now and then, and look after them."

"Going back to the West again?"

"Oh, yes. I must go for the sake of the youngsters. But I don't seem
to have much heart in it." He smoked awhile. "Over twenty years
we struggled along together -- the missus and me -- and it seems hard
that I couldn't see the last of her. It's rough on a man."

"The world is damned rough on a man sometimes," said Mitchell,
"most especially when he least deserves it."

The digger crossed his arms on the rail like an old "cocky" at the fence
in the cool of the evening, yarning with an old crony.

"Mor'n twenty years she stuck to me and struggled along by my side.
She never give in. I'll swear she was on her feet till the last,
with her sleeves tucked up -- bustlin' round. . . . And just
when things was brightening and I saw a chance of giving her
a bit of a rest and comfort for the end of her life. . . .
I thought of it all only t'other week when things was clearing up ahead;
and the last `order' I sent over I set to work and wrote her a long letter,
putting all the good news and encouragement I could think of into it.
I thought how that letter would brighten up things at home,
and how she'd read it round. I thought of lots of things that a man
never gets time to think of while his nose is kept to the grindstone.
And she was dead and in her grave, and I never knowed it."

Mitchell dug his elbow into my ribs and made signs for the matches
to light his pipe.