Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/132

 very well get away when ‘exemption-time’ came. I didn’t like to leave the claim.”

“Do any good over there?”

“Well, things brightened up a bit the last month or two. I had a hard pull at first; landed without a penny, and had to send back every shilling I could rake up to get things straightened up a bit at home. Then the eldest boy fell ill, and then the baby. I’d reckoned on bringing ‘em over to Perth or Coolgardie when the cool weather came, and having them somewheres near me, where I could go and have a look at ‘em now and then, and look after them.”

“Going back to the West again?”

“Oh, yes. I must go for the sake of the youngsters. But I don’t seem to have much heart in it.” He smoked awhile. “Over twenty years we struggled along together—the missus and me—and it seems hard that I couldn’t see the last of her. It’s rough on a man.”

“The world is damned rough on a man sometimes,” said Mitchell, “most especially when he least deserves it.”

The digger crossed his arms on the rail like an old “cocky” at the fence in the cool of the evening, yarning with an old crony.

“Mor’n twenty years she stuck to me and struggled along by my side. She never give in. I’ll swear she was on her feet till the last, with her sleeves tucked up—bustlin’ round. … And just when things was brightening and I saw a chance of giving her a bit of a rest and comfort for the end of her life. … I thought of it all only t’other week