“Good evening, Julia,” said Baldy; “fine evening.”

“Same to you, Baldy.  Any news to-day?” asked Julia.

“Well, there is,” said Baldy, “and it’s bad news for me; there’s ten more of my fatteners missing” (Nosey stopped chopping and listened) “and the master says I’ll have to hump my swag if I can’t find out what has become of them.  I say, Nosey, you don’t happen to have seen any dingoes or blacks about here lately?”

“I ain’t seen e’er a one, neither dingo nor blackfellow.  But, you know, if they were after mischief they’d take care not to make a show.  There might be stacks of them about and we never to see one of them.”

Nosey was proud of his cunning.

“Well,” said Baldy, “I can hear of nobody having seen any strangers about the Rises, nor dingoes, nor black fellows.  And the dingoes, anyhow, would have left some of the carcases behind; but the thieves, whoever they are, have not left me as much as a lock of the wool of my sheep.  I have been talking about ’em with old Sharp; he is the longest here of any shepherd in the country, and knows all the blacks, and he says it’s his opinion the man who took the sheep is not far away from the flock now.  What do you think about it, Nosey?”

“What the——­should I know about your sheep?” said Nosey.  “Do you mean to insinivate that I took ’em?  I’ll tell you what it is, Baldy; it’ll be just as well for you to keep your blasted tongue quiet about your sheep, for if I hear any more about ’em, I’ll see you for it; do you hear?”

“Oh, yes, I hear.  All right, Nosey, we’ll see about it,” said Baldy.

There would have been a fight perhaps, but Baldy was a smaller man than the other and was growing old, while Nosey was in the prime of life.

Baldy went to Nyalong next day.  His rations did not include gin, and he wanted some badly, the more so because he was in trouble about his lost sheep.  Gin, known then as “Old Tom,” was his favourite remedy for all ailments, both of mind and body.  If he could not find out what had become of his sheep, his master might dismiss him without a character.  There was not much good character running to waste on the stations, but still no squatter would like to entrust a flock to a shepherd who was suspected of having stolen and sold his last master’s sheep.

Baldy walked to Nyalong along the banks of the lake.  The country was then all open, unfenced, except the paddocks at the home stations.  The boundary between two of the runs was merely marked by a ploughed furrow, not very straight, which started near the lake, and went eastward along the plains.  In the Rises no plough could make a line through the rocks, and the boundaries there were imaginary.  Stray cattle were roaming over the country, eating the grass, and the main resource of the squatters was the Pounds Act.  Hay was then sold at 80 pounds per ton at Bendigo; a draft of fat bullocks was worth a mine