rought in cattle from there. The cattle had to be brought over
Swanston Street Bridge and right through the town after twelve o'clock
at night. We'd once or twice, when we'd been out late, stopped to look
at them, and watched the big heavy bullocks and fat cows staring and
starting and slipping all among the lamps and pavements, with the street
all so strange and quiet, and laughed at the notion of some of the
shopkeepers waking up and seeing a couple of hundred wild cattle, with
three or four men behind 'em, shouldering and horning one another, then
rushing past their doors at a hard trot, or breaking into a gallop for a
bit.

Some of these chaps, seeing we was cattle-men and knew most things in
that line, used to open out about where they'd come from, and what a
grand place Gippsland was--splendid grass country, rivers that run all
the year round, great fattening country; and snowy mountains at the
back, keeping everything cool in the summer. Some of the mountain
country, like Omeo, that they talked a lot of, seemed about one of the
most out-of-the-way places in the world. More than that, you could get
back to old New South Wales by way of the Snowy River, and then on to
Monaro. After that we knew where we were.

Going away was easy enough, in a manner of speaking; but we'd been
a month in Melbourne, and when you mind that we were not bad-looking
chaps, fairishly dressed, and with our pockets full of money, it was
only what might be looked for if we had made another friend or two
besides Mrs. Morrison, the landlady of our inn, and Gippsland drovers.
When we had time to turn round a bit in Melbourne of course we began to
make a few friends. Wherever a man goes, unless he keeps himself that
close that he won't talk to any one or let any one talk to him, he's
sure to find some one he likes to be with better than another. If he's
old and done with most of his fancies, except smokin' and drinkin' it's
a man. If he's young and got his life before him it's a woman. So Jim
and I hadn't been a week in Melbourne before we fell across a couple
of--well, friends--that we were hard set to leave. It was a way of mine
to walk down to the beach every evening and have a look at the boats
in the bay and the fishermen, if there were any--anything that might be
going on. Sometimes a big steamer would be coming in, churning the water
under her paddles and tearing up the bay like a hundred bunyips. The
first screw-boat Jim and I saw we co