The acknowledged bully of the yard put his head down and charged into the pound like a whirlwind. The gate was shut and all hands seated upon the fence with marvellous celerity. This warrior was a very evil-looking beast―a tall, hurdle-built magpie brute, with a development of horn remarkable even in that forest of frontlets. One circle he made round the pound, tossing blood and foam from his nostrils on every side, savagely lunging at every one he passed on the fence, treating the heavy blows which, alas! from time to time fell heavily upon his bleeding face with superb contempt. As he passed Mr. Neuchamp that gentleman lightly dropped behind him and switched him on the haunch, as a hint to move through the gate held open for him by Piambook. The mighty beast swung round. For one second his glaring visage seemed to say, ‘I’ll have your blood anyhow.’ That second prevented the impalement of a hero of fiction! Ernest turned, and for the second time that day showed great pace. But when making a spring at the fence, between the pound and the lane, his foot slipped off the rail and he fell forward from the ‘cap.’ The maddened animal, seeing his victim escaping, gave a terrific bound and succeeded in planting his fore-feet on either side of Mr. Neuchamp, though his hind-quarters still rested on the ground. Here he made frantic efforts to clear the panel and Mr. Neuchamp, the agony and uncertainty of whose position were indescribable, as his gasping articulation testified. But help was at hand. A stalwart Lachlan native sprang like a tiger at the beast’s head, and with a few crushing blows forced him to stagger back into the yard. As he turned a comparatively light tap from a wattle drafting stick on the spine, behind the horns, dropped _l’enragé_ in his tracks, as if struck by lightning―his nostrils in the dust, his eyes turned backwards, and his huge frame quivering in every muscle. Slowly recovering his senses, he staggered to his legs, and perceiving Piambook standing in the middle of his gateway, as if inviting him to the feast, rushed blindly and with unabated fury at him. That astute aboriginal disappears from his gaze; he reels wildly through the gate on to his head, picking himself up in the next yard, where he meets with the usual sympathy from his companions. Mr. Neuchamp is restored by the exhibition of a strongish dram. As he observes the last bullock enticed out of the lane by having a bag thrown to him, which, after savagely driving his horns through, he carried forth thereon in triumph, he confesses that nothing short of hand-grenades, prepared with nitro-glycerine, can be esteemed suitable implements for the effective drafting of ‘pigmeaters.’