As Mr. Windsor passed the door of the inn, he observed an immense quadruped hung up at the posts, which, but for the saddle and bridle, might have been taken for a strayed waggon-horse. The length of the stirrup-leathers conveyed to a bushman’s intelligence the fact that the rider of this Gargantuan steed was an individual of unusual length of limb. Passing quietly into the bar, and thence into a small parlour devoted to the family and particular friends of the host, he discovered the old couple, Miss Carry, and a stranger, whom he immediately associated with the charger aforesaid and with the district of the Hawkesbury. ‘Well, Mr. Windsor, and who’d have thought of seeing you?’ said Mrs. Walton. ‘Have you and Mr. Neuchum―and a nice gentleman he be, surely―been in Sydney all this time? And where are you leaving for now?’ ‘We’ve been in Sydney all the time, and a very jolly place it is, Mrs. Walton,’ said Jack, answering the old woman with his tongue and Carry’s quick glance with his eyes. ‘Mr. Neuchamp’s just going up the country to look at a cattle run, and I’m going home to Appin for a short spell.’ ‘What are you going to do there?’ said Carry; ‘I thought you went everywhere with the young gentleman?’ ‘My poor old mother’s very bad,’ said Jack, looking rueful, ‘and I must be home to-night, some time or other; but I don’t think anything else would have kept me from going up with the master, to see him all right with this new station as he’s going to buy.’ ‘Do you―live―at―Appin?’ said the stranger young man, taking about a minute for the enunciation of each word, and speaking in a drawling, though not nasal, monotone. ‘When I’m at home, which is about once in five years, I do,’ answered Jack. ‘_You_ live on the Hawkesbury, and haven’t ever been far from the river, I’ll swear.’ ‘So I do, at Rooty Hill Farm, Nepean Point,’ said the New Hollander with a smile, which broke first upon the edge of the round plump face and gradually spread over it like the eddy in a pond. ‘How―did―you―come―to―know?’ ‘By the look,’ said Jack coolly; ‘they don’t grow such men anywhere else in the colony, except on the Hawkesbury flats. My name’s Jack Windsor. What’s yours, old nineteen stun?’ ‘I ain’t nineteen stun, I’m only seventeen,’ said the youthful giant, whose voice, however, did by no means correspond with his stature, being mild and small of timbre. ‘My name’s Harry Homminey, and I’ll back our land to grow more corn to the acre, let alone pumpkins, than any farm this side of the Blue Mountains.’ ‘Like enough,’ answered Jack indifferently. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if you took to pumpkins very kind when you was young. They’re great feeding stuff. But your Windsor and Richmond farms is only handfuls after all. How many acres have you got?’ ‘A hundred and thirty-two,’ said the Netherlander, with just pride, ‘and never a tree or a stump on it.’