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scent and sound, and the gum trees were all topped with glistening cherry-coloured leaves. Everything felt so young and cheerful, he knew that something must be going to turn up! And then Bill came along, and things were arranged with a quickness that bewildered even Tony, not unused to having the course of his life decided in ten minutes.

It had been a most satisfactory experiment, and he would never forget Bill, who had treated him as a man; but when the second trip was over he came down to Sydney to spend his money and “learn things”—that was never long out of his thoughts—and then the sea drew him again. He found that he rather liked books, though he would not willingly have gone to school if it had not represented future power to him.

The voyage to ’Frisco was long, slow, and on the whole pleasant; Tony found the work comparatively easy and he got on well because he never shirked. How could he, when the chief object of his life was to prove that he was worth as much as a man? As the Minnie S. Garland drew near California he found himself thinking often of Robertson’s possible letter, especially at night. It almost kept him from feeling lonely.

“There ought to be one,” he thought. “There will be one—unless he has forgotten all about me. I wonder if he has? He liked me, but—I have no hold. . . . Bill likes me . . . I’m glad I met Bill. He was funny when he got on to the subject of women!—‘Never let them see you with buttons off or holes in your socks, or they’ll grab you and mend them an’ never let you go—keep clear of women anyhow, an’ go straight. . . .’ Well, the men I’ve known who weren’t straight with women weren’t very good specimens—my father, for instance. (I hope to God I’m not going to grow up like him!)—Not much danger—I do more work in a month than he has done in his whole