initial commit of ebook 3677HEADmain

2 files changed, 5390 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/onssr10.txt b/old/onssr10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc30a5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/onssr10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5390 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of On Our Selection, by Steele Rudd
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission.  The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below, including for donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+
+
+Title: On Our Selection
+
+Author: Steele Rudd (Arthur Hoey Davis)
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3677]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 07/16/01]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of On Our Selection, by Steele Rudd
+******This file should be named onssr10.txt or onssr10.zip*****
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, onssr11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, onssr10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by Col Choat
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of June 16, 2001 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana,
+Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri,
+Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma,
+Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
+Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in nearly all states now, and these are the ones
+that have responded as of the date above.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.  Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork
+to legally request donations in all 50 states.  If
+your state is not listed and you would like to know
+if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in
+states where we are not yet registered, we know
+of no prohibition against accepting donations
+from donors in these states who approach us with
+an offer to donate.
+
+
+International donations are accepted,
+but we don't know ANYTHING about how
+to make them tax-deductible, or
+even if they CAN be made deductible,
+and don't have the staff to handle it
+even if there are ways.
+
+All donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
+and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS).  Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum
+extent permitted by law.  As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+***
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may 
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the 
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.  
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, 
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.06/12/01*END*
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Dudley Col Choat
+
+
+
+
+
+PIONEERS OF AUSTRALIA!
+To You "Who Gave Our Country Birth;"
+to the memory of You
+whose names, whose giant enterprise, whose deeds of
+fortitude and daring
+were never engraved on tablet or tombstone;
+to You who strove through the silences of the Bush-lands
+and made them ours;
+to You who delved and toiled in loneliness through
+the years that have faded away;
+to You who have no place in the history of our Country
+so far as it is yet written;
+to You who have done MOST for this Land;
+to You for whom few, in the march of settlement, in the turmoil
+of busy city life, now appear to care;
+and to you particularly,
+GOOD OLD DAD,
+This Book is most affectionately dedicated.
+
+"STEELE RUDD."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.     STARTING THE SELECTION
+CHAPTER II.    OUR FIRST HARVEST
+CHAPTER III.   BEFORE WE GOT THE DEEDS
+CHAPTER IV.    WHEN THE WOLF WAS AT THE DOOR
+CHAPTER V.     THE NIGHT WE WATCHED FOR WALLABIES
+CHAPTER VI.    GOOD OLD BESS
+CHAPTER VII.   CRANKY JACK
+CHAPTER VIII.  A KANGAROO HUNT FROM SHINGLE HUT
+CHAPTER IX.    DAVE'S SNAKEBITE
+CHAPTER X.     DAD AND THE DONOVANS
+CHAPTER XI.    A SPLENDID YEAR FOR CORN
+CHAPTER XII.   KATE'S WEDDING
+CHAPTER XIII.  THE SUMMER OLD BOB DIED
+CHAPTER XIV.   WHEN DAN CAME HOME
+CHAPTER XV.    OUR CIRCUS
+CHAPTER XVI.   WHEN JOE WAS IN CHARGE
+CHAPTER XVII.  DAD'S "FORTUNE"
+CHAPTER XVIII. WE EMBARK IN THE BEAR INDUSTRY
+CHAPTER XIX.   NELL AND NED
+CHAPTER XX     THE COW WE BOUGHT
+CHAPTER XXI.   THE PARSON AND THE SCONE
+CHAPTER XXII.  CALLAGHAN'S COLT
+CHAPTER XXIII. THE AGRICULTURAL REPORTER
+CHAPTER XXIV.  A LADY AT SHINGLE HUT
+CHAPTER XXV.   THE MAN WITH THE BEAR-SKIN CAP
+CHAPTER XXVI.  CHRISTMAS
+
+
+
+
+On Our Selection.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+Starting the Selection.
+
+
+It's twenty years ago now since we settled on the Creek.  Twenty years!
+I remember well the day we came from Stanthorpe, on Jerome's dray--eight
+of us, and all the things--beds, tubs, a bucket, the two cedar chairs with
+the pine bottoms and backs that Dad put in them, some pint-pots and old
+Crib.  It was a scorching hot day, too--talk about thirst!  At every creek
+we came to we drank till it stopped running.
+
+Dad did n't travel up with us:  he had gone some months before, to put up
+the house and dig the waterhole.  It was a slabbed house, with shingled
+roof, and space enough for two rooms; but the partition was n't up.  The
+floor was earth; but Dad had a mixture of sand and fresh cow-dung with
+which he used to keep it level.  About once every month he would put it
+on; and everyone had to keep outside that day till it was dry.  There were
+no locks on the doors:  pegs were put in to keep them fast at night; and
+the slabs were not very close together, for we could easily see through
+them anybody coming on horseback.  Joe and I used to play at counting the
+stars through the cracks in the roof.
+
+The day after we arrived Dad took Mother and us out to see the paddock and
+the flat on the other side of the gully that he was going to clear for
+cultivation.  There was no fence round the paddock, but he pointed out on
+a tree the surveyor's marks, showing the boundary of our ground.  It must
+have been fine land, the way Dad talked about it!  There was very valuable
+timber on it, too, so he said; and he showed us a place, among some rocks
+on a ridge, where he was sure gold would be found, but we were n't to say
+anything about it.  Joe and I went back that evening and turned over every
+stone on the ridge, but we did n't find any gold.
+
+No mistake, it was a real wilderness--nothing but trees, "goannas," dead
+timber, and bears; and the nearest house--Dwyer's--was three miles away.
+I often wonder how the women stood it the first few years; and I can
+remember how Mother, when she was alone, used to sit on a log, where the
+lane is now, and cry for hours.  Lonely!  It WAS lonely.
+
+Dad soon talked about clearing a couple of acres and putting in corn--all
+of us did, in fact--till the work commenced.  It was a delightful topic
+before we started,; but in two weeks the clusters of fires that illumined
+the whooping bush in the night, and the crash upon crash of the big trees
+as they fell, had lost all their poetry.
+
+We toiled and toiled clearing those four acres, where the haystacks are
+now standing, till every tree and sapling that had grown there was down.
+We thought then the worst was over; but how little we knew of clearing
+land!  Dad was never tired of calculating and telling us how much the crop
+would fetch if the ground could only be got ready in time to put it in;
+so we laboured the harder.
+
+With our combined male and female forces and the aid of a sapling lever we
+rolled the thundering big logs together in the face of Hell's own fires;
+and when there were no logs to roll it was tramp, tramp the day through,
+gathering armfuls of sticks, while the clothes clung to our backs with a
+muddy perspiration.  Sometimes Dan and Dave would sit in the shade beside
+the billy of water and gaze at the small patch that had taken so long to
+do; then they would turn hopelessly to what was before them and ask Dad
+(who would never take a spell) what was the use of thinking of ever
+getting such a place cleared?  And when Dave wanted to know why Dad
+did n't take up a place on the plain, where there were no trees to grub
+and plenty of water, Dad would cough as if something was sticking in his
+throat, and then curse terribly about the squatters and political jobbery.
+He would soon cool down, though, and get hopeful again.
+
+"Look at the Dwyers," he'd say; "from ten acres of wheat they got seventy
+pounds last year, besides feed for the fowls; they've got corn in now,
+and there's only the two."
+
+It was n't only burning off!  Whenever there came a short drought the
+waterhole was sure to run dry; then it was take turns to carry water from
+the springs--about two miles.  We had no draught horse, and if we had
+there was neither water-cask, trolly, nor dray; so we humped it--and talk
+about a drag!  By the time you returned, if you had n't drained the
+bucket, in spite of the big drink you'd take before leaving the springs,
+more than half would certainly be spilt through the vessel bumping against
+your leg every time you stumbled in the long grass.  Somehow, none of us
+liked carrying water.  We would sooner keep the fires going all day
+without dinner than do a trip to the springs.
+
+One hot, thirsty day it was Joe's turn with the bucket, and he managed to
+get back without spilling very much.  We were all pleased because there
+was enough left after the tea had been made to give each a drink.  Dinner
+was nearly over; Dan had finished, and was taking it easy on the sofa,
+when Joe said:  
+
+"I say, Dad, what's a nater-dog like?" Dad told him:  "Yellow, sharp ears
+and bushy tail."
+
+"Those muster bin some then thet I seen--I do n't know 'bout the bushy
+tail--all th' hair had comed off." "Where'd y' see them, Joe?" we asked.
+"Down 'n th' springs floating about--dead."
+
+Then everyone seemed to think hard and look at the tea.  I did n't want
+any more.  Dan jumped off the sofa and went outside; and Dad looked after
+Mother.
+
+At last the four acres--excepting the biggest of the iron-bark trees and
+about fifty stumps--were pretty well cleared; and then came a problem that
+could n't be worked-out on a draught-board.  I have already said that we
+had n't any draught horses; indeed, the only thing on the selection like
+a horse was an old "tuppy" mare that Dad used to straddle.   The date of
+her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped
+something like an alderman.  We found her one day in about eighteen inches
+of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her hide bearing
+evidence that a feathery tribe had made a roost of her carcase.  Plainly,
+there was no chance of breaking up the ground with her help.  We had no
+plough, either; how then was the corn to be put in?  That was the question.
+
+Dan and Dave sat outside in the corner of the chimney, both scratching the
+ground with a chip and not saying anything.  Dad and Mother sat inside
+talking it over.  Sometimes Dad would get up and walk round the room
+shaking his head; then he would kick old Crib for lying under the table.
+At last Mother struck something which brightened him up, and he called Dave.
+
+"Catch Topsy and--" He paused because he remembered the old mare was dead.
+
+"Run over and ask Mister Dwyer to lend me three hoes."
+
+Dave went; Dwyer lent the hoes; and the problem was solved.  That was
+how we started.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+
+Our First Harvest
+
+
+If there is anything worse than burr-cutting or breaking stones, it's
+putting corn in with a hoe.
+
+We had just finished.  The girls were sowing the last of the grain when
+Fred Dwyer appeared on the scene.  Dad stopped and talked with him while
+we (Dan, Dave and myself) sat on our hoe-handles, like kangaroos on their
+tails, and killed flies.  Terrible were the flies, particularly when you
+had sore legs or the blight.
+
+Dwyer was a big man with long, brown arms and red, bushy whiskers.
+
+"You must find it slow work with a hoe?" he said.
+
+"Well-yes-pretty," replied Dad (just as if he was n't quite sure).
+
+After a while Dwyer walked over the "cultivation", and looked at it hard,
+then scraped a hole with the heel of his boot, spat, and said he did n't
+think the corn would ever come up.  Dan slid off his perch at this, and
+Dave let the flies eat his leg nearly off without seeming to feel it; but
+Dad argued it out.
+
+"Orright, orright," said Dwyer; "I hope it do."
+
+Then Dad went on to speak of places he knew of where they preferred hoes
+to a plough for putting corn in with; but Dwyer only laughed and shook
+his head.
+
+"D--n him!" Dad muttered, when he had gone; "what rot!  WON'T COME UP!"
+
+Dan, who was still thinking hard, at last straightened himself up and said
+HE did n't think it was any use either.  Then Dad lost his temper.
+
+"No USE?" he yelled, "you whelp, what do you know about it?"
+
+Dan answered quietly:  "On'y this, that it's nothing but tomfoolery,
+this hoe business."
+
+"How would you do it then?" Dad roared, and Dan hung his head and tried to
+button his buttonless shirt wrist-band while he thought.
+
+"With a plough," he answered.
+
+Something in Dad's throat prevented him saying what he wished, so he
+rushed at Dan with the hoe, but--was too slow.
+
+Dan slept outside that night.
+
+No sooner was the grain sown than it rained.  How it rained!  for weeks!
+And in the midst of it all the corn came up--every grain-and proved Dwyer
+a bad prophet.  Dad was in high spirits and promised each of us
+something--new boots all round.
+
+The corn continued to grow--so did our hopes, but a lot faster.  Pulling
+the suckers and "heeling it up" with hoes was but child's play--we liked it.
+Our thoughts were all on the boots; 'twas months months since we had pulled
+on a pair.  Every night, in bed, we decided twenty times over whether they
+would be lace-ups or bluchers, and Dave had a bottle of "goanna" oil ready
+to keep his soft with.
+
+Dad now talked of going up country--as Mother put it, "to keep the wolf
+from the door"--while the four acres of corn ripened.  He went, and
+returned on the day Tom and Bill were born--twins.  Maybe his absence did
+keep the wolf from the door, but it did n't keep the dingoes from the
+fowl-house!
+
+Once the corn ripened it did n't take long to pull it, but Dad had to put
+on his considering-cap when we came to the question of getting it in.
+To hump it in bags seemed inevitable till Dwyer asked Dad to give him a
+hand to put up a milking-yard.  Then Dad's chance came, and he seized it.
+
+Dwyer, in return for Dad's labour, carted in the corn and took it to the
+railway-station when it was shelled.  Yes, when it WAS shelled!  We had to
+shell it with our hands, and what a time we had!  For the first half-hour
+we did n't mind it at all, and shelled cob after cob as though we liked it;
+but next day, talk about blisters!  we could n't close our hands for them,
+and our faces had to go without a wash for a fortnight.
+
+Fifteen bags we got off the four acres, and the storekeeper undertook to
+sell it.  Corn was then at 12 shillings  and 14 shillings per bushel,
+and Dad expected a big cheque.
+
+Every day for nearly three weeks he trudged over to the store (five miles)
+and I went with him.  Each time the storekeeper would shake his head and
+say "No word yet."
+
+Dad could n't understand.  At last word did come.  The storekeeper was
+busy serving a customer when we went in, so he told Dad to "hold on a bit".
+
+Dad felt very pleased--so did I.
+
+The customer left.  The storekeeper looked at Dad and twirled a piece of
+string round his first finger, then said--"Twelve pounds your corn
+cleared, Mr. Rudd; but, of course" (going to a desk) "there's that account
+of yours which I have credited with the amount of the cheque--that brings
+it down now to just three pound, as you will see by the account."
+
+Dad was speechless, and looked sick.
+
+He went home and sat on a block and stared into the fire with his chin
+resting in his hands, till Mother laid her hand upon his shoulder and
+asked him kindly what was the matter.  Then he drew the storekeeper's bill
+from his pocket, and handed it to her, and she too sat down and gazed
+into the fire.
+
+That was OUR first harvest.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+Before We Got The Deeds
+
+
+Our selection adjoined a sheep-run on the Darling Downs, and boasted of
+few and scant improvements, though things had gradually got a little
+better than when we started.  A verandahless four-roomed slab-hut now
+standing out from a forest of box-trees, a stock-yard, and six acres under
+barley were the only evidence of settlement.  A few horses--not
+ours--sometimes grazed about; and occasionally a mob of cattle--also not
+ours--cows with young calves, steers, and an old bull or two, would stroll
+around, chew the best legs of any trousers that might be hanging on the
+log reserved as a clothes-line, then leave in the night and be seen no
+more for months--some of them never.
+
+And yet we were always out of meat!
+
+Dad was up the country earning a few pounds--the corn drove him up when it
+did n't bring what he expected.  All we got out of it was a bag of
+flour--I do n't know what the storekeeper got.  Before he left we put in
+the barley.  Somehow, Dad did n't believe in sowing any more crops, he
+seemed to lose heart; but Mother talked it over with him, and when
+reminded that he would soon be entitled to the deeds he brightened up
+again and worked.  How he worked!
+
+We had no plough, so old Anderson turned over the six acres for us, and
+Dad gave him a pound an acre--at least he was to send him the first six
+pounds got up country.  Dad sowed the seed; then he, Dan and Dave yoked
+themselves to a large dry bramble each and harrowed it in.  From the way
+they sweated it must have been hard work.  Sometimes they would sit down
+in the middle of the paddock and "spell" but Dad would say something about
+getting the deeds and they'd start again.
+
+A cockatoo-fence was round the barley; and wire-posts, a long distance
+apart, round the grass-paddock.  We were to get the wire to put in when
+Dad sent the money; and apply for the deeds when he came back.  Things
+would be different then, according to Dad, and the farm would be worked
+properly.  We would break up fifty acres, build a barn, buy a reaper,
+ploughs, cornsheller, get cows and good horses, and start two or three
+ploughs.  Meanwhile, if we (Dan, Dave and I) minded the barley he was sure
+there'd be something got out of it.
+
+Dad had been away about six weeks.  Travellers were passing by every day,
+and there was n't one that did n't want a little of something or other.
+Mother used to ask them if they had met Dad?  None ever did until an old
+grey man came along and said he knew Dad well--he had camped with him one
+night and shared a damper.  Mother was very pleased and brought him in.
+We had a kangaroo-rat (stewed) for dinner that day.  The girls did n't
+want to lay it on the table at first, but Mother said he would n't know
+what it was.  The traveller was very hungry and liked it, and when passing
+his plate the second time for more, said it was n't often he got
+any poultry.
+
+He tramped on again, and the girls were very glad he did n't know it was
+a rat.  But Dave was n't so sure that he did n't know a rat from a
+rooster, and reckoned he had n't met Dad at all.
+
+The seventh week Dad came back.  He arrived at night, and the lot of us
+had to get up to find the hammer to knock the peg out of the door and let
+him in.  He brought home three pounds--not enough to get the wire with,
+but he also brought a horse and saddle.  He did n't say if he bought them.
+It was a bay mare, a grand animal for a journey--so Dad said--and only
+wanted condition.  Emelina, he called her.  No mistake, she was a quiet
+mare!  We put her where there was good feed, but she was n't one that
+fattened on grass.  Birds took kindly to her--crows mostly--and she
+could n't go anywhere but a flock of them accompanied her.  Even when Dad
+used to ride her (Dan or Dave never rode her) they used to follow, and
+would fly on ahead to wait in a tree and "caw" when he was passing beneath.
+
+One morning when Dan was digging potatoes for dinner--splendid potatoes
+they were, too, Dad said; he had only once tasted sweeter ones, but they
+were grown in a cemetery--he found the kangaroos had been in the barley.
+We knew what THAT meant, and that night made fires round it, thinking to
+frighten them off, but did n't--mobs of them were in at daybreak.  Dad
+swore from the house at them, but they took no notice; and when he ran
+down, they just hopped over the fence and sat looking at him.  Poor Dad!
+I do n't know if he was knocked up or if he did n't know any more, but he
+stopped swearing and sat on a stump looking at a patch of barley they had
+destroyed, and shaking his head.  Perhaps he was thinking if he only had
+a dog!  We did have one until he got a bait.  Old Crib!  He was lying
+under the table at supper-time when he took the first fit, and what a
+fright we got!  He must have reared before stiffening out, because he
+capsized the table into Mother's lap, and everything on it smashed except
+the tin-plates and the pints.  The lamp fell on Dad, too, and the melted
+fat scalded his arm.  Dad dragged Crib out and cut off his tail and ears,
+but he might as well have taken off his head.
+
+Dad stood with his back to the fire while Mother was putting a stitch in
+his trousers.  "There's nothing for it but to watch them at night," he was
+saying, when old Anderson appeared and asked "if I could have those few
+pounds." Dad asked Mother if she had any money in the house?  Of course
+she had n't.  Then he told Anderson he would let him have it when he got
+the deeds.  Anderson left, and Dad sat on the edge of the sofa and seemed
+to be counting the grains on a corn-cob that he lifted from the floor,
+while Mother sat looking at a kangaroo-tail on the table and did n't
+notice the cat drag it off.  At last Dad said, "Ah, well!--it won't be
+long now, Ellen, before we have the deeds!"
+
+We took it in turns to watch the barley.  Dan and the two girls watched
+the first half of the night, and Dad, Dave and I the second.  Dad always
+slept in his clothes, and he used to think some nights that the others
+came in before time.  It was terrible going out, half awake, to tramp
+round that paddock from fire to fire, from hour to hour, shouting and
+yelling.  And how we used to long for daybreak!  Whenever we sat down
+quietly together for a few minutes we would hear the dull THUD!  THUD!
+THUD!--the kangaroo's footstep.
+
+At last we each carried a kerosene tin, slung like a kettle-drum, and
+belted it with a waddy--Dad's idea.  He himself manipulated an old bell
+that he had found on a bullock's grave, and made a splendid noise with it.
+
+It was a hard struggle, but we succeeded in saving the bulk of the barley,
+and cut it down with a scythe and three reaping-hooks.  The girls helped
+to bind it, and Jimmy Mulcahy carted it in return for three days' binding
+Dad put in for him.  The stack was n't built twenty-four hours when a
+score of somebody's crawling cattle ate their way up to their tails in it.
+We took the hint and put a sapling fence round it.
+
+Again Dad decided to go up country for a while.  He caught Emelina after
+breakfast, rolled up a blanket, told us to watch the stack, and started.
+The crows followed.
+
+We were having dinner.  Dave said, "Listen!"  We listened, and it seemed
+as though all the crows and other feathered demons of the wide bush were
+engaged in a mighty scrimmage.  "Dad's back!" Dan said, and rushed out in
+the lead of a stampede.
+
+Emelina was back, anyway, with the swag on, but Dad was n't.  We caught
+her, and Dave pointed to white spots all over the saddle, and said--"Hanged
+if they have n't been ridin' her!"--meaning the crows.
+
+Mother got anxious, and sent Dan to see what had happened.  Dan found Dad,
+with his shirt off, at a pub on the main road, wanting to fight the
+publican for a hundred pounds, but could n't persuade him to come home.
+Two men brought him home that night on a sheep-hurdle, and he gave up the
+idea of going away.
+
+After all, the barley turned out well--there was a good price that year,
+and we were able to run two wires round the paddock.
+
+One day a bulky Government letter came.  Dad looked surprised and pleased,
+and how his hand trembled as he broke the seal!  "THE DEEDS!" he said,
+and all of us gathered round to look at them.  Dave thought they were like
+the inside of a bear-skin covered with writing.
+
+Dad said he would ride to town at once, and went for Emelina.
+
+"Could n't y' find her, Dad?" Dan said, seeing him return without the mare.
+
+Dad cleared his throat, but did n't answer.  Mother asked him.
+
+"Yes, I FOUND her," he said slowly, "DEAD."
+
+The crows had got her at last.
+
+He wrapped the deeds in a piece of rag and walked.
+
+There was nothing, scarcely, that he did n't send out from town, and Jimmy
+Mulcahy and old Anderson many and many times after that borrowed our dray.
+
+Now Dad regularly curses the deeds every mail-day, and wishes to Heaven
+he had never got them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+
+When the Wolf was at the Door.
+
+
+There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out the
+waterhole.  Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe squatted on
+the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings--a
+favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a drain to turn the
+water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it rained.  Dad was
+feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.
+
+Joe said:  "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he
+went, but returned and said:  "There's no water in the bucket--Mother used
+the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching.  Dad
+tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way
+between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was
+all on fire.  "So it is, Dad!" said Joe,  slowly but surely dragging the
+head off a fly with finger and thumb.
+
+Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked.  "Good God!" was all he said.
+How he ran!  All of us rushed after him except Joe--he could n't run very
+well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor horse,
+bare-back.  When near the fire Dad stopped running to break a green bush.
+He hit upon a tough one.  Dad was in a hurry.  The bush was n't.  Dad
+swore and tugged with all his might.  Then the bush broke and Dad fell
+heavily upon his back and swore again.
+
+To save the cockatoo fence that was round the cultivation was what was
+troubling Dad.  Right and left we fought the fire with boughs.  Hot!  It
+was hellish hot!  Whenever there was a lull in the wind we worked.  Like a
+wind-mill Dad's bough moved--and how he rushed for another when one was
+used up!  Once we had the fire almost under control; but the wind rose
+again, and away went the flames higher and faster than ever.
+
+"It's no use," said Dad at last, placing his hand on his head, and throwing
+down his bough.  We did the same, then stood and watched the fence go.
+After supper we went out again and saw it still burning.  Joe asked Dad if
+he did n't think it was a splendid sight?  Dad did n't answer him--he
+did n't seem conversational that night.
+
+We decided to put the fence up again.  Dan had sharpened the axe with a
+broken file, and he and Dad were about to start when Mother asked them
+what was to be done about flour?  She said she had shaken the bag to get
+enough to make scones for that morning's breakfast, and unless some was
+got somewhere there would be no bread for dinner.
+
+Dad reflected, while Dan felt the edge on the axe with his thumb.
+
+Dad said, "Won't Missus Dwyer let you have a dishful until we get some?"
+
+"No," Mother answered; "I can't ask her until we send back what we
+owe them."
+
+Dad reflected again.  "The Andersons, then?" he said.
+
+Mother shook her head and asked what good there was it sending to them
+when they, only that morning, had sent to her for some?
+
+"Well, we must do the best we can at present," Dad answered, "and I'll go
+to the store this evening and see what is to be done."
+
+Putting the fence up again in the hurry that Dad was in was the very
+devil!  He felled the saplings--and such saplings!--TREES many of them
+were--while we, "all of a muck of sweat," dragged them into line.  Dad
+worked like a horse himself, and expected us to do the same.  "Never mind
+staring about you," he'd say, if he caught us looking at the sun to see if
+it were coming dinner-time--"there's no time to lose if we want to get the
+fence up and a crop in."
+
+Dan worked nearly as hard as Dad until he dropped the butt-end of a heavy
+sapling on his foot, which made him hop about on one leg and say that he
+was sick and tired of the dashed fence.  Then he argued with Dad, and
+declared that it would be far better to put a wire-fence up at once,
+and be done with it, instead of wasting time over a thing that would only
+be burnt down again.  "How long," he said, "will it take to get the posts?
+Not a week," and he hit the ground disgustedly with a piece of stick he
+had in his hand.
+
+"Confound it!" Dad said, "have n't you got any sense, boy? What earthly
+use would a wire-fence be without any wire in it?"
+
+Then we knocked off and went to dinner.
+
+No one appeared in any humour to talk at the table.  Mother sat silently
+at the end and poured out the tea while Dad, at the head, served the
+pumpkin and divided what cold meat there was.  Mother would n't have any
+meat--one of us would have to go without if she had taken any.
+
+I don't know if it was on account of Dan arguing with him, or if it was
+because there was no bread for dinner, that Dad was in a bad temper;
+anyway, he swore at Joe for coming to the table with dirty hands.  Joe
+cried and said that he could n't wash them when Dave, as soon as he had
+washed  his, had thrown the water out.  Then Dad scowled at Dave, and Joe
+passed his plate along for more pumpkin.
+
+Dinner was almost over when Dan, still looking hungry, grinned and asked
+Dave if he was n't going to have some BREAD?  Whereupon Dad jumped up in a
+tearing passion.  "D--n your insolence!" he said to Dan, "make a jest of
+it, would you?"
+
+"Who's jestin'?" Dan answered and grinned again.
+
+"Go!" said Dad, furiously, pointing to the door, "leave my roof, you
+thankless dog!"
+
+Dan went that night.
+
+It was only upon Dad promising faithfully to reduce his account within two
+months that the storekeeper let us have another bag of flour on credit.
+And what a change that bag of flour wrought!  How cheerful the place
+became all at once!  And how enthusiastically Dad spoke of the farm and the
+prospects of the coming season!
+
+Four months had gone by.  The fence had been up some time and ten acres of
+wheat put in; but there had been no rain, and not a grain had come up,
+or was likely to.
+
+Nothing had been heard of Dan since his departure.  Dad spoke about him
+to Mother.  "The scamp!" he said, "to leave me just when I wanted
+help--after all the years I've slaved to feed him and clothe him, see what
+thanks I get! but, mark my word, he'll be glad to come back yet."  But
+Mother would never say anything against Dan.
+
+The weather continued dry.  The wheat did n't come up, and Dad became
+despondent again.
+
+The storekeeper called every week and reminded Dad of his promise.  "I
+would give it you willingly," Dad would say, "if I had it, Mr. Rice; but
+what can I do?  You can't knock blood out of a stone."
+
+We ran short of tea, and Dad thought to buy more with the money Anderson
+owed him for some fencing he had done; but when he asked for it, Anderson
+was very sorry he had n't got it just then, but promised to let him have
+it as soon as he could sell his chaff.  When Mother heard Anderson
+could n't pay, she DID cry, and said there was n't a bit of sugar in the
+house, nor enough cotton to mend the children's bits of clothes.
+
+We could n't very well go without tea, so Dad showed Mother how to make a
+new kind.  He roasted a slice of bread on the fire till it was like a
+black coal, then poured the boiling water over it and let it "draw" well.
+Dad said it had a capital flavour--HE liked it.
