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Then Peter paused for a moment and blinked thoughtfully at Ross, then he took a drink of water. I can see now that the whole thing was a battle between Peter M’Laughlan and Robert Ross–Scot met Scot. “It seemed to me,” Jim Bullock said afterwards, “that Peter was only tryin’ to make some of us blanky well blubber.”

“And there are men,” Peter went on, “who have struggled and suffered and failed, and who have fought and failed again till their tempers are spoiled, until they grow bitter. They go in for self-pity, and self-pity leads to moping and brooding and madness; self-pity is the most selfish and useless thing on the face of God’s earth. It is cruel, it is deadly, both to the man and to those who love him, and whom he ought to love. His load grows heavier daily in his imagination, and he sinks down until it is in him to curse God and die. He ceases to care for or to think of his children who are working to help him.” (Ross’s sons were good, steady, hard-working boys.) “Or the brave wife who has been so true to him for many hard years, who left home and friends and country for his sake. Who bears up in the blackest of times, and persists in looking at the bright side of things for his sake; who has suffered more than he if he only knew it, and suffers now, through him and because of him, but who is patient and bright and cheerful while her heart is breaking. He thinks she does not suffer, that she cannot suffer as a man does. My God! he doesn’t know. He has forgotten in her the bright, fresh-faced, loving lassie he loved and won long years agone–long years agone—“

There was a sob, like the sob of an over-ridden horse as it sinks down broken-hearted, and Ross’s arms went out on the desk in front of him, and his head went down on them. He was beaten.

He was steered out gently with his wife on one side of him and his eldest son on the other.

“Don’t be alarmed, my friends,” said Peter, standing by the water-bag with one hand on the tap and the pannikin in the other. “Mr Ross has not been well lately, and the heat has been too much for him.” And he went out after Ross. They took him round under the bush shed behind the hut, where it was cooler.

When Peter came back to his place he seemed to have changed his whole manner and tone. “Our friend, Mr Ross, is much better,” he said. “We will now sing”–he glanced at Clara Southwick at the harmonium–“we will now sing ‘Shall We Gather at the River?'” We all knew that hymn; it was an old favourite round there, and Clara Southwick played it well in spite of the harmonium.

And Peter sang–the first and last time I ever heard him sing. I never had an ear for music; but I never before nor since heard a man’s voice that stirred me as Peter M’Laughlan’s. We stood like emus, listening to him all through one verse, then we pulled ourselves together.

Shall we gather at the River,
Where bright angels’ feet have trod–

The only rivers round there were barren creeks, the best of them only strings of muddy waterholes, and across the ridge, on the sheep-runs, the creeks were dry gutters, with baked banks and beds, and perhaps a mudhole every mile or so, and dead beasts rotting and stinking every few yards.

Gather with the saints at the River,
That flows by the throne of God.

Peter’s voice trembled and broke. He caught his breath, and his eyes filled. But he smiled then–he stood smiling at us through his tears.

The beautiful, the beautiful River,
That flows by the throne of God.

Outside I saw women kiss each other who had been at daggers drawn ever since I could remember, and men shake hands silently who had hated each other for years. Every family wanted Peter to come home to tea, but he went across to Ross’s, and afterwards down to Kurtz’s place, and bled and inoculated six cows or so in a new way, and after tea he rode off over the gap to see his friend.