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                          THE SQUATTER’S DREAM

                      ~A Story of Australian Life~

[Illustration]

                                  THE
                            SQUATTER’S DREAM

                      ~A Story of Australian Life~

                                   BY
                            ROLF BOLDREWOOD

       AUTHOR OF “ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,” “THE MINER’S RIGHT,” ETC.

                                ~London~
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                              AND NEW YORK
                                  1891

        _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_

                    RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
                           LONDON AND BUNGAY.

                  FIRST EDITION (PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE).
        _New Edition Published by_ MACMILLAN & CO., July, 1890;
         _Reprinted_ August, October, and November, 1890, 1891.




                          THE SQUATTER’S DREAM

                     _A STORY OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE._




                               CHAPTER I.

        “Here in the sultriest season let him rest.
          Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees;
        Here winds of gentlest wing will fan his breast,
          From heaven itself he may inhale the breeze.”—_Byron._


Jack Redgrave was a jolly, well-to-do young squatter, who, in the year
185—, had a very fair cattle station in one of the Australian colonies,
upon which he lived in much comfort and reasonable possession of the
minor luxuries of life. He had, in bush parlance, “taken it up” himself,
when hardly more than a lad, had faced bad seasons, blacks, bush-fires,
bushrangers, and bankers (these last he always said terrified him far
more than the others), and had finally settled down into a somewhat too
easy possession of a couple of thousand good cattle, a well-bred, rather
fortunate stud, and a roomy, cool cottage with a broad verandah all
covered with creepers.

The climate in which his abode was situated was temperate, from latitude
and proximity to the coast. It was cold in the winter, but many a ton of
she-oak and box had burned away in the great stone chimney, before which
Jack used to toast himself in the cold nights, after a long day’s riding
after cattle. He had plenty of books, for he did not altogether neglect
what he called his mind, and he had time to read them, as of course he
was not always out on the run, or away mustering, or doing a
small—sometimes very small—bit of business at the country town, just
forty miles off, or drafting or branding his cattle. He would work away
manfully at all these avocations for a time, and then, the cattle being
branded up, the business in the country town settled, the musters
completed, and the stockmen gone home, he used to settle down for a week
or two at home, and take it easy. Then he read whole forenoons, rather
indiscriminately perhaps, but still to the general advantage of his
intelligence. History, novels, voyages and travels, classics, science,
natural history, political economy, languages—they all had their turn.
He had an uncommonly good memory, so that no really well-educated prig
could be certain that he would be found ignorant upon any given subject
then before the company, as he was found to possess a fund of
information when hard pressed.

He was a great gardener, and had the best fruit trees and some of the
best flowers in that part of the country. At all odd times, that is,
early in the morning before it was time to dress for breakfast, in
afternoons when he had been out all day, and generally when he had
nothing particular to do, he was accustomed to dig patiently, and to
plant and prune, and drain and trench, in this garden of his. He was a
strong fellow, who had always lived a steady kind of life, so that he
had a constitution utterly unimpaired, and spirits to match. These last
were so good that he generally rose in the morning with the kind of
feeling which every boy experiences during the holidays—that the day was
not long enough for all the enjoyable occupations which were before him,
and that it was incumbent on him to rise up and enter into possession of
these delights with as little loss of time as might be.

For there were so many pleasant things daily occurring, and, wonderful
to relate, they were real, absolute duties. There were those cattle to
be drafted that had been brought from the Lost Waterhole, most of which
he had not seen for six months. There were those nice steers to ride
through, now so grown and fattened—indeed almost ready for market. There
were ever so many pretty little calves, white and roan and red, which he
had never seen at all, following their mothers, and which were of course
to be branded. It was not an unpleasant office placing the brand
carefully upon their tender skins, an office he seldom delegated—seeing
the J R indelibly imprinted thereon, with the consciousness that each
animal so treated might be considered to be a five-pound note added to
his property and possessions.

There was the wild-fowl shooting in the lagoons and marshes which lay
amid his territory; the kangaroo hunting with favourite greyhounds; the
jolly musters at his neighbours’ stations—all cattle-men like himself;
and the occasional races, picnics, balls, and parties at the country
town, where resided many families, including divers young ladies, whose
fresh charms often caused Jack’s heart to bound like a cricket-ball. He
was in great force at the annual race meetings. Then all the good
fellows—and there were many squatters in those days that deserved the
appellation—who lived within a hundred miles would come down to Hampden,
the country town referred to; and great would be the joy and jollity of
that week. Everybody, in a general way, bred, trained, and rode his own
horses; and as everybody, in a general way, was young and active, the
arrangement was productive of excellent racing and unlimited fun.

Then the race ball, at which everybody made it a point of honour to
dance all night. Then the smaller dances, picnics, and riding
parties—for nearly all the Hampden young ladies could ride well. While
the “schooling” indulged in by Jack and his contemporaries, under the
stimulus of ladies’ eyes, over the stiff fences which surrounded
Hampden, was “delightfully dangerous,” as one of the girls observed,
regretting that such amusements were to her prohibited. At the end of
the week everybody went peaceably home again, fortified against such
dullness as occasionally invades that freest of all free lives, that
pleasantest of all pleasant professions—the calling of a squatter.

Several times in each year, generally in the winter time, our hero would
hold a great general gathering at Marshmead, and would “muster for fat
cattle,” as the important operation was termed. Then all the neighbours
within fifty miles would come over, or send their stockmen, as the case
might be, and there would be great fun for a few days—galloping about
and around, and “cutting out,” in the camp every day; feasting, and
smoking, and singing, and story-telling, both in the cottage and the
huts, with a modest allowance of drinking (in the district around
Hampden there was very little of that), by night. After a few days of
this kind of work, Jack would go forth proudly on the war-path with his
stockman, Geordie Stirling, and a black boy, and in front of them a good
draft of unusually well-bred fat cattle, in full route for the
metropolis—a not very lengthened drive—during which no possible care by
day or by night was omitted by Jack or his subordinates—indeed, they
seldom slept, except by snatches, for the last ten days of the journey,
never put the cattle in the yard for any consideration whatever, but saw
them safely landed at their market, and ready for the flattering
description with which they were always submitted to the bidding of the
butchers.

This truly important operation concluded, Geordie and the boy were
generally sent back the next day, and Jack proceeded to enjoy himself
for a fortnight, as became a dweller in the wilderness who had conducted
his enterprise to that point of success which comprehends the cheque in
your pocket. How he used to enjoy those lovely genuine holidays, after
his hard work! for the work, while it lasted, _was_ pretty hard. And,
though Jack with his back to the fire in the club smoking-room, laying
down the law about the “Orders in Council” or the prospects of the next
Assembly Ball, did not give one the idea of a life of severe
self-denial, yet neither does a sailor on shore. And as Jack Tar,
rolling down the street, “with courses free,” is still the same man who,
a month since, was holding on to a spar (and life) at midnight, reefing
the ice-hard sail, with death and darkness around for many a league; so
our Jack, leading his horse across a cold plain, and tramping up to his
ankles in frosted mud, the long night through, immediately behind his
half-seen drove, was the same man, only in the stage of toil and
endurance, preceding and giving keener zest to that of enjoyment. Our
young squatter was a very sociable fellow, and had plenty of friends. He
wished ill to no man, and would rather do a kindness to any one than
not. He liked all kinds of people for all kinds of opposite qualities.
He liked the “fast” men, because they were often clever and generally
had good manners. There was no danger of his following their lead,
because he was unusually steady; and besides, if he had any obstinacy it
was in the direction of choosing his own path. He liked the _savants_,
and the musical celebrities, and the “good” people, because he
sympathized with all their different aims or attainments. He liked the
old ladies because of their experience and improving talk; and he liked,
or rather loved, all the young ladies, tall or short, dark or fair,
slow, serious, languishing, literary—there was something very nice about
all of them. In fact, Jack Redgrave liked everybody, and everybody liked
him. He had that degree of amiability which proceeds from a rooted
dislike to steady thinking, combined with strong sympathies. He hated
being bored in any way himself, and tried to protect others from what
annoyed him so especially. No wonder that he was popular.

After two or three weeks of town life, into which he managed to compress
as many dinners, dances, talks, flirtations, rides, drives, new books,
and new friends, as would have lasted any moderate man a year, he would
virtuously resolve to go home to Marshmead. After beginning to sternly
resolve and prepare on Monday morning, he generally went on resolving
and preparing till Saturday, at some hour of which fatal day he would
depart, telling himself that he had had enough town for six months.

In a few days he would be back at Marshmead. Then a new period of
enjoyment commenced, as he woke in the pure fresh bush air—his window I
need not state was always open at night—and heard the fluty carols of
the black and white birds which “proclaim the dawn,” and the lowing of
the dairy herd being fetched up by Geordie, who was a preternaturally
early riser.

A stage or two on the town side of his station lived Bertram Tunstall, a
great friend of his, whose homestead he always made the day before
reaching home. They were great cronies.

Tunstall was an extremely well-educated man, and had a far better head
than Jack, whom he would occasionally lecture for want of method,
punctuality, and general heedlessness of the morrow. Jack had more life
and energy than his friend, to whom, however, he generally deferred in
important matters. They had a sincere liking and respect for one
another, and never had any shadow of coldness fallen upon their
friendship. When either man went to town it would have been accounted
most unfriendly if he had not within the week, or on his way home,
visited the other, and given him the benefit of his new ideas and
experiences.

Jack accordingly rode up to the “Lightwoods” half an hour before sunset,
and seeing his friend sitting in the verandah reading, raised a wild
shout and galloped up to the garden gate.

“Well, Bertie, old boy, how serene and peaceful we look. No wonder those
ruffianly agricultural agitators think we squatters never do any work,
and ought to have our runs taken away and given to the poor. Why, all
looks as quiet as if everything was done and thought about till next
Christmas, and as if you had been reading steadily in that chair since I
saw you last.”

“Even a demagogue, Jack, would hesitate to believe that because a man
read occasionally he didn’t work at all. I wish _they_ would read more,
by the way; then they wouldn’t be so illogical. But I really haven’t
much to do just now, except in the garden. I’m a store-cattle man, you
know, and my lot being well broken in——”

“You’ve only to sit in the verandah and read till they get fat. That’s
the worst of our life. There isn’t enough for a man of energy to do—and
upon my word, old fellow, I’m getting tired of it.”

“Tired of what?” asked his friend, rather wonderingly; “tired of your
life, or tired of your bread and butter, because the butter is too
abundant? Oh, I see, we are just returned from town, where we met a
young lady who——”

“Not at all; not that I didn’t meet a very nice girl——”

“You always do. If you went to Patagonia, you’d say, ‘’Pon my word I met
a very nice girl there, considering—her hair wasn’t very greasy, she had
good eyes and teeth, and her skin—her skins, I mean—had not such a bad
odour when you got used to it.’ You’re such a very tolerant fellow.”

“You be hanged; but this Ellen Middleton really _was_ a nice girl,
capital figure, nice face, good expression you know, and reads—so few
girls read at all nowadays.”

“I believe they read just as much as or more than ever; only when a
fellow takes a girl for good and all, to last him for forty or fifty
years, if he live so long, she’d need to be a _very_ nice girl indeed,
as you say.”

“Don’t talk in that utilitarian way; one would think you had no heart;
but it does seem an awful risk, doesn’t it? Suppose one got taken in, as
you do sometimes about horses ‘incurably lame,’ or ‘no heart,’ like that
brute Bolivar I gave such a price for. What a splendid thing it would be
if one were only a Turk, and could marry every year and believe one was
acting most religiously and devoutly.”

“Come, Jack, who is talking unprofitably now? Something’s gone wrong
with you evidently. Here comes dinner.”

After dinner the friends sat and smoked in the broad verandah, and
looked out over the undulating grassy downs, timbered like a park, and
at the blue starry night.

“I really was in earnest,” said Jack, “when I talked about being tired
of the sort of life you and I, and all the fellows in this district, are
leading just now.”

“Were you though?” asked his friend; “what’s amiss with it?”

“Well, we are wasting our time, I consider, with these small cattle
stations. No one has room for more than two or three thousand head of
cattle. And what are they?”

“Only a pleasant livelihood,” answered his friend, “including books,
quiet, fresh air, exercise, variety, a dignified occupation, and perfect
independence, plus one or two thousand a year income. It’s not much, I
grant you; but I’m a moderate man, and I feel almost contented.”

“What’s a couple of thousand a year in a country like this?” broke in
Jack, impetuously, “while those sheep-holding fellows in Riverina are
making their five or ten upon country only half or a quarter stocked.
They have only to breed up, and there they are, with fifty or a hundred
thousand sheep. Sheep, with the run given in, will always be worth a
pound ahead, whatever way the country goes.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Tunstall; “though I have never been
across the Murray, and don’t intend to go, as far as I know. As for
sheep, I hate them, and I hate shepherds, lazy crawling wretches! they
and the sheep are just fit to torment one another. Besides, how do you
know these great profits _are_ made? You’re not much of an accountant,
Jack, excuse me.”

“I didn’t think you were so prejudiced,” quoth Jack, with dignity. “I
can cipher fast enough when it’s worth while. Besides, better heads than
mine are in the spec. You know Foreland, Marsalay, the Milmans, and Hugh
Brass, all longheaded men! They are buying up unstocked country or
cattle runs, and putting on ewes by the ten thousand.”

“Better heads than yours may lie as low, my dear Jack; though I don’t
mean to say you have a bad head by any means. And as to the
account-keeping you can do that very reasonably, like most other
things—_when you try_, when you try, old man. But you don’t often try,
you careless, easygoing beggar that you are, except when you are
excited—as you are now—by something in the way of natural history—a
mare’s nest, so to speak.”

“This mare’s nest will have golden eggs in it then. Theodorus Sharpe
told me that he made as much in one year from the station he bought out
there as he had done in half-a-dozen while he was wasting his life (that
was his expression) down here.”

“Has the benevolent Theodorus any unstocked back country to dispose of?”
asked Tunstall, quietly.

“Well, he has one place to sell—a regular bargain,” said Jack, rather
hesitatingly, “but we didn’t make any special agreement about it. I am
to go out and see the country for myself.”

“And suppose you do like it, and believe a good deal more of what
Theodorus Sharpe tells you than I should like to do, what then?”

“Why then I shall sell Marshmead, buy a large block of country, and put
on breeding sheep.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be considered perfectly Eastern hospitality to
call a man a perfect fool in one’s own house. But, Jack, if you do this
thing I shall _think_ so. You may quarrel with me if you like.”

“I should never quarrel with you, dear old boy, whatever you said or
thought. Be sure of that,” said Jack, feelingly. “We have been too long
friends and brothers for that. But I reserve _my_ right to think you an
unambitious, unprogressive what’s-your-name. You will be eaten out by
cockatoos in another five years, when I am selling out and starting for
my European tour.”

“I will take the chance of that,” said Tunstall; “but, joking apart, I
would do anything to persuade you not to go. Besides, you have a duty to
perform to this district, where you have lived so long, and, on the
whole, done so well. I thought you were rather strong on the point,
though I confess I am not, of duty to one’s country socially,
politically, and what not.”

“Well, I grant you I had notions of that kind once,” admitted Jack, “but
then you see all these small towns have become so confoundedly
democratic lately, that I think we squatters owe them nothing, and must
look after our own interests.”

“Which means making as much money as ever we can, and by whatever means.
Jack! Jack! the demon of vulgar ambition, mere material advancement, has
seized upon you, and I can see it is of no use talking. My good old
warm-hearted Jack has vanished, and in his place I see a mere
money-making speculator, gambling with land and stock instead of cards
and dice. If you make the money you dream of, it will do you no good,
and if not——”

“Well, if not? Suppose I don’t win?”

“Then you will lose your life, or all that makes life worth having. I
have never seen a ruined man who had not lost much beside his years and
his money. I can’t say another word. Good-night!”

Next morning the subject was not resumed. The friends wrung each other’s
hands silently at parting, and Jack rode home to Marshmead.

When he got to the outer gate of the paddock he opened it meditatively,
and as he swung it to without dismounting his heart smote him for the
deed he was about to commit, as a species of treason against all his
foregone life and associations.




                              CHAPTER II.

           “Who calleth thee, heart? World’s strife,
           With a golden heft to his knife.”—_E.B. Browning_


The sun was setting over the broad, open creek flat, which was dotted
with groups of cattle, the prevailing white and roan colouring of which
testified to their short-horn extraction. It was the autumnal season,
but the early rains, which never failed in _that_ favoured district, had
promoted the growth of a thick and green if rather short sward, grateful
to the eye after the somewhat hot day. A couple of favourite mares and
half-a dozen blood yearlings came galloping up, neighing, and causing
Hassan, his favourite old hack, to put up his head and sidle about.
Everything looked prosperous and peaceful, and, withal, wore that
indescribable air of half solitude which characterizes the Australian
bush.

Jack’s heart swelled as he saw the place which he had first chosen out
of the waste, which he had made and built up, stick by stick, hut by
hut, into its present comfortable completeness, and he said to
himself—“I have half a mind to stick to old Hampden after all!” Here was
the place where, a mere boy, he had ridden a tired horse one night,
neither of them having eaten since early morn, into the thick of a camp
of hostile blacks! How he had called upon the old horse with sudden
spur, and how gallantly the good nag, so dead beat but a moment before,
had answered, and carried him safely away from the half-childish,
half-ferocious beings who would have knocked him on the head with as
little remorse then as an opossum! Yonder was where the old sod but
stood, put up by him and the faithful Geordie, and in which he had
considered himself luxuriously lodged, as a contrast to living under a
dray.

Over there was where he had sowed his first vegetable seeds, cutting
down and carrying the saplings with which it was fenced. It was,
certainly, so small that the blacks believed he had buried some one
there, whom he had done to death secretly, and would never be convinced
to the contrary, disbelieving both his vows and his vegetables. There
was the stockyard which he and Geordie had put up, carrying much of the
material on their shoulders, when the bullocks, as was their custom,
“quite frequent,” were lost for a week.

He gazed at the old slab hut, the first real expensive regular
station-building which the property had boasted. How proud he had been
of it too! Slabs averaging over a foot wide! Upper and lower wall-plates
all complete. Loop holes, necessities of the period, on either side of
the chimney. Never was there such a hut. It was the first one he had
helped to build, and it was shrined as a palace in his imagination for
years after.

And now that the rude old days were gone, and the pretty cottage stood,
amid the fruitful orchard and trim flower-beds, that the brown face of
Harry the groom appears, from a well-ordered stable, with half-a-dozen
colts and hacks duly done by at rack and manger, that the stackyard
showed imposingly with its trimly-thatched ricks, and that the table was
already laid by Mrs. Stirling, the housekeeper, in the cool dining-room,
and “decored with napery” very creditable to a bachelor
establishment;—was he to leave all this realized order, this capitalized
comfort, and go forth into the arid wilderness of the interior,
suffering the passed-away privations of the “bark hut and tin pot
era”—all for the sake of—what? Making more money! He felt ashamed of
himself, as Geordie came forward with a smile of welcome upon his rugged
face, and said—

“Well, master, I was afraid you was never coming back. Here’s that
fellow Fakewell been and mustered on the sly again, and it’s the
greatest mercy as I heard only the day before.”

“You were there, I’ll be bound, Geordie.”

“Ye’ll ken that, sir, though I had to ride half the night. It was well
worth a ride, though. I got ten good calves and a gra-and two-year-old,
unbranded heifer, old Poll’s, you’ll mind her, that got away at
weaning.”

“I don’t remember—but how did you persuade Fakewell to take your word? I
should have thought he’d have forged half-a-dozen mothers for a beast of
that age.”

“Well, we had a sair barney, well nigh a fight, you might be sure. At
last I said, ‘I’ll leave it to the black boy to say whose calf she is,
and if he says the wrong cow you shall have her.’

“‘But how am I to know,’ says he, ‘that you haven’t told him what to
say?’

“‘You saw him come up. Hoo could I know she was here?’

“‘Well, that’s true,’ says he. ‘Well, now you tell me the old cow’s name
as you say she belongs to, so as he can’t hear, and then I’ll ask him
the question.’

“‘All right,’ I said, ‘you hear the paction (to all the stockmen, and
they gathered round); Mr. Fakewell says he’ll give me that heifer, the
red beast with the white tail, if Sandfly there can tell the auld coo’s
name right. You see the callant didna come with me; he just brought up
the fresh horses.’

“‘All right,’ they said.

“So Fakewell says—‘Now, Sandfly, who does that heifer belong to?’

“The small black imp looks serious at her for a minute, and then his
face broke out into a grin all over. ‘That one belong to Mr.
Redgrave—why that old ‘cranky Poll’s’ calf, we lose him out of weaner
mob last year.’

“All right, that’s so,” says Fakewell, uncommon sulky, while all the men
just roared; ‘but don’t you brand yer calves when you wean ’em?’

“‘That one get through gate, and Mr. Redgrave says no use turn back all
the mob, then tree fall down on fence and let out her and two more. But
that young cranky Poll safe enough, I take Bible oath.’

“‘You’ll do; take your heifer,’ says he; ‘I’ll be even with some one for
this.’”

“I dare say he didn’t get the best of you, Master Geordie,” said Jack,
kindly; “he’d be a sharp fellow if he did. You were going to muster the
‘Lost Waterhole Camp’ soon, weren’t you?”

“There’s a mob there that wants bringing in and regulating down there
just uncommon bad. I was biding a bit, till you came home.”

“Well, Geordie, you can call me at daylight to-morrow. I’ll have an
early breakfast and go out with you. You know I haven’t been getting up
quite so early lately.”

“You can just wake as early as any one, when you like, sir; but I’ll
call you. What horse shall I tell Harry?”

“Well, I’ll take ‘the Don,’ I think. No, tell him to get ‘Mustang,’ he’s
the best cutting-out horse.”

“No man ever had a better servant,” thought Jack as he sat down in half
an hour to his well-appointed table and well-served, well-cooked repast.

Geordie Stirling was as shrewd, staunch a Borderer as ever was reared in
that somewhat bleak locality, a worthy descendant of the men who
gathered fast with spear and brand, when the bale-fires gave notice that
the moss-troopers were among their herds. He was sober, economical, and
self-denying. He and his good wife had retained the stern doctrines in
which their youth had been reared, but little acted upon by the
circumstances and customs of colonial life.

Jack applied himself to his dinner with reasonable earnestness, having
had a longish ride, and being one of those persons whose natural
appetite is rarely interfered with by circumstances. He could always
eat, drink, and sleep with a zest which present joy or sorrow to come
had no power to disturb. He therefore appreciated the roast fowl and
other home-grown delicacies which Mrs. Stirling placed before him, and
settled down to a good comfortable read afterwards, leaving the
momentous question of migration temporarily in abeyance. After all this
was over, however, he returned to the consideration of the subject. He
went over Fred Tunstall’s arguments, which he thought were well enough
in their way, but savoured of a nature unprogressive and too easily
contented. “It’s all very well to be contented,” he said to himself;
“and we are very fairly placed now, but a man must look ahead. Suppose
these runs are cut up and sold by a democratic ministry, or allowed to
be taken up, before survey, by cockatoos, where shall we be in ten
years? Almost cockatoos ourselves, with run for four or five hundred
head of cattle; a lot of fellows pestering our lives out; and a couple
of thousand acres of purchased land. There’s no living to be made out of
_that_. Not what I call a living; unless one were to milk his own cows,
and so on. I hardly think I should do that. No! I’ll go in for something
that will be growing and increasing year by year, not the other way.
This district is getting worn out. The land is too good. The runs are
too small and too close to one another, and will be smaller yet. No! my
idea of a run is twenty miles frontage to a river—the Oxley or the
Lachlan, with thirty miles back; then with twenty thousand ewes, or even
ten to start with, you may expect something like an increase, and lots
of ground to put them on. Then sell out and have a little Continental
travel; come back, marry, and settle down. By Jove! here goes—Victory or
Westminster Abbey!”

Inspired by these glorious visions, and conceiving quite a contempt for
poor little Marshmead, with only 2,000 cattle and a hundred horses upon
its 20,000 acres, Jack took out his writing materials and scribbled off
the following advertisement:—

“Messrs. Drawe and Backwell have much pleasure in announcing the sale by
auction, at an early period, of which due notice will be given, of the
station known as Marshmead, in the Hampden district, with two thousand
unusually well-bred cattle of the J R brand. The run, in point of
quality, is one of the best, in a celebrated fattening district. The
cattle are highly bred, carefully culled, and have always brought
first-class prices at the metropolitan sale-yards. The improvements are
extensive, modern, and complete. The only reason for selling this
valuable property is that the proprietor contemplates leaving the
colony.”

“There,” said Jack, laying down his pen, “that’s quite enough—puffing
won’t sell a place, and everybody’s heard of Marshmead, and of the J R
cattle, most likely. If they haven’t, they can ask. There’s no great
difficulty in selling a first-class run. And now I’ll seal it up ready
for the post, and turn in.”

Next morning, considerably to Geordie’s disappointment, Jack declined to
go out to the “Lost Waterhole Camp,” telling him rather shortly (to
conceal his real feelings) that he thought of selling the place, and
that it would be time to muster when they were delivering.

“Going to sell the run!” gasped Geordie, perfectly aghast. “Why, master,
what ever put such a thing into your head? Where will ye find a bonnier
place than this? and there’s no such a herd of cattle in all the country
round. Sell Marshmead! Why, you must have picked up that when in town.”

“Never mind where I picked it up,” said Jack, rather crossly; “I have
thought the matter over well, you may believe, and as I have made up my
mind there is no use in talking about it. You don’t suppose Hampden is
all Australia?”

“No, but it’s one of the best bits upon the whole surface of it—and that
I’ll live and die on,” said Geordie. “Look at the soil and the climate.
Didn’t I go across the Murray to meet they store cattle, and wasna it
nearly the death of me? Six weeks’ hard sun, and never a drop of rain.
And blight, and flies, and bush mosquiteys; why, I’d rather live here on
a pound a week than have a good station there. Think o’ the garden,
too.”

“Well, Geordie,” said Jack, “all that’s very well, but look at the size
of the runs! Why, I saw 1,000 head of fat cattle coming past one station
I stayed at, in one mob, splendid cattle too; bigger and better than any
of our little drafts we think such a lot of. Besides, I don’t mind heat,
you know, and I’m bent on being a large stockholder, or none at all.”

“Weel, weel!” said Geordie, “you will never be convinced. I know you’ll
just have your own way, but take care ye dinna gang the road to lose all
the bonny place ye have worked hard for. The Lord keep ye from making
haste to be rich.”

“I know, I know,” said Jack, testily; “but the Bible says nothing about
changing your district. Abraham did that, you know, and evidently was
getting crowded up where he was.”

“Master John, you’re not jestin’ about God’s Word! ye would never do the
like o’ that, I know, but Elsie and I will pray ye’ll be properly
directed—and Elspeth Stirling will be a sorrowful woman I know to stay
behind, as she must, when all’s sold and ye go away to that desolate,
waesome hot desert, where there’s neither Sabbaths, nor Christian men,
nor the Word once in a year.”

The fateful advertisement duly appeared, and divers “intending
purchasers,” introduced by Messrs. Drawe and Backwell, arrived at
Marshmead, where they were met with that tempered civility which such
visitors generally receive.

The usual objections were made. The run was not large enough; the
boundaries were inconvenient or not properly defined; the stock were not
as good as had been represented; the improvements were not sufficiently
extensive. This statement was made by a young and aristocratic investor,
who was about to be married. He was very critical about the height of
the cottage walls, and the size of the sitting-room. The buildings were
too numerous and expensive, and would take more money than they were
worth to keep in repair. This was the report and opinion of an elderly
purchaser (Scotch), who did not see the necessity of anything bigger
than a two-roomed slab hut. Such an edifice had been quite enough for
him (he was pleased to remark) to make twenty thousand pounds in, on the
Lower Murray, and to drink many a gallon of whisky in. As such results
and recreations comprised, in his estimation, “the whole duty of man,”
he considered Jack’s neat outbuildings, and even the garden—_horresco
referens!_—to be totally superfluous and unprofitable. He expressed his
intention, if he were to do such an unlikely thing as to buy the wee bit
kail-yard o’ a place, to pull two-thirds of the huts down.

All these criticisms, mingled with sordid chaffering, were extremely
distasteful to Jack’s taste, and his temper suffered to such an extent
that he had thought of writing to the agents to give no further orders
for inspection. However, shortly after the departure of the
objectionable old savage, as he profanely termed the veteran
pastoralist, he received a telegram to say that the sale was concluded.
Mr. Donald M‘Donald, late of Binjee-Mungee, had paid half cash, and the
rest at short-dated bills, and would send his nephew, Mr. Angus
M‘Tavish, to take delivery in a few days.

Long before these irrevocable matters had come to pass, our hero had
bitterly repented of his determination. Those of his neighbours who were
not on such terms of intimacy as to expostulate roundly, like Tunstall,
could not conceal their distrust or disapproval of his course. Some were
sincerely sorry to lose him as a neighbour, and this expression of
feeling touched him more deeply than the opposition of the others.

Mr. M‘Tavish arrived, and, after delivery of his credentials, the last
solemnities of mustering and delivery were duly concluded.

The “nephew of his uncle” was an inexperienced but deeply suspicious
youth, who declined to take the most obvious things for granted, and
consistently disbelieved every word that was said to him. Geordie
Stirling with difficulty refrained from laying hands upon him; and Jack
was so disgusted with his “manners and customs” that, on the evening
when the delivery was concluded, he declined to spend another night at
old Marshmead, but betook himself, with his two favourite hacks,
specially reserved at time of sale, to the nearest inn, from which he
made the best of his way to the metropolis.

The disruption of old ties and habitudes was much more painful than he
had anticipated. His two faithful retainers located themselves upon an
adjoining farm, which their savings had enabled them to purchase. To
this they removed their stock, which was choice though not numerous.
Geordie, after his first warning, said no more, knowing by experience
that his master, when he had set his mind upon a thing, was more
obstinate than many a man of sterner mould. Too sincere to acquiesce,
his rugged, weather-beaten lineaments retained their look of solemn
disapproval, mingled at times with a curiously pathetic gaze, to the
last.

With his wife Elspeth, a woman of much originality and force of
character, combined with deep religious feeling of the old-fashioned
Puritan type, the case was different.

She had a strong and sincere affection for John Redgrave, whom she had
known from his early boyhood, and in many ways had she demonstrated
this. She had unobtrusively and efficiently ministered to his comfort
for years. She had not scrupled to take him to task in a homely and
earnest way for minor faults and backslidings, all of which rebukes and
remonstrances he had taken in good part, as springing from an
over-zealous but conscientious desire for his welfare. His friends
smiled at the good old woman’s warnings and testifyings, occasionally
delivered, when performing her household duties, in the presence of any
company then and there assembled, by whom she was not in the slightest
degree abashed, or to be turned from any righteous purpose.

“Eh, Maister John, ye’ll no be wantin’ to ride anither of thae weary
steeplechasers?” she had been pleased to inquire upon a certain
occasion; “ye’ll just be fa’in doon and hurtin’ yersel’, or lamin’ and
woundin’ the puir beastie that’s been granted to man for a’ useful
purposes!”

She had been in the habit of “being faithful to him,” as she termed
divers very plain spoken and home-thrusting exhortations in respect to
his general habits and walk in life, whenever she had reason to think
such allocution to be necessary. She had taken him to task repeatedly
for unprofitable reading upon, and lax observance of, the Sabbath; for a
too devoted adherence to racing, and the unpardonable sin of betting;
for too protracted absences in the metropolis, and consequent neglect of
his interests at Marshmead; and, generally, for any departure from the
strict line of Christian life and manners which she rigidly observed
herself, and compelled Geordie to practice. Though sometimes testy at
such infringements upon the liberty of the subject, Jack had sufficient
sense and good feeling to recognize the true and deep anxiety for his
welfare from which this excess of carefulness sprang. In every other
respect old Elsie’s rule was without flaw or blemish. For all the years
of their stay at Marshmead, no bachelor in all the West had enjoyed such
perfect immunity from the troubles and minor miseries to which
Australian employers are subjected. Spotless cleanliness, perfect
comfort, and proverbial cookery, had been the unbroken experience of the
Marshmead household. It was a place at which all guests, brought there
for pleasure or duty, hastened to arrive, and lingered with flattering
unwillingness to leave.

And now this pleasant home was to be broken up, the peaceful repose and
organized comfort to be abandoned, and the farewell words to be said to
the faithful retainer.

Jack felt parting with the old woman more than he cared to own; he felt
almost ashamed and slightly irritated at the depth of his emotion.
“Confound it,” he said to himself, “it’s very hard that one can’t sell
one’s run and move off to a thinly-stocked country without feeling as if
one had committed a species of wrong and treachery, and having to make
as many affecting farewells as I have no doubt my governor did when he
left England for the _terra incognita_ Australia.”

“Well, Elsie,” he said, with an attempt at ease and jocularity he was
far from feeling, “I must say good-bye. I hope you and Geordie will be
snug and comfortable at your farm. I’ll write to you when I’m settled in
Riverina; and, if I do as well as some others, I shall make a pot of
money, and be off to the old country in a few years.”

He put out his hand, but the old woman heeded it not, but gazed in his
face with a wistful, pleading look, and the tears filled her eyes, not
often seen in melting mood, as she said—

“Oh, Maister John, oh, my bairn, that I should live to see you ride away
from the bonny home where ye’ve lived so long, and been aye respeckit
and useful in your generation. Do ye think ye have the Lord’s blessing
for giving up the lot where He has placed ye and blessed ye, for to gang
amang strangers and scorners—all for the desire of gain? I misdoot the
flitting, and the craving for the riches that perish in the using,
sairly—sairly. Dinna forget your Bible; and pray, oh, pray to Him, my
bairn, that ye may be direckit in the right way. I canna speak mair for
greetin’ and mistrustin’ that my auld een have looked their last on your
bonny face. May the Lord have ye in His keeping.”

Her tears flowed unrestrainedly, as she clasped his hand in both of
hers, and then turned away in silence.

“Geordie,” said our hero, strongly inclined to follow suit, “you mustn’t
let Elsie fret like this, you know. I am not going away for ever. You’ll
see me back most likely in the summer, for a little change and a
mouthful of sea air. I shall find you taking all the prizes at the
Hampden show with that bull calf of old Cherry’s.”

“It’s little pleesure we’ll have in him, or the rest of the stock, for a
while,” answered Geordie. “The place will no be natural like, wantin’
ye. The Lord’s will be done,” added he, reverently. “We’re a’ in His
keepin’. I’d come with ye, for as far and as hot as yon sa-andy desert
o’ a place is, if it werena for the wife. God bless ye, Maister John!”




                              CHAPTER III.

        “So forward to fresh fields and pastures new.”—_Milton._


Jack’s spirits had recovered their usual high average when he found
himself once more at the club in a very free and unfettered condition,
and clothed with the prestige of a man who had sold his station well,
and was likely to rise in (pastoral) life.

He was bold, energetic, moderately experienced, and had all that
sanguine trust in the splendid probabilities of life common to those
youthful knights who have come scatheless through the tourney, and have
never, as yet, been

                  “Dragged from amid the horses’ feet,
                  With dinted shield and helmet beat.”

He derived a little amusement (for he possessed a keen faculty of
observation, though, as with other gifts, he did not always make the
best use of that endowment) from the evident brevet rank which was
accorded to him by the moneyed and other magnates. His advice was asked
as to stock investments. He was consulted upon social and political
questions. Invitations, of which he had always received a fair
allowance, came in showers. Report magnified considerably the price he
had received for Marshmead. Many chaperons and haughty matrons of the
most exacting class bid eagerly for his society. In short, Jack Redgrave
had become the fashion, and for a time revelled in all the privileged
luxury of that somewhat intoxicating position. Notwithstanding a fine
natural tendency _desipere in loco_, our hero was much too shrewd and
practical a personage not to be fully aware that this kind of thing
could not last. He had a far higher ambition than would have permitted
him to subside into a club swell, or a social butterfly, permanently. He
had, besides, that craving for bodily exercise, even labour, common to
men of vigorous organization, which, however lulled and deadened for a
time, could not be controlled for any protracted period.

He had, therefore, kept up a reasonably diligent search among the
station agents and others for any likely investment which might form the
nucleus of the large establishment, capable of indefinite expansion, of
which he had vowed to become the proprietor.

Such a one, at length (for, as usual when a man has his pockets full of
money, and is hungering and thirsting to buy, one would think that there
was not a purchaseable run on the whole continent of Australia), was
“submitted to his notice” by a leading agent; the proprietor, like
himself in the advertisement of Marshmead, was “about to leave the
colony,” so that all doubt of purely philanthropical intention in
selling this “potentiality of fabulous wealth” was set at rest. Jack
took the mail that night, with the offer in his pocket, and in a few
days found himself deposited at “a lodge in the wilderness” of Riverina,
face to face with the magnificent enterprize.

Gondaree had been a cattle-station from the ancient days, when old
Morgan had taken it up with five hundred head of cattle and two or three
convict servants, in the interests and by the order of the well-known
Captain Kidd, of Double Bay. A couple of huts had been built, with
stock-yard and gallows. The usual acclimatization and pioneer
civilization had followed. One of the stockmen had been speared: a score
or two of the blacks, to speak well within bounds, had been shot. By
intervals of labour, sometimes toilsome and incessant, oftener
monotonous and mechanical, the sole recreation being a mad debauch on
the part of master and man, the place slowly but surely and profitably
progressed—progressed with the tenacious persistence and sullen
obstinacy of the race, which, notwithstanding toils, dangers, broils,
bloodshed, and reckless revelries, rarely abandons the object originally
specified. Pioneer or privateer, merchant or missionary, the root
qualities of the great colonizing breed are identical. They perish in
the breach, they drink and gamble, but they rarely raise the siege. The
standard _is_ planted, though by reckless or unworthy hands; still goes
on the grand march of civilization, with splendour of peace and pomp of
war. With the fair fanes and foul alleys of cities—with peaceful village
and waving cornfield—so has it ever been; so till the dawn of a purer
day, a higher faith, must it ever be, the ceaseless “martyrdom of man.”

                    “And the individual withers,
                    And the race is more and more.”

Gondaree had advanced. The drafts of fat cattle had improved in number
and quality—at first, in the old, old days, when supply bore hard upon
demand, selling for little more than provided an adequate quantity of
flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco for the year’s consumption. But the herd
had spread by degrees over the wide plains of “the back,” as well as
over the broad river flats and green reed-beds of “the frontage,” and
began to be numbered by thousands rather than by the original hundreds.

Changes slowly took place. Old Morgan had retired to a small station of
his own with a herd of cattle and horses doubtfully accumulated, as was
the fashion of the day, by permission of his master, who had never once
visited Gondaree.

The old stockmen were dead, or gone none knew whither; but another
overseer, of comparatively modern notions, occupied his place, and while
enduring the monotonous, unrelieved existence, cursed the unprogressive
policy which debarred him from the sole bush recreation—in that desert
region—of planning and putting up “improvements.”

About the period of which we speak, it had occurred to the trustees of
the late Captain Kidd that, as cattle-stations had risen much in value
in that part of the country, from the rage which then obtained to
dispose of those despised animals and replace them with sheep, it was an
appropriate time to sell. The station had paid fairly for years past.
Not a penny had been spent upon its development in any way; and now, “as
those Victorian fellows and others, who ought to know better, were going
wild about salt-bush cattle-stations to put sheep on—why, this was
clearly the time to put Gondaree in the market.”

As Jack drove up in the unpretending vehicle which bore Her Majesty’s
mails and adventurous travellers to the scarce-known township of “far
Bochara,” the day was near its close. The homestead was scarcely
calculated to prepossess people. They had passed the river a couple of
miles back, and now halted at a sandy hillock, beneath which lay a
sullen lagoon. There were two ruinous slab huts, with bark roofs, at no
great distance from each other. There was a stock-yard immediately at
the back of the huts, where piles of bones, with the skulls and horns of
long-slain beasts, told the tale of the earliest occupation of the
place.

There was no garden, no horse-paddock, nothing of any kind, sort, or
description but the two huts, which might have originally cost ten
pounds each. Jack, taking his valise and rug, walked towards the largest
hut, from which a brown-faced young fellow, in a Crimean shirt and
moleskin trousers, had emerged.

“You are Mr.—Mr.—Redgrave,” said he, consulting a well-thumbed letter
which he took out of his pocket. “I have orders to show you the place
and the cattle. Won’t you come in?”

Jack stepped over two or three impediments which barred the path, and
narrowly escaped breaking his shins over a bullock’s head, which a
grand-looking kangaroo dog was gnawing. He glanced at the door, which
was let into the wall-plate of the hut above and below, after the oldest
known form of hinge, and sat down somewhat ruefully upon a wooden stool.

“You’re from town, I suppose?” said the young man, mechanically filling
his pipe, and looking with calm interest at Jack’s general get-up.

“Yes,” answered Jack, “I am. You are aware that I have come to look at
the run. When can we make a beginning?”

“To-morrow morning,” was the answer. “I’ll send for the horses at
daylight.”

“How do you get on without a horse-paddock?” asked Jack, balancing
himself upon the insecure stool, and looking enviously at his companion,
who was seated upon the only bed in the apartment. “Don’t you sometimes
lose time at musters?”

“Time ain’t of much account on the Warroo,” answered the overseer,
spitting carelessly upon the earthen floor. “We have a cursed sight more
of it than we know what to do with. And Captain Kidd didn’t believe in
improvements. Many a time I’ve written and written for this and that,
but the answer was that old Morgan did very well without them for so
many years, and so might I. I got sick of it, and just rubbed on like
the rest. If I had had my way, I’d have burned down the thundering old
place long ago, and put up everything new at Steamboat Point. But you
might as well talk to an old working bullock as to our trustees.”

“What are the cattle like?” inquired Mr. Redgrave.

“Well, not so bad, considering there hasn’t been a bull bought these ten
years. It’s first-class fattening country; I dare say you saw that if
you noticed any mobs as you came along.” Jack nodded. “When the country
is real good cattle will hold their own, no matter how they’re bred.
There ain’t much the matter with the cattle—a few stags and rough ones,
of course, but pretty fair on the whole. I expect you’re hungry after
your journey. The hut-keeper will bring in tea directly.”

In a few moments that functionary appeared, with a pair of trousers so
extremely dirty as to suggest the idea that he had been permanently
located upon a back block, where economy in the use of water was a
virtue of necessity. Rubbing down the collection of slabs which did duty
for a table with a damp cloth, he placed thereon a tin dish, containing
a large joint of salt beef, a damper like the segment of a cart-wheel,
and a couple of plates, one of which was of the same useful metal as the
dish. He then departed, and presently appeared with a very black
camp-kettle, or billy, of hot tea, which he placed upon the floor;
scattering several pannikins upon the board, one of which contained
sugar, he lounged out again, after having taken a good comprehensive
stare at the new comer.

“We smashed our teapot last muster,” said the manager, apologetically,
“and we can’t get another till the drays come up. This is a pretty rough
shop, as you see, but I suppose you ain’t just out from England?”

“I have been in the bush before,” said Jack, sententiously. “Are the
flies always as bad here?”

“Well, they’re enough to eat your eyes out, and the mosquitoes too—worse
after the rains; but they say it’s worse lower down the river.”

“Worse than this! I should hardly have thought it possible,” mused Jack,
as the swarming insects disputed the beef with him, and caused him to be
cautious of shutting his mouth after enclosing a few accidentally. The
bread was black with them, the sugar, the table generally, and every now
and then one of a small black variety would dart straight into the
corner of his eye.

When the uninviting meal was over, Jack walked outside, and, lighting
his pipe, commenced to consider the question of the purchase of the
place. With the sedative influences of the great narcotic a more calmly
judicial view of the question presented itself.

He was sufficiently experienced to know that, whereas you may make a
homestead and adjuncts sufficiently good to satisfy the most exacting
Squatter-Sybarite, if such be wanting, you can by no means build a good
run if the country, that is, extent and quality of pasture, be wanting.
A prudent buyer, therefore, does not attach much value to improvements,
scrutinizing carefully the run itself as the only source of future
profits.

“It is a beastly hole!” quoth Jack, as he finished his pipe, “only fit
for a black fellow, or a Scotchman on his promotion; but from what I saw
of the cattle as I came along (and they tell no lies) there is no
mistake about the country. They were all as fat as pigs, the yearlings
and calves, as well as the aged cattle. I never saw them look like that
at Marshmead, or even at Glen na Voirlich, which used to be thought the
richest spot in our district. There is nothing to hinder me clearing out
the whole of the herd and having ten or fifteen thousand ewes on the
place before lambing time. There is no scab and no foot-rot within a
colony of us. With fair luck, I could have up a woolshed in time to
shear; and a decent lambing, say 70 per cent., would give me—let me see,
how many altogether after shearing?”

Here Jack went into abstruse arithmetical calculations as to the
numbers, sexes, ages, and value of his possible property, and, after a
very rapid subtraction of cattle and multiplication of sheep, saw
himself the owner of fifty thousand of the last-named fashionable
animals, which, when sold at twenty-five shillings per head, or even
twenty-seven and sixpence (everything given in), would do very well
until he should have visited Europe, and returned to commence operations
upon a scale even more grand and comprehensive.

“I think I see my way,” he said to himself, finally, knocking the ashes
out of his pipe. “Of course one must rough it at first; the great thing
in these large stock operations is decisiveness.”

He accordingly decided to go to bed at once, and informed Mr.
Hawkesbury, the overseer, that he should be ready as soon as they could
see in the morning, and so betook himself to a couch, of which the
supporting portion was ingeniously constructed of strips of hide, and
the mattress, bed-clothing, curtains, &c., represented by a pair of
blankets evidently akin in antiquity, as in hue, to Bob the cook’s
trousers.

Accepting his host’s brief apologies, Jack turned in, and Mr.
Hawkesbury, having disembarrassed himself of his boots, pulled a ragged
opossum-rug over him, and lay down before the fire-place, with his pipe
in his mouth.

The coach and mail travelling, continued during two preceding days and
nights, had banged and shaken Jack’s hardy frame sufficiently to induce
a healthy fatigue. In two minutes he was sound asleep, and for three or
four hours never turned in his bed. Then he woke suddenly, and with the
moment of consciousness was enabled to realize Mr. Gulliver’s
experiences after the first flight of the arrows of the Liliputians.

He arose swiftly, and muttering direful maledictions upon the Warroo,
and all inhabitants of its borders from source to mouth, frontage and
back, myall, salt-bush, and cotton-bush, pulled on his garments and
looked around.

It yet wanted three hours to daylight. Mr. Hawkesbury was sleeping like
an infant. He could see the moon through a crack in the bark roof, and
hear the far hoarse note of the night-bird. Taking his railway rug, he
opened the door, which creaked upon its Egyptian hinge, and walked
forth.

    “Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest.”

And so on, as Longfellow has it in mournful _Evangeline_. The forest was
not exactly black, being partly of the moderately-foliaged eucalyptus,
and having a strip of the swaying, streaming myall, of a colour more
resembling blue than black. Still there were shadows sufficiently
darksome and weird in conjunction with the glittering moonbeams to
appeal to the stranger’s poetic sympathies. The deep, still waters of
the lagoon lay like dulled silver, ever and anon stirred into ripples of
wondrous brilliancy by the leaping of a fish, or the sinuous trail of a
reptile or water rodent. All was still as in the untroubled æons ere
discovery. In spite of the squalid surroundings and the sordid human
traces, Nature had resumed her grand solitude and the majestic hush of
the desert.

“All this is very fine,” quoth Jack to himself. “What a glorious night;
but I must try and have a little more sleep somehow.” He picked out a
tolerably convenient spot between the buttressed roots of a vast
casuarina, which from laziness rather than from taste had been spared by
the ruthless axes of the pioneers, and wrapping himself in his rug lay
down in the sand. The gentle murmur of the ever-sounding,
mournful-sighing tree soon hushed his tired senses, and the sun was
rising as he raised himself on his elbow and looked round.

It was a slightly different sleeping arrangement from those to which he
had been long accustomed. Nor were the concomitants less strange. A
large pig had approached nearer than was altogether pleasant. She was
evidently speculating as to the weak, defenceless, possibly edible
condition of the traveller. Jack had not been conversant with the
comprehensively carnivorous habits of Warroo pigs. He was, therefore,
less alarmed than amused. He also made the discovery that he was no
great distance from a populous ant-hill, of which, however, the free and
enlightened citizens had not as yet “gone for him.” Altogether he fully
realized the necessity for changing front, and, rising somewhat suddenly
to his feet, was about to walk over to the hut when the rolling thunder
of horses at speed, rapidly approaching, decided him to await the new
sensation.

Round a jutting point of timber a small drove of twenty or thirty horses
came at a headlong gallop in a cloud of dust, and made straight for the
stockyard in the direct track for which Jack’s bedroom was situated.
Standing close up to the old tree, which was sufficiently strong and
broad to shield him, he awaited the cavalry charge. They passed close on
either side, to the unaffected astonishment of an old mare, who turned
her eyes upon him with a wild glare as she brushed his shoulder with her
sweeping mane. Dashing into the large receiving-yard of the old
stockyard, they stopped suddenly and began to walk gently about, as if
fully satisfied with themselves. Following fast came two wild riders,
one of whom was a slight half-caste lad, and the other, to Jack’s great
surprise, a black girl of eighteen or twenty. This last child of the
desert rode _en cavalier_ on an ordinary saddle with extremely rusty
stirrup-irons. Her long wavy hair fell in masses over her shoulders. Her
eyes were soft and large, her features by no means unpleasing, and her
unsophisticated teeth white and regular. Dashing up to the slip-rails,
this young person jumped off her horse with panther-like agility, and
putting up the heavy saplings, thus addressed Mr. Hawkesbury, who, with
Jack, had approached:—

“By gum, Misser Hoxbry, you give me that horrid old mare to-day I ride
her inside out, the ole brute.”

“What for, Wildduck?” inquired the overseer; “what’s she been doing
now?”

“Why, run away all over the country and break half-a-dozen times, and
make me and Spitfire close up dead. Look at him.” Here she pointed to
her steed, a small violent weed, whose wide nostril and heaving flank
showed that he had been going best pace for a considerable period. “That
boy, Billy Mortimer, not worth a cuss.”

Having volunteered this last piece of information, Wildduck pulled off
the saddle, which she placed, cantle downward, against the fence, so as
to permit the moistened padding to receive all drying influences of sun
and air; then, dragging off the bridle to the apparent danger of
Spitfire’s front teeth, she permitted that excitable courser to wander
at will.

“That one pull my arm off close up,” she remarked, “all along that ole
devil of a mare. I’ll take it out of her to-day, my word! Who’s this
cove?”

“Gentleman come up to buy station,” answered Hawkesbury; “by and by,
master belong to you; and if you’re a good girl he’ll give you a new
gown and a pound of tobacco. Now you get breakfast, and ride over to
Jook-jook—tell’m all to meet us at the Long Camp to-morrow.”

“Kai-i!” said the savage damsel, in a long-drawn plaintive cry of
surprise, as she put her fingers, with assumed shyness, up to her face,
and peered roguishly through them; then, hitching up her scanty and
tattered dress, she ran off without more conversation to the hut.

“Good gracious!” said Jack to himself, “I wonder what old Elsie and
Geordie Stirling would think of all this; Moabitish women and all the
rest of it, I suppose. However, I am not here for the present to
regulate the social code of the Lower Warroo. Have you got the tribe
here?” he said, aloud.

“No, Wildduck ran away from a travelling mob of cattle,” answered
Hawkesbury. “She’s a smart gin when she’s away from grog, and a stunner
at cutting out on a camp.”

That day passed in an exhaustive general tour round the run. Mounted
upon an elderly stock-horse of unimpeachable figure, with legs
considerably the worse for wear, and provided with a saddle which caused
him to vow that never again would he permit himself to be dissociated
from his favourite Wilkinson, Jack was piloted by Mr. Hawkesbury through
the “frontage” and a considerable portion of the “back” regions of
Gondaree. It was the same story: oceans of feed, water everywhere, all
the cattle rolling fat. Nothing that the most hard-hearted buyer could
object to, if troubled with but a grain of conscience. Billowy waves of
oat grass, wild clover (_medicago sativa_), and half-a-dozen strange
fodder plants, of which Redgrave knew not the names, adorned the great
meadows or river flats; while out of the immense reed-beds, the feathery
tassels of which stirred in the breeze far above their heads, came ever
and anon, at the crack of the stock-whip, large droves of cattle in
Indian file, in such gorgeous condition that, as our hero could not
refrain from saying, a dealer in fat stock might have taken the whole
lot to market, cows, calves, bullocks and steers, without rejecting a
beast.

Leaving these grand savannahs, when they proceeded to the more arid back
country there was still no deterioration in the character of the
pasturage. Myall and boree belts of timber, never known to grow upon
“poor” or “sour” land, alternated with far-stretching plains, where the
salt-bush, the cotton-bush, and many another salsiferous herb and shrub,
betokened that Elysium of the squatter, “sound fattening country.” John
Redgrave was charmed. He forgot the dog-hole he had left in the morning,
the fleas, the pigs, the evil habiliments of Bob the cook, the
uninviting meal, all the shocks and outrages upon his tastes and habits;
his mind dwelt only upon the great extent and apparently half-stocked
condition of Gondaree. And as they rode home by starlight the somewhat
perilous stumbles of the old stock-horse only partially disturbed a
reverie in which a new wool-shed, a crack wash-pen, every kind of modern
“improvement,” embellished a model run, carrying fifty thousand
high-caste merino sheep.

He demolished his well-earned supper of corned beef and damper that
night with quite another species of appetite; and as he deposited
himself in an extemporized hammock, above the reach of midnight
marauders, he told himself that Gondaree was not such a bad place after
all, and only wanted an owner possessed of sufficient brains to develop
its great capabilities to become a pleasant, profitable, and childishly
safe investment.

Wildduck’s mission had apparently been successful. The old mare was
making off from the men’s hut in a comparatively exhausted state, while
a chorus of voices, accented with the pervading British oath, told of
the arrival of a number of friends and allies. High among the noisiest
of the talkers, and, it must be confessed, by no means reticent of
strong language, rose the clear tones and childlike laughter of the
savage damsel. In the delicate _badinage_ likely to obtain in such a
gathering it was apparent that she could well hold her own.

“My word, Johnny Dickson,” she was saying to a tall, lathy stripling,
whose long hair protected the upper portion of his spine from all danger
of sunstroke, “you get one big buster off that roan mare to-day; spread
all over the ground, too. Thought you was goin’ to peg out a
free-selection.”

“You shut up, and go back to old man Jack, you black varmint,” retorted
the unhorsed man-at-arms amid roars of laughter. “You ain’t no great
chop on a horse, except to ride him to death. I can back anything you’ll
tackle, or ere a black fellow between this and Adelaide. I’m half a mind
to box your ears, you saucy slut.”

“Ha, ha,” yelled the girl, “_you_ ride? that’s a good un! You not game
to get on the Doctor here to-morrow, not for twenty pound. You touch me!
Why, ole Nanny fight you any day, with a yam-stick. _I_ fight you
myself, blessed if I don’t.”

“What’s all this?” demanded Mr. Hawkesbury, suddenly appearing on the
scene. “Have any of you fellows been bringing grog on the place? Because
it’s a rascally shame, and I won’t have it.”

“Well, sir,” said one of the stockmen, “one of the chaps had a bottle,
quite accidental like, and the gin got a suck or two. That’s what set
her tongue goin’. But it’s all gone now, and nothing broke. Which way do
we go to-morrow?”

“Well, I want to muster those Bimbalong Creek cattle, and then put as
many as we can get on the main camp, just to give this gentleman here
(indicating Jack) a sort of idea of the numbers. Daylight start,
remember, so don’t be losing your horses.”

“All right,” said the self-constituted spokesman, the others merely
nodding acquiescence; “we’ll short-hobble them to-night—they can’t get
away very far.”

Considerably before daylight beefsteaks were frying, horses were being
gathered up, and a variety of sounds proclaimed that when bent upon
doing a day’s work the dwellers around Gondaree could set about it in an
energetic and business-like fashion. There was not a streak of crimson
in the pearly dawn-light, as the whole party, comprising more than a
dozen men and the redoubtable Wildduck, rode silently along the
indistinct trail which led “out back.” There was a good deal of smoking
and but little talk for the first hour. After that time converse became
more general, and the pace was improved at a suggestion from Mr.
Hawkesbury that the sooner they all got to the scene of their work the
better, as it was a pretty good day’s ride there and back.

“So it is,” answered a hard, weather-beaten-looking, grizzled stockman.
“I never see such a part of the country as this. If it was in other
colonies I’ve been to they’d have had a good hut, and yards, and a
horse-paddock at Bimbalong this years back. But they wouldn’t spend a
ten pound note or two, those Sydney merchants, not for to save the lives
of every stockman on the Warroo.”

“_That_ wouldn’t be much of a loss, Jingaree,” said the overseer,
laughing, while a sort of sardonic smile went the round of the company,
as if they appreciated the satire; “and I shouldn’t blame ’em if that
was the worst of it. But it’s a loss to themselves, if they only knew
it. All they can say is, plenty of money has been made on old Gondaree,
as bad as it is. I hope the next owner will do as well—and better.”

“Me think ’um you better git it back to me and ole man Jack,” suggested
Wildduck, now restored to her usual state of coolness and
self-possession. “Ole man Jack own Gondaree water-hole by rights.
Everybody say Gondaree people live like black fellows. What for you not
give it us back again?”

“Well, I’m blowed,” answered the overseer, aghast at the audacious
proposition; “what next? No, no, Wildduck. We’ve improved the country.”
Here the stockmen grinned. “Besides, you and old man Jack would go and
knock it down. You ain’t particular to a few glasses of grog, you know,
Wildduck.”

“White fellow learn us that,” answered the girl, sullenly, and the
“chase rode on.”

In rather less than three hours the party of horsemen had reached a
narrow reed-fringed watercourse, the line of which was marked by dwarf
eucalypti, no specimens of which had been encountered since they left
the homestead.

Here they halted for a while upon a sand-ridge picturesquely wooded with
the bright green arrowy pine (_callitris_), and, after a short smoke,
Mr. Hawkesbury proceeded to make a disposition of forces.

“Three of you go up the creek till you get to the other side of Long
Plain, there’s mostly a mob somewhere about there. You’ll see a big
brindle bullock; if you get him you’ve got the leading mob. Jingaree,
you can start; take Johnson and Billy Mortimer with you. Charley Jones,
you beat up the myall across the creek; take Jackson and Long Bill. Four
of you go out back till you come to the old Durgah boundary; you’ll know
it by the sheep-tracks, confound them. Waterton, you come with me, and
Mr. Redgrave will take the Fishery mob. Wildduck, you too, it will keep
you out of mischief, and you can have a gallop after the buffalo cows’
mob, and show off a bit.”

“All right,” answered the sable scout, showing her brilliant teeth, and
winding the stock-whip round her head with practised hand she made
Spitfire jump all fours off the ground, and proceed sideways, and even
tail foremost (as is the manner of excitable steeds), for the next
quarter of a mile.

Every section of the party having “split and squandered” according to
orders, which were, like those of a captain at cricket or football,
unhesitatingly obeyed, Jack found himself proceeding parallel with the
creek, with Mr. Hawkesbury as companion, followed by a wiry, sun-tanned
Australian lad and Miss Wildduck aforesaid.

It was still early. They had ridden twenty miles, and the day’s work was
only commencing. Always fond of this particular description of
station-work, John Redgrave looked with the keen eye of a bushman, and
something of the poet’s fancy, upon the scene. Eastward the sun-rays
were lighting up a limitless ocean of grey plain, tinged with a delicate
tone of green, while the hazy distance, precious in that land of hard
outlines and too brilliant colouring, was passing from a stage of
tremulous gold to the fierce splendour of the desert noon.

There was not a hill within a hundred miles. The level sky-line was
unbroken as on the deep, or where the Arab camel kneels by the far-seen
plumy palms. The horses stepped along briskly. The air was dry and
fresh. The element of grandeur and unimpeded territorial magnificence
told powerfully upon John’s sanguine nature.

“I don’t care what they say,” he thought. “This is a magnificent
country, and I believe would carry no end of sheep, if properly fenced
and managed. I flatter myself I shall make such a change as will
astonish the oldest and many other inhabitants.”

Following the water, they rode quietly onward until, near a bend of the
humble but enormously important streamlet, they descried the “Fishery,”
of which Hawkesbury had spoken. This was a ruinous and long deserted
“weir,” formed of old by the compatriots of Wildduck, for the ensnaring
of eels and such fish as might be left disporting themselves in the
Bimbalong after a flood of unusual height. At such periods the outer
meres and back creeks received a portion of the larger species of fish
which habitually reposed in the still, deep waters of the Warroo. Traces
could still be seen of a labyrinth of artificial channels, dams, and
reservoirs, showing considerable ingenuity, and distinct evidence of
more continuous labour than the aboriginal Australian is generally
credited with.




                              CHAPTER IV.

        “Ye seeken loud and see for your winninges.”—_Chaucer_.


“My word,” exclaimed Wildduck, jumping from her horse and gazing at the
rare ruin of her fading race, “this big one fishery one time. Me come
here like it picaninny. All about black fellow that time. Bullo—bullo.”

Here she spread out her hands, as if to denote an altogether
immeasurable muster-roll of warriors.

“Big one corrobaree—shake ’em ground all about; and old man Coradjee
too.”

Here she sank her voice into an awe-stricken whisper.

“Where are they all gone, Wildduck?” inquired Redgrave; “along a
Warroo?”

“Along a Warroo?” cried the girl, mockingly. “Worse than that. White
fellow shoot ’em like possum. That ole duffer, Morgan, shoot fader
belonging to me.”

“Come, come, Wildduck,” said Hawkesbury, “we’re after cattle just
now—never mind about old Mindai. It wasn’t one, nor yet two, white
fellows only that _he_ picked the bones of, if all the yarns are true.”

“You think I no care, because I’m black,” said the girl, reproachfully,
as the tears rolled down her dusky cheeks. “I very fond of my poor ole
fader.—Hallo! there’s cattle—come along, Waterton.”

“Changing the subject with a vengeance,” thought Redgrave, as the
mercurial mourner, with all the fickleness of her race, superadded to
that of her sex, looked back a laughing challenge to the stockman, and
closing her heels upon the eager pony, was at top speed in about three
strides. Looking in the direction of Spitfire’s outstretched neck,
Redgrave and his companion could descry a long dark line of moving
objects at a considerable distance on the plain, but whether horses,
cattle, or even a troop of emu, they were unable to make out with
certainty.

“Let’s back her up quietly,” said Hawkesbury. “She and Charley will head
them; it’s no use bustin’ our horses. This is rather a flash mob, but
they’ll be all right when they’re wheeled once or twice.”

Keeping on at a steady hand-gallop, they soon came up with a large lot
of cattle going best pace in the wrong direction. The accomplished
Wildduck, however, flew round them like a falcon, Spitfire doing his
mile in remarkably fair time. Being ably supported by Waterton, the
absconders were rounded up, and were ready to return and be forgiven,
when Hawkesbury and Mr. Redgrade joined them.

“By Jove!” cried our hero, with unconcealed approval, “what grand
condition all the herd seem to be in! Look at those leaders.” Here he
pointed to a string of great raking five and six year old bullocks,
whose immense frames, a little coarse, but well grown and symmetrical,
were filled up to the uttermost point of development. “You don’t seem to
have drafted them very closely.”

“No,” said Hawkesbury, carelessly. “We never send anything away that
isn’t real prime, and we missed this mob last year. They get their time
at Gondaree; and the last two seasons have been stunning good ones.”

“Don’t you always have good seasons, then?” asked Jack, innocently.

The overseer looked sharply at him for a moment, without answering, and
then said—

“Well, not always, it depends upon the rain a good deal; not but what
there’s always plenty of back-water on this run.”

“Oh! I dare say it makes a difference in this dry country,” returned
Jack, carelessly, thinking of Marshmead, where it used to rain sometimes
from March to November, almost without cessation, and where a month’s
fine weather was hailed as a distinct advantage to the sodden pasturage.
“But the rain never does anything but good here, I suppose.”

“Nothing but good, you may say that, when it does come. This lot won’t
be long getting to camp. Ha! I can hear Jingaree’s and the other
fellows’ whips going.”

By this time they had nearly reached the camp at which the various
scouting parties had separated. They had nothing to do but to follow the
drove, which, after the manner of well-broken station herds of the olden
time, never relaxed speed until they reached the camp, when they stopped
of their own accord, and while recovering their wind moved gently to and
fro, greeting friends or strangers with appropriately modulated
bellowings.

Much about the same time the other parties of stockmen could be seen
coming towards the common centre, each following a lesser or a greater
drove. Jingaree had been fortunate in “dropping across” his lot earlier
in the day, and was in peaceful possession of the camp and an
undisturbed smoke long before they arrived.

Mr. Redgrave rode through the fifteen or sixteen hundred there assembled
by himself, the stockmen meanwhile sitting sideways on their horses, or
otherwise at ease, while he made inspection.

“I should like to have had a lot like this at the Lost Water-hole Camp,
at poor old Marshmead,” thought Jack to himself, “for old Rooney, the
dealer, to pick from, when I used to sell to him. How he and Geordie
would have gone cutting out by the hour. They would have almost
forgotten to quarrel. Why, there isn’t a poor beast on the camp except
that cancered bullock.”

When he had completed a leisurely progress through the panting, staring,
but non-aggressive multitude, he rejoined Mr. Hawkesbury, with the
conviction strongly established in his mind that he had never seen so
many really fat cattle in one camp before, and that the country that
would do that with a coarse, neglected herd would do anything.

Mr. Hawkesbury having asked him whether he wanted to see anything more
on that camp, and receiving no answer in the negative, gave orders to
“let the cattle go,” and the party, proceeding to the bank of the creek,
permitted their steeds to graze at will with the reins trailing under
their feet, after the manner of stock-horses, and addressed themselves
to such moderate refreshment, in the form of junks of corned beef and
wedges of damper, as they had brought with them. Mr. Hawkesbury produced
a sufficient quantity for himself and his guest, who found that the
riding, the admiration, and the novel experience had whetted his
appetite.

Fairly well earned was the hour’s rest by the reeds of the creek.
Hawkesbury had at first thought of putting together the greater part of
the herd, but on reflection concluded that the day was rather far
advanced.

They were twenty miles from home. It would be as well to defer the
collection of the cattle belonging to the main camp until the following
day. In a general way it might be thought that a ride of forty miles,
exclusive of two or three hours’ galloping at camp, was a fair day’s
work. So it would have appeared, doubtless, to the author of _Guy
Livingstone_, who in one of his novels describes the hero and his good
steed as being in a condition of extreme exhaustion after a ride of
_thirty miles_. Whyte Melville, too, who handles equally well pen,
brand, and bridle, finds the horses of Gilbert and his friend in _Good
for Nothing_, or _All Down Hill_, reduced to such an “enfeebled
condition” by sore backs, consequent upon one day’s kangaroo-hunting,
that they are compelled to send a messenger for fresh horses a hundred
miles or more to _Sydney_, and to await his return in camp.

With all deference to, and sympathy with, the humanity which probably
prompted so mercifully moderate a chronicle, we must assert that to
these gifted writers little is known of the astonishing feats of speed
and endurance performed by the ordinary Australian horse.

Hawkesbury, indeed, rather grumbled when the party arrived at Gondaree
at what he considered an indifferent day’s work. He, his men, and their
horses would have thought it nothing “making a song aboot,” as Rob Roy
says, to have ridden to Bimbalong, camped the cattle, “cut out” or
drafted, on horseback, a couple of hundred head of fat bullocks, and to
have brought the lot safe to Gondaree stock-yard by moonlight. This
would have involved about twenty hours’ riding, a large proportion of
the work being done at full gallop, and during the hottest part of the
day. But they _had_ done it many a time and often. And neither the
grass-fed horses, the cattle, nor the careless horsemen were a whit the
worse for it.

However, as Mr. Hawkesbury had truly stated in their first interview,
the economy of time was by no means a leading consideration on the
Warroo. So the next day was devoted to the arousing and parading of the
stock within reach of the main camp. Mr. Redgrave’s opinion, as to the
number and general value of the herd after this operation, was so
satisfactory that on the morrow he once more committed himself to the
tender mercies of the Warroo mail, and proceeded incontinently to the
metropolis, where he without further demur concluded the bargain, and
became the first proud purchaser of Gondaree, and five thousand head of
mixed cattle, to be taken “by the books.”

