BURYING A STRANGER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XX, 16 November 1895, Page 622

BURYING A STRANGER.

The author of * Round the Compass in Australia ’ was crossing the plains of New South Wales in a time of drought, anc drove up toward night at a station homestead. In response to his * Cooee e,’ the gruff but kindly manager appeared. *My word !’ he said, by way of welcome ; and when the stranger, who had passed the carcases of thousands of sheep, asked how the game was going, the answer came at once : * The last lamb is dead. Thank God, that’s off my mind I’ Then he explained to the traveller, as the two men got outside the house :

* We were just going to plant a sundowner wnen yon coo-e-ed. Didn’t want to say anything about it before the missus.’ The * sundowner ' was a man, a wanderer, who had crept to the very threshold of safety, and there died, his hand upon the gate.

By the grave we stand, the manager with a Bible in his hand ; a book rarely used by him, perhaps, but reverenced after his fashion, and necessary now. He wishes the traveller to ‘do it over the cold un,’ but the traveller declines. With coarse fingers blundering through the leaves in an uncertain fashion, the manager begins at last to read from Ecclesiastes. A halfdozen verses gruffly fall, and then the words come : ‘ For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein be hath laboured under the sun ?

‘ For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief. * Yea, his heart taketb not rest in the night. This is also vanity.’ Then he closed the book, and said :

‘Well, he was a goner afore he was a comer ; and I don’t know as there’s need to pitch a long yarn. He hadn’t much for his labonr under the sun ; and a hoc sun it is up here at HOdeg. in the shade. He come a long way over the country-rock. He hadn’t a drop in his water-bottle, nor a bit of damper in bis swag. * He’d got his fingers on the slip-rails, and was within coo-e-e of drink and tucker when he went out sndden to the nevernever land ; and went it alone.

* He couldn't have had much vanity, not with them features, and, my word ! the Lord knows all about that. I hope if he gets as near to the homestead gate up there as he did down here last night, even if he isn’t very fit, one of the hands will see him, and open it and let him in—if it has to be on the sly. * It was at night he got here, and in the morning we found him. It's at night we cover him, and, rest or no rest, he won’t have to work in the morning. ‘ Let him down easy and slow. Drop in his shirallee and water-bag by him. That’s light. Scatter some sandal leaves over his face.

‘ What’s th it you’ve put on the board, Jim? “A Sundowner. Gone.'' And God forgive him, wherever he’s gone. A men. ’