“Tell you about it some other time,” said Tom.
“Well,” said Mitchell, “Bogan was always a good woolsorter, so, next shearing, old Baldy Thompson—(you know Baldy Thompson, Harry, of West-o’-Sunday Station)—Baldy had a talk with some of the chaps, and took Bogan out in his buggy with him to West-o’-Sunday. Bogan would sit at the end of the rolling tables, in the shearing-shed, with a boy to hand him the fleeces, and he’d feel a fleece and tell the boy what bin to throw it into; and by and by he began to learn to throw the fleeces into the bins himself. And sometimes Baldy would have a sheep brought to him and get him to feel the fleece and tell him the quality of it. And then again Baldy would talk, just loud enough for Bogan to overhear, and swear that he’d sooner have Bogan, blind as he was, than half a dozen scientific jackaroo experts with all their eyes about them.
“Of course Bogan wasn’t worth anything much to Baldy, but Baldy gave him two pounds a week out of his own pocket, and another quid that we made up between us; so he made enough to pull him through the rest of the year.
“It was curious to see how soon he learned to find his way about the hut and manage his tea and tucker. It was a rough shed, but everybody was eager to steer Bogan about—and, in fact, two of them had a fight about it one day. Baldy and all of us——and especially visitors when they came—were mighty interested in Bogan; and I reckon we were rather proud of having a blind wool-sorter. I reckon Bogan had thirty or forty pairs of eyes watching out for him in case he’d run against something or fall. It irritated him to be messed round too much—he said a baby would never learn to walk if it was held all the time. He reckoned he’d learn more in a year than a man who’d served a lifetime to blindness; but we didn’t let him wander much—for fear he’d fall into the big rocky waterhole there, by accident.
“And after the shearing-season Bogan’s wife turned up in Bourke——”
“Bogan’s wife!” I exclaimed. “Why, I never knew Bogan was married.”
“Neither did anyone else,” said Mitchell. “But he was. Perhaps that was what accounted for Bogan. Sometimes, in his sober moods, I used to have an idea that there must have been something behind the Bogan to account for him. Perhaps he got trapped—or got married and found out that he’d made a mistake—which is about the worst thing a man can find out——”
“Except that his wife made the mistake, Mitchell,” said Tom Hall.
“Or that both did,” reflected Mitchell. “Ah, well!—never mind—Bogan had been married two or three years. Maybe he got married when he was on the spree—I knew that he used to send money to someone in Sydney and I suppose it was her. Anyway, she turned up after he was blind. She was a hard-looking woman—just the sort that might have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop. But you can’t judge between husband and wife, unless you’ve lived in the same house with them—and under the same roofs with their parents right back to Adam for that matter. Anyway, she stuck to Bogan all right; she took a little two-roomed cottage and made him comfortable—she’s got a sewing-machine and a mangle and takes in washing and sewing. She brought a carrotty-headed youngster with her, and the first time I saw Bogan sitting on the veranda with that youngster on his knee I thought it was a good thing that he was blind.”
“Why?” I asked.