+
+Dave's only pair of pants were pretty well worn off him; Joe had n't a
+decent coat for Sunday; Dad himself wore a pair of boots with soles tied
+on with wire; and Mother fell sick.  Dad did all he could--waited on her,
+and talked hopefully of the fortune which would come to us some day; but
+once, when talking to Dave, he broke down, and said he did n't, in the
+name of the Almighty God, know what he would do!  Dave could n't say
+anything--he moped about, too, and home somehow did n't seem like home
+at all.
+
+When Mother was sick and Dad's time was mostly taken up nursing her; when
+there was nothing, scarcely, in the house; when, in fact, the wolf was at
+the very door;--Dan came home with a pocket full of money and swag full of
+greasy clothes.  How Dad shook him by the hand and welcomed him back!
+And how Dan talked of "tallies", "belly-wool", and "ringers" and implored
+Dad, over and over again, to go shearing, or rolling up, or branding--
+ANYTHING rather than work and starve on the selection.
+
+That's fifteen years ago, and Dad is still on the farm.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+The Night We Watched For Wallabies.
+
+
+It had been a bleak July day, and as night came on a bitter westerly howled
+through the trees.  Cold! was n't it cold!  The pigs in the sty, hungry
+and half-fed (we wanted for ourselves the few pumpkins that had survived
+the drought) fought savagely with each other for shelter, and squealed all
+the time like--well, like pigs.  The cows and calves left the place to
+seek shelter away in the mountains; while the draught horses, their hair
+standing up like barbed-wire, leaned sadly over the fence and gazed up at
+the green lucerne.  Joe went about shivering in an old coat of Dad's with
+only one sleeve to it--a calf had fancied the other one day that Dad hung
+it on a post as a mark to go by while ploughing.
+
+"My! it'll be a stinger to-night," Dad remarked to Mrs. Brown--who sat,
+cold-looking, on the sofa--as he staggered inside with an immense log for
+the fire.  A log! Nearer a whole tree!  But wood was nothing in Dad's eyes.
+
+Mrs. Brown had been at our place five or six days.  Old Brown called
+occasionally to see her, so we knew they could n't have quarrelled.
+Sometimes she did a little house-work, but more often she did n't.  We
+talked it over together, but could n't make it out.  Joe asked Mother,
+but she had no idea--so she said.  We were full up, as Dave put it, of
+Mrs. Brown, and wished her out of the place.  She had taken to ordering us
+about, as though she had something to do with us.
+
+After supper we sat round the fire--as near to it as we could without
+burning ourselves--Mrs. Brown and all, and listened to the wind whistling
+outside.  Ah, it was pleasant beside the fire listening to the wind!  When
+Dad had warmed himself back and front he turned to us and said:
+
+"Now, boys, we must go directly and light some fires and keep those
+wallabies back."
+
+That was a shock to us, and we looked at him to see if he were really in
+earnest.  He was, and as serious as a judge.
+
+" TO-NIGHT!" Dave answered, surprisedly--"why to-night any more than last
+night or the night before?  Thought you had decided to let them rip?"
+
+"Yes, but we might as well keep them off a bit longer."
+
+"But there's no wheat there for them to get now.  So what's the good of
+watching them?  There's no sense in THAT."
+
+Dad was immovable.
+
+"Anyway"--whined Joe--" I'M not going--not a night like this--not when I
+ain't got boots."
+
+That vexed Dad.  "Hold your tongue, sir!" he said--"you'll do as you're
+told."
+
+But Dave had n't finished.  "I've been following that harrow since sunrise
+this morning," he said, "and now you want me to go chasing wallabies about
+in the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else but to keep them from
+eating the ground.  It's always the way here, the more one does the more
+he's wanted to do," and he commenced to cry.  Mrs. Brown had something to
+say.  SHE agreed with Dad and thought we ought to go, as the wheat might
+spring up again.
+
+"Pshah!" Dave blurted out between his sobs, while we thought of telling
+her to shut her mouth.
+
+Slowly and reluctantly we left that roaring fireside to accompany Dad that
+bitter night.  It WAS a night!--dark as pitch, silent, forlorn and
+forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue.  And just to keep wallabies
+from eating nothing!  They HAD eaten all the wheat--every blade of it--and
+the grass as well.  What they would start on next--ourselves or the
+cart-harness--was n't quite clear.
+
+We stumbled along in the dark one behind the other, with our hands stuffed
+into our trousers.  Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe, bare-shinned and
+bootless, in the rear.  Now and again he tramped on a Bathurst-burr, and,
+in sitting down to extract the prickle, would receive a cluster of them
+elsewhere.  When he escaped the burr it was only to knock his shin against
+a log or leave a toe-nail or two clinging to a stone.  Joe howled, but the
+wind howled louder, and blew and blew.
+
+Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:
+
+"To HELL with everything!  Whatever he wants bringing us out a night like
+this, I'm DAMNED if I know!"
+
+Dad could n't see very well in the dark, and on this night could n't see
+at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that had
+fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne.  And what a fright they both got!
+The old horse took it worse than Dad--who only tumbled down--for he plunged
+as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting
+every leg he had in the wires.  How the brute struggled!  We stood and
+listened to him.  After kicking panels of the fence down and smashing
+every wire in it, he got loose and made off, taking most of it with him.
+
+"That's one wallaby on the wheat, anyway," Dave muttered, and we giggled.
+WE understood Dave; but Dad did n't open his mouth.
+
+We lost no time lighting the fires.  Then we walked through the "wheat"
+and wallabies!  May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one
+solitary pair of ears--but from the row and scatter they made there were
+a MILLION.
+
+Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire.
+Joe went to sleep--HOW, I don't know.  Then Dad sat beside him, and for
+long intervals would stare silently into the darkness.  Sometimes a string
+of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew
+would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them.
+Yet he seemed to be listening.
+
+We mooched around from fire to fire, hour after hour, and when we wearied
+of heaving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and cursed the
+wind, and the winter, and the night-birds alternately.  It was a lonely,
+wretched occupation.
+
+Now and again Dad would leave his fire to ask us if we could hear a noise.
+We could n't, except that of wallabies and mopokes.  Then he would go back
+and listen again.  He was restless, and, somehow, his heart was n't in the
+wallabies at all.  Dave could n't make him out.
+
+The night wore on.  By-and-by there was a sharp rattle of wires, then a
+rustling noise, and Sal appeared in the glare of the fire.  "DAD!" she
+said.  That was all.  Without a word, Dad bounced up and went back to the
+house with her.
+
+"Something's up!" Dave said, and, half-anxious, half-afraid, we gazed into
+the fire and thought and thought.  Then we stared, nervously, into the
+night, and listened for Dad's return, but heard only the wind and the
+mopoke.
+
+At dawn he appeared again, with a broad smile on his face, and told us
+that mother had got another baby--a fine little chap.  Then we knew why
+Mrs. Brown had been staying at our place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+
+Good Old Bess.
+
+
+Supper was over at Shingle Hut, and we were all seated round the fire--all
+except Joe.  He was mousing.  He stood on the sofa with one ear to the
+wall in a listening attitude, and brandished a table-fork.  There were
+mice--mobs of them--between the slabs and the paper--layers of newspapers
+that had been pasted one on the other for years until they were an inch
+thick; and whenever Joe located a mouse he drove the fork into the wall
+and pinned it--or reckoned he did.
+
+Dad sat pensively at one corner of the fire-place--Dave at the other with
+his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms.
+
+"Think you could ride a race, Dave?" asked Dad.
+
+"Yairs," answered Dave, without taking his eyes off the fire, or his chin
+from his palms--"could, I suppose, if I'd a pair o' lighter boots 'n
+these."
+
+Again they reflected.
+
+Joe triumphantly held up the mutilated form of a murdered mouse and
+invited the household to "Look!"  No one heeded him.
+
+"Would your Mother's go on you?"
+
+"Might," and Dave spat into the fire.
+
+"Anyway," Dad went on, "we must have a go at this handicap with the old
+mare; it's worth trying for, and, believe me, now! she'll surprise a few
+of their flash hacks, will Bess."
+
+"Yairs, she can go all right." And Dave spat again into the fire.
+
+" GO!  I've never known anything to keep up with her.  Why, bless my soul,
+seventeen years ago, when old Redwood owned her, there was n't a horse in
+the district could come within coo-ee of her.  All she wants is a few
+feeds of corn and a gallop or two, and mark my words she'll show some of
+them the way."
+
+Some horse-races were being promoted by the shanty-keeper at the
+Overhaul--seven miles from our selection.  They were the first of the kind
+held in the district, and the stake for the principal event was five
+pounds.  It was n't because Dad was a racing man or subject to turf
+hallucinations in any way that he thought of preparing Bess for the
+meeting.  We sadly needed those five pounds, and, as Dad put it, if the
+mare could only win, it would be an easier and much quicker way of making
+a bit of money than waiting for a crop to grow.
+
+Bess was hobbled and put into a two-acre paddock near the house.  We put
+her there because of her wisdom.  She was a chestnut, full of villainy, an
+absolutely incorrigible old rogue.  If at any time she was wanted when in
+the grass paddock, it required the lot of us from Dad down to yard her, as
+well as the dogs, and every other dog in the neighbourhood.  Not that she
+had any brumby element in her--she would have been easier to yard if she
+had--but she would drive steadily enough, alone or with other horses,
+until she saw the yard, when she would turn and deliberately walk away.
+If we walked to head her she beat us by half a length; if we ran she ran,
+and stopped when we stopped.  That was the aggravating part of her!  When
+it was only to go to the store or the post-office that we wanted her, we
+could have walked there and back a dozen times before we could run her
+down; but, somehow, we generally preferred to work hard catching her
+rather than walk.
+
+When we had spent half the day hunting for the curry-comb, which we
+did n't find, Dad began to rub Bess down with a corn-cob--a shelled
+one--and trim her up a bit.  He pulled her tail and cut the hair off her
+heels with a knife; then he gave her some corn to eat, and told Joe he was
+to have a bundle of thistles cut for her every night.  Now and again,
+while grooming her, Dad would step back a few paces and look upon her
+with pride.
+
+"There's great breeding in the old mare," he would say, "great breeding;
+look at the shoulder on her, and the loin she has; and where did ever you
+see a horse with the same nostril?  Believe me, she'll surprise a few
+of them!"
+
+We began to regard Bess with profound respect; hitherto we had been
+accustomed to pelt her with potatoes and blue-metal.
+
+The only thing likely to prejudice her chance in the race, Dad reckoned,
+was a small sore on her back about the size of a foal's foot.  She had had
+that sore for upwards of ten years to our knowledge, but Dad hoped to have
+it cured before the race came off with a never-failing remedy he had
+discovered--burnt leather and fat.
+
+Every day, along with Dad, we would stand on the fence near the house to
+watch Dave gallop Bess from the bottom of the lane to the barn--about a
+mile.  We could always see him start, but immediately after he would
+disappear down a big gully, and we would see nothing more of the gallop
+till he came to within a hundred yards of us.  And would n't Bess bend to
+it once she got up the hill, and fly past with Dave in the stirrups
+watching her shadow!--when there was one:  she was a little too fine to
+throw a shadow always.  And when Dave and Bess had got back and Joe had
+led her round the yard a few times, Dad would rub the corn-cob over her
+again and apply more burnt-leather and fat to her back.
+
+On the morning preceding the race Dad decided to send Bess over three
+miles to improve her wind.  Dave took her to the crossing at the
+creek--supposed to be three miles from Shingle Hut, but it might have been
+four or it might have been five, and there was a stony ridge on the way.
+
+We mounted the fence and waited.  Tommy Wilkie came along riding a
+plough-horse.  He waited too.
+
+"Ought to be coming now," Dad observed, and Wilkie got excited.  He said
+he would go and wait in the gully and race Dave home.  "Race him home!"
+Dad chuckled, as Tommy cantered off, "he'll never see the way Bess goes."
+Then we all laughed.
+
+Just as someone cried "Here he is!" Dave turned the corner into the lane,
+and Joe fell off the fence and pulled Dad with him.  Dad damned him and
+scrambled up again as fast as he could.  After a while Tommy Wilkie hove
+in sight amid a cloud of dust.  Then came Dave at scarcely faster than a
+trot, and flogging all he knew with a piece of greenhide plough-rein.
+Bess was all-out and floundering.  There was about two hundred yards yet
+to cover.  Dave kept at her--THUD! THUD! Slower and slower she came.
+"Damn the fellow!" Dad said; "what's he beating her for?"  "Stop it,
+you fool!" he shouted.  But Dave sat down on her for the final effort and
+applied the hide faster and faster.  Dad crunched his teeth.
+Once--twice--three times Bess changed her stride, then struck a branch-root
+of a tree that projected a few inches above ground, and over she
+went--CRASH!  Dave fell on his head and lay spread out, motionless.  We
+picked him up and carried him inside, and when Mother saw blood on him she
+fainted straight off without waiting to know if it were his own or not.
+Both looked as good as dead; but Dad, with a bucket of water, soon brought
+them round again.
+
+It was scarcely dawn when we began preparing for a start to the races.
+Dave, after spending fully an hour trying in vain to pull on Mother's
+elastic-side boots, decided to ride in his own heavy bluchers.  We went
+with Dad in the dray.  Mother would n't go; she said she did n't want to
+see her son get killed, and warned Dad that if anything happened the blame
+would for ever be on his head.
+
+We arrived at the Overhaul in good time.  Dad took the horse out of the
+dray and tied him to a tree.  Dave led Bess about, and we stood and
+watched the shanty-keeper unpacking gingerbeer.  Joe asked Dad for sixpence
+to buy some, but Dad had n't any small change.  We remained in front of
+the booth through most of the day, and ran after any corks that popped out
+and handed them in again to the shanty-keeper.  He did n't offer us
+anything--not a thing!
+
+"Saddle up for the Overhaul Handicap!" was at last sung out, and Dad,
+saddle on arm, advanced to where Dave was walking Bess about.  They saddled
+up and Dave mounted, looking as pale as death.
+
+"I don't like ridin' in these boots a bit," he said, with a quiver in
+his voice.
+
+"Wot's up with 'em?" Dad asked.
+
+"They're too big altogether."
+
+"Well, take 'em off then!"
+
+Dave jumped down and pulled them off-leaving his socks on.
+
+More than a dozen horses went out, and when the starter said "Off!"
+did n't they go!  Our eyes at once followed Bess.  Dave was at her right
+from the jump--the very opposite to what Dad had told him.  In the first
+furlong she put fully twenty yards of daylight between herself and the
+field--she came after the field.  At the back of the course you could see
+the whole of Kyle's selection and two of Jerry Keefe's hay-stacks between
+her and the others.  We did n't follow her any further.
+
+After the race was won and they had cheered the winner, Dad was n't to be
+found anywhere.
+
+Dave sat on the grass quite exhausted.  "Ain't y' goin' to pull the saddle
+off?" Joe asked.
+
+"No," he said.  "I AIN'T.  You don't want everyone to see her back,
+do you?"
+
+Joe wished he had sixpence.
+
+About an hour afterwards Dad came staggering along arm-in-arm with another
+man--an old fencing-mate of his, so he made out.
+
+"Thur yar," he said, taking off his hat and striking Bess on the rump with
+it; "besh bred mare in the worl'."
+
+The fencing-mate looked at her, but did n't say anything; he could n't.
+
+"Eh?" Dad went on; "say sh'ain't?  L'ere-ever y' name is--betcher pound
+sh'is."
+
+Then a jeering and laughing crowd gathered round, and Dave wished he
+had n't come to the races.
+
+"She ain't well," said a tall man to Dad--"short in her gallops." Then a
+short, bulky individual without whiskers shoved his face up into Dad's and
+asked him if Bess was a mare or a cow.  Dad became excited, and only that
+old Anderson came forward and took him away there must have been a row.
+
+Anderson put him in the dray and drove it home to Shingle Hut.
+
+Dad reckons now that there is nothing in horse-racing, and declares it a
+fraud.  He says, further, that an honest man, by training and racing a
+horse, is only helping to feed and fatten the rogues and vagabonds that
+live on the sport.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+
+Cranky Jack.
+
+
+It was early in the day.  Traveller after traveller was trudging by Shingle
+Hut.  One who carried no swag halted at the rails and came in.  He asked
+Dad for a job.  "I dunno," Dad answered--"What wages would you want?"
+The man said he would n't want any.  Dad engaged him at once.
+
+And SUCH a man!  Tall, bony, heavy-jawed, shaven with a reaping-hook,
+apparently.  He had a thick crop of black hair--shaggy, unkempt, and full
+of grease, grass, and fragments of dry gum-leaves.  On his head were two
+old felt hats--one sewn inside the other.  On his back a shirt made from
+a piece of blue blanket, with white cotton stitches striding up and down
+it like lines of fencing.  His trousers were gloom itself; they were a
+problem, and bore reliable evidence of his industry.  No ordinary person
+would consider himself out of work while in them.  And the new-comer was
+no ordinary person.  He seemed to have all the woe of the world upon him;
+he was as sad and weird-looking as a widow out in the wet.
+
+In the yard was a large heap of firewood--remarkable truth!--which Dad
+told him to chop up.  He began.  And how he worked!  The axe rang
+again--particularly when it left the handle--and pieces of wood scattered
+everywhere.  Dad watched him chopping for a while, then went with Dave
+to pull corn.
+
+For hours the man chopped away without once looking at the sun.  Mother
+came out.  Joy!  She had never seen so much wood cut before.  She was
+delighted.  She made a cup of tea and took it to the man, and apologised
+for having no sugar to put in it.  He paid no attention to her; he worked
+harder.  Mother waited, holding the tea in her hand.  A lump of wood
+nearly as big as a shingle flew up and shaved her left ear.  She put the
+tea on the ground and went in search of eggs for dinner.  (We were out
+of meat--the kangaroo-dog was lame.  He had got "ripped" the last time
+we killed.)
+
+The tea remained on the ground.  Chips fell into it.  The dog saw it.
+He limped towards it eagerly, and dipped the point of his nose in it.
+It burnt him.  An aged rooster strutted along and looked sideways at it.
+HE distrusted it and went away.  It attracted the pig--a sow with nine
+young ones.  She waddled up, and poked the cup over with her nose; then
+she sat down on it, while the family joyously gathered round the saucer.
+Still the man chopped on.
+
+Mother returned--without any eggs.  She rescued the crockery from the pigs
+and turned curiously to the man.  She said, "Why, you've let them take the
+tea!"  No answer.  She wondered.
+
+Suddenly, and for the fiftieth time, the axe flew off.  The man held the
+handle and stared at the woodheap.  Mother watched him.  He removed his
+hats, and looked inside them.  He remained looking inside them.
+
+Mother watched him more closely.  His lips moved.  He said, "LISTEN TO
+THEM!  THEY'RE COMING!  I KNEW THEY'D FOLLOW!"
+
+"Who?" asked Mother, trembling slightly.
+
+"THEY'RE IN THE WOOD!" he went on.  "Ha, ha!  I've got them.  They'll
+never get out; NEVER GET OUT!"
+
+Mother fled, screaming.  She ran inside and called the children.  Sal
+assisted her.  They trooped in like wallabies--all but Joe.  He was away
+earning money.  He was getting a shilling a week from Maloney, for chasing
+cockatoos from the corn.
+
+They closed and barricaded the doors, and Sal took down the gun, which
+Mother made her hide beneath the bed.  They sat listening, anxiously and
+intently.  The wind began to rise.  A lump of soot fell from the chimney
+into the fireplace--where there was no fire.  Mother shuddered.  Some more
+fell.  Mother jumped to her feet.  So did Sal.  They looked at each other
+in dismay.  The children began to cry.  The chain for hanging the kettle
+on started swinging to and fro.  Mother's knees gave way.  The chain
+continued swinging.  A pair of bare legs came down into the fireplace--they
+were curled round the chain.  Mother collapsed.  Sal screamed, and ran to
+the door, but could n't open it.  The legs left the chain and dangled in
+the air.  Sal called "Murder!"
+
+Her cry was answered.  It was Joe, who had been over at Maloney's making
+his fortune.  He came to the rescue.  He dropped out of the chimney and
+shook himself.  Sal stared at him.  He was calm and covered from head to
+foot with soot and dirt.  He looked round and said, "Thought yuz could
+keep me out, did'n'y'?"  Sal could only look at him.  "I saw yuz all run
+in," he was saying, when Sal thought of Mother, and sprang to her.  Sal
+shook her, and slapped her, and threw water on her till she sat up and
+stared about.  Then Joe stared.
+
+Dad came in for dinner--which, of course, was n't ready.  Mother began to
+cry, and asked him what he meant by keeping a madman on the place, and
+told him she KNEW he wanted to have them all murdered.  Dad did n't
+understand.  Sal explained.  Then he went out and told the man to "Clear!"
+The man simply said, "No."
+
+"Go on, now!" Dad said, pointing to the rails.  The man smiled at the
+wood-heap as he worked.  Dad waited.  "Ain't y' going?" he repeated.
+
+"Leave me alone when I'm chopping wood for the missus," the man answered;
+then smiled and muttered to himself.  Dad left him alone and went inside
+wondering.
+
+Next day Mother and Dad were talking at the barn.  Mother, bare-headed,
+was holding some eggs in her apron.  Dad was leaning on a hoe.
+
+"I am AFRAID of him," Mother said; "it's not right you should keep him
+about the place.  No one's safe with such a man.  Some day he'll take it
+in his head to kill us all, and then--"
+
+"Tut, tut, woman; poor old Jack!  he's harmless as a baby."
+
+"All right," (sullenly); "you'll see!"
+
+Dad laughed and went away with the hoe on his shoulder to cut burr.
+
+Middle of summer.  Dad and Dave in the paddock mowing lucerne.  Jack
+sinking post-holes for a milking-yard close to the house.  Joe at
+intervals stealing behind him to prick him with straws through a rent in
+the rear of his patched moleskins.  Little Bill--in readiness to
+run--standing off, enjoying the sport.
+
+Inside the house sat Mother and Sal, sewing and talking of Maloney's
+new baby.
+
+"Dear me," said Mother; "it's the tiniest mite of a thing I ever saw;
+why, bless me, anyone of y' at its age would have made three of--"
+
+"MIND, Mother!" Sal shrieked, jumping up on the sofa.  Mother screamed and
+mounted the table.  Both gasped for breath, and leaning cautiously over
+peeped down at a big black snake which had glided in at the front door.
+Then, pale and scared-looking, they stared across at each other.
+
+The snake crawled over to the safe and drank up some milk which had been
+spilt on the floor.  Mother saw its full length and groaned.  The snake
+wriggled to the leg of the table.
+
+"Look out!" cried Sal, gathering up her skirts and dancing about on
+the sofa.
+
+Mother squealed hysterically.
+
+Joe appeared.  He laughed.
+
+"You wretch!" Mother yelled.  "Run!--RUN, and fetch your father!"
+
+Joe went and brought Jack.
+
+"Oh-h, my God!"--Mother moaned, as Jack stood at the door, staring
+strangely at her.  "Kill it!--why don't he kill it?"
+
+Jack did n't move, but talked to himself.  Mother shuddered.
+
+The reptile crawled to the bedroom door.  Then for the first time the
+man's eyes rested upon it.  It glided into the bedroom, and Mother and Sal
+ran off for Dad.
+
+Jack fixed his eyes on the snake and continued muttering to himself.
+Several times it made an attempt to mount the dressing-table.  Finally it
+succeeded.  Suddenly Jack's demeanour changed.  He threw off his ragged
+hat and talked wildly.  A fearful expression filled his ugly features.
+His voice altered.
+
+"You're the Devil!" he said; "THE DEVIL!  THE DEVIL!  The missus brought
+you--ah-h-h!"
+
+The snake's head passed behind the looking-glass.  Jack drew nearer,
+clenching his fists and gesticulating.  As he did he came full before the
+looking-glass and saw, perhaps for the first time in his life, his own
+image.  An unearthly howl came from him.  "ME FATHER!" he shouted, and
+bolted from the house.
+
+Dad came in with the long-handled shovel, swung it about the room, and
+smashed pieces off the cradle, and tore the bed-curtains down, and made a
+great noise altogether.  Finally, he killed the snake and put it on the
+fire; and Joe and the cat watched it wriggle on the hot coals.
+
+Meanwhile, Jack, bare-headed, rushed across the yard.  He ran over little
+Bill, and tumbled through the wire-fence on to the broad of his back.
+He roared like a wild beast, clutched at space, spat, and kicked his heels
+in the air.
+
+"Let me up!---AH-H-H!--let go me throat!" he hissed.
+
+The dog ran over and barked at him.  He found his feet again, and, making
+off, ran through the wheat, glancing back over his shoulder as he tore
+along.  He crossed into the grass paddock, and running to a big tree
+dodged round and round it.  Then from tree to tree he went, and that
+evening at sundown, when Joe was bringing the cows home, Jack was still
+flying from "his father".
+
+After supper.
+
+"I wonder now what the old fool saw in that snake to send him off his head
+like that?" Dad said, gazing wonderingly into the fire.  "He sees plenty
+of them, goodness knows."
+
+"That was n't it.  It was n't the snake at all," Mother said; "there was
+madness in the man's eyes all the while.  I saw it the moment he came to
+the door." She appealed to Sal.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Dad; "NONSENSE!" and he tried to laugh.
+
+"Oh, of course it's NONSENSE," Mother went on; "everything I say is
+nonsense.  It won't be nonsense when you come home some day and find us
+all on the floor with our throats cut."
+
+"Pshaw!" Dad answered; "what's the use of talking like that?" Then to
+Dave:  "Go out and see if he's in the barn!"
+
+Dave fidgetted.  He did n't like the idea.  Joe giggled.
+
+"Surely you're not FRIGHTENED?" Dad shouted.
+
+Dave coloured up.
+
+"No--don't think so," he said; and, after a pause, "YOU go and see."
+
+It was Dad's turn to feel uneasy.  He pretended to straighten the fire,
+and coughed several times.  "Perhaps it's just as well," he said, "to let
+him be to-night."
+
+Of course, Dad was n't afraid; he SAID he was n't, but he drove the pegs
+in the doors and windows before going to bed that night.
+
+Next morning, Dad said to Dave and Joe, "Come 'long, and we'll see where
+he's got to."
+
+In a gully at the back of the grass-paddock they found him.  He was
+ploughing--sitting astride the highest limb of a fallen tree, and, in a
+hoarse voice and strange, calling out--"Gee, Captain!--come here,
+Tidy!--WA-AY!"
+
+"Blowed if I know," Dad muttered, coming to a standstill.  "Wonder if he
+is clean mad?"
+
+Dave was speechless, and Joe began to tremble.
+
+They listened.  And as the man's voice rang out in the quiet gully and the
+echoes rumbled round the ridge and the affrighted birds flew up, the place
+felt eerie somehow.
+
+"It's no use bein' afraid of him," Dad went on.  "We must go and bounce
+him, that's all." But there was a tremor in Dad's voice which Dave
+did n't like.
+
+"See if he knows us, anyway."--and Dad shouted, "HEY-Y!"
+
+Jack looked up and immediately scrambled from the limb.  That was enough
+for Dave.  He turned and made tracks.  So did Dad and Joe.  They ran.
+No one could have run harder.  Terror overcame Joe.  He squealed and
+grabbed hold of Dad's shirt, which was ballooning in the wind.
+
+"Let go!" Dad gasped.  "DAMN Y', let me GO!  "--trying to shake him off.
+But Joe had great faith in his parent, and clung to him closely.
+
+When they had covered a hundred yards or so, Dave glanced back, and seeing
+that Jack was n't pursuing them, stopped and chuckled at the others.
+
+"Eh?" Dad said, completely winded--"Eh?"  Then to Dave, when he got
+some breath:
+
+"Well, you ARE an ass of a fellow.  (PUFF!).  What th' DEVIL did y' RUN f'?"
+
+"Wot did I run f'?  What did YOU run f'?"
+
+"Bah!" and Dad boldly led the way back.
+
+"Now look here (turning fiercely upon Joe), don't you come catching hold
+of me again, or if y' DO I'll knock y'r d--d head off!...Clear home
+altogether, and get under the bed if y're as frightened as THAT."
+
+Joe slunk behind.
+
+But when Dad DID approach Jack, which was n't until he had talked a great
+deal to him across a big log, the latter did n't show any desire to take
+life, but allowed himself to be escorted home and locked in the barn
+quietly enough.
+
+Dad kept Jack confined in the barn several days, and if anyone approached
+the door or the cracks he would ask:
+
+"Is me father there yet?"
+
+"Your father's dead and buried long ago, man," Dad used to tell him.
