form of the balls and the bumps in the cushions of the
alleged billiard table which the owner of the Rest had bought many years
before in a coastal town, and which had not been improved by a
five-weeks' journey inland on a bullock-dray. He had always held the
proud position of "ringer" in the shearing-sheds of the stations round
Birralong, beating all comers by never having a tally of less than a
hundred sheep shorn a day, and that with the old-fashioned hand-shears.
The winner of the local races had always been ridden by Tony, and he had
been known to lose the whole of his shearing earnings at euchre and win
them back, together with all the money on the board, by wagering his
next year's cheque. The feminine portion of the population for miles
round had a bright eye for Tony whenever he appeared; but only one did
he seriously fancy, according to the authority of Marmot's verandah, and
she, by the same token, fully reciprocated his feelings, and was,
moreover, the admitted beauty of the district. And yet Tony, not
apparently on the spur of the moment, but calmly and with his eyes open,
had thrown in his lot with the three fossickers, and had gone off
without scarcely a word to any one. Why, Birralong collectively did not
know, for there had not been time as yet for an assemblage to take place
on the verandah of Marmot's store. The riddle would not long remain
unsolved when it had.

The hour of the evening meal had come and gone; the buzz-saws had ceased
to whirr and sing and the anvil hammers to ring through the still, hot
air. The sun had left his perch overhead, and was sinking slowly towards
the horizon, making the trees and houses throw long streaks and patches
of shadow of soft purple-blue, which is so peculiarly Australian, across
the yellow dust of the roadway. The mosquitoes were beginning to leave
their shelters, and occasionally, within the shadows, the ping-zing of
their high-toned note could be heard as one drifted by the ear. The
wood-fire smoke rose straight and steadily from kitchen chimneys, as the
sticks, set alight to boil the billy for tea, gradually went out, and
the aromatic scent of it floated through the air, seeming to fit in with
the chromatic whistle of the magpies from the gum trees in the paddocks.
But the men who were gathered round Marmot's verandah noted nothing of
these things. Marmot himself, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, sat on a
box of Barret twist tobacco in the doorway, where he