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Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am going home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal to carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife forever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this." The trader turned away in silence. "I say, now," said the drover, touching his elbow, "there's differences in parsons, an't there?
A band of timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor, dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender and sheep drover.
O oo, no; just a wee pickle siller, but nae man likit to lose onything. And folk said they highwayman wad skin the breeks aff a Hielandman. No that he was a Hielandman, though his name did begin wi' a "Mac." And so chattering, they had already won half-way across that lonely stretch of moor regarding which the drover had had misgivings.
They set out when it was getting dark; the sheep were put on the road, the drover going before the flock and Shergold following at the tail. It was a cold, cloudy night, threatening snow, and so dark that he could hardly distinguish the dim forms of even the hindmost sheep, and by and by the temptation to steal one assailed him. For how easy it would be for him to do it!
Roubideau rounded up next day his beef stock and sold two hundred head to the drover. During the second day the riders were busy putting the road brand on the cattle just bought. "Don't bust yore suspenders on this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there.
Now, if you care to look over this correspondence, you will notice that we have inquiries which will tax our carrying capacity to its utmost. The 'Laurel Leaf' and 'Running W' people alone have asked for a rate on thirty thousand head." But the drover brushed the correspondence aside, and asked for the possible feed bills.
Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the lightfooted and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of 'drouthy cronies, or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on his throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint of ugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs; now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brown the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of Dame Wheeler's cat: spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; flogged by the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all the animals of the parish; but yet living through his griefs, and bearing them patiently, 'for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe; and even seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of sunshine, or a wisp of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcase, some comfort in his disconsolate condition.
During the hours which the slaves are allowed to themselves, they are oftenest seen working on their own allotted piece of ground, where they raise favorite fruits and vegetables, besides corn for fattening the pig penned up near by, and for which the drover who regularly visits the plantations will pay them in good hard money.
We learned in the sequel that he went to Ypsilanti, and took rooms and board in a hotel, while calling on every colored family in town and for two or three miles around it, sometimes as a drover, at other times an agent to make arrangements for purchasing wood and charcoal. During four weeks he found a family that answered the description of the Hamilton family in color and number.
I thought you said you'd worked on Eridunda. What work did you do there? Kitchen jin?" Eagle did not understand what Mick said, but he saw that the white man was angry, so he hurried back to the fire and took out two other brands, hoping that these would please the drover. They were absolutely red-hot. Mick caught hold of them, but dropped them with a yell.
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