Six months later. Dinner about ready. "Take up a thousand acres," Dad
was saying; "take it up----"
He was interrupted by a visitor.
"Are you Mister Rudd?" Dad said he was.
"Well, er--I've a FI. FA. against y'."
Dad didn't understand.
The Sheriff's officer drew a document from his inside breast-pocket and
proceeded to read:
"To Mister James Williams, my bailiff. Greeting: By virtue of Her
Majesty's writ of FIERI FACIAS, to me directed, I command you that of the
goods and chattels, money, bank-note or notes or other property of Murtagh
Joseph Rudd, of Shingle Hut, in my bailiwick, you cause to be made the sum
of forty pounds ten shillings, with interest thereon," &c.
Dad understood.
Then the bailiff's man rounded up the cows and the horses, and Dad and the
lot of us leant against the fence and in sadness watched Polly and old
Poley and the rest for the last time pass out the slip-rails.
"That puts an end to the land business!" Dave said gloomily.
But Dad never spoke.
Chapter XVIII.
We Embark in the Bear Industry.
When the bailiff came and took away the cows and horses, and completely
knocked the bottom out of Dad's land scheme, Dad did n't sit in the ashes
and sulk.
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