In red hot haste to get out of a Colonial town—where the life was too much like what I had sailed eighteen thousand miles to avoid,—I agreed to my Mr. Gumscrew’s terms without debate. Board and lodging for self and horse, undertaking to do the light work of the farm for twelve months without wages. On these conditions I took up my abode in a wooden hut thatched with bark, on which any well-bred short-horn would have looked with contempt. The sun and moon shone clearly through the chinks between the weather boards; my bedstead was a bullock’s hide stretched over four posts driven into the ground, a slip of green hide hanging from wall to wall, formed at once my clothes-horse and chest of drawers. To the great contempt of my companion and fellow lodger, the overseer, I did put up a shelf for a few of my books, and drive in a nail for a small shaving glass, although not then able to boast a beard. The floor was of clay, variegated with large holes where the morning broom had swept too hard. The fire-place, built of unhewn stone, formed a recess half the size of our apartment. The kitchen was detached, and although small, rather better constructed than our chief hut, for the cook built it himself, and being an ‘old hand’ took pains with his special domain. If I had been ordered into such a dog-kennel in England how I should have grumbled, and devoured my heart, in vain complainings; but now—it was my own choice, I had _hope before me_,—the glorious climate, the elastic atmosphere made chinks and cracks in walls of no consequence; and when inclined to grumble, I thought of the dark den-like lawyer’s office in which I had wearied away the last six months of my European life. After a few days spent in cantering round the neighbourhood, I was ready to commence my light ‘duties.’