In the ecstasy of the moment Ernest Neuchamp forgot the fortune he had gained, the bride whom he had won, the home of his youth, the grand and glorious future, the not uneventful past. All things seemed as dreams and visions by the side of this grand and living Reality. As he sat on his horse and gazed, still flowed the glorious wave into the century-dry basin by the channel which he, Ernest Neuchamp, had, in defiance of Nature, opinion, and society, conceived, formed, and successfully completed. Seasons might come and go; another dry time might come; the water might periodically evaporate and disappear,—but nothing could evade the great fact henceforth in the history of the land, that he had established the connection between the river and this distant, long-dry, unthought-of reservoir. There would be no more hint or menace of Neuchamp’s Folly—more likely, Neuchamp’s River. Lake Neuchamp! Pshaw! it was an inland sea. Why not name it now? Why not render immortal, not his own perhaps ancient patronymic, but the lovely and beloved name of his soul’s divinity? Now was the hour, the minute, when the virgin waters were falling for the first time in creation into the flower-besprinkled lap of the green earth before their eyes! ‘Charley, my boy,’ he said to Mr. Banks, ‘take off your hat. Piambook, do liket me,’ he said, removing his own. ‘I name this water, now about to be filled for the first time within the memory of man, “Lake Antonia.” So mote it be. Hip, hip, hurrah!‘ and the echoes of the waste rang to the unfamiliar sounds of the great British shout of welcome, of salutation, of battle-joy, of deathdefiance, which England’s friends and England’s foes have had ere now just cause to know. ‘Hurrah!’ joined in Charley Banks with genuine feeling. ‘By George! I never thought to see this sight—last year particularly; but, of course, we might have known it wasn’t going to be dry always, as Levison said. We don’t see far beyond our noses, most of us. But it _was_ hard to conjure up any notion of a regular out-and-out waterfall like this with a twelvemonth’s dust, and last year’s burnt feed keeping as black as the day it took fire. I believe there will be thirty feet of water in this when it’s full up, and it soon will be at this rate.’ ‘Budgeree tumble down water that one,’ said Piambook. ‘Old man blackfellow yabber, debil-debil, make a light here when he yan long that one scrub.’ Another occasion of congratulation awaited Mr. Neuchamp, the pleasure and pride accompanying which were perhaps only second in degree to the feelings inspired by the engineering triumph of Lake Antonia. His stud of Austral-Arabian horses had shared in the general advance and development of the property; they were now a perfect marvel of successful rearing.