“It appears to me,” said Farmer Wigway, as they trudged under the moonlit gum trees, “that I have seen you before, Mr. —?”
“Amos Clark;” interrupted the stranger.
“Well, Mr. Clark, somehow your face and voice are kind of familiar, yet I swear I never heard that name before. Yet, come to think of it, it takes heaps of people to make a world, and there’s lots of them must be like lots of others. Now, there’s that old cow of mine; old Jack Higgins, of Box Hill, has got the very spit of her, and if it wasn’t for the brand I’d swear the two beasts were the same animal!”
Mr. Amos Clark was up early the next morning, and seemed in no pressing hurry to start off on his land quest. Besides, Mick was not ready. He had to exercise a mare carefully locked up in a loose-box near the stable before he could start.
The old man and the bigger boys had gone off to work, so Mr. Clark and his young companion were alone in the yard with Mick while he saddled up. Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Clark should fall to criticizing the animal, and approach to pat it. But he was quickly warned by Mick to stand clear.
“She’s got the brute of a temper with strangers,” he said; “kicks all round. Father and I are the only ones in the place that dare come near her.”
“What’s the good of her, then? What do you keep her for—a vicious brute like that?”
“Oh, she’s not ours. A sporting cove down in Sydney owns her—Alec Booth, perhaps you’ve heard of him? He thinks a lot of her, and she can travel, my word!”
“Travel!” said Mr. Clark, with apparent contempt. “Travel! Why, my buggy horse would give her a length and a beating any day.”
“What will you bet?” cried young Mick, thoughtlessly.