DAGO
Australia again! Well, what does it matter how many years had passed!
Sandy Magee (the coach driver), a bit grayer, a little more furrowed round the eyes, petted and hustled and swore and drove a four-horse team along the deep-rutted bush track between Grafton and Solferino. We were alone; I on the box-seat beside him.
Sandy and I coached that track once before alone together, but we were going the other way then, and I was pretty well broken up, and showed the raw red of healing scars I shall always carry with me. We crossed the old ford on the Clarence again, with the green island a few yards from the bank, and the broad, flat shelf of rock in the middle—with a deep drop into a dozen feet of water a few inches off the near wheels—into which my mate and I went headlong—pack horses and all—the first time we ever attempted it. By the way, we built the first punt that ever carried a dray across it in flood times—a good punt; it floats to-day—and we were driving quietly through old paddocks on the Yugilbar-Ogilve's, the very gum trees of which were familiar. We ring-barked many an acre of those same paddocks, my mate and I, at a price which was never paid us; but that doesn't matter now. Presently we came to a dip, where the track led through heavy timber down a gorge, at the foot of the ranges in which the Solferino diggings lay.
"You remember Dago" said Sandy, pointing with his whip to a little grass-grown heap of mullock about a dozen yards from the track on our right.
"Do I remember Dago?" Yes, I remembered Dago well. My hand went involuntarily to a heavy scar on
