The Project Gutenberg eBook, Babes in the Bush, by Rolf Boldrewood

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BABES IN THE BUSH

BABES IN THE BUSH

BY

ROLF BOLDREWOOD

AUTHOR OF

‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM,’

‘A COLONIAL REFORMER,’ ETC.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1900

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
‘FRESH FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW’

‘What letter are you holding in your hand all this time, my dear?’ said Captain Howard Effingham to his wife during a certain family council.

‘Really, I had almost forgotten it. A foreign postmark—I suppose it is from your friend Mr. Sternworth, in Australia or New Zealand.’

‘Sternworth lives in New South Wales, not New Zealand,’ returned he rather testily. ‘I have told you more than once that the two places are a thousand miles apart by sea. Yes! it is from old Harley. When he was chaplain to our regiment he was always hankering after a change from routine duty. Now he has got it with a vengeance. He was slightly eccentric, but a better fellow, a stauncher friend, never stepped.’

‘Don’t people go to Australia to make money?’ asked Rosamond Effingham, a girl of twenty, with ‘eldest daughter’ plainly inscribed upon her thoughtful features. ‘I saw in a newspaper that some one had come home after making a fortune, or it may have been that he died there and left it to his relatives.’

‘Sternworth has not made a fortune. He is not the man to want one. Still, he seems wonderfully contented and raves about the beauty of the climate and the progress of his colony.’

‘Let me read his letter out,’ pleaded the anxious wife softly, and, with a gesture of assent, the father and daughter sat expectant.

Mrs. Effingham had the gift of reading aloud with effect, which, with that of facile, clear-cut composition, came to her as naturally as the notes of a song-bird, which indeed her tuneful voice resembled.

‘The letter is dated from Yass—(what a funny name! a native one, I suppose)—in New South Wales, and June the 20th, 1834. Nearly six months ago! Does it take all that time to come? What a long, long way off it must be. Now then for the contents.

‘My dear Effingham—I have not written for an age—though I had your last in reply to mine in due course—partly because, after my first acknowledgment, I had nothing particular to say, nor any counsel to offer you, suitable for the situation in which you appear to have landed yourself. When you were in the old regiment you were always a bad manager of your money, and the Yorkshireman had to come to your assistance with his hard head more than once. I thought all that sort of thing was over when you succeeded to a settled position and a good estate. I was much put out to find by your last letter that you had again got among the shallows of debt. I doubt it is chronic with you. But it is a serious matter for the family. If I were near you I would scold you roundly, but I am too far off to do it effectually.

‘My reason for writing now—for I am too busy a man to send the compliments of the season across the globe—is that a tempting investment in land—a perfect gift, as the phrase is—has come to my knowledge.

‘Now, I am not hard-natured enough to tempt you to come here with your amiable wife, whose praises, not always from yourself, I have often heard—[really, my dear, I had no idea you paid me compliments in your letters to your friends]—and your tenderly nurtured family; that is, if you can retain your position, or one in any way approaching it. But I know that the loss of fortune in the old country entails a more complete stripping of all that men hold dear, than in this new land, where aristocratic poverty, or rather, scantiness of money, is the rule, and wealth, as yet, the exception.

‘I cannot believe that you are totally without means. Here, cash is at a premium. Therefore, if you have but the shreds and fragments of your fortune left, you may still have capital available from the wreck sufficient to make a modest venture, which I shall explain.

‘A family long resident near this rising town—say forty or fifty miles distant—have been compelled, like you, to offer their estate for sale. I will not enter into the circumstances or the causes of the step. The fact that we are concerned with is, that a valuable property—as fair judges consider it—comprising a decent house and several thousand acres of good land, may be bought for three or four thousand pounds.

‘I do not hide from you that many people consider that the present bad times are likely to last, even to become more pressing. I fully expect a reaction. If you can do better in any way I do not ask you for one moment to consider this matter, much as I should like to see my old comrade and his family here.

‘But if otherwise, and the melancholy life of the ruined middle-aged Briton stares you in the face, I say boldly, do not go to Boulogne, or other refuge for the shady destitute, where a man simply counts the days which he must linger out in cheap lodgings and cheese-paring idleness, but come to Australia and try a more wholesome, more manly, if occasionally ruder life. I know what you home-keeping English think of a colony. But you may find here a career for your boys—even suitable marriages for your girls, whose virtues and accomplishments would doubtless invest them with distinction.

‘If you can get this sum together, and a few hundreds to have in your pocket at landing, I can guarantee you a livelihood—you know my caution of old—with many of the essentials, God forbid I should say all, of “the gentle life.” Still, you may come to these by and by. The worst of my adopted country is that there is a cruel uncertainty of seasons, at times sore on man and beast. That you must risk, like other people. If you come, you will have one friend here in old Harley Sternworth, who, without chick or child, will be proud to pour out whatever feelings of affection God has given him, into the lap of your family. If you decide on coming, send a draft for three thousand pounds payable to my order at once. I will manage the rest, and have Warbrok ready to receive you in some plain way on your arrival. So farewell for the present. God bless you and yours, says your old friend,

Harley Sternworth.’

As the letter disclosed this positive invitation and plan of emigration which, whether possible or impossible, was now brought into tangible form, the clasp in which lay the father’s hand and the daughter’s slightly tightened. Their eyes met, their faces gradually softened from the expression of pained endurance which had characterised them, and as the clear tones of the reader came to an end, Rosamond, rising to her feet, exclaimed, ‘God has sent us a friend in our need. If we go to this far land we may work together and live and love undivided. But oh, mother, it breaks my heart to think of you. We are young, it should matter little to us; but how will you bear to be taken away from this pleasant home to a rude, waste country, such as Australia must be?’

‘My darling,’ said the matron, as she folded the letter with an instinctive habit of neatness, and handed it to her husband, ‘the sacrifice to me will be great, far greater than at one time I should have thought it possible to bear. But with my husband and children are my life and my true dwelling-place. Where they are, I abide thankfully to life’s close. Strength, I cannot doubt, will be given to us all to bear our—our——’

Here the thought, the inevitable, unimaginable woe of quitting the loved home of youth, the atmosphere of early friendship, the intertwining ties of relationship, completely overcame the courage of the speaker. Her eyes overflowed as, burying her face in her husband’s arms, which were opened to receive her, she wept long and silently.

‘How could we think of such a thing, my darling, for one moment?’ said Effingham. ‘It would kill you to part, at one blow, from a whole previous existence. I hardly foresaw what a living death it would be for you, more than all, to leave England for ever. There is a world of agony in that thought alone! I certainly gave Sternworth a full account of my position in my last letters. It was a relief. He has always been a true friend. But he has rashly concluded that we were prepared to go to his wild country. It would be your death-blow, darling wife; and then, what good would our lives be to us? Some of our friends will help us, surely. Let us live quietly for a year or two. I may get some appointment.’

‘It relieves my bursting heart to weep; yet it will fit me for future duty. No, Howard, we must not falter or draw back. You can trust, I know, in Mr. Sternworth’s practical wisdom, for you have a hundred times told me how far-seeing, shrewd, and yet kindly he was. In his plan there is the certainty of independence; together we can cheer each other when the day’s work is done. As for living in England, trusting to the assistance of friends, and the lingering uncertainty of a provision from the Government, I have seen too many families pitiably drifting towards a lower level. There is no middle course. No! Our path has been chosen for us. Let us go where a merciful Providence would seem to lead us.’

The fateful conference was ended. A council, not much bruited about, but fraught with momentous results to those yet unborn, in the Effingham family, and it may be to other races and sections of humanity. Who may limit the effects produced in the coming time, by the transplantation of but one rarely endowed family of our upward-striving race?

Nothing remained but to communicate the decision of the high contracting parties of the little state to the remaining members. The heir was absent. To him would have been accorded, as a right, a place in the parliament. But he was in Ireland visiting a college chum, for whom he had formed one of the ardent friendships characteristic of early manhood. Wilfred Effingham was an enthusiast—sanguine and impulsive—whose impulses, chiefly, took a good direction. His heart was warm, his principles fixed. Still, so sensitive was he to the impressions of the hour, that only by the sternest consciousness of responsibility could he remain faithful to the call of duty.

Devoted primarily to art and literature; sport, travel, and social intercourse likewise put in claims to his attention and mingled in his nature the impulses of a refined Greek with the energy and self-denial of his northern race.

It must be confessed that these latter qualities were chiefly in the embryonic stage. So latent and undeveloped were they, indeed, that no one but his fond mother had fully credited his possession of them.

But as the rounded limbs of the Antinous conceal the muscles which after-years develop and harden, so in the graceful physique and sensitive mind of Wilfred Effingham lay hidden powers, which, could he have foreseen their future exercise, would have astonished no one more than himself. Such was the youth recalled from his joyous revel in the Green Isle, where he had been shooting and fishing to his heart’s content.

A letter from his mother first told that his destiny had been changed. In a moment he was transformed. No longer was he to be an enjoyer of the hoarded wealth of art, letters, science, sitting on high and choosing what he would, as one of the gods of Olympus. His lot, henceforth, would be that of a toiler for the necessaries of life! It was a shrewd blow. Small wonder had he reeled before it! It met him without warning, unsoftened, save by the tender pity and loving counsel so long associated with his mother’s handwriting. The well-remembered characters, so fair in delicate regularity, which since earliest schooldays had cheered and comforted him. Never had they failed him; steadfast ever as a mother’s faith, unfailing as a mother’s love!

Grown to manhood, still, as of old, he looked, almost at weekly intervals, for the missive, ever the harbinger of home love, the herald of joy, the bearer of wise counsel—never once of sharp rebuke or untempered anger.

And now—to the spoiled child of affection, of endowment—had come this message fraught with woe.

A meaner mind, so softly nurtured, might have shrunk from the ordeal. To the chivalrous soul of Wilfred Effingham the vision was but the summons to the fray, which bids the knight quit the tourney and the banquet for the stern joys of battle.

His nature, one of those complex organisms having the dreamy poetic side much developed, yet held room for physical demonstration. Preferring for the most part contemplation to action, he had ever passed, apparently without effort, from unchecked reverie and study to tireless bodily toil in the quest of sport, travel, or adventure. Possessed of a constitution originally vigorous, and unworn by dissipation, from which a sensitive nature joined with deference to a lofty ideal had hitherto preserved him, Wilfred Effingham approached that rare combination which has ere now resulted, under pressure of circumstance, in the hero, the poet, the warrior, or the statesman.

He braced himself to withstand the shock. It was a shrewd buffet. Yet, after realising its force, he was conscious, much to his surprise, of a distinct feeling of exaltation.

‘I shall suffer for it afterwards,’ he told his friend Gerald O’More, half unconsciously, as they sat together over a turf fire which glowed in the enormous chimney of a rude but comfortable shooting lodge; ‘but, for the soul of me, I can’t help feeling agreeably acted upon.’

‘Acted upon by what?’ said his companion and college chum, with whom he had sworn eternal friendship. ‘Is it the whisky hot? It’s equal to John Jameson, and yet it never bothered an exciseman! Sure that same is amaylioratin’ my lot to a degree I should have never believed possible. Take another glass. Defy Fate and tell me all about it. Has your father, honest man, discovered another Roman tile or Julius Cæsar’s tobacco-pouch? [the elder Effingham was an antiquarian of great perseverance], or have ministers gone out, to the ruin of the country, and the triumph of those villains the radicals? ’Tis little that ever happens in that stagnant existence that you Saxons call country life, barring a trifle of make-believe hunting and shooting. Sure, didn’t me uncle Phelim blaze away into a farmer’s poultry-yard in Kent for half-an-hour, and swear (it was after lunch) that he never saw pheasants so hard to rise before.’

