know the name till we
saw it on the coffin; we knew him as "that poor chap that got drowned
yesterday."

"So his name's James Tyson," said my drover acquaintance, looking at the
plate.

"Why! Didn't you know that before?" I asked.

"No; but I knew he was a Union man."

It turned out, afterwards, that J.T. wasn't his real name--only "the
name he went by." Anyhow he was buried by it, and most of the "Great
Australian Dailies" have mentioned in their brevity columns that a young
man named James John Tyson was drowned in a billabong of the Darling
last Sunday.

We did hear, later on, what his real name was; but if we ever chance to
read it in the "Missing Friends Column," we shall not be able to give
any information to heart-broken mother or sister or wife, nor to anyone
who could let him hear something to his advantage--for we have already
forgotten the name.

ON THE EDGE OF A PLAIN

"I'd been away from home for eight years," said Mitchell to his mate,
as they dropped their swags in the mulga shade and sat down. "I hadn't
written a letter--kept putting it off, and a blundering fool of a fellow
that got down the day before me told the old folks that he'd heard I was
dead."

Here he took a pull at his water-bag.

"When I got home they were all in mourning for me. It was night, and the
girl that opened the door screamed and fainted away like a shot."

He lit his pipe.

"Mother was upstairs howling and moaning in a chair, with all the girls
boo-hoo-ing round her for company. The old man was sitting in the back
kitchen crying to himself."

He put his hat down on the ground, dinted in the crown, and poured some
water into the hollow for his cattle-pup.

"The girls came rushing down. Mother was so pumped out that she couldn't
get up. They thought at first I was a ghost, and then they all tried to
get holt of me at once--nearly smothered me. Look at that pup! You want
to carry a tank of water on a dry stretch when you've got a pup that
drinks as much as two men."

He poured a drop more water into the top of his hat.

"Well, mother screamed and nearly fainted when she saw me. Such a picnic
you never saw. They kept it up all night. I thought the old cove was
gone off his chump. The old woman wouldn't let go my hand for three
mortal hours. Have you got the knife?"

He cut up some more tobacco.

"All next day the house was full of neighbours, and the first to come
was an old sweetheart of mine; I never