+
+"Yes," he would say, "but he's alive again.  The missus keeps him in
+there"--indicating the house.
+
+And sometimes when Dad was not about Joe would put his mouth to a crack
+and say:
+
+"Here's y'r FATHER, Jack!"  Then, like a caged beast, the man would howl
+and tramp up and down, his eyes starting  out of his head, while Joe would
+bolt inside and tell Mother that "Jack's getting out,", and nearly send
+her to her grave.
+
+But one day Jack DID get out, and, while Mother and Sal were ironing came
+to the door with the axe on his shoulder.
+
+They dropped the irons and shrank into a corner and cowered piteously--too
+scared even to cry out.
+
+He took no notice of them, but, moving stealthily on tip-toes, approached
+the bedroom door and peeped in.  He paused just a moment to grip the axe
+with both hands.  Then with a howl and a bound he entered the room and
+shattered the looking-glass into fragments.
+
+He bent down and looked closely at the pieces.
+
+"He's dead now," he said calmly, and walked out.  Then he went to work at
+the post-holes again, just as though nothing had happened.
+
+Fifteen years have passed since then, and the man is still at Shingle Hut.
+He was the best horse Dad ever had.  He slaved from daylight till dark;
+keeps no Sunday; knows no companion; lives chiefly on meat and machine
+oil; domiciles in the barn; and has never asked for a rise in his wages.
+His name we never knew.  We call him "Jack." The neighbours called him
+"CRANKY Jack."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+
+A Kangaroo-Hunt from Shingle Hut.
+
+
+We always looked forward to Sunday.  It was our day of sport.  Once, I
+remember, we thought it would never come.  We longed restlessly for it,
+and the more we longed the more it seemed to linger.
+
+A meeting of selectors had been held; war declared against the marsupial;
+and a hunt on a grand scale arranged for this particular Sabbath.  Of
+course those in the neighbourhood hunted the kangaroo every Sunday, but
+"on their own," and always on foot, which had its fatigues.  This was to
+be a raid EN MASSE and on horseback.  The whole country-side was to
+assemble at Shingle Hut and proceed thence.  It assembled; and what a
+collection!  Such a crowd! such gear! such a tame lot of horses! and such
+a motley swarm of lean, lank, lame kangaroo-dogs!
+
+We were not ready.  The crowd sat on their horses and waited at the
+slip-rails.  Dogs trooped into the yard by the dozen.  One pounced on a
+fowl; another lamed the pig; a trio put the cat up a peach-tree; one with
+a thirst mounted the water-cask and looked down it, while the bulk of the
+brutes trotted inside and disputed with Mother who should open the safe.
+
+Dad loosed our three, and pleased they were to feel themselves free.  They
+had been chained up all the week, with scarcely anything to eat.  Dad
+did n't believe in too much feeding.  He had had wide experience in dogs
+and coursing "at home" on his grandfather's large estates, and always
+found them fleetest when empty.  OURS ought to have been fleet as
+locomotives.
+
+Dave, showing a neat seat, rode out of the yard on Bess, fresh and fat
+and fit to run for a kingdom.  They awaited Dad.  He was standing beside
+HIS mount--Farmer, the plough-horse, who was arrayed in winkers with
+green-hide reins, and an old saddle with only one flap.  He was holding an
+earnest argument with Joe...Still the crowd waited.  Still Dad and Joe
+argued the point...There was a murmur and a movement and much merriment.
+Dad was coming; so was Joe--perched behind him, "double bank," rapidly
+wiping the tears from his eyes with his knuckles.
+
+Hooray!  They were off.  Paddy Maloney and Dave took the lead, heading for
+kangaroo country along the foot of Dead Man's Mountain and through Smith's
+paddock, where there was a low wire fence to negotiate.  Paddy spread his
+coat over it and jumped his mare across.  He was a horseman, was Pat.
+The others twisted a stick in the wires, and proceeded carefully to lead
+their horses over.  When it came to Farmer's turn he hesitated.  Dad
+coaxed him.  Slowly he put one leg across, as if feeling his way, and
+paused again.  Joe was on his back behind the saddle.  Dad tugged hard at
+the winkers.  Farmer was inclined to withdraw his leg.  Dad was determined
+not to let him.  Farmer's heel got caught against the wire, and he began
+to pull back and grunt--so did Dad.  Both pulled hard.  Anderson and old
+Brown ran to Dad's assistance.  The trio planted their heels in the ground
+and leaned back.
+
+Joe became afraid.  He clutched at the saddle and cried, "Let me off!"
+"Stick to him!" said Paddy Maloney, hopping over the fence, "Stick to him!"
+He kicked Farmer what he afterwards called "a sollicker on the tail."
+Again he kicked him.  Still Farmer strained and hung back.  Once more he
+let him have it.  Then--off flew the winkers, and over went Dad and
+Anderson and old Brown, and down rolled Joe and Farmer on the other side
+of the fence.  The others leant against their horses and laughed the laugh
+of their lives.  "Worse 'n a lot of d--d jackasses," Dad was heard to say.
+They caught Farmer and led him to the fence again.  He jumped it, and rose
+feet higher than he had any need to, and had not old Brown dodged him just
+when he did he would be a dead man now.
+
+A little further on the huntsmen sighted a mob of kangaroos.  Joy and
+excitement.  A mob?  It was a swarm!  Away they hopped.  Off scrambled the
+dogs, and off flew Paddy Maloney and Dave--the rest followed anyhow, and
+at varying speeds.
+
+That all those dogs should have selected and followed the same kangaroo
+was sad and humiliating.  And such a waif of a thing, too!  Still, they
+stuck to it.  For more than a mile, down a slope, the weedy marsupial
+outpaced them, but when it came to the hill the daylight between rapidly
+began to lessen.  A few seconds more and all would have been over, but a
+straggling, stupid old ewe, belonging to an unneighbourly squatter, darted
+up from the shade of a tree right in the way of Maloney's Brindle, who was
+leading.  Brindle always preferred mutton to marsupial, so he let the
+latter slide and secured the ewe.  The death-scene was most imposing.
+The ground around was strewn with small tufts of white wool.  There was a
+complete circle of eager, wriggling dogs--all jammed together, heads down,
+and tails elevated.  Not a scrap of the ewe was visible.  Paddy Maloney
+jumped down and proceeded to batter the brutes vigorously with a waddy.
+As the others arrived, they joined him.  The dogs were hungry, and fought
+for every inch of the sheep.  Those not laid out were pulled away, and!
+when old Brown had dragged the last one off by the hind legs, all that was
+left of that ewe was four feet and some skin.
+
+Dad shook his head and looked grave--so did Anderson.  After a short rest
+they decided to divide into parties and work the ridges.  A start was made.
+Dad's contingent--consisting of himself and Joe, Paddy Maloney, Anderson,
+old Brown, and several others--started a mob.  This time the dogs separated
+and scampered off in all directions.  In quick time  Brown's black slut
+bailed up an "old man" full of fight.  Nothing was more desirable.  He was
+a monster, a king kangaroo; and as he raised himself to his full height on
+his toes and tail he looked formidable--a grand and majestic demon of the
+bush.  The slut made no attempt to tackle him; she stood off with her
+tongue out.  Several small dogs belonging to Anderson barked energetically
+at him, even venturing occasionally to run behind and bite his tail.  But,
+further than grabbing them in his arms and embracing them, he took no
+notice.  There he towered, his head back and chest well out, awaiting the
+horsemen.  They came, shouting and hooraying.  He faced them defiantly.
+Anderson, aglow with excitement, dismounted and aimed a lump of rock at
+his head, which laid out one of the little dogs.  They pelted him with
+sticks and stones till their arms were tired, but they might just as well
+have pelted a dead cow.  Paddy Maloney took out his stirrup.  "Look out!"
+he cried.  They looked out.  Then, galloping up, he swung the iron at the
+marsupial, and nearly knocked his horse's eye out.
+
+Dad was disgusted.  He and Joe approached the enemy on Farmer.  Dad carried
+a short stick.  The "old man" looked him straight in the face.  Dad poked
+the stick at him.  He promptly grabbed hold of it, and a piece of Dad's
+hand as well.  Farmer had not been in many battles--no Defence Force man
+ever owned him.  He threw up his head and snorted, and commenced a retreat.
+The kangaroo followed  him up and seized Dad by the shirt.  Joe evinced
+signs of timidity.  He lost faith in Dad, and, half jumping, half falling,
+he landed on the ground, and set out speedily for a tree.  Dad lost the
+stick, and in attempting to brain the brute with his fist he overbalanced
+and fell out of the saddle.  He struggled to his feet, and clutched his
+antagonist affectionately by both paws--standing well away.  Backwards and
+forwards and round and round they moved.  "Use your knife!" Anderson
+called out, getting further away himself.  But Dad dared not relax his
+grip.  Paddy Maloney ran behind the brute several times to lay him out
+with a waddy, but each time he turned and fled before striking the blow.
+Dad thought to force matters, and began kicking his assailant vigorously
+in the stomach.  Such dull, heavy thuds!  The kangaroo retaliated, putting
+Dad on the defensive.  Dad displayed remarkable suppleness about the hips.
+At last the brute fixed his deadly toe in Dad's belt.
+
+It was an anxious moment, but the belt broke, and Dad breathed freely
+again.  He was acting entirely on the defensive, but an awful consciousness
+of impending misfortune assailed him.  His belt was gone, and--his trousers
+began to slip--slip--slip!  He called wildly to the others for God's sake
+to do something.  They helped with advice.  He yelled "Curs!" and
+"Cowards!" back at them.  Still, as he danced around with his strange and
+ungainly partner, his trousers kept slipping--slipping.  For the fiftieth
+time and more he glanced eagerly over his shoulder for some haven of
+safety.  None was near.  And then--oh, horror!--down THEY slid calmly and
+noiselessly.  Poor Dad!  He was at a disadvantage; his leg work was
+hampered.  He was hobbled.  Could he only get free of them altogether!
+But he could n't--his feet were large.  He took a lesson from the foe and
+jumped--jumped this way and that way, and round about, while large drops
+of perspiration rolled off him.  The small dogs displayed renewed and
+ridiculous ferocity, often mistaking Dad for the marsupial.  At last Dad
+became exhausted--there was no spring left in him.  Once he nearly went
+down.  Twice he tripped.  He staggered again--down he was going--down--down,
+down and down he fell!  But at the same moment, and, as though they had
+dropped from the clouds, Brindle and five or six other dogs pounced on
+the "old man."  The rest may be imagined.
+
+Dad lay on the ground to recover his wind, and when he mounted Farmer
+again and silently turned for home, Paddy Maloney was triumphantly seated
+on the carcase of the fallen enemy, exultingly explaining how he missed
+the brute's head with the stirrup-iron, and claiming the tail.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+
+Dave's Snakebite.
+
+
+One hot day, as we were finishing dinner, a sheriff's bailiff rode up to
+the door.  Norah saw him first.  She was dressed up ready to go over to
+Mrs. Anderson's to tea.  Sometimes young Harrison had tea at Anderson's--
+Thursdays, usually.  This was Thursday; and Norah was starting early,
+because it was "a good step of a way".
+
+She reported the visitor.  Dad left the table, munching some bread, and
+went out to him.  Mother looked out of the door; Sal went to the window;
+Little Bill and Tom peeped through a crack; Dave remained at his dinner;
+and Joe knavishly seized the opportunity of exploring the table for
+leavings, finally seating himself in Dad's place, and commencing where Dad
+had left off.
+
+"Jury summons," said the meek bailiff, extracting a paper from his
+breast-pocket, and reading, "Murtagh Joseph Rudd, selector,
+Shingle Hut...Correct?"
+
+Dad nodded assent.
+
+"Got any water?"
+
+There was n't a drop in the cask, so Dad came in and asked Mother if there
+was any tea left.  She pulled a long, solemn, Sunday-school face, and
+looked at Joe, who was holding the teapot upside-down, shaking the
+tea-leaves into his cup.
+
+"Tea, Dad?" he chuckled--"by golly!"
+
+Dad did n't think it worth while going out to the bailiff again.
+He sent Joe.
+
+"Not any at all?"
+
+"Nothink," said Joe.
+
+"H'm!  Nulla bona, eh?" And the Law smiled at its own joke and went off
+thirsty.
+
+Thus it was that Dad came to be away one day when his great presence of
+mind and ability as a bush doctor was most required at Shingle Hut.
+
+Dave took Dad's place at the plough.  One of the horses--a colt that Dad
+bought with the money he got for helping with Anderson's crop--had only
+just been broken.  He was bad at starting.  When touched with the rein he
+would stand and wait until the old furrow-horse put in a few steps; then
+plunge to get ahead of him, and if a chain or a swingle-tree or something
+else did n't break, and Dave kept the plough in, he ripped and tore along
+in style, bearing in and bearing out,  and knocking the old horse about
+till that much-enduring animal became as cranky as himself, and the pace
+terrible.  Down would go the plough-handles, and, with one tremendous pull
+on the reins, Dave would haul them back on to their rumps.  Then he would
+rush up and kick the colt on the root of the tail, and if that did n't
+make him put his leg over the chains and kick till he ran a hook into his
+heel and lamed himself, or broke something, it caused him to rear up and
+fall back on the plough and snort and strain and struggle till there was
+not a stitch left on him but the winkers.
+
+Now, if Dave was noted for one thing more than another it was for his
+silence.  He scarcely ever took the trouble to speak.  He hated to be
+asked a question, and mostly answered by nodding his head.  Yet, though he
+never seemed to practise, he could, when his blood was fairly up, swear
+with distinction and effect.  On this occasion he swore through the whole
+afternoon without repeating himself.
+
+Towards evening Joe took the reins and began to drive.  He had n't gone
+once around when, just as the horses approached a big dead tree that had
+been left standing in the cultivation, he planted his left foot heavily
+upon a Bathurst-burr that had been cut and left lying.  It clung to him.
+He hopped along on one leg, trying to kick it off; still it clung to him.
+He fell down.  The horses and the tree got mixed up, and everything was
+confusion.
+
+Dave abused Joe remorselessly.  "Go on!" he howled, waving in the air a
+fistful of grass and weeds which he had pulled from the nose of the
+plough; "clear out of this altogether!--you're only a damn nuisance."
+
+Joe's eyes rested on the fistful of grass.  They lit up suddenly.
+
+"L-l-look out, Dave," he stuttered; "y'-y' got a s-s-snake."
+
+Dave dropped the grass promptly.  A deaf-adder crawled out of it.  Joe
+killed it.  Dave looked closely at his hand, which was all scratches and
+scars.  He looked at it again; then he sat on the beam of the plough,
+pale and miserable-looking.
+
+"D-d-did it bite y', Dave?"  No answer.
+
+Joe saw a chance to distinguish himself, and took it.  He ran home, glad
+to be the bearer of the news, and told Mother that "Dave's got bit by a
+adder--a sudden-death adder--right on top o' the finger."
+
+How Mother screamed!  "My God!  whatever shall we do?  Run quick," she
+said, "and bring Mr. Maloney.  Dear! oh dear! oh dear!"
+
+Joe had not calculated on this injunction.  He dropped his head and said
+sullenly:  "Wot, walk all the way over there?"
+
+Before he could say another word a tin-dish left a dinge on the back of
+his skull that will accompany him to his grave if he lives to be a
+thousand.
+
+"You wretch, you!  Why don't you run when I tell you?"
+
+Joe sprang in the air like a shot wallaby.
+
+"I'll not go AT ALL now--y' see!" he answered, starting to cry.  Then Sal
+put on her hat and ran for Maloney.
+
+Meanwhile Dave took the horses out, walked inside, and threw himself on
+the sofa without uttering a word.  He felt ill.
+
+Mother was in a paroxysm of fright.  She threw her arms about frantically
+and cried for someone to come.  At  last she sat down and tried to think
+what she could do.  She thought of the very thing, and ran for the
+carving-knife, which she handed to Dave with shut eyes.  He motioned her
+with a disdainful movement of the elbow to take it away.
+
+Would Maloney never come!  He was coming, hat in hand, and running for
+dear life across the potato-paddock.  Behind him was his man.  Behind his
+man--Sal, out of breath.  Behind her, Mrs. Maloney and the children.
+
+"Phwat's the thrubble?" cried Maloney.  "Bit be a dif--adher?  O, be the
+tares of war!"  Then he asked Dave numerous questions as to how it
+happened, which Joe answered with promptitude and pride.  Dave simply
+shrugged his shoulders and turned his face to the wall.  Nothing was to be
+got out of him.
+
+Maloney held a short consultation with himself.  Then--"Hould up yer hand!"
+he said, bending over Dave with a knife.  Dave thrust out his arm
+violently, knocked the instrument to the other side of the room, and
+kicked wickedly.
+
+"The pison's wurrkin'," whispered Maloney quite loud.
+
+"Oh, my gracious!" groaned Mother.
+
+"The poor crathur," said Mrs. Maloney.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Phwhat finger's bit?" asked Maloney.  Joe thought it was the littlest one
+of the lot.
+
+He approached the sofa again, knife in hand.
+
+"Show me yer finger," he said to Dave.
+
+For the first time Dave spoke.  He said:
+
+"Damn y'--what the devil do y' want?  Clear out and lea' me 'lone."
+
+Maloney hesitated.  There was a long silence.  Dave commenced breathing
+heavily.
+
+"It's maikin' 'm slape," whispered Maloney, glancing over his shoulder at
+the women.
+
+"Don't let him!  Don't let him!"  Mother wailed.
+
+"Salvation to 's all!" muttered Mrs. Maloney, piously crossing herself.
+
+Maloney put away the knife and beckoned to his man, who was looking on
+from the door.  They both took a firm  hold of Dave and stood him upon his
+feet.  He looked hard and contemptuously at Maloney for some seconds.
+Then with gravity and deliberation Dave said:  "Now wot 'n th' devil are
+y' up t'?  Are y' mad?"
+
+"Walk 'm along, Jaimes--walk 'm--along," was all Maloney had to say.  And
+out into the yard they marched him.  How Dave did struggle to get
+away!--swearing and cursing Maloney for a cranky Irishman till he foamed
+at the mouth, all of which the other put down to snake-poison.  Round and
+round the yard and up and down it they trotted him till long after dark,
+until there was n't a struggle left in him.
+
+They placed him on the sofa again, Maloney keeping him awake with a strap.
+How Dave ground his teeth and kicked and swore whenever he felt that
+strap!  And they sat and watched him.
+
+It was late in the night when Dad came from town.  He staggered in with
+the neck of a bottle showing out of his pocket.  In his hand was a piece
+of paper wrapped round the end of some yards of sausage.  The dog outside
+carried the other end.
+
+"An' 'e ishn't dead?" Dad said, after hearing what had befallen Dave.
+"Don' b'leevsh id--wuzhn't bit.  Die 'fore shun'own ifsh desh ad'er
+bish 'm."
+
+"Bit!" Dave said bitterly, turning round to the surprise of everyone.
+"I never said I was BIT.  No one said I was--only those snivelling idiots
+and that pumpkin-headed Irish pig there."
+
+Maloney lowered his jaw and opened his eyes.
+
+"Zhackly.  Did'n' I (HIC) shayzo, 'Loney?  Did'n' I, eh, ol' wom'n!" Dad
+mumbled, and dropped his chin on his chest.
+
+Maloney began to take another view of the matter.  He put a leading
+question to Joe.
+
+"He MUSTER been bit," Joe answered, "'cuz he had the d-death adder in his
+hand."
+
+More silence.
+
+"Mush die 'fore shun'own," Dad murmured.
+
+Maloney was thinking hard.  At last he spoke.  "Bridgy!" he cried, "where's
+th' childer?"  Mrs. Maloney gathered them up.
+
+Just then Dad seemed to be dreaming.  He swayed about.  His head hung
+lower, and he muttered, "Shen'l'm'n, yoush disharged wish shanksh y'cun'ry."
+
+The Maloneys left.
+
+Dave is still alive and well, and silent as ever; and if any one question
+is more intolerable and irritating to him than another, it is to be asked
+if he remembers the time he was bitten by deaf-adder.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+
+Dad And The Donovans.
+
+
+A sweltering summer's afternoon.  A heat that curled and withered the very
+weeds.  The corn-blades drooping, sulking still.  Mother and Sal ironing,
+mopping their faces with a towel and telling each other how hot it was.
+The dog stretched across the doorway.  A child's bonnet on the floor--the
+child out in the sun.  Two horsemen approaching the slip-rails.
+
+Dad had gone down the gully to Farmer, who had been sick for four days.
+The ploughing was at a standstill in consequence, for we had only two
+draught-horses.  Dad erected a shelter over him, made of boughs, to keep
+the sun off.  Two or three times a day he cut greenstuff for him--which
+the cows ate.  He humped water to him which he sullenly refused to drink;
+and did all in his power to persuade Farmer to get up and go on with the
+ploughing.  I don't know if Dad knew anything of mesmerism, but he used to
+stand for long intervals dumbly staring the old horse full in the eyes
+till in a commanding voice he would bid him, "Get up!" But Farmer lacked
+the patriotism of the back-block poets.  He was obdurate, and not once did
+he "awake," not to mention "arise".
+
+This afternoon, as Dad approached his dumb patient, he suddenly put down
+the bucket of water which he was carrying and ran, shouting angrily.  A
+flock of crows flew away from Farmer and "cawed" from a tree close by.
+Dad was excited, and when he saw that one of the animal's eyes was gone
+and a stream of blood trickled over its nose he sat down and hid his face
+in his big rough hands.
+
+"CAW, CAW!" came from the tree.
+
+Dad rose and looked up.
+
+" CURSE you!" he hissed--"you black wretches of hell!"
+
+"CAW, CAW, CAW"
+
+He ran towards the tree as though he would hurl it to the ground, and away
+flew the crows.
+
+Joe arrived.
+
+"W-w-wuz they at him, Dad?"
+
+Dad turned on him, trembling with rage.
+
+"Oh, YOU son of the Devil!" he commenced.  "YOU worthless pup, you!  Look
+there!  Do you see that?" (He pointed to the horse.) "Did n't I tell you
+to mind him? Did n'--"
+
+"Yes," snivelled Joe; "but Anderson's dog had a k-k-k-angaroo bailed up."
+
+"DAMN you, be off out of this!" And Dad aimed a block of wood at Joe which
+struck him on the back as he made away.  But nothing short of two broken
+legs would stop Joe, who the next instant had dashed among the corn like
+an emu into a scrub.
+
+Dad returned to the house, foaming and vowing to take the gun and shoot
+Joe down like a wallaby.  But when he saw two horses hanging up he
+hesitated and would have gone away again had Mother not called out that he
+was wanted.  He went in reluctantly.
+
+Red Donovan and his son, Mick, were there.  Donovan was the publican,
+butcher, and horse-dealer at the Overhaul.  He was reputed to be well-in,
+though some said that if everybody had their own he would n't be worth
+much.  He was a glib-tongued Irishman who knew everything--or fondly
+imagined he did--from the law to horse-surgery.  There was money to be
+made out of selections, he reckoned, if selectors only knew how to make
+it--the majority, he proclaimed, did n't know enough to get under a tree
+when it rained.  As a dealer, he was a hard nut, never giving more than a
+"tenner" for a twenty pound beast, or selling a ten pound one for less
+than twenty pounds.  And few knew Donovan better than did Dad, or had been
+taken in by him oftener; but on this occasion Dad was in no easy or
+benevolent frame of mind.
+
+He sat down, and they talked of crops and the weather, and beat about the
+bush until Donovan said:
+
+"Have you any fat steers to sell?"
+
+Dad had n't.  "But," he added, "I can sell you a horse."
+
+"Which one?" asked Donovan, for he knew the horses as well as Dad
+did--perhaps better.
+
+"The bay--Farmer."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Seven pounds." Now, Farmer was worth fourteen pounds, if worth a
+shilling--that is, before he took sick--and Donovan knew it well.
+
+"Seven," he repeated ponderingly.  "Give you six."
+
+Never before did Dad show himself such an expert in dissimulation.  He
+shook his head knowingly, and enquired of Donovan if he would take the
+horse for nothing.
+
+"Split the difference, then--make it six-ten?"
+
+Dad rose and looked out the window.  
+
+"There he is now," he remarked sadly, "in the gully there."
+
+"Well, what's it to be--six-ten or nothing?" renewed Donovan.
+
+"All right, then," Dad replied, demurely, "take him!"
+
+The money was paid there and then and receipts drawn up.  Then, saying
+that Mick would come for the horse on the day following, and after
+offering a little gratuitous advice on seed-wheat and pig-sticking, the
+Donovans left.
+
+Mick came the next day, and Dad showed him Farmer, under the bushes.  He
+was n't dead, because when Joe sat on him he moved.  "There he is,"
+said Dad, grinning.
+
+Mick remained seated on his horse, bewildered-looking, staring first at
+Farmer, then at Dad.
+
+"Well?" Dad remarked, still grinning.  Then Mick spoke feelingly.
+
+"YOU SWINDLING OLD CRAWLER!" he said, and galloped away.  It was well for
+him he got a good start.
+
+For long after that we turned the horses and cows into the little paddock
+at night, and if ever the dog barked Dad would jump up and go out in his
+shirt.
+
+We put them back into the paddock again, and the first night they were
+there two cows got out and went away, taking with them the chain that
+fastened the slip-rails.  We never saw or heard of them again; but Dad
+treasured them in his heart.  Often, when he was thoughtful, he would
+ponder out plans for getting even with the Donovans--we  knew it was the
+Donovans.  And Fate seemed to be of Dad's mind; for the Donovans got into
+"trouble,", and were reported to be "doing time." That pleased Dad; but
+the vengeance was a little vague.  He would have liked a finger in the pie
+himself.
+
+Four years passed.  It was after supper, and we were all husking corn in
+the barn.  Old Anderson and young Tom Anderson and Mrs. Maloney were
+helping us.  We were to assist them the following week.  The barn was
+illuminated by fat-lamps, which made the spiders in the rafters uneasy and
+disturbed the slumbers of a few fowls that for months had insisted on
+roosting on the cross-beam.
+
+Mrs. Maloney was arguing with Anderson.  She was claiming to have husked
+two cobs to his one, when the dogs started barking savagely.  Dad crawled
+from beneath a heap of husks and went out.  The night was dark.  He bade
+the dogs "Lie down."  They barked louder.  "Damn you--lie down!" he roared.
+They shut up.  Then a voice from the darkness said:
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Rudd?"
+
+Dad failed to recognise it, and went to the fence where the visitor was.
+He remained there talking for fully half-an-hour.  Then he returned, and
+said it was young Donovan.
+
+"DONOVAN!  MICK Donovan?" exclaimed Anderson.  And Mother and Mrs. Maloney
+and Joe echoed "MICK Donovan?"  They WERE surprised.
+
+"He's none too welcome," said Anderson, thinking of his horses and cows.
+Mother agreed with him, while Mrs. Maloney repeated over and over again
+that she was always under the impression that Mick Donovan was in gaol
+along with his bad old father.  Dad was uncommunicative.  There was
+something on his mind.  He waited till the company had gone, then
+consulted with Dave.
+
+They were outside, in the dark, and leant on the dray.  Dad said in a low
+voice:  "He's come a hundred mile to-day, 'n' his horse is dead-beat, 'n'
+he wants one t' take him t' Back Creek t'morrer 'n' leave this one in his
+place...Wot d'y' think?"  Dave seemed to think a great deal, for he said
+nothing.
+
+"Now," continued Dad, "it's me opinion the horse is n't his; it's one he's
+shook--an' I've an idea."  Then he proceeded to instruct Dave in the idea.
+A while later he called Joe and drilled him in the idea.
+
+That night, young Donovan stayed at Shingle Hut.  In the morning Dad was
+very affable.  He asked Donovan to come and show him his horse, as he must
+see it before thinking of exchanging.  They proceeded to the paddock
+together.  The horse was standing under a tree, tired-looking.  Dad stood
+and looked at Donovan for fully half-a-minute without speaking.
+
+"Why, damn it!" he exclaimed, at last, "that's MY OWN horse...You don't
+mean...S'help me!  Old Bess's foal!"  Donovan told him he was making a
+mistake.
+
+"Mistake be hanged!" replied Dad, walking round the animal.  "Not much of
+a mistake about HIM!"
+
+Just here Dave appeared, as was proper.
+
+"Do you know this horse?" Dad asked him.  "Yes, of course," he answered,
+surprisedly, with his eyes open wide, "Bess's foal!--of course it is."
+
+"There you are!" said Dad, grinning triumphantly.
+
+Donovan seemed uneasy.
