‘After all,’ he argued, ‘if he were able, by his own contrivance and invention, to anticipate fortune for a few years, instead of dragging out endlessly a life, perchance meant for better things, was he not practising economy in the truest form?’ Such, after certain mental conflicts and long calculations, was the question which he answered to himself in the affirmative. From that hour he ceased to struggle with what appeared to be either a matter of destiny or the prompting of an enlightened self-interest, according to the mood in which he found himself when considering this momentous question. The first operation foreign to the primitive, not to say barbarous, simplicity of the Rainbar establishment was the putting up of the paddock, at least double the size which Mr. Windsor had suggested, for the safe keeping of straggling cattle. _Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte._ After that ‘improvement’ was completed and paid for by the crisp new orders out of the book furnished to Ernest by his agents, Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, a highly unimaginative and trustworthy firm recommended by Paul, a new four-roomed cottage, of horizontal timbers, arose on the bank of the lagoon, to the great amazement of Piambook and Boinmaroo. By this time a considerable number of the bush labourers of the period had found their way to Rainbar. Rumour, which disdains not the far interior, but indeed seems to be additionally sonorous in the remoter haunts of man, had sounded her trumpet-blast far and wide with reference to Ernest Neuchamp’s acts and assets. The former were summed up ‘as going in for no end of improvements,’ and the latter were confidently credited with unlimited resources. The next project possessed the merits of grandeur of conception and perfect novelty, at least in the neighbourhood of Rainbar, the inhabitants whereof might have been numbered among the most pious communities in the world, from their consistent dependence upon Providence, had their morals in other respects borne investigation. Mr. Neuchamp had noticed that the Back Lake, as it was called, had evidently been filled recently by the overflow of the river, the waters of which had been conducted by a tortuous but plainly defined channel. The level of this inland sea, for it was of great extent, had lowered considerably since his occupation. In the event of a dry season it would doubtless become dry. Assuming this to take place, the cattle habitually watering there would be thrown upon the world―would be reduced to betake themselves to the ‘frontage.’ ‘Great inconvenience, perhaps loss,’ so said Charley Banks and Windsor, ‘would result.’