n their descent.

On the other three sides was scrub. Dense tropical scrub for miles,
giving out a muggy disagreeable heat, and that peculiar overpowering
smell common, I think, to all tropical growth. No one could have chosen
a better spot than this if his desire were to escape entirely from the
busy world and live a quiet sequestered life amongst the countless
beautiful gifts that Dame Nature seems so lavish of in the hundred nooks
and corners of the mountainous portion of Australia. In this humpy,
then, hidden from the world in general, and known only to a few miners
and prospectors, lived Dick Benson, his wife, and their daughter
Billjim. That is what she was called, anyway, by all the diggers on the
Newanga. It wasn't her name, of course. She was registered at Clagton
Court House as Katherine Veronica Benson, but no one in all the district
thought of calling her Kitty now, and as for Veronica--well, it was too
much to ask of any one, let alone a rough bushman.

The name Billjim she practically chose herself.

One evening a digger named Jack L'Estrange, a great friend of the
Bensons, was reading an article from the _Bulletin_ to her father, and
Kitty, as she was then called, was whiling away the time by pulling his
moustache, an occupation which interfered somewhat with the reading, but
which was allowed to pass without serious rebuke.

In this article the paper spoke of backblocks bushmen under the generic
soubriquet of Billjim. And a very good name too, for in any up-country
town one has but to sing out "Bill" or "Jim" to have an answer from
three-fourths of the male population.

The name tickled Kitty immensely, and she chuckled, "Billjim! Billjim!
Oh, I'd like to be called that."

"Would you though?" asked her father, smiling.

"Yes," answered Kitty; "it's a fine name, Billjim."

"Well, we will call you Billjim in future," said Dick; and from that day
the name stuck to her. And it suited her.

She was the wildest of wild bush girls. At twelve years old she could
ride and shoot as well as most of us, and would pan out a prospect with
any man on the Newanga.

She had never been to school, there being none nearer than Clagton,
which was some fifteen miles away, but she had been taught the simple
arts of reading and writing by her mother, and Jack L'Estrange had
ministered to her wants in the matter of arithmetic.

With all her wildness she was a good, kindly girl, materially helping
her mother in the h