+
+Joe in his turn appeared.  Dad put the same question to him.  Of course
+Joe knew Bess's foal--"the one that got stole."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Now," said Dad, looking very grave, "what have y' got t' say?  Who'd y'
+get him off?  Show's y'r receipt."
+
+Donovan had nothing to say; he preferred to be silent.
+
+"Then," Dad went on, "clear out of this as fast as you can go, an' think
+y'rself lucky."
+
+He cleared, but on foot.
+
+Dad gazed after him, and, as he left the paddock, said:
+
+"One too many f' y' that time, Mick Donovan!"  Then to Dave, who was still
+looking at the horse:  "He's a stolen one right enough, but he's a beauty,
+and we'll keep him; and if the owner ever comes for him, well--if he is
+the owner--he can have him, that's all."
+
+We had the horse for eighteen months and more.  One day Dad rode him to
+town.  He was no sooner there than a man came up and claimed him.  Dad
+objected.  The man went off and brought a policeman.  "Orright"--Dad
+said--"TAKE him."  The policeman took him.  He took Dad too.  The lawyer
+got Dad off, but it cost us five bags of potatoes.  Dad did n't grudge
+them, for he reckoned we'd had value.  Besides, he was even with the
+Donovans for the two cows.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+
+
+A Splendid Year For Corn.
+
+
+
+
+We had just finished supper.  Supper! dry bread and sugarless tea.  Dad
+was tired out and was resting at one end of the sofa; Joe was stretched at
+the other, without a pillow, and his legs tangled up among Dad's.  Bill
+and Tom squatted in the ashes, while Mother tried to put the fat-lamp into
+burning order by poking it with a table-fork.
+
+Dad was silent; he seemed sad, and lay for some time gazing at the roof.
+He might have been watching the blaze of the glorious moon or counting the
+stars through the gaps in the shingles, but he was n't--there was no such
+sentiment in Dad.  He was thinking how his long years of toil and worry
+had been rewarded again and again by disappointment--wondering if ever
+there would be a turn in his luck, and how he was going to get enough out
+of the land that season to pay interest and keep Mother and us in bread
+and meat.
+
+At last he spoke, or rather muttered disjointedly, "Plen-ty--to eat--in
+the safe."  Then suddenly, in a strange and hollow voice, he shouted,"
+THEY' RE DEAD--ALL OF THEN!  I STARVED THEM!"
+
+Mother DID get a fright.  She screamed.  Then Dad jumped up, rubbing his
+eyes, and asked what was the matter.  Nothing was the matter THEN.  He had
+dozed and talked in his sleep, that was all; he had n't starved anyone.
+Joe did n't jump up when Mother screamed--not altogether; he raised
+himself and reached for Dad's pillow, then lay down and snored serenely
+till bed-time.
+
+Dad sat gloomily by the fire and meditated.  Mother spoke pleadingly to
+him and asked him not to fret.  He ran his fingers uneasily through his
+hair and spat in the ashes.  "Don't fret?  When there's not a bit to eat
+in the place--when there's no way of getting anything, and when--merciful
+God!--every year sees things worse than they were before."
+
+"It's only fancy," Mother went on.  "And you've been brooding and brooding
+till it seems far worse than it really is."
+
+"It's no fancy, Ellen." Then, after a pause--"Was the thirty acres of
+wheat that did n't come up fancy?  Is it only fancy that we've lost nearly
+every beast in the paddock?  Was the drought itself a fancy?  No--no."
+And he shook his head sadly and stared again into the fire.
+
+
+Dad's inclination was to leave the selection, but Mother pleaded for
+another trial of it--just one more.  She had wonderful faith in the
+selection, had Mother.  She pleaded until the fire burned low, then Dad
+rose and said:  "Well, we'll try it once more with corn, and if nothing
+comes of it why then we MUST give it up." Then he took the spade and raked
+the fire together and covered it with ashes--we always covered the fire
+over before going to bed so as to keep it alight.  Some mornings, though,
+it would be out, when one of us would have to go across to Anderson's and
+borrow a fire-stick.  Any of us but Joe--he was sent only once, and on
+that occasion he stayed at Anderson's to breakfast, and on his way back
+successfully burnt out two grass paddocks belonging to a J.P.
+
+So we began to prepare the soil for another crop of corn, and Dad started
+over the same old ground with the same old plough.  How I remember that
+old, screwed and twisted plough!  The land was very hard, and the horses
+out of condition.  We wanted a furrow-horse.  Smith had one--a good one.
+"Put him in the furrow," he said to Dad, "and you can't PULL him out of
+it."  Dad wished to have such a horse.  Smith offered to exchange for our
+roan saddle mare--one we found running in the lane, and advertised as
+being in our paddock, and no one claimed it.  Dad exchanged.
+
+He yoked the new horse to the plough, and it took to the furrow
+splendidly--but that was all; it did n't take to anything else.  Dad
+gripped the handles--"Git up!" he said, and tapped Smith's horse with the
+rein.  Smith's horse pranced and marked time well, but did n't tighten the
+chains.  Dad touched him again.  Then he stood on his fore-legs and threw
+about a hundredweight of mud that clung to his heels at Dad's head.  That
+aggravated Dad, and he seized the plough-scraper, and, using both hands,
+calmly belted Smith's horse over the ribs for two minutes, by the sun.
+He tried him again.  The horse threw himself down in the furrow.  Dad took
+the scraper again, welted him on the rump, dug it into his back-bone,
+prodded him in the side, then threw it at him disgustedly.  Then Dad sat
+down awhile and breathed heavily.  He rose again and pulled Smith's horse
+by the head.  He was pulling hard when Dave and Joe came up.  Joe had a
+bow-and-arrow in his hand, and said!, "He's a good furrer 'orse, eh, Dad?
+Smith SAID you could n't pull him out of it."
+
+Shall I ever forget the look on Dad's face!  He brandished the scraper and
+sprang wildly at Joe and yelled, "Damn y', you WHELP!  what do you want
+here?"
+
+Joe left.  The horse lay in the furrow.  Blood was dropping from its
+mouth.  Dave pointed it out, and Dad opened the brute's jaws and examined
+them.  No teeth were there.  He looked on the ground round about--none
+there either.  He looked at the horse's mouth again, then hit him
+viciously with his clenched fist and said, "The old ----, he never DID
+have any!"  At length he unharnessed the brute as it lay--pulled the
+winkers off, hurled them at its head, kicked it once--twice--three
+times--and the furrow-horse jumped up, trotted away triumphantly, and
+joyously rolled in the dam where all our water came from, drinking-water
+included.
+
+Dad went straightaway to Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty,
+mean, despicable swindler--or something like that.  Smith smiled.  Dad put
+one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along,
+to split palings out of him.  But Smith did n't.  The instinct of
+self-preservation must have been deep in that man Smith.  Then Dad went
+home and said he would shoot the ---- horse there and then, and went
+looking for the gun.  The horse died in the paddock of old age, but Dad
+never ploughed with him again.
+
+Dad followed the plough early and late.  One day he was giving the horses
+a spell after some hours' work, when Joe came to say that a policeman was
+at the house wanting to see him.  Dad thought of the roan mare, and Smith,
+and turned very pale.  Joe said:  "There's "Q.P." on his saddle-cloth;
+what's that for, Dad?"  But he did n't answer--he was thinking hard.
+"And," Joe went on, "there's somethin' sticking out of his pocket--Dave
+thinks it'll be 'ancuffs." Dad shuddered.  On the way to the house Joe
+wished to speak about the policeman, but Dad seemed to have lock-jaw.
+When he found the officer of the law only wanted to know the number of
+stock he owned, he talked freely--he was delighted.  He said, "Yes, sir,"
+and "No, sir," and "Jusso, sir," to everything the policeman said.
+
+Dad wished to learn some law.  He said:  "Now, tell me this:  supposing a
+horse gets into my paddock--or into your paddock--and I advertise that
+horse and nobody claims him, can't I put my brand on him?" The policeman
+jerked back his head and stared at the shingles long enough to recall all
+the robberies he had committed, and said:  "Ye can--that's so--ye can."
+
+"I knew it," answered Dad; "but a lawyer in town told Maloney, over there,
+y' could n't."
+
+"COULD N'T?"  And the policeman laughed till he nearly had the house down,
+only stopping to ask, while the tears ran over his well-fed cheeks,
+"Did he charge him forrit?" and laughed again.  He went away laughing,
+and for all I know the wooden-head may be laughing yet.
+
+Everything was favourable to a good harvest.  The rain fell just when it
+was wanted, and one could almost see the corn growing.  How it encouraged
+Dad, and what new life it seemed to give him!  In the cool of the evenings
+he would walk along the headlands and admire the forming cobs, and listen
+to the rustling of the rows of drooping blades as they swayed and beat
+against each other in the breeze.  Then he would go home filled with fresh
+hopes and talk of nothing but the good prospect of that crop.
+
+And how we worked!  Joe was the only one who played.  I remember him
+finding something on a chain one day.  He had never seen anything like it
+before.  Dad told him it was a steel-trap and explained the working of it.
+Joe was entranced--an invaluable possession!  A treasure, he felt, that
+the Lord must specially have sent him to catch things with.  He caught
+many things with it--willie-wagtails, laughing-jackasses, fowls, and
+mostly the dog.  Joe was a born naturalist--a perfect McCooey in his way,
+and a close observer of the habits and customs of animals and living
+things.  He observed that whenever Jacob Lipp came to our place he always,
+when going home, ran along the fence and touched the top of  every post
+with his hand.  The Lipps had newly arrived from Germany, and their
+selection adjoined ours.  Jacob was their "eldest", about fourteen, and a
+fat, jabbering, jolly-faced youth he was.  He often came to our place and
+followed Joe about.  Joe never cared much for the company of anyone
+younger than himself, and therefore fiercely resented the indignity.
+Jacob could speak only German--Joe understood only pure unadulterated
+Australian.  Still Jacob insisted on talking and telling Joe his private
+affairs.
+
+This day, Mrs. Lipp accompanied Jacob.  She came to have a "yarn" with
+Mother.  They did n't understand each other either; but it did n't matter
+much to them--it never does matter much to women whether they understand
+or not; anyway, they laughed most of the time and seemed to enjoy
+themselves greatly.  Outside Jacob and Joe mixed up in an argument.
+Jacob shoved his face close to Joe's and gesticulated and talked German at
+the rate of two hundred words a minute.  Joe thought he understood him and
+said:  "You want to fight?"  Jacob seemed to have a nightmare in German.
+
+"Orright, then," Joe said, and knocked him down.
+
+Jacob seemed to understand Australian better when he got up, for he ran
+inside, and Joe put his ear to a crack, but did n't hear him tell Mother.
+
+Joe had an idea.  He would set the steel-trap on a wire-post and catch
+Jacob.  He set it.  Jacob started home.  One, two, three posts he hit.
+Then he hit the trap.  It grabbed him faithfully by three fingers.
+
+Angels of Love! did ever a boy of fourteen yell like it before!  He sprang
+in the air--threw himself on the ground like a roped brumby--jumped up
+again and ran all he knew, frantically wringing the hand the trap clung
+to.  What Jacob reckoned had hold of him Heaven only can tell.  His mother
+thought he must have gone mad and ran after him.  Our Mother fairly tore
+after her.  Dad and Dave left a dray-load of corn and joined in the hunt.
+Between them they got Jacob down and took him out of the trap.  Dad
+smashed the infernal machine, and then went to look for Joe.  But Joe
+was n't about.
+
+The corn shelled out 100 bags--the best crop we had ever had; but when Dad
+came to sell it seemed as though every farmer in every farming district on
+earth had had a heavy crop, for the market was glutted--there was too much
+corn in Egypt--and he could get no price for it.  At last he was offered
+Ninepence ha'penny per bushel, delivered at the railway station.  Ninepence
+ha'penny per bushel, delivered at the railway station!  Oh, my country! and
+fivepence per bushel out of that to a carrier to take it there!
+AUSTRALIA, MY MOTHER!
+
+Dad sold--because he could n't afford to await a better market; and when
+the letter came containing a cheque in payment, he made a calculation,
+then looked pitifully at Mother, and muttered--" SEVEN POUN'S TEN!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+
+
+Kate's Wedding.
+
+
+Our selection was a great place for dancing.  We could all dance--from Dan
+down--and there was n't a figure or a movement we did n't know.  We
+learned young.  Mother was a firm believer in early tuition.  She used to
+say it was nice for young people to know how to dance, and be able to take
+their part when they went out anywhere, and not be awkward and
+stupid-looking when they went into society.  It was awful, she thought, to
+see young fellows and big lumps of girls like the Bradys stalk into a
+ballroom and sit the whole night long in a corner, without attempting to
+get up.  She did n't know how mothers COULD bring children up so
+ignorantly, and did n't wonder at some of them not being able to find
+husbands for their daughters.
+
+But we had a lot to feel thankful for.  Besides a sympathetic mother,
+every other facility was afforded us to become accomplished.  Abundance of
+freedom; enthusiastic sisters; and no matter how things were going--whether
+the corn would n't come up, or the wheat had failed, or the pumpkins had
+given out, or the water-hole run dry--we always had a concertina in the
+house.  It never failed to attract company.  Paddy Maloney and the
+well-sinkers, after belting and blasting all day long, used to drop in at
+night, and throw the table outside, and take the girls up, and prance
+about the floor with them till all hours.
+
+Nearly every week Mother gave a ball.  It might have been every night only
+for Dad.  He said the jumping about destroyed the ground-floor--wore it
+away and made the room like a well.  And whenever it rained hard and the
+water rushed in he had to bail it out.  Dad always looked on the dark side
+of things.  He had no ear for music either.  His want of appreciation of
+melody often made the home miserable when it might have been the merriest
+on earth.  Sometimes it happened that he had to throw down the plough-reins
+for half-an-hour or so to run round the wheat-paddock after a horse or an
+old cow; then, if he found Dave, or Sal, or any of us, sitting inside
+playing the concertina when he came to get a drink, he would nearly go mad.
+
+"Can't y' find anything better t' do than everlastingly playing at that
+damn thing?" he would shout.  And if we did n't put the instrument down
+immediately he would tear it from our hands and pitch it outside.  If we
+DID lay it down quietly he would snatch it up and heave it out just as
+hard.  The next evening he would devote all his time to patching the
+fragments together with sealing-wax.
+
+Still, despite Dad's antagonism, we all turned out good players.  It cost
+us nothing either.  We learnt from each other.  Kate was the first that
+learnt.  SHE taught Sal.  Sal taught Dave, and so on.  Sandy Taylor was
+Kate's tutor.  He passed our place every evening going to his selection,
+where he used to sleep at night (fulfilling conditions), and always
+stopped at the fence to yarn with Kate about dancing.  Sandy was a fine
+dancer himself, very light on his feet and easy to waltz with--so the
+girls made out.  When the dancing subject was exhausted Sandy would drag
+some hair out of his horse's mane and say, "How's the concertina?"  "It's
+in there," Kate would answer.  Then turning round she would call out,
+"J--OE, bring the concer'."
+
+In an instant Joe would strut along with it.  And Sandy, for the fiftieth
+time, would examine it and laugh at the kangaroo-skin straps that Dave had
+tacked to it, and the scraps of brown paper that were plastered over the
+ribs of it to keep the wind in; and, cocking his left leg over the pommel
+of his saddle, he would sound a full blast on it as a preliminary.  Then
+he would strike up "The Rocky Road to Dublin", or "The Wind Among the
+Barley,", or some other beautiful air, and grind away untiringly until it
+got dark--until mother came and asked him if he would n't come in and have
+supper.  Of course, he always would.  After supper he would play some more.
+Then there would be a dance.
+
+A ball was to be held at Anderson's one Friday night, and only Kate and
+Dave were asked from our place.  Dave was very pleased to be invited; it
+was the first time he had been asked anywhere, and he began to practise
+vigorously.  The evening before the ball Dad sent him to put the draught
+horses in the top paddock.  He went off merrily with them.  The sun was
+just going down when he let them go, and save the noise of the birds
+settling to rest the paddock was quiet.  Dave was filled with emotion and
+enthusiastic thoughts about the ball.
+
+He threw the winkers down and looked around.  For a moment or two he stood
+erect, then he bowed gracefully to the saplings on his right, then to the
+stumps and trees on his left, and humming a tune, ambled across a small
+patch of ground that was bare and black, and pranced back again.  He
+opened his arms and, clasping some beautiful imaginary form in them, swung
+round and round like a windmill.  Then he paused for breath, embraced his
+partner again, and "galloped" up and down.  And young Johnson, who had
+been watching him in wonder from behind a fence, bolted for our place.
+
+"Mrs. Rudd!  Mrs. Rudd!" he shouted from the verandah.  Mother went out.
+
+"Wot's--wot's up with Dave?"
+
+Mother turned pale.
+
+"There's SOMETHING--!"
+
+"My God!" Mother exclaimed--" WHATEVER has happened?"
+
+Young Johnson hesitated.  He was in doubt.
+
+"Oh!  What IS it?" Mother moaned.
+
+"Well" (he drew close to her) "he's--he's MAD!"
+
+"OH-H!"
+
+"He IS.  I seen 'im just now up in your paddick, an' he's clean off he's
+pannikin."
+
+Just then Dave came down the track whistling.  Young Johnson saw him
+and fled.
+
+For some time Mother regarded Dave with grave suspicion, then she
+questioned him closely.
+
+"Yairs," he said, grinning hard, "I was goin' through th' FUST SET."
+
+It was when Kate was married to Sandy Taylor that we realised what a
+blessing it is to be able to dance.  How we looked forward to that
+wedding!  We were always talking about it, and were very pleased it would
+be held in our own house, because all of us could go then.  None of us
+could work for thinking of it--even Dad seemed to forget his troubles
+about the corn and Mick Brennan's threat to summon him for half the fence.
+Mother said we would want plenty of water for the people to drink, so
+Sandy yoked his horse to the slide, and he, Dad, and Joe started for the
+springs.
+
+The slide was the fork of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly.  The
+horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs
+kept the cask from slipping off going uphill.  Sandy led the way and
+carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe
+straddled the cask to keep her steady.
+
+It always took three to work the slide.
+
+The water they brought was a little thick--old Anderson had been down and
+stirred it up pulling a bullock out; but Dad put plenty ashes in the cask
+to clear it.
+
+Each of us had his own work to do.  Sandy knocked the partition down and
+decorated the place with boughs; Mother and the girls cooked and covered
+the walls with newspapers, and Dad gathered cow-dung and did the floor.
+
+Two days before the wedding.  All of us were still working hard.  Dad was
+up to his armpits in a bucket of mixture, with a stack of cow-dung on one
+side, and a heap of sand and the shovel on the other.  Dave and Joe were
+burning a cow that had died just in front of the house, and Sandy had gone
+to town for his tweed trousers.
+
+A man in a long, black coat, white collar, and new leggings rode up, spoke
+to Dad, and got off.  Dad straightened up and looked awkward, with his
+arms hanging wide and the mixture dripping from them.  Mother came out.
+The cove shook hands with her, but he did n't with Dad.  They went
+inside--not Dad, who washed himself first.
+
+Dave sent Joe to ask Dad who the cove was.  Dad spoke in a whisper and
+said he was Mr. Macpherson, the clergyman who was to marry Kate and Sandy.
+Dave whistled and piled more wood on the dead cow.  Mother came out and
+called Dave and Joe.  Dave would n't go, but sent Joe.
+
+Dave threw another log on the cow, then thought he would see what was
+going on inside.
+
+He stood at the window and looked in.  He could n't believe his eyes at
+first, and put his head right in.  There were Dad, Joe, and the lot of
+them down on their marrow-bones saying something after the parson.  Dave
+was glad that he did n't go in.
+
+How the parson prayed!  Just when he said "Lead us not into temptation"
+the big kangaroo-dog slipped in and grabbed all the fresh meat on the
+table; but Dave managed to kick him in the ribs at the door.  Dad groaned
+and seemed very restless.
+
+When the parson had gone Dad said that what he had read about "reaping the
+same as you sow" was all rot, and spoke about the time when we sowed two
+bushels of barley in the lower paddock and got a big stack of rye from it.
+
+The wedding was on a Wednesday, and at three o'clock in the afternoon.
+Most of the people came before dinner; the Hamiltons arrived just after
+breakfast.  Talk of drays!--the little paddock could n't hold them.
+
+Jim Mullins was the only one who came in to dinner; the others mostly sat
+on their heels in a row and waited in the shade of the wire-fence.  The
+parson was the last to come, and as he passed in he knocked his head
+against the kangaroo-leg hanging under the verandah.  Dad saw it swinging,
+and said angrily to Joe:  "Did n't I tell you to take that down this
+morning?"
+
+Joe unhooked it and said:  "But if I hang it anywhere else the dog'll
+get it."
+
+Dad tried to laugh at Joe, and said, loudly, "And what else is it for?"
+Then he bustled Joe off before he could answer him again.
+
+Joe did n't understand.
+
+Then Dad said (putting the leg in a bag):  "Do you want everyone to know
+we eat it, ---- you?"
+
+Joe understood.
+
+The ceremony commenced.  Those who could squeeze inside did so--the others
+looked in at the window and through the cracks in the chimney.
+
+Mrs. M'Doolan led Kate out of the back-room; then Sandy rose from the
+fire-place and stood beside her.  Everyone thought Kate looked very
+nice----and orange blossoms!  You'd think she was an orange-tree with a new
+bed-curtain thrown over it.  Sandy looked well, too, in his snake-belt
+and new tweeds; but he seemed uncomfortable when the pin that Dave put in
+the back of his collar came out.
+
+The parson did n't take long; and how they scrambled and tumbled over each
+other at the finish!  Charley Mace said that he got the first kiss; Big
+George said HE did; and Mrs. M'Doolan was certain she would have got it
+only for the baby.
+
+Fun!  there WAS fun!  The room was cleared and they promenaded for a
+dance--Sandy and Kate in the lead.  They continued promenading until one
+of the well-sinkers called for the concertina--ours had been repaired till
+you could get only three notes out of it; but Jim Burke jumped on his
+horse and went home for his accordion.
+
+Dance!  they did dance!--until sun-rise.  But unless you were dancing you
+could n't stay inside, because the floor broke up, and talk about
+dust!--before morning the room was like a drafting-yard.
+
+It was a great wedding; and though years have since passed, all the
+neighbours say still it was the best they were ever at.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+
+
+The Summer Old Bob Died.
+
+
+It was a real scorcher.  A soft, sweltering summer's day.  The air
+quivered; the heat drove the fowls under the dray and sent the old dog to
+sleep upon the floor inside the house.  The iron on the skillion cracked
+and sweated--so did Dad and Dave down the paddock, grubbing--grubbing, in
+130 degrees of sunshine.  They were clearing a piece of new land--a
+heavily-timbered box-tree flat.  They had been at it a fortnight, and if
+any music was in the ring of the axe or the rattle of the pick when
+commencing, there was none now.
+
+Dad wished to be cheerful and complacent.  He said (putting the pick down
+and dragging his flannel off to wring it):  "It's a good thing to sweat
+well."  Dave did n't say anything.  I don't know what he thought, but he
+looked up at Dad--just looked up at him--while the perspiration filled his
+eyes and ran down over his nose like rain off a shingle; then he hitched
+up his pants and "wired in" again.
+
+Dave was a philosopher.  He worked away until the axe flew off the handle
+with a ring and a bound, and might have been lost in the long grass for
+ever only Dad stopped it with  his shin.  I fancy he did n't mean to stop
+it when I think how he jumped--it was the only piece of excitement there
+had been the whole of that relentlessly solemn fortnight.  Dad got
+vexed--he was in a hurry with the grubbing--and said he never could get
+anything done without something going wrong.  Dave was n't sorry the axe
+came off--he knew it meant half-an-hour in the shade fixing it on again.
+"Anyway," Dad went on, "we'll go to dinner now."
+
+On the way to the house he several times looked at the sky--that cloudless,
+burning sky--and said--to no one in particular, "I wish to God it would
+rain!"  It sounded like an aggravated prayer.  Dave did n't speak, and I
+don't think Dad expected he would.
+
+Joe was the last to sit down to dinner, and he came in steaming hot.  He
+had chased out of sight a cow that had poked into the cultivation.  Joe
+mostly went about with green bushes in his hat, to keep his head cool, and
+a few gum-leaves were now sticking in his moist and matted hair.
+
+"I put her out, Dad!" he said, casting an eager glare at everything on the
+table.  "She tried to jump and got stuck on the fence, and broke it all
+down.  On'y I could n't get anything, I'd er broke 'er head--there was n't
+a thing, on'y dead cornstalks and cow-dung about." Then he lunged his fork
+desperately at a blowfly that persistently hovered about his plate, and
+commenced.
+
+Joe had a healthy appetite.  He had charged his mouth with a load of cold
+meat, when his jaws ceased work, and, opening his mouth as though he were
+sleepy, he leaned forward and calmly returned it all to the plate.  Dad
+got suspicious and asked Joe what was up; but Joe only wiped his mouth,
+looked sideways at his plate, and pushed it away.
+
+All of us stopped eating then, and stared at each other.  Mother said,
+"Well, I--I wrapped a cloth round it so nothing could get in, and put it
+in the safe--I don't know where on earth to put the meat, I'm sure; if I
+put it in a bag and hang it up that thief of a dog gets it."
+
+"Yes," Dad observed, "I believe he'd stick his nose into hell itself,
+Ellen, if he thought there was a bone there--and there ought to be lots by
+this time."  Then he turned over the remains of that cold meat, and,
+considering we had all witnessed the last kick of the slaughtered beast,
+it was surprising what animation this part of him yet retained.  In vain
+did Dad explore for a really dead piece--there was life in all of it.
+
+Joe was n't satisfied.  He said he knew where there was a lot of eggs, and
+disappeared down the yard.  Eggs were not plentiful on our selection,
+because we too often had to eat the hens when there was no meat--three or
+four were as many as we ever saw at one time.  So on this day, when Joe
+appeared with a hatful, there was excitement.  He felt himself a hero.
+We thought him a little saviour.
+
+"My!" said Mother, "where did you get all those?"
+
+"Get 'em!  I've had these planted for three munce--they're a nest I found
+long ago; I thought I would n't say anythink till we really wanted 'em."
+
+Just then one of the eggs fell out of the hat and went off "pop" on
+the floor.
+
+Dave nearly upset the table, he rose so suddenly; and covering his nose
+with one hand he made for the door; then he scowled back over his shoulder
+at Joe.  He utterly scorned his brother Joe.  All of us deserted the table
+except Dad--he stuck to his place manfully; it took a lot to shift HIM.
+
+Joe must have had a fine nerve.  "That's on'y one bad 'n'," he said,
+taking the rest to the fireplace where the kettle stood.  Then Dad, who
+had remained calm and majestic, broke out.  "Damn y', boy!" he yelled,
+"take th' awful things outside--YOU tinker!"  Joe took them out and tried
+them all, but I forget if he found a good one.
+
+Dad peered into the almost-empty water-cask and again muttered a short
+prayer for rain.  He decided to do no more grubbing that day, but to run
+wire around the new land instead.  The posts had been in the ground some
+time, and were bored.  Dave and Sarah bored them.  Sarah was as good as
+any man--so Dad reckoned.  She could turn her hand to anything, from
+sewing a shirt to sinking a post-hole.  She could give Dave inches in arm
+measurements, and talk about a leg!  She HAD a leg--a beauty!  It was as
+thick at the ankle as Dad's was at the thigh, nearly.
+
+Anyone who would know what real amusement is should try wiring posts.
+What was to have been the top wire (the No. 8 stuff) Dad commenced to put
+in the bottom holes, and we ran it through some twelve or fifteen posts
+before he saw the mistake--then we dragged it out slowly and savagely; Dad
+swearing adequately all the time.
+
+At last everything went splendidly.  We dragged the wire through panel
+after panel, and at intervals Dad would examine the blistering sky for
+signs of rain.  Once when he looked up a red bullock was reaching for his
+waistcoat, which hung on a branch of a low tree.  Dad sang out.  The
+bullock poked out his tongue and reached higher.  Then Dad told Joe to
+run.  Joe ran--so did the bullock, but faster, and with the waistcoat that
+once was a part of Mother's shawl half-way down his throat.  Had the
+shreds and ribbons that dangled to it been a little longer, he might have
+trodden on them and pulled it back, but he did n't.  Joe deemed it his
+duty to follow that red bullock till it dropped the waistcoat, so he
+hammered along full split behind.  Dad and Dave stood watching until
+pursued and pursuer vanished down the gully; then Dad said something about
+Joe being a fool, and they pulled at the wire again.  They were nearing a
+corner post, and Dad was hauling the wire through the last panel, when
+there came the devil's own noise of galloping hoofs.  Fifty or more cattle
+came careering along straight for the fence, bellowing and kicking up
+their heels in the air, as cattle do sometimes after a shower of rain.
