gave up their prey. They were in the right in moving their own
cattle, and were not responsible for the erratic tendencies of other
animals. If successful, they either sold their stolen beasts to
butchers on the road, or got them home to Boolabong. There were
dangers, of course, and occasional penalties. But there was much
success. It was supposed, also, that though they did not own sheep,
they preferred mutton for their daily uses, and that they supplied
themselves at a very cheap rate.

It may be imagined how such a family would be hated by the
respectable squatters on whom they preyed. Still there were men, old
stagers, who had know Moreton Bay before it was a colony--in the old
days when convicts were common--who almost regarded the Brownbies as
a part of the common order of things, and who were indisposed to
persecute them. Men must live; and what were a few sheep? Of some
such it might be said, that though they were above the arts by which
the Brownbies lived, they were not very scrupulous themselves; and it
perhaps served them to have within their ken neighbours whose
morality was lower even than their own. But to such a one as Harry
Heathcote the Brownbies were utterly abominable. He was for the law
and justice at any cost. To his thinking, the Colonial Government was
grossly at fault, because it did not weed out and extirpate not only
the identical Brownbies, but all Brownbieism wherever it might be
found. A dishonest workman was a great evil, but, to his thinking, a
dishonest man in the position of master was the incarnation of evil.
As to the difficulties of evidence, and obstacles of that nature,
Harry Heathcote knew nothing. The Brownbies were rascals, and should
therefore be exterminated.

And the Brownbies knew well the estimation in which their neighbour