n, and this is terrible
to a sensitive man.

We once had the key of the street for a night. We don't know how much
tobacco we smoked, how many seats we sat on, or how many miles we walked
before morning. But we do know that we felt like a felon, and that every
policeman seemed to regard us with a suspicious eye; and at last we
began to squint furtively at every trap we met, which, perhaps, made him
more suspicious, till finally we felt bad enough to be run in and to get
six months' hard.

Three winters ago a man, whose name doesn't matter, had a small office
near Elizabeth Street, Sydney. He was an hotel broker, debt collector,
commission agent, canvasser, and so on, in a small way--a very small
way--but his heart was big. He had a partner. They batched in the
office, and did their cooking over a gas lamp. Now, every day the
man-whose-name-doesn't-matter would carefully collect the scraps of
food, add a slice or two of bread and butter, wrap it all up in a piece
of newspaper, and, after dark, step out and leave the parcel on a ledge
of the stonework outside the building in the street. Every morning it
would be gone. A shadow came along in the night and took it.
This went on for many months, till at last one night the
man-whose-name-doesn't-matter forgot to put the parcel out, and didn't
think of it till he was in bed. It worried him, so that at last he had
to get up and put the scraps outside. It was midnight. He felt curious
to see the shadow, so he waited until it came along. It wasn't his
long-lost brother, but it was an old mate of his.

Let us finish with a sketch:

The scene was Circular Quay, outside the Messageries sheds. The usual
number of bundles of misery--covered more or less with dirty sheets of
newspaper--lay along the wall under the ghastly glare of the electric
light. Time--shortly after midnight. From among the bundles an old man
sat up. He cautiously drew off his pants, and then stood close to
the wall, in his shirt, tenderly examining the seat of the trousers.
Presently he shook them out, folded them with great care, wrapped them
in a scrap of newspaper, and laid them down where his head was to be.
He had thin, hairy legs and a long grey beard. From a bundle of rags he
extracted another pair of pants, which were all patches and tatters, and
into which he engineered his way with great caution. Then he sat down,
arranged the paper over his knees, laid his old ragged grey head back on
his precious