k up with us now,
Guy."

Guy Bolding.--"Yes. Very different from the first two years. You drew a
long face then. How wise you were, to insist on our learning experience
at another man's station before we hazarded our own capital! But, by
Jove! those sheep at first were enough to plague a man out his wits.
What with the wild dogs, just as the sheep had been washed and ready
to shear; then that cursed scabby sheep of Joe Timmes's, that we caught
rubbing his sides so complacently against our unsuspecting poor ewes.
I wonder we did not run away. But Patientia fit,--what is that line in
Horace? Never mind now. 'It is a long lane that has no turning' does
just as well as anything in Horace, and Virgil to boot. I say, has not
Vivian been here?"

Pisistratus.--"No; but he will be sure to come to-day."

Guy Bolding.--"He has much the best berth of it. Horse-breeding and
cattle-feeding: galloping after those wild devils; lost in a forest
of horns; beasts lowing, scampering, goring, tearing off like mad
buffaloes; horses galloping up hill, down hill, over rocks, stones, and
timber; whips cracking, men shouting, your neck all but broken; a great
bull making at you full rush. Such fun! Sheep are dull things to look at
after a bull-hunt and a cattle-feast."

Pisistratus.--"Every man to his taste in the Bush. One may make one's
money more easily and safely, with more adventure and sport, in the
bucolic department; but one makes larger profit and quicker fortune,
with good luck and good care, in the pastoral,--and our object, I take
it, is to get back to England as soon as we can."

Guy Bolding.--"Humph! I should be content to live and die in the
Bush,--nothing like it, if women were not so scarce. To think of the
redundant spinster population at home, and not a spinster here to be
seen within thirty miles,--save Bet Goggins, indeed, and she has only
one eye! But to return to Vivian: why should it be our object, more than
his, to get back to England as soon as we can?"

Pisistratus.--"Not more, certainly. But you saw that an excitement more
stirring than that we find in the sheep had become necessary to him. You
know he was growing dull and dejected; the cattle station was to be sold
a bargain. And then the Durham bulls and the Yorkshire horses which Mr.
Trevanion sent you and me out as presents, were so tempting, I thought
we might fairly add one speculation to another; and since one of us must
superintend the bucolics, and two