Linda began to look out of the window at least two miles from the Mooramah railway station. A few seconds before the train stopped, she discovered Hubert on the platform.

Waving his hand to her, he was at the window in a moment, receiving, indeed, personal tokens of welcome long before the guard could open the door and collect the tickets.

“Oh! I am so glad to see you again, dearest, dearest Hubert,” exclaimed Linda. “You have no idea how nice and large Mooramah looks. I am sure I shall never stir away from dear old Windahgil for a year. I don’t feel proud at all, do you, Laura? I am sure we are both immensely improved, though. Don’t you think so, Hubert?”

“You must wait till you are at home again, and I can turn you round and examine you both carefully,” said Hubert; “there are too many people here at present. I think mother looks splendid, and the governor gets younger every time he sees Sydney. I shall have to go soon, or our ages will be reversed.”

“Poor, dear old Hubert!” said Laura, looking at her brother’s sun-burnt face, and spare, muscular figure; “I’m sure you’ve been working yourself to death while we were away, with nobody to stop you. Never mind, we’ll soon make a difference—if we don’t talk you to death the first week.”

“I can hear all you’ve got to say,” said Hubert; “but just now let us get the luggage counted and ready for Jerry to put in the spring cart; then we’ll rattle home in the buggy. Don’t the old horses look well?”

“Splendid!” said Linda. “They have beautiful coats too, which I did not expect. They’re not quite so aristocratic in demeanour as Mr. Grandison’s carriage horses, but they can trot about double as fast, I daresay.”

“They look very different to what they did this time last year,” said Hubert, running his eye over the middle-sized, well-bred, wiry pair. “Do you remember poor old Whalebone tumbling down—Whipcord was nearly as bad—as we were driving to church, from sheer weakness?”

“Oh! yes,” said Linda; “we had to tie up the pole of the buggy with our pocket-handkerchiefs; poor old dear! He looks as if he could pull one’s arms off now.”

Once fairly off behind the fourteen-mile-an-hour buggy horses, spinning along the smooth bush road—the best wheel track in the world in good weather and in a dry country, that is, its normal state—the spirits of the party rose several degrees. Mr. Stamford and his wife were calmly happy at the idea of returning to their quiet home life, having had enough of the excitement of city and suburb for a while. The girls were continually exclaiming, as each new turn of the road brought them within sight of well-remembered spots and familiar points of the landscape, while Hubert, much too happy to talk, kept looking at his relatives, one by one, with an air of intense, overflowing affection.

“It’s worth all the loneliness to have you back again,” he said, patting his mother’s cheek; “but it was horribly dismal for a time. I felt as if I could have left the run in charge of the boundary-riders, only for shame, and run down to Sydney myself. Fortunately, Laura wrote so regularly that I seemed to know what you were doing and saving, as well as almost everything you thought.”

“I wrote too, I’m sure,” said Linda, with an injured air.

“Well, you were more spasmodic. Though I was very glad to get your letters too. I acquired a deal of information about the ‘Queen’s Navee,’ in which department I was weak. However, I suppose it’s as well to know everything.”

“I’m sure you are most ungrateful,” pouted Linda, “If you only knew how hard it is to write!”

“Oh, ho! quoting from Lord Sandwich’s lines:—

“You are too clever altogether, Hubert,” said Linda, with rather a conscious laugh. “You must have been taking lessons in mind-reading, or some such stuff, in our absence. But oh! there are some of the Windahgil sheep. How well they look! I’d almost forgotten there were such dear creatures in the world.”

“If it were not for them and their fleeces there would not be any trips to Sydney, or bachelors’ balls, or picnics,” said Mr. Stamford; “so keep up a proper respect for the merino interest, and all belonging to it.”

“They never looked better than they do now,” said Hubert; “the season has been a trifle dry since you left, but I think they are all the better for it. And did not the wool bring a capital price?” he continued. “I see you sold it all in Sydney—two and a penny, and two and threepence for the hogget bales. The wash-pen was paid for over and over again. However, I have a plan in my head for getting it up better still next year.”

