The pleasant days wore on until the less pleasant idea began to take shape in Mr. Neuchamp’s mind that it had become necessary to consider the route once more. This sojourn in Capua could not be indefinitely prolonged. Either he must go back to Garrandilla or he must make purchase of a station on his own account.

After due consideration of the Garrandilla scheme it became apparent that another year of the routine life which he recalled would be unendurably dull, whereas a new station, his own property, a cattle run—for he was resolved to have no other—would abound in novelties, and above all, in opportunities for carrying out his long-cherished plans of reform.

The only difficulty in his path would be Paul’s uncompromising desire to benefit him after his own fashion. For mysterious reasons he had apparently decided that he, Ernest, was not fit to run alone, in a pastoral sense, for another year at least. Mr. Neuchamp steeled himself to attack his provisional guardian on this point on the very next opportunity. He would enlist Antonia upon his side. He would recapitulate the reasons which caused him to consider himself the equal in experience of some pastoralists who had been all their lives in the country. Surely a man did not come ten thousand miles across the sea to a new, not to say unexplored country, to spend his life in looking on! He would press Paul hard. He would convert him, and then, hey for Eldorado, for Arcadia, for Utopia, with laws and ordinances framed by Dictator Ernest Neuchamp.

While at the club, an institution which became more pleasant in his eyes daily, and where he steadily enlarged the number of his acquaintances, he kept his ears open as to opportunities for buying station property advantageously. He had at one time been fixed in the idea of purchasing the cattle station of Mr. Jermyn Croker, about which that sceptical philosopher and Mr. Frankston had interchanged various pleasantries more or less acidulated. But it so chanced that among the honorary members who made their appearance from time to time at the club, and enlivened or impressed its ordinary society, came a squatter from another colony named Parklands.

With this young gentleman Ernest was much taken, and they soon struck up a strong intimacy. Mr. Parklands was Australian-born, but not on that account to be credited with any deficiency of energy; on the contrary, he possessed so much vigour of body and of mind that if he had degenerated in any way (as is a received theory with certain writers), his progenitors must have been perfect steam-engines. He was well known to have explored a very large proportion of the Australian continent, to have formed, managed, bought, or sold at least a score of cattle and sheep stations. His transactions comprised incidentally thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep. He had recently returned from another colony where he had acquired an immense area of newly-discovered country. He was on that account, he stated, ready to sell the remnant of his property in New South Wales on favourable terms.

Lal. Parklands was popular. A good-looking, pleasant fellow, went in for everything—billiards, loo, racquets, dinners, theatres, and balls, with the same zest, energy, and enjoyment which he threw into all his business operations. He strongly advised Ernest to ‘tackle old Frankston,’ as he expressed it, upon the subject of his independence, and to go in for a station on his own hook without delay.

‘It isn’t because I’m selling out myself that I say it,’ he added, ‘but the fact is, cattle are as low as they can possibly be, and the next change must be a rise. What do you say, Croker?’ he asked of that gentleman, who now lounged up. ‘You have had something to do with lowering the people’s spirits about their stock. If you’ll come to Queensland with me next time I want to buy there, I’ll pay your expenses.’

‘It is apparent,’ replied that gentleman, ‘that somebody is sure to swindle Neuchamp, and you may as well do it as any one else. I thought I was to have the honour, from what old Frankston said, but I suppose you have made highly-coloured representations after the manner of cornstalks.’

‘You are fatally wrong, as usual, Jermyn. I’ve made a pot of money out of Rainbar, and if Neuchamp buys it and does as well, he’ll be able to go back to Europe as a successful colonist in no time.’

‘If he takes Mr. Parklands as his model in speculation, management, and conversation, he must succeed in everything he undertakes,’ said Mr. Croker with ironical approbation.

‘Come and have some sherry, old Bitters,’ said Mr. Parklands cheerfully, ‘and then I’ll thrash you at billiards. Never saw an Englishman I couldn’t give points to yet. Can’t lick us.’

Roused by this national reflection, Mr. Croker offered to play for anything he chose to name, and Ernest betook himself to Morahmee. He had determined to open the parallels without delay.

Full of this noble resolution, Mr. Neuchamp only waited until Antonia had departed from the dining-room to commence the momentous project.

‘I begin to feel,’ said he artfully, ‘that my holiday is drawing to a close. I don’t think I ever enjoyed town life thoroughly before. But one can’t always be on furlough. I must join my regiment—must be off to the bush again.‘

‘What’s the hurry?’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘Nothing much ever goes on at a station until the cold weather sets in. You will find Garrandilla wretchedly dull after club-dinners, ball-going, boat-sailing, and all the rest of it. Even the verandah here is considerably better of a hot evening than those rascally slab huts.’

‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Frankston,’ said Ernest, ‘and you know that when the sailing day comes, and the wind is fair, Jack must get on board. I don’t suppose you find Captain Carryall would make much allowance for lagging.’

‘No, faith. He would need to be a smart fellow to stand before Charley if he kept him humbugging about when the bark was empty and the whaling gear in trim. But you are not shipped as an A.B. anywhere as yet. Make the most of your young life, Ernest, my boy—it won’t come twice.‘

‘There is a time for all things,’ rejoined Mr. Neuchamp, who had small reverence for play in the abstract; ‘I came to Australia principally for work, and I shall be uneasy until I am fairly in harness. But without beating about the bush, I am impatient to purchase a place of my own, and unless you are inexorably averse to the step, in which case I should give in, I feel the strongest desire to make a start on my own account.’

‘Why won’t you be content to sail by my orders for a while?’ said Paul, much disturbed. ‘If you knew how many young fellows I have seen ruined all for the want of a little delay, for want of following the caution I have given you, you would not be in such a hurry to risk your fortune on a throw.’

