self.

McKeith sternly quashed the black boys' ebullition and told them to
mind their own business. Bridget agreed that the buggy was first rate
and became enthusiastic over the horses, four fairly matched and
powerful roans.

'Oh! what beauties! I'd like to go and make friends with them.'

He was delighted. 'Good 'uns, ain't they? But wait and make friends
when you're behind 'em. We've twenty-five miles to do before sundown.
Got your traps fixed up? That's right. Here, Bill, take her ladyship's
bag and stow it safely at the back of the buggy. Handle it
gingerly--it's full of silver and glass fallals--not what we're much
used to on the Leura.'

The stockman grinned and carried the dressing-bag--one of Sir Luke's
and Lady Tallant's wedding presents--as if it were dynamite. Colin
seemed anxious to impress his wife's dignity upon her new subjects. She
felt still more like a queen of comic opera. He helped her into her
dust cloak, paid the bill, cut short the landlady's sulky
apologies--she had done her hair and recovered herself a little. Then
he settled Lady Bridget into the buggy after the manner of a bush
courtier--her feet on a footstool, the rug over her knees, a cushion at
her back. His whole air seemed to say:

'This is the Queen, and I, the King, expect that proper homage be paid
her.'

CHAPTER 6

The loafers at the bar all came out to see the start. The family on the
top of the bullock-dray peered forth from under the tilt. The barkeeper
shouted, 'Good luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith.' The drunken
reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too,
'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had
got out his answering, 'Thank ye--Good day, mates,' a shower of
opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented
bush rowdies--the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had
come up with them in the train from Leuraville.

Three of these men lurched on to the bar veranda, and, so to speak,
took the stage. In front was a stumpily-built bullock driver with a
red, truculent face, a ragged carrotty beard and inflamed narrow-ridded
eyes. A little to the rear stood a lanky, muscular bushman in very
dirty moleskins, with a smooth loose-lipped face, no eyelashes, and a
scowling forehead, who was evidently the worse for drink; next to him,
a shorter man of the drover type, older, eagle-beaked and with
sinister, foxy eyes. This one hailed