The Napoleon of dingoes, making a feint as if to dash through the gate, stopped abruptly. The harmless boot expended its force and momentum, with some inconvenience to its owner, against the gate-post. Ere a second _coup de pied_ could be arranged, Beelzebub glided swiftly through, with his flag erect and waving gently from side to side in token of approval. At breakfast Gregor gave a thrilling account of the havoc wrought in his flock, and solemnly swore that he had lifted the dog, with one kick, over the high palisades. Parklands, knowing the culprit and the utter hopelessness of any human effort to strike him without consent, felt no uneasiness. He also forgot to mention that the dog belonged to him. When Gregor was out of earshot Parklands (who was solely a cattle-owner), bursting with pride at the prowess of his pet, offered to lay Mr. Neuchamp a cool hundred that Beelzebub, bar baits, should eat all the sheep on any ordinary station in six months. Mr. Neuchamp, not having studied the habits and capacity of the Australian dingo sufficiently to warrant his making a book on the subject, declined the wager. ‘If I were you, Sparks,’ said Brandon, ‘the next time I was annexed by a young woman and wished to be off the bargain, I should make her a present of Beelzebub. If the “wily one” would not in a week sever the tenderest domestic ties, I am mistaken in his character. Wouldn’t mind even laying him against a mother-in-law.’ An early breakfast of chops, fresh from the slaughtered ewe, a short but exciting voyage in the dug-out, and they espied their ‘connecting link,’ who was equal to most occasions, standing with his horses ready for harnessing. Their narrow escape on the preceding night was now plainly legible in the wheel tracks, _just over_ the brink of the river bank, and even the reckless Sparks acknowledged it to have been ‘a near thing.’ Brandon now took the reins, lectured Sparks upon dangerous driving, and spun through the vast umbrageous eucalypti, towards the road. Neither accidents nor offences occurred during the next twenty-five miles, at the end of which luncheon was spread by the side of a reed-bordered lagoon. As they had now entered upon the extensive territory of the Rainbar run, Mr. Parklands caught a horse for himself, as also Mr. Neuchamp’s cob, with a view to rounding up an occasional mob of cattle and proving his vaunt as to their unsurpassed breeding and docility.