ck, "and get woke up with a black eye. Bushies don't
generally carry their swags out of pubs in their sleep, or walk neither;
it's only city swells who do that. Where's the blessed matches?

"Well, Tom agreed to go, and presently I saw a shadow under the window,
and lowered away.

"'All right?' I asked in a whisper.

"'All right!" whispered the shadow.

"I lowered the other swag.

"'All right?'

"'All right!' said the shadow, and just then the moon came out.

"'All right!' says the shadow.

"But it wasn't all right. It was the landlord himself!

"It seems he got up and went out to the back in the night, and just
happened to be coming in when my mate Tom was sneaking out of the back
door. He saw Tom, and Tom saw him, and smoked through a hole in the
palings into the scrub. The boss looked up at the window, and dropped to
it. I went down, funky enough, I can tell you, and faced him. He said:

"'Look here, mate, why didn't you come straight to me, and tell me how
you was fixed, instead of sneaking round the trouble in that fashion?
There's no occasion for it.'

"I felt mean at once, but I said: 'Well, you see, we didn't know you,
boss.'

"'So it seems. Well, I didn't think of that. Anyway, call up your mate
and come and have a drink; we'll talk over it afterwards.' So I called
Tom. 'Come on,' I shouted. 'It's all right.'

"And the boss kept us a couple of days, and then gave us as much tucker
as we could carry, and a drop of stuff and a few bob to go on the track
again with."

"Well, he was white, any road."

"Yes. I knew him well after that, and only heard one man say a word
against him."

"And did you stoush him?"

"No; I was going to, but Tom wouldn't let me. He said he was frightened
I might make a mess of it, and he did it himself."

"Did what? Make a mess of it?"

"He made a mess of the other man that slandered that publican. I'd be
funny if I was you. Where's the matches?"

"And could Tom fight?"

"Yes. Tom could fight."

"Did you travel long with him after that?"

"Ten years."

"And where is he now?"

"Dead--Give us the matches."

HIS FATHER'S MATE

It was Golden Gully still, but golden in name only, unless indeed the
yellow mullock heaps or the bloom of the wattle-trees on the hillside
gave it a claim to the title. But the gold was gone from the gully, and
the diggers were gone, too, after the manner of Timon's friends when his
wealth deserted him. Golden Gully was a