As we sat in the pleasant parlour a couple of hours later, serene and satisfied--I might say satiated--reading the latest _Port Phillip Patriot_, we saw the long string of cattle draw down a deep gorge into the valley, and cross the river in front of the house. Then we ordered out the horses, paid our bill, and, with a sigh of gastronomic retrospect, followed the trail across the plain. CHAPTER X OLD PORT FAIRY Mr. Burchett was rather famous for combining pleasure with business when travelling on the road with stock. At times his experiments were thought _un peu risques_. It was related of him and Mr. Alick Kemp (I think) that finding themselves so near Melbourne as the Saltwater River, in sole charge of a mob of fat cattle from "The Gums," they held council, and decided that the cattle would be all right in a bend of the river till the morning, being quiet and travel-worn. The friends then started for Melbourne, where they went to the theatre and otherwise enjoyed themselves. They came back the first thing in the morning, to find the cattle peacefully reposing, and as safe as houses. It might well have been otherwise. There was a dismal tale current in the district of the first mob of fat cattle from Eumeralla--magnificent animals, elephants in size, and rolling fat--stampeding at the sight of a pedestrian, on the road to market, being lost, and, as to the greater part, never recovered. This time we decided to take "the Frenchman's" road, past Crecy, a trifle monotonous, perhaps,--it was all plain till you got to Salt Creek,--but possessing advantages for so large a drove. We reached an out-station of the Hopkins Hill property, then owned by a Tasmanian proprietary, and managed by "a fine old 'Scottish' gentleman, all of the olden time." We put the cattle into a small mustering paddock, and retired to rest with great confidence in their comfort and our own. About midnight a chorus of speculative lowing and bellowing acquainted us with the fact that they were all out. An unnoticed slip-rail had betrayed us. We arose, but could do nothing, and returned to our blankets. Our rest, however, had been effectually broken. "How did you sleep, Fred?" was my query at daylight. "Well," meditatively, "I've had a quantity of _very inferior sleep_," was his rejoinder.