red parasol, or whether she suspected designs upon her progeny, is not
certain; anyhow, she went for them. The young man saw the cow coming
first, and he gallantly struck a bee-line for the fence, leaving the
girl to manage for herself. She wouldn't have managed very well if
Malachi hadn't been passing just then. He saw the girl's danger and ran
to intercept the cow with no weapon but his hands.

It didn't last long. There was a roar, a rush, and a cloud of dust, out
of which the cow presently emerged, and went scampering back to the bush
in which her calf was hidden.

We carried Malachi home and laid him on a bed. He had a terrible wound
in the groin, and the blood soaked through the bandages like water. We
did all that was possible for him, the boys killed the squatter's best
horse and spoilt two others riding for a doctor, but it was of no use.
In the last half-hour of his life we all gathered round Malachi's bed;
he was only twenty-two. Once he said:

"I wonder how mother'll manage now?"

"Why, where's your mother?" someone asked gently; we had never dreamt
that Malachi might have someone to love him and be proud of him.

"In Bathurst," he answered wearily--"she'll take on awful, I 'spect,
she was awful fond of me--we've been pulling together this last ten
years--mother and me--we wanted to make it all right for my little
brother Jim--poor Jim!"

"What's wrong with Jim?" someone asked.

"Oh, he's blind," said Malachi "always was--we wanted to make it
all right for him agin time he grows up--I--I managed to send home
about--about forty pounds a year--we bought a bit of ground, and--and--I
think--I'm going now. Tell 'em, Harry--tell 'em how it was--"

I had to go outside then. I couldn't stand it any more. There was a lump
in my throat and I'd have given anything to wipe out my share in the
practical jokes, but it was too late now.

Malachi was dead when I went in again, and that night the hat went
round with the squatter's cheque in the bottom of it and we made it "all
right" for Malachi's blind brother Jim.

TWO DOGS AND A FENCE

"Nothing makes a dog madder," said Mitchell, "than to have another dog
come outside his fence and sniff and bark at him through the cracks when
he can't get out. The other dog might be an entire stranger; he might
be an old chum, and he mightn't bark--only sniff--but it makes no
difference to the inside dog. The inside dog generally starts it, and
the outside dog only