Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/191



HE cloud of thick, brownish dust, that indicated the passing of the mail coach, paused opposite the claim, and the driver left a brown paper parcel on the corner post of the new-split, two-rail fence which had recently taken the place of the old, convict-built log fence round the Log Paddock. The Quiet Man took the parcel, and put it in a box, which held nails, candle ends, etc., under the bellows of the pick-pointing forge. Then he climbed to the top of the logged-up waste-heap, sat on the edge, and dropped his feet over the shaft into the suspended green-hide bucket, and took a grip of the rope, and his mate, taking a turn of the rope round a cross-piece on the whip-pole, lowered him to the bottom for his shift below.

"Now, I wonder what Tom got up by the coach," reflected the man on top, with a lazy mental effort. "It was too light for groceries, and it can't be fancy goods."

There were three huts on the siding of a spur of the ridge that came down to the corner of Log Paddock. One, a one-roomed bark hut, with the chimney and door in an end, stood down close to the road, Rh