Jack found the club a paradise after his sojourn in the wilderness. At
that time comparatively few men had explored the _terra incognita_ of
Riverina with a view to personal settlement. Therefore Jack’s fame as a
man of daring enterprise and commercial sagacity rose steadily until it
reached a most respectable altitude in the social barometer. He alluded
but sparingly to the privations and perils of his journey, making up for
this reticence by glowing descriptions of the fattening qualities and
vast extent of his newly-acquired territory. He aroused the envy of his
old companions of the settled districts, and was besieged with
applications from the relatives of wholly inexperienced youths from
Britain, and other youngsters of Australian rearing, who had had more
experience than was profitable, to take them back with him as
assistants. These offers he was prudent enough to decline.

His cash had been duly paid down, and the name of John Redgrave attached
to sundry bills at one and two years—bearing interest at eight per
cent.—the whole purchase-money being about twenty thousand pounds, with
right of brand, stock-horses, station-stores, implements, and furniture
given in. What was given in, though it cost some hard bargaining and
several telegrams, was not of great value. Among the twenty stock-horses
there were about two sound ones. The stores consisted of three bags of
flour, half a bag of sugar, and a quarter of a chest of tea. There was
an old cart and some harness, of which only the green hide portion was
“reliable.” Several iron buckets, which served indifferently for boiling
meat and carrying the moderate supplies of water needed or, more
correctly used on the establishment. Of the three saddles, but one was
station property. The others belonged to Mr. Hawkesbury and the
stockman.

Jack had decided to take the cattle at five thousand head without
muster, being of opinion, from the “look of the herd,” and from a
careful inspection of the station-books, wherein the brandings had been
carefully registered, and a liberal percentage allowed for deaths and
losses, that the number was on the run. He knew from experience that a
counting muster was a troublesome and injurious operation, and that it
was better to lose a few head than to knock the whole herd about. He
therefore made all necessary arrangements for going up and taking
immediate possession of Gondaree.

His plan of operations, well considered and carefully calculated, was
this: He had sternly determined upon “clearing off” the whole of the
cattle. Sheep were the only stock fit for the consideration of a large
operator. For cattle there could be only the limited and surely
decreasing local demand. For sheep, that is, for wool, you had the world
for a market. Wool _might_ fall; but, like gold, its fashion was
universal. Every man who wore a Crimean shirt, every woman who wore a
magenta petticoat, was a constituent and a contributor; the die was
cast. He was impatient of the very idea of cattle as an investment for a
man of ordinary foresight. He was not sure whether he would even be
bothered with a score or two for milkers.

To this end he now directed all his energies; and being able to work, as
Bertie Tunstall had truly observed, when he liked, now that he was
excited by the pressure of a great undertaking—an advance along the
whole line of his forces, so to speak—he displayed certain qualities of
generalship.

He first made a very good sale of all the fat cattle on the run (binding
the buyer to take a number which would give the herd “a scraping”) to
his old acquaintance Rooney, the cattle-dealer. These were to be removed
within two months from date of sale. He left instructions with his
agents, Messrs. Drawe and Backwell, to sell the whole of the remaining
portion of the herd (reserving only twenty milkers) as store cattle, to
any one who was slow and old-fashioned enough to desire them. He bought
and despatched stores, of a quality and variety rather different from
what he received, sufficient to last for twelve months; all the fittings
and accessories for a cottage and for a wool-shed, including nails, iron
roofing, doors, sashes—everything, in fact, except the outer timber,
which could be procured on the spot. He had no idea of trusting himself
to the war-prices of the inland store-keepers. A few tons of wire for
preliminary fencing, wool-bales, tools, a dray, carts, an earth-scoop
for dam-making, well-gearing and sixty-gallon buckets, a few tents,
plough and harrow (must have some hay), a few decent horses, an American
waggon with four-horse harness, and other articles “too numerous to
mention,” about this time found themselves on the road to Gondaree. All
these trifling matters “footed up” to a sum which gave a temporarily
reflective expression to Jack’s open countenance. Necessaries for a
sheep-station, especially in the process of conversion from cattle
ditto, have a way of coming out strong in the addition department.

“What of that?” demanded Jack of his conscience, or that quiet
cousin-german, prudence; “a sheep-station must be properly worked, or
not at all. The first year’s wool will pay for it all. And then the
lambs!”

In order to manage a decent-sized sheep property (and nothing is so
expensive as a small one), you must have an overseer. Jack was not going
to be penny-lunatic enough to be his own manager. And the right sort of
man must be thoroughly up to all the latest lights and discoveries—not a
working overseer, a rough, upper-shepherd sort of individual who counted
sheep and helped to make bush-yards, but a fairly-educated modern
species of centurion, whose intelligence and knowledge of stock (meaning
sheep) were combined with commercial shrewdness and military power of
combination. A man who could tell you in a few minutes how much a dam
displacing several thousand cubic yards of earth ought to cost; how many
men, in what number of days, should complete it; what provisions they
ought to consume; and what wages, working reasonably, they ought to
earn. A man full of the latest information as to spouts and soda, hot
water and cold, with a natural turn heightened by experience, for
determining the proportionate shades of fineness, density, freeness, and
length of staple which, in combination, could with safety be taken as a
model for the ideal merino. A man capable of sketching, with accuracy
and forethought, the multifarious buildings, enclosures, and
“improvements” necessary for a sheep-station in the first year of its
existence, or of conducting the shearing to a successful issue without
them at need.

For subalterns so variously gifted a demand had of late years grown up,
owing to the large profits and wonderful development of the
wool-producing interest. Of one of these highly-certificated
“competition-wallahs” John Redgrave had determined to possess himself.

In Mr. Alexander M‘Nab, late of Strathallan, and formerly of Mount
Gresham, he deemed that he had secured one of the most promising and
highly-trained specimens of the type.

Sandy M‘Nab, as he was generally called, was about eight-and-twenty
years of age, the son of a small but respectable farmer in the north of
Ireland, in which condition of life he had acquired an early knowledge
of stock, and an exceedingly sound rudimentary education. Far too
ambitious to content himself with the limited programme of his
forefathers, he had emigrated at sixteen, and worked his way up through
the various stages of Australian bush apprenticeship, until he had
reached his present grade, from which he trusted to pass into the ranks
of the Squatocracy.

Having secured this valuable functionary, and covenanted to pay him at
the rate of three hundred per annum, his first act was to despatch him,
after a somewhat lengthy consultation, to inspect a small lot of ten
thousand ewes, and on approval to hire men and bring them to Gondaree.
It was necessary to lose no time; lambing would be on in June, in August
shearing would be imminent. And the cattle would require to be off, and
the sheep to be on, somewhere about April, if the first year’s
operations were to have any chance of being financially successful.

The stores having been purchased, and Mr. M‘Nab with his letter of
credit having been shipped, that alert lieutenant, with characteristic
promptitude, reporting himself in readiness to embark at six hours’
notice, nothing remained but for Mr. Redgrave to “render himself” again
at Gondaree in the capacity of purchaser.

He accordingly cleared out from the club with alarmingly stern
self-denial, and, declining to risk his important existence in the
Warroo mail, took the road in the light American waggon, with his spare
horses and a couple of active lads accustomed to bush work.

After a journey of ordinary duration and absence of adventure, he once
more sighted the unromantic but priceless waters of the Warroo, and
beheld, with the eye of a proprietor, the “waste lands of the
Crown”—most literally deserving that appellation—with the full right and
title to which, as lessee, he stood invested.

Mr. Hawkesbury, in apparently the same Crimean shirt, with black and
scarlet in alternate bars, stood smoking the small myall pipe in much
the same attitude at the hut door as when Jack was borne off by two jibs
and a bolter in the Warroo mail. Bob the cook, the dark hues of his
apparel unrelieved by any shade of scarlet, appeared in his doorway with
his hands in his pockets, but betraying unwonted interest as the
_cortège_ ascended the sandhill.

Ordering the boys to let go the horses, and to pitch the tent, which he
had used on the journey, at a safe distance from the huts, Jack
descended with a slight increase of dignity, as of one in authority, and
greeted his predecessor.

“So you’ve bought us out,” he said, after inspecting carefully the
letter which Jack handed to him, “and I’m ordered to deliver over the
cattle, and the stores,—there ain’t much of them,—and the horses, and in
fact the whole boiling. Well, I wish you luck, sir; the run’s a good ’un
and no mistake, and the cattle are pretty fair, considering what’s been
done for ’em. I suppose you won’t want me after you’ve taken delivery.”

“I shall be very glad if you will stay on,” quoth Jack, whose honest
heart felt averse to ousting any man from a home, “until the cattle are
cleared off; after that I shall have another gentleman in charge of the
sheep and place generally. By staying two or three months you will
oblige me, if it suits your arrangements.”

“All right,” answered Mr. Hawkesbury: “I know the cattle pretty well,
and I dare say I can save as many as will cover my wages. I think you’ll
find them muster up pretty close to their book-number.”

The signal shot of the campaign was fired, so to speak, upon the arrival
of Mr. John Rooney, who came in a few days by appointment to take the
first draft of the Gondaree fat cattle.

Jack was sitting outside of his tent, like an Arab sheik, and thinking
regretfully of the flower-laden evening breeze which he had so often
inhaled at the same hour at Marshmead, when a tall, soldierly-looking
man rode up on a tired horse and jumped off with an unreserved
exclamation of relief.

“Hallo! Rooney, is that you, in this uncivilized part of the world?
Rather different from the old place, isn’t it! Come in, and I’ll have
your horse hobbled out. You mustn’t expect stables or paddock or any
other luxuries on the Warroo.”

“Sure, I know it well—my heavy curse on the same river; there never was
any dacency next or anigh it. Didn’t they lend me a buck-jumper at
Morahgil to-day, and the first place I found myself was on the broad of
my back.”

“What a shame! Did they give you another horse?”

“They did not. I rode the same devil right through. It’s little bucking
he feels inclined for now.”

“So I should think, after an eighty-mile ride. When did you leave?”

“About twelve o’clock. I was riding all night, and got there to
breakfast. The last time I took cattle from Morahgil I happened to knock
down the superintendent with a roping pole, maybe that’s why he treated
me so—the mane blayguard.”

“Well, he ought not to have let such a trifle dwell on his mind,
perhaps. But take a glass of grog, Rooney, while the fellow gets your
tea.”

“Faith, and I will, Masther John; and it’s sound I’ll sleep to-night,
fleas or no fleas. A man can’t do without it for more than three nights
at a time.”

In a few days the muster was duly concluded, and three hundred prime
bullocks secured in the ancient but massive stockyard. One of Rooney’s
drovers and a couple of road hands had arrived the evening before, to
whom they were intrusted. Rooney was too great a man to be able to
afford the time to travel with his own cattle, and had, indeed, a score
of other mobs to meet, despatch, buy, or sell, to arrive in as many
different and distant parts of the colony.

“Well, Masther John,” said he, “I won’t deny that I haven’t lifted a
finer mob this season. Isn’t it a murthering fine run, when it puts the
beef on them big-boned divils like that? If ye had some of those roan
steers we used to get at the Lost Waterhole Camp, sure they wouldn’t be
able to see out of their eyes with fat. I’ll be able to get the eight
hundred out of these aisy enough. I’ll send Joe. Best for the cows and
the rest of the bullocks the moment he’s shut of those circle-dot
cattle. I must be off down the river. I’ve a long ride before me. But,
Masther John, see here now, don’t be building too much on the saysons in
these parts. It’s not like Marshmead; I’ve seen it all as bare as a
brickfield, from the Warroo to the Oxley; and these very cattle with
their ribs up to their backbones, and dyin’ by hundreds. D’ye hear me
now? Don’t be spending all your money before ye see how prices are
going. I’m thinking we’ll see a dale of changes in the next three or
four years—all this racin’ and jostlin’ for breeding sheep can’t hould
out. Good-bye, sir.”

And so the kindly, stalwart, shrewd cattle dealer went on his way, and
Jack saw him no more for a season. But his warning words left an
impression of doubt and distrust upon the mind of his hearer that no
caution had previously had power to do. Was it possible that he had made
a mistake, and an irrevocable one? Was such a change in the seasons
credible, and could all his stretch of luxuriant prairie turn into dust
and ashes? It was impossible. He had known bad seasons, or thought he
had, in the old west country; he had seen grass and water pretty scarce,
and had a lower average of fat cattle in some seasons than others; but
as to any total disappearance of pasture, any ruinous loss of stock,
such he had never witnessed and was quite unable to realize.




                               CHAPTER V.

     “So many days my ewes have been with young;
     So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean;
     So many years ere I shall shear the fleece.”—_King Henry VI._


Jack had soon quite enough upon his hands to occupy him for every waking
hour and moment, to fatigue his body, and, consequently, to lay to rest
any obtrusive doubts or fears as to the ultimate success of his
undertaking. The stores began to arrive, and he had to fix a site for
the new cottage and the indispensable wool-shed. The former locality he
selected at Steamboat Point, before alluded to by Mr. Hawkesbury, which
was a bluff near a deep reach of the river, shaded by couba trees and
river-oaks of great age, and at an elevation far above the periodical
floods which from time to time swept the lowlands of the Warroo, and
converted its sluggish tide into a furious devastating torrent.

Sawyers were engaged, carpenters, splitters, and labourers generally.
With these, as, indeed, with all the station _employés_, much conflict
had to be gone through as to prices of contract and labour. A new
proprietor was looked upon as a person of limited intelligence, but
altogether of boundless wealth, which, in greater or less degree, each
“old hand” believed it his privilege to share. It was held to be an act
of meanness and unjustifiable parsimony for one in his position to
expect to have work done at the same rate as other people. Jack had much
trouble in disabusing them of this superstition. Eventually it came to
be admitted that “the cove knew his way about,” and “had seen a thing or
two before;” after which matters went more smoothly.

Then letters came from Drawe and Backwell stating that a large operator,
with a million of acres or so of new country, where “the blacks were too
bad for sheep,” had bought the whole of the herd, after Rooney had done
drafting, and was ready to take delivery without delay.

In due time all this hard and anxious work was accomplished. Mr. Joe
Best returned and possessed himself of every fat bullock and every
decent cow “without incumbrance” on the place. And then the
long-resident Gondaree herd—much lowing, and fully of opinion, judged by
its demeanour, that the end of the world was come—was violently evicted
and driven off from its birthplace in three great droves by a small army
of stockmen and all the dogs within a hundred miles.

So the cattle were “cleared off,” at low prices too, as in after days
Jack had occasion to remember. But nobody bought store cattle in that
year except as a sort of personal favour. Nothing better could be
expected.

“Well—so they’re mustered and gone at last,” said Hawkesbury, the day
after the last engagement. “Blest if I didn’t think some of us would
lose the number of our mess. Those old cows would eat a man—let alone
skiver him. The herd came up well to their number in the books, didn’t
they? There was more of those Bimbalong cattle than I took ’em to be.
Well, there’s been a deal of money took off this run since I came—next
to nothing spent either; that’s what I look at. I hope the sheep-racket
will do as well, sir.”

“I hope so, too, Hawkesbury,” answered Jack. “One good season with sheep
is generally said to be worth three with cattle. I had a letter to-day
from M‘Nab to say that he was on the road with the ewes, and would be
here early next month.”

“Well, then, I’ll cut my stick; you won’t want the pair of us, and I’m
not much to do with sheep, except putting the dogs on old Boxall’s
whenever I’ve caught ’em over their boundary. You’ll have to watch
_him_, if you get mixed, or you’ll come short.”

“Every sheep of mine will be legibly fire-branded,” said Jack, with a
certain pride; “there’s no getting over that, you know.”

“He’ll fire-brand too,” said Hawkesbury, “in the same place, quick. And
as his ear-mark’s a close crop, and he’s not particular what ear, his
shepherds might easy make any stray lots uncommon like their own.”

“By Jove!” said Jack, rather startled at the new light thrown on sheep
management on the Warroo. “However M‘Nab will see to that; he’s not an
easy man to get round, they say. Then, would you really prefer to leave?
If so, I’ll make out your account.”

“If you please, Mr. Redgrave. I’ve been up here five years now; so I
think I’ll go down the country, and see my people for a bit of change.
It don’t do to stay in these parts too long at a time, unless a man
wants to turn into a black fellow or a lushington.”

On the very day mentioned in his latest despatch, Mr. M‘Nab arrived with
his ten thousand ewes; and a very good lot they were—in excellent
condition too. He had nosed out an unfrequented back track, where the
feed was unspoiled by those marauding bands of “condottieri,” travelling
sheep. Water had been plentiful, so that the bold stroke was successful.
Pitching his tent in a sheltered spot, he sat up half the night busy
with pen and pencil, and by breakfast time had every account made out,
and all his supernumeraries ready to be paid off. The expenses of the
journey, with a tabulated statement showing the exact cost per sheep of
the expedition, were also upon a separate sheet of paper handed up to
his employer.

From this time forth all went on with unslackening and successful
progress. M‘Nab was in his glory, and went forth rejoicing each day,
planning, calculating, ordering, and arranging to his heart’s content.
The out-stations were chosen, the flocks drafted and apportioned, a
ration-carrier selected, bush-yards made, while, simultaneously, the
cottage walls began to arise on Steamboat Point, and the site of the
wool-shed, on a plain bordering an ana-branch sufficient for water, but
too inconsiderable for flood, was, after careful consideration, finally
decided upon. The season was very favourable; rain fell seasonably and
plentifully; grass was abundant, and the sheep fattened up “hand over
hand” without a suspicion of foot-rot, or any of the long train of
ailments which the fascinating, profitable, but too susceptible merino
so often affects.

The more Jack saw of his new manager the more he liked and respected
him. He felt almost humiliated as he noted his perfect mastery of every
detail connected with station (_i.e._ sheep) management, his energy, his
forecast, his rapid and easy arrangement of a hundred jarring details,
and reflected that he had purchased the invaluable services of this
gifted personage for so moderate a consideration.

“We shall not have time to get up a decent wool-shed this year, Mr.
Redgrave,” he said, at one of their first councils. “We _must_ have a
good, substantial store, as it won’t do to have things of value lying
about. A small room alongside will do for me till we get near shearing.
We must knock up a temporary shed with hurdles and calico, and wash the
best way we can in the creek. Next year we can go in for spouts, and all
the rest of it, and I hope we’ll be able to shear in such a shed as the
Warroo has never seen yet.”

“It’s a good while to Christmas,” said Jack. “How about the shed if we
put more men on? I don’t like make-shifts.”

“Couldn’t possibly be done in the time,” answered Mr. M‘Nab, with prompt
decision. “Lambing will keep us pretty busy for two months. We _must_
have shearing over by October, or all this clover-burr that I see about
will be in the wool, and out of your pocket to the tune of about
threepence a pound. Besides, these sawyers and bush-carpenters can’t be
depended upon. They might leave us in the lurch, and then we should
neither have one thing nor the other.”

“Very well,” said Jack, “I leave that part of it to you.”

All Mr. M‘Nab’s plans and prophecies had a fashion of succeeding, and
verifying themselves to the letter. Apparently he forgot nothing,
superintended everything, trusted nobody, and coerced, persuaded, and
placed everybody like pawns on a chess-board. His temper was wonderfully
under command; he never bullied his underlings, but had a way of
assuring them that he was afraid they wouldn’t get on together,
supplemented on continued disapproval by a calm order to come in and get
their cheque. This system was found to be efficacious. He always kept a
spare hand or two, and was thereby enabled to fill up the place of a
deserter at a moment’s notice.

Thus, with the aid of M‘Nab and of a good season, John Redgrave, during
the first year, prospered exceedingly. His sheep had a capital increase,
and nearly eight thousand gamesome, vigorous lambs followed their
mothers to the wash-pool. The wool was got off clean, and wonderfully
clear of dirt and seed; and just before shearing Mr. M‘Nab exhibited a
specimen of his peculiar talents which also brought grist to the mill.

It happened in this wise:—Looking over the papers one evening he
descried mention of a lot of store sheep then on their way to town, and
on a line of road which would bring them near to Gondaree.

“This lot would suit us very well, Mr. Redgrave,” said he, looking up
from his paper, and then taking a careful transcript in his pocket-book
of their ages, numbers, and sexes. “Seven thousand altogether—five
thousand four and six tooth wethers, with a couple of thousand ewes; if
they are good-framed sheep, with decent fleeces, and the ewes not too
old, they would pay well to buy on a six months’ bill. We could take the
wool off and have them fat on these Bimbalong plains by the time the
bill comes due.”

“How about seeing them?” quoth Jack; “they may be Queensland sheep, with
wool about half an inch long. They often shear them late on purpose when
they are going to start them on the road. ‘They’re a simple people,’ as
Sam Slick says, those Queenslanders.”

“Of course I must see them,” answered M‘Nab. “I never buy a pig in a
poke; but they will be within a hundred miles of us in a week, and I can
ride across and see them, and find out their idea of price. Shearing is
always an expensive business, and the same plant and hands will do for
double our number of sheep, if we can get them at a price.”

M‘Nab carried out his intention, and, falling across the caravan in an
accidental kind of way, extracted full particulars from the owner, a
somewhat irascible old fellow, who was convoying in person. He returned
with a favourable report. The sheep were good sheep; they had well-grown
fleeces, rather coarse; but that did not matter with fattening sheep;
they were large and would make good wethers when topped up. The ewes
were pretty fair, and not broken-mouthed. They wanted eleven shillings
all round, and they were in the hands of Day and Burton, the stock
agents.

“Now, I’ve been thinking,” said Mr. M‘Nab, meditatively, “whether it
wouldn’t pay for me to run down to Melbourne by the mail—it passes
to-morrow morning—and arrange the whole thing with Day and Burton.
Writing takes an awful long time. Besides, I might knock sixpence a head
off, and that would pay for my coach-fare and time, and a good deal
over. Seven thousand sixpences are one hundred and seventy-five pounds.
Thirty pounds would take me there and back, inside of three weeks.”

“That will only allow you two days in town,” said Jack, “and you’ll be
shaken to death in that beastly mail-cart.”

“Never mind that,” said the burly son of the “black north,” stretching
his sinewy frame. “I can stand a deal of killing. Shall I go?”

“Oh, go by all means, if you think you can do any good. I don’t envy you
the journey.”

M‘Nab accordingly departed by the mail next morning, leaving Jack to
carry on the establishment in his absence, a responsibility which
absorbed the whole of his waking hours so completely that he had no time
to think of anything but sheep and shepherds, with an occasional dash of
dingo. One forenoon, as he was waiting for his midday meal, having
ridden many a mile since daylight, he descried a small party approaching
on foot which he was puzzled at first to classify. He soon discovered
them to be aboriginals. First walked a tall, white-haired old man,
carrying a long fish-spear, and but little encumbered with wearing
apparel. After him a gin, not by any means of a “suitable age” (as
people say in the case of presumably marriageable widowers), then two
lean, toothless old beldames of gins staggering under loads of blankets,
camp furniture, spare weapons, an iron pot or two, and a few puppies;
several half-starved, mangy dogs followed in a string. Finally, the
whole party advanced to within a few paces of the hut and sat solemnly
down, the old savage sticking his spear into the earth previously with
great deliberation.

As the little group sat silently in their places bolt upright, like so
many North American Indians, Jack walked down to open proceedings. The
principal personage was not without an air of simple dignity, and was
very different of aspect from the dissipated and debased beggars which
the younger blacks of a tribe but too often become. He was evidently of
great age, but Jack could see no means of divining whether seventy years
or a hundred and twenty would be the more correct approximation. His
dark and furrowed countenance, seamed with innumerable wrinkles,
resembled that of a graven image. His hair and beard, curling and
abundant, were white as snow. His eye was bright, and as he smiled with
childish good humour it was apparent that the climate so fatal to the
incisors and bicuspids of the white invader, had spared the larger
proportion of his grinders. On Jack’s desiring to know his pleasure, he
smiled cheerfully again, and muttering “baal dalain,” motioned to the
younger female, as if desiring her to act as interpreter. She was
muffled up in a large opossum-rug which concealed the greater part of
her face; but as she said a few words in a plaintive tone, and with a
great affectation of shyness, Jack looking at her for the first time
recognized the brilliant eyes and mischievous countenance of his old
acquaintance Wildduck.

“So it’s you?” he exclaimed, much amused, upon which the whole party
grinned responsively, the two old women particularly. “And is this your
grandfather, and all your grandmothers; and what do you want at
Gondaree?”

“This my husband, cooley belonging to me—ole man Jack,” explained
Wildduck, with an air of matronly propriety. “Ole man Jack, he wantim
you let him stay long a wash-pen shearing time. He look out sheep no
drown. Swim fust-rate, that ole man.”

“Well, I’ll see,” replied Jack, who had heard M‘Nab say a black fellow
or two would be handy at the wash-pen—the sheep having rather a long
swim. “You can go and camp down there by the water. How did you come to
marry such an old fellow, eh, Wildduck?”

“My fader give me to him when I picaninny. Ippai and Kapothra, I s’pos.
Black fellow always marry likit that. White girl baal marry ole man, eh,
Mr. Redgrave?”

“Never; that is, not unless he’s very rich, Wildduck. Here’s a fig of
tobacco. Go to the store and get some tea and sugar, and flour.”

Old man Jack and his lawful but by no means monogamous household, were
permitted to camp at the Wash-pen Creek, in readiness for the somewhat
heavy list of casualties which “throwing in” always involves. A sheep
encumbered with a heavy fleece, and exhausted by a protracted immersion,
often contrives to drown as suddenly and perversely as a Lascar. Nothing
short of the superior aquatic resources of a savage prevents heavy loss
occasionally. So Mr. Redgrave, averse in a general way, for reasons of
state, to having native camps on the station, yet made a compromise in
this instance. A few sheets of bark were stripped, a few bundles of
grass cut, a few pieces of dry wood dragged up by old Nanny and Maramie,
and the establishment was complete. A short half-hour after, and there
was a cake baked on the coals, hot tea in a couple of very black quart
pots, while the odours of a roasted opossum, and the haunch of wallaby,
were by no means without temptation to fasting wayfarers with
unsophisticated palates. As old man Jack sat near the cheerful fire,
with his eyes still keen and roving, wandering meditatively over the
still water and the far-stretching plain, as the fading eve closed in
magical splendour before his unresponsive gaze, how much was this poor,
untaught savage to be pitied, in comparison with a happy English
labourer, _adscriptus glebæ_ of his parish—lord of eleven babes, and
twelve shillings per week, and, though scarce past his prime, dreading
increased rheumatism and decreasing wages with every coming winter!

For this octogenarian of one of earth’s most ancient families had
retained most of his accomplishments, a few simple virtues, and much of
his strength and suppleness; still could he stand erect in his frail
canoe, fashioned out of a single sheet of bark, and drive her swift and
safely through the turbulent tide of a flooded river. Still could he
dive like an otter, and like that “fell beastie” bring up the impaled
fish or the amphibious turtle. Still could he snare the wild fowl, track
the honey-bee, and rifle the nest of the pheasant of the thicket. Upon
him, as, indeed, is the case with many of the older aboriginals, the
fatal gifts of the white man had no power. He refused the fire-water; he
touched not the strange weed, by reason of the magical properties of
which the souls of men are exhaled in acrid vapour—oh, subtle and
premature cremation!—or sublimated in infinite sneezings. He drank of
the lake and of the river, as did his forefathers; he ate of the fowls
of the air and of their eggs (I grieve to add, occasionally stale), of
the forest creatures, and of the fish of the rivers. In spite of this
unauthorized and unrelieved diet, lightly had the burning summers passed
over his venerable pate. The square shoulders had not bowed, the upright
form still retained its natural elasticity, while the knotted muscles of
the limbs, moving like steel rings under his sable skin, showed
undiminished power and volume.




                              CHAPTER VI.

         “Law was designed to keep a state in peace.”—_Crabbe._


The mail-trap arrived this time with unwonted punctuality, and out of it
stepped Mr. M‘Nab, “to time” as usual, and with his accustomed cool air
of satisfaction and success.

“Made rather a better deal of it than I expected, sir,” was his
assertion, after the usual greetings. “There were several heavy lots of
store sheep to arrive, so I stood off, and went to look at some others,
and finally got these for ten and threepence. We had a hard fight for
the odd threepence; but they gave in, and I have the agreement in my
pocket.”

“You have done famously,” said Jack, “and I am ever so glad to see you
back. I have been worked to death. Every shepherd seems to have tried
how the dingoes rated the flavour of his flock, or arranged for a ‘box’
at the least, since you went. I have put on Wildduck’s family for
retrievers at the wash-pen.”

“Well, we wanted a black fellow or two there,” said M‘Nab. “Throwing in
is always a risky thing, but we can’t help it this year. There’s nothing
like a black fellow where sheep have anything like a long swim.”

Jack re-congratulated himself that night upon the fortunate possession
of the astute and efficient M‘Nab, who seemed, like the dweller at the
Central Chinese “Inn of the Three Perfections,” to “conduct all kinds of
operations with unfailing success.” In this instance he had made a sum
equalling two-thirds of his salary entirely by his own forethought and
promptitude of action. This was something like a subaltern, and Jack,
looking proud—

                     Far as human eye could see—
                     Saw the promise of the future
                     And the prices sheep would be.

The season, with insensible and subtle gradation, stole slowly, yet
surely, forward. The oat-grass waved its tassels strangely like the
familiar hay-field over many a league of plain and meadow. The callow
broods of wild fowl sailed joyously amid the broad flags of the lagoons,
or in the deep pools of the creeks and river. The hawk screamed exultant
as she floated adown the long azure of the bright blue, changeless
summer sky. Bird, and tree, and flower told truly and gleefully, after
their fashion, of the coming of fair spring; brief might be her stay, it
is true, but all nature had time to gaze on her richly-tinted robes and
form, potently enthralling in their sudden splendour, as are the fierce
and glowing charms of the south.

Unbroken success! The new sheep arrived and were delivered reluctantly
by their owner, who swore by all his gods that the agents had betrayed
him, and that for two pins he would not deliver at all, but finally
consented to hear reason, and sold his cart and horses, tent and
traps—yet another bargain—to the invincible M‘Nab, departing with his
underlings by mail.

Shearing was nearly over, the last flock being washed, when one
afternoon M‘Nab came home in a high state of dissatisfaction with
everything. The men were shearing badly; there had been two or three
rows; the washers had struck for more wages; everything was out of gear.

“I’ve been trying to find out the reason all day,” said he, as he threw
himself down on the camp-bed in his tent, with clouded brow, “and I can
think of nothing unless there is some villainous hawker about with grog;
and I haven’t seen any cart either.”

“It’s awfully vexatious,” said Jack, “just as we were getting through so
well. What the pest is that?” By this time, the day having been expended
in mishaps and conjectures, evening was drawing on. A dark figure came
bounding through the twilight at a high rate of speed, and, casting
itself on the tent floor, remained in a crouching, pleading position.

“Why, Wildduck,” said Jack, in amazement, “what is the matter now? You
are the most dramatic young woman. Has a hostile brave been attempting
to carry you off? or old man Jack had a fit of unfounded jealousy? Tell
us all about it.”

“That ole black gin, Nanny,” sobbed the girl, lifting up her face,
across which the blood from a gash on the brow mixed freely with her
tears; “that one try to kill me, she close up choke me only for
Maramie.” Here she showed her throat, on which were marks of severe
compression.

“Poor Wildduck!” said Jack, trying to soothe the excited creature. “What
made her do that? I thought yours was a model happy family?”

“She quiet enough, only for that cursed drink. She regular debbil-debbil
when she get a glass.”

“Ay!” said M‘Nab, “just as I expected; and where did you all get it?
You’ve had a nip, too, I can see.”

“Only one glass, Mr. M‘Nab; won’t tell a lie,” deprecated the fugitive.
“That bumboat man sell shearers and washers some. You no see him?”

“How should I see?” quoth M‘Nab; “where is he now?”

“Just inside timber by the wash-pen,” answered the girl; “he sneak out,
but leave ’em cart there.”

“I think I see my way to cutting out this pirate, or ‘bumboat,’ as
Wildduck calls him,” said Jack. “The forest laws were sharp and
stern—that is, I believe, that on suspicion of illegal grog you can
capture a hawker with the strong hand in New South Wales. So, Wildduck,
you go and camp with the carrier’s wife, she’ll take you in; and, M‘Nab,
you get a couple of horses and the ration-carrier—he’s a stout
fellow—and we’ll go forth and board this craft. We’ll do a bit of
privateering; ha, ha! ‘whate’er they sees upon the seas they seize upon
it.’”

With short preparation the little party set out in the cool starlight.
Jack put a revolver into his belt for fear of accidents. Mr. M‘Nab had
fished out the section of the Licensed Hawkers’ Act which referred to
the illegal carrying of spirits, and, being duly satisfied that he had
the law on his side, was ready for anything. The ration-carrier was
strictly impartial. He was ready to assist in the triumph of capture, or
to return unsuccessful with an equal mind, caring not a straw which way
the enterprise went. He lit his pipe, and followed silently. As they
approached the wash-pen they became sensible of an extraordinary noise,
as of crying, talking, and screaming—all mingled. From time to time a
wild shriek rent the air, while the rapid articulation in an unknown
tongue seemed to go on uninterruptedly.

“Must be another set of blacks,” said Jack, as he halted to listen. “I
hope not; one camp is quite enough on the place at a time.”

“It’s that old sweep, Nanny, I’m thinking,” said the ration-carrier.
“When she has a drop of grog on board she can make row enough for a
whole tribe. I’ve heard her at them games before.”

As the miami of the sable patriarch came into view, dimly lighted by a
small fire, an altogether unique scene presented itself. The old gin,
called Nanny, very lightly attired, was marching backward and forward in
front of the fire, apparently in a state of demoniac possession. She was
crying aloud in her own tongue, with the voice at its highest pitch of
shrillness, and with inconceivable rapidity and frenzy. In her hand she
carried a long and tolerably stout wand, being, in fact, no other than
the identical yam-stick to which Wildduck had referred as a weapon of
offence, when proposing her as a fitting antagonist for the contumacious
young stockman. With this she occasionally punctuated her rhetoric by
waving it over her head, or bringing it down with terrific violence upon
the earth. The meagre frame of the old heathen seemed galvanised into
magical power and strength as she paced swiftly on her self-appointed
course, whirling her shrivelled arms on high, or bounding from the earth
with surprising agility. Such may have been the form, such the accents,
of the inspired prophetess in the dawn of a religion of mystery and fear
among the rude tribes of earth’s earliest peoples—a Cassandra shrieking
forth her country’s woes—a Sibyl pouring out the dread oracles of a
demon worship. The old warrior sat unmoved, with stony eyes fixed on
vacancy, as the weird apparition passed and repassed like the
phantasmagoria of a dream; while his aged companion, who seemed of
softer mould, cowered fearfully and helplessly by his side.

“By Jove!” said Jack, “this is a grand and inspiriting sight. I don’t
wonder that Wildduck fled away from this style of thing. This old
beldame would frighten the very witches on a respectable Walpurgis
night. Great is the fire-water of the white man!”

“She’ll wear herself out soon,” said the ration-carrier. “Old man Jack
wouldn’t stand nice about downing her with the waddy, if she came near
enough to him. He and the tother old mammy, they never touches no grog.
They’re about the only two people in this part of the country as I know
of as doesn’t. But the gins is awful.”

“Polygamy has its weak side, apparently,” moralized Jack, as still the
frenzied form sped frantically past, and raved, and yelled, and
chattered, and threatened; “not but what the uncultured white female
occasionally goes on ‘the rampage’ to some purpose. Hallo! she’s
shortening stride; we shall see the finale.”

Suddenly, as if an unseen hand had arrested the force which had so
miraculously sustained her feeble form, she stopped. The fire of her
protruding eyes was quenched; her nerveless limbs tottered and dragged;
uttering a horrible, hoarse, unnatural cry, and throwing out her arms as
in supplication and fear, she fell forward, without an effort to save
herself, almost upon the embers of the dying fire. Old man Jack sat
stern and immovable; but the woman ran forward with a gesture of pity,
and, dragging the corpse-like form a few paces from the fire, covered it
with a large opossum-skin cloak or rug.

“We may as well be getting on towards this scoundrel of a hawker,”
proposed M‘Nab. “He ought to get it a little hotter if it were only for
this bit of mischief.”

“There’s a deal of tobacky in the grog these fellows sell,” observed the
ration-carrier, with steady conviction, “that’s the worst of ’em; if
they’d only keep good stuff, it wouldn’t be so much matter in this black
country, as one might say. But I remember getting two glasses, only two
as I’m alive, from a hawker once; I’m blest if they didn’t send me clean
mad and stupid for a whole week.”

On the side furthest from the creek upon which the temporary wash-pen
had been constructed, and midway between it and the plains, which
stretched far to the eastward, lay a sand-ridge or dune, covered with
thick growing pines. In this natural covert the reconnoitring party
doubted not that the disturber of their peace had concealed himself.
Riding into it, they separated until they struck the well-worn trail
which, in the pre-merino days, had formed the path by which divers
outlying cattle came in to water; following this, they came up to a
clear space where a furtive-looking fire betrayed the camp of the
unlicensed victualler. A store-cart, with the ordinary canvas tilt, and
the heterogeneous packages common to the profession, were partly masked
by the timber. As they rode up rapidly a man emerged from the shadow of
a large pine and confronted them.

“Hallo! mates,” he said, in a gruff but jocular tone; “what’s the row?
You ain’t in the bushranging line, are you? because I’ve just sent away
my cheques, worse luck.”

“You’ll see who we are directly,” said Jack, jumping down, and giving
his horse to the ration-carrier. “I wish to search your cart, that’s
all. I believe you’ve been selling spirits to my men. I’m a magistrate.”

“What d’yer mean, then, by coming here on the bounce?” said the man,
placing himself doggedly between Jack and the cart. “You ain’t got a
warrant, and I’ll see you far enough before you touches a thing in that
there cart. Why, my wife’s asleep there.”

“No she ain’t,” said a shrill voice, as a woman disengaged herself from
the canvas, “but you don’t touch anything for all that. We’ve our
licence, ain’t we, Bill, and what’s the use of paying money to
Government if pore people can’t be purtected?”

“Perhaps you’re not aware,” said M‘Nab, with cool accuracy, “that by the
19th and 20th sections of the 13th Victoria, No. 36, any magistrate or
constable, on suspicion of spirits in unlawful quantities being carried
for the purpose of sale, can search such hawker’s cart and take
possession of the spirits.”

“That’s the law,” said Jack, “and we are going to search your cart; so
stand aside, you cowardly scoundrel, making your ill-gotten profits out
of the wages of a lot of poor fellows who have worked hard for them. Do
you see this?” Here Jack suddenly produced his revolver, and giving the
fellow a shove, which sent him staggering against a fallen tree, took
possession of the vehicle, all unheeding the shrill tones and anything
but choice language of the female delinquent.

“Ay!” said M‘Nab, as he leaped actively into the cart, and turned over
packages of moleskin and bundles of boots, bars of soap, and strings of
dried apples, “this is all right and square; if you had only kept to a
fair trade nobody could take ye. What’s under these blankets?”

Lifting a pile of loosely-spread blankets, be suddenly raised a shout of
triumph.

“So this was where the lady was sleeping, is it? Pity for you, my man,
she didn’t stay there; we should have been too polite to raise her. The
murder is out.” Here he drummed with his hand upon a new kind of
instrument—a ten-gallon keg, half empty too. “What a lot the ruffian
must have sold.”

“What is your name?” asked Jack, blandly.

“William Smith,” answered the fellow, gruffly.

“Alias Jones, alias Dawkins, I suppose; never mind, we shall have time
to find out your early history, I dare say. Now, William, it becomes my
duty to arrest you in the Queen’s name, and, for fear of your giving us
the slip, I must take the precaution of tying your hands behind your
back.”

Suiting the action to the word, he “muzzled” Mr. William so suddenly and
effectually that, aided by M‘Nab, there was no great difficulty in
securing him by means of a stout cord which formed part of his own
belongings.

“Keep off, Mrs. Smith, or we shall be under the necessity of tying you
up too.”

This was no superfluous warning, as with a considerable flow of
Billingsgate, and with uplifted arms, the “bumboat woman” showed the
strongest desire to injure Jack’s complexion.

“You call yourselves men,” she screamed, “coming here in the dead of
night, three to one, and rummaging pore people’s property like a lot of
bushrangers. I’ll have the law of ye, if you was fifty squatters—robbing
the country, and won’t let a pore man live. I’ve got money, and friends
too, as’ll see us righted. Don’t ye lay a finger on me, ye hungry,
grinding, Port Phillip Yankee slave driver”—(this to M‘Nab)—“or I’ll
claw your ugly face till your mother wouldn’t know ye.”

“It’s my opinion and belief,” said M‘Nab, “that she wouldn’t be far
behind old Nanny, if she had that yam-stick and another tot or two of
her own grog. Here, Wilson, you catch this fellow’s horse; there he is,
hobbled under the big tree, and put him in the shafts. Mr. Redgrave and
I will bring yours on.”

The ration-carrier, much entertained, did as he was told, and Mr.
William being ordered to enter his own vehicle, on pain of being
attached to the tail-board, and compelled to walk behind, like a
bullock-driver’s hackney, the procession moved off, the ration-carrier
driving, and the others riding behind. Mrs. Smith followed for some
distance, disparaging everybody concerned, and invoking curses upon the
innocent heads of all the squatters in Riverina, but finally consented
to avail herself of the carriage.

In this order they reached Gondaree at an advanced hour of the night;
and the next day Mr. William was safely lodged in the lock-up at the
rising township of Burrabri, thirty miles down the river. Here he
languished, until a couple of neighbouring Justices of the Peace could
spare time from their shearing to try the case, when, the needful
evidence being forthcoming, he was fined thirty pounds, with the
alternative of three months’ imprisonment in Bochara gaol.

Hereupon his faithful companion appeared in a new light, and made a
highly practical suggestion-“You take it out, Bill,” said the artful
fair one; “don’t you go for to pay ’em a red farden. You’ll be a deal
cooler in gaol than anywhere else in this blessed sandy country. I’ll
look arter the cart and hoss, and have all ready for a good spree at
Christmas. You’ll be out by then.”

Mr. William looked at the blue sky through the open door of the
public-house—the improvised court-house on such occasions—but finally
decided to earn an honest penny—ten pounds per mensem, by voluntary
incarceration.

When he _did_ come forth, just before the Christmas week—alas that the
chronicler should have to record one more instance of woman’s
perfidy!—the frail partner of his guilt had sold the horse and cart,
retained the price thereof, and bolted with “another ‘Bill,’ whose
Christian name was John.”

The little episode ended, nothing occurred to mar the onward progress of
events until the last bale of wool was duly shorn, packed, and safely
deposited on a waggon _en route_ for the steamer and a colonial market.

Then, with a clear conscience and a feeling of intense and cumulative
satisfaction, Mr. John Redgrave betook himself once more to the busy
haunts of men. Had he been Sir John Franklin, returning from a
three-years’ voyage to the North Pole, he could hardly have been more
jubilant and grateful to a kind Providence, when he again ensconced
himself in the up-train for the metropolis. He revelled and rioted in
the unwonted luxuries of town life, like a midshipman at the Blue Posts.
Bread and butter, decent cookery, and cool claret, the half-forgotten
ceremonial of dinner, billiards, books, balls, lawn parties, ladies,
luxuries of all sorts and kinds; how delicious, how intoxicating they
were! Material advantages went hand in hand with this re-entrance to
Eden. He had very properly agreed with M‘Nab that it was well to sell
this year’s clip in the colony, as the washing and getting up were only
so-so, and wool was high. Next year they might show the English and
French buyers what the J R brand over Gondaree was like, and reasonably
hope that every year would add to the selling price of that valuable,
extensive, and scientifically got-up clip.

Jack looked bronzed, and thinner than of old, but all his friends,
especially the ladies, voted it an improvement; he had the air of an
explorer, a dweller in the wilderness, and what not. His wool, which
followed him, sold extremely well. Assumed to be successful, he was more
popular than ever. His bankers were urbane; he was consulted by some of
the oldest and most astute speculators; men prophesied great things as
to his ultimate financial triumphs. And Jack already looked upon himself
as forming one of the congress of Australian Rothschilds, and began to
think of all the munificent and ingeniously helpful things that he would
do in such case; for he was of a kindly and sentimentally generous
tendency, this speculative Jack of ours, and his day-dreams of wealth
were never unmingled with the names of those who immediately after such
realization would hear something to their advantage. Jack lingered in
Paradise for a couple of months, during which time he received his wool
money, and made arrangements with his bankers for the purchase of as
much wire as would suffice to fence a large proportion of his run. His
stores were commensurate with the future prestige of the establishment.
He explained to Mr. Mildmay Shrood, his banker, that he might possibly
put on a few thousand more sheep if he saw a good opportunity. Of course
he could buy more cheaply for cash; and if they paid as well as the lot
he had picked up this year, they would be very cheap after the wool was
off their backs.

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Shrood, with an air of friendly interest, “the
bank will be most happy to honour your drafts up to ten thousand pounds.
If you need more you will be kind enough to advise. I hear the most
favourable accounts of the district in which you have invested, and of
your property in particular. What is your own opinion—which I should
value—upon the present prices of stock and stations? will they keep up?”

“I have the fullest belief,” quoth Jack, with judicial certainty, “in
the present rates being maintained for the next ten years; for five
years at least it is impossible by my calculations, if correct, that any
serious fall should take place. The stock, I believe, are not in the
country in sufficient numbers to meet the rapidly enlarging demand for
meat. Wool is daily finding new markets and manufacturers. I never
expect to see bullocks above five pounds again; but sheep—sheep, you may
depend, will go on rising in price until I should not be surprised to
see first-class stations fetching thirty shillings, or even two pounds,
all round.”

“Quite of your opinion, my dear Mr. Redgrave,” quoth the affable
coin-compeller. “Happy to have my ideas confirmed by a gentleman of so
much experience. Depend upon it, sheep-farming is in its infancy. Good
morning. _Good_ morning, my dear sir.”

Jack saw no particular reason for hurrying himself, being represented at
Gondaree by a far better man than himself, as he told everybody. So he
spent his Christmastide joyously, and permitted January to glide over,
as a month suitable for gradually making up his mind to return to the
wilderness. Early in February he began to feel bored with the
“too-muchness” of nothing to do, and wisely departed.




                              CHAPTER VII.

       “But he still governed with resistless hand,
       And where he could not guide he would command.”—_Crabbe._


When Jack got back he was rather shocked at the altered aspect of the
run. There had been no rain, except in inconsiderable quantity, during
his absence, and the herbage generally showed signs of a deficiency of
moisture. The river flats, which were so lush and heavily cropped with
green herbage that your horse’s feet made a “swish-swashing” noise as
you rode through it, now were very parched up, dry, and bare, or else
burned off altogether.

On mentioning this to Mr. M‘Nab, he said—

“Well, the fact is that the grass got very dry, and some fellow put a
fire-stick into it. Then we have had a great number of travelling sheep
through lately, and they have fed their mile pretty bare. The season has
been very dry so far. I sincerely trust we shall get rain soon.”

“We may,” said Jack. “But when once these dry years set in, they say you
never know when it may rain again. But how do the sheep look?”

“Couldn’t possibly look better,” answered M‘Nab, decisively. “There is
any quantity of feed and water at the back, and I have not troubled the
frontage much. I am glad ye sent the wire up. We were nearly stopped, as
it came just as the posts were in. I have got one line of the lambing
paddock nearly finished, and we shall have that part of the play over
before long. No more shepherds and ‘motherers’ to pay in that humbugging
way next year.”

“And how are the other things getting on?” inquired Jack.

“Well, the cottage is nearly fit to go into. Your bedroom is finished
and ready for you. I had a garden fenced in, and put on a Chinaman with
a pump to grow some vegetables—for we were all half-way to a little
scurvy. The wool-shed is getting along, though the carpenters went on
the spree at Bochara for a fortnight. In fact, all is doing well
generally, and I think you’ll say the sheep are improved.”

Jack lost no time in establishing himself in his bedroom in the new
cottage, which he had judiciously caused to be built of “pise,” or
rammed earth, by this means saving the cartage of material, for the soil
was dug out immediately in front of the building, and securing coolness,
solidity, and thickness of wall, none of which conditions are to be
found in weather-board or slab buildings. Brick or stone was not, of
course, to be thought of, owing to the absence of lime, and the
tremendous expense of such materials. The heat was terrific. But when
Jack found himself the tenant of a cool, spacious apartment, with his
books, a writing-table, and a little decent furniture, the rest of the
cottage including a fair-sized sitting-room, with walls of reasonable
altitude, he did not despair of being able to support life for the few
years required for the process of making a fortune. The river, fringed
by the graceful though dark-hued casuarinas, was pleasant enough to look
on, as it rippled on over pools and sandy shallows, immediately below
his verandah. And beyond all expression was it glorious to bathe in by
early morn or sultry eve.

The garden, though far, far different from the lost Eden of Marshmead,
with its crowding crops, glossy shrubs, and heavily-laden fruit trees,
was still a source of interest and pleasure. Under the unwearied labour
and water-carrying of Ah Sing, rows of vegetables appeared, grateful to
the eye, and were ravenously devoured by the _employés_ of the station,
whom a constant course of mutton, damper, and tea—tea, damper, and
mutton—had led to, as M‘Nab said truly, the border-land of one of the
most awful diseases that scourge humanity. Never before had a cabbage
been grown at Gondaree, and the older residents looked with a kind of
awe at Ah Sing as he watered his rows of succulent vegetables,
toilsomely and regularly, in the long hot mornings and breezeless
afternoons.

“My word, John,” said Jingaree, who had ridden over from Jook-jook one
day on no particular business, but to look at the wonderful improvements
which afforded the staple subject of conversation that summer on the
Warroo, “you’re working this garden-racket fust chop. I’ve been here
eight year, and never see a green thing except marsh-mallers and
Warrigal cabbage. How ever do you make ’em come like that?”

“Plenty water, plenty dung, plenty work, welly good cabbagee,” said Ah
Sing, sententiously. “Why you not grow melon, tater, ladishee?”

“I don’t say we mightn’t,” said Jingaree, half soliloquizing, “but it’s
too hot in these parts to be carrying water all day long like a Chow.
Give us one of them cabbages, John.”

“You takee two,” quoth the liberal celestial. “Mr. Mackinab, he say,
give um shepherdy all about. You shepherdy?”

“You be hanged!” growled the insulted stockman. “Do I look like a
slouchin’, ’possum-eating, billy-carrying crawler of a shepherd? I’ve
had a horse under me ever since I was big enough to know Jingaree
mountain from a haystack, and a horse I’ll have as long as I can carry a
stock-whip. However, I don’t suppose you meant any offence, John. Hand
over the cabbages. Blest if I couldn’t eat ’em raw without a mossel of
salt.”

“Here tomala—welly good tomala,” said the pacific Chinaman, appalled at
the unexpected wrath of the stranger. “Welly good cabbagee, good-bye.”

Jack being comfortably placed in his cottage, took a leisurely look
through his accounts. He was rather astonished, and a little shocked, to
find what a sum he had got through for all the various necessaries of
his position.—Stores, wages, contract payments, wire, blacksmith,
carpenters, sawyers, bricklayers (for the wash-pen and the cottage
chimneys).—Cheque, cheque, there seemed no end to the outflow of
cash—and a good deal more was to come, or rather to go, before next
lambing, washing, and shearing were concluded. He mentioned his ideas on
the subject to Mr. M‘Nab.

That financier frankly admitted that the outlay _was_ large, positively
but not relatively. “You understand, sir,” he said, “that much of this
money will not have to be spent twice. Once have your fences up, and
breed up, or buy, till you have stocked your run, and you are at the
point where the largest amount of profit, the wool and the surplus
sheep, is met by the minimum of expenditure. No labour will be wanted
but three or four boundary riders. The wool, I think, will be well got
up, and ought to sell well.”

“I dare say,” said Jack, “I dare say. It’s no use stopping half way, but
really, the money does seem to run out as from a sieve. However, it will
be as cheap to shear 40,000 sheep as twenty. So I shall decide to stock
up as soon as the fences are finished.”

This point being settled, Mr. M‘Nab pushed on his projects and
operations with unflagging energy. He worked all day and half the night,
and seemed to know neither weariness nor fatigue of mind or body. He had
all the calculations of all the different contracts at his fingers’
ends, and never permitted to cool any of the multifarious irons which he
had in the fire.

He kept the different parties of teamsters, fencers, splitters,
carpenters, sawyers, dam-makers, well-sinkers, all in hand, going
smoothly and without delay, hitch, or dissatisfaction. He provided for
their rations being taken to them, kept all the accounts accurately, and
if there was so much as a sheepskin not returned, as per agreement, the
defaulter was regularly charged with it. Incidentally, and besides all
this work, sufficient for two ordinary men, he administered the
shepherds and their charge—now amounting to nearly 30,000 sheep. Jack’s
admiration of his manager did not slacken or change. “By Jove!” he said
to himself, occasionally, “that fellow M‘Nab is fit to be a general of
division. He never leaves anything to chance, and he seems to foresee
everything and to arrange the cure before the ailment is announced.”

The cottage being now finished, Jack began to find life not only
endurable, but almost enjoyable. He had got up a remnant of his library,
and with some English papers, and the excellent weeklies of the
colonies, he found that he had quite as much mental pabulum as he had
leisure to consume. The sheep were looking famously well. The lambs were
nearly as big in appearance as their mothers. The store sheep had
fattened, and would be fit for the butcher as soon as their fleeces were
off. The shepherds, for a wonder, gave no trouble, the ground being
open, and their flocks strong; all was going well. The wool-shed was
progressing towards completion; the wash-pen would follow suit, and be
ready for the spouts, with all the latest improvements, which were even
now on the road. Unto Jack, as he smoked in the verandah at night,
gazing on the bright blue starry sky, listening to the rippling river,
came freshly once more the beatific vision of a completely-fenced and
fully-stocked run, paying splendidly, and ultimately taken off his hands
at a profit, which should satisfy pride and compensate privation.

He and Mr. M‘Nab had also become accustomed to the ways of the
population. “I thought at first,” said Jack, “that I never set eyes on
such a set of duffers and loafers as the men at the Warroo generally.
But I have had to change my opinion. They only want management, and I
have seen some of the best working men among them I ever saw anywhere.
One requires a good deal of patience in a new country.”

“They want a dash of ill temper now and then,” rejoined M‘Nab. “It’s
very hard, when work is waiting for want of men, to see a gang of stout,
lazy fellows going on, refusing a pound and five-and-twenty shillings a
week, because the work is not to their taste.”

“But do they?” inquired Jack.

“There were five men refused work from one of the fence contractors at
that price yesterday,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “They wouldn’t do the
bullocking and only get shepherds’ wages, was the answer. I had the
travellers’ hut locked up, and not a bit of meat or flour will any
traveller get till we get men.”

“That doesn’t seem unjust,” said Jack. “I don’t see that we are called
upon to maintain a strike against our own rate of wages, which we do in
effect by feeding all the idle fellows who elect to march on. But don’t
be hard on them. They can do us harm enough if they try.”

“I don’t see that, sir. The salt-bush won’t burn, and they would never
think of anything else. They must be taught in this part of the world
that they will not be encouraged to refuse fair wages. Now we are
talking about rates—seventeen and sixpence is quite enough to give a
hundred for shearing. We must have an understanding with the other
sheep-owners, and try and fix it this year.”

Whether intimidated by the determined attitude of Mr. M‘Nab, or because
men differ in their aspirations, on the Warroo as in other places, the
next party of travellers thankfully accepted the contractors’ work and
wages, and buckled to at once. They were, in fact, a party of navvies
just set free from a long piece of contract, and this putting up posts,
pretty hard work, was just what they wanted.

M‘Nab fully believed it was owing to him, and mentally vowed to act with
similar decision in the next case of mutiny. A steady enforcement of
your own rules is what the people here look for, thought he.

The seasons glided on. Month after month of Jack’s life, and of all our
lives, fleeted past, and once again shearing became imminent. The time
did not hang heavily on his hands; he rose at daylight, and after a
plunge in the river the various work of each day asserted its claims,
and our merino-multiplier found himself wending his way home at eve as
weary as Gray’s ploughman, only fit for the consumption of dinner and an
early retreat to his bedroom. A more pretentious and certainly more
neatly-arrayed artist—indeed, a _cordon bleu_, unable to withstand the
temptations of town life—had succeeded Bob the cook. Now that the
cottage was completed, and reasonable comfort and coolness were
attainable, Jack told himself that it was not such a bad life after all.
A decent neighbour or two had turned up within visiting distance—that is
under fifty miles. The constant labour sweetened his mental health,
while the “great expectations” of the flawless perfection of the new
wool-shed, the highly improved wash-pen, and the generally triumphant
success of the coming clip, lent ardour to his soul and exultation to
his general bearing. M‘Nab, as usual, worked, and planned, and
calculated, and organized with the tireless regularity of an engine.
Chiefly by his exertions and a large emission of circulars, the Warroo
sheep-holders had been roused to a determination to reduce the price of
shearing per hundred from twenty shillings to seventeen and sixpence.
This reduced rate, in spite of some grumbling, they were enabled to
carry out, chiefly owing to an unusual abundance of the particular class
of workmen concerned. The men, after a few partial strikes, capitulated.
But they knew from whence the movement had emanated, and were not
inclined altogether to forget the fact. Indeed, of late M‘Nab, from
overwork and concentration of thought, had lost his originally
imperturbable manner. He had got into a habit of “driving” his men, and
bore himself more nearly akin to the demeanour of the second mate on
board a Yankee merchantman than the superintendent of the somewhat free
and independent workmen of an Australian colony.

“He’s going too fast, that new boss,” said one of the wash-pen hands one
day, as Mr. M‘Nab, unusually chafed at the laziness of one of the men
who were helping to fit a boiler, had, in requital of some insolent
rejoinder, knocked him down, and discharged him on the spot. “He’ll get
a rough turn yet, if he don’t look out—there’s some very queer
characters on the Warroo.”

And now the last week of July had arrived. The season promised to be
early. The grasses were unusually forward, while the burr-clover, matted
and luxuriant, made it evident that rather less than the ordinary term
of sunshine would suffice to harden its myriads of aggressively
injurious seed-cylinders. The warning was not unnoticed by the
ever-watchful eye of M‘Nab.

“There will be a bad time with any sheds that are unlucky enough to be
late this year,” he said, as Jack and he were inspecting the dam and
lately-placed spouts of the wash-pen; “that’s why I’ve been carrying a
full head of steam lately, to get all in order this month. Thank
goodness, the shed will be finished on Saturday, and I’m ready for a
start on the first of August.”

Of a certainty, every one capable of being acted upon by the contagion
of a very uncommon degree of energy had been working at high pressure
for the last two months. Paddocks had been completed; huts were ready
for the washers and shearers. The great plant, including a steam-engine,
had been strongly and efficiently fitted at the wash-pen, where a dam
sent back the water for a mile, to the great astonishment of Jingaree
and his friends, who occasionally rode over, as a species of holiday, to
inspect the work.

“My word,” said this representative of the Arcadian, or perhaps
Saturnian, period. “I wonder what old Morgan would say to all this here
tiddley-winkin’, with steam-engine, and wire-fences, and knock-about men
at a pound a week, as plenty as the black fellows when he first came on
the ground. They’ll have a Christy pallis yet, and minstrels too, I’ll
be bound. They’ve fenced us off from our Long Camp, too, with that
cussed wire. Said our cattle went over our boundary. Boundaries be
blowed! I’ve seen every herd mixed from here to Bochara, after a dry
season. Took men as knew their work to draft ’em again, I can tell you.
If these here fences is to be run up all along the river, any Jackaroo
can go stock-keeping. The country’s going to mischief.”

Winding up with this decided statement of disapproval, Mr. Jingaree thus
delivered himself at a cattle muster at one of the old-fashioned
stations, where the ancient manners and customs of the land were still
preserved in an uncorrupted state. The other gentlemen, Mr. Billy the
Bay, from Durgah, Mr. Long Jem, from Deep Creek, Mr. Flash Jack, from
Banda Murranul, and a dozen other representatives of the spur and
stock-whip, listened with evident approbation to Jingaree’s peroration.
“The blessed country’s a blessed sight too full,” said Mr. Long Jem. “I
mind the time when, if a cove wanted a fresh hand, he had to ride to
Bochara and stay there a couple of days, till some feller had finished
knockin’ down his cheque. Now they can stay at home, and pick and choose
among the travellers at their ease. It’s these blessed immigrants and
diggers as spoils our market. What right have they got to the country,
I’d like to know?”

This natural but highly protective view of the labour question found
general acquiescence, and nothing but the absurd latter-day theories of
the necessity of population, and the freedom of the individual,
prevented, in their opinion, a return of the good old times, when each
man fixed the rate of his own remuneration.

Meanwhile Mr. M‘Nab’s daring innovations progressed and prospered at the
much-changed and highly-improved Gondaree. On Saturday afternoon
Redgrave and his manager surveyed, with no little pride, the completed
and indeed admirable wool-shed. Nothing on the Warroo had ever been seen
like it. Jack felt honestly proud of his new possession, as he walked up
and down the long building. The shearing floor was neatly, even
ornamentally, laid with the boards of the delicately-tinted Australian
pine. The long pens which delivered the sheep to the operator were
battened on a new principle, applied by the ever-inventive genius of
M‘Nab. There were separate back yards and accurately divided portions of
the floor for twenty shearers. The roof was neatly shingled. All the
appliances for saving labour were of the most modern description, and as
different from the old-world contrivances in vogue among the wool-sheds
of the Warroo as a threshing-machine from a pair of flails. The
wool-press alone had cost more as it stood ready for work than many a
shed, wash-pen, huts, and yards of the old days.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

        “The crackling embers glow,
        And flakes of hideous smoke the skies defile.”—_Crabbe._


“There is accommodation for more shearers than we shall need this year,”
said M‘Nab, apologetically, “but it is as well to do the thing
thoroughly. Next year I hope we shall have fifty thousand to shear, and
if you go in for some back country I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a
hundred thousand sheep on the board before you sell out. That will be a
sale worth talking about. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like plenty of room
in a shed. The wool will be all the better this year even for it.”

“I know it has cost a frightful lot of money,” said Jack, pensively,
practising a gentle gallop on the smooth, pale-yellow, aromatic-scented
floor. “I dare say it will be a pleasure to shear in it, and all
that—but it’s spoiled a thousand pounds one way or the other.”

“What’s a thousand pounds?” said M‘Nab, with a sort of gaze that seemed
as though he were piercing the mists of futurity, and seeing an unbroken
procession of tens of thousands of improved merinos marching slowly and
impressively on to the battens, ready to deliver three pounds and a-half
of spout-washed wool at half-a-crown a pound. “When you come to add a
penny or twopence a pound to a large clip, all the money you can spend
in a wash-pen, or a shed, is repaid in a couple of years. Of course I
mean when things are on a large scale.”

“Well, we’re spending money on a large scale,” said Jack. “I only hope
the returns and profits will be in the same proportion.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said M‘Nab. “I must be off home to meet the
fencers.”

The shed was locked up, and they drove home. As they alighted, three men
were standing at the door of the store, apparently waiting for the
“dole”—a pound of meat and a pannikin of flour, which is now found to be
the reasonable minimum, given to every wayfarer by the dwellers in
Riverina, wholly irrespective of caste, colour, indisposition to work,
or otherwise, “as the case may be.”

Jack went into the house to prepare for dinner, while M‘Nab, looking
absently at the men, took out a key and made towards the entrance to the
store.

“Stop,” cried M‘Nab, “didn’t I see you three men on the road to-day,
about four miles off? Which way have you come?”

“We’re from down the river,” said one of the fellows, a voluble,
good-for-nothing, loafing impostor, a regular “coaster” and “up one side
of the river and down the other” traveller, as the men say, asking for
work, and praying, so long as food and shelter are afforded, that he may
not get it. “We’ve been looking for work this weeks, and I’m sure,
sliding into an impressive low-tragedy growl, the ’ardships men ’as to
put up with in this country—a-travellin’ for work—no one can’t imagine.”

“I dare say not,” said M‘Nab; “it’s precious little you fellows know of
hardships, fed at every station you come to, taking an easy day’s walk,
and not obliged to work unless the employment thoroughly suits you. How
far have you come to-day?”

There was a slight appearance of hesitation and reference to each other
as the spokesman answered—“From Dickson’s, a station about fifteen miles
distant.”

“You are telling me a lie,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “I saw you sitting
down on your swags this morning at the crossing-place, five miles from
here, and the hut-keeper on the other side of the river told me you had
been there all night and had only just left.”

“Well, suppose we did,” said another one, who had not yet spoken,
“there’s no law to make a man walk so many miles a day, like travelling
sheep. I dare say the squatters would have that done if they could. Are
you going to give us shelter here to-night, or no?”

“I’ll see you hanged first!” broke forth M‘Nab, indignantly; “what, do
you talk about _shelter_ in weather like this! A rotten tree is too good
a lodging for a set of lazy, useless scoundrels, who go begging from
station to station at the rate of five miles a day.”

“We did not come far to-day, it is true,” said the third traveller,
evidently a foreigner; “but we have a far passage to-morrow. Is it not
so, _mes camarades_?”

“Far enough, and precious short rations too, sometimes,” growled the man
who had spoken last. “I wish some coves had a taste on it themselves.”

“See here, my man,” said M‘Nab, going close up to the last speaker, and
looking him full in the eye, “if you don’t start at once I’ll kick you
off the place, and pretty quickly too.”

The man glared savagely for a moment, but, seeing but little chance of
coming off best in an encounter with a man in the prime of youth and
vigour, gave in, and sullenly picked up his bundle.

The Frenchman, for such he was, turned for a moment, and fixing a small
glittering eye—cold and serpentine—upon M‘Nab, said—

“It is then that you refuse us a morsel of food, the liberty to lie on
the hut floor?”

“There is the road,” repeated M‘Nab; “I will harbour no impostors or
loafers.”

“I have the honour to wish you good-evening,” said the Frenchman, bowing
with exaggerated politeness; “a pleasant evening, and dreams of the
best.”

The men went slowly on their way. M‘Nab went into the cottage, by no
means too well satisfied with himself. A feeling of remorse sprang up
within his breast. “Hang the fellows!” said he to himself, “it serves
them right. Still I am going in to a comfortable meal and my bed, while
these poor devils will most probably have neither. That Frenchman didn’t
seem a crawler either, though I didn’t like the expression of his eye as
he moved away. They’ll make up for it at Jook-jook to-morrow. Why need
they have told me that confounded lie? then they would have been treated
well. However, it can’t be helped. If we don’t give them a lesson now
and then the country will get full of fellows who do nothing but consume
rations, and fair station work will become impossible.”

Early next morning—it was Sunday, by the way—Jack was turning round for
another hour’s snooze, an indulgence to which he deemed himself fairly
entitled after a hard week’s work, when Mr. M‘Nab’s voice (_he_ was
always up and about early, whatever might be the day of the week) struck
strangely upon his ear. He was replying to one of the station hands; he
caught the words—“The shed! God in heaven—you can’t mean it!” Jack was
out of bed with one bound, and, half clad, rushed out. M‘Nab was
saddling a horse with nervous hands that could scarcely draw a buckle.

“What is it, man?” demanded Redgrave, with a sinking at the heart, and a
strange presentiment of evil.

“The wool-shed’s a-fire, sir!” answered the man, falteringly, “and I
came in directly I seen it to let you know.”

“On fire! and why didn’t you try and put it out?” inquired he, hoarsely,
“there were plenty of you about there.”

He was hoping against hope, and was scarcely surprised when the man
said, in a tone as nearly modulated to sympathy as his rough utterance
could be subdued to—

“The men are hard at it, sir, but I’m afraid——”

Jack did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence, but made at once
for the loose-box where his hack had been lately bestowed at night, and
in a couple of minutes was galloping along the lately-worn “wool-shed
track” at some distance behind M‘Nab, who was racing desperately ahead.

Before he reached the creek upon which the precious and indispensable
building had been, after much careful planning erected, he saw the great
column of smoke rising through the still morning air, and knew that all
was lost. He knew that the pine timber, of which it was chiefly
composed, would burn “like a match,” and that if not stifled at its
earliest commencement all the men upon the Warroo could not have
arrested its progress. As he galloped up a sufficiently sorrowful sight
met his eye. The shearers, washers, and some other provisional hands,
put on in anticipation of the unusual needs of shearing time, were
standing near the fiercely-blazing structure, with fallen roof and
charred uprights, which but yesterday had been the best wool-shed on the
Warroo. The deed was done. There was absolutely no hope, no opportunity
of saving a remnant of the value of five pounds of the whole costly
building.

“How, in the name of all that’s—” said he to M‘Nab, who was gazing
fixedly beyond the red smouldering mass, as if his ever-working mind was
already busied beyond the immediate disaster, “did the fire originate?
It was never accidental. Then who could have had the smallest motive to
do us such an injury?”

