ad joined him, and they watched
the parson mount his horse and ride away.

Dad drew a deep and grateful breath. "Thank God!" he said.

Chapter XXII.

Callaghan's Colt.

It was the year we put the bottom paddock under potatoes. Dad was
standing contemplating the tops, which were withering for want of rain.
He shifted his gaze to the ten acres sown with corn. A dozen stalks or
so were looking well; a few more, ten or twelve inches high, were
coming in cob; the rest had n't made an appearance.

Dad sighed and turned away from the awful prospect. He went and looked
into the water-cask. Two butterflies, a frog or two, and some charcoal
were at the bottom. No water. He sighed again, took the yoke and two
kerosene-tins, and went off to the springs.

About an hour and a half after he returned with two half-tins of muddy,
milky-looking water--the balance had been splashed out as he got
through the fences--and said to Mother (wiping the sweat off his face
with his shirt-sleeve)--

"Don't know, I'm SURE, what things are going t' come t';...no use doing
anything...there's no rain...no si----" he lifted his foot and with
cool exactness took a place-kick at the dog, which was trying to fall
into one of the kerosene-tins, head first, and sent it and the water
flying. "Oh you ----!" The rest is omitted in the interests of Poetry.

Day after. Fearful heat; not a breath of air; fowl and beast sought
the shade; everything silent; the great Bush slept. In the west a
stray cloud or two that had been hanging about gathered, thickened,
darkened.

The air changed. Fowl and beast left the shade; tree-tops began to
stir--to bend--to sway violently. Small branches flew down and rolled
before the wind. Presently it thundered afar off. Mother and Sal ran
out and gathered the clothes, and fixed the spout, and looked
cheerfully up at the sky.

Joe sat in the chimney-corner thumping the ribs of a cattle-pup, and
pinching its ears to make it savage. He had been training the pup ever
since its arrival that morning.

The plough-horses, yoked to the plough, stood in the middle of the
paddock, beating the flies off with their tails and leaning against
each other.

Dad stood at the stock-yard--his brown arms and bearded chin resting on
a middle-rail--passively watching Dave and Paddy Maloney breaking-in a
colt for Callaghan--a weedy, wild, herring-gutted brute that might have
been worth fifteen shillings. Dave was to