that pushes the
thermometer's silver thread up to 100 deg.!

Right away in the distance on three sides was a blue hill line and
blue soft trees.

And up near the house the trees were green and beautiful, and the
flowers a blaze of colour.

But all the stretching plain between was brown. Brown burnt grass
with occasional patches of dull green, criss-crossed here and there
with fences; that ran up the little hills that in places broke the
plain's straight line, and disappeared in the dips where rank grass
and bracken flourished. The head station consisted of quite a little
community of cottages on the top of a hill. Years ago, when Esther
was no bigger than her own little General, there had been only a rough,
red weather-board place on the hill-top, and a bark but or two for
outhouses.

And Mr. Hassal had been in the saddle from morning to night, and
worked harder than any two of his own stockmen, and Mrs. Hassal had
laid aside her girlish accomplishments, her fancy work, her guitar,
her water-colours, and had scrubbed and cooked and washed as many a
settler's wife has done before, until the anxiously watched wool
market had brought them better days.

Then a big stone cottage reared itself slowly right in front of the
little old place with its bottle-bordered garden plot, where nothing
more aristocratic than pig's face and scarlet geranium had ever grown.
A beautiful cottage it was, with its plenitude of lofty rooms, its
many windows, and its deep veranda. The little home was kitchen
and bedrooms for the two women servants now, and was joined to the
big place by a covered way.

A hundred yards away there was a two-roomed cottage that was occupied
by the son of an English baronet, who, for the consideration of
seventy pounds a year and rations kept the Yarrahappini business
books and gave out the stores.

Farther still, two bark humpies stood, back to back. Tettawonga,
a bent old black fellow, lived in one, and did little else than
smoke and give his opinion on the weather every morning.

Twenty years ago he had helped to make a steady foundation for
the red cottage that had arrived ready built on a bullock-dray.

Fifteen years ago he had killed with his tomahawk one of two
bushrangers who were trying to pick up Yarrahappini in the
absence of his master, and he had carried little trembling
Mrs. Hassal and tiny Esther to place of safety, and gone back
and dealt the other one a blow on the head that stunned