“I am afraid I have too good a guess,” answered M‘Nab. “But of that by
and by. Did you see any strange men camp here last night?” he asked of
the crowd generally.

“Travellers?” said one of the expectant shearers. “Yes, there was three
of ’em came up late and begged some rations. I was away after my horse
as made off. When I found him and got back it was ten o’clock at night,
and these coves was just making their camp by the receiving-yard.”

“What like were they?”

“Two biggish chaps—one with a beard, and a little man, spoke like a
’Talian or a Frenchman.”

“Did they say anything?”

“Well, one of them—the long chap—began to run you down; but the
Frenchman stopped him, and said you was too good to ’em altogether.”

“Who saw the shed first?”

“I did, sir,” said one of the fencers. “I turned out at daylight to get
some wood, when the fust thing I saw was the roof all blazin’ and part
of it fell in. I raised a shout and started all the men. We tried
buckets, but, lor’ bless you, when we come to look, the floor was all
burned through and through.”

“Then you think it had been burning a good while?” asked Jack, now
beginning to understand the drift of the examination.

“Hours and hours, sir,” answered the man; “from what we see, the fire
started under where the floor joins the battens; there was a lot of
shavings under the battens, and some of them hadn’t caught when we came.
It was there the fire began sure enough.”

“Did any one see the strange men leave?” asked M‘Nab, with assumed
coolness, though his lip worked nervously, and his forehead was drawn
into deep wrinkles.

“Not a soul,” said another of the hands. “I looked over at their camp as
we rushed out, and it was all cleared out, and no signs of ’em.”

John Redgrave and his manager rode back very sadly to Steamboat Point
that quiet Sunday morn. The day was fair and still, with the added
silence and hush which long training communicates to the mere idea of
the Sabbath day.

The birds called strangely, but not unmusically, from the pale-hued
trees but lately touched with a softer green. The blue sky was
cloudless. Nature was kindly and serene. Nothing was incongruous with
her tranquil and tender aspect but the stern, tameless heart of man.

They maintained for some time a dogged silence. The loss was bitter. Not
only had rather more money been spent upon the building than was quite
advisable or convenient, but the whole comfort, pride, and perhaps
profit, of the shearing would be lost.

“Those infernal scoundrels,” groaned M‘Nab; “that snake of a Frenchman,
with his beady black eyes. I thought the little brute meant mischief,
though I never dreamed of this, or I’d have gone and slept in the shed
till shearing was over. I’ll have them in gaol before a week’s over
their heads, but what satisfaction is there in that? It’s my own fault
in great part. I ought to have known better, and not have been so hard
on them.”

“I was afraid,” said Jack, “that you were a little too sharp with these
fellows of late. I know, too, what they are capable of. But no one could
have foreseen such an outrage as this. The next thing to consider is how
to knock up a rough makeshift that we can shear in.”

“That doesn’t give me any trouble,” answered the spirit-stricken M‘Nab;
“we could do as we did last year; but the season is a month forwarder,
and we shall have the burrs and grass-seed in the wool as sure as fate.
But for that, I shouldn’t so much care.”

M‘Nab departed gloomily to his own room, refusing consolation, and spent
the rest of the day writing circulars containing an accurate description
of the suspected ones to every police-station within two hundred miles.

Then it came to pass that the three outlaws were soon snapped up by a
zealous sergeant, “on suspicion of having committed a felony,” and
safely lodged in Bochara gaol. There did they abide for several weary
months, until the Judge of the Circuit Court was graciously pleased to
come and try them.

The loss in the first instance was sufficiently great. The labour of
many men for nearly a year; every nail, every ounce of iron contained in
the large building had been brought from Melbourne; the sawyers’ bill
was considerable. Twice had the men employed to put on the shingles
deserted, and the finishing of the roof was regarded by the anxious
M‘Nab as a kind of miracle. The sliding doors, the portcullises, the
hundreds of square feet of battening, the circular drafting-yard; all
the very latest appliances and improvements, united to very solid and
perfect construction, made an unusual though costly success. And now, to
see it wasted, and worse than wasted. “It is enough to make one believe
in bad luck, Mr. Redgrave!” said Mr. M‘Nab, who had just quitted his
bedroom.

“I am afraid it means bad luck for this season,” pursued he; “our wool
will be got up only middling, and if prices take a turn downward it will
be very puzzling to say what the damage done by this diabolical act of
arson will amount to.”

“We must hope for the best,” said Jack, who, feeling things very keenly
at the time, had a great dislike to the protracted torture which
dwelling upon misfortunes always inflicts upon men of his organization.
“The deed is done. To-morrow we must rig up a second edition of last
year’s proud edifice.”

The sheep were shorn, certainly. Mr. Redgrave did not exactly permit the
crop of delicate, creamy, serrated, elastic, myriad-threaded material to
be torn off by the salt-bushes, or to become ragged and patchy on the
sheeps’ backs. But the pleasure and pride of the toilsome undertaking,
the light and life of the pastoral harvest, were absent. There was a
total absence of rain; so there was a good deal of unavoidable dust. The
men could not be got to take the ordinary amount of pains; so the work
was thoroughly unsatisfactory. Then, in spite of all the haste and
indifferent workmanship purposely overlooked by M‘Nab, the grass-seed
and clover-burr ripened only too rapidly, and the ewes and lambs, coming
last, were choke-full of it. The lower part of every fleece was like a
nutmeg-grater with the hard, unyielding, hooked and barbed tentacles.
M‘Nab groaned in spirit as he saw all this unnecessary damage, which he
was powerless to prevent, and again and again cursed the hasty word and
lack of self-control which, as he fully believed, had indirectly caused
this never-ending mischief.

“A thousand for the shed, and another thousand for damage to wool,” said
he one day, as he flung one of these last porcupine-looking fleeces with
a disgusted air into a rude wool-bin made of hurdles placed on end.
“It’s enough to make a man commit suicide. I feel as if I ought to walk
to Melbourne with peas in my boots.”

“Never mind, M‘Nab,” said Jack, consolingly; “as I said before, the
thing is done and over, and we may make ourselves miserable, and so
injure our thought and labour fund. But that won’t build the shed again.
Luckily the sheep are all right—they couldn’t burn them. I never saw a
better lot of lambs, and the numbers are getting up to the fifty
thousand I once proposed as a limit. What’s the total count we have
passed through?”

“Forty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty,” answered M‘Nab, who
always had anything connected with numerals at his fingers’ ends. “We
have bought several small lots since last year, and the lambing average
was very high. Of course the lambs don’t actually count till weaning
time.”

“Well, we must only hope for a good season,” said Jack, “and for wool
and prices to keep up. Then, perhaps, the loss of the shed won’t be so
telling. We ought to have a good many fat sheep to sell in the winter.”

“So we shall,” said M‘Nab, “nearly ten thousand—counting the
full-mouthed and cull ewes. Then we shall have lambs from nearly sixteen
thousand ewes next year. I hope the season will not fail us, now the
paddocks are all finished.”

“Well, it _does_ look rather dry,” admitted Jack; “so early in the year
too. But then it always looks dry here when it doesn’t rain. I shall
have to run away to Melbourne now, and arrange whether to sell or ship
this only moderately well-got-up wool of ours. I must have another
interview with Mr. Shrood. It has been all spending and no returns of
late.”

Shearing being over—how differently concluded to what he had fondly
anticipated! Jack hied himself to town for his annual holiday. It did
not wear so much the air of a festival this year. There seemed to be a
flavour of stern business about it; much more than Jack liked.

The wool-market was by no means in so buoyant a condition as that of
last year. The faces of his brother squatters, especially those of the
more enterprizing among them, wore a serious and elongated expression.
Ugly reports went about as to a probable fall in wool and stock. Jack
found his indifferently got-up clip quite unsaleable in the colonial
market. He therefore shipped it at once, taking a fair advance thereon.
Freight, too, was unreasonably high that year. Everything seemed against
a fellow.

He went in for the little interview with Mr. Mildmay Shrood, and thought
that affable money-changer less agreeable than of yore. “He wanted to
know, you know.” He asked a series of questions, testifying a desire to
have the clearest idea of Jack’s stock, value of property, liabilities,
and probable expenditure during the coming year. He dwelt much upon the
unfortunate destruction of the wool-shed; asked for an estimate of the
cost of another; looked rather grave at the account of the get-up of the
clip, and the necessity for shipping the same. However, the concluding
portion of the interview was more reassuring.

“Of course you will continue to draw as usual, my dear sir; but I may
say, in confidence, that in commercial circles a fall in prices is very
generally anticipated.”

“There may be a temporary decline,” rejoined Jack, candidly, “but it is
impossible that it should be lasting. As for sheep, the stock are not at
present in the country to enable us to keep up with the demand,
especially since these meat-preserving establishments have commenced
operations.”

“Quite so, my dear sir, quite so,” assented Mr. Shrood, looking
paternally at him and rubbing his hands, “I am quite of your
opinion; but some of our directors have doubts—have doubts. Would
you mind looking in before you go—say in a week or two? Thanks.
Good-day—good-day.”

Jack attended the wool-sales pretty regularly, and saw the clips which
were undeniably well got up sell at good prices, in spite of the general
dullness of the market. The clip was an unusually heavy one, and every
day’s train brought down trucks upon trucks of bales, as if the interior
of Australia was one colossal wool-store, just being emptied at the
command of an enchanter. But the “heavy and moity” parcels were not
touched by the cautious operators at any price. So Jack groaned in
spirit, doubting that he might come in for a low market at home, and
knowing that he would have saved himself but for the woful work of the
incendiaries. He did not derive much comfort from the daring spirits
whose early and successful ventures had inspired him with the first
ideas of changing his district. They walked about like people who owned
a private bank, but upon which bank there happened to be, at present, a
run. They were, as a rule, men far too resolute to give in during
adversity, or the threatening of any, how wild soever, commercial
tempest. Still they looked sternly defiant, as who should say—“to bear
is to conquer our fate.” Jack did not enjoy the probabilities. These
were brass pots of approved strength for floating in the eddying
financial torrents. Might not he, an earthen vessel, meet with deadly
damage, fatal cracks, irrevocable immersion, in their company? “_Que
diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?_”

He sent up his stores, making a close calculation as to quantity. There
would not be so many men required after this shearing. The paddocks were
all finished, and few hands would be needed. Then he had doors and
windows, and hinges and nails, and tons of galvanized iron for roofing
for the shed—all over again. Confound it! Just as a fellow was hoping to
get a little straight. Jack _did_ feel very unchristian. However, it was
as necessary as tea and sugar—that is, if he ever intended to get a
decent price for his wool again. Somewhat earlier in the season than
usual, Jack commenced to revolve the question of a start. Then he
bethought himself of Mr. Mildmay Shrood.

“I wonder what he wanted to see me for?” asked Jack of his inner
consciousness; “very civil, friendly little fellow he is. I suspect my
over-draft is pretty heavy just now. But the fencing is all done, that’s
a blessing. And forty thousand sheep and a first-class run are good
security for more money than I’m ever likely to owe.”

So Mr. Redgrave hied away to the grand freestone portals which guarded
the palace of gold and silver, and the magic paper which gladdeneth the
heart of man, who reflecteth not that it is but a fiction—a “baseless
fabric”—an unsubstantial presentment of the potentiality of boundless
wealth.

Mr. Shrood was examining papers when he was ushered into the sacred
parlour, and looked rather more like the dragon in charge of the
treasure than the careless, openhanded financier of Jack’s previous
experience, whose sole business in life seemed to be to provide
cheque-books _ad infinitum_ with graceful indifference. As he ran his
eye down column after column of figures, his brow became corrugated, his
jaw became set, and his face gradually assumed an expression of hardness
and obstinacy.

Throwing down the last of the papers, and clearing his brow with sudden
completeness, he shook hands affectionately with Jack, and gently
anathematized the papers for their tediousness and stupidity.

“Awfully wearing work, Mr. Redgrave, this looking over the accounts of a
large estate. I feel as fatigued as if I had been at it all night. How
are you, and when do you leave?”

“I think the day after to-morrow,” said Jack. “I’m really tired of town,
and wish to get home again.”

“Tired of the town, and of all its various pleasures,” asked Mr. Shrood,
“at your age? Well, of course you are anxious to be at work again—very
creditable feeling. By the way, _by_ the way, now I think of it—you
haven’t encumbered your place by mortgage or in any other way during the
last year, have you?”

“Sir,” replied Jack, with dignity, “I regard my property as pledged in
honour to your bank, by which I have been treated hitherto with
liberality and confidence. I trust that our relations may continue
unaltered.”

“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly,” replied Mr. Mildmay Shrood, with an
air of touching generosity. “Precisely my own view. I trust you will
have no cause to regret your connection with our establishment. But I
have not concealed from you my opinion that, financially, there exists a
certain anxiety—premature in my view of events—but still distinct, as to
the relations between stock and capital. I have been requested by my
directors, to whose advice I am constrained to defer, to raise the point
of security in those instances where advances, I may say considerable
advances, have been made by us. You see my position, I feel sure.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Jack; “of course,” not seeing exactly what he was
driving at.

“You will not, therefore, feel that it amounts to any want of confidence
on the part of the bank,” continued Mr. Shrood, with reassuring
explanation in every tone, “if I name to you the formal execution of a
mortgage over your station, as a mere matter in the ordinary routine of
business, for the support of our advances to you past and future?”

“Oh, no,” replied Jack, with a slight gulp, misliking the sound of the
strictly legal and closely comprehensive instrument, which he had always
associated with ruined men and falling fortunes hitherto. “I suppose
it’s a necessary precaution when the mercantile barometer is low. I
shall be able to draw for necessary expenses as usual, and all that?”

Mr. Shrood smiled, as if anything to the contrary was altogether too
chimerical and beyond human imagination to be considered seriously for
one moment.

“My dear sir,” he proceeded, “I hope you have never had reason to doubt
our readiness to follow your suggestions hitherto. We have unbounded
confidence in your management and discretion. As we have reached this
point, however, would you mind executing the deed which has been
prepared in anticipation of your consent, and concluding this, I
confess, slightly unpleasing section of our arrangements while we are
agreed on the subject, to which I hope not to be compelled again to
recur.”

“Not at all,” replied Jack, “not at all,” feeling like the man at the
dentist’s, as if the tooth might as well be pulled out now as hereafter.

“Thank you; these things are best carried through at one sitting. Pray
excuse me for one moment. Mr. Smith!” Here a junior appeared. “Will you
bring in that—a—legal document, for Mr. Redgrave’s signature, and
a—attend to witness his signature? Your present liability to the bank,
Mr. Redgrave,” he explained, as the young gentleman disappeared,
“amounts to, I think, fifteen thousand pounds in round numbers—that is,
fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen and
ninepence. I think you mentioned forty thousand sheep as the stock, was
it not, at present depasturing on the station?”

“Forty-two—some odd hundreds,” answered Jack, “but that is near enough.”

Here Mr. Smith reappeared, with an imposing-looking piece of parchment,
commencing “Know all men by these presents,” which was handed to Jack
for his entertainment and perusal. Jack glanced at it. Nobody, save a
North Briton or a very misanthropical person, ever does read a deed
through, that I know of. But Jack knew enough of such matters to pick
out heedfully the principal clauses which concerned him. It was like
most other compilations of a like nature, and contained, apart from
unmeaning repetitions and exasperating surplusage, certain lucid
sentences, which Jack understood to mean that he was to pay up the said
few thousands at his convenience, or in _default_ to yield up Gondaree,
with stock thereto attached, to the paternal but irresponsible
“money-mill,” under the wildly improbable circumstance of his being
unable to clear off such advances in years to come—with principal and
interest.

“Forty-two thousand sheep, and station, at a pound,” said Jack to
himself, “leave a considerable margin; so I needn’t bother myself. Here
goes. It will never be acted upon—that is one comfort.”

So the name of John Redgrave was duly appended, and Mr. Smith wrote his
name as witness without the least embarrassment. He regarded squatters
who required accommodation as patients subject to mild attacks of
epidemic disease, which usually gave way to proper medical, that is to
say financial, treatment. Occasionally the patient succumbed. That
however was not _his_ affair. Let them all find it out for themselves.

He had many a time and oft envied the bronzed squatter lounging in on a
bright morning, throwing down a cheque and stuffing the five-pound notes
carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket. But, young as he was, he had more
than once seen a careworn, grizzled man waiting outside the bank
parlour, with ill-concealed anxiety for the interview which was to tell
him whether or not he went forth a ruined and hopelessly broken man.
Nothing could have been more soothing than the manner in which the whole
operation of the mortgage had been performed. Still it _was_ an
operation, and Jack felt a sensation difficult to describe, but tending
towards the conviction that he was not quite the same man as he had been
previously. He was not in his usual spirits at dinner that evening,
though of his two sharers of that well-cooked, yet not extravagant
repast, Hautley had ordered it, and Jerningham was by odds the neatest
talker then in town. The wine somehow wasn’t like last week’s. Must have
opened a new batch. He had no luck at billiards. He sat moodily in an
arm-chair in the smoking-room, and heard not some of the best (and least
charitable) things going. He mooned off to bed, out of harmony with
existing society.

“What the dickens is up with Redgrave?” asked little Prowler of old
Snubham, of the Indian Irregular Force. “He looks as black as thunder,
and hasn’t a word to say for himself.”

“A very fine trait in a man’s character,” growled Snubham; “half the
people one meets jabber everlastingly, Heaven knows. What would be the
matter with him? Proposed to some girl, and is afraid she’ll accept him.
A touch of liver, perhaps. Nothing else _can_ happen to a man at the
present day, sir.”

“Must be a woman, I think; he was awful spoony on Dolly Drosera. He’s
too rich to want money,” said Prowler, with a reverential awe of the
squatter proper.

“Humph! don’t know—wool’s down, I believe. He pays up at loo. Beyond
that I have no curiosity. Very ungentlemanlike thing, curiosity.
Mornin’, Prowler.”




                              CHAPTER IX.

            “A perfect woman, nobly planned,
            To warn, to comfort and command.”—_Wordsworth._


Jack’s doubts and misgivings were written upon his open brow for
twenty-four hours, but after that period they disappeared like morning
mists. He awoke to a healthier tone of feeling, and determined to combat
difficulty with renewed vigour and unshaken firmness.

“After all, I have not borrowed more than one good clip, and a little
cutting down of the stock will set all right,” said he to himself.
“Where would Brass, Marsailly, and all these other great guns have been
if they had boggled at a few thousands at the beginning? Next year’s
clip will be something like; and I never heard of any one but old Exmore
that had _two_ wool-sheds burned running. He put up a stone and iron
edifice then, and told them to see what they could make of that. There
was no grass-seed in his country though. Well, there is nothing like a
start from town for clearing out the blues. I wonder how fellows ever
manage to live there all the year round.”

These encouraging reflections occurred to the ingenuous mind of Mr.
Redgrave as he was speeding over the first hundred miles of rail which
expedite the traveller pleasantly on the road to the Great Desert.
_Facilis descensus Averni_—which means that it is very easy to “settle
one’s self” in life—the “downtrain” being furnished with “palace-cars”
of Pullman’s patent, and gradients on the most seductive system of
sliding scale.

Again the long gray plains. Again the night—one disjointed nightmare,
where excessive jolts dislocated the most evil witch-wanderings,
multiplying them, like the lower forms of life, by the severance. Then
the long, scorching day, the intolerable flies, and lo! Steamboat Point.
Gondaree, in all its arid, unrelieved glare and grandeur once more—Mr.
M‘Nab weighing sheepskins to a carrier, with as much earnestness as if
he expected half-a-crown a pound for them. Everything much as usual. Ah
Sing in the garden, watering cauliflowers. When Redgrave caught the last
glimpse of him as he left for town he was watering cabbages. Everything
very dry. No relief, no shade. The cottage looked very small: the
surroundings stiff and bare. “My eyes are out of focus just now,” said
Jack to himself. “I must keep quiet till the vision accommodates itself
to the landscape; otherwise I shall hurt M‘Nab’s feelings.”

“Well, how are you?” said Jack, heartily, as that person, having
despatched his carrier, walked towards him. “You look very thriving,
only dry; rather dry, don’t you think?”

“Well, we have hardly had a drop of rain since you started. Might be
just a shower. But everything is doing capitally. We are rather
short-handed; I sent away every soul but the cook, the Chinaman, and
four boundary-riders directly you left, and we are now, thanks to the
fencing, quite independent of labour till shearing-time.”

“How in the world do you get on?” inquired Jack, quite charmed, yet half
afraid of M‘Nab’s sudden eviction.

“Nothing can be simpler. The dogs were well poisoned before the fences
were finished. There’s no road through the back of the run, thank
goodness. We haven’t any bother about wells because of Bimbalong. I
count every paddock once a month, and that’s about all there is to do.”

“And who looks after the store?” inquired Jack.

“I do, of course,” said M‘Nab; “there is very little to give out, you’ll
mind. Two of the boundary-riders live at home here, and the other two at
a hut at Bimbalong. Now you’ve come there will be hardly enough work to
keep us going.”

“Four men to forty thousand sheep,” moralized Jack. “What would some of
the old hands think of that? Oh! the weaners,” cried he; “I had
forgotten them. How did you manage them, M‘Nab?”

“Well, we had a great day’s drafting, and put them back in the river
paddock. They are all as contented as possible, and as steady as old
ewes—thirteen thousand of them.”

“There’s a trifle of bother saved by that arrangement. What a burden
life used to be for the first three months after the weaning flocks were
portioned out!”

Jack’s spirits were many degrees lighter after this conversation.
Certainly there was a heavyish debt—and this millstone of a mortgage
hung round “his neck alway” like the albatross in the _Ancient Mariner_;
but the compensating economy of the fencing was beginning to work a
cure. If one could only tide over the shearing with the present reduced
Civil List, what a hole would the clip and the fat sheep make in the
confounded “balance debtor!” There is the wool-shed over again, to be
sure. What a murder that one should have all those hundredweights of
nails, and tons of battens, and acres of flooring, and forests of posts
and wall-plates to get all over again! It was very bitter work in Jack’s
newly-born tendency to economy to have all this outlay added on to the
inevitable expenditure of the season.

“As I said before,” concluded Jack, rounding off his soliloquy, “I never
knew any fellow but Exmoor undergo the ordeal by fire two seasons
running, so it’s a kind of insurance against the chapter of accidents
_this_ year.”

Jack insensibly returned to his ordinary provincial repose of mind and
body. He rode about in the early mornings and cooler evenings, and took
his turn to convoy travelling sheep, to officiate at the store, and to
relieve the ever-toiling M‘Nab in any way that presented itself. He kept
up this kind of thing for a couple of months, and then—the unbroken
monotony of the whole round of existence striking him rather suddenly
one day—he made up his mind to a slight change. There was a station
about fifty miles away, down the river, with the owner of which he had a
casual acquaintance; so, _faute d’autre_, he thought he would go and see
him.

“You can get on quite as well without me, M‘Nab,” he said. “I think a
small cruise would do me good. I’ll go and see Mr. Stangrove. One often
gets an idea by going away from home.”

“That’s true enough,” assented M‘Nab, “but I doubt yon’s the wrong shop
for _new_ ones. Mr. Stangrove is a good sort of man, I hear every one
say; but he hails from the old red-sandstone period (M‘Nab knew Hugh
Miller by heart), and has no more idea of a swing-gate than a
shearing-machine.”

“Well, one will get a notion of how the Australian Pilgrim Fathers
managed to get a livelihood, and subdue the salt-bush for their
descendants. There must be a flavour of antiquity about it. I will start
to-morrow.”

After a daylight breakfast, Mr. Redgrave departed, riding old Hassan,
and, like a wise man, leading another hackney, with a second saddle,
upon which was strapped his valise. “If you want to go anywhere,” he was
wont to assert, “you want a _few_ spare articles of raiment.” Sitting in
boots and breeches all the evening is unpleasant to the visitor and
disrespectful to his entertainers, whether he be what the old-fashioned
writers called “travel-stained” in wet weather, or uncomfortably warm in
the dry season. If you carry the articles alluded to you need a valise.
A valise is much pleasanter on a spare horse than in front of your own
person; and all horses go more cheerily in company, particularly as you
can divide the day’s journey by alternate patronage of either steed. I
think life in a general way passes as pleasantly during a journey _à
cheval_ as over any other “road of life.” Then why make toil of a
pleasure? Always take a brace of hacks, O reader, and then—

              “Over the downs mayst thou scour, nor mind
              Whether Horace’s mistress be cruel or kind.”

The sun was no great distance above the far unbroken sky-line; the air
was pleasantly cool as Jack rode quietly along the level track which led
to his outer gate, and down the river. The horses played with their
bits, stepping along lightly with elastic footfall. “What a different
life,” thought he, “from my old one at Marshmead! How full of interest
and occupation was every day as it rose! Neighbours at easy distances;
poor old Tunstall to go and poke up whenever John Redgrave failed to
suffice for his own entertainment and instruction. Jolly little Hampden,
with its picnics and parties, and bench-work, and boat-sailing, and
racing, and public meetings, and ‘all sorts o’ games,’ as Mr. Weller
said. The bracing climate, the wholesome moral and physical atmosphere,
the utter absence of any imp or demon distantly related to the traitor
Ennui; and here, such is the melancholy monotony of my daily life that I
find myself setting forth with a distinctly pleasurable feeling to visit
a man whom I do not know, and very probably shall not like when our
acquaintance expands. _Auri sacri fames_,—shall I quote that hackneyed
tag? I may as well—the day is long—there is plenty of time and to spare
on the Warroo, as Hawkesbury said. Fancy a fellow living this life for a
dozen years and _making no money_ after all. The picture is too painful.
I shall weep over it myself directly—like that arch-humbug Sterne.”

About half way to his destination was an inn—hostelry of the period; an
ugly slab building covered, as to its roof and verandah, with corrugated
iron. There was no trace or hint of garden. It stood as if dropped on
the edge of the bare, desolate, sandy plain. It faced the dusty track
which did duty as high road; at the back of the slovenly yard was the
river—chiefly used as a convenient receptacle for rubbish and broken
bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking pigs lay in the verandah,
or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate vicinity of the front
entrance. A stout man, in Crimean shirt and tweed trousers, stood in the
verandah, smoking, and, far from betraying any “provincial eagerness” at
the sight of a stranger, went on smoking coolly until Jack spoke.

“How far is Mr. Stangrove’s place?” inquired he.

“What, Juandah?” said the host, in a tone conveying the idea that in
ordinary social circles it was on a par, for notoriety, with London or
Liverpool. “Well, say thirty mile.”

“Do you take the back road, or the one nearest to the river?” further
inquired Jack.

“Oh, stick to the river bank,” answered the man; “at this time of year
it is nearest.”

“What in the name of wonder,” inquired Jack of himself, as he rode away,
“can a man do who lives at such a fragment of Hades _but_ drink? He must
be a Christian hero, or a philosopher, if he refrain under the utterly
maddening conditions of life. Were he one or the other, he probably
would not keep the grog-shop which he dignifies with the title of the
Mailman’s Arms.” Of course he drinks—it is written in his dull eye and
sodden face—his wife drinks, the barman drinks—the loafer who plays at
being groom in the hayless, strawless, cornless stable drinks. The
shepherd hands his cheque across the bar—and till every shilling,
purchased by a year’s work, abstinence, and solitude, disappears,
drinks—madly drinks. The miserable, debased aboriginal—camping there for
weeks with his squalid wives—drinks, and, perchance, when his wild blood
is stirred by vile liquor, murders ere his fit be over. From that den,
as from a foul octopus, stretch forth tentacula which fasten only upon
human beings. Question them, and hear vain remorse, bitter wrath,
agonized despair, sullen apathy—the name of one resistless, unsparing
curse—_drink_, _drink_, _drink_!

The midday sun was hot. The stage was a fair one; but Jack pushed on,
after receiving his information, for half-a-dozen miles further. Then,
discovering a green bend, he unsaddled, and, taking the precaution to
hobble his nags, lighted his pipe. They rolled and cropped the fresh
herbage, while he enjoyed a more satisfactory noontide lounge than the
horsehair sofa of Mr. Hoker’s best parlour would have afforded, after a
doubtful, or perhaps deleterious, repast.

The day was gone when Jack was made aware, by certain signs and
hieroglyphics, known to all bushmen, that he was approaching a station.
The pasture was closely cropped and bare. Converging tracks of horses,
sheep, and cattle obviously trended in one direction. At some distance
upon the open plain he could see a shepherd with his flock, slowly
moving towards a point of timber more than a mile in advance of his
present position. “I shall come upon the paddock fence just inside that
timber,” he remarked to himself, “and the house will probably be within
sight of the slip-rails. It will not be a very large paddock, I will
undertake to say.”

This turned out to be a correct calculation. He saw the sheep-yard,
towards which the flock was heading, as he reached the timber. He
descried the paddock fence and the slip-rail in the road; and within
sight—as he put up the rails and mustered a couple of temporary pegs,
for fear of accidents—was a roomy wooden building surrounded by a
garden.

Riding up to the garden gate, he was announced as “Mr. Stranger” by
about twenty dogs, who gave the fullest exercise to their lungs, and
would doubtless have gone even further had Jack been on foot. A tall,
sun-burned man, in an old shooting-coat, appeared upon the verandah,
and, making straight through the excited pack, greeted Redgrave warmly.

“Won’t you get off and come in? I’ll take your horses. [Hold your row,
you barking fools!] Oh! it is you, Mr. Redgrave; from Gondaree, I
think—met you at Barrabri—very glad to see you; of course you have come
to stay? Allow me to take the led horse.”

“I think I promised to look you up some day,” said Jack. “I took
advantage of a lull in station-work and—here I am.”

“Very glad indeed you have made your visit out, though I don’t know that
I have much to show you. But, as we are neighbours, we ought to become
acquainted.”

The horses were led over to a small but tolerably snug stable, where
they were regaled with hay previous to being turned out in the paddock,
and then Jack was ushered into the house. Mr. Stangrove was a married
man; so much was evident from the first; many traces of the
“pug-wuggies, or little people,” were apparent; and a girl crossing the
yard with a baby in her arms supplied any evidence that might be
missing.

“Will you have a glass of grog after your ride?” inquired the host, “or
would you like to go to your room?”

Jack preferred the latter, being one of those persons who decline to eat
or drink until they are in a comfortable and becoming state of mind and
body; holding it to be neither epicurean nor economical to “muddle away
appetite” under circumstances which preclude all proper and befitting
appreciation.

So Redgrave performed his ablutions, and, having arrayed himself in
luxuriously-easy garments and evening shoes, made his way to the
sitting-room. He had just concluded “a long, cool drink” when two ladies
entered.

“My dear, allow me to introduce Mr. Redgrave—Mrs. Stangrove, Miss
Stangrove.”

A lady advanced upon the first mention of names and shook hands with the
visitor, in a kindly, unaffected manner. She was young, but a certain
worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore silent
witness to the toils of housekeeping, with indifferent servants or none
at all; to want of average female society; to a little loneliness, and a
great deal of monotony. Such, with few exceptions, is the life of an
Australian lady, whose husband lives in the far interior, in the _real_
bush. Her companion, who contented herself with a searching look and a
formal bow, was “in virgin prime and May of womanhood”—and a most fair
prime and sweet May it was. Her features were regular, her mouth
delicate and refined, with a certain firmness about the chin, and the
_mutine_ expression about the upper lip, which savoured of declaration
of war upon just pretext. She had that air and expression which at once
suggest the idea of interest in unravelling the character. Jack shook
hands with himself when he thought of how he had persevered after the
traitorous idea had entered his head that after all it was no use going,
Mr. Stangrove wouldn’t be glad to see him, or care a rush about the
matter.

The evening meal was now announced, which circumstance afforded Jack
considerable satisfaction. He had ridden rather more than fifty miles,
and, whereas his horses had not done so badly in the long grass of the
“bend,” our traveller’s lunch had been limited to a pipe of “Pacific
Mixture.” All the same, while the preparations for tea were proceeding
he took a careful and accurate survey of his younger feminine neighbour.

Maud Stangrove was somewhat out of the ordinary run of girls in
appearance, as she certainly was in character. Her features were
regular, with a complexion clear and delicate to a degree unusual in a
southern land. Her mouth, perhaps, denoted a shade more firmness than
the ideal princess is supposed to require. But it was redeemed by the
frank, though not invariable, smile which, disclosing a set of extremely
white and regular teeth, gave an expression of softness and humour which
was singularly winning. The eyes were darkest hazel, faintly toned with
gray. They were remarkable as a feature; and those on whom they had
shone—in love or war—rarely forgot their gaze; they were clear and
shining; but this is to say little; such are the every-day charms of
that beauty which is in woman but another name for youth. Maud’s eyes
had the peculiar quality of developing fresh aspects and hidden
mysteries of expression as they fell on you—calm, clear, starlike, but
fathomless, glowing ever, and with hidden, smouldering fire. She was
dressed plainly, but in such taste as betokened reference to a milliner
remote from the locality. Rather, but very slightly, above middle height
in her figure, there was an absence of angularity which gave promise of
eventual roundness of contour—perhaps even too pronounced. But now, in
the flower-time of early womanhood, she moved with the unstudied ease of
those forest creatures in whom one notices a world of latent force.

Such was the apparition which burst upon the senses of Mr. Redgrave.

“Average neighbours!” said he to himself. “Who ever expected this—a
vision of no end of fear and interest? This is a girl fit for any one to
make love to or to quarrel with, as the case might be. I think the
latter recreation would be the easier. And yet I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you have ever been so far ‘down the river,’ as the people
call it, before?” said Mrs. Stangrove.

“I’m afraid I have not been a very good neighbour,” said Jack, beginning
to feel contrite at the _de haut en bas_ treatment of the general
population of the Warroo, in accordance with which he had devoted
himself to unrelieved work at Gondaree, and looked upon social
intercourse as completely out of the question. “But the fact is, that I
have been very hard at work up to this time. Now the fences are up I
hope to have a little leisure.”

Here Jack paused, as if he had borne up, like another Atlas, the weight
of the Gondaree world upon those shapely shoulders of his.

Miss Stangrove looked at him with an expression which did not imply
total conviction.

“We have heard of all your wonders and miracles, haven’t we, Jane? I
don’t know what we should have done in the wilderness here without the
Gondaree news.”

“I was not aware that I was so happy as to furnish interesting incidents
for the country generally,” answered Jack; “but it would have given me
fresh life if I had only thought that Mrs. and Miss Stangrove were
sympathetical with my progress.”

“You would have been rather flattered, then,” said Stangrove, who was a
downright sort of personage, “if you had heard the lamentations of these
ladies over your woolshed—indeed, Maud said that——”

“Come, Mark,” said Miss Stangrove, eagerly, and with the very becoming
improvement of a sudden blush, “we don’t need your clumsy version of all
our talk for the last year. Nobody ever does anything upon this
antediluvian stream from one century to another, and of course Jane and
I felt grieved that a spirited reformer like Mr. Redgrave should meet
with so heavy a loss—didn’t we, Jane?”

“Of course we did, my dear,” said that matron, placidly; “and Mark, too,
he said the wicked men who did it ought to be hanged, and that Judge
Lynch was a very useful institution. He was quite ferocious.”

“Thanks very many; I am sure I feel deeply grateful. I had no idea I had
so many well-wishers,” quoth Jack, casting his eyes in the direction of
Miss Maud. “It comforts one under affliction and—all that, you know.”

“How you must look down upon us, with our shepherds and old-world ways,”
said Maud. “You come from Victoria, do you not, Mr. Redgrave? We Sydney
people believe that you are all Yankees down there, and wear
bowie-knives and guns, and calculate, and so on.”

“Really, Miss Stangrove,” pleaded Jack, “you are indicting me upon
several charges at once; which am I to answer? I don’t look very
supercilious, do I? though I admit hailing from Victoria, which is
chiefly peopled by persons of British birth, whatever may be the
prevailing impression.”

“Well, you will have an opportunity of discussing the matter—the
shepherds, I mean—with my brother, who is a strong conservative. I give
you leave to convert him, if you can. We have hitherto found it
impossible, haven’t we, Mark?”

“Mark has generally good reasons for his opinions,” said the loyal wife,
looking approvingly at her lord and master—who, indeed, was very like a
man who could hold his own in any species of encounter. “But suppose we
have a little music—you might play _La Bouquetière_.”

“The piano is not so wofully out of tune as might be expected,” asserted
Maud, as she sat down comfortably to her work, all things being arranged
by Jack, who was passionately fond of music—a good deal of which, as of
other abstractions, he had in his soul.

“Far from it,” said he, as the shower of delicate notes which make up
this loveliest of airy musical trifles fell on his ear like a melody of
_le temps perdu_.

Jack had all his life been extremely susceptible to the charm of music.
He had a good ear, and his taste, naturally correct, had been rather
unusually well cultivated. With him the effect of harmony was to bring
to the surface, and develop as by a spell, all the best, the noblest,
the most exalted portions of his character. Any woman who played or sang
with power exercised a species of fascination over him, assuming her
personal endowments to be up to his standard. When Miss Stangrove, after
passing lightly over _capriccias_ of Chopin and Liszt, after a fashion
which showed very unusual execution, commenced in deference to his
repeated requests to sing _When Sparrows Build_, and one or two other
special favourites, in _such_ a mezzo-soprano! he was surprised,
charmed, subjugated—with astonishing celerity.

However, the evenings of summer, commencing necessarily late, come to an
end rather prematurely if we are very pleasantly engaged. So Jack
thought when Mr. Stangrove looked at his watch, and opined that Jack
after his ride would be glad to retire.

Jack was by no means glad, but of course assented blandly, and the two
ladies sailed off.

“Shall we have a pipe in the verandah before we turn in?” asked his
host. “You smoke, I suppose? We can open this window and leave the
glasses on the table here within easy reach.”

Taking up his position upon a Cingalese cane-chair on the broad
verandah, and lighting his pipe simultaneously with his host, Jack
leaned back and enjoyed the wondrous beauty of the night.

The cottage, unlike the Mailman’s Arms, fronted the river, towards which
a neatly-kept garden sloped, ending in a grassy bank.

“My sister belongs to the advanced party of reform, Mr. Redgrave, as you
will have observed,” said his entertainer. “She and I have numerous
fights on the subject.”

“I am proud to have such an ally,” said Jack; “but, seriously, I wonder
you have not been converted. Surely the profits and advantages of
fencing are sufficiently patent.”

“You must bear with me, my dear sir, as a very staunch conservative,”
answered his host, smoking serenely, and speaking with his usual calm
deliberation. “There is something, I think much, to be said on the other
side.”

“I feel really anxious to hear your arguments,” said Jack. “I fancied
that beyond what the shepherds always say—that sheep can’t do well or
enjoy life without a bad-tempered old man and a barking dog at their
tails—the brief against fencing was exhausted.”

“I do not take upon myself to assert,” said Stangrove, “that my reasons
ought to govern persons whose circumstances differ from my own. But I
find them sufficient for me for the present. I reserve the privilege of
altering them upon cause shown. And the reasons are—First of all, that I
could not enter into the speculation, for such it would be, of fencing
my run without going into debt—a thing I abhor under _any_
circumstances. Secondly, because the seasons in Australia are
exceedingly changeable, as I have had good cause to know. And, thirdly,
because the prices of stock are as fluctuating and irregular,
occasionally, as the seasons.”

“Granted all these, how can there be two opinions about an outlay which
is repaid within two years, which is more productive in bad seasons than
in good ones, and which dispenses with three-fourths of the labour
required for an ordinary sheep-station?”

“I have no reason to doubt what you say,” persisted Stangrove, “but
suppose we defer the rest of the argument until we have had a look at
the run and stock together. I can explain my meaning more fully on my
own beat. I dare say you will sleep tolerably after your ride.”




                               CHAPTER X.

             “Absence of occupation is not rest.”—_Cowper._


Jack went to bed with a kind of general idea of getting up in the
morning early and looking round the establishment. But, like the knight
who was to be at the postern gate at dawn, he failed to keep the
self-made engagement; and for the same reason he slept so soundly that
the sun was tolerably high when he awoke, and he had barely time for a
swim in the river, and a complete toilet, before the breakfast-bell
rang.

In spite of the baseless superstition that “there is nothing like one’s
own bed,” and so on, it is notorious that all men not confirmed
valetudinarians sleep far more satisfactorily away from home. For,
consider, one is comparatively freed from the dire demon,
Responsibility, you doze off tranquilly into the charmed realm of
dreamland—with “nothing on your mind.” Perfectly indifferent is it to
you, in the house of a congenial friend or affable stranger, whether
domestic disorganization of the most frightful nature is smouldering
insidiously or hurrying to a climax. The cook may be going next week,
the housemaid may have contracted a clandestine marriage. Your host may
be sternly revolving plans of retrenchment, and may have determined to
abandon light wines, and to limit his consumption to table-beer and
alcohol. But nothing of this is revealed to you; nor would it greatly
concern you if it was. For the limited term of your visit, the
hospitality is free, smooth, and spontaneous. Atra Cura, if she does
accidentally drop in by mistake, is a courteous _grande dame_, rather
plainly attired in genteel mourning, but perfect in manner. Not a
violent, unreserved shrew as she can be when quite “at home.” A visit is
in most instances, therefore, a respite and a truce. The parade, the
review, the skirmish are for a time impossible; so the “tired soldier”
enjoys the calm, unbroken repose in his own tent so rarely tasted.

The weather was hot, and there did not appear to be any likelihood of a
change. Nevertheless, Jack could not but acknowledge that no detail had
been omitted to insure the highest amount of comfort attainable in such
a climate. The butter was cooled, the coffee perfect, the eggs, the
honey, the inevitable chop, excellent of their kind. Everything bore
traces of that thorough supervision which is never found in a household
under male direction. Jack thought Miss Stangrove, charmingly neat and
fresh in her morning attire, would have added piquancy to a much more
homely meal.

“Just in time, Mr. Redgrave,” said that young lady; “we were uncertain
whether you were not accustomed to be aroused by a gong. Bells are very
old-fashioned, we know.”

“I doubt whether anything would have awakened me an hour since. I am a
reasonably early riser generally; but the ride and the extreme comfort
of my bedroom led to a little laziness. But where’s Stangrove?”

“I blush to say he went off early to count a flock of sheep,” said Miss
Stangrove, with assumed regret. “You must accustom yourself to our
aboriginal ways for a time. But is it not dreadful to think of? I hope
you extracted a total recantation from him last night.”

“We only made a commencement of the game last night,” said Jack. “Your
brother advanced a pawn or two, but we agreed to defer the grand attack
until after a ride round the run, which I believe takes place to-day.”

“I am afraid you will have a hot ride; but I don’t pity you for that.
Anything is better than staying indoors day after day, week after week,
as we wretched women have to do. You might tell Mark if he sees my horse
to have her brought in. I feel as if I should like a scamper. Oh! here
he comes to answer for himself. Well, Mark, how many killed, wounded,
and missing?”

“Good morning, Mr. Redgrave,” said Stangrove, smiling rather
lugubriously at his sister’s pleasantry. “I am afraid you are just in
time to remark on one of the weak points of my management. A shepherd
came before daylight to say that his flock had been lost since the day
before. I have been hunting for them these five hours.”

“And have you brought any home?” inquired Mrs. Stangrove.

“None at all,” he answered.

“Did you see any?” persisted the lady, who seemed rather of an anxious
disposition.

“Yes—ten.”

“And why didn’t you bring them?” pursued the chatelaine, whose
earnestness was in strong contrast with her sister’s nonchalance.

“Because they were dead,” replied Stangrove, laconically; “and now, my
dear, please to give me some tea. ‘Sufficient for the day’—and so on.”

“Accidents will happen,” interposed Jack, politely. “It is like more
important calamities and crimes, a matter of average.”

“Just so,” said Stangrove, gratefully; “and though I can’t help worrying
myself at a small loss, such as this, I know that the annual expense
from this cause varies very little.”

“There were wolves in Arcadia, were not there?” demanded the young lady.
“They ate a shepherd now and then, I suppose. If the dingoes would look
upon it in that light, what a joy it would be, eh?”

“I could cheerfully see them battening upon the carcase of that lazy
ruffian Strawler,” he very vengefully made answer.

“My love!” said Mrs. Stangrove, mildly, “the children will be in
directly—would you mind reading prayers directly you finish?”

“Well—ahem,” said the bereaved proprietor, rather doubtfully; “perhaps
you might as well read this morning, Mr. Redgrave and I have a long way
to go—what are you laughing at, Maud, you naughty girl?”

“Don’t forget to have old Mameluke got in for me, Mark, and to-morrow I
will go sheep-hunting with you myself, if little Bopeep continues
unsuccessful, and in an unchristian state of mind, unable to say his
prayers. I didn’t think the fencing question involved so high a moral
gain before.”

Breakfast over, two fresh hacks were brought up (Stangrove was a great
horse-breeder, and Jack’s eye had been offended as he rode up with
troops of mares and foals), and forth they fared for a day on the run,
and a contingent search for the lost flock.

Stangrove’s run was about the same size as Gondaree, but, save the
cottages and buildings of the homestead, there were no “improvements” of
any kind other than the shepherds’ huts. For stock, he had seventeen or
eighteen thousand sheep, a herd of cattle, and two or three hundred
horses. These last were within their boundaries in a general way, but
were occasionally outside of these merely moral frontiers. So also the
neighbouring stock wandered at will inside of the said imaginary
subdivisions.

“You see,” commenced Stangrove, in explanation, when they were fairly
out on the plain, “that I came into possession here some ten years past,
just after I had left school. My poor old governor, who was rather a
scientific literary character, lived at one of those small comfortable
estates near town, where a man can spend lots of money, but can’t by any
possibility make a shilling. Decent people, in those days, would as soon
have gone out to spend a few years with Livingstone as have come to live
permanently on the Warroo. We had a surly old overseer, of the old sort,
who managed a little and robbed a great deal. When I came here, after
the poor old governor died, you never saw such a place as it was.”

“I can partly imagine,” Jack said.

“Well, I worked hard, and lived like a black fellow for a few years, got
the property out of debt, improved the stock, and here we are. I get a
reasonable price for my wool, I sell a draft of cattle now and then, and
some horses, and am increasing the stock slowly, and putting by
something every year.”

“No doubt you are,” said Jack; “but here you have to live and keep your
wife and family in this out-of-the-way place; and at the present rate of
progress it may be years before you can make money or sell out
profitably. Why not concentrate all the work and self-denial into three
or four years—sell out, and enjoy life?”

“A tempting picture—but consider the risk. Debt always means danger; and
why should I incur that danger? At present I don’t owe a shilling, and
call no man master. As for happiness, I am not so miserable now (if I
could only find those sheep). I have a day’s work to do every day, or to
decline, if I see fit; and I would just as soon be here—a place endeared
to me by old association—as anywhere else.”

“But your family?” asked Jack, rather insincerely, as he was thinking of
Maud chiefly, and the stupendous sacrifice of _her_ life. “But,” he
said, “your children are growing up.”

“Yes, but only _growing_ up. By the time they need masters and better
schooling I shall be a little better off. Some change will probably take
place—stock will rise—or it will rain for two or three years without
stopping, as is periodically probable in New South Wales; and then I
shall sell, go back to the paternal acres in the county of Cumberland,
and grow prize shorthorns and gigantic cucumbers, and practise all the
devices by which an idle man cheats himself into the belief that he is
happy.”

“By which time you will have lost most of the zest for the choicer
pleasures of life.”

“Even so—but I am a great believer in the ‘in that state of life’
portion of the catechism. I was placed and appointed here, and hold
myself responsible for the safety and gradual increase of my ‘one
talent.’ Maud, too, has a share. I am compelled to be a stern guardian
in her interest.”

“Well,” returned Jack (after his companion had opened his mind, as men
often do in the bush to a chance acquaintance—so rare ofttimes is the
luxury of congeniality), “I am not sure that you are altogether wrong.
It squares with your temperament. Mine is altogether opposed to such
views. I think twenty years on the Warroo, with the certainty of a plum
and a baronetcy at the end, would kill me as surely as sunstroke. Isn’t
that sheep?”

As Jack propounded this grammatically doubtful query, he directed
Stangrove’s attention to a long light- line at a distance. It
was soon evident that it was sheep coming towards them. To Stangrove’s
great relief, they proved to be the missing flock, in charge of one of
the volunteers sent out in all directions, if only they might perchance
manage to drop across them. Upon being counted they were only fifteen
short. Ten being accounted for by the domestic declaration of Mr.
Stangrove, the other five were left to take their chance, and the flock
sent back to a new shepherd, _vice_ Strawler superseded.

Stangrove brightened up considerably after this recovery of his
doubtfully-situated property. Byron asserts “a sullen son, a dog ill, a
favourite horse fallen lame just as he’s mounted,” to be “trifles in
themselves,” but adds, “and yet I’ve rarely seen the man they didn’t
vex.” So with lost sheep. You must lose a dozen or twenty—you hardly
lose more than fifty, say from ten to five-and-twenty pounds—not a sum
to turn the scale of ruin by any means. Yet, from the time that the
announcement is made of “sheep away” until they are safely counted and
yarded, rarely does the face of the proprietor relax its expression of
weighty resolve and grave foreboding.

Jack found by his companion’s avowal that at least one person besides
Bertie Tunstall held the same unprogressive but eminently safe opinions.
“Here’s a man,” said Jack, “with a worse climate, far less recreation
and variety than I had, and see how he sticks to his fight! However, I
_am_ differently constituted—there’s no denying it. If Stangrove’s
father had not been somewhat of the same kidney, he and I would have had
little chance of discussing our theories on the banks of the Warroo.”

“And so you won’t be tempted into fencing?” demanded Jack, returning to
the charge.

“Not just at present,” rejoined Stangrove. “I do not say but that if I
find myself surrounded by fencing neighbours, willing to share the
expense and so on, in a few more years I may give in. But I am a firm
believer in the Safe. I am now in a position of absolute security, and I
intend to continue in it.”

“But suppose bad seasons come?”

“Let them! I have no bills to meet. I can weather them again as I have
done before, when on this very station we had to boil down our meat to a
kind of soup; it was too poor to eat otherwise. We outlived that. Please
God, we shall do so again.”

“I suppose you had terrible losses?”

“You may say that; if another season came like it, the country would be
‘a valley of dry bones,’ literally. But even if I lost all my increase
for a year, and a proportion of my old stock, it would only shake me,
not break me. A man who is in debt it cooks altogether—that is the
difference.”

“Well, let us hope that such times won’t come again,” said Jack,
beginning to be unpleasantly affected by the idea of an interview with
Mr. Shrood, in which he should be compelled to inform him that the
season had been fatal to his whole crop of lambs, and the greater part
of his aged ewes. “Every one says the seasons have changed, and that the
climate is more moist than it used to be.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said his host, who was not prone to take
much heed of “what everybody said.” “I see no very precise data upon
which to found such an assertion. _What has been may be again._ We shall
have another dry season within the next five years, as sure as my name
is Mark Stangrove. What do you think of those horses? That is rather a
fancy mob. I see Maud’s horse Mameluke among them. We must run them in.”

“How do you reconcile it to your conscience to keep such unprofitable
wretches as horses?” inquired Jack, “eating the grass of sheep and
cattle, and being totally unsaleable themselves, unfit to eat, and
hardly worth boiling down.”

“I am grieved to appear so old-fashioned and ignorant,” said Mark, “but
I have a sentiment about these horses, and really they don’t pay so
badly. They are the direct descendants, now numbered by hundreds, of an
old family stud. They cost nothing in the way of labour; they need no
shepherd or stockman: they are simply branded up every year. You
couldn’t drive them off the run if you tried. And every now and then
there springs up a demand, and I clear a lot of them off. It is all
found money, and it tells up.”

“Meanwhile, the grass they eat would feed ten thousand sheep.”

“That is perfectly true; but of course I make no scruple of putting the
sheep on their favourite haunts when hard up. Horses, you see, can pick
up a living anywhere. Besides, I have always remarked that each of the
great divisions of stock has its turn once or twice in a decade, if not
oftener. You have only, therefore, to wait, and you get your ‘pull.’ My
next ‘pull’ with the stud will be when the Indian horse market has to be
supplied by us, as it must some day.”

“You seem a good hand at waiting,” said Jack. “I don’t know but that
your philosophy is sound. I can’t put faith in it however.”

“Everything comes to him who waits, as the French adage goes,” said
Stangrove. “I have always found it tolerably correct. However here we
are at home. So we’ll put this lot into the yard, and I’ll lead up the
old horse with a spare rein. We must have a ride out to Murdering Lake
tomorrow; it’s our show bit of scenery.”

“Another eventful day over, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, as they met at the
tea-table. “Yesterday the sheep were lost; to-day the sheep are found.
So passes our life on the Warroo.”

“You’re an ungrateful, naughty girl, Maud,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “Think
how relieved poor Mark must be after all his hard work and anxiety.
Suppose he had lost a hundred.”

“I feel tempted to wish sometimes that every one of the ineffably stupid
woolly creatures _were_ lost for good and all, if it would only lead to
our going ‘off the run’ and having to live somewhere else. Only I
suppose they are our living, besides working up into delaines and
merinos—so I ought not to despise them. But it’s the _life_ I
despise—shepherd, shearer, stockman—day after day, year after year.
These, with rare exceptions (here she made a mock respectful bow to
Jack), are the only people we see, or shall ever see, till we are gray.”

“You are rather intolerant of a country life, Miss Stangrove,” said
Jack. “I always thought that ladies had domestic duties and—and so
on—which filled up the vacuum, with a daily routine of small but
necessary employments.”

“Which means that we can sew all day, or mend stockings, weigh out
plums, currants, and sugar for the puddings—and that this, with a little
nursing sick children, pastry-making, gardening, and _very_ judicious
reading, ought to fill up our time, and make us peacefully happy.”

“And why should it not?” inquired Mark, looking earnestly at his sister,
as if the subject was an old one of debate between them. “How can a
woman be better employed than in the duties you sneer at?”

“Do you really suppose,” said Maud, leaning forward and looking straight
into his face with her lustrous eyes, in which the opaline gleam began
to glow and sparkle, “that women do not wish, like men, to see the
world, of which they have only dreamed—to mix a little change and
adventure with the skim-milk of their lives—before they calm down into
the stagnation of middle age or matrimony?”

“I won’t say what I suppose about women, Maud,” rejoined her brother.
“Some things I know about them, and some things I don’t know. But,
believe me, those women do best in the long run who neither thirst nor
long for pleasures not afforded to them by the circumstances of their
lives. If what they desire should come, well and good. If not, they act
a more womanly and Christian part in waiting with humility till the
alteration arrives.”

“What do you say, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the unconvinced damsel. “Is it
wrong for the caged bird to droop and pine, or ought it to turn a tiny
wheel and pull up a tiny pail of nothing contentedly all its days,
unmindful of the gay greenwood and the shady brook; or, if it beat its
breast against the wires, and lie dead when the captor comes with seed
and water, is it to be mourned over or cast forth in scorn?”

“’Pon my word,” answered Jack, helplessly, rather overawed by the strong
feeling and earnest manner of the girl, and much “demoralized” by those
wonderful eyes of hers, “I hardly feel able to decide. I’m a great lover
of adventure and change and all that kind of thing _myself_; can’t live
without it. But for ladies, somehow, I really—a—feel inclined to agree
with your brother. Sphere of home—and—all that, you know.”

“Sphere of humbug!” answered she, with all the sincerity of contempt in
her voice. “You men stick together in advocating all kinds of
intolerable dreariness and nonsensical treadmill work because you think
it good for women! You would be ashamed to apply such reasoning to
anything bearing on your own occupations. But I will not say another
word on the subject; it always raises my temper, and _that_ is not
permitted to our sex, I know. Did you see my dear old Mameluke to-day,
Mark?”

“Yes, and he’s now in the stable.”

“Oh, thanks; we must have a gallop to-morrow and show Mr. Redgrave our
solitary landscape. That will be one ripple on the Dead Sea.”

Life seemed capable of gayer aspects, even upon the Warroo, as next
morning three residents of that far region rode lightly along the
prairie trail. The day was cool and breezy; a great wind had come
roaring up from the south the evening before, crashing through the far
woods and audible in mighty tones for many a mile before it stirred the
streamers of the couba trees, as they all sat under the verandah in the
sultry night. Then the glorious coolness of the sea-breeze, almost the
savour of the salt sea-foam and of the dancing wavelets, smote upon
their revived senses. Hence, this day was cool, bracing, with a clear
sky and a sighing breeze. Jack was young, and extremely susceptible.
Maud Stangrove was a peerless horsewoman, and as she caused Mameluke, a
noble old fleabitten gray, descendant of Satellite, to plunge and
caracole, every movement of her supple figure, as she swayed easily to
each playful bound, completed the sum of his admiration and submission.

“Oh, what a day it is!” said she. “Why don’t we have such weather more
often? I feel like that boy in _Nick of the Woods_, when he jumps on his
horse to ride after the travellers whom the Indians are tracking, and
who shouts out a war-whoop from pure glee and high spirits. ‘Wagh! wagh!
wagh! wagh!’ Don’t you remember it, Mr. Redgrave?”

“Oh yes, quite well.” Jack had read nearly all the novels in the world,
and, if any good could have been done by a competitive examination in
light reading, would have come out senior wrangler. “_Nick of the Woods_
was very powerfully written—that is, it was a good book; so was the
_Hawks of Hawk Hollow_. Dick Bruce was the boy’s name.”

“Of course. I see you know all about him, and Big Tom Bruce is the one
that was shot, and didn’t tell them that he had a handful of slugs in
his breast till after the Indian town is taken, and then he falls down,
dying. Grand fellow, is not he? Nothing of that sort in our wretched
country, is there?”

“We had a little fighting at that Murdering Lake we are going to,” said
Mark. “Nothing very wonderful. But my horse was speared under me, and
_he_ remembered it for the rest of his life. Red Bob _was_ killed;
however, as he said before he died, it wasn’t ‘twenty to one, or
anything near it.’ He had shot scores of blacks, if his own and others’
tales were true.”

“And why were you engaged in your small war, Master Mark?” demanded
Maud. “It’s all very well to talk about Indians, and so on, but what had
these miserable natives done to you?”

“They were not so miserable in those days,” said her brother; “this
tribe was strong and numerous. I would have shirked it if possible; but
they speared a lot of the cattle and one of the men. We had to fight or
give them up the run.”

“The old story of Christianity and civilization? However I know _you_
would not have hurt a hair of their red-ochred locks if you could have
avoided it. Indeed, I wonder you kept your own scalp safe in those days.
The most simple savage might have circumvented you, I’m sure, you good,
easy-going, unsuspicious, conscientious old goose that you are.”

Here another expression, which Jack preferred much to those more
animated glances which opposition had called forth, came over her
features; as she gazed at her brother a soft light seemed gradually to
arise and overspread her whole countenance, till her eyes rested with an
expression of deep unconscious tenderness upon the bronzed, calm face of
Mark Stangrove. “I wonder if anything in the whole world could lead to
her looking at me like that?” thought Jack.

“This is the place. ‘Stand still, my steed,’” quoted Maud, as she reined
up Mameluke upon a pine-crested sand-hill, after a couple of hours’
riding. “There you can just see the water of the lake. Isn’t it a pretty
place? _The_ pretty place, I should say, as it is the only bit with the
slightest pretension upon the whole dusky green and glaring red patch of
desert which we call our run.”

It was, in its way, assuredly a pretty place. The waters were clear, and
had the hue of the undimmed azure, as they gently lapped against the
grassy banks. Around was a fringe of dwarf eucalypti, more spreading and
umbrageous than their congeners are apt to be. On the further side was a
low sand-hill with a thicker covering of shrubs. A drove of cattle were
feeding near; a troop of half-wild horses had dashed off at their
approach, and were rapidly receding in a long, swaying line in the
distance. A blue crane, the Australian heron, flew with a harsh cry from
the shallows, and sailed onward with stately flight.

“Oh for a falcon to throw off!” cried Maud, whose spirits seemed quite
irrepressible. “Why cannot I be a young lady of the feudal times, and
have a hawk, with silken jesses, and a page, and a castle, and all that?
Surely this _is_ the stupidest, most prosaic country in the world. One
would have thought that in a savage land like this they would have
devoted themselves to every kind of sport, whereas I firmly believe one
would have more chance of hunting, shooting, or fishing in Cheapside.
Why did I ever come here?” she pursued in a voice of mock lamentation.

“Because you were born here, you naughty girl,” said Mark; “are you not
ashamed to be always running down your native country? Don’t I see a
fire on the far point?”

They rode round the border of the lake, scaring the plover and the wild
fowl which swam or flew in large flocks in the shallows. When they
reached the spot where the small cape formed by the sand advanced boldly
into the waters of the lake at the eastern side, they observed that the
fire appertained to a small camp of blacks. Riding close up, the unmoved
countenance of “old man Jack” appeared with his two aged wives, while at
a little distance, superintending the boiling of certain fish, was the
girl Wildduck. She turned to them with an expression of unaffected
pleasure, and, rushing up to Miss Stangrove, greeted her with the most
demonstrative marks of affection. Suddenly beholding Redgrave, she
looked rather surprised; then, bestowing a searching look of inquiry
upon him, she made her usual half-shy, half-arch, salutation.

“So Wildduck is a _protégée_ of yours, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack; “I
had no idea she had such distinguished patronage.”

“Maud is a bit of a missionary in her way,” said Mark; “though perhaps
you might not think it. Many a good hour she has wasted over the runaway
scamp of a gin, and a little rascal of a black boy we had.”

“Poor things!” said Maud, with quite a different tone from her ordinary
badinage. “They have souls, and why should one not try to do them a
little good! I am very fond of this Wildduck, as she is called, though
Kalingeree is her real name. I remember her quite a little girl. Isn’t
she a pretty creature?—not like gins generally are.”

“She is wonderfully good-looking,” said Jack; “I thought so the first
time I saw her—when she was galloping after a lot of horses.”

“I am afraid her stock-keeping propensities have led her into bad
company,” said Maud; “and yet it is but a natural passion for the chase
in the nearest approach the bush affords. I can’t help feeling a deep
interest in her. You wouldn’t believe how clever she is.”

“She looks to me very much thinner than she used to be,” said Mark. “How
large her eyes seem, and so bright. I’m afraid she will die young, like
her mother.”

“She has been ill, I can see,” said Maud, as the girl coughed, and then
placed her hand upon her chest, with a gesture of pain. “What has been
the matter with you, Wildduck?”

“Got drunk, Miss Maudie; lie out in the rain,” said the girl, who was as
realistic as one of—let us say—Rhoda Broughton’s heroines.

“Oh, Wildduck!” said her instructress; “how _could_ you get tipsy again,
after all I said to you?”

“Tipsy!” said the child of nature, with a twinkle of wicked mirth in her
large bright eye—“tipsy! _me likum tipsy!_”

Mark and his guest were totally unable to retain their gravity at this
unexpected answer to Miss Stangrove’s appeal, though Jack composed his
countenance with great rapidity as he noticed a deeply-pained look in
Maud’s face, and something like a tear, as she hastily turned away.

“Are the old miamis there still, Wildduck?” asked Mark, by way of
turning the subject.

“Where you shoot black fellow, long ago?” asked she. “By gum, you
peppered ’em that one day. You kill ’em one—two—Misser Stangrove.”

“No, I think not, Wildduck. I fired my gun all about. Don’t think I
killed anybody. Black fellow spear Red Bob that day.”

“Aha!” said the girl, her face suddenly changing to an expression of
passion. “Serve him right, the murdering dog. He kill poor black fellows
for nothing; shoot gins, too, and picaninnies; ask old man Jack.”

Here she said a few words rapidly in her own language to the old man.
The effect was instantaneous. He sprang up—he seized his spear—his eyes
suddenly assumed a fixed and stony stare—with raised head he strode
forward with all the lightness and activity of youth. He muttered one
name repeatedly. Then his expression changed to one of horrible
exultation.

“I believe old man Jack was there,” said Mark. “Perhaps he threw the
spear that hit me.”

“Dono,” said Wildduck; “might ha’ been. He’d have done it quick if he
had, I know that.”

A spring cart with luncheon had been sent on at an early hour, and
commanded to camp close by the deserted miamis, which had never been
inhabited since the battle. Leaving their sable friends, with an
invitation to come up and receive the fragments, they rode over to the
spot indicated.

“Give me the hobbles,” said Mark to the lad who drove the spring cart.
“You can lay the cloth and set the lunch.”




                              CHAPTER XI.

         “The Phantom Knight, his glory fled,
         Mourns o’er the fields he heaped with dead.“—_Scott._


Jack had the privilege of lifting Maud from her horse, and then their
three nags were unsaddled and hobbled. Rejoicing in this “constitutional
freedom,” they availed themselves of it to the extent of drinking of the
lake, rolling in the sand, and cropping with relish the long grass which
only grew on the lake-side.

“Here is the very spot—how strange it seems!” said Mark, “that we should
be drinking bottled ale and eating _pâtés de foie gras_ just where
spears were flying and guns volleying. It was night, however, when we
made our charge. We had been tracking all day, and were guided by their
fires latterly.”

“Did they make much of a fight?” asked Jack.

“They were plucky enough for a while. Our party had a few nasty wounds.
They had some advantage in throwing their spears, as they were close,
and we could not see them as well as they saw us. Poor old Bob! the
spear that killed him was a long slender one. It went nearly through
him. They took to the lake at last.”

“And have they never inhabited these miamis since?” asked Maud.

“Never, from that day to this. Blacks are very superstitious. They
believe in all kinds of demons and spirits. You ask Wildduck when she
comes up.”

They walked over the “dark and bloody ground” when the repast was over.
There were the ruined wigwams just as their occupants had fled from them
at the first volley of their white foes, nearly a generation since.
Marks of haste were apparent. The wooden buckets used for water, and
scooped from the bole of a tree, a boomerang or two, a broken spear,
mouldered away together.

“The situation,” said Jack, “is not without a tinge of romance. This
isn’t particularly like Highland scenery; and blacks always return and
carry off their dead, if possible; otherwise Sir Walter’s lines might
stand fairly descriptive—

                         “‘A dreary glen—
               Where scattered lay the bones of men,
               In some forgotten battle slain,
               And bleached by drifting wind and rain.’”

“It must be a terrible thing in a deed like this not to be _quite_
certain whether one was in the right or not. Very likely some of those
buccaneers of stockmen provoked this tribe, if you only knew it, Mark.”

“Perhaps they did, my dear—more than likely. But we had only plain facts
to go upon. They were killing our cattle and servants. We did not
declare war. It was the other way. Injustice may have been done, but my
conscience is clear.”

“There comes old man Jack, and Mrs. old man Jack, collectively,” said
Redgrave. “Let us hear what they say about it.”

Slowly, and with sad countenances, the little band approached, and sat
down at a short distance from the luncheon. They were regaled with the
delicacies of civilization. Maud administered port wine to Wildduck,
and, guardedly, to old Nannie. The others declined the juice of the
grape, but partook freely of the eatables.

“Now, then, Wildduck,” said Redgrave, “tell us anything you know about
this battle. Your people never lived here since?”

“Never, take my oath,” said Wildduck, “never no more—too many wandings
(demons). One black fellow sleep there one night, years ago; he frighten
to death—close up. He tell me——-”

“What did he tell you, Wildduck?” said Maud.

“Well,” began the girl, sitting down on her heels in the soft grass, “he
was out after cattle and tracked ’em here at sundown. So he says, ‘I’ll
camp at the old miamis, blest if I don’t. Baal me frighten,’ he say.
Well, he lie down long a that middle big one miami and go fast asleep.
In the middle of the night he wake up. _All the place was full of
blacks._ Plenty—plenty,” spreading out both her hands. “They ran about
with spears, and womrahs, and heilaman. Then he saw white fellows, and
fire came out of their guns. Very dark night. Then a white fellow, big
man with red hair, fire twice—clear light shine, and he saw a tall black
fellow send spear right through him. He say,” said the girl, lowering
her voice, “just like old man Jack.”

“This _is_ something like the legitimate drama, Miss Stangrove,” said
Jack. “You see there is more good, solid tragedy in Australian life than
you fancied.”

“Go on, Wildduck,” said she. “What a strange scene—only to imagine! What
happened then?”

“When white fellow fall down, the tall black fellow give a great jump,
and shout out, only he hear nothing. Then all the blacks make straight
into the lake. He look again—all gone—he hear ’possum, night-owl—that’s
all.”

“And do you believe he saw anything _really_, Wildduck? Come now, tell
the truth,” cross-examined Mark.

“Well, Charley, big one, frighten; I see that myself. But he took a
bottle from the Mailman’s Arms, and he’d never wait till he saw the
bottom—I know that. Here come old man Jack; he look very queer, too.”

The old savage had begun to walk up towards the spot where they had
gathered rather closely together in the interest of Wildduck’s legend.
There was, as she had said, something strange in his appearance.

