Thus Joe Freeman, after considerable ciphering, made out that he could ‘take up’ for himself and his three younger children a total of twelve hundred and eighty acres of first-class land! He had determined that as long as there was an alluvial flat in the colony his choice should not consist of _bad_ land. Added to this would be a pre-emptive grazing right of three times the extent. This would come to three thousand eight hundred and forty acres, which, added to the freehold of twelve hundred and eighty acres, gave a total of five thousand one hundred and twenty acres. The entire use of this territory he could secure by a payment of five shillings per acre for the _freehold portion_ only—say, three hundred and twenty pounds. ‘Of course his three children were compelled, by law, to reside on their selections. As two of these were under five years old, some difficulty in the carrying out of the apparently stringent section No. 18 might be anticipated. This difficulty was utterly obliterated by building his cottage _exactly_ upon the intersecting lines of the four half-sections, thus: [Illustration: Diagram] By this clever contrivance Mary Ellen, the baby, as well as Bob, aged three years, were ‘residing upon their selections’ when they were in bed at night, inasmuch as that haven of rest (for the other members of the family) was carefully placed across the south line which divided the estates. Nor was this all. Bill Freeman took up a similar quantity of land in precisely the same way, locating it about a mile from his brother’s selection, so that as it was clearly not worth any other selector’s while to come between them, they would probably have the use of another section or two of land for nothing. The squatter on whose run this little sum was worked out was a struggling, burdened man, unable to buy out or borrow. He was ruined. But the individual, in all ages, has suffered for the State. Mr. Neuchamp’s Australian career had now reached a point when life, however heroic, is generally conceded to be less adventurous. His end, in a literary sense, is near. We feel bound in honour, however, to add the information, that upon the assurance of Mr. Frankston that they could not leave New South Wales temporarily at a more prosperous time, Ernest Neuchamp resolved once more to tempt the main, and to taste the joy of revisiting, with his Australian bride, his ancestral home. Having taken the precaution to call a council of the most eminent floriculturists of flower-loving Sydney to his aid, he procured and shipped a case of orchidaceous plants, second to none that had ever left the land, for the delectation of his brother Courtenay. He had long since paid the timely remittance which had so lightened his load of anxiety in the ‘dry season’ at Rainbar, with such an addition of ‘colonial interest’ as temporarily altered the views of the highly conservative senior as to the soundness of Australian securities.