letters to him, Aunt Bob said. She knew what was in 'em, but, of
course, she'd never tell us. The Oracle only wrote one in reply. Then,
what must the girl do but clear out from home and make her way over to
Sydney--to Aunt Bob's place, looking for Tom. She never got any further.
She took ill--brain-fever, or broken heart, or something of that sort.
All the time she was down her cry was--'I want to see him! I want to
find Tom! I only want to see Tom!'

"When they saw she was dying, Aunt Bob wired to the Oracle to come--and
he came. When the girl saw it was Tom sitting by the bed, she just gave
one long look in his face, put her arms round his neck, and laid her
head on his shoulder--and died.... Here comes the Oracle now."

Mitchell lifted the tea-billy on to the coals.

[End of original text.]

From the original advertisements (March, 1900), books by the same
author:

When the World was Wide & Other Verses

By Henry Lawson, Author of "While the Billy Boils".

Ninth Thousand. With photogravure portrait and vignette title.
Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 5s.; post free, 5s. 5d.

Mr. R. Le Gallienne, in The Idler: "A striking volume of ballad
poetry. A volume to console one for the tantalising postponement of Mr.
Kipling's promised volume of sea ballads."

Weekly Chronicle, Newcastle (Eng.): "Swinging, rhythmic verse."

Sydney Morning Herald: "The verses have natural vigour, the writer has
a rough, true faculty of characterisation, and the book is racy of the
soil from cover to cover."

Melbourne Age: "'In the Days when the World was Wide and Other Verses',
by Henry Lawson, is poetry, and some of it poetry of a very high order."

Otago Witness: "It were well to have such books upon our shelves... they
are true History."

New Zealand Herald: "There is a heart-stirring ring about the verses."

Bulletin: "How graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong."

While the Billy Boils: Australian Stories.

By Henry Lawson.

Author of "In the Days when the World was Wide".

Twelfth Thousand. With eight plates and vignette title by F. P. Mahony.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper cover, 2s. 6d. (postage, 6d.)

Also in two parts (each complete in itself), in picture covers, at 1s.;
post free, 1s. 3d. each (Commonwealth Series).

The Academy: "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing
about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. Mr.