When the first instalment of stores, of a very mixed and comprehensive description, arrived from Sydney, in three drays drawn by ten bullocks each, Mr. Neuchamp was much impressed by the teamsters. They were brothers who had left their farms in the settled districts for this arduous but profitable undertaking. Finer specimens, outwardly, of the native Australian it would have been difficult to find. Tall, powerful, well-built fellows, they were just the men fitted to found ‘a bold peasantry their country’s pride.’ Their appearance at Rainbar hastened the action of one of Ernest’s long-cherished plans. He had always intended, when arrived at the dignity of a proprietor, to establish a rural population in the vicinity of the home station. In time to come their residence and occupation would add value to his land. Available labour would be at hand whenever he required assistance. And a consideration, dearer to the heart of Ernest Neuchamp than aught other—he believed fully in his power, by this means, to elevate his fellow-man in the social scale, to aid both in his material and mental advancement.

In conversation with the brothers, he gathered that they had each a small farm ‘down the country,’ as they called it, where they kept a few cattle, raised reasonably regular crops, and generally lived an independent but unprogressive life. They admitted that they were pressed for room, and in a bad season lost many cattle. ‘How should you like to have a half section each on that flat which you see there?’ inquired Ernest, with the light of sanguine benevolence in his eye. ‘Your cattle would increase, and in a few years you might be well-to-do, prosperous men.’

The Australian yeoman, as he may fairly be called, is not wholly dissimilar to his American cousin, though the type is, as yet, not noticeably divergent from the Anglo-Saxon. Slow of speech, his reasoning faculties, within fixed limits, are active and vigorous. Concerning matters which relate to his personal or pecuniary welfare, a more shrewd, cool-judging individual does not exist. Well skilled in the valuable art of holding his tongue, he asks but few questions. He asserts little. But, if you happen to have the arrangement of a bargain in stock or land, or of a contract for carriage or bush-work, with the rural Australian, you will rarely find that the apparently impassive countryman has ‘got the wrong end of the stick.’

So, when Mr. Neuchamp made the somewhat unusual offer to Abraham Freeman and his brothers, William and Joe, of permitting them each to conditionally purchase three hundred and twenty acres upon the river-flat, below the house, himself finding the cash for the first deposit payment, they quickly ran over the advantages in their own minds, and came to the conclusion that the ‘cove,’ or proprietor, was an inexperienced swell, whom Providence had delivered into their hands. They realised the fact that, though cultivation was not likely to flourish in a land where it did not rain, sometimes, for six months, they would be able to keep as many cattle as they liked. From merely legitimate increase, not to speak of chances, such as always occur near large herds, they might look forward to a snug herd each in four or five years. They would have a place to keep their teams, and might continue their carrying uninterruptedly. They could by no possibility lose much, and might gain largely, by accepting Ernest’s offer. Still, with characteristic caution in ‘making a deal’ of any sort, they spoke hesitatingly.

‘Well, I don’t know, sir, about coming up here for good,’ said the eldest brother. ‘Our place down the country is comfortable like, and the cattle do middling well’ (half of them had died during the winter from cold and starvation). ‘I don’t know how my wife would like it either.’

‘I should be sorry to urge a removal from anything very pleasant as a homestead,’ said Ernest; ‘but I thought, perhaps, that you might have the advantage here of more land, and the opportunity of getting on faster in life—of course you will, and have the carriage from the station.‘

‘I believe it might be worked,’ said Bill Freeman, the second brother, an astute personage, who thought that they might now begin to be persuaded into accepting their good fortune. ‘Certainly it’s thundering hot, and a long way over these blank plains. But likely Mr. Neuchamp will have a bit of bush work or fencing ready for us when we come up. It’s poor work laying out all our bit of money on a bit of land and have nothing to fall back upon.’

‘I daresay I shall have something going on,’ said Ernest, who, now that he was possessed by the ‘improvement’ demon, saw in his mind’s eye many new buildings and fencings absolutely necessary. ‘Of course you will have the preference when any such is given out.’

‘Then it will be all right, sir,’ said Abraham Freeman, ‘and when we take up the land, you’ll be ready to advance the eighty pounds for the deposit on each half section. We can pay it back in work and carriage by degrees like.’

‘Oh, of course we can pay it back in a year or so,’ said Bill.

‘Certainly; I said so when I mentioned the subject first,’ said Ernest, ‘and I shall be prepared to carry out my promise.’

‘Then, after the crops are cut,’ said Abraham Freeman, unable to repress a slight look of satisfaction, not to say exultation, ‘we’ll make a start up, and bring our few cattle with us. They’re crawling, quiet things, and won’t give no trouble to any one.’

‘Very well, that is settled,’ said Ernest, concluding the interview—satisfied that he had secured the nucleus of a contented and substantial tenantry, more common in England than in Australia.

So the namesake of the great Sheik Ibraheem, who first depastured his stock upon the waste lands of the period, departed with his brethren and oxen.

