It may be gathered that Mr. Neuchamp was alone and possessed his soul in peace, when he found sufficient time in which to indulge these grand ideas and magniloquent reflections. Mr. Parklands’ company was not favourable to contemplation. His very existence was an aggressively energetic fact, wholly adverse to reverie or mental repose of any description. He was always talking or smoking, or asserting or denying, or going out or coming in, or preparing for his next journey or reviewing his last one. His very correspondence was of a telegrammatic and restless nature, full of reference to distances and routes, orders to overseers and stockmen to go thither, or come hither, to await him at one place or meet him at another. He went to bed defiantly and got up noisily, full of plans and prospects, and requiring everybody to arise and be stirring, in the most literal sense. Aymer Brandon was constitutionally of a calm, equable, and chiefly amiable temperament, provided that he had things mostly his own way. But he was temporarily excited by the demon of unrest which abode in Parklands, so that between practical jokes, contradictions, reminiscences of adventures, revelries, and the like, no peace, in the true sense of the word, was possible until their departure from Rainbar. Not until several days after that event did Mr. Neuchamp realise that he was clothed with real and undisputed sovereignty. Then with sudden afflatus arose in his brooding mind the thought of the elevated duties and deep responsibility of his position. It was the hour of the evening meal. This frugal meal―damper, hard corned beef, and very black astringent tea―the same served in a very black quart pot―Ernest had enjoyed in solitude. Humble as was the fare, it was amply sufficient for a man in the pride of vigorous youth. The indifferent Bohea had power to stimulate delicately, yet positively, the nerves of Mr. Neuchamp’s, perhaps, hypersensitive brain. The night was calm and clear. The starry heavens held no cloud. The long lagoon lay darkly metallic, or broke into phosphoric ripples. The mysterious sounds of the desert were rare and as yet unfamiliar to the listener. All things afforded a startling contrast to his English name and surroundings, even to his later metropolitan habitudes. Yet as he sat there by the light of the stars, amid the tremendous solitude of the wilderness, his heart swelled with the thought that he was the virtual ruler of a territory larger than his ancestral country―larger than any member of the house of Neuchamp had owned since the first baronial fiefs in their blood-bought Normandy.