Thus the light-hearted Irishman rattled on, well divining, for all his apparent mirth, that something more than common had come in the letter, that had the power to drive the blood from Wilfred’s cheek and set Care’s seal upon his brow. That impress remained indelible, even when he smiled, and affected to resume his ordinary cheerfulness.

At length he spoke: ‘Gerald, old fellow! there is news from home which most people would call bad. It is distinct of its kind. We have lost everything; are ruined utterly. Not a chance of recovery, it seems. My dear mother bids me understand that most clearly; warns me to have no hope of anything otherwise. The governor has been hard hit, it seems, in foreign bonds; Central African Railways, or Kamschatka telegraph lines,—some of the infernal traps for English capital at any rate. The Chase is mortgaged and will have to go. The family must emigrate. Australia is to be the future home of the Effinghams. This appears to be settled. That’s a good deal to be hid in two sheets of note-paper, isn’t it?’ And he tossed up the carefully directed letter, caught it as it fell, and placed it in his pocket.

‘My breath is taken away; reach me the whisky, if you wish to save my life, or else it will be——’ (prompt measures were taken to relieve the unfortunate gentleman, but without success). ‘Wilfred, me dear fellow, do you tell me that you’re serious? What will ye do at all, at all?’

‘Do? What better men have had to do before now. Face the old foe of mortals, Anagkaia, and see what she can do when a man stands up to her. I don’t like the idea any the worse for having to cross the sea to a new world, to find a lost fortune. After all, one was getting tired of this sing-song, nineteenth century life of fashionable learning, fashionable play, fashionable work—everything, in fact, regulated by dame Fashion. I shall be glad to stretch my limbs in a hunter’s hammock, and bid adieu to the whole unreal pageant.’

‘Bedad! I don’t know. I’d say the reality was nearer where we are, with all the disadvantages of good dinners, good sport, good books, and good company. But you’re right, me dear fellow, to put a bold face on it; and if you have to take the shilling in the divil’s regiment, sure ye’ll die a hero, or rise to Commander-in-Chief, if I know ye. But your mother, and poor Miss Effingham, and the Captain—without his turnips and his justice-room and his pointers and his poachers, his fibulæ and amphoræ—whatever will he do among blackfellows and kangaroos? My heart aches for ye all, Wilfred. Sure ye know it does. If ye won’t take any more potheen, let us sleep on it; and we’ll have a great day among the cocks, if we live, and talk it over afterwards. There never was that sorrow yet that ye didn’t lighten it if ye tired your legs well between sun and sun!’

With the morrow’s sun came an unwonted calm and settled resolve to the soul of Wilfred Effingham. Together, gay, staunch Gerald O’More and he took the last day’s sport they were likely to have for many a day. The shooting was rather above than under the average, as if the ruined heir was willing to show that his nerves had not been affected by his prospects.

‘I must take out the old gun,’ he said, ‘and keep up my shooting. Who knows but that we may depend upon it for a meal now and then in this New Atlantis that we are bound for. But one thing is fixed, old fellow, as far as a changeable nature will permit. I shall have to be the mainstay of my father’s house. I must play the man, if it’s in me. No more dilettantism, no more mediæval treasures, no more tall copies. The present, not the past, is what we must stand or fall by. The governor is shaken by all this trouble; not the best man of business at any time. My dear mother is a saint en habit de Cour; she will have to suffer a sea-change that might break the hearts of ordinary worldlings. Upon Rosamond and myself will fall the brunt of the battle. She has prepared herself for it, happily, by years of unselfish care and thought. I have been an idler and a loiterer. Now the time has come to show of what stuff I am made. It will mean good-bye to you, Gerald O’More, fast friend and bon camarade. We shall have no more shooting and fishing together, no more talk about art and poetry, no more vacation tours, no more rambles, for long years—let us not say for ever. Good-bye to my old life, my old Self! God speed us all; we must arm and away.’

‘I’d say you might have a worse life, Wilfred, though it will come hard on you at first to be shooting kangaroos and bushrangers, instead of grouse and partridges, like a Christian. But we get used to everything, I am told, even to being a land-agent, with every boy in the barony wondering if he could tumble ye at sixty paces with the ould duck gun. When a thing’s to be done—marrying or burying, standing out on the sod on a foggy morning with a nate shot opposite ye, or studying for the law—there’s nothing like facing it cool and steady. You’ll write me and Hallam a line after you’re landed; and we’ll think of ye often enough, never fear. God speed ye, my boy! Sure, it’s Miss Annabel that will make the illigant colonist entirely.’

The friends parted. Wilfred lost no time in reaching home, where his presence comforted the family in the midst of that most discouraging state of change for the worse, the packing and preparing for departure.

But he had utilised the interval since he left his friend by stern self-examination, ending in a fixed, unalterable resolve. His mother, his sisters, and his father were alike surprised at his changed bearing. He had grown years older in a week. He listened to the explanation of their misfortune from his father with respectful silence or short, undoubting comment. He confirmed the decision to which the family counsel had arrived. Emigration to Australia was, under the circumstances, the only path which promised reparation of the fortunes of the house. He carefully read the letter from Mr. Sternworth, upon which their fate seemed to hang. He cheered his mother by expressing regret for his previous desultory life, asking her to believe that his future existence should be devoted to the welfare of all whom both held so dear.

‘You have never doubted, my dearest mother,’ he said, ‘but that your heedless son would one day do credit to his early teaching? I stand pledged to make your words good.’

The arrival of the heir, who had taken his place at his father’s right hand in so worthy a spirit, seemed to infuse confidence into the other members of the family. Each and all appeared to recognise the fact that their expatriation was decided upon, and while lamenting their loved home, they commenced to gather information about their new abode, and to dwell upon the more cheering probabilities.

The family was not a small one. Guy Effingham was a high-spirited schoolboy of fourteen, whose cricket and football engagements had hitherto, with that amount of the humanities which an English public schoolboy is compelled to master, under penalties too dire for endurance, been sufficient to fill up his irresponsible life. It was arranged that he was to remain at school until the week previous to their departure. His presence at home was not necessary, while his mother wished him to utilise the last effective teaching which he was likely to have. To her was committed the task of preparing him for his altered position. Two younger daughters, with a boy and girl of tender years, the darlings of the family, completed the number of the Effinghams. The third daughter, Annabel, was the beauty of the family. A natural pride in her unquestioned loveliness had always mingled with the maternal repression of all save the higher aims and qualities which it had been the fond mother’s life-long duty to inculcate. Annabel Effingham had received from nature the revival of the loveliness of some ancestress, heightened and intensified by admixture of family type. She was fair, with the bright colouring, the silken hair, the delicate roseate glow which had long been the boast of the women of her mother’s family—of ancient Saxon blood—for many generations. But she had superadded to these elements of beauty a classical delicacy of outline, a darker shade of blue in the somewhat prouder eye, a figure almost regal in the nobility of carriage and unconscious dignity of motion, which told of a diverse lineage. Beatrice, the second daughter of the house, had up to the present time exhibited neither the strong altruistic bias which, along with the faculty of organisation, characterised Rosamond, nor the universally confessed fascination which rendered Annabel’s path a species of royal progress. Refined, distinguished in appearance, as indeed were all the members of the family, she had not as yet developed any special vocation. In her appearance one saw but the ordinary traits which stamp a highly cultured girl of the upper classes. She was, perhaps, more distinctly literary in her tastes than either of her sisters, but her reserved habits concealed her attainments. For the rest, she appeared to have made up her mind to the inevitable with less apparent effort than the other members of the family.

‘What can it avail—all this grieving and lamenting?’ she would say. ‘I feel parting with The Chase, with our relations and friends—with all our old life, in fact—deeply and bitterly. But that once admitted, what good end is served by repeating the thought and renewing the tears? Other people are ruined in England, and have to go to Boulogne and horrid continental towns, where they lead sham lives, and potter about, unreal in everything but dulness and poverty, till they die. We shall go to Australia to do something—or not to do it. Both are good in their way. Next to honest effort I like a frank failure.’

‘But suppose we do fail, and lose all our money, and have nothing to eat in a horrid new country,’ said Annabel, ‘what will become of us?’

‘Just what would become of us here, I suppose; we should have to work—become teachers at a school, or governesses, or hospital nurses; only, as young women are not so plentiful in Australia as in England, why, we should be better paid.’

‘Oh, but here we know so many people, and they would help us to find pleasant places to live in,’ pleaded Annabel piteously. ‘It does seem so dreadful to be ten thousand miles away from your own country. I am sure we shall starve!’

‘Don’t be a goose, Annabel. How can we starve? First, we have the chance of making money and living in plenty, if not in refinement, on this estate that papa is going to buy. And if that does not turn out a success, we must find you a place as companion to the Governor-General’s wife, or as nursery governess for very young children. I’ll become a “school marm” at Yass—that’s the name—and Rosamond will turn dressmaker, she has such a talent for a good fit.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear! don’t talk of such dreadful things. Are we to go all over the world only to become drudges and work-women? We may as well drown ourselves at once.’

‘My child! my child!’ said a gentle voice. ‘What folly is this? What are we, that we should be absolved from the trials that others have to bear? God has chosen, for His own good purpose, to bring this misfortune upon us. He will give us strength to bear it in a chastened spirit. If we do not bear it in a resigned and chastened spirit, we are untrue to the teaching which we have all our lives affected to believe in. We have all our part to perform. Let us have no repining, my dearest Annabel. Our way is clear, and we have others to think of who require support.’

‘But you like to be miserable, you know, mother; you think it is God’s hand that afflicts you,’ sobbed the desponding spoiled child. ‘I can’t feel that way. I haven’t your faith. And it breaks my heart; I shall die, I shall die, I know.’

‘Pray, my darling, pray for help and grace from on high,’ continued the sweet, sad tones of the mother, as she drew her child’s fair head upon her lap, and passed her hand amid ‘the clustering ringlets rich and rare,’ while Beatrice sat rather unsympathetically by. ‘You will have me and your sisters to cheer you.’ Here the fair disconsolate looked distrustfully at Beatrice.

By degrees the half-mesmeric, instinctive influence of the loved mother’s pitying tones overcame the unwonted fit of unreason.

‘I will try and be good,’ she murmured, looking up with a soft light in her lovely eyes, ‘but you know I am a poor creature at best. You must bear with me, and I will help as much as I can, and try to keep from repining. But, oh, my home, my home, the dear old place where I was born. How dark and dreary do this long voyage and journey seem!’

‘Have we not a yet longer voyage, a more distant journey to make, my own one?’ whispered the mother, in accents soft as those with which in times gone by she had lulled the complaining babe. ‘We know not the time, nor the hour. Think! If we do not prepare ourselves by prayer and faith, how dark that departure will appear!’

‘You are always good and kind, always right, mother,’ said the girl, recovering her composure and assuming a more steadfast air. ‘Pray for me, that I may find strength; but do I not know that you pray for all of us incessantly? We ought—that is—I ought to be better than I am.’

Among the lesser trials which, at the time of his great sorrow, oppressed Howard Effingham, not the least was the necessity for parting with old servants and retainers. He was a man prone to become attached to attendants long used to his ways. Partly from kindly feeling, partly from indolence, he much disliked changing domestics or farm labourers. Accustomed to lean against a more readily available if not a stronger support than his own, he was, in most relations of life, more dependent than most men upon his confidential servants.

