Having paid down a large sum in cash, they entered into possession of their property with feelings of much self-gratulation, as being now truly squatters, just as much so, indeed, as Mr. Neuchamp, who had thought himself so well able to patronise them. But, unluckily for them, and in direct contravention of the saying, ‘Hawks winna pike oot hawks’ een,‘ the ex-owner of the station, formerly indeed an old acquaintance who had risen in life, displayed the most nefarious keenness in plotting an unscrupled treachery. He settled down, under the conditional purchase clause, section 13, upon the very best part of the run, the goodwill of which he had the day before been paid for. Having a large family, and the land laws having been recently altered so that a double area could be selected by each ‘person,’ he, with the Messrs. Freemans‘own cash, actually annexed, irrevocably, an area which reduced the value of the grazing property by about one-third. Shrewd and unscrupulous as themselves, he calmly informed the frantic Freemans ‘that he had only complied with the law.’ He laughed at their accusations of bad faith. ‘Every man for himself,’ he retorted, adding that ‘if all stories were true, they hadn’t been very particular themselves, but had sat down on the cove’s run that first helped ’em when they was bull-punchers without credit for a bag of flour.’ Rendered furious by this very original application of their own practice to the detriment of their own property, they wasted much of their—well—we must say, legally acquired gains in endless suits and actions for trespass against this most unprincipled free selector, and others who shortly followed his example. The lawyers came to know Freeman _versus_ Downey as a _cause célèbre_. It is just possible that these brothers may come to comprehend, by individual suffering, the harassed feeling which their action had, many a time and oft, tended to produce in others.