he pleased, but had a rooted disbelief that honesty was the best policy, and a fixed determination to shear as many sheep as he could get the manager to pass. By dint of close watching, constant reprimand, and occasional 'raddling' (marking badly shorn sheep and refusing to count them), Mr. Gordon had managed to tone him down to average respectability of execution; still he was always uneasily aware that whenever his eye was not upon him, Jackson was doing what he ought not to do, with might and main. He had indeed kept him on from sheer necessity, but he intended none the less to mark his opinion of him.
'Come in, Jackson. Your tally is so and so. Is that right?'
Jackson.—'I suppose so.'
'Cook and store account, so much; shearing account so much.'
Jackson.—'And a good deal too.'
'That is your affair,' said Mr. Gordon, sternly enough. 'Now, look here, you're in my opinion a bad shearer and a bad man. You have given me a great deal of trouble, and I should have kicked you out of the shed weeks ago, if I had not been short of men. I shall make a difference between you and those who have tried to do their best; I make you no allowance of any sort; I pay you by the strict agreement; there's your cheque. Now, go!'
Jackson goes out with a very black countenance. He mutters, with an oath, that, if he'd known how he was going to be served 'he'd 'a "blocked" 'em a little more.' He is believed to have been served right, and he secures no sympathy whatever. Working-men of all classes in Australia are shrewd and fair judges generally. If an employer does his best to mete out justice, he is always appreciated and supported by the majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole process of settling with the shearers. The horses have been got in. Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds: some, like Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds 'higher up,' in a colder climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they will pass to others, until the last flocks in the 'mountain runs' are shorn. Those who have not farms of
