the result of years of labour swept away.
She cried then.

She also fought the pleuro-pneumonia--dosed and bled the few remaining
cattle, and wept again when her two best cows died.

Again, she fought a mad bullock that besieged the house for a day. She
made bullets and fired at him through cracks in the slabs with an
old shot-gun. He was dead in the morning. She skinned him and got
seventeen-and-sixpence for the hide.

She also fights the crows and eagles that have designs on her chickens.
Her plan of campaign is very original. The children cry "Crows, mother!"
and she rushes out and aims a broomstick at the birds as though it were
a gun, and says "Bung!" The crows leave in a hurry; they are cunning,
but a woman's cunning is greater.

Occasionally a bushman in the horrors, or a villainous-looking
sundowner, comes and nearly scares the life out of her. She generally
tells the suspicious-looking stranger that her husband and two sons
are at work below the dam, or over at the yard, for he always cunningly
inquires for the boss.

Only last week a gallows-faced swagman--having satisfied himself that
there were no men on the place--threw his swag down on the veranda, and
demanded tucker. She gave him something to eat; then he expressed his
intention of staying for the night. It was sundown then. She got a
batten from the sofa, loosened the dog, and confronted the stranger,
holding the batten in one hand and the dog's collar with the other. "Now
you go!" she said. He looked at her and at the dog, said "All right,
mum," in a cringing tone, and left. She was a determined-looking woman,
and Alligator's yellow eyes glared unpleasantly--besides, the dog's
chawing-up apparatus greatly resembled that of the reptile he was named
after.

She has few pleasures to think of as she sits here alone by the fire, on
guard against a snake. All days are much the same to her; but on Sunday
afternoon she dresses herself, tidies the children, smartens up
baby, and goes for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old
perambulator in front of her. She does this every Sunday. She takes as
much care to make herself and the children look smart as she would if
she were going to do the block in the city. There is nothing to see,
however, and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along
this track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you
are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness
of