+Joe was behind them--considerably--still at full speed and yelping like a
+dog.  Joe loved excitement.
+
+For weeks those cattle had been accustomed to go in and out between the
+posts; and they did n't seem to have any thoughts of wire as they bounded
+along.  Dave stood with gaping mouth.  Dad groaned, and the wire's-end he
+was holding in his hand flew up with a whiz and took a scrap of his ear
+away.  The cattle got mixed up in the wires.  Some toppled over; some were
+caught by the legs; some by the horns.  They dragged the wire twenty and
+thirty yards away, twisted it round logs, and left a lot of the posts
+pointing to sunset.
+
+Oh, Dad's language then!  He swung his arms about and foamed at the mouth.
+Dave edged away from him.
+
+Joe came up waving triumphantly a chewed piece of the waistcoat.  "D-d-did
+it g-give them a buster, Dad?" he said, the sweat running over his face as
+though a spring had broken out on top of his head.  Dad jumped a log and
+tried to unbuckle his strap and reach for Joe at the same time, but
+Joe fled.
+
+That threw a painful pall over everything.  Dad declared he was sick and
+tired of the whole thing, and would n't do another hand's-turn.  Dave
+meditated and walked along the fence, plucking off scraps of skin and hair
+that here and there clung to the bent and battered wire.
+
+We had just finished supper when old Bob Wren, a bachelor who farmed about
+two miles from us, arrived.  He used to come over every mail-night and
+bring his newspaper with him.  Bob could n't read a word, so he always got
+Dad to spell over the paper to him.  WE did n't take a newspaper.
+
+Bob said there were clouds gathering behind Flat Top when he came in, and
+Dad went out and looked, and for the fiftieth time that day prayed in his
+own way for rain.  Then he took the paper, and we gathered at the table to
+listen.  "Hello," he commenced, "this is M'Doolan's paper you've got, Bob."
+
+Bob rather thought it was n't.
+
+"Yes, yes, man, it IS," Dad put in; "see, it's addressed to him."
+
+Bob leaned over and LOOKED at the address, and said:  "No, no, that's
+mine; it always comes like that."  Dad laughed.  We all laughed.  He
+opened it, anyway.  He  had n't read for five minutes when the light
+flickered nearly out.  Sarah reckoned the oil was about done, and poured
+water in the lamp to raise the kerosene to the wick, but that did n't last
+long, and, as there was no fat in the house, Dad squatted on the floor and
+read by the firelight.
+
+He plodded through the paper tediously from end to end, reading the
+murders and robberies a second time.  The clouds that old Bob said were
+gathering when he came in were now developing to a storm, for the wind
+began to rise, and the giant iron-bark tree that grew close behind the
+house swayed and creaked weirdly, and threw out those strange sobs and
+moans that on wild nights bring terror to the hearts of bush children.  A
+glimmer of lightning appeared through the cracks in the slabs.  Old Bob
+said he would go before it came on, and started into the inky darkness.
+
+"It's coming!" Dad said, as he shut the door and put the peg in after
+seeing old Bob out.  And it came--in no time.  A fierce wind struck the
+house.  Then a vivid flash of lightning lit up every crack and hole, and a
+clap of thunder followed that nearly shook the place down.
+
+Dad ran to the back door and put his shoulder against it; Dave stood to
+the front one; and Sarah sat on the sofa with her arms around Mother,
+telling her not to be afraid.  The wind blew furiously--its one aim seemed
+the shifting of the house.  Gust after gust struck the walls and left them
+quivering.  The children screamed.  Dad called and shouted, but no one
+could catch a word he said.  Then there was one tremendous crack--we
+understood it--the iron-bark tree had gone over.  At last, the shingled
+roof commenced to give.  Several times the ends rose (and our hair too)
+and fell back into place again with a clap.  Then it went clean away in
+one piece, with a rip like splitting a ribbon, and there we stood,
+affrighted and shelterless, inside the walls.  Then the wind went down and
+it rained--rained on us all night.
+
+Next morning Joe had been to the new fence for the axe for Dad, and was
+off again as fast as he could run, when he remembered something and called
+out, "Dad, old B-B-Bob's just over there, lyin' down in the gully."
+
+Dad started up.  "It's 'im all right--I w-w-would n'ter noticed, only
+Prince s-s-smelt him."
+
+"Quick and show me where!" Dad said.
+
+Joe showed him.
+
+"My God!" and Dad stood and stared.  Old Bob it was--dead.  Dead as Moses.
+
+"Poor old Bob!" Dad said.  "Poor-old-fellow!"  Joe asked what could have
+killed him?  "Poor-old-Bob!"
+
+Dave brought the dray, and we took him to the house--or what remained of it.
+
+Dad could n't make out the cause of death--perhaps it was lightning.  He
+held a POST-MORTEM, and, after thinking hard for a long while, told Mother
+he was certain, anyway, that old Bob would never get up again.  It was a
+change to have a dead man about the place, and we were very pleased to be
+first to tell anyone who did n't know the news about old Bob.
+
+We planted him on his own selection beneath a gum-tree, where for years
+and years a family of jackasses nightly roosted, Dad remarking:  "As there
+MIGHT be a chance of his hearin', it'll be company for the poor old cove."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+
+
+When Dan Came Home.
+
+
+One night after the threshing.  Dad lying on the sofa, thinking; the rest
+of us sitting at the table.  Dad spoke to Joe.
+
+"How much," he said, "is seven hundred bushels of wheat at six shillings?"
+
+Joe, who was looked upon as the brainy one of our family, took down his
+slate with a hint of scholarly ostentation.
+
+"What did y' say, Dad--seven 'undred BAGS?"
+
+"Bushels!  BUSHELS!"
+
+"Seven 'un-dered bush-els-of wheat--WHEAT was it, Dad?"
+
+"Yes, WHEAT!"
+
+"Wheat at...At WHAT, Dad?"
+
+"Six shillings a bushel."
+
+"Six shil-lings-a....  A, Dad? We've not done any at A; she's on'y showed
+us PER!"
+
+"PER bushel, then!"
+
+"Per bush-el.  That's seven 'undered bushels of wheat at six shillin's per
+bushel.  An' y' wants ter know, Dad--?"
+
+"How much it'll be, of course."
+
+"In money, Dad, or--er----?"
+
+"Dammit, yes; MONEY!"  Dad raised his voice.
+
+For a while, Joe thought hard, then set to work figuring and rubbing out,
+figuring and rubbing out.  The rest of us eyed him, envious of his learning.
+
+Joe finished the sum.
+
+"Well?" from Dad.
+
+Joe cleared his throat.  We listened.
+
+"Nine thousan' poun'."
+
+Dave laughed loud.  Dad said, "Pshaw!" and turned his face to the wall.
+Joe looked at the slate again.
+
+"Oh!  I see," he said, "I did n't divide by twelve t' bring t' pounds,"
+and laughed himself.
+
+More figuring and rubbing out.
+
+Finally Joe, in loud, decisive tones, announced, "FOUR thousand, NO
+'undered an' twenty poun', fourteen shillin's an'--"
+
+"Bah!  YOU blockhead!" Dad blurted out, and jumped off the sofa and went
+to bed.
+
+We all turned in.
+
+We were not in bed long when the dog barked and a horse entered the yard.
+There was a clink of girth-buckles; a saddle thrown down; then a thump,
+as though with a lump of blue-metal, set the dog yelping lustily.  We lay
+listening till a voice called out at the door--"All in bed?" Then we knew
+it was Dan, and Dad and Dave sprang out in their shirts to let him in.
+All of us jumped up to see Dan.  This time he had been away a long while,
+and when the slush-lamp was lit and fairly going, how we stared and
+wondered at his altered looks!  He had grown a long whisker, and must have
+stood inches higher than Dad.
+
+Dad was delighted.  He put a fire on, made tea, and he and Dan talked till
+near daybreak--Dad of the harvest, and the Government dam that was
+promised, and the splendid grass growing in the paddock; Dan of the great
+dry plains, and the shearing-sheds out back, and the chaps he had met
+there.  And he related in a way that made Dad's eyes glisten and Joe's
+mouth open, how, with a knocked-up wrist, he shore beside Proctor and big
+Andy Purcell, at Welltown, and rung the shed by half a sheep.
+
+Dad ardently admired Dan.
+
+Dan was only going to stay a short while at home, he said, then was off
+West again.  Dad tried to persuade him to change his mind; he would have
+him remain and help to work the selection.  But Dan only shook his head
+and laughed.
+
+Dan accompanied Dad to the plough every morning, and walked cheerfully up
+and down the furrows all day, talking to him.  Sometimes he took a turn at
+the plough, and Dad did the talking.  Dad just loved Dan's company.
+
+A few days went by.  Dan still accompanied Dad to the plough; but did n't
+walk up and down with him.  He selected a shade close by, and talked to
+Dad from there as he passed on his rounds.  Sometimes Dan used to forget
+to talk at all--he would be asleep--and Dad would wonder if he was unwell.
+Once he advised him to go up to the house and have a good camp.  Dan went.
+He stretched himself on the sofa, and smoked and spat on the floor and
+played the concertina--an old one he won in a raffle.
+
+Dan did n't go near the plough any more.  He stayed inside every day, and
+drank the yeast, and provided music for the women.  Sometimes he would
+leave the sofa, and go to the back-door and look out, and watch Dad
+tearing up and down the paddock after the plough; then he'd yawn, and
+wonder aloud what the diggins it was the old man saw in a game like that
+on a hot day; and return to the sofa, tired.  But every evening when Dad
+knocked off and brought the horses to the barn Dan went out and watched
+him unharnessing them.
+
+A month passed.  Dad was n't so fond of Dan now, and Dan never talked of
+going away.  One day Anderson's cows wandered into our yard and surrounded
+the hay-stack.  Dad saw them from the paddock and cooeed, and shouted for
+those at the house to drive them away.  They did n't hear him.  Dad left
+the plough and ran up and pelted Anderson's cows with stones and
+glass-bottles, and pursued them with a pitch-fork till, in a mad rush to
+get out, half the brutes fell over the fence and made havoc with the wire.
+Dad spent an hour mending it; then went to the verandah and savagely asked
+Mother if she had lost her ears.  Mother said she had n't.  "Then why the
+devil could n't y' hear me singin' out?"  Mother thought it must have been
+because Dan was playing the concertina.  "Oh, DAMN his concertina!" Dad
+squealed, and kicked Joe's little kitten, that was rubbing itself fondly
+against his leg, clean through the house.
+
+Dan found the selection pretty slow--so he told Mother--and thought he
+would knock about a bit.  He went to the store and bought a supply of
+ammunition, which he booked to Dad, and started shooting.  He stood at the
+door and put twenty bullets into the barn; then he shot two bears near the
+stock-yard with twenty more bullets, and dragged both bears down to the
+house and left them at the back-door.  They stayed at the back-door until
+they went very bad; then Dad hooked himself to them and dragged them down
+the gully.
+
+Somehow, Dad began to hate Dan!  He scarcely ever spoke to him now, and at
+meal-times never spoke to any of us.   Dad was a hard man to understand.
+We could n't understand him.  "And with DAN at home, too!" Sal used to
+whine.  Sal verily idolised Dan.  Hero-worship was strong in Sal.
+
+One night Dad came in for supper rather later than usual.  He'd had a hard
+day, and was done up.  To make matters worse, when he was taking the
+collar off Captain the brute tramped heavily on his toe, and took the nail
+off.  Supper was n't ready.  The dining-room was engaged.  Dan was showing
+Sal how the Prince of Wales schottische was danced in the huts Out Back.
+For music, Sal was humming, and the two were flying about the room.  Dad
+stood at the door and looked on, with blood in his eye.
+
+"Look here!" he thundered suddenly, interrupting Dan--"I've had enough of
+you!"  The couple stopped, astonished, and Sal cried, "DAD!"  But Dad was
+hot.  "Out of this!" (placing his hand on Dan, and shoving him).  "You've
+loafed long enough on me!  Off y' go t' th' devil!"
+
+Dan went over to Anderson's and Anderson took him in and kept him a week.
+Then Dan took Anderson down at a new game of cards, and went away
+West again.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+Our Circus.
+
+
+Dave had been to town and came home full of circus.  He sat on the ground
+beside the tubs while Mother and Sal were washing, and raved about the
+riding and the tumbling he had seen.  He talked enthusiastically to Joe
+about it every day for three weeks.  Dave rose very high in Joe's
+estimation.
+
+Raining.  All of us inside.  Sal on the sofa playing the concertina; Dad
+squatting on the edge of a flat stone at the corner of the fireplace; Dave
+on another opposite; both gazing into the fire, which was almost out,
+and listening intently to the music; the dog, dripping wet, coiled at
+their feet, shivering; Mother sitting dreamily at the table, her palm
+pressed against her cheek, also enjoying the music.
+
+Sal played on until the concertina broke.  Then there was a silence.
+
+For a while Dave played with a piece of charcoal.  At last he spoke.
+
+"Well," he said, looking at Dad, "what about this circus?"
+
+Dad chuckled.
+
+"But what d' y' THINK?"
+
+"Well" (Dad paused), "yes" (chuckled again)--"very well."
+
+"A CIRCUS!" Sal put in--"a PRETTY circus YOUS'D have!"
+
+Dave fired up.
+
+"YOU go and ride the red heifer, strad-legs, same as y' did yesterday,"
+he snarled, "an' let all the country see y'."
+
+Sal blushed.
+
+Then to Dad:
+
+"I'm certain, with Paddy Maloney in it, we could do it right enough, and
+make it pay, too."
+
+"Very well, then," said Dad, "very well.  There's th' tarpaulin there,
+and plenty bales and old bags whenever you're ready."
+
+Dave was delighted, and he and Dad and Joe ran out to see where the tent
+could be pitched, and ran in again wetter than the dog.
+
+One day a circus-tent went up in our yard.  It attracted a lot of notice.
+Two of the Johnsons and old Anderson and  others rode in on draught-horses
+and inspected it.  And Smith's spring-cart horse, that used to be driven
+by every day, stopped in the middle of the lane and stared at it; and,
+when Smith stood up and belted him with the double of the reins, he bolted
+and upset the cart over a stump.  It was n't a very white tent.  It was
+made of bags and green bushes, and Dad and Dave and Paddy Maloney were two
+days putting it up.
+
+We all assisted in the preparations for the circus.  Dad built seats out
+of forked sticks and slabs, and Joe gathered jam-tins which Mother filled
+with fat and moleskin wicks to light up with.
+
+Everyone in the district knew about our circus, and longed for the opening
+night.  It came.  A large fire near the slip-rails, shining across the
+lane and lighting up a corner of the wheat-paddock, showed the way in.
+
+Dad stood at the door to take the money.  The Andersons--eleven of
+them--arrived first.  They did n't walk straight in.  They hung about for
+a while.  Then Anderson sidled up to Dad and talked into his ear.  "Oh!
+that's all right," Dad said, and passed them all in without taking any
+money.
+
+Next came the Maloneys, and, as Paddy belonged to the circus, they also
+walked in without paying, and secured front seats.
+
+Then Jim Brown and Sam Holmes, and Walter Nutt, and Steve Burton, and
+eight others strolled along.  Dad owed all of them money for binding,
+which they happened to remember.  "In yous go," Dad said, and in the lot
+went.  The tent filled quickly, and the crowd awaited the opening act.
+
+Paddy Maloney came forward with his hair oiled and combed, and rang the
+cow-bell.
+
+Dave, bare-footed and bare-headed, in snow-white moles and red shirt,
+entered standing majestically upon old Ned's back.  He got a great
+reception.  But Ned was tired and refused to canter.  He jogged lazily
+round the ring.  Dave shouted at him and rocked about.  He was very
+unsteady.  Paddy Maloney flogged Ned with the leg-rope.  But Ned had been
+flogged often before.  He got slower and slower.  Suddenly, he stood and
+cocked his tail, and to prevent himself falling, Dave jumped off.  Then
+the audience yelled while Dave dragged Ned into the dressing-room and
+punched him on the nose.
+
+Paddy Maloney made a speech.  He said:  "Well, the next item on the
+programme'll knock y' bandy.  Keep quiet, you fellows, now, an' y'll see
+somethin'."
+
+They saw Joe.  He stepped backwards into the ring, pulling at a string.
+There was something on the string.  "Come on!" Joe said, tugging.  The
+"something" would n't come.  "Chuck 'im in!" Joe called out.  Then the
+pet kangaroo was heaved in through the doorway, and fell on its head and
+raised the dust.  A great many ugly dogs rushed for it savagely.  The
+kangaroo jumped up and bounded round the  ring.  The dogs pursued him
+noisily.  "GERROUT!" Joe shouted, and the crowd stood up and became very
+enthusiastic.  The dogs caught the kangaroo, and were dragging him to
+earth when Dad rushed in and kicked them in twos to the top of the tent.
+Then, while Johnson expostulated with Dad for laming his brindle slut,
+the kangaroo dived through a hole in the tent and rushed into the house
+and into the bedroom, and sprang on the bed among a lot of babies and
+women's hats.
+
+When the commotion subsided Paddy Maloney rang the cow-bell again, and
+Dave and "Podgy," the pet sheep, rode out on Nugget.  Podgy sat with
+hind-legs astride the horse and his head leaning back against Dave's
+chest.  Dave (standing up) bent over him with a pair of shears in his
+hand.  He was to shear Podgy as the horse cantered round.
+
+Paddy Maloney touched Nugget with the whip, and off he went--"rump-ti-dee,
+dump-ti-dee."  Dave rolled about a lot the first time round, but soon got
+his equilibrium.  He brandished the shears and plunged the points of them
+into Podgy's belly-wool--also into Podgy's skin.  "Bur-UR-R!" Podgy
+blurted and struggled violently.  Dave began to topple about.  He dropped
+the shears.  The audience guffawed.  Then Dave jumped; but Podgy's horns
+got caught in his clothes and made trouble.  Dave hung on one side of the
+horse and the sheep dangled on the other.  Dave sang out, so did Podgy.
+And the horse stopped and snorted, then swung furiously round and round
+until five or six pairs of hands seized his head and held him.
+
+Dave did n't repeat the act.  He ran away holding his clothes together.
+
+It was a very successful circus.  Everyone enjoyed it and wished to see it
+again--everyone but the Maloneys.  They said it was a swindle, and ran Dad
+down because he did n't divide with Paddy the 3s. 6d. he took at the door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+
+
+When Joe Was In Charge.
+
+
+Joe was a naturalist.  He spent a lot of time--time that Dad considered
+should have been employed cutting burr or digging potatoes--in ear-marking
+bears and bandicoots, and catching goannas and letting them go without
+their tails, or coupled in pairs with pieces of greenhide.  The paddock
+was full of goannas in harness and slit-eared bears.  THEY belonged to Joe.
+
+Joe also took an interest in snakes, and used to poke amongst logs and
+brush-fences in search of rare specimens.  Whenever he secured a good one
+he put it in a cage and left it there until it died or got out, or Dad
+threw it, cage and all, right out of the parish.
+
+One day, while Mother and Sal were out with Dad, Joe came home with a
+four-foot black snake in his hand.  It was a beauty.  So sleek and lithe
+and lively!  He carried it by the tail, its head swinging close to his
+bare leg, and the thing yearning for a grab at him.  But Joe understood
+the ways of a reptile.
+
+There was no cage--Dad had burnt the last one--so Joe walked round the
+room wondering where to put his prize.  The cat came out of the bedroom
+and mewed and followed him for the snake.  He told her to go away.  She
+did n't go.  She reached for the snake with her paw.  It bit her.  She
+spat and sprang in the air and rushed outside with her back up.  Joe
+giggled and wondered how long the cat would live.
+
+The Rev. Macpherson, on his way to christen M'Kenzie's baby, called in for
+a drink, and smilingly asked after Joe's health.
+
+"Hold this kuk-kuk-cove, then," Joe said, handing the parson the reptile,
+which was wriggling and biting at space, "an' I'll gug-gug-get y' one."
+But when Mr. Macpherson saw the thing was alive he jumped back and fell
+over the dog which was lying behind him in the shade.  Bluey grabbed him
+by the leg, and the parson jumped up in haste and made for his
+horse--followed by Bluey.  Joe cried, "KUM 'ere!"--then turned inside.
+
+Mother and Sal entered.  They had come to make Dad and themselves a cup of
+tea.  They quarrelled with Joe, and he went out and started playing with
+the snake.  He let it go, and went to catch it by the tail again, but the
+snake caught HIM--by the finger.
+
+"He's bit me!" Joe cried, turning pale.  Mother screeched, and Sal bolted
+off for Dad, while the snake glided silently up the yard.
+
+Anderson, passing on his old bay mare, heard the noise, and came in.  He
+examined Joe's finger, bled the wound, and was bandaging the arm when
+Dad rushed in.
+
+"Where is he?" he said.  "Oh, you d--d whelp!  You wretch of a boy!
+MY God!"
+
+"'Twasn' MY fault."  And Joe began to blubber.
+
+But Anderson protested.  There was no time, he said, to be lost barneying;
+and he told Dad to take his old mare Jean and go at once for Sweeney.
+Sweeney was the publican at Kangaroo Creek, with a reputation for curing
+snake-bite.  Dad ran out, mounted Jean and turned her head for Sweeney's.
+But, at the slip-rails, Jean stuck him up, and would n't go further.  Dad
+hit her between the ears with his fist, and got down and ran back.
+
+"The boy'll be dead, Anderson," he cried, rushing inside again.
+
+"Come on then," Anderson said, "we'll take off his finger."
+
+Joe was looking drowsy.  But, when Anderson took hold of him and placed
+the wounded finger on a block, and Dad faced him with the hammer and a
+blunt, rusty old chisel, he livened up.
+
+"No, Dad, NO!" he squealed, straining and kicking like an old man kangaroo.
+Anderson stuck to him, though, and with Sal's assistance held his finger
+on the block till Dad carefully rested the chisel on it and brought the
+hammer down.  It did n't sever the finger--it only scraped the nail
+off--but it did make Joe buck.  He struggled desperately and got away.
+
+Anderson could n't run at all; Dad was little faster; Sal could run like a
+greyhound in her bare feet, but, before she could pull her boots off, Joe
+had disappeared in the corn.
+
+"Quick!" Dad shouted, and the trio followed the patient.  They hunted
+through the corn from end to end, but found no trace of him.  Night came.
+The search continued.  They called, and called, but nothing answered save
+the ghostly echoes, the rustling of leaves, the slow, sonorous notes of a
+distant bear, or the neighing of a horse in the grass-paddock.
+
+At midnight they gave up, and went home, and sat inside and listened,
+and looked distracted.
+
+While they sat, "Whisky," a blackfellow from Billson's station, dropped
+in.  He was taking a horse down to town for his boss, and asked Dad if he
+could stay till morning.  Dad said he could.  He slept in Dave's bed; Dave
+slept on the sofa.
+
+"If Joe ain't dead, and wuz t' come in before mornin'," Dave said, "there
+won't be room for us all."
+
+And before morning Joe DID come in.  He entered stealthily by the
+back-door, and crawled quietly into bed.
+
+At daybreak Joe awoke, and nudged his bed-mate and said:
+
+"Dave, the cocks has crowed!"  No answer.  He nudged him again.
+
+"Dave, the hens is all off the roost!"  Still no reply.
+
+Daylight streamed in through the cracks.  Joe sat up--he was at the
+back--and stared about.  He glanced at the face of his bed-mate and
+chuckled and said:
+
+"Who's been blackenin' y', Dave?"
+
+He sat grinning awhile, then stood up, and started pulling on his trousers,
+which he drew from under his pillow.  He had put one leg into them when
+his eyes rested on a pair of black feet uncovered at the foot of the bed.
+He stared at them and the black face again--then plunged for the door and
+fell.  Whisky was awake and grinned over the side of the bed at him.
+
+"Wot makit you so fritent like that?" he said, grinning more.
+
+Joe ran into Mother's room and dived in behind her and Dad.  Dad swore,
+and kicked Joe and jammed him against the slabs with his heels, saying:
+
+"My GAWD!  You DEVIL of a feller, how (KICK) dare you (KICK) run (KICK)
+run (KICK, KICK, KICK) away yesterday, eh?"  (KICK).
+
+But he was very glad to see Joe all the same; we all felt that Shingle Hut
+would not have been the same place at all without Joe.
+
+It was when Dad and Dave were away after kangaroo-scalps that Joe was most
+appreciated.  Mother and Sal felt it such a comfort to have a man in the
+house--even if it was only Joe.
+
+Joe was proud of his male prerogatives.  He looked after the selection,
+minded the corn, kept Anderson's and Dwyer's and Brown's and old Mother
+Murphy's cows out of it, and chased goannas away from the front door the
+same as Dad used to do--for Joe felt that he was in Dad's place, and
+postponed his customary familiarities with the goannas.
+
+It was while Joe was in charge that Casey came to our place.
+A starved-looking, toothless little old man with a restless eye, talkative,
+ragged and grey; he walked with a bend in his back (not a hump), and
+carried his chin in the air.  We never saw a man like him before.  He
+spoke rapidly, too, and watched us all as he talked.  Not exactly a
+"traveller;" he carried no swag or billycan, and wore a pair of boots much
+too large.  He seemed to have been "well brought up"--he took off his hat
+at the door and bowed low to Mother and Sal, who were sitting inside,
+sewing.  They gave a start and stared.  The dog, lying at Mother's feet,
+rose and growled.  Bluey was n't used to the ways of people well brought up.
+
+The world had dealt harshly with Casey, and his story went to Mother's
+heart.  "God buless y'," he said when she told him he could have some
+dinner; "but I'll cut y' wood for it; oh, I'll cut y' wood!" And he went
+to the wood-heap and started work.  A big heap and a blunt axe; but it
+did n't matter to Casey.  He worked hard, and did n't stare about, and
+did n't reduce the heap much, either; and when Sal called him to dinner he
+could n't hear--he was too busy.  Joe had to go and bring him away.
+
+Casey sat at the table and looked up at the holes in the roof, through
+which the sun was shining.
+
+"Ought t' be a cool house," he remarked.
+
+Mother said it was.
+
+"Quite a bush house."
+
+"Oh, yes," Mother said--"we're right in the bush here."
+
+He began to eat and, as he ate, talked cheerfully of selections and crops
+and old times and bad times and wire fences and dead cattle.  Casey was a
+versatile ancient.  When he was finished he shifted to the sofa and asked
+Mother how many children she had.  Mother considered and said, "Twelve."
+He thought a dozen enough for anyone, and, said that HIS mother, when he
+left home, had twenty-one--all girls but him.  That was forty years ago,
+and he did n't know how many she had since.  Mother and Sal smiled.  They
+began to like old Casey.
+
+Casey took up his hat and went outside, and did n't say "Good-day" or
+"Thanks" or anything.  He did n't go away, either.  He looked about the
+yard.  A panel in the fence was broken.  It had been broken for five
+years.  Casey seemed to know it.  He started mending that panel.  He was
+mending it all the evening.
+
+Mother called to Joe to bring in some wood.  Casey left the fence, hurried
+to the wood-heap, carried in an armful, and asked Mother if she wanted
+more.  Then he returned to the fence.
+
+"J-OE," Mother screeched a little later, "look at those cows tryin' to eat
+the corn."
+
+Casey left the fence again and drove the cows away, and mended the wire on
+his way back.
+
+At sundown Casey was cutting more wood, and when we were at supper he
+brought it in and put some on the fire, and went out again slowly.
+
+Mother and Sal talked about him.
+
+"Better give him his supper," Sal said, and Mother sent Joe to invite him
+in.  He did n't come in at once.  Casey was n't a forward man.  He stayed
+to throw some pumpkin to the pigs.
+
+Casey slept in the barn that night.  He slept in it the next night, too.
+He did n't believe in shifting from place to place, so he stayed with us
+altogether.  He took a lively interest in the selection.  The house, he
+said, was in the wrong place, and he showed Mother where it ought to have
+been built.  He suggested shifting it, and setting a hedge and ornamental
+trees in front and fruit trees at the back, and making a nice place of it.