In this instance, therefore, he had taken it much to heart that his Scotch land-steward, a man of exceptional capacity and absolute personal fidelity, having a wife also, of rare excellence in her own department, should be torn from him by fate.

Backed up by his trusty Andrew, with his admirable wife, he felt as if he could have faced all ordinary colonial perils. While under Jeanie Cargill’s care, his wife and daughters might have defied the ills of any climate, and risked the absence of the whole College of Physicians.

Andrew Cargill was one of those individuals of strongly marked idiosyncrasy, a majority of whom appear to have been placed, by some mysterious arrangement of nature, on the north side of the Tweed. Originally the under-gardener at The Chase, he had risen slowly but irresistibly through the gradations of upper-gardener and under-bailiff to the limited order of land-steward required by a moderate property. He had been a newly-married man when he formed the resolution of testing the high wages of the Southron lairds. His family, as also his rate of wages, had increased. His expenses he had uniformly restricted, with the thoroughness of his economical forefathers. He despised all wasteful ways. He managed his master’s affairs, as committed to his charge, with more than the rigorous exactitude he was wont to apply to his own. Gaining authority, by the steady pressure of unrelaxing forecast habit of life, he was permitted a certain license as to advice and implied rebuke. Had Andrew Cargill been permitted to exercise the same control over the extra-rural affairs that he was wont to use over the farm-servants and the plough-teams, the tenants and the trespassers, the crops and the orchards, the under-gardeners and the pineries, no failure, financial or otherwise, would have occurred at The Chase.

When the dread disaster could no longer be concealed, it is questionable whether Mr. Effingham felt anything more acutely than the necessity which existed of explaining to this faithful follower the extent, or worse, the cause of his misfortune. He anticipated the unbroken silence, the incredulous expression, with which all attempts at favourable explanation would be received. Open condemnation, of course, was out of the question. But the mute reproach or guarded reference to his master’s inconceivable imbecility, which on this occasion might be more strongly accented than usual, would be hard to endure.

Mr. Effingham could not depute his wife, or one of the girls, to convey the information to the formidable Andrew. So he was fain to pull himself together one morning, and go forth to this uncompromising logician. Having briefly related the eventful tale, he concluded by dispensing with his faithful servant, as they were going to a new country, and very probably would never be able to employ servants again.

Having thrown down the bombshell, the ‘lost leader’ looked fixedly at Andrew’s unmoved countenance, and awaited the particular kind of concentrated contempt which he doubted not would issue forth.

His astonishment was great when, after the hurried conclusion, ‘I shall miss you, Andrew, you may be sure, more than I say; and as for Jeanie, I don’t know how the young ladies and the mistress will get on without her,’ the following words issued slowly and oracularly from Andrew’s lips:—

‘Ye’ll no miss me ava, Maister Effingham. Dinna ye think that it’s a’ news ye’re tellin’ me. I behoved just to speer a bit what garred the puir mistress look sae dowie and wae. And the upshot o’ matters is that I’m gaun wi’ ye.’

‘And your wife and children?’

‘Ye didna threep I was to leave them ahint? Andra’ Cargill isna ane o’ thae kind o’ folk, sae just tak’ heart, and for a’ that’s come and gane ye may lift up your heid ance mair; it’s nae great things o’ a heid, as the auld wife said o’ the Deuk’s, but if Botany Bay is the gra-and country they ca’ it, and the book-writers and the agents haena been tellin’ the maist unco-omon set o’ lees, a’ may gang weel yet.’

‘But what’s put this in your head, of all people in the world, Andrew?’ queried his master, becoming bold, like individuals, or corporate bodies, of purely defensive ideas, after observing tokens of weakness in the besieging force.

‘Weel, aweel, first and foremost, Laird, ye’ll no say that we haena eaten your bread and saut this mony a year; there’s been neither stint nor stay till’t. I hae naething to say against the wage; aiblins a man weel instructed in his profession should aye be worthy o’ his hire. Jeanie has been just spoiled by the mistress—my heart’s sairvice to her and the young leddies—till ilka land they were no in, wad be strange eneugh to her, puir body. And the lang and short o’ the hail matter is, that we loe ye and your bonnie lads and lassies, Laird, sae weel that we winna be pairted frae ye.’

As Mr. Effingham grasped the hand of the staunch, true servitor, who thus stood by him in his need, under whose gnarled bark of natural roughness lay hid so tender and true a core, the tears stood in his eyes.

‘I shall never forget this, Andrew,’ said he; ‘you and Jeanie, old friend, will be the comfort of our lives in the land over-sea, and I cannot say what fresh courage your determination has given me. But are you sure it will be for your own advantage? You must have saved money, and might take a farm and live snugly here.’

‘I was aboot to acquent ye, Laird,’ said the conscientious Scot, too faithful to his religious principles to take credit for a disinterestedness to which he felt but partially entitled. ‘Ye’ll see, Laird, for ye’re weel acquent wi’ the Word, that the battle’s no always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Ye’ll ken that, frae your ain experience—aweel, I winna just say that neither’—proceeded Andrew, getting slightly involved between his quotations and his determination to be ‘faithful’ to his erring master, and by no means cloaking his sins of omission. ‘I’ll no say but what ye’ve been lettin’ ither folks lead ye, and throw dust in ye’re een in no the maist wiselike fashion, as nae doot ye wad hae dune wi’ the tenants, puir bodies, gin I had letten ye. But touchin’ my ain affairs, I haena sae muckle cause to brag; for maybe I was unco stiff-necked, and it behoved to chasten me, as weel’s yersell; I hae tint—just flung awa’—my sma’ scrapin’s and savin’s, these saxteen years and mair, in siccan a senseless daft-like way too!’

Here Andrew could not forbear a groan, which was echoed by an exclamation from his master.

‘I am sincerely grieved—astonished beyond expression! Why, Andrew, surely you have not been dabbling in stocks and foreign loans?’

‘Na—nae ga-amblin’ for me, Laird!’ replied Andrew sourly, and with an accentuation which implied speedy return to his ordinary critical state of mind; ‘but if I had minded the Scripture, I wadna hae lost money and faith at one blow. “Strike not hands for a surety,”’ it saith, ‘but I trusted Geordie Ballantyne like a brither; my ain cousin, twice removed. He was aboot to be roupit oot, stock and lock, and him wi’ a hoosefu’ o’ weans. I just gaed surety to him for three hunder pound!’

‘You were never so mad—a prudent man like you?’

‘And he just flitted to America, fled frae his ain land, his plighted word, and left me to bear the wyte o’t. It’s nae use greetin’ ower spilt brose. The money’s a’ paid, and Andra’ Cargill’s as puir a man’s when he cam’ to The Chase, saxteen years last Michaelmas. Sae, between the heart-break it wad be to pairt wi’ the family, and the sair heart I hae gotten at pairtin’ wi’ my siller, the loss o’ a friend—“mine own familiar freend,” as the Psawmist says—as weel’s the earnings o’ the maist feck o’ my days, at ae blast, I hae settled to gang oot, Laird, to Austra-alia, and maybe lay oot a wheen straight furrows for ye, as I did lang syne on the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick.’

Here Andrew’s voice faltered, and the momentous unprecedented conversation ended abruptly.

The unfeigned delight with which his wife and daughters received the news did much to reconcile Mr. Effingham to his expatriation, and even went far to persuade him that he had, in some way, originated the whole idea. Nor was their satisfaction unfounded. Andrew, with all his apparent sternness and occasional incivility, was shrewd, capable, and even versatile, in the application of his industry and unerring common sense to a wide range of occupations. He was the ideal colonist of his order, as certain to succeed in his own person as to be the most helpful and trustworthy of retainers.

As for Jeanie, she differed from her husband in almost every respect, except in the cardinal virtues. She had been a rustic celebrity in her youth, and Andrew occasionally referred still, in moments of unbending, to the difficulties of his courtship, and the victory gained over a host of rival suitors. She still retained the softness of manner and tenderness of nature which no doubt had originally led to the fascination of her masterful, rugged-natured husband.

For the rest, Jean Cargill had always been one of those servants, rare even in England, the land of peerless domestics, whose loving, unselfish service knew no abatement in sickness and in health, good fortune or evil hap. Her perceptive tastes and strong sense of propriety rendered her, as years rolled on, a trusted friend; an infinitely more suitable companion for the mistress and her children, as she always called them, than many a woman of higher culture. A tireless nurse in time of sickness; a brave, clear-headed, but withal modest and cautious, aid to the physician in the hour of peril. She had stood by the bedstead of more than one member of the family, in the dark hour, when the angel of death waited on the threshold of the chamber. Never had she slackened or faltered, by night or day, careless of food or repose till the crisis had passed, and the ‘whisper of wings in the air’ faded away.

Mrs. Effingham, with all her maternal fondness and devotion, had been physically unable at times to bear up against the fatigue of protracted watching and anxiety. She had more than once, from sheer bodily weakness, been compelled to abandon her post. But to Jeanie Cargill, sustained by matchless love and devotion, such a thing had never occurred. At noon or midnight, her hand was ever ready to offer the needful food, the vital draught; her ear ever watchful to catch the faint murmur of request; her eye, sleepless as a star, was ever undimmed, vigilant to detect the slightest change of symptom. Many nurses had been heard of, seen, and even read of, in the domestic circles of Reigate, but in the estimation of every matron capable of giving an opinion, Jeanie Cargill, by countless degrees of comparison, outshone them all.

That night, when Mrs. Effingham, as was her wont, sought relief from the burden of her daily cares, and the crowding anxieties of the morrow, ‘meekly kneeling upon her knees,’ it appeared to her as if in literal truth the wind had been tempered to the shorn lamb. That terrible travel into the unknown, the discomforts and dangers of the melancholy main, with the dreary waste of colonial life, would be quite different adventures, softened by the aid and companionship of everybody’s ‘dear old Jeanie.’ Her patient industry, her helpful sympathy, her matchless loyalty and self-denial, would be well-springs of heaven-sent water in that desert. Andrew’s company, though not socially exhilarating, was also an invigorating fact. Altogether, Mrs. Effingham’s spirits improved, and her hopes arose freshly strengthened.

No sooner was it settled that Andrew and his fortunes were to be wafted o’er the main, in the vessel which bore the Effingham family, than, with characteristic energy, he had constituted himself Grand Vizier and responsible adviser. He definitely approved of much that had been done, and counselled still further additions to the outfit. Prime and invincible was his objection to leave behind a certain pet ‘Jersey coo,’ ‘a maist extraordinar’ milker, and for butter, juist unco-omon. If she could be ta’en oot to thae parts, she wad be a sma’ fortune—that is, in ony Christian land where butter and cheese were used. Maybe the sea-captain wad let her gang for the value o’ her milk; she was juist in the height o’t the noo. It wad be a sin and a shame to let her be roupit for half price, like the ither kye, puir things.’

Persistent advocacy secured his point. Daisy had been morally abandoned to her fate; but Wilfred, goaded by Andrew’s appeals, had an interview with the shipping clerk, and arranged that Daisy, if approved of, should fill the place of the proverbial milch cow, so invariably bracketed with the ‘experienced surgeon’ in the advertisements of the Commercial Marine. Her calf also, being old enough to eat hay, was permitted to accompany her.

Andrew also combated the idea that the greyhounds, or at least a pair, should be left behind, still less the guns or fishing-rods.

‘Wasna the Laird the best judge of a dog in the haill country-side, and no that far frae the best shot? What for suld he walk aboot the woods in Australia waesome and disjaskit like, when there might be kangaroos, or whatna kind o’ ootlandish game, to be had for the killing? Hoot, hoot, puir Page and Damsel couldna be left ahint, nor the wee terrier Vennie.’

