terraces on the south side of the river, and
was bowling along on a level stretch of road across the elevated flat.

"What trees are those?" asked the stranger, breaking the aggressive
silence which followed his unpatriotic argument, and pointing to a grove
ahead by the roadside. "They look as if they've been planted there.
There ain't been a forest here surely?"

"Oh, they're some trees the Government imported," said the bagman, whose
knowledge on the subject was limited. "Our own bush won't grow in this
soil."

"But it looks as if anything else would--"

Here the stranger sniffed once by accident, and then several times with
interest.

It was a warm morning after rain. He fixed his eyes on those trees.

They didn't look like Australian gums; they tapered to the tops, the
branches were pretty regular, and the boughs hung in shipshape fashion.
There was not the Australian heat to twist the branches and turn the
leaves.

"Why!" exclaimed the stranger, still staring and sniffing hard. "Why,
dang me if they ain't (sniff) Australian gums!"

"Yes," said the driver, flicking his horses, "they are."

"Blanky (sniff) blanky old Australian gums!" exclaimed the
ex-Australian, with strange enthusiasm.

"They're not old," said the driver; "they're only young trees. But they
say they don't grow like that in Australia--'count of the difference in
the climate. I always thought--"

But the other did not appear to hear him; he kept staring hard at the
trees they were passing. They had been planted in rows and cross-rows,
and were coming on grandly.

There was a rabbit trapper's camp amongst those trees; he had made a
fire to boil his billy with gum-leaves and twigs, and it was the scent
of that fire which interested the exile's nose, and brought a wave of
memories with it.

"Good day, mate!" he shouted suddenly to the rabbit trapper, and to the
astonishment of his fellow passengers.

"Good day, mate!" The answer came back like an echo--it seemed to
him--from the past.

Presently he caught sight of a few trees which had evidently been
planted before the others--as an experiment, perhaps--and, somehow,
one of them had grown after its own erratic native fashion--gnarled and
twisted and ragged, and could not be mistaken for anything else but an
Australian gum.

"A thunderin' old blue-gum!" ejaculated the traveller, regarding the
tree with great interest.

He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silent