+Little things like that pleased Mother.  "Anyway," she would sometimes say
+to Sal, "he's a useful old man, and knows how to look after things about
+the place." Casey did.  Whenever any watermelons were ripe, he looked
+after THEM and hid the skins in the ground.  And if a goanna or a crow
+came and frightened a hen from her nest Casey always got the egg, and when
+he had gobbled it up he would chase that crow or goanna for its life and
+shout lustily.
+
+Every day saw Casey more at home at our place.  He was a very kind man,
+and most obliging.  If a traveller called for a drink of water, Casey
+would give him a cup of milk and ask him to wait and have dinner.  If
+Maloney, or old Anderson, or anybody, wished to borrow a horse, or a dray,
+or anything about the place, Casey would let them have it with pleasure,
+and tell them not to be in a hurry about returning it.
+
+Joe got on well with Casey.  Casey's views on hard work were the same as
+Joe's.  Hard work, Joe thought, was n't necessary on a selection.
+
+Casey knew a thing or two--so he said.  One fine morning, when all the sky
+was blue and the butcher-birds whistling strong, Dwyer's cows smashed down
+a lot of the fence and dragged it into the corn.  Casey, assisted by Joe,
+put them all in the yard, and hammered them with sticks.  Dwyer came along.
+
+"Those cattle belong to me," he said angrily.
+
+"They belongs t' ME," Casey answered, "until you pay damages." Then he put
+his back to the slip-rails and looked up aggressively into Dwyer's face.
+Dwyer was a giant beside Casey.  Dwyer did n't say anything--he was n't a
+man of words--but started throwing the rails down to let the cows  out.
+Casey flew at him.  Dwyer quietly shoved him away with his long, brown
+arm.  Casey came again and fastened on to Dwyer.  Joe mounted the stockyard.
+Dwyer seized Casey with both hands; then there was a struggle--on Casey's
+part.  Dwyer lifted him up and carried him away and set him down on his
+back, then hastened to the rails.  But before he could throw them down
+Casey was upon him again.  Casey never knew when he was beaten.  Dwyer was
+getting annoyed.  He took Casey by the back of the neck and squeezed him.
+Casey humped his shoulders and gasped.  Dwyer stared about.  A plough-rein
+hung on the yard.  Dwyer reached for it.  Casey yelled, "Murder!"  Dwyer
+fastened one end of the rope round Casey's body--under the arms--and
+stared about again.  And again "Murder!" from Casey.  Joe jumped off the
+yard to get further away.  A tree, with a high horizontal limb, stood near.
+Dad once used it as a butcher's gallows.  Dwyer gathered the loose rein
+into a coil and heaved it over the limb, and hauled Casey up.  Then he
+tied the end of the rope to the yard and drove out the cows.
+
+"When y' want 'im down," Dwyer said to Joe as he walked away,
+"cut the rope."
+
+Casey groaned, and one of his boots dropped off.  Then he began to spin
+round--to wind up and unwind and wind up again.  Joe came near and eyed
+the twirling form with joy.
+
+Mother and Sal arrived, breathless and excited.  They screeched at Joe.
+
+"Undo th' r-r-rope," Joe said, "an' he'll come w-w--WOP."
+
+Sal ran away and procured a sheet, and Mother and she held it under Casey,
+and told Joe to unfasten the rope and lower him as steadily as he could.
+Joe unfastened the rope, but somehow it pinched his fingers and he let go,
+and Casey fell through the sheet.  For three weeks Casey was an invalid at
+our place.  He would have been invalided there for the rest of his days
+only old Dad came home and induced him to leave.  Casey did n't want to
+go; but Dad had a persuasive way with him that generally proved effectual.
+
+Singularly enough, Dad complained that kangaroos were getting scarce where
+he was camped; while our paddocks were full of them.  Joe started a mob
+nearly every day, as he walked round overseeing things; and he pondered.
+Suddenly he had an original inspiration--originality was Joe's strong
+point.  He turned the barn into a workshop, and buried himself there for
+two days.  For two whole days he was never "at home,", except when he
+stepped out to throw the hammer at the dog for yelping for a drink.  The
+greedy brute! it was n't a week since he'd had a billyful--Joe told him.
+On the morning of the third day the barn-door swung open, and forth came a
+kangaroo, with the sharpened carving knife in its paws.  It hopped across
+the yard and sat up, bold and erect, near the dog-kennel.  Bluey nearly
+broke his neck trying to get at it.  The kangaroo said:  "Lay down, you
+useless hound!" and started across the cultivation!, heading for the
+grass-paddock in long, erratic jumps.  Half-way across the cultivation it
+spotted a mob of other kangaroos, and took a firmer grip of the carver.
+
+Bluey howled and plunged until Mother came out to see what was the matter.
+She was in time to see a solitary kangaroo hop in a drunken manner towards
+the fence, so she let the dog go and cried, "Sool him, Bluey!  Sool him!"
+Bluey sooled him, and Mother followed with the axe to get the scalp.  As
+the dog came racing up, the kangaroo turned and hissed, "G' home, y'
+mongrel!" Bluey took no notice, and only when he had nailed the kangaroo
+dextrously by the thigh and got him down did it dawn upon the marsupial
+that Bluey was n't in the secret.  Joe tore off his head-gear, called the
+dog affectionately by name, and yelled for help; but Bluey had not had
+anything substantial to eat for over a week, and he worried away vigorously.
+
+Then the kangaroo slashed out with the carving-knife, and hacked a junk
+off Bluey's nose.  Bluey shook his head, relaxed his thigh-grip, and
+grabbed the kangaroo by the ribs.  How that kangaroo did squeal!  Mother
+arrived.  She dropped the axe, threw up both hands, and shrieked.  "Pull
+him off! he's eating me!" gasped the kangaroo.  Mother shrieked louder,
+and wrung her hands; but it had no effect on Bluey.  He was a good dog,
+was Bluey!
+
+At last, Mother got him by the tail and dragged him off, but he took a
+mouthful of kangaroo with him as he went.
+
+Then the kangaroo raised itself slowly on to its hands and knees.  It was
+very white and sick-looking, and Mother threw her arms round it and cried,
+"Oh, Joe!  My child! my child!"
+
+It was several days before Joe felt better.  When he did, Bluey and he
+went down the gully together, and, after a while, Joe came back--like
+Butler--alone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+
+
+Dad's "Fortune."
+
+
+Dad used to say that Shingle Hut was the finest selection on Darling Downs;
+but WE never could see anything fine about it--except the weather in
+drought time, or Dad's old saddle mare.  SHE was very fine.  The house was
+built in a gully so that the bailiffs (I suppose) or the blacks--who were
+mostly dead--could n't locate it.  An old wire-fence, slanting all
+directions, staggered past the front door.  At the rear, its foot almost
+in the back door, sloped a barren ridge, formerly a squatter's sheep-yard.
+For the rest there were sky, wallaby-scrub, gum-trees, and some acres of
+cultivation.  But Dad must have seen something in it, or he would n't have
+stood feasting his eyes on the wooded waste after he had knocked off work
+of an evening.  In all his wanderings--and Dad had been almost everywhere;
+swimming flooded creeks and rivers, humping his swag from one end of
+Australia to the other; at all games going except bank-managing and
+bushranging--he had seen no place timbered like Shingle Hut.
+
+"Why," he used to say, "it's a fortune in itself.  Hold  on till the
+country gets populated, and firewood is scarce, there'll be money in it
+then--mark my words!"
+
+Poor Dad!  I wonder how long he expected to live?
+
+At the back of Shingle Hut was a tract of Government land--mostly
+mountains--marked on the map as the Great Dividing Range.  Splendid
+country, Dad considered it--BEAUTIFUL country--and part of a grand scheme
+he had in his head.  I defy you to find a man more full of schemes than
+Dad was.
+
+The day had been hot.  Inside, the mosquitoes were bad; and, after supper,
+Dad and Dave were outside, lying on some bags.  They had been grubbing
+that day, and were tired.  The night was nearly dark.  Dad lay upon his
+back, watching the stars; Dave upon his stomach, his head resting on his
+arms.  Both silent.  One of the draught-horses cropped the couch-grass
+round about them.  Now and again a flying-fox circled noiselessly overhead,
+and "MOPOKE!--MOPOKE!" came dismally from the ridge and from out the
+lonely-looking gully.  A star fell, lighting up a portion of the sky, but
+Dad did not remark it.  In a while he said:
+
+"How old are you, Dave?"  Dave made a mental calculation before answering.
+
+"S'pose I must be eighteen now ...Why?"
+
+A silence.
+
+"I've been thinking of that land at the back--if we had that I believe we
+could make money."
+
+"Yairs--if we HAD."
+
+Another silence.
+
+"Well, I mean to have it, and that before very long."
+
+Dave raised his head, and looked towards Dad.
+
+"There's four of you old enough to take up land, and where could you get
+better country than that out there for cattle?  Why" (turning on his side
+and facing Dave) "with a thousand acres of that stocked with cattle and
+this kept under cultivation we'd make money--we'd be RICH in a very
+few years."
+
+Dave raised himself on his elbow.
+
+"Yairs--with CATTLE," he said.
+
+"Just so" (Dad sat up with enthusiasm), "but to get the LAND is the first
+thing, and that's easy enough ONLY" (lowering his voice) "it'll have to be
+done QUIETLY and without letting everyone 'round know we're going in for
+it." ("Oh! yairs, o' course," from Dave.)  "THEN" (and Dad lifted his
+voice and leaned over) "run a couple of wires round it, put every cow
+we've here on it straight away; get another one or two when the barley's
+sold, and let them breed."
+
+"'Bout how many'd that be t' start 'n?"
+
+"Well, EIGHT good cows at the least--plenty, too.  It's simply WONDERFUL
+how cattle breed if they're let alone.  Look at Murphy, for instance.
+Started on that place with two young heifers--those two old red cows that
+you see knocking about now.  THEY'RE the mothers of all his cattle.
+Anderson just the same...Why, God bless my soul! we would have a better
+start than any one of them ever had--by a long way."
+
+Dave sat up.  He began to share Dad's enthusiasm.
+
+"Once get it STOCKED, and all that is to be done then is simply to look
+after the fence, ride about among the cattle every day, see they're right,
+brand the calves, and every year muster the mob, draft out the fat
+bullocks, whip them into town, and get our seven and eight pounds a head
+for them."
+
+"That'd suit me down to the ground, ridin' about after cattle," Dave said.
+
+"Yes, get our seven and eight pounds, maybe nine or ten pounds a-piece.
+And could ever we do that pottering about on the place?"  Dad leaned over
+further and pressed Dave's knee with his hand.
+
+"Mind you!" (in a very confidential tone) "I'm not at all satisfied the
+way we're dragging along here.  It's utter  nonsense, and, to speak the
+truth" (lowering his voice again) "I'VE BEEN SICK OF THE WHOLE DAMN THING
+LONG AGO."
+
+A minute or two passed.
+
+"It would n't matter," Dad continued, "if there was no way of doing
+better; but there IS.  The thing only requires to be DONE, and why not DO
+it?"  He paused for an answer.
+
+"Well," Dave said, "let us commence it straight off--t'morror.  It's the
+life that'd suit ME."
+
+"Of course it WOULD...and there's money in it...no mistake about it!"
+
+A few minutes passed.  Then they went inside, and Dad took Mother into his
+confidence, and they sat up half the night discussing the scheme.
+
+Twelve months later.  The storekeeper was at the house wanting to see Dad.
+Dad was n't at home.  He never was when the storekeeper came; he generally
+contrived to be away, up the paddock somewhere or amongst the corn--if any
+was growing.  The storekeeper waited an hour or so, but Dad did n't turn
+up.  When he was gone, though, Dad walked in and asked Mother what he had
+said.  Mother was seated on the sofa, troubled-looking.
+
+"He must be paid by next week," she said, bursting into tears, "or the
+place'll be sold over our heads."
+
+Dad stood with his back to the fire-place, his hand locked behind him,
+watching the flies swarming on the table.
+
+Dave came in.  He understood the situation at a glance.  The scene was not
+new to him.  He sat down, leant forward, picked a straw off the flor and
+twisted it round and round his finger, reflecting.
+
+Little Bill put his head on Mother's lap, and asked for a piece of
+bread...He asked a second time.
+
+"There IS no bread, child," she said.
+
+"But me wants some, mumma."
+
+Dad went outside and Dave followed.  They sat on their heels, their backs
+to the barn, thoughtfully studying the earth.
+
+"It's the same thing"--Dad said, reproachfully--"from one year's end to
+the other...alwuz a BILL!"
+
+"Thought last year we'd be over all this by now!" from Dave.
+
+"So we COULD...Can NOW...It only wants that land to be taken up; and,
+as I've said often and often, these cows taken----"
+
+Dad caught sight of the storekeeper coming back, and ran into the barn.
+
+Six months later.  Dinner about ready.  "Take up a thousand acres," Dad
+was saying; "take it up----"
+
+He was interrupted by a visitor.
+
+"Are you Mister Rudd?"  Dad said he was.
+
+"Well, er--I've a FI. FA. against y'."
+
+Dad didn't understand.
+
+The Sheriff's officer drew a document from his inside breast-pocket and
+proceeded to read:
+
+"To Mister James Williams, my bailiff.  Greeting:  By virtue of Her
+Majesty's writ of FIERI FACIAS, to me directed, I command you that of the
+goods and chattels, money, bank-note or notes or other property of Murtagh
+Joseph Rudd, of Shingle Hut, in my bailiwick, you cause to be made the sum
+of forty pounds ten shillings, with interest thereon," &c.
+
+Dad understood.
+
+Then the bailiff's man rounded up the cows and the horses, and Dad and the
+lot of us leant against the fence and in sadness watched Polly and old
+Poley and the rest for the last time pass out the slip-rails.
+
+"That puts an end to the land business!" Dave said gloomily.
+
+But Dad never spoke.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+
+
+We Embark in the Bear Industry.
+
+
+When the bailiff came and took away the cows and horses, and completely
+knocked the bottom out of Dad's land scheme, Dad did n't sit in the ashes
+and sulk.  He was n't that kind of person.  He DID at times say he was
+tired of it all, and often he wished it far enough, too!  But, then, that
+was all mere talk on Dad's part.  He LOVED the selection.  To every
+inch--every stick of it--he was devoted.  'T was his creed.  He felt
+certain there was money in it--that out of it would come his independence.
+Therefore, he did n't rollup and, with Mother by the hand and little Bill
+on his back, stalk into town to hang round and abuse the bush.  He walked
+up and down the yard thinking and thinking.  Dad was a man with a head.
+
+He consulted Mother and Dave, and together they thought more.
+
+"The thing is," Dad said, "to get another horse to finish the bit of
+ploughing.  We've got ONE; Anderson will lend the grey mare, I know."
+
+He walked round the room a few times.
+
+"When that's done, I think I see my way clear; but THAT'S the trouble."
+
+He looked at Dave.  Dave seemed as though he had a solution.  But Joe spoke.
+
+"Kuk-kuk-could n't y' b-reak in some kang'roos, Dad?  There's pul-lenty in
+th' pup-paddick."
+
+"Could n't you shut up and hold your tongue and clear out of this, you
+brat?" Dad roared.  And Joe hung his head and shut up.
+
+"Well, y' know"--Dave drawled--"there's that colt wot Maloney offered us
+before to quieten.  Could get 'im.  'E's a big lump of a 'orse if y' could
+do anythin' with 'im.  THEY gave 'im best themselves."
+
+Dad's eyes shone.
+
+"That's th' horse," he cried.  "GET him!  To-morrow first thing go for
+him!  I'LL make something of him!"
+
+"Don't know"--Dave chuckled--"he's a----"
+
+"Tut, tut; you fetch him."
+
+"Oh, I'll FETCH 'im."  And Dave, on the strength of having made a valuable
+suggestion, dragged Joe off the sofa and stretched himself upon it.
+
+Dad went on thinking awhile.  "How much," he at last asked, "did Johnson
+get for those skins?"
+
+"Which?" Dave answered.  "Bears or kangaroos?"
+
+"Bears."
+
+"Five bob, was n't it?  Six for some."
+
+"What, A-PIECE?"
+
+"Yairs."
+
+"Why, God bless my soul, what have we been thinking about?  FIVE SHILLINGS?
+Are you sure?"
+
+"Yairs, rather."
+
+"What, bear-skins worth that and the paddock here and the lanes and the
+country over-run with them--FULL of the damn things--HUNDREDS of them--and
+we, all this time--all these years--working and slaving and scraping
+and-and" (he almost shouted), "DAMN me!  What asses we HAVE been, to be
+sure."  (Dave stared at him.)  "Bear-skins FIVE SHILLINGS each, and----"
+
+"That's all right enough," Dave interrupted, "but----"
+
+"Of COURSE it's all right enough NOW," Dad yelled, "now when we see it."
+
+"But look!" and Dave sat up and assumed an arbitrary attitude.  He was
+growing suspicious of Dad's ideas.  "To begin with, how many bears do you
+reckon on getting in a day?"
+
+"In a day"--reflectively--"twenty at the least."
+
+"Twenty.  Well, say we only got HALF that, how much d' y' make?"
+
+" MAKE?" (considering).  "Two pounds ten a day...fifteen or twenty pounds
+a week...yes, TWENTY POUNDS, reckoning at THAT even.  And do you mean to
+tell ME that we would n't get more than TEN bears a day?  Why we'd get
+more than that in the lane--get more up ONE tree."
+
+Dave grinned.
+
+"Can't you SEE?  DAMN it, boy, are you so DENSE?"
+
+Dave saw.  He became enthusiastic.  He wondered why it had never struck us
+before.  Then Dad smiled, and we sat to supper and talked about bears.
+
+"We'll not bother with that horse NOW," said Dad; "the ploughing can go;
+I'm DONE with it.  We've had enough poking and puddling about.  We'll
+start this business straightaway."  And the following morning, headed by
+the dog and Dad, armed with a tomahawk, we started up the paddock.
+
+How free we felt!  To think we were finished for ever with the raking and
+carting of hay--finished tramping up and down beside Dad, with the
+plough-reins in our hands, flies in our eyes and burr in our feet--finished
+being the target for Dad's blasphemy when the plough or the horses or the
+harness went wrong--was delightful!  And the adventure and excitement
+which this new industry promised operated strongly upon us.  We rioted and
+careered like hunted brumbies through the trees, till warned by Dad to
+"keep our eyes about;" then we settled down, and Joe found the first bear.
+It was on an ironbark tree, around the base of which we soon were
+clamouring.
+
+"Up y' go!" Dad said, cheerfully helping Dave and the tomahawk into the
+first fork.
+
+Dave ascended and crawled cautiously along the limb the bear was on and
+began to chop.  WE armed ourselves with  heavy sticks and waited.  The
+dog sat on his tail and stared and whined at the bear.  The limb cracked,
+and Dave ceased chopping and shouted "Look out!" We shouldered arms.  The
+dog was in a hurry.  He sprang in the air and landed on his back.  But
+Dave had to make another nick or two.  Then with a loud crack the limb
+parted and came sweeping down.  The dog jumped to meet it.  He met it,
+and was laid out on the grass.  The bear scrambled to its feet and made
+off towards Bill.  Bill squealed and fell backwards over a log.  Dad
+rushed in and kicked the bear up like a football.  It landed near Joe.
+Joe's eyes shone with the hunter's lust of blood.  He swung his stick for
+a tremendous blow--swung it mightily and high--and nearly knocked his
+parent's head off.  When Dad had spat blood enough to make sure that he
+had only lost one tooth, he hunted Joe; but Joe was too fleet, as usual.
+
+Meanwhile, the bear had run up another tree--about the tallest old gum in
+the paddock.  Dad snapped his fingers angrily and cried:  "Where the devil
+was the DOG?"
+
+"Oh, where the devil wuz the DORG?" Dave growled, sliding down the
+tree--"where th' devil wuz YOU?  Where wuz the lot o' y'?"
+
+"Ah, well!" Dad said "--there's plenty more we can get.  Come along."
+And off we went.  The dog pulled himself together and limped after us.
+
+Bears were plentiful enough, but we wandered far before we found another
+on a tree that Dave could climb, and, when we DID, somehow or other the
+limb broke when he put his weight on it, and down he came, bear and all.
+Of course we were not ready, and that bear, like the other, got up another
+tree.  But Dave did n't.  He lay till Dad ran about two miles down a gully
+to a dam and filled his hat with muddy water and came tearing back with it
+empty--till Anderson and Mother came and helped to carry him home.
+
+We did n't go out any more after bears.  Dave, when he was able, went and
+got Maloney's colt and put him in the plough.  And, after he had kicked
+Dad and smashed all the swingle-trees about the place, and got right out
+of his harness a couple of times and sulked for two days, he went well
+enough beside Anderson's old grey mare.
+
+And that season, when everyone else's wheat was red with rust--when
+Anderson and Maloney cut theirs for hay--when Johnson put a firestick in
+his--ours was good to see.  It ripened; and the rain kept off, and we
+reaped 200 bags.  Salvation!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+
+Nell and Ned.
+
+
+That harvest of two hundred bags of wheat was the turning-point in the
+history of our selection.  Things somehow seemed to go better; and Dad's
+faith was gradually justified--to some extent.  We accumulated out-buildings
+and added two new rooms to the hut, and Dad was able to lend old Anderson
+five pounds in return for a promise to pay seven pounds ten shillings in
+six months' time.  We increased the stock, too, by degrees; and--crowning
+joy!--we got a horse or two you could ride to the township.
+
+With Nell and Ned we reckoned we had two saddle-horses--those were their
+names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt.  Fine hacks they were, too!
+Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet.  Dad reckoned Ned was the
+better of the two.  He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle
+disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a
+sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"--a habit that discounted
+his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women
+could n't saddle him to run the cows in.  Whenever he saw the saddle or
+heard the girth-buckles rattle he would start to flinch.  Put the cloth
+on his back--folded or otherwise--and, no matter how smart you might be,
+it would be off before you could cover it with the saddle, and he would n't
+have flicked it with his tail, or pulled it off with his teeth, or done
+anything to it.  He just flinched--made the skin on his back--where there
+was any--QUIVER.  Throw on the saddle without a cloth, and he would "give"
+in the middle like a broken rail--bend till his belly almost touched the
+ground, and remain bent till mounted; then he'd crawl off and gradually
+straighten up as he became used to you.  Were you tender-hearted enough to
+feel compunction in sitting down hard on a six-year-old sore, or if you
+had an aversion to kicking the suffering brute with both heels and belting
+his hide with a yard or two of fencing-wire to get him to show signs of
+animation, you would dismount and walk--perhaps, weep.  WE always rode him
+right out, though.
+
+As a two-year-old Ned was Dad's hope.  Pointing proudly to the long-legged,
+big-headed, ugly moke mooching by the door, smelling the dust, he would
+say:  "Be a fine horse in another year!  Little sleepy-looking yet; that's
+nothing!"
+
+"Stir him up a bit, till we see how he canters," he said to Joe one day.
+And when Joe stirred him up--rattled a piece of rock on his jaw that
+nearly knocked his head off--Dad took after Joe and chased him through the
+potatoes, and out into the grass-paddock, and across towards Anderson's;
+then returned and yarded the colt, and knocked a patch of skin off him
+with a rail because he would n't stand in a corner till he looked at his
+eye.  "Would n't have anything happen to that colt for a fortune!" he said
+to himself.  Then went away, forgetting to throw the rails down.  Dave
+threw them down a couple of days after.
+
+WE preferred Nell to Ned, but Dad always voted for the colt.  "You can
+trust him; he'll stand anywhere," he used to say.  Ned WOULD!  Once, when
+the grass-paddock was burning, he stood until he took fire.  Then he stood
+while we hammered him with boughs to put the blaze out.  It took a lot to
+frighten Ned.  His presence of mind rarely deserted him.  Once, though, he
+got a start.  He was standing in the shade of a tree in the paddock when
+Dad went to catch him.  He seemed to be watching Dad, but was n't.  He was
+ASLEEP.  "Well, old chap," said Dad, "how ARE y'?" and proceeded to bridle
+him.  Ned opened his mouth and received the bit as usual, only some of his
+tongue came out and stayed out.  "Wot's up w' y'?" and Dad tried to poke
+it in with his finger, but it came out further, and some chewed grass
+dropped into his hand.  Dad started to lead him then, or rather to PULL
+him, and at the first tug he have the reins Ned woke with a snort and
+broke away.  And when the other horses saw him looking at Dad with his
+tail cocked, and his head up, and the bridle-reins hanging, they went for
+their lives through the trees, and Blossom's foal got staked.
+
+Another day Dad was out on Ned, looking for the red heifer, and came
+across two men fencing--a tall, powerful-looking man with a beard, and a
+slim young fellow with a smooth face.  Also a kangaroo-pup.  As Dad slowly
+approached, Ned swaying from side to side with his nose to the ground,
+the elder man drove the crowbar into the earth and stared as if he had
+never seen a man on horseback before.  The young fellow sat on a log and
+stared too.  The pup ran behind a tree and growled.
+
+"Seen any cattle round here?" Dad asked.
+
+"No," the man said, and grinned.
+
+"Did n't notice a red heifer?"
+
+"No," grinning more.
+
+The kangaroo-pup left the tree and sniffed at Ned's heels.
+
+"Won't kick, will he?" said the man.
+
+The young fellow broke into a loud laugh and fell off the log.
+
+"No," Dad replied--"he's PERFECTLY quiet."
+
+"He LOOKS quiet."
+
+The young fellow took a fit of coughing.
+
+After a pause.  "Well, you did n't see any about, then?" and Dad wheeled
+Ned round to go away.
+
+"No, I DID N'T, old man," the other answered, and snatched hold of Ned's
+tail and hung back with all his might.  Ned grunted and strained and tore
+the ground up with his toes; Dad spurred and leathered him with a strap,
+looking straight ahead.  The man hung on.  "Come 'long," Dad said.  The
+pup barked.  "COME 'long with YER!" Dad said.  The young fellow fell off
+the log again.  Ned's tail cracked.  Dad hit him between the ears.  The
+tail cracked again.  A piece of it came off; then Ned stumbled and went on
+his head.  "What the DEVIL----!" Dad said, looking round.  But only the
+young fellow was laughing.
+
+Nell was different from Ned.  She was a bay, with yellow flanks and a lump
+under her belly; a bright eye, lop ears, and heavy, hairy legs.  She was a
+very wise mare.  It was  wonderful how much she know.  She knew when she
+was wanted; and she would go away the night before and get lost.  And she
+knew when she was n't wanted; then she'd hang about the back-door licking
+a hole in the ground where the dish-water was thrown, or fossicking at the
+barn for the corn Dad had hidden, or scratching her neck or her rump
+against the cultivation paddock slip-rails.  She always scratched herself
+against those slip-rails--sometimes for hours--always until they fell down.
+Then she'd walk in and eat.  And how she COULD eat!
+
+As a hack, Nell was unreliable.  You could n't reckon with certainty on
+getting her to start.  All depended on the humour she was in and the
+direction you wished to take--mostly the direction.  If towards the
+grass-paddock or the dam, she was off helter-skelter.  If it was n't,
+she'd go on strike--put her head down and chew the bit.  Then, when you'd
+get to work on her with a waddy--which we always did--she'd walk backwards
+into the house and frighten Mother, or into the waterhole and dirty the
+water.  Dad said it was the fault of the cove who broke her in.  Dad was a
+just man.  The "cove" was a union shearer--did it for four shillings and
+six pence.  Wanted five bob, but Dad beat him down.  Anybody else would
+have asked a pound.
+
+When Nell DID make up her mind to go, it was with a rush, and, if the
+slip-rails were on the ground, she'd refuse to take them.  She'd stand and
+look out into the lane.   You'd have to get off and drag the rails aside
+(about twenty, counting broken ones).  Then she'd fancy they were up, and
+would shake her head and mark time until you dug your heels into her; then
+she'd gather herself together and jump high enough for a show--over nothing!
+
+Dave was to ride Nell to town one Christmas to see the sports.  He had n't
+seen any sports before, and went to bed excited and rose in the middle of
+the night to start.  He dressed in the dark, and we heard him going out,
+because he fell over Sandy and Kate.  They had come on a visit, and were
+sleeping on the floor in the front room.  We also heard him throw the
+slip-rails down.
+
+There was a heavy fog that morning.  At breakfast we talked about Dave,
+and Dad "s'posed" he would just about be getting in; but an hour or two
+after breakfast the fog cleared, and we saw Dave in the lane hammering
+Nell with a stick.  Nell had her rump to the fence and was trying hard to
+kick it down.  Dad went to him.  "Take her gently; take her GENTLY, boy,"
+he shouted.  "PSHAW!  take her GENTLY!" Dave shouted back.  "Here"--he
+jumped off her and handed Dad the reins--"take her away and cut her
+throat."  Then he cried, and then he picked up a big stone and rushed at
+Nell's head.  But Dad interfered.
