ard--so there was some fellers hangin' round arter
her. An' Dave Regan's horse was hangin' up outside her place as often as
anybody else's. Dave was a native an' a bushy, an' drover an' a digger,
an' he was a bit soft in them days--he got hard enough arterwards.

Mrs Hardwick hated bullick-drivers--she had a awful down on
bullickies--I dunno why. We never interfered with her fowls, an' as
for swearin'! why, she could swear herself. Jimmy Hardwick was a
bullick-driver when she married him, an' p'r'aps that helped to account
for it. She wouldn't let us boil our billies at her kitchen fire, same
as any other bushwoman, an' if one of our bullicks put his nose under
her fence for a mouthful of grass, she'd set her dogs onter him. An'
one of her dogs got something what disagreed with him one day, an' she
accused us of layin' poisoned baits. An', arter that, she 'pounded some
of our bullicks that got into her lucerne paddick one night when we was
on the spree in Mudgee, an' put heavy damages on 'em. She'd left the
sliprails down on purpose, I believe. She talked of puttin' the police
onter us, jest as if we was a sly-grog shop. (If _she'd_ kept a sly-grog
shop she'd have had a different opinion about bullick-drivers.) An' all
the bullick-drivers hated her because she hated bullickies.

Well, one wet season half a dozen of us chaps was camped there for a
fortnight, because the roads was too boggy to travel, an' one night they
got up a darnce at Peter Anderson's shanty acrost the ridges, an' a
lot of gals an' fellers turned up from all round about in spite of the
pourin' rain. Someone had kidded Dave Regan that Mother Hardwick was
comin', an' he turned up, of course, in spite of a ragin' toothache he
had. He was always ridin' the high horse over us bullickies. It was a
very cold night, enough to cut the face an' hands off yer, so we had a
roarin' fire in the big bark-an'-slab kitchen where the darncin' was.
It was one of them big, old-fashioned, clay-lined fire-places that goes
right acrost the end of the room, with a twenty-five foot slab-an'-tin
chimbly outside.

Dave Regan was pretty wild about being had, an' we copped all the
gals for darncin'; he couldn't get one that night, an' when he wasn't
proddin' out his tooth with a red-hot wire some one was chaffin' him
about Mrs Hardwick. So at last he got disgusted an' left; but before
he went he got a wet three-bushel flour-bag an' climbed up very quietly
onter the roof by the