VVAYBACK AT THE PLOUGH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2647, 7 December 1904, Page 77

VVAYBACK AT THE PLOUGH.

/■ -—» - By Charles Oscab -Palmer. Your surpriss and alarm were great when you let up the Venetian blinds and looked oult from your luxurious bedroom to sec the cold fog clasping the distant Mils and brooding heavily over the harbour. Maybe the Haupiri or the Penguin would be de-layed,-and dainty-fingered customers would go. from your "establishment to seek 'the fine fabrics they .wanted or desired elsewhere, > * , " ■ - Wayback, however, was out under, the fog, feeding his horses, long before sunrise. He saw- the first faint, blue rift in>the brooding canopy, and soon the disigy mass rolled asunder, and the sullen hilltops were clear. - Soon the fog rolled off seaward, and the" ambery* light stole along the tussccky ridges, and, like silvery smoke, the lingering mists stole" up from the deeper valleys. Long after the sun was shining en the bush, in the gullies, on the southern j side of the> river, the mists, filmy, showy, ' sun-bright, lingered there ; but Wayback had S little time to mark the beauty about him. He was busy splitting wood and canying water for the day ; filling their nosebags and harnessing * liis team — Jess, the eager-eyed, &cry old black mare, and Dollie, the quiet bay filly. After breakfast he led them away round by the oldtime bridle track lo the terraces, and was about to harness them to the hillside plough, when 3ie noticed that Doljie had cast her off-side front shoe. A little seeking and he found the shoe, torn off where the team had been turning yesterday. Vox a wonder hammer and nails happened to be handy, and after much tinkering, and several explosions, Waybaok fixed the shoe, and got his team on the move. He happened upon, the toughest -piece of ploughing ho had tackled for some time. Pukio and flax roots -were matted ] in the nioist places; fern and tutu in the dry. Here the plough plunged into a depression, and there the horses "busted" --i bank, until the collars pulled at their throats, and the traces were above Iheir • backs, but Wayback stuck to the stilts of his plough and the reins, and laid a tidy line of soil against the weather. Ma.iy a "Whoa! whoa ! Steady! Wboa !'' weie his, and m^ny a "Dollie! Jess! Dollie! Keep steady ! Whoa i' 1

At noon he led liis team to the waterhole, but Jess refused to have anything to do with a fresh drinking place, and had to have her chaff without a drink.

Wayback hung his billy on a standard driven horizontally into the bank, and soon the tutu sticks were blazing briskly beneath it. As Wayback ate his cold mutton and bread and butter and finished up vith liis currant scons, he looked over the paper in which his lunch had been wrapped. Or he looked contentedly over his moi-i-mg's work and enjoyed the sunshine, that was fragrant with that time-old fragrance from ferny hiilslopes aud streamsides wfoere grows the moss-green taukinau and dingy manuka. He saw the sun-gleam en the flux that swayed in the wind that brought the smoke ever the ridge from \ 'here, the itbbiter's dogs were barking, and he heard the river murmur belovr the shading bl'jft'3.

His team worked steadily throughout the afternoon, and he scarce had time to mark the shadows 'deepen between the hills o.s the sun sank toward the western tops. As he unharnessed and trudged home behind the team, the great, rosy afterglow spread far up into the sky, and a tender silvery light fay on the stream that wound away below the dingy hills. As he' came round the corner c-i the hill the ruddy moon confronted him, the waiting cows and the eager kiddies, and though tired he was delighted to ineot mother carrying little Bub Wayback ; to tyke his little' darling in his arms, and rejoice in her glee at the sight of the horses and her continued exclamation, "A-duck, a-duck, a-duck, a-duck, a-duck!" Ho was cut after tea in tha keen wind that blows down the valley seaward from the inland snows to feed the stock, cover tha- horses, and milk the old poley. The moon &Lone on the frosted, gleaming grass, on the murmurous river, on the ferny hillsides and tha deep-wooded gullies, whence the mimnur of the sea, was echoed solemnly and the morepork's cry came weirdly. As he finished up for the night he had vividly in his mind's eye the result of his day's toil, the tarn-up, fat, tough fern root perishing in the frosty wind, deep furrows where the turnips will fatten his fourtooths next winter.