Not that there were not plenty of hands on the station. It was a big
run, and gave employment in one way or another to quite a band of men.
But Mr. Linton preferred to keep a very close watch over everything,
and he had long realized that the best way of seeing that your business
is done is to take a hand yourself. The men said, "The boss was
everywhere," and they respected him the more in that he was no
kid-glove employer, but was willing to share in any work that was going
forward. Especially he insisted on working among the cattle, and--Norah
was nearly always with him on his rides--they had a more or less
accurate knowledge of every beast on the place. Outside the boundary
fences they went very seldom; the nearest township, seventeen miles
away, Norah regarded as merely a place where you called for the mail,
and save that it meant a ride or drive with her father, she had never
the slightest desire to go there.

Summer was very late that year, and "burning-off" operations on the
rougher parts of the run had been carried on much longer than was
generally possible. Norah always regarded "burning-off" as an immense
picnic, and used to beg her father to take her out. Night after night
found them down on the flats, getting rid of old dead trees, which up
to the present had refused obstinately to burn. It was picturesque
work, and Norah loved it, though she would have been somewhat
embarrassed had you hinted that the picturesqueness had anything to do
with its attractions.

One after another, they would light the stumps, some squat and solid,
others rising thirty or forty feet into the air. Once the fires were
lit, it was necessary to keep them going; moving backwards and forwards
among the trees, stoking, picking up fallen bits of burning timber and