Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/165

 them. The father never lifts his eyes; the hole widens round the stump; he digs away till the brave little wife comes and takes him gently by the arm. He half rouses himself and follows her to the house like an obedient dog.

Trial and disgrace follow, and then other misfortunes, pleuro among the cattle, drought, and poverty.

Thud, thud, thud again! But it is not the sound of the fossicker's pick―it is the fall of sods on his wife's coffin.

It is a little bush cemetery, and he stands stonily watching them fill up her grave. She died of a broken heart and shame. 'I can't bear disgrace!' I can't bear disgacedisgrace [sic]!' she had moaned all these six weary years―for the poor are often proud.

But he lives on, for it takes a lot to break a man's heart. He holds up his head and toils on for the sake of a child that is left, and that child is―Isley.

And now the fossicker seems to see a vision of the future. He seems to be standing somewhere, an old, old man, with a younger one at his side; the younger one has Isley's face. Horses' feet again! Ah, God! Nemesis once more in troopers' uniform!

The fossicker falls on his knees in the mud and clay at the bottom of the drive, and prays Heaven to take his last child ere Nemesis comes for him.

Long Tom Hopkins had been known on the diggings as 'Tom the Devil.' His profile, at least from one side, certainly did recall that of the sarcastic Mephistopheles; but the other side, like his true character, was by no