‘You are not the first man, Jack, and will not be the last,’ quoth Ernest, ‘who has been started on the downward road by the same agency. But I hope you will always perceive, when accusing another, that unless you had been that particular sort of fool that bad luck is exciting one to turn into a rogue, her influence would have been quite insufficient. We may as well drop the subject, for ever; but it will do you no harm to look sometimes, without witnesses, at the precipice you passed so closely.’ Mr. John Windsor, naturally one of the cheeriest of mortals, for which temperament he had to thank a Milesian ancestress, showed no inclination to revert to this painful topic. On the contrary, as they approached the more settled country which lay between Garrandilla and the railway terminus, he entertained Ernest much by his _naïve_ and acute observations. His companionship was always valuable in other respects. He knew all the by-tracks and short cuts, by availing themselves of which the road was materially shortened. At nightfall, wherever they happened to be, Jack took all charge and responsibility as to the horses out of Ernest’s hands. He saw that Osmund received full justice in the inn stables, if they happened to stay at one of the village hostelries; or if compelled to turn out he affixed the hobbles, and following the track (slotwise) at dawn of day, regularly and efficiently produced the hackneys saddled and accoutred at the proper after-breakfast hour. Full of anecdote, flavoured with the purest Australian slang, all unconsciously used, he was a never-failing mine of interest and amusement. They passed the railway terminus, as Ernest had decided to ride down the whole distance, being not unwilling to exhibit Osmund, now ‘prompt in his paces, cool, and bold,’ and after the summer grasses of Garrandilla, sleek and ‘on his top’ in point of condition. He pictured himself cantering along the pleasant seaside ways around Sydney, and if a vision occasionally mingled with his reveries of a fair girlish shape, all the more graceful in the riding-habit of the period, not far from his side, was it not the natural outcome of the double summer time, the pleasant season of the land, and the fairy-time that comes but once—the thrice golden spring of youth? With these ‘companions of Sintram’ not ominous and threatening, but full of high hope, of purpose, and of all mighty dreams, pleasantly he paced on over the rocky, fast descending mountain tracks. ‘Rum road this, sir, for coaching,’ said Mr. Windsor. ‘I’ve been up and down here many a time, by night and day, good weather and bad, in the old times, many years before the Zig Zag was chopped out of the sidelings. I’ve been glad enough to see the bottom of the hill at Mount Victoria, once or twice, with a queer team and the brake not over good.’