lves, that as they grew old
would run a little way and then pull up if a mob came, jump, jump, past
them. No shooting, except a few ducks and pigeons. Father used to laugh
at the shooting in this country, and say they'd never have poachers
here--the game wasn't worth it. No fishing, except an odd codfish, in
the deepest waterholes; and you might sit half a day without a bite.

Now this was very bad for us boys. Lads want plenty of work, and a
little play now and then to keep them straight. If there's none, they'll
make it; and you can't tell how far they'll go when they once start.

Well, Jim and I used to get our horses and ride off quietly in the
afternoon, as if we were going after cattle; but, in reality, as soon
as we were out of sight of mother, to ride over to that old villain,
Grimes, the shanty-keeper, where we met the young Dalys, and others of
the same sort--talked a good deal of nonsense and gossip; what was worse
played at all-fours and euchre, which we had learned from an American
harvest hand, at one of the large farms.

Besides playing for money, which put us rather into trouble sometimes,
as we couldn't always find a half-crown if we lost it, we learned
another bad habit, and that was to drink spirits. What burning nasty
stuff I thought it at first; and so did we all! But every one wanted to
be thought a man, and up to all kinds of wickedness, so we used to make
it a point of drinking our nobbler, and sometimes treating the others
twice, if we had cash.

There was another family that lived a couple of miles off, higher up the
creek, and we had always been good friends with them, though they
never came to our house, and only we boys went to theirs. They were the
parents of the little girl that went to school with us, and a boy who
was a year older than me.

Their father had been a gardener at home, and he married a native girl
who was born somewhere about the Hawkesbury, near Windsor. Her father
had been a farmer, and many a time she told us how sorry she was to go
away from the old place, and what fine corn and pumpkins they grew; and
how they had a church at Windsor, and used to take their hay and fruit
and potatoes to Sydney, and what a grand place Sydney was, with stone
buildings called markets for people to sell fruit and vegetables and
poultry in; and how you could walk down into Lower George Street and see
Sydney Harbour, a great shining salt-water plain, a thousand times as
big as the bigges