residents around Possum Gully. It was a small Dissenting chapel, where a
layman ungrammatically held forth at 3 P.m. every Sunday; but the
congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for the
sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of butter, the
continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before and after the
service, than for the service itself.

I knew the appearance of Harold Beecham, would make quite a miniature
sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter. In any
company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among
these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the cruel
effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry. I felt
proud of my quondam sweetheart. There was an unconscious air of physical
lordliness about him, and he looked such a swell--not the black-clothed,
clean-shaved, great display of white collar-and-cuffs swell appertaining
to the office and city street, but of the easy sunburnt squatter type of
swelldom, redolent of the sun, the saddle, the wide open country--a man
who is a man, utterly free from the least suspicion of effeminacy, and
capable of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow--with an arm ready
and willing to save in an accident.

All eyes were turned on us as we approached, and I knew that the
attentions he paid me out of simple courtesy--tying my shoe, carrying my
book, holding my parasol--would be put down as those of a lover.

I introduced him to a group of men who were sitting on a log, under the
shade of a stringybark, and leaving him to converse with them, made my
way to where the women sat beneath a gum-tree. The children made a third
group at some distance. We always divided ourselves thus. A young fellow
had to be very far gone ere he was willing to run the gauntlet of all the
chaff levelled at him had he the courage to single out a girl and talk to
her.

I greeted all the girls and women, beginning at the great-grandmother of
the community, who illustrated to perfection the grim sarcasm of the
fifth commandment. She had worked hard from morning till night, until too
old to do so longer, and now hung around with aching weariness waiting
for the grave. She generally poured into my cars a wail about her
"rheumatisms", and "How long it do be waiting for the Lord"; but today
she was too curious about Harold to think of herself.

"Sure, Sybyller, who's that? Is he