e for the comfort of the heiress.
To Ellen Harriott the arrival was a new excitement, a change in the
monotony of bush life; but to the old lady and Hugh it meant a great
deal more. It meant that they would be no longer master and mistress of
the big station on which they had lived so long, and which was now so
much under their control that it seemed almost like their own.

Everything depended on what the girl was like. They had never even
seen a photograph of her, and awaited her coming in a state of nervous
expectancy. All over the district they had been practically considered
owners of the big station; Hugh had taken on and dismissed employees at
his will, had controlled the buying and selling of thousands of sheep
and cattle, and now this strange girl was to come in with absolute power
over them. They would be servants and dependants on the station, which
had once belonged to them.

After Hugh had gone, the old lady sat back in her armchair and read over
again her letter from Mr. Grant; and, lest it should be thought that
that gentleman had only one side to his character, it is as well for the
reader to know what was in the letter. It ran as follows:--

Dear Mrs. Gordon,

I am writing to you about a most important matter. Colonel Selwyn is
dead, and my daughter has come out from England. I don't know anyone to
take charge of her except yourself. I am an old man now, and set in my
ways, and this girl is really all I have to live for. Looking back on my
life, I see where I have been a fool; and perhaps the good fortune that
has followed me has been more luck than anything else. Your husband was
a smarter man than I am, and he came to grief, though I will say that I
always warned him against that Western place.

Do you remember the old days when we had the two little homesteads, and
I used to ride down from the out-station of a Saturday and spend Sunday
with you and Andrew, and talk over the fortunes we were going to make?
If I had met a woman like you in those days I might have been a better
man. As it was, I made a fool of myself. But that's all past praying
for.

Now about my girl. If you will take her, and make her as good a woman as
yourself, or as near it as you can, you will earn my undying thanks.
As to money matters, when I die she will of course have a great deal of
money, so that it is well she should begin now to learn how to use it;
I have, therefore, given her full power to draw all money that may b