Mitchell got up, stretched himself, and brought the billy and pint-pots
to the head of my camp. The moon had grown misty. The plain horizon had
closed in. A couple of boughs, hanging from the gnarled and blasted timber
over the billabong, were the perfect shapes of two men hanging side by side.
Mitchell scratched the back of his neck and looked down at the pup
curled like a glob of mud on the sand in the moonlight,
and an idea struck him. He got a big old felt hat he had,
lifted his pup, nose to tail, fitted it in the hat, shook it down,
holding the hat by the brim, and stood the hat near the head of his doss,
out of the moonlight. "He might get moonstruck," said Mitchell,
"and I don't want that pup to be a genius." The pup seemed
perfectly satisfied with this new arrangement.

"Have a smoke," said Mitchell. "You see," he added, with a sly grin,
"I've got to make up the yarn as I go along, and it's hard work.
It seems to begin to remind me of yarns your grandmother or aunt
tells of things that happened when she was a girl -- but those yarns are true.
You won't have to listen long now; I'm well on into the second volume.

"After the storm I hurried home to the tent -- I was batching
with a carpenter. I changed my clothes, made a fire in the fire-bucket
with shavings and ends of soft wood, boiled the billy,
and had a cup of coffee. It was Saturday night. My mate was at the Royal;
it was cold and dismal in the tent, and there was nothing to read,
so I reckoned I might as well go up to the Royal, too, and put in the time.

"I had to pass the Bank on the way. It was the usual weatherboard box
with a galvanised iron top -- four rooms and a passage,
and a detached kitchen and wash-house at the back; the front room to the right