Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/colonialreformer03bold Project Gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work. Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54067 Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55652 Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). In the expression “the [Ǝ]NE brand” [Ǝ] represent the reverse E character depressed by half a line. In the expression "the M[Ḋ] brand" [Ḋ] represents a reversed D depressed by half a line. A COLONIAL REFORMER [Illustration: Colophon] A COLONIAL REFORMER by ROLF BOLDREWOOD Author of ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ ‘The Squatter’S Dream,’ ‘The Miner’S Right,’ etc. In Three Volumes VOL. III London Macmillan and Co. and New York 1890 All rights reserved CHAPTER XXIV In the strange exceptional condition of nervous tension up to which that marvellous instrument, the human ‘harp of a thousand strings,’ is capable of being wound, under the pressure of dread and perplexity, there is a type of visitor whose face is always hailed with pleasure. This is a fact as unquestionable as the converse proposition. For the _bien-venu_ under such delicate and peculiar circumstances, helpfulness, sympathy, and decision are indispensable. Of no avail are weakly condolences or mild assenting pity. The power to dispense substantial aid may or may not be wanting. But the friend in need must have the moral power and clearness of mental vision which render decisiveness possible and just. His fiat, favourable or unfavourable, lets in the light, separates real danger from undefined terror, offers security for well-grounded hope, or persuades to the calmness of resignation. A man so endowed, in a very unusual degree, was Mr. Levison. Deriving his leading characteristics from Nature’s gift—very scantily supplemented by education—he yet possessed the rare qualities of apprehensive acuteness, intrepidity, and discrimination in such measure and proportion as a hundred prize-takers at competitive examinations might have vainly hoped to emulate. Like that Australian judge, of whom the American citizen, in an inland assize town, is reported to have said, ‘Wal, Judge Shortcharge may be right, or he may be wrong, but he _decides_. I go for the judge myself.’ Abstinens Levison much resembled that brief but weighty legal luminary, in that, after due consideration of any case concerning which he was minded to give judgment, his verdict was clear and irrevocable. For this reason the soul of Ernest Neuchamp was glad within him at the prospect of hearing from the lips of the grave, undemonstrative, unwavering pastoralist words of comfort or of rebuke, which would be to him as the Oracles of the Gods.