There was more trouble with the greyhounds’ passage than the cows, but in consideration of the large amount of freight and passage-money paid by the family, the aristocratic long-tails were franked. Andrew, with his own hands, packed up the fowling-pieces and fishing-rods, which, with the exaggerated prudence of youth, Wilfred had been minded to leave behind, considering nothing worthy of removal that would not be likely to add to their material gains in the ‘new settlement.’ He had yet to learn that recreation can never be advantageously disregarded, whether the community be a young or an old one.

Little by little, a chain of slow yet subtle advances, by which, equally with geologic alterations of the earth’s surface, its ephemeral living tenants proceed or retrograde, effected the translation of Howard Effingham, with wife and children, retainers and household goods. Averse by nature to all exertion which savoured of detail, reserving his energy for what he was pleased to dignify with the title of great occasions, as he looked back over the series of multitudinous necessary arrangements, Howard Effingham wondered, in his secret soul, at the transference of his household. Left to himself, he was candid enough to admit, such a result could never have been achieved. But the ceaseless ministration of Jeanie and Andrew, the calm forethought of Mrs. Effingham, the unsparing personal labour of Wilfred, had, in due time, worked the miracle.

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CAMP

Whatever may be the loss or injury inseparable from misfortune, no one of experience denies that the pain is lightened when the blow has fallen. The shuddering terror, the harrowing doubts, which precede an operation, far outrun the torture of the knife. Worse a thousandfold to endure than actual misery, poverty and disgrace, is the dull sense of impending doom, the daily anxiety, the secret dread, the formless, unhasting, unsparing terror, which each day brings nearer to the victim.

Howard Effingham had, for weeks past, suffered the torments of the lost. An unwise concealment of the coming ruin which his reserved temperament forbade him to announce, had stretched him upon the rack. The acute agony was now past, and he felt unspeakably relieved as, with increasing completeness, the preparations for departure were accomplished.

After the shock of the disaster he commenced the necessary duties with an unwontedly tranquil mind. He had despatched a bank draft for the amount mentioned by his friend and counsellor the Rev. Harley Sternworth. Prior to this needful act, he held various conferences with the trustees of Mrs. Effingham’s settlement. In many instances such authorities are difficult, even impracticable, to deal with, preferring the minimum interest which can be safely procured in the matter of trust money, to the slightest risk. In this instance, the arbiter of destiny was an old gentleman, at once prudent yet liberal-minded, who did not disdain to examine the arguments in favour of the Australian plan. After reading Mr. Sternworth’s letter, and comparing the facts therein stated with colonial securities, to which he had access, he gave in his adhesion to the investment, and converted his coadjutor, a mild, obstinate personage, who could with difficulty be induced to see any other investment legally open to them but the ‘sweet simplicity of the three per cents.’

Long was the last day in coming, but it came at last. Their stay in the old home was protracted until only time was given for the journey to Southampton, where the staunch, old-fashioned wool-ship lay, which was to receive their condensed personal effects and, as it seemed to them, shrivelled-up personalities.

Adieus were said, some with sore weeping and many tears; some with moderate but sincere regret; some with the half-veiled indifference with which any action not affecting their own comfort, interest, or reputation is regarded by a large class of acquaintances. The minor possessions—the carriages, the horses, the library, the furniture—were sold. A selection of the plainest articles of this last requisite, which, the freight being wonderfully low, their chief adviser had counselled them to carry with them, was alone retained.

‘It will sell for next to nothing,’ his last letter had said, ‘judging from my experience after the regiment had “got the route,” and you will have it landed here for less than the price of very ordinary substitutes. Bring all the small matters you can, that may be useful; and don’t leave the piano behind. I must have a tune when I come to see you at Warbrok, and hear Mrs. Effingham sing “Auld Robin Gray” again. You recollect how our old Colonel broke down, with tears rolling over his wrinkled cheeks, when she sang it?’

All was now over. The terrible wrench had been endured, tearing apart those living fibres which in early life are entwined around hearth and home. They had gazed in mournful farewell upon each familiar thing which from childhood’s hour had seemed a portion of their sheltered life. Like plants and flowerets, no denizens of hothouse or simulated tropic clime, but not the less carefully tended from harmful extremes, climatic or social, had the Effingham family grown and flourished. Now they were about to be abandoned to the elemental forces. Who should say whether they would wither under rude blasts and a fiercer sun, or, from natural vigour and inherent vitality, burgeon and bloom beneath the Southern heavens?

Of the whole party, she who showed less outward token of sorrow, felt in her heart the most unresting anguish. To a woman like Mrs. Effingham, reared from infancy in the exclusive tenets of English county life, the idea of so comprehensive a change, of a semi-barbarous migration, had been well-nigh more bitter than death—but for one source of aid and spiritual support, unendurable.

Her reliance had a twofold foundation. The undoubting faith in a Supreme Being, who ordered aright all the ways of His creatures, even when apparently remote from happiness, remained unshaken. Firmly had she ever trusted in that God by whom her former life had been guided. Events might take a mysteriously doubtful course. But, in the wilderness, under leafy forest-arches, beneath the shadow of the gathering tempest, on land or ocean, she would trust in God and her Redeemer. Steadfast and brave of mien, though with trembling lip and sickened heart, she marshalled her little troop and led them on board the stout ship, which only awaited the morrow’s dawn to spread her wings and sweep southward—ever southward—amid unknown seas, until the great island continent should arise from out the sky-line, telling of a land which was to provide them with a home, with friends, even perhaps a fortune. What a mockery in that hour of utter wretchedness did such hope promptings appear!

After protracted mental conflict, no more perfect system of rest can be devised than that afforded by a sea-voyage. Anxiety, however mordant, must be lulled to rest under the fixed conditions of a journey, before the termination of which no battle of life can be commenced, no campaign resumed.

Toil and strife, privation and poverty, labour and luck, all the contending forces of life are hushed as in a trance. As in hibernation, the physical and mental attributes appear to rally, to recruit fresh stores of energy. ‘The dead past buries its dead’—sorrowfully perchance, and with silent weeping. But the clouds which have gathered around the spirit disperse and flee heavenwards, as from a snow-robed Alp at morning light. Then the roseate hues of dawn steal slowly o’er the silver-pure peaks and glaciers. The sun gilds anew the dark pine forest, the purple hills. Once more hope springs forth ardent and unfettered. Endeavour presses onward to victory or to death.

To the Effingham family came a natural surprise, that, under their circumstances of exile and misfortune, any cheerfulness could occur. The parents possessed an air of decent resignation. But the younger members of the family, after the first days of unalloyed wretchedness, commenced to exhibit the elastic temperament of youth.

The seamanship displayed on the staunch sailing ship commenced to interest them. The changing aspects of sea and sky, the still noon, the gathering storm-cloud, the starry midnight, the phosphorescent fire-trail following the night-path of their bark—all these had power to move the sad hearts of the exiles. And, in youth, to move the heart is to lighten the spirit.

Wilfred Effingham, true to his determination to deliver himself over to every practical duty which might grow out of their life, had procured books professing to give information with regard to all the Australian colonies.

With difficulty he managed, after an extended literary tour involving Tasmania, Swan River, and New Zealand, to distinguish the colony to which they were bound, though he failed to gather precise information regarding the district in which their land was situated. He made out that the climate was mild, and favourable to the Anglo-Saxon constitution; that in mid-winter, flowering shrubs and delicate plants bloomed in spite of the pretended rigour of the season; that the heat in summer was considerable, as far as shown by the reading of the thermometer, but that from the extreme dryness of atmosphere no greater oppressiveness followed than in apparently cooler days in other climates.

‘Here, mother,’ he said, having mastered the latter fact, ‘we have been unconsciously coming to the exact country suited to your health and pursuits. You know how fond of flowers you are. Well, you can have a winter garden now, without the expense of glass or the trouble of hothouse flues; while you can cheat the season by abstaining from colds, which you could never do in England, you know.’

‘I shall be happy to have a little garden of my own, my son,’ she replied, ‘but who is to work in it? We have done for ever, I suppose, with head and under gardeners. You and Guy and everybody will always, I suppose, be at farm-work, or herding cattle and sheep, busy from morning to dark. How glad we shall be to see your faces at night!’

‘It does not follow,’ replied Wilfred, ‘that we shall never have a moment to spare. Listen to what this author says: “The colonist who has previously been accustomed to lead a life, where intervals of leisure and intellectual recreation hold an acknowledged place, must not consider that, in choosing Australia for his home, he has forfeited all right to such indulgences. Let him not think that he has pledged himself to a life of unbroken toil and unremitting manual labour. On the contrary, he will discover that the avocations of an Australian country gentleman chiefly demand the exercise of ordinary prudence and of those rudimentary business habits which are easily acquired. Intelligent supervision, rather than manual labour, is the special qualification for colonial success; and we do not err in saying that by its exercise more fortunes have been made than by the rude toils which are supposed to be indispensable in the life of an Australian settler.”

‘There, mother!’ said the ardent adventurer. ‘That writer is a very sensible fellow. He knows what he is talking about, for he has been ever so many years in Australia, and has been over every part of it.’

‘Well, there certainly seems permission given to us to have a flower-garden for mamma without ruining ourselves or neglecting our business,’ said Rosamond. ‘And if the climate is so beautiful as they say, these dreadful February neuralgia-martyrdoms will be things of the past with you, dearest old lady.’

‘There, mother, what do you say to that? Why, you will grow so young and beautiful that you will be taken for our elder sister, and papa would be ashamed to say you are his wife, only that old gentlemen generally marry young girls nowadays. Then, fancy what a garden we shall have at The Chase—we must call it The Chase, no matter what its present name is. It wouldn’t feel natural for us to live anywhere but at a Chase. It would be like changing our name.’

On board ship there is always abundant leisure for talk and recreation, especially in low latitudes and half calms. The Effinghams, after they had been a month out, began to feel sensibly the cheering effects of total change of scene—the life-breathing atmosphere of the unbounded sea. The demons of Regret and Fear, for the most part, shun the blue wave and lie in wait on land for unwary mortals. The ship was seaworthy and spacious, the officers capable, the few passengers passably agreeable. Gradually the tone was restored of Captain Effingham’s nervous system. He ceased to repine and regret. He even beheld some grains of hope in the future, black as the outlook had until now appeared. While the expression of sweet serenity and calm resignation which ever dwelt upon the features of Mrs. Effingham became heightened and assured under the concomitants of the voyage, until she appeared to radiate peace and goodwill sufficient to affect beneficially the whole ship’s company. As for the two little ones, Selden and Blanche, they appeared to have been accustomed since infancy to a seafaring life. They ran about unchecked, and were in everybody’s way and every one’s affections. They were the youngest children on board, and many a rough sailor turned to look, with something like a glistening in his eye, on the saucy brown-eyed boy, and the delicate little five-year-old fairy, whose masses of fair hair floated in the breeze, or were temporarily confined with an unwilling ribbon.

It seemed but the lengthening limit of a dream when the seaman at the good ship’s bow was commanded to keep a lookout for land; when, yet another bright blue day, fading into eve, and a low coast-line is seen, rising like an evening cloud from out a summer sea.

‘Hurrah!’ said Wilfred Effingham, as the second mate pointed out the land of promise, ‘now our life begins. We shall belong to ourselves again, instead of being the indulgently treated slaves—very well treated, I confess—but still the unquestionable bond-slaves of that enlightened taskmaster, Captain Henry Fleetby of the Marlshire.’

