However, at Banklands Nickie solicited work, laborious and painful work.  Moreover, he went to the job of his own free will, when sober and in his right mind.  This seemed to imply an awakening of conscience, a dawning sense of his utter uselessness to the body politic, and a desire to figure as a useful member of society.  On the other hand, it may have been a symptom of brain-softening.  But it happened to be neither; it was in fact a means to a wicked end.  On the fading end of a superior suburb, where the streets of fine villas and mansions thinned off and dwindled, and were lost among the gum trees of the original wilderness, Nickie found his billet.

The suburb was coming ahead.  The motor-car had made it easy and accessible to the rich.  Splendid dwellings were going up all over the place, the road makers were exceedingly busy, and hammers of the stone-knappers rattled an incessant fusillade.

Nickie the Kid came to Banklands one pleasant summer day, watched the busy people with a desultory sort of interest, and moralised within himself.

“Do these people expect to live a thousand years?” mused Mr. Crips, “that they build such solid houses?  Or do they regard them as monuments?  Look at that palace, and I sleep well on a potato sack under four boards!”

Nickie was examining a fine, white house, ornate as a wedding cake, with plentiful cement, and balconies as frivolous as those of a Chinese pagoda.  It stood within capacious grounds, and proclaimed aloud the fact that its proprietor was a rich man, ostentatious of his riches.

“I expect there’s a matter of thirty rooms in that house,” mused Nicholas Crips, “and after all, a man can get just as drunk in a threepenny bar.”

Nickie put in a couple of days skirmishing at Banklands, and fared well, but as there was no hotel in the suburb Nicholas did not contemplate making a lengthy stay.  Something he saw on the second afternoon induced him to change his mind, and threw him into a state of profound reflection lasting for nearly an hour; then he sauntered over to the man working on the pile of stones before the gates of the cemented mansion, and seating himself on the broken metal, entered into conversation with the two-inch mason wielding the hammer.

“Pretty hard work this,” ventured Nicholas.

“Blanky hard,” assented the stonebreaker.

“Did you ever try the softening influence of beer?” asked Nickie, drawing a bottle from his pocket.

“Well, I won’t make yeh force it on me,” said the stonebreaker.

They divided the liquor like brothers dear, and the stonebreaker developed a sudden affection for Nicholas Crips, who after twenty minutes casual conversation, introduced his plea.

“Must be splendid exercise for the liver, stoneknapping,” he said.  “I’ve been troubled with liver complaint lately.  Living too high.  Could you give a man a job?”

“Well,” said the breaker, “I got a sorter contrac’ t’ break so many yards.  If you’ll do it at bob a yard you can get gain’ on the other end iv th’ ’eap.”