A few yards farther it was stopped again, and at this second exasperation the driver's language went from bad to worse; for the coach was behind its time. "What now? Passengers?" "Yes." "The owner of the boxes?" "Yes." "And you too? Where's your cheque?" There was a moment's colloquy between the two dusky figures in the road; then the man took a slip of paper from the left-hand pocket in his moleskins, and held it to the off-lamp for the driver's inspection. "The two of us," he said. "Yes? Well! up you jump.... All aboard!" And with his blankets round her, and her hand in his, the little governess, and her lost love who was found, passed at star-rise through the Greenbush boundary-gate, and on and on into another life. A FAREWELL PERFORMANCE Sam Eccles had killed a brown snake in his wood-heap, and had proceeded to play a prehistoric trick on all comers to the Murrumbidgee Bridge Hotel. He had curled up the carcase under a bench on the verandah, and the new chum from Paka, riding in for the station mail, had very violently killed that snake again. But the new chum was becoming acclimatised to bush humour; and _he_ arranged the lifeless coil in a most lifelike manner on the snoring body of a Gol-gol boundary-rider who was lying deathly drunk inside the bar. This a small but typical company applauded greatly; but Sam Eccles himself leant back against the wall and laughed only softly in his beard. There was a reminiscent twinkle in his eye, and someone offered him something for his thoughts. "I was thinkin'," said Sam, "of another old snake-yarn that come my way last Christmas-time. Was any of you jokers in the township then? I thought not; it was the slackest Christmas ever I struck." "My troubles about Christmas!" said a drover with a blue fly-veil. "Pitch us the yarn." "Ah, but it's a yarn and a half! I'm not sure that I want to pitch it. I do and I don't; it'd make you smile." "Yes?" "Rip it out, Sam!" "See here, boss," said the drover, "mix yer own pison and chalk it to me." And that settled the matter. "Any of you know the I-talian?" began Sam, by way of preface, as he mixed his grog. "Pasquale?" said the new chum. "Rather! I sling him out of my store periodically."