himself.

"And a look of a man who is strong as a horse; and that's all. No,
stop: I forgot his birrd."

"His bird! Does he keep a bird?"

"The young ruffian! he's making sport of me," said the lady. "I said
birrd: b-e-a-r-d, birrd. And it's all tinged grey and black. That's
your father."

"And the girls?"

"Oh, just two bright sun-browned colleens, like you, only better
looking. What next?"

"What sort of a place is it?"

"Place? Oh, there's a wooden house on a slope looking down a bluff at
the edge of a great plain, from which you look over the Blue Mountains."

"Yes, they call them blue because they're green, I suppose?" said Nic,
with a smile.

"And people say it's only we Irish who make bulls," cried the lady
merrily. "No; they call them blue because in the distance they look as
clear and blue as the loveliest amethyst. Ah! it's a beautiful place,
Dominic, as you'll say."

"And big?"

"Big?"

The lady laughed softly.

"Yes, boy; it's big. There's plenty of land out yonder, and so the
government's pretty generous with it. Here at home they count a man's
estate by acres: we do it in square miles out there."

"Look here, Dominic," said the lady, after answering scores of
questions, during what seemed to Nic the happiest hours he had ever
spent in his life, "I've been thinking."

"Yes, madam."

"Say Lady O'Hara, boy," cried the visitor petulantly; and then, with a
sad smile full of pathos on her quivering lip, she added softly, "I
can't tell ye to call me mother: my son died, Dominic, just when he
began to know me; but look here," she cried, brightening, though the lad
could see tears in her fine dark eyes, out of which she seemed to peer
as from passing clouds. "Sure, I tell ye I've been thinking. Your
father said it was time you left school to finish your education out
there."

"Education?" faltered Nic.

"Oh yes; but not book learning, boy: hunting, and shooting, and riding,
and stock-keeping, and farming, and helping to make Australia a big
young England for John Bull's sons and daughters, who want room to
move."

"Yes, I see," cried Nic.

"To be sure you do. Well, then, the ship sails in a month from to-day:
so what's the good of your stopping here for a month?"

"But I've nowhere else to go," said Nic.

"Oh! yes, you have. You and I have got to be great friends--there,
something more than that. I shall just borrow you of your father and
mother till I have to give y