‘But consider,’ said Ernest, perceiving, as he thought, a slight sign of compromise in Paul’s candid face, ‘I am not exactly like other young fellows, with the same intentions. I have had in reality more experience in the time of my novitiate than they have had in double the period. I have had road work, station work, sheep and cattle management. I have had, from peculiar circumstances, more than ordinary advantages of practical teaching, and I do myself consider that unless I am duller than ordinary, I may be trusted to manage a moderate-sized cattle station, if you will help me with your advice in the purchase.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Paul, passing through into the verandah, and lighting the cigar of reflection, ‘I don’t know but that, as you say, you have had rather more luck than common in your apprenticeship. You have been before the mast, too, as we say on board ship, and that is a great help. You are as steady as a church. That’s all to the good, no doubt. But what I am afraid of is a sudden turn in prices—stock can hardly be lower, to be sure. Well, well—you can only risk it. But I don’t want to see you, as I have seen many a good fellow, lose his money and the best years of his life, and either die, go to the devil, or settle down to the banishment of an overseer’s berth.‘

‘Like poor old Geoffrey Hasbene,’ said Ernest; ‘I don’t think I could quite endure that, though the old fellow is resigned enough.’

‘I remember him well enough,’ said Paul; ‘it’s a good while since I heard his name. I have seen him ruffling it with the best, and the owner of a good station. He was not very fast either.’

‘And what ruined him?’

‘Partly bad luck, partly a careless, easy-going disposition. He thought more of his house, his stables, and his garden than he did of his stock, and that was the end of it. Mind you take warning by him.’

‘I hope I shall—but now that you think I may really make an attempt to fly off the nest, might we not settle something about the probability of a purchase to-night?’

‘Yes—perhaps—yes,‘ answered Paul, seating himself with a resigned and gloomy air. ‘I suppose you have heard of a place or two at the club. There’s a good deal of business done there. Has Jermyn Croker said anything to you further?’

‘Scarcely, but a young squatter named Parklands has a place that seems suitable; he appears a nice fellow enough.’

‘Oh! young Parklands—humph! Very nice boy—quite sharp enough, but I don’t suppose could let you in very extensively. Well, I’ll inquire to-morrow; better leave that part of it to me. I’ll see about Croker’s place also. Plenty of time. Market full of sellers, and very few buyers. Cash very scarce. But that’s all in your favour. Antonia!‘

‘Here, papa,’ said that young lady, joining them. ‘What is the matter? has anything happened, that you look so serious?’

‘Well, that’s as it may be; Ernest here is bent upon buying a station at once, and I have been trying to show him the prudence of waiting.’

‘But he can’t wait years and years,’ said Antonia, taking, to Mr. Neuchamp’s great joy, her powerful aid to his side of the suit. ‘I don’t think you would have done it either, you impetuous old dear; didn’t some one run away to sea like a naughty boy, and come back in a ship of his own—eh?‘

‘And suppose I did, you saucy puss, didn’t I run the risk of being drowned, starved, burned, roasted alive, and all sorts of deaths; and if I had a son, I should think it my duty to warn him against the sea, as the worst profession in the world.’

‘And he would think it his duty to go in spite of you. Not that Mr. Neuchamp would do anything contrary to your advice, I am sure,’ said Antonia with a becoming blush, ‘but I think he is wise in wishing to have a place of his own, and begin life in earnest. Besides, everybody says a cattle station is so pleasant, I almost think I could manage one myself.’

‘Pity they should be so far from Sydney, or you might come and try,’ said Ernest, with a grateful inflection in his voice. ‘Waratah would distinguish herself in a camp, I feel sure.’

‘I daresay we should do nearly as well as certain—hem—English people,‘ said she mischievously. ‘I have always thought from what I have heard that life on a cattle station must be quite the romance of the bush. There is a sort of Bedouin flavour about it, with a necessity for good horsemanship that would fascinate me if I were a man.’

‘Go and play something, like a darling,’ said the old man. ‘I feel a little like my namesake in the Bible—Saul, I mean—as if music could conjure the evil spirit out of me.‘

It was finally settled, therefore, on that fateful evening, that Mr. Frankston should inquire about the station which Mr. Parklands had for sale, and decide whether it or that of Mr. Jermyn Croker would be the better investment.

The preliminary was carried out with business-like precision. Mr. Frankston called upon the cheerful Parklands and the desponding Croker and extracted from each, their separate temperaments notwithstanding, the area of the runs, the number, age and sexes, and condition of the cattle, and many other particulars, including the lowest price, necessary to a true and just knowledge of the bargain. He, besides this, set on foot inquiries among those of his numerous constituents who happened to be neighbours, and finally, after all these precautions, told Ernest that he thought Parklands’ place seemed the cheaper, and that when it was formally placed under offer he had better go and inspect it.

The negotiations having proceeded to this desirable length, Mr. Neuchamp’s satisfaction was unbounded. He saw himself placed in the position which he had long coveted, and pictured day-dreams. He would be a territorial magnate, having the right to rule over a region larger than the whole county wherein his paternal estate was situated. If he could not impose new laws he could justly administer the old ones. Visions of improved breeds of cattle, of a different method of treating the station hands, of developing the capabilities of the run, of making a fortune in a few years, and revisiting England. All these achievements rendered possible by that first bold step in actual colonisation, the purchase of a run, passed through his brain, with the lightning-like rapidity that was wont to characterise such mental evolutions, but which had of late been more infrequent. He did not confide these plottings against the peace of the district which he was to invade to Antonia. It was not from any decline of sympathetic friendship, but chiefly because of late that young lady, now ever ready to approve of his wish to begin upon his own responsibility, seldom approved of his projects in advance of the age or of Australian ordinary bush customs, which she maintained had been formed by very shrewd and successful men.

It was necessary that Mr. Parklands and Mr. Neuchamp should meet at the station, so that he himself should be able to exhibit its special advantage. But that gentleman had far too many engagements to permit of his starting off at once upon this particular errand.

It was therefore arranged that, on a certain date, Ernest should make his appearance at a far inland township named Bilwillia, where he would meet Mr. Parklands, who by that time would have ‘come across’ from the Burra-warra-nonga, or some such easily pronounced locality, which he was compelled to visit regarding the approval of a small lot of ten thousand store cattle and fifty thousand wethers, under offer to him for the Melbourne market.

