thing, for, if he
couldn't beat them for pace, he would outlast them.

And then one day he disappeared from the paddock, and we never saw him
again. We knew there were plenty of men in the district who would steal
him; but, as we knew also of many more who would "inform" for a pound
or two, we were sure that it could not have been local "talent" that
had taken him. We offered good rewards and set some of the right sort to
work, but heard nothing of him for about a year.

Then the surveyor's assistant turned up again, after a trip to the
interior. He told us the usual string of back-block lies, and wound up
by saying that out on the very fringe of settlement he had met an old
acquaintance.

"Who was that?"

"Why, that little bay horse that I rode after the brumbies that time.
The one you called White-when-he's-wanted."

"The deuce you did! Are you sure? Who had him?"

"Sure! I'd swear to him anywhere. A little drover fellow had him. A
little fellow, with a big scar across his forehead. Came from Monaro way
somewhere. He said he bought the horse from you for fifteen notes."

The King's warrant doesn't run much out west of Boulia, and it is not
likely that any of us will ever see the drover again, or will ever again
cross the back of "White-when-he's-wanted".

THE DOWNFALL OF MULLIGAN'S

The sporting men of Mulligan's were an exceedingly knowing lot; in fact,
they had obtained the name amongst their neighbours of being a little
bit too knowing. They had "taken down" the adjoining town in a variety
of ways. They were always winning maiden plates with horses which were
shrewdly suspected to be old and well-tried performers in disguise.

When the sports of Paddy's Flat unearthed a phenomenal runner in the
shape of a blackfellow called Frying-pan Joe, the Mulligan contingent
immediately took the trouble to discover a blackfellow of their own,
and they made a match and won all the Paddy's Flat money with ridiculous
ease; then their blackfellow turned out to be a well-known Sydney
performer. They had a man who could fight, a man who could be backed to
jump five-feet-ten, a man who could kill eight pigeons out of nine at
thirty yards, a man who could make a break of fifty or so at billiards
if he tried; they could all drink, and they all had that indefinite look
of infinite wisdom and conscious superiority which belongs only to those
who know something about horseflesh.

They knew a great many things never le