ho sat,
cold-looking, on the sofa--as he staggered inside with an immense log
for the fire. A log! Nearer a whole tree! But wood was nothing in
Dad's eyes.

Mrs. Brown had been at our place five or six days. Old Brown called
occasionally to see her, so we knew they could n't have quarrelled.
Sometimes she did a little house-work, but more often she did n't. We
talked it over together, but could n't make it out. Joe asked Mother,
but she had no idea--so she said. We were full up, as Dave put it, of
Mrs. Brown, and wished her out of the place. She had taken to ordering
us about, as though she had something to do with us.

After supper we sat round the fire--as near to it as we could without
burning ourselves--Mrs. Brown and all, and listened to the wind
whistling outside. Ah, it was pleasant beside the fire listening to
the wind! When Dad had warmed himself back and front he turned to us
and said:

"Now, boys, we must go directly and light some fires and keep those
wallabies back."

That was a shock to us, and we looked at him to see if he were really
in earnest. He was, and as serious as a judge.

"TO-NIGHT!" Dave answered, surprisedly--"why to-night any more than
last night or the night before? Thought you had decided to let them
rip?"

"Yes, but we might as well keep them off a bit longer."

"But there's no wheat there for them to get now. So what's the good of
watching them? There's no sense in THAT."

Dad was immovable.

"Anyway"--whined Joe--"I'M not going--not a night like this--not when I
ain't got boots."

That vexed Dad. "Hold your tongue, sir!" he said--"you'll do as you're
told."

But Dave had n't finished. "I've been following that harrow since
sunrise this morning," he said, "and now you want me to go chasing
wallabies about in the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else
but to keep them from eating the ground. It's always the way here, the
more one does the more he's wanted to do," and he commenced to cry.
Mrs. Brown had something to say. SHE agreed with Dad and thought we
ought to go, as the wheat might spring up again.

"Pshah!" Dave blurted out between his sobs, while we thought of telling
her to shut her mouth.

Slowly and reluctantly we left that roaring fireside to accompany Dad
that bitter night. It WAS a night!--dark as pitch, silent, forlorn and
forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue. And just to keep
wallabies from eating nothing! They HAD eaten