As nothing was to be gained by immediate departure, Mr. Neuchamp availed himself of this unexpected holiday with unrestrained satisfaction and enjoyment. He feasted upon his favourite authors and upon the newer publications which he was enabled to procure in Sydney, thanks to the excellent public and private libraries. Antonia and he renewed their literary labours and criticisms; and that young lady immortalised herself and completely subjugated Jack Windsor, by making a water-colour sketch of Ben Bolt in an attitude of mingled fear, wrath, and desperation, when unexpectedly confronted with a German band. It was Mr. Windsor’s deliberate conviction, emphatically expressed, that ‘a young lady who could take off a horse like that—the dead image of him—could do anything.‘ In truth, horse and man formed, at the moment, a study for an artist. The former with glaring eye, open nostril, sudden arrest of action, and capacity for the wildest outbreak; the latter sitting watchful, statuesque, centaur-like, a personification of equestrian strength and grace.

As the distance to Bilwillia was great, and its reputation unfavourable in the matter of horse-flesh, Ernest determined not to risk the safety of Osmund, whom he left in snug quarters near Sydney.

Mr. Windsor, much to his disappointment, received news of the illness of his mother, the only relative in the world, as he had often stated to Ernest, for whom he possessed a grain of affection. He was more strongly moved by the sudden announcement of her being sick unto death than Mr. Neuchamp thought possible.

‘I don’t half fancy,’ he said, ‘sloping and leaving you to go and take delivery of the place all alone by yourself, sir; and they say Mr. Parklands knows a thing or two. However, he’s an off-handed chap, and the best thing you can do is to leave the whole jimbang in his hands altogether. If you go barneying about calves, or counting horses that’s give in, he’ll best ye, as sure as you’re born. So your dart is to say you don’t know nothin’ about cattle, and drop him in for the drafting out calves under age, and all them sorts of things. Then, as he’s a gentleman, he’s bound to give you a show. I ought to be along with you, I know. But I haven’t seen my poor old mother for five years good, and I must go, if I was never to make a rise again.‘

Jack departed, but he somehow found time to call at Walton’s inn on his way to Appin, where his old mother lived and where he had spent his childhood. Ben Bolt had but little breathing time once clear of Sydney streets, and that wild steed of the desert was sensible of a decidedly quickened circulation as he was pulled up in the inn yard, and turned into a stall after a hurried and headlong manner.

As Mr. Windsor passed the door of the inn, he observed an immense quadruped hung up at the posts, which, but for the saddle and bridle, might have been taken for a strayed waggon-horse. The length of the stirrup-leathers conveyed to a bushman’s intelligence the fact that the rider of this Gargantuan steed was an individual of unusual length of limb.

Passing quietly into the bar, and thence into a small parlour devoted to the family and particular friends of the host, he discovered the old couple, Miss Carry, and a stranger, whom he immediately associated with the charger aforesaid and with the district of the Hawkesbury.

‘Well, Mr. Windsor, and who’d have thought of seeing you?’ said Mrs. Walton. ‘Have you and Mr. Neuchum—and a nice gentleman he be, surely—been in Sydney all this time? And where are you leaving for now?‘

‘We’ve been in Sydney all the time, and a very jolly place it is, Mrs. Walton,’ said Jack, answering the old woman with his tongue and Carry’s quick glance with his eyes. ‘Mr. Neuchamp’s just going up the country to look at a cattle run, and I’m going home to Appin for a short spell.’

‘What are you going to do there?’ said Carry; ‘I thought you went everywhere with the young gentleman?’

‘My poor old mother’s very bad,’ said Jack, looking rueful, ‘and I must be home to-night, some time or other; but I don’t think anything else would have kept me from going up with the master, to see him all right with this new station as he’s going to buy.’

‘Do you—live—at—Appin?‘ said the stranger young man, taking about a minute for the enunciation of each word, and speaking in a drawling, though not nasal, monotone.

‘When I’m at home, which is about once in five years, I do,’ answered Jack. ‘You live on the Hawkesbury, and haven’t ever been far from the river, I’ll swear.’

‘So I do, at Rooty Hill Farm, Nepean Point,’ said the New Hollander with a smile, which broke first upon the edge of the round plump face and gradually spread over it like the eddy in a pond. ‘How—did—you—come—to—know?‘

‘By the look,’ said Jack coolly; ‘they don’t grow such men anywhere else in the colony, except on the Hawkesbury flats. My name’s Jack Windsor. What’s yours, old nineteen stun?’

‘I ain’t nineteen stun, I’m only seventeen,’ said the youthful giant, whose voice, however, did by no means correspond with his stature, being mild and small of timbre. ‘My name’s Harry Homminey, and I’ll back our land to grow more corn to the acre, let alone pumpkins, than any farm this side of the Blue Mountains.’

‘Like enough,’ answered Jack indifferently. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if you took to pumpkins very kind when you was young. They’re great feeding stuff. But your Windsor and Richmond farms is only handfuls after all. How many acres have you got?’

‘A hundred and thirty-two,’ said the Netherlander, with just pride, ‘and never a tree or a stump on it.’

‘Well, what’s that?’ demanded the denizen of the waste. ‘Why, a child can take up three hundred and twenty acres in the bush anywhere. I wouldn’t be bothered with land unless I had a whole section to begin with.’

‘It’s a deal better than no land at all; and that’s about what you have, I expect,’ said the agriculturist, gradually coming to the opinion and belief that Mr. Windsor was disposed to disparage him and his fat acres before Carry Walton.

‘Never mind what I have, and keep a civil tongue in your head,’ said Jack wrathfully; ‘I’ll give that round face of yours such a pasting that they will not know you from a Lower Narran man, only by your weight, when you go home. But I won’t be cross to-night, and the poor old mother dying for all I know. Good-bye, Mrs. Walton; good-bye, Carry. I must be off.’

Mr. Windsor departed into the night and they saw him no more, but I am strongly of opinion that he managed to telegraph something to Carry before he gained his saddle, and if it meant unalterable affection as she understood it, whether it was the automatic process, or Morse’s, who shall say?