“That’s right, my boy,” said his father; “stick well to your business and it will stick to you—a homely proverb, but full of wisdom. How does the garden look?”

“Not so bad. I had it made pretty decent for mother to look at. I kept all the new plants watered—they’ve grown splendidly, and I managed, with a little help, to get up a ‘bush house’ in case mother brought up any new ferns, or Coleus novelties.”

“The very thing I am wishing for, my dear boy,” said his mother. “I was just wondering how I could manage; I did get a few pot plants and ferns.”

“A few!” said Mr. Stamford, making believe to frown. “You showed a correct estimate of your mother’s probable weakness, however, Hubert. I don’t know that you could have spent your leisure time more profitably.”

“Home, sweet home!” sang Linda, as they drove up to the well-known white gate. “How lovely the garden looks, and everything about the dear old place is flourishing; even the turkeys have grown up since we left. I feel as if I could go round and kiss everything—the very posts of the verandah. That is the advantage of going away. I really think it is one’s duty to do so; it makes you value your home so when you come back.”

“I shall have no curiosity about the great world for a year at least,” said Laura. “It will take us nearly that time to read all the new books; and to properly enjoy the garden, I am going to have a fernery of my own. I bought the Fern World out of my own money, and somebody—I forget who it was—promised to send me some rare New Zealand and South Sea Island ferns. After all, the pleasures of country life are the best, I really do believe; they are so calm and peaceful and yet satisfying.”

That first meal, lunch or dinner, as it might happen to be, in the old familiar room, was an unmixed delight to all. The two servants, having just returned, had exerted themselves to prepare a somewhat recherchÉ repast for the family, to whom they were attached, and whose return they hailed with honest expressions of welcome. The cookery and arrangements generally met with special commendation, while in the intervals of talking, laughing, and sudden exclamations of delight, Linda repeated her conviction that she had never enjoyed eating and drinking so much since she left Windahgil.

Immediately after this necessary performance, Hubert and Mr. Stamford betook themselves to one of the outlying portions of the run, where the son was anxious for his father to behold the success of a new dam lately constructed. This piece of engineering had “thrown back” the water of a creek nearly two miles, thus affording permanent sustenance for a large flock of sheep.

“These weaners were formerly obliged to come in to the frontage, you remember governor, where they were always mixing with the other sheep. The water dried up regularly about this time. Now they can stay here till next shearing, and I think the country suits them better, too.”

“They are looking uncommonly well,” said Mr. Stamford, running his eye over a flock of fine, well-grown young sheep, which were just moving out to grass after their noonday rest. “They ought to cut a first-rate fleece this year.”

“Yes; and the wool is so clean,” said Hubert. “There is nothing like having your sheep within fences; no running about with dogs and shepherds; they don’t get half the dust and sand into their fleeces. But I’m afraid this is about the last improvement Windahgil wants doing to it. It’s getting too settled and finished. How I should like to tackle a big, wild, half-stocked run in new country, with no fencing done, and all the water to make!”

“You must bide your time, my boy,” said Mr. Stamford, with a serious face. “It will come some day—in another year or two, perhaps. You mustn’t be in too great a hurry to leave us all. Windahgil is not such a bad place.”

“On the contrary, it’s getting too good altogether. There’s only half enough work, and next to no management required. Why, you could do all the work yourself, governor, with a steady working overseer!”

“Thank you, my boy, for the compliment,” said Mr. Stamford, taking off his hat.

“Oh, you know what I mean, father! so don’t pretend you don’t. I’m not growing cheeky because things have gone well lately; but really there’s only enough managing to keep you in exercise. It will half break my heart to go away, but what’s the use of settling down on a small comfortable place like this? And how can I feel that I’m doing the best for the family, when I hear of fellows like Persse, and Grantley, and Philipson taking up that new country beyond the Barcoo by the thousand square miles; splendid downs covered with blue grass and Mitchell grass? Grand water, too, when you come upon it. Think what all that country will be worth in a few years.”

