Page:On Our Selection.djvu/50

36 through the "wheat" and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitary pair of ears—from the row and scatter they made there was a million.

Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire. Joe went to sleep—how, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet he seemed to be listening.

We mooched around from fire to fire, hour after hour, and when we wearied of heaving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and cursed the wind, and the winter, and the night-birds alternately. It was a lonely, wretched occupation. Now and again Dad would leave his fire to ask us if we could hear a noise. We could n't, except that of wallabies and mopokes. Then he would go back and listen again. He was restless, and, somehow, his heart was n't in the wallabies at all. Dave could n't make him out.

The night wore on. By-and-by there was a sharp rattle of wires, then a rustling noise, and Sal appeared in the glare of the fire. "Dad!" she said. That was all. Without a word, Dad bounced up and went back to the house along with her.