t,' says poor old Jim, 'it's a horse worth talking
about. Don't you remember the imported entire that they had his picture
in the papers--him that Mr. Windhall gave 2000 Pounds for?'

'What! the Marquis of Lorne? Why, you don't mean to say they're going
for him?'

'By George, I do!' says Jim; 'and they'll have him here, and twenty
blood mares to put to him, before September.'

'They're all gone mad--they'll raise the country on us. Every police
trooper in the colony'll be after us like a pack of dingoes after an old
man kangaroo when the ground's boggy, and they'll run us down, too; they
can't be off it. Whatever made 'em think of such a big touch as that?'

'That Starlight's the devil, I think,' said Jim slowly. 'Father didn't
seem to like it at first, but he brought him round bit by bit--said he
knew a squatter in Queensland he could pass him on to; that they'd
keep him there for a year and get a crop of foals by him, and when the
"derry" was off he'd take him over himself.'

'But how's he going to nail him? People say Windhall keeps him locked up
at night, and his box is close to his house.'

'Starlight says he has a friend handy; he seems to have one or
two everywhere. It's wonderful, as father told him, where he gets
information.'

'By George! it would be a touch, and no mistake. And if we could get a
few colts by him out of thoroughbred mares we might win half the races
every year on our side and no one a bit the wiser.'

It did seem a grand sort of thing--young fools that we were--to get hold
of this wonderful stallion that we'd heard so much of, as thoroughbred
as Eclipse; good as anything England could turn out. I say again, if
it weren't for the horse-flesh part of it, the fun and hard-riding and
tracking, and all the rest of it, there wouldn't be anything like the
cross-work that there is in Australia. It lies partly between that and
the dry weather. There's the long spells of drought when nothing can be
done by young or old. Sometimes for months you can't work in the garden,
nor plough, nor sow, nor do anything useful to keep the devil out of
your heart. Only sit at home and do nothing, or else go out and watch
the grass witherin' and the water dryin' up, and the stock dyin' by
inches before your eyes. And no change, maybe, for months. The ground
like iron and the sky like brass, as the parson said, and very true,
too, last Sunday.

Then the youngsters, havin' so much idle time on their hands, take