Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/169

It was two days since Sven Andersen had set off full of good intentions for the future, and he was still within a dozen miles of his home. "Where he had been in the meantime was best known to him- self ; but for all improvement that had been wrought in his appearance he had better have remained else- where. As he moved along the dusty road, talking and gesticulating to himself, occasionally pausing to glare savagely at some object by the roadside, or, still worse, to express amusement at his thoughts in a harsh laugh, he had the look of a man well advanced in intoxication; but he was not drunk,. unless drunkenness be given a wider interpretation than is usually allowed to the word.

‘Either drunk or mad,’ was the reflection of a person watching him approach from a verandah a hundred yards or so down the road. ‘Not drunk in his gait,” he added awhile later; ‘mad then.’ And the man rose to his feet and went into the house.

A counter ran across the room in front of the door, and behind this stood a young man busy with