's life--still .... It would
mean very hard work; but had he not just been contemplating, with
perfect equanimity, an even more arduous venture on the other side?
What a capricious piece of mechanism was the human brain!

Another thought that occurred to him was that his services might prove
more useful to this new country than to the old, where able men
abounded. He recalled many good lives and promising cases he had here
seen lost and bungled. To take the instance nearest home--Polly's
confinement. Yes, to show his mettle to such as Rogers; to earn respect
where he had lived as a mere null--the idea had an insidious
fascination. And as Polly sagely remarked: if it were not he, it would
be some one else; another would harvest the KUDOS that might have been
his. For the rough-and-ready treatment--the blue pills and black
draughts--that had satisfied the early diggers had fallen into
disrepute; medical skill was beginning to be appreciated. If this went
on, Ballarat would soon stand on a level with any city of its size at
home. But even as it was, he had never been quite fair to it; he had
seen it with a jaundiced eye. And again he believed Polly hit the nail
on the head, when she asserted that the poor position he had occupied
was responsible for much of his dislike.

But there was something else at work in him besides. Below the surface
an admission awaited him, which he shrank from making. All these pros
and cons, these quibbles and hair-splittings were but a misfit attempt
to cloak the truth. He might gull himself with them for a time: in his
heart he knew that he would yield--if yield he did--because he was by
nature only too prone to follow the line of least resistance. What he
had gone through to-night was no new experience. Often enough after
fretting and fuming about a thing till it seemed as if nothing under
the sun had ever mattered so much to him, it could happen that he
suddenly threw up the sponge and bowed to circumstance. His vitality
exhausted itself beforehand--in a passionate aversion, a torrent of
words--and failed him at the critical moment. It was a weakness in his
blood--in the blood of his race.--But in the present instance, he had
an excuse for himself. He had not known--till Polly came out with her
brother's offer--how he dreaded having to begin all over again in
England, an utter stranger, without influence or recommendations, and
with no money to speak of at his back.

But now he owned up,