‘We have been very happy, my dear,’ said Mrs. Effingham, ‘happier than I should have thought possible in a ship, under any circumstances. Let us hope our good fortune will continue on land. I shall always look back to this voyage as the most wonderful rest that our poor wounded hearts could have enjoyed. Your papa looks quite himself again, and I feel better than I have done for years. I shall remember our captain, his officers, and his ship, with gratitude, as long as I live.’

‘I feel quite attached to the dear old vessel,’ said Annabel, ‘but we can’t go sailing about the world all our lives, like respectable Flying Dutchmen. I suppose the captain must turn us out to-morrow. Who would have thought we should regret coming to the end of the voyage?’

How calm was that last day of the long, but not too long, voyage, when they glided for hours on a waveless sea, by a great wall of sandstone cliffs, which finally opened, as if by magic, and discovered the portal of an Enchanted Haven! Surely the prospect could not all be real, of this wondrous nook, stolen from the vast, the limitless Pacific, in which they discerned, through the empurpling eve, villas, cottages, mansions, churches, white-walled and fantastic to their eyes, girt with strange shrubs and stately forest trees of unknown aspect. As the Marlshire floated to her anchorage, threading a fleet of skiffs, which made the waters gay with many a sail, the full heart of the mother and the wife overflowed.

Involuntarily a fervent prayer of thanksgiving went up to that Being who had safely guarded them o’er the waste of ocean; had permitted their entrance into this good land, which lay ready to receive them in their need.

Passengers concluding a short voyage are nervously anxious to land, and commence the frantic enjoyment of existence on terra firma. Not so with the denizens of the good ship Marlshire, which had been their home and dwelling-place for more than a quarter of a year. Having grown, with the strange adaptiveness of our nature, to love the gallant bark, you revere the captain, respect the first officer, and believe in the second. Even the crew is above the average of the mercantile Jack-tar novel. You will always swear by the old tub; and you will not go on shore till to-morrow morning, if then.

All things considered, the family decided to stay quietly on board the Marlshire that night, so as to disembark in a leisurely way in the morning, when they would have the day before them in which to make arrangements.

They talked of staying quietly on board, but the excitement of being so near the land was too much for them. The unnatural quietude of the ship, the calm water of the bay, the glancing lights, which denoted the thousand homes of the city, the cries and sounds of the massed population of a seaport, the warm midnight air, the woods and white beaches which denoted the shore-line, the gliding harbour-boats, all seemed to sound in one strangely distinct chorus: ‘Land, land, land at last.’ All magically exciting, these sounds and scenes forbade sleep. Long after the other members of the family had gone below for the night, Wilfred and Rosamond paced the deck, eagerly discussing plans for the future, and, with the sanguine temper of youth, rapidly following each freshly-formed track to fortune.

No one was likely to indulge in slumber after sunrise. A babel of sounds announced that the unlading of cargo had commenced. Their last ship breakfast prefaced the actual stepping upon the friendly gangway, which now alone divided them from the other side of the world. Before that feat was performed, a squarely-built, grey-headed personage, in clerical garb, but withal of a somewhat secular manner, walked rapidly from the wharf to the deck and confronted the party.

‘Here you are at last, all safe and sound, Howard, my dear fellow!’ said he, shaking hands warmly with Mr. Effingham. ‘Not so much changed either; too easy-going for that. Pray present me to Mrs. Effingham and the young ladies. Your eldest son looking after the luggage?—proper place for him. Allow me to take your arm, my dear madam, and to conduct you to the hotel, where I have engaged rooms for you. May as well set off—talk as we go along. Only heard of the Marlshire being signalled the day before yesterday. Came a long journey—slightly knocked up this morning, but soon recovered—splendid climate—make a young man of you, Earl Percy, in a year or two. We always called him Earl Percy in the regiment, Mrs. Effingham. Perhaps he told you. And all this fine family too—two, four, six, seven. I can hardly credit my senses. Plenty of room for them in this country—plenty of room—that’s one thing.’

‘We have every reason to be thankful for the comfortable way in which we have voyaged here,’ said Mrs. Effingham; ‘and now that you have so kindly come to meet us, I feel as if half our troubles were over.’

‘Your troubles are just commencing, my dear madam, but with Harley Sternworth’s help something may be done to lighten them. Still I feel sure that these young ladies will look upon difficulties in a sensible way, not expecting too much, or being discouraged—just at first, you know.’

‘Your country, my old friend, will have to look bad indeed if my wife cannot find a good word to say for it,’ said Mr. Effingham, roused to unwonted cheerfulness. ‘At any rate, it suits you well; you look as hard as a west country drover.’

‘Never was better. Haven’t had a dose of medicine for years. Ride fifty miles a day if necessary. Finest climate—finest country—under the sun. Lots of parish work and travelling, with a dash of botanising, and a pinch of geology to fill up spare time. Wouldn’t go back and live in a country town for the world. Mope to death.’

All this time the reverend gentleman was pressing forward up a gentle incline, towards the lower end of George Street, and after walking up that noble thoroughfare, and discreetly refraining from mention of the buildings which ornament that part of it, he turned again towards the water and piloted his party successfully to Batty’s Hotel.

‘Here, my dear madam, you will find that I have secured you pleasant apartments for a week or ten days, during which time you will be able to recruit after the voyage, and do justice to the beauties of the city. You are not going up country at once. A few days’ leisure will be economy in the end.’

‘So we are not to start off hundreds of miles at once, in a bullock dray, as the captain told us?’ said Rosamond.

‘No, my dear young lady, neither now nor, I hope, at any time will such a mode of travelling be necessary. I cannot say too much for your conveyance, but it will be fairly comfortable and take you to your destination safely. After that will commence what you will doubtless consider to be a tolerably rough life. Yes—a rough life.’

‘These young people have made up their minds to anything short of living like Esquimaux,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘I don’t think you will frighten them. You and I saw curious backwoods places when we were quartered in Canada, didn’t we? You will hardly match them in Australia.’

‘Nothing to be compared to it,’ said Mr. Sternworth earnestly. ‘We have no winter here, to begin with; that is, none worth speaking about for cold. Moreover, the people are intensely British in their manners and customs, in an old-fashioned way. But I am not going to explain everything. You will have to live the explanation, which is far better than hearing it, and is sure to be retained by the memory.’

It was decided that no move was to be made for the interior until the baggage was landed, and arrangements made for its safe carriage by dray.

‘If you leave before all is ready,’ said their mentor, ‘you run risk of the loss of a portion, by mistake or negligence; and this loss may never be repaired. You will find your furniture of immense value in the new abode, and will congratulate yourself upon having brought it. It is astonishing with what different eyes you look upon a table or sideboard here and in England.’

‘I was anxious to bring out some of our old possessions,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘But I had hard work to persuade my husband that we might not be able to procure such here. Your advice was most opportune. I feel more pleased than I can say that we were able to act upon it.’

At lunch they were joined by Wilfred, who had discovered that there was no chance of all the furniture coming ashore that day. He had arranged with the captain that Andrew and his family should remain on board, as also Daisy the cow, until everything was ready to load the drays with the heavy baggage.

Andrew had expressed himself much pleased with the arrangement, regarding the ship as ‘mair hamelike’ than the busy foreign-looking city, to the inhabitants of which he did not take kindly, particularly after an exploring stroll, which happened to be on the Sunday after arrival.

‘A maist freevolous folk, given up to mammon-worship and pleesure-huntin’,—walkin’ in thae gairdens—no that they’re no just by-ordinar’ for shrubs and floorin’ plants frae a’ lands—walkin’ and haverin’ in the gairdens on the Sawbath day, a’ smilin’ and heedless, just on the vairge o’ happiness. Saw ye ever the like? It’s juist fearsome.’

Upon the lady portion of the family, the city with its shops, parks, and inhabitants made a more favourable impression.

Mr. Sternworth was untiring in showing them, in the excursions which Mrs. Effingham and the girls made under his guidance, the beauties of the city. They wandered much in the lovely public gardens, to Mrs. Effingham’s intense delight, whose love of flowers was, perhaps, her strongest taste. They drove out on the South Head road, and duly noted the white-walled mansions, plunged deeply in such luxuriant flower-growth as the Northern strangers had rarely yet beheld. Wonderfully gracious seemed the weather. It was the Australian spring with air as soft and balmy as that of Italy in her fairest hours.

How enjoyable was that halt between two stages of existence! Daily, as they rose from the morning meal, they devoted themselves to fresh rambles around the city, under the chaperonage of the worthy person. They commenced to feel an involuntary exhilaration. The pure air, the bright days, the glowing sun, the pleasant sea-breeze, combined to cause an indefinable conviction that they had found a region formed for aid and consolation.

The streets, the equipages, the people, presented, it is true, few of the contrasts, to their English experience, which a foreign town would have afforded. Yet was there the excitement, strong and vivid, which arises from the first sight of a strange land and an unfamiliar people.

‘This town has a great look of Marseilles,’ said Wilfred, as they loitered, pleasantly fatigued, towards their temporary home in the deepening twilight. ‘The same white, balconied, terraced houses of pale freestone; the southern climate, the same polyglot water-side population, only the Marseilles quay might be stowed away in a hundred corners of this wonderful harbour; and the people—only look at them—have a Parisian tendency to spend their evenings in the streets. I suppose the mildness of the climate tends to it.’

‘This kind of thing, I suppose, strikes you sharply at first,’ said Mr. Sternworth; ‘but my eyes have become so accustomed to all the aspects of my little world, that I cannot see much difference between it and many English places I have known in my day. The variations noted at first have long since disappeared; and I feel as much at home as I used to do at Bideford, when I was quartered there with the old regiment.’

‘But surely the people must be different from what they are in England,’ said Beatrice. ‘The country is different, the trees, the plants—how beautiful many of them are!—and the climate; surely all this must tend to alter the character or the appearance of the people.’

‘It may in a few centuries have that effect, my dear young lady,’ said the old gentleman, ‘but such changes are after the fashion of nature’s workings, imperceptibly slow. You will agree with me in another year, that many old acquaintances in men and manners are to be met with out here, and the rest present only outward points of divergence.’

The days of restful peace had passed. The valuable freight—to them invaluable—having been safely loaded, Mr. Sternworth unfolded the plan which he had arranged for their journey.

‘You are aware,’ he said, ‘that Warbrok Chase, as the young ladies have decided to call your estate, is more than 200 miles from Sydney. It lies 40 miles beyond Yass, which town is distant 180 miles from the Metropolis. Now, although we shall have railways in good time, there is nothing of the sort yet, and the roads are chiefly in their natural state. I would therefore suggest that you should travel in a roomy horse-waggon, comfortably fitted up, taking a tent with you in which to sleep at night. I have procured a driver well acquainted with the country, who knows all the camps and stopping-places, and may be depended upon to take you safely to your journey’s end.’

‘No railways, no coaches,’ said Mr. Effingham; ‘yours is rather a primitive country, Harley, it must be confessed; but you know what is best for us all, and the weather is so mild that none of us can suffer from the bivouac.’

‘I should not have hazarded it if there had been any risk to health,’ said the old gentleman, bowing courteously. ‘There are coaches, however, and you might reach your destination in four days, after hurried travelling. But the tariff is expensive for so large a party; you would be crowded, or meet unsuitable fellow-travellers, while you could take but little of your luggage with you.’

‘I vote for the overland journey,’ said Rosamond. ‘I am sure it will be quite refreshingly eastern. I suppose Andrew and Jeanie and poor dear Daisy and the dogs and everything can go.’

