you to hook it when we first seen the
brands by daylight, and I'd ha' been off like a brindle "Mickey" down a
range.'

'Better for us if we had,' I said; 'but it's too late now. We must stick
to it, I suppose.'

We had kept the cattle going for three or four miles through the
thickest of the country, every now and then steering our course by the
clear round top of Sugarloaf, that could be seen for miles round,
but never seemed to get any nearer, when we came on a rough sort of
log-fence, which ran the way we were going.

'I didn't think there were any farms up here,' I said to Jim.

'It's a "break",' he said, almost in a whisper. 'There's a
"duffing-yard" somewhere handy; that's what's the matter.'

'Keep the cattle along it, anyway. We'll soon see what it leads to.'

The cattle ran along the fence, as if they expected to get to the end of
their troubles soon. The scrub was terribly thick in places, and every
now and then there was a break in the fence, when one of us had to go
outside and hunt them until we came to the next bit. At last we came to
a little open kind of flat, with the scrub that thick round it as you
couldn't hardly ride through it, and, just as Jim said, there was the
yard.

It was a 'duffing-yard' sure enough. No one but people who had cattle to
hide and young stock they didn't want other people to see branded would
have made a place there.

Just on the south side of the yard, which was built of great heavy
stringy-bark trees cut down in the line of the fence, and made up with
limbs and logs, the range went up as steep as the side of a house. The
cattle were that tired and footsore--half their feet were bleeding, poor
devils--that they ran in through the sliprails and began to lay down.

'Light a fire, one of you boys,' says father, putting up the heavy
sliprails and fastening them. 'We must brand these calves before dark.
One of you can go to that gunyah, just under the range where that big
white rock is, and you'll find tea and sugar and something to eat.'

Jim rushed off at once, while I sulkily began to put some bark and twigs
together and build a fire.

'What's the use of all this cross work?' I said to father; 'we're bound
to be caught some day if we keep on at it. Then there'll be no one left
to take care of mother and Aileen.'

He looked rather struck at this, and then said quietly--

'You and your brother can go back now. Never say I kept you against your
will. You may as well