burning sun, our bright blood bounded, and we lived!
But in gray, chill winter the bark hut, so long deserted, repaid our ingratitude by generous kindness. Creeping, all wet, and weary with travel, splashed with mire, and torn by prickly scrub, to its friendly shelter, it glowed warm welcome, its rough but honest sides laughing in the beams of the roaring logs till they were nigh to crack again. How cheery were those evenings. How we ate the ewe mutton, and laughed at the mishaps of the day; how we smoked, and toasted our toes and "yarned;" three sworn comrades, singing the songs of our native Britain to the accompaniment of the whistling Austral wind.
The hut was not commodious. When duly camped within it, indeed, we had but scant room. When McAlister had flung his lazy length upon the lounging chair (a wool bale stretched upon the racktoothed iron skeleton of some long-forgotten patent) and I had usurped the cane-bottomed American importation, there was but one place for Thwaites, and that the table top. Thwaites would roost there, like some intelligent bird, and chant the lays of his native country. We called him the "Little Warbler." Thwaites was a young man of military tendencies. He had belonged in the old country to the Diggleshire Yeomanry Cavalry (who received the thanks of their Lord-Lieutenant and county, you may remember, for their conduct in the great insurrection of the cider-sellers against the patent bottling process), and in our excursions into the bush he was perpetually waving a brass-headed whip which he affected, and with wild cries of "St. George and Diggleshire!" charging the brush fences. Paddy, his big-boned horse, put him down badly one afternoon, and he gave up this method of exhilaration. McAlister, who owned that sense of dry humour which is a fungoid growth peculiar to Scotland, would artfully excite Thwaites to wrath by the assumption of anti-Hanoverian tendencies, and induce in him a violent outburst of loyalty, and frequent reference to a lady of whom he habitually spoke as "My gracious sovereign, whom God preserve." McAlister himself was not without his prejudices, for on one occasion I distinctly remember that we removed the table, and fought over the merits of poor Mary Queen of Scots. I had ventured to hint that her conduct in the matter of Bothwell was not quite incapable of impeachment, and McAlister challenged me to trial by battle. In justice to the soundness of a reasoning which has sent so many honest men to Hades, I will presume that my cause was a bad one, for I received a very sound and cornplete drubbing.
One of poor Thwaites's duties was to "keep the books," and once a week he would labour painfully, but religiously at his task. The, "books" could not have been very difficult to "keep," I think, but somehow or other we never could keep them. I am now inclined to think that our system was too comprehensive, for, as we put everything down in a volume called a day-book, (lucus a non lucendo, I suppose, for we never wrote anything in it until night), and transferred it bodily to a ledger, our accounts were pretty mixed. After I had been there a month, Thwaites mounted his horse solemnly and mysteriously one morning, and rode off one hundred and twenty miles to his brother. Two days afterwards he returned, dusty but calm, and big with intelligence of importance. After supper, he said to me gravely, "you have been in a bank, haven't you?" I replied that I had for a month or so, until my ravages among the well kept books were presumed to have permanently affected the brain of Napoleon Smith, the manager. "Then," said Jack, "since you've been used to banking, my boy, my brother thinks that you can keep the books." I was ready for any hazardous experiment in those days, and I consented. I think on the whole I did pretty well, though three rams (half-bred Leicesters, and as strong as bullocks), got into Derwent Joe's account, and could not be got out again by any financial operation I could devise, while I was always dropping boots and things in "carrying over." Jack would endeavour sometimes to see how I was getting on, but he told me one day that he couldn't understand why I should keep four plugs of Barrett's twist in the Long Swamp Paddock, and put our married couple's wages to the debit of Weathers and Weaners. I really don't think he understood much about it.
