It occasionally occurs to our unresting, unreasonable minds, prone, as we all are, to straining the mental vision and wearying our hearts with efforts to descry the form, to catch the Sibylline words, of the veiled future, that we are not so very wretched in the society of the present. After some slight intervals of sighing for the (social) fleshpots of Egypt, Mr. Neuchamp began to enjoy his life very thoroughly, and to question whether he should be so much happier after he had become a proprietor and carried out his plans of regeneration. The spring had set in, and nothing could be more lovely than the fresh warm air, the gloriously fresh mornings, the cool calm nights.

‘How happily the days of Thalaba went by!’ His health, spirits, and appetite were faultless. It was a time of hope and expectation for the great event of the year. The shearing was coming on, and insensibly the increase of station hands. The putting into order of the disused shearers’ huts, wash-pens, machinery, and woolshed, spoke of impending transactions of importance, and told that ‘the year had turned.’ He had made up his mind, too, that ‘after shearing he would revisit the metropolis.’ There the moon-lighted, sea-washed verandah of Morahmee, with a slight and graceful form pacing thereon, musing ‘in maiden meditation fancy free,’ showed softly yet bright, as an occasional romance gleam through the somewhat prosaic mist of his ordinary day-dreams. It might have been the influence of the pure dry air, of the oxygenated atmosphere, which caused Ernest to become so very light of heart after this heroic resolution. If it were so, nothing that has ever been said by enthusiastic tourists in praise of the beauty and salubrity of the Australian climate can be held to be in the slightest degree exaggerated.

Another effect was noticeable about this time. Ernest commenced to be remarked, among his observing mess-mates, for a suspicious eagerness to learn and acquire all the mysteries of stock farming, some of which he might have previously overlooked. He delighted Mr. Doubletides by his alacrity, and that grim veteran remarked that in a year or two more he might be able to look after a small station himself, always provided that he had a careful overseer.

‘The deuce a bit you’ll see of him thin, me ould shepherd-driver, in a year or two, or next year either,’ said Barrington. ‘I know the signs of it. He’s going to cut Garrandilla after shearing, and he’s trying to suck ye, like a marrow-bone, of all the fruits of all yer long hard life and experience, me ould warrior. And why wouldn’t he? Sure I’d be off myself and invest, if my uncle would only send out the ten thousand that he promised me.’

‘Neuchamp manage a station!’ said Malcolm Grahame. ‘He just knows naething whatever about foot-rot, and he disna know first-combing from pieces; it’s my deleeberate opinion he’ll just be insolvent within the year.’

‘How do you know?’ quoth Charley Banks. ‘It’s half luck, seems to me. I know an old cove that only branded his cattle once about every two years, and he made more money than all the district put together. Neuchamp’s a good sort of notion about a horse, and he don’t drink. I’ll lay six to two he ain’t broke next year, nor the year after.’

Garrandilla was not a fenced run. It was in the pre-wire-bearing stage, preceding that daring and wondrous economy of labour. At the period of which this veracious chronicle treats, the older pastoral tenants were wont to speak with distrust of the new-fangled idea of turning large numbers of valuable sheep ‘loose—literally loose, by George—night and day’ in securely fenced but unguarded enclosures.

One thing was certain, they had made their money mainly by the exercise of certain qualities, among which were numbered, beside industry and energy, a talent for organisation scarcely inferior to that required by a general of division. At Garrandilla the twenty or thirty flocks, averaging two thousand each, were marshalled, counted, gathered, dispersed, with the punctuality, exactness, and discipline of a battalion on field duty. Were all these rare endowments, these valuable habits, to be henceforth of no avail? Were the sheep to be just turned loose and seen from time to time like a lot of store cattle? Were experienced shepherds, skilled overseers, henceforth to be unnecessary? And would any young inexperienced individual who had brains enough to know a dingo from a collie, or to see a hole in a fence when such hiatus was present, do equally as well to look after five or ten thousand sheep in a paddock, as the oldest shepherd, under the orders of the smartest manager in the land? These were serious and important questions. Mr. Jedwood was not a man given to hurried outlay. The process of building up his fortune had been hard, anxious, and gradual. He had no idea of reversing the process in any possible casting down of that edifice. Therefore, with the aforesaid twenty or thirty shepherds, ration-carriers, etc., it did not admit of doubt as to there being plenty of work at Garrandilla. Of a truth the work was unceasing from daylight on Monday morning till dark, or later, on Saturday night. Indeed Sunday was often spent by Mr. Doubletides in weighing out rations, and making out a few of the men’s accounts, as a species of rest from his labours not unbefitting the day.

