by the coats of the cattle and horses.

`If it had only been honestly come by,' Jim said, `what a jolly place
it would have been!'

Towards the north end of the paddock was a narrow gully
with great sandstone walls all round, and where it narrowed
the first discoverers had built a stockyard, partly with dry stone walls
and partly with logs and rails.

There was no trouble in getting the cattle or horses into this,
and there were all kinds of narrow yards and pens for branding the stock
if they were clearskins, and altering or `faking' the brands
if they were plain. This led into another yard, which opened into
the narrowest part of the gully. Once in this, like the one they came down,
and the cattle or horses had no chance but to walk slowly up,
one behind the other, till they got on the tableland above.
Here, of course, every kind of work that can be done to help disguise cattle
was done. Ear-marks were cut out and altered in shape,
or else the whole ear was cropped off; every letter in the alphabet
was altered by means of straight bars or half-circles, figures, crosses,
everything you could think of.

`Mr. Starlight is an edicated man,' said father. `This is all his notion;
and many a man has looked at his own beast, with the ears altered
and the brand faked, and never dreamed he ever owned it.
He's a great card is Starlight. It's a pity he ever took
to this kind of life.'

Father said this with a kind of real sorrow that made me look at him