Her face wad fyle the Logan-Water;

Oh, sic a wife as willie had,

I wadna gie a button for her.

It was early morning when Rashleigh took the road once more, pondering upon the comfort enjoyed by these industrious people, whose whole mode of life and manners formed so complete a contrast to that of the lower classes of Australian society that he scarcely dared to hope the habitation of Mr Arlack, to which he was bound, would be in any way comparable to it.

According to the directions he had received, he now retraced his steps towards Campbelltown, and going on to a small public-house at the southern end of its straggling street, obtained some breakfast, after which he enquired among a knot of idlers who were playing at quoits which was the road leading to Mr Arlack’s.

“Mr Arlack!” replied the man to whom he addressed himself. “I never knowed as he had got a handle to his name before!”

Then, calling to one of his compeers, he shouted, “Why, what do you think! Here’s a cove as wants to find out Mr Arlack’s. An’t that a pretty go?

“Ho! ho! ho!” roared out the other. “I say, young fellow, how long have you been in the Colony?”

“About two years and a half,” replied Ralph.

“Oh! Then you’re only green yet, as green as a savoy cabbage; but old Lunnon Bob is the name we gives your Mr Arlack. What do you want with him, eh?”

“Why, I am assigned to him,” responded Rashleigh.

“Aye, aye! Assigned to him, are you? Let’s look at your teeth,” said the other; and our adventurer, simply enough, opened his mouth.

“Ha! By George!” swore the querist. “You’d better knock one half of them there grinders o’ yourn out again the first iron-bark fence you come to; for in the first place, you’ll have no use at all for them at old Bob’s, and in the next, Polly Arlack will hate you like hell, for she’ll think you’ve come a’purpose to eat her out of house and home.”

At this sally, the man’s brother compotators testified their satisfaction by redoubled peals of horse-laughter; and Rashleigh, taking such treatment in dudgeon, was about to depart when the fellow who had first spoken to him offered him a drink of something from a pot he held, saying as he did so, “Never mind that old fellow, he’s only having a lark with you. Come, drink a drop o’ this; you won’t have a chance again soon. Now, do you see them slip-rails? Well, you must rum down a road that leads through them, and follow it along until you come to a farm you’ll see in a cleared bottom; enquire there and they’ll show you the path to Lunnon Bob’s.”

Thanking the man, Rashleigh followed the route he had thus indicated, and soon arrived at the first farm, where the dogs, to the number of at least a score, rushed out upon him with tremendous yells, their gaunt and bony frames testifying such an extremity of famine as might well inspire fear in the breast of anyone whom they assailed, lest the ravenous brutes should immolate him as the readiest means of appeasing that hunger which had reduced them to skeletons.

This danger he happily escaped, and being again instructed as to the proper path, at length arrived upon Bob Arlack’s farm. The culture of this cherished spot of the earth’s surface did not afford any very high specimen of the arts of agriculture. Weeds of rank and luxuriant growth formed by far the most prominent objects in the so-called cultivated field, amid which, in one corner, about ten acres of straggling rows of maize seemed to maintain a most desperate conflict for sufficient air from the heavens and nutriment from the soil to enable them to support a sickly existence.

Other crops there seemed to be none, and the rest of the cleared land was enjoyed by the weeds in undisputed supremacy. Where the fence could be seen, it appeared in a most dilapidated condition; the bush poles of which it had at first been composed were in many places broken down and in others altogether missing, thus leaving the paddock they were destined to secure at the mercy of any vagrant animal who might chance to stray that way. At the farther end of this clearing might be seen a cluster of huts, towards which a narrow pathway appeared to lead, that Rashleigh now followed; but upon his getting near his destination, the view did not afford any very cheering anticipations of his future lot.

The principal dwelling, or home of all the Arlacks, was a hut which, even in that age of simple materials and rude workmanship, might claim pre-eminence for ugliness and deformity. The walls, having dropped much out of the perpendicular, were shoved up by props applied externally. The gaping orifices in the bark roof bespoke premature decay, occasioned by neglect. The chinks between the slabs, of fully an average width, had once been attempted to be stopped; but the rain having wetted the plaster through the yawning fissures, it had fallen in piecemeal, and was never renewed; and finally, it seemed a moot point whether there was more filth to be found inside, or out, of this most delectable dwelling.

