well--anyway, I found it so. He had taken a trip to Sydney the
Christmas before last, and when he came back there was something
wanting. He became more silent, he drank more, and sometimes alone,
and took to smoking heavily. He dropped his mates, took little or no
interest in Union matters, and travelled alone, and at night.

The Australian bushman is born with a mate who sticks to him through
life--like a mole. They may be hundreds of miles apart sometimes, and
separated for years, yet they are mates for life. A bushman may have
many mates in his roving, but there is always one his mate, "my
mate;" and it is common to hear a bushman, who is, in every way, a
true mate to the man he happens to be travelling with, speak of _his
mate's mate_--"Jack's mate"--who might be in Klondyke or South
Africa. A bushman has always a mate to comfort him and argue with
him, and work and tramp and drink with him, and lend him quids when
he's hard up, and call him a b--- fool, and fight him sometimes; to
abuse him to his face and defend his name behind his back; to bear
false witness and perjure his soul for his sake; to lie to the girl
for him if he's single, and to his wife if he's married; to secure a
"pen" for him at a shed where he isn't on the spot, or, if the mate
is away in New Zealand or South Africa, to write and tell him if it's
any good coming over this way. And each would take the word of the
other against all the world, and each believes that the other is the
straightest chap that ever lived-"a white man!" And next best to
your old mate is the man you're tramping, riding, working, or drinking
with.

About the first thing the cook asks you when you come along to a
shearers' hut is, "Where's your mate?" I travelled alone for a
while one time, and it seemed to me sometimes, by the tone of the