‘Well, what’s that?’ demanded the denizen of the waste. ‘Why, a child can take up three hundred and twenty acres in the bush anywhere. I wouldn’t be bothered with land unless I had a whole section to begin with.’ ‘It’s a deal better than no land at all; and that’s about what you have, I expect,’ said the agriculturist, gradually coming to the opinion and belief that Mr. Windsor was disposed to disparage him and his fat acres before Carry Walton. ‘Never mind what I have, and keep a civil tongue in your head,’ said Jack wrathfully; ‘I’ll give that round face of yours such a pasting that they will not know you from a Lower Narran man, only by your weight, when you go home. But I won’t be cross to-night, and the poor old mother dying for all I know. Good-bye, Mrs. Walton; good-bye, Carry. I must be off.’ Mr. Windsor departed into the night and they saw him no more, but I am strongly of opinion that he managed to telegraph something to Carry before he gained his saddle, and if it meant unalterable affection as she understood it, whether it was the automatic process, or Morse’s, who shall say? Certain it is that she returned to the room with a serene countenance, and listened apparently with intentness to the somewhat uninteresting conversation of the man of maize and pumpkins, who eventually mounted his massive charger and trampled along the highway towards the rich levels of Nepean Point. Mr. Neuchamp was so extremely anxious to make a commencement upon the foundations of his own experience and management that he left Sydney a week or two before the actual time necessary to reach the township of Bilwillia, where he was to make rendezvous with Mr. Parklands. He purchased for himself a befitting hackney, and, not having Jack Windsor’s aid, was beguiled into the possession of a stiff, short-legged cob, which his English tradition led him to believe would be the exact animal for a long journey and indifferent keep. Having gone part of the way by rail, he managed to reach the unromantic and extremely hot township of Bilwillia more than three days before Parklands could by possibility arrive, unless under the highly improbable supposition that he had more time than he knew what to do with. Mr. Neuchamp was, as we have had before occasion to explain, by no means destitute of resources. If there was any interest whatever to be extracted from a locality, he was a likely man to discover and avail himself of it. But he afterwards confessed that he then and there felt more nearly reduced to the unphilosophical and indefeasible position of utter dulness than he could have believed possible.