Nelly's grief, which had been shrilly expressed at intervals, became subdued as she listened to Tom's theories. To her mind the whole mystery had been settled. There need be no further anxiety, and only formal expressions of grief. During the rest of the evening the wailing was purely official. Tom's wit had so circumstantially accounted for the event, that it ceased to be solemn. The next day they dug a hole five feet deep in the clean sand at the back of the humpy, and there Jimmy was laid to rest with the whole of his personal property, the most substantial of which consisted of an enamel billy, plate, and mug. The Chinese matting on which he had slept was used to envelop the body, and the sand was compressed in the grave. But Tom and his family had gone. He said--and the deep furrows of grief were in his face: "Carn help it. Must go away one month. I bin think about that boy too much." TOM'S PHILOSOPHY Tom had been so long intimately associated with cynical white people that several of the more fantastic customs of his race are by him contemned. Accordingly I was somewhat surprised to discover, after a few weeks of rainless weather, during which the shady pool at the mouth of the creek whence the supplies for his camp are drawn had decreased in depth, that he had been slyly practising the arts of the rain-maker. As a matter of fact Tom was not in need of water, but, calculating fellow that he is, he foresaw the probability of having to carry it in buckets from the creek for the house, and to obviate such drudgery he shrewdly exercised his wit. A thoughtful, designing person is Tom--ever ready to accept the inevitable, with unruffled aboriginal calm, and just as willing--and as competent, too--to assist weary Nature by any of the little arts which he, by close observation of her moods, has acquired, or the knowledge which has been handed down from generation to generation. As it was the season of thunderstorms, he craftily so timed his designs that their consummation was not in direct opposition to meteorological conditions, but rather in consistency with them. Captain Cook found the ENDEAVOUR in a very tight corner on one occasion, out of which he wriggled, and in recording the circumstance wrote: "We owed our safety to the interposition of Providence, a good look-out, and the very brisk manner in which the ship was manned." In a similar spirit Tom's art was exemplified. He watched the weather, while he coaxed the rain.