home, or in
the places we came back to, as it was in the places we went to. Anyway
it went, there wasn't the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest
friends were, as a rule, in favour of our taking away as little as we
could possibly manage with, and coming back with a pile, whether we came
back saloon or not; and that ought to settle the matter as far as any
chap that had the slightest consideration for his friends or family was
concerned.

There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that
steerage. One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie
way, and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by
his mates. Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their
life, some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart to
call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds, travellers for
"graft" or fortune, and professional wanderers wear in front of it
all. Except one man--an elderly eastern digger--he had lost his wife in
Sydney while he was away.

They sent him a wire to the Boulder Soak, or somewhere out back of
White Feather, to say that his wife was seriously ill; but the wire went
wrong, somehow, after the manner of telegrams not connected with mining,
on the lines of "the Western". They sent him a wire to say that his wife
was dead, and that reached him all right--only a week late.

I can imagine it. He got the message at dinner-time, or when they came
back to the camp. His mate wanted him to sit in the shade, or lie in
the tent, while he got the billy boiled. "You must brace up and pull
yourself together, Tom, for the sake of the youngsters." And Tom for
long intervals goes walking up and down, up and down, by the camp--under
the brassy sky or the gloaming--under the brilliant star-clusters that
hang over the desert plain, but never raising his eyes to them; kicking
a tuft of grass or a hole in the sand now and then, and seeming to watch
the progress of the track he is tramping out. The wife of twenty years
was with him--though two thousand miles away--till that message came.

I can imagine Tome sitting with his mates round the billy, they talking
in quiet, subdued tones about the track, the departure of coaches,
trains and boats--arranging for Tom's journey East, and the working of
the claim in his absence. Or Tom lying on his back in his bunk, with his
hands under his head and his eyes fixed on the calico above--thinking,
thinking, think