alows, which grew on the edge of a
dried-up swamp, once the haunt and breeding place of countless thousands
of wild duck, teal, and geese. This was another of the mustering camps
on Tinandra, and as it lay on his way home, he decided to go there and
see if any of the "Big Swamp" cattle were still alive. As he rode slowly
over towards the fringe of timber, the westering sun turned from a
dazzling, blinding gold to a gradually deepening red; and his sweating
horse gave a snort of satisfaction as the soft, spongy, and sandy
spinifex country was left behind, and the creature's hoofs struck upon
the hard sun-baked plain of yellow earth which lay between the two
camps. Looking down at the great, widely spreading cracks in the hungry
soil, the result of a seven-months' continuous drought, Harrington
almost unconsciously bent his head and thought that surely God would
send rain. He was not a religious man in the conventional sense--he
had never been inside a church in his life--but the memory of his dead
mother's belief in God's mercy and goodness was still strong within him.

The brigalow scrub was about half a mile in length, and stood between
the swamp and the high river bank. At the dried-up bed of the swamp
itself he did not care to look a second time; its once reedy margin was
now a sight of horror, for many hundreds of cattle had been bogged there
long months before, as they had striven to get further out to the centre
where there was yet left a little water, saved from evaporation by the
broad leaves of the blue water-lilies.

Skirting the inner edge of the scrub till he reached its centre, he
looked carefully among the timber, but not a beast was to be seen; then
dismounting he led his horse through, came out upon the river bank, and
looked across the wide expanse of almost burning sand which stretched
from bank to bank, unbroken in its desolation except by a few ti-trees
whose roots, deep down, kept them alive.

"Bob, old fellow," he said to his horse, "we've another ten miles to
go, and there's no use in killing ourselves. I think that we can put in
half an hour digging sand, and manage to raise a drink down there in the
river bed."

Still leading the animal, which seemed to know his master's intention,
Harrington walked down the sloping bank, his long riding-boots sinking
deeply into the fine, sandy soil, and Bob pricked up his ears and gave a
true stock-horse sigh of weariness and anticipation combined.

On th