As Ralph drew nigh the door, a shoal of half-starved hens and ducks disputed the precedence of the entrée with him; while just as he was crossing the threshold, a whole flight of these fowl intruders, apparently alarmed by some unexpected opposition from within, fluttered out past his head with most discordant screams. Inside the hut was a being of epicene gender; at least, its dress rendered sex doubtful, inasmuch as the upper parts, which first met his gaze, were, a tattered man’s hat and shirt, both marvellously out of repair, and utterly unacquainted with any kind of ablution or other purification. The elf locks which in greasy and matted luxuriance shaded her face, and a questionable garment that depended from her middle, looking more like a petticoat, however, than anything else, seemed in Rashleigh’s opinion to stamp this apparition of uncleanliness as a female, and accordingly he saluted her as such, with, “Pray, ma’am, is Mr Arlack at home?”

The lady replied, “He’ll be here just now. What do you want with him? Drat them fowls!” she added parenthetically. “What a deuce of a row they kick up!”

“Why, ma’am,” replied our exile, “I’m assigned to him, from Emu Plains.”

“Oh,” returned the dame. “You’re the new government man. Sit down and rest yourself.” And then she began again the execution of some domestic duty which the irruption of the feathered invaders had apparently interrupted.

Rashleigh, having obeyed her injunctions to be seated, calmly surveyed his future mistress at his leisure. In person Mrs Arlack was rather above the middle height, but so far from being en bon point that her enemies called her skinny. Her cheek bones in particular were remarkably prominent. Above these twinkled a sparkling pair of small greenish-grey eyes. These orbs of vision, in apparent mistrust of the “willainy of the world”, as Arlack would express it, had retreated as far as possible from the surface of her countenance, and taken up their abode at the bottom of two deep caverns, the entrances to which were fortified by stiff bristly overhanging brows of portentous size and a very dirty flaxen hue. Her nose, from its irregular aquiline shape, bore no slight resemblance to the broken bill of a cockatoo, but ever appeared to maintain an anxious guard over the orifice that formed a most capacious mouth, into which, in fact, the nasal protuberance seemed desirous of intruding its extremity at least.

Her complexion, as far as the important fact could be ascertained through the dirt which so perpetually begrimed it, was a kind of dingy yellow, and her voice was a not very melodious compound of a growl and a squeak.

As Mrs Arlack was so philosophically negligent of the means of setting off her own most powerful natural charms by any recourse to the fastidious arts of tidiness or cleanliness, it may easily be conceived that her dwelling was none of the neatest on earth. Indeed, the complicated arrangement of unhewn timber, which by the greatest stretch of courtesy was called a table, appeared never to have been cleansed or washed since it first was put together and at present afforded a singular mélange of movables, among which may just be mentioned a large black iron pot, leaning negligently on one side, so as to show a little hominy in the bottom; a few wooden spoons, of most indubitable native manufacture, as they might vie in size as well as rudeness with the paddles used by the Tonga Islanders; some half-munched fragments of corn cake; in divers places a plentiful sprinkling of tobacco ashes from the pipe of the proprietor; a lump of blackish-yellow home-made soap swimming in a puddle of slop; a lot of ragged children’s clothing, with a few filthy napkins among them; and some four or five dirty tin pots, which were battered and bruised into all manner of shapes.

The earthen floor of this recherché retreat was plentifully strewn with fowls’ dung, agreeably chequered by petty lagoons of stinking water. The fireplace, for want of care, had most grievously suffered in its contests with the fury of the element it was erected to control, for many of the slabs that composed it were burned quite across at their bottoms, leaving large orifices for the accommodation of a stray dog or pig who might wish to enjoy the genial warmth of the ashes, which a grunter was at that moment doing, having stretched his lazy length along in perilous proximity to a blazing log.

To crown all, the hut appeared the chosen rendezvous of myriads of fleas upon the floor and of clouds of flies in the air, the perpetual biting of the former serving to counteract the somnolent desires occasioned by the monotonously drowsy hum of the latter.

While Rashleigh was intently gazing upon the varied rich and rare beauties of this charming prospect, a pot on the fire near him boiled over suddenly, and Mrs Arlack cried out, in a tone like that of a cracked tin trumpet, “What the hell are you gaping at, you, sir? Why don’t you take the pot off?”

This he hastened to do, and the lady added, “You’d better look a little smart here, I can tell you. We don’t like no sleepy-going coves about our farm.”

In a few minutes more, Mr Arlack appeared at the door, dressed in a dirty and ragged cotton shirt, ditto duck continuations, a dilapidated straw hat, and boots to match.

His beauteous helpmate said, “Here, Bob, is a new government man for you;” and showed him the pass which she had received from Rashleigh.

While his new master was reading, or rather pretending to read this pass, Rashleigh observed that Mr Arlack was short, squat and bowlegged. His mouth, to use a colonial witticism, was unlike a poor man’s lease in being “from y-ear to y-ear”, because it stretched from here to yonder; and yet, in spite of its size, it seemed still to be too small for his tongue, which, whenever its owner was quiescent, protruded very much and wobbled about in an extraordinary way as often as he spoke.

