One wonders if it ever occurred to these snug-comfort loving cits, as daily they drove home to pleasant villas and luxurious surroundings—did it ever occur to them, after the second glass of old port, to what a life of wretchedness, solitude, and sordid surroundings their griping parsimony was condemning the unlucky exile from civilisation, who was hopelessly chained to their ledger? For him no beeswing port, no claret of Bordeaux. He drank his ‘Jack the Painter’ tea milkless, most probably, and flavoured with blackest sugar, occasionally stimulating his ideality with ration rum or villainous dark brandy. Though his the brain that planned, the hand that carried out long desert wayfarings of exploration—long, toilsome drudgeries of stock travelling to lone untrodden wilds; his the frame that withered, the eye that dimmed, the health that failed, the blood that flowed, ere the process of colonising, progression, and commercial extension was complete. Thus land was occupied, villages sprang up, inter-communication was established, and the wilderness subdued. All the magnificent results of civilisation were brought about over territories of incredible area by the intelligence, enterprise, and energy of one individual. And he, too often, when the battle was won, the standard hoisted, and the multitude pouring over the breach, found himself a beggared and a broken man. Mr. Neuchamp, after due preliminaries, entered the office of Messrs. Sticker and Pugsley, with whom he had an interview by no means of a disagreeable character. The senior partner, an elderly, gray-haired personage, showed much of the formal politeness which is commonly thought to distinguish the gentleman of ‘the old school.’ He received Ernest courteously, begged that he would take a chair, alluded to the weather, deplored the arrival of the mosquitoes, to which the rain and the spring in conjunction had been jointly favourable, requested to know whom he had the honour of receiving, and finally desired information as to the particular mode in which he could be of service to him. ‘I have been informed,’ said Ernest, ‘that your firm are agents for the Mildool station, and that it is in the market. I have come to request that you will put it under offer to me, as I have some intention of purchasing a property of that sort.’