this was
the States--why, we'd have had the Great Eastern up here twenty years
ago"----or words to that effect.

Then he added, reflectively:

"When I come over here I calculated that I was going to make things
hum, but now I guess I'll have to change my prospectus. There's a lot of
loose energy laying round over our way, but I guess that if I wanted
to make things move in your country I'd have to bring over the entire
American nation--also his wife and dawg. You've got the makings of a
glorious nation over here, but you don't get up early enough!"

. . . . .

The only national work performed by the blacks is on the Darling. They
threw a dam of rocks across the river--near Brewarrina, we think--to
make a fish trap. It's there yet. But God only knows where they got the
stones from, or how they carried them, for there isn't a pebble within
forty miles.

A Case for the Oracle

The Oracle and I were camped together. The Oracle was a bricklayer by
trade, and had two or three small contracts on hand. I was "doing a
bit of house-painting". There were a plasterer, a carpenter, and a
plumber--we were all T'othersiders, and old mates, and we worked
things together. It was in Westralia--the Land of T'othersiders--and,
therefore, we were not surprised when Mitchell turned up early one
morning, with his swag and an atmosphere of salt water about him.

He'd had a rough trip, he said, and would take a spell that day and take
the lay of the land and have something cooked for us by the time we came
home; and go to graft himself next morning. And next morning he went to
work, "labouring" for the Oracle.

The Oracle and his mates, being small contractors and not pressed for
time, had dispensed with the services of a labourer, and had done their
own mixing and hod-carrying in turns. They didn't want a labourer now,
but the Oracle was a vague fatalist, and Mitchell a decided one. So it
passed.

The Oracle had a "Case" right under his nose--in his own employ, in
fact; but was not aware of the fact until Mitchell drew his attention
to it. The Case went by the name of Alfred O'Briar--which hinted a mixed
parentage. He was a small, nervous working-man, of no particular colour,
and no decided character, apparently. If he had a soul above bricks, he
never betrayed it. He was not popular on the jobs. There was something
sly about Alf, they said.

The Oracle had taken him on in the first place as a day-labourer,