He walked in a slow and stately manner; he held himself unusually erect.
From time to time he glanced at the old encampment, then at the lake.
His face lit up with the fire of strong passion, and then he would
mutter to himself, as if recalling the past.

“Ask him what he is thinking about, Wildduck,” said Mark.

The girl spoke a few words to the old man. It was the philter that
renews youth, the memory of the passionate past. He stalked forward with
the gait of a warrior. Shaking off the fetters of age, he trod lightly
upon the well-known scene of conflict, with upraised head and lifted
hand. Words issued from his lips with a fiery energy, such as none
present had ever witnessed in him.

“He say,” commenced Wildduck, “this the place where his tribe fight the
white man, long time ago. Misser Stangrove young feller then. Many black
fellow shot—so many—so many (here she spread out her open palms). By and
by all run into lake.”

“Does he remember Red Bob being killed?” asked Maud.

“Red Wanding,” cried the girl, still translating the old man’s speech,
which rolled forth in faltering and passionate tones, “he knew well;
that debil-debil shoot picaninny belonging to him—little girl—‘poor
little girl’ he say. (Here the gray chieftain threw up his arms wildly
towards the sky, while hot tears fell from the eyes still glaring with
unsated wrath and revenge.) He say, before that he always friend to
white fellow—no let black fellow spear cattle.”

“Ask him where _he_ was himself that night,” said Mark.

The inquiry was put to him. Old man Jack replied not for a few moments;
then he walked slowly forward to a large hollow log of the
slowly-rotting eucalyptus, which had lain for a score of years scarce
perceptibly hastening on its path of slow decay. Stooping suddenly, he
thrust in his long arm and withdrew a spear. It was mouldering with age,
but still showed by its sharpened point and smoothed edges how dangerous
a weapon it had been. He felt the point, touched a darkened stain which
reached to a foot from the end, and, suddenly throwing himself with
lightning-like rapidity into the attitude of a thrower of the javelin,
shouted a name thrice with a demoniac malevolence which curdled the
hearts of the hearers. He then snapped the decayed lance, and, throwing
the pieces at Mark’s feet with a softened and humble gesture, relapsed
into his old mute, emotionless manner, and strode away along the border
of the lake.

“He say,” concluded Wildduck, with a half confidential manner, “that
_he_ spear Red Bob that night with _that one spear_. He hide ’em in log,
and never see it again till this day.”

“Some secrets are well kept,” said Mark. “If it had been known within a
few years after the fight, old man Jack would have been shot half a
dozen times over. Now, no one would think of avenging Red Bob’s death
more than that of Julius Cæsar. After all, it was a fair fight; and I
believe old man Jack’s story.”

“Well, I shall never laugh at bush warfare again,” said Maud; “there is
sad earnest sufficient for anybody in this tale.”

“We may as well be turning our horses’ heads homeward. Wildduck, you
come up to-morrow and get something for your cough.”

“Come up now,” accepted Wildduck, with great promptitude. “Too much
frightened of Wanding to-night to stop here.”

A brisk gallop home shook off some of the influences of their somewhat
eerie adventure. Maud strove to keep up the lively tone of her ordinary
conversation, but did not wholly succeed. Her subdued bearing rendered
her, in Jack’s eyes, more irresistible than before. He was rapidly
approaching that helpless stage when, in moods of grave or gay, a man
sees only the absolute perfection of his exemplar of all feminine
graces. From the last pitying glance which Maud bestowed on Wildduck, to
the frank kiss which she so lovingly pressed on Mameluke’s neck as she
dismounted, Jack only recognized the rare combination of lofty sentiment
with a warm and affectionate nature.

Next morning Jack was under marching orders. He had left M‘Nab
sufficiently long by himself, in case anything of the nature of work
turned up. He had secured an extremely pleasant change from the monotony
of home. He had, most undeniably, acquired one or more new ideas. How
regretfully he saw Mark finish his breakfast, and wait to say good-bye,
preparatory to a long day’s ride after those eternal shepherds!

“You must come and see us again,” said Mrs. Stangrove, properly careful
to retain the acquaintance of an agreeable neighbour and an eligible
_parti_. “You have no excuse now. We shall not believe in the use and
value of your fencing if it won’t provide you with a little leisure
sometimes.”

“You must all come and see me before shearing,” rejoined he. “I shall
make a stand on my rights in etiquette, and refuse to come again before
you have ‘returned my call,’ as ladies say. I have several novelties
beside the fencing to show, which might interest even ladies. I hope you
won’t give Stangrove any rest till he promises to bring you.”

“We have a natural curiosity to see all the new world you are reported
to have made,” Maud said, “and even your model overseer, Mr. M‘Nab. He
must surely be one of the ‘coming race,’ and have any quantity of ‘vril’
at command. I suppose the land will be filled with such products of a
higher civilization after we early Arcadians are abolished.”

“You must come and see, Miss Stangrove. I will tell you nothing. M‘Nab
is the ideal general-of-division in the grand army of labour, to my
fancy. But whether it is to be Waterloo or Walcheren the future must
decide. _Au revoir!_”

He shook hands with Stangrove, and, mounting, departed with his brace of
hackneys for the trifling day’s ride between there and home. Truth to
tell, he tested the mettle of his steeds much more shrewdly than in his
leisurely downward course. It was nearer to eight hours than nine when
he reined up before the home-paddock gate of Gondaree.

Returning to one’s own particular abode and domicile is not always an
unmixed joy, however much imaginative writers have insisted upon the
aspect. “The watchdog’s honest bay” occasionally displays a want of
recognition calculated to irritate the sensitive mind. Evidence is
sometimes forced upon the unwilling _revenant_ of the proverbial and
unwarrantable playing of mice in the absence of the lord of the castle,
who is thereby unpleasantly reminded that he occupies substantially the
position of the cat. Possibly he is greeted with the unwelcome
announcement that an important business interview has lapsed by reason
of his absence. It may be that he finds his household absent at an
entertainment, thus causing him to moralize upon desolate hearthstones
and shattered statuettes, while he is gloomily performing for himself
the minor offices so promptly bestowed on more fortunate arrivals. Or
fate, being in one of her dark moods—a subtle prescience of evil, only
too true—meets him on the threshold, and he enters his home as chief
mourner. “Happy whom none of these befall;” and in such cheer did our
hero find himself when, after hurried inquiry, it transpired that
“nothing had happened,” that everything was going on as well as could
be, and that Mr. M‘Nab was out at the woolshed (No. 3), and had left
word that he would be in at sundown.

“So everything has gone on well in my absence,” said Jack to his
lieutenant, as they sat placidly smoking after the evening meal. “I
began to be a little nervous as I got near home, though why it should be
I can’t say.”

“So well,” answered M‘Nab, “that if it were not for the woolshed there
would be too little to do. Once a month is often enough to muster the
paddocks, and the percentage of loss has been very trifling. The sheep
are in tip-top condition. The clip will be good and very clean. I hope
we are past our troubles.”

“I hope so too,” echoed Jack. “How many sheep are there in the river
paddock?”

“Nine thousand odd. You never saw anything like them for condition.”

“Isn’t there a risk in having them there at this time of year? The river
_might_ come down; and Stangrove told me the greater part of that
paddock is under water in a big flood.”

“Plenty of time to get them out. If the worst came we could soon rig a
temporary bridge over the anabranch creek.”

“People about here say,” objected Jack, “that when a _real_ flood comes
down all sorts of places are filled which you wouldn’t expect; and sheep
are the stupidest things—except pigs—that ever were tried in water and a
hurry.”

“You needn’t be uneasy; I’ll have them out of that hours before there is
any danger,” said M‘Nab, confidently. “Meanwhile, if they don’t use the
feed the travelling stock will only have the benefit of it. What did you
think of Mr. Stangrove’s place, sir?”

“I was agreeably surprised,” said Jack, with an air of much gravity.
“The whole affair is old-fashioned, of course; but the stock are very
good, in fine order, and everything about the place very neat and nice.
Mr. Stangrove and his family are exceedingly nice people.”

“So I’ve heard,” said M‘Nab. “So I believe (as if that was a point so
unimportant as to merit the merest assent); but the _Run_!—the run is
one of the best and largest on the river, and to think of its being
thrown away upon less than twenty thousand sheep, a thousand head of
cattle, and a few mobs of rubbishy horses!”

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Jack, smiling at M‘Nab’s righteous
indignation; “but Stangrove is one of those men who thinks he has a
right to do what he wills with his own. And really he has something to
say for himself.”

“I can’t think it, sir; I can’t think it,” asserted the stern
utilitarian. “The State ought to step in and interfere when a man is
clearly wasting and misusing the public lands. I’d give all the
shepherding, non-fencing men five years’ warning; if at the end of that
time they had not contrived to fence and dig wells the country should be
resumed and let by tender to men who would work the Crown lands decently
and profitably.”

“You’re rather too advanced a land-reformer,” said his employer. “You
might have the tables turned upon you by the farmers. However, you can
argue the point of eviction with Mr. Stangrove, who will be here with
the ladies, I hope, before shearing. But he has fought for his land
once, and I feel sure would do so again if need were. Still I think he
will be rather astonished at our four boundary riders.”

The first necessity was an inspection of the new wool-shed, which was
raising its unpretending form, like a species of degenerate ph[oe]nix,
from the ashes of its glorious predecessor. It was strong and
substantial, full of necessary conveniences—good enough—but not the
model edifice—the exemplar of a district, the pride of Lower Riverina.

Now befell a halcyon time of a couple of months of Jack’s existence,
during which the millennium, as far as Gondaree was concerned, seemed to
have arrived.

The weather was perfect; there was just enough rain, not more than was
needed to “freshen up” the pasture from time to time. There were ten
thousand fat sheep; the lambing had commenced, and prospects were
splendid.

Better than all, the reactionary reign of economy directly proceeding
from M‘Nab’s well-calculated outlay had set in. With forty-two thousand
“countable” sheep and twenty thousand lambing ewes, “in full blast,”
there were but the four boundary riders, M‘Nab, the cook, and Ah Sing,
plus the shed workmen. “This was something like,” Jack said to himself.
“Fancy the small army I should have billeted upon me if I were like
Stangrove, and had the same proportion of hands to employ. The very
thought of it is madness, or insolvency—which comes to the same thing.”

“I really believe we could do with even fewer hands upon a pinch,” said
M‘Nab. “Ah Sing is of course a luxury, though a justifiable one. The
boundary-riders come in for their own rations, so a ration-carrier is
unnecessary. The two that live at the homestead cook for themselves.
There is next to no work in the store till shearing; you or I can give
out anything that is wanted. The cook chops his own wood, and fetches it
in once a week; water is at the door. If it were not for having to
convoy travelling sheep, one man could watch and the rest go to sleep
till shearing. There are no dingoes, and we have no township near us to
breed tame dogs. Next year we must have thirty thousand lambing-sheep by
hook or by crook, and then you may put Gondaree into the market with
sixty thousand sheep as soon after as you please.”

“What about these ten thousand fat sheep?” said Jack. “Isn’t it time we
were thinking of drafting and sending them on the road?”

“If I were you, Mr. Redgrave, I would not sell them, unless you were
obliged, till after shearing. They are worth from twelve to fourteen
shillings all round in Melbourne, let us say. Well, the wethers will cut
six shillings’ worth of wool, and the ewes five. It would pay you to
shear them and sell them as store sheep.”

“That’s all very well; but if you don’t sell at the proper time I always
notice that it ends in keeping them for another year; by which you lose
interest, and risk a fall in the market.”

“Not much chance of sheep falling below ten shillings,” rejoined M‘Nab.
“We can send them in very prime about March. We may just as soon make
one expense of the shearing.”

“Well,” yielded Jack, “I dare say it won’t make much difference. We
shall have it—the clip—and if they only fetch ten shillings there will
be a profit of five and twenty per cent. They don’t cost anything for
shepherding, that’s one comfort.”

So matters wore on till July. To complete the astonishing success and
enjoyment of the situation, Jack received a letter from Stangrove, to
say that he was going to drive over, and would bring the ladies for a
day’s visit to Gondaree.

Jack’s cup well-nigh overflowed. To think of having her actually in the
cottage, under his very roof—to have the happiness of beholding her
walking about the garden and homestead, criticising everything, as she
would be sure to do. Perhaps even appreciating, with that clear
intellect of hers, the scope and breadth of the system of management, of
his life pleasures even. Could she be won to take an interest, then what
delirious, immeasurable joy!

Preparations were made. A feminine supernumerary was secured from the
woolshed camp. Fortunately the cook was undeniable, and he needed but a
word to “impress himself” and execute marvels. The cottage was entirely
given up to the ladies, and the bachelors’ quarters made ready for
occupation by Stangrove, M‘Nab, and himself. So might they retire, and
smoke and talk sheep _ad libitum_. The small flower-garden round the
cottage, or rather at the side, as its verandah almost overhung the
river, was made neat. Even M‘Nab, though grumbling somewhat at a
feminine invasion “just before shearing,” looked out his best suit of
clothes, and prepared to abide the onset. Had there ever been a lady at
Gondaree before? Jack began to consider. It was exceedingly doubtful.

At the appointed day, just before sundown, Stangrove’s buggy rattled up
behind, as usual, a very fast pair of horses. He was a great man for
pace, and, having lots of horses to pick out of, generally had something
only slightly inferior to public performers. Indeed, his friends used to
complain that he never could be got to stay a night with any one on the
road—being always bent upon some impossible distance in the day, and
insisting upon going twenty or thirty miles farther, in order to
accomplish it. However that might be, no man drove better horses.

“Here we are at last, Redgrave,” said he, as Jack rushed out to satisfy
himself that Maud was actually in the flesh at his gates. “We should
have been here before, but the ladies, of course, kept me waiting.
However, I think we’ve done it under seven hours—that’s not so bad.”

“Bad! I should think not—splendid going!” said Jack. “I must get you to
sell me a pair of buggy horses; mine are slow enough for a poison cart.
Mrs. Stangrove, how good of you to cheer up a lonely bachelor! Miss
Stangrove, I throw myself and household on your mercy. Will you, ladies,
deign to walk in? you will find an attendant, and take possession of my
house and all that is in it. Stangrove, we must take out the nags
ourselves; no spare hands on a fenced-in run, you perceive.”

“All right, Redgrave, that’s the style I like. Mind you keep it up.”

The stable was well found, though the groom was absent. Abundance of hay
had been supplied, and the buggy was placed under cover. The friends
were soon sauntering down by the river, and of course talking sheep, in
the interval before dinner.

“Saw a lot of your weaners as we came along,” said Stangrove. “How well
they look. Much larger than mine, and the wool very clean. It certainly
makes a man think. How many are there in that paddock?”

“Nine thousand,” answered Jack, carelessly. “They have been there since
they were weaned.”

“And how often are they counted?”

“Once a month, regularly.”

“What percentage of loss?”

“Next to none at all; the fact is we have no dogs, and the season has
been so far, glorious.”

“Well, I have five shepherds for the same number,” said Stangrove; “have
had one or two ‘smashes,’ endless riding, bother, and trouble. It seems
very nice to turn them loose and never have any work or expense with
them—the most troublesome of one’s whole flock—till shearing. However,
as I said before, my mind is made up for the next couple of years—after
that, I won’t say——”

“I think I hear the dinner-bell,” said Jack; “the ladies will be
wondering what has become of us.”

M‘Nab having arrived about this time, looking highly presentable, the
masculine contingent entered the cottage, and dinner was announced.

“Your housekeeping does not need to fear criticism,” said Mrs.
Stangrove, as she tasted the clear soup. This was a _spécialité_ of
Monsieur Jean Dubois, an artist who, but for having contracted the
colonial preference for cognac, our _vin ordinaire_, would have graced
still a metropolitan establishment.

“We women are always complimented upon our domestic efficiency, home
comforts, and so on,” said Maud. “It appears to me that bachelors always
live more comfortably than the married people of our acquaintance.”

“I don’t think that is always the case,” pleaded Mrs. Stangrove. “But in
many instances I have noted that you gentlemen, who are living by
yourselves, always seem to get the best servants.”

“‘Kinder they than Missises are,’ Thackeray says, you know; but it must
be quite an accidental circumstance. In by far the greater number of
instances a lone bachelor is oppressed, neglected, and perhaps robbed.”

“I am not so sure of that,” persisted Maud. “You exaggerate your chances
of misfortune. I know when I am travelling with Mark we generally find
ourselves much better put up, as he calls it, at a bachelor residence
than at a regular family establishment. Don’t we, Mark?”

“Well, I can’t altogether deny it,” deposed Stangrove, thus adjured. “It
may not last, and the bachelor may be living on his capital of comfort.
But I must say that, unless I know a man’s wife is one of the right
sort, I prefer the unmarried host. You fling yourself into the best
chair in the room as soon as you have made yourself decent. You are safe
to be asked to take a glass of grog without any unnecessary waste of
time. And you are absolutely certain that no possible cloud can cast a
shade over the evening’s _abandon_. Whereas, in the case of the ‘double
event,’ the odds are greater that it won’t come off so successfully.”

“What _are_ you saying about married people, Mark? You’re surely in a
wicked sarcastic humour. Don’t believe him Mr. Redgrave.”

“My dear! you are the exceptional helpmate, as I am always ready to
testify. But there _may_ be cases, you know, when the husband has just
stated that he’ll be hanged if he will have his mother-in-law for
another six months, just yet; or the cook, not being able to ‘hit it’
with the mistress’s slightly explosive temper, has left at a moment’s
notice, and there is nothing but half-cold mutton and quite hot
soda-bread to be procured; the grog, too, has run out, which is _never_
the case in a bachelor’s establishment—and so—and so. Unless the lady of
the house is partial to strangers (like you, my dear), give me Tom, or
Dick, and Liberty Hall.”

“So I say too,” added Maud. “Of course being a single young person, I
feel flattered by the respectful admiration I meet with at such houses.
It’s not proper, I suppose. I ought to feel more pleased to be under the
wing of a staid, overworked, slightly soured mother of a family, who
keeps me waiting for tea till all the children are put to bed, and gives
me something to stitch at during the evening; but I don’t—and so there’s
no use saying I do.”

“I’m afraid your tastes border on the Bohemian, Miss Stangrove,” said
Jack. “I’m rather a Philistine myself, I own, in the matter of young
ladies.”

“Thinking, no doubt, as is the manner of men, that stupidity contains a
great element of safety for women. I could prove to you that you are
utterly wrong; but you might think me more a person of independent
ideas—that is, more unladylike than ever. So I abstain. How nicely your
verandah looks over the river. It is quite a balcony. Isn’t it very
unpleasantly near in flood-time?”

“The oldest inhabitant has never seen water cover this point,” said
Jack. “I ascertained that very carefully before I built here. If you
look over to those low green marshy flats on the other side, you will
see that miles of water must spread out for every additional inch the
river rises.”

“Yes, Steamboat Point is all right,” said Mark. “I’ve heard the blacks
admit that. I’ve seen a big flood or two here too; but the water runs
back into the creeks and anabranches in a wonderful way. Gets behind you
and cuts you off before you can help yourself, sometimes, in the night.
If I were you I would have every weaner out of those river paddocks
before spring.”

“We could have them out soon enough if there was any danger,” here
interposed M‘Nab.

“You would find it hard, take my word for it,” said Stangrove, “if the
river came down a banker.”

“I could whip a bridge over any back creek here in half an hour,” said
M‘Nab, decisively, “that would cross every sheep we have there in two
hours.”

“There’s a Napoleonic ring about that, Mr. M‘Nab,” said Maud; “but the
Duke would have had all his forces—I mean his sheep—withdrawn from the
position of danger in good time. One or two of Buonaparte’s bridges
broke down with him, you remember.”

“It doesn’t look much like a flood at present,” said Jack; “though this
is no warranty in Australia, which is a land specially dedicated to the
unforeseen. Let us hope that there will be nothing so sensational at or
before shearing this year.”

“Not even bushrangers,” said Maud. “What does this mean?” handing over
to her brother the _Warroo Watch-tower and Down-river Advertiser_, in
which figured the following paragraph: “We regret sincerely to be
compelled to state that the rumours as to a party of desperadoes having
taken to the bush are not without foundation. Last week two drays were
robbed near Mud Springs by a party of five men, well armed and mounted.
The day before yesterday the mailman and several travellers on the Oxley
road were stopped and robbed by the same gang. They are said to be led
by the notorious Redcap, and to have stated that they were coming into
the Warroo frontage to give the squatters a turn.”

Mrs. Stangrove turned pale, Maud laughed, while Mark devoted himself
very properly to calm the apprehensions of his wife.

“Maud,” he said, “this is no laughing matter. It is the beginning of a
period, whether long or short, of great trouble and anxiety, it may be
danger, I am not an alarmist; but I wish we were well out of this
matter.”

“It seems very ridiculous,” said Jack; “every man’s hand will be against
them, and they _must_ be run or shot down, ultimately.”

“Nothing more certain,” admitted Stangrove; “but these fellows generally
‘turn out’ from the merest folly or recklessness, and become gradually
hardened to bloodshed. They are like raw troops, mere rustics at first.
But they soon learn the part of ‘first robber,’ and generally lose some
of their own blood, or spill that of better men, before they get taken.”

“We have a dray just loading up from town. There is time—yes, just
time,” said M‘Nab, consulting his pocket-book, “to write by mail. We can
order revolvers, and a repeating rifle or two, and have them up in five
weeks. Can we get anything for you?”

“Certainly, and much obliged,” said Stangrove; “if they know that we are
well armed, they will be all the more chary of coming to close quarters.
You may order for me a brace of repeating rifles and three revolvers.”

“With some of the neighbours we might turn out a respectable force, and
hunt the fellows down,” said Jack, who felt ready for anything in the
immediate proximity of Maud, and only wished the gang would attack
Gondaree then and there.

There was no such luck, however. The ordinary station life was
unruffled. The ladies rode and drove about with cheerful energy. Maud
admired the paddocks and the unshepherded sheep immensely, and vainly
tried to extort her brother’s consent to begin the reformed system as
soon as they returned to Juandah.

Mark had said that he would defer the enterprise for two years, and he
was a man who, slow in forming resolves, always adhered to them.




                              CHAPTER XII.

           “So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
             The heart had hardly time to beat,
           Before a shallow seething wave
             Sobbed in the grasses at our feet;
           The feet had hardly time to flee
             Before it brake against the knee,
           And all the world was in the sea.”—_Jean Ingelow_.


The days passed pleasantly in excursions to Bimbalong, to the back
paddocks, and in rides and drives along the perfect natural roads
peculiar to the locality. In the long excursions, the twilight was upon
them more than once before they reached home. Jack did not altogether
neglect his opportunities. When he rode close to Maud’s bridle-rein, as
they flitted along in the mild half-light between the shadowy pines, or
the avenues of oak and myall, words would become gradually lower in
tone, more accented with feeling, than the ordinary daylight converse.

“And so you think,” said Jack, on one of these pleasant twilight
confidentials—Stangrove, who was driving, being rather anxious to get
home before the light got any worse—“that I am not playing too hazardous
a game in spending freely now, with the expectation of being so largely
recouped within a year or two.”

“It is exactly what I should do if I were a man,” said the girl,
frankly. “How men can consent to bury themselves alive in this
wearisome, never-ending, bush sepulchre I cannot think. I should perish
if I were compelled to lead such a life without possibility of change.
When we think of the glorious old world, the dreamland of one’s spirit,
the theatre of art, luxury, war, antiquity, which leisure would enable
one to visit—how can _one_ be contented?”

“I never thought _I_ should feel contented on the Warroo,” said her
companion; “yet now, really, I don’t find it so awfully dull, you know.”

“Not just at present,” answered Maud, archly. “Well, I am candid enough
to own that, our families having joined forces since your visit, things
are a shade more bearable. But fancy growing gray in this life and these
surroundings. Twenty years after! Fancy us all at that date, here!”

“I can’t fancy it. What should we be like, Miss Stangrove?”

“I can tell you,” pursued the excited girl. “Mark much the same, gray
and more silent—strongly of opinion that the Government of the day were
in league with free selectors, and generally robbers and murderers. His
opinions are pretty strong now. _Then_, of course, they would have
ripened into prejudices. My sister-in-law, frail, worn out by servants
and household cares; just a _little_ querulous, and more indisposed to
read.”

“And yourself?” asked Jack.

“Oh! I should have been quietly buried under a couba tree before that
impossible period. Or, if I unhappily survived, would have become
eccentric. I should be spoken of generally as a ‘little strong-minded,’
slight dash of temper, and so on; very fond of riding, and, they say,
can count sheep and act as boundary-rider when her brother is short of
hands. How do you like the picture?”

“You have not paid me the compliment of including me on the canvas.”

“I don’t possibly imagine you within thousands of miles of Gondaree or
Juandah at such a time. You will be dreaming among the ‘Stones of
Venice,’ lounging away the winter in Rome, or settled in a hunting
neighbourhood in a pleasant English county, making up your mind, very
gradually, to return to Australia, and to devote the rest of your days
to model farming and national regeneration.”

“There is only one thing absolutely necessary to render my existence
happy under the conditions which you have so accurately sketched,”—here
he leaned forward, and placing his hand upon her horse’s mane, saw a
softened gleam in her marvellous eyes—as of the heart’s farewell to
unacknowledged hope—“and that is——”

“We are really riding shamefully slow,” said she suddenly, as she drew
her rein, and the free horse tossed his head and went off at speed.
“Mark must have nearly reached home, and Jane, as usual, will be
fancying all kinds of impossible accidents—that dear old Mameluke has
tumbled down, positively tumbled down and broken my arm in three places.
I tell her she’ll suspect me of taking a ‘bait’ next. How still the
plain looks, and how exactly the same—north and south, east and west!
But even in this light you can distinguish the heavy, dark, winding line
of the river timber.”

In due time the guests departed, and Mr. Redgrave was left to the
consideration of the loneliness of his condition, a view of life which
had not presented itself strongly before his introduction to Miss
Stangrove. He had been contented to enjoy the society of wife, widow,
and maid in the most artless, instinctive fashion, without any fixed
plan of personal advantage. Not that this unsatisfactory general
approbation had escaped criticism by those who felt themselves to be
sufficiently interested to speak. He had been called selfish, conceited,
fastidious, fast, uninteresting, and mysterious. Many adjectives had in
private been hurled at his devoted head. But he “had a light heart, and
so bore up.” Besides, he had a reserve of popularity to fall back upon.
There were many people who would not suffer Jack Redgrave to be run down
unreasonably. So up to this time he had eluded appropriation and defied
disapproval.

Now matters were changed. The slow, resistless Nemesis was upon him. In
his ears sounded the prelude to that melody—heard but once in this
mortal life—in tones at first low and soft, then rich and dread with
melody from the immortal lyre. At that summons all men arise and follow.
Follow, be it angel or fiend. Follow, be the path over vernal meads,
through forest gloom, or the drear shades of the nether hell.

No woman, Jack soliloquised, had ever before commended herself to his
tastes, his senses, his reason, and his fancy. She was in his eyes
lovely in form and face; original, cultured, tender, and true. He would
make her his wife if his utmost efforts might compass such triumph, such
wild exaggeration of happiness. She might not care particularly about
him. She might merely have whiled away a dull week. Now, many a time had
_he_ done likewise, with apparent interest and inward tedium. Were it
so, he felt as if he could bestow a legend on Steamboat Point by casting
himself into the rapid but not particularly deep waters which flowed
beneath. At any rate he would try. He would make the great hazard. He
would know his fate after shearing. Meanwhile, there was nearly enough
to do until that solemn Hegira to put the thought of Maud Stangrove out
of his head.

Having made up his mind, Mr. Redgrave dismissed the fair Maud with
philosophical completeness. Master Jack was extremely averse to holding
his judgment in suspense, that process involving abrasion of his
peculiarly delicate mental cuticle. He was prone, therefore, to a speedy
settlement of all cases of conscience. Judgment being delivered, he bore
or performed sentence unflinchingly. Yet his friends asserted that
during any stay of proceedings he could amuse himself as unreservedly,
as free from boding gloom, or “the sad companion, ghastly pale, and
darksome as a widow’s veil,” as any sportive lambkin on his way to mint
sauce and deglutition. Thus, having settled that the subjugation of Miss
Stangrove could not be undertaken until after shearing, he went heart
and soul into the arrangements for that annual agony, to the total
exclusion of all less material considerations.

To a healthy man, in the full possession of all mental and bodily
faculties, perhaps a state of perfect employment is the one most nearly
approaching to that of perfect happiness. It is rarely conceded at the
time; but more often than we wot of do men recall, when in the lap of
ease, that season of comparative toil and strife, with a sigh for the
“grand old days of pleasure and pain.” Each nerve and muscle is at
stretch. The struggle is close and hard; but there is the glorious
sensation of “the strong man rejoicing in his strength.” The very
fatigue is natural and wholesome. The recovery is sure and complete;
and, if only a reasonable meed of success crown those unsparing efforts,
the heart swells with the proud joy of him round whose brow is twined
the envied crown in the arena. Let who will choose the dulled sensation
with which, in after life, the successful merchant notes his dividends,
or the politician accepts the long-promised leadership.

Mr. Redgrave, then, having girded himself for the fight, in company with
M‘Nab, drank delight of battle with his peers, that is, with the
shearers, washers, and knockabout men, who struck repeatedly, and gave
as much trouble as their ingenuity could manage to supply during the
first week of shearing.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly—as is the custom of all Australian weather-wonders—clouds
charged with heavy driving showers came hurtling across the fair blue
sky. This abnormal state of matters on the Warroo was succeeded by a
steady, settled rainfall, pouring down heavily, and yet more heavily on
several successive days, as if heaven’s windows were once more opened,
and the dry land was again to be circumscribed. Without loss of time,
down came the river, “tossing his tawny mane,” foam-flecked, and bearing
on his broad brown bosom all sorts of goods and chattels not intended
for water carriage. The anabranch surrounding a large portion of the
river paddock, wherein were the weaners, was simultaneously filled by
the turbid torrent, which dashed into its deep but ordinarily dry bed
from the brimming river. At the present level no danger was to be
apprehended for the unconscious weaners; but M‘Nab was unwilling to
trust to the probabilities, and decided upon getting them out. A bridge
was extemporised, of a sort laid away in the well-stored chambers of his
practical brain, and thrown across the narrowest part.

With a heavy expenditure of patience, and the efficient leadership of
certain pet sheep, which M‘Nab had reared and trained for shearing
needs, the whole lot were mustered and safely crossed over the
newly-born water-course.

“I am not sure now,” said M‘Nab, “that we have not had all our trouble
for nothing. I believe the river will be low again in a week.”

“All the same,” affirmed Jack, “it’s well to be on the safe side,
especially of a back creek in flood-time. Nobody knows what these
confounded rivers are capable of doing when no one wants them.”

“Well, they can have the No. 2 paddock, and the dry ewes can have No. 3.
I wanted No. 2 for the shorn sheep, though. It’s just a nuisance the
water coming down now.”

The mild excitement of the spate, as Mr. M‘Nab called it, died away. The
sun came out; the waters returned to nearly their former limits, and a
wide, half-dried surface of mud, alone denoted where the deep and turbid
waters had rolled over the broad channel of the anabranch.

The wool-shed and wash-pen had been correctly placed upon the borders of
a creek so conveniently humble as never to attain to any measure of
danger or discomfort in the highest flood. So, directly the rain ceased,
the great yearly campaign went on rapidly and smoothly.

Weeks passed; the season was advancing; the sun became hotter; there was
not a day of broken weather; everything was in capital gear, and worked
with even suspicious smoothness.

“We are getting on like a house afire,” said M‘Nab; “that is,” as he
suddenly bethought himself of the awkwardness of the allusion, “much
faster than I expected. We have a good lot of men. There is no dust. The
wash-pen is just grand. I never saw wool cleaner and better got up,
though I say so.”

“Our luck has turned,” said Jack; “no more accidents; though it’s
strange that, when all is unnaturally successful, something is sure to
happen. If the engine was to smash, a valve or some small trouble to
happen, I should feel that the ring of Polycrates had been thrown into
the Warroo, and not returned by an officious codfish.”

“I don’t know about Polly Whatsyname’s ring,” said Mr. M‘Nab, whose
education had not included the classics; “but things couldn’t be better.
I shall put those weaners back into the river paddock again. The grass
is all going to waste.”

“Just as you like,” said Jack, who had forgotten his caution now that
the emergency was over. “I suppose we shall have the dust blowing in
about a fortnight.”

“By then we shall be done shearing. I don’t care what comes after,”
answered the manager. “And now I must go back to the shed.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“Thank God, it’s Saturday night!” said Jack, as they sat down to their
dinner at the fashionable hour of nine p.m. “I enjoy a good bout of
work; it’s exciting, and pulls one together. But one wants a _little_
sleep sometimes; likewise something to eat.”

“This has been a middling hard week,” graciously admitted M‘Nab, who
rarely would concede that any amount of labour constituted a _really_
laborious term. “One more week, and every dray will be loaded up, and
the wool off our hands.”

“Do you think the weather will hold good? It had rather a lowering, hazy
look to-day.”

“That means that it’s raining somewhere else,” said M‘Nab,
uninterestedly. “It’s very often our share of it on the Warroo here.”

“Don’t know—somehow I have had a queer feeling all day that I can’t
account for. Hard work generally goes to raise my spirits in view of the
splendid appreciation of food and sleep that follows. But I have felt
what the teller of tales calls a ‘presentiment’—a foreshadowing of
evil—if such a thing can be.”

“Take a glass of grog extra to-night, sir; you’ve caught cold at the
wash-pen, or the influenza the men had before shearing has fastened on
you. Some of them got a great shaking with it, and lay about like a lot
of old women.”

“I suspect the vagabonds considered it a favourable time to be ill,”
laughed Jack, “as they were not paying for their rations, and thought we
might put them on at a little gentle work. However, we won’t pursue the
subject.”

No one can have an adequate comprehension of the value of the Sabbath as
a day of pure rest who has not worked at high pressure, with brain or
hand, the week-time through. Well and wisely was the Lord’s Day
ordained—well and wisely is it maintained—for the needful recovery of
the wasted powers of the wondrous, miraculous machine called Man. In
this age, above all others, it is vitally necessary that a weekly truce
should be proclaimed, when the life-long conflict may cease and the
fever-throbs of the “malady of thought” may be stilled.

But for this anodyne, how many a brow, hot with the electric currents
that flash ceaselessly through the brain, would pass swiftly from pain
to madness! How many a stalwart frame, the unguarded, yet precious,
capital of the son of labour, would stagger and fall by the wayside of a
life which was one endless, monotonous martyrdom of unrelieved toil! But
the eve, the blessed herald of the coming holy day, arrives; the worn
craftsman rests, enjoys, and sinks into a dreamless sleep. The modern
Alchemist, he who painfully coins his brain into gold, relinquishing
crucible and furnace, walks forth into the pure air of heaven, and
thanks the Great Ruler for the respite—the sweet moments of a charmed,
untroubled day.

John Redgrave, as he awoke at dawn, and turned over for an hour or two
of rare repose, had some such glimmerings of thankfulness. He had
nothing to do or to think about until late in the afternoon, when the
sheep for Monday’s shearing would have to be packed into the shed, and
the next contingent due for the somewhat trying lavation by spout placed
near their tubbing apparatus. All the morning—what an amazing quantity
of time!—absolutely free. A leisurely calm breakfast, with the glorious
“nothing to do” for ever so long afterwards. It was the reign of Buddha,
the classic Elysium. He would sit on high like broad-fronted Jove, and
meditate, and read and write, and be supremely happy.

From the tenor of Mr. Redgrave’s thoughts, it will not escape the acute
reader that he had forgotten his presentiment. But scarcely had he
concluded his solitary, luxuriously-lingering meal—(M‘Nab of course was
miles away on some indispensable work, which he kept for Sundays and
holidays)—than the Eidolon stole forth from the curtains of his soul,
and confronted him with disembodied but ghastly presentment. Down went
the register of Jack’s animal spirits—down—down. The very face of heaven
darkened—the sky became overcast. The breeze became chill and moaned
eerily, without any assignable reason—for what were clouds in Riverina
but the heralds of prosperity, or its synonym, the Rain-King, but the
lord and gold-giver of all the sun-scorched land?

Thus he reasoned. But his logic was powerless to dislodge the demon. The
necessary evening work was formally proceeded with; but the sun set upon
few more depressed and utterly wretched mortals than John Redgrave, as
he moodily smoked for an hour, and retired early to an uneasy couch.
More than once he half rose through the night, and listened, as a
strange sound mingled with the blast which roared and raved, and shook
the cottage roof in the frenzied gusts of the changeful spring. But an
hour before dawn he sprang suddenly up and shouted to M‘Nab, who slept
in an adjoining room.

“Get up, man, and listen. I thought I could not be mistaken. The river
has got us this time.”

“I hear,” said M‘Nab, standing at the window, with all his senses about
him. “It can’t be the river; and yet, what else can it be?”

“I know,” cried Jack; “it’s the water pouring into the back creek when
it leaves the river. There must be an awful flood coming down, or it
could never make all that row. The last time it filled up as smoothly as
a backwater lagoon. Listen again!”

The two men stood, half-clad as they were, in the darkness, ever deepest
before dawn, while louder, and more distinctly, they heard the fall, the
roar, the rush of the wild waters of an angry flood down a deep and
empty channel. A very deep excavation had been scooped of old by the
Warroo at the commencement of the anabranch, which, leaving the river at
an angle, followed its course for miles, sometimes at a considerable
distance, before it re-entered it.

“My conscience!” said M‘Nab, “I never heard the like of that before—in
these parts, that is. I would give a year’s wage I hadn’t crossed those
weaners back. I only did it a day or two since. May the devil—but
swearing never so much as lifted a pound of any man’s burden yet. We’ll
not be swung clear of this grip of his claws by calling on _him_.”

With this anti-Manichæan assertion, M‘Nab went forth, and stumbled about
the paddock till he managed to get his own and Jack’s horse into the
yard. These he saddled and had ready by the first streak of dawn. Then
they mounted and rode towards the back of the river paddock.

“I was afraid of this,” said Jack, gloomily, as their horses’ feet
plashed in the edge of a broad, dull- sheet of water, long
before they reached the ridge whence they usually descried the
back-creek channel. “The waters are out such a distance that we shall
not be able to get near the banks of this infernal anabranch, much less
throw a bridge over any part of it. There is a mile of water on it now,
from end to end. The sheep must take their chance, and that only chance
is that the river may not rise as high as Stangrove says he has known
it.”

“I deserve to be overseer of a thick run with bad shepherds all my
life,” groaned M‘Nab, with an amount of sincerity in his abjectly
humiliated voice so ludicrous that Jack, in that hour of misery, could
scarcely refrain from smiling. “But let us gallop down to the outlet; it
may not have got that far yet.”

They rode hard for the point, some miles down, where the treacherous
offshoot re-entered the Warroo. It sometimes happens that, owing to the
sinuosities of the watercourses of the interior, horsemen at speed can
outstrip the advancing flood-wave, and give timely notice to the
dwellers on the banks. Such faint hope had they. By cutting across long
detours or bends, and riding harder than was at all consistent with
safety to their clover-fed horses, they reached the outlet. Joy of joys,
it was “as dry as a bone.”

“Now,” said M‘Nab, driving his horse recklessly down into the hard-baked
channel, “if we can only find most of the sheep in this end of the
paddock we may beat bad luck and the water yet. Did the dog come, I
wonder? The Lord send he did. I saw him with us the first time we pulled
up.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Jack; “we’ve ridden too hard for any mortal dog
to keep up with us, though Help will come on our tracks if he thinks
he’s wanted.”

“Bide a bit—bide a bit,” implored M‘Nab, forgetting his English, and
going back to an earlier vernacular in the depth of his earnestness.
“The dog’s worth an hour of time and a dozen men to us. Help! Help!
here, boy, here!”

He gave out the canine summons in the long-drawn cry peculiar to drovers
when seeking to signal their whereabouts to their faithful allies. Jack
put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a whistle of such remarkable
volume and shrillness that M‘Nab confessed his admiration.

“That will fetch him, sir, if he’s anywhere within a mile. Dash’d if
that isn’t him coming now. See him following our tracks. Here, boy!”

As he spoke a magnificent black and tan collie raised his head from the
trail and dashed up to Jack’s side, with every expression of delight and
proud success.

Mr. Redgrave was one of those men to whom dogs, horses, children, and
others attach themselves with blind, unreasoning confidence. Is it
amiability? Has mesmerism any share in the strange but actual
fascination? There were many far wiser than he unsought and unrecognized
by the classes referred to. In his case the fact, uncomplimentary or
otherwise, remained fixed and demonstrable. The sheep-dog in question
was introduced to him by an aged Scot, who arrived one day at Gondaree
followed by a female collie of pure breed and unusual beauty. Jack,
always merciful and sympathetic, had comforted the footsore elder, who
carried a large bundle upon his back, at which the dog cast ever and
anon a wistful glance. Lowering the pack carefully to the ground before
he drained the cheering draught, he wiped his lips, and, untying the
knapsack, rolled out, to his host’s wild astonishment, _five blind
puppies_!

“Ye ken, sir, the auld slut here just whelpit a week syne, maist
unexpectedly to me. I was sair fashed to make my way doon wi’ sax
doggies. But I pledged my word to Maister Stangrove to gang back to
Juandah before shearing, and I wadna brak my word—no, not for five
poond.”

“But are you going to carry the whole litter another fifty miles?”

“Weel, aweel, sir, I’ll not deny it’s a sair trial; but I brocht lassie
here from the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick, where my auld bones will never
lie. The wee things come of the bluid of Tam Hogg’s grand dog Sirrah.
Forbye they’re maist uncommon valuable here. I never askit less than a
pund for ilka ane o’ them yet, and siller’s siller, ye ken.”

“I’ll give you a sov,” said Jack, “for the black and tan pup—him with
the spot between the eyes. I suppose we could rear him with an old ewe?”

“He’s the king of this lot, but ye shall have the pick of them a’ even
withoot the siller, for the kind word and the good deed you’ve done to
the auld failed, doited crater that ance called himsel’ Jock Harlaw of
Ettrick. May the Lord do so to me and mair, if I forget it.”

The next day the old man came up, and solemnly delivered over the plump,
roly-poly dogling, which, being fostered upon an imprisoned ewe, throve
and grew into one of the best dogs that ever circumvented that deceitful
and wicked quadruped called the sheep, the measure of whose intelligence
has ever been consistently underrated.

The judicious reader will comprehend that, even on a fenced run, a good
sheep-dog is valuable, and even necessary. The headlong, reckless system
of driving, the cruel, needless terrorising under which “shepherded
sheep” have for generations suffered in Australia may be as strongly
repudiated as ever. But under certain conditions, it is well known to
all rulers of sheep stations that there is no moving sheep without the
aid and conversation of a dog. Therefore, though much of the occupation
of the ordinary half-trained sheep-dog be gone, a really well-bred and
highly-trained animal is still prized.

The collie “Help,” then, as he grew up, showed great hereditary aptitude
for every kind of knowledge connected with the “working” of sheep. He
was passionately fond of Jack, whom he recognized as his real and true
master; but he would follow and obey M‘Nab, appearing to know by
intuition when work among the sheep was intended. From him, as a man of
sheep from earliest youth, he learned all the niceties of the
profession. At drafting and yarding he was invaluable. Lifted into a
yard crammed with panic-stricken or unwilling sheep, he would run along
on their bodies or “go back through them” in a manner wonderful to
observe—this last practice being known to all sheep-experts as the only
way hitherto invented for prevailing on sheep to run up freely to a
gate. He would bark or bite (this last with great discretion) at word of
command. He would stay at any part of the yard pointed out to him, and
though among the station hands it was commonly, but erroneously,
reported that he could “keep a gate,” and had been seen drafting “two
ways at once,” still it was so far near the truth that he had many times
been posted at the entrance of sub-yards, and had prevented any sheep
from entering during the whole duration of the drafting. For the rest,
he was affectionate, generous, and brave, a good watch-dog, and no mean
antagonist. In his own branch of the profession he was held to be
unequalled for sagacity and effectiveness on the whole river.

In the hour of sore need this was the friend and ally, most
appropriately named, who appeared on the scene. With a wave of the hand
from Jack, he started off, skirting the nearest body of sheep. The
well-trained animal, racing round the timid creatures, turned them
towards the outlet, and followed the master for further orders. This
process was repeated, aided by M‘Nab, until they had gone as far from
the outlet of the creek as they dared to do, with any chance of crossing
before the flood came down.

“We must rattle them in now,” said M‘Nab. “I’m afraid there is a large
lot higher up, but there’s five or six thousand of these, and we must
make the best of it.”

As the lots of sheep coalesced on their homeward route, the difficulty
of driving and the value of the dog grew more apparent. Large mobs or
flocks of sheep are, like all crowds, difficult to move and conduct. By
themselves it would have been a slow process; but the dog, gathering
from the words and actions of his superiors that something out of the
common was being transacted, flew round the great flock, barking,
biting, rushing, worrying—driving, in fact, like ten dogs in one. By
dint of the wildest exertion on the part of the men, and the tireless
efforts of the dog, the great flock of sheep, nearly six thousand, was
forced up to the anabranch. Here the leaders unhesitatingly took the as
yet dry, unmoistened channel, and in a long string commenced to pour up
the opposite bank.

“Give it them at the tail, sir,” shouted M‘Nab, who was at the lead, “go
it, Help, good dog—there is not a moment to lose. By George, there comes
the flood. Eat ’em up, old man!—give it ’em, good dog!”

There was fortunately one more bend for the flood water to follow round
before it reached the outlet. During the short respite Jack and M‘Nab
worked at their task till the perspiration poured down their faces—till
their voices became hoarse with shouting, and well-nigh failed. Horses
and men, dog and sheep, were all in a state of exhaustion and despair
when the last mob was ascending the clay bank.

“Two minutes more, and we should have been too late,” said M‘Nab, in a
hoarse whisper; “look there!”

As he spoke, a wall of water, several feet in height, and the full
breadth of the widest part of the channel, came foaming down, bearing
logs, trees, portions of huts and haystacks—every kind of _débris_—upon
its eddying tide. The tired dog crawled up the bank and lay down in the
grass. A few of the last sheep turned and stared stolidly at the close
wild water. There was a hungry, surging rush, and in another minute the
creek was level with the river, and the place where the six thousand
sheep had crossed dryshod (and sheep resemble cats very closely in their
indisposition to wet their feet) was ten feet under water, and would
have floated a river steamer.

Jack returned to the homestead rather comforted by this present bit of
success, and hopeful that the sheep left in the river paddock might yet
escape. They had no further anxiety about those which they had plucked
out of the fire—that is to say, the water—for they were in a secure high
and dry paddock, and they were not likely to attempt to swim back again.

It was very provoking to think, however, that only a week previous the
whole lot had been absolutely safe if they had been sufficiently
cautious to let well alone till after shearing.

On the morrow such a sight met John Redgrave’s eyes as they had not
looked upon since he entered into possession of Gondaree. The cottage
was built, as has been before related, upon a bluff, and was believed to
be impregnable by the highest flood that ever came down the Warroo. When
Jack walked into the verandah, and saw by the pale dawn-light the angry
waters, deep, turbulent, and wide as his vision went, rushing but a few
feet below the floor on which he trod, he felt as if he were at sea, and
trusted that the older residents had made no miscalculation. It was
certainly a novel experience in that dry and thirsty land to hear the
“roar of waters” so closely brought home to one’s bed and board. On the
other side of the river, far as the eye could see, the vast flats were
as an inland sea, the trees standing in the water like pillars in a vast
aqueduct, their stems forming endless colonnades.

This augured badly for his own river-paddock, and, breakfast hastily
concluded, he started down to see if any of the sheep were visible from
the opposite bank of the anabranch. He managed to get near enough to
sweep the flats with a field-glass, and at last made out the greater
part of the weaners, huddled together upon a small rise, surrounded by
water, and not much above the general level. Here, though cold and
hungry, they might remain in safety till the flood fell, if the waters
rose no higher. But there lay the danger. The waters surrounded them for
a long stretch on every side. Even if they could get near them, nothing
would induce young sheep to face a much less expanse of water. The
current was too rapid to work any species of raft. If the river
continued rising through the night, there would not be a sheep of these
three thousand and more alive by daylight.

Jack turned sick at heart with the bare idea. Good heavens! was he to be
eternally the sport of circumstance and the victim of disaster? Was
there such a thing as Bad Luck, an evil principle, in which he had
steadfastly disbelieved, but which he did not doubt in other cases had
hunted men to their doom? Could it possibly happen in his own case? How
rarely do men accept any of life’s evils as possibilities in their own
cases! Here, however, he was again face to face with an unsolved
difficulty, a peril imminent, deadly, and well-nigh hopeless of escape.
Three thousand some hundreds of beautiful young sheep, with fourteen
months’ wool on. Another two thousand pounds gone at one blow! It was
enough to make a man hang himself.

He had a long consultation with M‘Nab, who had settled in his own mind
that nothing could be done, except drown a man or two, in trying
conclusions with such a waste of water, with large logs and uprooted
trees whirling madly down the stream, which indeed looked like a lake
dislodged from its moorings, and mad for a view of the distant sea.

So he calmly waited the issue, hoping for a fall during the night, and
cursing himself, as deeply as a sound Presbyterian could afford to do,
for having brought this loss upon his employer by over-greed of grass.
The river did not fall. Indeed, it rose so rapidly that on their last
visit to the place of observation they could hear the continuous
bleating of the hapless sheep—a token that they were alarmed and
endangered by the rising tide.

All that night the sound was in Jack’s ears as he listened at intervals,
or tossed restlessly on an uneasy bed.

With the earliest dawn he was astir and down at the look-out. There had
evidently been a considerable rise during the night. He saw that the
water had made a clean breach over the spot occupied by the flock—of the
whole number, there was not a solitary sheep to be seen. He would have
been saved a few days of anxious expectation—a feeling between utter
despair and trembling hope—had he known that his friends at Juandah,
that very day, had seen scores of their carcases floating past their
windows, but were happily unconscious of their particular ownership.

For nearly a week Jack was inconsolable—he took no interest in the
remaining portion of the shearing, which M‘Nab finished with his
customary exactness, paying off the shearers, washers, and extra hands,
and despatching every pound of wool and every sheepskin as if the last
of the clip—like a cow’s milk—was the richest and most valuable.

The floods had rolled away, and the sun shone out hotter than ever upon
miles of blackened clover and mud-covered pasturage, entirely ruined for
the year by the unseasonable immersion. When they rode over the paddock
the sight was pitiable in the extreme. By far the greater proportion of
the drowned sheep had been floated away bodily, as the “cruel, crawling
tide” rose inch by inch in the darkness, till they were swept from
footing. But many were found entangled in drift-wood, carried into large
hollow trees—as many as fifteen or twenty, perhaps, in one cluster—black
and decomposing, with the wool bleaching in great strips and masses. A
miserable sight for John Redgrave, in truth, who, but a fortnight since,
had considered that wool almost in his pocket, and every shorn weaner
good value for half a sovereign all round. Then the confounded _fama
clamosa_ of the affair. The local papers had quick and fast hold of the
tale:

“We are deeply grieved to hear that Mr. Redgrave of Gondaree, who has
spared no cost in improving that valuable property, has lost ten
thousand sheep in the late disastrous flood.” Next week—“We have much
pleasure in stating that Mr. Redgrave has had only five thousand sheep
drowned, but we had not then learned that his wool-shed and wash-pen,
with a portion of the clip, were entirely washed away.” And so on.

The quickest way to escape condolences and local sympathy would be to
make tracks for Melbourne. This he accordingly did, having, like the
preceding season, had a sufficiency of salt-bush life for a while.
Matters in some respects were more favourable to his mental recovery
than on his former visit. Wool was up. The season, bar floods, had been
good on the whole. Everybody connected with sheep was disposed to be
cheerful and make allowances. Most of the people he met had not heard of
the trifling overthrow of the remote Warroo, and the incidental “natural
selection” of his lamented weaners. Others, who had heard, did not care.
The joyous squatters, on the strength of a good twopenny rise in the
home market, made light of his sorrows. One man said, laughingly, that
he knew of a station, about a thousand miles lower down, which the same
flood had treated even more scurvily.

“Wallingford, you know, had overstocked that run of his with store
cattle; all the back country dry as a bone; no rain for two years; five
or six thousand head of cattle all but starving; poor as crows, give you
my word. Everything depending upon the river and the lake flats for the
clover, as soon as it was ripe. Well, the flood comes down, smothers his
clover; river twenty miles wide for nearly a month; lake overflowed too.
Droll predicament, wasn’t it? Quite antipodean. Half the run too dry;
t’other half too wet. No rain; clover of course black as your hat when
the water went down. Wallingford heaps of bills to meet, too.”

The salient points of humour which Mr. Wallingford’s ingeniously
complicated calamities evolved under artistic treatment served
indirectly to comfort our victim. The misfortunes of others, especially
of the same profession, are soothing, benevolists notwithstanding. Jack
felt ashamed of howling over his few sheep, and recollected the still
imposing numbers of the last count, and returned to his normal state of
contentment with to-day, and rose- anticipation of to-morrow.

His interview with Mr. Mildmay Shrood was pacific and encouraging. That
gentleman congratulated him upon the name and fame to which the Gondaree
clip had attained, prophesying even greater distinction. He listened
with polite sympathy to the account of the loss of the weaners, but
observed that such accidents must occasionally happen in wet seasons,
and that, as he was informed, the country generally had received immense
benefit from the late rains.

“Your clip is one of the best in the whole of Riverina, my dear
Redgrave, and your number of sheep—‘52,000,’ thank you—has on the whole
kept up admirably. Management, my dear sir, is everything—everything.
Good-morning. Good-morning.”




                             CHAPTER XIII.

                     “Hope told a flattering tale.”


Thus endorsed, Jack began to consider himself to be as fine a fellow as
the rest of the world was bent upon making him out to be. He held up his
head as in the old days, when debt and he were strangers, and gave his
opinion with imposing decision upon all matters, pastoral, social, and
political. He was glad now that he had followed M‘Nab’s advice, and
shorn the fat sheep. Their wool told up noticeably in the clip, and he
trusted that in the coming autumn he should be able to top the market
with the first draft of fat sheep from the glorious salt-bush plains
which skirted the lonely Bimbalong.

He received a certain amount of satisfaction from observing how reduced
was the list of stores and necessaries with which he had been entrusted
by M‘Nab. “Why, it’s next to nothing,” said he, as he looked over it;
“one would think we were providing for a cattle station except for next
year’s shearing requirements. If we have only another decent year or
two, the debt will be wiped off, and hey for Europe!” Then, from that
vision of the sea, arose the form—as of a Venus Anadyomene—of Maud
Stangrove. Would she share his pilgrimage? How enchanting the thought!
How divine the companionship! Together would they wander through the
cities of the old world, as through the dream-palaces of his boyish
days. Paris, with her mingled splendours and luxuries. Rome, calm and
majestic, even amid her ruins, as befitted the Mother of Nations.
Venice, with mysterious gondolas still floating adown her sea, which is
“her broad, her narrow streets,” which still, as in old days of regal
pride, and power, and love, is “her black-marble stair.” Switzerland,
with her pure, white-robed, heaven-gazing Alps, receiving their crimson
dawn-blush ere beholding the fresh day-birth of a world. Last of all,
but how far from least, “Merrie England,” the great land of their
fathers—every legendary and historical feature of which had been graven
in his mind from earliest childhood. Bound on such a pilgrimage as this,
“with one fair spirit for his minister,” how cheerfully would he
abandon, for a season, the dull labours and prosaic thoughts with which
his later years had been bedimmed! He thought of Maud’s cultured and
receptive mind; her keen spirit of observation; her unfailing
cheerfulness; and the deep, unselfish tenderness which he had remarked
in her home intercourse. Could he but win this peerless creature to
himself; could he but provide for this diamond of purest ray serene the
costly setting which alone harmonized with its rank among “earth’s
precious things,” he told himself that the sayings of cynics about the
ills of humanity would be meaningless falsehoods.

This, perhaps, slightly exalted conception of the probabilities of
matrimony, combined with the absence of the central figure, around which
such roseate clouds softly circled, tended to abridge Mr. Redgrave’s
metropolitan sojourn. He made the novel discovery that ordinary modern
society was worldly and frivolous—that club _viveurs_ were selfish and
dissipated—that his acquaintances, generally, were destitute of
ennobling aims; and that it behoved any man, whose soul cherished a
lofty purpose, to follow out a sustained plan unswervingly. To this end
he determined, rather ungratefully, considering how powerful a tonic his
visit had proved, to abandon the vain city, and betake himself
incontinently to the majestic desert and to—Maud Stangrove.

He made an abrupt departure, somewhat to the surprise of that very small
section of society which troubled itself with his weal or woe, and
appeared suddenly before M‘Nab, who, in his turn, was surprised also.

Mr. M‘Nab was not only astonished at his employer’s short stay in
Melbourne, but also at his cheerful and animated demeanour.

“The trip has done you a world of good, sir,” he said. “I thought when
you went away that it would take you longer to forget our losses.”

“Well, there’s nothing like change of air, and the knowledge of what
other people are doing, when you are low. If people spent more money in
trains and coaches they would spend less on doctors, I believe. A man
who is shut up with his misery broods over it till, like a shepherd, he
goes mad some day. When I got to town, I found others had suffered even
more heavily, and, of course, that comforted me.”

“And the wool?” inquired M‘Nab.

“Nothing but compliments,” answered Jack. “Never expected to see wool
got up like it on the Warroo, and so on. Mr. Shrood prophesied all kinds
of triumphs and fancy prices next year. I might have had ten thousand
sovereigns to take away in my hat, if I had asked for them. This flood
seems to have done a world of damage, and such a trifle as the loss of
two or three thousand sheep was voted not worth talking about.”

“It was an awful sacrifice—just a throwing to the fishes of two thousand
golden guineas, any way ye look at it,” said, slowly and impressively,
the downright M‘Nab. He could never be led to gloss over any
shortcomings, losses, or failures, holding them as points in the game of
life to be carefully scored, which no player worthy of the name would
omit. “You’re welcome to knock half of it off my wages,” he continued,
“as I shall always believe that I was to blame for want of care. But I
hope we’ll have profits yet that will clear off the score of this and
other losses.”

“I am fully confident that we shall, M‘Nab,” said Jack, hopefully; “and
I have no notion of making my deficit good out of your screw, though it
is manly of you to offer it. You work as hard and do as much as one man
can. Whether things go right or wrong, I shall never blame you, be
assured. I am free to admit that in your place I should not do half as
well. And now, do you want any help for a week or two, for I think I
shall ride down to Juandah?”

“I did not expect you back for a month more,” said M‘Nab, smiling to
himself; “so I had arranged to do without you, you see. I can get on
grandly till we begin to draft the fat sheep for market.”

Thus absolved and conscience-clear, Mr. Redgrave immediately betook
himself to Juandah, where he was received with frank and kindly welcome
by everybody. It was fortunate that he had gone to Melbourne after the
flood-disaster, as he was now able to treat that damaging blow in a much
more light and philosophical fashion than would have been possible to
him without the aid of his metropolitan experiences.

“It was rather a facer,” he admitted to Stangrove, who had delicately
described their grief at seeing the drowned weaners floating past their
windows in scores and hundreds, “but when a fellow has a large operation
in hand he must look at the progress of the whole enterprise, and not
fix his mind upon minor drawbacks. A single vessel doesn’t matter out of
the whole convoy of East Indiamen. The loss of the _Royal George_ had no
perceptible influence on the rest of the British navy. I shall shear
over sixty thousand sheep next year, with luck, and when I sell shall
think no more of those poor devils of weaners than you do of the
blacks—probably mythical—that Red Rob slew during your minority.”

“With luck—with luck—as you say,” said Stangrove, rather absently. “But,
as we agreed before, luck seems necessary to the working out of your
plan, which I admit, at present prices, looks feasible enough. But
suppose we _don’t_ get our fair share of luck this year, what then?
However, we needn’t anticipate evil. Let’s come in and see the ladies.”

“‘So behold you of return,’ as dear old Madame Florac says,” commenced
Maud, looking up from _The Newcomes_. “How truly fortunate you men are,
Mr. Redgrave, that you can get away to some decent abode of mankind
every now and then under the pretence of business! Now we poor,
oppressed women have to give reasons that will bear the most searching
investigation before we are allowed to go anywhere. Men only say vaguely
‘must go—important business,’ and take themselves off.”

“Really, Miss Stangrove, I don’t see but that you, in this nice cool
room, with nothing to do but to read about Ethel and Barnes, that grand
old cat Lady Kew, and the dear old Colonel, are about as well off as any
one I have seen in my travels.”

“That’s all nonsense. We endure life here, of course, but look at the
delightful change of scene, air, life, people, trees, bread and butter,
everything new and fresh that you have had lately. Uniformity is death
to some natures. That is why some unhappy individuals of my sex make
dismal endings and horrid examples of themselves. Some girl marries the
butler, or the stockman, or the music master periodically. Depend upon
it, it is nothing but Nature’s protest against the murderous monotony of
their daily lives.”

“Maud, Maud,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “how can you say such dreadful
things? Quite improper, I think. I declare Mr. Redgrave will be shocked
and alarmed if you go on so. Really, my dear!”

Jack mildly combated these extreme and unconventional opinions,
declaring that some of the most discontented, useless, and life-weary
people he had ever seen had enjoyed no end of variety—passed their lives
in sight-seeing—been everywhere—and yet were more utterly _ennuyés_ than
even Miss Stangrove on the banks of the Warroo.

“Well,” said that young lady, “you see they had only been working out
the vanity and vexation of spirit theory, and how dreary a result it was
for the Wise King to come to! But I should like ‘to see the folly of it
too.’ I think manufacturing one’s own vanity and vexation is more
satisfactory than acquiring it second-hand.”

“I wonder if our black friends ever feel bored,” said Jack; “before we
came and gave them iron tomahawks it must have taken a fellow a week to
chop out a ’possum; so I suppose constant employment conduced to
cheerfulness. Still, of late years, food being plentiful, wars
traditionary, and travel impossible, game perhaps a trifle scarcer, a
sense of impatience of the ‘slow, strong hours’ _may_ have crossed their
unused intelligences.”

“It may be, for all we know,” said Mark, who had re-entered and thrown
himself upon a sofa, “at the root of the frantic love for ardent spirits
which all the younger natives have. The men of a generation or two back,
like ‘old man Jack,’ don’t drink. But all the middle-aged and younger
ones, _more particularly those, by comparison, educated_, drink
fearfully hard whenever they get the chance.”

“So do all savages,” said Jack; “likewise smoke furiously. Alcohol and
tobacco seem particularly attractive to their organizations; and they
have no power of moderation. ‘Too much of anything is not good,’ said
the Red Indian, ‘but too much rum is just enough.’ That’s their idea—all
over the world.”

“I suggest that we have exhausted the subject,” mildly interposed Mrs.
Stangrove, “and as it is getting cool we might all go for a drive in the
break with Mark and the young horses. Can you take us, my dear?”

This was voted a first-rate suggestion. The evening, comparatively cool
only, was approaching. So the ladies apparelled themselves suitably, and
as Mark let the half-broken team out, without fear of stone or stump,
along the glorious, level, sandy out-station track, the rushing air
refreshed their senses, jaded by the long, breezeless midsummer day. It
was twilight deepening into night as they returned, a very cheerful and
animated party. Maud, with the changeful mood of her sex, declared
herself again reconciled to existence, and even conscious of pleasurable
anticipation as regarded tea.

Jack was catechised after that refection upon the balls,
archery-parties, picnics, races, &c., to which he had been on his late
visit to town. Maud sang a new song or two which she had managed to get
up, buried alive as she assumed herself to be, and John Redgrave was
more deeply enthralled than ever.

Stangrove asked him to stay a fortnight or so with them, if he could
spare the time; and Jack declared it would be most uncomplimentary to
M‘Nab’s management, and the fencing system generally, to suppose that a
proprietor was pinned to his homestead like a mere shepherding squatter.
So he gratefully accepted the invitation and the opportunity. In spite
of the weather—and even the presence of the beloved object cannot render
the month of January a pleasant one in Lower Riverina—the days passed in
a dreamily luxurious tropical fashion. Jack had an early enjoyable swim
in the capacious Warroo, now rippling over sand-bars and pebbles, as if
it had never risen with death upon its angry tide. Then the breakfast in
the cool darkened room, before the great and resistless glare of the day
commenced, was very pleasant. After that period, and until the sun was
down, I am free to confess that all the _dramatis personæ_ might as well
have been in Madras or Bombay. Outside the heat was awful, and the first
effect on leaving the shelter of the cottage after ten o’clock a.m., was
as if one had suddenly encountered the outer current of a blast furnace.
Mark was out on the run, as a matter of course, pretty nearly all day
and every day. There were never-ending duties among the sheep, cattle,
and horses which did not permit him to make any philosophical
reflections upon the heat of the weather. He simply put it out of the
question, as he had done from boyhood. Consequently he did not feel it
half as much as those who tried by every means to evade it.

Jack did not feel himself called upon to offer to join his host in these
daily expeditions. He occasionally, of course, volunteered when his
assistance was likely to be useful. But generally he lounged about the
house, and made himself generally useful by reading aloud to the ladies,
irrigating Mrs. Stangrove’s flower-garden, practising duets with Maud,
and generally raising Miss Stangrove from that desolate and vacuous
condition into which she had been in danger of falling before his
opportune arrival. The riding and the driving parties were of course not
abandoned. There was always some period arbitrarily defined as the cool
of the evening, when such exercise, even walking by the Warroo under the
sighing river-oaks, was suitable and satisfactory. He and Mark had long
arguments about all kinds of subjects, in which the ladies now and then
took part. Nothing could have been more generally agreeable than the
whole thing. But the days wore on, and Jack felt that he had no decent
excuse for staying longer; he therefore prepared to depart. He had not
seen his way either, much as he longed for an opportunity, to put that
very tremendous and momentous question to Maud, to which he had sworn to
himself that he _would_ receive a definitive answer before quitting
Juandah. Truth to tell, their intimacy had not advanced so quickly as he
had hoped. He saw, or thought he saw, that Maud liked his society. But
she was so frank and unembarrassed that he mistrusted the existence of
any deeper sentiment. He was not altogether without knowledge of the
ways of womenkind; and he knew that this frank recognition of the
pleasantness of his society was by no means a good sign. He did not feel
inclined to ask any girl, obviously non-sympathetic, to marry him,
trusting to the unlikeliness of her seeing any decenter sort of fellow
in these wilds, and to her acknowledged distaste for life on the Warroo.
“No, hang it,” he said to himself, “that would be hardly generous. I’ll
wait till she shows some sign that she really cares for me—loves me, I
mean. If she doesn’t, John Redgrave is not the man to ask her. If she
does, she can’t hide it, nor can any woman that ever lived. I know so
much of the alphabet.”

Thus hardening his heart temporarily and strategically, Mr. Jack
finished copying the last galop, put a finishing touch to the grand
arterial system of irrigation borrowed from Ah Sing, which he had
engineered for the benefit of Mr. Redgrave’s roses and japonicas, gave
Mark Stangrove a real good day’s work at the branding-yard, showed him a
new dodge for leg-roping which elicited the admiration of the stockmen,
and went on his way, accompanied for a mile or two by his host.




                              CHAPTER XIV.

                  “Soft! What are you?
                  Some villain mountaineers?
                  I have heard of such.“—_Cymbeline_.


Mrs. Stangrove and Maud were sitting in the drawing-room that morning, a
little silent and distrait, we may confess, when a man’s footstep was
heard on the verandah. “I did not think that Mark would have returned so
soon,” said Maud, going to the French window and looking out. She stood
there for an instant, and then, turning to her sister a face ashen-white
and strangely altered, gasped out a single word—that word of dread,
often of doom, in the far, lone, defenceless Australian
waste—“Bushrangers!” Mrs. Stangrove gave a moaning, half-muffled cry,
and then, obeying the irresistible maternal instinct, rushed into the
adjoining apartment where her children were. At the same moment a tall
man with a revolver raised in his right hand stepped into the room, and
gazed rapidly round with restless eyes, as of one long used to meet with
frequent foes. Behind him, closely following, were three other armed
men, while a fifth was visible in the passage, thus cutting off all
retreat towards the rear.

Maud Stangrove was a girl of more than ordinary firmness of nerve. She
strove hard against the spasmodic terror which the feeling of being
_absolutely in the power_ of lawless and desperate men at first
produced. Rapidly conning over the chances of a rescue, in the event of
the working overseer and his men returning, as she knew they were likely
to do, at an early hour, having been out at the nearest out-station
since sunrise, accompanied by Mark, who had intended when leaving to cut
across to them and inspect their work, she felt the necessity of keeping
cool and temporizing with the enemy.

