dry country has little chance. The driver, responsible to the extent of his freight, generally sleeps under his dray; hence both watchman and insulation are provided.
The unrelaxing energy with which work is pushed at this stage is exciting and contagious. At or before daylight every soul in the great establishment is up. The boundary riders are always starting off for a twenty or thirty mile ride, and bringing tens of thousands of sheep to the wash-pen; at that huge lavatory, there is splashing and soaking all day with an army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight till dark, or used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and needful food. At nine o'clock p.m. luxurious dreamless sleep obtains, given only to those whose physical powers have been taxed to the utmost, and who can bear without injury the daily tension.
Everything and everybody is in splendid working order, nothing is out of gear. Rapid and regular as a steam-engine the great host of toilers moves onward daily, with a march promising an early completion. Mr. Gordon is not in high spirits, for so cautious and far-seeing a captain rarely feels himself so independent of circumstances as to indulge in that reckless mood, but much satisfied with the prospect. Whew! the afternoon darkens, and the night is given over to water-spouts and hurricanes, as it appears. Next day is raw, gusty, with chill heavy showers, drains to be cut, roofs to be seen to, shorn sheep shivering, washers all playing pitch-and-toss, shearers sulky; everybody but the young gentlemen wearing an injured expression of countenance. 'Looks as if it would rain for a month,' says Long Jack. 'If we hadn't been delayed, might have had the shearing over by this.' Reminded that there are 50,000 sheep yet remaining to be shorn, and that by no possibility could they have been finished; answers, 'He supposes so, always the same, everything sure to go agin the pore man.' The weather does not clear up. Winter seems to have taken thought, and determined to assert his rights even in this land of eternal summer. The shed is filled, and before the sheep so kept dry are shorn, down comes the rain again. Not a full day's shearing for ten days. Then the clouds disappear as if the curtain of a stage had been rolled up, and lo! the golden sun, fervid and impatient to obliterate the track of winter.
On the first day after the recommencement, matters go
