before we made up matters, just at the last
he'd have chucked up the sponge and cleared out for good and all. He as
good as said so; but he was one of them kind of men that once he'd
made a start never turned back. There'd been some chaff, to make things
worse, between Moran and Daly and some of the other fellows about being
game and what not, specially after what father said at the hut, so he
wouldn't draw out of it now.

I could see it fretted him worse than anything since we came back, but
he filled himself up with the idea that we'd be sure to get the gold
all right, and clear out different ways to the coast, and then we'd have
something worth while leaving off with. Another thing, we'd been all
used to having what money we wanted lately, and we none of us fancied
living like poor men again in America or anywhere else. We hadn't had
hardly a scrap from Aileen since we'd come back this last time. It
wasn't much odds. She was regular broken-hearted; you could see it in
every line.

'She had been foolish enough to hope for better things,' she said; 'now
she expected nothing more in this world, and was contented to wear
out her miserable life the best way she could. If it wasn't that her
religion told her it was wrong, and that mother depended on her, she'd
drown herself in the creek before the door. She couldn't think why some
people were brought into this miserable world at all. Our family had
been marked out to evil, and the same fate would follow us to the end.
She was sorry for Jim, and believed if he had been let take his own road
that he would have been happy and prosperous to-day. It was a pity he
could not have got away safely to Melbourne with his wife before that
wicked woman, who deserved to be burnt alive, ruined everything. Even
now we might all escape, the country seemed in so much confusion with
all the strangers and bad people' (bad people--well, every one thinks
their own crow the blackest) 'that the goldfields had brought into it,
that it wouldn't be hard to get away in a ship somehow. If nothing else
bad turned up perhaps it might come to pass yet.'

This was the only writing we'd had from poor Aileen. It began all misery
and bitterness, but got a little better at the end. If she and Gracey
could have got hold of Kate Morrison there wouldn't have been much left
of her in a quarter of an hour, I could see that.

Inside was a little bit of paper with one line, 'For my sake,' that
was all. I knew th