Poor old Jim! We bought a couple of horses, and rode away down to Sale with these chaps that had sold their cattle in Melbourne and was going home.

It rained all the way, and it was the worst road by chalks we'd ever seen in our lives; but the soil was wonderful, and the grass was something to talk about; we'd hardly ever seen anything like it.

A few thousand acres there would keep more stock than half the country we'd been used to.
We didn't stay more than a day or so in Sale.

Every morning at breakfast some one was sure to turn up the paper and begin jabbering about the same old infernal business, Hood's cattle, and what a lot were taken, and whether they'll catch Starlight and the other men, and so on.
We heard of a job at Omeo while we were in Sale, which we thought would just about suit us.

All the cattle on a run there were to be mustered and delivered to a firm of stock agents that had bought them; they wanted people to do it by contract at so much a head.