'Och, bother him an' his twenty-five shillin'!' said Ted. 'Just because I cleared his old paddick, he thinks I'm a workin' bullick. He offered me thirty shillin' after, if ye come to that; an' I told him he hadn't money enough in the bank to keep me. Neither has he.'

'But, Ted,' I urged, 'why not? It's good money, and you've got to work somewhere.'

'Aye,' said Ted, his constraint lifting for a moment to admit the right vagabondish twinkle into his blue eyes. 'Somewhere! An' sometimes. But not there, mate, an' not all the time, thank ye; not me. It's all right for Mannasseh Ford; but, spare me days, I'd sooner be in me grave.'

I pondered this for a time, while a voice within me kept on repeating with sickening certainty: 'He's going away; he's going away. You've lost your friend; you've lost your friend.' And then, as one thrusts a foot into cold water before taking a plunge: 'Well, then, what shall you do, Ted?' I asked him. But, for the moment, I was not to have the plunge.

'Oh, if ye come to that,' he said, weakly smiling, 'I've money in hand, an' to spare. Look at the wealth o' me.' And he drew out for my edification a little bundle of greasy one-pound notes, which, for me, certainly had a very substantial look. I knew instinctively that my friend wanted me to help him out by pursuing the inquiry; but for the time I shirked it, and we talked of other things. Later in the day I returned to it, as a moth to a candle, undeterred, partly impelled thereto, in fact, by the assured foreknowledge that the process would hurt.

'But what will you do, Ted, now you've given up Mannasseh Ford? Will you take another job round the Creek here, or----'

I paused, scanning my only friend's face, and seeing my loss of him writ plainly in his downcast eyes and half-shamed expression. (I am not sure but what there may have been more of the human boy, the child, in Ted, than in myself.)

'Oh, well, mate,' he said haltingly, and then stopped altogether. He was drawing an intricate pattern in the dust with the blade of his pen-knife, a favourite pastime with bushmen. The pause was pregnant. At last he looked up with a toss of his head. 'Oh, come on, mate,' he said impatiently. 'Swim across to-night, an' we'll beat up Queensland way. I tell ye, travellin' 's fine. Ye've got no boss to say do this an' that. You goes y'r own way at y'r own gait. Ye'd better come.'

'So you'll go, Ted. I knew you would,' I said, musing in my rather old-fashioned way. It seems a smallish matter enough now; but I know that at the time I was conscious of making a momentous sacrifice, of taking a step of epoch-making significance. Somehow, the very greatness of the sacrifice made me the more determined about it. I should lose my only friend, a devastating loss; and the more clearly I realised how naked this loss would leave me, the more convinced I felt that my decision was right. There is, of course, a kind of gluttony in self-denial; one's appetite for sacrifice, and particularly in youth, may be undeniably avid.

'Well, I did try to stop,' he muttered, almost sullenly for him. And then, with that toss of his head, and the glimmering of a frank smile: 'But I can't stick it. Humpin' a swag's about all I'm fit for, I reckon. You're right, too, it's no game for your father's son.' And here his kindly face lost all trace of anything but friendliness. 'Only, what beats me is what in the world else can ye do, mewed up in this--this blessed work'us. That's what has me beat.'