In the Long Swamp Paddock, by the way, lived one Long Tom, who was an oddity. He was nearly seven feet high and thin as a harpoon. He had been a sailor, digger, explorer, stockman, everything but a quiet stop-at-home. For the last ten years, however, he had rested in the hut by the Long Swamp, and the place was known as Long Tom's Waterhole; indeed, Long Tom and his dog were better known at the stations round about, than the name of the Chief Secretary of the Colony. His dog was one of the biggest impostors--for a dog--that I have ever met. He was called Old Moke, and was supposed to be of marvellous sagacity; he was a stumpy-tailed, long-bodied, shambling beast, who worked just when he chose, and as he chose. Long Tom, when riding to muster, would remark that if we didn't get the sheep soon, he would have to put "Old Moke on 'em," as though the act was equivalent to working a miracle, or dissolving Parliament. By-and-by Old Moke was "put on." "Moke!" Tom would remark in tones of conscious superiority, "get away forward!" We would hear a howl, and see a streak of white lightning slip out from under the belly of Tom's horse. Moke had obeyed the summons. By-and-by, in the depths of the forest, faint barks would be heard, and Tom would grow uneasy. He would whistle. Still the barking would continue, and presently, with a rushing sound, a flock of ewes would fly past us bewilderedly. Tom would shift in his saddle, and we would grin.
Presently McAlister gallops up, raging. "Call off your cursed dog, Tom!" he shouts. "Hi, Moke!" roars Tom. "Moke! Moke! Sink, and burn, and-and-and----the dog. Moke! Hi! Moke!" Then would Long Tom, vomiting fury, gallop madly into the bush, some agonised howls would be heard, and old Moke would be seen no more until supper, when he would meet us at the hut wagging his delusive stump defiantly. Yet everybody around believed in the beast. Old Moke was a sort of religion at the Dinkledoodledum, and to express doubt of his immense value would be heresy of the deepest dye. One would meet stockmen going home with puppies, squeaking at their heels. "Any good?" one would ask, nodding at the black and white mass. "Good! I believe you. That's one of old Moke's," would be the proud reply. Alas! old Moke--honest impostor, thou and thy crack-brained master are both gone! Gone, let us hope, old dog, to a place where the faults of both of ye will be as lightly dealt with as in the pleasant days of old.
When Thwaites had gone to bed in the corner--he was a most determined sleeper--McAlister and I would pitch another log on the fire and prepare for enjoyment. Carefully filling our pipes, we placed the grease-pannikin on a mark made exactly in the centre of the table, and "yarned." By "yarning," dear reader, I don't mean mere trivial conversation, but hard, solid talk. McAlister was a man of more than ordinary natural talents, and had he been placed in other circumstances, would have cut a figure. It was not easy to argue with him, and some of our discussions lasted until cock-crow. The arguments not unfrequently merged into story-telling, and in that department my memory served me in good stead. I had been a sickly brat in my infancy, and having unfettered access to the library of a man who owned few prejudices for moral fig-leaves, had, with the avidity for recondite knowledge which sickly brats always evince, read many strange books. I boiled down my recollections for McAlister, and constituted myself a sort of Scherezade for his peculiar benefit. He would smoke and I would fix my eyes on a long strip of bark which hung serpentwise from the ridge pole, and relate. I think if that strip of bark had been removed, my power of narration would have been removed with it. In this fashion we got through a good deal of Brantome, several of the plays--or rather plots of the plays--of Wycherley, Massinger, and Farquahar, and most of Byron. We rambled over the Continent with Gil Blas, discussed the Alchemists, strolled up and down Rome with Horace, and investigated the miracles of the early Saxon churchmen in company of a lot of queer fellows who lived somewhere about the time of the Venerable Bede. We talked Candide and Dr. Lardner's Encyclopædia; we saw Hogarth with Ireland's descriptions; we quarrelled bitterly over Tom Paine's Age of Reason, and made friends again over the pathetic adventures of one Moll Flanders, a friend of Daniel Defoe.
Oh, cheery bark hut, despite all miseries of rough ways and rougher weather, despite all hideousness of lamb-cutting and sheep-slaughtering, despite the figs of tobacco that would get mixed up with my record of maiden-ewes and two-toothed wethers, despite rain, storm, and tough mutton, I recall thy memory with unfeigned regret. Thither "never came the trader, never waved a European flag;" no smiling bill-discounters ever invaded thy sacred precincts; no severe duns, rightly claiming that which is, alas! their own, and that which I am unable to pay them, ever darkened thy hospitable doorway; no folio documents, demanding instant official attention, were ever brought by the merry black-boy
