ccredited parson, in the presence of responsible
witnesses; and that, when everyone had their own, Carrotty Peg, if
alive, would be the lady of Kuryong. However, she had never come back
to prove it, and no one cared about asking her alleged husband any
unpleasant questions.

So much for the history of its owners; now to describe the homestead
itself. It had originally consisted of the two-roomed slab hut, which
had been added to from time to time. Kitchen, outhouses, bachelors'
quarters, saddle-rooms, and store-rooms had been built on in a kind of
straggling quadrangle, with many corners and unexpected doorways and
passages; and it is reported that a swagman once got his dole of rations
at the kitchen, went away, and after turning two or three corners,
got so tangled up that when Fate led him back to the kitchen he didn't
recognise it, and asked for rations over again, in the firm belief that
he was at a different part of the house.

The original building was still the principal living-room, but the house
had grown till it contained about twenty rooms. The slab walls had been
plastered and whitewashed, and a wide verandah ran all along the front.
Round the house were acres of garden, with great clumps of willows and
acacias, where the magpies sat in the heat of the day and sang to one
another in their sweet, low warble.

The house stood on a spur running from the hills. Looking down the river
from it, one saw level flats waving with long grasses, in which the
solemn cattle waded knee-deep. Here and there clumps of willows and
stately poplars waved in the breeze. In the clear, dry air all colours
were startlingly vivid, and round the nearer foothills wonderful lights
and shadows played and shifted, while sometimes a white fleece of mist
would drift slowly across a distant hill, like a film of snowy lace on
the face of a beautiful woman. Away behind the foothills were the grand
old mountains, with their snow-clad tops gleaming in the sun.

The garden was almost as lacking in design as the house. There were
acres of fruit trees, with prairie grass growing at their roots, trees
whereon grew luscious peaches and juicy egg-plums; long vistas of
grapevines, with little turnings and alleys, regular lovers' walks,
where the scent of honeysuckle intoxicated the senses. At the foot of
the garden was the river, a beautiful stream, fed by the mountain-snow,
and rushing joyously over clear gravel beds, whose million-tinted
pebble