of gold at Ballarat, and, therefore, grass was everywhere precious.  No wonder if the hardy bullock-driver became a cattle lifter after his team had been impounded by the station stockman when found only four hundred yards from the bush track.  Money, in the shape of fat stock, was running loose, as it were, on every run, and why should not the sagacious Nosey do a little business when Baldy’s fat sheep were tempting him, and a market for mutton could be found no farther away than the Nyalong butcher’s shop.

Baldy left the township happier than usual, carrying under his arm two bottles of Old Tom.  He was seen by a man who knew him entering the Rises, and going away in the direction of Nosey’s hut, and then for fifteen years he was a lost shepherd.  In course of time it was ascertained that he had called at Nosey’s hut on his way home.  He had the lost sheep on his mind, and he could not resist the impulse to have another word or two with Nosey about them.  He put down the two bottles of gin outside the door of the hut, near an axe whose handle leaned against the wall.  Nosey and his wife, Julia, were inside, and he bade them good evening.  Then he took a piece of tobacco out of his pocket, and began cutting it with his knife.  He always carried his knife tied to his belt by a string which went through a hole bored in the handle.  It was a generally useful knife, and with it he foot-rotted sheep, stirred the tea in his billy, and cut beef and damper, sticks, and tobacco.

“I have been to Nyalong,” he said, “and I heern something about my sheep; they went to the township all right, strayed away, you know, followed one another’s tails, and never came back, the O. K. bullocks go just the same way.  Curious, isn’t it?”

Nosey listened with keen interest.  “Well, Baldy,” he said, “and what did you hear?  Did you find out who took ’em?”

“Oh, yes,” said Baldy; “I know pretty well all about ’em now, both sheep and bullocks.  Old Sharp was right about the sheep, anyway.  The thief is not far from the flock, and it’s not me.”  Baldy was brewing mischief for himself, but he did not know how much.

“Did you tell the police about ’em?” asked Nosey.

“Oh, no, not to-day!” answered Baldy.  “Time enough yet.  I ain’t in no hurry to be an informer.”

Nosey eyed him with unusual savagery, and said: 

“Now didn’t I tell you to say no more about your blasted sheep, or I’d see you for it? and here you are again, and you can’t leave ’em alone.  You are no better than a fool.”

“Maybe I am a fool, Nosey.  Just wait till I get a light, and I’ll leave your hut and trouble you no more.”

He was standing in the middle of the floor cutting his tobacco, and rubbing it between the palms of his hands, shaking his head, and eyeing the floor with a look of great sagacity.