+
+But the day Dad mounted Nell to bring a doctor to Anderson!  She started
+away smartly--the wrong road.  Dad jerked her mouth and pulled her round
+roughly.  He was in a hurry--Nell was n't.  She stood and shook her head
+and switched her tail.  Dad rattled a waddy on her and jammed his heels
+hard against her ribs.  She dropped her head and cow-kicked.  Then he
+coaxed her.  "Come on, old girl," he said; "come on,"--and patted her on
+the neck.  She liked being patted.  That exasperated Dad.  He hit her on
+the head with his fist.  Joe ran out with a long stick.  He poked her in
+the flank.  Nell kicked the stick out of his hands and bolted towards the
+dam.  Dad pulled and swore as she bore him along.  And when he did haul
+her in, he was two hundred yards further from the doctor.  Dad turned her
+round and once more used the waddy.  Nell was obdurate, Dad exhausted.
+Joe joined them, out of breath.  He poked Nell with the stick again.  She
+"kicked up."  Dad lost his balance.  Joe laughed.  Dad said, "St-o-op!"
+Joe was energetic.  So was Nell.  She kicked up again--strong--and Dad
+fell off.
+
+"Wot, could'n' y' s-s-s-stick to 'er, Dad?" Joe asked.
+
+"STICK BE DAMNED--run--CATCH her!--D----N y'!"
+
+Joe obeyed.
+
+Dad made another start, and this time Nell went willingly.  Dad was
+leading her!
+
+Those two old horses are dead now.  They died in the summer when there was
+lots of grass and water--just when Dad had broken them into harness--just
+when he was getting a good team together to draw logs for the new railway
+line!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+
+The Cow We Bought.
+
+
+When Dad received two hundred pounds for the wheat he saw nothing but
+success and happiness ahead.  His faith in the farm and farming swelled.
+Dad was not a pessimist--when he had two hundred pounds.
+
+"Say what they like," he held forth to Anderson and two other men across
+the rails one evening--"talk how they will about it, there's money to be
+made at farming.  Let a man WORK and use his HEAD and know what to sow and
+when to sow it, and he MUST do well." (Anderson stroked his beard in grave
+silence; HE had had no wheat).  "Why, once a farmer gets on at all he's
+the most independent man in the whole country."
+
+"Yes!  Once he DOES!" drawled one of the men,--a weird, withered fellow
+with a scraggy beard and a reflective turn of mind.
+
+"Jusso," Dad went on, "but he must use his HEAD; it's  all in th' head."
+(He tapped his own skull with his finger).  "Where would I be now if I
+had n't used me head this last season?"
+
+He paused for an answer.  None came.
+
+"I say," he continued, "it's a mistake to think nothing's to be made at
+farming, and any man" ("Come to supper, D--AD!"--'t was Sal's voice)
+"ought t' get on where there's land like this."
+
+"LAND!" said the same man--"where IS it?"
+
+"Where IS it?" Dad warmed up--"where IS N'T it?  Is n't this land?"
+(Looking all round.)  "Is n't the whole country land from one end to the
+other?  And is there another country like it anywhere?"
+
+"There is n't!" said the man.
+
+"Is there any other country in th' WORLD" (Dad lifted his voice) "where a
+man, if he likes, can live" ("Dad, tea!") "without a shilling in his
+pocket and without doing a tap of work from one year's end to the other?"
+
+Anderson did n't quite understand, and the weird man asked Dad if he meant
+"in gaol."
+
+"I mean," Dad said, "that no man should starve in this country when
+there's kangaroos and bears and"--(Joe came and stood beside Dad and asked
+him if he was DEAF)--"and goannas and snakes in thousands.  Look here!"
+(still to the weird man), "you say that farming"--(Mother, bare-headed,
+came out and stood beside Joe, and asked Anderson if Mrs. Anderson had got
+a nurse yet, and Anderson smiled and said he believed another son had just
+arrived, but he had n't seen it)--"that farming don't pay"--(Sal came
+along and stood near Mother and asked Anderson who the baby was
+like)--"don't pay in this country?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"It will pay any man who----"
+
+Interruption.
+
+Anderson's big dog had wandered to the house, and came back with nearly
+all that was for supper in his mouth.
+
+Sal squealed.
+
+"DROP IT--DROP IT, Bob!" Anderson shouted, giving chase.  Bob dropped it
+on the road.
+
+"DAMN IT!" said Dad, glaring at Mother, "wot d' y' ALL want out
+'ere?...Y-YOU brute!" (to the dog, calmly licking its lips).
+
+Then Anderson and the two men went away.
+
+But when we had paid sixty pounds to the storekeeper and thirty pounds in
+interest; and paid for the seed and the reaping and threshing of the
+wheat; and bought three plough-horses, and a hack for Dave; and a
+corn-sheller, and a tank, and clothes for us all; and put rations in the
+house; and lent Anderson five pounds; and improved Shingle Hut; and so on;
+very little of the two hundred pounds was left.
+
+Mother spoke of getting a cow.  The children, she said, could n't live
+without milk and when Dad heard from Johnson and Dwyer that Eastbrook dairy
+cattle were to be sold at auction, he said he would go down and buy one.
+
+Very early.  The stars had scarcely left the sky.  There was a lot of
+groping and stumbling about the room.  Dad and Dave had risen and were
+preparing to go to the sale.
+
+I don't remember if the sky was golden or gorgeous at all, or if the
+mountain was clothed in mist, or if any fragrance came from the
+wattle-trees when they were leaving; but Johnson, without hat or boots,
+was picking splinters off the slabs of his hut to start his fire with,
+and a mile further on Smith's dog was barking furiously.  He was a famous
+barker.  Smith trained him to it to keep the wallabies off.  Smith used to
+chain him to a tree in the paddock and hang a piece of meat to the
+branches, and leave him there all night.
+
+Dad and Dave rode steadily along and arrived at Eastbrook before mid-day.
+The old station was on its last legs.  "The flags were flying half-mast
+high." A crowd of people were there.  Cart-horses with harness on, and a
+lot of tired-looking saddle-hacks, covered with dry sweat, were fastened
+to cart-wheels, and to every available post and place.  Heaps of old iron,
+broken-down drays and buggies and wheel-barrows, pumps and pieces of
+machinery, which Dad reckoned were worth a lot of money, were scattered
+about.  Dad yearned to gather them all up and cart them home.  Rows of
+unshaven men were seated high on the rails of the yards.  The yards were
+filled with cattle--cows, heifers, bulls, and calves, all
+separate--bellowing, and, in a friendly way, raking skins and hair off
+each other with their horns.
+
+The station-manager, with a handful of papers and a pencil behind his ear,
+hurried here and there, followed by some of the crowd, who asked him
+questions which he did n't answer.  Dad asked him if this was the place
+where the sale was to be.  He looked all over Dad.
+
+A man rang a bell violently, shouting, "This way for the dairy cows!"  Dad
+went that way, closely followed by Dave, who was silent and strange.  A
+boy put a printed catalogue into Dad's hand, which he was doubtful about
+keeping until he saw Andy Percil with one.  Most of the men seated on the
+rails jumped down into an empty yard and stood round in a ring.  In one
+corner the auctioneer mounted a box, and read the conditions of sale, and
+talked hard about the breed of the cattle.  Then:
+
+"How much for the imported cow, Silky?  No.1 on the catalogue.  How much
+to start her, gentlemen?"
+
+Silky rushed into the yard with a shower of sticks flying after her and
+glared about, finally fixing her gaze on Dad, who was trying to find her
+number in the catalogue.
+
+"A pure-bred 'Heereford,' four years old, by The Duke out of Dolly, to
+calve on the eighth of next month," said the auctioneer.  "How much to
+start her?"
+
+All silent.  Buyers looked thoughtful.  The auctioneer ran his restless
+eyes over them.
+
+Dad and Dave held a whispered consultation; then Dad made a movement.
+The auctioneer caught his eye and leant forward.
+
+"FIVE BOB!" Dad shouted.  There was a loud laugh.  The auctioneer frowned.
+"We're selling COWS, old man," he said, "not running a shilling-table."
+
+More laughter.  It reached Dave's heart, and he wished he had n't come
+with Dad.
+
+Someone bid five pounds, someone else six; seven-eight-nine went round
+quickly, and Silky was sold for ten pounds.
+
+"Beauty" rushed in.
+
+Two station-hands passed among the crowd, each with a bucket of beer and
+some glasses.  Dad hesitated when they came to him, and said he did n't
+care about it.  Dave the same.
+
+Dad ran "Beauty" to three pound ten shillings (all the money he had), and
+she was knocked down at twelve pounds.
+
+Bidding became lively.
+
+Dave had his eye on the men with the beer--he was thirsty.  He noticed no
+one paid for what was drunk, and whispered his discovery to Dad.  When the
+beer came again, Dad reached out and took a glass.  Dave took one also.
+
+"Have another!" said the man.
+
+Dave grinned, and took another.
+
+Dad ran fifteen cows, successively, to three pounds ten shillings.
+
+The men with the beer took a liking to Dave.  They came frequently to him,
+and Dave began to enjoy the sale.
+
+Again Dad stopped bidding at three pounds ten shillings.
+
+Dave began to talk.  He left his place beside Dad and, hat in hand,
+staggered to the middle of the yard.  "WOH!" he shouted, and made an
+awkward attempt to embrace a red cow which was under the hammer.
+
+"SEV'N POUN'--SEV'N POUN'--SEV'N POUN'," shouted the auctioneer, rapidly.
+"Any advance on sev'n POUN'?"
+
+"WENNY (hic) QUID," Dave said.
+
+"At sev'n poun' she's GOING?"
+
+"Twenny (hic) TWO quid," Dave said.
+
+"You have n't twenty-two PENCE," snorted the auctioneer.
+
+Then Dave caught the cow by the tail, and she pulled him about the yard
+until two men took him away.
+
+The last cow put up was, so the auctioneer said, station-bred and in full
+milk.  She was a wild-looking brute, with three enormous teats and a large,
+fleshy udder.  The catalogue said her name was "Dummy."
+
+"How much for 'Dummy,' the only bargain in the mob--how much for her,
+gentlemen?"
+
+Dad rushed "Dummy." "Three poun' ten," he said, eagerly.
+
+The auctioneer rushed Dad.  "YOURS," he said, bringing his hammer down
+with a bang; "you deserve her, old man!"  And the station-manager chuckled
+and took Dad's name--and Dad's money.
+
+Dad was very pleased, and eager to start home.  He went and found Dave,
+who was asleep in a hay-stack, and along with Steven Burton they drove the
+cow home, and yarded her in the dark.
+
+Mother and Sal heard the noise, and came with a light to see Dad's
+purchase, but as they approached "Dummy" threatened to carry the yard away
+on her back, and Dad ordered them off.
+
+Dad secured the rails by placing logs and the harrow against them, then
+went inside and told Mother what a bargain he'd made.
+
+In the morning Dad took a bucket and went to milk "Dummy." All of us
+accompanied him.  He crawled through the rails while "Dummy" tore the
+earth with her fore-feet and threw lumps of it over the yard.  But she
+was n't so wild as she seemed, and when Dad went to work on her with a big
+stick she walked into the bail quietly enough.  Then he sat to milk her,
+and when he took hold of her teats she broke the leg-rope and kicked him
+clean off the block and tangled her leg in the bucket and made a great
+noise with it.  Then she bellowed and reared in the bail and fell down,
+her head screwed the wrong way, and lay with her tongue out moaning.
+
+Dad rose and spat out dirt.
+
+"Dear me!" Mother said.  "it's a WILD cow y' bought."
+
+"Not at all," Dad answered; "she's a bit touchy, that's all."
+
+"She tut-tut--TUTCHED YOU orright, Dad," Joe said from the top of the yard.
+
+Dad looked up.  "Get down outer THAT!" he yelled.  "No wonder the damn
+cow's frightened."
+
+Joe got down.
+
+Dad brought "Dummy" to her senses with a few heavy kicks on her nose, and
+proceeded to milk her again.  "Dummy" kicked and kicked.  Dad tugged and
+tugged at her teats, but no milk came.  Dad could n't understand it.
+"Must be frettin'," he said.
+
+Joe owned a pet calf about a week old which lived on water and a long rope.
+Dad told him to fetch it to see if it would suck.  Joe fetched it, and it
+sucked ravenously at "Dummy's" flank, and joyfully wagged its tail.
+"Dummy" resented it.  She plunged until the leg-rope parted again, when
+the calf got mixed up in her legs, and she trampled it in the ground.  Joe
+took it away.  Dad turned "Dummy" out and bailed her up the next day--and
+every day for a week--with the same result.  Then he sent for Larry
+O'Laughlin, who posed as a cow doctor.
+
+"She never give a drop in her life," Larry said.  "Them's BLIND tits she
+have."
+
+Dad one day sold "Dummy" for ten shillings and bought a goat, which
+Johnson shot on his cultivation and made Dad drag away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+
+The Parson and the Scone.
+
+
+It was dinner-time.  And were n't we hungry!--particularly Joe!  He was
+kept from school that day to fork up hay-work hard enough for a man--too
+hard for some men--but in many things Joe was more than a man's equal.
+Eating was one of them.  We were all silent.  Joe ate ravenously.  The
+meat and pumpkin disappeared, and the pile of hot scones grew rapidly
+less.  Joe regarded it with anxiety.  He stole sly glances at Dad and at
+Dave and made a mental calculation.  Then he fixed his eyes longingly on
+the one remaining scone, and ate faster and faster....Still silence.
+Joe glanced again at Dad.
+
+The dogs outside barked.  Those inside, lying full-stretch beneath the
+table, instantly darted up and rushed out.  One of them carried off little
+Bill--who was standing at the table  with his legs spread out and a pint
+of tea in his hand--as far as the door on its back, and there scraped him
+off and spilled tea over him.  Dad spoke.  He said, "Damn the dogs!"  Then
+he rose and looked out the window.  We all rose--all except Joe.  Joe
+reached for the last scone.
+
+A horseman dismounted at the slip-rails.
+
+"Some stranger," Dad muttered, turning to re-seat himself.
+
+"Why, it's--it's the minister!" Sal cried--"the minister that married
+Kate!"
+
+Dad nearly fell over.  "Good God!" was all he said, and stared hopelessly
+at Mother.  The minister--for sure enough it was the Rev. Daniel
+Macpherson--was coming in.  There was commotion.  Dave finished his tea at
+a gulp, put on his hat, and left by the back-door.  Dad would have
+followed, but hesitated, and so was lost.  Mother was restless--"on pins
+and needles."
+
+"And there ain't a bite to offer him," she cried, dancing hysterically
+about the table--"not a bite; nor a plate, nor a knife, nor a fork to eat
+it with!"  There was humour in Mother at times.  It came from the father's
+side.  He was a dentist.
+
+Only Joe was unconcerned.  He was employed on the last scone.  He commenced
+it slowly.  He wished it to last till night.  His mouth opened and received
+it fondly.  He buried his teeth in it and lingered lovingly over it.
+Mother's eyes happened to rest on him.  Her face brightened.  She flew at
+Joe and cried:
+
+"Give me that scone!--put it back on the table this minute!"
+
+Joe became concerned.  He was about to protest.  Mother seized him by the
+hair (which had n't been cut since Dan went shearing) and hissed:
+
+"Put--it--back--sir!" Joe put it back.
+
+The minister came in.  Dad said he was pleased to see him--poor Dad!--and
+enquired if he had had dinner.  The parson had not, but said he did n't
+want any, and implored Mother not to put herself about on his account.
+He only required a cup of tea--nothing else whatever.  Mother was
+delighted, and got the tea gladly.  Still she was not satisfied.  She
+would be hospitable.  She said:
+
+"Won't you try a scone with it, Mr. Macpherson?" And the parson said he
+would--"just one."
+
+Mother passed the rescued scone along, and awkwardly apologised for the
+absence of plates.  She explained that the Andersons were threshing their
+wheat, and had borrowed all our crockery and cutlery--everybody's, in
+fact, in the neighbourhood--for the use of the men.  Such was the custom
+round our way.  But the minister did n't mind.  On the contrary, he
+commended everybody for fellowship and good-feeling, and felt sure that
+the district would be rewarded.
+
+It took the Rev. Macpherson no time to polish off the scone.  When the
+last of it was disappearing Mother became uneasy again.  So did Dad.  He
+stared through the window at the parson's sleepy-looking horse, fastened
+to the fence.  Dad wished to heaven it would break away, or drop dead, or
+do anything to provide him with an excuse to run out.  But it was a
+faithful steed.  It stood there leaning on its forehead against a post.
+There was a brief silence.
+
+Then the minister joked about his appetite--at which only Joe could afford
+to smile--and asked, "May I trouble you for just another scone?"
+
+Mother muttered something like "Yes, of course," and went out to the
+kitchen just as if there had been some there.  Dad was very uncomfortable.
+He patted the floor with the flat of his foot and wondered what would
+happen next.  Nothing happened for a good while.  The minister sipped and
+sipped his tea till none was left...
+
+Dad said:  "I'll see what's keeping her," and rose--glad if ever man was
+glad--to get away.  He found Mother seated on the ironbark table in the
+kitchen.  They did n't speak.  They looked at each other sympathisingly.
+
+"Well?" Dad whispered at last; "what are you going to do?"  Mother shook
+her head.  She did n't know.
+
+"Tell him straight there ain't any, an' be done with it," was Dad's
+cheerful advice.  Mother several times approached the door, but hesitated
+and returned again.
+
+"What are you afraid of?" Dad would ask; "he won't eat y'." Finally she
+went in.
+
+Then Dad tiptoed to the door and listened.  He was listening eagerly when
+a lump of earth--a piece of the cultivation paddock--fell dangerously near
+his feet.  It broke and scattered round him, and rattled inside against
+the papered wall.  Dad jumped round.  A row of jackasses on a tree near by
+laughed merrily.  Dad looked up.  They stopped.  Another one laughed
+clearly from the edge of the tall corn.  Dad turned his head.  It was
+Dave.  Dad joined him, and they watched the parson mount his horse and
+ride away.
+
+Dad drew a deep and grateful breath.  "Thank God!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+
+Callaghan's Colt.
+
+
+It was the year we put the bottom paddock under potatoes.  Dad was
+standing contemplating the tops, which were withering for want of rain.
+He shifted his gaze to the ten acres sown with corn.  A dozen stalks or so
+were looking well; a few more, ten or twelve inches high, were coming in
+cob; the rest had n't made an appearance.
+
+Dad sighed and turned away from the awful prospect.  He went and looked
+into the water-cask.  Two butterflies, a frog or two, and some charcoal
+were at the bottom.  No water.  He sighed again, took the yoke and two
+kerosene-tins, and went off to the springs.
+
+About an hour and a half after he returned with two half-tins of muddy,
+milky-looking water--the balance had been splashed out as he got through
+the fences--and said to Mother (wiping the sweat off his face with his
+shirt-sleeve)--
+
+"Don't know, I'm SURE, what things are going t' come t';...no use doing
+anything...there's no rain...no si----" he lifted his foot and with cool
+exactness took a place-kick at the dog, which was trying to fall into one
+of the  kerosene-tins, head first, and sent it and the water flying.
+"Oh you ----!" The rest is omitted in the interests of Poetry.
+
+Day after.  Fearful heat; not a breath of air; fowl and beast sought the
+shade; everything silent; the great Bush slept.  In the west a stray cloud
+or two that had been hanging about gathered, thickened, darkened.
+
+The air changed.  Fowl and beast left the shade; tree-tops began to
+stir--to bend--to sway violently.  Small branches flew down and rolled
+before the wind.  Presently it thundered afar off.  Mother and Sal ran out
+and gathered the clothes, and fixed the spout, and looked cheerfully up at
+the sky.
+
+Joe sat in the chimney-corner thumping the ribs of a cattle-pup, and
+pinching its ears to make it savage.  He had been training the pup ever
+since its arrival that morning.
+
+The plough-horses, yoked to the plough, stood in the middle of the paddock,
+beating the flies off with their tails and leaning against each other.
+
+Dad stood at the stock-yard--his brown arms and bearded chin resting on a
+middle-rail--passively watching Dave and Paddy Maloney breaking-in a colt
+for Callaghan--a weedy, wild, herring-gutted brute that might have been
+worth fifteen shillings.  Dave was to have him to hack about for six
+months in return for the breaking-in.  Dave was acquiring a local
+reputation for his skill in handling colts.
+
+They had been at "Callaghan"--as they christened the colt--since daylight,
+pretty well; and had crippled old Moll and lamed Maloney's Dandy, and
+knocked up two they borrowed from Anderson--yarding the rubbish; and there
+was n't a fence within miles of the place that he had n't tumbled over and
+smashed.  But, when they did get him in, they lost no time commencing to
+quieten him.  They cursed eloquently, and threw the bridle at him, and
+used up all the missiles and bits of hard mud and sticks about the yard,
+pelting him because he would n't stand.
+
+Dave essayed to rope him "the first shot," and nearly poked his eye out
+with the pole; and Paddy Maloney, in attempting to persuade the affrighted
+beast to come out of the cow-bail, knocked the cap of its hip down with
+the milking-block.  They caught him then and put the saddle on.  Callaghan
+trembled.  When the girths were tightened they put the reins under the
+leathers, and threw their hats at him, and shouted, and "hooshed" him
+round the yard, expecting he would buck with the saddle.  But Callaghan
+only trotted into a corner and snorted.  Usually, a horse that won't buck
+with a saddle is a "snag."  Dave knew it.  The chestnut he tackled for
+Brown did nothing with the saddle.  HE was a snag.  Dave remembered him
+and reflected.  Callaghan walked boldly up to Dave, with his head high in
+the air, and snorted at him.  He was a sorry-looking animal--cuts and
+scars all over him; hip down; patches and streaks of skin and hair missing
+from his head.  "No buck in him!" unctuously observed Dad, without lifting
+his chin off the rail.  "Ain't there?" said Paddy Maloney, grinning
+cynically.  "Just you wait!"
+
+It seemed to take the heart out of Dave, but he said nothing.  He hitched
+his pants and made a brave effort to spit--several efforts.  And he turned
+pale.
+
+Paddy was now holding Callaghan's head at arms'-length by the bridle and
+one ear, for Dave to mount.
+
+A sharp crack of thunder went off right overhead.  Dave did n't hear it.
+
+"Hello!" Dad said, "We're going to have it--hurry up!"
+
+Dave did n't hear him.  He approached the horse's side and nervously tried
+the surcingle--a greenhide one of Dad's workmanship.  "Think that'll hold?"
+he mumbled meekly.
+
+"Pshaw!" Dad blurted through the rails--" Hold!  Of course it'll hold--hold
+a team o' bullocks, boy."
+
+"'S all right, Dave; 's all right--git on!" From Paddy Maloney, impatiently.
+
+Paddy, an out-and-out cur amongst horses himself, was anxious to be
+relieved of the colt's head.  Young horses sometimes knock down the man
+who is holding them.  Paddy was aware of it.
+
+Dave took the reins carefully, and was about to place his foot in the
+stirrup when his restless eye settled on a wire-splice  in the crupper--also
+Dad's handiwork.  He hesitated and commenced a remark.  But Dad was
+restless; Paddy Maloney anxious (as regarded himself); besides, the storm
+was coming.
+
+Dad said:  "Damn it, what are y' 'FRAID o', boy? THAT'll hold--jump on."
+
+Paddy said:  "NOW, Dave, while I've 'is 'ead round."
+
+Joe (just arrived with the cattle-pup) chipped in.
+
+He said:  "Wot, is he fuf-fuf-fuf-f-rikent of him, Dad?"
+
+Dave heard them.  A tear like a hailstone dropped out of his eye.
+
+"It's all damn well t' TALK," he fired off; "come in and RIDE th'----horse
+then, if y' s'----GAME!"
+
+A dead silence.
+
+The cattle-pup broke away from Joe and strolled into the yard.  It barked
+feebly at Callaghan, then proceeded to worry his heels.  It seemed to take
+Callaghan for a calf.  Callaghan kicked it up against the rails.  It must
+have taken him for a cow then.
+
+Dave's blood was up.  He was desperate.  He grabbed the reins roughly, put
+his foot in the stirrup, gripped the side of the pommel, and was on before
+you could say "Woolloongabba."
+
+With equal alacrity, Paddy let the colt's head go and made tracks,
+chuckling.  The turn things had taken delighted him.  Excitement (and
+pumpkin) was all that kept Paddy alive.  But Callaghan did n't budge--at
+least not until Dave dug both heels into him.  Then he made a blind rush
+and knocked out a panel of the yard--and got away with Dave.  Off he went,
+plunging, galloping, pig-jumping, breaking loose limbs and bark off trees
+with Dave's legs.  A wire-fence was in his way.  It parted like the Red
+Sea when he came to it--he crashed into it and rolled over.  The saddle
+was dangling under his belly when he got up; Dave and the bridle were
+under the fence.  But the storm had come, and such a storm!  Hailstones as
+big as apples nearly--first one here and there, and next moment in
+thousands.
+
+Paddy Maloney and Joe ran for the house; Dave, with an injured ankle and a
+cut head, limped painfully in the same direction; but Dad saw the
+plough-horses turning and twisting about in their chains and set out for
+them.  He might as well have started off the cross the continent.  A
+hailstone, large enough to kill a cow, fell with a thud a yard or two in
+advance of him, and he slewed like a hare and made for the house also.  He
+was getting it hot.  Now and again his hands would go up to protect his
+head, but he could n't run that way--he could n't run much any way.
+
+The others reached the house and watched Dad make from the back-door.
+Mother called to him to "Run, run!"  Poor Dad!  He was running.  Paddy
+Maloney was joyful.  He danced about and laughed vociferously at the hail
+bouncing off Dad.  Once Dad staggered--a hail-boulder had struck him
+behind the ear--and he looked like dropping.  Paddy hit himself on the
+leg, and vehemently invited Dave to "Look, LOOK at him!"  But Dad battled
+along to the haystack, buried his head in it, and stayed there till the
+storm was over--wriggling and moving his feet as though he were tramping
+chaff.
+
+Shingles were dislodged from the roof of the house, and huge hailstones
+pelted in and put the fire out, and split the table, and fell on the sofa
+and the beds.
+
+Rain fell also, but we did n't catch any in the cask--the wind blew the
+spout away.  It was a curled piece of bark.  Nevertheless, the storm did
+good.  We did n't lose ALL the potatoes.  We got SOME out of them.  We had
+them for dinner one Sunday.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+
+The Agricultural Reporter.
+
+
+It had been a dull, miserable day, and a cold westerly was blowing.  Dave
+and Joe were at the barn finishing up for the day.
+
+Dad was inside grunting and groaning with toothache.  He had had it a week,
+and was nearly mad.  For a while he sat by the fire, prodding the tooth
+with his pocket-knife; then he covered his jaw with his hand and went out
+and walked about the yard.
+
+Joe asked him if he had seen Nell's foal anywhere that day.  He did n't
+answer.
+
+"Did y' see the brown foal any place ter-day, Dad?"
+
+"Damn the brown foal!"--and Dad went inside again.
+
+He walked round and round the table and in and out the back room till
+Mother nearly cried with pity.
+
+"Is n't it any easier at all, Father?" she said commiseratingly.
+
+"How the devil can it be easier?...Oh-h!"
+
+The kangaroo-dog had coiled himself snugly on a bag before the fire.  Dad
+kicked him savagely and told him to get out.  The dog slunk sulkily to the
+door, his tail between his legs, and his back humped as if expecting
+another kick.  He got it.  Dad sat in the ashes then, and groaned
+lamentably.  The dog walked in at the back door and dropped on the bag
+again.
+
+Joe came in to say that "Two coves out there wants somethink."
+
+Dad paid no attention.
+
+The two "coves"--a pressman, in new leggings, and Canty, the
+storekeeper--came in.  Mother brought a light.  Dad moaned, but did n't
+look up.
+
+"Well, Mr. Rudd," the pressman commenced (he was young and fresh-looking),
+"I'm from the (something-or-other) office.  I'm--er--after information
+about the crops round here.  I suppose--er----"
+
+"Oh-h-h!" Dad groaned, opening his mouth over the fire, and pressing the
+tooth hard with his thumb.
+
+The pressman stared at him for awhile; then grinned at the storekeeper,
+and made a derisive face at Dad's back.   Then--"What have you got in this
+season, Mr. Rudd?  Wheat?"
