ots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow,
irregular hole, and burrowed down till he reached a level where the
tap-root was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite as
hard as flint: then he found that he hadn't room to swing the axe, so he
heaved out another ton or two of earth--and rested. Next day he sank
a shaft on the other side of the gum; and after tea, over a pipe, it
struck him that it would be a good idea to burn the tree out, and so
use up the logs and lighter rubbish lying round. So he widened the
excavation, rolled in some logs, and set fire to them--with no better
result than to scorch the roots.

Tom persevered. He put the trace harness on his horse, drew in all the
logs within half a mile, and piled them on the windward side of that
gum; and during the night the fire found a soft place, and the tree
burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a squatter's
boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to occupy the
selector's attention; which it did, for a week. He waited till the hole
cooled, and then he went to work with pick, shovel, and axe: and even
now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as are published
in the agricultural weeklies, for getting out stumps without graft. He
thought he would be able to get some posts and rails out of that
tree, but found reason to think that a cast-iron column would split
sooner--and straighter. He traced some of the surface roots to the other
side of the selection, and broke most of his trace-chains trying to
get them out by horse-power--for they had other roots going down from
underneath. He cleared a patch in the course of time and for several
seasons he broke more ploughshares than he could pay for.

Meanwhile the squatter was not idle. Tom's tent was robbed several
times, and his hut burnt down twice. Then he was charged with killing
some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his own use,
but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion between the
squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics and religion.

Tom ploughed and sowed wheat, but nothing came up to speak of--the
ground was too poor; so he carted stable manure six miles from the
nearest town, manured the land, sowed another crop, and prayed for
rain. It came. It raised a flood which washed the crop clean off the
selection, together with several acres of manure, and a considerable
portion of the original surface