rs, but we
didn't know the brands of the mothers; they all seemed different.

After this all was made right to kill a beast. The gallows was ready
rigged in a corner of the yard; father brought his gun and shot the
yellow steer. The calves were put into our calf-pen--Polly's and
all--and all the cows turned out to go where they liked.

We helped father to skin and hang up the beast, and pretty late it was
when we finished. Mother had laid us out our tea and gone to bed with
Aileen. We had ours and then went to bed. Father sat outside and smoked
in the starlight. Hours after I woke up and heard mother crying. Before
daylight we were up again, and the steer was cut up and salted and in
the harness-cask soon after sunrise. His head and feet were all popped
into a big pot where we used to make soup for the pigs, and by the time
it had been boiling an hour or two there was no fear of any one swearing
to the yellow steer by 'head-mark'.

We had a hearty breakfast off the 'skirt', but mother wouldn't touch a
bit, nor let Aileen take any; she took nothing but a bit of bread and
a cup of tea, and sat there looking miserable and downcast. Father said
nothing, but sat very dark-looking, and ate his food as if nothing was
the matter. After breakfast he took his mare, the old dog followed;
there was no need to whistle for him--it's my belief he knew more than
many a Christian--and away they went. Father didn't come home for
a week--he had got into the habit of staying away for days and days
together. Then things went on the old way.

Chapter 3

So the years went on--slow enough they seemed to us sometimes--the green
winters, pretty cold, I tell you, with frost and hail-storms, and the
long hot summers. We were not called boys any longer, except by mother
and Aileen, but took our places among the men of the district. We lived
mostly at home, in the old way; sometimes working pretty hard, sometimes
doing very little. When the cows were milked and the wood chopped, there
was nothing to do for the rest of the day. The creek was that close that
mother used to go and dip the bucket into it herself, when she wanted
one, from a little wooden step above the clear reedy waterhole.

Now and then we used to dig in the garden. There was reaping and
corn-pulling and husking for part of the year; but often, for weeks at
a time, there was next to nothing to do. No hunting worth much--we were
sick of kangarooing, like the dogs themse