! He cantered away with the rest of the party, as
if he hadn't a thought in the world except about pleasure and honest
business. Nobody couldn't have told that he wasn't just like them other
young gentlemen with only their stock and station to think about, and
a little fun at the races now and then. And what a risk he was running
every minute of his life, he and all the rest of us. I wasn't sorry to
be out of the town again. There were lots of police, too. Suppose one
of them was to say, 'Richard Marston, I arrest you for----' It hardly
mattered what. I felt as if I should have tumbled down with sheer fright
and cowardliness. It's a queer thing you feel like that off and on.
Other times a man has as much pluck in him as if his life was worth
fighting for--which it isn't.

The agent knew all about us (or thought he did), and sent a chap to show
Mr. Carisforth's cattle (Charles Carisforth, Esq., of Sturton, Yorkshire
and Banda, Waroona, and Ebor Downs, New South Wales; that was the name
he went by) the way to the yards. We were to draft them all next morning
into separate pens--cows and bullocks, steers and heifers, and so on.
He expected to sell them all to a lot of farmers and small settlers that
had taken up a new district lately and were very short of stock.

'You couldn't have come into a better market, young fellow,' says the
agent's man to me. 'Our boss he's advertised 'em that well as there'll
be smart bidding between the farmers and some of the squatters. Good
store cattle's been scarce, and these is in such rattling condition.
That's what'll sell 'em. Your master seems a regular free-handed sort
of chap. He's the jolliest squatter there's been in town these years,
I hear folk say. Puts 'em in mind of Hawdon and Evelyn Sturt in the old
overlander days.'

Next day we were at the yards early, you bet. We wanted to have time to
draft them into pens of twenty to fifty each, so that the farmers and
small settlers might have a chance to buy. Besides, it was the last
day of our work. Driving all day and watching half the night is pretty
stiffish work, good weather and bad, when you've got to keep it up for
months at a time, and we'd been three months and a week on the road.

The other chaps were wild for a spree. Jim and I had made up our minds
to be careful; still, we had a lot to see in a big town like Adelaide;
for we'd never been to Sydney even in our lives, and we'd never seen the
sea. That was something to look