“I understand you, my boy,” said the proud father, while a sudden emotion stirred his heart, as he remembered the days of his own youth, when he too had nourished the same high thoughts of adventure and discovery, and had played his part amid the dangers and privations of frontier life. “You can talk it over with Mr. Hope. We’ll see what can be done.”

“I suppose,” said Hubert, after a while, “when you’ve been up a week or ten days, and I’ve talked over everything with mother and the girls, from the regatta to the last new waltz step, I may as well take my holiday. I haven’t had one for three years. I begin to forget what the sea looks like, and I think a month in the ‘big smoke’ and a few new ideas will do me no harm.”

“Have your holiday, by all means, and enjoy it too, my boy. Thank God, it is not a question of money now. I have the fullest belief in the sanitary value, mentally, of a trip to the metropolis now and then.”

“Thank you, father. I’m sure it will brush me up a little; besides, I want to go to the Lands Office for certain reasons. I want, above all, to have a good talk with this Mr. Barrington Hope that I’ve heard so much about.”

“You’ll find him an uncommon sort of person. The more you see of him, the more you’ll like him, I feel certain. He is just the man I should like you to make a friend of. Try and get him to return with you, if he can spare the time.”

After the tea-things were cleared away, and the large, steadfast, satisfactory table was left free for reading, writing, or needlework—for all of which purposes it was equally well adapted—what a season of rational enjoyment set in! The book box had been opened before. The beautiful new uncut volumes, the titles of which were received with exclamations of joy, were placed upon a table. The collection of new music was inspected, Linda going there and then to the piano and dashing off a waltz; making, besides, a running commentary upon half-a-dozen songs which she and Laura were going to learn directly there was a minute to spare. Mr. Stamford took his accustomed chair, and devoted himself to the Sydney Morning Herald. Mrs. Stamford resumed the needlework which is apparently a species of Penelope’s web for all mothers of families, while Hubert and Laura, somewhat apart from the rest, kneeling on their chairs as if they had been children again, made a cursory examination of the new books, exclaiming from time to time at passages or illustrations.

“I feel inclined not to go to Sydney till after I’ve read most of these books,” said Hubert; “only that would make it so late. But it seems a pity to leave such a lot of splendid reading. Certainly there’s the Public Library in Sydney, but I hardly ever go in there, because I find it so hard to get out again. I did stay there once till the lamps were lit. I had gone in for a few minutes after breakfast.”

“What a queer idea!” said Laura, laughing outright. “How strange it must have felt to have lost a whole day in Sydney. Never mind, Hubert! There are a good many young men to whom it would not occur to spend a whole day in a library, public or private. Everything in moderation, though. You must have another station at your back before you can read all day long.”

“Please God, we’ll have that too,” replied he with a cheery smile, “or else the new country will be taken up very fast. I don’t think Windahgil will see me after next shearing; that is if the governor doesn’t forbid it.”

“You don’t care about breaking our hearts, you naughty boy!” said his sister, pressing her cheek against his, as they looked over the same book. “What are we all to do when you are gone! You don’t think how lonely and miserable the place will be.”

“Are you going to stay here all your life, Laura? If you will, I will. But don’t think I shall not feel the parting bitterly; I quite tremble to think of it. How miserable I was when you were in Sydney! But what is a man to do? A few years of self-denial and hard life now will make things easy for the rest of our days. I am the working head of the family now. Father is not the man he used to be. And if I take life too easily for the next few years, all these great opportunities will be gone, and we shall regret it all the rest of our lives.”

“But the risk!” sighed Laura; “the wild country, blacks, thirst, fever and ague. Every paper brings news of some poor fellow losing his life out there. What should we do if you were taken? Remember how many lives you carry about with you.”

