r cleverly altered; witness could see the
original brand quite plain underneath; as far as he knew Mr. Hood never
sold or gave any one authority to take the animal; he had missed him
some months since, and always believed he had strayed; knew the bull to
be a valuable animal, worth several hundred pounds.

We had one bit of luck in having to be tried in an out-of-the-way place
like Nomah. It was a regular outside bush township, and though the
distance oughtn't to have much to say to people's honesty, you'll mostly
find that these far-out back-of-beyond places have got men and women to
match 'em.

Except the squatters and overseers, the other people's mostly a shady
lot. Some's run away from places that were too hot to hold 'em.
The women ain't the men's wives that they live with, but somebody
else's--who's well rid of 'em too if all was known. There's most likely
a bit of horse and cattle stealing done on the quiet, and the publicans
and storekeepers know who are their best customers, the square people
or the cross ones. It ain't so easy to get a regular up-and-down
straight-ahead jury in a place of this sort. So Starlight and I knew
that our chance was a lot better than if we'd been tried at Bargo or
Dutton Forest, or any steady-going places of that sort.

If we'd made up our minds from the first that we were to get into it
it wouldn't have been so bad; we'd have known we had to bear it. Now we
might get out of it, and what a thing it would be to feel free again,
and walk about in the sun without any one having the right to stop you.
Almost, that is--there were other things against us; but there wasn't
so much of a chance of their turning up. This was the great stake. If we
won we were as good as made. I felt ready to swear I'd go home and never
touch a shilling that didn't come honest again. If we lost it seemed
as if everything was so much the worse, and blacker than it looked at
first, just for this bit of hope and comfort.

After the bull had been sworn to by Mr. Hood and another witness, they
brought up some more evidence, as they called it, about the other cattle
we had sold in Adelaide. They had fetched some of the farmers up that
had been at the sale. They swore straight enough to having bought cattle
with certain brands from Starlight. They didn't know, of course, at the
time whose they were, but they could describe the brands fast enough.
There was one fellow that couldn't read nor write, but he remembered