Next day there was a regular split and squander. We didn’t wait long after daylight, you bet. Father was off and well on his way before the stars were out of the sky. He took Warrigal’s horse, Bilbah, back with him; he and Starlight was going off to the islands together, and couldn’t take horses with them. But he was real sorry to part with the cross-grained varmint; I thought he was going to blubber when he saw father leading him off. Bilbah wouldn’t go neither at first; pulled back, and snorted and went on as if he’d never seen only one man afore in his life. Father got vexed at last and makes a sign to old Crib; he fetches him such a “heeler” as gave him something else to think of for a few miles. He didn’t hang back much after that.

The three other chaps went their own road. They kept very dark all through. I know their names well enough, but there’s no use in bringing them up now.

Jim and I cuts off into the town, thinking we was due for a little fun. We’d never been in a big town before, and it was something new to us. Adelaide ain’t as grand quite as Melbourne or Sydney, but there’s something quiet and homelike about it to my thinking—great wide streets. planted with trees; lots of steady-going German farmers, with their vineyards and orchards and droll little waggons. The women work as hard as the men, harder perhaps, and get brown and scorched up in no time—not that they’ve got much good looks to lose; leastways none we ever saw.

We could always tell the German farmers’ places along the road from one of our people by looking outside the door. If it was an Englishman or an Australian, you’d see where they’d throwed out the teapot leavings; if it was a German, you wouldn’t see nothing. They drink their own sour wine, if their vines are old enough to make any, or else hop beer; but they won’t lay out their money in the tea chest or sugar bag; no fear, or the grog either, and not far wrong. Then the sea! I can see poor old Jim’s face now the day we went down to the port and he seen it for the first time.

“So we’ve got to the big waterhole at last,” he said. “Don’t it make a man feel queer and small to think of its going away right from here where we stand to the other side of the world? It’s a long way across.”