“I am three and fifty years old,” he said, “and I ’listed when I was twenty.  I was in all the wars in India for nineteen years, and never was hit but once, and that was on the top of my head.  Look here,” he took off his hat and pointed to a ridge made by the track of a bullet, “if I had been an inch taller I shouldn’t be here now.  And maybe it would have been all the better.  I have been too long at the fighting to learn another trade now.  When I ’listed I was told my pay would be a shilling a day and everything found.  A shilling a day is seven shillings a week, and I thought I should live like a fighting cock, plenty to eat and a shilling a day for drink or sport.  But I found out the difference when it was too late.  They kept a strict account against every man; it was full of what they called deductions, and we had to pay for so many things out of that shilling that sometimes for months together I hadn’t the price of a pint o’ threepenny with a trop o’ porter through it.”

“What was the biggest battle you ever were in?” enquired Philip.

“Well, I had some close shaves, but the worst was when we took a stockade from the Burmans.  My regiment was the 47th, and one company of ours, sixty-five, rank and file, and two companies from other regiments were ordered to attack it.  Our officers were all shot down before we reached the stockade, but we got in, and went at the Burmans with the bayonet.  But such a crowd came at us from the rear of the stockade that we had to go out again, and we ran down the hill.  Our ranks were broken, and we had no time to rally before a lot of horsemen were among us.  My bayonet was broken, and I had nothing but my empty musket to fight with.  I warded off the sabre cuts with it right and left, so, dodging among the horses, and I was not once wounded.  It was all over in a hot minute or two, but, when the supports came up, and we were afterwards mustered, only five men of our company answered the roll-call.  Of course I was one of them, and the barrel of my musket was notched like a saw by all the strokes I had parried with it.”  The last time Philip saw Summers he was hammering bluestone by the roadside.  The pomp and circumstance of glorious war had left him in hisold age little better than a beggar.

Philip found Nyalong without much trouble, and renewed the acquaintance begun at Bendigo with Mr. Barton and the other diggers.  To all appearance his promotion was not worth much; he might as well have stayed at the Waterholes.  Mr. McCarthy acted as school director —­an honorary office—­and he showed Philip the school.  He said: