es went
whirling into town, to 'service', through clouds of dust and broiling
heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up
their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun, and sat on their
heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily concerning crops, fruit,
trees, and vines, and horses and cattle; the drought and 'smut' and
'rust' in wheat, and the 'ploorer' (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle,
and other cheerful things; that there colt or filly, or that there
cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or 'Jim's'). They always talked
most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name was
possible--except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening the old local
relic of the golden days dropped in and announced that he intended to
'put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where he'd been going to put
it down twenty years ago--and every week since. It was nearly time that
somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.

An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
with her 'bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it. She still drove a long,
bony, blind horse in a long rickety dray, with a stout sapling for a
whip, and about twenty yards of clothes-line reins. The floor of the
dray covered part of an acre, and one wheel was always ahead of the
other--or behind, according to which shaft was pulled. She wore, to all
appearances, the same short frock, faded shawl, men's 'lastic sides, and
white hood that she had on when the world was made. She still stopped
just twenty minutes at old Mrs Leatherly's on the way in for a yarn and
a cup of tea--as she had always done, on the same days and at the same
time within the memory of the hoariest local liar. However, she had a
new clothes-line bent on to the old horse's front end--and we fancy that
was the reason she didn't recognise us at first. She had never looked
younger than a hard hundred within the memory of man. Her shrivelled
face was the colour of leather, and crossed and recrossed with lines
till there wasn't room for any more. But her eyes were bright yet, and
twinkled with humour at times.

She had been in the Bush for fifty years, and had fought fires,
droughts, hunger and thirst, floods, cattle and crop diseases, and all
the things that God curses Australian settlers with. She had had two
husbands, and it could be said of neither that he had ever done an
honest d