‘Everything and everybody you please but the heavy luggage. Your servants will be able to sleep under a part of the waggon-tilt, which will be comfortable enough at night. The cow will give you milk for your tea. Even the greyhounds may catch you a wallaby or two, which will come in for soup.’

‘There could not be a better scheme,’ said Wilfred exultingly. ‘My dear sir, you are a second father to us. How long do you think it will take us to get to Warbrok altogether?’

‘You will have to make up your minds to ten or twelve days’ travelling, I am afraid—say, twenty miles a day. I really believe you will not find it tedious, but, as with your water journey, get quite to like it. Besides, there is one grand advantage, as far as the young ladies are concerned.’

‘What is that?’ said Annabel, with added interest, but somewhat doleful countenance. ‘Is there any advantage in travelling like gipsies?’

‘It is this, then, my dear girls,’ said the old man, bending upon them his clear, kindly beaming eyes, ‘that you will make acquaintance with the rougher habitudes (and yet not unduly so) of country life in Australia by this primitive forest journeying. When you arrive at your destination you will therefore be proportionately satisfied with your new residence, because it will represent a settled home. Your daily journey will by that time have become a task, so that you will hail the prospect of repose with thankfulness.’

‘Is that all?’ asked Annabel with a disappointed air. ‘Then we are to undergo something dreadful, in order that something only disagreeable may not look so bad after it. Is all Australian life like that? But I daresay I shall die young, and so it won’t matter much. Is the lunch nearly ready? I declare I am famishing.’

Every one laughed at this characteristic sequence to Annabel’s prophecy, and the matter of the march having been settled, their friend promised to send up the waggon-driver next morning, in order that the proper fittings and the lamps—indispensable articles—and luggage might be arranged and packed. A tent also was purchased, and bedding, cooking utensils, provisions, etc., secured.

‘You will find Dick Evans an original character,’ said the parson, ‘but I do not know any man in the district so well suited for this particular service. He has been twenty years in Australia, and knows everything, both good and evil, that can be known of the country and people. He is an old soldier, and in the 50th Regiment saw plenty of service. He has his faults, but they don’t appear on the surface, and I know him well enough to guarantee that you will be wholly ignorant of them. His manners—with a dash of soldier servant—are not to be surpassed.’

At an hour next morning so soon after dawn that Andrew Cargill, the most incorruptible of early birds, was nearly caught napping, Mr. Dick Evans arrived with two horses and his waggon. The rest of the team, not being wanted, he had left in their paddock at Homebush. He immediately placed the waggon in the most convenient position for general reference, took out his horses, which he accommodated with nose-bags, and with an air of almost suspicious deference inquired of Andrew what he could commence to do in the way of packing.

The two men, as if foreseeing that possible encounters might henceforth take place between them, looked keenly at each other. Richard Evans had the erect bearing of which the recipient of early drill can rarely divest himself. His wiry figure but slightly above the middle height, his clean-shaved, ruddy cheek, his keen grey eye, hardly denoted the fifty years and more which he carried so lightly.

A faultless constitution, an open-air occupation with habits of great bodily activity, had borne him scatheless through a life of hardship and risk.

This personage commenced with a request to be shown the whole of the articles intended to be taken, gently but firmly withstanding any opinion of Andrew’s to the contrary, and replying to his protests with the mild superiority of the attendant in a lunatic asylum. After the whole of the light luggage had been displayed, he addressed himself to the task of loading and securing it with so much economy of space and advantage of position, that Andrew readily yielded to him the right to such leadership in future.

‘Nae doot,’ he said, ‘the auld graceless sworder that he is, has had muckle experience in guiding his team through thae pathless wildernesses, and it behoves a wise man to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” But wae’s me, it’s dwelling i’ the tents o’ Kedar!’

Dick Evans, who was a man of few words and strong in the heat of argument, was by no means given to mixing up discussion with work. He therefore kept on steadily with his packing until evening, only requiring from Andrew such help and information as were indispensable.

‘There,’ said he, as he removed the low-crowned straw hat from his heated brow, and prepared to fill his pipe, ‘I think that will about do. The ladies can sit there in the middle, where I’ve put the tent loose, and use it as a sofy, if they’ve a mind to. I can pitch it in five minutes at night, and they can sleep in it as snug as if they had a cottage with them. You and your wife can have the body of the waggon to yourselves at night, and I’ll sleep under the shafts. The captain and the young gentlemen can have all the room between the wheels, and nobody can want more than that. I suppose your missis can do what cooking’s wanted?’

‘Nae doot,’ Andrew replied with dignity, ‘Mistress Cargill wad provide a few bits o’ plain victual. A wheen parritch, a thocht brose, wad serve a’ hands better than flesh meat, and tea or coffee, or siccan trash.’

‘Porridge won’t do for me,’ said the veteran firmly, ‘not if I know it. Oatmeal’s right enough for you Scotchmen, and not bad stuff either, in your own country, but beef and mutton’s our tack in Australia.’

‘And will ye find a flesher in this “bush,” as they ca’ it, that we’ve to push through?’ demanded Andrew. ‘Wad it no be mair wiselike to keep to victual that we can carry in our sacks?’

‘Get plenty of beef and mutton and everything else on the road,’ said Mr. Evans, lighting his pipe and declining further argument. ‘Don’t you forget to bring a frying-pan. I’ll take the horses back to the paddock now and be here by daylight, so as we can make a good start.’

It had been arranged by Mr. Sternworth that the boys, as he called them, should set forth in the morning with Evans and the waggon, as also Andrew and Jeanie, taking with them the cow, the dogs, and the smaller matters which the family had brought. No necessity for Captain Effingham and the ladies to leave Sydney until the second day. He would drive them in a hired carriage as far as the first camp, which Evans had described to him.

They would thus avoid the two days’ travel, and commence their journey after the expedition had performed its trial trip, so to speak.

‘What should we have done without your kind care of us?’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘Everything up to this time has been a pleasure trip. When is the hard life that we heard so much of to begin?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Rosamond, ‘Mr. Sternworth is going to be like the brigand in the romances, who used to lure persons from their homes. I have no doubt but that there are “hard times” awaiting us somewhere or somehow.’

‘My dear young lady, let me compliment you on your good sense in taking that view of the future. It will save you from disappointment, and fill your mind with a wholesome strength to resist adversity. You may need all your philosophy, and I counsel you to keep it, like armour, well burnished. I do not know of any evil likely to befall you, but that you will have trouble and toil may be taken as certain. Only, after a time, I predict that you will overcome your difficulties, and find yourselves permanently benefited.’

The old gentleman, whose arrangements were as successfully carried out as if he had been the commissary instead of the chaplain of his former regiment, made his appearance on the following day in a neat barouche drawn by a pair of good-looking bay horses, and driven by a highly presentable coachman.

‘Why, it might pass muster for a private carriage,’ said Annabel. ‘And I can see a crest on the panels. I suppose we shall never own a carriage again as long as we live.’

‘This is a private carriage, or rather was, once upon a time,’ said Mr. Sternworth; ‘the horses and the coachman belonged to it. Many carriages were put down last year, owing to a scarcity of money, and my old friend Watkins here, having saved his wages, like a prudent man, bought his master’s carriage and horses, and commenced as cab proprietor. He has a large connection among his former master’s friends, and is much in demand at balls and other festivities.’

The ex-coachman drove them at a lively pace, but steadily, along a macadamised turnpike road, not so very different from a country lane in Surrey, though wider, and not confined by hedges. The day was fine. On either side, after the town was left behind, were large enclosures, wherein grazed sheep, cattle, and horses. Sometimes they passed an orangery, and the girls were charmed with the rows of dark green trees, upon which the golden fruit was ripe. Then an old-fashioned house, in an orchard, surrounded by a wall—wall and house coloured red, and rusty with the stains of age—much like a farmhouse in Hertfordshire. One town they passed was so manifestly old-fashioned, having even ruins, to their delight and astonishment, that they could hardly believe they were in a new country.

‘Some one has been playing Rip Van Winkle tricks upon us,’ said Rosamond. ‘We have been asleep a hundred years, and are come back finding all things grown old and in decay.’

‘You must not forget that the colony has been established nearly fifty years,’ said Mr. Sternworth, ‘and that these are some of the earliest settlements. They were not always placed in the most judicious sites; wherefore, as newer towns have passed them in the race for trade, these have submitted to become, as you see them, “grey with the rime of years,” and simulating decay as well as circumstances will permit.’

‘Well, I think much more highly of Australia, now that I have seen a real ruin or two,’ said Annabel decisively. ‘I always pictured the country full of hideous houses of boards, painted white, with spinach green doors and windows.’

The afternoon was well advanced as the inmates of the carriage descried the encampment which Mr. Evans had ordered, with some assistance from his military experience. So complete in all arrangements for comfort was it—not wholly disregarding the element of romantic scenery—that the girls cried aloud in admiration.

The streamlet (or creek) which afforded the needful water meandered round the base of a crag, jutting out from a forest-clothed hill. The water-hole (or basin) in the channel of the creek was larger than such generally are, and reflected brightly the rays of the declining sun. The meadow, which afforded space for the encampment, was green, and fertile of appearance. The waggon stood near the water; the four horses were peacefully grazing. At a short distance, under a spreading tree, the tent had been pitched, while before it was a wood fire, upon which Jeanie was cooking something appetising. Wilfred and his brother were strolling, gun in hand, up the creek; the cow was feeding among the rushes with great contentment; Andrew was seated, meditating, upon a box which he had brought forth from the recesses of the waggon; while Dick Evans, not far from a small fire, upon which stood a camp-kettle at boiling-point, was smoking with an air of conscious pride, as if not only the picturesque beauty, but the personages pertaining to the landscape, belonged to him individually.

‘I could not leave you more comfortably provided for,’ said their ‘guide, philosopher, and friend.’ ‘Old Dick may be trusted in all such matters as implicitly as the Duke of Wellington. I never knew him at fault yet in this kind of life.’

‘You must positively stay and have afternoon tea with us,’ exclaimed Annabel. ‘It is exactly five, and there is Dick putting a tin cupful of tea into the teapot. What extravagant people you colonists are! I never drank tea in the open air before, but it seems quite the right thing to do. I see Jeanie has made griddle-cakes, like a dear old thing. And I know there is butter. I am so hungry. You will stay, won’t you?’

‘I think, sir,’ said the ex-family coachman, looking indulgently at the special pleader, ‘that we shall have time to get back to the Red Cow Inn to-night, after a cup of tea, as the young lady wishes it. I’ll run you into town bright and early to-morrow.’

‘Very well then, Miss Annabel, I shall have the honour to accept your invitation,’ bowed the old man. ‘I go away more cheerfully than I expected, now that I leave you all so comparatively snug. It will not be for long. Be sure that I shall meet you on the threshold of Warbrok.’

The al fresco meal was partaken of with much relish, even gaiety, after which civilisation—as personified by the reverend gentleman and the carriage—departed. Annabel looked after it ruefully, while Jeanie and Mrs. Effingham took counsel together for the night. It was for the first time in the family history. Never before had the Effinghams slept, so to speak, in the open air. It was a novel adventure in their uneventful lives—a marked commencement of their colonial career. It affected them differently, according to their idiosyncrasies. Rosamond was calmly resolute, Annabel apprehensive, and Beatrice indifferent; the boys in high spirits; Mr. Effingham half in disapproval, despondently self-accusing; while Mrs. Effingham and Jeanie were so fully absorbed in the great bedding question that they had no emotions to spare for any abstract consideration whatever.

