de. Mahony
paid his three shillings for a bottle of ale; but Purdy washed down the
steak with cup after cup of richly sugared tea.

In the early afternoon they set off again, revived and refreshed. Purdy
caught at a bunch of aromatic leaves and burst into a song; and Mahony.
... Good God! With a cloudless sky overhead, a decent bit of horseflesh
between his knees, and the prospect of a three days' holiday from
storekeeping, his name would not have been what it was if he had for
long remained captious, downhearted. Insufficient sleep, and an empty
stomach--nothing on earth besides! A fig for his black thoughts! The
fact of his being obliged to spend a few years in the colony would, in
the end, profit him, by widening his experience of the world and his
fellow-men. It was possible to lead a sober, Godfearing life, no matter
in what rude corner of the globe you were pitchforked.-- And in this
mood he was even willing to grant the landscape a certain charm. Since
leaving Ballan the road had dipped up and down a succession of swelling
rises, grass-grown and untimbered. From the top of these ridges the
view was a far one: you looked straight across undulating waves of
country and intervening forest-land, to where, on the horizon, a long,
low sprawling range of hills lay blue--cobalt-blue, and painted in with
a sure brush--against the porcelain-blue of the sky. What did the
washed-out tints of the foliage matter, when, wherever you turned, you
could count on getting these marvellous soft distances, on always
finding a range of blue-veiled hills, lovely and intangible as a dream?

There was not much traffic to the diggings on a Sunday. And having come
to a level bit of ground, the riders followed a joint impulse and broke
into a canter. As they began to climb again they fell naturally into
one of those familiar talks, full of allusion and reminiscence, that
are only possible between two of a sex who have lived through part of
their green days together.

It began by Purdy referring to the satisfactory fashion in which he had
disposed of his tools, his stretcher-bed, and other effects: he was not
travelling to Melbourne empty-handed.

Mahony rallied him. "You were always a good one at striking a bargain,
my boy! What about: 'Four mivvies for an alley!'--eh, Dickybird?"

This related to their earliest meeting, and was a standing joke between
them. Mahony could recall the incident as clearly as though it had
happened yesterday