So the new chum rode to the homestead straight and he told them a story grand Of the desperate fight that he fought that day with the King of the Overland. And the tale went home to the public schools of the pluck of the English swell, How the drover fought for his very life, but blood in the end must tell. But the travelling sheep and the Wilga sheep were boxed on the Old Man Plain. 'Twas a full week's work ere they drafted out and hunted them off again. With a week's good grass in their wretched hides, with a curse and a stockwhip crack They hunted them off on the road once more to starve on the half-mile track. And Saltbush Bill, on the Overland, will many a time recite How the best day's work that ever he did was the day that he lost the fight. _DROUGHT AND DOCTRINE._ BY J. BRUNTON STEPHENS. (_By kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Sydney and Melbourne._) Come, take the tenner, doctor ... yes, I know the bill says "five," But it ain't as if you'd merely kep' our little 'un alive; Man, you saved the mother's reason when you saved that baby's life, An' it's thanks to _you_ I ha'n't a ravin' idiot for a wife. Let me tell you all the story, an' if then you think it strange, That I'd like to fee ye extry--why, I'll take the bloomin' change. If yer bill had said a hundred ... I'm a poor man, doc., and yet I'd 'a' slaved till I had squared it; ay, an' still been in yer debt. Well, you see, the wife's got notions on a heap o' things that ain't To be handled by a man as don't pretend to be a saint; So I minds "the cultivation," smokes my pipe an' makes no stir, An' religion an' such p'ints I lays entirely on to her. No, she's got it fixed within her that, if children die afore They've been sprinkled by the parson, they've no show for evermore; An' though they're spared the pitchfork, the brimstun, an' the smoke, They ain't allowed to mix _up there_ with other little folk. So when our last began to pine, an' lost his pretty smile, An' not a parson to be had within a hunder mile-- (For though there is a chapel down at Bluegrass Creek, you know, The clargy's there on dooty only thrice a year or so)-- Well, when our yet unchristen'd mite grew limp, an' thin, an' pale, It would 'a' cut you to the heart to hear the mother wail About her "unregenerate babe," an' how, if it should go, 'Twould have no chance with them as had their registers to show. Then awful quiet she grew, an' hadn't spoken for a week, When in came brother Bill one day with news from Bluegrass Creek. "I seen," says he, "a notice on the chapel railin' tied; They'll have service there this evenin'--can the youngster stand the ride?