and he had hitherto been extremely lucky, whether from his deep-seated determination ‘not to be licked,’ or from other interested quarters, so that one of his admirers went so far as to say that if he had been due at St. Thomas’s the day after that historic island had been submerged, ‘and a gull above it flying,’ Parklands would have been descried sailing about in a cutter, searching sanguinely for his I.P., and defying the elements with his customary formula. Still, though he abstained from fencing, and did not greatly see the use of dwellings in the bush, where a blackfellow was an inexpensive and efficient substitute for one and a few sheets of bark for the other, he had so far relaxed his austere notions of outlay at Rainbar as to sanction the erection of two huts and a large, strong, well-planned stockyard. Of these improvements he had boasted on the journey to such an extent that Ernest half expected a modified Swiss chalet and a stockyard like that of the municipal cattle-yards in Melbourne, of which he had seen a photo. Aymer Brandon laughed at his grand description, declining to expect anything but a couple of broken-backed humpies; and as for the cattle-yard, he assured Ernest that at the last muster he attended at Rainbar they carried a lot of posts and rails out to the Back Lake in drays, put them up temporarily, mustered the fat cattle adjacent, _by moonlight_, and brought the posts and rails back with them after they had served their turn. Then Sparks emitted divers scintillations, and finally became sulky, and declined further conversation. However, the huts turned out to be weather-proof and substantial, as huts go, and the stockyard, if not macadamised like the Melbourne Stock Exchange, or covering thirty-six acres like its Chicago cousin, was yet a roomy and many-gated enclosure, equal to the working of twice as many head of cattle as Rainbar at this time boasted. Mr. Windsor was therefore enabled to take up his abode with the hutkeeper in the edifice which did duty for kitchen and men’s hut, while Mr. Banks secured a second bedroom in the other one with the proprietor, and professed himself to be snugly lodged. That young gentleman confided to Ernest his extreme gratification at finding himself permanently located at a ‘real first-class, fattening, plains-country cattle station’; such an establishment, since his entrance into regular employment, having been his ideal location. ‘Not a sheep near the place or likely to be for years,’ he remarked exultingly―‘that’s what I like about it; all good rightdown cattle work to look forward to: drafting, branding, camping, and, I suppose, driving the fat cattle to Melbourne some day―won’t that be jolly? As for sheep, I’m sick of the very sound of the name. When your work’s done with cattle, it’s done; but with sheep it never stops―winter and summer―all the year round.’