One night, late-ish, just as we were walking off to our hut there was a scratching at the door; when we opened it there was old Crib! He ran up to both of us and smelt round our legs for a minute to satisfy himself; then jumped up once to each of us as if he thought he ought to do the civil thing, wagged his stump of a tail, and laid himself down. He was tired, and had come a long way. We could see that, and that he was footsore, too. We knew that father wasn’t so very far off, and would soon be in. If there’d been anybody strange there Crib would have run back fast enough; then father’d have dropped there was something up and not shown. No fear of the dog not knowing who was right and who wasn’t. He could tell every sort of a man a mile off, I believe. He knew the very walk of the police troopers’ horses, and would growl, father said, if he heard their hoofs rattle on the stones of the road.

About a quarter of an hour after father walks in, quiet as usual. Nothing never made no difference to him, except he thought it was worth while. He was middlin’ glad to see us, and behaved kind enough to mother, so the poor soul looked quite happy for her. It was little enough of that she had for her share. By and by father walks outside with us, and we had a long private talk.

It was a brightish kind of starlight night. As we walked down to the creek I thought how often Jim and I had come out on just such a night possum hunting, and came home so tired that we were hardly able to pull our boots off. Then we had nothing to think about when we woke in the morning but to get in the cows; and didn’t we enjoy the fresh butter and the damper and bacon and eggs at breakfast time! It seems to me the older people get the more miserable they get in this world. If they don’t make misery for themselves other people do it for ‘em; or just when everything’s going straight, and they’re doing their duty first-rate and all that, some accident happens ‘em just as if they was the worst people in the world. I can’t make it out at all.

“Well, boys,” says dad, “you’ve been lucky so far; suppose you had a pretty good spree in Melbourne? You seen the game was up by the papers, didn’t you? But why didn’t you stay where you were?”

“Why, of course, that brought us away,” says Jim; “we didn’t want to be fetched back in irons, and thought there was more show for it in the bush here.”