‘My dear Miss Frankston,’ replied he, when urged upon this subject by Antonia, ‘I grieve that I cannot consistently comply with your kind request. But I feel myself so rapidly turning into a mere town lounger, that I am sure another week or two would complete the transformation, and my moral ruin. For besides, unfortunately’—here he smiled at his expressed regret—‘I fixed to-morrow for my departure from your most pleasant and hospitable home, and I _never_ alter my plans.’ ‘I should be very sorry to wish you to alter them for our sake,’ said the girl, unable, however, to suppress a slight tone of pique. ‘No doubt you will be much happier exploring the highway across the Blue Mountains, which, of course, will be a great novelty to you. But I should not have thought a few days would have made any difference. You will find it dull enough at Garrandilla, where you are going.’ ‘Dull!’ said he, ‘dull! in the heart of a new continent, a new world, with untold stores of new plants, new companions, new experiences, the outset of a new life. My dear Miss Antonia, how _can_ it be dull to any person of ordinary intelligence?’ ‘Well,’ answered she, smiling, ‘perhaps it is I who am dull for thinking so. Most young men who have left our house for the interior have been of that opinion. But I will not attempt to cloud your anticipations. Only, I really _do_ think you ought not to walk.’ ‘Why not? What possible difference can it make how I get over the twenty or thirty miles a day before I reach the station, to which your father has so kindly given me letters of introduction? Such jolly walking tours as I have had in England and Wales, in Ireland, and one lovely vacation tour in our old home, Normandy.’ ‘What a charming thing to be able to see the place where one’s ancestors lived a thousand years ago!’ said she eagerly. (Mr. Neuchamp, having let slip the admission of the early settlement of his family in that rather stirring Norse colony, had been cross-questioned upon the subject.) ‘How you must have enjoyed it! That’s the worst of Australia—there’s nothing a hundred years old in it, except a red-gum tree. But seriously, you may find yourself exposed to inconveniences by walking, like a labouring man. It is not the fashion in our country for gentlemen to walk.’ Miss Antonia had entirely settled the matter by the last observation. Fashion had been through life one of the deadliest enemies to the peace of Ernest Neuchamp. In his own country he had alarmed his relatives and scandalised his neighbours by his wild defiance of that successor of Thor and Odin, as he profanely termed the social belief of decorous Christians. Was he to bow the knee to this false god in a strange land, which at least he hoped to be pure from the idolatries of the effete civilisation from which he had fled? Not so, by St. Newbold! the patron saint of his house. He smiled with great gentleness as he answered, with half sad but most irrevocable decision—