all the wheat--every
blade of it--and the grass as well. What they would start on
next--ourselves or the cart-harness--was n't quite clear.

We stumbled along in the dark one behind the other, with our hands
stuffed into our trousers. Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe,
bare-shinned and bootless, in the rear. Now and again he tramped on a
Bathurst-burr, and, in sitting down to extract the prickle, would
receive a cluster of them elsewhere. When he escaped the burr it was
only to knock his shin against a log or leave a toe-nail or two
clinging to a stone. Joe howled, but the wind howled louder, and blew
and blew.

Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:

"To HELL with everything! Whatever he wants bringing us out a night
like this, I'm DAMNED if I know!"

Dad could n't see very well in the dark, and on this night could n't
see at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that
had fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne. And what a fright they both
got! The old horse took it worse than Dad--who only tumbled down--for
he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the
fence, twisting every leg he had in the wires. How the brute
struggled! We stood and listened to him. After kicking panels of the
fence down and smashing every wire in it, he got loose and made off,
taking most of it with him.

"That's one wallaby on the wheat, anyway," Dave muttered, and we
giggled. WE understood Dave; but Dad did n't open his mouth.

We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked through the "wheat"
and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by
one solitary pair of ears--but from the row and scatter they made there
were a MILLION.

Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire.
Joe went to sleep--HOW, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for
long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a
string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time
a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never
noticed them. Yet he seemed to be listening.

We mooched around from fire to fire, hour after hour, and when we
wearied of heaving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and
cursed the wind, and the winter, and the night-birds alternately. It
was a lonely, wretched occupation.

Now and again Dad would leave his fire to ask us if we could hear a
noise. We could n't, except that of