und it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of the
country, but could never overcome the thought that in those first false
steps he had lost all worth striving for. Time softened the gloomy
defiance of his farewell verses, but did not alter his determination to
efface himself, to be forgotten even by his family. He held no
communication with anyone in England, and heard nothing from his home
until ten years later, when a lawyer's letter notified him that both his
mother and father were dead, and that under the will of the latter he
was to receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds. Meanwhile, Gordon
appears to have made no attempt to win any of the prizes that were the
common reward of pluck and industry in the Australia of the fifties. He
joined the mounted police force of South Australia, but, impatient of
its discipline, soon left it, and for long afterwards was content with
the rough employment of a horse-breaker.

A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this time. He broke in horses
during the day, and read the classic poets at night. Think of the
refined Englishman in blue blouse, fustian, and half-Wellington boots,
seated among the boisterous company of a 'men's hut' on a Bush station,
reading Horace by the aid of a rude lamp, 'consisting of a honeysuckle
cone stuck in clay in a pannikin, and surrounded with mutton fat!' Or
sitting at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining, as he so finely
did, the famous Balaclava Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity and
admiration a year after he arrived in Australia. How he would have liked
to be among the actors in that scene!

'Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride
Long years of pleasure outvie!'

he exclaims, and wishes that his own end could be fair as that of one
'who died in his stirrups there.'

Gordon seemed not only to be reconciled to his Bush life, but to have
become attached to it. He once declared it to be better in many
respects than any other. He was temperate, skilful in his work, and as
popular as one of reserved manner can be. Most of the squatters of the
period made it a practice to receive into their social circle any
companionable and educated man, whether their equal in position or not.
It was a generous custom, typical of the most hospitable country in the
world, and worked well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike Henry Kingsley
and others of the same class, took no advantage of it. That the
squatters did not themselves rec