Certain it is that she returned to the room with a serene countenance, and listened apparently with intentness to the somewhat uninteresting conversation of the man of maize and pumpkins, who eventually mounted his massive charger and trampled along the highway towards the rich levels of Nepean Point.

Mr. Neuchamp was so extremely anxious to make a commencement upon the foundations of his own experience and management that he left Sydney a week or two before the actual time necessary to reach the township of Bilwillia, where he was to make rendezvous with Mr. Parklands. He purchased for himself a befitting hackney, and, not having Jack Windsor’s aid, was beguiled into the possession of a stiff, short-legged cob, which his English tradition led him to believe would be the exact animal for a long journey and indifferent keep. Having gone part of the way by rail, he managed to reach the unromantic and extremely hot township of Bilwillia more than three days before Parklands could by possibility arrive, unless under the highly improbable supposition that he had more time than he knew what to do with.

Mr. Neuchamp was, as we have had before occasion to explain, by no means destitute of resources. If there was any interest whatever to be extracted from a locality, he was a likely man to discover and avail himself of it. But he afterwards confessed that he then and there felt more nearly reduced to the unphilosophical and indefeasible position of utter dulness than he could have believed possible.

For if any place could possibly combine extremest degrees of isolation, monotony, dreariness, and depressing discomfort, that place was Bilwillia. It straggled around the edge of a sombre watercourse, the ditchlike banks of which dropped perpendicularly through the clay, as if dug by some savage engineer centuries since. Around, anear, afar, all was plain and sky. The arid landscape was as boundless, monotonous, as the sea. The salsolaceous plants, within ten feet of the unbarked pine-posts of the rude verandah, were identical in appearance with every plant for a hundred leagues. Hill nor tree nor stone was there within a square of a thousand miles.

There were no books; no newspaper, save the Bourke Banner, a fortnight old, containing sundry local incidents, a short leading article, and a lengthy advertisement of Holloway’s Pills.

On the fourth day, about the exasperating period of noon, when the ‘blue fly sung in the pane,’ and all the slow torture of Mariana in the moated grange transposed to southern latitudes seemed to be in process of representation, Mr. Neuchamp, to his excessive delight, made out two separate cortÈges arriving from different directions. Both comprised mounted men and spare horses, and either of them might well be the long-expected Parklands. They were plainly steering across the wide plain for the Bilwillia Inn.

The first cavalcade was headed by an unusually tall athletic-looking personage riding a well-bred powerful horse, which evidently made little of his somewhat unfair weight. A sharp-looking elfish black boy and a stockman, at some distance behind, drove several spare animals, including a packhorse, upon the tracks of their leader. As they arrived at the inn, the gentleman in advance hung up his horse and walked into the house, while his attendants proceeded to unsaddle the whole troop.

Almost immediately after the full and careful observation of this party had been concluded by Mr. Neuchamp, rendered desperate by long abstinence from decent society, the second group gradually ‘came up from the under world,’ like a strange sail, and disclosed the form of a charioteer, with an attendant and spare horses. The driving was like unto that of the son of Nimshi, whom, in the matter of pace, Mr. Parklands resembled. And that energetic and punctual personage it proved to be.

‘How are you, Neuchamp?’ he called out cheerily, jumping down from an express waggon with a driving seat. ‘Splendidly punctual, are we not? Had to come sixty miles yesterday, and five-and-thirty this morning. Can’t lick us!’

‘It was very good of you,’ said Ernest most sincerely, ‘to make a push. I do not know what I should have done if I had had to wait another day here.’

‘You don’t mean to say you came here before yesterday?’ cried Mr. Parklands in tones of horror and amazement.

‘I came three days ago, I am sorry to say.’

‘Three days!’ groaned Parklands, ‘in this cursed hole. I wonder you didn’t hang yourself, or go on the spree. But Englishmen never do that till they have been three years out from home.’

‘Three years!’ said Ernest, rather amused. ‘Then there is a possibility of my taking to inebriety in course of time. It is rather alarming!’

‘I have known many a good fellow take to it. All the same, I shouldn’t say it was much in your line though, in three years or thirty. But didn’t I see a tremendous long fellow go into the house, just as those other horses came up?’

‘There was a very tall man at the head of yonder party,’ said Ernest, looking over at the black boy and his companion, who was lighting a fire and preparing to cook. ‘He is now in the hotel.’

‘Aymer Brandon for a thousand!’ said Mr. Parklands excitedly. ‘A very old friend of mine, and the best fellow going. I suspect he has been over to his runs, on the Warrego. I’ll soon lug him out.’

With this he dashed into the inn, and shortly reappeared in company with the tall gentleman, who, indeed, only required to be seen once to be easily recognised in future.

Mr. Aymer Brandon was presently introduced with great and joyous empressement by Mr. Parklands, who hung about him with schoolboy abandon. He was so considerably above six feet in height that Mr. Neuchamp and his friend, both well-built, middle-sized men, looked abnormally short beside him. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, his vast symmetrical frame seemed equally adapted to feats of strength or of activity.

‘We are in luck, Neuchamp; Brandon happens to be going down to one of his stations below Rainbar, and we can join forces—that is horses—and tool down luxuriously, four-in-hand. Can’t lick us! I had a presentiment we should come out double sixes when I started.‘

Mr. Neuchamp thought it would be most pleasant travelling.

‘You see, your cob can go with the spare horses, which the boys will drive after us. Couldn’t improve on the caravan if we’d planned for a month.’

Ernest would have modified his anticipation of comfort had he been aware that the larger proportion of the horses depended upon for this rapid and efficient journeying were, at that very moment, wholly unbroken to harness, having, so to speak, never seen a collar.

But this uncertainty of the future was as yet hidden from him, and the whole party proceeded to lunch, which, in consequence of much exhortation, with promises, and even threats, from Mr. Brandon and his friend, was, with the help of the omnipotent bitter beer of Tennant, by no means to be scorned in the wilderness.

‘What’s your waggon like, Sparks?’ queried Mr. Brandon privately.

