DEAR COUSIN ERNEST—I have dared the perils of the deep, not the least for your sake, but _me voici_. I made a short stay in Sydney, but being extremely tired of the dust and mosquitoes, I decided upon the course of travelling by rail and coach to your far-away estate at once. [Here Ernest groaned, a suspicious sound which might have been in sympathy for the trials of a lonely if not distressed damsel, or an expression of despondency at the idea of his own inevitable cares and anxieties, such as must attend the entertainment of the first lady-guest ever seen at Rainbar. He continued the reading of the epistle.] If Sydney had been a more interesting place I might have lingered for a week or two so as to exchange letters with you. Had it possessed that foreign air which one finds so pleasant in many continental spots, otherwise dull enough, I could have amused myself. But being, as it is, a second-hand copy of a provincial British town—I grant you the botanical element is lovely, though neglected—I could not endure another week. I seemed to long for the desert, in all its vastness and grandeur, where your abode is placed. It was like staying in an Algerian town, a dwarfed and dirty Paris, full of _cafés_ and shabby Frenchmen playing at dominoes. I had no lady acquaintances. There _are_ a few, I suppose. So I grew desperate, and took my passage through the agency company; Cobb, I think, is the name. If you have no phaeton or dogcart available, you might bring a saddle-horse for me.—Your affectionate cousin, AUGUSTA NEUCHAMP. Just after the perusal of this letter, which showed that Miss Neuchamp’s angles still stood out as sharply as those of a Theban obelisk—the voyage and change of sky notwithstanding—Mr. Neuchamp was startled by the sudden appearance of Piambook, who rushed into his presence with an air of sincere discomposure very different from that of his usual unimpressible demeanour. His rolling dark eyes gleamed—his features worked—his mouth, slightly open, could only articulate the borrowed phrase of his conquerors, ‘My word! my word!’ It was for some moments the only sound that could be extracted from him by Ernest’s inquiries. ‘What is it, Piambook?’ at length demanded Ernest, so decidedly, almost fiercely, that his sable retainer capitulated. ‘Me look out longa wheelbarrow,’ he explained at length. He had been despatched to a distant point of the run at a very early hour of the morning. ‘Well, what did you see?’ pursued his master. ‘You can yabber fast enough when you like.’ ‘That one wheelbarrow plenty broket,’ explained the observing pre-Adamite. ‘Mine see um longa plain—plenty sit down—liket three fellow wheel. Billy Robinson, he go longa township.’ ‘Well, what then? the coach broke down; that’s not wonderful—passengers walked, I suppose.’