BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Just as dusk was falling, I came, one summer evening, on a circular clearing in the bush, over-grown with heath and hyacinths, bracken and burrs. On a bare branch of a giant bluegum, a pair of jackasses were laughing to their hearts' content. Beside a fireplace that he had fashioned of a few rough stones, a bronzed and bearded swagman was sitting on a fallen tree fern, enjoying his evening meal. We were soon talking of everything under the sun-the Dorsetshire village in which he was born; the feverish gold-rush that lured him over-seas; and the wayward gipsyings of later days. As we gossiped beside the dying embers, the sky became pyrotechnic with wildfire. It gleamed from every point of the compass. In the vivid radiance of each flash, every stick and stone around us stood out as clearly as at noon.

'Going far?' I inquired.

'I must make Wombat Creek to-night!'

'A dark trudge,' I observed; 'it'll take you all your time to keep the track!'

'Oh yes,' he replied with a smile, as he rose, picked up his billy, humped his swag and lit his pipe, 'but a few wisps of wildfire will light things up a bit!'

My Australian swagman is not the only pilgrim on the planet who has to follow a tortuous track in a poor light. It may be-who knows?-that a stray sentence somewhere in these pages will enable some uncertain wayfarer to discern more clearly the obscure path from which, in his confusion, he might otherwise have wandered.

FRANK W. BOREHAM. Armadale, Melbourne, Australia Easter, 1924.

Boreham, F. W. Wisps of Wildfire. The Abingdon Press, 1924. pp. 7-8.