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RED MICK AND HIS SHEEP DOGS.
When Hugh came home one day with his face, as usual, full of trouble, Mary began to laugh him out of it.
"Well, Mr.Hugh, which is it to-day--the Doyles or the Donohoes?
Have they been stealing sheep or breaking gates ?" "Oh, it's all very well for you to laugh," he said; "you don't understand.

Some of that gang up the river went into the stud paddock yesterday to cut down a tree for a bee's nest, and left the tree burning; might have set the whole run--forty thousand acres of dry grass--in a blaze.

Then they drove their dray against the gate, knocking it sideways, and a lot of the stud sheep got out into the other paddock, and I'll have to be off at day-break to-morrow to get 'em back." "Why don't you summon the wretches, and have them put in gaol, or go and break their gates, and cut down their trees ?" she said, with a cheerful ignorance of details.
"I daren't--simply daren't.

If I summoned one of them, I'd never have dry grass but there'd be fires.