Over the Sliprails

There were about a dozen of us jammed into the coach, on the box seat and hanging on to the roof and tailboard as best we could. We were shearers, bagmen, agents, a squatter, a cockatoo, the usual joker— and one or two professional spielers, perhaps. We were tired and stiff and nearly frozen— too cold to talk and too irritable to risk the inevitable argument which an interchange of ideas would have led up to. We had been looking forward for hours, it seemed, to the pub where we were to change horses. For the last hour or two all that our united efforts had been able to get out of the driver was a grunt to the effect that it was “'bout a couple o' miles. ” Then he said, or grunted, “'Tain't fur now, ” a couple of times, and refused to commit himself any further; he seemed grumpy about having committed himself that far.