midnight
The rains abated , and the temporary labour was discharged ; not Norris , to whom the engineer clung as to found money ; not Norris , who found himself a ganger on the line in the regular staff of navvies . His camp was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest , far from any house ; as he sat with his mates about the evening fire , the trains passing on the track were their next , and indeed their only , neighbours , except the wild things of the wood . Lovely weather , light and monotonous employment , long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk , long sleepless nights , when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked in the moonlit forest , an occasional paper of which he would read all , the advertisements with as much relish as the text ; such was the tenor of an existence which soon began to weary and harass him . He lacked and regretted the fatigue , the furious hurry , the suspense , the fires , the midnight coffee , the rude and mud-bespattered poetry of the first toilful weeks . In the quietness of his new surroundings a voice summoned him from this exorbital part of life , and about the middle of October he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents and the shoulder of Bald Mountain . Clad in his rough clothes , with a bundle on his shoulder and his accumulated wages in his pocket , he entered Sydney for the second time , and walked with pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets , like a man landed from a voyage . The sight of the people led him on .