'I suppose you can take care of yourself--you look a likely man,' he
said. 'Well, the nights are so warm no man needs a dwelling. When you're
tired of knocking round to-night, take your traps down by the river, roll
yourself in your blanket in the lee of a gum-tree, and sleep there. Did
it myself for a week, and only had to put up one fight all the time.
Sleeping out's no hardship here. Meanwhile, in exchange for the latest
news from down under, I'll dump your swag, and keep an eye on her till
you call again.'

The young fellow's ready friendship was most grateful to Done, and he
remained in the bar till a run of business rendered further conversation
impossible, picking up useful knowledge by the way, and presently
discovering the barman to be a gentleman with an expensive polish, whose
most earnest desire was to hide his gentility and disguise the contingent
gloss under a brave assumption of the manners and speech peculiar to the
people of the rough young democracy.

Tea that evening was the most expensive meal Jim Done had ever eaten, and
far from being the best; but his appetite was equal to anything, and the
fare on the Francis Cadman had not been so dainty as to give him any
epicurean prejudices. It was night when Jim came from the primitive
restaurant, darkness having come down with a suddenness surprising to a
new chum accustomed to long twilights. Jim had taken tea in a tent near
Paddy's Market. Here scores of tents of all sorts and sizes were huddled
together. All cooking was done out of doors. Fires were everywhere, their
glow, reflected brightly on the canvas of the 'flies,' giving a fantastic
brilliance to the scene. Life stirred around him, jubilant, bounteous,
pulsing life. The levity of the people was without limit. Their
childishness astonished Done, but he lived to find this a characteristic