisted like, where a ----y brumby colt kicked him when he
was a kid. ----y good thing for him it was a brumby, or unshod,
anyway; he'd a' bin in Queer Street else, I'm thinkin'. Jever meet him
down that way?'

I admitted that I never had, but promised to look out for him.

'Aye, ye might,' said the bullocky. 'An', if ye see him, tell him ye
met me--Bill's my name--Bill Gray, ye see--an' tell him-- Oh, tell him
I said to mind his ----y p's an' q's, ye know, an' be good to his ----y
self.'

I readily promised that I would, and our conversation lapsed for a
time, while Bill Gray filled his pipe, cutting the tobacco on the ball
of his left thumb from a good-sized black plug. For the rest of our
walk together, I used extreme circumspection, and was able to confine
our desultory exchanges to such safe topics as the bullocks, the
weather, the roads, and so forth, all favourite subjects with bushmen.
And then, as we drew near the one street of the little township, there
was the saw-mill, and my opportunity for bidding good-day to a too
inquisitive companion.

'So long, sonny,' said he, in response to my salutation. 'Take care of
your ----y self.' (His favourite adjective had long ceased to have any
meaning whatever for this good fellow. He now used it even as some
ladies use inverted commas, or other commas, in writing. And
sometimes, when he had occasion to use a word as long as, say,
'impossible,' he would actually drag in the meaningless expletive as
an interpolation between the first and second syllables of the longer
word, as though he felt it a sinful waste of opportunities to allow so
many good syllables to pass unburdened by a single enunciation of his
master word.)

VIII

The freedom of the open road was infinitely delightful to me after the
incessant task work of St. Peter's. And perhaps this, quite as much as
the policy of getting well away from the Myall Creek district, was
responsible for the fact that I held on my way, with never a pause for
work of any sort, through a whole week. My lodging at night cost me
nothing, of course; and the expenditure of something well under a
shilling a day p