At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that two bullocks had strayed during some one’s watch.  Not in theirs, they hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the background.

But Dan’s scorn turned to blazing wrath, when—­the drovers refusing to replace the “strays” with cows from the mixed cattle in hand, and refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks, two beasts short—­the musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh mob of cattle for the sake of two bullocks.  “Just as I was settling down to celebrate Sunday, too,” Dan growled, as he and Jack rode out of camp.

Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of Sabbath-keeping out of Dan’s blood, although he was not particular which day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath.  “Two in a fortnight” was all he worried about.

Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order; the drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents once more, reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night, and after dinner, as the “boys” tailed the bullocks and mixed cattle on the outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down to “celebrate our Sabbath” by resting in the warm, dry shade.

Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the camp and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his taste; Dan with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs spread out before him; the Maluka, Jak [sic], and the Dandy flat upon their backs, with bent-back folded arms for pillows, and hats drawn over eyes to shade them from the too dazzling sunlight; dogs, relaxed and spread out, as near to their master as permitted, and the missus “fixed up” in an opened-out, bent-back grassy tussock, which had thus been formed into a luxurious armchair.  At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole, gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses—­flies were conspicuous by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the timber; away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops, brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that “Sunday wasn’t a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf now and then.”