Page:The Middle of Things - Fletcher (1922).djvu/236

 "So then I was obliged to work for my living. I went up country, and for some time worked as a miner in the Bendigo district. I had been working in this way perhaps fourteen months when an accident occurred in the mine at which I was engaged. There was a serious fall of earth and masonry; two or three of my fellow-workers were killed on the spot, and I was taken up for dead. I was removed to a local hospital—there had been some serious injury to my head and spine, but I still had life in me, and I was brought round. But I remained in hospital, in a sort of semiconscious state, for a long time—months. When I went back, after my discharge, to my quarters—nothing but a rough shanty which I had shared with many other men—all my possessions had vanished. Among them, of course, were the papers I had kept, and a packet of letters written to me by my mother when I was a schoolboy at Eton.

"Of course, I knew at once what had happened—some one of my mates, believing me to be dead, had appropriated all my belongings and gone off with them. There was nothing at all to be wondered at in that—it was the usual thing in such a society. And I knew there was nothing to do but to accept my loss philosophically."

"Did you make no effort to recover your possessions?" asked Mr. Millington-Bywater.

"No," answered the witness with a quiet smile. "I didn't! I knew too much of the habits of men in mining centers to waste time in that way. A great many men had left that particular camp during my illness—it would have been impossible to trace each one. No—after all, I had left England in order to