whispered that the squatter meant to try and break through the monopoly that some of the old hands had created, and that some new blood might be infused, and I believe that I had been engaged to hang as the sword of Damocles over the other carpenters' heads, but I refused the _rôle_. The head carpenter was an old, worn-out man with a large family. He had been there seventeen years. He had one hundred pounds a year and double rations, with a free house, wood, water, and many little perquisites. I daresay he had saved a little money, but any one may easily understand that a man over fifty years of age, with a large family and a settled home where he has been for seventeen years, does not like the prospect of change and to have to make a new start in life. Such a billet as that of tradesman on a station is much sought after, and in many respects is incomparably better than the position occupied in town by a married man who works for wages. But neither the one nor the other suited my ambition. If I had been doomed to choose between the two, I think I should, after all, have taken the lot of the man in town, for he is more independent if he is poorer. It is all very well to work for a master when one is young, but as one gets on for thirty years of age he likes to be his own master. At least that was my opinion. There seemed to me something so forbidding in the ringing of the large bell on the station. It would ring at a quarter to six on a morning for all hands to get out of bed and dress. Then it rang at six o'clock for starting work. It rang for dinner, and it rang when we were to start again. It was all correct enough; I have no fault to find with it, I cannot suggest anything better, but all the same I did not like it. My work on the station was otherwise both pleasant and independent enough. A great deal of it consisted in making and hanging gates for the various paddocks. These would be made at home in the shop and afterwards carted out to their places. Then I would get a labourer with me and we would drive off in a spring-cart from one gate to the other, and hang them. It was a regular journey across the paddocks, and involved about a fortnight's trip every time.