The process of general management was somewhat in this wise. Each of the young men had certain flocks placed in his charge; these he was expected to count at least once a week. He had a small sheep-book or journal in which the name of every shepherd, with the number of his flock, was entered upon a separate page, as thus: ‘John Hogan, 14th May; 4-tooth wethers; No. 2380; dead, 5; added, 14; taken out, 52—total, 2337.’

A similar account was kept of every flock upon the station, which was expected to be verified by a count at any moment. This counting it was de rigueur to perform early in the morning. As the shepherd usually left the yard or fold soon after sunrise, and many of the flocks were ten or fifteen miles from the head station, it followed that the young gentleman who counted a distant flock had to quit his couch at an exceedingly early hour.

Then the ration-carriers, who were always conveying provisions, water, wood, all things necessary to the shepherds, required in their turn supervision.

Nothing but the hardest bodily labours and unsleeping apprehensive vigilance kept this small army in good order and efficiency. If a shepherd lost his flock, there was mounting hot haste and terrific excitement till the sheep were found; Mr. Jedwood riding and aiding personally in the quest as if ruin was awaiting the non-arrival of the flock, to pounce down upon him and his.

There was no denying that the management of Garrandilla was very successful upon the whole. The fat sheep were eagerly competed for by dealers and others directly it was known that they were in the market. The wool brought a good though not extreme price in the home or colonial markets. The station accounts were kept by the storekeeper with the strict accuracy of those in a merchant’s office. There was no waste, no untidiness, no delay, no dawdling of any kind. The men were well though not extravagantly lodged and fed, after the manner of the country. They received the ordinary wages, sometimes a shade above them. Whatever they drew from the station-store was accurately debited to them, and they received a cheque for the exact amount of the balance upon the day of their departure. What they did with the said cheque—whether they spent it in forty-eight hours at the nearest inn, whether they kept their money for the purpose of buying land, whether they put it into the savings bank, or gambled it away—was a thing unknown to Mr. Jedwood, and concerning which he never troubled himself to inquire.

When Mr. Neuchamp, in the ardour of his unquenched philanthropy, questioned him about these things, he declared that he had no great opinion of station-hands as a class, that most of them were d——d rascals, and that as long as they did his work and received the pay agreed upon he really did not care two straws what became of them.

Ernest felt this to be a very doubtful position, as between master and men, and further required to know whether, if he, Mr. Jedwood, took measures to locate a few of his best men with their families upon the frontage to the river, he would not secure an attached tenantry, and be always certain of a better and readily available class of labour.

To this Mr. Jedwood made answer that he should consider himself to be qualifying for admission to a lunatic asylum if he attempted to do any such thing. ‘In the first place you would lose,’ he said, ‘a quantity of your best land, and your best water. In the next place, as their stock increased they would use and spoil double the quantity of land they had any legal title to. Most probably they would not work for you, when you needed labour, except at their own price and terms; and if you wished at any time to buy them out, they would ask and compel you to give double the price they had paid. No, no; I’ve kept free selectors out all these years, and, as long as I live here, I’ll do so still.’

So Mr. Neuchamp had again to fall back upon his own thoughts and excogitations. He was not convinced by Mr. Jedwood, who took a narrowed, prejudiced view of the case, he contended. But he arrived at the conclusion in his own mind, that the amount of bodily and mental labour devoted to the sheep-pasturing division of Garrandilla was exhaustingly large, and that any mode of simplifying it, and reducing this great army of labourers, would be very desirable.