‘Slap-up!’ answered he with confidence. ‘There’s no brake; but that won’t matter, as two of the horses have been in harness before, somewhere. We’ll do the hundred miles to Rainbar in two days comfortably.’

‘Nothing more complete could be hoped for on the Darling,’ pronounced his friend calmly, ‘so that’s settled. I subscribe the black boy and five horses, which we can break in on the road. I hope the I.P. (intending purchaser) is a good plucked one, or he is like to turn back before reaching Rainbar, if he journeys with us in the waggon.’

An early start was arranged for next morning. Accordingly the half uplifted disc of the red sun of the desert irradiated the whole party on the farther bank of the river fully equipped for the road.

Aymer Brandon held the ribbons, while Parklands took the box-seat, in order to be ready in case of a complication with the scratch team. Mr. Neuchamp sat behind in company with Tom Fuller, a Rainbar stockman and past-master in smashes of every kind, sort, and description on wheel or in saddle, on land or water, mountain or plain. The black boy, Eachin, rode in charge of the spare horses, amongst which was turned Mr. Neuchamp’s Sydney cob. One of the unbroken horses was considerately placed in the near wheel, the other in the off lead. It being evident that all precautions had now been taken, Mr. Brandon sang out ‘Let go!’ to the volunteers who had assisted at the ticklish business of putting to, and with a shout, a double-thonger, half a dozen wild plunges, and an innocuous kick, the team settled down on the utterly perfect, firm, sandy road to something like racing speed.

There was little conversation for the first mile. Without a brake, all that could be done was to hold the team straight, shooting the gullies fairly as they came. Ever and anon, as a bar touched his hocks, the off leader kicked gaily over the traces, but finding the outer side yet more uncomfortable, kicked back again with discretion beyond his years.

Three miles had been swallowed up ere the team steadied ever so slightly. Then Brandon got his pull at them.

‘Good travelling, Neuchamp?’ said Mr. Parklands. ‘Do the journey easy by to-morrow night. The day after I’ll show you the finest lot of cattle in Australia—all reds, whites, and roans. Can’t lick ‘em!’

‘Are they quiet?’ asks Mr. Neuchamp, as a vision of back country cattle blacks and brindles, which he mentally vows to improve off the face of the earth, crosses his brain.

‘Quiet?’ queries Parklands derisively, ‘why, you can’t kick’ em out of your way.‘

‘I am truly glad to hear that,’ says Mr. Neuchamp heartily; ‘quiet cattle are so much pleasanter to draft.’

A ten-mile stage, at the highly meritorious pace alluded to, having been slipped over, the monotony of Australian steppe-travelling was varied by the introduction of two of Brandon’s troop. They were, comparatively,

The first introduced was a grand-looking old black horse, with a superabundance of pluck and one hip down. He was substituted for the off-side leader, who was turned over to Eachin. The alteration was effected in five minutes, and old Darkie sailed off as though he had been carefully coached since colthood. This state of affairs was obviously too good to last. Not accustomed to winkers, the veteran, catching his toe in a root, went down like a shot. Now occurred a first-class complication.

‘Total wreck, with loss of all hands,’ concludes Mr. Neuchamp.

Not so. Parklands and Jim Fuller are down almost as soon as Darkie, and fasten on the horses like bull terriers in a rat-pit, while Aymer Brandon sits calmly in his place, and delivers his orders with the imperiousness of the skipper whose mainmast has gone by the board.

This was the situation: when Darkie fell the team was doing ten miles an hour. The wheelers swept over him, and he was brought up by the fore-axle of the waggon. Both check-reins were carried away and the lead bars broken. The near leader dashed round the back of the coach, where he was pulled up with a round turn by the strong arm of Mr. Brandon, who was engaged, as to his whip-hand, in rib-roasting Darkie to make him ‘come out of that.’

‘Here, Jem!’ he sang out, ‘freeze on to this brute behind while I make that three-cornered calamity come out of his earth.’

Darkie, finding his position under the waggon becoming too hot, emerged dexterously, and stood upright under the off-wheeler, raising that unsuspecting animal’s hindquarters upon his back. Having achieved which he awaited the next move, which promptly came in the shape of two terrific double-thongers. Upon this Darkie darted out, and at once commenced to feed till again wanted.

‘My dear Parklands,’ commenced Mr. Neuchamp, underrating the variety of bush expedients, ‘this is indeed unfortunate. I suppose we shall have to camp here until the harness is repaired.’

‘Camp!’ exclaims Parklands in wild amaze, ‘we’ll be off in ten minutes. Can’t lick us.’

And in good sooth, a pair of spare bars having been rigged, and the checks spliced with bush buckles, within fifteen minutes they were once more under weigh and doing their ten knots an hour comfortably.

At two o’clock Toolara, a station which was the property of Mr. Parklands, and distant about seventy miles from Rainbar, was reached; there a good luncheon was secured. At four o’clock start was made to do the remaining twenty miles between them and Gregor’s shanty, where the night was to be passed.

At Toolara the party was augmented by a tame dingo, belonging to Mr. Parklands. He was most appropriately named Beelzebub. For, in his own realm, the vast kingdom of this chief, he reigned unequalled.

A magnificent specimen of the Australian dingo, bright orange as to colour with a white ring round the neck, he boasted of long sweeping hair and was feathered like a Gordon setter. The intelligence expressed by his flag was marvellous, and its language various and comprehensive as that of a semaphore. His face alone, if fate had but permitted the painting of it to Sir Edwin Landseer, would have been well worth a thousand guineas at the Royal Academy. Plainly visible therein were foresight, decision, craft, and self-control, in sufficient quantity to furnish forth a Cabinet Ministry. You could not look upon the calm countenance without feeling a conviction that against all ordinary foes that gifted animal was safe, as Achilles upon the Trojan plain. Like unto the Homeric hero he was invulnerable save in one point, the poisoned bait, that talismanic safeguard which assures the pastoral future of Australia.

To his credit be it stated, Beelzebub did not in any way identify himself with the party, who were, through this discreet conduct, not included in the anathemas he was destined to bring down on his own head. He kept about a quarter of a mile from the road, in a course parallel with the waggon.

