y
half-past five it was almost over, and Pip, in a fever of
restlessness, was telling Mr. Hassal he was sure they would be
late and miss it.

Judy had pleaded hard to be allowed to go, but everyone said it was
out of the question--indeed, it was doubted if it were wise to allow
Pip to face the danger that is inseparable with the drafting of the
wilder kind of cattle that had been driven from great distances.

But he had forcibly carried the day, and dressed himself up in so
business-like a way that Mr. Hassel had not the heart to refuse him.
He came down to breakfast in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old, serge
trousers fastened round the waist with a leathern belt, in which an
unsheathed bowie knife, freshly sharpened, was jauntily stuck. No
persuasions would induce him either to wear a coat or sheathe the knife.

The grey was brought round to the veranda steps, with Mr. Hassal's
own splendid horse. Mr. Gillet was there on a well-groomed roan;
he had three stock-whips, two quite sixteen feet long, the third
shorter one, which he presented to Pip.

The boy's face glowed. "Hurrah, Fizz!" he said; standing up in
his saddle and brandishing it round his head. "What 'ud you give to
change places?"

He dug his heels into the animal's sides and went helter-skelter
at a wild gallop down the hill.

It was a mile and a half to the cattle yards, and here was the
strongest excitement.

Pip could not think where all the men had sprung from. There were
some twenty or thirty of them, stockmen, shearers "on the
wallaby," as their parlance expressed lack of employment, two
Aboriginals, exclusive of Tettawonga, who was smoking and looking
on with sleepy enjoyment, and several other of the station hands.

In the first yard there were five hundred cattle that had been driven
there the night before, and that just now presented the appearance of
a sea of wildly lashing tails and horns. Such horns!--great,
branching, terrific-looking things that they gored and fought each
other madly with, seeing they could not get to the common enemy
outside.

Just for the first moment or two Pip felt a little disinclined to
quit the stronghold of his horse's back. The thunder of hoofs and
horns, the wild charges made by the desperate animals against the
fence, made him expect to see it come crashing down every minute.

But everybody else had gone to "cockatoo"--to sit on the top rail
of the enclosure and look down at the maddened creatur