But he was smooth-faced, like a girl, and ye're a dark, wrinkled man.
'Sides, he died years agone, over the water." But the old lady grew thoughtful and silent from that day, and three weeks after she was carried up to her grave,-- "By the little grey church on the windy hill." At the funeral, William Lee, the man whom I have been describing, pushed quietly through the little crowd, and as they threw the first earth on the coffin, stood looking over the shoulder of his brother, who was unconscious of his existence.
Like many men who have been much in great solitudes, and have gone days and weeks sometimes without meeting a fellow-creature, he had acquired the habit of thinking aloud, and if anyone had been listening they would have heard much such a soliloquy as the following, expletives omitted, or rather softened:-- "A brutal cold country this, for a man to camp out in.

Never a buck-log to his fire, no, nor a stick thicker than your finger for seven mile round; and if there was, you'd get a month for cutting it.

If the young'un milks free this time, I'll be off to the bay again, I know.
But will he?
By George, he shall though.

The young snob, I know he daren't but come, and yet it's my belief he's late just to keep me soaking out in the rain.

Whew! it's cold enough to freeze the tail of a tin possum; and this infernal rubbish won't burn, at least not to warm a man.