front veranda."

"How many do you have of a week?"

"That depends. Sundowners are as uncertain as they are unknown
quantities. After shearing-time they're thickest; in the dead of summer
fewest. This is the dead of summer," and, for the hundredth time in our
travel, Glenn shook his head sadly.

Sadness was ill-suited to his burly form and bronzed face, but it was
there. He had some trouble, I thought, deeper than drought. It was too
introspective to have its origin solely in the fact that sheep were dying
by thousands, that the stock-routes were as dry of water as the hard sky
above us, and that it was a toss-up whether many families in the West
should not presently abandon their stations, driven out by a water-
famine--and worse.

After a short silence Glenn stood up in the trap, and, following the
circle of the horizon with his hand, said: "There's not an honest blade
of grass in all this wretched West. This whole business is gambling with
God."

"It is hard on women and children that they must live here," I remarked,
with my eyes on the Strangers' Hut.

"It's harder for men without them," he mournfully replied; and at that
moment I began to doubt whether Glenn, whom I had heard to be a bachelor,
was not tired of that calm but chilly state. He followed up this speech
immediately by this: "Look at that drinking-tank!"