ndown. You are free till then."

"Thank you, father," cried Nic, whose veins throbbed with eager
anticipation of the pleasures to be enjoyed in what seemed to be the
first real holiday he had ever had. "You'll trust me too, mother, won't
you?"

"Yes, yes, my boy," cried Mrs Braydon.

"Of course she will," said the doctor. "Mamma has grown quite nervous
since she has had a fresh chicken to take care of: she makes more fuss
over you than she does over the girls."

"But they know the place better, my dear," pleaded Mrs Braydon.

"Nic will know it ten times better in a fortnight," said the doctor.
"Eh, Nic?"

"I'll try, father," cried the boy, laughing. "I'm not going to be
beaten by a couple of girls."

"Off with you, then!"

"Shall I take the dogs, father?"

"Yes. No: not to-day. I shall keep them chained up for another week,
to get them more used to the place. They may do what you will not do--
go astray."

Five minutes later Nic was waving his hand to his mother at the window
as he strode off, proud and elate, with his gun over his shoulder and
his shot belt across his breast, the powder flask peeping out of his
breast pocket--for in those days men had not dreamed of even percussion
guns, let alone breech-loaders and cart ridges ready to slip into the
piece.

"Nic!"

The boy turned to see his father mounted on his chestnut, and with a
stock whip in his hand.

"Which way are you going?"

"I want to try and find my way to the edge of the precipice, father, and
look down from the Bluff into the great gully."

"Very well. Straight away for a mile--north-west. Shoot any snakes you
see. They alarm your mother and sisters, and they are dangerous to the
dogs."

The doctor pressed his horse's sides, turned his head, and went off at a
canter, looking as if he had grown to its back, and Nic watched him in
admiration for a few minutes.

"I wish I could ride like that," he said to himself as he strode off
taking great breaths of the elastic air. "Well, father was a boy once,
and could not ride any better than I can. I shall try hard."

"Hah! how beautiful it all is!" he said softly, as he paused at the end
of a few minutes, to gaze right away; for he had reached an eminence in
the park-like land from which he could see, fold upon fold, wave upon
wave, the far stretching range of the Blue Mountains.

"And they are blue," he cried aloud, "and blue and lavender and
amethyst; but I suppose when one