‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear boy,’ said the liberal endorser. ‘If things go well, nothing’s easier for you than to clear off every stiver of debt. See how you have been able to pay off Levison, principal and interest, out of that last lot of cattle, without a shade of difficulty. If the rise takes place which Levison and I and some more of us anticipate, why you, I, and he stand to win something very respectable. You can then give us all a cheque for the amount advanced, and the whole thing is over and finished. Until the drought broke up, I don’t deny that we all had to be very close-hauled, and lay-to a good deal from time to time; but now, with bullocks eight pounds a head, and fat sheep ten shillings—wool up too, and real property rising,—not to mention the shipping trade doubling every month,—why, if we can’t clap on sail, my boy, we never can, and what the ship can’t carry she may drag.’ The old man looked so thoroughly convinced of the truth of his convictions as he spoke, with the kindling eye and elevated visage of one resolved upon a hazardous but honourable enterprise, that Ernest Neuchamp, always prone to be influenced by contagious exaltation of sentiment, caught fire from his ardent mien and tone. ‘Well, so be it,’ he said; ‘I am content to sink or swim in the same boat with you and yours. We have Ab. Levison for a pilot, and he knows all the rocks and soundings of the pastoral deep sea from Penrith to Carpentaria, I should say. As you say there’s a time for all things, I think this is the time to back one’s opinion in reason and moderation. I will go and confront the agents for Mildool.’ Messrs. Sticker and Pugsley were steady-going, precise men of business of the old school. As stock and station agents they had always steadily set their faces against all outlay except for the merest necessaries of life. Bred to their business in the old times when stock were plentiful, labour cheap, and cash extremely hard to lay hold of in any shape or form, they struggled desperately against these new-fangled notions of ‘throwing away money uselessly,’ as they termed the comparatively large outlay which they occasionally heard of upon dams, wells, fencing, woolsheds, and washpens. Large profits had been made in the good old times, when such speculations would have gone nigh to have furnished a warrant _de lunatico inquirendo_. They did not see how it was all to be repaid. They doubted the management which comprehended such sinful extravagance; and they proposed to continue their time-honoured system, which made it imperative upon all stockholders who were unlucky enough to be in debt to them, to spend nothing, to live upon shepherds‘wages, and not to think of coming to town until times improved.