Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/70

 were the Messrs. Macpherson, owners of the station. When the bushranger Morgan was killed at Pechelbah, in their father's time, they hardly expected to have to defend Dagworth against a lawless band humorously describing themselves as Union Shearers.

In spite of their defensive operations, a ruffian crawled through and set fire to the valuable building, which was totally consumed.

They were armed, and shots were freely interchanged. One Unionist found dead was believed to be one of the attacking party.

The 'Shearers' War' languished for a time, but was still smouldering three years afterwards, as on the 4th of August 1894 the Cambridge Downs woolshed was burnt. This was a very expensive building, in keeping with the size and value of the station, where artesian bores had been put down, and artificial lakes filled from the subterranean water-flow. Money had been liberally, lavishly spent in these and other well-considered improvements, aids to the working of the great industrial enterprise evolved from the brain of one man, and having supported hundreds of labourers and artisans for years past. In the great solitudes where the emu and kangaroo or the roving cattle herds alone found sustenance, the blacksmith's forge now glowed, the carpenter's hammer rang, the ploughman walked afield beside his team, the 'lowing herd wound slowly o'er the lea,' recalling to many an exiled Briton his village home.

The 'big house,' the squire-proprietor's abode, rose, garden-and grove-encircled, amid the cottages and humbler homes which it protected—a mansion in close resemblance, allowing for altered conditions and more spacious surroundings, to homes of the Motherland, which all loved so well. At what cost of head and hand, of toil, and danger, and hardship, ay, even of blood, let the headstones in the little shaded graveyard tell! And now, when long years, the best years of early manhood, had been expended freely, ungrudgingly in the conflict with Nature, was the workman, the junior partner in the enterprise, well paid, well fed and housed during the doubtful campaign, the loss of which could smite to ruin the senior, to lay his rash destroying hand upon the beneficent structure he had helped to raise?