“You set a great value on Hubert Stamford,” he said jokingly, while something in his eyes showed a deeper feeling. “Other people wouldn’t think any great loss had taken place if I dropped. But men still go to sea, though wrecks occur. Think how nice it will be when I return bronzed, and illustrious, a gallant explorer with a whole country-side taken up for ‘Stamford and Son,’ with runs to keep and to sell, and to give away if we like.”

“I’m afraid you won’t be stopped; you are an obstinate boy, though no one would think it. I think I shall take possession of the piano and sing you that lovely ‘Volkslied,’ though I’m afraid my voice is weak after the night journey.”

Laura had taken a few lessons in Sydney, very wisely. Her naturally sweet, pure voice and correct intonation were therefore much aided by her later instruction.

“You have improved,” said her brother. “I never expected you to turn out such a prima donna, though there is a tone in your voice that always makes me wish to cry, as if that would be the height of enjoyment. You brought up a duet for me, didn’t you? Well, we won’t try it to-night. You’re rather tired, I can see. We’ll attack it some morning after breakfast, when we’re fresh.”

From this day forward, life flowed on with uninterrupted felicity for the Windahgil household. It was nearly a week before the excitement passed away of enjoying all the treasures and novelties brought from the metropolis. The weather even became favourable to the new development of the garden, in which Mr. Stamford and his wife were principally interested. Genial showers refreshed the soil—always inclined to be thirsty in that region—so that Mrs. Stamford’s ferns and flowers, and plants with parti-coloured leaves, as well as her husband’s new varieties of vegetables, shrubs, and fruit trees, all partook of the beneficence of the season.

As for Hubert and his sisters, they rode and drove about by day whenever the weather was favourable; indeed sometimes when it was not. They read steadily at the new books by night, and by that means, and a few visits to old friends in the neighbourhood, filled up every spare moment in a mode of life each day of which was consciously and unaffectedly happy.

In addition to these quasi-pastoral occupations, one day brought the exciting news that a new proprietor—indeed a new family—was about to arrive in the district—now the owner of a sheep station distant from Windahgil about twenty miles had for some months, indeed since the change of season, cherished hopes of selling out to advantage.

An astute, unscrupulous speculator, he had purchased sheep largely, at low prices, directly the weather broke, had crowded on to Wantabalree all the stock it could hold—and more, had sent the rest of his cheap purchase “on the road.” This means, in Australia, travelling for grass to a distant undefined point in a neighbouring colony whence at any time they could be ordered back; subsisting at free quarters, on other men’s pastures till shearing.

He then offered Wantabalree for sale, at the high market price of the day, describing it as a magnificent pastoral property with a stock of sheep of the highest quality and breeding; puffed up the grass, the improvements, the homestead, the water supply, directly and indirectly, and having done all this, awaited quietly the usual victim provided with cash and deficient in experience.

In Australia, as in other countries probably, it is a fact patent to observers of human nature that the weak points of any particular locality are rarely obtruded upon the incoming proprietor or tenant. He is, in a general way, prone to spend money on a liberal scale for the first two or three years.

The interests of other proprietors are, in a way, identical. Assuming that the newly-arrived purchaser has made an indifferent bargain—that is, has misunderstood wholly the value of his investment, or bought in total ignorance of the peculiar drawbacks of the district, it is rarely that any one volunteers to enlighten him.

Such information, if unfavourable, might tend to depreciate the value of property locally. It was none of their business. Every one had enough to do to look after their own affairs. They might want to sell out themselves some day.

Besides, after all, the seasons might prove wet for years to come, in which case a tide of general prosperity would set in, quite sufficient to float Colonel Dacre’s as well as the other partially stranded argosies of the period.

This was the mode of reasoning which mostly obtained around Mooramah—possibly not wholly unknown in other centres more or less connected with financial operations.

