for several thousand pounds. However, the personal appearance of Mick himself, an athletic, manly, full-bearded fellow, as also that of his family, was decidedly prepossessing. They were busily attending to the various classes of stock, with much difficulty kept apart for purposes of sale. Whatever else these Australian Celts lacked, they had been well nourished in youth and infancy. A finer sample of youthful humanity, physically considered, Wilfred had never seen. The lack of order everywhere visible had in no way reacted upon their faculties. All their lives they had known abundant nutriment, unrestricted range. Healthful exercise had been theirs, congenial labour, and diet unstinted in the great essentials. Few other considerations had entered into the family councils.
And now they were about to migrate, like the world’s elder children, to a land promising more room. Then, as now, a higher life was possible, where the sheep and the oxen, the camels and the asses, would enjoy a wider range. The sale over, they would once more resume that journey which, commencing soon after the marriage day of Michael Donnelly and Bridget Joyce, was not ended yet.
Wilfred Effingham was soon confirmed in his opinion that he had done well to attend. Many of the neighbouring settlers were there, as well as farmers and townspeople from Yass, brought together by the mysterious attraction of an auction sale. One of the townspeople, asking first if he was Mr. Effingham of Warbrok, put into his hand a note which ran as follows: —
‘My dear Wilfred – I thought you were likely to be at Donnelly’s sale, so I send you a line by a parishioner of mine. I have made inquiries about the stock, and consider that you could not do better than buy as many of the cattle as you have grass for. They are known to be quiet, having been used to dairy tending, and are certain to increase in value and number, as you have so much grass at Warbrok. Price about two pounds. A few horses would not be superfluous, and there are some good ones in Donnelly’s lot, or they would hardly have stood his work. Mention my name to Mick, and say he is to let you down easy. I have had a touch of rheumatism lately —et ego in Arcadia– there’s no escape from old age and its infirmities in any climate, however good, or I’d have looked you up before now. Tell your father I’m coming over soon. – Always yours sincerely,
The hour of sale having arrived, and indeed passed, the auctioneer, who had driven out from Yass for the purpose, commenced his task, which he did by climbing on to the ‘cap’ of the stock-yard and rapping violently with a hammer-handled hunting-crop. A broad-chested, stout-lunged, florid personage was Mr. Crackemup, and if selling by auction deserved to be ranked as one of the fine arts, he was no mean professor.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘I say ladies, for I notice quite a number of the fair sex have honoured me with their presence. Let me mention, in the first place, that the owner of this valuable stock we see before us has resolved to leave this part of the country. Yes, my friends, to leave Gumbaragongara for good and all! Why do I mention this fact – why do I dwell upon it? Because, ladies and gentlemen, it makes all the difference as to the bona fide nature of the sale which we are met together to-day to celebrate – that is – a – to carry out – according to these written conditions. My principal, Mr. Donnelly, with the shrewdness which has characterised him through life, seized upon this view of the case. “If I leave the country bodily,” he said to me, “and sell the stock for what they’ll fetch, no one can say that I went away and took the best with me.” No, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Donnelly departs to-morrow for Monaro, taking only a dray and team, with a few riding-horses, so that all his well-bred, quiet, beautiful herd of dairy cattle, selected with great care from some of the best herds in the colony [here divers of the audience grinned irreverently], I shall have the honour of submitting to public competition this day.
‘The first lot, ladies and gentlemen, is No. 1. Generally so, isn’t it? Ha! ha! One hundred and fifty-four cows and heifers, all broken to bail; most of them with calves at foot, or about to – to – become mothers.’
Mr. Crackemup was a man of delicate ideas, so he euphemised the maternal probabilities.
‘Any one buying this choice lot, with butter at a shilling, and cheese not to be bought, buys a fortune. I will sell a “run out” of twenty head, with the option of taking the lot. “Fifteen shillings a head” – nonsense; one pound, twenty-two and six, twenty-five-thank you, miss; thirty shillings, thirty-five, thirty-seven and six-thank you, sir. One pound seventeen and sixpence, once; one pound seventeen and sixpence, twice; for the third and last time, one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence. Gone! What name shall I say, sir? “Howard Effingham, Warbrok Chase.” Twenty head. Thank you, sir.’
At this critical moment the voice of Dick Evans was heard by Wilfred, in close proximity to his ear: ‘Collar the lot, sir; they’re dirt cheap; soon be in full milk. Don’t let ’em go.’
‘I believe,’ said Wilfred, raising his voice, ‘that I have the option of taking the whole.’
‘Quite correct, sir; but if I might advise – ’
‘I take the lot,’ said Wilfred decisively.
And though there was a murmur from the crowd, and one stalwart dame said, ‘That’s not fair, thin; I med sure I’d get a pen of springers myself,’ the auctioneer confirmed his right, and the dairy lot became his property.
It turned out, as is often the case, that the first offered stock were the most moderate in price. Many of the buyers had been holding back, thinking they would go in lots of twenty, and that better bargains might be obtained. When they found that the stranger had carried off all the best dairy cows, their disappointment was great.
‘Serves you right, boys,’ was heard in the big voice of the proprietor; ‘if you had bid up like men, instead of keeping dark, you’d have choked the cove off taking the lot. Serves you all dashed well right.’
The remaining lots of cattle consisted of weaners, two and three-year-old steers and heifers. Of fat cattle the herd had been pretty well ‘scraped,’ as Donnelly called it, before the sale. For most of these the bidding was so brisk and spirited that Wilfred thought himself lucky in securing forty steers at twenty-five shillings, which completed his drove, and were placed in the yard with the cows.
Then came the horses; nearly a hundred all told – mares, colts, fillies, yearlings, with aged or other riding-horses. These last Donnelly excused himself for selling by the statement that if he took them to Monaro half of them would be lost trying to get back to where they had been bred, and that between stock-riders and cattle-stealers his chance of regaining them would be small.
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