When the evening meal was finished Mr. Neuchamp and his henchman went over to one of four fires which had been lighted at opposite sides of the woolly multitude. Jack Windsor lighted his pipe and lay down upon his blanket, where he smoked luxuriously and dozed by turns. Ernest reclined in the same fashion, and after a short struggle with his very natural drowsiness fell fast asleep. At daylight next morning Mr. Neuchamp awoke without it being necessary for any one to call him. The bosom of great mother Hertha was harder than any resting-place which he had hitherto tried; but youth and an adventurous disposition being on his side, he found when dressed that the mental thermometer registered an altitude fully above the average. The sheep were still lying down and appeared by no means to be anxious to crop the dewy grass, or whatever somewhat wiry and infrequent herbage did duty for that traditional description. ‘Yonder’s the cook’s fire,’ explained Mr. Windsor, pointing to a rising smoke; ‘we’d better get our breakfast to begin with.’ Round a blazing fire, the warmth of which, in the sharp autumn morning, was decidedly pleasant, were grouped thirty or forty men engaged in talking, warming themselves, and in a leisurely way partaking of a substantial breakfast. From a pyramid of chops, replenished from an immense frying-pan, with a handle like a marlin-spike, each man abstracted whatever he chose. Wedges of damper (or bread baked in hot ashes) were cut from time to time from great circular flat loaves of that palatable and wholesome but somewhat compressed-looking bread, while gallons of hot tea were procurable from buckets full of the universal bush beverage. The overseer and some of the horse drivers were absent, as the hacks and cart-horses had wandered during the night rather farther than usual. Ernest and his companion applied themselves to the serious business of the hour, the former conscious that he was being subjected to a searching inspection from his fellow-employees. His rough tweed suit was sufficiently different from the blue serge shirts and peajackets of the others to mark his different social position, had not his hands, fresh complexion, and general appearance denoted him to be a ‘new arrival,’ and more or less a swell. Swells out of luck are unfortunately by no means rare as ordinary bush hands in Australia, and such a phenomenon would not ordinarily have excited curiosity or hostile criticism. Still a little rough jesting is not to be avoided sometimes when an obviously raw comrade joins a bush brigade. It was natural enough then that a tall, dissipated-looking fellow with a whiskerless face and long hair, a leader and wit of the community, should step forward and address Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Well, Johnny, and what do you think of travelling with store sheep in this blessed country? You didn’t do none o’ that in the blessed old country as you’ve just come from, did ye now?’