Here was a slice of good luck; to get rid of this one so easily. George
gave him money, and having wished him farewell, watched him striding
steadily up the long hill towards Exeter with great satisfaction; then
he went back to the public-house, and sat drinking an hour or more. At
last he got out his horse to ride homeward.

The crowd about the public-house door was as thick as ever, and the
disturbance greater. Some of the women were trying to get their drunken
husbands home, one man had fallen down dead-drunk beside the door in
the mud, and his wife was sitting patiently beside him. Several girls
were standing wearily about the door, dressed in their best, each with
a carefully folded white pocket-handkerchief in her hand for show, and
not for use, waiting for their sweethearts to come forth when it should
suit them; while inside the tap all was a wild confusion of talk,
quarrelling, oaths, and smoke enough to sicken a scavenger.

These things are changed now, or are changing, year by year. Now we
have our rural policeman keeping some sort of order, and some show of
decency. And indeed these little fairs, the curse of the country, are
gradually becoming extinct by the exertions of a more energetic class
of county magistrates; and though there is probably the same amount of
vice, public propriety is at all events more respected. I think I may
say that I have seen as bad, or even worse, scenes of drunkenness and
disorder at an English fair, as ever I have in any Australian mining
town.

George Hawker was so hemmed in by the crowd that he was unable to
proceed above a foot's-pace. He was slowly picking his way through the
people, when he felt some one touching him on the leg, and, looking
round, saw Lee standing beside him.