for it with tears in his eyes; but we didn't like to injure a poor fool who never injured us―who was an entire stranger to us. He didn't know what Out Back meant.
Local Influence had given us a kind of note of introduction to be delivered to the cattle-agent at the yards that morning; but the agent was not there―only two of his satellites, a cockney colonial-experience man, and a scrub-town clerk, both of whom we kindly ignore. We got on without the note, and at Orange we amused ourself by reading it. It said:
'Dear Old Man,―Please send this beggar on; and I hope he'll be landed safely at Orange―or―or where-ever the cattle go.―Yours,.
We had been led to believe that the bullocks were going to Sydney. We took no further interest in those cattle.
After Nyngan the bush grew darker and drearier, and the plains more like ghastly oceans; and here and there the 'dominant note of Australian scenery' was accentuated, as it were, by naked, white, ring-barked trees standing in the water and haunting the ghostly surroundings.
We spent that night in a passenger compartment of a van which had been originally attached to old No. 1 engine. There was only one damp cushion in the whole concern. We lent that to a lady who travelled for a few hours in the other half of the next compartment. The seats were about nine inches wide and sloped in at a sharp angle to the bare matchboard wall, with a bead on the outer edge; and as the cracks had become well caulked with the grease and dirt of
