unted, "I will ensure him a hearing, and good bye, sir."

"And God speed you!" says Frank. But, lo! as he turned to ride away,
Black-hair the sleepy-headed comes to the hut-door, looking important,
and says, "Hi!" Frank is glad of this, for he likes the stupid-looking
young fellow better than he fancied he would have done at first, and
says to himself, "There's the making of a man in that fellow, unless I
am mistaken." So he turns politely to meet him, and, as he comes
towards him, remarks what a fine, good-humoured young fellow he is,
Blackhair ranges alongside, and, putting his hand on the horse's neck,
says, mysteriously--

"Would you like a native companion?"

"Too big to carry, isn't it?" says Frank.

"I'll tie his wings together, and send him down on the ration dray,"
says Black-hair. "You'll come round and see us again, will you?"

So Frank fares back to Toonarbin, wondering where Lee has gone. But
Black-hair goes back into the hut, and taking his parrot from the
bedplace, puts it on his shoulder, and sits rubbing his knees before
the fire. Yellow-hair and the hut-keeper are now in loud conversation,
and the former is asking, in a loud, authoritative tone (the neat man
being outside), "whether a chap is to be hunted and badgered out of his
bed by a parcel of ---- parsons?" To which the Hut-keeper says, "No,
by ----! A man might as well be in barracks again." Yellowhair, morally
comforted and sustained by this opinion, is proceeding to say, that,
for his part, a parson is a useless sort of animal in general, who gets
his living by frightening old women, but that this particular parson is
an unusually offensive specimen, and that there is nothing in this
world that he (Yellow-hair) would like better than to have him out in
front of the house for five minutes, and see who was best man,--when
Black-hair, usually a taciturn, peaceable fellow, astonishes the pair
by turning his black eyes on the other, and saying, with lowering
eyebrows,--

"You d----d humbug! Talk about fighting him! Always talking about
fighting a chap when he is out of the way, when you know you've no more
fight in you than a bronsewing. Why, he'd kill you, if you only waited
for him to hit you! And see here: if you don't stop your jaw about him,
you'll have to fight me, and that's a little more than you're game for,
I'm thinking."

This last was told me by the man distinguished above as "the neat man,"
who was standing outside, and heard th