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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

II

II.

We are bidden to love our neighbour; I hated mine. That, I suppose, wascrime number one. But I wonder whether the saint ever trod this earth who could have loved that man. Possibly some old colonist may see this, who will remember "Grip" Thompson. I heard to-day j that he was dead—of old age. Why was he kept alive, I wonder, for eighty years to war against his fellow men? Why was he permitted to lock up those broad leagues of sunny hill and fertile valley, while thousands of his fellow-colonists were painfully hewing their little farms out of the giant bush; sinking their little capital deep in spongy swamps; starving on stony plains; or eating the bitter bread of public charity on relief works? For thirty years, he stopped settlement as with an iron wall. In vain he was written at, preached at, prayed to, I threatened with laws and lawlessness. The land was his, he said, and he meant to keep it;—keep it he did, for a whole generation. Well, he has not taken it with him!

page 30

My farm marched with a piece of his interminable boundary-fence. My few sheep looked through the wire fences at his great flocks; sometimes, when feed was short on our side, a few stragglers would slip through to his pastures, which were seldom fed down, as their owner boasted. When mustering time came, I got the usual notice that ten, a dozen, or a score of my sheep were in his yards, waiting to be claimed, and I would ride across with the dogs and get them, and get with them a sneer from "Grip" and black looks from his manager and shepherds.

Though the number of the strayed sheep might vary, one thing never varied—they were always shorn when I saw them, "Grip" took excellent good care of that. In the year after I bought my farm, it happened that most of the stragglers to be reclaimed were ewes which, in the ordinary course of things, should have had lambs with them when I was sent for to take them from Thompson's yard. He pretended to give me every opportunity of "mothering" (as it is called) my missing lambs, but for fifteen ewes I could find but four. Again, next year, he played me a similar trick, and when I ventured to complain, curtly told me to keep my—crawlers on my own grass, if I had any grass to keep them on. There was no help for it, and, choking down a desire to wring the old brute's neck, I drove the unlucky sheep home. As the devil would have it, a fatal opportunity to make Thompson pay for his insult offered itself only too soon.

In passing my own sheep through the race in the following week, I found six of his amongst them. In previous years there had never been more than two, of which he had more than once taken care to sneeringly remind me. The stragglers were young half-bred wethers, very similar to a flock of my own. Here was a chance to square the account. I had but to alter the ear-marks and the paint-brand. A paint-brand is, of course, easy enough to deal with; and, as it unfortunately happened, there was no particular difficulty about changing the ear-marks in this case. Thompson's marks were a "swallow-fork"' in the left ear, and an oblong hole punched in the centre of the right ear. A "swallow-fork," I may mention, is made by snipping an angular piece out of the extremity of the ear. Now my brand consisted of two such snips out of the left ear, and an oblong strip cut from the tip nearly to the root of the right ear. I had thus but to take one of Thompson's wethers, cut an extra "swallow-fork" out of the left ear, and enlarge his oblong punch-hole in the right ear, and the thing was done. It was done; done, not once or twice, but for years together. I swore that for every lamb of which Thompson cheated me I would take a sheep from him; and I went on until some thirty of his had been treated after the fashion described. No shame or repentance troubled me; nor, after the first year, was there any fear of being found out. When an enemy was too strong to be fought openly, was it not perfectly justifiable to meet him with his own weapons?

