p 'em matches."

Carew handed over his match-box in speechless amazement.

"They've been out all day with the cattle," said the old man. "I've got
a lot of wild cattle in that there mob. I go out with a few quiet ones
in the moonlight, and when the wild cattle come out of the scrubs to
look at 'em we rush the whole lot out into the plain. Great hands these
gins are--just as good as the boys."

"Good Lord!" said Carew, looking at the two little figures, who had now
a couple of ducks each, a puftalooner or two, and a big pannikin of
tea, and were sitting on the edge of the verandah eating away with great
enjoyment; "what have they been doing with the cattle to-day?"

"Minding them lest the wild ones should clear out. They dropped their
matches somehow; that's what fetched 'em home early. They'll have to
sleep on the verandah to-night. We'll make that their boodore, as they
say in France."

The dark was now falling; the sunlight had left long, faint, crimson
streaks in the sky. The air was perceptibly cooler, and flights of
waterfowl hurried overhead, making their way to the river. The Chinaman
lighted a slush-lamp, by whose flickering light Charlie produced from
his swag a small bundle of papers, and threw them on the table.

"We might as well get our business over, Keogh," he said. "I've got the
paper here for you to sign, making over your interest in the block and
the cattle, and all that."

He pored over the document, muttering as he read it. "Your name'll have
to be filled in, and there's a blank for the name of the person it's
transferred to."

"That'll be Mr. Grant's name," suggested Carew.

"I don't know so much about that," said Charlie. "I don't think, if a
man has a mortgage over a place, that he can take it in his own name.
That fool Pinnock didn't tell me. He was too anxious to know how we got
on with the larrikins to give me any useful information. Anyhow, I'll
fill in my own name--for all the block is worth I ain't likely to steal
it. I can transfer it to Mr. Grant afterwards."

"I don't care," said the old man indifferently, "I'll transfer my
interest to anyone you like. I'm done with it. I'm signing away fifteen
of the best years of my life. But my name ain't Keogh, you know, though
I always went by that. My father died when I was a kiddy, and my mother
married again, so I got called by my stepfather's name all my life. This
is my right name, and it's a poor man's name to-day." And as the two me