Their object is to die, and to do so with as much trouble to their owners as they possibly can.

They die in the droughts when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the long grass in the sodden gullies breeds "fluke" and "bottle" and all sorts of hideous complaints.

They get burnt in bush fires from sheer malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they are calcined.

They get drowned by refusing to leave flooded country, though hunted with frenzied earnestness.
It was not the sheep so much as the neighbours whose depredations were drawing lines on Hugh Gordon's face.

"I wouldn't care," he confided to Miss Grant, "if they only took a beast or two.