starving or sleeping out all night! Ough! If they weren't such miserable
cowards they'd know I'd be better dead than chained to the end of a row
of pound-notes. They'd have kicked me out, and let me either buck up or
die."

"But--oh, I do wish Dr. Angus or Wullie were here! I know there's an
answer to all that, but I'm such an idiot I can't find it," she cried
despairingly.

"I'll do them! I'll get my own back on them! I'm damned if I'll do as
they expect me to. If they'd only seen me last time in Auckland," and he
gave an ugly laugh. "Do you think I lived on their bally pound a week?
Why, I spent that in half a day! Sometimes I wouldn't call for it for
five weeks. I'd go past the Post Office every day, knowing it was there,
and torturing myself with the thought of what I could buy with it, and
leaving it there till I'd got five pounds and could drink myself to
hell!"

She shivered. She could hear him grinding his teeth as he sat close to
her. She felt the same inarticulate helplessness that she had felt about
all the miseries of Lashnagar. She wanted, most passionately, to do
something for him. His telling her about it was, in itself, a challenge.

"But how did you live all the time, wasting your money like that?"

He laughed harshly.

"It's easy to live south the line--in Australasia, anyway, if you're a
drunkard. There's a lot of money about, you know. Men come from
up-country with a big cheque to knock out--shearers and men like that,