‘It does not appear to be a fashionable thing to do,’ admitted Ernest, ‘judging from the remarks of my neighbours, as well as yourself; but I am somewhat like you in one respect―I do things upon my own responsibility, and, I am afraid, do not care sufficiently about other people’s opinions. Sometimes I am wrong―very wrong―I admit. But at other times I am so satisfied of being right that the whole world would not turn me.’ Mr. Levison looked Ernest ‘straight in the eye’ with his own singularly clear, penetrating gaze. ‘I hold with you in that,’ he said at length; ‘nothing like a man who acts on his own reason, and sticks to it. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but he’ll come out better in the long run than any fellow that follows the wind wherever it blows. And so you believe in these cockatoo chaps? Now, what’s the good of ’em?’ ‘Just so far,’ said Ernest, ‘that I hope, in time, to see a thriving and prosperous population here, making proper use of the soil, and advantageous to the proprietor, as they in turn would be benefited by him.’ Mr. Levison again regarded Ernest fixedly. His calm features, across whose lineaments the ripple of a positive opinion or sentiment rarely broke, might have been taken to denote the benevolent toleration of one who hears a spoiled child insist upon being presented with a portion of the moon, or propose, with saline agency, the capture of an uncaged bird. ‘Population―what’s the good of population on a cattle station?’ he said, with his usual slow, unpunctuated direction of speech. ‘All the crop they’ll ever get out of that land you may put in your coat pocket. In a dry season it’s as much as the salt-bush will grow, let alone grass or crops. In a wet one, all this country’s like a garden, from the Paroo to the Macquarie. Your horses don’t want corn _then_, or hay―wouldn’t eat it if they were paid for it. What are farmers to grow here that would pay for carriage to the coast? Wheat they can’t think of in a hot place like this. Rice and such things they might have a try at, if they were Chinamen. But I can tell you what they _will_ do.’ ‘What is that?’ inquired Ernest, reassured. ‘Why, you’ll find that their cattle will go on increasing pretty fast; and what with grass rights and taking their blocks a little way off each other, they’ll have nigh as much of Rainbar as you will in three or four years. I suppose that isn’t what you fetched ’em up for?’ ‘I do not grudge them a fair share of the Crown land,’ said Ernest. ‘The land was made for all of us. But I certainly did not anticipate their requiring more than a limited area at any time.’ ‘Well, it will be _unlimited_ if you don’t manage to hem ’em in somehow. They’ll give you your work to do, take my word for it, some of these fine days. My nags are a little fresher, and I am obliged to you for as good a mount as ever I crossed.’