lasts, which swept in eddies of snow, ruffling the feathers
of the hens and driving the tails of the horses between their legs.

Charley and Mac had come thus far on their way out to have a look at
the stock in the big paddocks higher in the hills, before the
thickening snow had made purposeless their going further. So they had
dropped in to see old George, the rouseabout, and have a yarn with him,
or, if there were no signs of the weather clearing, to consider the
question of work in the wool-shed.

"Hullo, boys!" mumbled George. "I reckon as thar' ain't no use us
gittin' art jist now. I thinks the fire's the best place ter day.
Squat yerself in that thar cheer, Mac, me boy. Jinny! get some tea,"
he roared hospitably through the wall towards the wee kitchen where his
hard-working little wife was making bread for her large family of
children who were away at school. "And I'll give yer a toon on the
grammephone."

Nothing averse, the two stockmen settled down before the big log fire
in George's den, aromatically smoky from firewood and tobacco, with its
walls papered from odd paperhangers' samples and prints from Victorian
journals, and with domestic odds and ends lying here and there. The
good lady speedily produced the tea and added cakes and scones, while
George brought into action his cheap American machine and its hoary old
records; vague, scratching echoes here in the depths of the bush of the
gay sparkling life of Piccadilly and Leicester Square by night,
laughing theatre crowds and wonderful women--a life worlds away from
George and his rough, but hospitable hearth. He laughed where
sometimes there were jokes, more frequently where there were not, and
the other two laughed good-naturedly in concert, for the machine
scratched so badly that they could not distinguish a word, though
George, remembering them in the freshness of their youth, was blind to
their growing infirmities. If the two laughed heartily, or expressed
in words the good qualities of a record, those, in addition to George's
particular cronies, were given a second or a third run.

They grew rather tired of this entertainment, and turned their
attention to the domestic bookshelf and the family treasures which
adorned the walls and the mantelpiece. In a glass frame was an army
biscuit of army hardness on which Mrs. George's brother had written a
letter on a distant Christmas Day in South Africa and had posted to
her. They deserted other r