r claimed it before six months the auctioneer was held
liable. He had to return the horse and stand the loss. But they found
a way to make themselves right. Men generally do if a law's over sharp;
they get round it somehow or other. So the auctioneers made it up among
themselves to charge ten per cent on the price of all horses that they
sold, and make the buyer pay it. For every ten horses they sold they
could afford to return one. The proof of an animal being stolen didn't
turn up above once in fifty or a hundred times, so they could well
afford the expense when it did.

It wasn't an easy thing to drive horses out of the Hollow, 'specially
those that had been bred or reared there. But they were up to all that
kind of thing, dad and Starlight. First there was a yard at the lower
end of the gully that led up where we'd first seen Starlight come down,
and a line of fence across the mountain walls on both sides, so that
stock once in there couldn't turn back. Then they picked out a couple
or three old mares that had been years and years in the Hollow, and been
used to be taken up this track and knew their way back again. One they
led up; dad went first with her, and another followed; then the colts
took the track after them, as stock will. In half-an-hour we had them
all up at the top, on the tableland, and ready to be driven anywhere.
The first day we meant to get most of the way to Jonathan Barnes's
place, and to stop there, and have a bit of a spell the second. We
should want to spell the horses and make 'em up a bit, as it was a
longish drive over rough country to get there. Besides, we wanted all
the information we could get about the diggings and other matters, and
we knew Jonathan was just that open-mouthed, blatherskitin' sort of chap
that would talk to everybody he saw, and hear mostly all that was going
on.

A long, hard day was that first one. The colts tried to make back every
now and then, or something would start them, and they'd make a regular
stampede for four or five miles as hard as they could lay leg to ground.
It wasn't easy to live with 'em across broken country, well-bred 'uns
like them, as fast as racehorses for a short distance; but there were
as good behind 'em, and Warrigal was pretty nearly always near the lead,
doubling and twisting and wheeling 'em the first bit of open ground
there was. He was A1 through timber, and no mistake. We got to a place
father knew, where there was a yard, a little