More and more to him was it apparent daily that there was no cessation, no leisure, no possible contemplative comfort in a life like this. It was the same thing every day. Sheep, sheep, sheep—usque ad nauseam.

Garrandilla was a highly unrelieved establishment. There were no ordinary bush distractions. There was no garden. There were no buildings except those positively necessary for the good guidance and government of the place. Jedwood’s two rooms served him for every conceivable want here below. They really were not so much bigger than the captain’s cabin in the good ship which brought Ernest to Australia. But they were large enough to eat, drink, and sleep in twenty years since, and they were so now.

At times a neighbour rode over and spent an hour or two, talking sheep, of course. Occasionally a lady, from sheer weariness or ennui, would accompany her husband or brother, and beat up the great Mr. Jedwood’s quarters for a short visit.

One day Ernest was standing near the cottage in a meditative position, when a gentleman rode up, having a lady on either hand. Mr. Jedwood, with old-fashioned gallantry, promptly assisted the fair visitors to dismount, and then calling out loudly, said, ‘Neuchamp, take these horses over to the stable.’

Ernest walked over, and taking the horses mechanically, was about to make for the stable, when one of the ladies exclaimed in a tone of great astonishment, ‘Mr. Neuchamp!’ He looked up, and to his very considerable surprise recognised one of the young ladies of the Middleton family, his fellow-voyagers.

‘Why, what is the meaning of all this?’ inquired Miss Middleton. ’I never thought to see you so generally useful; but I understand—you are staying at Garrandilla, and performing the “colonial experience” probation.’

‘You have guessed it exactly with your usual acuteness, Miss Middleton,’ said Ernest, who, slightly confused at having to act as amateur stable-boy, had now recovered his usual self-possession,—never long absent, to do him justice. ‘I will come in as soon as I have stabled the horses.’

When Ernest returned he found the ladies evidently concluding a short narrative to Mr. Jedwood, in which he guessed himself to have figured. Nothing could be warmer or more pleasurable, however, than their recognition.

‘And so, Mr. Neuchamp, here we meet, after all our arguments, and passages-of-arms,’ said the younger sister. ‘We are on our native heath, you know, so we shall take the offensive. How do you find all the new theories and schemes for improvement stand the climate?’

‘Not so very badly,’ assented Ernest boldly. ‘I am biding my time, like the Master of Ravenswood. I intend to cause a sensation by carrying them out when I have a station of my own.’

‘Oh, you must get one in this district,’ affirmed the elder sister with determination; ‘it would be so pleasant to have some one to talk to. We are living in utter solitude, as far as rational conversation is concerned.’

Mr. Jedwood at this juncture ‘trusted that, as they did him the honour to pay him a visit now and then, they did not include Garrandilla in the conversational solitude.’

‘Oh, you know, you’re such an old friend. We can recollect riding to Garrandilla with papa ever since we could be trusted on horseback. It is one of our chief pleasures and resources. But really, Mr. Jedwood, you ought to build a new cottage. I used to think the old hut a splendid place once, but it looks now, you must confess, rather small.’

‘Two rooms for one man, and that man an old bachelor, Miss Middleton, are not so very bad. I’m used to the old place. I can sit there and write my letters, and here, by the chimney side, I smoke my pipe and watch the embers. But I think I must put up a new place, if it’s only for my young lady friends. I’ll see about it after shearing, after shearing.’

But this promise of a comparatively palatial edifice after shearing had been made, to the young ladies’ knowledge, for several years past, and they evidently did not place much faith in it; Miss Middleton asserting that it was lucky Mr. Jedwood had not commenced life at Garrandilla in a watch-box, as he most certainly would have continued the use of that highly compressed apartment.

They all laughed at this, and Mr. Middleton affected to reprove his merry daughter for her sally, but the end of it was that Ernest received a very cordial invitation to visit his old acquaintances at their station, distant about twenty miles, and mentally resolved to take an early opportunity of availing himself of it. The society of young ladies had been entirely out of his line since he had parted with Antonia Frankston, on the verandah at Morahmee. The effect was agreeable in proportion to the period of compulsory withdrawal from such pleasures and recreations.

