TO-MORROW
Page: 22

"What for? For running away? Why! he
wanted to make a lawyer's clerk of me--just to
please himself. Master in his own house; and my
poor mother egged him on--for my good, I sup-
pose. Well, then--so long; and I went. No, I
tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and
blue from his great fondness for me. Ah! he was
always a bit of a character. Look at that shovel
now. Off his chump? Not much. That's just
exactly like my dad. He wants me here just to
have somebody to order about. However, we two
were hard up; and what's five quid to him--once
in sixteen hard years?"

"Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never
want to come back home?"

"Be a lawyer's clerk and rot here--in some such
place as this?" he cried in contempt. "What! if
the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would
kick it down about my ears--or else die there be-
fore the third day was out."

"And where else is it that you hope to die?"

"In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed
mountain-top for choice. At home? Yes! the
world's my home; but I expect I'll die in a hospital
some day. What of that? Any place is good
enough, as long as I've lived; and I've been every-
thing you can think of almost but a tailor or a
soldier. I've been a boundary rider; I've sheared
sheep; and humped my swag; and harpooned a
whale. I've rigged ships, and prospected for gold,
and skinned dead bullocks,--and turned my back
on more money than the old man would have
scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!"

He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself to-
gether and managed to utter, "Time to rest
now."

He straightened himself up, away from the wall,
and in a severe voice said, "Time to go."

But he did not move. He leaned back again,
and hummed thoughtfully a bar or two of an out-
landish tune.

She felt as if she were about to cry. "That's
another of your cruel songs," she said.

"Learned it in Mexico--in Sonora." He talked
easily. "It is the song of the Gambucinos. You
don't know? The song of restless men. Nothing
could hold them in one place--not even a woman.
You used to meet one of them now and again, in