fferent class; he could shear very
well if he pleased, but had a rooted disbelief that honesty was the
best policy, and a fixed determination to shear as many sheep as he
could get the manager to pass. By dint of close watching, constant
reprimand, and occasional "raddling" (marking badly-shorn sheep and
refusing to count them) Mr Gordon had managed to tone him down to
average respectability of execution. Still he was always uneasily aware
that whenever his eye was not upon him, Jackson was doing what he ought
not to do with might and main. Gordon had, indeed, kept him on from
sheer necessity, but he intended none the less to mark his opinion of
him.

"Come in, Jackson! Your tally is so-and-so. Is that right?"

Jackson.--"I suppose so."

"Cook and store account, so much; shearing account so much."

Jackson.--"And a good deal too."

"That is your affair," said Mr Gordon, sternly enough. "Now look here!
You're in my opinion a bad shearer and a bad man. You have given me a
great deal of trouble, and I should have kicked you out of the shed
weeks ago if I had not been short of men. I shall make a difference
between you and men who have tried to do their best. I make you no
allowance of any sort, I pay you by the strict agreement. There's your
cheque. Go!"

Jackson goes out with a very black countenance. He mutters with a surly
oath that if "he'd known how he was going to be served he'd ha'
'blocked' 'em a little more." He is pretty well believed to have been
served right, and he secures no sympathy whatever. Working-men of all
classes are shrewd and fair judges generally. If an employer does his
best to mete out justice he is always appreciated and supported by the
majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole
process of settling with the shearers. The horses have all been got in.
Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the
afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds; some, like
Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds "higher up," in a colder
climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they
will pass to others, until the last sheep in the mountain runs are
shorn. Then those who have not farms of their own betake themselves to
reaping. Billy May and Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back
themselves against time in the wheat-field as on the shearing-floor.
Harvest over, they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they
commence