Steadying her voice with an effort, and facing the intruder with a very
creditable air of unconcern, she said—“What do you want? I think you
have mistaken your way.”

The robber looked at her with a bold glance of admiration, and then,
with an instinctive deference which struggled curiously with his
consciousness of having taken the citadel, made answer—“See here, Miss,
I’m Redcap; dessay you’ve heard of me. You’ve no call to be afeared; but
we’ve come here for them repeating rifles as Mr. Stangrove’s been smart
enough to get up from town.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” said Maud, thankful to remember that
she had not seen lately these unlucky celebrities in the small-arm way,
which, for their marvellous shooting and rapidity of loading, had been a
nine-days’ wonder in the neighbourhood.

“Well,” interposed a black-visaged, down-looking ruffian, who had
ensconced himself in an easy chair, “some of you will have to know about
’em, and look sharp too, or we’ll burn the blessed place down about your
ears.”

“You shut up, Doctor,” said the leader, who seemed, like Lambro, one of
the mildest-mannered men that ever “stuck up mails or fobbed a note.”
“Let me talk to the lady. It’s no use your fencing, Miss, about these
guns; we know all about ’em, and have ’em we will. Mr. Stangrove shot a
bullock with the long one last Saturday. You’d better let us have ’em,
and we’ll clear out.”

Maud was considering whether it would not be safer to “fess” and get rid
of the unwelcome visitors, who, though wonderfully pacific, might not
remain so. A diversion was effected. One of the younger members of the
band suddenly appeared with the baby—the idolized darling of the
household—in his arms.

“Here,” he cried, “I’ve got something as is valuable. I shall stick to
this young ’un to put me in mind of my pore family as I’ve been obliged
to cut away from.”

Mrs. Stangrove, poor lady, had been keeping close with the older
children, flattering herself that this precious infant, then taking the
air in his nurse’s arms, was safe from the marauders. She was speedily
undeceived by the piercing cry which reached her ears, as the affrighted
babe, just old enough to “take notice” of the stranger, proclaimed
distrust of his awkward, though not unkind, dandling.

Rushing in with frantic eagerness, and the “wrathful dove” expression
which the gentlest maternal creature assumes at any “intromitting” with
her young, as old Dugald Dalgetty phrases it, Mrs. Stangrove suddenly
confronted the audacious intruder, and, seizing the child, tore it out
of his arms with so deft a promptitude that the delinquent had no time
for resistance. Looking half startled, half sullen, he stood in the same
position for a moment, with so ludicrous an expression of defeat and
mortification that his companions burst into a fit of unrestrained
laughter, while Mrs. Stangrove, in the reaction from her unaccustomed
ferocity, clasped the child to her bosom in a paroxysm of tears.

“This here’s all very well,” said Redcap, “but we didn’t come for
foolery. If these rifles ain’t turned up in five minutes you’ll be sorry
for it. If some of ’em gets to the brandy, Miss,” here he lowered his
voice and looked significantly at Maud, “there’s no saying what will
happen. Better deal with us while we’re in a good temper.”

Maud believed that the coveted weapons were somewhere upon the premises,
although she had spoken truly at the first demand when she averred that
she was ignorant of their precise locality. She was aware that a moment
might change the mood of the robbers from one of amused toleration to
that of reckless brutality. Not wholly ignorant of the terrible legends,
still whispered low and with bated breath, of wrongs irrevocable
suffered by defenceless households, her resolution was quickly taken.

“Jane,” she said to Mrs. Stangrove, who, helpless and unnerved, was
still sobbing hysterically, “if you know where these guns are tell me at
once, and I will go for them. It can’t be helped. These men have behaved
fairly, and as we can neither fight nor run away, we must give up our
money-bags, or what they consider an equivalent. Where are the rifles?”

“Oh, what will Mark say?” moaned out the distracted wife. “If he were
only here I should not care. And yet, perhaps, it’s better as it is. If
they do not hurt the dear children I don’t care what they take. You know
best. The rifles are in Mark’s dressing-room, in the shower-bath.”

Maud went out, and presently reappeared with the beautiful American
repeaters, one of which had the desirable peculiarity of being able to
discharge sixteen cartridges in as many seconds, if needful; the other
was a light and extremely handy Snider—“a tarnation smart
shooting-iron,” as one of the station hands, who hailed from the Great
Republic, had admiringly expressed himself.

Redcap’s eyes glistened as he possessed himself of the
“sixteen-shooter,” and handed the Snider to the Doctor.

“All’s well that ends well,” growled that worthy, “we’ll be a match for
all the blessed traps between here and Sydney with these here tools; but
for two pins I’d put a match in every gunyah on the place, just to learn
Stangrove not to be in such a hurry to run in a mob of pore fellers as
had got tired of being messed about by those infernal troopers.”

“You’ll just do what I tell you, Doctor,” said Redcap, savagely, “and if
I catch one of you burning or shooting without orders he’ll have to
settle with me. Hallo! it can’t be dinner-time.”

This last observation was called forth by the appearance of the
parlour-maid with the table-cloth and a tray. She was a buxom country
girl, without any of that hyper-sensitiveness of the nervous system
common to town domestics. A bushranger to her was simply an exaggerated
“traveller,” and nothing more. One o’clock p.m. having arrived, it did
not occur to her that the family would choose to omit the important
midday meal on account of visitors, however unwelcome. She proceeded,
therefore, with perfect coolness to lay the cloth, and observing no sign
of objection from Maud, presently brought in the dishes, and set the
chairs as usual. Maud, thinking that the less fear they showed the
better it would be for them, called the children, and motioned to Mrs.
Stangrove to take her accustomed place. Simultaneously, Miss Ethel, a
quiet little monkey of nine years, being extremely hungry, then and
there recited the customary grace, praying God to “relieve the wants of
others, and to make them truly thankful for what they were about to
receive.”

Maud afterwards confessed that it cost her a strong effort to repress a
smile as she noted the look of undisguised astonishment which came over
the faces of Redcap and his men, who probably had not heard for many a
year, if ever, that simple benediction.

The Doctor recovered himself first. “I feel confoundedly hungry,” said
he; “I suppose we may as well take a snack too.”

“Then come along with me to the kitchen,” said the maid, promptly, with
the most matter-of-fact air, opening the door of the passage.

The men stared for a moment as if disposed for equal privileges in the
region of communism which they now morally inhabited. But the old
instinct was not entirely overpowered, and with one look at Maud’s rigid
countenance and the pale face of Mrs. Stangrove, Redcap followed the
girl, and signed to his comrades to do likewise.

At this moment one of the bed-room doors opened, and a man entered the
room, dressed in a full suit of black. His hair shone with pomatum, and
he looked something between a lay reader and a provincial footman.

“Look out,” roared the Doctor, “perhaps there’s more of ’em coming,” as
he raised his revolver.

“Come, none of that, Doctor,” said the new-comer; “don’t you never see
nothin’ but a cove’s clothes?”

A roar of laughter from the others and the returned Redcap apprised him
of his mistake. It was the youngest member of their own band, who, being
of a restless disposition, had managed to find his way to the spare
room, where he had coolly appropriated a combination suit of John
Redgrave’s, and had further anointed himself with a pot of pomatum,
which did not belong to that gentleman. This episode improved the
spirits both of captors and captives, and, hustling one another like
school-boys, the whole gang made their way into the kitchen, where, to
judge from the sounds of laughter that issued therefrom, they enjoyed
themselves much more than would have been the case in the dining-room.

In about half an hour Maud had the inexpressible gratification of seeing
them mount and make off steadily along the road which led “up the
river.”

When they were fairly off Maud felt symptoms of having taxed nature
severely. She turned deadly pale as she threw herself upon the sofa,
covering her face with her hands, while her whole frame shook with
convulsive sobs, as she tried with her full strength of will to control
the tendency to “the sad laugh that cannot be repressed.” However, as
chiefly happens in those feminine temperaments where the reasoning
powers are stronger than the emotional, she succeeded, and bestowed all
her regained energy to the support and consolation of her sister-in-law.

While these wonderful things were happening, John Redgrave was
peacefully riding along the up river road, thinking of the manifold
perfections of his divinity, and little dreaming that she was at that
very moment a distressed damsel, in the power of traitors and
_faitours_.

“What a lovely morning!” soliloquized he, “not so warm as it has been; a
breeze too. How peaceful everything looks! Really, this is _not_ such a
fearful climate as I thought it at first. With a decent house, and one
fair spirit to be his minister, a fellow might gracefully glide through
existence here for a few years—that is, if he were making lots of money.
It would be almost too uneventful, that’s the worst of it—nothing ever
happens here. Hallo! what a pace the Sergeant is coming at, and old
Kearney too!”

This exclamation was called forth by the sudden appearance of the whole
police force which was thought necessary for the protection of a
district about a hundred miles square. Jack knew their figures, and
indeed their horses, the Sergeant’s gray and the trooper’s curby-hocked
chestnut, to well to be mistaken. They raced up to him, and, pulling up
short, both addressed him at once—a trifle out of breath.

“Have you seen any travellers on horseback, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the
Sergeant.

“If it’s purshuing them ye are, ye’re going right wrong,” blurted out
trooper Kearney.

“Seen who? Pursuing what?” demanded Jack. “Why should I pursue anybody?”

“Then you haven’t heard,” said the Sergeant.

“The divil a hear,” interrupted Private Kearney; “sure he doesn’t look
like it, and he ridin’ along the road as peaceful as if there wasn’t a
bushranger betuxt here and Adelaide.”

“Bushrangers!” quoth Jack, fully aroused. “I’d forgotten all about them,
and near here? Where were they seen last, Stewart?”

“Constable Kearney, will you oblige me by keeping silence, and falling
to the rear,” said the Sergeant, majestically, while he proceeded to
enlighten Jack as to the probable whereabouts of the gang “from
information received.”

“As far as I can make out, sir, and if that scoundrel of a mailman
hasn’t put me on the wrong track, they were at Mr. Stangrove’s Ban Ban
out-station last night, and have either gone down the river or over to
his head-station to-day.”

“His head-station! His head-station!” echoed Jack, in wild tones of
astonishment—“no! surely not!”

“Very likely indeed, _I_ think,” said the Sergeant, “it’s just about
their dart from Ban Ban—they may be there now.”

“What in the name of all the fiends are we wasting time here for, then?”
answered he, in a voice so hoarse and strange that the Sergeant looked
narrowly at him to note whether he had been drinking, all forms of
eccentricity on the Warroo being referable, in his opinion, founded upon
long experience, to different stages of intoxication. “Thank God, I
brought my revolver with me—come on, there’s a good fellow.”

Sergeant Stewart had not, indeed, done more than slacken his pace for
the time necessary to restore the wind of his horses, pretty well
expended by a three-mile heat. He was a cool, plucky, good-looking
fellow, and no bad sample of a crack non-commissioned officer of
Australian police, a body of men inferior to none in the world for
general light cavalry. He was as distinguished-looking in his way as his
old namesake, Bothwell, in _Old Mortality_, whom he resembled in more
points than one.

By the time Jack had concluded his sentence, his blood-hackney was
pulling his arms off, neck and neck with the Sergeant’s wiry gray, while
Mr. Kearney and the doubtful chestnut were powdering away behind, at no
great distance.

“It’s lucky we met you,” said the Sergeant; “there are five of them, I
hear; three of us are a pretty fair match for the scoundrels.”

“I see you have your rifles,” said Jack; “you don’t generally carry
them.”

“No; but this time we thought we were out for a week. I only saw the
mailman, who gave me the office, early this morning, and came here as
hard as we could split. Here comes another recruit, I suppose—by George!
it’s Mr. Stangrove.”

So it proved. That gentleman, as unsuspicious as Jack himself, was
cantering along a bush track which led into the main “frontage road” at
right angles.

“Halloa, Redgrave! turned round since I left you, and our gallant police
force too. What’s the row—horse-stealers?”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid, old fellow,” said Jack, going close up.
“Redcap and his lot have been seen not far off.”

He stopped—for the sudden spasm of pain which contracted Stangrove’s
features was bad to see.

“Good God!” he said, at length, gnawing his set lip; “my poor wife will
be frightened to death, and Maud! Let us ride—pray God we are not too
late.”

Little was said. The horses, all tolerably well-bred, and possessing
that capacity for sustaining a high rate of speed for hours together
peculiar to “dry-country horses,” held on, mile after mile, until they
sighted a large reed-bed, which occupied a circular flat or bend of the
river.

“By gad! here they are,” said the sergeant, “camped on the bank! I can
see their saddles; the horses are feeding in the reed-bed. Now if we can
get up pretty close before they see us we have them.”

“All right,” said Jack, with the cheerfulness of a man whose spirits are
raised by the near approach of danger. “You and Mr. Stangrove get round
that clump of gums, and take them in the rear; Kearney and I will sneak
along close to the bank, till we’re near enough to charge. I’ll bet a
tenner I have the saddles first. Then they are helpless.”

“I think you wouldn’t make a bad general, sir,” said the Sergeant. “Mr.
Stangrove, I think we can’t do better.”

Stangrove handled his revolver impatiently, and, with something between
a groan and a reply, rode silently on.

“Now, see here, Mr. Redgrave,” said Pat Kearney—a _rusé_ old veteran,
who had put “the bracelets” upon many a horse and cattle stealer, and
was not now about to have his first fray with bushrangers—“if we can
snake on ’em before they have time to take to thim unlucky rade-bids—my
heavy curse on thim for hiding villains—we have thim safe. They may fire
a shot, but they’re unsignified crathers, not like Bin Hall or Morgan.”

“And why shouldn’t these fellows fight?” asked Jack.

“Ye see, now, it’s this a way. Just keep under the bank near thim big
oaks—sure that’s iligant. ’Tis a great ornamint to the force ye’d make
intirely. Well, as I tould ye, that spalpeen of a Redcap—more by token I
put a handful of slugs in him once—has never killed any one yet—nor the
others—d’ye see now?”

“I don’t see, Kearney, that it makes much difference—they’re outlaws.”

“Ah! but there’s a dale of differ between men that’s fighting with a
halter round their necks, and these half-baked divils that hasn’t more
than fifteen years’ gaol to fear, with maybe a touch of Berrima, at the
outside.”

“I understand, then; you think that they are more likely to give in
after the first flutter than if they were sure to be hanged when
caught.”

“By coorse they will; why wouldn’t they? I knew Redcap when he’d think
more of duffing a red heifer than all the money in the country. If he
seen me, I believe he’d hold up his hands, from habit like.”

“Then you don’t think it a good plan to make bush-ranging the same as
murder, and to hang a fellow directly he turns out?”

“Thim that wanted that law made didn’t have their families living on the
Warroo,” said the old trooper, sturdily. “How can a couple of men like
us thravel and purtect a district as big as Great Britain? And what
would turn a raw lot like these devils let loose quicker than a
blundering, over-severe law? By the mortial, they see us. Hould on, sir,
and we’ll charge them together, like Wellington and the Proosians at
Waterloo.”

The robbers had a good strategical position. Their base of operations
was the reed-bed, a labyrinth of cane-like stalks which met overhead in
the narrow paths worn by the feet of the stock. They were, however,
divided in party and in purpose. Two of them had been detailed to fetch
up the horses grazing in the reed-bed, and the remainder, having just
sighted Redgrave and Constable Kearney, stood to their arms with
sufficient determination.

On the very edge of the river bank, beneath which the stream ran in a
deeper channel than ordinary, were the five saddles of the gang. They
had evidently dismounted at this spot, and, after unsaddling, had gone
to the edge of the reed brake, where an unusually shady tree afforded
them an inviting lounge.

Thus it chanced that Jack’s keen eyes discovered the state of affairs,
as he and Kearney prepared to rival Waterloo, on a necessarily limited
scale.

“Look here, Kearney,” said he, as they commenced the grand charge, “I
mean to throw those saddles into the river. The rascals are a good
thirty yards from them. They can’t do much without horses. So you blaze
away, and cover me as well as you can.”

“It’s a great move intirely—but watch that divil Redcap; ’tis a mighty
nate shot he is—and you’ll be out in the open—bad cess to it.”

Jack’s blood was up, and he did not care two straws for all the Redcaps
and revolvers in Saltbushdom. Racing frantically for the accoutrements,
he jumped off, and emptied his revolver, save one barrel, at the enemy.
Kearney, a cool and experienced warrior, drew off some little distance
to the right, and opened business on his own account, not only with his
revolver, but with his breach-loading rifle, while his trained horse
stood as steady as a Woolwich gunner. Jack, stooping down, coolly threw
one saddle after another into the swirling current, where they were
swept off before the very eyes of the brigands. As he stood upright,
after hearing the “ping” of more than one bullet unpleasantly close, he
felt a sharp blow—an electric throb—in his left arm, and realized the
fact that a bullet had passed through the muscles near the shoulder.

Inwardly congratulating himself that his right arm was unharmed, Jack
drew himself up, and, facing the dropping shots which still hissed
angrily around him, his eye fell upon the redoubtable Redcap, who, rifle
in hand, had evidently been trying the range of Stangrove’s late
purchase in a manner not contemplated by that gentleman. Jack swung
round, and lifting his revolver, as if at gallery practice, pulled the
trigger with that deadly confidence of aim which some men say is never
experienced save in snipe-shooting or man-shooting. Bar accidents, the
career of William Crossbrand, otherwise Redcap, was ended. Not so,
however, was he to be sped. There had been an old forcing-yard built at
the spot for the purpose of swimming cattle and horses over the river. A
few straggling posts were left. Behind one of these the robber adroitly
slipped, and the bullet buried itself in the massive and twisted timber,
just on a level with Mr. Redcap’s unharmed breast.

“Sure it was the greatest murder in the world,” said Mr. Kearney,
afterwards, with apparent incongruousness. “’Twas a dead man he was,
only for that blagguard of a post.”

At this moment the Sergeant and Stangrove—who had been waiting till the
two other outlaws came up, driving their hobbled horses before them—made
a rush, which was the signal for an advance in line of the attacking
party. A few scattered shots were exchanged on both sides. The shooting
(let any of my readers try what practice they can make, with the best
revolvers, from moving horses) was not anything to boast of. It was soon
evident that the bushrangers were not going to fight to the last gasp.
They began to slacken fire, and show signs of capitulation. Perhaps the
most dramatic incident occurred just before the surrender. The Sergeant
had ridden up, neck and neck, with Stangrove to their partially
entrenched position, and had exhausted his ammunition in a sharp
exchange, when the Doctor stepped forward from behind a tree, and took
deliberate aim at him with the Snider.

There was no time to reload. Things looked critical. Stangrove and the
others were engaged on their own account; but the Sergeant was equal to
the situation; he fell back upon the moral force in which he so
enormously excelled his antagonist. Raising his hand in a threatening
attitude, and drawing himself up as if on parade, he fixed his stern
eyes upon the audacious criminal and roared out—

“You infernal scoundrel, would you dare to shoot _me_?”

It was a strange and characteristic spectacle. The handsome, soldierly,
comparatively refined man-at-arms, sitting upon his horse, affording a
perfectly fair mark; the half-sullen, half-irresolute criminal, with the
power of life and death in his wavering hands; but the mental pressure
was too great. The old reverence for the representative of the Law was
not all uprooted. A host of doubts and dismal visions of dock and judge,
and manacled limbs, and the Sergeant sternly implacable, “reading him
up” before a crowded court, rose before his overcharged brain. The
conflict was too intense. With a muttered oath he flung down the
historic Snider, and stood with outstretched hands, which the alert
officer of police immediately enclosed in the gyves of the period.

“You’ve acted like a sensible chap,” said Stewart, patronizingly, as the
handcuffs clicked with the closing snap. “I’m not sure that you won’t
get off light. You have had the luck not to have killed anybody that I
know of since you turned out.”

About the same time Mr. Redcap and the other semi-desperadoes had
lowered their flags to Stangrove, his late guest, and Constable Kearney.
This last warrior had, like his superior officer, lost no time in
securing the prisoners. Four pairs of handcuffs were available for the
elder men. The youngest brigand had his elbows buckled together behind
his back with a stirrup-leather.

“Bedad! ye’re a great arr-my intirely,” said Mr. Kearney, complacently.
“Sure it’s kilt and murthered I thought we’d all be with a lot of fine
young men like yees forenint us. But the Docther there hadn’t the heart
to rub out the Sergeant; ’tis the polite man he always was.”

“Well, they say taking to the bush is a short life and a merry one,”
grumbled out Redcap in a kind of Surrey-side tragedy growl. “I know our
time’s been short, and a dashed long way from merry. I’m thankful we
ain’t shed any blood—leastways not killed any cove as I knows of.” Here
he looked at Jack’s wounded arm, the blood from which had considerably
altered the hue of his shooting-jacket.

“Oh! the divil a hanging match there’ll be, if that’s what ye’re
thinking of,” said Kearney. “Sure when they didn’t hang Frank Gardiner
why would they honour the likes of ye with a rope, and Jack Ketch, and a
parson? Cock ye up with hanging indeed! Ye’ll be picking oakum or
chipping freestone, or learning to make shoes and mats, ten years from
now.”

“You have been at my station, I see by the rifles,” said Stangrove; “was
that all you took?”

“Nothing else, Mr. Stangrove,” said Redcap, humbly, “as I’m a living
man. We’d heard so much about them—that the big one could carry a mile
and shoot all day—that we was bound to have ’em. But we done no harm,
and the ladies wasn’t much frightened—not the young lady anyhow.”

“It’s lucky for you they were not,” said Stangrove, huskily; “and it may
serve you something at your trial. Sergeant, what are you going to do
with the prisoners? will you bring them to Juandah to-night?”

“No, sir, I propose to make straight for the gaol at Barrabri; we’ll get
to the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ some time before to-morrow morning. It’s the
first halt we shall make; so step out, you fellows. The sooner we get to
Barrabri the sooner you’ll be comfortably in gaol, where you’ll have
nothing to think of till the Quarter Sessions.”

“Good-bye, Sergeant. Good-bye, Kearney. Redgrave, you had better come
home with me and get that arm seen to. By the way, Sergeant, leave word
at the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ to send on Doctor Bateman, if he’s anywhere
about.”

“So far so good,” said Jack, as they turned their horses’ heads towards
Juandah. “They were not a very terrific set of ruffians, and had
evidently not bound themselves by a dark and bloody oath never to be
taken alive.”

“The sharpest shooting seems to have come your way,” said Stangrove,
noticing that Jack’s face was growing pale. “I heard a bullet or two
whistle near me; but I believe they were sick of their life and anxious
to yield decently. I feel mercifully inclined towards them, inasmuch as
I believe they let us off cheap at Juandah; whereas, if it had been one
of the old gangs——”

“Here we are,” said Jack, as they reined up at the stable door. “Do you
know I feel very queer.” Here he dismounted, and moving with some
difficulty, that mortal paleness overspread his face which, once seen,
is indelibly associated with real or temporary lifelessness, and down
went Mr. John Redgrave, helpless as a new-born babe, or a young lady
menaced by a black beetle.

Stangrove let go his horse, and raised his prostrate guest in his arms
(and a most awfully heavy burden be found him) when out rushed Mrs.
Stangrove and Maud.

“Oh, my darling, we have had the bushrangers here, the horrid men; they
took both the rifles; and one of them took dear baby in his arms and
frightened me to death. Have you seen them? And who is that? Why, it’s
Mr. Redgrave. Is he wounded?”

“He was hit through the arm, but he is not desperately wounded. He lost
some blood and fainted. Oh, you’re coming to; that’s right; sit up, old
man, and we’ll soon have you in bed.”

Maud had come forward with a half-cry parting her lips, while her
widely-opened eyes were expressive of pained yet warmest sympathy. She
could not trust herself to speak, but, kneeling beside the insensible
form, bathed Jack’s face with her handkerchief dipped in water, with a
woman’s ready wit, and, loosening his neckerchief, watched with deepest
earnestness the first faint signs of returning life.

“’Pon my word,” said Jack, as he sat up and stared rather wildly around
him, “I feel awfully ashamed of myself to tumble down and give trouble
all from a scratch like this. But I suppose it has bled and Sangrado-ed
one a bit. It will soon pass off.”

“You have been fighting for us, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, with
involuntary tenderness in every tone of her voice; “and we must not be
ungrateful. Try if you can walk inside now. Lean on me. I am ever so
strong, I can tell you.”

Jack did as he was bid, and felt it necessary to avail himself of the
rude strength of which Miss Stangrove boasted. Without any great loss of
time he found himself on a couch in the spare room, where, with the aid
of Mr. and Mrs. Stangrove, he was turned into an interesting invalid,
with his arm bound up, pending the arrival of Dr. Bateman.

Part of the evening was spent by the household in his bedroom, and a
very pleasant evening it was. Mrs. Stangrove was gravely happy, but
inclined to be tearful when recurring to the dear children. Maud and her
brother took the humorous side of the adventure, and Jack laughed till
his arm ached at Maud’s description of the appearance of the younger
bushranger as he turned out in part of Jack’s raiment, and the remainder
as left by a travelling agent for an orphan asylum.

“‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Stangrove. “I shall not have the
same anxious feeling every time the dogs bark now. It might easily have
been worse; and, taking them as bushrangers, a decenter lot of fellows I
never wish to meet.”

Dr. Bateman came next morning, having fortunately looked in at the
‘Mailman’s Arms’ on his way in from a back block, whither he had been
called to set a stockman’s leg, broken only the week before. Hearing of
the casualty awaiting him at Juandah, he came on best pace, making
running with his wiry iron-legged mustang from the start. The doctor,
who had in a general way to minister to the indispositions and accidents
of the population of a district about a hundred and fifty miles long and
a hundred broad, required to possess the constitutional qualities of his
favourite mare. Most of them he did possess, thinking as little of a
ride of a hundred miles in a day and a half as she did of carrying him.

“So you managed to get hit, Mr. Redgrave?” quoth he, in a loud cheery
voice, bustling in after breakfast. “Infernal scoundrels—never knew such
a gang. _Never_ in my life. Worst lot that have taken the bush since old
Donohoe’s time.”

“But, doctor,” protested two or three voices in a breath, “you surely
mistake—they——”

“What I say I stick to,” interrupted the doctor, with a twinkle in his
shrewd gray eye. “Worst gang I ever knew—_for a medical man_. Why, you
are, my dear sir, the only wounded man in the whole district. I’m
ashamed of them—the country’s going to destruction. No energy among the
natives.”

“Oh, that’s it,” said Stangrove; “I was going to stand up for my friend,
the enemy—Mr. Redcap and his merry men; but from your point of view they
did behave disgracefully; not a patch upon Morgan, or the Clarkes, or
even the virtuous and politically celebrated Frank Gardiner. What do you
think of your patient, doctor?”

“That he is in very good quarters. Pulse marks quicker time to-day than
yesterday. Slight touch of fever, only natural; arm inflamed and
painful. A week’s quiet, not a day less, will set him right. Would have
been a very pretty case had bullet perforated the humerus. As it is,
merely amounts to laceration of muscles, minor vessels, and nerves.”

“You’ll stay to-night, doctor, of course?” asked Stangrove.

“No, must go after lunch; have to ride down the river as far as Emu
Reach. Man drowned last night—inquest.”

“How was that?”

“Oh, shepherd, of course; frightful amount of lunacy among them. Poor
old Pott Quartsley got a great fright last week up Din Din. He went into
a shepherd’s hut at dusk and saw him standing just in front of the door.
‘What are you staring at me like that for, you old fool?’ he said. Gave
him a slight push. The shepherd turned half round and slid into the same
posture, silently, ‘Great God!’ said Quartsley, rushing frantically out,
‘what is all this?’”

“And what was it?” asked Stangrove.

“Why, the man _had hanged himself_ the day before with his bridle-rein
fastened to the tie-beam. His feet just touched the ground, and his hat
was on his head, so that he looked, in the half-light, exactly like a
man standing upright. It had a great effect on old Quartsley.”

“What direction will the result take?”

“That of fencing, I believe. Says he can’t afford to keep expensive
luxuries like shepherds any longer. That they’re extravagances are sure
to injure the finest property—the soundest constitution in the long run.
Says he shall repent, economize, and fence—for the future.”

“Bravo!” said Jack, a little feebly; “if old Quartsley begins to fence
you won’t be left behind, Stangrove?”

“I said two years,” answered he, “and in two years I’ll consider the
question, not an hour before that time. In the interval don’t you excite
yourself. The doctor and I are going to the men’s hut. I’ll send Maud
with some cold tea for you.”




                              CHAPTER XV.

                “A little cloud as big as a man’s hand.”


It is not half a bad thing to “be laid up,” as it is called, for a
reasonable and moderate fraction of one’s life—more especially if a
“bright particular star” is impelled to beam softly and brilliantly upon
one in consequence. Jack, after the inflammation, which gave him “fits”
the first day or two, had subsided, began to enjoy himself after a
subdued fashion. Though food was restricted by the despotic doctor, and
liquor, other than tea, altogether interdicted, there was no embargo
laid upon tobacco. Mr. Redgrave, therefore, used to get over the window
which “gave” into the garden, and have many a soothing and delightful
pipe in the afternoons and the long, clear, bright nights.

He was, I firmly believe, perfectly well able to read; but he pretended
that it made his head ache, so Maud fell into the trap and volunteered
to read Macaulay’s _Essays_, the _Saturday Review_, _Macmillan’s
Magazine_, Market Harborough, and even some choice bits from Tennyson
and Browning. What pleasant mornings these were! Stangrove was out; Mrs.
Jane deep in housekeeping and nursery details; so these two people were
able for a brief season to taste uninterruptedly the charm of pure
intellectual enjoyment, unalloyed by the jar of small duties or the
regretful sense of unperformed work. Convalescence, that regal state and
condition, evades all ordinary responsibilities. It is above duty,
blame, arithmetic and grammar—the scourges and penances of this toiling
pilgrimage we call life. It was joy unspeakable to lie back with
half-closed eyes and hear Maud’s fresh, clear young voice ringing out in
accents of love, or laughter, or denunciation, or sounding strangely
unnatural in the bitterness of the _Saturday’s_ sarcasms.

There was much reviewing of reviewers too, poetizing upon poets;
philosophizing upon philosophers. Arguments and comments were
plentifully superinduced by the variety of texts. A week on board ship
is equal to a year on land—a day’s tending of an invalid involves a
feeling of dominancy and ownership, which renders the experience equal
in completeness to a week on shipboard. According to this scale of
reckoning, Maud Stangrove and John Redgrave had protracted opportunities
of knowing each other’s characters, amounting in all to such duration of
time as fully justified them in contracting that morally indissoluble
betrothal called an “engagement.” This unlimited liability they actually
had the temerity to enter into, and in the usual solemn manner sign,
seal, and ratify, before John Redgrave left Juandah, perfectly recovered
and unutterably happy.

He, of course, immediately acquainted Stangrove with the stupendous and
miraculous fact, which that unimaginative personage received with his
usual coolness.

“Maud is of age,” he remarked, “and is fully entitled to choose for
herself. She could not have chosen a better fellow; but I wish that
confounded mortgage of yours was sold for sewing guards, or whatever the
women buy obsolete deeds for. I was quite startled by seeing ‘Know all
men by these presents’ glaring at me on Jane’s work-table the other day.
I hate the look even of one; it’s like the skin of a dead serpent.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said Jack, “you don’t think the trifle of debt I owe upon
60,000 sheep—which they will be and more by lambing time—worth thinking
seriously about. Why, Mildmay Shrood told me when I was down——”

“Just what he wished you to believe, I dare say. He’s a good fellow, as
men of money go, I grant you; but he would put his thumb or his foot on
you if the money market fell with as little compunction as I feel for
this fellow here.” And Mark trod savagely upon a large brown flat
insect, which was making its way in a blundering, purblind fashion from
a decayed log to the wood-pile.

“I’m sorry that I can’t show as clear a sheet as I could have done once
upon a time, old fellow,” said Jack. “But, on the other hand, nothing
venture nothing have. If things turn out as I expect, please God, Maud
shall have everything in the wide world that she can frame a wish for.”

“And if not—you must pardon me for looking on the dark side of things—I
have so much more often seen that colour come up——”

“If not,” said Jack, “if not—I will never ask her or any woman to share
my poverty. Our engagement must remain as it is till I can tell with
some show of accuracy how things are likely to go. You may trust me not
to hurry her.”

“I trust you in that and in far more important matters,” returned Mark,
as he wrung his hand. “Henceforth you are our brother, save in name—let
things go as they will—but I must do my best for Maud.”

“Do you think I shall place a single obstacle in your way? If I thought
I could not add some colour and richness to her life, which—pardon me—it
lacks here, I would turn away now and never see her face more.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

When Jack returned to his home and his duties he displayed an amount of
interest in the statistics and general progress of the station which
amazed and delighted Mr. M‘Nab. That energetic personage had been
toiling away by himself since the news, much exaggerated, of Mr.
Redgrave’s adventure with his ordinary conscientious regularity.
Everything was in apple-pie order. The minimization of labour had been
carried out almost to a fault, as Jack thought, when he had to unsaddle
and feed his own horse, and, Mr. M‘Nab being absent, and Monsieur Dubois
gone for a load of wood, the place looked desolate enough after the
home-like, old-fashioned Juandah. However, Jack comforted himself with
thinking that this was the straight road to clearing off the mortgage—to
a triumphant sale of a fully stocked run, and to the final possession of
a “kingdom by the sea,” or beyond sea, in which Maud Stangrove should
reign, when “the happy princess followed him.”

Day after day he accompanied M‘Nab in long rides from one end of the run
to the other. With him he counted the sheep wherever such counting might
be necessary. He took his turn at weighing of rations, and in every way
worked with hand and head as hard (so M‘Nab, with grim humour, asserted)
as if he had been his own overseer.

In the rare intervals of leisure, when that embodiment of
concentrativeness permitted his thoughts to dwell upon any subject other
than sheep, he could not avoid the inference that the proprietor of
Gondaree was a changed man. Up to this turning-point of his life John
Redgrave had been content to work fairly, sometimes fiercely, with head
or hand; but, in any case, to accept success or failure with undisturbed
serenity. Now it was otherwise. He examined searchingly the whole
working of the establishment, and satisfied himself, much to M‘Nab’s
gratification, of the condition and well-being of each division of the
stock, of the plant, and machinery of the place. He went carefully
through the account-books, and verified the debits and credits, with an
accuracy which his lieutenant had not believed to be in him, as he
afterwards said. He compiled a statement of the financial position of
Gondaree, which, after various testings and corrections, was agreed
between them to be arithmetically, mathematically, indisputably exact.
He had fully decided to sell. The sheep were in fine condition, severely
culled, and originally well chosen. The run was of the best possible
quality, in full working order, and capable of yet greater development.
He could not imagine its fetching less than the highest market price. At
that time such a run, so stocked, so improved, was held to be good value
for twenty-five shillings per head. It was not impossible or even
unlikely that two competing buyers might run it up to twenty-seven and
sixpence. The lesser price would pay off the mortgage—he had no other
debts in the world—and leave him, say, forty or fifty thousand pounds.

This was the account current he had ciphered out many and many a time.
It was written upon sheets of paper, large and small, upon
blotting-pads, upon stray leaves of journals, and pretty well engraven
upon a less perishable, more retentive, material—the heart of John
Redgrave.

Something in this wise were the figures:—

 10,000 fat sheep, now ready for market at, say,                 £7,500
   15_s._

 50,000 sheep, with station, stores, furniture,                 £62,500
   implements, horses, drays, &c., all given in at, say,
   25_s._

                                                                   ————

                                                                £70,000

 Mortgage due Bank of N. Holland                   £25,000

 Interest, commission, incidentals, and             £5,000
   expenses overlooked, say

                                                       ———      £30,000

                                                                   ———-

                                                                £40,000

As far as any one could make out, judging from the present prices,
Gondaree was as safe to sell at this estimate as Mr. Stangrove’s fast,
handsome buggy horses—young, sound, and a dead match—were to bring fifty
pounds in any sale-yard in the colonies. Here was a magnificent surplus.
Say, forty thousand pounds. That was enough, surely. A large proportion
would of course remain on mortgage, and, as he would receive one-third
or one-half cash, it could not be better placed, receiving, as he would,
eight per cent. interest, the ordinary tariff between squatter and
squatter. Should he not sell before shearing, and realize this Aladdin’s
Palace, into which the Princess was ready to step, at once and without
delay?

He could not exactly afford the train of slaves, with diamonds as big as
pigeons’ eggs, and rubies and emeralds to match; but on three or four
thousand a year a decent approximation to rational luxury might be
reached. Should he decide at once, and, as with poor, dear, old,
despised _little_ Marshmead, scribble off the fatal advertisement and
abide the issue?

He took up his pen. But why do so few people sell out mining shares,
railway debentures, seductive scrip of all sorts, at exactly the maximum
of profit? He wavered. Then he concluded to reap the profit of the last,
_really_ the last shearing; wait till the 20,000 lambs were fit to
count, and thus make sure—of course it was a moral certainty—of an
additional twenty thousand pounds. Prices would keep up at least another
couple of years—that would be long enough for him.

So he decided to see his shearing over, and to have everything fit to
deliver, at a week’s notice, by the time the coming crop of lambs should
be weanable and countable. While this great resolve was maturing, the
fiercely bright summer days, each about sixteen hours long, were gliding
by. The stars burned nightly in the unclouded heavens, in which so pure
was the atmosphere, so free from the slightest hint of mist or storm,
that the most distant denizen of the thought-untravelled stellar waste
shone golden-clear. Even in the sultry monotony of that changeless
sea-like desert summer is not endless. Autumn, with an earlier twilight,
a keener breath of early morn, a shorter, scarce less burning day,
advanced, followed with slow but firm step the fading summer-time.

                  *       *       *       *       *

“So the fat sheep are drafted, tar-branded, and fairly on the road at
last,” said Mr. Redgrave, after a week’s tolerably sharp work. “They
look very prime. I hope they will meet as good a market as they
deserve.”

“Never a better lot left the Warroo,” said M‘Nab; “the wethers are very
even, and extraordinary weights. Better sheep I never handled. The
drover is a good steady fellow; and I’ll catch them up before they get
near the train.”

“The season has been dry the last month or two,” remarked Jack; “after
those unlucky floods one felt as if it never would be too dry again; but
it looks like it now for all that.”

“The feed is not so good as it might be on the road, they say,” agreed
M‘Nab; “but six weeks’ steady driving will take them to the train; and
they will lose very little condition in that time. If we don’t top the
market we ought to do.”

Within a few weeks after this conversation Jack found himself sole
denizen of Gondaree, M‘Nab having taken himself off by the mail,
allowing just sufficient time for him to catch the sheep and organize
the order in which they should be “trained” for the Melbourne market.
With the first mail after his departure, Jack discovered to his great
vexation that a sudden and serious fall had taken place in fat stock.
The season had, without any great demonstration of dryness, been
consistently free from rain. It was cool and breezy—a hopeful condition,
Jack thought. It was a very bad sign with the older residents.

It has been remarked, by persons of lengthened Australian experience,
that the sudden fluctuations in price which have occurred with a curious
periodicity since there has been stock enough in the colonies to found
theories upon, have usually as little warning as the alarm of fire in a
theatre. One person, scenting the coming danger, rises and steals
quietly out, a few more follow with ill-concealed haste, then with
sudden terror starts up every creature in the building, and the
resistless agony of the panic is in full operation.

So, apparently, is it with those mighty and disastrous changes in the
value of live stock, which have ever, in the history of Australia,
pulled men’s houses about their ears, like those of cards. They have
whelmed alike the grizzled pioneer after a life of toil, the youthful
capitalist in the first year of his first purchase, the hoary merchant,
and the gambling speculator in one tidal wave of ruin. Before such an
under-current sets in the apparent dearth of stock, in a land full of
sheep and cattle, from Cooktown to the county of Cumberland, is
curiously noticeable. Nobody will sell their oldest ewes, their most
decrepit cows; it pays so much better to hold on. Bills, when times and
credit are good, are renewed (with, of course, interest added), and
every financial accommodation is resorted to rather than that the
sanguine stockholder should be compelled to slay the goose which (in his
opinion) is so prolific of the golden eggs, in the guise of wool and
increase.

So the game goes on, until some fine day the money-market tightens,
after its deadly, unforeseen, boa-constrictor fashion. The ominous cry
of fire, or its financial synonym, is raised. A few wary or fortunate
operators “get out;” but for the rank and file, who have been trusting
to continuous good luck, high prices, and a “change in the climate for
the better,” the stampede of the panic is their only portion. In all
lost battles of life, more than once has it chanced that “the brave in
that trampling multitude had a fearful death to die.”

Similar storm-signals now smote upon Jack’s unaccustomed ear.

“We are sorry to note that all our correspondents speak of continued
absence of rain in their particular localities. A drought is beginning
to arouse the fears of stockholders, and prices of fat and store stock
have fallen rapidly.” Such was the utterance of the _Warroo Watchman_.

This was the letter from his town agents, to whom he had entrusted the
sale of the much-considered fat sheep:—


“Dear Sir,—If you haven’t started your fat sheep, keep them back till
you hear again from us.

“Market glutted—all stock down.

                                              “Yours faithfully,
                                              “DRAWE & BACKWELL.”


This looked bad. What a nuisance it was! For the last two years he
couldn’t have gone wrong, at whatever time he had despatched them; a
fair average price had been always obtainable; and now, just when
everything was marked out, the whole arrangements incapable of failure
in any way—here the confounded demand breaks down, and upsets all a
man’s calculations!

Something after this fashion ran Jack’s thoughts. What should he do?
Bringing the sheep back again was expensive, undignified, and would by
no means aid in decreasing the debt, which had lately become rather a
_bête noir_ in his daily imaginings. The Warroo was not sufficiently
advanced for the telegraph, or he might have held converse with the
ready-witted M‘Nab, who would have been certain to strike out the most
favourable line of action. He had nothing for it but to write to Drawe
and Backwell, to say that he _had_ sent forward the sheep; that they
must communicate with M‘Nab, in charge, and do the best they could under
the circumstances.

Up to this period of the enterprise John Redgrave, in despite of the
episodes of the wool-shed and the flood, had suffered from no anxiety as
to the ultimate success of the great venture. The prices of wool and
sheep, store, fat, ewes and lambs, culls—everything that could be
counted and could run out of a yard—had been firm and adamantine, as the
bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England. Every sort, kind, and
condition of sheep was worth half-a-sovereign, two to a pound, minimum;
one pound a head with station; without, ten shillings.

Now there seemed a danger of the citadel being undermined, of the great
fabric of investment and adventure—built up by a free expenditure of
capital and energy during the last five years—melting away like an
iceberg before the south wind. With such a thaw—resolving into primitive
elements the gilded temple—down would go the fame and fortune of John
Redgrave, and, for aught he cared, down might go his life, and stilled
for ever might be those restless heart-beats. Thus, when by a sudden
intuitive forecast the shadow of misfortune fell athwart the sunlight of
his soul, did he for an instant feel the dull agony of despair—thus
spoke he to his saddened spirit.

With the first mail that was due after M‘Nab’s departure, allowing him
time to reach the sheep, came a letter, as thus—“Sheep-market is
bad—decidedly bad, with no hope of getting better. I can keep the sheep
about Echuca till I get your answer. Shall I send them on, or return? My
advice is to sell at all hazards.”

Jack returned answer that he was to do whatever he thought best, and to
use his own discretion unreservedly.

The sheep were sold accordingly. They brought eight shillings and
tenpence all round, which just returned, clear of all expenses, eight
shillings net. A magnificent price truly, and a terrible come-down from
the fourteen or fifteen shillings which had been the regular price, for
years past, of large, aged, prime sheep, as were the Gondaree lot.

M‘Nab was back in remarkably quick time after this untoward outcome of
so much care and forethought, and planning and contriving.

“The sheep were beautifully driven; I never saw a lot better looked
after; they showed first-rate in the yards at Newmarket. All the
drovers, butchers, and agents said there hadn’t been a lot in like them
this season. They topped the market, but what sort of a market was
it?—rushed and glutted with all kinds of half-fat stock, going for
nothing. And cattle down too—regular store prices; a most miserable
sight.”

“And what’s said about wool and stations?” inquired Jack.

“That there’s going to be the devil to pay; there’s a tremendous
commercial panic in England. Discount up to war figures. The great
dissenting bankers—Underend, Burney & Co.—gone for any sum you like to
mention. Run on the Bank of England. Panic on the Stock Exchange. The
end of the world, as far as accommodation is concerned!”

“By Jove!” said Jack, “could anything have been more unlucky? I wish to
heavens that I had sold out three months since, though that might only
have landed some other unlucky beggar in the same fix. There’s no chance
of selling now at any price?”

“Sell!” answered M‘Nab, and here he looked kindly and almost pitifully
at Jack, on whose face there was a dark and troubled look, such as he
had never seen there in bygone mishaps. “There won’t be a station sold
for the next three years, except at prices which will leave the owners
the clothes they wear, and not a half-crown to put in the
breeches-pocket either.”

“What in the world shall I do?” groaned Jack. “I would have given much
to have cleared out after shearing.”

“Well, sir,” said M‘Nab, sitting down and putting on a calm,
argumentative look, “let us look at the matter both ways. No doubt the
outlook is gloomy; but here we have the place and the stock. There’s not
a station in the colonies that can be worked at a less annual expense.
Surely we can carry on and pay interest on the mortgage till times come
round.”

“Perhaps,” said Jack, disconsolately. “But suppose times _don’t_ come
round; and suppose the Bank presses for their money?”

“The times _will_ change and improve,” said M‘Nab, impressively, “as
surely as the sun will shine after the next stormy day, whenever that
may be. And as for the Bank, they seldom push any customer in whom they
have confidence, and who has a real good property at his back.”

“I trust so. But how in the world shall I ever grub on for three or four
years more in this infernal wilderness, waiting for better seasons, and
a rise in the market, which, for all we know, may never come?”

“My dear sir,” said M‘Nab, “nothing but patience and doggedness ever did
any good in stock matters yet. It’s the men that stick to their runs and
their cattle and sheep, in spite of losses and danger, and
discouragement and misery, that have always come out in the end with the
tremendous profits that from time to time have always been realized in
Australia, and _will again_. Look at old Ruggie M‘Alister, coming back
to his place one day, after counting out his two flocks to a person sent
up to take charge by his agents, finding the place burnt down, the hut
robbed, the cook speared, and a big black fellow swimming the Murray
with his best double-barrelled gun in his mouth. There was cause for
despair for ye, if ye like!”

“And what did your friend do?”

“Shot the black fellow with his carbine; dived for the double-barrel.
Lived under a dray with the bailiff till after shearing; got the run out
of debt, and is worth ten thousand a year, and has a villa near
Melbourne this minute.”

“I could have done that _once_,” answered Jack; “but whether I am
growing old, or have only one supply of energy, which is exhausted, I
know not; I can’t face the idea of all the work, and daily drudgery, and
endless monotony—over again—over again!”

“There’s nothing else to be done, sir. You’ll think better of it
to-morrow. And you needn’t bother about my salary. We’ll work together,
and I’ll never ask you for a penny of it till better times come.”

Next day, as was his custom, Jack did not find the storm-signals so
unmistakable or portentous. As M‘Nab had very properly pointed out,
there were still the first-class, fully-improved run, the sixty thousand
sheep. The clip would be large and well got up, in spite of the fall in
the value of the carcase.

Underend, Burneys, might totter and fall, crushing under the ruins of a
long-decayed house, tunnelled and worm-eaten with usury, the trusting
friend, the confiding public; but unless mankind and womenkind abandoned
those garments, delicate, indispensable, and universally suitable from
India to the Pole, the demand for wool, like that for gold, might
slacken, but could not cease. This confounded American war would come to
an end. Why the deuce could they not put off this insane, suicidal
contest for a year or two? The season would improve—even that was
against a man. It looked drier, and yet more dry, every day he got up.
Whereas, at Marshmead—ah! why, why did he ever leave that lovely (though
flattish—but never mind), cool, green, regularly raining Eden? “Sad was
the hour and luckless was the day”—as Hassan the camel-driver said. But
if he had never left it he would never have seen Maud. “So, after all,
it is Kismet. The will of Allah must be done!”

With this rather unorthodox consolation Jack ended his soliloquy, and
prepared to march sternly along the path of duty, though the flowerets
lay withered by the wayside, the surges of the shoreless sea of Ruin
sounded sullenly in his ears, and though the illuminating image of Maud
Stangrove, smiling welcome with eyes and brow, was hidden by mists and
storm-rack.

                  *       *       *       *       *

All things went on much as usual; but it was like the routine of a
household in which there has been a death. Jack’s favourite of all the
Lares and Penates had always been Hope. Her image was not shattered; but
the light and colour had faded from the serenely glowing lineaments. The
calm eyes that had looked forth over every marvel of earth and sea and
sky—resting on the far mountains, illumined by golden gleams from the
Eternal Throne—were now rayless.

Hope-inspired, John Redgrave was and had proved himself capable of
bodily and mental labour of no mean order—of self-denial severe and
enduring. But severed from the probability of attainment of success, of
eventual triumph, he was prone to a state of feeling as of the cheetah
that has missed the prey, and after a succession of lightning-like
bounds retires sullenly to hood and keeper.

As soon as he could assure himself that he was in a proper and befitting
state of mind, he rode down to Juandah, making the journey in a very
different tone and temper from the last. He did not find that his
altered prospects had made his friends less cordial; on the contrary, it
seemed to him that never before was he so manifestly the _bien-venu_ as
on this occasion. Maud sang and played, and talked cheerily, and with a
slight preference for the minor key, which harmonized with the sore and
bruised spirit of the guest. Mrs. Stangrove, too, exerted herself to the
extent of sprightliness wonderful to behold. When a man is suffering in
mind, body, or estate, the sympathy of sincere, unworldly women—and all
women are unworldly with those they love—is soothing, tender, and
inexpressively healing. As the dark-souled physician in the _Fair Maid
of Perth_ was enabled by the perfection of his art to apply to the
severed hand of the knight the unguent which stilled his raging torment
at a touch, so the sweet eyes and the soft tones of Maud Stangrove
cooled and composed his fevered soul. Mark Stangrove, also, was
unusually genial, even hilarious.

“This insatiable Warroo is going to have another dig at us,” he said.
“We have just _not_ escaped a flood, and now we are in for a drought.
That means a few years more of the mill for us. Well, we’re all in the
same boat; we must stick to the oars, keep a good look out, and weather
it out together.”

“A good look out!” echoed Jack. “I see nothing but rocks and breakers.”

“Come, come, old fellow; a capful of wind, or even a heavy gale, doesn’t
mean total wreck always. We shall, of course, have to take in sail,
throw cargo over, and all that. Seriously, things are going to be bad in
more ways than one. I’m not altogether taken by surprise; I’ve seen it
before; but I don’t wish to crow over you for all that. I think in some
ways you are better off than I am.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Why, though I am a good deal under-stocked, this drought will put me
ever so much about. I shall lose a lot of my lambs and calves, have to
travel all the sheep, and, generally, be compelled to spend money and
lose stock right and left till rain comes again.”

“You can afford it,” said Jack, “and I can’t; it will be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back. A long drought means unsaleable stock—which
means increase of debt, interest, and principal—which means ruin.”

“You go too fast, my dear fellow. I used to tell you that you were going
to be rich rather more quickly than I fancied probable; and now you are
determined to be ruined with equal rapidity. I must tell Maud to read
you a sermon upon patience and perseverance.”

“I deserve no quarter from her or from you either,” professed Jack, who
was now _en pénitence_ all round, “for dragging her into this uncertain,
anxious life of mine.”

“Well, accidents will happen, you know. I blame those rascally
bushrangers and your gun-shot wound for it all; no woman can nurse any
fellow, under a hundred, without appropriating him. But I’ll take care
that you are not married till you are something more than a bank
overseer, which is a different thing from a bank manager, you know.”

“Hang all banks and bank officials, from the board of directors to the
junior messenger,” fulminated Jack, “though, as they only sell money to
fools like me, who choose to buy, they are scarcely to blame either. And
now, old fellow, as I’ve relieved my mind, we’ll go in and be civil to
the ladies. Even if times are bad, one must not quite forget to be a
gentleman. Thank you, once and for all, old fellow, for your true
kindness.”

After this Jack put away his Skeleton gently, though firmly, into his
closet, and, turning the key, compelled him there to abide, only
permitting him to come out and sit by the fire with him occasionally
when no one was present, or to walk cheerfully round the room when he
was dressing in the morning—or to wake him before earliest dawn and
whisper in his ear till he rose desperately at the first faint streak of
day. But these being the regularly allotted periods and interviews,
lawfully to be claimed and recognized by all well-bred skeletons and
their proprietors, Jack could not with any conscience grumble.

He explained the whole state of affairs to Maud, who, to his surprise,
took it coolly, and, like Mark, said “that things might not turn out so
badly. That every one agreed that his station was very well managed, and
that probably he might overrate the probability of loss. That, whether
or no, she knew he would fight it out manfully—and that she would
wait—oh, yes! years upon years—as long as he would promise to think of
her, and for her, now and then.”

So they parted, Jack thinking how difficult it was to understand women.
He would have sworn that the fiery girl, whose petulances had so often
amused him, would have been as deeply disappointed, as intolerant of the
delay, as himself. And now here she was calmly looking forward to years
of stocking-mending and child-nursing on the Warroo before they could be
married, as if she had never dreamed of a higher life, to be realized in
a few short months.

John Redgrave had never experienced, and therefore had not realized, the
most deeply-rooted attribute of woman’s manifold nature—the capacity for
self-sacrifice. Rarely can he who is blessed with her first pure love
overtax its wondrous endurance—its angelic tenderness.

With right down hard work, as with the conscientious performance of
military duty, in the trenches or otherwise, before the enemy, much of
the darker portion of the spirit’s gloom disappears. Man is a working
animal—civilization notwithstanding; and an undecided mental condition,
combined with bodily inaction, has ever produced the direst forms of
misery to which our kind is subjected here below.

So day after day saw Jack and his faithful subject fully occupied from
dawn to sunset in the ordinary routine of station work. The personal
labour devolving upon each was tolerably severe, but the exact number of
hands allotted to the place by the inexorable M‘Nab was rigidly adhered
to, and not an extra boy even would he hear of until the inevitable
month before shearing, when all ordinary labour laws must perforce be
suspended.

The four boundary-riders, all active, steady men, young or in the prime
of life, well-paid and well-housed, did their duty regularly and
efficiently. It was part of M‘Nab’s creed that, if you kept a man at all
you should pay him well, and otherwise minister to his well-being. In
cheap labour there was no economy; and for anything like
indifferently-performed work he had a dislike almost amounting to
abhorrence. He and Jack transacted all the business that of right
appertained to the home station. They by turns convoyed the increasingly
numerous and hungry flocks of travelling sheep; took out the rations;
laid the poisoned meat, which, spread over the run in cartloads, was
daily returning an equivalent in dead eagles, dogs, and dingoes; counted
the sheep regularly; and all this time there was not a sheep-skin
unaccounted for—not a nail or a rail out of order in the whole
establishment.

So fared all things until the time for shearing drew nigh. Jack felt
quite delighted at the first engagement of washers, the first appearance
of three or four shearers, with their big swags and low-conditioned
horses, having journeyed from far land where winter was not wholly
obsolete as a potentate, and did not stand for a mere section of the
year between autumn and spring. The changed appearance of the
long-silent huts was pleasant to his eye; the daily increase of strange
voices and unembarrassed, careless talk; the giving out of rations; the
arrangement of the steam-engine; the arrival of teamsters—all these
things heralded the cheerful, toilsome, jostling shearing-time, half
festive, half burdensome, yet still combining the pains and pleasures of
harvest.




                              CHAPTER XVI.

        “And did she love him? What and if she did?
          Love cannot cool the burning Austral sands,
        Nor show the secret waters that lie hid
          In arid valleys of that desert land.”—_Jean Ingelow._


The season had not been a good one for grass. It was a very good one for
wool. Save a little dust, no exception could be taken to anything. The
clip was well grown; the washing simply perfection. The lambing had been
a fortunate one. Counting these aspirants for the trials and triumphs to
which the merino proper is foredoomed, the count stood well over sixty
thousand sheep, of all ages. But a few months since, what a comfortable
sum of money did they represent; whereas now—but it would not bear
thinking of! The shearers even seemed to be unnaturally good and easy to
manage now that no particular benefit could accrue from their conduct.
Everything was right but the one important fact, which lay at the
root—the price of stock. Even if that had improved, the season was going
to turn and evilly entreat them; the “stars in their courses fought
against Sisera;” and Jack began to consider himself as his modern
exemplar—the prey of the gods!

He sent off his wool, but this year he determined not to go to town
himself; with the present prices and a fast-coming drought staring him
in the face, what could a man do in the Club or in Collins Street but
advertise himself as an incipient insolvent? Better stick to his work,
save a little money, now that it was too late, and spend the summer
pleasantly in staving off bush fires, following in the dusty wake of
endless hordes of starving travelling sheep, and watching the desolation
of the grass famine, already sore in the land, deepen from scarcity into
starvation. A pleasant programme truly, and considerably altered from
that one dreamily sketched out for himself and Maud so short a year
agone—ah, me!

He wrote to his agents, desiring them to sell or ship the clip at their
discretion, and to pour the proceeds into the lap of the Bank of New
Holland, so to speak, by the hands of Mr. Mildmay Shrood. From that
gentleman he, by and by, received a missive, very soothing and
satisfactory, as times went—“The wool had been sold very well, and had
maintained the high reputation of Gondaree both for quality and
condition. Mr. Redgrave was empowered to continue to draw upon the bank
for expenses, though (he might, perhaps, be pardoned for suggesting, in
the present severe financial pressure) the bank trusted that their
constituents would use every effort to keep down expenses to the lowest
limit consistent with efficient working. It was thought by gentlemen of
experience that the present untoward season would soon break up. In the
meanwhile, however, the utmost care and caution were necessary to
prevent loss and depreciation of valuable securities.”

“All this is very reassuring,” said Jack, grimly, to himself, as he
marked the allusion to the securities—doubtless now regarded as the
property of the bank, or something nearly akin. “However, we are not
quite sold up yet, and if the season would change and a little rally
come to pass in the market we might snap our fingers at the men of
mortgage yet. There is a chance still, I believe. The wool fetched the
best price on the river; everything will depend upon the season, and how
we get through the summer.”

When poor Tom Hood once wrote that the “summer had set in with its usual
severity,” little thought the great humorist that he was describing the
sad simple earnest of the far land, to him a _terra incognita_.

All places have their “hard season”—that portion of the year when the
ordinary operation of the weather has power to inflict the greatest
amount of damage upon dwellers or producers. In one country it is
winter, which is the foe of man with unkind frosts, cruel snow-storms,
hurtling blasts, or dark and dreary days. In another land it is the
hurricane season, when every vessel goes down at anchor, or is lifted
high and dry over bar and beach, when the town totters above the
shrinking inhabitants, and when, perchance, the more awful earthquake
gapes for the wretches whom the great tempest has spared. But in
Australia, more especially in that great interior system of sea-like
plains, where for hundreds of miles the level is unbroken, and where,
doubtless, at no very distant period the surges of ocean resounded, the
hard season there is the summer, more particularly the periodically
recurring oppression of a dry summer following a dry winter. In that
land, where the brief spring is a joy and a luxury only too transient,
where the winter is a time of rejoicing—mild, fair, verdant—where autumn
is the crown and utter perfection of sublunary weather, the sole terror
is of the slow, unnatural, gradual desiccation which—as in the olden
Pharaoh days—eats up every green herb, and, if protracted, metamorphoses
plain and forest and watercourse into similitudes of the “valley of dry
bones.”

Such _has_ happened aforetime in the history of Australia. Such may, at
the expiration of any aqueous cycle, happen again.

A term of dread was apparently settling down upon the land when John
Redgrave resolved to stay at home the summer-time through. Such were the
prospects which confronted him as he rode from paddock to paddock, among
the tens of thousands of sheep, and watched from day to day the
pasturage shrivel up and disappear; the water retire into the bosom of
the sun-baked earth.

The days were long, even dreary, and as the summer wore on they seemed
longer and more dreary still. Hot, glaring, breezeless—there was no
change, no relief—apparently no hope. There was no sign of distress
among the Gondaree flocks. In that well-watered, well-pastured,
well-fenced, and subdivided station the stock scarcely felt the pressure
of the death-like season which was decimating the flocks in
less-favoured localities. But everything that was heard, said, or
thought of in that melancholy time tended to depression and despair.
“This man had lost ten thousand sheep, having made too late a start for
the back country, and been unable to reach water from the intervening
desert. They—fine, strong, half-fat wethers—had gone mad with
thirst—obstinately refused to stir—as is the manner of sheep in their
extremity, and had perished to the last one. Then some one had sold
three thousand weaners for ninepence a head, a well-grown lot too.”

As the panic and the season acted and reacted upon one another, by the
time the summer had passed, and the autumn and the cold nights, but
still dry, stern, merciless as the summer, had come, the value of stock
and stations had come to be nominal.

People of imaginative temperaments began to ask themselves whether they
could have been sane when they in cool blood set down 20,000 sheep and a
station as value for £20,000 or £25,000. Had such prices been actually
paid?

Yes, actually paid! Not in golden sovereigns, perhaps, but in good
cheques upon perfectly solvent bank accounts, and in bills of exchange,
which were legally strong enough to extract the last penny of their
value from him whose name was written under the talismanic word
“accepted.” The money had been there, doubtless; and now it seemed as if
it had turned into withered leaves, like the fairy gold in the old
legends.

So mused Jack on his daily rounds, as wearily he rode day after day,
often on a weak and tired horse, for grass was none, and hay and corn
were considerably dearer than loaf sugar; or when he lighted his pipe at
night, and sat staring at the stars, while M‘Nab wrote up his accounts,
and generally bore himself as if droughts were merely passing obstacles
to the prosperity which _must_ eventually attend the proprietor of
well-classed sheep and a fenced-in run.

The famine year dragged on. Long will that season be remembered
throughout the length and breadth of the great island-continent.
Its history was written in the hearts of ruined men—in the
dangerously-tasked minds of many a proprietor whom “luck and
pluck” carried through the ordeal. Still the drought grasped with
unrelenting gripe the enfeebled flocks—the thirst-maddened and
desperate herds. The great merchants of the land were beginning to
grow accustomed to the sound of the terrible word “bankruptcy.”
All bank shares had fallen, and were falling, to prices which
showed the usual cowardly distrust of the public in the time of
trial. Rumour began to be busy with the names of more than one
bank, including the Bank of New Holland, which had, it was
asserted, made stupendous advances to the squatters. “Hadn’t they
lent old Captain Blockstrop a quarter of a million, and even that
wouldn’t do? Every day the directors met, old Billy used to talk
to the manager in much the same tone of voice that he had been
accustomed to use to his first mate, and demand ten, twenty, or
thirty thousand pounds, as the case might be. ‘I must have it, Mr.
Shrood,’ the old man would roar out, ‘if I’m to carry on, or else,
sir, the house of William Blockstrop and Co. will have the
shutters up to-morrow morning.’ And he got the money of course.”

“And suppose he didn’t get it?” might remark an inquiring bystander,
innocent of the mighty system of involuted financial machinery.

“Not get it!” would Croker, or Downemouth, _flaneurs_ informed in all
the monetary diplomacy of the day, say—“Do you suppose _that_ bank can
afford to let old Blockstrop drop? No, sir; rotten as the commercial and
pastoral interests are, they know better than to cut their own throats
just yet. Other fellows may have to sell their sheep for half-a-crown a
head, and take to billiard-marking, or ‘pies all hot,’ for all the bank
cares; but once you’re in like old Blockstrop they _can’t_ let you go.”

Autumn passed over, winter commenced—that is, the month of June arrived.
The rain seemed as far off as ever. One day Jack smiled grimly as he
observed the anachronism of a tolerably smart bush-fire, which was
burning away merrily, not the grass, good wot, but the dried forest
leaves which lay inches deep on the bare bosom of the tranced and
death-like earth.

Up to this time hope had prevailed among the sore disheartened
stock-owners that the weather _must_ change. It would be unnatural,
impossible, that such a season could last over the next three months.
There would be some rain, and even a little rain in that strange
country, where most of the trees and shrubs are edible and even
fattening for stock, counts for much. Were it to last for three months
more millions of sheep and hundreds of thousands of cattle would be
lying dead on the bare, dusty, wind-swept wastes, which had formerly
been considered to be pastures.

Could this thing be? The old colonists shook their heads. They
remembered 1837–38–39—during which memorable years but little rain fell,
when flour was £100 per ton, when rice even was too expensive for
consumption, when more than half of the handful of stock then in New
South Wales perished for lack of food. With the present heavily-stocked
runs what manner of desolation might be expected now?

In the midst of this “horror of a great tempest—when men’s hearts were
failing them for fear”—John Redgrave received this letter, lying
innocently, _anguis in herbâ_, among the ordinary contents of his Monday
morning’s mail-bag:—


                                         “BANK OF NEW HOLLAND,
                                         ”_June 30th, 1868_.

                “John Redgrave, Esq., Gondaree, Warroo.

“My dear Sir,—I have been instructed by the Board of Directors to draw
your attention to the amount of your over-draft, amounting, at date,
with interest, to £30,114 12_s._ 9_d._, which I am to request that you
will reduce at your earliest convenience.

                                         “I remain,
                                         “Yours faithfully,
                                         ”MILDMAY SHROOD.”


Jack’s face turned nearly as white as when he fell fainting at the
Juandah gate. He set his teeth hard as he crushed the fateful missive in
his hand; and leaning back, growled out a savage oath, such as seldom
passed his lips. “This was to be the end, then, of all his hopes, and
plans, and work, exile, and anxiety. To be sold up now, in the very
vortex of the unabated panic, in the worst month of the year, in the
most depressing period of the worst drought that had been known for
thirty years! No warning, no hint of such an impending stroke. The sword
of Damocles had been suspended financially above his head, in his daily
musings, in his nightly dreams, for many a month. But strong in sanguine
anticipation of a change in the season, in a rise of the market, he had
become accustomed to its presence. It had come to be as harmless as a
punkah; and now—it had fallen, keen, deadly, inevitable, full upon his
defenceless head.”

For he knew his position to be utterly hopeless. “Reduce his overdraft!”
What a world of irony lay in the request! Even could he sell without the
consent of the bank—to which abstraction every sheep, lamb, and fleece
was mortgaged—how was he to realize, when best fat sheep were selling
under five shillings, and ewes, as well-bred and classed as his own,
were offering in any number at half a-crown a head, and unsaleable at
that? God in heaven! he was a ruined man—not in the sense of those whom
he had known in mercantile life, who seemed in some wonderful fashion to
fail, and come forth again with personal belongings hardly curtailed to
ordinary observation, but really, utterly, tangibly ruined—left without
home, or household goods, or opportunity to commence afresh. A beggar
and a byword for rashness, extravagance, utter want of discretion,
purpose, energy, what not. Who has not heard the chorus of cant which
swells and surges round a fallen man? M‘Nab was away; he would tell him
the news next day. Meanwhile, he must go to town and see what could be
done. Matters might be arranged somehow, though of what the “somehow”
was to be composed he had not the faintest conception, even after a
night cap wherein the proportion of “battle-axe” was not very closely
calculated—“To bed, to bed, to bed!” Banquo, his ghost, did not more
effectually murder sleep than in Jack’s case did the delicate, deadly
caligraphy of Mildmay Shrood.

On the morrow he told M‘Nab what had happened, and betook himself on
horseback to the stage which the mail could reach on the following day,
choosing the distraction of a long ride rather than the slow torture of
a whole day’s waiting.

M‘Nab was moved, though not altogether surprised, at the intelligence.
He knew that the interest must have been running up upon the bank
account, when all was necessarily going out and nothing, since the clip
of wool, coming in. He held as firmly as ever to his opinion that stock
and stations must rise again after a time. The ship would right herself,
though water-logged and dipping bows under with every sea. The thing was
to know how long the storm would rage. He cautioned Jack to be cool and
cautious in his dealing with the bank, and at whatever cost to procure
further accommodation—time being the all-important matter in such a
season. Three days’ rain would send up the value of all stock fifty per
cent. at least, to rise another cent. per cent. within the year.

                  *       *       *       *       *

John Redgrave reached Melbourne after a journey over five hundred miles
of a country which, in all but the essential features of camels and
Arabs, would seem to have been translated bodily from the great desert
of Sahara. Nor leaf, nor grass, reed nor rush relieved the bare, dusty,
red-brown wastes. The stations, deserted by their travelling stock,
looked as if built by a past generation of lunatics upon a “waste land,
where no one comes or hath come since the making of the world.”

