‘ANTI-HUMBUG’ Williams ran out from his school-house door as he saw his young acquaintance alight from Quick’s spring-cart.

“You’re a brick!” he exclaimed, emphatically slapping the youth’s shoulders, “a regular brick! The inspector told me they ought never to have sent you to such an hole, and I may tell you now that Chapman has been expecting you to throw it up ever since you went out. Well,” he went on as he drew his guest into the parlor, chasing out a few of his children in order to gain space and silence, “and so you’re going to leave us for good, and be off to the old country again; I dare say you’re right. Australia is pretty much played out. Things are not what they were when I came out. There’ll be a bust-up some day, mark my words. Droughts and theology, deserts and dry bones, that will undo the place. What would old Buckle have said? Curious action of the climate, eh? But we brought the virus with us from the old land. Coelum non animum.”

During dinner Williams drew out the youth regarding his future movements: “So you think of going in for the law? I don’t know that you could do better. It’s the path to open a career for young talents. I was going in for the law once but my health broke down so they sent me out here — thirty years ago now. Well, perhaps you won’t regret the time you’ve spent in Australia when you’ve got your chambers in some old court in the Temple.”

The younger man rose, for he had various matters to settle in Ayr before the coach left. When he came back a few hours later out of the hot dusty road, he found the schoolmaster asleep over the “Stockwhip” with his head on his arms, and a jug of shandy gaff beside him. The youth refrained from rousing him; but as the coach rumbled heavily off, his last vision of Ayr was a glimpse of the wiry little man running down the street and waving his hat in farewell.

At Sydney, instead of seeking quarters in Castlereagh Street, he went to a boarding-house in the corner of Wynyard Square. It was a highly respectable establishment, even patronised by distinguished missionaries from Pacific islands; after breakfast every morning a gaunt young Scotchman offered up a long prayer in which with much fervent repetition he would insist that all our righteousness is but as filthy rags. The young schoolmaster adapted himself to the ways of the place with his usual calm tolerance of everything that had no hold on his own inner life, and made as little attempt to flee from the Scotchman’s filthy rags at this house as from the young woman’s chignon at the other.

In this brief camping-space on the road of life he lived as in a dream, making no attempt to reconcile the haunting thoughts of yesterday with the eager thoughts of tomorrow. On the morning after his arrival he strolled along the wharves, into the Botanic Gardens, the Public Library, the long meandering curves of George Street, round by the University, bidding goodbye to his old haunts. On his way back he dropped in at his barber’s an old man in George Street to whom he had often been before. “And so you’re going home? To live at Croydon again? Ah, Croydon!” exclaimed the old man, “Ah, dear; many’s the time I’ve eaten walnuts at Croydon Fair. All done away with now, is it? Ah, dear, dear. Yes, the happiest days of my life were spent at Croydon, long before you were born. Ah, Croydon Fair. You don’t get such walnuts out here; dried up things. Ah, dear, dear.” And he left the chattering old man lost in memories to return to his room in Wynyard Square. As he looked out of the window at the hard bright sunlight stretching far along the street opposite, the old barber’s mood of reverie seemed to find an echo in him, and the child of the north gazed for the last time, half absently, half wistfully, at the things that were vanishing from his sight.

The leisurely voyage in a sailing ship gave him time to review his experi............