“Good luck!” we called after him.  “Early showers!” and there was a note in our voices brought there by the thought of that gaunt figure at the well—­rattling its dicebox as it waited for one more round with our Fizzer:  a note that brought a bright look into the Fizzer’s face, as with an answering shout of farewell he rode on into the forest.  And watching the sturdy figure, and knowing the luck of our Fizzer—­that luck that had given him his fearless judgment and steadfast, courageous spirit—­we felt his cheery “Half-past eleven four weeks” must be prophetic, in spite of those long dry stages, with their beating heat and parching dust eddies—­stages eked out now at each end with other stages of “bad going.”

“Half-past eleven four weeks,” the Fizzer had said; and as we returned to our mail-matter, knowing what it meant to our Fizzer, we looked anxiously to the northwest, and “hoped the showers” would come before the “return trip of the Downs.”

In addition to the fifty letters for the house, the Fizzer had left two others at the homestead to be called for—­one being addressed to Victoria Downs (over two hundred miles to our west), and the other to—­

    F. Brown, Esq.,
    In charge of stud bulls going west
    Via northern territory.

The uninitiated may think that the first was sent out by mistake and that the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it—­in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—­an address could never be too vague.  The bush-folk love to say that when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it decided to use that in its place.

And so it would seem.  “Down South” envelopes are laboriously addressed with the names of stations and vias here and vias there; and throughout the Territory men move hither and thither by compulsion or free-will giving never a thought to an address; while the Department, knowing the ways of its people, delivers its letters in spite of, not because of, these addresses.  It reads only the name of the man that heads the address of his letters and sends the letters to where that man happens to be.  Provided it has been clearly stated which Jones is meant the Department will see to the rest, although it is wise to add Northern Territory for the guidance of Post Offices “Down South.”  “Jones travelling with cattle for Wave Will,” reads the Department; and that gossiping friendly wire reporting Jones as “just leaving the Powell,” the letter lies in the Fizzer’s loose-bag until he runs into Jones’s mob; or a mail coming in for Jones, Victoria River, when this Jones is on the point of sailing for a trip south, his mail is delivered on shipboard; and as the Department goes on with its work, letters for east go west, and for west go south—­in mail-bags, loose-bags, travellers’ pockets or per black boy—­each one direct to the bush-folk as a migrating bird to its destination.