He was about to bridle his horse, and depart for his home, a few miles distant from the goldfields ‘township’ of Barrawong, where ten thousand miners with their families, tradespeople, officials, and camp-followers generally, had made provisional homes, when his eye was attracted by a man at some distance, walking slowly towards him. A footsore tramp, evidently—‘remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.’ As he approached, Banneret’s experienced eye told him that the man before him had been ill—probably short of food—had broken down on the road, and was now straining every nerve to get to town, probably to be admitted into the Public Hospital, so often a haven of rest and refreshment to the invalid wayfarer. When the ‘traveller,’ as a nomadic labourer is termed in Australia, came up to the barrack, the Commissioner was shocked at his emaciated appearance and deathlike pallor. His hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes proclaimed a struggle with weakness, dangerously protracted. His patched and threadbare garments told a tale of want and absolute poverty, rare in this land of careless plenty and comparative extravagance. It appeared as if the succour might even now come too late, as to sailors stricken with that mysterious malady of the sea, which decimates long-exiled crews, landing them only to die, with the scent in their nostrils of the freshly turned loam. As he came within a few paces of the Commissioner, he staggered and almost fell. That official sprang forward and caught him by the arm. ‘Why, Jack Waters!’ he said—‘I should hardly have known you. What have you been doing to yourself?’
‘It’s what’s left of me,’ said the exhausted man, hardly able to speak, it would seem, and trying as he did so to manage a sickly smile—a most melancholy attempt. ‘Where I’ve been and what I’ve gone through’s a long story; you might be in it towards the end, so we’d better come into the “Reefer’s Arms” (old Bill Barker’s alive yet, I suppose) and talk it over a bit. You know me, Mr. Banneret, this years and years, and you always found me straight, didn’t you?’
‘Certainly I have; I never thought anything to the contrary. But what’s this great affair you want me to hear about? Won’t it do to-morrow? Stay at Barker’s to-night; I’ll shout your night’s lodging, you know.’