and cautious band Moonlighter led down to the old battered
engine-house by the edge of the common, where the goats of Cow Flat were
known to herd in large numbers. Sure enough here were goats of both
sexes, and all sorts and sizes--sleeping huddled in the ruined
engine-house, on the sides of the grass-grown tip, in the old bob-pit,
and upon the remains of the fallen stack. Carefully and quietly the
animals were awakened; slyly they were drawn forth, with gentle whispered
calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more
especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously
distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny
awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in
a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that
followed the invasion. Then, when the animals within the ruin were fully
alive to the situation and awake to the knowledge that it all meant
carrots, and that outside carrots innumerable awaited the gathering, they
streamed forth: they fought in the doorways, they battered a passage
through the broken wall; faint plaintive queries went up from scores of
throats, answered by gluttonous mumblings from goats that had been
fortunate enough to snatch a morsel of the delectable vegetable. Down
from the tips and up from the bob-pit they came, singly and in sets,
undemonstrative matrons with weak-kneed twins at their heels, skittish
kids and bearded veterans, and joined the anxious, eager, hungry mob.

'Away with them, my boys,' ordered Moonlighter. 'Head 'em fer the common.
We'll have every blessed goat in the place.'

He sent away three bands in three different directions, fully
provisioned, and commissioned to collect goats from all quarters.

'Bring 'em up to the main mob on the common, an' the man what makes a row
I'll hang in his shirt to the nearest tree. Don't leave the beggars any
kind of a goat at all.'

Dick had undertaken a big contract. Cow Flat was simply infested with
goats; every family owned its small flock, and the milk-supply of the
township depended entirely upon the droves of nannies that grubbed for
sustenance on the stony ridges or the bare, burnt stretch of common land.
Probably Cow Flat was so called because nobody had ever seen anything
remotely resembling a cow anywhere in the vicinity; consequently goats
were hold in high esteem, for ten goats can live and prosper where one
cow wo