I must either kill myself, or get something to fill up my time till the day --
yes, the day comes.  I've always been a middling writer,
tho' I can't say much for the grammar, and spelling, and that,
but I'll put it all down, from the beginning to the end,
and maybe it'll save some other unfortunate young chap
from pulling back like a colt when he's first roped, setting himself against
everything in the way of proper breaking, making a fool of himself generally,
and choking himself down, as I've done.

The gaoler -- he looks hard -- he has to do that, there's more than one or two
within here that would have him by the throat, with his heart's blood running,
in half a minute, if they had their way, and the warder was off guard.
He knows that very well.  But he's not a bad-hearted chap.

`You can have books, or paper and pens, anything you like,' he said,
`you unfortunate young beggar, until you're turned off.'

`If I'd only had you to see after me when I was young,' says I ----

`Come; don't whine,' he said, then he burst out laughing.
`You didn't mean it, I see.  I ought to have known better.
You're not one of that sort, and I like you all the better for it.'

     .    .    .    .    .

Well, here goes.  Lots of pens, a big bottle of ink, and ever so much
foolscap paper, the right sort for me, or I shouldn't have been here.
I'm blessed if it doesn't look as if I was going to write copies again.
Don't I remember how I used to go to school in old times;
the rides there and back on the old pony; and pretty little Grace Storefield
that I was so fond of, and used to show her how to do her lessons.
I believe I learned more that way than if I'd had only myself to think about.
There was another girl, the daughter of the poundkeeper,
that I wanted her to beat; and the way we both worked, and I coached her up,
was a caution.  And she did get above her in her class.  How proud we were!
She gave me a kiss, too, and a bit of her hair.  Poor Gracey!
I wonder where she is now, and what she'd think if she saw me here to-day.
If I could have looked ahead, and seen myself -- chained now like a dog,
and going to die a dog's death this day month!

Anyhow, I must make a start.  How do people begin when they set to work
to write their own sayings and doings?  There's been a deal more doing
than talking in my life -- it was the wrong sort -- more's the pity.

Well, let's see; his parents were poor, but respectable.  That's what
they always say.  My parents were poor, and mother was as good a soul
as ever broke bread, and wouldn't have taken a shilling's worth
that wasn't her own if she'd been starving.  But as for father,
he'd been a poacher in England, a Lincolnshire man he was,
and got sent out for it.  He wasn't much more than a boy, he said,
and it was only for a hare or two, which didn't seem much.
But I begin to think, being able to see the right of things a bit now,
and having no bad grog inside of me to turn a fellow's head upside down,
as poaching must be something like cattle and horse duffing --
not the worst thing in the world itself, but mighty likely to lead to it.

Dad had always been a hard-working, steady-going sort of chap,
good at most things, and like a lot more of the Government men,
as the convicts were always called round our part, he saved some money
as soon as he had done his time, and married mother, who was
a simple emigrant girl just out from Ireland.  Father was a square-built,
good-looking chap, I believe, then; not so tall as I am by three inches,
but wonderfully strong and quick on his pins.  They did say
as he could hammer any man in the district before he got old and stiff.
I never saw him `shape' but once, and then he rolled into a man
big enough to eat him, and polished him off in a way that showed me
-- though I was a bit of a boy then -- that he'd been at the game before.
He didn't ride so bad either, though he hadn't had much of it
where he came from; but he was afraid of nothing, and had a quiet way
with colts.  He could make pretty good play in thick country,
and ride a roughish horse, too.

Well, our farm was on a good little flat, with a big mountain in front,
and a scrubby, rangy country at the back for miles.  People often asked him
why he chose such a place.  `It suits me,' he used to say, with a laugh,
and talk of something else.  We could only raise about enough
corn and potatoes, in a general way, for ourselves from the flat;
but there were other chances and pickings which helped to make the pot boil,
and them we'd have been a deal better without.

First of all, though our cultivation paddock was small,
and the good land seemed squeezed in between the hills,
there was a narrow tract up the creek, and here it widened out
into a large well-grassed flat.  This was where our cattle ran,
for, of course, we had a team of workers and a few milkers when we came.
No one ever took up a farm in those days without a dray and a team,
a year's rations, a few horses and milkers, pigs and fowls,
and a little furniture.  They didn't collar a 40-acre selection,
as they do now -- spend all their money in getting the land
and squat down as bare as robins -- a man with his wife and children
all under a sheet of bark, nothing on their backs, and very little
in their bellies.  However, some of them do pretty well,
though they do say they have to live on 'possums for a time.
We didn't do much, in spite of our grand start.