From time to time columns of dust, moving cloud-pillars, met or passed
them on their way, the abodes of evil Genii, as the Bedouins told. Evil
spirits were abroad, doubtless Jack thought, in sufficient numbers. The
land looked as if not only there never had been any herbage whatever,
but, from the total absence of the roots, as if there could by no
possibility be any in the future. The mail horses were worn and feeble,
threatening to leave them stranded in the midst of some endless plain.
At the mail-station, no fresh animals being forthcoming, it seemed as if
their journey must then and there end, or be performed on foot. But the
driver, a man of resources, lounged over to the pound, and seeing
therein two comparatively plump nags, _one_ of which had certainly worn
harness, set up a claim, and promptly released them upon payment of
sustenance fees. With these equivocal steeds the journey was prosecuted
to the railway terminus, and once more, after nearly two years’ absence,
Mr. Redgrave found himself in the great city which has grown up in
little more than a generation.

Pleasant would have been the change from the lone waste, in process of
change into a charnel-house, but for the great overshadowing dread which
dwelt with John Redgrave day by day. The fresh breezes of ocean fanned
his bronzed cheek, but awoke not, as of old, the joyous pulsations of a
heart free to respond to every tone of the grand harmony of Nature. The
slave who feels at every step the galling of his heavy chain thanks not
God for the blue sky, or the song of the soaring bird; and he who is the
thrice fettered bond-slave of Debt bears a spirit steeled against all
softening and ennobling influences.

Some transient gleams of the joy of new sensation and old friendship
were permitted even to his hopeless condition. But even amid the welcome
and the talk of old associates there ran depressing announcements.

“Times were incredibly bad. As for stock, no one would take them at a
gift. Wool was down, lower than for years, and (of course) never would
rise again. Hugh Brass was gone. Estate in liquidation. The Marsalays,
Moreland, ditto; Heaven only knew for what amount—not that it mattered
much, in these days, whether a man stopped for one hundred thousand or
three. Fellow went one day to bank-manager, and actually wanted advances
on a good run and twenty thousand sheep. Manager, new appointment,
inquired if he had _any other liabilities_? Shut him up, rather. Times’
changed, eh, old boy?”

Jack admitted that they were—indeed!

The day after his arrival, Jack hied him to the portals of the enchanted
castle, at which he had so confidently blown the horn in the days of
careless youth. Changed, alas! was the Knight; dimmed was his armour;
hacked his morion; and shorn the waving plume that had nodded to the
breeze. After entering the antechamber he was compelled to wait. That
purgatorial apartment was tenanted by an elderly man of the squatter
persuasion, as Jack could see at a glance. He, doubtless, was awaiting
his turn in the _folter-kammer_, and by the fixed and anxious look of
the worn face his anticipations were strongly tinged with evil. A
different species of pioneer this from Jack, from Stangrove, from Hugh
Brass, from Tunstall. He was more akin to the Ruggie M‘Alister type. His
sinewy hand and weather-beaten frame were those of a man who by long
years of every kind of toil, risk, and privation had built up a modest
property—a home and a competency—no more. He was the father of a family,
possibly with boys at school receiving a better education than their
parent, a brood of merry girls disciplined by a much-enduring governess.
There would be an ancient orchard at such a man’s homestead—no doubt it
was in or near the settled districts—and a large “careless-ordered”
flower-garden in which the masses of bloom compensated in
picturesqueness and splendour for lack of neatness. Jack could have
sworn he had only incurred debt by compulsion to buy a few thousand
acres immediately round his house, when the free-selectors came swarming
over the flats he had discovered in old dangerous days, and ridden over
as his own, winter and summer, for twenty years. He had trusted (so he
told Jack) to a good season or two pulling him through, whereas now, the
strong man’s voice trembled as he said—

“If they sell me up, I shall have to go out a beggar. Yes, a beggar,
sir, after thirty years’ work. I could bear it, very like; but my wife
and the children. Great God! what will become of us?”

Out of the inner room came a plump, well-shaven townsman. He was
evidently in good spirits; he hummed a tune, rubbed his hands, looked
benevolently at Jack and the older bushman, and passed forth into the
atrium. He was a stockbroker; his paper was all right till the fourth of
next month. What could man wish for more? It was an eternity of safety.
What changes in the market might take place by that time! He lit a
cigar, looked at his watch, and lounging over to the _café_, ordered a
somewhat luxurious lunch, to which, and to a bottle of iced moselle, he
did full and deliberate justice. About the time when the broker had
finished his soup, and was dallying with his amontillado, the door of
the bank sanctum opened, and forth walked, or rather staggered, the
pioneer squatter, with clenched teeth and features so ghastly in their
expression of hopeless woe that Jack involuntarily rushed to his aid, as
to a man about to fall down in a fit. The old man looked at him with
eyes so awful in their despair that he shuddered—his lips moved, but no
sound came from them. Waving his hand, with a gesture as deprecating
remark, the unhappy man, like one in his sleep, passed on.

Jack walked in with a quick, resolute step, and an appearance of
composure he was far from feeling, and saluted the man of doom.

There was a flavour of bygone cordiality in Mr. Shrood’s greeting, but
his face instantly assumed an expression of decorous gravity, mingled
with the stern resolution of irresponsible power. Jack at once crossed
swords, so to speak, by producing the fatal letter. “I received this
from you a week since, Mr. Shrood. What am I to understand from it?”

Before this momentous interview proceeds further we may let our readers
into a secret which was necessarily hidden from John Redgrave and the
outside world—as the discussions of the terrible conclave preceding the
dread fiat at the _Vehmegericht_.

The bank directors had held a general meeting, with the president in the
chair, having in view the circumstances of the country and the
securities and liabilities of the bank. Among those present were some of
the best financial intelligences of the day, men of ripe experience,
keen calculation, and sound logical habit of mind. Many were the pros
and cons. There was some difference of opinion as to the mode of
operation; none whatever as to the fact of the danger of the position.
One of the oldest directors had opened the proceedings. He asserted that
never before in the history of the colony had the indebtedness of all
classes of constituents been so large. It had coincided with an
altogether unparalleled period of financial loss and depression in
England—he might add, in Europe; and, with a heavy fall in the price of
wool, stock, and stations, a war of stupendous magnitude in the new
world had not been without effect upon previous monetary relations. From
all these causes had the great pastoral interest of Australia suffered,
and the suffering was more intensified by the operation of a drought,
still unbroken, and of a severity unknown for thirty years. He felt the
deepest sympathy for the pastoral interest, for the gentlemen who had
invested their capital—he might almost say their lives—in these mighty
and fascinating adventures. He trusted he might not be accused of
sentimentalism—but the pastoral tenants had paid in health, strength,
and all the powers of manhood, to the credit of this account, and spent
their blood freely in its support.

He knew that the liability of the bank connected with the indebtedness
of this class of constituents—was very great. But so, likewise, were the
resources of their old, stable, and securely-founded establishment. The
squatters had, on the whole, been their best, their most solvent
customers. Let all be helped now, in their hour of need, except those
who were manifestly unreliable, incapable, or too deeply involved. A
favourable change might take place within the year. If so, the bank
would always receive the praise of having stood firm in danger, and
having helped to save from ruin a deserving, an honourable, and an
indispensable class of producers. Here Mr. Oakleigh paused, and a murmur
as nearly resembling approbation as could be expected to emanate from
the august assembly, came from the listeners. One would have concluded
that the advocate of mercy and continuous accommodation had carried his
point. But a still more reverend senior, no other than the president
himself, during the debate, left his place with the deliberation of age,
and, adjusting his spectacles, thus spoke:

“He had listened with great pleasure to the lucid statement of facts
presented to the Board by their friend and valued director, Mr.
Oakleigh. His suggestions did him honour. They might congratulate
themselves upon the possession of such an intellect, so high a tone of
feeling, in their council. But,” and here the speaker changed his
position, and inserted one hand into his ample white waistcoat, “he must
be pardoned for representing to gentlemen present that the laws which
governed sound banking institutions, such as their own, did not admit of
consideration for individuals or for classes of constituents, however
deserving of sympathy. The logic of banking was inexorable. Economic
laws were unvarying; they had stood the test of years, of generations.
By them, and them only, could he consent to be governed.” Here he
applied himself to his snuff-box, and proceeded. “It would be clearly
apparent to all now present that the liabilities of the bank were
unusually large; they were daily increasing. The reserve fund was being
seriously, he might say dangerously, lowered. If such a course were
persevered with, in the present state of the money market, but one
result could be looked for. The credit of the bank would be endangered;
even worse might follow, to which he would not at present allude. Such
being the case, and it could not in his opinion be denied, what was
their plain, undoubted, inevitable course of action? He had had many
years of experience as a merchant, and as director and president of the
Bank of New Holland, which latter position he had had the honour to hold
for a term exceeding the lifetime of some present. From the teaching of
these long and chequered years, not unmarked by financial tempests, such
as they were now contending with, he submitted his opinion, which was
fixed and unalterable. The bank must close _all pastoral accounts under
a certain amount_. They must realize upon such securities promptly, and
without respect to persons. It would be for the directors to fix the
sums, but obviously the larger accounts must be called in. But this
course, once decided upon, must be inflexibly adhered to. Cases of great
individual hardship would occur; it was unavoidable in the operation of
all such acts of policy. No one, speaking as an individual, felt more
deeply such consequences of a protective policy than he himself. But he
would remind gentlemen present that they owed a justice to families of
shareholders in the bank, rather than what might be considered mercy to
those who had assumed a voluntary indebtedness. The action he had
indicated comprehended safety to the bank, to the shareholders, and to
the more important constituents. Temporizing would, in his opinion,
involve the bank and all concerned in eventual ruin.”

The president took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully with a
spotless handkerchief, and sat solemnly down. His arguments were felt to
be incontrovertible. His great age, his long experience, his unfailing
success in the management of all affairs with which, for half a century,
he had been connected, his high character, added weight to his
arguments, of themselves not easily to be controverted. But little more
was said, and that chiefly in a conversational manner. Before the Board
separated, a motion was carried that the manager be instructed to close
all pastoral accounts under thirty-five thousand pounds. In the event of
non-payment to realize upon securities without delay.

Such had been the preliminary debate—such had been the bill before the
oligarchs of the Council of Currency—the potentates who coerce kings and
resist nations, who render war possible or truce compulsory—with whom
peace and prosperity or “blood and iron” are matters of exchange.

Such was the court, such the gravely-debated proposition, such the
irreversible verdict arrived at, before Jack reached Melbourne. All
“unconscious of his doom,” though full of intuitive dread, did he then
demand of Mr. Mildmay Shrood what he was to understand by the letter he
had received. That gentleman might have saved many words, and some
anxiety to his interlocutor, by simply replying “Ruin!?”—but an answer
so laconic would not have justified the reputation for politeness which
the manager of the Bank of New Holland, in common with managers of banks
generally deservedly held.

He used no insincerity when he answered that it gave him much pain to be
compelled to state that the bank felt it necessary to call upon him to
reduce, or indeed, to extinguish his liability to them without delay.

“And, if I am unable—in the teeth of this detestable season and this
infernal panic, which the London money-mongers seem to have got up on
purpose to take away our last chance, what then?” demanded Jack,
commencing to boil over.

“I must again express my unfeigned regret,” said Mr. Shrood, “but I
cannot disguise from you that the bank will at once realize upon the
security which it holds for your advances.”

“In plain words, your bank, without warning of any kind, demands a very
large sum of money, advanced during several years, and sells me up
without mercy, in the midst of a grass famine and a money famine.”

“I am afraid, though you put it strongly, and perhaps not altogether
fairly as regards the bank, that your view of their action as regards
yourself is correct.”

“And can _you_ talk of fairness?” said Jack with quivering lip and
blazing eyes, as he stood up and faced the calm, decorous man of
business. “Was I not led to imagine when this money was advanced with
such apparent willingness, that I should have time, accommodation, all
reasonable assistance if required, for the repayment? All the money has
been faithfully invested in stock and permanent improvements. No run in
the country, at this moment, is in better order or more cheaply managed.
Can any one say that I have been extravagant in my personal expenses? It
is hard—devilish hard—and unfair to boot.”

Mr. Shrood was quite of the same opinion. He was a man of kindly though
disciplined impulses, and what men call “a good fellow,” underneath his
armour of caution and official reserve. He did not intend to explain the
policy of the bank. It was his to obey, and not to criticize, though
within certain well defined limits he had much discretionary power. But
he had always liked Jack, and was as sorry as he could afford to be,
with so many unpleasantnesses of similar character to deal with, for his
gravitation towards the bad, which he doubted could not be arrested.

Still, he thought he would make one effort with the directors in favour
of John Redgrave, whose property he knew was thoroughly good of its
kind, and whose particular case he felt to be one of “real distress.”

“I can but reiterate my expressions of regret, my dear Mr. Redgrave,”
returned he; “nothing but the extreme, the unprecedented financial
disorganization could have led the bank authorities to countenance so
harshly restrictive a policy. I cannot speak of it in any other terms.
But I will make a special effort to obtain further accommodation for
you, though I do not advise you to rest any great hope upon a favourable
response. On Wednesday the Board sits again. If you will call on Monday
morning next, I will inform you of their ultimatum.”

Jack thanked the banker from his heart, and went forth to spend two or
three days after a rather less melancholy fashion. We know that John
Redgrave was so enthusiastic a votary of the present that, unless that
genius was manifestly overshadowed by the awful future, he was apt to
cry ruthlessly—“Stay, for thou art fair.”

So he ate of the unaccustomed, and drank of the choice, and otherwise
solaced himself, carrying a good hope of the success of Mr. Mildmay
Shrood’s intercession, the prestige of which he overrated sadly, until
Monday morning.

His heart commenced to register a low tide of electricity—dark doubts,
akin to despair, began to throng and rise; there was “a whisper of wings
in the air,” altogether non-angelic, as he stood once more in the
presence of Mildmay Shrood, and of—Fate. One look at the fixed
expression of the features of the manager was sufficient to settle the
question of concession. All hope and expectation died out of Jack’s
heart. He nerved himself for the blow.

“I regret more deeply than I can express——” commenced Mr. Shrood.

“It is not worth while to go on,” interrupted Jack. “I believe that you
have tried to do what you could for me, and I thank you sincerely for
it. The question is now, what time can I have to make arrangements with
another bank, or a mercantile firm, to carry me on—if such an unlikely
thing comes to pass?”

“The bank will take no action for one month—so much I can guarantee; at
the end of that period no further cheque will be paid, and the bank will
sell or take possession of the stock and station, as mortgaged to them.”

“What about current expenses?”

“They will be paid as usual—if not exceeding ordinary amounts.”

“Well, thank God,” said Jack, “my people, the few there are of them, are
paid up. I shall not have to trouble you for much. I wish you good
morning.”

The banker walked over to him, and looked full in the face of the man
who was going forth, as he believed, to utter, inevitable ruin. _He_
knew that only by a miracle could any one obtain assistance in the
present state of finance. All the other banks, all the great mercantile
squatting houses, bankers themselves in all but name, had been throwing
over dead weight, dropping small, doubtful, or not vitally necessary
accounts, for months past.

John Redgrave’s quest would be that of a drowning man who solicits the
inmates of dangerously laden boats, in the worst possible weather, out
of sight of land, to have pity upon him and to risk their lives,
manifestly for his sake. He might not encounter the precipitate
phraseology of the British tar, but a crack with an oar-blade would,
metaphorically, represent his reception.

Mr. Shrood was not, of course, any more than the officer of any other
service, likely to divulge the inner workings of official action; but he
wrung Jack’s hand with an emphasis not all conventional, as he wished
him success, and bade him a genuine farewell.

“It is precious hard upon that young fellow, I must say,” said he, half
aloud. “I really did not think I could be so unbusinesslike as to flurry
myself about a single account, with the half-yearly balance coming on
too. It must be near lunch-time.”

Mr. Mildmay Shrood opened an inner baize-embellished door, and
disappeared into a long passage, which led to his private suite of
apartments. He then and there threw himself into a game of romps with
his daughters, aged six and eight years respectively, and informed his
wife that there would be a flower-show on the following Saturday, to
which, if nothing materially affecting his health, or the weather, took
place in the interval, he intended to have the honour of escorting her.

Mrs. Shrood expressed her high approval of this announcement, and at the
same time stated her opinion that he looked rather fagged, asked if the
affairs of the bank were going on well, and if he would like a glass of
sherry.

“What bank, my dear? Yes, thank you; the brown sherry, if you please.
What bank do you allude to?”

“Nonsense, Mildmay! Why, our bank, of course.”

“Madam,” replied the husband gravely, draining the glass of sherry with
zest and approbation, “I have before had the honour to remark to you
that, once inside that door, I know of the existence of _no_ bank,
either in New Holland or New Caledonia. And further, O partner of my
cares and shares—I was about to say—but suppose we say Paris bonnets,
_àpropos_ of one that’s just come in, unless, madam, you wish to come
and see me periodically at Gladesville, you will not mingle my private
life, in any way or form, with my existence in that——other place.”

Here Mr. Shrood, who had in his earlier days been a staunch
theatre-goer, waved his wine glass, and, putting himself in the attitude
of “first robber,” scowled furiously at his wife.

That sensible matron first threw her arms round his neck, and told him.
not to be a goose, and then, after arranging her ruff, rang the bell for
lunch, to which Mr. Shrood, having by this time, like a wise man, got
Jack’s stony face and gloomy eyes out of his thoughts, did reasonable
justice.

Mr. Redgrave, with his customary hopefulness, recovered from the first
misery of his position sufficiently to go about to all likely places,
and to test the money-market most exhaustively, as to the accommodation
needed for a squatter with an undeniable property and a heavy mortgage.
His agents, Drawe and Backwell, were first applied to. They had nothing
to learn, as his relations with them had always been of a confidential
nature, since the old, the good old days of Marshmead. They had always
given him good advice, which he did not always want, and money, which he
always did. They had always helped him to the limit of safety, and would
have done anything in reason for him now; but, like many others, they
were not able. Their capital and reserve fund were strained to the
fullest extent. Times and the seasons were so bad that no one without
the resources of the Count of Monte Christo, combined with the business
talents of a Rothschild, could have done the pastoral community much
good in that year. They had a smoke over it in the back office; but
nothing, in the shape of relief, was found to be practicable.

“You see, old fellow,” said Backwell, who, as old squatter himself,
understood every move in the game, “we could find four or five thousand
pounds for you, but what good would that be? You would have to sell
twenty thousand of your best sheep to meet the acceptances, and, of
course, the bank won’t stand your reducing the stock much. Then—though
that would have been a good payment to account a year or two back—they
won’t thank you for it now. They want the whole of their advances to
you, and less won’t do. There are plenty more in the same boat. People
say they are shaky themselves. They have some fearfully heavy
accounts—old Blockstrop and others—we all know. They can’t afford to
show any mercy, and they won’t. What stock will come to, unless the
drought breaks up, no man can say. We are not what I should call a very
solvent firm at present; and so I tell you. They must have some fellows
to sell stock, you know, or we should have a note to settle our little
account in quick sticks. Let me drive you out to St. Ninian’s to-night,
and we’ll have a taste of the sea-breeze, and look at Drawe’s dahlias;
they’re all he has to live for now, he says.”




                             CHAPTER XVII.

              “But dreary though the moments fleet,
              O let me think we yet shall meet.”—_Burns._


Jack came back next morning rather “picked-up” after Mrs. Backwell’s
kindly talk, and Drawe’s dahlias, and a stroll by the “loud-sounding
sea,” which looked to him as if it belonged in its glory and freshness
to another world which he should soon quit and never revisit. He was
sufficiently invigorated to try all the banks—the Denominational, the
London Bartered, the Polynesian, the Irish, Welsh, and Cornish, the
Occidental, the Alexandra, the United, and so on. It was of no avail. At
the majority he was informed that the bank was not prepared to take up
fresh squatting accounts at present. At some he was requested to call
after the next Board day; but the answer, varied and euphemized, was
“No,” in all cases. Then he tried the mercantile firms, the old-standing
English or Australian houses, which, in spite of the assumed supposed
American domination in all things in the colony of Victoria, had held
the lead, and kept their pride of place since the pre-auriferous days.
With them, and the great wool-dealing firms, the same answer only could
be obtained. They would advance anything in reason upon the coming clip,
or on any given number of sheep, at market rates; but, as to “taking-up”
a fresh account of that magnitude, they were “not prepared.”

Tired out, disappointed, and disheartened, Jack left town, after writing
a brief note to Mr. Shrood, intimating that the bank might sell Gondaree
as soon as that remorseless corporation pleased. He recommended Messrs.
Drawe and Backwell as auctioneers; they knew the property well, and
would probably get as much for it as any other firm.

Then was the wearisome return journey commenced. In former days there
had always been some glimmer of hope or expectation wherewith to gild
the excessive neutral tints of the landscape. Now there was no hope, and
the expectation was evil. He would have likened himself to an Indian
chief going back to deliver himself up to the torture. At Gondaree was
the stake to which he would have to be attached on arrival. The fire
would be lighted, and the roasting would begin and continue till he
should receive the _coup de grâce_, by being tacitly directed to leave
his own station, and go forth into the wilderness—a beggar and a broken
man.

                  *       *       *       *       *

M‘Nab did not ask many questions; it was not his wont except when he
wished to lower the spirits of an owner of store sheep, with a view to a
slight concession in price. But he gathered from Jack’s visage and
listless air that no success of any kind had attended his efforts.

“Gondaree is to be sold,” said he, with the recklessness of despair,
“some time next month. You will soon see an advertisement headed
‘Magnificent salt-bush property on the Warroo,’ and so on.”

“And ye were unable to get any assistance from the bank?”

“No more than brandy and soda out of an iceberg,” responded Jack,
helping himself to the first-named restorative. “Whether they want
money, and have to recoup themselves out of us poor devils, I don’t
know. But you would think that other than cash payments had been unknown
since Magna Charta. Shall have to carry our coin in leather bags soon.”

“Ay, that’s bad, very bad! I didn’t realize things would be just that
bad. Surely the banks might have just a trifle of discrimination; if
Gondaree is sold now, they’re just making some one a present of thirty
thousand pounds out of your pocket.”

“I am much of your way of thinking, M‘Nab; I am just as sure as that we
shall see the sun to-morrow that I am going to be sold off at the edge
of a rising market. It’s hard—too hard; but a man’s life, more or less,
can’t matter.”

“Could you not have sold half, and held on with the rest?” suggested
M‘Nab, still restlessly cogitating every conceivable scheme. “The place
could divide first-rate opposite the Point. If you had sent me down,
I’ll warrant I would have knocked up a deal, or a put-off, in some
fashion.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you had,” assented Jack. “I ought to have sent
you down with a power of attorney—only that one has a mistaken
preference for mismanaging one’s own affairs. Well, it can’t be helped
now. Cursed be the stock and station. Cursed be the whole concern.”

Jack was fully a week at home before he could nerve himself for the
inevitable last visit to Juandah—his farewell to Maud Stangrove. It was
a cruel word; it would be a bitter parting; but he must tell her in his
own speech that his fate had but suffered him to win her heart, had but
lured him to the contemplation of the unutterable happiness that should
have been theirs, to drop the veil for ever, to shatter the goblet in
which the draught had foamed and sparkled with unearthly brilliancy.

He had thought once that perhaps, pledged as they were to each other, a
mutual understanding to await the events of the next few years might
have still existed between them. But he cast out the tempting idea, with
even added bitterness, as he thought of the lots of other men and other
women whom he had often pitied and despised.

What, he told himself, could compensate her for the long weary years of
waiting and watching, the gradual extinction of youth in form, in mind,
in soul, to be repaid, after youth had passed by, with a sombre union,
which poverty should divest of all grace, joy, and romance. No—they must
part—and for ever! Maud, with her youth and beauty, would soon find a
mate more worthy than he of the treasure of her love. He, with all his
faults, was not the man to drag those light footsteps into the mire of
poverty and obscurity. As for him, he would carve out fame and another
fortune for himself—or fill a nameless grave.

Juandah was suffering, like all the rest of the country from the
withering drought, which still denied water to the dusty fissures,
verdure to the earth, and had apparently closed up the windows of
heaven. Still there was a look of homely comfort about the place, which
showed the garrison to be trusty and bold—fierce though the siege had
been, and close the blockade.

“Come in, old fellow, and we’ll see if we can find you something to
eat,” called out Mark Stangrove, who, with a very old shooting-coat on,
had just ridden in on a very lean steed, and with a general air of
having finished a hard day’s work. “I’m not very sure of it. Maud and
the missus have been very hard set of late—no eggs, no butter, little
milk, no vegetables, indifferent meat, and a great flavour of rice in
all the dishes. I’ve been pulling weak sheep out of a water-hole all
day. Pleasant work and inspiriting.”

Jack walked in, and it was fully explained to him by the unspoken
kindness of the ladies of the house that they knew pretty well the
measure of his misfortune. Somehow, one is not always sufficiently
grateful for the delicate and generous consideration that one meets with
in time of trouble. It is like the deference accorded when people are
too sick, or too old, or too generally incompetent to enter into active
competition with the talents of the world militant. It is kindly meant,
but there is a savour of accusation of weakness. So John Redgrave felt
partly grateful, and partly savage with himself, at being in a condition
to be morally “poor-deared” by Maud and her sister. All his life, up to
this time, he had been from earliest boyhood as one in authority. He had
said, since he could recollect, “to this man, go here,” and so on. Now
was it to be that he should have to descend from his pride of place, to
suffer pity, to endure subordination, to live as the lowly in spirit and
in fortune? With the suddenness of the levin-bolt it would sometimes
flash across him that such might be his doom. And with the thought would
come a passionate resolve to end his fast-falling, narrowing existence,
ere it were swept away amid the melancholy and ignoble circumstances
which had terminated other men’s lives.

It may have been gathered from these and other faithful impressions of
the inner workings of John Redgrave’s mind, that, though a careless,
kindly, easy-going species of personage, he was naturally and
unconsciously proud. To his pride was just now added the demon of sullen
obstinacy.

He was unable, however, after a few moments, to withstand the influence
of the unaffected kindness and sympathy of his friends. When he looked
at the two women, and remarked that they looked pale and careworn, as
having had privations of their own to bear in this most miserable
season, he hated himself for having entertained any selfish feeling.

“You have come back from your travels,” said Maud; “it seems to me that
you are always going and returning. I always have envied you your
wanderings.”

“I am afraid I have come to the stage when I shall go—but, in the words
of the Highland Lament, ‘return nae mair,’” answered he, sadly.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “People who, like us,
have lived so long in this country, know all about the ups and downs of
squatting. Why shouldn’t you begin again, like others, and do better
with a second venture than the first? Look at Mr. Upham, Mr. Feenix, and
Cheerboys Brothers; they have all been ruined, at least once, and how
thriving they are now.”

“I hope to show my friends, and the world too, my dear Mrs. Stangrove,”
said Jack, standing up and squaring his broad shoulders, “that one fall
has not taken all the fight out of me. But it is an uphill game, and I
may, like many a better man, find the odds too heavy. But, whatever
happens, you may believe that I shall not forget my friends at Juandah,
who have proved themselves such in my hour of need.”

“I have heard,” at length Maud said, in low faltering tones, “that
people in—in their dark hours—and we all have them at some time of our
lives—should walk by the counsel of their friends if they know them to
be good and true. We are too apt to be led by our own wayward spirits,
and sorrow warps our better judgment. I know Mark will be glad to give
you his best advice. And oh! do—do talk matters over with him. He is
cool, and sure judging, and is seldom mistaken in his course.”

Mrs. Stangrove had slipped out “on household work intent.”

“Maud,” he said, “dearest, loveliest, best-beloved, why has fortune, so
kind though unsought for many a year, deserted me now, when for the
first time in my life I had prized her with a miser’s joy for your dear
sake, and for yours alone? My heart will break—is broken—at the thought
of leaving you. But——”

“Why should you leave us—me, if you will have it so?” interrupted she
passionately; “stay with us for a time till your wound be healed, as in
the first dear time when I nursed you, and knew the joy of lightening
your weary hours and soothing all your pain. Do you think mine a
fair-weather love, given in assurance of ease, and pleasure, and fairy
summer-time—or did I yield my heart to be yours in weal or woe? You
dishonour me by an implied mistrust—and yourself by such faint-hearted
fears of the future.”

She had risen, and laid her hand on his shoulder as she spoke with all
the aroused magnetic energy of tender, yet impetuous womanhood, ere yet
experience has quenched the open trust of youth, or sorrow smirched the
faint delicate hues of beauty.

“Promise me that you will talk your plans over with Mark. And oh! if you
_would_ but follow his advice.”

Jack groaned aloud, but his face was set unyieldingly, as he took her
hand in both of his, and looked pityingly and mournfully in the sweet
pale face, and loving, tear-brightened eyes.

“My darling, my darling,” he said, hoarsely, “it cannot be. I must tread
my path alone. For good or for evil, I will confront my fate sole and
unfriended, and either make a name and another fortune, or add mine to
the corses on life’s battle-field. If I live and prosper I will return
to my love. But here I release her from the pain and the lowliness of a
life linked to so ill-starred a destiny as that of John Redgrave.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

The evening was not dreary. Mark and his wife exerted themselves to
dispel the gloom that threatened to enshroud the little party. Maud was
again outwardly calm and self-possessed, as women often are, in the
supreme hours of life. Jack exhibited the recklessness of despair, and
appeared to have dismissed from his mind the misery of his position.
Stangrove recounted the many shifts and contrivances rendered necessary
by the exigencies of the season.

“Did you ever taste milk, old fellow,” he said, “distilled chiefly from
water-lilies? I assure you our two melancholy milkers have consumed no
other food for weeks. There is not, of course, a particle of grass, or
so much as an unstripped salt-bush or cotton-bush for miles. Well, the
big lagoon (quite a lake it looks in winter) has not dried up yet. You
may see the cows standing up to their backs in it all day long. Even the
lilies are not on the surface. An occasional flower is all that they get
there, but from time to time you may notice one of the amphibious
creatures put her head deeply under water like a diving duck, and raise
it after a longish interval, filled with a great trailing bunch of roots
and esculent filaments. Great idea, isn’t it? I wonder how long they
would take to Darwinize into webbed feet and a beaverly breadth of
tail.”

“They manage to live, and give us milk besides, on this blanc-mange, or
whatever it is,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “I don’t know what the poor
children would have done but for these submarine plantations.”

“My dear old Mameluke has copied their idea, then,” joined in Maud, with
a brave attempt at light converse, which ended in a flickering, piteous
smile; “for I saw him in the cows’ water party yesterday, with very
little but his head visible. He has lost all the hair from his knees
down, either from the leeches or the water.”

“We are living in strange times,” remarked Jack; “it is a pity we can’t
get a few hints from the blacks, who must have seen all the dry seasons
since Captain Cook. What have you done with all your sheep, Mark?”

“We are eating the few that are left,” said Mark.

“And very bad they are,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove. “We are all so tired
of mutton, that I shall never like it again as long as I live.”

“The beef would be worse, if we had any,” resumed Mark. “The sheep are
just eatable, though I agree as to the indifferent quality. All the
flocks are in the mountains in charge of my working overseer, old
Hardbake, as well as the cattle. Here is the last letter: ‘The sheep is
all well, and the wool will be right if so be as you get rain by the
time the snow falls here. We must cut and run then for fear of
haccidence. The cattle is pore but lively. Send some more baccy. Yours,
to command, Gregory Hardbake.’ Curious scrawl, isn’t it?”

The ladies having retired, Mark Stangrove and his guest adjourned to the
veranda for the customary _tabaks parlement_, and for some time smoked
silently under the influence of the glorious southern night. All was
still save the faint but clearly-heard ripple of the stream, and the
low, sighing, rhythmical murmur of the river oaks. Cloudless was the
sky; the broad silver moon hung in mid firmament, with splendour
undimmed, save by a wide translucent halo—in happier times suggestive of
rain. In this hopeless season, the denizens of the Warroo had learned by
sad experience to distrust this and all other ordinary phenomena.

“Glorious night,” said Mark at length, breaking the long silence, “but
how infinitely we should prefer the wildest weather that ever frightened
a man to his prayers! Strange, how comparative is even one’s pleasure in
the beauty of nature, and how dependent upon its squaring with our
humble daily needs. When I read such a passage as—‘the storm beat
mercilessly in the faces of the wayfarers, with heavy driving showers,’
&c.—when the author has exhausted himself in this endeavour to elicit
your sympathy for the unlucky hero and heroine—I feel madly envious,
which I take it is _not_ the feeling intended to be produced. So you are
going to clear out, old fellow, for good and all? You know, I am sure,
how sorry we all are. Will you pardon me if I ask what your plans are
for the future?”

“I have no plans,” answered Jack. “I shall make a fresh start as soon as
I am sold up. I must do as other shipwrecked men, I suppose—go before
the mast, or take a third-mate’s berth, and work up to a fresh
command—if it’s in me.”

“That’s all very well in its way. I admire pluck and independence; but
without capital it’s a long, weary business.”

“How have the other men fared?” demanded Jack. “I am not the first who
has been left without a shilling, but with health, strength,
and—well—some part of one’s youth remaining, it is a disgrace to such a
man, in this country above all others, to lie down or whine for
assistance at the first defeat.”

“Granted, my dear fellow; though I confess I take your proposition to
apply more strictly to the labourer proper than to him who starts
weighted with the name and habits of a gentleman. There is no track open
to him that he could not travel with tenfold greater speed with the aid
of capital to clear the way.”

“That I cannot have without laying myself under obligations to friends
or relatives, and nothing would induce me to ask or accept such help,”
quoth Jack, with unwonted sternness. “I have lost a fortune and the best
years of my life—as I believe by no fault of my own. I will regain it,
as I have lost it, without help from living man; or the destiny which
has robbed me of all that makes life worth having may take a worthless
life also.”

“It strikes me that you are hardly just, not to say generous,” rejoined
Mark, “to speak of your life as entirely worthless; but I am not going
to preach, old fellow, to a man in your hurt and wounded state. I have
been near enough to it myself to understand your chief bitternesses. Now
listen to me, like a good fellow, as if I were your elder brother or
somebody in the paternal line. You know I am a heap of years older,
besides having the advantage of being a spectator, and a _very_ friendly
one, of your game.”

Jack nodded an affirmative, while Stangrove, refilling his pipe, sent
forth a contemplative cloud and recommenced:

“When a man is ruined—and I have seen a whole district cleared out in
one year before now—one thing, almost the chief thing, he has to guard
against is, a wild desire springing mainly from mortification, wounded
pride, and a kind of reactionary despair, to get away from the scene of
his disaster and from his previous occupation, whatever it may be. Now
this feeling is perfectly natural. All the same it should not be
indulged. When a man has done nothing worse than the unsuccessful, he
should calmly review his position, and above all take the advice of his
friends. If he have plenty of them—as you have—he may rest assured that
their verdict as to his plans and prospects is far more likely to be
correct than his own. When he disagrees with the whole jury of them, he
generally is in the position of the proverbial person who found eleven
most obstinate jurymen entirely opposed to _his_ way of thinking.”

“But surely a man must know his own capacity, and can gauge the measure
of his own powers more correctly than any number of friends,” pleaded
Jack.

“I am not sure of that. I believe in several heads being better than
one, especially where the latter has just come out of the thick of the
conflict, and has not escaped without a hard knock or two. To pursue my
lecture on adversity—don’t take it so seriously, Redgrave, or I must
stop. A good fellow, with staunch friends, is invariably helped to one
fresh start, often to two. So you may look upon it as a settled thing.
Sheep are cruelly low now——”

“What! begin with _another sheep station_, and a small one?” interrupted
Jack. “Let me die first.”

“There, again, allow me to differ with you, and to state another
peculiarity of misadventure. A fellow always insists upon changing his
stock. A cattle-man takes to sheep, after a knock-down, and _vice
versâ_. Whereas, it is just the thing he should _not_ do. He knows, or
fancies he knows, all the expenses and drawbacks of one division of
stock farming; of the peculiar troubles of the other he is ignorant, and
so over-estimates the advantages. By this shuttle-cocking, he abandons
one sort when their turn for profit is at hand, and generally gets well
launched into the other as their turn is departing. Besides, all the
accumulation of experience—a fair capital in itself—is thus wasted.”

“Hang experience,” swore Jack, with peculiar bitterness; “it’s the light
that illumines the ship’s wake, as some unlucky beggar like me must have
said; and which leaves the look-out as dim as ever.”

“You persist in doing yourself injustice,” continued his patient friend;
“everybody will concede that you have had very hard luck; you have lost
by one fluke—you may get your revenge by another, if you have the
wherewithal to put on the card; not otherwise though. As I said before,
sheep are down to nothing—at that painful price you are compelled to
sell. Why not buy some other fellow’s place at the same figure? When the
tide rises, as it surely will, you will float into deep water with the
rest of them.”

“What do you fancy the real value of runs to be?”

“From six to ten shillings for sheep and stations, according to quality,
not a halfpenny more.” Jack could not repress a groan. “Well, with five
thousand pounds you ought to be able to buy a good property with twenty
thousand sheep—half cash, half at two years.”

“Where’s the money to come from?” demanded Jack, from the depths of his
beard.

“My dear fellow,” Stangrove said, getting up and walking over to him,
“you don’t think me such a beast as to have bored you all this time if I
had not intended to act as well as talk. I will find the money; you know
I have always been a screwing, saving kind of chap. You can relieve your
conscience by giving me a second mortgage till you pay up.”

Jack grasped the hand of his entertainer till the strong man half
flinched from the crushing pressure.

“You are a good fellow, true friend, and worthy to be the brother of the
sweetest girl that ever gladdened a man’s heart. But I cannot accept
your offer, noble and self-sacrificing as it is. I am an unlucky devil;
I have no faith in my future fortune; and I will not be base enough to
run the risk of dragging down others into the pit of my own poverty and
wretchedness.”

“But, my dear fellow, hear reason; don’t decide hastily. You don’t know
to what you are, perhaps, condemning yourself, and—others besides
yourself.”

“It is because I _am_ considering others,” answered Jack, as he stood up
and looked, half pleadingly, at the silver moon, the silent stars, the
clear heavens, the wonder and majesty of night, as who should strive to
win an answer from an oracle. “It is for the sake of others, for the
sake of _her_, that I reject your offer. I should only blend your ruin
with my own—foredoomed, it may be, like much else that happens in this
melancholy, mysterious life of ours. And now, God bless you. I will
start early. I could not say farewell to Maud. Tell her my words, and—to
forget me.”

The two men grasped each other’s hands silently, and without other
speech each went to his own apartment.

Before sunrise Jack left an uneasy pillow, and, dressing hastily, walked
quietly out of the house, and into the horse-paddock, or an enclosure so
designated, which in former days had contained adequate nutriment for
all inmates. He found his attenuated steed, and caught him without much
difficulty. The unlucky animal was standing by a box tree, staring
vacantly upwards, and refreshing himself from time to time with a
vigorous bite at the bark, which he chewed with evident relish. Saddling
up at the stable, he walked towards the outer sliprails, intending to
avoid the dismounting at that rude substitute for a gate, about which he
had often rallied Mark. He had just concluded the taking down and
replacing of these antiquated entrance-bars, and, with an audible sigh,
was about to mount, when he saw Maud coming along the short-cut footpath
from the house, which led to the garden gate. She waved her hand. He had
no choice—no wish, but to stop. She was his love. She was before his
eyes once again. He had tried to spare her—perhaps himself. But it was
not to be.

She came swiftly up this dusty path, in the clear warm morning light,
her hair catching a gleam of the level sun, her cheek faintly tinted
with a sudden glow, her lips apart, her eyes burning bright. She looked
at him, for one moment, with the honest tenderness of a woman, pure from
the suspicion of coquetry—loving, and not ashamed though the world
should witness her love.

“John,” she said, in a tone of soft, yet deep reproach, “were you going
away, for ever perhaps, and without a word of farewell?”

“Was it not better so?” he murmured, taking her hand in both of his, and
looking into her eyes with mingled gloom and passion, as though he had
been Leonora’s lover, doubting, pitying, yet compelled to bid her forth
to the midnight journey on the phantom steed.

“Better! why should it be better?” said she, with a wild terror in her
voice and looks. “Have you no pity for yourself—for me—that you despise
the advice of your best friends, and insist upon dooming yourself to
poverty and obscurity? I knew Mark was going to speak to you, and he
told me that he would help—like a good fellow as he is—you or—us—why
should I falter with the word?—to make a new commencement. Why, why are
you so proud, so unyielding, so unwilling to sacrifice your pride for my
sake? You cannot care for me!”

Here the excited girl flung herself forward, as if she would have
humbled herself in the dust before him, while a storm of sobs shook her
bosom, and caused her whole form to tremble as if in an ague fit.

Jack raised her tenderly in his arms, and, pouring forth every name of
love, strove to soothe and pacify her.

“Darling,” he said, “have pity upon me, and trust me a little also. All
that a man should do would I do for your dear sake; and if I do not at
once consent to accept Mark’s generous offer, or that of any friend for
the present, why will you not let me try my chance, single-handed, with
fortune, like another? When the Knight returns to his Ladye-love after
such a combat, is he not doubly welcome, doubly dear? Why should you
insist upon my being defended from the rude blasts of adversity, as if I
were unable to prove myself a man among men!”

“You deceive yourself,” she said, in sad, serene accents; “you will not
yield yourself to the counsels of those who are cool and prudent. Will
you not let me tell you that, though you are the dearest, greatest of
mortal men in my eyes, I do not think prudence is a marked gift of
yours?”

“You are a saucy girl,” he said, as she smiled sadly through her tears;
“but you are only telling me what I knew before. Still, but for
imprudence, or what the world calls such, conquests and splendid
discoveries would never have been made. I have something of the
‘conquestador’ in me. It must have space and opportunity for a year or
two, or I shall die.”

“Will you make me one promise before you go?” said she, looking
earnestly into his face, “and I can then wait—for, trust me, I shall
wait for you till I die—with a heart less hopelessly despairing.”

“I will, if——”

“Then promise me this—that if, in two years, you have not succeeded, as
you expect, you will return to me, and will not then refuse Mark’s
proffered aid.”

He hesitated.

“Think this,” she said, as she raised herself slightly on tiptoe, and
whispered in his ear. “It is my life that I am asking of you; I feel it.
If you love your pride—yourself more——”

“I promise,” he said hastily. “I promise before God, if in two years I
have made no progress, I will return and bow myself at your feet. You
shall deal with me as you list.”

Their lips were pressed convulsively together in one lingering kiss.
Then she released herself with mute despair.

She stood for one moment gazing upon him with all the ardour of her love
and truth shining out of her wondrous eyes. Her face became deadly pale.
Its whole expression gradually changed to one unutterably mournful and
despairing. Then, turning, she walked slowly, steadily, and without once
turning her head, along the homeward path. Jack watched her till she
passed through the garden gate and entered the veranda. Mounting his
horse, he rode along the river road at a pace more in accordance with
the condition of his emotions than the condition of his hackney.




                             CHAPTER XVIII.

          “Fickle fortune has deceived me:
          She promised fair, and performed but ill.”—_Burns._


Events were following in quick succession across John Redgrave’s life,
like the presentments of a magic lantern; and it seemed to him at times
with a like unreality. But reason, in hours of compulsory attention,
proved with cold logic that they were only too harshly true.

A little while, as he could not help owning to himself, and he would be
driven forth from the Eden of “the potentiality of wealth” and luxury,
into the outer world of dreary fact, poverty, and labour. Fast sped the
melancholy, aimless, half-anxious, half-despairing days, following upon
the advertisement which took all the pastoral and commercial world into
his confidence, and stamped him with the stigma of failure. Thus, one
fine day, a stranger, a shrewd-looking personage, redolent of capital,
from his felt wide-awake to his substantial boots, arrived by the mail,
and presented the credentials which announced him a Mr. Bagemall
(Bagemall Brothers and Holdfast) and the _purchaser of Gondaree_. It was
even so. That “well-known, fattening run, highly improved, fenced and
subdivided, with 65,794 well-bred, carefully-culled sheep, regularly
supplied with the most fashionable Mudgee blood, the last two clips of
wool having averaged two shillings and ninepence per lb.,” &c., &c., as
per advertisement, had been sold publicly, Messrs. Drawe and Backwell
auctioneers. Sold, and for what price? For eight shillings and
threepence per head, half cash and half approved bills at short dates!

Well, he had hoped nothing better. In the teeth of such a season, such a
panic, such a general loosening of the foundations alike of pastoral and
commercial systems, what else was to be expected as the proceeds of a
forced sale, with terms equal to cash? The murder was out. The hazard
had been played and lost—let the stakes at least be handed over with
equanimity.

So Mr. Bagemall was received with all proper hospitality, and
courteously entreated, he being apparently bent more upon the
refreshment and restoration of the inner man, after a toilsome and
eventful journey, than upon information regarding his purchase. He made
no inquiries, but smoked his pipe and enjoyed his dinner, talking in a
cheery and non-committal manner about the state of politics, and the
last European news by the mail. He went early to bed, pleading urgent
want of a night’s rest, and postponed the serious part of the visit
until the morrow.

When the morning meal and the morning pipe had been satisfactorily
disposed of, he displayed a willingness, but no haste, to commence
business.

“I suppose we may as well take a look round the place, Mr. Redgrave,”
said he; “everything looks well in a general way; nothing like fencing
to stand a bad season. Monstrous pity to put such a property in the
market just now. Can’t think what the banks are about. Sure to be a
change for the better soon, unless rain has ceased to form part of the
Australian climate, and then we shall all be in the same boat.”

“I shouldn’t have sold if I could have helped it, you may be sure,”
answered Jack; “but the thing is done, and it’s no use thinking about
it. The sooner it’s over the better.”

“Just as you please—just as you please,” said the stranger. “You will
oblige me by considering me in the light of a guest during my short
stay. I must go back the end of the week. I don’t know that I need do
anything but count the sheep, in which our friend here (turning to
M‘Nab) perhaps will help me. Everything being given in, I sha’n’t bother
myself or you by inspecting the station plant. The wash-pen and shed
speak for themselves.”

“Thank you very much,” said Jack; “delivering over a station is
generally a nuisance, especially as to the smaller matters. I remember
being at Yillaree, when Knipstone was giving delivery to old M‘Tavish.
They had been squabbling awfully about every pot and kettle and
frying-pan, all of which Knipstone had carefully entered—some of them
twice over. To complete the inventory he produced a brass candlestick,
saying airily, ‘The other one is on the store table.’ ‘Bring it here,
then, you rascal,’ roared M‘Tavish. ‘I wouldn’t take your word for a box
of matches.’”

“The purchase-money was somewhere about eighty thousand pounds,”
remarked Bagemall, who seemed to remember what every station had brought
for the last ten years. “A paltry fifty pounds couldn’t have mattered
much one way or the other.”

The next morning the counting began in earnest. A couple of thousand
four-tooth wethers had been put in the drafting yard, for some reason or
other, and with this lot they made a commencement. Now, except to the
initiated, this counting of sheep is a bewildering, all but impossible
matter. The hurdle or gate, as the case may be, is partially opened and
egress permitted in a degree proportioned to the supposed talent of the
enumerator. If he be slow, inexperienced, and therefore diffident, a
small opening suffices, through which only a couple of sheep can run at
a time. Then he begins—two, four, six, eight, and so on, up to twenty.
After he gets well into his tens he probably makes some slight
miscalculation, and while he is mentally debating whether forty-two or
fifty-two be right, three sheep rush out together, the additional one in
wild eagerness jumping on to the back of one of the others, and then
sprawling, feet up, in front of the gate. The unhappy wight says “sixty”
to himself, and, looking doubtfully at the continuous stream of animals,
falls hopelessly in arrear and gives up. In such a case the sheep have
to be re-yarded, or he has to trust implicitly to the honour of the
person in charge, who widens the gate, lets the sheep rush out
higgledy-piggledy, as it seems to the tyro, and keeps calling out
“hundred”—“hundred” with wonderful and almost suspicious rapidity. Yet,
in such a case, there will rarely be one sheep wrong, more or less, in
five thousand. Thus, when arrived at the yard, M‘Nab looked inquiringly
at the stranger, and took hold of one end of the hurdle.

“Throw it down and let ’em rip,” said Mr. Bagemall. “You and I will
count, and Mr. Redgrave will perhaps keep tally.”

Keeping tally, it may be explained, is the notation of the hundreds, by
pencil or notched stick, the counter being supposed only to concern
himself with the units and tens.

M‘Nab, who was an unrivalled counter, relaxed his features, as
recognizing a kindred spirit, and, as the sheep came tearing and
tumbling out, after the fashion of strong, hearty, paddocked wethers, he
placed his hands in his pockets and reeled off the hundreds, as did Mr.
Bagemall, in no time. The operation was soon over. They agreed in the
odd number to a sheep. And M‘Nab further remarked that Mr. Bagemall was
one of those gifted persons who, by a successive motion of the fingers
of both hands, was enabled (quite as a matter of form) to check the
tally-keeper as well. Paddock after paddock was duly mustered, driven
through their respective gates, and counted back. In a couple of days
the operation, combined with the inspection of the whole run, was
concluded.

Sitting in the veranda after a longish day’s work, all smoking, and Jack
looking regretfully at his garden, which, small and insignificant
compared with the exuberant plantation of Marshmead, was very creditable
for the Warroo, and indeed was just about to make some small repayment
for labour in the way of fruit, Mr. Bagemall remarked—

“I didn’t know you had any blacks about the place. Does this lot belong
here?”

“It must be old man Jack and his family,” answered M‘Nab. “I have been
wondering what had become of them for ever so long. I heard Wildduck was
very ill. Yes, this is our tribe, sir; not a very alarming one, but all
that brandy and ball-cartridge have left.”

“What has the old fellow got on his back?” inquired Mr. Bagemall; “the
men carry nothing if they can help it.”

“Poor Wildduck,” said Jack, half to himself, “I had forgotten all about
her of late, with the allowable selfishness of misfortune. By Jove! it’s
she that the old man is carrying. She must be ill indeed.”

The old savage, followed by his aged wives at humble distance, marched
on in a stately and solemn manner, until he reached a mound near the
garden gate. Here the little procession halted; one of the gins placed
an opossum rug upon the earth, and upon this the old man, with great
care and tenderness, placed the wasted form of the girl Wildduck. She it
was, apparently in the last stage of consumption, as her hollow cheeks
testified, and the altered face, now lighted by eyes of unnatural size,
brilliant with the fire of death. The three men walked over.

“Ah, Misser Redgrave,” said she, while a dreamy smile passed over her
wan countenance, “stockman say you sell Gondaree and go away. Old man
Jack carry me from Bimbalong—me _must_ say good-bye.” Here a frightful
fit of coughing prevented further speech, while the old man and the gins
made expressive pantomime, in acquiescence, and then, seating themselves
around, took out sharp-edged flints, and, scooping a preliminary gash on
their faces, prepared for a “good cry.” Strangely soon blood and tears
were flowing in commingled streams adown their swart countenances.
Wildduck lay gasping upon her rug, and from time to time sobbed out her
share of the lament for the kind white man who was about to leave their
country.

Jack leaned over the ghastly and shrunken form of what had once been the
agile and frolicsome Wildduck. The dying girl—for such unquestionably
she was—looked up in his face, with death-gleaming and earnest gaze.

“You yan away from Gondaree, Misser Redgrave?” she gasped out. “No come
back?”

Jack nodded in assent.

“Me yan away too,” she continued; “Kalingeree close up die, me thinkum;
that one grog killum, and too much big one cough, like it white fellow.
You tell Miss Maudie, I good girl long time.”

“Poor Wildduck,” said Jack, genuinely moved by the sad spectacle of the
poor victim to civilization. “Miss Maudie will be very sorry to hear
about you. Can’t you get down to Juandah? I’m sure she would take care
of you.”

“Too far that one place, now. Me going to die here. Old man Jack bury me
at Bimbalong. My mother sit down there, long o’ waterhole—where you see
that big coubah tree. Misser Redgrave!” she said, with sudden
earnestness, trying to raise herself; “you tell me one thing?”

“What is it, my poor girl?”

“You tell me”—here she gazed imploringly at him, with a look of dread
and doubt piteous to mark in her uplifted face—“where you think I go
when I die?”

“Go!” answered Jack, rather confused by this direct appeal to his
assumed superior knowledge of the future. “Why, to heaven, I believe,
Wildduck. We shall all go there, I hope, some day.”

“I see Miss Maudie there; she go, I know. You go too; you always kind to
poor black fellow.”

“I hope and trust we shall all go there some day, if we’re good,” said
he, unconsciously recalling his good mother’s early assurances on that
head. “Didn’t Miss Maudie tell you so.”

“Miss Maudie tell me about white man’s God—teach me prayer every
night—say, ‘Our Father.’ You think God care about poor black girl?”

“Yes, I do; you belong to Him, Wildduck, just the same as white girl.
You say prayer to Him. He take care of you, same as Miss Maudie tell
you.”

“She tell me she very sorry for poor black girl. She say, why you drink
brandy, Wildduck? that wicked. So me try—no use—can’t help it. Black
fellow all the same as little child. Big one stupid.”

“White fellow stupid too, Wildduck,” said John Redgrave; “you have been
no worse than plenty of others who ought to have known better. But
perhaps you won’t die after all.”

“Me die fast enough.” Here the merciless cough for a time completely
exhausted her. “I believe to-morrow. You think I jump up white fellow?”

“I can’t say, Wildduck,” answered he. “We shall all be very different
from what we are now. You had better cover yourself up and go to sleep.”

“I very tired,” moaned the girl, feebly; “long way we come to-day. You
tell new gentleman he be kind to old man Jack. You say good-bye to poor
Wildduck.” Here she held out her attenuated hand. It had been always
small and slender, as in many cases are those of the women of her race.
In the days of her health and vigour, Jack had often noticed the curious
delicacy of her hands and feet, and speculated on the causes of such
conformation among a people all ignorant of shoe and stocking. But now
the small brown fingers and transparent palm were like those of a child.
He held them in his own for a second, and then said, “Good-night,
Wildduck.”

“Good-bye, Misser Redgrave, good-bye. You tell Miss Maudie, perhaps I
see her some day, you too, long big one star.” Here she pointed to the
sky. Her eyes filled with tears. Jack turned away. When he looked again,
she had covered her face with the rug. But he could hear her sobs, and a
low moaning cry.

“Strange, and how hard to understand!” said Jack to himself, as he
strode forward in the twilight towards the cottage. “I wonder what the
extent of this poor ignorant creature’s moral responsibility may be.
What opportunities has she had of comprehending her presence on this
mysterious earth? Save a few lessons from Maud, she has never heard the
sacred name except as giving power to a careless oath. As to actual
wickedness she is a thousand-fold better than half the white sinners of
her own sex. Her sufferings have been short. And perhaps she lies
a-dying more happily circumstanced than a pauper in the cold walls of a
work-house, or a waif in a stifling room in a back slum of any given
city. As far as the children of crime, want, and vice are concerned, all
cities are much on a par, whether Australian, European, or otherwise.”

The night was boisterous, yet, mingled with the moaning of the blast,
Jack fancied that at midnight he heard a cry, long-drawn, wailing, and
more shrill than the tones of the wind-harp, or the sighing of the bowed
forest.

The pale dawn was still silent, ghostly gray. No herald in roseate
tabard had proclaimed the approach of the tyrant sun—lord of that
stricken waste—when John Redgrave walked over to the camp. He saw at
once, by the attitudes of the group, that they were mourners of the
dead. Each sat motionless and mute, gazing with grief-stricken
countenances towards the fourth fire—in the equally divided space—by
which lay a motionless figure, covered from head to foot with furs. He
looked at old man Jack, but he moved not a muscle of his disfigured
countenance, while in his eyes, fixed with a strong glare, there was no
more speculation than in those of the dead.

The women sat like ebon statues; down their shrivelled breasts and bony
arms the dried rivulets of blood made a ghastly blazonry. Jack knew
enough of the customs and ceremonies of this fast-fading people to be
aware that no speech, or even gesture, was possible during the two first
days of mourning. He walked over and raised the covering from the face
of the dead girl. Her features, always delicate and regular (for, though
rarely, such types unquestionably do exist among most aboriginal
Australian tribes), were composed and peaceful. The closed eyes were
fringed with lashes of extraordinary length. The heavy waving locks,
rudely combed back, were not without artistic effect. The pallor of
death bestowed a fairer hue on the clear brown, not coal-black, skin.
The lingering shadow of a smile remained upon the scarcely closed lips,
which half recalled the arch expression of the merry forest child,
dancing in the sunshine like the swaying leaflets. Now, like them in
autumn-death, she was lying on the breast of the great earth-mother. One
hand pressed her bosom, in the shut fingers of which was a small cross,
hung round the neck by a faded ribbon, which he remembered to have been
a present from Maud Stangrove. “He whose word infused with life this
ill-starred child of clay will He not recall the parted spirit?” thought
Jack, as he reverently replaced the fur cloak. “God bless her,” he said,
softly.

He turned and looked back as he entered his dwelling. There sat the
three figures—rigid, sorrow-denoting, motionless as carvings on a
mausoleum. For two days they watched their dead—soundless, sleepless,
foodless. Ere the third day broke, the mourners and their charge had
disappeared.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Gondaree had been sold. The stock and station had been “delivered,” in
squatting parlance; the meaning of which is, that the purchaser had
satisfied himself that the actual living, wool-bearing sheep coincided
in number, sex, age, and quality with the statement of Messrs. Drawe and
Backwell. Also that the run comprised about the specified number of
square miles; that the fences were tangible, and not paper delineations;
that the wool-shed and wash-pen were not ideal creations of the poet, or
that synonymous son of romance, the auctioneer; lastly, that the great
Warroo itself was a perennial summer-defying stream, and not a dusty
ditch—a river by courtesy, full-tided only in winter, when everybody has
more water than he knows what to do with. In the great pastoral
chronicles it is written that serious mistakes as to each and all of
these important matters have been made ere now.

None of these encounters between the real and the probable had occurred
with respect to Gondaree. Mr. Bagemall had expressed himself in terms of
unbusinesslike approval of the whole property both to Mr. Redgrave and
M‘Nab. The run was, in his opinion, first class; the improvements
judicious and complete; the stock superior in quality, and in condition
really wonderful, considering the season.

“Nothing the matter, my dear sir,” said he to Redgrave, “but want of
rain and want of credit. Both of these complaints have become chronic,
worse luck. I remember, some years since, when we were nearly cleaned
out from the same causes. However, if I had not bought the place, some
one else would. I feel ashamed, though, of getting it such a bargain.
Fortune of war, you know, and all that, I suppose. Horses? Certainly—not
mentioned in terms of sale. But any two of the station-hacks you choose.
I suppose you will go in for back blocks. Take my advice, don’t be
down-hearted. This is the best country that ever was discovered for
making fresh starts in life. As long as a man is young and hearty, there
are chances under his feet all day long. Think so? Know it. Why, look at
old Captain Woodenwall, turned sixty when he was stumped up ten years
ago, and look at him now. Warm man, member of the Upper House, drives
his carriage again. Got every one’s good word too. Never give in. _Nil_
whatsy-name, as the book says. Good-bye, sir, you have my best wishes. I
have made my arrangements with your super-smart fellow, quite my sort,
rising man. Sha’n’t be here for years, I hope. Good-bye, sir.”

After this somewhat lengthened address, protracted beyond his custom,
Mr. Bagemall departed by the mail. He had previously entered into an
arrangement with M‘Nab, continuing to that energetic personage, whose
talent for organization he fully appreciated, the sole management of
Gondaree. He had furthermore admitted him to a partnership, the
estimated value thereof to be “worked out” of future profits. Mr.
Bagemall had not now to learn that this was the cheapest and surest way
of securing the permanent services and uttermost efforts of a man of
exceptional brain and energy, as he very correctly took Alexander M‘Nab
to be.

“Well, all is over now,” said Jack to his late manager; “everything
seems to be much as it was before—except that Hamlet will be played
without the unlucky beggar of a prince. I’m glad Bagemall took you in—he
showed his sense; he’s not a bad fellow by any means.”

“I’m glad, and I’m sorry, Mr. Redgrave. It was too good an offer for me
to refuse; but I’ve saved a couple of thousand pounds, and I had a
notion that if you could have raised as much more—which would have been
easy enough—I should say we might have gone in together for some back
country with a little stock on it. There are lots of places in the
market, and it’s a grand time for investing. There will never be a
better, in my opinion.”

“Thank you very much, old fellow,” said Jack, moved by the generosity of
his ex-lieutenant, the more so as M‘Nab was very careful of his money,
all of which he had hardly earned; “but I intend to make tracks, and go
on my path alone. I have hardly settled what I shall do yet. I think I
shall travel and look about me for a few months. I am heartily tired of
this part of Australia.”

“Better by far nip in now, while the chance is good,” argued the shrewd,
clear-sighted M‘Nab. “Depend upon it, there will be no such
opportunities this time next year. The first forty-eight hours’ rain
will make a difference. All kinds of good medium runs are hawked about
now, and if Mr. Bagemall hadn’t been so quick I should have been in
Collins Street this week with half-a-dozen offers in my pocket. But what
I want to say is this—there’s two thousand lying to my credit in the
London Bartered. Take my advice, run down to Melbourne and get two or
three more to put to it, and Drawe and Backwell will give you a dozen
runs to pick from. It’s heartily at your service. If you don’t like the
saltbush, there’s Gippsland, a splendid country, with good store
cattle-stations going at three pounds a head.”

John Redgrave grasped the hand of the speaker and wrung it warmly.

“You’re a good fellow, M‘Nab,” said he, “and you have justified the
opinion which I formed of you at the beginning of our acquaintance. I
shall always remember you as a true friend, and a much cleverer fellow
than myself. I should almost have felt inclined to have gone in with you
as managing partner, but I cannot take your or any other friend’s money,
to run the risk of losing it and self-respect together. It cannot be;
but I thank you heartily all the same.”




                              CHAPTER XIX.

              “Strong is the faith of our youth to pursue
              The path of its promise.”—_Frances Brown._


On the following morning John Redgrave quitted for ever the place in
which he had spent five of the best years of his life, all his capital,
and, measured by expenditure of emotional force, as much brain-tissue as
would have lasted him to the age of Methuselah at quiet, steady-going
Marshmead. He had packed and labelled his personal belongings, which
were to be sent to Melbourne by the wool-drays. They would reach their
destination long ere he needed them, doubtless. He mounted his favourite
hackney, leading another, upon the saddle of which was strapped a
compact valise. The boundary-riders had come in, apparently for no
reason in particular. But it had leaked out that the master was to clear
out for good on that day. They were all about the stable-yard as he came
out of the garden gate, attended by M‘Nab.

They made haste to anticipate him, and one of them led out the half-Arab
gray, while another held his stirrup, and a third the led horse.

“We want to say, sir,” said the foremost man, “that we are all sorry as
things have turned out the way they have. All the country about here
feels the same. You’ve always acted the gentleman to every man in your
employ since you’ve been on the river; and every man as knows himself
respects you for it. We wish you good luck, sir, wherever you go.”

Jack tried to say a word or two, but the words wouldn’t come. Something
in his throat intercepted speech, much as was the case when he last said
good-bye to his mother after the holidays. He shook hands with M‘Nab and
with the men all round. Mounting his horse, and taking the led horse by
the lengthened rein, he rode slowly away along the Bimbalong track. The
men raised a cheer, he waved his hand in response, and the small world
of Gondaree went on much as usual, like the waters of a pond after the
widening circles caused by a transient interruption.

After riding at a foot-pace for an hour, Jack began to press on a
little, intending to put a fair day’s journey at nightfall between him
and his late home. Turning in his saddle for a moment, to take a last
look at the well-known landscape, with the winding, dark-hued line of
the river timber cutting the sky-line, he saw that he was followed by
the dog ‘Help.’ This astute quadruped, who, as Jack was wont to assert,
“knew in a general way as much as other folks,” had evidently considered
the question of his master’s departure, and had adopted his line of
action. Aware from experience that if he exhibited an intention to go
anywhere, or do anything, not comprehended in instructions connected
with sheep, he was liable to be chained up till further orders, he had
taken good care to keep out of the way at Jack’s leave-taking. His
master had no intention of taking him with him, but had wished to pat
him for the last time, and great whistling and calling had taken place
in consequence. “But Gelert was not there.”

As the dog, therefore, upon Jack’s discovering him, came sidling
forward, wagging his tail apologetically, and bearing in his honest eyes
an expression partly of joy and partly of confession of wrong-doing,
Jack felt a sensation of satisfaction more considerable than some people
would have thought the occasion warranted.

“So you’ve come after me, you old rascal,” said he—upon which Help,
divining that he was forgiven, set up a joyous bark, and careered wildly
over the plain. “Do you know that you are not showing as much sense as I
gave you credit for, in leaving a rich master to follow a poor one?
You’re only a provincial, it seems, not a dog of the world at all.
However, as you _have_ come, we must make the best of it. Come to
heel—do you hear, sir?—and we must get a muzzle at the first store we
come to.”

The Bimbalong boundary, now a long line of wire fence, with egress only
by a neat gate on the track, was reached in due time. Here Jack’s
memory, unbidden, recalled the day of their first muster of the
cattle—the glorious day, the abundant herbage, the free gallop after the
half-wild herd, in which poor Wildduck had distinguished herself; and,
fairer than all, the glowing hope which had invested the unaccustomed
scene with brightest colours. How different was the aspect of the spot
now! The bare pastures, the prosaic fence-line—the Great Enterprise
carried through to the point of conspicuous failure; the reckless,
joyous child of these lone wastes lying in her grave, under the
whispering streamers of the great coubah tree yonder. And is every hope
as cold and dead as she? He was faring forth a wanderer, a beggar.
Better, perhaps, thought he, in the bitterness of his spirit, that I had
dropped to the bushranger’s bullet. Better to have fallen in the front
of the battle than to have survived to grace the triumph and wear the
chain.

The landless and dispossessed proprietor rode steadily on along the
well-marked but unfrequented track which led “back”—that is, into the
indifferently-watered, sparsely-stocked, and thinly-populated region
which stretched endless at the rear of the great leading streams. In
this desolate country, compared with which the frontage properties on
the Warroo, slightly suburban as they might be deemed, were as fertile
farms, lay grand possibilities—the Eldorado which always accompanies the
unknown. Here were still tenantless, as wandering stockmen had told,
enormous plains to which those on the Warroo were as river flats,
fantastic, isolated ranges, full of strange metallic deposits and
presumably rich ores. Immense water-holes, approaching the character of
lakes, where curious tribes of aboriginals hunted, some of which were
entirely bald, others bowed in the limbs from the continuous chase of
the emu and kangaroo. From time to time Jack had listened to these tales
of Herodotus; had, with some trouble, verified the localities indicated,
and seen a pioneer or two who had explored this _terra incognita_.

Full of eager anticipation of the new untrodden land, in which wonders
and miracles might still survive, leading to fortune by a triumphant
short cut—a new run with limitless plains and hidden lakes, a copper
mine, a gold mine, a silver mine, a navigable river—all these were
possible in the unknown land, waiting only for some adventurer with
purse as empty and need as desperate as his owner. Lulled by these
glorious phantasies, John Redgrave gradually recovered his spirits—they
were elastic, it must be confessed; and as the horses, poor but plucky,
like their master, stepped cheerily along the level trail, he caught
himself more than once humming a half-forgotten air. He had proposed to
himself to make for a small township about forty miles distant, the
inhabitants of which were composed in equal proportions of
horse-stealers, persons “wanted,” and others, these last lacking only
the courage, not the inclination, to turn bushrangers. Gurran—this was
the name of this delectable settlement—of course boasted of two
public-houses.

About an hour before sundown Jack calculated that he was about ten miles
from his destination. He had of course not been pressing his horses, and
had plodded steadily on without haste, but without halt, since the
morning. He could not, as he calculated, reach Gurran by Sundown, but an
hour’s travelling along the smooth, broad trail by the clear starlight
would be pleasant enough. He did not want, Heaven knows, to get to the
beastly hole too early. A simple meal, hunger sweetened, a smoke by the
fire, and then to bed, with a daylight start next morning. Such were his
intentions.

As he thought over and arranged these “short views of life,” he became
aware that the sky was overclouded. Clouds were by no means rare on the
Warroo, but no one had been in the habit of connecting them with rain
for many a month past. And so Jack rode on carelessly, while the sky
grew blacker, the air more still and warm, bank after bank rose in the
south, and at length—no, surely, it never can be, by Jove! it is—a drop
of _rain_!

“I shouldn’t wonder, now I think of it,” said Jack, sardonically, “if it
were to rain cats and dogs, just when I am regularly cleaned out. A
month ago it might have made a difference.” He unfastened an overcoat
which he threw over himself, and as the rain commenced in a gentle but
continuous drizzle (_he_ knew the sign) paced gloomily forward.

