ck in
those days. Of course he wasn't the Oracle then; he was young Tom
Marshall--but that doesn't matter. Everybody liked him--especially women
and children. He was a bit happy-go-lucky and careless, but he didn't
know anything about 'this world', and didn't bother about it; he hadn't
'been there'. 'And his heart was as good as gold,' my aunt used to
say. He didn't understand women as we young fellows do nowadays, and
therefore he hadn't any contempt for 'em. Perhaps he understood, and
understands, them better than any of us, without knowing it. Anyway, you
know, he's always gentle and kind where a woman or child is concerned,
and doesn't like to hear us talk about women as we do sometimes.

"There was a girl on the goldfields--a fine lump of a blonde, and pretty
gay. She came from Sydney, I think, with her people, who kept shanties
on the fields. She had a splendid voice, and used to sing 'Madeline'.
There might have been one or two bad women before that, in the Oracle's
world, but no cold-blooded, designing ones. He calls the bad ones
'unfortunate'.

"Perhaps it was Tom's looks, or his freshness, or his innocence, or
softness--or all together--that attracted her. Anyway, he got mixed up
with her before the goldfield petered out.

"No doubt it took a long while for the facts to work into Tom's head
that a girl might sing like she did and yet be thoroughly unprincipled.
The Oracle was always slow at coming to a decision, but when he does
it's generally the right one. Anyway, you can take that for granted, for
you won't move him.

"I don't know whether he found out that she wasn't all that she
pretented to be to him, or whether they quarrelled, or whether she
chucked him over for a lucky digger. Tom never had any luck on the
goldfields. Anyway, he left and went over to the Victorian side, where
his people were, and went up Gippsland way. It was there for the first
time in his life that he got what you would call 'properly gone on a
girl'; he got hard hit--he met his fate.

"Her name was Bertha Bredt, I remember. Aunt Bob saw her afterwards.
Aunt Bob used to say that she was 'a girl as God made her'--a good,
true, womanly girl--one of those sort of girls that only love once. Tom
got on with her father, who was packing horses through the ranges to the
new goldfields--it was rough country and there were no roads; they had
to pack everything there in those days, and there was money in it. The
girl's father took to Tom