a waistcloth.

The clothes were bundled together into a corner, three spears and as
many nulla-nullas and boomerangs drawn from where they were tucked in
the rafters, and the trio astonished a cow tied up in a corner with her
tender calf by going through a kind of war dance, and all in silence.

Then the cow felt better in all probability, for there was no sign of
the calf being stunned with a club to be cooked for a holiday, the
performers of the dance stepping lightly to the door, out of which
Bungarolo peered cautiously before dropping down upon his breast and
crawling rapidly off to the garden fence, without disturbing the two
collies, though Nibbler, who lay as if asleep, opened one eye, lifted
his tail, and brought it down with a rap and closed the eye again.

He opened it, though, twice more as the other two blacks passed him in
the same way, gave two more sharp raps with his tail, and then sniffed
at the last black as if wondering how he would taste. But as he had had
a pretty good piece of a drowned sheep, he subsided and closed the eye,
not even turning his head to gaze after the three blacks as they glided
on right under the fence on the side farthest from the house, and close
by where old Sam was contentedly digging, in perfect unconsciousness
that the three great children were off to the bush for a jovial day,
hunting for fat grubs, honey, snakes, and other picnic delicacies in the
glorious open wilds.

Half an hour had passed, during which Brookes went to the door of the
wood-shed three times to scowl at Leather; but the convict was hard at
work at the end of the wood-yard, chopping away at rails which he was
splitting, tapering at the ends and piling on a heap, ready for some
fencing that was to be done as soon as there was a little time.

Brookes felt ill-used. He would have liked to find the assigned servant
yawning and doing nothing, or taking advantage of the master's absence
to have a nap, and give him cause, as he was in his own estimation head
man now, to let loose his tongue at the man he hated intensely.

But there was no excuse, and Brookes went back into the shed.

"I shall catch him yet," he muttered. "Only let him give me a chance."

But Brookes could not rest. He pitched the soft bundled-up fleeces
about irritably, for they annoyed him. He wanted something hard, and
growing more restless from a desire to show his authority, he went to
where the two blacks should have been cleanin