Robbery under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood — Read

We got to Melbourne all right, and though it's a different sort of a place from Sydney, it's a jolly enough town for a couple of young chaps with money in their pockets. Most towns are, for the matter of that. We took it easy, and didn't go on the spree or do anything foolish. No, we weren't altogether so green as that. We looked out for a quiet place to lodge, near the sea -- St. Kilda they call it, in front of the beach -- and we went about and saw all the sights, and for a time managed to keep down the thought that perhaps sooner or later we'd be caught, and have to stand our trial for this last affair of ours, and maybe one or two others. It wasn't a nice thing to think of; and now and then it used to make both of us take an extra drop of grog by way of driving the thoughts of it out of our heads. That's the worst of not being straight and square. A man's almost driven to drink when he can't keep from thinking of all sorts of miserable things day and night. We used to go to the horse-yards now and then, and the cattle-yards too. It was like old times to see the fat cattle and sheep penned up at Flemington, and the butchers riding out on their spicy nags or driving trotters. But their cattle-yards was twice as good as ours, and me and Jim used often to wonder why the Sydney people hadn't managed to have something like them all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush that we'd often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about.

However, one day, as we was sitting on the rails, talking away quite comfortable, we heard one butcher say to another, "My word, this is a smart bit of cattle-duffing -- a thousand head too! " "What's that? " says the other man. "Why, haven't you heard of it? " says the first one, and he pulls a paper out of his pocket, with this in big letters: "Great Cattle Robbery.