On Our Selection

e Watched F

ught savagely with each other for shelter, and squealed all the time like-well, like pigs. The cows and calves left the place to seek shelter away in the mountains; while the draught horses, their hair standing up like barbed-wire, le

old-looking, on the sofa-as he staggered inside with an immense log for

little house-work, but more often she did n't. We talked it over together, but could n't make it out. Joe asked Mother, but she had no idea-so she said. We

Brown and all, and listened to the wind whistling outside. Ah, it was pleasant beside the fi

tly and light some fires and

at him to see if he were really in ear

-night any more than last night or the night b

as well keep them

to get now. So what's the good of wat

s immo

going-not a night like this

r tongue, sir!" he said-"

the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else but to keep them from eating the ground. It's always the way here, the more one does the more he's wan

en his sobs, while we thought o

forlorn and forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue. And just to keep wallabies from eating nothing! They HAD eaten all t

the rear. Now and again he tramped on a Bathurst-burr, and, in sitting down to extract the prickle, would receive a cluster of them elsewhere. When he escaped

g to wait on Jo

r he wants bringing us out a nigh

a fright they both got! The old horse took it worse than Dad-who only tumbled down-for he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting every leg he had in

" Dave muttered, and we giggled. WE under

wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitar

, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire

aving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and cursed the wind, and the

except that of wallabies and mopokes. Then he would go back and listen again. He was rest

ing noise, and Sal appeared in the glare of the fire. "DAD!" she said. That

the fire and thought and thought. Then we stared, nervously, into the nig

nd told us that mother had got another baby-a fine little ch