“Yes, my hand is wet, but, Jacky, this drop won’t save a beast’s life without it is a frog’s.”

Jacky smiled and rose.  “Where that wet came from more stay behind.”

He pointed to other patches of grass close by, and following them showed George that they got larger and larger in a certain direction.  At last he came to a hidden nook, where was a great patch of grass quite a different color, green as an emerald.  “Water,” cried Jacky, “a good deal of water.”  He took a jump and came down flat on his back on the grass, and sure enough, though not a drop of surface water was visible, the cool liquid squirted up in a shower round Jacky.

Nature is extremely fond of producing the same things in very different sizes.  Here was a miniature copy of those large Australian lakes which show nothing to the eye but rank grass.  You ride upon them a little way, merely wetting your horse’s feet, but after a while the sponge gets fuller and fuller, and the grass shows symptoms of giving way, and letting you down to “bottomless perdition.”

They squeezed out of this grass sponge a calabash full of water, and George ran with it to the panting beast.  Oh! how he sucked it up, and his wild eye calmed, and the liquid life ran through all his frame!

It was hardly in his stomach before he got up of his own accord, and gave a most sonorous moo, intended no doubt to express the sentiment of “never say die.”

George drove them all to the grassy sponge, and kept them there till sunset.  He was three hours squeezing out water and giving it them before they were satisfied.  Then in the cool of the evening he drove them safe home.

The next day one more of his strayed cattle found his way home.  The rest he never saw again.  This was his first dead loss of any importance; unfortunately, it was not the last.

The brutes were demoralized by their excursion, and being active as deer they would jump over anything and stray.

Sometimes the vagrant was recovered—­often he was found dead; and sometimes he went twenty miles and mingled with the huge herds of some Croesus, and was absorbed like a drop of water and lost to George Fielding.  This was a bitter blow.  This was not the way to make the thousand pounds.

“Better sell them all to the first comer, and then I shall see the end of my loss.  I am not one of your lucky ones.  I must not venture.”

A settler passed George’s way driving a large herd of sheep and ten cows.  George gave him a dinner and looked over his stock.  “You have but few beasts for so many sheep,” said he.

The other assented.

“I could part with a few of mine to you if you were so minded.”

The other said he should be very glad, but he had no money to spare.  Would George take sheep in exchange?

“Well,” drawled George, “I would rather it had been cash, but such as you and I must not make the road hard to one another.  Sheep I’ll take, but full value.”