footman suggested a truly
pitiable kind of destitution, and did, I am convinced, throw a shadow
over what otherwise had been the outset of a jaunt entirely after his
own heart.

As the morning wore on, however, and we left behind us all likelihood
of chance encounters with more fortunately placed and therefore
critical people, bestriding pigskin, Ted's spirits rose again to their
normal easy altitude, and mounted beyond that to the level of boyish
jollity. Myself, I incline to think that walking along a bush track,
with a long stick in his hand and a pack-horse to drive before him,
was really an ideal situation for Ted, despite his preference for
riding. Afoot, he could so readily step aside to start a 'goanner' up
a tree, or pluck an out-of-the-way growth to show me.

There never was such a fellow for 'noticing' things, as they say of
children. Print he never read, so far as I know, and perhaps this
helped to make him so amazingly keen a reader of Nature. Not the
littlest comma on that page ever eluded him.

'Hullo!' he would say when Werrina was miles away behind us. 'Who'd've
thought o' that baldy-faced steer o' Murdoch's bein' out here?' One
gazed about to locate the beast. But, no. No living thing was in
sight. In passing, quite casually, Ted's roving eye had spied a hoof
mark, perhaps a day old or more, in the soft bottom of a tiny
billabong; a print I could hardly make out, leave alone identify as
having been made by this beast or the other, even under the guidance
of Ted's pointing finger. Yet for Ted that casual glance--no stooping,
no close scrutiny--supplied an accurate and complete picture: the
particular beast, its gait, occupation, and way of heading, and the
period at which it had passed that way. Withal, it was true enough, as
the storekeeper said, poor Ted had no 'Systum'; or none, at all
events, of the kind cultivated in shops and offices.

III

However much at fault I may be in recollection of our arrival at
Sydney, my memories of our first night at Livorno Bay (so my father
christened the derelict's resting-place) could hardly be more vivid
and distinct. That night marks for me the beginning of a definite
epoch in my life.

I passed the spot in a large inter-state steamer last year. There was
no sign of any ship there then, so far, at all events, as I could make
out with a borrowed pair of glasses; and the place looked very much
the same as any other part of the Australian coast. There ar