ed and fenced in a year or two--taking bush contracts about the
district between whiles to make "tucker" for the family until he got his
first crop off.

Wall was never accused of employing dummies, or underhanded methods in
dealings with selectors, but he had been through so much and had brooded
so long that he had grown very hard and bitter and suspicious, and the
reverse of generous--as many men do who start out in life too soft and
goodhearted and with too much faith in human nature. He was a tall, dark
man. He ordered Ross's boys off the run, impounded Ross's stock--before
Ross had got his fencing finished, summoned Ross for trespass, and Ross
retaliated as well as he could, until at last it mightn't have been safe
for one of those men to have met the other with a gun. The impounding of
the selector's cattle led to the last bad quarrel between Wall and his
son Billy, who was a tall, good-natured Cornstalk, and who reckoned that
Australia was big enough for all of us. One day in the drought, and in
an extra bitter mood, Wall heard that some of his sheep had been dogged
in the vicinity of Ross's selection, and he ordered Billy to take a
station-hand and watch Ross's place all night, and, if Ross's cattle put
their noses over the boundary, to drive them to the pound, fifteen miles
away; also to lay poisoned baits for the dogs all round the selection.
And Billy flatly refused.

"I know Ross and the boys," he said, "and I don't believe they dogged
the sheep. Why, they've only got a Newfoundland pup, and an old lame,
one-eyed sheep-dog that couldn't hurt a flea. Now, father, this sort of
thing has been going on long enough. What difference does a few paltry
acres make to us? The country is big enough, God knows! Ross is a
straight man and--for God's sake, give the man a chance to get his
ground fenced in; he's doing it as fast as he can, and he can't watch
his cattle day and night."

"Are you going to do as I tell you, or are you not?" shouted Wall.

"Well, if it comes to that, I'm not," said Billy. "I'm not going to
sneak round a place all night and watch for a chance to pound a poor
man's cows."

It was an awful row, down behind the wool-shed, and things looked so bad
that old Peter, the station-hand, who was a witness, took off his coat
and rolled up his sleeves, ready, as he said afterwards, "to roll into"
either the father or the son if one raised a hand against the other.

"Father!" said Billy, though rather