ho were wanted for sheep- and
cattle-stealing in the district. I decidedly remember it was during the
reign of the squatters in the nearer west. There came a great gust that
shook the kitchen and caused the mother to take up the baby out of the
rough gin-case cradle. The father took his pipe from his mouth and said:
"Ah, well! poor devils." "I hope they're not out in a night like this,
poor fellows," said the mother, rocking the child in her arms. "And I
hope they'll never catch 'em," snapped her sister. "The squatters has
enough."

"I wonder where poor Jim is?" the mother moaned, rocking the baby, and
with two of those great, silent tears starting from her haggard eyes.

"Oh don't start about Jim again, Ellen," said her sister impatiently.
"He can take care of himself. You were always rushing off to meet
trouble half-way--time enough when they come, God knows."

"Now, look here, Ellen," put in Uncle Abe, soothingly, "he was up in
Queensland doing well when we last heerd of him. Ain't yer never goin'
to be satisfied?"

Jim was evidently another and a younger uncle, whose temperament from
boyhood had given his family constant cause for anxiety.

The father sat smoking, resting his elbow on his knee, bunching up his
brush of red whiskers, and looking into the fire--and back into his own
foreign past in his own foreign land perhaps: and, it may be, thinking
in his own language.

Silence and smoke for a while; then the mother suddenly straightened up
and lifted a finger:

"Hush! What's that? I thought I heard someone outside."

"Old Poley coughin'," said Uncle Abe, after they'd listened a space.
"She must be pretty bad--oughter give her a hot bran mash." (Poley was
the best milker.)

"But I fancied I heard horses at the sliprails," said the mother.

"Old Prince," said Uncle Abe. "Oughter let him into the shed."`

"Hush!" said the mother, "there's someone outside." There _was_ a step,
as of someone retreating after peeping through a crack in the door, but
it was not old Poley's step; then, from farther off, a cough that was
like old Poley's cough, but had a rack in it.

"See who it is, Peter," said the mother. Uncle Abe, who was dramatic and
an ass, slipped the old double-barrelled muzzle-loader from its leathers
on the wall and stood it in the far corner and sat down by it. The
mother, who didn't seem to realize anything, frowned at him impatiently.
The coughing fit started again. It was a man.

"Who's there