‘“Back up, boys,” I roared, “keep them going!” as we swept through the party; soldiers running one way, the convicts, poor beggars, making their chains rattle again in their hurry to get safe away. That was a time! I saw the young soldier-officer capsized on to one of his men. Such a smash I never see; it was all downhill luckily. Away we went at the tail of the mob, galloping for our lives, and soon left red coats and yellow trousers, muskets and leg-irons, far behind us. Luckily the mob was too wild to break, and before sundown we were miles from the bottom of the hill, and had the cattle safe inside of the rock-wall camp, where we had a good feed and a night’s sleep, both of which we wanted bad enough.’ ‘I’ll be bound you did,’ assented the landlord; ‘it’s a hard life, is a stockman’s—out in all weathers, and risking your life, as one might say.’ ‘Life?’ said the saturnine, grizzled old land-pirate, who had apparently relapsed into a different train of thought; ‘what’s a man’s life in this country; leastways used to be. Here!’ roared he, dashing his hand upon the table, ‘bring in a bottle of brandy, Joe, and a kettle of water, and I’ll tell you a yarn about old days as’ll make your hair curl, unless this here gentleman’s ashamed to drink with old Ike?’ Mr. Neuchamp had by this period of the evening made the discovery that he had invoked a fiend that he was unable to lay; as the old stockman glared at him with half-infuriate, half-imploring eyes, while putting his last observation into the form of a question, he felt much inclined to defy and refuse his uncomfortable boon companion. But having evaded the implied obligation to drink so far he thought it expedient to comply, partly from the novelty of the experience, partly from his dislike to a possible quarrel. ‘Ha!’ said the strange old man, as he half filled his tumbler with the powerful spirit, and stirred the heavy red glowing logs in the stone fireplace till they shot up a shower of sparks, and threw out a fierce heat like the mouth of a furnace; ‘fine thing is a fire! that put me in mind of it. Fill up, curse ye! Joe, ye old, half-baked Jimmy. It was over on the Dervent side, afore I came here at all, that two chaps as did a good deal on the cross, that’s how it was told me, was a-skinnin’ a bullock in a gully, as had only one end to it.’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Surely——’