ect upon us. Our hands and arms, as far
as the elbows, swelled, so that our sleep at night was often disturbed by
pain.

Mother made the butter. She had to rise at two and three o'clock in the
morning, in order that it would be cool and firm enough to print for
market.

Jane Haizelip had left us a year previously, and we could afford no one
to take her place. The heavy work told upon my gentle, refined mother.
She grew thin and careworn, and often cross. My father's share of the
work was to break in the wild cows, separate the milk, and take the
butter into town to the grocer's establishment where we obtained our
supplies.

Dick Melvyn of Bruggabrong was not recognizable in Dick Melvyn, dairy
farmer and cocky of Possum Gully. The former had been a man worthy of the
name. The latter was a slave of drink, careless, even dirty and
bedraggled in his personal appearance. He disregarded all manners, and
had become far more plebeian and common than the most miserable specimen
of humanity around him. The support of his family, yet not, its support.
The head of his family, yet failing to fulfil the obligations demanded of
one in that capacity. He seemed to lose all love and interest in his
family, and grew cross and silent, utterly without pride and pluck.
Formerly so kind and gentle with animals, now he was the reverse.

His cruelty to the young cows and want of patience with them I can never
forget. It has often brought upon me the threat of immediate
extermination for volunteering scathing and undesired opinions on his
conduct.

The part of the dairying that he positively gloried in was going to town
with the butter. He frequently remained in for two or three days, as
often as not spending all the money he got for the butter in a drunken
spree. Then he would return to curse his luck because his dairy did not
pay as well as those of some of our neighbours.

The curse of Eve being upon my poor mother in those days, she was unable
to follow her husband. Pride forbade her appealing to her neighbours, so
on me devolved the duty of tracking my father from one pub to another and
bringing him home.

Had I done justice to my mother's training I would have honoured my
paternal parent in spite of all this, but I am an individual ever doing
things I oughtn't at the time I shouldn't.

Coming home, often after midnight, with my drunken father talking maudlin
conceited nonsense beside me, I developed curious ideas on the fifth
co