to pink, to the first blue of the sky. On the naked spurs that sprang out from the hill, leading straight down to the branding-yard square, red, white, black dots were cast out, as a child flings beads that roll apart, and together, and mix, and tear ever toward the bottom. Scannell saw them come, with sheen of hides and of horns, and all sounds faint and blended as the changes of the dawn. By the yards Scannell sat his cob stiffly. He had grown grey at this game for the love of it, and the old lust drew him out to each muster with an ache in the arm that would wheel no more scrubbers by the swing of a twelve-foot lash. It was a new generation and new blood; but they played the same old game, and only the man who has trod that track knows the joy of it. He passes; and if the clay under the feet of the next man is knit by blood-cement, none ask questions. For the wind keeps the records, and the sunshine, and the old, old grey bitterns that cry from the flax-swamps.
Down the spurs Scannell saw them coming, and sounds swelled to crackling thunder, and the tossing wild river took shape. Between two tin joined mobs rode Lou; his rein loose as he swung his colt with the knees, and the long lash licking full length right and left, drawing sullen ones in until the parallels met. The boys fed more streams to the main, and
