e
people too, one to live on the other. Why should we pay for what is our
own? I believe in getting my share somehow.'

'That's a sort of argument that doesn't come out right,' said George.
'How would you like another man to come and want to halve the farm with
you?'

'I shouldn't mind; I should go halves with some one else who had a
bigger one,' I said. 'More money too, more horses, more sheep, a bigger
house! Why should he have it and not me?'

'That's a lazy man's argument, and--well, not an honest man's,' said
George, getting up and putting on his cabbage-tree. 'I can't sit and
hear you talk such rot. Nobody can work better than you and Jim, when
you like. I wonder you don't leave such talk to fellows like Frowser,
that's always spouting at the Shearers' Arms.'

'Nonsense or not, if a dry season comes and knocks all our work over, I
shall help myself to some one's stuff that has more than he knows what
to do with.'

'Why can't we all go shearing, and make as much as will keep us for six
months?' said George. 'I don't know what we'd do without the squatters.'

'Nor I either; more ways than one; but Jim and I are going shearing next
week. So perhaps there won't be any need for "duffing" after all.'

'Oh, Dick!' said Aileen, 'I can't bear to hear you make a joke of that
kind of thing. Don't we all know what it leads to! Wouldn't it be better
to live on dry bread and be honest than to be full of money and never
know the day when you'd be dragged to gaol?'

'I've heard all that before; but ain't there lots of people that have
made their money by all sorts of villainy, that look as well as the
best, and never see a gaol?'

'They're always caught some day,' says poor Aileen, sobbing, 'and what a
dreadful life of anxiety they must lead!'

'Not at all,' I said. 'Look at Lucksly, Squeezer, and Frying-pan Jack.
Everybody knows how they got their stock and their money. See how they
live. They've got stations, and public-house and town property, and they
get richer every year. I don't think it pays to be too honest in a dry
country.'

'You're a naughty boy, Dick; isn't he, Jim?' she said, smiling through
her tears. 'But he doesn't mean half what he says, does he?'

'Not he,' says Jim; 'and very likely we'll have lots of rain after all.'

Chapter 8

The 'big squatter', as he was called on our side of the country, was Mr.
Falkland. He was an Englishman that had come young to the colony, and
worked his w