ino-half-Leicester
animal. The cross-bred will get through, under, or over any fence you
like to put in front of him. He is never satisfied with his owner's run,
but always thinks other people's runs must be better, so he sets off to
explore. He will strike a course, say, south-east, and so long as
the fit takes him he will keep going south-east through all
obstacles--rivers, fences, growing crops, anything. The merino relies on
passive resistance for his success; the cross-bred carries the war into
the enemy's camp, and becomes a living curse to his owner day and night.

Once there was a man who was induced in a weak moment to buy twenty
cross-bred rams. From that hour the hand of Fate was upon him. They
got into all the paddocks they shouldn't have been in. They scattered
themselves over the run promiscuously. They visited the cultivation
paddock and the vegetable-garden at their own sweet will. And then they
took to roving. In a body they visited the neighbouring stations, and
played havoc with the sheep all over the district.

The wretched owner was constantly getting fiery letters from his
neighbours: "Your blanky rams are here. Come and take them away at
once," and he would have to go nine or ten miles to drive them home. Any
man who has tried to drive rams on a hot day knows what purgatory is. He
was threatened every week with actions for trespass.

He tried shutting them up in the sheep-yard. They got out and went back
to the garden. Then he gaoled them in the calf-pen. Out again and into
a growing crop. Then he set a boy to watch them; but the boy went to
sleep, and they were four miles away across country before he got on to
their tracks.

At length, when they happened accidentally to be at home on their
owner's run, there came a big flood. His sheep, mostly merinos, had
plenty of time to get on to high ground and save their lives; but, of
course, they didn't, and were almost all drowned. The owner sat on a
rise above the waste of waters and watched the dead animals go by. He
was a ruined man. But he said, "Thank God, those cross-bred rams are
drowned, anyhow." Just as he spoke there was a splashing in the water,
and the twenty rams solemnly swam ashore and ranged themselves in front
of him. They were the only survivors of his twenty thousand sheep.
He broke down, and was taken to an asylum for insane paupers. The
cross-breds had fulfilled their destiny.

The cross-bred drives his owner out of his mind, b