Besides the decidedly open feature above referred to, Arlack possessed a most splendid squint with both eyes, so that it was often observed he would make a capital cook, as he could always keep one eye on the pot while he surveyed the intricacies of the chimney with the other; and, to complete the catalogue of his complexional recommendations, his face was absolutely furrowed, seamed and gashed until it had nearly lost a human shape by the pitiless assaults of the smallpox.

As Mr Arlack had originally been a member of the ardent fraternity of chummies in the cityward regions of London, he had there contracted the usual cockney contempt for the letters “v” and “w”, transposing those much injured visible signs of spoken sounds in the most careless and ludicrous manner. His first address to our adventurer exemplified this peculiarity; for having apparently at last deciphered the date of the pass, he demanded, “Vell, and vere have you been to all this vile? Vy didn’t you come ’ere sooner than this ’ere?”

“I am not a very good hand at walking,” replied Rashleigh; “but I did not lose much time on the road, any more than I could help.”

“Um,” replied the other. “I s’pose not; but howsomever, I von’t take no furder notice of this ’ere breach. Sally, did you give him his mess?”

“No,” said Sally. “I thought there was time enough.”

“Vell, vell. Give it to him now, and let him go to his hut,” returned the caro sposo of the amiable lady, who thereupon left off mixing up her corn meal and enquired of Ralph, “What are you going to put your mess in?”

“Why,” returned the other, “I don’t know, unless you may be good enough to lend me a bag.”

“Well, I’m sure!” retorted the dame. “Lend you a bag, indeed! A pretty thing, as if I’d got nothing to do but make bags for government men!”

As this was spoken with sufficient haughtiness to show that she was fully aware of the immeasurable distance in point of station between herself and the applicant, Ralph saw he could not hope for any accommodation from her, and he replied, “Very well, ma’am. I’ll put it in my handkerchief and hat, if you please.”

“Come on, then,” said his mistress. And after measuring the grain with the greatest nicety in a quart pot, she said, “There now. There’s a peck of corn (maize) for you, and here’s four pounds of pork. That’s your week’s mess, and you’ll come to me this day week for more.”

Not if I can help it, thought Rashleigh, as he withdrew to the hut, which Mrs A. pointed out from her back door as his future residence. He passed a small shed open on three sides, where there was a steel mill. A little beyond this stood three diminutive stacks of bush hay and straw, which the efforts of the cattle had nearly overturned, these roving bands of plunderers having nibbled all round their bottoms until they looked just like whipping-tops, supported by some most mysterious agency. A little beyond these stood the government men’s hut.

It may easily be imagined from the account given of Mr Arlack’s own dwelling that the abode of his assigned servants was anything but a palatial residence. In good truth, a more desolate and neglected-looking hole can scarcely be conceived. Two rude sleeping-places constructed of sheets of bark, and three pieces of broken iron pots comprised all the movable articles, except two short blocks of wood. The sides and roof were more than commonly pervious. The earthen floor was covered with littered straw, apparently wasted out of one of the berths, where it lay as if the occupant used it for a bed, loose as it was. On a fence opposite the door hung a mass of rags, which only close examination could convince an observer had once been a blanket. Ralph, who had found an empty bag hanging up, went his way to grind the maize with the steel mill. This instrument was in very bad repair, and sunset arrived by the time he had ground his pittance of meal, which was, after all, so coarsely done that if he had used a sieve fully half of the weekly allowance would have been lost; but Mr Arlack’s establishment did not allow such a wasteful piece of refinement.

He now returned to the wretched hut, brought a little wood in, made up a fire, and swept the floor with a handful of leafy boughs. While he was thus engaged, his future companion came in, bearing a calabash full of water. Rashleigh had well-nigh fainted with affright at the first glimpse he caught of this gaunt and woebegone wretch, whose emaciated figure would have well befitted him to represent Shakspeare’s starved apothecary, so much so, indeed, that our adventurer at first deemed him no earthly being; but the spectral visitant speedily reassured him by saying, though in melancholy and sepulchral tones, “Well, mate! You’ve come home, I see!”

“Aye,” returned Rashleigh; “and a pretty home it is to come to!”

The other only replied by a significant gesture, and after having brought in his tattered bed-clothes, set himself to work in the preparation of some hominy. Having procured another of the pieces of iron pot, Ralph followed his example, and both sat down upon the blocks to eat this meagre fare. Salt or sugar they had none, and Rashleigh could swallow only a few mouthfuls of the tasteless repast; but his companion, after remarking that he did not seem to like hominy, quickly finishe............