on that fencing contract, if we get it, you might as well know
what sort of a man he is and was, so's you won't get uneasy about him
if he gets deaf for a while when you're talking, or does funny things
with his pipe or pint-pot, or walks up and down by himself
for an hour or so after tea, or sits on a log with his head in his hands,
or leans on the fence in the gloaming and keeps looking
in a blank sort of way, straight ahead, across the clearing.
For he's gazing at something a thousand miles across country, south-east,
and about twenty years back into the past, and no doubt he sees himself
(as a young man), and a Gippsland girl, spooning under the stars
along between the hop-gardens and the Mitchell River.
And, if you get holt of a fiddle or a concertina, don't rasp or swank too much
on old tunes, when he's round, for the Oracle can't stand it.
Play something lively. He'll be down there at that surveyor's camp
yarning till all hours, so we'll have plenty of time for the story --
but don't you ever give him a hint that you know.

"My people knew him well; I got most of the story from them --
mostly from Uncle Bob, who knew him better than any. The rest leaked out
through the women -- you know how things leak out amongst women?"

Mitchell dropped his head and scratched the back of it. HE knew.

"It was on the Cudgegong River. My Uncle Bob was mates with him
on one of those `rushes' along there -- the `Pipeclay', I think it was,
or the `Log Paddock'. The Oracle was a young man then, of course,
and so was Uncle Bob (he was a match for most men). You see the Oracle now,
and you can imagine what he was when he was a young man.
Over six feet, and as straight as a sapling, Uncle Bob said,
clean-limbed, and as fresh as they made men in those days;