+
+"I don't know....Oh-h--it's awful!"
+
+Another silence.
+
+"Did n't think toothache so bad as THAT," said the man of news, airily,
+addressing Mother.  "Never had it much myself, you see!"
+
+He looked at Dad again; then winked slyly at Canty, and said to Dad, in an
+altered tone:  "Whisky's a good thing for it, old man, if you've got any."
+
+Nothing but a groan came from Dad, but Mother shook her head sadly in the
+negative.
+
+"Any oil of tar?"
+
+Mother brightened up.  "There's a little oil in the house," she said,
+"but I don't know if we've any tar.  Is there, Joe--in that old drum?"
+
+"Nurh."
+
+The Press looked out the window.  Dad commenced to butcher his gums with
+the pocket-knife, and threatened to put the fire out with blood and saliva.
+
+"Let's have a look at the tooth, old man," the pressman said,
+approaching Dad.
+
+Dad submitted.
+
+"Pooh!--I'll take that out in one act!"...To Joe--"Got a good strong piece
+of string?"
+
+Joe could n't find a piece of string, but produced a kangaroo-tail sinew
+that had been tied round a calf's neck.
+
+The pressman was enthusiastic.  He buzzed about and talked dentistry in a
+most learned manner.  Then he had another squint at Dad's tooth.
+
+"Sit on the floor here," he said, "and I won't be a second.  You'll feel
+next to no pain."
+
+Dad complied like a lamb.
+
+"Hold the light down here, missis--a little lower.  You gentlemen" (to
+Canty and Dave) "look after his legs and arms.  Now, let your head come
+back--right back, and open your mouth--wide as you can."  Dad obeyed,
+groaning the whole time.  It was a bottom-tooth, and the dentist stood
+behind Dad and bent over him to fasten the sinew round it.  Then, twisting
+it on his wrist, he began to "hang on" with both hands.  Dad struggled and
+groaned--then broke into a bellow and roared like a wild beast.  But the
+dentist only said, "Keep him down!" and the others kept him down.
+
+Dad's neck was stretching like a gander's, and it looked as if his head
+would come off.  The dentist threw his shoulders into it like a crack
+oarsman--there was a crack, a rip, a tear, and, like a young tree leaving
+the ground, two huge, ugly old teeth left Dad's jaw on the end of that
+sinew.
+
+"Holy!" cried the dentist, surprised, and we stared.  Little Bill made for
+the teeth; so did Joe, and there was a fight under the table.
+
+Dad sat in a lump on the floor propping himself up with his hands; his
+head dropped forward, and he spat feebly on the floor.
+
+The pressman laughed and slapped Dad on the back, and asked "How do you
+feel, old boy?"  Dad shook his head and spat and spat.  But presently he
+wiped his eyes with his shirt-sleeve and looked up.  The pressman told
+Mother she ought to be proud of Dad.  Dad struggled to his feet then, pale
+but smiling.  The pressman shook hands with him, and in no time Dad was
+laughing and joking over the operation.  A pleased look was in Mother's
+face; happiness filled the home again, and we grew quite fond of that
+pressman--he was so jolly and affable, and made himself so much at home,
+Mother said.
+
+"Now, sit over, and we'll have supper," said Dad, proud of having some
+fried steak to offer the visitors.  We had killed a cow the evening
+before--one that was always getting bogged in the dam and taking up much
+of Dad's time dragging her out and cutting greenstuff to keep her alive.
+The visitors enjoyed her.  The pressman wanted salt.  None was on the
+table.  Dad told Joe to run and get some--to be quick.  Joe went out, but
+in a while returned.  He stood at the door with the hammer in his hand
+and said:
+
+"Did you shift the r-r-r-rock-salt from where S-Spotty was lickin' it this
+evenin', Dave?"
+
+Dave reached for the bread.
+
+"Don't bother--don't bother about it," said the pressman.  "Sit down,
+youngster, and finish your supper."
+
+"No bother at all," Dad said; but Joe sat down, and Dad scowled at him.
+
+Then Dad got talking about wheat and wallabies--when, all at once, the
+pressman gave a jump that rattled the things on the table.
+
+"Oh-h-h!...I'VE got it now!" he said, dropping his  knife and fork and
+clapping his hands over his mouth.  "Ooh!"
+
+We looked at him.  "Got what?" Dad asked, a gleam of satisfaction
+appearing in his eyes.
+
+"The toothache!--the d----d toothache!...Oh-h!"
+
+"Ha! ha!  Hoo! hoo! hoo!" Dad roared.  In fact, we all roared--all but the
+pressman.  "OH-H!" he said, and went to the fire.  Dad laughed some more.
+
+We ate on.  The pressman continued to moan.
+
+Dad turned on his seat.  "What paper, mister, do you say you come from?"
+
+"OH-H!...Oh-h, Lord!"
+
+"Well, let me see; I'll have in altogether, I daresay, this year, about
+thirty-five acres of wheat--I suppose as good a wheat----"
+
+"Damn the wheat!...OOH!"
+
+"Eh!" said Dad, "why, I never thought toothache was THET bad!  You reminds
+me of this old cow we be eatin'.  SHE moaned just like thet all the time
+she was layin' in the gully, afore I knocked 'er on the head."
+
+Canty, the storekeeper, looked up quickly, and the pressman looked round
+slowly--both at Dad.
+
+"Here," continued Dad--"let's have a look at yer tooth, old man!"
+
+The pressman rose.  His face was flushed and wild-looking.  "Come on out
+of this--for God's sake!" he said to Canty--"if you're ready."
+
+"What," said Dad, hospitably, "y're not going, surely!" But they were.
+"Well, then--thirty-five acres of wheat, I have, and" (putting his head
+out the door and calling after them) "NEXT year--next year, all being
+well, please God, I'll have SIXTY!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+
+A Lady at Shingle Hut.
+
+
+Miss Ribbone had just arrived.
+
+She was the mistress of the local school, and had come to board with us a
+month.  The parents of the score of more of youngsters attending the
+school had arranged to accommodate her, month about, and it was our turn.
+And did n't Mother just load us up how we were to behave--particularly Joe.
+
+Dad lumbered in the usual log for the fire, and we all helped him throw it
+on--all except the schoolmistress.  Poor thing!  She would have injured
+her long, miserable, putty-looking fingers!  Such a contrast between her
+and Sal!  Then we sat down to supper--that old familiar repast, hot meat
+and pumpkin.
+
+Somehow we did n't feel quite at home; but Dad got on well.  He talked
+away learnedly to Miss Ribbone about everything.  Told her, without
+swearing once, how, when at school in the old country, he fought the
+schoolmaster and leathered him well.  A pure lie, but an old favourite of
+Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh.  He laughed now.  And
+such a laugh!--a loud, mirthless, merciless noise.  No one else joined in,
+though Miss Ribbone smiled a little.  When Joe recovered he held out
+his plate.
+
+"More pumpkin, Dad."
+
+"If--what, sir?" Dad was prompting him in manners.
+
+"IF?" and Joe laughed again.  "Who said 'if'?--I never."
+
+Just then Miss Ribbone sprang to her feet, knocking over the box she had
+been sitting on, and stood for a time as though she had seen a ghost.  We
+stared at her.  "Oh," she murmured at last, "it was the dog!  It gave me
+such a fright!"
+
+Mother sympathised with her and seated her again, and Dad fixed his eye
+on Joe.
+
+"Did n't I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of a
+dog outside the house altogether--eh?--did n't I?  Go this moment and tie
+the brute up, you vagabond!"
+
+"I did tie him up, but he chewed the greenhide."
+
+"Be off with you, you--" (Dad coughed suddenly and scattered fragments of
+meat and munched pumpkin about the table) "at once, and do as I tell you,
+you----"
+
+"That'll do, Father--that'll do," Mother said gently, and Joe took Stump
+out to the barn and kicked him, and hit him against the corn-sheller, and
+threatened to put him through it if he did n't stop squealing.
+
+He was a small dog, a dog that was always on the watch--for meat; a
+shrewd, intelligent beast that never barked at anyone until he got inside
+and well under the bed.  Anyway, he had taken a fancy to Miss Ribbone's
+stocking, which had fallen down while he was lying under the table, and
+commenced to worry it.  Then he discovered she had a calf, and started to
+eat THAT.  She did n't tell US though--she told Mrs. Macpherson, who
+imparted the secret to mother.  I suppose Stump did n't understand
+stockings, because neither Mother nor Sal ever wore any, except to a
+picnic or somebody's funeral; and that was very seldom.  The Creek was n't
+much of a place for sport.
+
+"I hope as you'll be comfortable, my dear," Mother observed as she showed
+the young lady the back-room where she was to sleep.  "It ain't s' nice as
+we should like to have it f' y'; we had n't enough spare bags to line it
+all with, but the cracks is pretty well stuffed up with husks an' one
+thing an' 'nother, and I don't think you'll find any wind kin get in.
+Here's a bear-skin f' your feet, an' I've nailed a bag up so no one kin
+see-in in the morning.  S' now, I think you'll be pretty snug."
+
+The schoolmistress cast a distressed look at the waving bag-door and said:
+
+"Th-h-ank you-very much."
+
+What a voice!  I've heard kittens that had n't their eyes open make a
+fiercer noise.
+
+Mother must have put all the blessed blankets in the house on the
+school-teacher's bed.  I don't know what she had on her own, but we only
+had the old bag-quilt and a stack of old skirts, and other remnants of the
+family wardrobe, on ours.  In the middle of the night, the whole confounded
+pile of them rolled off, and we nearly froze.  Do what we boys would--tie
+ourselves in knots and coil into each other like ropes--we could n't get
+warm.  We sat up in the bed in turns, and glared into the darkness towards
+the schoolmistress's room, which was n't more than three yards away; then
+we would lie back again and shiver.  We were having a time.  But at last
+we heard a noise from the young lady's room.  We listened--all we knew.
+Miss Ribbone was up and dressing.  We could hear her teeth chattering and
+her knees knocking together.  Then we heard her sneak back to bed again
+and felt disappointed and colder than ever, for we had hoped she was
+getting up early, and would n't want the bed any longer that night.  Then
+we too crawled out and dressed and tried it that way.
+
+In answer to Mother at breakfast, next morning, Miss Ribbone said she had
+"slept very well indeed."
+
+We did n't say anything.
+
+She was n't much of an eater.  School-teachers are n't as a  rule.  They
+pick, and paw, and fiddle round a meal in a way that gives a
+healthy-appetited person the jim-jams.  She did n't touch the fried
+pumpkin.  And the way she sat there at the table in her watch-chain and
+ribbons made poor old Dave, who sat opposite her in a ragged shirt without
+a shirt-button, feel quite miserable and awkward.
+
+For a whole week she did n't take anything but bread and tea--though there
+was always plenty good pumpkin and all that.  Mother used to speak to Dad
+about it, and wonder if she ate the little pumpkin-tarts she put up for
+her lunch.  Dad could n't understand anyone not eating pumpkin, and said
+HE'D tackle GRASS before he'd starve.
+
+"And did ever y' see such a object?" Mother went on.  "The hands an' arms
+on her!  Dear me!  Why, I do believe if our Sal was to give her one
+squeeze she'd kill her.  Oh, but the finery and clothes!  Y' never see the
+like!  Just look at her!"  And Dad, the great oaf, with Joe at his heels,
+followed her into the young lady's bedroom.
+
+"Look at that!" said Mother, pointing to a couple of dresses hanging on a
+nail--"she wears THEM on week-days, no less; and here" (raising the lid of
+a trunk and exposing a pile of clean and neatly-folded clothing that might
+have been anything, and drawing the articles forth one by one)--"look at
+them!  There's that--and that--and this--and----"
+
+"I say, what's this, Mother?" interrupted Joe, holding up something he had
+discovered.
+
+"And that--an'----"
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"And this----"
+
+"Eh, Mother?"
+
+"Don't bother me, boy, it's her tooth-brush," and Mother pitched the
+clothes back into the trunk and glared round.  Meanwhile, Joe was hard at
+his teeth with the brush.
+
+"Oh, here!" and she dived at the bed and drew a night-gown from beneath
+the pillow, unfolded it, and held it up by the neck for inspection.
+
+Dad, with his huge, ungainly, hairy paws behind him, stood mute, like the
+great pitiful elephant he was, and looked  at the tucks and the
+rest--stupidly.  "Where before did y'ever see such tucks and frills and
+lace on a night-shirt?  Why, you'd think 't were for goin' to picnics in,
+'stead o' goin' to bed with.  Here, too! here's a pair of brand new stays,
+besides the ones she's on her back.  Clothes!--she's nothin' else but
+clothes."
+
+Then they came out, and Joe began to spit and said he thought there must
+have been something on that brush.
+
+Miss Ribbone did n't stay the full month--she left at the end of the
+second week; and Mother often used to wonder afterwards why the creature
+never came to see us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+
+The Man with the Bear-Skin Cap.
+
+
+One evening a raggedly-dressed man, with a swag on his back, a bear-skin
+cap on his head, and a sheath-knife in his belt, came to our place and
+took possession of the barn.  Dad ordered him off.  The man offered to
+fight Dad for the barn.  Dad ran in and got the gun.  Then the man picked
+up his swag and went away.  The incident caused much talk for a few days,
+but we soon forgot all about it; and the man with the bear-skin cap passed
+from our minds.
+
+Church service was to be held at our selection.  It was the first occasion,
+in fact, that the Gospel had come to disturb the contentedly irreligious
+mind of our neighbourhood.  Service was to open at 3 p.m.; at break-of-day
+we had begun to get ready.
+
+Nothing but bustle and hurry.  Buttons to be sewn on Dave's shirt; Dad's
+pants--washed the night before and left on the clothes-line all night to
+bleach--lost; Little Bill's to be patched up generally; Mother trotting
+out to the clothes-line every minute to see if Joe's coat was dry.  And,
+what  was unusual, Dave, the easy-going, took a notion to spruce himself
+up.  He wandered restlessly from one room to another, robed in a white
+shirt which was n't starched or ironed, trying hard to fix a collar to it.
+He had n't worn the turn-out for a couple of years, and, of course, had
+grown out of it, but this did n't seem to strike him.  He tugged and
+fumbled till he lost patience; then he sat on the bed and railed at the
+women, and wished that the shirt and the collar, and the church-service
+and the parson, were in Heaven.  Mother offered to fasten the collar, but
+when she took hold of it--forgetting that her hands were covered with
+dough and things--Dave flew clean off the handle!  And when Sal advised
+him to wear his coloured shirt, same as Dad was going to do, and reminded
+him that Mary Anderson might n't come at all, he aimed a pillow at her and
+knocked Little Bill under the table, and scattered husks all over the
+floor.  Then he fled to the barn and refused dinner.
+
+Mid-day, and Dad's pants not found.  We searched inside and outside and
+round about the pig-sty, and the hay-stack, and the cow-yard; and eyed the
+cows, and the pet kangaroo, and the draught-horses with suspicion; but saw
+nothing of the pants.  Dad was angry, but had to make the most of an old
+pair of Dave's through the legs of which Dad thrust himself a lot too far.
+Mother and Sal said he looked well enough in them, but laughed when he
+went outside.
+
+The people commenced to arrive on horseback and in drays.  The women went
+on to the verandah with their babies; the men hung round outside and
+waited.  Some sat under the peach-tree and nibbled sticks and killed
+green-heads; others leant against the fence; while a number gathered round
+the pig-sty and talked about curing bacon.
+
+The parson came along.  All of them stared at him; watched him unsaddle
+his horse and hunt round for a place to fasten the beast.  They regarded
+the man in the long black coat with awe and wonder.
+
+Everything was now ready, and, when Dad carried in the side-boards of the
+dray and placed them on boxes for seat accommodation, the clergyman
+awaited his congregation, which had collected at the back-door.  Anderson
+stepped in; the rest followed, timid-looking, and stood round the room
+till the clergyman motioned them to sit.  They sat and watched him closely.
+
+"We'll now join in singing hymn 499," said the parson, commencing to sing
+himself.  The congregation listened attentively, but did n't join in.
+The parson jerked his arms encouragingly at them, which only made them the
+more uneasy.  They did n't understand.  He snapped his arms harder, as he
+lifted his voice to the rafters; still they only stared.  At last Dad
+thought he saw through him.  He bravely stood up and looked hard at the
+others.  They took the hint and rose clumsily to their feet, but just then
+the hymn closed, and, as  no one seemed to know when to sit again, they
+remained standing.
+
+They were standing when a loud whip-crack sounded close to the house, and
+a lusty voice roared:
+
+"Wah Tumbler!  Wah Tumbler!  Gee back, Brandy!  Gee back,
+you----!----!!----!!!"
+
+People smiled.  Then a team of bullocks appeared on the road.  The driver
+drawled, "Wa-a-a-y!" and the team stopped right in front of the door.
+The driver lifted something weighty from the dray and struggled to the
+verandah with it and dropped it down.  It was a man.  The bullock-driver,
+of course, did n't know that a religious service was being conducted
+inside, and the chances are he did n't much care.  He only saw a number of
+faces looking out, and talked at them.
+
+"I've a ---- cove here," he said, "that I found lying on the ---- plain.
+Gawd knows what's up with him--I don't.  A good square feed is about what
+he wants, I reckon."  Then he went back for the man's swag.
+
+Dad, after hesitating, rose and went out.  The others followed like a
+flock of sheep; and the "shepherd" brought up the rear.  Church was out.
+It gathered around the seeming corpse, and stared hard at it.  Dad and
+Dave spoke at the same time.
+
+"Why," they said, "it's the cove with the bear-skin cap!"  Sure enough it
+was.  The clergyman knelt down and felt the man's pulse; then went and
+brought a bottle from his valise--he always carried the bottle, he said,
+in case of snake-bite and things like that--and poured some of the contents
+down the man's throat.  The colour began to come to the man's face.  The
+clergyman gave him some more, and in a while the man opened his eyes.
+They rested on Dad, who was bending benignly over him.  He seemed to
+recognise Dad.  He stared for some time at him, then said something in a
+feeble whisper, which the clergyman interpreted--"He wishes you--" looking
+at Dad--"to get what's in his swag if he dies."  Dad nodded, and his
+thoughts went sadly back to the day he turned the poor devil out of
+the barn.
+
+They carried the man inside and placed him on the sofa.  But soon he took
+a turn.  He sank quickly, and in a few moments he was dead.  In a few
+moments more nearly everyone had gone.
+
+"While you are here," Dad said to the clergyman, in a soft voice, "I'll
+open the swag."  He commenced to unroll it--it was a big blanket--and when
+he got to the end there were his own trousers--the lost ones, nothing
+more.  Dad's eyes met Mother's; Dave's met Sal's; none of them spoke.  But
+the clergyman drew his own conclusions; and on the following Sunday, at
+Nobby-Nobby, he preached a stirring sermon on that touching bequest of the
+man with the bear-skin cap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+
+One Christmas.
+
+
+Three days to Christmas; and how pleased we were!  For months we had
+looked forward to it.  Kate and Sandy, whom we had only seen once since
+they went on their selection, were to be home.  Dave, who was away
+shearing for the first time, was coming home too.  Norah, who had been
+away for a year teaching school, was home already.  Mother said she looked
+quite the lady, and Sal envied the fashionable cut of her dresses.
+
+Things were in a fair way at Shingle Hut; rain had fallen and everything
+looked its best.  The grass along the headlands was almost as tall as the
+corn; the Bathurst-burr, the Scotch-thistles, and the "stinking Roger"
+were taller.  Grow!  Dad never saw the like.  Why, the cultivation was n't
+large enough to hold the melon and pumpkin vines--they travelled into the
+horse-paddock and climbed up trees and over logs and stumps, and they
+would have fastened on the horses only the horses were fat and fresh and
+often galloped about.  And the stock!  Blest if the old cows did n't carry
+udders like camp-ovens, and had so much milk that one could track them
+everywhere they went--they leaked so.  The old plough-horses, too--only a
+few months before dug out of the dam with a spade, and slung up between
+heaven and earth for a week, and fed and prayed for regularly by
+Dad--actually bolted one day with the dray because Joe rattled a dish of
+corn behind them.  Even the pet kangaroo was nearly jumping out of its
+skin; and it took the big black "goanna" that used to come after eggs all
+its time to beat Dad from the barn to the nearest tree, so fat was it.
+And such a season for butterflies and grasshoppers, and grubs and snakes,
+and native bears!  Given an ass, an elephant, and an empty wine-bottle or
+two, and one might have thought Noah's ark had been emptied at our
+selection.
+
+Two days to Christmas.  The sun getting low.  An old cow and a heifer in
+the stock-yard.  Dad in, admiring them; Mother and Sal squinting through
+the rails; little Bill  perched on one of the round posts, nursing the
+steel and a long knife; Joe running hard from the barn with a plough-rein.
+
+Dad was wondering which beast to kill, and expressed a preference for the
+heifer.  Mother said, "No, kill the cow."  Dad inspected the cow again,
+and shook his head.
+
+"Well, if you don't she'll only die, if the winter's a hard one; then
+you'll have neither."  That settled it.  Dad took the rope from Joe, who
+arrived aglow with heat and excitement, and fixed a running noose on one
+end of it.  Then--
+
+"Hunt 'em round!" he cried.
+
+Joe threw his hat at them, and chased them round and round the yard.
+Dad turned slowly in the centre, like a ring-master, his eye on the cow;
+a coil of rope was in this left hand, and with the right he measuredly
+swung the loop over and over his head for some time.  At last the cow gave
+him a chance at her horns, and he let fly.  The rope whizzed across the
+yard, caught little Bill round the neck, and brought him down off the post.
+Dad could hardly believe it.  He first stared at Bill as he rolled in the
+yard, then at the cow.  Mother wished to know if he wanted to kill the
+boy, and Joe giggled and, with a deal of courage, assured Dad it was "a
+fine shot."  The cow and the heifer ran into a corner, and switched their
+tails, and raked skin and hair off each other with their horns.
+
+"What do you want to be always stuck in the road for?" Dad growled, taking
+the rope off little Bill's neck.  "Go away from here altogether!" Little
+Bill went away; so did Mother and Sal--until Dad had roped the cow, which
+was n't before he twice lassoed the heifer--once by the fore-leg and once
+round the flanks.  The cow thereupon carried a panel of the yard away,
+and got out and careered down the lane, bucking and bellowing till all the
+cattle of the country gathered about her.
+
+Dad's blood was up.  He was hanging on to the rope, his heels ploughing
+the dust, and the cow pulling him about as she liked.  The sun was
+setting; a beautiful sunset, too, and Mother and Sal were admiring it.
+
+"Did y' never see th' blasted sun go--go down be----" Dad did n't finish.
+He feet slid under a rail, causing him to relax his grip of the rope and
+sprawl in the dust.  But when he rose!
+
+"Are y' going t' stand staring there all night?"  They were beside the
+rails in an instant, took the end of the rope which he passed to them,
+put it once round the gallows-post, and pulled-pulled like sailors.  Dad
+hung on close to the cow's head, while Joe kicked her with his bare foot
+and screwed her tail.
+
+"Steady!" said Dad, "that'll about do."  Then, turning to the women as he
+mounted a rail and held the axe above the cow's head:  "Hang on there
+now!"  They closed their eyes and sat back.  The cow was very patient.
+Dad extended himself for a great effort, but hesitated.  Joe called out:
+"L-l-ook out th' axe dud-dud-don't fly and gug-gug-get me, Dad!"  Dad
+glanced quickly at it, and took aim again.  Down it came, whish!  But the
+cow moved, and he only grazed her cheek.  She bellowed and pulled back,
+and Mother and Sal groaned and let the rope go.  The cow swung round and
+charged Joe, who was standing with his mouth open.  But only a charge of
+shot could catch Joe; he mounted the rails like a cat and shook his hat at
+the beast below.
+
+After Dad had nearly brained her with a rail the cow was dragged to the
+post again; and this time Dad made no mistake.  Down she dropped, and,
+before she could give her last kick, all of us entered the yard and
+approached her boldly.  Dad danced about excitedly, asking for the long
+knife.  Nobody knew where it was.  "DAMN it, where is it?" he cried,
+impatiently.  Everyone flew round in search of it but Joe.  HE was curious
+to know if the cow was in milk.  Dad noticed him; sprang upon him; seized
+him by the shirt collar and swung him round and trailed him through the
+yard, saying:  "Find me th' knife; d' y' HEAR?"  It seemed to sharpen
+Joe's memory, for he suddenly remembered having stuck it in one of the
+rails.
+
+Dad bled the beast, but it was late before he had it skinned and dressed.
+When the carcase was hoisted to the gallows--and it seemed gruesome enough
+as it hung there in the pallid light of the moon, with the night birds
+dismally wailing like mourners from the lonely trees--we went home and
+had supper.
+
+Christmas Eve.  Mother and Sal had just finished papering the walls, and
+we were busy decorating the place with green boughs, when Sandy and Kate,
+in their best clothes--Kate seated behind a well-filled pillow-slip
+strapped on the front of her saddle; Sandy with the baby in front of
+him--came jogging along the lane.  There was commotion!  Everything was
+thrown aside to receive them.  They were surrounded at the slip-rails,
+and when they got down--talk about kissing!  Dad was the only one who
+escaped.  When the hugging commenced he poked his head  under the flap of
+Kate's saddle and commenced unbuckling the girth.  Dad had been at such
+receptions before.  But Sandy took it all meekly.  And the baby! (the
+dear little thing) they scrimmaged about it, and mugged it, and fought for
+possession of it until Sandy became alarmed and asked them to "Mind!"
+
+Inside they sat and drank tea and talked about things that had happened
+and things that had n't happened.  Then they got back to the baby and
+disagreed on the question of family likeness.  Kate thought the youngster
+was the dead image of Sandy about the mouth and eyes.  Sal said it had
+Dad's nose; while Mother was reminded of her dear old grandmother every
+time the infant smiled.  Joe ventured to think it resembled Paddy Maloney
+far more than it did Sandy, and was told to run away and put the calves
+in.  The child was n't yet christened, and the rest of the evening was
+spent selecting a name for it.  Almost every appellation under the sun was
+suggested and promptly rejected.  They could n't hit on a suitable one,
+and Kate would n't have anything that was n't nice, till at last Dad
+thought of one that pleased everybody--"Jim!"
+
+After supper, Kate started playing the concertina, and the Andersons and
+Maloneys and several others dropped in.  Dad was pleased to see them; he
+wished them all a merry Christmas, and they wished him the same and many
+of them.  Then the table was put outside, and the room cleared for a
+dance.  The young people took the floor and waltzed, I dare say, for
+miles--their heads as they whirled around tossing the green bushes that
+dangled from the rafters; while the old people, with beaming faces,
+sat admiring them, and swaying their heads about and beating time to the
+music by patting the floor with their feet.  Someone called out "Faster!"
+Kate gave it faster.  Then to see them and to hear the rattle of the boots
+upon the floor!  You'd think they were being carried away in a whirlwind.
+All but Sal and Paddy Maloney gave up and leant against the wall, and
+puffed and mopped their faces and their necks with their
+pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+Faster still went the music; faster whirled Sal and Paddy Maloney.  And
+Paddy was on his mettle.  He was lifting Sal off her feet.  But Kate was
+showing signs of distress.  She leaned forward, jerked her head about,
+and tugged desperately at the concertina till both handles left it.  That
+ended the tussle; and Paddy spread himself on the floor, his back to the
+wall, his legs extending to the centre of the room, his chin on his chest,
+and rested.
+
+Then enjoyment at high tide; another dance proposed; Sal trying hard to
+persuade Dad to take Mother or Mrs. Maloney up; Dad saying "Tut, tut,
+tut!"--when in popped Dave, and stood near the door.  He had n't changed
+his clothes, and was grease from top to toe.  A saddle-strap was in one
+hand, his Sunday clothes, tied up in a handkerchief, in the other, and his
+presence made the room smell just like a woolshed.
+
+"Hello, Dave!" shouted everyone.  He said "Well!" and dropped his hat in a
+corner.  No fuss, no kissing, no nothing about Dave.  Mother asked if he
+did n't see Kate and Sandy (both were smiling across the room at him),
+and he said "Yairs"; then went out to have a wash.
+
+All night they danced--until the cocks crew--until the darkness gave way to
+the dawn--until the fowls left the roost and came round the door--until it
+was Christmas Day!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of On Our Selection, by Steele Rudd
+
diff --git a/old/onssr10.zip b/old/onssr10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d04c421
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/onssr10.zip