Mr. Windsor had completed what he called a very fair spell of work, for him, and having secured a prominent cheque and a high character at the settlement, after shearing, was in charity with all men, even the police, and much minded to have a pleasure trip ‘down the country,’ as he phrased the transmontane towns. Hence, when Ernest invited him to accompany him to Sydney, having extracted a confession that he had never seen that ‘kingdom by the sea,’ or indeed had been a stroller by the ‘poluphloisboio thalasses’ at any time, he readily and gratefully accepted the offer. ‘Seems queer, sir, doesn’t it, that I’ve never seen our main city or the big waterhole, as the blacks call it. Somehow I’ve always had the luck to miss it. Not that I had any powerful great longing to go. I’ve always had some pleasant place nigh home to spend my Christmas in, after I’d made a bit of money; and somehow, when I was once comfortable I didn’t care about stirring.’ ‘But I wonder that an active, intelligent fellow like you, Jack, never made up your mind to go all the way to Sydney, out of curiosity.’ ‘Well, it _is_ a wonder, sir; only, somehow I’ve had no eddication, as I told you before, and chaps like me, as don’t know much except about bush things, haven’t as much curiosity, I think, as other people. Sydney’s only a bigger town than Campbelltown, or Yass, or Goulburn, and what’s there to see in them if fifty of ’em was rolled up together? That’s the way I used to talk.’ ‘But the sea, Jack, the sea! you haven’t the sea in Yass or Goulburn.’ ‘Oh! I know that, sir. Bless you, now I am quite different, since you took the trouble to learn me to read and write a bit.’ (Mr. Neuchamp had so utilised the evenings at the cattle station and other quiet places.) ‘I’m always thinking what a stupid beggar I’ve been to have been contented with the life I used to lead. Just like an old working bullock in a lucerne field, grubbing away and never raisin’ his head till it was time to lay down. You’ve made a man of me, sir, that’s what you have. I hope I’ll be able to make you think some day—“Well, he wasn’t a bad fellow after all.”’ ‘I think so now, Jack; I always have thought so from the first time I saw you.’ Mr. Windsor here groaned out a curse upon some one of Eve’s daughters unknown to this chronicler. ‘What a regular more-pork I was to be sure, to go and run my neck agin’ a roping-pole, and all for a—false jade, who’d have come to see me hanged, I believe, and laughed at the sight—blank her.’