Though Thompson, for the most part, lived alone and unseen in the heart of his brown hill kingdom, he occasionally came out to page 31 concern himself with public affairs: he found it paid him to do so. By sitting on the Road Board, he could get his solitary road kept in repair at the district's expense, and could also help to keep rates as low as possible—an important point when one has one hundred and twenty thousand acres to be taxed. Then, though he was never a candidate for a seat in Parliament, and openly scoffed at that body as a set of babbling fools and rogues, whose trade was to plunder honest colonists, he always did his best for the Conservative candidate for the electorate; and, mean as he usually was, would spend more money on such occasions than twelve months' living could have cost him. What his household expenses were, indeed, was known to none but himself and his book-keeper. He did not live at the homestead of his station, but in a small, mean-looking, two-storied wooden house, about three miles therefrom. The grey shingles of its sloping roof could be indistinctly seen from the road, looking out from some straggling plantations of blue-gum, willow, and Californian pine. No guest had ever been known to pass under the said grey roof. No man was ever known to boast that he had sat down within those unpainted walls. Anyone who came to see Thompson on business was always met at the manager's house, where, if necessary, the stranger could put up for the night. Old sun-downers told highly-coloured yarns of ferocious mastiffs who flew at the throat of any man on foot approaching within a quarter of a mile of old "Grip's" castle. It was quite certain that the most persistent swagger had never obtained the inevitable feed and shake down there. Moreover, extraordinary as the thing was in the case of a colonial house, no changes of servants ever gave Thompson's neighbours information about his household. It was generally supposed that an old childless, married couple attended to his wants, but, if they existed, they had never quitted the premises for twenty years at least. Neighbours believed in their existence, but none knew their names, or could describe them. Thompson took his own stores across from the homestead in his waggonette. His oldest station hands knew as little about his domestic affairs as the veriest stranger; not that many of his station hands were old servants; thanks to his meanness he generally parted company with his men at short intervals. Of this meanness full advantage was taken by his opponents in the election contests I have just referred to, and especially in a battle which took place nine years ago-just before, my ruin—and wherein I was prominent on the popular and anti-Thompson side. We elected our man, after a desperate fight, during which feeling ran very high. How proud I felt as I rode home that night, thinking over the victory of the people's cause, of how our [triumphant candidate had gripped me by the hand, and of what a change this day was to bring about—this day on which the wool-kings had been beaten at last.

Lying on my table when I reached home was one of the usual curt notes from Thompson's manager, requesting me to fetch ten sheep of mine from their yards at my earliest convenience. I hardly thought twice about it, so full was my mind of the day's page 32 excitement. Going to bed, I slept happily and soundly. It was for the last time. On reaching the yards next day, I saw at a glance that something was wrong. Thompson looked grimmer, his manager blacker, the shepherds more sullen than usual. Asked whether I claimed the sheep, I said "Yes." "Then," snarled Thompson, with his drawling accent, "we shall pros-e-cute you for sheep-stealing." He looked steadily at me as he spoke, under his straight, white eyebrows, with the most honest, open look I had ever seen on his face-a look of honest, open, gratified hate. The lines that curved from the base of his thin, crooked nose down outside the corners of his mouth deepened into furrows, the upper lip drew back slightly: it was the face of a man who felt that his enemy was in his grasp, and who was about to tighten that grasp. Boldly though I faced him, my heart misgave me, and I knew that he must have discovered something, if not all. Simply remarking that Mr. Cross, the manager, would hear anything I had to say, Thompson turned on his heel, and walked off, rigid as a rod of iron. In answer to my questions, Cross stated briefly that these particular sheep had been found on their land. Seeing my brand and ear-mark on them, he had treated them as stragglers. The shepherd, however, had drawn his attention to the fact that the earmarks were Mr. Thompson's, but clumsily tampered with. On closely examining the sheep, it was also plain otherwise that they belonged to Mr. Thompson's flock. Of course these sheep (five in number) would be detained; the other five I could take home if I pleased. I could examine the detained sheep if I liked, and explain, if I could, how it was that while part of the cutting in the ears was several years old, part had been done so recently that clotted blood was still sticking to the edges. Had Thompson been an ordinary man, I think I should have broken down, and begged for mercy. As it was, I could but ride home, cursing my folly, and prepare for the worst.

Strange to say, the worst did not come. Some lawyer's quibble partly saved me. I was not put in the dock as a thief, but was merely charged with the fraud of altering ear-marks. The magistrate inflicted! a fine of a hundred pounds, hoping that the disgrace and exposure would, in my case, somewhat add to the severity of the otherwise light' punishment. I left the court, a man with whom no honest settler would care to shake hands. I, who, a week before, had dreamed of regenerating the nation, I whose pulse had beat time with the march of progress, and whose eye had brightened at the eloquent words of my successful champion, slunk away alone through the little crowd outside the court door, an unconvicted felon.