Even an experienced Australian pastoralist may be placed at considerable disadvantage when he comes to inspect station property in a region previously unknown to him. He may under-rate or over-estimate the changes in pasture produced in varying seasons. He may be wholly ignorant of probable or latent disease. Summer’s heat or winter’s cold may surprise him by their diverse results. Such men may make—have indeed made—the most astonishing mistakes in purchasing stations in unfamiliar country. How much more so the wholly inexperienced, newly-arrived buyer from Europe, or Hindustan—ignorant of the very alphabet of pastoral science! He is indeed delivered over as a prey. The net is, in a manner, spread for him. Unless he be clearly warned, and indeed vigorously frightened away from this all-tempting enclosure, he is very apt to be enmeshed. After his entanglement—from which except by the blindest chance he rarely emerges save with despoiled plumage and drooping crest—he can hear from his too reticent neighbours doleful tales of loss and distress, a portion of which information would have been sufficient to deter him from (as he now believes) so suicidal an investment.

To do the Stamfords justice, they were not the sort of people likely to stand by and see an injustice perpetrated without protest. Colonel Dacre, on arriving in the district, had called at Windahgil, and informing Mr. Stamford that he felt disposed to buy Wantabalree, which was then offered for sale with so many sheep, so much purchased land, &c., had asked his opinion of the policy of the purchase.

Hubert and his father looked at one another for a moment. Then the younger man burst out—“I think it’s a confounded shame that any gentleman coming to a fresh district should be taken in, utterly deceived in a purchase like this one of Wantabalree. It is known to every child within fifty miles that the place is over-stocked by nearly one-half. The reason the run looks so well is that a lot of sheep that were travelling have just been put on. They haven’t had time to eat down the grass yet. If a dry season comes they’ll die like flies.”

“You must be careful in making statements to Mr. Dealerson’s prejudice,” said his father. “We are not on good terms with him. That should be, perhaps, considered by Colonel Dacre. At the same time, I endorse every word you have said.”

“I know I hate the fellow like poison,” said Hubert. “He’s mean and dishonest—and deserves to be had up for false representation to boot; but I would say the same if he were my own brother. The sale of Wantabalree with the stock at present on it, under the advertisement of a fairly-stocked run, is a deception and a robbery. I give Colonel Dacre leave to repeat my words to Mr. Dealerson or his friends.”

“I gather from what you say,” said the Colonel; “that the stock upon Wantabalree is in excess of what it would be safe to depasture in ordinary seasons; that the buyer would probably, in the event of an unfavourable season, be at a disadvantage—--”

“Such a disadvantage that he would lose twenty or thirty thousand sheep to begin with,” replied Hubert; “and even under the most favourable circumstances the place could never carry its present stock.”

“Yet the sheep look very well—are indeed fit for market—as I am informed by the person the agents recommended me to consult.”

“This is the finest season we have had for five years. It is the best time of year also,” said Hubert. “Any run about here would carry double its ordinary stock for a few months—till winter, for instance. If a third more sheep were put on now, say on to this run, neither sheep nor run would exhibit much difference until the autumn was well over.”

“And what would happen then?” asked the Colonel.

“Then they would merely begin to starve—become weak and die—thousand after thousand, while all the survivors would be impoverished and lessened in value.”

“Good Heavens!” said the astonished soldier. “I never imagined such deceit could be practised in a pastoral community. It amounts to obtaining money under false pretences!”

“Not legally,” said Mr. Stamford; “but every word which my son has told you is substantially true. Wantabalree with its present stock is nothing better than a trap skilfully set to catch the unwary purchaser. Mr. Dealerson is, so to speak, an enemy of ours, but I will do Hubert the justice to say that a friend acting similarly would have fared no better at his hands.”

“Well! forewarned is forearmed,” said the colonel. “I feel deeply indebted to you, but your conduct has been in marked contrast to that of all the other residents to whom I have spoken on the subject.”

“Unfortunately, there is too much caution or apathy in matters of this sort,” said Mr. Stamford. “We should have been delighted to have you as a neighbour, believe me, but not at such cost to yourself.”