for house-painting. Then he said, slowly and deliberately:

"`If she -- the girl -- had lived, we might have tried to fix it up quietly.
That's what I was hoping for. I don't see how we can help him now,

even if he'd let us. He would never have spoken, anyway.
We must let it go on, and after the trial I'll go to Sydney

and see what I can do at headquarters. It's too late now.
You understand, Mitchell?'

"`Yes. I've thought it out.'
"Then he went away towards the Royal.

"And what could Jack Drew or we do? Study it out whatever way you like.
There was only one possible chance to help him, and that was to go

to the judge; and the judge that happened to be on that circuit
was a man who -- even if he did listen to the story and believe it --

would have felt inclined to give Jack all the more for what
he was charged with. Browne was out of the question.

The day before the trial I went for a long walk in the bush,
but couldn't hit on anything that the Doctor might have missed.

"I was in the court -- I couldn't keep away. The Doctor was there too.
There wasn't so much of a change in Jack as I expected,

only he had the gaol white in his face already. He stood fingering the rail,
as if it was the edge of a table on a platform and he was

a tired and bored and sleepy chairman waiting to propose a vote of thanks."
The only well-known man in Australia who reminds me of Mitchell is Bland Holt,

the comedian. Mitchell was about as good hearted as Bland Holt, too,
under it all; but he was bigger and roughened by the bush. But he seemed

to be taking a heavy part to-night, for, towards the end of his yarn,
he got up and walked up and down the length of my bed, dropping the sentences

as he turned towards me. He'd folded his arms high and tight,
and his face in the moonlight was -- well, it was very different

from his careless tone of voice. He was like -- like an actor
acting tragedy and talking comedy. Mitchell went on, speaking quickly --

his voice seeming to harden:
. . . . .

"The charge was read out -- I forget how it went -- it sounded
like a long hymn being given out. Jack pleaded guilty.

Then he straightened up for the first time and looked round the court,
with a calm, disinterested look -- as if we were all strangers

and he was noting the size of the meeting. And -- it's a funny world,
ain't it? -- everyone of us shifted or dropped his eyes,

just as if we were the felons and Jack the judge. Everyone except the Doctor;
he looked at Jack and Jack looked at him. Then the Doctor smiled

-- I can't describe it -- and Drew smiled back. It struck me afterwards
that I should have been in that smile. Then the Doctor did

what looked like a strange thing -- stood like a soldier with his hands
to Attention. I'd noticed that, whenever he'd made up his mind to do a thing,

he dropped his hands to his sides: it was a sign that he couldn't be moved.
Now he slowly lifted his hand to his forehead, palm out, saluted the prisoner,

turned on his heel, and marched from the court-room. `He's boozin' again,'
someone whispered. `He's got a touch of 'em.' `My oath, he's ratty!'

said someone else. One of the traps said:
"`Arder in the car-rt!'

"The judge gave it to Drew red-hot on account of the burglary being
the cause of the girl's death and the sorrow in a respectable family;

then he gave him five years' hard.
"It gave me a lot of confidence in myself to see the law of the land

barking up the wrong tree, while only I and the Doctor and the prisoner
knew it. But I've found out since then that the law is often the only one

that knows it's barking up the wrong tree."
. . . . .

Mitchell prepared to turn in.
"And what about Drew," I asked.

"Oh, he did his time, or most of it. The Doctor went to headquarters,
but either a drunken doctor from a geebung town wasn't of much account,

or they weren't taking any romance just then at headquarters.
So the Doctor came back, drank heavily, and one frosty morning they found him

on his back on the bank of the creek, with his face like note-paper
where the blood hadn't dried on it, and an old pistol in his hand --

that he'd used, they said, to shoot Cossacks from horseback
when he was a young dude fighting in the bush in Poland."

Mitchell lay silent a good while; then he yawned.
"Ah, well! It's a lonely track the Lachlan's tramping to-night;

but I s'pose he's got his ghosts with him."
I'd been puzzling for the last half-hour to think where

I'd met or heard of Jack Drew; now it flashed on me that I'd been told
that Jack Drew was the Lachlan's real name.

I lay awake thinking a long time, and wished Mitchell had kept his yarn
for daytime. I felt -- well, I felt as if the Lachlan's story

should have been played in the biggest theatre in the world,
by the greatest actors, with music for the intervals and situations --

deep, strong music, such as thrills and lifts a man from his boot soles.
And when I got to sleep I hadn't slept a moment, it seemed to me,

when I started wide awake to see those infernalhanging boughs
with a sort of nightmare idea that the Lachlan hadn't gone,

or had come back, and he and Mitchell had hanged themselves sociably --
Mitchell for sympathy and the sake of mateship.

But Mitchell was sleepingpeacefully, in spite of a path of moonlight
across his face -- and so was the pup.

The Darling River
The Darling -- which is either a muddy gutter or a second Mississippi --

is about six times as long as the distance, in a straight line, from its head
to its mouth. The state of the river is vaguely but generally understood

to depend on some distant and foreign phenomena to which bushmen refer
in an off-hand tone of voice as "the Queenslan' rains",

which seem to be held responsible, in a general way,
for most of the out-back trouble.

It takes less than a year to go up stream by boat to Walgett or Bourke
in a dry season; but after the first three months the passengers generally

go ashore and walk. They get sick of being stuck in the same sort of place,
in the same old way; they grow weary of seeing the same old "whaler"

drop his swag on the bank opposite whenever the boat ties up for wood;
they get tired of lending him tobacco, and listening to his ideas,

which are limited in number and narrow in conception.
It shortens the journey to get out and walk; but then you will have

to wait so long for your luggage -- unless you hump it with you.
We heard of a man who determined to stick to a Darling boat and travel

the whole length of the river. He was a newspaper man. He started
on his voyage of discovery one Easter in flood-time, and a month later

the captain got bushed between the Darling and South Australian border.
The waters went away before he could find the river again,

and left his boat in a scrub. They had a cargo of rations,
and the crew stuck to the craft while the tucker lasted;

when it gave out they rolled up their swags and went to look for a station,
but didn't find one. The captain would study his watch and the sun,

rig up dials and make out courses, and follow them without success.
They ran short of water, and didn't smell any for weeks;

they suffered terrible privations, and lost three of their number,
NOT including the newspaper liar. There are even dark hints

considering the drawing of lots in connection with something
too terrible to mention. They crossed a thirty-mile plain at last,

and sighted a black gin. She led them to a boundary rider's hut,
where they were taken in and provided with rations and rum.

Later on a syndicate was formed to explore the country and recover the boat;
but they found her thirty miles from the river and about eighteen

from the nearest waterhole deep enough to float her, so they left her there.
She's there still, or else the man that told us about it

is the greatest liar Out Back.
. . . . .

Imagine the hull of a North Shore ferry boat, blunted a little at the ends
and cut off about a foot below the water-line, and parallel to it,

then you will have something shaped somewhat like the hull
of a Darling mud-rooter. But the river boat is much stronger.

The boat we were on was built and repaired above deck
after the different ideas of many bush carpenters, of whom the last