oker.

"There was no loft," put in a voice from the top of the coach.

"I say, Mister--Mister man," said the Joker suddenly to the driver, "Was
his missus sick at all?"

"I dunno," replied the driver. "She might have been. He said so, anyway.
I ain't got no call to call a man a liar."

"See here," said the cannibalistic individual to the driver, in the tone
of a man who has made up his mind for a row, "has that shanty-keeper got
a wife at all?"

"I believe he has."

"And is she living with him?"

"No, she ain't--if yer wanter know."

"Then where is she?"

"I dunno. How am I to know? She left him three or four years ago. She
was in Sydney last time I heard of her. It ain't no affair of mine,
anyways."

"And is there any woman about the place at all, driver?" inquired a
professional wanderer reflectively.

"No--not that I knows on. There useter be a old black gin come pottering
round sometimes, but I ain't seen her lately."

"And excuse me, driver, but is there anyone round there at all?"
enquired the professional wanderer, with the air of a conscientious
writer, collecting material for an Australian novel from life, with an
eye to detail.

"Naw," said the driver--and recollecting that he was expected to be
civil and obliging to his employers' patrons, he added in surly apology,
"Only the boss and the stableman, that I knows of." Then repenting
of the apology, he asserted his manhood again, and asked, in a
tone calculated to risk a breach of the peace, "Any more questions,
gentlemen--while the shop's open?"

There was a long pause.

"Driver," asked the Pilgrim appealingly, "was them horses lost at all?"

"I dunno," said the driver. "He said they was. He's got the looking
after them. It was nothing to do with me."

. . . . .

"Twelve drinks at sixpence a drink"--said the Joker, as if calculating
to himself--"that's six bob, and, say on an average, four shouts--that's
one pound four. Twelve beds at eighteenpence a bed--that's eighteen
shillings; and say ten bob in various drinks and the stuff we brought
with us, that's two pound twelve. That publican didn't do so bad out of
us in two hours."

We wondered how much the driver got out of it, but thought it best not
to ask him.

. . . . .

We didn't say much for the rest of the journey. There was the usual man
who thought as much and knew all about it from the first, but he
wasn't appreciated. We suppressed him. One or two w