‘As to that, sir,’ said Mr. Windsor, settling himself so suspiciously in the saddle that Ben Bolt arched his back and made ready for hostile action, ‘I should be cock-sure that having an empty cobbra, as the blacks say, was on the main track that led to the grog-camp, only that the best eddicated chaps are the worst lushingtons when they give way at all. Perhaps they remember old times too well, if they’ve come down in the world. But I’ve noticed that a working man as likes reading, and is always looking out for a new book, or thinks he knows something as will alter the pull of money over labour—he’s a very unlikely card to drink much. If he gets a paper with a long letter in it, or a working man’s yarn in a book, he goes home as happy as a king, and reads away to his wife, or sits up half the night spelling it out. _He_ don’t drink. Even if he spouts a bit at the public, he talks a deal more than he swipes.’ ‘I am quite of your opinion, Jack; the more a man knows, the more he wants to know. Then he must read; if he reads steadily all his spare time, he finds his drinking companions low and dull, and thinks it a great waste of time to be shouting out foolish songs or idle talk for four or five hours that would put him half way through a new book. Besides, he has become good company for himself, which your drinking man is not.’ ‘That’s the best reason of all, sir,’ heartily assented his follower. ‘It is hard lines on those chaps that can only talk about horses or cattle, or crops, or bullock driving. When they’re by themselves they can only sulk. It’s natural that they should want other men to talk to, and then it’s hard work to make any fun without the grog.’ ‘And there’s another very powerful beverage,’ continued Ernest, ‘that has been known to preserve men from the snare of strong drink, when nothing else would.’ ‘What’s that, sir?’ ‘The influence of a good woman, John. The hope to win her some day by prudence and self-denial; the endeavour to be worthy of her; or the determination to give the best part of one’s life to the comfort and happiness of her and her children, after she is a wife.’ ‘By the holy poker, sir,’ shouted Mr. Windsor, roused out of his usual cool demeanour, ‘you’ve just hit it there; there’s no man worth calling a man as wouldn’t work himself to skin and bone, and suffer thirst till his tongue hung out, if he could make himself of some account in the eyes of some women I’ve seen. There’s a girl that we saw no later than last night, sir—you know who I mean; by George, if she’d only hold up her finger I’d live on rice and pickles like a Chinaman to the end of my days, and sniff at a glass of grog like old Watch does.’