‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I took a big walk this morning to see if I could find tracks of this old varmint. I thought she might be dead, but I warn’t satisfied, so I took a regular good cruise. I found some tracks by the lake, where I hadn’t been for some time, and there sure enough I finds my lady, as snug as a wallaby in a wheat patch. Look how she’s filled herself, sir.’
Wilfred replied that the old mare appeared to have found good quarters.
‘When I got to the lake, sir, I was reg’lar stunned. It was as dry as a bone, but through the mud there was a crop of “fat hen” comin’ up all over, miles and miles of it, as thick as a lucerne field on the Hunter. The old mare was planted in a patch where it was pretty forrard. But it’s growin’ so’s you can see it, and there’ll be feed enough in a week or two for all our cattle and every hoof within twenty miles of the lake.’
‘Wonderful news, Dick; and this “fat hen,” as you call it, is good and wholesome food for stock?’
‘Can’t beat it, sir; first-chop fattening stuff; besides, there’s rushes and weeds growin’ among it. You may pound it, we’ll have no more trouble with the cattle for the winter, and they’ll be in good fettle to start south in the spring.’
This was glorious news. It was duly related at the breakfast-table, and after that meal Wilfred and Guy betook themselves to the lake. There they beheld one of Nature’s wondrous transformations.
The great lake lay before them, dry to its farthermost shore. The headlands stood out, frowning in gloomy protest against the conversion of their shining sea into a tame green meadow. Such, in good sooth, had it actually become. Through the moist but rapidly hardening mud of the lake-surface millions of plants were pushing themselves with vigour and luxuriance, caused by the richness of the ooze from which they sprang. Far as the eye could see, a green carpet was spread over the lately sombre-coloured expanse. The leaves of the most forward plants were rounded and succulent, while nothing could be more grateful to the long-famished cattle than the full and satisfying mouthfuls which were in parts of the little bays already procurable.
Even now, guided by the mysterious instinct which sways the hosts of the brute creation so unerringly, small lots had established themselves in secluded spots, showing by their improved appearance how unusual had been the supply of provender.
‘What a wonderful thing,’ said Guy; ‘who would ever have thought of the old lake turning into a cabbage-garden like this? Dick says this stuff makes very good greens if you boil it. Why, we can let Churbett and the Benmohr people send their cattle over if it keeps growing—as Dick says—till it’s as high as your head. But how in the world did this seed get here? That’s what I want to know. The lake hasn’t been dry for ten years, that’s certain, I believe. Well, now, did this seed—tons of it—lie in the mud all that time; and if not, how was it to be sowed, broadcast, after the water dried up?’