ugh my life's drama, I have
been a spectator, and not an actor, and so in this story I shall keep
myself as much as possible in the background, only appearing personally
when I cannot help it.

Acting on this resolve I must now make my CONGE, and bid you farewell
for a few years, and go back to those few sheep which James Stockbridge
and I own in the wilderness, and continue the history of those who are
more important than myself. I must push on too, for there is a long
period of dull stupid prosperity coming to our friends at Baroona and
Toonarbin, which we must get over as quickly as is decent. Little Sam
Buckley also, though at present a most delightful child, will soon be a
mere uninteresting boy. We must teach him to read and write, and ride,
and what not, as soon as possible, and see if we can't find a young
lady--well, I won't anticipate, but go on. Go on, did I say?--jump on,
rather--two whole years at once.

See Baroona now. Would you know it? I think not. That hut where we
spent the pleasant Christmas-day you know of is degraded into the
kitchen, and seems moved backward, although it stands in the same
place, for a new house is built nearer the river, quite overwhelming
the old slab hut in its grandeur--a long low wooden house, with deep
cool verandahs all round, already festooned with passion-flowers, and
young grapevines, and fronted by a flower garden, all a-blaze with
petunias and geraniums.

It was a summer evening, and all the French windows reaching to the
ground were open to admit the cool south wind, which had just come up,
deliciously icily cold after a scorching day. In the verandah sat the
Major and the Doctor over their claret (for the Major had taken to
dining late again now, to his great comfort), and in the garden were
Mrs. Buckley and Sam watering the flowers, attended by a man who drew
water from a new-made reservoir near the house.

"I think, Doctor," said the Major, "that the habit of dining in the
middle of the day is a gross abuse of the gifts of Providence, and I'll
prove it to you. What does a man dine for?--answer me that."

"To satisfy his hunger, I should say," answered the Doctor.

"Pooh! pooh! stuff and nonsense, my good friend," said the Major; "you
are speaking at random. I suppose you will say, then, that a black
fellow is capable of dining?"

"Highly capable, as far as I can judge from what I have seen," replied
the Doctor. "A full-grown fighting black would be ashamed