day or two further on the track, that they are more rotten than
the pair you left behind.

There is some growling about the water here, and one of the men makes a
billy of tea. The water is better cooked. Pint-pots and sugar-bags
are groped out and brought to the kitchen hut, and each man fills his
pannikin; the Irishman keeps a thumb on the edge of his, so as to
know when the pot is full, for it is very dark, and there is no more
firewood. You soon know this way, especially if you are in the habit of
pressing lighted tobacco down into your pipe with the top of your thumb.
The old slush-lamps are all burnt out.

Each man feels for the mouth of his sugar-bag with one hand while he
keeps the bearings of his pot with the other.

The Irishman has lost his match-box, and feels for it all over the table
without success. He stoops down with his hands on his knees, gets the
table-top on a level with the flicker of firelight, and "moons" the
object, as it were.

Time to turn in. It is very dark inside and bright moonlight without;
every crack seems like a ghost peering in. Some of the men will roll
up their swags on the morrow and depart; some will take another day's
spell. It is all according to the tucker.

THE UNION BURIES ITS DEAD

While out boating one Sunday afternoon on a billabong across the river,
we saw a young man on horseback driving some horses along the bank. He
said it was a fine day, and asked if the Water was deep there. The joker
of our party said it was deep enough to drown him, and he laughed and
rode farther up. We didn't take-much notice of him.

Next day a funeral gathered at a corner pub and asked each other in to
have a drink while waiting for the hearse. They passed away some of the
time dancing jigs to a piano in the bar parlour. They passed away the
rest of the time skylarking and fighting.

The defunct was a young Union labourer, about twenty-five, who had
been drowned the previous day while trying to swim some horses across a
billabong of the Darling.

He was almost a stranger in town, and the fact of his having been a
Union man accounted for the funeral. The police found some Union papers
in his swag, and called at the General Labourers' Union Office for
information about him. That's how we knew. The secretary had very little
information to give. The departed was a "Roman," and the majority of
the town were otherwise--but Unionism is stronger than creed. Liquor,
however, is stron