His cynical anticipations were but too literally fulfilled. At first
light and almost misty, then a steady downpour, in twenty minutes it was
half a shower-bath, half a water-spout. Every shred of Jack’s clothing
was soaked and resoaked, till the feeling was as if he were clad in wet
brown paper. The horses slipped, and boggled, and stumbled, and laboured
in the black soil plain which alternated with the sand, and which has
the peculiar and vexatious quality of balling, or gathering on hoof or
wheel, when thoroughly moistened. The air changed, the temperature was
lowered, the night became dark, so that Jack more than once lost his
way. The thunder pealed, and the lightning in vivid flashes from time to
time showed a watery waste, with creeks running, and all the usual
Australian superabundance of water immediately succeeding the utter
absence of even a drop to drink. It was nine o’clock when, tired, soaked
to the skin, with beaten horses, and temper seriously damaged, John
Redgrave pulled up before the “Stock-horse Inn” at Gurran. The person
who kept the poison-shop came out, with his pipe in his mouth, and,
seeing a traveller, expressed mild surprise, but did not volunteer
advice or assistance.

“Have you any hostler here?” demanded Jack, with pardonable acerbity.

“Well, there is a chap, but he’s on the burst just now, as one might
say. Are you going to stop?”

“Yes, of course,” said Jack; “why don’t you look a little more lively!
If you were as wet and cold as I am you’d know what I want.”

“I should want a jolly good nip to begin with,” said the unmoved
landlord; “but you can let your horses go, and put your saddles and
swags in the ferendah, can’t ye?”

“Haven’t you got a stable?” asked Jack, furious at this reception after
such a ride.

“Well, there’s a stable at the back, but the door’s off, and there’s
nothing in it.”

“No corn? no chaff?”

“No—there ain’t nothin’. How am I to get it up here?”

“And what is there for my horses to eat, if I let them go?”

“Well, there’s a bit of picking down by the crick. It’s all our horses
has to live on.”

Jack reflected for a while; then, considering that the other inn
couldn’t possibly be worse than this, and might be better, he concluded
to try it, and telling the astonished innkeeper that he was an uncivil
brute, and deserved to lose his license, he headed straight for the
light of the rival hostelry.

Here he met with a decided welcome and abundant civility. His horses
were unsaddled, and put into a building which, if rude, possessed the
essentials of equine comfort. And when he found himself before a good
fire in a small parlour adorned with wonderful prints, with a glass of
hot grog in possession, and a supper of eggs and bacon in prospect, he
felt that there were extenuating circumstances in the lot even of that
ill-fated and persecuted individual John Redgrave, late of Gondaree.

He awoke next morning early, and, dressing hastily, went straight to the
stable, which to his exceeding wrath and despair he found empty. The
badly-fastened door was open; there was no means of knowing at what hour
the nags had escaped or been _taken out_. Here was a pleasant state of
matters; all the misery of the position, intensified by the state of his
nerves, rushed upon him. He knew well what a nest of robbers he was
among. If not stolen, the horses had been “planted” or concealed until a
reward, consonant with the ideas of the thieves, was forthcoming. He
would do anything rather than go back to Gondaree. He had a few pounds
left, and he could, at worst, buy a mustang of the neighbourhood and
pursue his journey. Turning back sullenly to the inn, he saw his host
ride up, who stated that he had been out since daybreak after the
absentees without success, but that he had sent a young man after them,
who, if this here rain didn’t wash out the tracks, would find ’em “if
they was above ground.” With this meagre consolation Jack proceeded to
attack his uninviting breakfast.

The rain was still falling; the dismal, dusty, thinly-timbered flat,
which stretched for miles in unbroken dulness, with a shallow,
unmeaning, dry creek winding tortuously through, was now converted into
a sea of black mud. Jack knew that in a week it would be carpeted with
green, as would indeed be the whole of Gondaree, and the Warroo
generally. He groaned as he thought that all this “unearned increment”
would be of not a shilling’s-worth of value to him. Mr. Bagemall and Mr.
M‘Nab would reap the benefit of it—it was a clear fifty per cent. upon
the price of every sheep on the place to begin with. Gregory Hardbake
would be on the way down from the mountains rejoicing. All the world
would be joyful and prosperous, while he was left on his beam-ends, a
stranded wreck, and not even allowed to pursue his lonely voyage in
peace. It was hard; but Fate should break, not bend, him. His friends,
if he had any left, should see that. All that day he was compelled to
pace up and down the narrow verandah of the melancholy wooden box,
comforted by the assurances of the host that his ’osses would be safe to
be got within the week, that the “young man as was after ’em” had never
been known to miss finding such runaways. Unless—added he,
meditatively—they’ve gone and made back to where they came from.

However, that night the much-vaunted “young man,” a long-legged,
brown-faced, long-haired son of the soil, of the worst type of
pound-haunting, gully-raking bush native, returned without the horses.
When Jack, in the course of the evening, mentioned that thirty shillings
for each horse would be forthcoming on delivery, he brightened up, and
declared his determination to have another try next morning.

As Jack, about noon on the following day, was observing gloomily that
the rain had stopped, to his intense delight the young man before
eulogized was observed approaching, driving the lost horses before him.
Perhaps no sense of gratification is keener for the moment than that of
the traveller in Australia, who in a strange, possibly evil-reputed
locality recovers the favourite steed. The agonizing anxiety, the too
probable fear of total loss, the delay, expense, and inconvenience of
remount—all these doubts and dreads vanish at the moment when the
well-known outline appears. Like wrathful passengers upon reaching the
end of the voyage, all previous offences are condoned. The despotic
captain, the surly second officer, become almost popular, and a general
amnesty is proclaimed.

So, as old Pacha, with his high shoulder and flea-bitten grey skin,
followed by his companion, walked into the stable yard, about two panels
square of rickety round rails, Jack thought the much-suspected “young
man” not such a bad fellow after all. He perhaps reciprocated the
compliment after receiving the reward, though his conscience ought to
have troubled him if, as is too probable, he had “shifted” Jack’s horses
the first night, and left them at a convenient distance from the inn on
the second.

Their owner concluded not to tempt misfortune further.

Saddling up promptly, he once more took the road, glad to leave behind
Gurran and all its belongings.

That night John Redgrave reached a station where, of course, he was
hospitably received, and where he rested secure from the machinations of
persons to whom fresh horses and “clean-skinned” cattle presented an
irresistible temptation.

Keeping a northerly course, he gradually passed the boundaries of the
comparatively settled country, and entered the legendary and
half-explored region that skirted the great desert of his dreams. Here
rose, like polar meteors, fresh gleams of hope irradiating the sunless
cloud-land in which his spirit had dwelt of late—glimpses of that garden
of the Hesperides—anew discovery—fortunate isles—a land of gold and
gems, were on the cards. Like the garden of old, there was the Dragon—a
dragon to be fought or circumvented, as circumstances might direct.

Did he lose the faint track which led between the solitary outposts of
the pioneers, there was the certainty of death by thirst. A few days’
anxious wandering, twenty-four hours of delirious agony, and the bones
of John Redgrave and his weary steeds would lie blanching on the endless
plains and sand-ridges, until the next lost wayfarer or questing tracker
fell across them.

Did he escape the famine-fiend, were there not the prowling patient
human wolves of the melancholy waste ready to surround and do to death
that enemy of all primeval man, the wandering, insatiable white man?
Little, however, did John Redgrave reck of Scylla and Charybdis. The
barque must float him onward and still onward to fortune and to fame, or
must lie deep amid ocean’s treasures, or a stranded wreck upon the
inhospitable shore. He was in no mood to be frightened at aught which
other men had dared. With the demon of poverty astern, what to him was
the terrible deep, fanned by the wildest storm that ever blew? Still he
pressed onward; not heedlessly, but with wary patience, as beseemed an
experienced bushman, whose life might depend upon the strength and speed
of the good horse between his knees. The influence of the great drought
in this unstocked country became fainter and less unfavourable. The gray
tufted grasses and salsolaceous bushes, uncropped by stock, remained
nutritive and uninjured year after rainless year in that strange
Australian desert. Their strength untaxed by the moderate journeys, old
Pacha and his companion, with the wonderful hardihood of Australian
horses, improved in condition.

Now it chanced that at one of the most distant stations, of which the
proprietor had been able to say, like Othere, “no man lies north of me,”
Jack picked up a partner, who volunteered to join in his adventure,
sharing equally in the expenses of the modest outfit and in the profits,
such as they might be. Guy Waldron was a big, ruddy-faced, jovial young
Englishman, scarce a year from his father’s hall in Oxfordshire. An
insuperable disgust for the slow gradation of English fortune-making,
combined with the true dare-devil Norse temperament, had driven him
forth with his younger son’s portion to make or mar a colonial career.
The two men took to one another with sudden strength of liking.

The quiet resolution and utter disdain of danger which Jack exhibited
after a course of highly discouraging anecdotes volunteered by Mr.
Blockham, the proprietor of Outer Back Mullah, attracted the younger
son.

“I am horribly tired,” he said to Jack, “of doing colonial experience
with this old buffer. It’s tremendously hard work and no pay, and, as
I’ve been here for a year, I fancy we’re quits. I know as much bullock
as I’m likely to learn for the next five years. I got a tip from home
the other day. What do you say if I go run-hunting with you? You’re just
the sort of mate I should like, and I believe there is some grand
country to the north-west, in spite of what old Blockham says.”

Jack looked at the cheerful, pleasant youngster, full of mirth, and with
the eager blood of generous youth, unworn and sorrow free, coursing
through every vein. Much as he hungered after congenial fellowship in
his lonely quest, he yet spoke warningly.

“It’s a risky game enough, Waldron, you know. I’d say, if you take my
advice, stay where you are for another year. You’ll get your money out
then, and be _sure_ of investing it properly. You have a little to learn
yet, excuse me, like all new arrivals.”

“Oh, yes, I dare say, that’s all very prudent, and so on. There are new
chums and new chums. Look at my arms, old fellow.”

Here he rolled up his jersey and showed his muscular fore-arm, bronzed
and well-nigh blackened by exposure to the unrespecting sun.

“I’ve not had my coat on much, as you see. I can ride, brand, leg-rope,
split, fence, milk, and draft with any man we’ve ever had here. A year
or two more Jackerooing would only mean the consumption of so many more
figs of <DW64>-head, in my case. No! take me or leave me, as you like,
but I’m off exploring on my own hook if you don’t.”

“In that case,” assented Jack, “we may as well hunt in couples. We can
back up one another if the <DW65>s are as bad and the water as scarce as
your friend says.”

“He be hanged!” said the impetuous youth. “He’s not a bad old chap, but
he tells awful yarns, and, like all old hands, he thinks nobody knows
anything but himself.”

“Then it’s settled. Can you get a couple of horses?”

“Yes, and a stunning black boy. The young scamp is awfully fond of me,
and as a tracker he’s a regular out-and-outer. By Jove! won’t it be
jolly—Redgrave and Waldron, the intrepid explorers! I feel as if we
could go to Carpentaria.”

Jack smiled at the boy’s joyous readiness for the battle. Once he had
been as wild in delight at feast or foray; but those days had gone.

“We must wait till we come back,” said he, gravely, “before we begin to
arrange the fashion of the chaplet. If the black boy is plucky, and
really wants to go with us, bring him by all means.”

Mr. Waldron, for whom remittances had lately arrived, spent the next day
in getting in his horses, packing his effects, the half of which were
condemned by Jack as being overweight, and questioning and lecturing the
boy Doorival as to his special “call” for the enterprise. This sable
waif was not the particular property of any one, so he was permitted to
risk his valueless life without remark or remonstrance. He had been
captured in a somewhat indiscriminate reprisal upon a wild tribe by a
neighbour of Mr. Blockham’s, with his foot sticking out of a hollow log,
in which, like a dingo puppy, he had instinctively hidden. Dragged forth
by that member, he had been chained up till he grew tame, and well
flogged from time to time till further “civilized.” After a few years of
this stern training he had become sufficiently civilized to run away,
and had arrived at Outer Back Mullah some months since, a shade more
than half dead with fear and thirst. Travelling through hostile country,
where his kidney fat wouldn’t have been worth an hour’s purchase after
discovery by his countrymen, he had had necessarily but little leisure
and less refreshment. Guy Waldron had taken him in hand as he would a
bull-terrier pup, and, finding him game and sharp, had adopted him as
personal retainer. On the third morning after the treaty, therefore,
Doorival appeared on an elderly but well-conditioned screw, leading a
pack-horse, and showing in his roving black eyes and gleaming teeth the
strongest satisfaction at his promotion.

Mr. Blockham did by no means disguise his sentiments when he bade
farewell to his quondam pupil and his adventurous guest.

“Well, Waldron, good-bye. I wish you both luck, I’m sure; but I’m blest
if I don’t believe a warrigal will be picking some of your bones before
this day six months. I’ve no opinion of exploring; I don’t believe in
running after new country; let other fellows, if they’re fools enough,
do all that bullocking. Wise men buy their work afterwards—and cheap
enough too. I didn’t take up Outer Back Mullah; quite the contrary. I
gave a chap two hundred pounds for it, and where’s he now?”

“Somebody must find the runs,” said Guy, “and a good run, with permanent
water, or say a dozen or twenty blocks, are worth more than two hundred
or two thousand pounds either.”

“That’s all very well,” returned the cynical senior; “but how do you
know there’s any country where you’re going, let alone water? Besides,
excuse me, sir, but you’re a-goin’ with a man that’s been unlucky, by
his own word, with everything he’s touched before. I don’t believe in a
man as is unlucky. I’ve seen a deal of life, and I never go in with one
of that sort; not if I know it. No offence to you, sir.” This to Jack.
“_You_ can’t help it, I know. As for you, you young black bilber, what
are you grinnin’ and lookin’ so pleased at? You’ll wish old Driver was a
lickin’ ye with the dog-chain again, when some of them myalls gets round
ye a little before daylight.”

The little expedition set forth, maugre the boding utterances of Mr.
Blockham. The equipment was not costly, but it was sufficient; and two
of the party at least had a “letter of credit” good for all the drafts
which they were likely to draw upon it for some time to come.

What says the wise, sad humorist?—

           “Our youth! our youth! that spring of springs,
           It surely is one of the blessedest things
               By Nature ever invented.
           When the rich are happy in spite of their wealth,
           When the poor are rich in spirits and health,
               And all with their lot contented.”

Guy Waldron, full of hope, and thirsting for wild life and adventure,
rode side by side with Jack, carolling as he went, like Taillefer
singing the song of Rollo in the fore-front of the Battle of Hastings.

Doorival followed at a short distance, accompanied by the dog Help, whom
he had managed to propitiate, and to whom he from time to time addressed
all kinds of pretended inquiries and suggestions.

“By Jove!” said Guy, “I feel quite a new man now I’ve got away from that
confounded dull place, and that dismal old growler Blockham. He’s like
the man in Marcus Clarke’s ballad, who ‘Did nothing but swear and
smoke.’ It’s a luxury to have a Christian to talk to again. Talk of
Englishmen!—Doorival’s a king to him.”

“It’s all luck,” said Jack; “even in this rather distant region you
might have found a chum who got the periodicals by every mail, and went
in for decent reading at odd times.”

“That’s true enough,” said the representative of “Young England,” “for I
went over one day to get our mail—sixty-mile ride too—and Haughton’s
cousin had just come down from India, such a jolly chap he was too—had
been in Cashmere lately, and told us no end of yarns. But I was fool
enough to think all squatters were alike, and let my agents send me
anywhere they liked.”

“Well, you’ll know better next time,” said Jack, “after we’ve discovered
this new country, and sold a few blocks to buy a couple of thousand
store cattle with. You can pick up an Indian swell, or any sort of
partner you fancy, if that works out.”

“_You’ll_ suit me down to the ground, old fellow,” said Mr. Waldron,
enthusiastically. “We’re in ‘for better for worse,’ as they say in the
christening service, or the matrimonial questions and answers, or
whatever it is.”

“It doesn’t concern us at present,” said Jack, gravely. “Possibly you’ll
be better informed on that subject likewise, some day. In the meantime,
how long shall we be getting through this cursed scrub?”

“I believe we shall have a week of it, if old Blockham is to be
believed. He always used to swear that the scrub on this side of Mullah
was more than a hundred miles thick, and that beyond that was a sandy
desert, which ran right into the middle of the continent.”

“Probably his geographical information was defective,” answered Jack.
“He is evidently one of that order of pioneers whose watchword is ‘no
good country beyond me.’ We must keep a due north-west course, take our
chance of water, and if Australia keeps true to her past character the
worse country we pass through the better our chance of dropping on to
something astoundingly good.”

“You think so really?” asked Waldron.

“Sure of it—look at the Won-won country, the Matyara, and half-a-dozen
other choice districts I could name. The first explorers must have been
perfectly desperate with the awful jungles and barren tracts they had to
pass through. Then one fine morning a fellow climbs up the last
iron-bark range, or tears his garments in pushing through the last
thicket, and lo! the Promised Land lies stretched out before him.”

“By George! you raise a fellow’s spirits awfully,” said Guy. “I suppose
you have been in this funny country ever so many years?”

“I wasn’t born in it, if that is what you mean,” answered his companion;
“but I have been in Australia ever since I could speak; so I have had
the benefit of sufficient colonial experience at any rate.”

Thus conversing, sometimes idly enough, at times with a strong tinge of
earnestness, the day wore on. At sundown they reached a fairly
commodious spot, and there they made their simple dispositions for
passing the night.

Here Mr. Doorival began to demonstrate his quality, and to establish the
soundness of the reasoning which led to his being promoted to his
present position. He it was who discovered the water, made the fire,
helped to unpack the cooking utensils, and to hobble out the horses—the
whole under the watchful eye of the dog Help, who lay under a bush and
watched the proceedings with great interest.

One horse was tethered, so as to be at hand in case of need; the others
were permitted to range within moderate bounds. Only a small fire was
made, as, once within the boundaries of the real wild blacks, it would
be hazardous to run the chance of attracting them to the camp. And it
was thought _en règle_. The nights were mild, as rarely in that region
is it otherwise, the occasional storms and fierce rainfalls excepted.

After the evening meal and the _postc[oe]nal_ smoke, each one wrapped
himself in his blanket and lay down separately, and at some distance
from the fire; so in case of attack their antagonists would be less
likely to surround them, or to discover the precise locality from which
the deadly discharge of the white man’s firearms might be expected. Help
deserted his youthful acquaintance of the day, and, curling himself up
beside his master, dozed all watchfully, as is the manner of his kind.




                              CHAPTER XX.

          “Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness.”—_Cowper._


For five days the explorers pursued their toilsome journey. The scrub
was dense; the travelling was monotonous and discouraging; but the
leader was too old a bushman to expect other than difficulty and
privation at the onset, while the temperament of Guy Waldron soared
easily in its first essay of conflict with the wilderness above such
trifles as scarcity of water and a dangerous route. The boy Doorival
managed to jack up a little game from time to time, which materially
aided their unpretending _menu_. Once, indeed, the horses went back a
whole day’s journey; the situation was far from reassuring while they
waited in camp for their scout. But at sundown the unerring and patient
tracker returned triumphantly with the truants; and that night in camp
was so full of satisfaction that it might be considered to approach a
condition of actual pleasure so lightly flow or ebb the currents of
mental circulation which we characterize as joy or sorrow.

“By Jove!” said Guy, “I’ve often thought it was jolly enough dozing
before the fire on a great ottoman at Waldron Hall, after a good day’s
shooting, before it was time to dress for dinner, but I really believe I
feel more real pleasure at this moment as we lie here smoking and seeing
these rascally nags of ours short-hobbled and safe again for a start. I
thought we were up a tree several times to-day, for exploring on foot is
_not_ inspiriting exercise, anyhow you look at it.”

“Doorival is a trump,” assented Jack. “He was a happy thought; here’s
his health in this flowing bowl of ‘Jack the Painter.’ I wish Mr.
Blockham’s stores had been a little more _recherché_.”

“He believes in the great doctrine of cheap and t’other thing,” answered
Waldron. “I never could have imagined that sugar of such exceeding
blackness was manufactured as we always had there. I used to tell him
that some planter distantly related must have worked up his spare
<DW65>s in it. He was always giving me lessons in economy. One night he
said solemnly, as we were smoking, ‘Look here, Waldron, you’ll never
make no money if you use matches to light your pipe when there’s a fire
right before you;’ whereupon he placed a coal on the bowl of his and
puffed away like a man who had saved a sovereign. Fancy saving the
fractional part of a farthing, and then paying a shilling for a glass of
bad grog.”

“It sounds absurd,” agreed Jack, “but with colonists of his stamp the
grog is exceptional, while the penny wisdom is invariable. And I must
say in justice that the Blockhams of our acquaintance generally die
rich, having burrowed their way to wealth, mole-blind to the pleasures
of the intellect, the claims of sympathy, and the duties of society.”

“Well, we’ll go in for the severest screwing,” said Guy, “when we get
hold of this new run, with which we shall make a colossal fortune and a
European reputation. I _should_ like to crow over my old governor, bless
his old soul!—he always delicately hinted that I should never do any
good out here, or anywhere else. Wanted me to take a farm. A farm! Fancy
three hundred acres in Oxfordshire, with a score or two of bullocks, and
twice as many black-faced Down sheep. Regular cockatooing. I didn’t see
it then. Now I’d almost as soon ‘keep a pike.’”

“You’re an adventurous, crusading kind of fellow, I know, Master Guy,”
said Jack, reflectively, “and I’m very glad to find another
knight-errant. But I’m not sure, all the same, whether both of us might
not have gone into the Master of Athelstane business advantageously, and
grown heavier and fussier every year, while we looked after our own
green fields and these same despised short-horned beeves. However, it’s
Kismet, I suppose, that such land and sea rovers should exist, and
either plant their standards or fill the breach for other more cautious
combatants to walk over. Now, every man to his blanket. Good-night.”

The scrub was passed at length, and, as Jack had prophesied, they
descried open country so superior to the character of the district
generally as to warrant the expectation of still more splendid
discoveries.

The watercourses were larger and the occasional lagoons deeper, and
beyond all question permanent. The plains were immense, and though not
richly grassed were covered with the best kinds of salsolaceous herbage,
known to bushmen as affording better and healthier food for stock than
the more enticing-looking green sward.

However, with the insatiable greed of their kind, they were not disposed
to content themselves with anything short of the magnificent and exalted
standard which they had set up for themselves. So onward and onward
still they pressed, though from time to time the existence of “Indian
sign” began to be pressed upon their attention by the watchful, uneasy
Doorival.

“My word, plenty wild black fellow sit down here,” he exclaimed one day.
“Big one tribe—plenty fighting men—you see um track.” Here he pointed to
some perfectly invisible imprint upon the hard dry soil. “We better push
on, these fellows sneak ’long a camp some night.”

“Then they’ll get pepper,” answered Guy, with his customary contempt of
danger. “I could knock over as many of your countrymen, Doorival, with
this Terry-rifle as would keep them corroboreeing for a month. All the
same, I’d rather they didn’t tackle us just yet.”

“I think we must take rather longer stages,” proposed Jack, “and get out
of this hostile country. We haven’t seen the track of cattle or sheep
for nearly a week. I suspect we are beyond the furthest-out people.”

However, it would appear that Jack had under-estimated the enterprise of
his countrymen, for next day Doorival came tearing in full of excitement
to announce that he had seen cattle tracks, “all about—all about;” and
by a patient system of induction the gradually concentric tracks brought
them before the light had wholly faded within view of the actual
encampment.

It _was_ an outside station, in every sense of the word. As they rode up
across the long, ever-lengthening plain to the speck in the shifting
wavelets of the mirage which they knew to be a hut, a strangely
characteristic reception awaited them.

In front of a small mud-walled cabin, thatched with wiry tussock grass
which grew sparsely by the great lagoon on the bank of which it was
constructed, sat a ragged individual, whose haggard features displayed
pain and anxiety in equal proportions.

Before him were two crossed sticks, upon which were arranged a brace of
double-barrelled rifles, much after the fashion of the disabled soldier
in _Gil Blas_ who levied contributions from the charitable on the
roadside.

Perceiving as they advanced that the sentinel hoisted a flag of truce,
so to speak, by waving a tattered handkerchief, they rode up and
dismounted.

“By George! this is a droll homestead,” said Mr. Waldron, with his usual
impetuosity. “May I ask if you are the survivors of Leichhardt’s
expedition, or the Spirits of the Inner Desert, or Robinson Crusoe
_redivivus_? At any rate I’m proud to make your acquaintance, sir. Allow
me to introduce my friend, Mr. Redgrave; my own name, Waldron.”

An unaccustomed smile distorted the stranger’s features. He retained his
sitting position, as if, like the prince in the greatest of all fairy
tales, he was composed of black marble below the waist.

“We’re very glad to see you and your friend too—pleasure decidedly
mutual. Name of our firm, Heads and Taylor. We made out from Burnt
Creek. I’ve been at death’s door with rheumatism—can’t walk a yard to
save my life. Taylor is just recovering from fever and ague. He’s in bed
in the humpy.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Jack, sincerely. “But what is the idea
of this battery?”

“Blacks!” said the rheumatic gentlemen. “I believe we have the greatest
lot of devils on this run anywhere this side of Carpentaria. They’ve
tried to rush the hut several times—once at night, luckily when the
stockmen were at home, and we potted seven. They’re away all day, and I
have to mount guard, as you see. However, turn out your horses, and
we’ll enjoy ourselves for once in a way. It’s no compliment,
unfortunately, to say that the longer you stay the better shall we be
pleased.”

“Thanks, very much,” said Jack; “we won’t trespass on your rations; but
we’ll camp alongside of you for a few days, and perhaps we may be able
to be of mutual assistance.”

“Likely enough,” said the prince with the black marble legs, moving
uneasily on his form. “I suppose you are looking out for country?”

“That is our object. Have you a notion of anything first class?”

“If you wait till the stockmen come in, I believe one of them knows of
some wonderful country close by, that is within fifty miles. He lost
himself, and got out there when we first came up; and he has ever since
wanted us to move over and take it up; but this place is good enough and
large enough for all the stock we shall have for the next ten years. So
Taylor and I refused to budge. It will be the very thing for you.
Perhaps you won’t mind helping me into the hut. I should like to see if
Taylor wants anything. It is quite a luxury to feel safe.”

They lifted their afflicted brother pioneer carefully, and deposited him
upon the edge of a rude stretcher in the hut. On the other bed lay the
wasted form of a man, who raised his eyes beseechingly as they entered.

“Poor chap,” said Mr. Heads, “he’s past the worst stage, but he’s
awfully weak, and generally very thirsty about this time. I was just
wondering whether I could drag myself in when you hove in sight. Of
course I knew it was all right when I saw your horses. Horses denote
respectability, always.”

“Except when mounted by bushrangers,” said Jack.

“I didn’t think of that. There’s nothing to steal out here, and an
off-chance of being walked into by the blacks. We haven’t attained to a
sufficiently high stage of civilization to support white Indians.
Meanwhile, ‘sufficient for the day,’ &c.”

“I should say so,” said Waldron, lost in admiration of the courage and
coolness of these dwellers in the wilderness. “_You_ have had your share
of evils, and something over.”

“It’s all a lottery—the fellows at Burnt Creek used to call us ‘heads
and tails,’ and say we ought to toss up who would be first eaten by the
<DW65>s. I didn’t think it would be such a close thing, however.”

At nightfall the two stockmen came home, and the history of the
establishment was fully disclosed. The overland journey with the stock
had been unusually toilsome, and in swimming a river and remaining in
wet clothes Mr. Heads had contracted an illness which had taken the form
of acute rheumatism, and threatened to <DW36> him for life. Fever and
ague had fastened their _remitting_ fangs upon Taylor, and here in this
lonely outpost, in the midst of hostile savages, hundreds of miles from
medical or other aid, had the wayworn pioneers to brave their fate—to
recover if their constitutions proved sufficiently strong, or to die and
be buried in the waste. Such are the risks, however, which Englishmen
have ever been found willing to dare for fame or for fortune.

And such, as long as “proud England keeps unchanged the strong hearts of
her sons,” will they still continue to brave. Fortunately the stockmen
were resolute, active young men, or a very Flemish account of the cattle
would have been rendered. Of course they rode armed to the teeth with
carbine and revolver, and made but little scruple of using both on
occasion.

“I’m blowed if I know how the boss stands it, sitting up there like an
image, day after day. He’s a good shot, and these warrigal devils knows
it, or they’d have rushed the place long enough before now. I’m that
afraid of seeing the hut burned, and them lyin’ cut up in bits outside,
that I hardly durst come home of a night.”

“How are the cattle doing?” asked Jack.

“Well—they can’t help doing well; and they’d do better if these black
beggars would let ’em alone. Better fattening country no man ever see.
Pity you gentlemen don’t sit down handy and be neighbours for us.”

“I’m not sure that we won’t,” said Jack, in a non-committal tone of
voice; “but we sha’n’t go in for any but real, first-class country, and
plenty of it. We want run for ten or fifteen thousand head of cattle, at
least.”

“Come, Mick,” said Mr. Heads, “you may as well lay this gentleman on to
that Raak country that you saw when you were lost beyond the range, if
you were not too frightened to know what it was like.”

“Well, I don’t say but I will,” said Mick, slowly. “I dare say he’ll
sling me a tenner if it turns out all right. It _is_ country, and no
blessed mistake. This here run ain’t a patch on it.”

“Is there plenty of it?” inquired Jack, with commendable caution. “We
don’t want a mulga scrub and a plain or two. We must have a whole
country side; good water, and twenty-five-mile block. Something in that
line. And I’ll give you——”

“Twenty pounds, after we’ve seen and approved,” broke in Waldron, who
was impatiently chafing to clench the bargain. “So it’s a bargain, eh?”

“Done—and done with you, sir,” said the stockman heartily. “You’re one
of the right sort; and I’d give a trifle out of my own pocket to have
you alongside of us. I’ll go a bit of the way to-morrow, and put you up
to the lay of the country—there’s room enough and water enough for half
the cattle in Queensland.”

This important stage reached, the rest of the evening was spent in
comparatively cheerful and abstract talk. Mr. Heads took a more cheerful
view of his situation and surroundings, and stated that when Messrs.
Redgrave and Waldron had arrived and fairly put down stakes, he should
look upon themselves as residents in a settled district. “They had not
had a beast speared for a week. Matters were decidedly improving. If
Taylor would only get stronger, he believed he would be on his legs
again in no time. Couldn’t say how cheered up they all felt. Don’t you,
Taylor?” Here the periodical chills came on the sick man, and he began
to shiver as if he would shake his teeth out soon.

It was held, after due consultation, to be only consistent with the
exercise of Christian charity to remain for a few days, and to comfort
the garrison of this _garde douloureuse_. The horses profited by the
respite; and when the journey was recommenced the explorers had the
satisfaction of leaving their hosts in a state of mental and bodily
convalescence. Mr. Taylor, having passed over the shaking stage, began
to recover strength, while Mr. Heads, still much restricted as to
locomotion, was hopeful as to ultimate recovery, and inclined to believe
that the heathen would be confounded in due time, and the persecuted
cattle be permitted to eat their cotton-bush unharmed, free from spears
and stampedes.

Detailed information as to route and water-courses was obtained from
Mick Mahoney, the stockman, a New South Welshman of Irish extraction,
who was loud in praise of the grand country he was, in his own phrase,
“laying them on to.” Altogether, matters wore a more hopeful and
encouraging appearance to Jack’s mind than at any time since the
“hegira” from Gondaree. The horses were fresh and in good heart; their
arms and ammunition were carefully looked to. Some slight addition was
made to the commissariat; and Mr. Waldron, as he rode forth, all
_adieux_ having been made, declared himself to be “as fit as a fiddle,”
and ready to fight all the blacks in the glorious new territory of Raak
if it was half as good as Mick Mahoney had made out.

“I feel like one of the Pilgrim Fathers,” he was good enough to remark,
“just unloaded from the _Mayflower_, and all ignorant of Philip of
Pokanoket, Tecumseh, and the rest of the Red Indian swells. I suppose we
shall not have any of their weight to do battle with. A spear like an
arrow is a mild kind of weapon enough unless it hits you. I propose if
we get this country, to be kind to these Austral children of Ishmael,
against whom is, apparently, the hand of every man.”

“The worst possible policy,” said Jack; “after the place is settled,
well and good, but as long as ill-blood lasts you can’t be too careful.”

“I think you are disposed to be hard on them,” answered Guy; “but of
course you’re the commanding officer, and I give in. Only, I have a
strong feeling in favour of a genuine patriarchal reign. The whole
tribe, gradually convinced of the good feeling and firmness of the new
ruler, bowing down to the beneficent white stranger, and, while toiling
for him with passionate devotion, insensibly creating for themselves a
higher ideal.”

“Dreams and phantasies of youth, my dear Waldron, frightfully
exaggerating the good qualities of human nature, never by any chance
realized. There’s always some scoundrel of a stockman who undoes all
your teaching, or some long-headed crafty pagan who convinces his
brethren of the very obvious fact that stealing is a cheaper way of
procuring luxuries than working for them.”

“It may be so,” said the boy (another name for enthusiast, unless the
nature be precociously cold or corrupt); “but all the same, if we get
this country, I should like to do something for these pre-Adamite
parties, or whatever they are. I think they are very improvable myself.”

“Up to a certain point, but not a peg further; like all savages, they
lack the power of continuous self-denial; that’s where the lowest known
specimens of the white races immeasurably excel them. Out of any given
hundred of the most debased whites you may get an individual infinitely
susceptible of development by culture. You may take the continent
through, and from the whole aboriginal population you shall be unable to
cull such a one.”

“Well, I know that is the general creed about <DW65>s, as we
comprehensively call all men a few shades darker than ourselves; but
when we annex this kingdom of Raak I will certainly try the experiment.
In the meanwhile, when shall we get to it? I feel most impatient to gaze
on this land of the Amalekites. They have no walled cities at any rate.”

“If we have luck we may get there to-morrow,” said Jack, “and camp on
our own run, or runs, for we shall have plenty to sell as well as to
keep.”

Steering precisely by the directions given, and a rough chart
manufactured for them, they found themselves quartered for the first
night in a barren and unpromising scrub. However, this was the
description of country described, being, indeed, the occasion of Mick
Mahoney losing his tracks and eventually blundering into the astonishing
land of Raak.

Next morning they were all on the alert, and for the greater part of the
day toiled through a most hopeless and apparently endless scrub. Evening
approached and found them still in the jungle. Guy began to think that
they had missed their course; or that Mick Mahoney had lied; or that
they were going deeper and deeper into one of the endless waterless
thickets which occur “down there.” Doorival, who by no means relished
this description of travelling, and who had found his pack-horse most
vexatious and hard to manage, suddenly ascended a high tree, and soon as
he reached the top began to gesticulate and call out.

“All right, Misser Redgrave,” he cried out, as soon as he had deposited
himself, with some breathlessness, on the ground; “me see ’um that one
new country, big waterhole, and big hill, like’t Mick tell you. Plenty
black fellow sit down; I believe me see ’um smoke all about.”

“They be hanged!” said Guy, throwing up his hat; “let us push on and
camp on the edge of it. I don’t want to stop another night in the
wilderness.”

Fired with new hope, they redoubled their exertions, and as the sun fell
in broad banners—“white and golden, crimson, blue”—he lighted up the
welcome panorama of a vast pyramidal mass of granite, throwing its
shadows across a silver-mirrored lake, while, far as eye could see,
stretched apparently endless plains.

The comrades looked at each other for a moment, and then Guy burst into
a wild hurrah, and, taking Jack’s hand, shook it with unacted fervour.

“By Jove, old fellow,” said he, “this is a moment worth living for,
worth a whole long life in Oxfordshire, with all the partridge and
pheasant shooting, fishing and hunting, dressing for dinner, and all the
other shams and routine of recreation. This is life! pure and
unadulterated; travel, adventure, anxiety, and now Success! Triumph!
Fortune!”

“Don’t make such a row, my dear fellow,” said Jack, more philosophical,
but inwardly exultant, “or else we shall have the whole standing army of
Raak upon our backs. You may depend upon it the fellows are pretty well
fed in this locality; and when that is the case they are apt to become
very ugly customers in a skirmish. We may as well take off the packs.”

“What, camp here?” demanded Waldron, in a most aggrieved tone.

“Why not? You would not have us go on to the lake before we know whether
the tribe is not in force there. No! here we have the scrub at our
backs, and if attacked—and we must keep that possibility uppermost in
our minds—we have a capital cover to fight or fly in, whichever may be
most expedient.”

So they abode there, warily abstaining from making any but the smallest
fire, and deferring possession of the new world till the morrow.

They had been long on their way to the lake—to _their_ lake—concerning
the name of which they had already held discussion, before the sun
irradiated the virgin waste which lay unclaimed, untrodden, save by the
foot of the wandering savage, before and around them. The pyramid of
fantastically piled rocks rose clear and sharp in outline on the shore
of the lake. The distance, as is usual with such landmarks in a
perfectly level country, was greater than they had supposed. It was
midday when they loosed their tired horses among the luxuriant herbage
at its base, and wandered to the edge of the gleaming waters, doubly
gracious from their rarity in that land of fierce heat and infrequent
pool and stream. Amid the caves which deeply tunnelled the foundation of
this wonder-temple of Nature they found traces of burial and tribal
feast, and the strange, gigantic Red Hand, the symbol of forgotten
rites, traced rudely but indelibly upon the dim cavern walls. Doorival
gazed with wondering and troubled looks upon these tokens of an older
day—a more powerful organization of the fast-fading tribes.

“I believe big one black fellow sit down here,” he said, with some
appearance of awe and perturbation, a most unusual state of mind with
him, a full-blooded wolf cub that he was, and curiously devoid of fear;
“one old man Coradjee come every moon and say prayer along a that one
murra. By and by wild black fellow run track belonging to us, and sneak
up ’long a camp.”

“We must keep a good look out, then, Doorival,” said Redgrave, sanguine
and fearless in the presence of the great discovery. “Keep your revolver
in good order, and Mr. Waldron and I will pick them off with our rifles
like crows. Help will tell us when they are coming, won’t you, old man?”

That intelligent quadruped, conscious that he was being appealed to, but
not, let us say, fully understanding the whole of the conversation,
looked wistfully at his master for a minute, and then relieved his
feelings by a series of loud barks and a rush down to the lake, in the
erroneous expectation of catching some of the water-fowl that thronged
the shallows.

They concluded to camp at the lake that day, and on the next to try and
discover the river which they doubted not divided at some point this
magnificent tract of country. The one fact established of a permanent
watercourse, and their prize was gained. They had nothing more to do but
to put in their tenders for as many five-mile blocks as they pleased of
the Raak country. Their fortune was made; they could easily dispose of a
third part of it; stock up another third with breeding cattle, and after
three or four years of very easy squatter-life—_pace_ the blacks—might
consider themselves to be wealthy men.




                              CHAPTER XXI.

       “The brown Indian marks with murderous aim.”—_Goldsmith._


Late next day they fell upon converging tracks and indications that the
wild creatures of the region walked steadily in one direction, mostly
discovered and collated by Doorival. Keeping the average direction, they
came towards evening upon a noble, full-fed flowing stream, running
north-easterly, and abounding in fish and wild-fowl.

“Hurrah!” shouted Guy Waldron, “this is something like a river. What a
glorious reach that is! We ought to christen it, for I swear no white
man ever saw it before; what shall we call it? I make you a present of
the lake, by which to immortalize any of your fair friends; but I should
like to name this river; or I’ll toss up, whichever you like.”

“I will accept the lake, which I hereby call Lake Maud—we will provide
the champagne on a future occasion. What shall you call the river?”

“I shall call it the Marion, after my dear old mother. Heaven knows
whether she will ever see her wild boy again. I should like to have my
head in the old lady’s lap again, as I used to do when I was a
schoolboy, and she used to talk to me in her gentle way, and charm all
the perversity out of me. I wonder what sets me thinking of the blessed
saint now.”

“It won’t do you any harm, Guy,” said Jack, kindly. “Mine died when I
was a little chap, but I shall never forget her, it seems like
yesterday. And now, what about making tracks for civilization—save the
mark—the day after to-morrow? We may run the river down to-morrow to see
if the country gets worse or better, and then we must head for the
nearest place the mail passes and send in our tenders—the sooner the
better.”

“All right. I should like a month here; but one can’t be too spry about
the tenders; there are always such a lot of rascally landsharks on the
look-out for anything like good new country. They might have got a scrap
or two of information out of old Blockham, from which basis they are
quite capable of tendering for all the available country within a
thousand miles of him.”

“Quite true,” said Jack. “I’m glad you see it in that light. I’ve heard
of many a pioneer who has had the hard work of years snatched away from
him by tenders suspiciously close to, but little in advance of, his own.
How the information was supplied Heaven only knows, but it has been done
before now. Didn’t old Ruthven get Yap-yap and Marngah, all that country
side? and didn’t Westrope, who discovered it, lose heart and migrate to
California, disgusted with Australia, and wroth with the whole civil
service from the messengers to the minister?”

Their exploration fully confirmed the previous high estimate of the
quality of the country. Following the river downward, they came from
time to time upon unusually broad, deep reaches, equal to a three years’
drought without serious diminution. The plains retained their character,
and were rich in saline herbage, intermingled with the best kinds of
fattening grasses. There was room for half-a-dozen stations of the
largest size; and as far as they could see there was no appearance of
the country “falling off”—that is, changing into the apparently verdant
but utterly worthless spinifex, or the endless scrubs which multiply
labour and decrease profits. No; the Raak country was as good as good
could be, perfect in quality, and more than sufficient in quantity. They
rested contented, and decided to make back to the settlements with
morning light. With that end in view they shaped their course in such
fashion as to strike the Great Scrub, which they had penetrated after
leaving Mr. Blockham’s, at a point more in the direct line to the
settled country, whence they might send in their tenders for their
principality with the smallest possible loss of time.

By cutting off corners, and making use of their previous experience,
they managed to reach the border of this jungle tract late on the
following evening.

All that day and the previous night the boy Doorival had been uneasy and
watchful. Had they not known his exceptional courage, they would have
attributed his uneasiness to the causeless fear and general apprehension
so often exhibited by aboriginals when in strange territory. More than
once he pointed out a thin column of smoke rising at no great distance
from them. Sometimes one was observable on one flank, sometimes on the
other, or in their rear. And as they rode forward it seemed that these
tiny vaporous phenomena were rather less distant than in the earlier
part of the day.

“You see that one?” said the boy, in a low, broken voice, indicative of
dread. “Black fellow talk along that one smoke. One black fellow ’long a
hill see you, _he_ make smoke. ’Nother one black fellow see that one
smoke, _he_ make ’um smoke, tell ’nother one black fellow ‘all right.’
By and by, I believe, we see ’um, and no mistake. I think keep watch,
all hands, ’long a camp to-night.”

“Very well, Doorival,” said Jack, “we shall all sleep with one eye open.
Help will tell us when they are pretty close up, and we have plenty of
cartridges all ready for the first round.”

They had approached within a couple of miles of a long cape of scrub
which stretched out into the open country, as a promontory into the sea,
when it suddenly became apparent that they had entered upon a different
description of travelling. They found a wide expanse of deep sand, level
as the blown beaches of the sea, embellished in large patches here and
there with the pink flowering mesembryanthum, which looked like a great
bright flag cast down on the mimic shore, but deep and toilsome for the
horses, so that an active footman could have run as fast as the
struggling, floundering quadrupeds. Here, in this unexpected trap,
suddenly appeared two large bodies of blacks, who converged, as if by
preconcerted signal, and followed closely upon their tracks. They did
not make any pretence of attack, but followed patiently in the wake of
the party, as if more in the hope that the horses might sink exhausted
in the sand, and so place the party at their mercy, than with the
intention of forcing an engagement.

John Redgrave and his companions had ridden hard that day in order to
reach the point now in front of them, and, ignoring the possibility of
any change of country, had not perhaps exercised sufficient caution in
so doing. Now they saw their error. The horses toiled, stumbled, and
staggered in the deep, yielding sand, while nearer and still nearer came
the savage horde, following up, with wolf-like obstinacy, their
faltering footsteps. At length, when the timber was distant about a
mile, the expedition held a council of war.

“I wonder, if we get into the cover, whether there is any chance of the
fellows following us further,” said Waldron. “My horse is nearly done,
thanks to my unfair weight; but I don’t like to leave him behind.”

“Plain black fellows never go ’long a scrub,” asserted Doorival; “we get
’long a timber they stop and turn round. Too much afraid of debil-debil;
but I believe they catch us before that; they close up now.”

“How can we stop them?” demanded Guy. “I can’t go faster to save my
life.”

“I’ll show you,” said Jack, dismounting; “you lead my horse on slowly,
and be ready to wait for me as I come up. I’ll manage to stop them.”

“But you are going to certain death,” said Waldron. “I can’t stand
that.”

“Not at all,” said Jack, coolly; “you take my orders: I’m first officer,
you know. Walk on quietly, and leave me here.”

Jack remained where he was, and permitted Waldron and Doorival to go
slowly forward. He looked carefully to his rifle, and as the array of
natives came rather confusedly along he picked out a conspicuous-looking
personage in the lead and fired. The unfortunate savage threw up his
arms and dropped dead in his tracks. Another fell, desperately wounded,
and yet another to the third shot. The mass of pursuers became confused
at this sudden onslaught. They halted, appeared irresolute, and finally
made a flank movement, and suffered our travellers to pursue their way
in peace.

Jack quickly rejoined his men, who had stopped at the first shot; they
then dismounted, and, leading their weary horses, made good their way to
the cover, where they found firm ground and a sheltered nook, wherein
they rested for the night, thankful to believe that they would remain
unmolested by the dismayed contingent of the tribes of Raak.

“It was unfortunate that we should be compelled to draw first blood,”
said Jack, as they kept midnight watch, “but it was unavoidable. If one
horse had fallen we should have had the whole mob upon us at once,
without the faintest chance of escape.”

“What made you think of that particular style of defence?”

“I happened to know two explorers,” answered Jack, “who saved themselves
in a similar emergency long ago. Only that they were in very wet, marshy
country. Shirley told me he had never known it fail; and he being an
unquestioned authority I determined to try it.”

“Well, there’s nothing like experience,” said Guy, reflectively. “I
should never have thought of it, though I was just preparing to sell my
life dearly, as the writing fellows call it. To-morrow we shall be well
across this belt of scrub, and I suppose we may consider the war-path
business over.”

“I trust so,” answered his comrade; “we have plenty of obstacles and
troubles before us yet without that. I must say I shall be glad to see
the first bush inn again, unsatisfactory halting-places as they are,
notwithstanding.”

“That tribe give us fits when we go back to Raak again,” observed
Doorival, with decision. “How many men you take, Misser Redgrave?”

“Plenty of men, plenty of guns, Doorival,” said Guy Waldron; “don’t you
be afraid. You must tell them all about that if they don’t touch the
cattle we’ll be the best friends they ever had.”

“I not afraid,” said the boy, proudly. “You nebber see me frighten,
Misser Waldron!”

“Well, I never did,” admitted Guy; “you are as plucky a little beggar as
I ever saw of your age, white or black.”

For three days they pursued their course through the interminable scrub,
occasionally suffering for want of water, and at other times rendered
anxious by the idea that they had mistaken their course, and perhaps
struck the barren, waterless thicket at a point where it was broader
than they had imagined, in which case they might be a week or even a
fortnight before they threaded its ofttimes fatal maze. On the fourth
day they sent Doorival ahead to see if he could find any indication of a
change of landscape, which would fortify them in the idea that they had
not been mistaken in their calculations.

To their great joy their messenger returned before sunset with the
welcome intelligence that he had seen open country ahead, and they would
reach it early next morning.

A small supply of water being discovered, the little party camped, full
of sanguine anticipation of the morrow, looking upon the worst of the
journey as past, and already fancying themselves restored to
civilization and free to enter upon the first stage of their successful
discovery.

Their camp-fire was rather larger than usual that night. Some of the
minor precautions were dispensed with. No sign of native trails had been
seen lately, and after their repulse of the Raak army they felt
themselves equal to any ordinary skirmishing party.

The partners talked long as they sat and smoked by the fire. Guy was
unusually excited with the confirmation of their reckoning and the
expectation of a trip to the metropolis for the presentation of their
tenders, in the names of Redgrave and Waldron, for so many blocks upon
either bank of the river Marion, with others, including, of course, Lake
Maud and Mount Stangrove.

“It’s full of magnificent sensations, this _rôle_ of successful
explorer, Redgrave,” he said. “Nothing comes up to it that I ever felt
before, especially when you see plainly before you the unmistakable
profits and advantages. It comprehends so much beside discovery; it’s
the creation, as it were, of a colony of one’s very own.”

“It’s a grand thing in its way,” agreed Jack, with less enthusiasm,
recalling one great enterprise which had looked as fair and yet failed
so fatally. “But, as I said before, many things have to be done yet; and
I’m getting old enough, I fear, to dread the proverbial slip.”

“I know,” interrupted Guy, with eager scorn; “but there _can’t_ be a
break-down in our case—it’s morally impossible. They _must_ accept our
tenders. We can’t have any difficulty in selling some of our spare
blocks for cash enough to put on store cattle. How glorious it will be
to see them pitching into that lovely saltbush by the lake! I know my
governor would send me out two or three thousand pounds if he knew I had
a real partner and a real station—a country-side of my own.”

“It all looks very well, old fellow,” said Jack, “and I feel with you
that nothing in the ordinary run of events can prevent our forming a
fine property out of our discovery, which is entirely confined to our
own knowledge. You had better go straight in with the tenders as soon as
we reach the region of her Majesty’s mails, and I will stay at any
convenient township till I hear from you.”

“But why not come down with me?” demanded Guy. “I have lots of tin to
carry us on for a few months, and a spell in town would do you no harm.”

“I have made no vow,” said Jack, “but I have taken a solemn
resolution”—and a strange light came into his eyes as he spoke, and into
his heart a thrill as he thought of Juandah and his last words to Maud
Stangrove—“a resolution not to resume my position in society until I do
so as the man who has achieved a success; I must return a leader, a
conqueror, or my old comrades shall see me no more. My barque must sail
up the harbour with flags flying and prizes towed astern, or lie a
battered hull for wind and wave to hold revel over.”

“Ha!” said Guy, “stands the case thus? So we are too proud to bend to
the breeze until the wind changes? Well, I understand the feeling; only
you must put me up to all the ways of your Lands Department, or else I
shall get sold or nobbled, or ‘had,’ and then where will the prize-money
come from?”

“It is all simple enough,” said Redgrave. “You will leave with
everything cut and dry, and in writing. You will be able to manage
advances and so on down below, and I shall be all the more handy to go
and take delivery of the first lot of store cattle.”

“By Jove!” said Waldron, excitedly, “I feel as if I were behind them at
this very moment.”

As he spoke the dog Help rose slowly and, looking out into the darkness,
growled in a low, fierce tone, while Doorival, converted suddenly into a
statue, expressive of the act of listening, with an intensity apparent
in every nerve and muscle, raised his hand in silent warning. Each man
felt for his arms, and placed himself in full and perfect readiness for
the reception of whatever enemy might appear. The night was intensely
dark. Within a few feet of the fire the thicket was altogether composed
of Egyptian darkness. It might have been solitary as the great desert,
it might have contained an army with banners, for all that could be
seen: still evil was abroad, they doubted not. The dog, whose tongue
never lied, growled yet more menacingly. From Doorival at length came
the interpretation of the faint sounds of the desert.

“Hang that fire,” he said, at last, “I think we big fools for making it;
black fellow coming to rush the camp; I hear ’em stick break just now.”

Not a sound had fallen upon the less delicate organs of the two men, and
Redgrave, but for the corroboration of Help’s evidence, would have felt
almost inclined to discredit Doorival’s information.

“Sticks break all night in the bush,” he said, “still there’s something
up by the old dog’s bristles. If it were a dingo he would walk out to
meet it; but you see he cowers close by us. Listen again.”

“Your hear ’em now?” said Doorival, in a hoarse whisper, as a very faint
but continuous murmur of voices came in on the breeze. “Black fellow—no
mistake.”

“Every man to his tree,” said Guy. “I vote we clear out to the rear of
the fire, so that we may deliver a converging fire upon the scoundrels
when they come near the light. I call it devilish unhandsome to try and
pot us now we are so near civilized society. However, they’ll get it
hot, that’s one comfort.”

“It was a strange experience,” Redgrave thought, as he coolly picked out
the largest available tree where none were very big, and with Guy
awaited the attack. In utter desolation of that nameless solitude, with
the hour midnight, and the faint but distinct sounds as of the light
tread and hushed voices of the advancing savages, Redgrave felt as if
they were enacting a scene in some weird drama, and were awaiting the
Demon with whose intercourse their fate was interwoven.

That they would come off victorious, with the advantage of preparation
and the immense superiority of fire-arms, he never doubted. Still the
blacks had the advantage of numbers, and of that instinctive cunning
which renders the savage man no mean antagonist.

The noises ceased; for some minutes, an unpleasant period of suspense,
they awaited the onset. Then the dog suddenly burst into a loud, fierce
bark, as the still, warm midnight air was rent by a storm of yells; and
a shower of spears, apparently from every point of the compass, covered
the fire and every foot of ground within some distance with thirsty
spear-points.

A double volley, fired low and carefully in the direction of the
thickest spears apparently had some effect, as a sudden cry, promptly
checked, implied. For some time this curious interchange of missiles
took place. Whenever the blacks pressed forward, desirous of discovering
the exact hiding-place of the daring white men, a steady discharge
repulsed them. The whites were well supplied with ammunition, and the
rapidity with which they loaded and fired deceived the attacking party.
More than one man of note had fallen, and they became less eager in the
attack upon a party so well prepared, so skilled in defence. Apparently
a last attack was ordered. Some kind of flank movement was evidently
arranged, and some of the boldest of the fighting men of the tribe
ordered to the front. The spears commenced to fall very closely among
the resolute defence corps. They appeared as if thrown from a shorter
distance. Guy could have sworn that the spear which whizzed so closely
by his head, as he leaned over to fire in the direction of a
suspiciously opaque body, was thrown from behind yon small clump of
mulga. With the decision of intelligence, or the recklessness of
despair, the dog Help suddenly rushed out and assaulted what appeared to
be a man at the base of the clump referred to. Guy dashed forward to the
smouldering fire, and seizing a fire-stick threw it in the direction of
the combat where the dog was baying savagely, and occasional blows and
spear-thrusts showed that a fight _à l’outrance_ was proceeding. The
brand blazed up for a moment, just sufficient to display the burly form
of a savage warrior engaged in the ignoble contest. With practical
quickness Guy took a snap shot and sent a bullet through the broad
chest, the arms of which at once collapsed.

In the excitement of the moment Guy moved forward, displaying the whole
of his grand and lofty figure in the uncertain light. A score of spears
from the concealed enemy hurtled around him with the suddenness of a
flight of arrows. One of the puny-looking missiles—they were reed
spears, tipped with bone—pierced his arm, another struck him in the
side. Snapping the former short off, and carelessly drawing forth the
other, the wounded man stalked back to his cover, from whence he, with
Jack and Doorival, kept up a ceaseless fusillade. So deadly was the fire
that their assailants dared not approach more nearly the desperate
strangers, who fought so hard and shot so straight. From time to time a
yell, a smothered cry, proclaimed that a shot had taken effect.

The explorers took advantage of a pause in the attack to draw together
and hold converse.

“Redgrave, old fellow,” said Guy, in tones which were strangely altered,
“I fancy that I’ve lost more blood than shows, or else I’m hard hit, for
I feel deuced faint and queer.”

“You don’t mean it, Guy; surely you can’t be serious in thinking those
two needle punctures could stop you.”

“The one in the arm _is_ only a scratch, though it makes one wince; but
this confounded one in the flank has bitten more deeply, and I don’t
know what to say about it.”

“Then there is nothing for it,” said Jack, decisively, “but to beat a
retreat. If these black devils think you are badly hurt nothing will
stop their rush when they choose to make it. We must take stars for our
guide, and move steadily back, keeping our course as well as we can.”

“And what about the horses?”

“They must be left to their fate; we should risk our lives, and perhaps
lose them, if we attracted notice now by trying to catch them.”

“Pacha and all?” asked Guy, incredulously.

“I believe I could almost suffer my hand to be hacked off rather than
lose him if it were optional,” confessed Jack; “but we must choose
between life and death: the time is short.”

Having communicated the decision to Doorival, and pointed out the
direction, that young person selected a star, and, marching with eyes
steadfastly fixed upon it, the others followed him.

They were not pursued, probably because they were near the boundary of
the tribe that had assailed them. No people while unmolested are more
punctilious in preserving a proper attitude to friends and foes than the
untaught aborigines. They respect the hunting-grounds of their
neighbours in the most conscientious manner, and are always ready to
hunt up an outlaw or criminal who has taken refuge in the territory of a
foreign tribe. Such was one element of safety upon which the little
party reckoned, and by great good fortune it did not fail them.

By the merest chance it happened that the spot where the unlucky
camp-fire had been lighted was within a short distance of the ancient
and scarcely-observed tribal boundary. So that when John Redgrave with
his wounded comrade and their henchman abandoned their position they
were unwittingly in perfect safety before they had left the scene of the
conflict three miles behind them. It afterwards transpired that the
second chief of the tribe had been mortally wounded in the last volley.
The excitement and grief caused by his fall aided the retreating party
in their silent flight.

All the night through they travelled slowly but steadily onward, having
for their pilot the untiring Doorival, and for their guidance one
friendly star.

As day broke, and the red dawn stole soft and blushing over the gray
plain and duller foliage, they found themselves upon a pine-clothed
sand-hill, from whence they could survey the landscape in all
directions. By the clear dawn-light each man was enabled to scan the
face of his comrade. The pale and changed countenance of the once gay
and volatile Guy Waldron struck Redgrave with a feeling of wonder and
dread.

“Well, it seems that we are clear of these highly patriotic ‘burghers of
this desert city,’” said he, with an attempt at his old manner, though
the pained and fixed expression of his features belied the jesting
words. “Do you think there is a medical practitioner within hail,
Redgrave? though I fear me he would come late.”

“Good God!” said Jack, “you don’t say—you can’t think, old man, you are
_really_ hurt. I thought it was a mere scratch. Let us look and see;
surely something can be done.”

“’Tis not ‘as deep as a draw-well, or as wide as a church-door,’ as
Mercutio says, but I am really afraid that I shall see the old hall no
more, not even the modified home of a club smoking-room. It’s
hard—deuced hard, isn’t it, to die by the hand of miserable savages, in
a place only to be vaguely guessed at as within certain parallels; just
when we had hit the white too.”

“Don’t think of that, my dear old boy,” said Jack, gently, “you lie down
and have a sleep, and perhaps we shall find that you have over-rated the
damage.”

They made a fire; Jack and the boy Doorival kept watch, while the
sore-fatigued and wounded man slept. No sound of fear or conflict smote
upon their ears, as toil-worn and saddened, they passed the mournful
hours. Towards evening Guy Waldron stirred, but moaned with fresh and
increasing pain.

“Where am I?” he asked, as he looked around, with eyes which incipient
delirium had begun to brighten. “Oh, here, on this miserable
sand-hill—and dying—dying. Yes, I know that I am going fast. Do you
know, Redgrave, that I dreamed I was back in the old place in
Oxfordshire, and I saw my mother and the girls. I wish—I wish you could
have met my people, but that’s over—as plain as I see you and Doorival.
Don’t cry, you young scamp. Mr. Redgrave will look after you, won’t you?
Well, I thought the governor looked quite gracious, and said I was just
in time for the hunting season. Every one was so jolly glad to see me,
and then I woke and felt as if another spear was going slap through me.
Oh, how hard it is to die when a fellow is young and has all the world
before him! I don’t want to whine over it; but it seems such awful bad
luck, doesn’t it now?”

“I wish I had been hit instead,” groaned Jack. “I’m used to bad luck,
and it seems only the order of nature with me. Try and sleep again,
there’s a good fellow.”

“I shall never sleep again—except the long sleep,” answered Guy,
mournfully. “I feel my head going, and I shall begin to rave before
long. So we may as well have our last talk. When I’m gone send my watch
and these things—they are not of any great value—to my agents in Sidney,
and ask them to send them to my people. They know my address—and,
Doorival, come here.”

The boy came, with deepest sorrow in every feature, and knelt down by
his master’s side.

“Will you go home to my father, my house across the big sea, and tell
them how I was struck with a spear in a fight, and all about me.”

“I go, Misser Walron,” said the boy, cheerfully. “I tell your people.”

“You not afraid of big one water, and big canoe?”

“Me not afraid,” said the boy, proudly. “I go anywhere for _you_—you
always say, Doorival afraid of nothing.”

“All right, Doorival; you were always a game chicken. I should have made
a man of you if I had lived. Mr. Redgrave will give you new clothes when
you go down the country, and put you on board ship. Mind you are a good
boy, and remember what I told you, when you go to my country, and see
father belonging to me. Now good-night.”

The boy threw himself on his face beside the dying man, and with many
tears kissed his hand, and then, raising himself, walked to a tree at
some distance and sat with his head upon his knees, in an attitude of
the deepest dejection.

“Look here, old fellow,” continued Guy, “there’s a hundred or two to my
credit at the agents’. I’ll scrawl an order in your favour. You take it
and do what you can for the honour of the firm, and my share of the
profits, if there be any, in time to come, can go to my sisters. It will
remind them of poor Guy. I shall die happier if I think they will get
something out of it when I’m gone. Let the boy take all my traps home in
the ship with him. It will comfort the girls and the old people at home,
who have seen the last of their troublesome Guy. I wish you all the luck
going; and some day, when you are thinking of the first draft of fat
cattle, remember poor Guy Waldron, who would have rejoiced to knock
through all the rough work along with you; but it cannot be. Somebody
gets knocked over in every battle, and it’s my luck, and that’s all
about it. Good-bye, Redgrave, old fellow. I’m done out of my share of
hut-building, stock-yard-making, and all the rest of it. I feel that as
much as anything. Give me your hand—my eyes are growing dim.”

All the long night John Redgrave and the boy watched patiently and
tenderly by the dying man. Shortly before daylight there was a period of
unusual stillness. Jack lighted a torch and took one look at the still
face which he had learned to love. The features still wore the calm air
habitual to the man. The parted lips bore recent traces of a smile. The
square jaw was set and slightly fallen—Guy Waldron was dead!—dead in
this melancholy desert, thousands of miles from any one of his own name
or kindred.

John Redgrave closed the fearless blue eyes, which still bore unchanged
their steadfast look of truth or challenge. He covered the still face,
placed by his side the arm, carelessly thrown, as in life’s repose,
above the head, and, casting himself on the sand beside the dead, was
not ashamed to weep aloud.

How well-nigh impossible to realize was it that, but one short night
before, that clay-cold form had been full of glowing life, high hope,
and generous speech. A fitting representative of the old land, which has
sent forth so many heroes, conquering and to conquer. The darling of an
old ancestral home—the deeply-loved son of a gallant father. The
long-looked-for, dreamed-of wanderer, a demi-god in the eyes of his
sisters. And now, there lay all that was left of Guy Waldron—lonely and
unmarked in death amid that solitary waste, as a crag fallen from the
brow of their scarce-named peak, as a tree that sways softly but heavily
to its fall amid the crashing undergrowth of the desert woodlands.

                  *       *       *       *       *

That night John Redgrave and the wailing Doorival buried him at the foot
of a mighty sighing pine, covering up their traces as completely as the
boy’s woodcraft enabled them to do, and marking the spot in a sure but
unobtrusive manner, so that in days to come the burying-place of Guy
Waldron should not be suffered to remain undistinguished. This duty
being performed, Jack gathered up the small personal treasures of the
dead man, and long before dawn, steering by the southern stars, they
pursued their mournful progress towards the settlements.




                             CHAPTER XXII.

             “I loved him well; his gallant part,
             His fearless leading, won my heart.”—_Scott._


For several days they had an average measure of privation only. The
resources of Doorival were found equal to supplying them with food and
water. From the course pointed out to him he had never varied, and Jack
was, from observation and calculation, perfectly certain that it would
bring them, if carried out, well within the line of the settled
districts.

But as to one condition of success he felt undecided. For some weeks
there had been no rain, and a stretch of country lay yet before them in
which, according to the rainfall, they might, or might not, find water;
in the language of explorers, signifying that they might, or might not,
perish. Desperate from the death of Guy Waldron, he had been too
reckless to take this risk into the account. He would dare the hazard,
and put his last chance upon the die.

So it fared that, after leaving the last watercourse and entering upon
the wide untrodden system of plain, scrub, and sand-hill—scrub and
sand-hill and plain—which divided the rivers, Jack was compelled to
admit, after two days’ short allowance of water, and one with none at
all, that he had been foolhardy. The third day passed without the
slightest appearance of moisture. It was inexpedient to diverge from the
line for more than a short distance in search for fear of wasting their
failing strength. The boy, strong in passive courage, held out
unflinchingly. John Redgrave had the fullest faith in the accuracy of
his reckoning. They must, without the shadow of a doubt, strike the
waters of the Wondabyne, _if they could hold out_. But that was the
vital question. By his closely-examined and re-examined calculation they
should sight the great eucalypti that towered above those deep and
gleaming waters (oh, thought of Paradise!) hurrying beneath the carved
limestone cliffs on the following sunset, or at least before midnight.
Were but one day longer necessary, then were they both lost. The boy was
failing now in spite of his courage. For himself, he would not, could
not, consciously yield as long as he could stand or crawl on hands and
knees. Yet a certain swelling of his parched throat, a murmur in his
ears, a disposition to talk aloud and unbidden, all these signs
announced to him, as a practised bushman, that the fourth day, if passed
without water, would find them delirious and dying. Shutting out these
thoughts as far as his volition availed, he strode on, followed feebly
by the boy, during the long terrible day.

At sunset they halted for a few minutes upon the inevitable sand-hill,
with pine and shrub and long yellow grass, the exact fac-simile of
scores which they had crossed since they had left Raak. Jack faced the
west and gazed for a few moments upon the gorgeous blazonry of
scroll-like clouds, the rolling wavelets of orange, splashed with
crimson and ruddy with burning gold, which rose and fell in shifting
masses, as if rent by Titans from the treasure-house of Olympus. Far
away northward, far as the eye could see, lay the dim green desert,
measureless, lifeless, and life-denying.

“It is the last sunset that I shall see, possibly. It seems hard, as
poor Guy said; but when he and better men had gone on the battle-field
and elsewhere with the sound of victory in their ears, John Redgrave may
well go too. It is a fitting end of the melodrama of life. Doorival,
shoot that crow.”

This highly inconsequent concluding remark was occasioned by the
alighting of the bird of ill-omen, which had been following them since
dawn with the strange instinct of its kind, on a branch almost
immediately above them. The boy, wayworn almost to the death, and
looking well-nigh lifeless as he lay at Jack’s feet, could not resist
the irony of the situation, and, noiselessly sliding his carbine into
aim, sent a bullet through the breast of the unlucky “herald of the
fiend,” who dropped down before them, like the raven at the feet of Lucy
Ashton and her fateful, fascinating companion.

                     “To tear the flesh of princes
                       And peck the eyes of kings.”

Murmured Jack, “If one ever could smile again, it would be at this
transposition of situations. A minute since this unprejudiced fowl had a
well-grounded expectation that he was about to dine or sup upon us. Now
we are going to eat _him_.”

“Stupid fellow this one waggan,” said Doorival, taking a long and
apparently satisfactory suck at the life-blood of the incautious one;
“he think we close up dead.”

“He wasn’t far wrong either,” answered Jack, grimly. “Now light a fire,
and let us roast him a little for the look of the thing.”

Stimulated by even this unwonted repast, the forlorn creatures struggled
on till midnight. The night was comparatively cool, and with parched
throats and fevered brain John Redgrave judged it better, in spite of
the increasing weakness of the boy, to press forward and make their last
effort before dawn.

The Southern Cross, burning in the cloudless azure, with, as it appeared
to the despairing wayfarer, a mocking radiance and intensity of lustre,
had shown by its apparent change of position that the night was waning,
when the boy, who had been going for the last hour like an over-driven
horse, fell and lay insensible. Jack raised him, and after a few minutes
he opened his eyes and spoke feebly.

“Can’t go no furder, not one blessed step. You go on, Misser Redgrave,
and leave me here. I go ’long a Misser Waldron.” Here his dark eyes
gleamed. “He very glad to see Doorival again. I believe Wondabyne ahead;
you make haste.”

Jack’s only reply to this was to pick the boy up and to stagger on with
him across his shoulder. For some distance he managed by frantic effort
and sheer power of will to support the burden; but his failing muscles
all but brought him heavily to the earth over every slight obstruction.
He was compelled to halt, and, placing the lad at the foot of a tree, he
extemporized a sort of couch for him of leaves and branches.