Mr. Neuchamp, with a feeling of conscious success, related his achievement to Banks and Jack Windsor. Somewhat to his disappointment the former made no remark, and the one made by the latter consisted of certain mutterings suspiciously resembling profuse oaths, ending with a declaration that ‘he’d have seen Abe and Bill Freeman, not to mention that planting rascal Joe, jolly well—— first.‘

The sequel of this philanthropic arrangement adjusted itself after this fashion. The brothers Freeman, as soon as they reached home, took measures for selling off their holdings, the proceeds of which they invested in as many cattle from their neighbours as, added to their own, made up a herd of more than a hundred and fifty head, exclusive of thirty-six working bullocks. They also ‘gave the office’ to a brother-in-law and such of their neighbours as were willing to go into a little speculative land selection. The upshot of which was that, within a year after the proposal to the Messrs. Freeman, Ernest had the satisfaction of witnessing the taking up of half a dozen other selections of three hundred and twenty acres each upon the best part of his frontage. This occupation gave the selectors a legal right to about six thousand acres of ‘pre-emptive right’ suitable for the pasturage of five or six hundred head of mixed cattle and their probable increase.

Charley Banks openly demurred to all this as very likely to lead to complications as to calves, and stated his opinion plainly that the young lads, of which there were two or three in each family, would be always galloping about the run when not wanted, looking for a horse, a strayed bullock, or with any excuse in fact that happened to come uppermost. He had seen it tried before, he averred, and it had not answered. Free selectors were all very well, ‘like measles and fevers,’ when you got them in the ordinary course of things; but as to paying to catch them and helping them to come into your place, it was likely to end in a losing game. But Mr. Neuchamp had still great faith in the inherent excellence of human nature, and overpowered Charley with arguments which the youthful Conservative distrusted but was unable for the present to answer. He contented himself with prophesying that there would be a store and a public-house next at the Long Reach. This of course would end in a surveyed township, and a reserve for travelling stock, by means of which they would lose the use of one of the best watering-places and camps on the run.

Ernest had at first floating ideas of running down to the metropolis during the hot months, for—for—some one of the many reasons which generally gather additional force about January or February at the latest. But really, when the time came, there was so much work of various sorts going on that he prudently thought he had better stay at home for another year until he could leave everything in full working order, and go forth ‘on pleasure bent’ with a clear conscience. He arrived at this conclusion somewhat unwillingly; but he did so from the class of motives which chiefly actuated him, and so settled the matter.

Months rolled on. The many drafts of fat cattle had been mustered and sent away in satisfactory succession. All was realised for that source of income that could be relied upon for one season. The improvements of various sorts had been completed and paid for, this latter process adding up to a much larger sum than had been originally calculated upon. The cutting to the Outer Lake had also been finished according to contract. The cash payment for this same piece of civil engineering for the first time aroused a feeling in Ernest’s breast that perhaps he was spending money rather faster than it was made, that it was a scale of proportionate outlay that could not be continued indefinitely. Nothing was more necessary in Mr. Neuchamp’s opinion than to improve the breed of cattle existing at Rainbar. To that end he had purchased a small but costly shorthorn stud. He had written to his brother Courtenay to send out to him certain animals of the purest procurable Bates blood. All things had been done that in the eyes of an intelligent public would eventually distinguish Rainbar as a model cattle station, with prize stock and unrivalled improvements. In the future was a plain certainty of trebling value and carrying capacity.

Thus far matters had gone on with undeviating regularity in all respects as where the stock were concerned. Mr. Neuchamp found that whenever his account with Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton needed replenishing on the credit side of the ledger—a position of affairs of which he was informed with much precision and regularity—he had only to muster for fat cattle and despatch a draft to market. He began to believe that such was the invariable state and condition of things. He wondered why all cattle-holders did not make rapid fortunes. He wondered why doubt should be expressed about the expediency or otherwise of investing in such a steadily profitable speculation; and inasmuch as his brandings became more numerous each quarter, far more than replacing the numbers sent away for sale, it amazed him to think how such an easy and pleasant way of doubling or quadrupling capital had not simultaneously entered the brain of every man of average intelligence in Australia.

He was now to learn that other factors in the calculation existed. The first slight ripple of the tidal wave which might or might not overwhelm was the remark of Charley Banks one day that they had had no rain for a month; that the appearance of the weather indicated none for another month, ‘in which case,’ said Mr. Banks, ‘the grass would go back.’

‘I had not remarked it,’ said Ernest, looking up (it was breakfast-time) from an interesting article in the Fortnightly Review. ‘Now you mention it, it does seem rather dry. However, I suppose we shall soon have rain.’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Charley; ‘it looks very like setting in dry, and what’s more, Jack Windsor thinks the same, and the blacks say “big one water, longa lake dry up, like’t long time”—that looks bad.‘

‘And suppose it does,’ said Ernest, cutting his Review carefully, ‘surely there will be grass and water enough on the run for all our stock?’

