Page:On Our Selection.djvu/49

Rh We stumbled along in the dark one behind the other, with our hands stuffed into our trousers. Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe, bare-shinned and bootless, in the rear.

Now and again he tramped on Bathurst-burr, and, in sitting down to extract the prickle, would receive a cluster of them elsewhere. When he escaped the burr it was only to knock his shin against a log or leave a toe-nail or two clinging to a stone. Joe howled, but the wind howled louder, and blew and blew.

Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:

"To hell with everything! Whatever he wants bringing us out a night like this, I'm damned if I know!"

Dad could n't see very well in the dark, and on this night could n't see at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that had fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne. And what a fright they both got! The old horse took it worse than Dad—who only tumbled down—for he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting every leg he had in the wires. How the brute struggled! We stood and listened to him. After kicking panels of the fence down and smashing every wire in it, he got loose and made off, taking most of it with him.

"That's one wallaby on the wheat, anyway," Dave muttered, and we giggled. We understood Dave; but Dad did n't open his mouth.

We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked