Chapter III.
Before We Got the Deeds.
OUR selection adjoined a sheep-run on the Darling Downs, and boasted of few and scant improvements, though things had gradually got a little better than when we started. A verandahless four-roomed slab-hut now standing out from a forest of box-trees, a stock-yard, and six acres under barley were the only evidence of settlement. A few horses—not ours—sometimes grazed about; and occasionally a mob of cattle—also not ours—cows with young calves, steers, and an old bull or two, would stroll around, chew the best legs of any trousers that might be hanging on the log reserved as a clothes-line, then leave in the night and be seen no more for months—some of them never.
And yet we were always out of meat!
Dad was up the country earning a few pounds—the corn drove him up when it didn't bring what he expected. All we got out of it was a bag of flour—I don't know what the storekeeper got. Before he left we put in the barley. Somehow, Dad did n't believe in sowing any more crops, he seemed to lose heart; but Mother talked it over with him, and when reminded
