years."

Mitchell reflected.

"And what did your old man do when he found out that you were smoking?"
I asked.

"The old man?"

He reflected.

"Well, he seemed to brighten up at first. You see, he was sort of
pensioned off by mother and she kept him pretty well inside his
income.... Well, he seemed to sort of brighten up--liven up--when he
found out that I was smoking."

"Did he? So did my old man, and he livened me up, too. But what did your
old man do--what did he say?"

"Well," said Mitchell, very slowly, "about the first thing he did was to
ask me for a fill."

He reflected.

"Ah! many a solemn, thoughtful old smoke we had together on the
quiet--the old man and me."

He reflected.

"Is your old man dead, Mitchell?" I asked softly. "Long ago--these
twelve years," said Mitchell.

COMING ACROSS

We were delayed for an hour or so inside Sydney Heads, taking passengers
from the _Oroya_, which had just arrived from England and anchored off
Watson's Bay. An Adelaide boat went alongside the ocean liner, while we
dropped anchor at a respectable distance. This puzzled some of us until
one of the passengers stopped an ancient mariner and inquired. The
sailor jerked his thumb upwards, and left. The passengers stared aloft
till some of them got the lockjaw in the back of their necks, and then
another sailor suggested that we had yards to our masts, while the
Adelaide boat had not.

It seemed a pity that the new chums for New Zealand didn't have a chance
to see Sydney after coming so far and getting so near. It struck them
that way too. They saw Melbourne, which seemed another injustice to the
old city. However, nothing matters much nowadays, and they might see
Sydney in happier times.

They looked like new chums, especially the "furst clarsters," and there
were two or three Scotsmen among them who looked like Scots, and talked
like it too; also an Irishman. Great Britain and Ireland do not seem to
be learning anything fresh about Australia. We had a yarn with one of
these new arrivals, and got talking about the banks. It turned out that
he was a radical. He spat over the side and said:

"It's a something shame the way things is carried on! Now, look here, a
banker can rob hundreds of wimmin and children an' widders and orfuns,
and nothin' is done to him; but if a poor man only embezzles a shilling
_he gets transported to the colonies for life_." The italics are ours,
but the words were his.

W