i.e., bullock-drivers,
sheep tenders, and the other white hands who worked on the sheep-runs up
country, to sign articles by which they agreed to serve their master for
one, two, or three years at so much per year and certain daily rations.
Liquor was never included in this agreement, and the men remained, per
force, total abstainers during the whole time. The money was paid in a
lump sum at the end of the engagement. When that day came round,
Jimmy, the stockman, would come slouching into his master's office,
cabbage-tree hat in hand.

"Morning, master!" Jimmy would say. "My time's up. I guess I'll draw my
cheque and ride down to town."

"You'll come back, Jimmy?"

"Yes, I'll come back. Maybe I'll be away three weeks, maybe a month. I
want some clothes, master, and my bloomin' boots are well-nigh off my
feet."

"How much, Jimmy?" asks his master, taking up his pen.

"There's sixty pound screw," Jimmy answers thoughtfully; "and you mind,
master, last March, when the brindled bull broke out o' the paddock. Two
pound you promised me then. And a pound at the dipping. And a pound when
Millar's sheep got mixed with ourn;" and so he goes on, for bushmen can
seldom write, but they have memories which nothing escapes.

His master writes the cheque and hands it across the table. "Don't get
on the drink, Jimmy," he says.

"No fear of that, master," and the stockman slips the cheque into his
leather pouch, and within an hour he is ambling off upon his long-limbed
horse on his hundred-mile journey to town.

Now Jimmy has to pass some six or eight of the above-mentioned roadside
shanties in his day's ride, and experience has taught him that if he
once breaks his accustomed total abstinence, the unwonted stimulant has
an overpowering effect upon his brain. Jimmy shakes his head warily as
he determines that no earthly consideration will induce him to partake
of any liquor until his business is over. His only chance is to avoid
temptation; so, knowing that there is the first of these houses some
half-mile ahead, he plunges into a byepath through the bush which will
lead him out at the other side.

Jimmy is riding resolutely along this narrow path, congratulating
himself upon a danger escaped, when he becomes aware of a sunburned,
black-bearded man who is leaning unconcernedly against a tree beside the
track. This is none other than the shanty-keeper, who, having observed
Jimmy's manoeuvre in the distance, has taken a short c