en and come to
breakfast." So William gave the man three dozen and went to
breakfast--with a good conscience; having performed the ordinary
duty of the day extraordinarily well, he was on the high road to
perfection.

The sentence of the court was carried out by a scourger, sometimes
called flagellator, or flogger. The office of scourger was usually
held by a convict; it meant promotion in the Government service, and
although there was some danger connected with it, there was always a
sufficient number of candidates to fill vacancies. In New South
Wales the number of officers in the cat-o'-nine tails department was
about thirty. The danger attached to the office consisted in the
certainty of the scourger being murdered by the scourgee, if ever the
opportunity was given.

Joe Kermode had once been a hutkeeper on a station. The hut was
erected about forty yards from the stockyard, to which the sheep were
brought every evening, to protect them from attack by dingoes or
blackfellows. If the dingoes and blackfellows had been content with
one sheep at a time to allay the pangs of hunger, they could not have
been blamed very much; but after killing one they went on killing as
many more as they could, and thus wasted much mutton to gratify their
thirst for blood.

Joe and the shepherd were each provided with a musket and bayonet for
self-defence.

The hut was built of slabs, and was divided by a partition into two
rooms, and Joe always kept his musket ready loaded, night and day,
just inside the doorway of the inner room. Two or three blacks would
sometimes call, and ask for flour, sugar, tobacco, or a firestick.
If they attempted to come inside the hut, Joe ordered them off,
backing at the same time towards the inner door, and he always kept a
sharp look-out for any movement they made; for they were very
treacherous, and he knew they would take any chance they could get to
kill him, for the sake of stealing the flour, sugar, and tobacco.
Two of them once came inside the hut and refused to go out, until Joe
seized his musket, and tickled them in the rear with his bayonet,
under the "move on" clause in the Police Offences Statute.

Early one morning there was a noise as of some disturbance in the
stockyard, and Joe, on opening the door of his hut, saw several
blacks spearing the sheep. He seized his musket and shouted, warning
them to go away. One of them, who was sitting on the top rail with
his back towards th