sight began to get bad about six years before, he said; he didn't take
much notice of it at first, and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes
worse. He had already the manner of the blind--the touch of every
finger, and even the gentleness in his speech. He had a boy down with
him--a "sorter cousin of his," and the boy saw him round. "I'll
have to be sending that youngster back," he said, "I think I'll send
him home next week. He'll be picking up and learning too much down
here."

I happened to know the district he came from, and we would sit by the
hour and talk about the country, and chaps by the name of this and
chaps by the name of that--drovers mostly, whom we had met or had
heard of. He asked me if I'd ever heard of a chap by the name of Joe
Scott--a big sandy-complexioned chap, who might be droving; he was his
brother, or, at least, his half-brother, but he hadn't heard of him
for years; he'd last heard of him at Blackall, in Queensland; he might
have gone overland to Western Australia with Tyson's cattle to the new
country.

We talked about grubbing and fencing and digging and droving and
shearing--all about the bush--and it all came back to me as we talked.
"I can see it all now," he said once, in an abstracted tone, seeming
to fix his helpless eyes on the wall opposite. But he didn't see the
dirty blind wall, nor the dingy window, nor the skimpy little bed, nor
the greasy wash-stand; he saw the dark blue ridges in the sunlight,
the grassy sidings and flats, the creek with clumps of she-oak here
and there, the course of the willow-fringed river below, the distant
peaks and ranges fading away into a lighter azure, the granite ridge
in the middle distance, and the rocky rises, the stringy-bark and the
apple-tree flats, the scrubs, and the sunlit plains--and all. I could