Jack's hand came out through the hole, Tom gripped it, and then fell
with his face in the damp clay.

They half carried, half dragged him from the drive, for the roof was
low and they were obliged to stoop. They took him to the shaft and
sent him up, lashed to the rope.

A few blows of the
pick, and Jack scrambled from his prison and went to the surface, and
knelt on the grass by the body of his brother. The diggers gathered
round and took off their hats. And the sun went down.



THE MAN WHO FORGOT


"Well, I dunno," said Tom Marshall--known as "The Oracle"--"I've
heerd o' sich cases before: they ain't commin, but--I've heerd o' sich
cases before," and he screwed up the left side of his face whilst he
reflectively scraped his capacious right ear with the large blade of a
pocket-knife.

They were sitting at the western end of the rouseabouts' hut, enjoying
the breeze that came up when the sun went down, and smoking and
yarning. The "case" in question was a wretchedly forlorn-looking
specimen of the swag-carrying clan whom a boundary-rider had found
wandering about the adjacent plain, and had brought into the station.
He was a small, scraggy man, painfully fair, with a big, baby-like
head, vacant watery eyes, long thin hairy hands, that felt like pieces