334 ALL ABOARD FOR SUNRISE LANDS.

Uncle Nat though was fast asleep, and when he did awake, an-
swering the ringing of a big house-bell, he told Ralph at the table
that they were all going after breakfast to the wool-shed, and he
added, “I miss Rick, but I guess the young man from Concord is there.”

Breakfast over, Mr. Bright and his guests were speedily on their
way to the wool-shed.

“That’s my wool-shed,’ said Mr. Bright finally, pointing out a
long, low wooden building. “Stop one moment. About here I found,
‘one day last week, my child, away now visiting. The little thing
does like sheep, especially a plump little sheep, and the liking
seems to be mutual. When missed the other day, my child was
found down here, fast asleep, a lot of sheep close by and on guard,
I suppose, while their keeper had a nap. Oh,I was going to tell
you about my paddocks! Outside this that hems in my wool-shed,
are paddocks for the sheep when at large, one having fifteen
thousand acres and two others have ten thousand each. Then I
have a smaller paddock where my cattle are.”

“Do you have a fence round all these?” inquired Uncle Nat.

“Oh yes, miles of it; fifty, we will say. Sometimes it is a ‘chock
and log’ fence; that is, logs resting on blocks, and sometimes it is of
bushes laid lengthwise, and then fastened down by forked sticks. . Now
if a run, as we call it—a range of ground for feeding sheep — should
not be fenced, then I must have shepherds to look after my flocks, and
the sheep must be penned up at night. If a run is fenced, I have what
we call boundary-riders, each rider having at his disposal a couple of
horses, and he rides about, looking after both sheep and fences, and
sometimes he must trot lively. There is a boundary rider.”

They saw on the outer edge of the wool-paddock a man on _horse-
back.

“ There is a Guaetter I‘have met in the United States, that they would