Five miles had been travelled when the first victim to his fiendish arts appeared. Norval, leisurely boiling the evening camp kettle, the while watching his flock peacefully nibbling towards the yard, is thunderstruck to see those splendid wethers, filled with salt-bush and water, suddenly sundered as if by a red streak of lightning, and the division farthest from him sent across the plain racing for their lives, with the devil himself whipping in.

Then does that unhappy Gael pursue, with his longest strides and Anglo-Ossianic oaths, but to no purpose. The astute dog-fiend, when the fat-laden flyers had collapsed suddenly and hopelessly, through sheer breathlessness, turns him round, curls his noble flag far over his back, and, like the famed coyote, ‘vanishes through an atmospheric crack.’

This trifling adventure was witnessed by Brandon, Parklands, and Mr. Neuchamp with great interest. The sheep did not belong to them. The dog was fully believed to be a dingo errant, running his diurnal stage of duty. And, in the end, it would conduce to the benefit of the merino interest, as Norval would be roused into a course of spasmodic bait-laying, which possibly might bring a few genuine freebooters off their perches. Aymer Brandon, after a hearty laugh all round and the assertion from Sparks that they ‘couldn’t lick him,’ dropped the whipcord on to his team and swept away over a splendid salt-bush plain, level as a bowling green, though slightly differing in colour. As they threaded a clump of box, the corpse (apparently) of Beelzebub was descried stretched out under a tree, looking rather more dead than the reality. The crafty one permitted himself to be passed without the motion of a muscle, and was no more seen until a mile or two on, when a cloud of dust, with a red thunderbolt darting to and fro therein, proclaimed the fact that another shepherd was in process of disestablishment.

The short Australian twilight had commenced, when Parklands took the reins to pilot the coach into a deep horse-shoe bend unknown to Brandon, near to the opposite bank of which stood the half-way house. At a nobly undeniable pace did the gallant Sparks tool through the glades of mighty red gum patriarchs, the roots of which, long fed by river springs, deep piercing the soft alluvium, had made them loftier, broader, wider of shade than the fatherland. He had shot more than one polygonum creek, straight and true as an Indian the Saults St. Marie’s boiling rapid, when Brandon shouted, ‘Where the blazes are you driving—slap into the river? I can’t see how these nags will take a water jump!‘

‘By Jove!’ said the iron-nerved Sparks, as with a clever sweep he came to anchor, the near wheels going several inches over the river bank in the operation, with a drop to the water at an angle of seventy-five or a hundred feet, ‘so I am. Jump out, boys. Can’t lick us.’

The events of the day had occasionally startled Mr. Neuchamp, but his sangfroid won the admiration of Parklands and his friend. He had exhibited no tendency to jump out before he was told; and Brandon was afterwards heard to state his conviction, that if Sparks had charged the Darling four-in-hand with characteristic carelessness of results, Ernest would have simply sat back and kept his chin up, in profound undoubting faith that he would be landed safely upon the opposite bank.

The horses were promptly unharnessed and turned out amidst luxuriant pasture, after which all hands crossed the Great River in Gregor’s dug-out to that gentleman’s hotel. An apology for the primitive appearance of the place was thought necessary by Parklands, so considerate ever is the outgoing proprietor to the intending purchaser. Ernest assured him that, though slightly inferior to the Royal, he had already, since his arrival in Australia, been lodged more humbly. Having witnessed one another’s signature in passable whisky, towels were produced, and the dust of the day consigned to the river.

At ten o’clock P.M. all hands were ordered to bed by Aymer Brandon, in spite of Sparks’s desire to describe a lovely damsel whom he had met when last in Sydney. She was his sixteenth engagement, but circumstances had compelled an irrevocable parting. Knowing that another whisky would infallibly bring on a retrospective history of the other fifteen, Aymer was inexorable and hunted the amorous Parklands to bed, where he was heard to murmur softly, ‘Couldn’t lick her,’ as he dropped off to sleep.

Beelzebub, arising with the lark, promoted the next adventure, as follows: Gregor was out at cockcrow, to kill a sheep for morning chops, but found himself all too late. His fold, a hundred yards from the house, was dog-proof, with the exception of the hurdled gateway. Reaching it, ‘all hunger-maddened and intent on blood,’ he found another in possession actuated by similar motives. He beheld Beelzebub in the very act of devouring a six-tooth ewe—not the class of sheep usually selected for slaughter. ‘Stiffen those blank dingoes!’ roared Gregor, ‘there goes a note!’ Charging wrathfully into the yard, and unconsciously commending himself by name to his enemy, he assaulted the ‘Evil One.’ The instinct of the latter came primarily into play, thus assaulted unawares, and he sprang at the high slanting poles, all vainly. Not Cerberus himself could have cleared them. This false step was but the weakness of a moment. Logical reasoning, the result of civilised intercourse, reasserted its sway. Calm as Marlborough, he then comprehended the situation with a glance, and proceeded to execute the only strategical movement possible in the very pressing, or rather depressing, condition of the engagement.

Gregor, upon observing his abortive attempt to clear the fence, had rushed to the gate. The crafty one, with an innocent expression of countenance, and his flag curled gracefully over his back, trotted calmly towards him. Gregor timed the dog well, unknowing of his resources, and aimed a kick at him which would have stove in a thirty-ton cutter.

The Napoleon of dingoes, making a feint as if to dash through the gate, stopped abruptly. The harmless boot expended its force and momentum, with some inconvenience to its owner, against the gate-post. Ere a second coup de pied could be arranged, Beelzebub glided swiftly through, with his flag erect and waving gently from side to side in token of approval.

At breakfast Gregor gave a thrilling account of the havoc wrought in his flock, and solemnly swore that he had lifted the dog, with one kick, over the high palisades.

Parklands, knowing the culprit and the utter hopelessness of any human effort to strike him without consent, felt no uneasiness. He also forgot to mention that the dog belonged to him. When Gregor was out of earshot Parklands (who was solely a cattle-owner), bursting with pride at the prowess of his pet, offered to lay Mr. Neuchamp a cool hundred that Beelzebub, bar baits, should eat all the sheep on any ordinary station in six months.