The flat was well enough, but there were other places in the gullies
beyond that that father had dropped upon when he was out shooting.
He was a tremendous chap for poking about on foot or on horseback,
and though he was an Englishman, he was what you call a born bushman.
I never saw any man almost as was his equal.  Wherever he'd been once,
there he could take you to again; and what was more,
if it was in the dead of the night he could do it just the same.
People said he was as good as a blackfellow, but I never saw one
that was as good as he was, all round.  In a strange country, too.
That was what beat me -- he'd know the way the creek run,
and noticed when the cattle headed to camp, and a lot of things
that other people couldn't see, or if they did, couldn't remember again.
He was a great man for solitary walks, too -- he and an old dog he had,
called Crib, a cross-bred mongrel-looking brute, most like
what they call a lurcher in England, father said.  Anyhow, he could do
most anything but talk.  He could bite to some purpose, drive cattle or sheep,
catch a kangaroo, if it wasn't a regular flyer, fight like a bulldog,
and swim like a retriever, track anything, and fetch and carry,
but bark he wouldn't.  He'd stand and look at dad as if he worshipped him,
and he'd make him some sign and off he'd go like a child that's got a message.
Why he was so fond of the old man we boys couldn't make out.
We were afraid of him, and as far as we could see he never patted
or made much of Crib.  He thrashed him unmerciful as he did us boys.
Still the dog was that fond of him you'd think he'd like to die for him
there and then.  But dogs are not like boys, or men either -- better, perhaps.

Well, we were all born at the hut by the creek, I suppose,
for I remember it as soon as I could remember anything.
It was a snug hut enough, for father was a good bush carpenter,
and didn't turn his back to any one for splitting and fencing,
hut-building and shingle-splitting; he had had a year or two at sawing, too,
but after he was married he dropped that.  But I've heard mother say
that he took great pride in the hut when he brought her to it first,
and said it was the best-built hut within fifty miles.
He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself,
with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up,
and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it
-- chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions -- by himself.
Then he dug up a little garden in front, and planted a dozen or two
peaches and quinces in it; put a couple of roses -- a red and a white one --
by the posts of the verandah, and it was all ready for his pretty Norah,
as she says he used to call her then.  If I've heard her tell
about the garden and the quince trees and the two roses once,
I've heard her tell it a hundred times.  Poor mother! we used to get round her
-- Aileen, and Jim, and I -- and say, `Tell us about the garden, mother.'
She'd never refuse; those were her happy days, she always said.
She used to cry afterwards -- nearly always.

The first thing almost that I can remember was riding the old pony, 'Possum,
out to bring in the milkers.  Father was away somewhere,
so mother took us all out and put me on the pony, and let me have a whip.
Aileen walked alongside, and very proud I was.  My legs stuck out straight
on the old pony's fat back.  Mother had ridden him up when she came --
the first horse she ever rode, she said.  He was a quiet little old roan,
with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down with
us boys, for all that.  If we fell off he stopped still and began to feed,
so that he suited us all to pieces.  We soon got sharp enough
to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers,
I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them.
After a bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves,
and help dad brand the calves, which began to come pretty thick.
There were only three of us children -- my brother Jim, who was two years
younger than I was, and then Aileen, who was four years behind him.
I know we were both able to nurse the baby a while after she came,
and neither of us wanted better fun than to be allowed to watch her,
or rock the cradle, or as a great treat to carry her a few steps.
Somehow we was that fond and proud of her from the first
that we'd have done anything in the world for her.  And so we would now
-- I was going to say -- but that poor Jim lies under a forest oak
on a sandhill, and I -- well, I'm here, and if I'd listened to her advice
I should have been a free man.  A free man!  How it sounds, doesn't it?
with the sun shining, and the blue sky over your head,
and the birds twittering, and the grass beneath your feet!
I wonder if I shall go mad before my time's up.

Mother was a Roman Catholic -- most Irishwomen are; and dad was a Protestant,
if he was anything.  However, that says nothing.  People that don't talk much
about their religion, or follow it up at all, won't change it for all that.
So father, though mother tried him hard enough when they were first married,
wouldn't hear of turning, not if he was to be killed for it,
as I once heard him say.  `No!' he says, `my father and grandfather,
and all the lot, was Church people, and so I shall live and die.
I don't know as it would make much matter to me, but such as my notions is,
I shall stick to 'em as long as the craft holds together.
You can bring up the girl in your own way; it's made a good woman of you,
or found you one, which is most likely, and so she may take her chance.
But I stand for Church and King, and so shall the boys,
as sure as my name's Ben Marston.'

Chapter 2

Father was one of those people that gets shut of a deal of trouble
in this world by always sticking to one thing.  If he said he'd do
this or that he always did it and nothing else.  As for turning him,
a wild bull half-way down a range was a likelier try-on.
So nobody ever bothered him after he'd once opened his mouth.
They knew it was so much lost labour.  I sometimes thought
Aileen was a bit like him in her way of sticking to things.
But then she was always right, you see.

So that clinched it.  Mother gave in like a wise woman, as she was.
The clergyman from Bargo came one day and christened me and Jim --
made one job of it.  But mother took Aileen herself in the spring cart
all the way to the township and had her christened in the chapel,
in the middle of the service all right and regular, by Father Roche.