Part 2 (1/1)

”Coht?”

Jackson--”I suppose so”

”Cook and store account, so ood deal too”

”That is your affair,” said Mr Gordon, sternly enough ”Now look here!

You're in reat deal of trouble, and I should have kicked you out of the shed weeks ago if I had not been short of men I shall make a difference between you and men who have tried to do their best I reeoes out with a very black countenance Heto be served he'd ha'

'blocked' 'em a little ht, and he secures no sy-enerally If an employer does his best to mete out justice he is always appreciated and supported by the majority These few instances will serve as a description of the whole process of settling with the shearers The horses have all been got in

Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all theBy the afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds; soher up,” in a colder cli necessarily commences later From these they will pass to others, until the last sheep in the mountain runs are shorn Then those who have not far Billy May and Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back the-floor

Harvest over, they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they commence to visit their friends and repay themselves for their toils by a tolerably liberal allowance of rest and recreation

Old Ben and a few choice speciet no further than the nearest public house Their cheques are handed to the landlord and a ”stupendous and terrible spree” sets in At the end of a week he informs them that they have received liquor to the a over a hundred pounds--save the mark! They enerously presents the each, and they take the road for the next woolshed

The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a sarded force, file up They nuth, willingness and obedience being required in their case, they are et and to replace than shearers They are a varied and motley lot That powerful and rather handsoe Next to hiht, neat, quiet individual He was a lieutenant in a line regiment The lad in the rear was a Sandhurst cadet Then came two navvies and a New Zealander, five Chinamen, a Frenchinal blacks There are no invidious distinctions as to caste, colour, or nationality Every one is a e, one pound per week; wood, water, tents and food ”A LA DISCRETION” Their accounts are simple: so many weeks, so many pounds; store account, so

The wool-pressers, the fleece-rollers, the fleece-pickers, the yardsmen, the washers' cooks, the hut cooks, the spare shepherds; all these and a few other supernu been paid off, the snowstor all day coo to rest that night withon every wakingtrain of drays and wagons, with loads varying fro off in detachments since the commencement In a day or two the last of the three and a half hundredweight, are distributed, slow journeying, along the road, which they uide tumuli, from Anabanco to the waters of the Murray Between the two points there is neither a hill nor a stone All is the vast monotonous sea of plain--at this season a prairie-etation; in the late summer, or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a DRY WINTER, dusty, and herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of miles

Silence falls on the plains and waters of Anabanco for the next six months The woolshed, the washpen, and all the huts connected with them are lone and voiceless as caravanserais in a city of the plague