a week before. Father got Mr.
White's buggy-horses ready and took Warrigal with him to a place where
a man met him with a light four-wheeled Yankee trap and harness. Dad was
dressed up to look like a back-country squatter. Lots of 'em were quite
as rough-looking as he was, though they drive as good horses as any
gentleman in the land. Warrigal was togged out something like a groom,
with a bit of the station-hand about him. Their saddles and bridles they
kept with 'em in the trap; they didn't know when they might want them.
They had on their revolvers underneath their coats. We were to go round
by another road and meet at the township.

Well, everything turned out first-rate. When we got to Ballabri there
was father walking his horses up and down. They wanted cooling, my word.
They'd come pretty smart all the way, but they were middlin' soft, being
in great grass condition and not having done any work to speak of for a
goodish while, and being a bit above themselves in a manner of speaking.
We couldn't help laughing to see how solemn and respectable dad looked.

'My word,' said Jim, 'if he ain't the dead image of old Mr. Carter, of
Brahway, where we shore three years back. Just such another hard-faced,
cranky-looking old chap, ain't he, Dick? I'm that proud of him I'd do
anything he asked me now, blest if I wouldn't!'

'Your father's a remarkable man,' says Starlight, quite serious; 'must
have made his way in life if he hadn't shown such a dislike to anything
on the square. If he'd started a public-house and a pound about the time
he turned his mind to cattle-duffing as one of the fine arts, he'd have
had a bank account by this time that would have kept him as honest as
a judge. But it's the old story. I say, where are the police quarters?
It's only manners to give them a call.'

We rode over to the barracks. They weren't much. A four-roomed cottage,
a log lock-up with two cells, a four-stalled stable, and a horse-yard.
Ballabri was a small township with a few big stations, a good many farms
about it, and rather more public-houses than any other sort of buildings
in it. A writing chap said once, 'A large well-filled graveyard, a small
church mostly locked up, six public-houses, gave the principal features
of Ballabri township. The remaining ones appear to be sand, bones, and
broken bottles, with a sprinkling of inebriates and blackfellows.' With
all that there was a lot of business done there in a year by the stores