Ha, ha! Did I laugh?
What a rum thing it is that a man should have a laugh in him when he's only got twenty-nine days more to live--a day for every year of my life.

Well, laughing or crying, this is what it has come to at last.

All the drinking and recklessness; the flash talk and the idle ways; the merry cross-country rides that we used to have, night or day, it made no odds to us; every man well mounted, as like as not on a racehorse in training taken out of his stable within the week; the sharp brushes with the police, when now and then a man was wounded on each side, but no one killed.

That came later on, worse luck.

The jolly sprees we used to have in the bush townships, where we chucked our money about like gentlemen, where all the girls had a smile and a kind word for a lot of game upstanding chaps, that acted like men, if they did keep the road a little lively.