\'Look alive, boys,\' said Hugh Tressider; \'we must slog on for the next hour or two. Pitch dark, and going to be a wet night; but if we don\'t lose the road we shall pull Barallan before bedtime. There we\'re sure of a yard and a welcome. A night\'s sleep won\'t do us any harm.\'

\'A night\'s sleep? Dashed if I\'ve had any for a week,\' growled the head stock-rider. \'I\'m fit to drop off my bloomin\' moke this minute; and he\'s just the size to kick me for falling. Them blessed B.R. cattle\'s like a mob of kangaroos for breaking and rushin\' if so much as a \'possum squeals or a stick breaks. But I know Mr. Bayard\'s is a regular stunning place to stop at. Gentle or simple, it\'s all one to him. He\'s a gentleman as is a gentleman; and every workin\' man in the district \'ll say the same.\'

\'All right, Joe; then stir up those lads and the blackfellow a bit; don\'t let the tail cattle struggle, whatever you do. I\'ll go on with the lead; my old horse will keep the track.\'

\'What a thundering wild night it\'s going to be,\' said the drover to himself as he threaded his way through the thick-growing timber, skirting the half-seen wildish herd, which, but a week from the pastures where they had been bred, were still troublesome and prone to break back at the smallest opportunity. The rain, which had held off during the gusty, stormy day, now came down in driving sleety showers, ice-cold, and wetting to the skin the dogged, silent horsemen, who, by the nature of things, were incompletely clothed for resisting so serious a downfall. The cattle, beginning to low with discomfort and uneasiness, were with difficulty restrained from facing towards the opposite point of the compass, away from 492the blinding storm, which now drove full in their teeth. To those unacquainted with the skill, acquired by long experience in this particular occupation, it would have seemed little short of a miracle that four men and a black boy, who had also the special care of a pack-horse, could guide six hundred head of unwilling, half-wild cattle through a thickly-timbered country on so dark a night, with rain and storm to complicate matters withal.

But it was possible. It was done well and effectively. The leader\'s horse, an Arab-looking grey, visible from time to time, denoted each turn and direction of the road. The quick eyes of the stock-riders were seldom at fault, and detecting each straggling animal, they were instant to urge a wheel before separation from the main body took place. The gregarious habit of cattle was in their favour, as also their indisposition to straggle overmuch in the darkness. When they were doubtful, the piercing organ of the man of the woods was called into play. His decision was prompt and unerring.

It was, \'Me see \'um two fellows cow and that one red bullock yan along a gully, likit picaninny way. You hold \'em, this one pack-horse, me fetch \'um.\' And back they came accordingly. One hour, then another, had slowly passed. The rain had ceased, but the heavens were ebon black and murky. Still rode the man, who had first spoken, at the head of the great drove, which, lowing from time to time, kept plodding monotonously forward, at other times silent and all but soundless as a procession of ghostly beeves, escorted by a company of spectre horsemen.

Wet and weary, chilled to the bone, too dispirited to speak—indeed conversation would have been difficult under the circumstances of compulsory separation—the jaded stock-riders moved on; the rain-drops showering from the leaves as they brushed from time to time under the low-growing shrubs and sapling eucalyptus, the horses\' feet sinking deeply in the clay and decomposed gravel of the forest; or splashing shoulder-deep through the mountain streams that crossed their track; their watchful outlook strained and concentrated to the fullest, each man at his allotted station. It was a phase of Australian backwoods life not always credited to the much-enduring bushman.

\'By George! this is a hard life,\' soliloquised the weary pioneer, for such he had been in more than one colony, as he 493sat, stiff, sore, and aching in every limb, upon his game but over-tired horse. \'Hold up, old man, you haven\'t had the saddle off your back nor I my clothes for the last six-and-thirty hours; but another half-hour will see you in a good paddock and me in Barallan parlour, with the cattle safe inside of post and rails, if we haven\'t taken a wrong track. Only for Bandah we should have followed the old Bundoorah road, a mile back, and found ourselves in the middle of a howling scrub, with a strong chance of losing these confounded B.R. cattle, the worst herd to drive in the district, and no more likelihood of bed or supper than if we were afloat on a raft.\'

And here the travel-worn bushman, sodden and soaked, splashed and sleepy as he was, laughed aloud at the absurdity of the conceit.