‘Not so sure of that. In this part the grass goes all to nothing in a dry year, breaks off, and blows away, making the country look like a brick-field. Besides, I was reading in Sturt’s Exploration; capital book it is’—(Mr. Banks had been craftily led into the path of literary exercise by tastes of travel and adventure, of which line of action he was passionately fond)—‘well, I was reading that the year the Captain went down the Murrumbidgee first, 1827, was a terrible drought—worse than anything we have had since. That year was the driest summer in England known for a century.‘

‘What of that?’

‘Why, didn’t you tell me that your letters from England, the last mail, said they were having an awfully hot season for them, brooks nearly dry, people having to cart water ten miles, and so on. Well, our summer follows theirs in a kind of way six months after. So I’m afraid we are in for a regular dry season, if not a drought.’

‘And does that make so much difference?’ asked Ernest coolly. ‘This seems a dry country at the best of times; Nature should be equal to any emergency in that line, from the practice she ought to have had in this topsy-turvy continent.’

‘My word, and so she is in a general way,’ said the youngster, standing up for his native land. ‘But a drought, the real thing I mean, a dry summer after a dry winter, is something awful. I can recollect one when I was a little chap at school, and that was something I never forgot.’

‘What was it like, Charley? I’m never afraid of facts; half the evil of life arises from not looking them in the face.’

‘Well, but some facts frighten you like a ghost does, however straight you may look them in the face,’ said the lad. ‘In the year I remember, lots of squatters lost their stock to the last head, and were ruined out and out. There was no beef or mutton fit for a blackfellow to eat. Flour was a hundred pounds a ton, and had to be mixed with ground rice. All of us boys were taken from school because bread was too dear—not that we cared about that. Nobody could sell anything. People almost forgot what money was like, there was so little of it.‘

‘We must hope for the best,’ said Mr. Neuchamp firmly, though, as he was speaking, an unpleasant thought flitted through his brain of how he should make things pleasant with Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, if the easily negotiated drafts of fat cattle could no longer be collected from Rainbar camp. ‘We may have summer rains or thunder showers; the least thing seems to cause the herbage to grow hereabouts.’

‘We may have,’ said Mr. Banks doubtfully, ‘but it don’t look likely to me. If you have noticed, it has turned cloudy and dark-looking, and all passed off again, a dozen times within the last month or two, and that’s as bad a sign as could be.’

Mr. Neuchamp revolved the unpleasing idea thus presented to him much and often in the days following this eventful dialogue. With a sudden flash of perception he saw his course of unchecked improvement and disproportionate outlay in remorseful clearness.

Had he then, in despite of the respectful but marked disapproval of both of his faithful subordinates, experienced in the ways of the land, been steering obstinately on a course with a rock ahead plainly visible to their clear if not far-reaching vision? Would he really find himself landed in a labyrinth of debt, like so many unlucky squatters that he had heard of, from which all attempt at extrication would be vain without the total sacrifice of his investment? He felt like a reckless mariner who, having disregarded the cry of breakers ahead, had carried on madly until the fatal crash was heard, and the good ship, dreadfully immovable, lay broadside on to the remorseless billows.

With returning daylight, however, the retrospective reverse having occupied the hours of a sleepless night, came firmer resolves, and even some faint signs of hope. Surely even his rigid agents would advance what money he needed upon the security of his fat stock to come. If they were not to be moved to the disbursing point, his brother Courtenay might permit him to draw upon him for a couple of thousand pounds. That would completely set him free from pressing liabilities, and would be amply sufficient to carry on with until another crop of fat stock should ripen, till this present abnormal state of matters, with the drought-bound herd of cattle, became a thing of the past.

The days, the weeks, passed on without any alteration of the weather, except what might be considered a passing from bad to worse. Hot days, cool days, windy days, cloudy days, came and went, but no rainy days, although often the sky looked dark, and storm-clouds rolled up in great battalions, only, alas! to scatter, break up, and flee before the sun’s rays like a barbarian army at the sight of a dreaded enchanter.

Certain effects commenced to follow the gradual and complete desiccation which pervaded the soil. The grass withered, became brittle and sapless, then blew away before the breath of the harsh hot wind, leaving the red earth bare, baked, and ‘much more like a brick-field’ (this was Jack Windsor’s simile) ‘than a first-chop cattle-run.’

The Back Lake commenced to dry up, and the weaker cattle sank by scores in the mud, and either died or were extricated with difficulty. The strange cattle came into the frontage, and strove with the habituÉs of that locality for the very scanty pasture which was left.

Great hordes of travelling sheep laid waste a portion of the run, eating every available particle of herbage within a mile of either side of the road. At first Ernest was inclined to treat these devourers of every green (or dry) thing with consideration, but found that he would speedily possess a herd of cattle and no appreciable grass for them to eat if that policy was persevered with. So Mr. Banks had orders to ‘shepherd’ every lot through the run, and to describe the proprietor as a violent and ferocious person given to impounding and every legal oppression.

With the colony of selectors amicable relations commenced to be endangered.

