Against the odds and prejudices thus at work, Wanless fought manfully for more than two years. When he could get work he laboured at it early and late, and when, as often happened, work was denied him, he tended his little garden and his allotment patch with the closeness of a Chinese farmer. His flowers were the pride of the village, and his care coaxed the old trees in his garden into a degree of fruit-bearing that almost put to shame the vigour of their youth. Yet he could not always make ends meet; and when he began to see his little hoard melting away, his heart once more failed him. If the farmers would not have him he must once more try elsewhere, and again a local railway afforded him a refuge. He became a "ganger" on the Stratford line at 14s. a-week, and for more than four years made his daily journey backwards and forwards on his "beat," winter and summer, in cold and heat, well or ill. In one sense, this work was not so hard as a farm labourer's or a navvy's is, but it told on the health as much. Exposure, thin clothing, and poor food did their work rapidly enough, and Thomas's limbs began to stiffen, and his back to grow bent before his time. Like his fellows, he promised to become an old man at 50, but he would have stuck to his work had not a sharp attack of pleurisy laid him up in the winter of 1855, and once more compelled him to seek to live by farm labour. He could not face the bleak unsheltered railway track again, and even if he could, there was no room for him. His place had been filled up. With a weary heart and a spirit well-nigh crushed, Thomas once more looked for work on the farms around Ashbrook. "Is there no hope for us, Sally, lass?" he would often cry. "Must we go to the workhouse at last?" "Ay, the workhouse, the workhouse!" he would exclaim. "The parsons promise us a deal in the other world, but that's the best they think we deserve here. Well, perhaps they mean to give us a better relish for the other world when it comes." Thomas had one thing to cheer him, though, and no doubt that gave him more courage to face the world again than he otherwise would have had. His precious son, young Tom, had emigrated to Australia about a year before this terrible illness had enfeebled his father. He had gone as an assisted emigrant, but the old man had given him L10 of old Hawthorn's L20 to begin the New World upon. The parting had cost the family much, and the father most of all; but they felt it to be for the best. There was no room to grow in the old land; in the new there was a great freedom. The lad dreamt of gold nuggets; but the wiser father bade him stick to the land as soon as he could get a bit to stick to.