“My word,” said Jim,“if he ain’t the dead image of old Mr. Carter, of Brahway, where we shore three years back. Just such an other hard-faced, cranky-looking old chap, ain’t he, Dick? I’m that proud of him, I’d do anything he asked me now, blest if I wouldn’t!”

“Your father’s a remarkable man,” says Starlight, quite serious; “must have made his way in life if he hadn’t shown such a dislike to anything on the square. If he’d started a public-house and a pound about the time he turned his mind to cattle-duffing as one of the fine arts, he’d have had a bank account by this time that would have kept him as honest as a judge. But it’s the old story. I say, where are the police quarters? It’s only manners to give them a call.”

We rode over to the barracks. They weren’t much. A four-roomed cottage, a log lock-up with two cells, a four-stalled stable, and a horse-yard. Ballabri was a small township with a few big stations, a good many farms about it, and rather more public-houses than any other sort of buildings in it. A writing chap said once,“A large well-filled graveyard, a small church mostly locked up, six public-houses, gave the principal features of Ballabri township. The remaining ones appear to be sand, bones, and broken bottles, with a sprinkling of inebriates and blackfellows.” With all that there was a lot of business done there in a year by the stores and inns, particularly since the diggings. Whatever becomes of the money made in such places? Where does it all go to? Nobody troubles their heads about that.

A goodish lot of the first people was huddled away in the graveyard under the sand ridges. Many an old shepherd had hobbled into the Travellers’ Rest with a big cheque for a fortnight’s spree and had stopped behind in the graveyard, too, for company. It was always a wonderful place for steadying lushingtons, was Ballabri.

Anyhow we rode over to the barracks because we knew the senior constable was away. We’d got up a sham horse-stealing case the day before, through some chaps there that we knew. This drawed him off about fifty mile. The constable left behind was a youngish chap, and we intended to have a bit of fun with him. So we went up to the garden-gate and called out for the officer in charge of police quite grand.

“Here I am,” says he, coming out, buttoning up his uniform coat. “Is anything the matter?”

“Oh! not much,” says I; “but there’s a man sick at the Sports-man’s Arms. He’s down with the typhus fever or something. He’s a mate of ours, and we’ve come from Mr. Grant’s station. He wants a doctor fetched.”