'Is it doing that again you are, after all you promised me, and you so nearly caught--after the last one?
Didn't I go on my knees to ye to ask ye to drop it and lead a good life, and didn't ye tell me ye'd never do the like again?
And the poor innocent children, too, I wonder ye've the heart to do it.' It came into my head now to wonder why the sergeant and two policemen had come down from Bargo, very early in the morning, about three months ago, and asked father to show them the beef in his cask, and the hide belonging to it.

I wondered at the time the beast was killed why father made the hide into a rope, and before he did that had cut out the brand and dropped it into a hot fire.

The police saw a hide with our brand on, all right--killed about a fortnight.

They didn't know it had been taken off a cancered bullock, and that father took the trouble to 'stick' him and bleed him before he took the hide off, so as it shouldn't look dark.
Father certainly knew most things in the way of working on the cross.
I can see now he'd have made his money a deal easier, and no trouble of mind, if he'd only chosen to go straight.
When mother said this, father looked at her for a bit as if he was sorry for it; then he straightened himself up, and an ugly look came into his face as he growled out-- 'You mind your own business; we must live as well as other people.
There's squatters here that does as bad.

They're just like the squires at home; think a poor man hasn't a right to live.