land that gives him house-room burning in his breast.

Who the man was, who now lay deep in a grave that fitted him as a glove
fits the hand, careless of the pass to which he had brought his mate;
who this really was, Long Jim knew no more than the rest. Young Bill had
never spoken out. They had chummed together on the seventy-odd-mile
tramp from Melbourne; had boiled a common billy and slept side by side
in rain-soaked blankets, under the scanty hair of a she-oak. That was in
the days of the first great stampede to the goldfields, when the embryo
seaports were as empty as though they were plague-ridden, and every man
who had the use of his legs was on the wide bush-track, bound for the
north. It was better to be two than one in this medley of bullock-teams,
lorries, carts and pack-horses, of dog-teams, wheelbarrows and swagmen,
where the air rang with oaths, shouts and hammering hoofs, with
whip-cracking and bullock-prodding; in this hurly-burly of thieves,
bushrangers and foreigners, of drunken convicts and deserting sailors,
of slit-eyed Chinese and apt-handed Lascars, of expirees and
ticket-of-leave men, of Jews, Turks and other infidels. Long Jim, himself
stunned by it all: by the pother of landing and of finding a roof to cover
him; by the ruinous price of bare necessaries; by the length of this
unheard-of walk that lay before his town-bred feet: Long Jim had gladly
accepted the young man's company on the road. Originally, for no more than
this; at heart he distrusted Young Bill, because of his fine-gentleman
airs, and intended shaking the lad off as soon as they reached the
diggings. There, a man must, for safety's sake, be alone, when he stooped
to pick up his fortune. But at first sight of the strange, wild scene that
met his eyes he hastily changed his mind. And so the two of them had stuck
together; and he had never had cause to regret it. For all his lily-white
hands and finical speech Young Bill had worked like a nigger,
standing by his mate through the latter's disasters; had worked till the