She was tall and stout, with great muscular arms bare to the shoulder, and her face was pink with righteous indignation.

This woman drove slowly up the one road of Waddy, and standing erect in her vehicle roundly abused the township from end to end.

Crying her cause in a big strident voice, she insulted the inhabitants individually and in the mass, and wherever several people were assembled she pulled up and poured out upon them the vials of her wrath in a fine flow of vituperation; and after every few sentences she interpolated an almost pathetic plea to somebody, she did not care whom, to step forward and resent her criticism that she might have an opportunity of hammering decency and religion into the benighted inhabitants of an unregenerate place.
'Who stole the goats ?' she screamed, and, receiving no answer, screamed the question from house to house.
'Waddy's a township of thieves an' hussies!' she cried, 'thieves an' hussies! Gimme me goats or I'll have the law on you all--you low, mean stealers an' robbers, ye! Who stole the goats?
Who came by night an' robbed a decent widdy woman of her beautiful goats?
Who?
Who?
Who?
Say you didn't, someone! Gi' me the lie, you lot o' gaol-birds an' assassinators!' All Waddy turned out to hear, and many followed the woman up the road.
The school children heard the noisy procession go by with amazement and regret, and the visitor grew shriller and fiercer as her search progressed.

At length she discovered what she declared to be one of her goats in the possession of Mrs.Hogan, and she left her waggon and charged the latter, who fled in terror, bolting all her doors and throwing up a barricade in the passage.

But the stranger was not to be foiled: she sat down on the doorstep and proclaimed the house under siege, announcing her intention to remain until she had wreaked her vengeance on Mrs.Hogan, and offering meanwhile to fight any four women of Waddy for mere diversion.
It was not till the tired miners off the night shift had secured all the goats she pointed out as hers, tied their legs and packed them on her waggon, that the woman could be induced to leave; and as she drove away she heaped further insult on the township, and from the distant toll-bar signalled a final gesture of contempt and loathing.
This woman took back to Cow Flat her own explanation of the mystery of the lost goats, and in due time deputations from the rival township began to reach Waddy, so that the Great Goat Riot developed rapidly.