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‘The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.’

‘Think so?’ I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.

‘I’m sure of it. It’s very seldom HE takes to any one.’

I said nothing.

Then after a while Andy said suddenly–

‘Look here, Jack, I’m glad of it. I’d like to see him make a chum of some one, if only for one trip. And don’t you make any mistake about the Boss. He’s a white man. There’s precious few that know him–precious few now; but I do, and it’ll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn with.’ And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.

The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains–big clearings rather–and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that we’d left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,–as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.

The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we’d finished the boss said to me–

‘Look here, Jack, you’re going on to Sydney, aren’t you?’

‘Yes; I’m going down to have a fly round.’

‘Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He’s going down in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It won’t be so comfortable as the passenger; but you’ll save your fare, and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You’ve only got to have a look at ’em every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren’t you?’

I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth, I felt really sorry to part with him. I’d had to work as hard as any of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He’d struck me as a man who’d been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.

‘Come and have a drink, Boss,’ I said. The agent had paid us off during the day.

He turned into a hotel with me.

‘I don’t drink, Jack,’ he said; ‘but I’ll take a glass with you.’

‘I didn’t know you were a teetotaller, Boss,’ I said. I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now that it was over it was a different thing.

‘I’m not a teetotaller, Jack,’ he said. ‘I can take a glass or leave it.’ And he called for a long beer, and we drank ‘Here’s luck!’ to each other.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wish I could take a glass or leave it.’ And I meant it.

Then the Boss spoke as I’d never heard him speak before. I thought for the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before the night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. ‘Jack!’ he said, ‘there’s worse things than drinking, and there’s worse things than heavy smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on him that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it’s a heavy load. And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no comfort in liquor, then it’s deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.’

He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet tone–

‘But you’re only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won’t ask you to take the second drink. You don’t want it; and, besides, I know the signs.’