is hand flew up with a whiz and took a
scrap of his ear away. The cattle got mixed up in the wires. Some
toppled over; some were caught by the legs; some by the horns. They
dragged the wire twenty and thirty yards away, twisted it round logs,
and left a lot of the posts pointing to sunset.

Oh, Dad's language then! He swung his arms about and foamed at the
mouth. Dave edged away from him.

Joe came up waving triumphantly a chewed piece of the waistcoat.
"D-d-did it g-give them a buster, Dad?" he said, the sweat running over
his face as though a spring had broken out on top of his head. Dad
jumped a log and tried to unbuckle his strap and reach for Joe at the
same time, but Joe fled.

That threw a painful pall over everything. Dad declared he was sick
and tired of the whole thing, and would n't do another hand's-turn.
Dave meditated and walked along the fence, plucking off scraps of skin
and hair that here and there clung to the bent and battered wire.

We had just finished supper when old Bob Wren, a bachelor who farmed
about two miles from us, arrived. He used to come over every
mail-night and bring his newspaper with him. Bob could n't read a
word, so he always got Dad to spell over the paper to him. WE did n't
take a newspaper.

Bob said there were clouds gathering behind Flat Top when he came in,
and Dad went out and looked, and for the fiftieth time that day prayed
in his own way for rain. Then he took the paper, and we gathered at
the table to listen. "Hello," he commenced, "this is M'Doolan's paper
you've got, Bob."

Bob rather thought it was n't.

"Yes, yes, man, it IS," Dad put in; "see, it's addressed to him."

Bob leaned over and LOOKED at the address, and said: "No, no, that's
mine; it always comes like that." Dad laughed. We all laughed. He
opened it, anyway. He had n't read for five minutes when the light
flickered nearly out. Sarah reckoned the oil was about done, and
poured water in the lamp to raise the kerosene to the wick, but that
did n't last long, and, as there was no fat in the house, Dad squatted
on the floor and read by the firelight.

He plodded through the paper tediously from end to end, reading the
murders and robberies a second time. The clouds that old Bob said were
gathering when he came in were now developing to a storm, for the wind
began to rise, and the giant iron-bark tree that grew close behind the
house swayed and creaked weirdly, and threw out those s