hope of turning it into a herd, or to spend my life on horseback
galloping after half-wild cattle on the plains. I wasn't long "beating
about the bush," though I've once or twice been out with the natives and
have had a brush with the rangers, one of whom--Black Jack--carried a
bullet of mine about in his shoulder for some time before he fell in a
fight with the police just outside Melbourne. His skeleton's in the
museum now; but the worst time I ever had was when I was driving----;
but I'll tell you that another time. I meant when I began this letter to
start with an announcement that ought to take your breath away, and
somehow I'm as shy of saying it on paper as I should be if you were
standing before me with those "clear cold eyes" of yours, that yet were
always shining with love to your wild brother, though you always "looked
him through." The plain truth is, I now invite you to come over here and
live with _us_. Do you read that?--US. For I am--we are--_married_. Yes;
a fact. And who do you think _we_ are? There's me to begin with, and
who's the other party, the "Co.," should you fancy? Well, don't guess.
I'll tell you. Mary Deane. You remember how I used to sing:

"I'm sitting on the stile, Ma-ree,"

in the old house at home, when she was a little wisp of a dark-eyed
lassie, just thinking about going to the old farm belonging to her Uncle
Deane, in Herefordshire; and how she ran away and hid herself when I
wanted to say "good-bye" to her before I left. Well, her uncle made up
his mind to come to this side--as you wrote me he had--and I'd nearly
forgotten all about it, until one day, as I was strolling along towards
the bank in Sydney, who should I come upon quite suddenly but Mr. Deane,
and walking beside him a slim, elegant, bright-eyed beauty, to whom I
raised my hat, not knowing who she was, till a peal of silvery laughter
brought back my memory to the days of old, when we used to sit in the
garden on a summer evening at Barnes, and slip down the lawn to the
boat-house, that we might launch the dear old pater's wherry, and have a
moonlight trip, with soft singing of part songs, to which I know I
growled a villainous bass. Dear pater, had he lived I might have stayed
in the old country, and tried to keep up the old place; but I fear I
should have disappointed him, and so--well, all may be for the best.

Perhaps it was the remembrance of the dear balmy evenings "under the
Abeles" that put me in mind of