Part 49 (1/2)

Ida dried her eyes, and with the ravel outside It was Priestley, a bullock driver who had drawn up to the store on the previous-evening; a decent sort of vulgarian, but altogether too industrious to get any further forward than the extreme tail-end of his profession

So there is a time and a season--a time for work, and a time for repose--hence you find the industrious -weary set of frames in hopeless co of daisies The contrast is sickening Moreover, the saion of industry But the Scotch-navigator can't see it

He is too furiously busy for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to notice that, even in thehas acan possibly have Such a man finds himself born unto trouble, as the sparks fly in all directions; but he isprocess, just as the tethered calf is aware that he always turns a flying soes in any direction away fro; and this sis as the calf knows about Euclid's definition of a radial line The fact is, that the Order of Things--rightly understood-- is not susceptible of any coercion whatever, and must be humoured in every possible way In the race of life,your sprint for the tactical mo always at work, he could get very little work done; and, being pursuantly in a chronic state of debt and destitution, he got only the work that intermittently slothful men would n't take at the price

It is scarcely necessary to add that he had a wife and about thirteen sirls

”Mornin', chaps,” said this plebeian, standing between the wind and our nobility, with a hand on each door-post ”Hope you're enjoyin' yourselves

Say, Moriarty; I'it that bit o' loadin' off”

”I'll be with you in twostorekeeper ”I know you alant to get away”

”Say, chaps,” continued the bullock driver, advancing into the roo confidentially round the table, ”think there's any use o' y-track to Nalrookar? See, I could ht; an' there's boun' to be a bit o' blue-bush, if not crows-foot, on theot two-ton-five for there; an' I'it through your run What do you think, chaps?”

”Why didn't you take this into consideration when you loaded?”

dears ain't choosers,” replied the apostle of brute force and ignorance ”Fact was, Arblaster, I bethought oood friends me an' him alas; an' I says to myself, 'Well, I'll chance her--make a spoon, or spoil a horn' That's the way I reasoned it out See, if I got to turn roun', an' foller the rass Swamp, an' take the Nalrookar track from there, I won't fetch the station much short o' fifty mile; an' there ain't a ht into the ground Starve a locust 'Sides, I'm jubious about the Convincer Sand-hill, even with half a load Bullocks too weak”

”Well, it's hardly likely the boss would let you cross the run,” replied Arblaster ”He'd be a d----d fool if he did”

”I' hihfare of the run, at any price For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-ti Paddock, the other day, they were n't five h--but he ht back by the station; thirtytill they did it No, Priestley; to ask Montgoue with hiet insulted”

”Well, I s'pose I nedly, as he turned and went out

”Fifty h case”

”And yet it's necessary, in a sense,” replied Nelson ”Sa a bit in a season like this

I couldn't crush a poor, decent, hard-working devil like that I'd give hi the run; and then, as a matter of form, I'd send a o and get our mot d' ordre, boys”

So we left the breakfast-rooies, with the practical M'Murdo, went to the veranda of the boss's house for their day's orders; Moriarty, with a ring of keys in his hand, sauntered across to the store; and I ainst the south side of the barracks, whence I torpidly surveyed the scene around, whilst listening topores

In an open shed, near the store--where two tribes saddler and Salvationist, named (without a word of a lie) Joey Possum, was at work on the horse-furniture of the station; his tilted wagonette, blazoned with his na close by Watching these lewd fellows of the baser sort at their sordid toil, ht, and so drifted into a speculation on the peculiar kind of difficulties which at certain times beset certain sojourners on the rind of this third pri to do with my story

But as the mere mention of them may have whetted the reader's curiosity, I suppose it is only fair to satisfy hiical point of view, to be peculiarly favourable to the ascendancy of baleful influences Theabove the western horizon, in her ibbous edgenow in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini) Also, her horizontal attitude was so full of eux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supreest andsouthwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the tiuardianshi+p of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seee, whilst, across the invisible Pole, the beneficent constellations of Crux and Centaurus exhibited the very paralysis of hopelessness Worst of all, Jupiter and Mars both held aloof, whilst ascendant Saturn mourned in the House of Cancer

Such was the wretched aspect of the heavens to -hole, toward ht I was somewhat comforted to observe in Procyon a firulus (in the House of Leo); but theelement in an extreo), scarcely affected by theconfidently from the eastern horizon

Still, toso hopeless in the lunar and stellar outlook that, for comfort, I turned my eyes toward the station cemetery, which was dimly in view

There several shapeless for slowly and silently a what you could scarcely call a carnival, in their own sombre way

The tiether on a half-drownedcannot convey; so, after pinchinga small sum in mental arithmetic to verify ot thereedily stevedoring the long, dry grass