Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/28

 other fellow too!" And the driver was a noted eccentric, and there were no other passengers—but—well, all men are mad more or less—and more Out Back in drought time. So perhaps the inspector thought himself lucky to have no more than three looneys on hand—and one of them he knew. Better the lunatic you know than the one you don't. Then they went their various ways through their common hells to their private ones, sober, drunken and domestic.

"But," said Bob to the policeman, casually, as they plunged into a fifty-mile bank of dust, "that's a hard case, that one-eyed chap they call the Bogan. What lark was he up to when he took your lug?"

Which satisfied the constable at once that it was only another little practical joke attempted on the police, whereas Bob might have talked to him till Sydney, and never convinced him that his new and previous mates had been in earnest, but mistaken.

Bob now became Billy's brother Tom, and was told all about it again—about Billy's troubles in Australia—and so on through all the freaks of a disordered brain to Redfern Terminus.

Billy was taken to the Receiving House, where Bob went to see him, and they saved him from Callan Park.

Some weeks later a boat of the Bright Star Line wanted a fourth or fifth cook (and as many shillings a month firemen as they could get), and Billy went as cook, and the other lunatic saw him off with a supply of tobacco and a parcel of clean things.