“I'd been away from home for eight years,” said Mitchell to his mate, as they dropped their swags in the mulga shade and sat down. “I hadn't written a letter—kept putting it off, and a blundering fool of a fellow that got down the day before me told the old folks that he'd heard I was dead.”  
Here he took a pull at his water-bag.
 
“When I got home they were all in mourning for me. It was night, and the girl that opened the door screamed and fainted away like a shot.”
 
He lit his pipe.
 
“Mother was upstairs howling and moaning in a chair, with all the girls boo-hoo-ing round her for company. The old man was sitting in the back kitchen crying to himself.”
 
He put his hat down on the ground, dinted in the crown, and poured some water into the hollow for his cattle-pup.
 
“The girls came rushing down. Mother was so pumped out that she couldn't get up. They thought at first I was a ghost, and then they all tried to get holt of me at once—nearly smothered¹ me. Look at that pup! You want to carry a tank of water on a dry stretch when you've got a pup that drinks as much as two men.”
 
He poured a drop more water into the top of his hat.
 
“Well, mother screamed and nearly fainted when she saw me. Such a picnic you never saw. They kept it up all night. I thought the old cove² was gone off his chump. The old woman wouldn't let go my hand for three mortal hours. Have you got the knife?”
 
He cut up some more tobacco.
 
“Al............