I went away to Australia and landed there under the name of Wickham. I
had a certain amount of money which had come to me from my mother. I
speculated with it on my arrival, somewhat foolishly, no doubt, and I
lost it--every penny.
"So then I was obliged to work for my living. I went up country, and for
some time worked as a miner in the Bendigo district. I had been working
in this way perhaps fourteen months when an accident occurred in the mine
at which I was engaged. There was a serious fall of earth and masonry;
two or three of my fellow-workers were killed on the spot, and I was
taken up for dead. I was removed to a local hospital--there had been some
serious injury to my head and spine, but I still had life in me, and I
was brought round. But I remained in hospital, in a sort of semiconscious
state, for a long time--months. When I went back, after my discharge, to
my quarters--nothing but a rough shanty which I had shared with many
other men--all my possessions had vanished. Among them, of course, were
the papers I had kept, and a packet of letters written to me by my mother
when I was a schoolboy at Eton.
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