the merry cross-country rides that we used to have, night or day,
it made no odds to us; every man well mounted, as like as not
on a racehorse in training taken out of his stable within the week;
the sharp brushes with the police, when now and then a man was wounded
on each side, but no one killed. That came later on, worse luck.
The jolly sprees we used to have in the bush townships,
where we chucked our money about like gentlemen, where all the girls
had a smile and a kind word for a lot of game upstanding chaps,
that acted like men, if they did keep the road a little lively.
Our `bush telegraphs' were safe to let us know when the `traps'
were closing in on us, and then -- why the coach would be `stuck up'
a hundred miles away, in a different direction, within twenty-four hours.
Marston's gang again! The police are in pursuit! That's what we'd see
in the papers. We had 'em sent to us regular; besides having the pick of 'em
when we cut open the mail bags.

And now -- that chain rubbed a sore, curse it! -- all that racket's over.
It's more than hard to die in this settled, infernal, fixed sort of way,
like a bullock in the killing-yard, all ready to be `pithed'.
I used to pity them when I was a boy, walking round the yard,
pushing their noses through the rails, trying for a likely place to jump,
stamping and pawing and roaring and knocking their heads
against the heavy close rails, with misery and rage in their eyes,
till their time was up. Nobody told THEM beforehand, though!

Have I and the likes of me ever felt much the same, I wonder,
shut up in a pen like this, with the rails up, and not a place
a rat could creep through, waiting till our killing time was come?
The poor devils of steers have never done anything but ramble off the run
now and again, while we -- but it's too late to think of that.