"Say three bottles," replied the stranger, seating himself on the counter.

"And--let 's see--a pound of tobacco; a dozen of matches; a tin of baking-powder; and a couple of hobble-chains. I'll make that do till I get as far as Hay. My chaps are squealing for pickles," he continued, turning to me. "I did n't know you at the first glance. Your name's Collins--is n't it? You might remember me pa.s.sing by you last spring, a few miles back along the track here, where you 'd been helping Steve Thompson and a big, gipsy-looking fellow to load up some wool on a Sydney-pattern wagon? So that chestnut was a stolen horse, after all.

Smart bit of work. Another devil of a season--isn't it? I've been trying to shift 900 head of forward stores from Mamarool to Vic.; but I advised the owner to give it best, though it was money out of my pocket, when I had none in it to begin with. Managed to arrange for them on Wooloomburra till the winter comes on."

Whilst speaking, he had opened his knife and removed the capsule and cork from one of the bottles of pickles; then, after drinking some of the vinegar out of the way, he began harpooning the contents of the bottle, and eating them with a relish that was pleasant to see.

I made a suitable reply, whilst Moriarty, having made up his order, noted the items and price on the paper which contained the tobacco.

"I see Alf Jones is gone, Moriarty," I remarked, after a pause--the stranger being occupied with his pickles. "Wisest thing he could do."

"Foolishest thing he could do," replied the storekeeper. "Nosey was a fixture on Runnymede; he was one of Montgomery's pets; and if he thinks he can better that in Australia, he's got a lot to learn. And what a hurry he was in, to get out of the best billet he'll ever have, poor beggar! with his shyness and his disfigurement. But he's been on the pea, like a good many more.

Let's see--it was just the day after you went away that he came to Montgomery, and said he must go. That'll be six or eight weeks ago now. Montgomery went a lot out of his way to persuade him to stop, but it was no use; he was like a hen on a hot griddle till he got away. Decent chap, too; and, by gosh!

can't he sing and play! We found afterward that he had given his books to the station library, with the message that we were to think kindly of him when he was gone. I felt sort of melancholy to see him drifting away to beggary, with his fiddle-case across the front of his saddle, and his spare horse in his hand. He knew no more where he was going than the man in the moon."

"Don't you believe it," I replied. "These cranky fellows have always sane spots in their heads; and Alf is particularly lucky in that respect.

There's not above two--or, at the most, three--lobes of that fellow's brain in bad working order. Just you watch the weekly papers, and you'll get news of him in his proper sphere. He's gone to Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne, to do something better than boundary riding."

"No; he's gone to Western Queensland," remarked the stranger, who had been watching Moriarty's flies, without the trace of a smile on his saturnine face. "I met him sixty or eighty mile beyond the Darling, on the Thargomindah track, three weeks ago."

"Not the same fellow, surely?" I suggested.

"Well," replied the stranger tolerantly, "the young chap I'm speaking of had some disfigurement of the face, so far as I could distinguish through a short c.r.a.pe veil; and he was carrying a box that he evidently would n't trust on his pack-horse, but whether it was a violin-case or a child's coffin, I was n't rude enough to ask. Old-fashioned Manton single-barrel slung on his back. Good-looking black-and-tan dog.

Brown saddle-horse; small star; WD conjoined, near shoulder; C or G, near flank. Bay mare, packed; JS, off shoulder; white hind-foot.

Horses in rattling condition; and he was taking his time. He'd been boundary riding in the Bland country before coming here. Peculiar habit of giving his head a little toss sometimes when he spoke."

"That's him, right enough," said Moriarty. "Had you a yarn with him?"

"Not much of a yarn certainly," replied the stranger, holding his bottle up to the light while he speared a gherkin with his knife. "It was coming on evening when I met him; and, says he, 'I 'm making for the Old-man Gilgie-- haven't you come past it?' So I told him if he wanted to camp on water, he'd have to turn back five mile, and come with me to where I knew of a brackish dam. I'd just been disappointed of water, myself, at the Old-man Gilgie. It had been half-full a few days before, but a dozen of Elder's camels had called there, carrying tucker to Mount Brown; and each of them had scoffed the full of a 400-gallon tank. Talk about camels doing without water!"--Just here, though the stranger's ordinary language was singularly quotable in character, he digressed into a searching and comprehensive curse, extending, inclusively, from Sir Thomas Elder away back along the vanishing vista of Time to the first man who had conceived the idea of utilising the camel as a beast of burthen.

"So we camped late at night," he resumed, in a relieved tone; "and this friend of yours cleared-off early in the morning. He was n't interested in anything but the Diamantina track, and I was nasty over the gilgie, so we did n't yarn much. However, that chap 's no more off his head than I am.

Bit odd, I daresay; but that's nothing. I often find myself a bit odd-- negligent, and forgetful, and sort of imbecile--but that's a very different thing from being off your head. Why, just now, I saw your two horses in the paddock as I came up; and, if I was to be lagged for it, I could n't think where I had seen them before--in fact, not till I recognised you. Want of sleep, I blame it on. Well, if I don't shift, there won't be many pickles left for my chaps. They were to boil the billy at the Balahs.