“Now look here, Doorival,” he said; “you and I are not dead yet, though
close up, I know. I will go on, and if I get to the water before
daylight I will come back and bring you on. I will keep the same track
till I drop. I know the river is ahead, perhaps not very far. I break
the branches and leave track. You come on to-morrow morning if you don’t
see me. Now, good-night. I’ll leave Help with you.”

The boy’s dull eye glistened as he placed his arm round the neck of the
dog, who, with the wondrous sympathy of his race, sat in front of the
exhausted lad, looking wistfully into his face. Famishing as was the
brute himself, he had made no independent excursions for the water he so
sorely needed, but had followed patiently the feeble steps of his
comrades in misfortune. At his master’s word he lay down in an attitude
of watchfulness by the fainting boy, and remained to share a lingering
death, as Jack’s steps died away in the distance.

John Redgrave shook the boy’s hand, parting as those who, in a common
adventure, have been more closely knit together by the presence of
danger and of death. Then he strode on—weak, weary, alone, but still
defiant of Fate. For more than two hours he pressed forward
unwaveringly, though conscious of increasing weakness of mind and body.
The timber became more dense, and his progress was retarded by small
obstacles which still were sufficient to entangle his feeble feet. Then
his brain began to wander. Sometimes he thought he was at Marshmead. He
heard plainly the musical cry of the swans in the great meres, and the
shrill call of the plover, circling and wheeling over the broad marshes.
If he could only get through this timber he would see the reed-brake
ahead, and, falling into the knee-deep water, would lap and lave till
his fevered soul was cooled. Then a white shape walked beside him, and
extended a hand pointing towards that bright star. It was Maud
Stangrove, though her face was turned away—and the Shape was misty,
transparent, indistinct—he knew every curve and outline of that
faultless figure, the poise of her head, the swaying grace of her step.
She had come to tell him that her pure spirit had passed from earth,
that _his_ hour was come—that they would be united for ever beyond yon
fair star—that toil and weariness, hope, fear, and mordant anxiety, the
fierce pangs, the evil dreams of this vain life, were over. Be it so—he
was content. Let the end come.

Then the fair shape floated onward, gazing on him with sad, luminous
eyes, as of farewell. The look of despairing fondness, of unutterable
pity, was more than his overwrought senses could bear. He threw up his
arms, and calling on the name of his lost love dashed madly through the
dense undergrowth. Suddenly he was sensible of a crushing blow, of
intense pain, then of utter darkness, and John Redgrave fell prone, and
lay as one dead.

He awoke at length to full consciousness of his position and
surroundings, more clear, perhaps, from the loss of blood which had
followed the blow against his brow from the jagged limb of a dead tree
against which he had staggered and fallen. The moon shone clearly, the
night was cool almost to coldness. He felt revived, but full of
indignation. It was the ingenious cruelty which restores the fainting
man to the dire torments of the rack. His swollen tongue, which all that
day his mouth had been unable to contain, was covered, as were his face
and throat, with ants. His throat was parched still, but his brain was
revived. He rose to his feet, sternly obstinate while life yet
flickered. Onward still. He would die with his face to the river. He
would crawl when he could no longer walk. He would die as a man should
die.

Onward—still onward; he remembered his course, and the star which
Doorival called Irara. Weak at first, but gradually rallying, he walked
steadily and more cautiously forward. An hour passed. The temporary
feeling of excitement has subsided, and overpowering, leaden drowsiness
is pressing heavily upon his brain. Again he sinks to the earth, half
fearing, half wishing to rise no more. Suddenly he hears the whistling
wings of a flight of birds which sweep overhead. His languid senses are
aroused; he watches mechanically the dark, swift forms cleave the air in
relief against the clear sky. They are wild-fowl, on their way, no
doubt, to distant waters. His gaze follows them as they glide forward in
swaying file, and suddenly, with the plummet-like fall, drop and
disappear.

Merciful Heaven! can it be? Versed in all the habits of fur and feather,
as becomes a sworn sportsman, well he knows that when such birds drop
they drop in water, in _water_! He staggers to his feet, and stumbling,
reeling, tottering like a drunken man, makes for the place where they
became invisible. One glance, one hoarse broken cry of joy, pain,
rapture mingled in one utterance, and he is on his knees beside a
gleaming, rushing stream. He hears the gurgling, whistling note of the
delighted birds that are diving and splashing and chasing one another in
ecstasy of enjoyment. It is the Wondabyne! He remains upon his knees
looking for some seconds at the starry heavens; then, slowly and
sparingly, he drinks at intervals; he laves his brow and parched and
bleeding lips again and again in the cool waters. Then he carefully
fills the tin cup which hangs from a leather strap at his waist, and
turns on his track to the boy Doorival. Him he finds still sleeping,
with the dog beside him, who barks joyously at his approach. He wakes
him, and pointing to the tin cup, of which the boy drinks eagerly,
repeats but the single word “Wondabyne.”

It is enough; Doorival arises, staggers off with him, as one risen from
the dead.

Once more he sees the reedy shore—the gleaming river into which Help
plunges incontinently. He has much difficulty in preventing Doorival
from “drinking himself to death.” Both assuage the fiery thirst which
has been burning up brain and marrow. Both throw themselves upon the
warm sandy turf, and sleep till the sun is far on his path on the
morrow.

The battle is won—the standard is planted—all is plain and easy
journeying for the future. They are close to the mail track; another
day’s journey will bring them to the actual settled country.

On the morrow, just before sunset, they reach The Pioneers’ Royal Hotel,
a palatial weather-board edifice, apparently dropped down like an
aerolite upon the bare red soil of the plain. If it has no other
advantages, it possesses the inestimable one of being the mail depot.
That invaluable custodian of her Majesty’s correspondence, the mailman,
passes the door daily. To-morrow, if need be, John Redgrave may put
himself, his followers, and his tenders “on board” of this unpretending
express waggon, which bears the fortunes, the passions, the emotions,
the whole abstract life of the interior, to the metropolis.




                             CHAPTER XXIII.

         “I, the sport of Fortune.”—_Duke Charles of Orleans._


Jack, “ragged and tanned,” half-starved, and a “footman” (as a person
not in possession of a horse is termed in Australian provincial
circles), was not for the moment regarded with special favour by the
landlord of the Royal Pioneer.

However, the first few words led to immediate “class legislation.” The
landlords of Australian inns, I may observe, are tolerably good judges
of “who’s who,” and, to their honour, are more regardful of
gentlemanlike bearing than of money and good clothes.

So Jack was inducted into the front parlour, and invited to repair the
inroads upon his outward man in a bedroom of comparative grandeur. He
first of all arranged for the purchase of an entirely new rig-out from
the affiliated store, also in possession of the landlord, and a bath.
After indulgence in the latter luxury, he made up the whole of his
former wearing apparel in a package, and desired that they might be
given to the poor, or otherwise disposed of. He then decided that he
would transact the imposing ceremony of dinner, and afterwards draw up
his tenders for twenty five-mile blocks on the River Marion, and be
ready for a start to the metropolis next morning.

Entering the parlour in a suit of rough tweed, he felt much more like a
shepherd king of the future than the death-doomed pioneer—half hunter,
half savage—of the preceding few days. As he came in, a well-dressed,
strongly-jewelled personage arose from the sofa on which he had been
sitting, and greeted Jack with much cordiality.

“Mr. Redgrave, I believe, I have the honour of addressing. I’ve heard of
your heroic feats, sir. I hope you will give me the pleasure of your
company at dinner. Took the liberty of ordering it the moment I heard of
your arrival. No denial, sir, if _you_ please. You are Frank Forestall’s
guest to-night, whatever happens.”

There was no resisting the dash and pertinacity of his entertainer, so
Jack quietly subsided into the position, and permitted the strange
gentleman to make himself happy in his own way. The dinner, after a
rather unreasonable delay, arrived, by no means so indifferent as to
cuisine as might have been imagined. Mr. Forestall insisted on “Piper,
No. 2,” and pressed Jack to do him justice in huge glasses, which he
seemed to have magical powers of emptying.

It must be remembered that Jack had been many months without the taste
of spirits, much less of decent wine. His recent experiences, the total
change of scene, the hope of a happy sequel, now near and tangible, to
the volume of his life, all these things tended to produce a general
feeling of exhilaration, tending, as the evening wore on, to entire loss
of caution and self-control. Mr. Forestall described himself as an
extensive mail-contractor, who visited the far interior from time to
time with a view to comprehensive contracts, in which he intended, at no
distant period, to rival, if not to overshadow, the foreign element, as
represented by the potentate Cobb. He artfully led the conversation to
explorations, privations, and the adventures of Jack and his hapless
comrade, mingling sympathetic flattery with acute inquiries, until,
after successive beakers of “hot stopping” and pipes of negrohead, Jack
was in no humour to conceal any portion of his intentions and
discoveries. How and when he had retired for the night John Redgrave
was, next morning, unable to remember; but awaking, long after sunrise,
with a splitting headache and a disordered system, he had a confused
recollection of having imparted much information which he had never
intended to reveal except in the sealed tenders of Redgrave and Waldron,
passing in due course through the Department of Lands.

Dressing and shaking himself together with no inconsiderable effort, he
found by inquiring of the landlord that the mail had come and gone, and
that his genial host of the preceding evening had departed with it.
Wroth with himself for the loss of even one day, he adhered sternly to
the drawing out of the tenders in proper form.

After a subdued and decorous meal, he retired early, and at the
appointed hour deposited himself, Doorival, and Help in the unpretending
conveyance which bore the toilers of the midmost plateaux to the
breeze-swept cities of the “kingdom by the sea.”

Here, in due time, he was deposited as one who re-enters Paradise, after
rejoicing in the as yet unforgiven outer world, amid the rayless toil of
ungrateful labour, amid the briars and thorns of Earth—accursed and
unreclaimed.

He lost not an hour after his arrival in despatching the inestimable
“Tenders for (20) twenty five-mile blocks, situated on the River Marion,
west of Daar Creek, and bearing south-west from the Camp No. XL. of Mr.
Surveyor Kennedy.”

Having done this, Jack awaited impatiently the time when a reply might
reasonably be expected to arrive. He sought the agents of Guy Waldron,
and deposited with them the relics and the few lines in which the dying
man had traced the record of his last wishes. He found these gentlemen
kindly disposed, and grateful to him for the manifest sympathy which he
exhibited.

“How the old squire will bear it I can’t think,” said the senior
partner. “I am the son of a tenant on his estate, and I can remember him
since I was that big. He was a terrible man when he was crossed, and Mr.
Guy was always a wild youngster, but he was prouder of him, I used to
think, than of all the rest put together. It will be a comfort to them
all to see this lad here. I dare say he wrote about him; and as he saw
him at the very last, it may please them to hear of his last moments.”

So the heroic Doorival was despatched, accompanied by poor Guy’s big
outfit in a chest full of all his unused property, books, papers, &c.,
and arriving safely in Oxfordshire was installed as prime favourite, and
second in command to the butler. Let us hope that he behaved better than
one anglicised aboriginal, who was for some slight offence chastised by
the butler. That official was solemn and awe-inspiring of aspect. But
the wolf-cub had grown and strengthened; he turned fiercely to bay, and
smote suddenly and so shrewdly his superior officer that a coroner’s
inquest appeared imminent. Sentence of deportation went forth against
him, afterwards commuted. But the son of the waste was respected after
this outbreak, and in the servants’ hall was permitted to possess his
soul in peace.

There was a balance of something over £300 remaining in the hands of Guy
Waldron’s agents, and this sum, in the terms of his note, they paid over
to Jack, as representative of the firm of Redgrave and Waldron. He had
nothing now to look forward to but the acceptance of his tenders. He
found that with the weighty and responsible task before him he was
unable to interest himself in the ordinary frivolities of town life. He
was deeply anxious to get his first lot of store cattle on the way; and
to this end these tenders must be accepted and returned to him with but
little delay.

Day after day he haunted the Lands Office, and by dint of pertinacity
and daily application he managed to get his papers “put through” that
excellent and long-suffering department. It is hinted that from press of
work or other causes delay has become chronic in that much-maligned,
calm-judging branch of the public service. Whether they pitied his
manifest impatience, or whether the lives of certain officials were made
a burden to them during the passage of the papers, certain it is that
some weeks before the ordinary routine Jack had reason to believe that
an acknowledgment of his communication would reach him in advance of the
ordinary official period. Before the impatiently expected official
communication arrived, Jack had made several important arrangements
depending upon this contingency, so that no more time than was
absolutely necessary might be lost. He was feverishly anxious to be
again on the war-path.

He thought of joyous Guy Waldron lying beneath the solitary pine-tree,
on the far sand-hill, swept now in the advanced season by the burning
desert blast; and he pined for the moment when he could recommence his
labour, and make some progress in fulfilment of his pledge to his dead
comrade.

He thought of fair Maud Stangrove, lonely, weary with vigil and orison,
enduring her prosaic, unrelieved life at Juandah; and his heart stirred
with an unaccustomed throb as he pictured her wild joy upon receiving
his letter, telling of the acceptance of the tenders, and his departure
to stock the Wonder-land so dearly-bought, so hardly wrested from Nature
and from man. He had arranged with certain stock and station agents for
the placing of a certain number of the blocks in their hands for sale,
upon the receipt of which security they were willing to advance the cash
necessary for the purchase of a couple of thousand head of cattle.

In pursuance of these plans he had determined, after extracting a solemn
pledge from one of the higher officials that within a very short space
of time he should receive the necessary reply to his proposals, to
proceed at once to the station where the cattle were on approval. He
authorized the momentous despatch to be delivered to his agents, to be
by them forwarded to him at the cattle-station.

The cattle were mustered, counted, and approved of. The price was very
low, the quality reasonable—it was not necessary to be too fastidious
under the circumstances. The time Jack had calculated upon expending had
just expired, when lo! the expected despatch, “On Her Majesty’s
Service,” with her Majesty’s envelope and her Majesty’s
Lion-and-Unicorned seal, arrived.

“Just as I calculated, to a day,” quoth Jack. “This reminds one of old
times, when I used to be rather proud of ‘fitting my connections’ in
business matters, as Americans phrase it. Now for the first Act of
Victory in Westminster Abbey!” He opened the missive hastily. How neat
and decided were the characters of this long-looked-for epistle! Jack
read it twice over, as his vision after one glance was temporarily
obscured.

This was the wording of the important document:—

                                        “DEPARTMENT OF LANDS,
                                                 ”_October 15, 186—_.

“SIR—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of tenders for
unoccupied Crown lands, as noted in the margin, bearing date September
10th _ultimo_, and to inform you that tenders on the part of F.
Forestall and Co. and others, which would appear to be for the same
blocks, were received at this office upon the 9th September _ultimo_.

                                    “I have the honour to be, sir,
                                    “Your obedient servant,
                                    “J.M. INGRAM,
                                    “Under Secretary.

  “John Redgrave, Esq.,
    “Care of Messrs. Thornbrook and Bayle,
      “Stock and Station Agents.”

Jack read more than once the fatally clear and concise announcement,
with the blank, expressionless countenance of a man perusing his
death-warrant, unexpectedly received. Was it credible, possible, that an
overruling Providence could permit such hellish treachery? Now he
understood all the artful inquiries, the feigned _bonhomie_ and
hospitality, the sudden departure of the double-dyed traitor Forestall.
Was this to be the recompense for the deadly perils, the hunger, the
thirst, the blood of Guy Waldron, his own passage through the Valley of
the Shadow? It could not be! Again and again he showered wild curses
upon his own weakness, on the heartless villain who had taken advantage
of him, the feeble survivor of the desperate conflict waged with the
malign powers of the desert.

Again he assured himself that such monstrous injustice before high
Heaven could not be carried out. He would return at once to the
metropolis, and if such base theft, worse a thousand times than the
comparatively straight-forward and manly robbery under arms by the
wandering outlaw, who risked his life upon the hazard, were confirmed,
he would shoot Forestall in midday, in the public streets, before he
would submit to be mocked and plundered of the prize for which he and
his dead comrade had shed their blood. He felt compelled, to his deep
mortification, to explain to the owner of the partly-purchased herd that
unforeseen circumstances prevented his completing his bargain, and
necessitated his instant presence at head-quarters. Deeply disappointed,
and with a host of doubts bordering upon despair preying upon his very
vitals, he abjured rest and sleep, almost food, until he once more found
himself in the streets of——.

Without an instant’s delay he presented himself at the office of Messrs.
Thornbrook and Bayle, to whom, haggard and fierce of mien, he at once
presented the official letter.

“I see the whole thing,” said the senior partner, “and I feel as
indignant as yourself at the vile deception which has been practised
upon you. I know the scoundrel well, and it is far from his first crime
in the same direction. I will go with you to the Minister for Lands, and
we will see what we can do. But first have some breakfast, and calm down
your excitement a little. We may manage to arrange matters, surely.”

Jack took the well-meant advice, and before long they were in the
ante-chamber of the Minister for Lands, the arbiter of fate, he who
gives or withholds fortune, decreeing affluence or ruin, “according to
the Regulations under the Land Act.”

After waiting about an hour for the return of a glib gentleman who went
in just before them, with the assurance that his business could be
settled in ten minutes, they passed into the presence of the great man.
They found a quiet-looking personage seated before a very comfortable
writing-table, on which lay piles of official-looking papers in
envelopes of every gradation of size, some of them apparently
constructed to receive a quire or two of foolscap without inconvenience.
They were received with politeness, and Mr. Thornbrook introduced Jack,
who at once stated his grievance.

“Your tenders were sent to this department on or about the——?”

“The tenth of September,” said Jack. “I came down at once, after
returning from the new country applied for.”

The minister rang a bell, and a clerk appeared.

“Send up the tenders, signed John Redgrave for Redgrave and Waldron, for
unoccupied Crown lands, and any others for the same blocks.”

In a few minutes several large envelopes were laid upon the table, upon
one of which was marked “Redgrave and Waldron.—Tenders for Raak new
country.”

“I understand you to complain,” said the minister, blandly, but not
without a tone of sympathy, “that, whereas you and your partner—since
dead, I regret to hear—were the actual discoverers and explorers of this
Raak country, other persons have put in tenders for apparently the same
blocks.”

“That is my complaint,” said Jack; “and not an unreasonable one either I
should fancy. My partner and I, at the risk of our lives, he, poor
fellow, did lose his, found and traversed this country, never seen or
heard of by white men, with the sole exception of the stockman who told
us. I came to town with hardly a day’s loss of time, put in formal
tenders, and now, to my utter astonishment, I find that tenders for the
same country are in before mine. I certainly did speak unguardedly about
the affair to a fellow named Forestall, and he, it appears, has planned
to rob me of my very hardly-earned right to the run.”

“It appears to be a very bad case,” answered the minister; “but you
will, I am sure, concede that the department can only deal with tenders
or applications for pastoral leases of unoccupied Crown lands as brought
before it, without reference to the characters or motives of applicants.
I may point out to you that these tenders (here he gathered up a sheaf
of the octavo envelopes) appear to have been put in on the ninth of
September, one day before yours. You and your friend can examine them.”

Jack and Mr. Thornbrook did look over them. There were a large number.
They were prepared evidently by skilled and experienced hands. Some were
in the name of Francis Forestall and Co., many in other names, of which
Jack had no knowledge. They offered a shade above the yearly rental and
premium which Jack had put down, never dreaming of a competitor. Then,
again, they were geographically most accurate. Close calculations
evidently had been made, charts studied, and the nearest possible
approximation as to latitude and longitude around it. Nor was this the
worst. Every square mile of the Raak country was of course included. But
the tenders in the strange names took in the whole available country
above, below, around that desirable oasis, so that there it was
hopeless, if the hostile tenders were accepted, to find even a
decent-sized run anywhere within a week’s ride of Mount Stangrove and
Lake Maud.

Jack turned from the accursed papers to the minister and demanded
whether the mere accident of priority was to override his unquestionable
claims as discoverer.

“Did the matter rest wholly with me,” he replied calmly—for hundreds of
difficult cases, passionate appeals, and wild entreaties had educated
his mind, during his term of office, to a judicial lucidity and
decision—“I have no hesitation in saying that I should at once direct
that your tenders be accepted; but I am compelled to decide all cases of
this nature entirely by certain regulations made under the Crown Lands
Occupation Act. One of these specifically states that the order of
priority, other things being equal, must rule the acceptance of tenders;
with no other fact or consideration can I deal. The tenders of
Forestall, Robinson, Andrews, Johnson, and Wade are apparently for the
identical and adjacent blocks. They were received in this department
twenty-four hours before yours.”

“Of course, of course, we allow that,” said Mr. Thornbrook. “But can
nothing be done for my friend here? It is the hardest of all hard cases.
It will ruin him. I speak advisedly: he has already entered into
engagements that I fear, if this matter goes adversely, he cannot meet.
My dear sir,” said Mr. Thornbrook, warming with his client’s wrongs,
“pray consider the matter; you must see the equity of the case is with
us; try and prevent such a palpable wrong-doing and perversion of
justice.”

“My dear sir,” said the minister, rising, “the matter shall have the
most serious and minute consideration of myself and my colleagues. There
will be a cabinet meeting on Thursday, at which the affair can be
appropriately brought up. I will order a letter, containing the final
decision of the Government, to be sent to Mr. Redgrave, whom I now beg
to assure of my deep sympathy. Good morning, gentlemen.”

In the course of ten days Jack received another official letter, in the
handwriting which he had come to know, and also to dread. He had passed
a wretched, anxious time, and now he was to know whether he was to be
lifted up afresh to the pinnacle of hope, or to be hurled down into an
_inferno_ of despair, lower than he had ever yet, dark as had been his
experiences, unmerciful his disasters, been doomed to endure. He read as
follows:—

                                        “DEPARTMENT OF LANDS,
                                        ”_October_ 30, 186—.

“SIR—I have the honour to inform you, by direction of the Minister for
Lands, that, after the fullest consideration of your case, it has been
finally decided to accept the tenders of Messrs. Forestall and others
for the blocks noted in margin, as having been received prior to those
of Messrs. Redgrave and Waldron.

                                         “I have the honour to be, sir,
                                         “Your obedient servant,
                                         “J.M. INGRAM,
                                         “Under Secretary.

  “John Redgrave, Esq.”




                             CHAPTER XXIV.

                              DE PROFUNDIS


Jack hardly knew how and in what fashion he left the city. Mechanically,
and all aimlessly, as he steered his course, some old memories helped to
guide his footsteps towards the desert, towards the great waste amid
which he had joyed and sorrowed, toiled and endured, in which the
palm-fringed fountains had been so rare, whence now the simoon had
arisen which had whelmed all the treasures of his existence. From time
to time as he wandered on, ever northward, and trending towards the
outer bush-world, he accepted the rudest labour, working stolidly and
desperately until the allotted task was concluded. In truth his mind was
stunned; he had no hope, no plan. What was the use of his trying
anything? Was he not doomed? Did not Mr. Blockham warn poor Guy against
having anything to do with an unlucky man? He tried to forget the past
and to avoid thoughts of the future by hard work and continual exertion.
When he walked it was not in his accustomed leisurely pace, but as if he
were walking for a wager, trying to get away from himself.

But this could not last long. One day, after he had left a lonely bush
inn, he felt attacked with dizziness, which for a few moments would
obscure his sight. From time to time he felt as if a mortal sickness had
seized him, but he disregarded the warnings of Nature and obstinately
continued his course, until all at once his powers failed him, and, sick
to death in body and in mind, he flung himself down by the side of a
sheltering bush and scarcely cared whether he lived or died. Faithful to
the last, patient of hunger and of thirst, strong in the blind,
unreasoning love of his kind, with a fidelity that exceeds the
friendship of man, and equals the purest love of woman, the dog Help,
with silent sympathy, lay by his side.

The form of the wanderer lay beneath the forest tree, which swayed and
rocked beneath the rising blast. With the moaning of the melancholy
shrill-voiced wind, wailing all night as if in half-remembered dirges,
mingled the cries of a fever-stricken man. John Redgrave was delirious.


With recovered consciousness came a wondering gradual perception of a
hut, of the limited size and primitive design ordinarily devoted to the
accommodation of shepherds. A fire burned in the large chimney; and the
small resources of the building had been carefully utilized. By the
hearth, smoking on a small stool, sat an elderly man, whose general
appearance Jack seemed hazily to recall.

As Jack moved, the man turned round, with the watchful air of one who
tends the sick, and disclosed the white locks and rugged lineaments of
the old Scotch shepherd whom he had relieved at Gondaree, and to whose
gratitude he had owed the gift of the dog Help.

“Eh! mon!” ejaculated the ancient Scot, “ye have been mercifully spared
to conseeder your ways. I dooted ye were joost gane to yer accoont when
I pickit ye up yonder, with the doggie howlin’ and greetin’ o’er ye.”

“I don’t see much mercy in the matter. Better far that I were stiff and
cold now under the yarran bush; but I am much obliged to you all the
same.”

“Kindly welcome; ye’re kindly welcome, young man: ye’ve been on the
spree, as they ca’ it, I can tell that weel, more by token I hae nae
preevilege to school ye on that heed, seeing that I, Jock Harlaw, am
just as good as ready money in the deel’s purse from that self-same
inseedious, all-devourin’ vice.”

“No, it’s not that,” said Jack, with a faint smile, “but I don’t wonder
that you thought so. I’m very tired, that’s all, and there’s something
wrong with my head, I think.”

“The Lord be thankit; I’m glad it’s no that devil’s glamour that’s
seized ye. But surely I ken the collie; how did ye come by him, may I
speer?”

“So you don’t remember me or the dog; you came to Gondaree with him and
the other pups on your back.”

“Lord save us! auld lassie wasna wrang, then; it’s just fearsome,”
ejaculated the old man, in accents of the deepest concern and wonder.
“And do you tell me,” continued he, “that you’re the weel-gained,
prosperous, kind-spoken gentleman that helped old Jock in his sair need
yon time? Fortune’s given ye a downthraw; but oh, hinny, however sair
the burden may be, or sharp the strokes of adversity, better a hunner
times to bear a thing than to sell your manhood to the enemy of the
flesh.”

Jack saw there was still a suspicion in the old man’s mind; it must have
been hard for him to believe anything but drink could have brought a man
so low, but he did not resent the mistake, and only closed his eyes
wearily.

“If ye ask auld Jock Harlaw to tell you the truth,” the old man
continued, “he’ll say that of all the men he’s had ken of he never saw
one that did not die in the wilderness once he had bowed the knee to the
Moloch of drink. Ye may see the Promised Land, and the everlastin’ hills
glintin’ in the gold o’ the new Jerusalem; but ye maun see, like Moses
on the mountain top, or on the sands o’ the desert, ye’ll no win oot,
ance ye’re like me, if the angels frae heaven cam and draggit ye by the
hand.”

“It’s a bad look out, Jock, by your showing; but how is it, with your
strong perception of the evils of the habit, and your religious turn of
mind, that you have not broken yourself of it?”

“Maister Redgrave,” answered the old man, solemnly, “that is one of the
awful and inscrutable meesteries of the life of the puir, conceited,
doited crater that ca’s himsel’ man. My forbears were godly, sober,
self-denying Christian men and women. Till the day I left the bonny
homes o’ Ettrick, for this far, sad, wearifu’ land, nae living man had
ever seen the sign o’ liquor upon me, or could hae charged me wi’ the
faintest token of excess. I was shepherd for the Laird o’ Hopedale, and
nae happier lad than Jock Harlaw ever listened to the lilting o’ the
lasses on the Cowden Knowes.”

“And what tempted you to emigrate, and better your condition, as it is
ironically termed?”

“Weel, aweel,” pursued the old man, contemplatively, “my nature was aye
deeply tinged wi’ romance. I had heard tell o’ the grand plains and
forests, and the great sheep farms of Australia, with opportunities of
makin’ a poseetion just uncommon, and I was tempted, like anither fule,
to quit the hame of my fathers, and the bonny Ettrick-shaw, and Mary
Gilsland, that was bonnier than a’, to mak’ my fortune. And a pretty
like fortune I hae made o’ it.”

“Well, but how did you come to grief? There must have been so many
people too glad to get a man like you among their sheep.”

“I had my chances, I’ll no deny,” said the old man. “Ilka one o’ us has
ae guid chance in this life, forbye a wheen sma’ opportunities o’
weel-doin’. But though I wrocht, and toiled, and scrapit for the day
when I should write and bid Mary to join me across the sea, I had nae
great luck, and mair times than one I coupit a’ the siller just as I had
filled the stocking. At the lang end of a’, just as things had mended,
my puir Mary died, and I had nae strength left to strive against the
evil one that came in the form of comfort to my sair heart and broken
speerit. Maybe I had learned to pass a wee thing too near to the edge
when I was working—there’s a deal too much of that amang men that would
scorn the idea of drunkenness.”

“And the end?”

“And the end was that I was delivered over bound hand and foot to a
debasing habit, which has clung to me for thretty years, in spite of
prayers and resolutions, and tears of blood. And so it will be, wae’s
me, till the day when auld Jock Harlaw dies in a ditch or under a tree
like a gaberlunzie crater, or is streekit in the dead-house o’ a bush
public. And which gate are ye gangin’ the noo?” demanded the old man
with a sudden change from his dolorous subject.

“Haven’t an idea; don’t know, and don’t care.”

“That’s bad,” said the old shepherd, looking at him with pained and
earnest looks; “but ye’re looking no fit to leave this. I misdoot that I
wranged ye when I thocht it was the drink. What will I do if it is the
fever?”

“Let me rest here; I dare say I shall soon get over it,” said Jack, with
a gleam of his old hopefulness, but he was touched with the anxious
manner of the kind old man, and made the best of what he was afraid
would be a serious illness.

But he was happily mistaken; a few days’ rest and the careful nursing of
the shepherd, whose small stock of medicine had never before been broken
into, sufficed to restore him, not to health, but to a state of
convalescence which permitted him to stroll a little way from the hut.

Jack had had many talks with the old man, whose experience was worth
something, although he had not been able to avail himself of it, and the
conclusion he arrived at was that he would accompany Harlaw to Jimburah.

“I’m weel kenned there; why suld ye no get a flock o’ sheep too? The
doggie will do work fine for ye, and maybe we’ll get a hut together, and
I’ll cook for ye; then when ye get strong ye can look aboot and see what
ye can do.”

“Anything you like, Jock,” said he, wearily; “one thing is much the same
as another to me now.”

“Weel a weel,” said the old man, gratified at his acquiescence, “there’s
better lives than a herd’s in Australia, and there’s waur. I wadna say
but that after sax months or so, with the labour and the calm, peaceful
life where ye see God’s handiwork and nae ither thing spread out before
ye, after sax months ye might find your courage and your health come
back to ye, and gang on your way to seek your fortune.”

“Didn’t you find it dreadfully lonely at first?” inquired Jack.

“Weel, I canna in conscience deny that at first I thocht it just being
sold into slavery, but as time passed I found it wasna sae devoid of
rational satisfaction as might ha’ been supposed. Many a peacefu’ day
hae I walked ahint my flock, sound in mind and body too. There’s
poseetions in life, I’ll no deny, that’s mair dignified and pridefu’,
but on a fine spring morning, when the grass is green, the birds a’
whistling and ca’ing to ither puir things, the face o’ Nature seems
kindly and gracious; the vara sheep, puir dumb beasties, seem to
acknowledge the influence of the scene, and there’s a calm sense o’ joy
and peace unknown to the dwellers in towns.”

The old man warmed with his subject, and spoke with such earnestness
that Jack could not help smiling, far as his thoughts were from anything
like mirth.

“Well, Harlaw, man is a curious animal, not to be accounted for on any
reasonable plan or system. As you and I have not managed to dispossess
ourselves of the complex functions chiefly exercised in the endurance of
various degrees of pain which we know as life, we may as well wear them
out for a time in what men call shepherding as in any other direction.
They don’t fence hereabout, then?”

“Not within years of it, sir; and I’m thinkin’ it’s just as well for
puir bodies like you and me, if you’ll excuse the leeberty.”

“Don’t make any excuse, and get out of the way of saying ‘sir,’ if we
are to be mates. Call me Jack—Jack Smith. Mr. Redgrave is dead and
buried—fathoms deep. Would to God he were, and past waking!” he added,
with sudden earnestness.

“Dinna say that; oh, dinna cease to have faith in His mercy and
long-suffering,” said the old man, beseechingly. “I am old and fechless,
and, as I hae told ye, a drunkard neither mair nor less; but I cling to
the promises in this book (here he took from his pocket an old,
much-worn Bible), and though the mortal pairt o’ Jock Harlaw be stained
wi’ sin and weakness and folly, I hae na abandoned the hope and the
teaching o’ my youth, nor the trust that they may yet gar me triumph
over the Adversary. But we must be ganging; it’s twenty miles, and lang
anes too, to Jimburah.”

There was nothing but to buckle to the journey. Jack was weak after his
illness, but he faced the road as the manifest alternative, the old
man’s rations having been exhausted, and further sojourn in the deserted
hut being inexpedient.

He was thoroughly exhausted when the home-paddock of Jimburah was
sighted. He walked up with Jock Harlaw to the overseer’s cottage, the
proprietor’s house being unapproachable by the “likes of them.” Here he
and his companion stood for half an hour, waiting the arrival of that
important personage, the overseer, along with nearly a dozen other
tramps, candidates for work, or merely food and shelter in the
“travellers’ hut,” like themselves. A stout, bushy-bearded man rode up
at a hand-gallop in the twilight, and spoke.

“Well, there seem plenty of you just now, a lazy lot of beggars, I’ll be
bound; looking for work and praying you mayn’t get it, eh?”

This was held to be very fair wit, and some of the hands laughed
appreciatingly at it.

“Any shepherds among you? You fellows with the dogs I suppose have
stolen them somewhere to look like the real thing? Oh, it’s you, old
Jock, is it?” he went on, with a good-natured inflection, changing the
hard tones of his voice. “You’re just in time; I’ve lost two rascally
sweeps of shepherds at the dog-trap. Can you and your mate take two
flocks of wethers there? You know the place.”

“Nae doot they’ll be bad sheep to take,” quoth old Jock, with national
caution. “Just fit to rin the legs off a man with the way they’ve been
handled; but I’m no saying, if ye’re in deeficulty.”

“Then you’ll take them? Well, you can come as early as you like
to-morrow morning. But stop; is your mate any good? _You_ don’t look as
if you’d done much shepherding, though you’ve got a fine dog, by the
look of him.”

“He’s a friend of mine,” affirmed Jock, with prompt decision, “and I’ll
wager ye a pound o’ ’bacco ye hav’na a better shepherd on the whole of
Jimburah.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the official, “he may be as good as most of them,
and be no great things either. However, I’m hard up, and must risk it.
What’s your name?”

“John Smith,” said Jack, steadily.

“Uncommon fine name too. Well, Smith, you can go out along with Scotch
Jock to-morrow morning, and take the 1,800 flock; he has 2,200 in his.
I’ll send your rations out after you, and will come and count you
to-morrow fortnight. Come in now and take your pannikin of flour for
to-night. He knows the travellers’ hut. Here, you other fellows, come in
and get your grub.”

He who of old boasted himself equal to either fortune enunciated a great
idea. But how different, often, is the practical application to the
theory fresh from the philosopher’s workshop!




                              CHAPTER XXV.

    “There is a tide in the affairs of man
    Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”—_Shakespeare._


The “travellers’ hut” is an institution peculiar to divers of the
outlying and interior districts of Australia. It is the outcome of
experience and cogitation, the final compromise between the claims of
labour and capital, as to the measure of hospitality to be extended to
workmen errant. Given the fact that a certain number of labourers will
appear at the majority of stations, almost every day of the year,
demanding one night’s food and lodging, how to entertain them? Were they
suffered to eat and drink at discretion of the food supplied the
permanent _employés_, abuses would arise. Said _employés_ would be
always requiring fresh supplies, having “just been eaten out” by the
wayfarers. Also disputes as to the labour of cooking. It might happen
that the more provident and unscrupulous guests would occasionally carry
away with them food sufficient to place them “beyond the reach of want”
on the following day, or, so wayward is ungrateful man, might levy upon
the garments and personal property of the station servants after they
had gone forth to their work. Such examples were not wholly wanting
before the establishment of that _juste milieu_, the “travellers’ hut.”
There, an iron pot, a kettle, a bucket, and firewood are generally
provided. Each traveller receives at the station store a pint of flour
and a pound of meat. These simple but sufficing materials he may prepare
for himself at the travellers’ hut in any fashion that commends itself
to his palate. On the following day, if not employed, it is incumbent
upon him to move on to the next establishment.

Jack smoked his pipe over the fire in the caravanserai aforesaid, after
a meal of fried meat and cakes browned, or rather blacked, in the
frying-pan which had previously prepared the meat. Old Jock performed
this duty cheerfully, and not without a certain rude skill. He produced
from his kit a small bag containing a modicum of tea and sugar, which
just sufficed for a pint each of the universal and precious bush
beverage, causing them to be looked upon with envy by their less
fortunate companions. Tired out by the day’s journey, Jack had scarcely
energy to consume his share of the food, and but for the pannikin of
tea, indifferent enough, but still a wonderful restorative in all “open
air” life and labour, could not have essayed even so much exertion. At
another time he would have been amused by the rude mirth and reckless
jests of his associates. But this night he sat silent and gloomy, hardly
able to realize his existence amid conditions so astonishingly altered.

“You’re rather down on your luck, young man,” observed a stout but not
athletic individual, smoking an exceedingly black pipe, full of the
worst possible tobacco; “you’ve made too long a stage, that’s about it.
I’m blowed if I’d knock myself up, at this time of year, for all the
squatters in the blessed country.”

“No fear of you doin’ that, Towney,” said a wiry-looking young fellow
with light hair and a brickdust complexion, which defied the climate to
change its colour by a single shade, “at this time of year, or any
other, _I_ should say. How fur have you come?”

“A good five mile,” quoth the unabashed Towney, “and quite enough too. I
walked a bit, and smoked a bit, you see. Blest if I didn’t think I
should finish my baccy before the blessed old sun went down.”

“Well, I’m full up of looking for work,” said the younger man. “There’s
no improvements goin’ on in this slow place, or I could soon get in
hut-buildin’, or dam-makin’, or diggin’ post holes. I ain’t like you,
Towney, able to coast about without a job of work from shearin’ to
shearin’. If the coves knowed you as well as I do they’d let you starve
a bit, and try how you like that.”

An ugly look came into the eyes of the man as he said slowly, “There
might be a shed burnt, accidental-like, if they tried that game. You
remember Gondaree, Bill, and the flash super? I wonder how he and his
boss looked that Sunday mornin’.”

Bill, an elderly, clean-shaved individual, the yellowness of whose
physiognomy favoured the hypothesis of prison discipline having been
applied (ineffectually) for his reformation, gave a chuckle of
satisfaction as he replied—

“Well, it happened most unfortunate. I ’ope it didn’t ill-convenience
’em that shearin’. I hear as M‘Nab (he’s boss now, and they’ve bought
the next run) has got the best travellers’ hut on the river. Anybody
heard who they’ve shopped for those hawkers at Bandra?” continued Bill,
who seemed to have got into a cheerful line of anecdote, running
parallel with the _Police Gazette_.

“Why, what happened them?” asked the fiery-faced young man.

“Oh, not much,” affably returned Bill; “there wasn’t much of ’em found,
only a heap of bones, about the size of shillings. Some chaps had rubbed
’em out and burned ’em.”

“What for?” inquired the sun-scorched proprietor of the prize freckles.

“Well, they was supposed to be good for a hundred or so. However, they
put it away so artful that no one but the police was able to collar it;
and the fellows got nothin’ but a trifle of slops and a fiver.”

“It’s my belief,” asserted the young man with the high colour,
concluding the conversation, “that you and Towney are a pair of
scoundrels as would cut the throat of your own father for a note. And
for two pins I’d hammer the pair of ye, and kick yer out of the hut to
sleep under a gum-tree. It’s dogs like you, too, as give working-men a
bad name, and makes the squatters harder upon the lot of us than they
would be. I’m goin’ to turn in.”

The men thus discourteously entreated looked sullenly and viciously at
the speaker, but a low sound of approval from the half-dozen other men
showed that the house was with him. Besides which, the wiry, athletic
bushman was evidently in good training, and had the great advantage of
youth and unbroken health on his side. So when he stepped forward with
his head up and a slight gesture of the left hand, as of one not wholly
devoid of scientific attainment, the pair of ruffians turned off the
affair with a forced laugh; after which the whole of the company sought
their sleeping compartments or bunks, with but little of the delay
resulting from an elaborate _toilette de nuit_.

The next day found Jack and his companion in possession of the Dog-trap
out-station hut, and of two flocks of sheep, duly counted over to them
by the overseer. Two brush-yards constructed on the side of a rocky
hill, and half full of dry sheep manure, a guano-like accumulation of
years, completed the improvements.

A month’s ration for the two men (64lbs. of flour, 16lbs. sugar, and
2lbs. tea) was deposited upon the earthen floor by the ration-carrier,
who arrived in a spring-cart about the same time as themselves.

“Now, my men,” said the overseer, after counting the sheep and entering
them in his pocket-book, “you’re all right for a month. You can kill a
sheep every other week, and salt down what you can’t keep fresh. Smith,
you’ll have to stir them long legs of yours after your wethers; they’re
only four-tooth sheep, and devils to walk, I believe. Keep your
sheep-skins and send ’em in by the cart, or I’ll charge you half-a-crown
apiece for ’em. You can settle among yourselves which way you’ll run
your flocks; though I suppose you’ll quarrel, and not speak to each
other, like all the rest of the shepherds, before half your time is out.
If you lose any sheep, one of you come in and report. Good-morning.”

With which exhortation Mr. Hazeham rode off, either by nature not “a man
of much blandishment,” or not caring, on principle, to waste courtesy on
shepherds.

“So here we maun sojourn for sax months,” remarked old Jock, as they sat
at their evening meal, after having yarded their flocks, killed a sheep,
swept and garnished their hut, and made such approximation to comfort as
their means permitted. “I dinna ken but what we may gang along ducely
and comfortably. Ye were wise to write and order the weekly paper. It
will give us the haill news that’s going and many an hour’s guid
wholesome occupation, while the sheep are in camp or at the water. We’ll
maybe get a book or two from the station library.”

“I expect you’ll have most of the reading for a while,” answered ‘Mr.
Smith.’ “What’s the use of knowing that every one is better off than
one’s self? One comfort is that this flock keeps me going, and I shall
sleep at night in consequence.”

“Ye’ll no find them rin sae muckle after a week or twa’s guid
shepherding. There’s a braw ‘turn out’ here—both sides frae the hut;
once ye get to ken the ways o’ your flock, ye’ll be like the guid
shepherd in the Holy Book, and they’ll be mair like to follow ye, man,
than to keep rin-rinning awa’ after every bit of green feed.”

In spite of Jack’s gloomy air, and refusal to take comfort, or
acknowledge interest in life, matters slowly improved. The hut was not
so bad, clean-swept and daily tended by the neat handed Harlaw, who had
constituted himself cook, steward, and butler to the establishment. The
country was open, thus minimizing the labour of looking after the
flocks, which, left a good deal to themselves, as is the fashion of
experienced shepherds, mended and fattened apace. The atmosphere of the
interior, cool and fresh, “a nipping and an eager air,” soon commenced
to work improvement in the general health of the two Arcadians.

John Redgrave had considerately written and ordered one of the
excellently conducted weekly papers of the colony, which duly arrived,
directed to “Mr. John Smith, Jimburah, _viâ_ Walthamstowe,” such being
the imposing name of their post town. The weekly journals of Australia,
arranged something after the pattern of _The Field_, are, we may
confidently assert, in certain respects the most creditable specimens of
newspaper literature known to the English-speaking world. Comprising, as
they do, fairly-written leading articles, tales and sketches, essays
political, pastoral and agricultural information, travel, biography,
records and descriptions of all the nobler sports and athletic feats of
communities hereditarily addicted to such recreations, plus the ordinary
news of the day, they are hailed as a boon by all who have sufficient
intellectual development to feel the want of at least occasional mental
pabulum. Alike to the country gentleman and farmer, the lonely stockman,
the plodding drover, or the solitary shepherd, they are at once a
necessity and a benefit, occasionally a priceless luxury.

So it came to pass that after a few weeks had glided on, unmarked but by
no means slowly, and the fate-guided comrades had settled down to a
placid endurance bordering upon enjoyment of their damper, mutton,
quart-pot tea, and <DW64>-head, Jack began to look forward to his paper,
and to digest the contents of it, from the stock advertisements to the
list of new books, unattainable, alas! with a relish which surprised
himself. The regular exercise, the healthful, pure atmosphere, the
absence of anxiety, the sound sleep, and natural appetite had produced
their ordinary effects, had thoroughly recruited his bodily and mental
powers. In despite of himself, so to speak, and of the persistence with
which he would declare that he was irrevocably ruined, his mental
thermometer rose perceptibly. He experienced once more a sensation (and
there is no more complete test of high bodily health) which he had
rarely enjoyed since the blessed days of Marshmead. He felt the
childlike lightness of spirit, on awakening with the dawn, which more
than all things denotes an uninjured and perfect physique, a nervous
system in normal and flawless condition. Wonderful is the self-attuning
power of the “harp of a thousand strings,” the divinely-fashioned
instrument upon which, alas! angelic melodies alternate with demon
wailings; and the fiend-chorus from the lowest inferno is mysteriously
permitted to drown the seraphic tones which would fain uplift the
aspirations of man to his celestial home.

                  *       *       *       *       *

With braced sinews, freshly-toned nerves, and veins refilled with pure
and unfevered blood, John Redgrave appeared so manifestly an altered man
that his humble mentor could not refrain from approving comment.

“Eh, ma certie, but ye’re just improvin’ and gainin’ strength, like the
vara sheep, the puir dumb craters, just uncommon. There’s a glint o’
your e’e, and a lift o’ your heed, and a swing o’ your walk that tell me
ye’re castin’ awa’ the black shadow—the Lord be praised for it, and for
a’ His mercies. I’ll live to see you ance mair in your rightful place
amang men, and ye’ll give old Jock a corner in your kitchen, or a lodge
gate to keep, when he’s too auld and failed to work, and hasna strength
left for as much as to drink.”

“You have a right to a share of whatever I may have in time to come,”
said Jack, with comparative cheerfulness. “But I have lost the habit of
hoping. I do feel wonderfully better; and if I _could_ look forward to
anything but to some fresh strange trick of destiny I should feel again
like the man I once was, who had the heart to dare and the hand to back
a bold adventure. But I doubt my luck, as I have had good reason to do;
and I believe old Blockham was not far wrong when he said that there
were some men (and he took me to be one of them) who, with whatever
apparent prospects, never did any good.”

“He’s an auld sneck-drawer. I kenned him weel when he hadna sae muckle
as a guid pair o’ boots. I wadna gie a foot-rot parin’ for the opinion
o’ a hunner like him.”

“He is a stupid old fellow enough,” said Jack; “but those sort of people
have an awkward knack of being right, especially where the making of
money is concerned. A man can’t be too thick-headed to be a successful
money-grubber.”

“It gars one doot o’ the wisdom and maircy of an over-ruling Providence
whiles,” assented the old man; “but I’ll no deny that siccan thoughts
hae passed through my ain brain when I hae seen the senseless, narrow,
meeserable ceephers that were permitted to gather up a’ the guid things
o’ this life. But that’s no to say that a man wi’ understanding and
pairts suldna learn caution frae adversity, and pass all these creeping
tortoise-bodies in the race of life, like the hare, puir beastie, if the
auld story-book had given him anither heat.”

“But the hare never gets a chance of a second heat, my old friend,” said
Jack, ruefully; “that’s the worst of it; he jumps into a gravel-pit, or
a stray greyhound chops him. I think I see my sheep drawing off.”

So the colloquy ended for the time. But Jack doubtless revolved the
question suggested by his humble friend, and asked himself whether the
returning hope of which he was conscious was the herald of a gleam of
fickle Fortune’s favour, or whether it was an _ignis fatuus_, destined
to lure him on to yet more dire misfortune.

“That can hardly be,” he concluded, in soliloquy. “I can’t well be
lower, and he that is down need fear no fall, as the old song says.”

But Jack’s hope this time was no _ignis fatuus_. He had seen the lowest
depths of his adversity, and though his spirit had been crushed for a
while his moral nature had not suffered. And now that his health was
restored he was ready to face his fate as a man should, and struggle
once more to get himself a place among other men as soon as he got the
chance; and the chance came soon, and in a form which he had not dared
to hope.

As he sat one day under a tree watching the sheep which were feeding on
a wide spread of country before him, he took a newspaper out of his
pocket which had arrived at the hut just as he was starting, and on
looking down the column of “local news” his eye met a paragraph which
caused the blood to leap in his veins, and filled his mind with a new
and sudden hope. It was this—

“We regret to hear that Mr. F. Forestall and his companion, a stockman,
name unknown, have been killed by the blacks when they were on their way
to take possession of some new land which Mr. Forestall had purchased.
The land is again in the market.”

Jack bounded from his seat in a state of feverish excitement. “By Jove!
there’s a chance for me yet, but I have not a minute to lose.”

He was impatient to be off at once, but there were the sheep to be
driven in and a horse to be got. While he stood thinking what was the
best to be done he saw Mr. Hazeham riding up, and suddenly resolved to
tell him of his predicament and appeal to him for help.

“Well, what do you want?” said the overseer, “and what do you mean by
sitting there reading the lies in that confounded paper and letting your
sheep go all over the country?”

“The sheep _have_ rather a spread,” said Jack, quietly, “but you’ll find
them all right. They are feeding towards the yard, and have a good way
to go yet, but if you have a few minutes to spare I want to speak to
you, if you please, and ask your help.”

Mr. Hazeham looked in surprise at “John Smith,” and his astonishment was
considerably increased when he heard all Jack had to say. He was
good-natured in the main, and not unwilling to help a man who had been a
large landed proprietor, and might be again; besides, he was not a
little pleased at his own sagacity, for he remembered that he had
described Jack to Mr. Delmayne, the proprietor, as looking “like a swell
out of luck,” so he promptly replied, “Certainly I will help you, Mr.
——”

“Redgrave,” said Jack, reddening.

“Mr. Redgrave, I see there’s no time to lose. You shall have old
Scamper, he’s the best horse we’ve got, and never mind about the sheep;
a fellow applied this morning, and he’s still at the huts. I shall be at
my place in an hour, or less; you come up, and you shall have the horse
and your wages, John Smith,” he added with a laugh.

Jack laughed too, and started off as fast as he could go to find the old
shepherd.

On his way his thoughts went back to Forestall whom he had never
forgiven for his treachery; but death does away with offences, and he
only felt pity towards the man who had supplanted him, and who had not
even entered into possession of his ill-gotten lands.

“Puir fellow,” said old Jock, when he heard the story, “I expect it was
the same black varmints that gave Meester Waldron his death. There’s
naething in the way of fichting so deevilish as thae wee pisoned arrows,
but I wadna hae ye too much set up. The land may be sold, ye ken.”

“True, but there _is_ a chance, and luck may be in my favour this time.”

“Dinna talk o’ luck, laddie; the Lord has seen fit to chastise your
pride, for weel ye wot ye were high-minded ance, and sin’ ye’ve taken
your punishment doucely I’m fain to believe that He may see fit to
reward you; and,” continued the old man, solemnly lifting his hands,
“wherever ye gang, and whatever happens, may the Lord bless ye, and hae
ye in His holy keepin’.”

“Good-bye, old fellow,” said Jack, wringing his hand, while his eyes
glistened with unwonted dew. “If I succeed you shall hear of me, and you
must come to me, and bring the dogs with you.”

Mounted on Scamper, which Jack had bought of Mr. Hazeham, he made the
best of his way to the town. His first proceeding was to call at the
office of the Minister for Lands: it was possible they might be able to
direct him to the agents of Mr. Forestall. Jack was fortunate enough to
see the minister himself, who remembered him directly, for he had felt
much sympathy with Jack, and had been indignant at the way he had been
treated.

“I suppose you are come about that land, Mr. Redgrave?”

“Yes, I am,” said Jack, with a beating heart, and a desperate attempt to
speak calmly. “I hope I am not too late. Will you tell me, sir, whether
the transfer was quite completed?”

“I am happy to tell you it was not, Mr. Redgrave. The papers were drawn
up, but there has been some delay in the office. Poor Forestall was
eager to see his possessions, and thought he would conclude the
arrangements when he came back. So I suppose we have but to transfer the
names, eh?”

“Thank God,” said Jack, fervently, and the sudden revulsion from fear
and uncertainty to assurance sent a sudden choke into his throat which
prevented his saying any more.

The minister saw his agitation, and talked on in a kindly way, giving
him time to recover.

From the minister’s office Jack went to the cattle agents he had seen
before, and made the same arrangements as formerly. He had not touched
poor Guy’s £300, and that would be enough to get stores, pay wages, and
so on.

There was no delay anywhere. Every one in the office knew how Jack had
been cheated, and was ready to oblige him; so the papers were ready for
him in a very short time, and once more he set out on his travels.




                             CHAPTER XXVI.

              “Time and Tide had thus their sway,
              Yielding, like an April day,
              Smiling morn for sullen morrow,
              Years of joy for hours of sorrow.”—_Scott._


There is no need to write John Redgrave’s history for the next three
years. It was a time of hard and continuous struggle, large successes
and exasperating failures; his stock increased largely, but there was
great difficulty in transporting droves of cattle to the nearest market;
plenty of water for sheep, and no danger of floods or droughts, but it
was not easy at such an out-station as this to get sufficient labour in
shearing-time, and the great distance the wool had to be conveyed took
off much of the profits. Moreover, Jack could not make up his mind that
it would be right to bring Maud into such a wilderness, with no
neighbours but the blacks, who, though they had shown no hostility to
Jack, were not to be trusted. He had written to Maud at first, full of
hope and confident of success, and she, dear girl, had been willing to
share with him the rudest log hut; but as time went on he felt how
impossible it was that he should bring her to be the light of his home
before he had made that home fit to receive her.

In his solitary hours, in the silence of his small dwelling-place, he
bitterly regretted having left Marshmead. It was possible that he might
become a very rich man if he lived to be old, but meantime his youth was
going by, and happiness along with it.

But time had good things in store yet for the brave man whose courageous
spirit had never suffered more than a temporary depression. On one of
his visits to the town of —— to buy some of the multitudinous articles
required on a large station, he learnt from an old acquaintance who was
there on the same errand that Donald McDonald, who had bought Marshmead,
had expressed a very strong determination to sell Marshmead and go back
to Scotland. His nephew, Mr. Angus McTavish, had long ago bought a very
large sheep run, and was reported to be doing wonders. Jack’s heart
leaped at the thought of getting back Marshmead, where he had been so
happy, so undisturbed by carking care. With a thoughtful brow he began
to consider the ways and means. By strict economy and careful
management, added to two fairly good years, he had paid off the greater
part of the purchase-money, and his sheep had increased so much that,
after all his losses, he calculated upon being able to buy Marshmead if
only he could get a purchaser for Wondega.

He wrote, accordingly, to Bertie Tunstall, asking him to make inquiries
about Marshmead, and authorizing him to buy it if Mr. McDonald was
really going to sell.

Pending these negotiations, Jack was restless and excited. The thought
of Maud was ever uppermost; she had expressed her willingness to wait,
for years if it was necessary. At the same time, rightly judging her
love by his own, he felt that she would be happier, as she frankly said,
helping to make his home happy than in waiting until everything should
be put in order for herself. Yet, again, how could he bring her to
Wondega?

An answer came in due time: McDonald would sell, but he considered the
improvements he had made on the estate, which turned out to be very
slight, and the increase in the cattle would make it worth a great deal
more than he had given for it.

However, he was willing to sell the place on the same conditions on
which he had bought it—namely, half the money in cash, and the rest in
bills at short date. Despatching another letter to Tunstall, directing
him to close with the offer, Jack bade adieu to Wondega, a place
endeared by no memories of love and friendship, as had been Gondaree and
Marshmead, but, on the contrary, made gloomy by having been the scene of
Guy Waldron’s death, and his own solitary and uncheered abode during the
time of great anxiety and unceasing effort.

There was no difficulty in selling the place; it was different now from
the time when the two adventurers first stood on the hill and caught
sight of Lake Maud; great droves of sheep pastured on the <DW72>s, a
large but rude wool-shed stood in the shelter of some trees, and a
modest cottage was built in the open, loop-holed at certain heights in
case of an attack from the natives. Some of the land had been fenced in,
but there had been no money to spare for rail-fencing, and the rails and
posts were of wood, mostly cut, shaped, and put down by Jack himself.

The land sold well, and Jack was enabled to buy back his own old place.
On his way back he passed by Gondaree, and could not refrain from
stopping and making some inquiries about M‘Nab, who happened to be
absent from the station.

The year succeeding his downfall had been unusually favourable to the
pastoral interests. High prices for wool and stock, steady rainfall, new
country opening, a cessation of wars and rumours of war—all these
circumstances had combined to produce and sustain for squatters the most
protracted term of triumphant success ever known in the Australias.
Those who, without skill or energy, had by good luck purchased when
stock were at their lowest, had of course been floated out on the
ever-deepening tide into undreamed-of fortune and success. Those who,
like Alexander M‘Nab, possessed both, had gone on from one successful
enterprise to another with astonishing rapidity. His name, as the
managing partner in this district for the great firm of Bagemall
Brothers, was constantly quoted as the exemplar of first-class
management, luck in speculation, successful shrewdness, and
well-deserved advancement. A magistrate, an exhibitor of prize stock, an
inventor of improvements in machinery as applied to station uses, a
co-proprietor of several of the largest properties in the district, a
power in the state, his name was in every man’s mouth. Time and
prosperity had mellowed his perhaps originally aggressive propensities,
and now he was popular, respected among all classes of men.

John was glad to hear of the prosperity of his old overseer, and pushed
on with a light heart to Juandah. He was met with a warm welcome. Mark
Stangrove looked more prosperous, a trifle stouter and merrier; the good
years had told in his favour. Maud was lovelier than ever, though she
was certainly thinner and paler, so John Redgrave thought at first, with
a pang of compunction, but after he had been there two or three days he
fancied that he must have been mistaken, for the bloom on her cheek and
the sparkle in her eye were as beautiful as ever.

“Oh, Maud, my darling,” said Jack, as they stood together in the veranda
the evening of his arrival, “what time I have wasted! I go back to
Marshmead a poorer man than when I left it, for I am burdened with a
debt, and what years I have lost!”

“Don’t regret the past, dear Jack,” said Maud, sliding her little hand
into his; “perhaps if you had never left Marshmead you would always have
been a little dissatisfied with it; besides, if you had never left it we
should not have met.”

“I would bear it all over again if you were the prize at the end, Maud.”

“Once is enough,” said Maud, with an arch glance from her bright eyes.

“And I may have my prize?”

“Yes, when you are ready,” replied Maud, demurely.

“I’m ready now, you saucy girl,” said Jack, laughing, though he winced
at the implied reproach in her words, “and I have a great mind to take
you at your word, and carry you off to Marshmead at once.”

“Come back when you like, my dear fellow,” said Mark Stangrove, who had
just joined them, “and then we’ll see about it.”

The week passed all too quickly, but Jack resolved that it should not be
very long before he returned, and certain whispered conferences with
Maud settled the time.

As John Redgrave at length reached the homestead, certain changes were
strongly apparent. The once trim, orderly, and pleasant place was
weed-grown and melancholy of aspect. The stables were tenantless, and
bore traces of long disuse. Many of the buildings were roofless, while
the materials of others had been used up for the formation of
out-houses. Mr. McDonald did not “believe,” as he expressed it, in
improvements, nor in having one man or boy about his establishment who
could possibly be done without; for this reason probably he made use of
the garden as a calf paddock, and Jack’s heart felt acute misery when he
saw the trampled flower-beds, the broken fruit-trees, the mutilated
shrubs; but McDonald was not a man whom this sort of thing troubled. To
have lived in sight of such a daily desecration would have been to some
men an intolerable annoyance. He did not care a jot, when duly satisfied
by careful inspection that his bank balance was on the right side, that
his daily steak and glass of grog were attainable, if every garden in
the land had been uprooted. In other than these convictions and
satisfactions he had no interest. He rarely rode over the run. He never
helped to bring in the calves to brand, or the fat bullocks for market.
He was by no means particular about keeping up the purity of the
carefully-bred herd. He often permitted his calves to be past the proper
age before they were branded, probably by the aid of his neighbour’s
stockmen. But with all this apparent neglect, and his whisky-drinking to
boot, he kept steadily to his principle of having as little labour to
pay and feed as was possible. He did not mind a few strayed or even lost
cattle. If a few calves were branded by others he troubled not his head;
and yet this obese, unintelligent block made more money than the
cleverest man in the whole district. His secret was this, and I present
it to aspiring pastoralists: he had no personal expense; he had no
debts; therefore he was able to weather out the terrible financial gales
when the failure of clever, hard-working men was of daily occurrence.

As Jack got off his horse at the house, Elsie came to the door.

“Eh! but it’s Maister John, it’s my ain bairn,” she cried, “come to
bless my auld e’en before I dee; oh, thank the Lord that I hae lived to
see this day.”

The old woman flung her arms round his neck and burst into tears.

“My dear old Elsie,” said Jack, kissing her, “I am as glad to be here as
you are to see me; and where’s Geordie?”

“Geordie is awa looking after the cattle in the stock, but he’ll be here
the nicht. And oh, Maister John, is it you that’s bought the place?”

“Indeed it is, Elsie, and you must tell me what has been done since I
left.”

“Eh, but ye must hae your dinner first, my bonny man, and I must see
aboot the getting o’t; but bide a wee, I’ll send for Geordie; he’ll tell
ye a’.”

Later in the evening John heard from the lips of his two faithful
friends what had been done in his absence. Whatever improvements bad
been made, and they were very few, were in the direction of the
cattle-yards. They were larger than formerly, and that was all; but the
stock had increased largely, and were in good condition. As to the lost
garden, Jack thought that Maud might like to watch the gradual formation
of a new one. He had got out of the habit of thinking that everything
should be complete and perfect before Maud came.

After setting men to work at repairs in the stables to begin with, Jack
in a few days’ time rode over to pay a visit to his old friend Bertie
Tunstall, who could hardly do enough to show his gladness. Jack had so
much to say that the two days of his stay hardly sufficed for a
recountal of all he had seen, felt, and suffered, since leaving
Marshmead. In old times they used to enjoy the circulation of ideas
produced and quickened by the mutual intercourse of persons who read
habitually and did not permit the wondrous faculty of thought to be
entirely absorbed by the cares of every-day life, by the claims of
business, by plans and actions tending directly or indirectly to the
acquisition and investment of money. It is given to few active
professions to afford and to justify as great a degree of leisure for
realizing an abstract thought as to that of the Australian squatter. He
may manage his property shrewdly and successfully, and still utilize a
portion, at either end of the day, for history and chronicle of old, for
poetry and politics, for rhyme and reason. He can vary intellectual
exercise with hard bodily labour. He may possess, at small additional
cost, the latest literary products of the old and new world. He may,
after the arrival of each mail-steamer, revel in masterpieces of the
thought-giants, fresh from the workshop. When kindred spirits are
available within meeting distance, great is the joy of the pioneers,
what time the half-wild herds are gathered; the tender oxlets seared
with the indelible cipher. Then arises the bustle of the body as each
man lauds a favourite author or decries a pet aversion.

Life again flowed on for Jack with the peaceful security and round of
accustomed duties which had filled up the days of long ago happily and
so completely. Spring ripened into glowing summer with stores of fruit
and flowers; with long dreamy days of sunshine tempered by breezes which
wandered over marsh and mere, fresh from gentle murmurings with the
wandering ocean wave. Again he saw the wild swan lead her brood of
cygnets through the deep reed-bordered meres. Again he leaned from his
saddle at midday and dipped his broad-leafed hat in the cool marsh
waters which plashed pleasantly around his horse’s feet. Once more he
rose at dawn to feel the thrice-blessed sense of safety and untroubled
possession of the land. Again he mingled with his fellows on terms of
absolute equality; nay, more, of slight but acknowledged superiority, as
of one who had bought experience, who had struggled with fate and
overcome. And in the midst of the priceless sensation of contentment and
repose came a fuller tide of thankfulness, a savour of keener relish,
born of the unforgotten hardships of the past. Before the summer days
had reached their longest John Redgrave brought home his bride.

What need to say that they were happy? The union of two such loving
hearts and two such perfect tempers is sure to bring happiness. At the
sight of his friend’s lovely wife, and Jack’s perfect delight in her,
Bertie Tunstall suddenly found himself a lonely and miserable man. He
said his health needed a change, and went off to town, from whence he
returned in a few weeks an engaged man, and in due time made another
visit to the same place, and brought back a pretty, amiable, loving
little wife, who proved to be a great favourite of Maud’s.

According to John Redgrave’s promise, old Jock Harley was not forgotten;
a place by the “ingle neuk” was offered him, but he preferred a hut of
his own, and a comfortable one was built for him on the hill-side, far
away from the house, where he could have his eye on the cattle, though
he never took the interest in them which he did in sheep, giving it as
his opinion that they were “puir doited beasties, and unco hard to
unnerstan’.” The dog Help came with him, and was made a great pet of by
all the household.

When John grew prosperous and wealthy he sent home a considerable sum to
Guy Waldron’s sisters, the increase of the £300 which had come to him so
opportunely when he was in his direst need.

As years passed on, as the clover and rye-grass matted in thick sward
over the fens and flats of Marshmead, Jack found his thoughts running
much upon the education of the steadily increasing olive-branches that
came, and grew, and flourished in that cool, breezy clime.

To the alarm of old Elsie and Geordie, who spoiled the rosy boys and
girls to their hearts’ content, Mrs. Redgrave already begins to hint at
a residence in the metropolis, solely, of course, for the sake of
masters and so on for dear Bertie and Maud.

For many a year John Redgrave’s life and opinions have been before his
countrymen and close neighbours, great and small, poor and rich. His
active principles have been plain for all men to see. If he buys a
thousand acres of the Marshmead Crown lands, he employs no agent, but
stands up like a man and bids in person. His motto is “fair and above
board.” What he thinks right to do he will perform if he can, maugre
land-sharks, agitators, or even his very respectable and slightly
democratic farmer neighbours. Every one in the district knows, or
believes he knows, nearly every thought of the heart of that transparent
kindly nature—of that hearty, jolly and benevolent Squire of Marshmead.
But two of his opinions have ever excited remark or called forth
curiosity. One is an intense dislike to sheep, under any and all forms
of management. The other is a furious and unreasonable hostility to the
extensive pastoral region which lies north of the Murray.

His tale is told. I hold it expedient in common fairness to inform my
confidential friend, the reader, that the writer is acquainted with more
than one Jack who abandoned the substance for the shadow; with more—many
more, alas!—than one or two young, brilliant, brave, and beautiful
Jacks, who, enthralled by the Circe of new worlds, served henceforth to
fill her dungeon-sties, or to wander aimlessly from land to land, till
kindly death released from union wasted body and ruined soul. But, alas!
not with many who, like John Redgrave, fought their way back to comfort
and affluence, after having gone down into the depths of misfortune,—not
with many who “suffered and were strong.”

                                THE END.

           RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.

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                                 _REUBEN SACHS._

                                 BY LORD LYTTON.
                              _THE RING OF AMASIS._

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          _JOHN VALE’S GUARDIAN._

          _SCHWARTZ._
          _THE WEAKER VESSEL._

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                                Transcriber’s Note

          This table summarizes any corrections made to the text, as
          printed.

 p. 17      the opposition of the others[,/.]        Corrected.

 p. 33      many other inhabitants.[”]               Added.

 p. 44      any dacency next or anigh it[.]          Added.

 p. 45      I’ll send Joe[.]                         Added.

 p. 47      you know[.]”                             Added.

 p. 36      [‘\“]She and Charley will head them      Corrected.

 p. 76      but we have a far pas[s]age              Corrected.

 p. 104     they were only fifteen short[.]          Added.

 p. 111     was the girl Wildd[cu/uc]k               Transposed.

 p. 126     or Dick, and Liberty Hall.[’/”]          Corrected.

 P. 134     and worked with even suspicious          Added.
            smoothness[.]

 p. 140     as he [grew, up/grew up,] showed         Moved comma.

 p. 159     to well to[o] be mistaken.               Removed.

 p. 161     [“]Little was said.                      Removed.

 p. 180     tun[n]elled                              Added.

 p. 217     “I will, if——[”]                         Added.

 p. 232     the una[c]customed scene                 Added.

 p. 298     in[ ]certain respects                    Spaced added.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Squatter's Dream, by Rolf Boldrewood

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