Truth to tell, he was commencing to weary somewhat of the eternal, never-ending merino drill. He could understand a lad of seventeen or eighteen, like Charley Banks, spending two or three years profitably enough in the Garrandilla grind, and being better so employed than anywhere else. But he, Ernest Neuchamp, was a man whose years and months were of somewhat more value in the world than those of a raw lad. He thought, too, that he knew about as much of the not very abstruse and recondite lore necessary for the average management of a station as he was likely to acquire in another year, or any greater length of time. He resolved that, after shearing, he would state his case fully to Mr. Frankston, and secure, if possible, that paternal elder’s consent to his purchasing a station of his own with his own money.

From time to time at long intervals, whenever by no possibility could any excuse be found for working among the sheep, would Mr. Doubletides summon him, the other youngsters, and any unoccupied individuals that were handy, and crossing the river, proceed to ‘regulate the cattle a bit,’ as he expressed it. Jack Windsor being a first-class stockman, and handy with the roping-pole, was always invited to join the party. Then they would have a week’s mustering, branding, drafting, weaning, fat cattle collecting, what not—and then every one would come back much impressed with the heroism of the whole expedition, and the cattle would be left to their own devices for three or four months longer. These muster parties were extremely congenial to Mr. Neuchamp’s tastes and tendencies. He found the country, which was wild and hilly in places, more interesting than the uniform, monotonous, but profitable campaign, where roamed the carefully-tended merino. There were Alpine gorges, tiny streamlets, masses of foliage, botanical treasures, and above all, a mode of life more irregular, more volitional, than the daily mechanical regularity with which the machinery of the ‘merino-mill,’ as Barrington profanely called it, revolved diurnally at Garrandilla proper.

Moreover there was occasionally trials of speed, of bottom, of horsemanship, in thus tracking the half wild cattle to their fastnesses, in which Osmund distinguished himself, and which were more akin to the noble sport of hunting than anything which Ernest had met with in Australia. The driving of the great herd into the stockyard, the drafting, the roping, the branding, the cutting out, all these were novelties and excitements of a very high order, as they then appeared to the ardent mind of Mr. Neuchamp.

So keenly did he appreciate the general work among the cattle, that upon a recommendation from Mr. Doubletides, who thought all time not absolutely devoted to sheep and wool thoroughly wasted, he was promoted to be a kind of cattle overseer. Then from time to time, in company with Jack Windsor, for whose services he formally petitioned, he was despatched on short but pleasant missions to the cattle station when any particular duty of an outpost nature was required to be done.

Then the friends were in their glory. Jack Windsor had been brought up on a cattle station, and had a strong preference for them as stock over sheep. He always took care to provide an ample commissariat in case of accidents, while Mr. Neuchamp armed himself against the perils of a long evening or two at the hut of the cattle manager by bringing a book. Thus fully accoutred they would start off amid the congratulations of Barrington and Charley Banks for a week’s perfect happiness.

Why Mr. Neuchamp esteemed himself to be favoured by fate in being especially selected for this department, was chiefly on this account—that it opened a prospect of change and comparative mental leisure. I have described my hero carelessly and faintly, but the judicious reader will ere this have discovered that Ernest was essentially less disposed to action than contemplation. Not that he disliked or avoided work, but he liked it in large quantities rather than in small, with spaces for consideration and preparation duly interspersed.

For instance, at Garrandilla it was one constant succession of calls and appointments and engagements. ‘Would Mr. Neuchamp get something out of the store? Would he make out So-and-so’s account? Would he go down and draft So-and-so’s flock? Would he be sure to be up before daylight and count the sheep at the Rocky Springs? Mr. Jedwood was returning from the farthest back station, and would he lead a fresh horse to meet him at the fifteen-mile hut? Would he take out a fortnight’s rations to old Bob, and be sure to bring in all the sheep-shears? Would he calculate the number of cubic yards in the Yellow Dam, just completed, and check the storekeeper’s account with the contractor?’ and so on.