The moon, in her second quarter, had arisen lustrous in the pure, dark blue firmament, fire-besprinkled with ‘patines of bright gold,’ before this important matter (and supper) was concluded. Then it was formally announced that the tent was fully furnished, and had turned out wonderfully commodious. The mattresses were placed upon a layer of ‘bush-feathers,’ as Dick Evans called them, and which (the small twigs and leaf-shoots of the eucalyptus) he had impressed Wilfred and his brother to gather. There was a lantern secured to the tent-pole, which lighted up the apartment; and sheets, blankets, coverlets being brought forth, Annabel declared that she was sure they would all sleep like tops, that for her part she must insist on going to bed at once as the keen air had made her quite drowsy. A dressing-table had been improvised, chiefly with the aid of Mr. Evans’ mechanical skill. When the matron and her daughters made their farewell for the night, and closed their canvas portal, every one was of the opinion that a high degree of comfort and effective lodging had been reached.

Mr. and Mrs. Cargill and family retired to the inmost recesses of the upper waggon, where the ends of the tilt, fastened together, protected them. Mr. Effingham and his sons joined Dick Evans at his briskly burning fire, where the old man was smoking and occasionally indulging in a refresher of tea as if he had no intention of going to bed till he reached Warbrok.

‘We are having glorious weather to travel in, Evans,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘You have been in the service, Mr. Sternworth tells me; what regiment?’

‘I was in the old 50th for many a year, Captain,’ he said, unconsciously standing erect and giving the salute. ‘I served under Sir Hugh Gough in India, where I got this slash from a Mahratta sabre. Didn’t seem a hard cut neither; the fellow just seemed to swing his wrist, careless-like, as he rode by, but it was nigh deep enough to take the “wick” out of me. Their swords was a deal sharper than ours, and their wooden scabbards kept ’em from getting blunt again. I had a great argument with my sergeant about it once,’ continued the old man. ‘I couldn’t a-bear to see our poor chaps sliced up by them razor-edged tulwars, while our regulation swords was a’most too dull to cut through a quilted cotton helment. Ah! them was fine times,’ said the old soldier, with so genuine a regret in his tones that Howard Effingham almost believed he had, for the first time in his life, fallen across a noble private, pleased with his profession, and anxious to return to it.

‘I have rarely heard a soldier regret the army,’ said he. ‘But you still retain zeal for the service, I am pleased to find.’

‘Well, sir, that’s all very well,’ said the philosophical man-at-arms; ‘but what I was a-thinking of was the “loot.” It’s enough to bring tears into a man’s eyes that served his Queen and country, to think of the things as we passed over. Didn’t Jimmy O’Hara and two or three more men of my company get together once and made bold to stick up the priest of one of them temples. No great things either—gold earrings and bangles, and a trifle of gold mohurs, the priest’s own. There was a copper-coloured, bronze-looking idol—regular heathen god, or some such cretur—which the priest kept calling out “Sammy” to, or “Swammi.” The ugly thing had bright glittering eyes, and Jim wanted to get ’em out badly, but the priest said, “Feringhee wantee like this?” and he picked up a bit of glass, and smiled contempshus like. At last we left him and “Swammi,” eyes and all. I don’t ever deserve to have a day’s luck, sir, agin, as long as I live.’

‘Why so?’ said Mr. Effingham, astonished at the high moral tone, which he had not been used to associate with the light infantry man of the period. ‘Not for taking the image away, surely?’

‘No!’ shouted the old man, roused from his ordinary respectful tone. ‘But for leavin’ him behind! That Sammy, sir, was pure gold, and his eyes was di’monds, di’monds! Think o’ that. We left a thousand pound a man behind, because we didn’t know gold when we seen it. It will haunt me, sir, to my dying day.’

The boys laughed at the unsentimental conclusion of the veteran’s tale. Their father looked grave.

‘I cannot approve of the plunder of religious edifices, Evans; though the temptation was too great for soldiers, and indeed for others in those days.’

The chief personages having retired, Mr. Effingham and his sons essayed to make their couch under the waggon.

‘It is many a year since I had any experience in this kind of thing,’ said he; ‘but, if I remember rightly, it was in Spain that I bivouacked last. This locality is not unlike Estramadura. That rocky ravine, with the track running down it, is just where you would have expected to see the muleteer stepping gaily along beside his mules singing or swearing, as the case might be; and they do both with great vigour.’

‘I remember Don Pedro, Captain,’ said Dick. ‘I mind the wine-skins putty well too. It wasn’t bad stuff; but I don’t know as dark brandy doesn’t come handier if ye wants a stir up. But there’s one thing you can’t have forgot, Captain, that beats this country holler.’

‘You must mean the fleas,’ said Effingham; ‘they certainly could not be surpassed. I hope you don’t mean to rival them here.’

‘Well, I don’t deny, Captain, that in some huts, where the people aren’t particular, in a sandy country, in summer you will find a few, and likewise them other reptiles, ’specially where there’s pine slabs, but in a general way we’re pretty clean in this country, and you’ve no call to be afeard to tackle your blankets.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, Evans,’ said Effingham, yawning. ‘I have no doubt that your camp is always fit for inspection. I think we may say good-night.’

Between the keen air of the forest, and the unwonted exercise, a tendency to drowsiness now set in, which Mr. Effingham and his sons discovered by the time that the blankets were drawn over them. The sides of their apartment, represented by the wheels of the waggon, were covered by the canvas tilt, the ceiling was low but sufficient. It was the ideal chamber in one respect. Ventilation was unimpeded, while shelter was secured.

CHAPTER III
THE NEW HOME

When Wilfred awoke from deep untroubled slumber, the sun seemed gazing at the encampment with haughty, fixed regard, as of a monarch, enthroned upon the summit of the purple mountain range.

Unwitting of the lengths (fortunately) to which the unsparing archer could go in Southern lands, he essayed to commence dressing.

Rising hurriedly, he was reminded by a tap on the head from the axle-tree that he was in a bedroom of restricted accommodation. More guarded in his after-movements he crawled outside, first placing on the dewy grass a rug upon which to stand. He commenced his toilette, and cast a comprehensive glance around.

The first thing he saw was the upright form of Richard Evans, who, returning from a search after his hobbled horses, drove them before him towards the camp, at the same time smoking his pipe with a serene and satisfied air. The morning was chilly, but he had not thought a coat necessary, and in a check shirt and moleskin trousers calmly braved an atmosphere not much above forty degrees Fahrenheit.

‘This must be a fine climate,’ said Wilfred to his father. ‘We shall be well wrapped up till breakfast time, at any rate, and yet that old buffer is wandering about in his shirt-sleeves as if he were in Naples.’

‘He is pretty hard-bitten, you may depend,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘I think some of our old “die-hards” are as tough samples of humanity as could anywhere be met. I do not uphold the British soldier as a model, but they were men in my time, beyond any manner of doubt.’

Dick marched up his team to the waggon, whence the lodgers had by this time issued—Andrew to make a fire near the tent, and Jeanie to penetrate that sacred enclosure, and presumably to act as tire-woman in the interior.

The shafts, which had served Dick as a sleeping apartment during the night, aided by a shroud of tarpaulin, were uplifted, and bagging being thereon stretched, were converted into a manger for the chaff and maize, which the horses quickly commenced to consume.

Presently Jeanie issued from the tent, and finding the camp-kettle boiling, proceeded to make tea. Andrew, in the meantime, milked the cow. The gridiron was brought into requisition, and certain mutton chops broiled. Eventually Mrs. Effingham and her daughters issued from the tent, fresh and dainty of aspect as if they had just left their bedrooms at The Chase. Then the day commenced, and also breakfast.

‘Good-morning, O mother! Hail, O tender maidens! What do you think of camping out?’ was Wilfred’s greeting, ‘Have you been sitting up weeping, or did you forget everything till daylight, as we did?’

‘We all slept like tops,’ said Annabel. ‘I never was so sleepy in my life. I was almost off before I could undress. I think it’s splendid. And oh! what is there for breakfast?’

Grilled chops, smoking cups of tea, with bread and butter, constituted the repast. Worse meals have been eaten. The appetites were, like the travellers, highly respectable. By the time the meal was finished, Mr. Richard Evans had harnessed his team, and bringing himself up to the attitude of ‘attention,’ requested to know when the ladies would like to make a start.

After consultation, it was notified to their guide and courier that as soon as the tent was struck and the baggage packed, every one would be ready.

The troops being in high health and spirits, in a comparatively short space of time the march was resumed. Wilfred and Guy walked ahead, fowling-piece in hand. Andrew drove the cow, which followed quietly in the rear. The coupled greyhounds looked eagerly around, as if sensible that they were now in hunting country. They were with difficulty restrained when a wallaby, in two bounds, crossed the road and disappeared in an adjoining scrub.

The dry air was pure and fresh, the unclouded sky blue as a sapphire dome, the winding forest road free from all impediment but an occasional ledge of sandstone. If there is any portion of the day ‘when the poor are rich in spirits and health,’ when the heart of youth stirs, when age is soothed with dreams of happiness, it is in that sweetest hour which follows the early morning meal in rural Australia. Dawn is austere, mid-day often sultry, but nowhere will he, whose heart and intelligence respond alike gratefully to that charmed time, find its inspirations more invigorating than in the early summer of Australia. Then the fortunate traveller experiences coolness without cold, and warmth without the heat which produces lassitude.

As the waggon rolled easily along, the horses stepping cheerily on the track, the wayfarers paced over the unwonted herbage with an alertness of mien which would have suggested a very different history.

‘How lovely the shrubs are that we see in all directions!’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘What should we have given for that golden flowering mimosa at The Chase, or this blue-leaved, pink pointed tree, which I suppose must be a young eucalyptus. Here they are so common that no one heeds them, and yet there are rare plants enough to set up a dozen greenhouses.’

‘Everything is so utterly different,’ said Rosamond. ‘I am most agreeably surprised at the landscape. What erroneous ideas one has of far countries! I suppose it is because we seldom feel sufficient interest to learn about them thoroughly. I pictured Australia a sandy waste, with burned-up reedy grass, and a general air of the desert. Now, here we have woods, a pretty little brook rippling by, rocks and hills, and in the distance a mountain. I could make quite an effective sketch.’

‘The country isn’t all like this, Miss,’ said Dick Evans, with a deferential air. ‘If you was to go two or three hundred miles into the bush, there’s no timber at all; you’ld find it all sand and salt-bushes—the curiousest place ever you see.’

‘How can it be the “bush,”’ inquired Wilfred, ‘if there are no trees? But we are not going so far, at any rate.’

‘Finest grazing land out,’ said Richard the experienced. ‘All the stock rolling fat—no trouble in looking after ’em. If I was a young gentleman, that’s the place I’d make for. Not but what Warbrok’s a pleasant spot, and maybe the young ladies will like it better than the plains.’

‘I fancy we all shall, Richard,’ said Rosamond. ‘The plains may be very well for sheep and cattle, but I prefer a woodland country like this. I suppose we can have a garden there?’

‘Used to be the best garden in all the country-side, Miss, but the Warleighs were a wild lot; they let everything go to wrack. The trees and bushes is mostly wore out, but the sile’s that good, as a handy man would soon make it ship-shape again.’

‘What are we to do for lunch?’ said Annabel, with some appearance of anxiety. ‘If we are to go on roaming over the land from sunrise to sunset without stopping, I shall die of hunger—I’m sure I shall. I keep thinking about those cakes of Jeanie’s.’

‘My dear child,’ said her mother, ‘I daresay we shall manage to feed you and the rest of the flock. I am pleased to find that you have such a famous appetite. To be sure, you have not stopped growing yet, and this fresh air acts as a tonic. So far, we must not complain of the climate.’