Their cattle, having much increased, required a considerable range of pasture. Their owners commenced to grumble if the Rainbar cattle fed over their grazing rights, quite unconscious of their wholesale unnoticed trespass up to the present time. One of the conditional purchasers, indeed, after a brisk argument with Jack Windsor, informed that gentleman that grass was grass now, and that they intended to stand upon their rights. They were poor men, and couldn’t see that they were to starve their cattle for Mr. Neuchamp or Mr. Old-champ either. If he hadn’t expected to get some pull out of them, he would never have persuaded them to come there. They didn’t see as they owed him anything.

This was one of the unkindest cuts of the very hard fortune of the hard season. Ernest felt the ingratitude of his ‘plantation’ settlers more deeply than any one of them could have supposed.

To make matters pleasanter, he received a letter from Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, informing him that his account was overdrawn, and that he could by no means have any more money until the credit side of his balance was substantially reinforced.

He was commencing to fall upon evil days, certainly. What to do he did not exactly know. He was unwilling to write to Paul Frankston and state the case. It would have appeared like a simple asking for a loan. He was ready enough to accept Paul’s advice, friendship, and hospitality. He did not wish to be directly indebted to him for money.

And yet, quoi faire, without an advance of some sort? For, even on cattle stations, where you are not always putting your hand into your pocket, as with sheep, various occasions for expenditure arise, and money is indispensable.

He had been sufficiently learned in the ways of land to know that store cattle were nearly always saleable, and that one could generally dispose of a large lot more easily than fat ones. But during this terribly dry weather, he reasoned that no one would desire store cattle at any price. Buyers were uncertain as to when it would rain, and would delay making purchases until definite assurance of a change of weather. Of fat cattle he had none; they had enough to keep themselves in a pinched, independent manner, but no more. The situation resolved itself into this: money must positively be raised for station expenses for the next six months.

After much extremely unpleasant cogitation about money, for the first time in his life, Mr. Neuchamp finally decided to write to Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, stating his position, and his reasonable expectation of receiving aid from his brother in England. He made this explanation, requesting at the same time that they would permit him to draw for the sum of five hundred pounds in advance, on the strength of five thousand pounds which he had grounds for expecting that he would obtain from his brother.

This important letter being despatched, Ernest felt more at ease than had been his lot for some time past. In money difficulties, like other matters, the chief misery lies in the stage of doubt or procrastination. This being passed, and a definite course of action entered upon, mental relief ensues. Happy the man whose temperament leads him to bestow the same amount of curative anxiety upon the earlier stages of ‘chest complaint’ that the majority are compelled to furnish during the more aggravated phases of the disorder.

Mr. Neuchamp, to do him justice, was not a man consciously to remain within the borders of a fool’s paradise. Once aware of the necessity for strenuous exertion, he was unhappy until progress had been made. He had previously written an explanatory letter to his brother Courtenay, not defending his somewhat free expenditure, but owning candidly that the sudden change of the season, with the collapse of the marketable portion of the herd, had taken him by surprise, and reduced him to a state of virtual, though temporary, insolvency. ‘However,’ he added, ‘my herd of cattle has increased considerably, both in number and quality, since I purchased, and I anticipate—though I own I was mistaken about the time when they would become remunerative—that my enterprises and outlay for labour will eventually prove sources of extraordinary profit. At the same time,‘ he added, ‘it is my duty to tell you that I cannot speak with any certainty as to when repayment of your loan may take place. The seasons here are variable and irregular, the price of stock low and high by turns. All I can do is to pay you Australian interest, which is much higher than in England, and to promise to return your capital when times improve. I shall never reproach you if you do not lend me your money, as I do not wish to disguise from you that it is uncertain whether you ever see it again. But if you do not, and I fail to obtain accommodation in any way, Rainbar must be sold, and I shall be ruined.’

Mr. Neuchamp, regarding his letter when written, did not like the look of the last sentence, nor the rather uncomfortable last word. So he cast about for another sentence or two of less obnoxious suggestion. In this extremity he bethought himself of a certain lady-cousin, Miss Augusta Neuchamp, a damsel of very well-defined opinions and courageous propagandism, with whom he and Courtenay had been much at war—she having a full share of the family obstinacy of purpose. So he wrote, ‘Give my love to Cousin Augusta, and tell her that she would like Australia uncommonly, in some respects. It presents a great field for her peculiar crazes.’

This important letter despatched, there was nothing for it but to do the waiting on Providence as patiently as was possible to a nature constitutionally averse to suspense and uncertainty. Something of the romance of the kingdom of Rainbar had departed, when the throne and crown jewels were liable at any time to be taken in execution. Its ruler commenced to experience those various throbs and spasms, the preliminary pangs, headaches, and heartaches, which assail all travellers through the Valley of the Shadow of Debt!

He was not doomed, however, at this particular period of his pastoral existence, to be kept long in the torture-chamber. For Isaac of York there was a Wilfred of Ivanhoe ‘round.’

