under the table at supper-time when he took the first fit, and what a
fright we got! He must have reared before stiffening out, because he
capsized the table into Mother's lap, and everything on it smashed except
the tin-plates and the pints. The lamp fell on Dad, too, and the melted
fat scalded his arm. Dad dragged Crib out and cut off his tail and ears,
but he might as well have taken off his head.

Dad stood with his back to the fire while Mother was putting a stitch in
his trousers. "There's nothing for it but to watch them at night," he was
saying, when old Anderson appeared and asked "if I could have those few
pounds." Dad asked Mother if she had any money in the house? Of course
she had n't. Then he told Anderson he would let him have it when he got
the deeds. Anderson left, and Dad sat on the edge of the sofa and seemed
to be counting the grains on a corn-cob that he lifted from the floor,
while Mother sat looking at a kangaroo-tail on the table and did n't
notice the cat drag it off. At last Dad said, "Ah, well!--it won't be
long now, Ellen, before we have the deeds!"

We took it in turns to watch the barley. Dan and the two girls watched
the first half of the night, and Dad, Dave and I the second. Dad always
slept in his clothes, and he used to think some nights that the others
came in before time. It was terrible going out, half awake, to tramp
round that paddock from fire to fire, from hour to hour, shouting and
yelling. And how we used to long for daybreak! Whenever we sat down
quietly together for a few minutes we would hear the dull THUD! THUD!
THUD!--the kangaroo's footstep.

At last we each carried a kerosene tin, slung like a kettle-drum, and
belted it with a waddy--Dad's idea. He himself manipulated an old bell
that he had found on a bullock's grave, and made a splendid noise with it.