Now, all these things Ernest could do, and did do—as did his fellow-cadets—still the endless small succession troubled him. Small wonder, then, that a feeling of relief and satisfaction possessed him when he got the route for Warbrok, and he and Jack packed up their effects and necessaries for a week’s comfortable, steady, solitary work among the cattle, where no complications existed, and where they saw no one but a couple of stockmen and old Mr. Hasbene, the manager, from the time they left Garrandilla till they returned.

In the long days of tracking the outlying ‘mobs’ or small subdivisions of the main herd, in the unrelieved wandering through ‘the merry greenwood,’ with its store of nature’s wonders—hidden watercourses, mimic waterfalls, rare ferns, plants, and flowers, strange birds and stranger beasts—Ernest felt the new delight and enjoyment of a born naturalist. Then the sharp gallops, ‘when they wheeled the wild scrub cattle at the yard,’ were exciting and novel.

The evening, too, spent in the rude but snug building that had served the cattle overseer—a laconic but humorous old man who had once been a prosperous squatter—for a habitation for many a year, story-telling, reading, or dozing before a glowing fire, were pleasant enough in their way.

In the ordinary yard work—drafting, branding, roping, throwing, etc.—Mr. Neuchamp felt a strong and increasing interest. When they returned to the merino metropolis of Garrandilla, old Mr. Hasbene expressed his regret emphatically, while Jack Windsor loudly lamented the necessity of going back to school.

‘Sheep’s all very well,’ that gentleman would observe, ‘but my heart ain’t never been with them like the cattle. There’s too much of the shopkeeping pen-and-ink racket about ’em for me. Look at our storekeeper, he’s writin’ away all day, and sometimes half the night, to keep all the station accounts square. There’s Mr. Doubletides, he’s always away before daylight, and home at all hours of the night. There’s some blessed flock for ever away or having to be counted, or drafted, or shifted, or tar-branded, or sold, or delivered; and it’s the same story all the year round. There’s no rest and no easy time with sheep, work as hard as you will. Of course the wool’s a fine thing, but give me a mob of a couple or three hundred head of fat cattle on the road for market with a good horse under ye and a fourteen-foot whip in your hand. That’s a job worth talking about—a couple of thousand pounds on legs in front of ye—and precious hard work in a dark night, sometimes, to keep it from cuttin’ right off and leavin’ ye with your finger in your mouth.’

‘By George, Jack, you’re a regular bullocky boy,’ said old Mr. Hasbene; ‘you had better get Mr. Neuchamp here to put you on as stockman when he buys a cattle station, as I expect he will when he leaves us. If I was a young man I’d go with him myself, for I see he’s got a real turn for the roans and reds, and there’s nothing like ’em.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Ernest. ‘I have a great fancy for a cattle run; and I must say, I think Jack is right about the sheep. They are a great deal too much trouble, especially with shepherds. I came away from England to lead a quiet life in the wilderness, to have a little leisure and time to think, and not to be hurried from one engagement to another like a Liverpool cotton broker or a stock exchange speculator.’

‘I don’t say there isn’t money made by sheep,’ remarked Mr. Hasbene, ’but cattle, to my mind, have always been the most gentlemanly stock. A man does his work; it’s sharp sometimes; but then he has it over. He knows what he’s about, and hasn’t to be always “hurried up” like a Yankee dry goods clerk. I wouldn’t change lives with Jedwood for all the world. I live like a gentleman in my small quiet way, but I’ll be hanged if he does.’