In due course a letter arrived from Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, to his great joy, that they had acceded to his request, on the strength of remittances arriving from England; that the sum named was now at his credit; but—but—they trusted that he would not exceed the sum referred to, before paying in money to the credit of his account current, as, they regretted, it would not be in their power, under any circumstances whatever, to exceed that advance. And they were his faithfully, etc.

‘Hang their “yours faithfully,”’ banged out Ernest, in the overflowing expansion of the moment—borrowing a hitherto avoided colonial habit—‘why do people who would not stretch out a hand to save one from beggary call themselves “yours truly or faithfully”?—“truth and obedience” for ever on their lips, and how little of either is ever exhibited. However, I am to have the money for the present, and that will last me to the end of the year, by which time the heavens or Courtenay may come to the rescue of Rainbar.’

The pecuniary aid of his formal agents, though grudgingly given, was timely and valuable. Ernest determined to economise, with a view to make the relief fund last as long as possible. Taking a hint from his maritime experiences, he proceeded to shorten sail while such signs of storm and tempest were observable in the financial horizon—a policy highly to be commended, but, like many of our good resolutions and better deeds of this mortal life, ever prone to be late of arrival. So life again flowed on at Rainbar in a monotonous round of daily duties, which the increasing severity of the season rendered tedious and troublesome, but not exciting. The weak cattle were dragged out of waterholes and creeks; the locust hordes of travelling sheep watched and followed, lest they cleared off the poor remains of the dying pasture. Musters were in abeyance until ‘the rain came.’ The drought still remained unbroken. The great canal remained as innocent of water, and as unlikely to be filled, as if it had been constructed between the tanks and the desert gate of Aden. Every superfluous station hand had been ‘hunted,’ to use Charley Banks’s phrase—in fact, that young man had very strongly expressed his idea in favour of contraction of the strength of that department. So that the pleasant spectacle was presented of the station work being done by the smallest practicable staff, viz. the proprietor, Charley Banks, Jack Windsor, and the two black boys.

In the midst of this state of matters a stranger appeared one day, whose knocked-up horses showed plainly in their very visible anatomy the effects of a long journey and indifferent keep. Mr. Neuchamp hasted to welcome the ‘guest sent by Allah’ with true Arab hospitality. Considerably to his surprise he recognised the sun-burned, grave visage of his quondam travelling companion, Mr. Abstinens Levison. That gentleman’s reflective countenance relaxed somewhat as he shook hands with his host, and relinquished his way worn steeds to Mr. Windsor’s good offices.

‘So you’re the man that bought Rainbar,’ said he with mild acquiescence. ‘I heard that a young Englishman had cleared out Parklands. Smart fellow he is—gone in for a whole country-side on the Darr. Sure to do well when we get rain again. He and I have had many a deal together. Got the best of me once in a big lot of store cattle, and it ain’t many men that have got that to say of Ab. Levison.‘

‘Very glad to see you, Mr. Levison,’ said Ernest heartily. ‘Come in and make yourself at home. Which way are you travelling in this terrible season? No wonder your horses have had enough of it.’

‘Just about done, and that’s the truth,’ made answer Mr. Levison slowly, and with consideration. ‘I’m on my way to Mingadee, a place of mine down the river, about a hundred miles from here. I shall have to walk and carry my swag, for the horses, poor things, are as weak as cats. If I hadn’t come through the back country, where I knew a few spots where there’s feed in all seasons, such as it is, they’d have knocked up before now.’

‘Walking is becoming quite fashionable,’ said Ernest; ‘people are coming round fast to my way of thinking, that we were intended to use our legs in some other way than lolling upon a horse all day. I saw a police trooper trudging past to the Quarter Sessions at Warren last week, with a good part of a hide (evidence in a cattle-stealing case) on his back. The mail had stopped running. He told Jack one of his horses was dead, and he was as able to carry the other as the poor brute was to carry him. But you won’t have to walk this time, if you’ll stay with me to-night. We have a horse or two left, and I can give you one that steps as fast nearly as the roan you were good enough to lend me near Nubba.’

‘All right,’ said Mr. Levison. ‘I’d not be particular about it; only I’m a little pushed for time. I have to meet a man about a largish lot of stores that we’re dealing over.’

‘Buying store cattle in the teeth of a season like this!’ exclaimed Ernest in astonishment. ‘Why, it’s a hard matter to keep alive one’s own, I should think.’

‘Look here!’ said the man of original mould, commencing on the lunch which had been provided for him calmly but with decision, as if the back country that he mentioned had been better provisioned for the quadrupedal than the human part of his equipment. ‘It’s always been a way of mine to act different from other folks in the way of buying and selling stock. I can recollect the markets for many years back. I’ve seen sheep at all prices from a shilling to a guinea, and cattle in proportion. My rule is—I don’t mind telling you, for you’ll never do much in the dealing line—my rule is, to buy when every one wants to sell, to sell when every one tries to hold on; and it’s paid me, so far. That’s good damper of yours; your cook kneads it up well, that’s half the battle.‘

‘He’s not a bad fellow in his way,’ asserted Ernest; ‘but he will soon have very little flour to knead. Drays can’t travel, and we shall have only South American fare directly, beef and water. Certainly we have plenty of pumpkins, that’s the advantage of a garden.’

