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.