How many an ingenuous pastoralist has for years wandered innocently by the charmed ocean-strand of Arcady the Blessed, leading the careless, untroubled life which belongs of right to all true Arcadians, ignorant alike of want or luxury, of debt, of anxious thought for the morrow! When, lo! in a luckless hour, unhallowed desire has urged him to the opening of the sealed, the forbidden casket which contained the Genie―‘Improvement.’ The baleful Djinn, accursed of Solomon and many succeeding wise men, towers aloft, darkening the summer sky, and finally demanding the life of his deliverer. In the Eastern tale, the threatened victim cajoled the monster into re-entrance and brazen bondage. Rarely, alas! does the modern enfranchiser of the Demon succeed in enforcing retrenchment and safety! Mr. Neuchamp had a general idea, based upon Paul Frankston’s parting instructions, Mr. Levison’s warning words, ‘Don’t you waste your money,’ and even the half-careless hints of Brandon and Parklands, that his course as a squatter was to be guided by economy. At the outset, therefore, he merely ordered articles and implements absolutely necessary. He devoted his spare time to the task of instilling some glimmering rays of intellectual light into the unused but not opaque intelligence of Charley Banks. Finding that the boy had a strong taste for voyages and travels, he provided him with books of that particular department, and gradually had the satisfaction of seeing the lad settle down of an evening to steady reading, instead of to the eternal pipe, with perhaps an excursion to the kitchen and a not wholly improving gossip with Jack Windsor. He drew him out, and invited him to the discussion of principles of action derived from the lives of his favourite heroes. He encouraged him to digest a certain daily quantity of ‘stiff’ or improving literature, and arranged that the more humorous celebrities of the day were not wanting. He sketched a combination of reading and reflection, with the hard personal exertion and keen practical attention to detail which the youngster loved. He drew his attention to distinguished persons who combined excellence in both classes of attainment; and he demonstrated how poor and mean a goal is that of material success, unrelieved by mental progress or spiritual enlightenment. But when all the calves were branded up, so completely that no more work, in that direction, could be done until more calves were born,―when all the stragglers were got in, and there were no musters to attend; as the days grew longer, the sun hotter, the whole routine more uniform and monotonous,―life commenced to be burdensome to Ernest Neuchamp. Then the fascinating idea of works and enterprises of a new and reproductive nature, like the temptation of a hermit in the Thebaid, arose with resistless might.