The romantic hazardousness of life had for some considerable time now made its appeal felt by me. It seemed infinitely curious and interesting to me that I and my father ever should have known Ted intimately, as one who shared our curious life on the _Livorno_; Ted who was born and bred there in Werrina; we who came there across thousands of miles of ocean from the world's far side, from Putney, from places whose names Ted had never heard. And then that I should have walked down to that milking-yard with my pails, and, so to say, stumbled upon Ted, after his long wanderings in Queensland, where at this moment he was probably wandering again, hundreds of miles away and, possibly, thinking of me, of that same milking-yard, of these identical slip-rails and splintery grey fence. A wonderful and mysterious business, this life in the great world, I thought; and with that I threw up my left hand to lift the rails down. 'Oh, hold on! Don't move! Stay as you were a minute!' I jumped half out of my skin as these words, apparently spoken in my very ear, reached me; and, wheeling abruptly round, I saw a man wearing a very large grey felt hat, and holding pencils and a paper block in his hands, peering at me from a little wooded hummock at the end of the cowshed. The skin about his eyes was all puckered up, he held a pencil cross-wise between his white teeth, and was shaking his head from side to side as though very much put about over something. 'What a pity! It's gone now,' he said, as he strode down the slope towards me. He clearly was disappointed about something; but yet I thought that never since the days when my father was with me had I heard any one speak more pleasantly, or seen any one smile in kindlier fashion. Later, I realised that no one I had met since my father's death possessed anything resembling the sort of manner, address, intonation, or mental attitude of this Mr. Rawlence. I had no theories then about social divisions, and the like; but here, I thought, was a man who would find nobody in the district having anything in common with himself. By the same token, I thought, had my father been alive this newcomer would have recognised a possible companion in him. And, finally, as Mr. Rawlence came to a standstill before me, this absurd reflection flitted through my mind: 'If he only knew it, there's me! But he will never know--how could he?'