For more than a mile, down a slope, the weedy marsupial outpaced them, but when it came to the hill the daylight between rapidly began to lessen.

A few seconds more and all would have been over, but a straggling, stupid old ewe, belonging to an unneighbourly squatter, darted up from the shade of a tree right in the way of Maloney's Brindle, who was leading.

Brindle always preferred mutton to marsupial, so he let the latter slide and secured the ewe.

The death-scene was most imposing.

The ground around was strewn with small tufts of white wool.