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in New Zealand than in any other country since he was born. He thought he was “due for somewhere else.”

So he worked his way back to Dunedin and used all the magnetism that was in him to be taken on board a Union boat on its way to Sydney. They did take him on, as a favour (how sick Tony was of favours!), and he worked in the galley. It was a short, dreary passage, and he was glad to leave New Zealand behind for the present.

Some months afterwards he wrote to Robertson for the first time since leaving Paranui.

“Dear Mr. Robertson,

“I have not written to you for a long time, there was nothing settled to say. I hope you are quite well, I wonder when you came back.

“I left N.Z. more than six months ago, when I went away from Paranui I went down South to a timber camp. It was very interesting, but I did not stay long, then I got taken on at a cattle station in the hill country called Tupa Tupa, there are good men there and the mountains look as if they were too big to fit into the world. But it is beastly cold there in winter. I was there in winter. Then I came over here in the Moeraki round by the Bluff helping the Stewards, I would not be a Steward for something, I would rather be me.

“I began to write tidily but it all goes to seed if I don’t watch the whole blessed time. Here I went droving with a man called Hooker, he is a real good sort, he swears more than anybody I ever met which is saying a lot, so many New Zealanders and Australians swear very well. That is not why I like him though, he is Good, he taught me how to box, he used to be middleweight champion of Australia, but he was knocked out a long time ago and then the drink