singularly appropriate to the occasion: as I opened my eyes I smiled and murmured cheerfully, ‘Ain’t I a fool!’—an opinion of my conduct which I still retain. .
The foregoing account of my short excursion to the debatable land ’twixt life and death reads tamely enough on paper, and in fact has but one very questionable recommendation, that of truth.
Boake had agreed to stay with Mr. Commins for two years; and when, towards the close of 1888, the time expired, he was wholly under the spell of the Bush. At times he complained of its monotony, its hardships; but he always added that he could not again endure a city life. So, although urged to return to Sydney by his father, who wished him to qualify to obtain his license as surveyor, he preferred to take service as boundary-rider at Mullah Station, near Trangie, in the Narromine district. He was influenced by a reluctance to commit himself wholly to a surveyor's career, for though an excellent draughtsman, and fairly competent in the field, his heart was not in the work.
The parting from the friends at Rosedale was affectionate and sad. Boake promised to come back in three years, with a pocket full of money, and then——! His hopes were never to be realised. As the months passed, and one by one rosy dream-castles faded, his constitutional melancholy intensified to morbid gloom. He became more and more despondent, self-absorbed, careless of externals. And at last he ceased to struggle.
