It grew darker and colder. The rain came as if the frozen south were spitting
at your face and neck and hands, and our feet grew as big as camel's,
and went dead, and we might as well have stamped the footboards
with wooden legs for all the feeling we got into ours. But they were
more comfortable that way, for the toes didn't curl up and pain so much,
nor did our corns stick out so hard against the leather, and shoot.

We looked out eagerly for some clearing, or fence, or light
-- some sign of the shanty where we were to change horses -- but there was
nothing save blackness all round. The long, straight, cleared road
was no longer relieved by the ghostly patch of light, far ahead,
where the bordering tree-walls came together in perspective
and framed the ether. We were down in the bed of the bush.

We pictured a haven of rest with a suspended lamp burning
in the frosty air outside and a big log fire in a cosy parlour off the bar,
and a long table set for supper. But this is a land of contradictions;
wayside shanties turn up unexpectedly and in the most unreasonable places,
and are, as likely as not, prepared for a banquet when you
are not hungry and can't wait, and as cold and dark as a bushman's grave
when you are and can.

Suddenly the driver said: "We're there now." He said this
as if he had driven us to the scaffold to be hanged, and was fiercely glad
that he'd got us there safely at last. We looked but saw nothing;
then a light appeared ahead and seemed to come towards us;
and presently we saw that it was a lantern held up by a man in a slouch hat,
with a dark bushy beard, and a three-bushel bag around his shoulders.
He held up his other hand, and said something to the driver
in a tone that might have been used by the leader of a search party