chain round the neck settled it.

He scowled at her darkly.

'Now, look here,' he said; 'you've allowed gamblin' in this bar--your
boss has. You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog.
Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your
boss? I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and
I don't care if you lose your licence. I ain't goin' to lose my dog. I
wouldn'ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I----'

She was filling a pewter hastily.

'Here! for God's sake have a drink an' stop yer row.'

He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and
scowled out the door.

'Which blanky way did them chaps go?' he growled.

'The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.'

'And I'll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
lose me shed! Here!' jerking the empty pewter across the bar, 'fill that
up again; I'm narked properly, I am, and I'll take twenty-four blanky
hours to cool down now. I wouldn'ter lost that dog for twenty quid.'

He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,
muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the
track to Tinned Dog.

*****

Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite
settled it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it
to you.

Telling Mrs Baker.

Most Bushmen who hadn't 'known Bob Baker to speak to', had 'heard tell
of him'. He'd been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie
river in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and
had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to
Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a
pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob
Baker went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager
in charge.

He'd been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he'd been
a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for
they had to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of
vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed. It's very nice to hear the
chaps sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow', but you've mostly got to pay
for it twice--first in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the
chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place
and they were giving me a send-off. It