“Write for the papers? I would rather go on tramp, which is much more amusing. Do something? What am I to do? Man, there isn’t on the face of the earth a more helpless person than a bankrupt trader at forty-five. He knows too much to be employed in his own trade. He’s got to go down below and to stay there. Never mind. I can turn my hand to anything. If I stayed at home I should have to be a sandwich-man. How would you like that? Even my old grandfather would come back to the present life, if it were only to burst with rage, if he met his grandson walking down Regent Street between a pair of boards. You wouldn’t like it yourself, would you? Come out to Sydney next year, and very likely you’ll see that, or something like it.” “Then you go out to certain misery.” “Misery? Certain misery?” The Colonist laughed cheerfully. “My nephew, you are a very narrow-minded person, though you are a scholar and a Member of Parliament. You think that it is misery to take off a frock-coat and a tall hat, and to put on a workingman’s jacket and bowler. Bless you, my boy! that’s not misery. The real misery is being hungry and cold. In Australia no one is ever cold, and very few are ever hungry. In my worst times I’ve always had plenty to eat, and though I’ve been many times without a shilling, I’ve never in all my life been miserable or ashamed.” “But there is the companionship.” “The companions? They are the best fellows in the world. Misery? There isn’t any with the fellows down below, especially the young fellows. And, mind you, it is exciting work, the hand-to-mouth life. Now, by the time I get out, the business will be sold up, and my partner, who is a young man, will be off on another lay; they always put out the old man as soon as they can. What shall I do? I shall go hawking and peddling. I shall become Autolycus.” “And afterwards?” “There is no afterwards, till you come to the hospital, which is a really pleasant place, and the black box. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.” He mixed another soda-and-whisky and drank it off. “It’s thirsty work along the roads under the sun--a red-hot burning sun, not like your red frying-pan skulking behind a cloud. Wherever you stop you get a drink. Then you bring out your wares. I’ve got a tongue that runs like an engine newly oiled. And where you put up for the night there are the boys on the road, and there are songs and stories. Respectability go hang!” He laughed again. He put on his hat and swung out of the room, laughing as at the very finest joke in the world--to come home as a gentleman, and to go back as a tramp. CHAPTER XVI AND ANOTHER CAME Almost immediately after the colonial merchant--the wholesale trader in sardines and tea-leaves from a shanty--had departed, there came another. They might almost have passed each other on the stairs. It was none other than the Counsel learned in the Law, the pride and prop of his family, the successful barrister, Mr. Christopher Campaigne.