He was always hopeful and cheerful. "If the worst comes to the worst,"
he said, "there's things I can do where I come from. I might do a
bit o' wool-sorting, for instance. I'm a pretty fair expert. Or else
when they're weeding out I could help. I'd just have to sit down and
they'd bring the sheep to me, and I'd feel the wool and tell them what
it was--being blind improves the feeling, you know."

He had a packet of portraits, but he couldn't make them out very well
now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he
told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with
reference to one--a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter
from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get
you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on
another piece of paper, and address an envelope for me."

Darkness fell quickly upon him now--or, rather, the "sort of white
blur" increased and closed in. But his hearing was better, he said,
and he was glad of that and still cheerful. I thought it natural that
his hearing should improve as he went blind.

One day he said that he did not think he would bother going to the
hospital any more. He reckoned he'd get back to where he was known.
He'd stayed down too long already, and the "stuff" wouldn't stand
it. He was expecting a letter that didn't come. I was away for a
couple of days, and when I came back he had been shifted out of the
room and had a bed in an angle of the landing on top of the staircase,
with the people brushing against him and stumbling over his things all
day on their way up and down. I felt indignant, thinking that--the
house being full--the boss had taken advantage of the bushman's
helplessness and good nature to put him there. But he said that he