Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/130



The yarn was all lies, I suppose; but it wasn't bad. A city bushman told it, of course, and he told it in the travellers' hut.

'As true's God hears me I never meant to desert her in cold blood,' he said. 'We'd only been married about two years, and we'd got along grand together; but times was hard, and I had to jump at the first chance of a job, and leave her with her people, an' go up-country.'

He paused and fumbled with his pipe until all ears were brought to bear on him.

'She was a beauty, and no mistake; she was far too good for me―I often wondered how she came to have a chap like me.'

He paused again, and the others thought over it―and wondered, too, perhaps. The joker opened his lips to speak, but altered his mind about it.

'Well, I travelled up into Queensland, and worked back into Victoria 'n South Australia, an' I wrote home pretty reg'lar and sent what money I could. Last I got down on to the South-Western Coast of South Australia an' there I got mixed up with 106