old tree and fairly whisked its burning
limbs off. They flew ever so far. We thought we had them all out, when
suddenly Dad gave a yell.

"There was a little, deep gully running at right angles to the creek,
and right through the paddocks up to the house. In winter it was a
creek, but now it was dry as a bone, and rank with dead grass at the
bottom. As we looked we saw smoke rise from this gully, far away, in the
home paddock.

"'My Shropshires!' said Dad, and he made a run for Bosun.

"How we did tear! I never thought old Dad could run so hard! It seemed
miles to the corner where the horses were, and ages before we got on
them and were racing for the home paddock. And all the time the smoke
was creeping along that beastly gully, and we knew well enough that,
tear as we might, we couldn't be in time.

"You see, the valuable sheep were in a paddock, where this gully ended.
It wasn't very near the house, and no one might see the fire before
every sheep was roasted. We had only just got them. Dad had imported
some from England and some from Tasmania, and I don't know how much they
hadn't cost."

"Weren't you afraid for the house as well?" asked Harry.

"No. There was a big ploughed paddock near the house; it would have
taken a tremendous fire to get over that and the orchard and garden. We
only worried about the Shropshires.

"I got the lead away, but Dad caught me up pretty soon. Between us and
the sheep paddock there were only wire fences, which he wouldn't take
Bosun over, so he couldn't race away from the rest of us this time.

"We might as well take it easy,' he said, 'for all the good we can do.
The sheep nearly live in that gully.'

"All the same, we raced. The wind had gone down by now, so the fire
couldn't travel as fast as it had done in the open ground. There was a
long slope leading down to the gully, and as we got to this we could see
the whole of the little paddock, and there wasn't a sheep in sight.
Every blessed one was in the gully, and the fire was three-parts of the
way along it!

"Roast mutton!' I heard Dad say under his breath.

"Then we saw Norah. She came racing on Bobs to the fence of the paddock
near the head of the gully--much nearer the fire than we were. We saw
her look at the fire and into the gully, and I reckon we all knew she
was fighting with her promise to Dad about not tackling the fire. But
she saw the sheep before we could. They had run from the smoke along the
gully till