‘Quite right, Mr. Hasbene,’ said Ernest. ’The characteristics of “the gentle life,” in my estimation, are occasional strenuous, useful, and dignified exertion, seconded by unquestioned leisure, more or less embellished by letters with the aid of the arts and sciences. All this keenness to amass money, land, flocks, and herds, is merely the trading instinct pushed to excess, whether the owner lives in a street, in a city, or a hut on a plain. However, we must be off. Good-bye.‘ Away they went at the rapid pace so dear to unthinking youth, all heedless of the capital of human as of equine bone and sinew, secure of a vast endowment to their credit in the future, good for endless drafts and extravagant cheques, while the grizzled senior rode back to his lonely lodge to contest, as best might be, with three months’ loneliness, three months’ absence of human face, of human speech, laughter, or tears. It was not a gay life, certainly, but such as it was, he had lived and outlived twenty odd years of it. In all human probability—he was failing now—he would remain there until he died. So best—where else should he go? Geoffrey Hasbene had once possessed money, friends, a good station, a fair position. But indifferent luck, combined with an easy, careless, liberal disposition, had caused his property to drift away from him. For a time he had suffered some of the evils of neglect and of poverty. Then this prospect of employment was offered and thankfully accepted, and for many years he had been exercising for another the qualities of vigilance and economy that, in the long past years, would have gathered and secured a fortune for himself.

The season wore on. The mild Australian winter, far different from the stern season that Mr. Neuchamp had associated with that name, changed almost imperceptibly into glowing spring—into burning summer.

The ordinary work of the station advanced. Men came and went; were hired, verbally; retained, paid off, and so on, with an undeviating regularity that savoured of machinery.

With spring came all the bustle of washing and shearing. Herds of men arrived at Garrandilla, and were employed as sheepwashers, shearers, extra shepherds, watchmen, engineers, fleece-rollers, and people to do anything that may be required and nothing in particular. Much Ernest marvelled at the apparently profuse and reckless manner in which men were engaged at high wages, until it occurred to him one evening to reckon up, with the assistance of Malcolm Grahame, the probable value of the wool crop. Then he admitted that a few hands or a few pounds, more or less, were not much to be considered in view of such a large quantity of so high-priced and so promptly convertible a commodity.

The general tone of the establishment was altered. Mr. Windsor had completed his colt-breaking business, and having enrolled himself as a shearer, was living in a state of luxurious freedom from any kind of work, and waiting with twenty or thirty other gentlemen, apparently of independent means, the important tocsin which tells of the commencement of shearing.

Barrington and Grahame were galloping about all day long, from the shed to the wash-pen, looking important and mysterious, while Mr. Banks was permanently located at the latter place, and evidently considered himself as in a great degree responsible for the reputation of the Garrandilla clip in the forthcoming wool sales.

For Ernest, to his great satisfaction, employment had been found at the cattle station, an unusual number of fat stock having been sold and delivered at this particular season, so that he and Jack Windsor had been mustering and drafting and partly delivering the said beeves, until it was time for the latter gentleman to take his place among the braves, who, when on the war-path, on the far plains of the north-west, are, sometimes inaccurately enough, styled and designated shearers.

Thus it came to pass that Ernest grew to consider himself more immediately connected with the ‘cattle side of the run’ than the sheep ditto, and insensibly began to imbibe those prejudices in favour of one description of stock, which, though not capable of logical justification, are often found to be sufficiently powerful to influence a man’s whole life.

At last, after many minor combats and skirmishes, a strike among the sheepwashers, a demand for more pay from the shearers, a short supply of carriers, a threatened superfluity of clover-burr and grass seed—the great shearing campaign was completed.

The men were paid off; the teams wool-laden departed; the shepherds returned to their homes—save the mark; Mr. Jedwood departed for town; and for a little space it really seemed as if the genius of bustle would revisit Garrandilla—‘nevermore.’

Mr. Jedwood had told Ernest, before leaving, that if he particularly wished to visit town before he returned he was fully at liberty to do so, as Mr. Doubletides would be able to manage all there was to do for the next three months, with the other youngsters, or even without them.

Before he left town, Ernest would have scouted the idea of leaving Garrandilla under a full twelvemonths. But circumstances, it is said, constantly alter and affect cases.

The circumstances were—extreme heat; waveless uniformity, not to say monotony, of existence; the lack of fresh companionship; and finally, a strong, impetuous, sudden desire for civilised life, coupled with an undefined, unrecognised longing for the criticisms of Antonia Frankston upon his new and thrilling experiences.