t Annie and
shook hands warmly with her. Then they went out, and mounting, rode back
in the direction of Mudgee. Uncle Abe winked long and hard and solemnly
at Andy Page, and Andy winked back like a mechanical wooden image.
The two women nudged and smiled and seemed quite girlish, not to
say skittish, all the morning. Something had come to break the cruel
hopeless monotony of their lives. And even the settler became foolishly
cheerful.

Five years later: same hut, same yard, and a not much wider clearing in
the gully, and a little more fencing--the women rather more haggard
and tired looking, the settler rather more horny-handed and silent, and
Uncle Abe rather more philosophical. The men had had to go out and work
on the stations. With the settler and his wife it was, "If we only had
a few pounds to get the farm cleared and fenced, and another good plough
horse, and a few more cows." That had been the burden of their song for
the five years and more.

Then, one evening, the mail boy left a parcel. It was a small parcel, in
cloth-paper, carefully tied and sealed. What could it be? It couldn't be
the Christmas number of a weekly they subscribed to, for it never came
like that. Aunt Annie cut the discussion short by cutting the string
with a table knife and breaking the wax.

And behold, a clean sugar-bag tightly folded and rolled.

And inside a strong whitey-brown envelope.

And on the envelope written or rather printed the words:

"For horse-feed, stabling, and supper."

And underneath, in smaller letters, "Send Bible and portraits to----."
(Here a name and address.)

And inside the envelope a roll of notes.

"Count them," said Aunt Annie.

But the settler's horny and knotty hands trembled too much, and so did
his wife's withered ones; so Aunt Annie counted them.

"Fifty pounds!" she said.

"Fifty pounds!" mused the settler, scratching his head in a perplexed
way.

"Fifty pounds!" gasped his wife.

"Yes," said Aunt Annie sharply, "fifty pounds!"

"Well, you'll get it settled between yer some day!" drawled Uncle Abe.

Later, after thinking comfortably over the matter, he observed:

"Cast yer coffee an' bread an' bacon upon the waters--"

Uncle Abe never hurried himself or anybody else.

THE BATH

The moral should be revived. Therefore, this is a story with a moral.
The lower end of Bill Street--otherwise William--overlooks Blue's Point
Road, with a vacant wedge-shaped allotment runni