s no plough could make a line
through the rocks, and the boundaries there were imaginary. Stray
cattle were roaming over the country, eating the grass, and the main
resource of the squatters was the Pounds Act. Hay was then sold at
80 pounds per ton at Bendigo; a draft of fat bullocks was worth a
mine of gold at Ballarat, and, therefore, grass was everywhere
precious. No wonder if the hardy bullock-driver became a cattle
lifter after his team had been impounded by the station stockman when
found only four hundred yards from the bush track. Money, in the
shape of fat stock, was running loose, as it were, on every run, and
why should not the sagacious Nosey do a little business when Baldy's
fat sheep were tempting him, and a market for mutton could be found
no farther away than the Nyalong butcher's shop.

Baldy left the township happier than usual, carrying under his arm
two bottles of Old Tom. He was seen by a man who knew him entering
the Rises, and going away in the direction of Nosey's hut, and then
for fifteen years he was a lost shepherd. In course of time it was
ascertained that he had called at Nosey's hut on his way home. He
had the lost sheep on his mind, and he could not resist the impulse
to have another word or two with Nosey about them. He put down the
two bottles of gin outside the door of the hut, near an axe whose
handle leaned against the wall. Nosey and his wife, Julia, were
inside, and he bade them good evening. Then he took a piece of
tobacco out of his pocket, and began cutting it with his knife. He
always carried his knife tied to his belt by a string which went
through a hole bored in the handle. It was a generally useful knife,
and with it he foot-rotted sheep, stirred the tea in his billy, and
cut beef and damper, sticks, and tobacco.

"I have been to Nyalong," he said, "and I heern something about my
sheep; they went to the township all right, strayed away, you know,
followed one another's tails, and never came back, the O. K. bullocks
go just the same way. Curious, isn't it?"

Nosey listened with keen interest. "Well, Baldy," he said, "and what
did you hear? Did you find out who took 'em?"

"Oh, yes," said Baldy; "I know pretty well all about 'em now, both
sheep and bullocks. Old Sharp was right about the sheep, anyway.
The thief is not far from the flock, and it's not me." Baldy was
brewing mischief for himself, but he did not know how much.

"Did you tell the police ab