undemonstrative matrons with weak-kneed twins at their heels, skittish
kids and bearded veterans, and joined the anxious, eager, hungry mob.

'Away with them, my boys,' ordered Moonlighter. 'Head 'em fer the common.
We'll have every blessed goat in the place.'

He sent away three bands in three different directions, fully
provisioned, and commissioned to collect goats from all quarters.

'Bring 'em up to the main mob on the common, an' the man what makes a row
I'll hang in his shirt to the nearest tree. Don't leave the beggars any
kind of a goat at all.'

Dick had undertaken a big contract. Cow Flat was simply infested with
goats; every family owned its small flock, and the milk-supply of the
township depended entirely upon the droves of nannies that grubbed for
sustenance on the stony ridges or the bare, burnt stretch of common land.
Probably Cow Flat was so called because nobody had ever seen anything
remotely resembling a cow anywhere in the vicinity; consequently goats
were hold in high esteem, for ten goats can live and prosper where one
cow would die of hunger and melancholy in a month.

Jacker Mack, Peterson, and Parrot Cann had recognised their billies in
the heard, but Butts was still missing. On an open space near the road by
which Moonlighter's gang had come, and at a safe distance from the
township, a few of the raiders held the main body of the goats. Parrot
Cann, with a bag of cabbages on his shoulder, was the centre of
attraction, and the dropping of an occasional leaf kept the goats pushing
about him, some uprearing and straining toward the tantalising bag,
others baa-ing in his face a piteous appeal. Suddenly, however, an astute