waiting until a rash chicken or duckling should, in spite of its
mother's warning clucks of terror, insist on coming out from under
her sheltering wings. If I took an umbrella, or a croquet mallet,
or a walking stick, and went out, the bird would remain quite
unmoved, even if I held my weapon pointed gun-wise towards him. But
let anyone take a real gun and hold it ever so well hidden behind
their back, and emerge ever so cautiously from the shelter of the
shrubs, my fine gentleman was off directly, mounting out of sight
with a few strokes of his powerful wings, and uttering a shriek of
derision as he departed. Nothing is so rare as a successful shot at
a hawk.

We consoled ourselves however on this occasion, by reflecting. that
we had annihilated two young hawks before they had commenced their
lives of rapine and robbery, and rode on our way rejoicing, to find
Ned Palmer sitting outside his but door on a log of drift wood,
making, candles. In the more primitive days of the settlement, the
early settlers must have been as badly off for light, during the
long dark winter evenings, as are even now the poorer inhabitants of
Greenland or of Iceland, for their sole substitute for candles
consisted of a pannikin half filled with melted tallow, in which a
piece of cork and an apology for a wick floated. But by my time all
this had long been past and over, and even a back-country shepherd
had a nice tin mould in which he could make a dozen candles of the
purest tallow at a time.

Ned was just running a slender piece of wood through the loops of
his twisted cotton wicks, so as to keep them above the rim of the
mould, and the strong odour of melted mutton fat was tainting the
lovely fresh air. But New Zealand run-holders have often to put up