right down on the hard ground, embracing and drawing up his knees, and
felt as if he'd like never to get up again: while Jimmy shook some
chaff and corn that he carried for his riding hack into a box for the
horse, and his travelling mate, Billy Grimshaw, lifted his big
namesake half full of cold tea, on to the glowing coals by the burning
log--looking just like an orang-outang in a Crimean shirt.

Ben got a fresh horse at Alfred Gentle's farm under the shadow of
Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the
roaring days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a
farming township. Here he roused and told the storekeeper. Then up
the creek to Home Rule, dreariest of deserted diggings.

He struck across the ages-haunted bush, and up Chinaman's Creek, past
"the Chinamen's Graves," and through the scrub and over the ridges
for the Talbragar Road. For he had to see Jack Denver home from start
to finish.

Glaring, hot and dusty, lay the long, white road; coated with dust
that felt greasy to the touch and taste. The coffin was in a
four-wheeled trap, for the solitary hearse that Mudgee boasted then
was to meet them some three miles out of town--at the racecourse, as
it happened, by one of those eternal ironies of fate. (Jones, the
undertaker, had had another job that morning.) The long string of
buggies and carts and horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen
drawn respectfully back amongst the trees here and there along the
route; male hats off and held rigidly vertical with right ears as the
coffin passed; and drivers waiting for a chance to draw into the line.

Think of it; up early on the first morning, a long day at the races, a