as as
cheerful as if he were alive again, or had never lived at all. And so
I shall get over this. Why should I give way to what I know will pass,
and is meant to pass? It is my father I feel for. But I couldn't be
there; and it is no fault of mine that I was not there. No one told me
what was going to happen; and no one could know: so again,--why grieve
over what can't be helped?"

And then, to give the lie to all his cool arguments, he sat down among
the fern, and burst into a violent fit of crying. "Oh, my poor dear
old daddy!"

Yes; beneath all the hard crust of years, that fountain of life still
lay pure as when it came down from heaven--love for his father.

"Come, come, this won't do; this is not the way to take stock of my
goods, either mental or worldly. I can't cry the dear old man out of
this scrape."

He looked up. The sun was setting. Beneath the dark roof of evergreens
the eucalyptus boles stood out, like basalt pillars, black against a
background of burning flame. The flying foxes shot from tree to tree,
and moths as big as sparrows whirred about the trunks, one moment
black against the glare beyond, and vanishing the next, like imps of
darkness, into their native gloom. There was no sound of living thing
around, save the ghastly rattle of the dead bark-tassels which swung
from every tree, and far away, the faint clicking of the diggers at
their work, like the rustle of a gigantic ant-hill. Was there one
among them all who cared for him? who would not forget him in a week
with--"Well, he was pleasant company, poor fellow," and go on digging
without a sigh? What, if it were his fate to die, as he had seen many
a stronger man, there in that lonely wilderness, and sleep for ever,
unhonoured and unknown, beneath that awful forest roof, while his
father looked for bread to others' hands?

No man was less sentimental, no man less superstitious than Thomas
Thurnall; but crushed and softened--all but terrified (as who would
not have been?)--by that day's news, he could not struggle against the
weight of loneliness which fell upon him. For the first and last time,
perhaps, in his life, he felt fear; a vague, awful dread of unseen and
inevitable possibilities. Why should not calamity fall on him, wave
after wave? Was it not falling on him already? Why should he not grow
sick to-morrow, break his leg, his neck--why not? What guarantee had
he in earth or heaven that he might not be "snuffed out silently," as
h