When Mr. Neuchamp looked around, after completing his toilette, the scene strongly stirred his imaginative mind; it was unique, unfamiliar, and majestic. At his feet, down the long incline of the mountain, lay the vast foreign-foliaged, primeval forests, the silver-threaded, winding rivulets, the hoary crag-ramparts of yesterday’s travel shrouded in billowing, rolling mists, or rich in combination of light and shade, colour and effect, and at the bidding of the morning sunbeam. As far as vision extended, nought but these characteristic features of the mountain wilderness was visible. Immediately around him, however, were decisive though humble evidences of the domination of art over nature. The inn orchard, with its autumn-blushing apples, stables, barn-yard, the cheerful smoking chimneys in the ’eager air’—all these told of the limited but absolute sway of civilised man. Ernest’s ideas gradually shaped themselves into the concrete fact of breakfast. After this luxurious meal Mr. Neuchamp felt his ardour for travel and exploration rekindled. He inquired the road from the landlord and boldly pushed on. Much the same fortune attended him, sometimes traversing rugged and barren country, and at other times finding cottages, farms, and orchards upon his route. When, however, he reached the more open forest lands, he found that a portion of the carefully graded highway was in process of being metalled. Here were many parties of stonebreakers at work by contract, apparently preferring such labour to the more monotonous daily wage. Asking for water at one small camp, he found in the cook a well-mannered youngster, doubtless a gentleman. Ernest was pressed to take more substantial refreshment, but he declined the offer. ‘How far do you think of going to-day?’ inquired the affable stone-compeller. ‘About half a dozen miles,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, who by this time had completed the chief portion of a fair day’s trudge. ‘My reason for asking,’ continued the basaltic one, ‘is, that we are going to have a little dinner at an inn just so far distant. The party consists of my mates—very decent fellows—and our superintendent, who is a regular brick. We shall be glad if you will join us.’ ‘Most happy indeed,’ answered Ernest, especially gratified to enter upon a new phase of life utterly outside of his previous experiences, and perhaps more typically Australian than anything he could have stumbled upon except by the merest accident. He had dined in many queer places and met with strange company in his day, being always ready to extend his observations in the interest of philosophical inquiry, but a dinner of persons who broke stones upon a highroad for their subsistence, and who were presumably gentlemen, he had never yet been so fortunate as to hear of, much less to partake of. ‘If you don’t mind waiting half an hour,’ pursued the Amphitryon, ‘while I change my clothes, we can walk down comfortably together.’