had the benefit of
any draught there might be, and the majority of the adult male members
of the population were sitting or standing around.

"It gets me. That's what it does, gets me clean," Marmot exclaimed. "Why
Tony----well, there, he's the one lad I'd have taken into the store here
to lend me a hand."

The immensity of the admiration and confidence implied by the remark for
the moment silenced every one. No higher compliment could be paid by
Marmot.

"It's a darned rum go," Smart, the saw-miller, observed solemnly. "He,
who came as a kid and wanted to see if my band-saw 'ud take his head off
in one swish--he, Tony Taylor, who knew enough at ten to spot the winner
of the Cup, to go and get landed by a fossicker's yarn. There's a darned
rum go."

"Yes; and where's the cause of it all?" Marmot asked. "There must be a
cause. We'd all be black-fellows and earth-worms if it wasn't for a
cause. There must be a cause, if we could only find it. Look for the
cause, says I, in a case that's a bit mixed. But there ain't no cause in
this, as I can see."

"Ain't there?" a man leaning against the end post of the verandah
exclaimed. "Ain't there no cause? That's just your blooming error."

"Well, I'm no bush lawyer," Marmot replied, with a glance round the
gathering. "It's more nor I can reason out."

"Look here," exclaimed the man, a selector who lived a couple of miles
out from the township in solitary grandeur, and had an opinion, which
might be right or wrong but was always strong, on every conceivable
subject under the sun, especially the opposite sex, whom he cordially
detested; "I'll tell you what's up. You believe me, a woman's to blame
in this."

"Good iron, Slaughter," some one replied. "They're always the trouble."

"Yes, they are," Slaughter went on. "Anywhere they're the trouble, but
in the bush----well, they're real daisies in the bush; that's what they
are, real daisies."

"But you don't mean----hullo, here's Cullen coming. He'll know what's in
the wind," Marmot exclaimed, as he caught sight of the blacksmith coming
along the road.

As Cullen reached them a cloud of dust appeared on the road to the west,
and he had stepped on to the verandah and exchanged greetings, and had
been asked to explain the problem which was occupying their minds,
before the cause of the dust-cloud went by at a hand-gallop in the form
of two saddle-horses, one ridden by a long-legged, wiry, sandy-haired
youth, and the other b