Selected Stories by Henry Lawson Page B

reach the door of the homestead; but still he digs steadily, and does not seem to hear his wife’s cry of despair. The troopers search the boy’s room and bring out some clothing in two bundles; but still the father digs. They have saddled up one of the farm horses and made the boy mount. The father digs. They ride off along the ridge with the boy between 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 disgrace!” 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 Bob Sawkins had been known on the diggings as “Bob 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 means a devil’s. His physiognomy had been much damaged, and one eye removed, by the premature explosion of a blast in some old Ballarat mine. The blind eye was covered with a green patch, which gave a sardonic appearance to the remaining features.
    He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little, and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable “why” into his conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up the pauses caused by his stuttering; but this by no means assisted him in his speech, for he often stuttered over the “why” itself.
    The sun was getting low down, and its yellow rays reached far up among the saplings of Golden Gully when Bob appearedcoming down by the path that ran under the western hill. He was dressed in the usual costume—cotton shirt, moleskin trousers, faded hat and waistcoat, and blucher boots. He carried a pick over his shoulder, the handle of which was run through the heft of a short shovel that hung down behind, and he had a big dish under his arm. He paused opposite the shaft with the windlass, and hailed the boy in his usual form of salutation.
    “Look, see here, Isley!”
    “What is it, Bob?”
    “I seed a young—why—magpie up in the scrub, and yer oughter be able to catch it.”
    “Can’t leave the shaft; father’s b’low.”
    “How did yer father know there was any—why—wash in the old shaft?”
    “Seed old Corney in town Saturday, ’n’ he said thur was enough to make it worth while bailin’ out. Bin bailin’ all the mornin’.”
    Bob came over, and letting his tools down with a clatter, he hitched up the knees of his moleskins and sat down on one heel.
    “What are yer—why—doin’ on the slate, Isley?” said he, taking out an old clay pipe and lighting it.
    “Sums,” said Isley.
    Bob puffed away at his pipe a moment.
    “ ‘Tain’t no use!” he said, sitting down on the clay and drawing his knees up. “Edication’s a failyer.”
    “Listen at him!” exclaimed the boy. “D’yer mean ter say it ain’t no use learnin’ readin’ and writin’ and sums?”
    “Isley!”
    “Right,