a boy or two. Mighty dull for the old woman, I should think, with
on'y the ghost to keep her company. She was her cousin or her aunt or
somethin', the ghost was, and, Lord, women is fools an' no mistake."
It was July, and the winter rains had just fallen, so that the plains,
contrary to custom, were a regular sea of mud.

The wheels sank axle deep in it. The horses floundered through it in the
darkness, and every now and then the lamps were reflected in a big pool
of shallow water. The wind blew keen and cold, but the coach was full
inside and out, and so, though it was pitch dark, I kept my seat by the
driver.

A light gleamed up out of the darkness.

"Trotting Cob!" said he, and discoursed upon it till he pulled up his
horses on their haunches exactly opposite a wide-open door, where the
lamplight displayed a rudely-laid table and a bright fire, which seemed
hospitably to beckon us in. The whole place was as wide awake as if it
were noon instead of midnight.

Ten minutes' stay, and we were off again into the darkness, and then I
prevailed upon the driver to tell me the tale of Trotting Cob. He told
it in his own way. He interlarded his speech with strange oaths. He
stopped often to swear at the road, to correct the horses, and he was
emphatic in his opinions on the foolishness of women, so I must e'en do
as he did, and tell the tale of Trotting Cob in my own way.

A flat world--possibly to English eyes an uninteresting, desolate,
dreary world; but to those who knew and loved them, they had a weird
charm, all their own, those dull, gray plains that stretched away mile
after mile till it seemed the horizon, unbroken by hill or tree, must
be the end of the world. Trotting Cob was Murwidgee then, Murwidgee
Waterhole, where all the stock stopped and watered; but from the slab
hut, which was the only dwelling for miles, no waterhole was visible;
the creek was simply a huge crack in the earth, and at the bottom,
twenty feet below the level of the plain, was the water-hole. One
waterhole in summer, and in winter a whole chain of them, but the creek
seldom if ever flowed, except in a very wet season. It was a permanent
waterhole--Murwidgee, fed by springs, and the white cockatoos and
screaming corellas came there and bathed in its waters, and the black
swans, and the wild duck, and teal rested there on their way south, when
summer had laid his iron hand on the northern plains.

The reeds and rushes made a pleasant green