y Government letter came. Dad looked surprised and
pleased, and how his hand trembled as he broke the seal! "THE DEEDS!"
he said, and all of us gathered round to look at them. Dave thought
they were like the inside of a bear-skin covered with writing.

Dad said he would ride to town at once, and went for Emelina.

"Could n't y' find her, Dad?" Dan said, seeing him return without the
mare.

Dad cleared his throat, but did n't answer. Mother asked him.

"Yes, I FOUND her," he said slowly, "DEAD."

The crows had got her at last.

He wrapped the deeds in a piece of rag and walked.

There was nothing, scarcely, that he did n't send out from town, and
Jimmy Mulcahy and old Anderson many and many times after that borrowed
our dray.

Now Dad regularly curses the deeds every mail-day, and wishes to Heaven
he had never got them.

Chapter IV.

When the Wolf was at the Door.

There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out
the waterhole. Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe
squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without
their wings--a favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a
drain to turn the water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it
rained. Dad was feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.

Joe said: "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he
went, but returned and said: "There's no water in the bucket--Mother
used the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching.
Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way
between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock
was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely
dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb.

Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked. "Good God!" was all he said.
How he ran! All of us rushed after him except Joe--he could n't run
very well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor
horse, bare-back. When near the fire Dad stopped running to break a
green bush. He hit upon a tough one. Dad was in a hurry. The bush was
n't. Dad swore and tugged with all his might. Then the bush broke and
Dad fell heavily upon his back and swore again.

To save the cockatoo fence that was round the cultivation was what was
troubling Dad. Right and left we fought the fire with boughs. Hot!
It was hellish hot! Whenever there was a lull in the wind