Ernest was at first annoyed, then surprised, lastly, unaffectedly amused, when a highly popular dramatic version of the incident appeared at the Victoria Theatre, wherein he was represented as defying the Count, and assuring him that ‘berlood should flow from Morahmee Jetty to the South Head Lighthouse ere he relinquished the two maidens to his lawless grasp,’ while Jack Windsor’s representative, with a cabbage-tree hat and a hanging velvet band broad enough to make a sash for Carry, placed himself in an exaggerated, pugilistic attitude, and implored the foreign seamen to ‘come on and confront on his own ground, by the shore of that harbour which was his country’s pride, a true-born Sydney native!’ This brought down the house, and occasioned Mr. Neuchamp such anguish of mind that he began to think Jermyn Croker not such a bad fellow after all, and to feel unkindly towards the great land and the warm-hearted people of his adoption. Incapable of being stimulated by flattery into a false estimate of himself, these exaggerated symptoms of appreciation but pained him acutely; they disturbed his philosophical mind, ever craving for the performance of justice and intolerant of all lower standards of right. As for Antonia Frankston, like most women, she was gratified by these tokens of the distinction which had been so profusely accorded to her hero. He was a hero who, in her eyes, though worthy of triumphs and processions, evaded his claims to such distinctions. He was too prone, she thought, to be over Scriptural in his social habitudes, and unless roused and incited, to take the lower rather than the higher seat at the board. Now that the people, wavering and impulsive, but still a mighty and tangible power, had endorsed and adopted him, Antonia’s expansive mind recognised the brevet rank bestowed upon him. After all, had he not done much and dared greatly? Was it not well for the world to know it? If he was to be decorated, few deserved it more. So Antonia accepted serenely and in good faith the plaudits and universal flattery which now commenced to be showered upon the hero of her choice, the idol of her heart, the image of all written manhood. The days which Mr. Neuchamp spent in Sydney after his return from Mildool and Rainbar were certainly more tedious than any which he had ever known in the pleasant city; but at length they passed away and were no more—strange thought! those atoms from the mighty mass of Time—drops from his flowing river—draughts, alas! quaffed or spilled from life’s golden chalice. They were past, faded, dead, irrevocably gone, as the days of the years before Pharaoh, before the shepherd kings, before the dawn of human life, Eden, or the first gleam of light which flashed upon a darkened, formless world!