t was easy to overlook the flock of sheep, which then numbered
more than eighty. Some furniture, a bed, table, bench, cupboard, and
chest were manufactured, and a gun, ammunition, and tools were carried
to the corral.

The stranger, however, had seen nothing of his new dwelling, and he
had allowed the settlers to work there without him, while he occupied
himself on the plateau, wishing, doubtless, to put the finishing stroke
to his work. Indeed, thanks to him, all the ground was dug up and ready
to he sowed when the time came.

It was on the 20th of December that all the arrangements at the corral
were completed. The engineer announced to the stranger that his dwelling
was ready to receive him, and the latter replied that he would go and
sleep there that very evening.

On this evening the colonists were gathered in the diningroom of Granite
House. It was then eight o'clock, the hour at which their companion was
to leave them. Not wishing to trouble him by their presence, and thus
imposing on him the necessity of saying farewells which might perhaps be
painful to him, they had left him alone and ascended to Granite House.

Now, they had been talking in the room for a few minutes, when a light
knock was heard at the door. Almost immediately the stranger entered,
and without any preamble,--

"Gentlemen," said he, "before I leave you, it is right that you should
know my history. I will tell it you."

These simple words profoundly impressed Cyrus Harding and his
companions. The engineer rose.

"We ask you nothing, my friend," said he; "it is your right to be
silent."

"It is my duty to speak."

"Sit down, then."

"No, I will stand."

"We are ready to hear you," replied Harding.

The stranger remained standing in a corner of the room, a little in the
shade. He was bareheaded, his arms folded across his chest, and it
was in this posture that in a hoarse voice, speaking like some one
who obliges himself to speak, he gave the following recital, which his
auditors did not once interrupt:--

"On the 20th of December, 1854, a steam-yacht, belonging to a Scotch
nobleman, Lord Glenarvan, anchored off Cape Bernouilli, on the western
coast of Australia, in the thirty-seventh parallel. On board this yacht
were Lord Glenarvan and his wife, a major in the English army, a French
geographer, a young girl, and a young boy. These two last were the
children of Captain Grant, whose ship, the 'Britannia,' had been lost,
crew an