me. I bound her down to a certain day. The day
came; a heavy storm fell just over my garden, filling the ground tank,
which was almost empty. About two inches fell. Within half a mile of
each side of the garden the dust was barely laid.

Old Bootha's luck stuck to her that time, and I had to give her a new
dress and some 'bacca.' But during the last drought she failed
signally. Her excuse for failing was that a great wirreenun up the
creek was so angry with the white people who were driving away all emu,
kangaroo, and opossums, the black fellow's food, and yet made a fuss if
their dogs killed a sheep for them sometimes, that he put his
rain-stone in a fire, and while he did that no rain would fall. He said
if all the sheep died the white fellows would go away again, and then,
as long ago, the black fellows' country would have plenty of emu and
kangaroo.

We saw a curious coincidence in connection with one of Bootha's
witch-poles in my garden, the pole whose falling foretold death of some
relative of some one in the house.

One afternoon there had been drizzling rain and a grey mist
overshadowing things. Matah went out to look at the chances of a
continuance of rain, the usual drought being on. He called to me to
come and see a curious sky. Looking towards the west I saw a golden
ball of a sun piercing the grey clouds which seemed like a spangled
veil over its face; shooting from the sun was a perfect halo of golden
light, from which three shafts spread into roadways up past the grey
clouds into the vault of heaven. The effect was very striking indeed,
against the grey clouds shaded from silver to almost black.

As we stood waiting for the sun to sink and the afterglow to paint
these clouds, as it did, from shrimp pink and heliotrope to vivid
crimson, we saw Bootha's pole fall. The air was quite still.

'The damp has loosened its setting,' said Matah, 'but we had better
leave it alone and let the old girl fix it up again herself; it may be
taboo to ordinary mortals like us.'

We left it.

That evening a messenger arrived from the sheep station to say my
cook's mother had died just before sunset. The camp were firm believers
in Bootha's witch-stick after that.

It was just as well we did not touch that stick; had we done so, Bootha
says we should have broken out in sores all over our bodies.

They say that long ago the wirreenuns always used to have a sort of
totem wizard-stick guarding the front of their camps