o a
wilderness. Science may find a theory to account for the beginning
of all things, but among all her triumphs she has been unable to put
an end to the rabbit. War has been made upon them by fire, dynamite,
phosphorus, and all deadly poisons; by dogs, cats, weasels, foxes,
and ferrets, but he still marches over the land triumphantly.

For fifteen years Nosey roamed from station to station under various
names, between Queensland and the Murray, but wherever he went, the
memory of his crime never left him. He had been taught in his
boyhood that murder was one of the four sins crying to heaven for
vengeance, and he knew that sooner or later the cry would be heard.
Sometimes he longed to unburden his mind to a priest, but he seldom
saw or heard of one. The men with whom he worked and wandered were
all like himself--lost souls who had taken the wrong turn in the
beginning of their days, the failures of all trades and professions;
thieves, drunkards, and gamblers; criminals who had fled from
justice; men of pleasure and, therefore, of misery; youths of good
family exported from England, Ireland, and Scotland to mend their
morals, to study wool, and become rich squatters. All these men get
colonial experience, but it does not make them saintly or rich. Here
and there, all over the endless plains, they at last lie down and
die, the dingoes hold inquests over them, and, literally, they go to
the dogs, because they took the wrong turn in life and would not come
back.

In 1868 Nosey and his two mates were approaching a station on the
Lachlan. Since sunrise they had travelled ten miles without
breakfast, and were both hungry and weary. They put down their swags
in the shade of a small grove of timber within sight of the station
buildings. Bob Castles said:

"I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run.
He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide;
believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read
nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard
of. Bought two runs on the Murray, and paid 180,000 pounds for 'em
in one cheque. He kept a lame schoolmaster to write his cheques and
teach his children, gave him 40 pounds a year, the same as a
shepherd. Lived mostly on mutton all the year round; never killed no
beef for the station, but now and then an old bullock past work,
salted him down in the round swamp for a change o' grub. Never