Lovely weather, light and
monotonous employment, long hours of somnolent camp-
fire talk, long sleepless nights, when he reviewed his
foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked in
the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he
would read all, the advertisements with as much relish
as the text; such was the tenor of an existence which
soon began to weary and harass him. He lacked and
regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense,
the fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud-
bespattered poetry of the first toilful weeks. In the
quietness of his new surroundings a voice summoned him
from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle
of October he threw up his situation and bade farewell
to the camp of tents and the shoulder of Bald Mountain.
Clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his
shoulder and his accumulated wages in his pocket, he
entered Sydney for the second time, and walked with
pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets,
like a man landed from a voyage. The sight of the
people led him on.
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