“Four men to forty thousand sheep,” moralized Jack. “What would some of the old hands think of that? Oh! the weaners,” cried he; “I had forgotten them. How did you manage them, M‘Nab?”
“Well, we had a great day’s drafting, and put them back in the river paddock. They are all as contented as possible, and as steady as old ewes—thirteen thousand of them.”
“There’s a trifle of bother saved by that arrangement. What a burden life used to be for the first three months after the weaning flocks were portioned out!”
Jack’s spirits were many degrees lighter after this conversation. Certainly there was a heavyish debt—and this millstone of a mortgage hung round “his neck alway” like the albatross in the Ancient Mariner; but the compensating economy of the fencing was beginning to work a cure. If one could only tide over the shearing with the present reduced Civil List, what a hole would the clip and the fat sheep make in the confounded “balance debtor!” There is the wool-shed over again, to be sure. What a murder that one should have all those hundredweights of nails, and tons of battens, and acres of flooring, and forests of posts and wall-plates to get all over again! It was very bitter work in Jack’s newly-born tendency to economy to have all this outlay added on to the inevitable expenditure of the season.
“As I said before,” concluded Jack, rounding off his soliloquy, “I never knew any fellow but Exmoor undergo the ordeal by fire two seasons running, so it’s a kind of insurance against the chapter of accidents this year.”
Jack insensibly returned to his ordinary provincial repose of mind and body. He rode about in the early mornings and cooler evenings, and took his turn to convoy travelling sheep, to officiate at the store, and to relieve the ever-toiling M‘Nab in any way that presented itself. He kept up this kind of thing for a couple of months, and then—the unbroken monotony of the whole round of existence striking him rather suddenly one day—he made up his mind to a slight change. There was a station about fifty miles away, down the river, with the owner of which he had a casual acquaintance; so, faute d’autre, he thought he would go and see him.
“You can get on quite as well without me, M‘Nab,” he said. “I think a small cruise would do me good. I’ll go and see Mr. Stangrove. One often gets an idea by going away from home.”
“That’s true enough,” assented M‘Nab, “but I doubt yon’s the wrong shop for new ones. Mr. Stangrove is a good sort of man, I hear every one say; but he hails from the old red-sandstone period (M‘Nab knew Hugh Miller by heart), and has no more idea of a swing-gate than a shearing-machine.”
“Well, one will get a notion of how the Australian Pilgrim Fathers managed to get a livelihood, and subdue the salt-bush for their descendants. There must be a flavour of antiquity about it. I will start to-morrow.”
After a daylight breakfast, Mr. Redgrave departed, riding old Hassan, and, like a wise man, leading another hackney, with a second saddle, upon which was strapped his valise. “If you want to go anywhere,” he was wont to assert, “you want a few spare articles of raiment.” Sitting in boots and breeches all the evening is unpleasant to the visitor and disrespectful to his entertainers, whether he be what the old-fashioned writers called “travel-stained” in wet weather, or uncomfortably warm in the dry season. If you carry the articles alluded to you need a valise. A valise is much pleasanter on a spare horse than in front of your own person; and all horses go more cheerily in company, particularly as you can divide the day’s journey by alternate patronage of either steed. I think life in a general way passes as pleasantly during a journey à cheval as over any other “road of life.” Then why make toil of a pleasure? Always take a brace of hacks, O reader, and then—