d to lay the strap about
one in mistake for the other. They had a saying that Uncle Abel saw with
ten squinting eyes.

Also, he could never--or would not, as the family said--remember names.
He referred to Mrs Porter, a thin, haggard selector's wife, as
"Mrs Stout" and he balanced matters by calling Mrs Southwick
"Mrs Porterwicket"--when he didn't address her as "Mrs
What's-the-woman's-name"--and he succeeded in deeply offending both
ladies.

Uncle Abel was Mrs Carey's uncle.

Down at the lower end of Carey's selection at Rocky Rises, in the
extreme corner of the lower or outer paddock, were sliprails opening
into the main road, which ran down along the siding, round the foot of
a spur from ridge, and out west. These sliprails were called "The Lower
Sliprails" by the family, and it occurred to Uncle Abel to refer to them
as "Buckolts' Gate," for no other reason apparently than that Buckolts'
farm lay in that direction. The farm was about a mile further on, on the
other side of the creek, and the gate leading to it from the main road
was round the spur, out of sight of Carey's selection. It is quite
possible that Uncle Abel reasoned the thing out for days, for of such
material are some human brains. Sliprails, or a slip-panel, is a panel
of fencing of which the rails are made to be slipped out of the mortise
holes in the posts so as to give passage to horses, vehicles and cattle.
I suppose Abel called it a gate, because he was always going to hang a
proper gate there some day. The family were unaware of his new name for
the Lower Sliprails, and after he had, on one or two occasions, informed
the boys that they would find a missing cow or horse at the Buckolts'
Gate, and they had found it calmly camped at the Lower Sliprails, and
after he had made several appointments to meet parties at Buckolts'
Gate, and had been found leaning obstinately on the fence by the Lower
Sliprails with no explanation to offer other than that he _was_ waiting
at Buckolts' Gate, they began to fear that he was becoming weak in his
mind.

ACT I

It was New Year's Eve at Rocky Rises. There was no need for fireworks
nor bonfires, for the bush-fires were out all along the ranges to the
east, and, as night came on, lines and curves of lights--clear lights,
white lights, and, in the nearer distance, red lights and smoky
lights--marked the sidings and ridges of a western spur of the Blue
Mountain Range, and seemed suspended against a dark sky, fo