seat, a fire was quickly lit from the dead
boughs which lay plentifully around, and
his quart-pot, replenished at the creek, was
soon hissing and bubbling with its side
thrust into the glowing fire. He had a good
store of kangaroo-sandwiches, and there he
sat with his cup of strong bush-tea; looking
alternately at the grazing cattle, and into the
solemn, gloomy, and soundless woods, in
which even the laughing jackass failed to
shout his clamorous adieu to the falling day.
Only the distant monotone of the morepork—
the nocturnal cuckoo of the Australian wilds
—reached his ear; making the profound
solitude still more solitary. He very soon
rolled himself in his travelling-rug, and flung
himself down before the fire— having
previously piled a fresh supply of timber upon it
—near where his trusty dogs lay, and where
Sorcerer, in the favourite fashion of the bush-
horse, slept as he stood.

The morning was hushed and breathless.
Instead of that bracing chill, with which the
Australian lodger out of doors generally wakes
up, Robert Patterson found the perspiration
standing thick on his face, and he felt a
strange longing for a deep breath of fresh air.
But motion there was none, except in the
little creek which trickled with a fresh and
inviting aspect at a few yards from him. He
arose, and stripping, plunged into the deepest
spot of it that he could find; and thus
refreshed, rekindled his fire, and made his solitary
breakfast. But all around him hung, as
it were, a leaden and death-like heaviness.
Not a bough nor a blade of grass was moved
by the air. The trees stood inanimately
moody and sullen. He cast his eyes through
the gloomy shadow beneath them, and a
sultry, suffocating density seemed to charge
the atmosphere. The sky above him was
dimmed by a grey haze.

"There is something in the wind to-day,
old fellow," he said, addressing his horse in his
usual way; for he had long looked on him as
a companion, and firmly believed that he understood
all that he said to him. " There is
something in the wind: yet, where is the
wind?"

The perspiration streamed from him with
the mere exertion of saddling his horse, and,
as he mounted him to rouse up his cattle.
Horse, dogs, and cattle, manifested a listlessness
that only an extraordinary condition
of the atmosphere could produce. If you had
seen the tall, handsome young man seated on
his tall and noble horse, you would have felt
that they were together formed for any
exploit of strength and speed. But the whole
troop—cattle, man, and horse—went slowly
and soberly along, as if they were oppressed
by a great fatigue or the extreme exhaustion
of famine.

The forest closed in upon them again, and
they proceeded along a narrow track, flanked
on each side by tall and densely-growing trees;
the creeping vines making of the whole
forest one intricate, impenetrable scene. All
was hushed as at midnight. No bird enlivened
the solitude by its cries, and they had left the
little stream. Suddenly there came a puff of
air; but it was like the air from the jaws of a
furnace, hot, dry, withering in its very touch.
The young settler looked quickly in the direction
from which it came, and instantly shouted
to the cattle before him, in a wild, abrupt,
startling shout, swung aloft the stock-whip
which he held in his hand, and brought it
down with the report of a pistol, and the
sharp cut as with a knife, on the ear of the
huge bullock just before him. The stock-
whip, with a handle about a half a yard long
and a thong of three yards long, of plaited
bullock-hide, is a terrible instrument in the
hands of a practised stockman. Its sound is
the note of terror to the cattle, it is like the
report of a blunderbuss, and the stockman at
full gallop will hit any given spot on the
beast that he is within reach of, and cut the
piece clean away through the thickest hide
that bull or bison ever wore. He will
strike a fly on a spot of mud at full speed,
and take away the skin with him, making
the rosy blood spring into the wind, and
the astonished animal dart forward as if
mad.

Loud and louder, wilder and more fiercely
shouted the squatter, and dashed his horse
forward over fallen trees; through crashing
thickets, first on one side of the road, and
then on the other. Crack, crack, went the
stinging, slashing whip; loud was the bark
of dogs; and the mob of cattle rushed
forwards at headlong speed. The young man
gazed upward; and, through the only narrow
opening of the forest saw strange volumes
of smoke rolling southward. Hotter, hotter,
stronger and more steadily came the wind.
He suddenly checked his horse, and listening,
grew pale at the sound which reached him.
It was a low deep roar, as of a wind in the
tree-tops, or of a heavy water-fall, distant,
and smothered in some deep ravine.

"God have mercy! " he exclaimed, "a bush
fire! and in this thick forest! " Once more
he sprang forward, shouting, thundering with
his whip. He and the herd were galloping
along the narrow wood track. But, as he
had turned westward in the direction of
his home, the woods—of which he had before
seen the boundary—now closed for some miles
upon him; and, as he could not turn right or
left for the chaos of vines and scrub that
obstructed the forest, the idea of being overtaken
there by the bush-fire was horrible.
Such an event would be death, and death
only.

Therefore, he urged on his flying herd with
desperation. Crack upon crack from his long
whip, resounded through the hollow wood.
The cattle themselves seemed to hear the
ominous sound, and sniff the now strongly
perceptible smell of burning. The roar of
the fire came louder, and ever and anon