is head on
the swag; the whole length of the verandah was before him; his eyes
were wide open, but his face was in the shade. Now he rose painfully and
stood on the ground outside, with his hands in his pockets, and gazed
out over the open for a while. He breathed a long breath, too--with a
groan in it. Then he lifted his swag quietly from the end of the floor,
shouldered it, took up his water-bag and billy, and sneaked over the
road, away from the place, like a thief. He struck across the plain, and
tramped on, hour after hour, mile after mile, till the bright moon went
down with a bright star in attendance and the other bright stars waned,
and he entered the timber and tramped through it to the "cleared road",
which stretched far and wide for twenty miles before him, with ghostly
little dust-clouds at short intervals ahead, where the frightened
rabbits crossed it. And still he went doggedly on, with the ghastly
daylight on him--like a swagman's ghost out late. And a mongrel followed
faithfully all the time unnoticed, and wondering, perhaps, at his
master.

"What was yer doin' to that girl yesterday?" asked Danny of Yankee Jack
next evening, as they camped on the far side of the plain. "What was you
chaps sayin' to Alice? I heerd her cryin' in her room last night."

But they reckoned that he had been too drunk to hear anything except an
invitation to come and have another drink; and so it passed.

The Hero of Redclay

The "boss-over-the-board" was leaning with his back to the wall between
two shoots, reading a reference handed to him by a green-hand applying
for work as picker-up or woolroller--a shed rouseabout. It was terribly
hot. I was slipping past to the rolling-tables, carrying three fleeces
to save a journey; we were only supposed to carry two. The boss stopped
me:

"You've got three fleeces there, young man?"

"Yes."

Notwithstanding the fact that I had just slipped a light ragged fleece
into the belly-wool and "bits" basket, I felt deeply injured, and
righteously and fiercely indignant at being pulled up. It was a
fearfully hot day.

"If I catch you carrying three fleeces again," said the boss quietly,
"I'll give you the sack."

"I'll take it now if you like," I said.

He nodded. "You can go on picking-up in this man's place," he said
to the jackeroo, whose reference showed him to be a non-union man--a
"free-labourer", as the pastoralists had it, or, in plain shed terms, "a
blanky scab