s of the Kennels on their
arrival in Australia. His executors had seen no reason to dispense
with Bill's services as yet; and, truth to tell, they had never
seen the man, nor heard of his doings. It was only during the last
few months that a manager had been placed in charge of the station,
and during his time Wallaby Bill had stuck closely to his work.

Jacob Wilton Hall, the man who had made Warrimoo station, had all
his life long been something of an eccentric; and yet, withal, a
man who generally accomplished what he had set out to do, and one
who had converted a modest competence into a handsome fortune. He
had been an indiscriminate admirer of animals, and an interested
student of the manners and customs of all the creatures of the
wild. When the rabbit pest first began to be severely felt in the
neighbourhood of his home-station, he had tried a variety of
methods of coping with it, and in the execution of some of these
methods he had met with a good deal of opposition and ridicule from
his neighbours. He had, for instance, imported fifty ferrets and
weasels of both sexes and turned them loose in pairs, in
rabbit-earths situated in different outlying portions of his land.
These fierce little creatures were a scourge to the countryside by
reason of their attacks upon poultry; but it was freely stated that
they adopted the curious attitude of nearly all the native-born
animals in ignoring the rabbits they had been expected to prey upon.

Jacob Hall had then imported two pairs of wild cats, and turned
these loose in the back-blocks of his land, besides encouraging a
number of cats of the domesticated variety to take to the bush life
and become wild, as they have been doing all over Australia for
many years. With great difficulty and considerable expenditure of
money, the eccentric squatter had succeeded in securing a pair of
Tasmanian Wolves and a pair of Tasmanian Devils, and, having
successfully evaded the customs and quarantine authorities, he
turned these exceptionally fierce and bloodthirsty creatures loose
in the wildest part of his land. Indeed, he took up an extra few
thousand acres of quite unprofitable "Church and School land,"
hilly, rocky, and heavily timbered on the flats, largely, it was
said, for the purpose of turning his Tasmanian importations into
it. The Wolves and the Tasmanian Devils killed a number of his
sheep; and it was stated among the neighbours that if Jacob Hall
had lived he would even