A Lynching for Kitty –

After one or two more drinks, we left for camp. To my disgust, when I got outside I found some waster had eloped with “Matilda.” Just then we were attracted by the sound of a row at the opposite pub. We got there just in time to see a man throw a beer bottle at his opponent who was standing at the bar. The bottle missed the man and struck the wall with such force that the splinters of glass rebounded and shattered the eye of Kitty, the barmaid—no better liked girl ever graced a bar on the fields. We grabbed the thrower.

The cry went up, “Lynch the cow!”

A few minutes later the rope was round his neck, the end was thrown over the limb of a mulga tree. A Yankee named Dan Binan, supervised the would-be execution. Don informed us that we had to present arms at him before he could pull him up. A stranger appeared on the scene. He claimed to be a plain clothes man, showed his badge, and told us to “cut it out,” which we did after an “application of boots” to our prisoner. The last we saw of him was limping along the road with the rope still round his neck. We didn’t wear light boots in those days.

LINES TO KITTY
(A Barmaid).

I am thinking of you Kitty
While l’m lying lying here alone,
My bed is made of ferns
And my pillow is a stone;

I am camped here in a gully
In the cold and chilly breeze,
With no comrades but the mopokes
and the possums in the trees.

I see you tripping to the bar-room,
Yes I see you tripping in,
At the whirring of the gingle
Which Kerry taught me how to spin.

I hear you taking orders
With a thorough business air,
One glance is quite convincing
That you act upon the square.

“What is yours sir, what is yours sir”,
Please let the drinks be known;
Is the Boss not in it ?
Well then captain what’s your own.

And how is the old landlord;
Is he swaggering about ?
He is happy when he’s on the pump
Or uncorking bottled stout.

You are standing there beside him
With your winning Irish smile,
It would coax a duck from water
Round my heart it wore a coil.

Well, perhaps the day’s not distant
When on velvet I shall stand,
Then I’ll come and see you Kitty
With dollars at command.

D.M., May, 1916.

The lines of ” A Spud-digger’s Spree,”