ned, and so have no
need to furnish any man swizzles. She knew he would never pull himself
together now. It was very weak of him, and horrible, but then... When
that thirst gets into the blood, and there's something behind the man's
life too--as Dicky Merritt said, "It's a case for the little black
angels."

Vic would not give him liquor. He got it, however, from other sources.
He was too far gone to feel any shame now. His sensibilities were all
blunted. One day he babbled over the bar-counter to O'Fallen, desiring
greatly that they should be reconciled. To that end he put down the last
shilling he had for a swizzle, and was so outrageously offended when
O'Fallen refused to take it, that the silver was immediately swept into
the till; and very soon, with his eye-glass to his eye, Mr. Jones was
drunk.

That was the occasion mentioned in the first sentence of this history,
when Vic was very angry.

The bar-room was full. Men were wondering why it was that the Postmaster
and the Little Milliner, who went to Magari ten days before, to get
married by the parson there, had not returned. While they talked and
speculated, the weekly coach from Magari came up slowly to the door,
and, strange to say, without a blast from the driver's horn. Dicky
Merritt and Company rushed out to ask news of the two truants, and were
met with a warning wave of the driver's hand, and a "Sh-h! sh--!" as
he motioned towards the inside of the coach. There they found the
Postmaster and the Little Milliner mere skeletons, and just alive. They
were being cared for by a bushman, who had found them in the plains,
delirious and nearly naked. They had got lost, there being no regular
road over the plains, and their horse, which they had not tethered
properly, had gone large. They had been days without food and water when
they were found near the coach-track.

They were carried into O'Fallen's big sitting-room. Dicky brought the
doctor, who said that they both would die, and soon. Hours passed. The
sufferers at last became sane and conscious, as though they could not
go without something being done. The Postmaster lifted a hand to his
pocket. Dicky Merritt took out of it a paper. It was the marriage
licence. The Little Milliner's eyes were painful to see; she was not
dying happy. The Postmaster, too, moved his head from side to side in
trouble. He reached over and took her hand. She drew it back, shuddering
a little. "The ring! The ring!" she whispered.