Will know our like no more.
Foot forth! the last bob's paid out,
Some see their last shift through.
But the men who are not played out
Have other jobs to do."
—From Tramp Navvies.
'Twas towards the close of a fine day on the following summer that we were at work in the dead end of a cutting, Moleskin and I, when I, who had been musing on the quickly passing years, turned to Moleskin and quoted a line from the Bible.
"Our years pass like a tale that is told," I said.
"Like a tale that is told damned bad," answered my mate, picking stray crumbs of tobacco from his waistcoat pocket and stuffing them into the heel of his pipe. "It's a strange world, Flynn. Here to-day, gone to-morrow; always waitin' for a good time comin' and knowin' that it will never come. We work with one mate this evenin', we beg for crumbs with another on the mornin' after. It's a bad life ours, and a poor one, when I come to think of it, Flynn."
"It is all that," I assented heartily.