‘Down I comes through the smoke, an’ just clear o’ the tree was five darkies a-lyin’ stretched out as would never cry “mo-poke!” no more. Not another soul, dead or alive, could I see. But presen’ly back canters ole Davies, an’ says he, cool as you like, “Hello, Wilson,” says he, “is that you? Where’s the rest o’ the cattle? There’s eight head short yet!” Darn his ole skin, an’ all bosses like him, as thinks more of a few head o’ stock than a man’s life! ‘You see, lads, when the cattle, disturbed by poor Towzer a-barkin’, and me a-firin’, moves quietly off afore daybreak, one lot of nigs follers ’em up, an’ one lot stops to ’tend on me. ‘Them with the cattle, after they’d gone a little way, starts a-spearin’ ’em, an’ the mob breaks, an’ never stops till they gets to the fust seven-mile hut, where the other lot was; and the chap there, seein’ some with spears stickin’ in ’em, gallops off to the head station, and out comes ole Davies an’ all hands. ‘No; no more new country for me—not if I knows it! I’m a-gettin’ too old now for such a little game as they played on me out there. Is that the supper-bell a-ringin’? Well, it’s the finest sound I’ve heard for five ’underd miles an’ more.’ KEEPING SCHOOL AT ‘DEAD FINISH.’ A Reminiscence of ‘The Rivers.’ The people at Dead Finish had never applied for such a thing, nor dreamt of, nor wished for it, neither they nor their children. These latter were mostly of an age now to be of use about the house or in the field. They had imagined themselves, these half-a-dozen or so of scattered families hidden in the gloomy recesses of coastal scrubs, quite secure from any officious interference with their offspring by the Government. And, without exception, they took it as a most uncalled-for act of tyranny, this proposed establishment of a school and a teacher in their midst, and well within the two-mile radius from all. Here was the corn just ready to be pulled and husked, and got ready for Tuberville, and who was to do it with Tom, Jack and Bill wasting their time at a school? ‘If Mr Gov’ment was here,’ growled ‘Brombee’ O’Brien, the largest selector of the lot, ‘I’d give ’im a bit o’ my mind. Wot bizness he got, comin’ an’ takin’ the kids just as they’re a-gittin’ handy? Why didn’t he come afore, when they was bits o’ crawlers, an’ no use to no one? Anyhow, me an’ the missis niver ’ad no schoolin’; an’ why should they? Will learnin’ cut through a two-foot log? Will ’rethmetic split palin’s or shingles? Will readin’ an’ writin’ run brombees, or drive a team o’ bullocks, or ’elp to plough or ’arrer? No; it ain’t likely. Then wot’s the good of it? Garn? Wot they givin’ us?’ Thus Mr O’Brien, at a meeting of neighbours specially convened to confront the unlooked-for emergency, and whose own ideas he voices to the letter.