covered and diversions created, and there was much hiding behind logs and
in clumps of scrub; indeed, the police were only foiled at length by the
exertion of that subtle strategy for which Moonlighter was notorious.

It was after one o'clock in the morning when Cow Flat was reached. The
little township slept, steeped in darkness, beside its sluggish strip of
creeping 'slurry' miscalled a creek. Beyond, on the rise, a big mine
clattered and groaned, and puffed its glowing clouds of steam against the
sky; but Cow Flat had settled down into silence after the midnight change
of shifts, and a mining township sleeps well. For all that it was a
stealthy and cautious band Moonlighter led down to the old battered
engine-house by the edge of the common, where the goats of Cow Flat were
known to herd in large numbers. Sure enough here were goats of both
sexes, and all sorts and sizes--sleeping huddled in the ruined
engine-house, on the sides of the grass-grown tip, in the old bob-pit,
and upon the remains of the fallen stack. Carefully and quietly the
animals were awakened; slyly they were drawn forth, with gentle whispered
calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more
especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously
distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny
awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in
a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that
followed the invasion. Then, when the animals within the ruin were fully
alive to the situation and awake to the knowledge that it all meant
carrots, and that outside carrots innumerable awaited the gathering, they
streamed forth: they fought in the doorways, they battered a passage
through the broken wall; faint plaintive queries went up from scores of
throats, answered by gluttonous mumblings from goats that had been
fortunate enough to snatch a morsel of the delectable vegetable. Down
from the tips and up from the bob-pit they came, singly and in sets,