weight had wrought.

There was no hope from the first. My poor friend, who had so often faced
Death for two pounds, lay very still awhile. Then he began to talk,
wandering in his mind, "Where are the cattle?"--his mind evidently going
back to the old days on the road. Then, quickly, "Look out there--give
me room!" and again "Five-and-twenty pounds, Mary, and a sure thing if
he don't fall at the logs."

Mary was sobbing beside the bed, cursing the fence and the money that
had brought him to grief. At last, in a tone of satisfaction, he said,
quite clear and loud: "I know how it was--_There couldn't have been any
dead man in that hearse!_"

And so, having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, he drifted
away into unconsciousness--and woke somewhere on the other side of the
big fence that we can neither see through nor over, but all have to face
sooner or later.

VICTOR SECOND

We were training two horses for the Buckatowndown races--an old grey
warrior called Tricolor--better known to the station boys as The
Trickler--and a mare for the hack race. Station horses don't get trained
quite like Carbine; some days we had no time to give them gallops at
all, so they had to gallop twice as far the next day to make up.

One day the boy we had looking after The Trickler fell in with a mob of
sharps who told him we didn't know anything about training horses, and
that what the horse really wanted was "a twicer"--that is to say, a
gallop twice round the course. So the boy gave him "a twicer" on his own
responsibility. When we found out about it we gave the boy a twicer with
the strap, and he left and took out a summons against us. But somehow
or other we managed to get the old horse pretty fit, tried him against
hacks of different descriptions, and persuaded ourselves that we had the
biggest certainty ever known on a racecourse.

When the horses were galloping in the morning the kangaroo-dog, Victor,
nearly always went down to the course to run round with them. It amused
him, apparently, and didn't hurt anyone, so we used to let him race; in
fact, we rather encouraged him, because it kept him in good trim to hunt
kangaroo. When we were starting for the meeting, someone said we had
better tie up Victor or he would be getting stolen at the races. We
called and whistled, but he had made himself scarce, so we started and
forgot all about him.

Buckatowndown Races. Red-hot day, everything dusty, everybody drunk and