‘It’s only a few miles furder on, ma’am, to the King Parrot Waterhole, where we can stop in the middle of the day, and have a bit to eat if the young ladies is sharp-set. I always stop on the road and feed my horses about twelve o’clock. And if the young gentlemen was to walk on, they might shoot a pair of ducks at the waterhole, as would come in handy for the pot.’

When about mid-day they reached the King Parrot Waterhole, a reed-fringed pool, about as large as their English horse-pond, they found Wilfred in possession of a pair of the beautiful grey-breasted wood-ducks (Anas Boscha), a teal, with chestnut and black feathers and a brilliant green neck, also a dark-furred kangaroo, which Dick pronounced to be a rock wallaby.

‘Australia isn’t such a bad place for game,’ said Guy. ‘We found the ducks swimming in the pool, three brace altogether, and “Damsel” caught this two-legged hare, as she thought it, as it was making up that stony hill. I like it better than Surrey.’

‘We shall find out ever so many interesting things,’ said Rosamond. ‘I shall never feel thankful enough to that good old Professor Muste for teaching me the small bit of botany that I know. Now, look at this lovely Clianthus, is it not enough to warm the heart of a Trappist? And here is that exquisite purple Kennedya, which ought, in an Australian novel, to be wreathed round the heroine’s hat. Do my eyes deceive me, or is not that a white heath? I must dig it up.’

‘I believe, Rosamond, that you could comfort yourself on Mount Ararat,’ said Annabel. ‘Why, it will be ages before those ducks can be picked and roasted. Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie, can’t we have them before tea-time? I wish I had never seen them.’

‘If you like, you can help me take off the feathers, and spare Jeanie’s everlastingly busy fingers,’ said Beatrice.

Here Annabel looked ruefully at her tiny, delicate hands, with a child’s pout.

‘Oh, it’s no use looking at your pretty hands,’ said the more practical Beatrice. ‘This is the land of work, and all who can’t make themselves useful will be treated like the foolish virgins in the parable. It always makes me smile when that chapter is read. I can fancy Annabel holding out her lamp, with an injured expression, saying, “Well, nobody told me it was time to get ready.”’

‘Beatrice, my daughter,’ said Mrs. Effingham gravely, ‘sacred subjects are not befitting matter for idle talking; dispositions vary, and you may remember that Martha was not praised for her anxiety to serve.’

At mid-day the kettle bubbled on the fire, kindled by the ever-ready Richard, cakes and sandwiches were handed round, the tea—thanks to Daisy—was gratefully sipped.

The sun shone brightly on the green flat, where the horses grazed in peace and plenty. The birds chirped and called at intervals; all Nature seemed glad and responsive to the joyous season of the southern spring.

Thus their days wore on, in peaceful progression, alike free from toil, anxiety, or adventure. The daily stage was accomplished, under Dick’s experienced direction, without mistake or misadventure. The evening meal was a time of rest and cheerful enjoyment, the night’s slumbers refreshing and unbroken.

‘What a delightful country this is! I feel quite a new creature, especially after breakfast,’ exclaimed Annabel one morning. ‘I could go on like this for months, till we reached the other side of the continent, if there is any other side. Will it be as nice as this, I wonder, at Malbrook, or Warbrok, or whatever they call it? Warbrok Chase won’t look so bad on our letters, when we write home. I must send a sketch of it to cousin Elizabeth, with a bark cabin, of course. She will never believe that we have a real house to live in among the backwoods. What sort of a house is it, Dick? Is it thatched and gabled and damp and delightful, with dear little diamond casements like the keeper’s lodge, or is it a horrid wooden barn? Tell me now, there’s a dear old man!’

‘We shall be there, Miss, the day after to-morrer, please God,’ responded Dick with respectful solemnity. ‘Parson Sternworth said I was to say nought about the place, but let it come on you suddent-like. And I’m a man as is used to obey orders.’

‘Very well, you disagreeable old soldier,’ said the playful maiden. ‘I’ll be even with you and the parson, as you call him. See if I don’t.’

‘Sorry to disobleege you, Miss Anniebell,’ said the veteran, ‘but if my old General, Sir Hugh Gough, was to come and say, “Corporal Richard Evans, hand me over the chart of the country,” I should have to tell him that he hadn’t got the counter-sign.’

‘And quite right too, Evans,’ interposed Mr. Effingham, ‘to keep up your good old habits in a new country. Discipline is the soul of the army.’

‘I was allers taught that, sir,’ replied Dick, with an air of military reminiscence which would have befitted a veteran of the Great Frederick. ‘But when we reaches Warbrok my agreement’s out with the Parson, and Miss can order me about all day.’

In spite of Annabel’s asseverations that the party would never reach the spot indicated, and that she believed there never was any such place, but that Dick would lead them into a trackless forest and abandon them, the journey ended about the time specified. A rugged track, indeed, one afternoon tried their patience. The horses laboured, the docile cow limped and lagged, the girls complained, while Andrew’s countenance became visibly elongated.

At length Dick Evans’s wooden facial muscles relaxed, as halting on the hardly-gained hill-top he pointed with his whip-handle, saying simply, ‘There’s Warbrok! So the young ladies and gentlemen can see for theirselves.’

How eagerly did the whole party gaze upon the landscape, which now, in the clear light of the Southern eve, lay softly in repose before them!

The character of the scenery had changed with the wondrous suddenness peculiar to the land in which they had come to dwell. A picture set in a frame of forest and unfriendly thickets! Now before their eyes came with magical abruptness a vision of green slopes, tall groves, and verdurous meadows. It was one of nature’s forest parks. Traces of the imperfect operations of a new country were visible, in felled timber, in naked, girdled trees, in unsightly fences. But nature was in bounteous mood, and had heightened the contrast with the barren region they had over-passed, by a flushed abundance of summer vegetation. This lavish profusion of herb and leaf imparted a richness of colouring, a clearness of tone, which in a less favourable season of the year Warbrok must perceptibly have lacked.

‘Oh, what a lovely, lovely place!’ cried Annabel, transported beyond herself as she stood on tip-toe and gazed rapturously at the scene. ‘Those must be the Delectable Mountains. Dick, you are a Christian hero [the old man smiled deprecatingly], I forgive you on the spot. And there is the house, a real house with two storeys—actually two—I thought there were only cottages up the country—and an orchard; and is that a blue cloud or the sea? We must have turned round again. Surely it can’t be our lake? That would be too heavenly, and those glorious mountains beyond!’

‘That’s Lake William, miss, called after His Gracious Majesty King William the Fourth,’ explained Dick, accurate and reverential. ‘Fourteen miles long and seven broad. You’ll find the house big enough, but it’s a long way from being in good order; and it’s a mercy there’s a tree alive in the orchard.’

‘Oh, never mind, we’ll soon put things to rights, won’t we, mamma? And what splendid creatures those old trees will be when they come out in leaf. I suppose it’s too early in the spring yet?’ continued she.

‘Dead—every one of ’em, miss,’ explained their conductor. ‘They’ve been ring-barked, more’s the pity. They was beauties when I knowed ’em fust, before the blessed tenants was let ruinate everything about the place. I wonder there’s a stone of the house standing, that I do. And now, sir, we’ll get on, and the young ladies can have tea in their own parlour, if my old woman’s made a fire, accordin’ to orders.’

The hearts of the more reflective portion of the party were too full for comment, so Annabel’s chatter was allowed to run on unchecked. A feeling of despondency had been gradually stealing over Howard Effingham and his wife, as for the two last stages they had pictured to themselves the toil of building up a home amid the barren solitudes, such as, in their innocence, they thought their new property might resemble. Now, here was a spot in which they might live out their lives with cheerful and contented minds, thankful that ‘their lines had fallen in pleasant places’; having reason to hope that their children might dwell in peace and prosperity after them.

‘We can never be sufficiently grateful to your dear old friend,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘If he had not in the first place written you that letter, Howard, and afterwards acted upon his opinion so boldly, what might have been our fate?’

‘He always used to look after me when we were in the regiment,’ said her husband acquiescingly; ‘I daresay he’ll find a similar pleasure in taking charge of us now. Fortunately for you and the girls, he never married.’

A few miles only needed to be traversed before Mr. Evans triumphantly drove his team through the gate of the dilapidated garden fence surrounding the front of a large old-fashioned stone mansion, with wide verandah and lofty balcony, supported upon freestone pillars. A stout, elderly woman of decided aspect opened the creaking hall door, and casting a searching glance at Mr. R. Evans, made the strangers welcome.

‘I’m sure I’m very glad to see you, my lady,’ said she, bobbing an antiquated curtsey, ‘and you, sir, and the young ladies and gentlemen. I’ve done all I could to clean up the old barrack of a house; it was that lonesome, and made me frighted with ghosts, as I thought I’d never live to see you all; and Dick here, I knew there was no certainty of, as might have gone to Timor, or the Indies, and never let on a word about it. Please you to come in, my lady.’

‘My old woman’s temper is none of the best, Captain,’ said Dick, stating the fact with philosophical calmness, ‘but I’ll warrant she’s cleaned up as much as any two, and very bad it wanted it when Parson Sternworth brought us over.’

Now that a nearer view was afforded of the demesne and dwelling, it was evident that the place had been long abandoned to natural decay and sordid neglect. The fences were rotten, gapped, or fallen; the orchard, though the aged trees were high out of the reach of browsing cattle, had been used as a convenient species of stock paddock; the climbers, including a magnificent bignonia and a wistaria, the great laterals of which had erstwhile clothed the verandah pillars with beauty and bloom, were broken and twisted. In the rear of the building all the broken bottles and bones of the land appeared to be collected; while, with windows broken, shutters hanging on a single hinge, doors closing with difficulty, or impossible to open, all things told of the recklessness of ruined owners.

Still, in despite of all deficiencies, the essentials of value could not be overlooked. The house, though naked and desolate of aspect, was large and commodious, promising in its shingled roof and massive stone walls protection against the heat of summer, the cold of winter. The deep black mould needed but ordinary culture to respond generously. The offices might be mouldering and valueless, but the land was there, thinly timbered, richly grassed, well adapted for stock of all kinds. And though the gaunt limbs of the girdled trees looked sadly unpicturesque between the front of the house and the lake shore, some had been left untouched, and the grass was all the more richly swarded. The lake itself was a grand indisputable fact. It was deep and fresh, abounding in water-fowl, a priceless boon to dwellers in a climate wherein a lack of rivers and permanent reservoirs is unhappily a distinguishing characteristic.

Let it not be supposed that Wilfred and his mother, the girls and Jeanie were outside the house all this time. Very promptly had Dick unloaded the household stores, pressing all able-bodied persons, including his wife, into the service, until the commissariat was safely bestowed under shelter. His waggon was taken to the rear, his horses unharnessed, and he himself in a marvellously short space of time enjoying a well-earned pipe, and advising Andrew to bestow Daisy’s calf in a dilapidated but still convertible calf-pen, so that his mother might graze at ease, and yet be available for the family breakfast table in the morning.

‘The grass here is fust-rate,’ he said, in a tone of explanation to Andrew. ‘There’s been a lot of rain in spring. It’s a pity but we had a few good cows to milk. It would be just play for you and me and the young master in the mornings. Teach him to catch hold like and learn him the use of his hands.’

‘Him milk!’ exclaimed Andrew, in a tone of horrified contempt. ‘And yet—I dinna say but if it’s the Lord’s will the family should ha’ been brocht to this strange land, it may be no that wrang that he should labour, like the apostles, “working with his hauns.” There’s guid warrant for’t.’