************************************** “To-morrow and to-morrow too!  Rabbit, he go away quickly now.  Boy come along with big gun, rabbit he afraid directly, go under the ground.” **************************************

Pip understood his mixed English enough to know he was making fun of him, and told him wrathfully to “shut up for a Dutch idiot.”

Then he shouldered the gun he was so immeasurably proud of and went off the other side of the barbed-wire fence, where was the happy hunting-ground of the little rodent that would not allow Mr. Hassal to grow rich.

He shot five that day, four the next, seven the next, but after a time he voted it slow, and went after gill birds, with more enjoyment but less certainty of a bag.

Every day was filled to the brim with enjoyment, and but for the intense heat that first month at Yarrahappini would have been one of absolute content and happiness.

And now there was the cattle-drafting!

Breakfast was very early the morning of the great event; by half-past five it was almost over, and Pip, in a fever of restlessness, was telling Mr. Hassal he was sure they would be late and miss it.

Judy had pleaded hard to be allowed to go, but everyone said it was out of the question—­indeed, it was doubted if it were wise to allow Pip to face the danger that is inseparable with the drafting of the wilder kind of cattle that had been driven from great distances.

But he had forcibly carried the day, and dressed himself up in so business-like a way that Mr. Hassel had not the heart to refuse him.  He came down to breakfast in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old, serge trousers fastened round the waist with a leathern belt, in which an unsheathed bowie knife, freshly sharpened, was jauntily stuck.  No persuasions would induce him either to wear a coat or sheathe the knife.

The grey was brought round to the veranda steps, with Mr. Hassal’s own splendid horse.  Mr. Gillet was there on a well-groomed roan; he had three stock-whips, two quite sixteen feet long, the third shorter one, which he presented to Pip.

The boy’s face glowed.  “Hurrah, Fizz!” he said; standing up in his saddle and brandishing it round his head.  “What ’ud you give to change places?”

He dug his heels into the animal’s sides and went helter-skelter at a wild gallop down the hill.

It was a mile and a half to the cattle yards, and here was the strongest excitement.

Pip could not think where all the men had sprung from.  There were some twenty or thirty of them, stockmen, shearers “on the wallaby,” as their parlance expressed lack of employment, two Aboriginals, exclusive of Tettawonga, who was smoking and looking on with sleepy enjoyment, and several other of the station hands.

In the first yard there were five hundred cattle that had been driven there the night before, and that just now presented the appearance of a sea of wildly lashing tails and horns.  Such horns!—­great, branching, terrific-looking things that they gored and fought each other madly with, seeing they could not get to the common enemy outside.