w is crooked yet; but that fight
straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy--so
I didn't lose much beauty by it.'

When we'd done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said--

'Look here, Joe! if you won't come to the dance to-night--and I can't
say you'd ornament it--I tell you what you'll do. You get little Mary
away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll--and act like a man. The
job's finished now, and you won't get another chance like this.'

'But how am I to get her out?' I said.

'Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree
near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.'

'What good'll that do?'

'Never you mind. You just do as you're told, that's all you've got to
do,' said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.

After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The
first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the
second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking
excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see
sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary
black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly
that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor
Romany. I went away and walked about four miles down the river road,
getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding
along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought
that there wasn't much to choose between us as far as happiness was
concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling
like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him.

But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails
and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at
the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn't expect anything, in
spite of what Jack said.

I didn't like the idea of hanging myself: I'd been with a party who
found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round
where he was. And I'd helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river
in a flood, and they weren't sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity
that a chap couldn't lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in
the moonlight and die just by thinking of it--and die with his eyes
and mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn't make a beautiful
corpse, anyway i