Better give us another bottle." He handed Moriarty the money for the goods, and stowed them in a small flour-bag. "So-long, boys--see you again some day."

And the imbecile stranger trailed his four-inch spurs from our presence.

"Do you know him, Moriarty?" I asked.

"I can't say I do," replied the storekeeper. "One day, last winter, I happened to be out at the main road when he pa.s.sed with 400 head of fats; and somehow I knew that his name was Spooner. Never saw him again till now.

But how about Nosey Alf--was n't I right for once?--and were n't you wrong for once?"

"So it appears," I replied. "But you haven't told me how you worked the scandal. You were sitting with your backs against the wall--Go on"----

"Sitting with our backs against the wall," repeated my agent complacently.

"Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps on account of Jack the Sh.e.l.lback being picked to take Nosey's place; and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even quoted a remark Mrs. Beaudesart had made about you, only a couple of hours before. She had said that, though you were such a wonderful talker, you were surprisingly reticent respecting your own former life, and your family connections, and the place you came from. We commented on this remark, and laughed a bit, not at you, but at her. Clever engineering-- was n't it?"

"Not unless she was in her room, with her ear against the wall."

"Trust her," replied my amba.s.sador confidently. "She saw us sitting down as she went across the yard; and we counted on her. We knew her meanness in the matter of listening."

"Don't say 'meanness,'" I remonstrated. "I must take her part there.

You can't judge even a high-minded woman by the standard of a moderately mean man, in this particular phase of character. Our deepest student of human nature makes his favourite Beatrice, on receiving a hint, run down the garden like a lapwing, to do a bit of deliberate eavesdropping; whilst her masculine counterpart, Bened.i.c.k, has to hear his share of the disclosure inadvertently and reluctantly. Similarly, in Love's Labour Lost, when the mis-delivered letter is handed to Lord Boyet to read, he says:--

This letter is mistook; it importeth none here; It is writ to Jaquenetta.

That, of course, settles the matter in his mind; but the Princess, true to her s.e.x, says eagerly, and with a perfectly clear conscience:--

We will read it, I swear; Break the neck of the wax, and let every one give ear.

"Don't let us judge women by our standard here, for we can't afford to be judged by their standard in some other"----

"Hear, hear; loud applause; much laughter," interrupted the delegate flippantly. "Well, we were yarning and laughing over Mrs. Beaudesart's simplicity; and it came out that Nelson and Mooney knew there was some reason why you dare n't go back to where you were known; but they had never heard the story; so I put them on their honour, and told them the whole affair."

"How did the story run?" I asked.

My vicar repeated it. (Which is more than I can do.)

"Well, that ought to drum me out of her esteem," I remarked, with the feeling of a man respited on the scaffold. "And it hangs together fairly well for a fabrication. But I'm honestly sorry to have been forced to put such an office on you, Moriarty. Indeed, I wonder how you could have the nerve to tell such a yarn in a woman's hearing."

"Friendship, old man," replied my factor wammly. "But it ain't a fabrication.

I found I couldn't invent anything with the proper ring of truth about it; so, the evening before the disclosure, when Jack the Sh.e.l.lback was in the store getting some things to take out with him, I asked him what was the most blackguardly prank he ever got off with; and that was the yarn he told me.

Of course, I altered it a bit to suit you."

"And Mrs. Beaudesart believes it?" I queried hopefully.

"I don't see what else she can do, considering the way the thing came-off.

She would have to be like one of the ancient prophets."

"And you think it has the proper effect?"

"No effect at all," replied the nuncio decidedly. "Her manner's just the same when she hears you talked about promiscuously; and she does n't take it any way ill to overhear a quiet joke about the thing that's supposed to be coming-off some time soon. It's a failure so far as that goes.

Certain as life."

"Well, Moriarty, if dishonour has no effect, we must try disgrace."

"Why, they're the same. You better go back to school, Collins."

"They're entirely independent of each other--if you insist on bringing me back to school, to waste my time over one barren pupil. Poverty, for instance, is disgrace without dishonour; Michael-and-Georgeship is dishonour without disgrace. In cases like mine, the dishonour lies in the fact, and the disgrace in the publicity. You must set the whole station commenting on your scandal."

"That's just what the whole station is doing at the present time,"

replied my legate unctuously. "Surprising how these things spread of themselves, when they 're once fairly started. And everybody believes the yarn; bar Mooney, and Nelson, and myself; and you can depend your life on us to keep it jigging. No, I'm wrong; Montgomery's got the inside crook on us."

"Montgomery?" said I inquiringly.

"Yes. I got a fright over that," explained the diplomatist.

"The other morning, I was at some correspondence here, and I heard a quick step, and when I looked up, who should I see but Montgomery, as black as thunder.

"'Moriarty!' says he, in a voice that made me jump; 'what is this story I hear of Collins? Now, no shuffling,' says he; 'I've traced it home to you, and I want your authority. I always looked upon Collins as a decent sort of oddity,' says he; 'and I'm determined to sift this matter thoroughly.'