The defunct was a young Union labourer, about twenty-five, who had
been drowned the previous day while trying to swim some horses across
a billabong of the Darling.

He was almost a stranger in town, and the fact of his having been a
Union man accounted for the funeral. The police found some Union
papers in his swag, and called at the General Labourers' Union Office
for information about him. That's how we knew. The secretary had
very little information to give. The departed was a "Roman," and
the majority of the town were otherwise--but Unionism is stronger than
creed. Liquor, however, is stronger than Unionism; and, when the
hearse presently arrived, more than two-thirds of the funeral were
unable to follow.

The procession numbered fifteen, fourteen souls following the broken
shell of a soul. Perhaps not one of the fourteen possessed a soul any
more than the corpse did--but that doesn't matter.

Four or five of the funeral, who were boarders at the pub, borrowed a
trap which the landlord used to carry passengers to and from the
railway station. They were strangers to us who were on foot, and we
to them. We were all strangers to the corpse.

A horseman, who looked like a drover just returned from a big trip,
dropped into our dusty wake and followed us a few hundred yards,
dragging his packhorse behind him, but a friend made wild and
demonstrative signals from a hotel veranda--hooking at the air in
front with his right hand and jobbing his left thumb over his shoulder
in the direction of the bar--so the drover hauled off and didn't catch