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THE GEOLOGICAL SPIELER

the worth of it any-way, and I'm not thin-skinned. They're the mugs and not us, anyhow it goes, and I can take them down before I leave.'

But on the way home he had a talk with another man whom we might set down as a 'chap.'

'I wouldn't have thought the Boss was a college man,' said Steelman to the chap.

'A what?'

'A University man―University education.'

'Why! Who's been telling you that?'

'One of your mates.'

'Oh, he's been getting at you, why: it's all the Boss can do to write his own name. Now that lanky sandy cove with the birth-mark grin―it's him that's had the college education.'

'I think we'll make a start to-morrow,' said Steelman to Smith in the privacy of their whare. 'There's too much humour and levity in this camp to suit a serious scientific gentleman like myself.'