Managing to light his pipe again by sheltering the match with his shut hand against the night-wind, in a manner peculiar to backwoods Australians, he was silent for a while. Then recommenced: \'Yes, a hard life, this of mine; work and anxiety by day and by night, wet and dry, hot or cold, burnt up and scorched in the summer, half drowned and starved with cold in the winter, and all for what? Just for a decent living, with little enough chance of putting by anything for a rainy day—I mean for a dry season,\' he added, with another laugh. \'Well, though it is a hard life, I wouldn\'t exchange it for everyday work in a merchant\'s office, in a bank, or a Government department. These may be very well for some people, but they wouldn\'t suit Hugh Tressider at all. Give me the open air for it! And then, hard as the occasional rubs are, you have the benefit of contrast, and enjoy it all the more, as I shall a good supper and a good bed, which I\'m morally certain to drop in for to-night. What a trump that Arnold Bayard is! If all squatters were like him, travelling would be a luxury and a privilege. Besides, I have the comfort of thinking—and it does keep me from being a peg too low at times—that all my hard work has not been for my own advantage, and that I have benefited others. Bless all their hearts! How I wish I could do more for them. Was that a dog\'s bark? Yes, by Jove! and there\'s the Barallan paddock fence on the left; it makes a wing to the stock-yard. Right you are, old man\' (to his horse); \'we can\'t go wrong now; we\'ll go back, and help a bit with the tail.\'

494Making back to the next horseman, Tressider shook up the leg-weary but still game and willing hackney, and finding his way to the rear, informed all hands of the change in their immediate prospects, with the certainty of a speedy entrance into a haven of rest and refection. The intelligence had a distinctly stimulating effect. The pace of the drove was perceptibly quickened. Men, dogs, and horses seemed to have acquired new life and spirit. In less than half an hour the cattle were safely bestowed in a capacious stock-yard, the gates carefully secured, and the whole party dismounted before the outbuildings of Barallan Station.

Though it had been dark for four hours by the watches of the night, it was not more than half-past ten by the clock. Lights were still visible in the principal building, and a glowing fire in the men\'s kitchen showed that the cook was all alive, or had very lately retired.

A tall man with an abundant beard now advanced, and looked earnestly in the face of Tressider as he advanced to meet him. \'Oh, it\'s you, old man!\' he said, in a voice every intonation of which bespoke kindly, unequivocal welcome. \'I expected you yesterday. What a drenching you must have had this miserable day. Mrs. Bayard has gone to bed, but there\'s nothing to prevent you and me from being comfortable for another hour. Of course the cattle are in the yard?\'

\'Yes.\'

\'Well, look here, you fellows, put your horses through that wicket-gate. Capital feed inside, and not too big a paddock. Joe hasn\'t turned in yet. He\'ll soon have supper ready for you. And, hold on, when you\'ve turned out your horses, come up to the back door of the house. A glass of grog all round won\'t hurt any of you this cold night.\'

\'Thank you, Mr. Bayard,\' was the reply from the oldest stock-rider.

In fifteen minutes at the outside Hugh Tressider was enabled to realise the justice of his proposition, that from the great contrasts of existence the essence of pleasure is extracted. His waterproof valise had furnished a complete change of dry garments, arrayed in which he was seated before a blazing fire, subsequent to the absorption of a glass of hot grog. A substantial meal was imminent, and as he watched the neat-handed Phyllis deftly covering that hospitable board, he was 495confirmed in the opinion that life had but few avenues of higher enjoyment open to him.

Arnold Bayard, the owner of the station, a wealthy and much-respected magnate in the land, had a particular fancy for this young fellow, whom he watched enjoying himself after his day, or indeed days, of toil and travail, with paternal benevolence.

\'A deuced hard-working, honourable, well-principled young fellow,\' he was wont to say. \'Every one ought to do him a good turn. I wish all the young ones were like him. His father, Captain Tressider, an old Waterloo veteran, bought that farm of theirs, on the Upper Hunter, instead of a station in the old days, and ruined himself trying to grow oranges and olives, and all that rot, instead of sheep and cattle. When he died, Hugh was left with his mother and the little brothers and sisters to look after. Quite a boy himself, too. He buckled to it then, and it has been all against collar with him ever since. Working like a nigger, and living like one, too, sometimes, but he has managed to keep them going, and pay for their education, though he came off rather short himself. Never mind that; I say he is as true a gentleman as ever stepped, and some day he must come out right. The Tressiders are high enough in point of birth. There\'s a title, too, in the family, I\'m told, if the next heir at home were cleared off, but of course Hugh\'s too practical a fellow ever to bother his head about that.\'

Thus far, Mr. Bayard. But this was only to strangers. Most of the people in the district knew so much, and honoured Hugh Tressider accordingly. Nobody could be poorer; no one could work harder. But curious as it may seem to those people who persist in manufacturing a stage Australia for themselves,—which is as like the country as the English milord of the Porte St. Martin, with his boule-dogue, his top-coat, and the ever-present \'god-dam,\' to the real aristocrat,—there are few places where gentle birth and the manners which chiefly accompany that accidental circumstance are more truly honoured. So it will not be considered as anything very wonderful by Australians that Hugh Tressider, though only a drover by occupation, who received a certain sum per head for the conveying of ............