squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed Australia. The boy cursed
back, was chastised, and immediately went home and brought his father.

Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog and this precipitated
things. The dummy would have gone under had his wife not arrived on
the scene with the eldest son and the rest of the family. They all
fell foul of Tom. The woman was the worst. The selector's dog chawed
the other and came to his master's rescue just in time---or Tom
Hopkins would never have lived to become the inmate of a lunatic
asylum.

Next year there
happened to be good grass on Tom's selection and nowhere else, and he
thought it wouldn't be a bad idea--to get a few poor sheep, and fatten
them up for market: sheep were selling for about seven-and-sixpence a
dozen at that time. Tom got a hundred or two, but the squatter had a
man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs to set on the
sheep directly they put their noses through the fence (Tom's was
not a sheep fence). The dogs chased the sheep across the selection
and into the run again on the other side, where another man waited
ready to pound them.

Tom's dog did his best; but he fell sick while chawing up the fourth
capitalistic canine, and subsequently died. The dummies had robbed
that cur with poison before starting it across--that was the only way
they could get at Tom's dog.

Tom thought that two might play at the game, and he tried; but his
nephew, who happened to be up from the city on a visit, was arrested
at the instigation of the squatter for alleged sheep-stealing, and