Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/305

 for the security of his people at home, who were remitting money to his credit. Roughly dressed was he—had evidently been 'on the wallaby' recently. After telling me his name and birth, he must have thought I looked doubtful, for he said, 'I am the man I say; I'm not the Claimant.' That great personage was then supplying England and Australia with food for conversation. A book lay near me with a Latin quotation on the frontispiece. This I slightly indicated; he at once took the hint and translated it correctly.

'What have you been doing lately?' I inquired. His hands, roughened and gnarled, with no make-believe manual labour, assured me that he had been pretty continuously at work of some sort.

'Well, station work mostly,' he returned answer. 'My last job was cooking for a survey camp.'

'Was it for this that you graduated at Trinity College, Dublin?' was my unspoken thought. That he drank hard between times, poor fellow, was apparent to my experienced eye. He received his money duly, which was, of course, 'blued' like all previous remittances. I exchanged letters with the friends who had written after him. I advised, if they were really anxious for his return, that he should be placed on board ship, but no money given to him till safe on blue water. What historiettes of lapsed gentlefolk in the colonies might be written! The Honourable Blank Blank, long past even the middle passage of station work, who loafs about country towns, taking work as ostler, or even 'boots' at the hotels, ready to drink with any rough, and feebly subsisting upon the reflection of former greatness, until he becomes too useless for even such a position, is locked up for repeated drunkenness, and finally dies in a gutter.

The 'cranky' long-bearded shepherd vegetates on a back-block station, amid desert regions now becoming traditionary, where wire fences are all unknown, or by dingoes rendered ineffectual.

A row of books adorns his solitary hut, a weekly paper, perhaps his sponge and ivory-backed brushes, curious-appearing souvenirs of old days. He talks pleasantly enough to the rare-appearing stranger, who is also a gentleman. The British tourist, if a new arrival, rides off with pity in his heart, possibly with some idea of aiding the hermit to return to his