"
The crows had got her at last.
He wrapped the deeds in a piece of rag and walked.
There was nothing, scarcely, that he did n't send out from town, and Jimmy
Mulcahy and old Anderson many and many times after that borrowed our dray.
Now Dad regularly curses the deeds every mail-day, and wishes to Heaven
he had never got them.
Chapter IV.
When the Wolf was at the Door.
There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out the
waterhole. Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe squatted on
the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings--a
favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a drain to turn the
water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it rained. Dad was
feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.
Joe said: "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he
went, but returned and said: "There's no water in the bucket--Mother used
the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching. Dad
tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way
between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was
all on fire.
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