‘Couldn’t have a better thing. Lived on them for a year, in ‘38,’ said Mr. Levison approvingly. ‘That was something like a drought. If we ever get one like it again it will cook half the stock in the country. We’re that crowded up now that there’s no get-away, as there was then, to the mountains.’

‘Then you don’t think this season is as bad as can be?’ inquired Ernest. ‘It seems very terrible to me.’

‘It ain’t as bad as that time unless you’ve lost half your cattle and don’t see no way to save the rest,’ affirmed his guest with mild decision, as if stating some rather agreeable proposition.

‘Whatever shall we do?’ groaned Ernest. ‘I’m half ruined as it is.’

‘You’ve spent a lot of money on this place, by the look of things as I came along,’ said this mild but uncompromising critic, filling himself another cup of tea with much deliberation. ‘You’ve been and put up a big paddock and a horse-yard and a grand house; and, last night, I’m blessed if I didn’t ride slap into that drain arrangement, miles of it I see there was. Now, I don’t say it’s altogether a waste of money, but when a young man like you buys a place, he has no call to spend a shilling that he can help till he gets it out of the run.’

‘I can understand the prudence of that policy now,’ answered Ernest, half amused, half inclined to resent this extremely plain speech from a comparative stranger, yet comprehending with instinctively clear perception the unaffected friendliness of intuition and truthful habit of his reviewer, ‘but the fat cattle sold so well that I expected to continue paying my way and still improving the property.’

‘That’s where you made the mistake,’ pursued the senior colonist; ‘you went on thinking that the good seasons were a-going to last for ever. If you’d kept on selling and never spending, you’d have had your money in your pocket now, and might have been in the market for some of these lots of first-rate store cattle that’s going a-begging—splendid fine-bred cattle, too, as you ever saw!‘ Here Mr. Levison emptied the teapot with a benign expression, and, crossing his legs reflectively, looked with mild reproach at his entertainer.

Ernest felt each item of guilty extravagance arise and arraign him separately, as Mr. Levison, with judicial enumeration, went on ticking off his pecuniary sins. In one of these lightning flashes of self-accusation with which conscience favours erring man, he realised the difference of his position from what it would have been if he had doggedly adhered to the scale of non-expenditure which he had found at Rainbar, and had retained the proceeds of his drafts of cattle with which to pay off his purchase-money, or re-invest in stores at the tempting tariff of the day. The faint counter-consolation that occurred to him, under the circumstances, was that if he had acted in such a way he would not have been Ernest Neuchamp at all, but must have changed his very nature and identity. So there was no more to be said.

On the next morning Osmund was saddled for Mr. Levison, who, after saying that he would be back at sundown on the fifth day, departed for Mingadee. He was good enough to express his unqualified admiration of the gray horse’s make and shape as he mounted him. ‘I saw a lot of mares and foals knocking about at the big bend,’ he said. ‘Brood mares are useless wretches generally, and you can buy horses a deal cheaper than you raise ‘em. But if you could turn out a few colts like this gray horse here, why, I should begin to think there was something in horse-breeding after all.’

On the fifth day punctually, about sundown, Mr. Levison reappeared at Rainbar. Having crossed the hundred miles of plain which separated the stations in two days, he remained one day, transacting the purchase of the store stock to which he had referred; then Osmund carried him back in two days, ‘quite flippant,’ as Jack Windsor observed. As he partook of the evening meal in company with Ernest, he essayed to cheer him up after the following fashion—

‘I’d a sort of notion that I’d checked off all your money-burying before I left. But it seems I wasn’t quite up to the number of holes a man can dig and fill up with sovereigns. I came across the Settlement!—regular town it is; and that native chap—active fellow he is, and no mistake—told me you’d paid the deposit money and given ‘em employment, and advanced ‘em money in other ways. I’ve seen new hands do many a blind trick, but I never knew a man before, of his own free will, bring down a lot of free selectors on his own run.’

‘It does not appear to be a fashionable thing to do,’ admitted Ernest, ‘judging from the remarks of my neighbours, as well as yourself; but I am somewhat like you in one respect—I do things upon my own responsibility, and, I am afraid, do not care sufficiently about other people’s opinions. Sometimes I am wrong—very wrong—I admit. But at other times I am so satisfied of being right that the whole world would not turn me.‘

Mr. Levison looked Ernest ‘straight in the eye’ with his own singularly clear, penetrating gaze. ‘I hold with you in that,’ he said at length; ‘nothing like a man who acts on his own reason, and sticks to it. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but he’ll come out better in the long run than any fellow that follows the wind wherever it blows. And so you believe in these cockatoo chaps? Now, what’s the good of ‘em?’

