Mr. Neuchamp had in his hours of remorse and repentance sufficiently gone over the ground of his errors and miscalculations, so as to be very fully convinced of the folly of this his most indefensible proceeding. He had been thirsting for the words of the oracle. Now that the hollow sounds came from Dodona’s oak, he liked not their purport. The spirit of his ancestors, temporarily oppressed by misfortune, awoke in his breast, and he thus made answer: ‘My dear sir, I am most willing to own that I have in this matter acted unwisely. And the more I see of this great but perplexing country, the more ready I am to admit that extreme caution is necessary in many transactions where such need does not appear on the surface. But I have acted in this, and in all other stages of my Australian career, upon the principle of attempting to do good to my fellow-creatures, and of raising the standard of human happiness and culture. Such motives I hold to be the true foundation of every instructed, christianised, and, therefore, permanent community. Want of success may have attended my efforts to carry out these ideas; but of such efforts and endeavours, whatever may be the result, I trust I shall never feel ashamed!’ As Mr. Neuchamp uttered the concluding words of this vindication of his faith with a kindling eye and slightly raised tone, he held his head erect and looked with a fixed and rather stern regard at Mr. Levison, as if defying all the Paynim hosts of selfishness and monopoly. Mr. Levison met his gaze with a moment’s searching glance, and then, with a relapse into his ordinary expression of judicial calculation, thus answered— ‘I ain’t going to say that you are acting altogether wrong in trying to right things in a general way in life. There’s more than you has noticed a lot of wrong turns and breakdowns for want of a finger-post or two. And I like to see a man back his opinion right through, whether it’s right or wrong. But if you lose your team, and break your pole, and spoil your loading when you’re on a long overland trip, how are you to help your mates or any other chap that’s bogged when they want you to double-bank? That’s what I look at. You’ve got to stand and look on, just like a broke loafer or a coach passenger. What I say, and what I stick to, is that a man should make sure, and double sure, of his own footing, and _then_ he can wire in and haul out any man, woman, or child as he takes a fancy to put on firm ground. But, if you go too fast, and your agent drops you, and you want to help a fellow, why, you’re bust, and he’s bust, and what can either of ye do but sit on your stern fixings and look at each other?’ Mr. Levison’s illustrations were homely, but they had a force and application which Ernest fully recognised. ‘You have the truth on your side,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I see it now—very plainly, too. I wonder why I could not see it before.’