ime be called for. Behind the main
building was another, which served as a store for the produce obtained
either by purchase or in payment for outstanding "tallies" of goods
supplied, a small annexe to the main building giving sleeping
accommodation to Marmot, who, being a man of frugal habits and simple
mind, "ran the store on his own," as they said in Birralong. His
customers, as a general rule, were neither too proud nor too busy to
mind lending him a hand at making up their orders, for when a man went
to the store at Birralong, he went in a spring-cart or dray, if he were
going to buy, and as often as not accompanied by any female attachment
he might have about his selection, so that he was never pushed for time.

Facing the store, and along the side of the road, a row of posts fitted
with ring-bolts stood for the convenience of customers who came in
riding or driving, and chose to hitch up their horses. A verandah, ten
feet wide, and with a roof resting on square, hard-wood posts,
ornamented the front of the building, and formed, to the majority of the
Birralong folk, its chief attraction--for it was here that men gathered
to smoke a friendly pipe with one another, and discuss such items of
news as are likely to be met with in a bush township. As a general rule,
these related to the domestic and private affairs of neighbours, and it
was said that if any one had a doubt as to the course which events and
circumstances were taking with him, he had only to ascertain what was
said on Marmot's verandah; every one's business was known better there
than to the persons whom it mostly concerned.

The number of houses which made up the township was not large. A hundred
yards back from the roadway the local saw-mill made the air melodious,
all the working hours of the day, with the ringing song and whirr of the
buzz-saws--a pleasant sound to listen to from the cool shade of a
verandah on the hot, drowsy days of summer, when the clear, dry air was
redolent with the scent from the neighbouring gums. Farther down the
township stood the local smithy, where, bush horses rarely being shod,
the work of the smith was combined with that of wheelwright and the
making of galvanized iron water-tanks. An occasional job of repairing
some farming implement necessitated the blowing up of the forge and the
swinging of the anvil hammers, the sounds of which, mingling with those
of the buzz-saws, would have led a chance visitor to regard Birralo