‘Just so far,’ said Ernest, ‘that I hope, in time, to see a thriving and prosperous population here, making proper use of the soil, and advantageous to the proprietor, as they in turn would be benefited by him.’

Mr. Levison again regarded Ernest fixedly. His calm features, across whose lineaments the ripple of a positive opinion or sentiment rarely broke, might have been taken to denote the benevolent toleration of one who hears a spoiled child insist upon being presented with a portion of the moon, or propose, with saline agency, the capture of an uncaged bird.

‘Population—what’s the good of population on a cattle station?’ he said, with his usual slow, unpunctuated direction of speech. ‘All the crop they’ll ever get out of that land you may put in your coat pocket. In a dry season it’s as much as the salt-bush will grow, let alone grass or crops. In a wet one, all this country’s like a garden, from the Paroo to the Macquarie. Your horses don’t want corn then, or hay—wouldn’t eat it if they were paid for it. What are farmers to grow here that would pay for carriage to the coast? Wheat they can’t think of in a hot place like this. Rice and such things they might have a try at, if they were Chinamen. But I can tell you what they will do.‘

‘What is that?’ inquired Ernest, reassured.

‘Why, you’ll find that their cattle will go on increasing pretty fast; and what with grass rights and taking their blocks a little way off each other, they’ll have nigh as much of Rainbar as you will in three or four years. I suppose that isn’t what you fetched ‘em up for?’

‘I do not grudge them a fair share of the Crown land,’ said Ernest. ‘The land was made for all of us. But I certainly did not anticipate their requiring more than a limited area at any time.’

‘Well, it will be unlimited if you don’t manage to hem ‘em in somehow. They’ll give you your work to do, take my word for it, some of these fine days. My nags are a little fresher, and I am obliged to you for as good a mount as ever I crossed.’

‘I am very happy to have been able to do you so small a service; and as for your advice, which you have been friend enough to favour me with,’ said Ernest, feeling depressed and much lowered in spirit by his guest’s extremely ‘faithful’ criticism, ‘I can assure you that it has sunk deeply into my mind.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ said Mr. Levison gravely. ‘There’s very few men worth bothering with in the way of advice, and fewer still that aren’t too great fools to take it when it’s put before ‘em. But I took a fancy to you, somehow, from the first time we met, when you had the thick boots and the swag. I thought that it showed pluck in you; and, from what I see here, you’re one of those that goes in for helping other people along the road of life. And a thundering soft thing it is, in a general way, I tell you. Why, you’ve been teaching that native chap to read, so he says.’

‘I plead guilty to that,’ said Ernest, with a smile. ‘The fact is that Jack Windsor is such a smart fellow that is seems a pity he should be left helpless, as all ignorant men are. And there’s plenty of spare time in the bush.’

‘Is there?’ said Mr. Levison. ‘I never found it so. But that says nothing. I say it’s a manly thing to feel for your neighbour because maybe he hasn’t had a hundredth part of the chances you’ve had yourself. That’s being kind and true-hearted, and being a gentleman, as I understand it,’ concluded Mr. Levison, with rather unusual emphasis. ‘But that’s not what I want to say,’ pursued he, buckling up the girths of his second saddle, and arranging his pack with the most accurate balance possible. ‘It’s this: you want some more store cattle on Rainbar.’

This last proposition Mr. Levison made in a tone of such peculiar conviction that Ernest could not frame a denial, but listened in wonder, merely ejaculating—

‘In a dry season?’

‘It ain’t going to be dry for ever,’ said Mr. Levison oracularly, ‘and cattle are bound to rise within the next two years, as sure as my name’s—— Smith,’ he added, with a faint relaxation of his facial muscles. ‘I’ve just bought five thousand head of store cattle from the man I met at Mingadee; bought ‘em cheap, for cash—my name’s Cash, you know—and better bred cattle I never saw. I know ‘em well. They’re all on a run on the Turon, and I’m to take delivery there. Seventeen-and-six for bullocks and twelve for cows. Can’t hurt at that, eh?’

‘I should say not,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, calculating the scale of profits at three pounds ten shillings, which his bullocks had fetched, and, like all inexperienced owners, omitting to allow for either deaths, losses, or non-fattening tendencies. ‘I wish I had half of them here—that is, when rain comes.‘

‘That’s just what I was coming to,’ said Mr. Levison, with still slower and more inexpressive enunciation if possible. ‘If you’ll be said by me, you’ll buy the cows; they’re about half and half. There’s till next April to take delivery of ‘em, and you can have ‘em at what I bought ‘em at—twelve shillings, big and little.‘

‘But the money?’ said Ernest. ‘I have only what will pay my expenses for six months.’

‘I’ll take your bill at twelve months, with interest added,’ said the peripatetic philanthropist. ‘You write to old Frankston and tell him so, and perhaps I’ll renew if no rain comes. Tell him it’s Levison’s advice to you to make this bargain. He knows what that means. And my way of looking at things tells me that it’s a deal more likely than not, that within five years, if you take these cows and breed up, the rain will come, cattle will rise, and you’ll have nearer ten thousand head of cattle on Rainbar than five. I shall camp at that lake of yours to-night if I’ve luck. Good-bye, till we meet again. You buy those “circle dot” cows, and don’t you waste your money.’