Mr. Neuchamp, not having studied the habits and capacity of the Australian dingo sufficiently to warrant his making a book on the subject, declined the wager.

‘If I were you, Sparks,’ said Brandon, ‘the next time I was annexed by a young woman and wished to be off the bargain, I should make her a present of Beelzebub. If the “wily one” would not in a week sever the tenderest domestic ties, I am mistaken in his character. Wouldn’t mind even laying him against a mother-in-law.‘

An early breakfast of chops, fresh from the slaughtered ewe, a short but exciting voyage in the dug-out, and they espied their ‘connecting link,’ who was equal to most occasions, standing with his horses ready for harnessing. Their narrow escape on the preceding night was now plainly legible in the wheel tracks, just over the brink of the river bank, and even the reckless Sparks acknowledged it to have been ‘a near thing.’ Brandon now took the reins, lectured Sparks upon dangerous driving, and spun through the vast umbrageous eucalypti, towards the road.

Neither accidents nor offences occurred during the next twenty-five miles, at the end of which luncheon was spread by the side of a reed-bordered lagoon. As they had now entered upon the extensive territory of the Rainbar run, Mr. Parklands caught a horse for himself, as also Mr. Neuchamp’s cob, with a view to rounding up an occasional mob of cattle and proving his vaunt as to their unsurpassed breeding and docility.

The opportunity soon occurred. A small lot of some fifty or sixty head appeared about a half-mile from the road. Away went Parklands with Eachin and Mr. Neuchamp backing up. After a sharp ring or two the cattle stood with the horsemen around them. To Mr. Parklands’ mortification and Brandon’s wild delight, everything being plainly visible from the waggon, a huge coarse-horned, dun-coloured bullock singled out and ‘went for’ Ernest without more ado. The appearance of the brute was appalling, and his intention so obvious that Mr. Neuchamp did not hesitate to turn and fly across the plain for his life. The cob, though a fair roadster, was not constructed for violent exercise at short notice. He held on gallantly, but bos ferox gained perceptibly on him. At the half-mile end his horns were level with the cob’s quarters, and Mr. Neuchamp had concluded to throw himself off and trust to the brute’s continuing his mad career, when the cob, feeling that the game was up, stopped short, throwing his rider over his head. The bullock hurled past them with a snort of wrath and defiance, continuing his headlong course over the plain, in search of the first congenial scrub. When Parklands came up Mr. Neuchamp was gazing at his horse, which stood with its legs wide apart panting, with streams of sweat running down his flanks and even his face. His ears were dangling limply, and he looked very much indeed as if he were going to cry.

‘Really, Parklands,’ said poor Neuchamp, ‘if that is a specimen of a Rainbar beast, I can well understand your saying that they will not get out of your way.’

‘D—n the brute!‘ quoth Sparks; ‘he does not belong to the run at all. Didn’t you see the JS on his quarter? He is one of those infernal scrub-danglers from the Lachlan come across to get a feed. I’ll shoot the ill-conditioned wretch if ever I come across him again.’

Upon being assured both by Brandon and Parklands that this was really the state of the case, Ernest continued his inspection of the remainder of the mob, with which he was well satisfied. Not to risk any further contretemps, Parklands then suggested a return to the known dangers of the waggon. This also suited the cob, who looked as if he had carried all his friend’s money in a race and lost it.

‘Ten miles from Rainbar,’ sang out Parklands. The words had hardly left his lips when the fore part of the waggon sprang into the air.

‘Hang on behind!’ shouted Brandon; and another minute saw Sparks and Jem Fuller fasten on to the hind axle, backing for their lives. ‘Man the horses, Eachin! Jem, you cut a straight sapling while we rouse out the saddle-straps for a splice.’

On inspection the pole was found to have snapped about a foot from the fore-carriage, upon which the broken stump, catching the ground, had turned that important part of the mechanism under the waggon, causing the alarming jolt. The pole being ‘fished’ with a pine sapling and numberless saddle-straps, the remaining ten miles were safely accomplished rather under the hour, with the middle of the mended pole trailing in the dust.

They were heartily welcomed at Rainbar by Mr. Brigalow, the overseer, who produced some good whisky, and with an invention of his own, called a geebung, a fair imitation of soda water was concocted, in which all present drank success to the purchaser.

On the morning after their arrival at Rainbar no time was lost by the restless Parklands, who was astir and alive to the utmost possible extent at daylight. Mr. Neuchamp, too excited to sleep during the night, had fallen asleep before dawn. He had but dozed off, it appeared to him, and now here was Parklands rousing up everybody, catching horses, whistling to the dogs, swearing at the black boys, throwing missiles at Brandon’s door, and generally making as much noise as a dozen ordinary people. Where work of any general nature is on foot in the bush, breakfast is the first important stage, being indispensable, as, whatever other meals may be partaken of provisionally or left to chance, human nature urgently cries out for one ‘square meal,’ pour commencer. The cook therefore came in for his share of intimidation and criticism from this terrible early bird.

Eventually the whole party found themselves assembled for breakfast at the comparatively early hour of 5.30 A.M., while through the unglazed open windows they could see the partially filled horse-yard, in which stood every available screw and stock-horse on the place.

‘Now, Neuchamp,’ commenced Mr. Parklands, only partially arresting the process of deglutition, ‘we must come to a decision about the muster. I am bound by the terms of my agreement with old Father Frankston—rather a downy old bird, in spite of his jolly ways and out-and-out dinners—to get in all the herd and count them over to you. I would rather not do it, I confess; not because I’m afraid of my numbers, but it takes time. I have to be in Melbourne in ten days, in Adelaide in three weeks. Besides, it knocks the cattle about. Doesn’t it, Aymer?‘

‘Of course it does,’ assented that gentleman; ‘but it has an element of safety about it, as far as the purchaser is concerned.’

‘No doubt of that; but in cases where the books have been so regularly kept for years, as Brigalow’s here, any man can see that he must get his numbers if he takes them by the book total, with a decent percentage knocked off for deaths, etc., for fear of accidents.’

