Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/27

 to the Bushman's Creed in another man's trouble be he Bushman or or Chinaman and which is usually performed on the quiet, mysteriously, furtively, and looks more like a low class conspiracy, or better class robbery being planned than anything else. But in Billy's case it didn't matter. Bogan collected the men in the bar, and took off his old black slouch calico crowned straw hat. But Jack Moonlight objected jocularly that there were edges of straw inside under which coins might slip in a hat held by experienced hands (he was a noted gambler and so was One-Eyed Bogan).

So One-Eyed Bogan borrowed Moonlight's hat, "chucked" "half-a-caser" in it for a send-off, and passed it round. In a shearing shed in full swing in a good season it would have been quids, half-quids, casers, and at the lowest half-casers permitted. But scrub-cutting is low down and "red hot" in a bad season. "Anyways," Bogan said, " there was enough to get a clean shirt and socks and a handkerchief and boot laces for Billy." When Bogan got his last shearing cheque he went to Sydney and ended up, or rather began a new life in the Darlinghurst Receiving House, with a pair of torn trousers, a shirt, the best part of a waistcoat, a new elastic side-boot, and one sock. He sang "Home, Sweet Home!" all the first night in the padded cell "an' that'll show how bad I was!" he said.

And at the last moment, Bogan told the policeman in charge of Billy, for his comfort on a thirty-mile dry stretch, that "he'd better keep his eye on the