in spite of all that was said of the free, brave bush.
It was not new to him, this dark side of life; that was the worst of it.
It had been all along and he had known that it had been, but never before
had he understood the significance of it, never before had he realised
how utterly civilisation has failed. And this was what crushed him--the
hopelessness of it all, the black despair that seemed to fill the
universe, the brutal weariness of living, the ceaseless round of sorrow
and sin and shame and unspeakable misery.

Often in the bush it had come to him, lying sleepless at night under the
star-lit sky, all alone excepting for the tinkling of his horse-bell:
"What is to be the end for me? What is there to look forward to?" And his
heart had sunk within him at the prospect. For what was in front? What
could be? Shearing and waiting for shearing--that was his life. Working
over the sweating sheep under the hot iron shed in the sweltering summer
time; growing sick and losing weight and bickering with the squatter till
the few working months wore over; then an occasional job, but mostly
enforced idling till the season came round again; looking for work from
shed to shed; struggling against conditions; agitating; organising; and
in the future years, aged too soon, wifeless and childless, racked with
rheumatism, shaken with fevers, to lie down to die on the open plain
perchance or crawl, feebled and humbled, to the State-charity of Dunwich.
He used to shut his eyes to force such thoughts from him, fearing lest he
go mad, as were those travelling swagmen he met sometimes, who muttered
always to themselves and made frantic gestures as they journeyed,
solitary, through the monotonous wilderness. He had flung himself into
unionism because there was nothing else that promised help or hope and
because he hated the squatters, who took, as he looked at it,
contemptible advantage of the bushmen. And he had felt that with unionism
men grew better and heartier, gambling less and debating more, drinking
less and planning what the union would do when it grew strong enough. He
had worked for the union before it came, had been one of those who
preached it from shed to shed and argued for it by smouldering camp fires
before turning in. And he had seen the union feeling spread until the
whole Western country throbbed with it and until the union itself started
into life at the last attempt of the squatter to force down wages and was
extendin