So departed Mr. Levison, rather incongruously inculcating economy and a heavy purchase of stock all in the same breath.

Ernest lost no time in writing to Paul Frankston to inform him of the offer of his very practical friend with reference to the store cattle, requesting his advice thereon. By return of post he received the following missive:—

Morahmee, 20th January 18—.

My dear Boy—Have your letter, and glad to see you are regularly embarked in squatting life, and keep going at Rainbar in spite of bad times and bad weather. Seasons awfully uncertain in Australia; always were ever since I was a boy, and I don’t expect them to alter much. People make money here in spite of them, and so will you if you keep a good look-out. As to the store cattle, there’s dirty weather ahead—the bank barometer falling and no rain. But for all that, Levison is a man to be backed. He is never far out. If he says cattle will rise, they will rise. I never knew him wrong yet. Where he has bought you can’t go wrong in following his lead. He has taken a fancy to you, and wishes to put you on for a good thing. I never do things by halves myself. So I advise you to take his offer. Go or send for the cattle when he takes delivery, and trust to Providence to send rain and a market. When the bill falls due we must arrange to pay or renew. Don’t overdraw in other ways more than you can help, if you will let me give you my opinion. Crampton tells me your orders find their way down in spite of the dry weather. Spend nothing, never mind about its being necessary. That’s the safe thing in squatting.

Shall we see you after you have brought your cattle home? We have had awful hot weather. The mosquitoes seem livelier than average. Antonia thinks you might write and describe the country. She met Parklands the other day, who told her Brandon nearly finished all your careers with his four-in-hand freaks. Careful fellow, Parklands. Good-bye, my dear boy. God bless you.

Paul Frankston.

Thus fortified, Mr. Neuchamp wrote immediately to Mr. Levison, who had with characteristic carefulness left his addresses for the next month or two, and informed him that he accepted his offer with many thanks, and would attend, with Mr. Banks, at the station, some hundreds of miles off, where the cattle were running. This matter settled, he told Charley of the adventure awaiting him, arranging to leave Jack Windsor in charge of the place until their return.

Mr. Banks expressed his unqualified approval of the whole matter. ‘This sort of thing,’ he was good enough to say, ‘was something like. Putting on more stock was the proper sort of work; any money spent in that way would be sure to be returned. But hang these improvements! Filling up the station with a lot of weekly men, and once they’re there, it’s not so easy to send ‘em away again. Levison’s a chap that gets good value for his money, whatever he touches; and if he thinks buying store stock is the right thing, I’ll put five to two on him and his tip. He will be there, or thereabouts, when the flag falls, I’ll lay.’

Within reasonable time a letter arrived from Mr. Levison of a very concise and practical form. It set forth that, upon a certain day of a certain month, his droving manager would be at Leigh Court, in the district of King, where the herd of store cattle which he had purchased were running. That the proprietor was bound by his agreement to have five thousand head of cattle mustered and delivered within one month from the date specified. That his manager had instructions to deliver to Mr. Neuchamp, or his order, all the female cattle, young and old, of the said herd. He, Levison, had no doubt in his own mind that rain would fall within six months, and he wished him luck. This was the only portion of the letter not devoted to business. Laconic as was the style, Ernest felt touched by it, as the spontaneous expression of a heart filled with daily cares, and with rare leisure for friendship and sentiment.

After a certain amount of necessary consultation and commissariat action, Mr. Neuchamp, one fine morning, left Rainbar with an imposing cortÈge. It consisted of Charley Banks, Piambook, and a man to drive the light waggon, which, containing food, raiment, cooking utensils, and bedding, Ernest very properly took with him. There were other two men, who had contracted to act as road hands and to make themselves generally useful. They drove half a dozen spare horses, Mr. Neuchamp being minded to purchase as few as possible at the seat of war, or the place of delivery. Fast travelling was, of course, not possible under the circumstances. They expected to travel at the rate of twenty or twenty-five miles a day, until they should arrive at Leigh Court, the run to be depopulated, so to speak. It was distant about six hundred miles. There yet remained about two months to the date of delivery. So Ernest gave himself seven weeks for the journey, and trusted to have a week or two for refitting before commencing his grand march homewards with two considerable droves of new store cattle.

Mr. Windsor and Boinmaroo were left in charge of the stock and station. Bitterly did the first-named gentleman deplore the hard necessity which prevented his going forth on the war-path with the other braves.

Every night after the first, on which occasion a neighbouring out-station was reached, and the impatient home-loving horses put securely into a yard, a camp was organised.

Two tents were pitched, one for the master and Charley Banks, the other for the men and any other road acquaintances that might be encountered. One of the new hands had an accordion. He played moderately, but quite well enough to satisfy the uncritical audience, and to enliven their somewhat unamused evenings.