‘It occurs to me,’ interposed Mr. Neuchamp, remembering Windsor’s advice, ‘that as I have actually no experience in taking over a herd like this, if Mr. Brandon would kindly act for me in the whole matter, I should be happy to leave the delivery in his and your hands, feeling sure that he could arrange it with you, in my interest, better than I could myself.’

‘I could have no objection, of course,’ said Parklands. ‘I think it a very good idea on your part; and though Aymer is my oldest friend, yet I fancy no one would accuse him of not doing you justice in such a case as this. I don’t think they’d tell him so, at any rate.’

‘What a lazy beggar you are in small things, Sparks,’ said Aymer. ‘Why don’t you muster the cattle, and have done with it? And why am I to be exalted into the position of your head stockman, and expected to back you up in all kinds of audacious fabrications in which I have no personal interest?’

‘Who is lazy now?’ sneered Parklands. ‘Why can’t you oblige Neuchamp and me also; it may be for the last time, for I shall never return from Melbourne alive, if the girls are half as pretty as they used to be. Besides, I give you full power to fix the percentage, inspect the books, knock off the price—anything you like, in fact. As a seller of unparalleled generosity, we can’t be licked.‘

‘I shall feel really grateful, Mr. Brandon,’ said Ernest, ‘if you will consent to be my arbitrator and friend in the business.’

‘Well,’ said Brandon, stretching his vast frame and rising slowly from the breakfast-table, ‘if both parties combine against me there is nothing but capitulation for it. I surrender. So we may go to work forthwith. There are the books for ten years back—certainly very neatly and regularly kept. Branded, so many; missing, so many; dead, so many; sold, so many. It strikes me, however, that 1 per cent additional might be added to the death-rate.‘

‘All right, old boy, knock it off,’ exclaimed Parklands.

‘Then, as to the brandings, nothing of course counts under six months. I observe that you and Brigalow had a very fair haul of calves about a month ago. I suppose none of them came from those outlying Wanilmah cattle of mine? We’ll scratch them out of the count.’

‘You be hanged,’ explodes Parklands. ‘I believe that old cattle-stealer, Weenham, that you call an overseer, is a long way on the debit side with me in the calf line. But scratch them out if you like. I hope you’re contented now. I believe you’re standing in with Neuchamp, and met accidentally by appointment at Bilwillia to have me.’

‘I’ve not quite done with you yet,’ said Brandon calmly, all unheeding of the gradually rising thermometer of Sparks’s temper. ‘What about those Back Lake cattle? It has just occurred to me that the last camp we saw there two years ago, when I helped you muster, contained an unusual number of “pigmeaters,” even for back country. You can’t charge our friend full price for them.‘

‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Parklands, ‘you’re a friend in need. Well, of course we’ll make a deduction for them. Though as the country is so splendid out there, and is easily watered by cutting a channel from the river, I——‘

‘Cost only two thousand pounds,’ murmured Aymer.

‘Go to blazes! Five hundred more likely,’ said the sanguine Sparks. ‘Well say a hundred off for “ragers.”‘

‘Must have a hundred and fifty,’ placidly pleaded Brandon. ‘Think of the danger and anxiety in muster times.’

‘You’re another!’ burst out Sparks, now justly indignant. ‘If I take off another penny for anything, may I be——‘

‘Well, I only want two more stock-horses now,’ persisted Brandon; ‘nothing here fit to call a horse that you could break your neck off creditably.’

‘Where am I to get them, eh?’ asked Parklands despairingly.

‘Don’t mind taking the two wheelers you drove up. Neuchamp will find them handy for practising four-in-hand with—the only fun he’ll be likely to get here. And now, as I’m thoroughly exhausted and demoralised by unmasking your villainy, we’ll adjourn to lunch. Can’t lick us, eh, Sparks.‘

‘Well, of all the cold-blooded, grasping, unprincipled screws that ever imposed upon a warm-hearted proprietor under the cloak of early friendship, you’re the biggest, you old humbug. Mr. Neuchamp, you never made a better bargain in your life, thanks to this long impostor. Let us have lunch on the strength of it; we’ll do the arithmetic afterwards, and I shall be able to start at daylight. Can’t lick us!’

Somewhat comforted by the notion that he would be able to depart without the enforced delay of a muster, and again commence one of his long and rapid journeys, made with the tireless celerity of a Russian lieutenant with despatches, Parklands ordered and attacked lunch with his usual vigour and determination. Mr. Neuchamp in his turn was shrewd enough to perceive that Brandon, having definitely, though unwillingly, accepted the responsibility of acting for him, had decided with the sternest impartiality between his friend and himself. He felt that equally by this arbitration or by leaving it wholly to Mr. Parklands he would in any case have been a considerable gainer by adopting Jack Windsor’s advice, and he felt a lively satisfaction at the successful result.

Lunch having been disposed of, the trio sat down to the calculation, and the lowest attainable number of cattle, with their ratable money-value per head, having been produced as the result of Aymer Brandon’s subtraction and addition, Mr. Neuchamp gave a cheque for the amount, signed with the hitherto unquestioned name of Ernest Neuchamp. In return he received a receipt from Parklands, reciting below that he had hereby purchased the right, title, and license to all those crown lands situated in the county of Oxley, and comprising the runs of Rainbar East and West, Warrah, Banda, North Banda, Back Banda, and Outer Back Banda, with two thousand head of cattle, more or less, branded LP, and the right to all cattle whatever bearing that brand not absolutely proved to be sold or demised by the proprietor or by his orders.

This feat fully accomplished, Mr. Neuchamp was congratulated by both gentlemen upon being the proud possessor of one of the best cattle runs of a very good district, and tolerably cheap too, as he was assured.

‘The fact is,’ said Mr. Parklands, ‘I should never have offered it at this price; but I am going in extensively for a lot of new country upon the Darr, and I want all the cash I can get hold of. It’s necessary to buy money, you know, sometimes, and this is a case in point. If things go right, in half a dozen years I shall be able to sell runs by the dozen. Can’t lick us!’