"If ye is a new chum ye will get tucker in that tent there," said Bill, "but——"
"Lor', mates! What does ye mean? Doesn't ye not know me?" interrupted the stranger. "I is Satan——"
"Golly! an' so it is, but—but where's your whiskers," cried Black George, holding a lighted match in the stranger's face.
"Satan, ye deevil, gie's yer hand," roared Scottie, "A'm rael glad to see ye."
"Oh, mates, I is glad to git back, I is," began our old friend. "I hasn't had a proper feed since I left, an' I has been disgraced. I went to a theatre in Sydney an' there was a fight on the stage, an' because I jumped up an' jined in socially like, the police came in an' started on me. I couldn't fight them all, for there war' mor'n a dozen, an' next day the judge, a very decent old gentleman, told me to git from Sydney, for it war' full o' sharks. I gitted to Melbourne, but, oh, Lor'! mates, don't none of you never go there——"
|
The Belle of the Bush. A Salvation Army Convert in White Cliffs. |
"But your opal, Satan? What did you get for it?" I broke in.