eek when
things was clearing up ahead; and the last 'order' I sent over I set
to work and wrote her a long letter, putting all the good news and
encouragement I could think of into it. I thought how that letter would
brighten up things at home, and how she'd read it round. I thought of
lots of things that a man never gets time to think of while his nose is
kept to the grindstone. And she was dead and in her grave, and I never
knowed it."

Mitchell dug his elbow into my ribs and made signs for the matches to
light his pipe.

"An' yer never knowed," reflected the Oracle.

"But I always had an idea when there was trouble at home," the digger
went on presently, in his quiet, patient tone. "I always knowed; I
always had a kind of feeling that way--I felt it--no matter how far I
was away. When the youngsters was sick I knowed it, and I expected the
letter that come. About a fortnight ago I had a feeling that way when
the wife was ill. The very stars out there on the desert by the Boulder
Soak seemed to say: 'There's trouble at home. Go home. There's trouble
at home.' But I never dreamed what that trouble was. One night I did
make up my mind to start in the morning, but when the morning came I
hadn't an excuse, and was ashamed to tell my mates the truth. They might
have thought I was going ratty, like a good many go out there." Then he
broke off with a sort of laugh, as if it just struck him that we
might think he was a bit off his head, or that his talk was getting
uncomfortable for us. "Curious, ain't it?" he said.

"Reminds me of a case I knowed,----" commenced the Oracle, after a
pause.

I could have pitched him overboard; but that was a mistake. He and the
old digger sat on the for'ard hatch half the night yarning, mostly about
queer starts, and rum go's, and curious cases the Oracle had knowed,
and I think the Oracle did him a lot of good somehow, for he seemed more
cheerful in the morning.

We were overcrowded in the steerage, but Mitchell managed to give up his
berth to the old digger without letting him know it. Most of the chaps
seemed anxious to make a place at the first table and pass the first
helpings of the dishes to the "old cove that had lost his missus."

They all seemed to forget him as we entered the Heads; they had their
own troubles to attend to. They were in the shadow of the shame of
coming back hard up, and the grins began to grow faint and sickly. But I
didn't forget him. I wish sometimes tha