BILLIARDS MADE EASY.

There was a lurid atmosphere at Birralong during the days that the
diggers held high revel at the Rest. The sun blazed down pitilessly on
the land, stricken sore by the drought; for it was the season of the
year when the rain should have come in copious downfalls to moisten the
parched soil, and when thunderstorms, accompanied by the vivid gleam of
tropical lightning, should have come to cool and clear the air. But no
rain came; not even a cloud obscured the blue of the sky for a moment,
and not a suspicion of dew fell during the hours of darkness. Only the
lightning came, as soon as the sun was down, blazing, flaring, and
flashing round the horizon and high overhead; disturbing the darkness as
the patter of a tattoo disturbs silence; punctuating the night into
periods of sombre, awful blackness by moments of dazzling, blinding
white fury, that made the eyes tingle through the succeeding moments of
dark, and the ears shrink and tremble, anticipating the rending
thunder-crash which never came. And always was the air hot and dry, and
the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano.
The grass, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp
and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were
parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors,
swarms of grasshoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of
myriads, upon everything that was green or bore the semblance of green,
and never moving on until only the bare earth and the stripped tree
branches were left.

It was such a season when some excuse was to be made for congregating at
the Rest, and the advent of the diggers, with money to spend and a
desire to entertain everybody who came within coo-ee of them, gave any
excuse needed, not only to the selectors, but also to the men of
Birralong.

Great things were going to be done as soon as the period of festivity
was over, and the miners returned to the field and settled down steadily
once more to toil and industry. Many a hard-working selector, who
remembered his parched paddocks and bony stock, thought of throwing in
his lot with the men he had formerly referred to as gully-rakers, when
he saw the lavish expenditure, not only at the Rest, but at Marmot's,
made possible by the gold they had won. Nor were the establishments at
either end of the township alone in profiting. There would be a great
demand for tools when t