Mr. Pomeroy Greene, resolving to make Victoria his future home, had emigrated after a comprehensive fashion--not now so common. He brought with him, in addition to his large family, a house, with men-servants and maid-servants, horses and carriages, farm tools and implements, nearly everything which he could have needed had he proceeded to free-select an uninhabited island. Was there not "Rory O'More," a son of "Irish Birdcatcher"; "Nora Creina," dam by "Drone"; the graceful "Taglioni," and the hunter "Pickwick," a big, powerful, Galway-looking nag, up to any weight over any height, and not too refined to draw a cart or do a day's harrowing on a pinch? An exceedingly useful stamp of horse in a new country, most of us will admit, and quite worth his passage money. Also, in this connection, came Tom Brannigan, an active, resolute, humorous young Irishman, with a decided family likeness to one Mickey Free about him. He was stud groom, and a model retainer during the first years of the settlement of Woodlands. Let me not forget Smith, the butler, a decorous, solemn personage of staid demeanour and faultless accuracy of get-up, an occasional twinkle of the eye only at times betraying that he belonged to the Milesian and not the Saxon branch of his widely-dispersed family and vocation. Just thirteen miles from Melbourne, Woodlands was a pleasant morning or afternoon's ride--an easy drive. You left Melbourne by the Flemington road, traversed the Moonee Ponds, finally debouching upon the plain, whence you saw the house, built bungalow fashion upon a wooded slope, with flanking wings and a courtyard, verandah-encircled likewise, facing eastward towards Sunbury, and on the west having an extensive outlook over plain and forest, with the sea in the distance. The landscape was extensive, "wide and wild, and open to the air," but sufficiently wooded to prevent the expression of bleakness. These thoughts possibly do not occur to me as I dress provisionally in shooting coat, slippers, etc., and rush out to the stables to look at the gallant steed that is to carry Caesar and his fortunes, a game-looking Arab grey, fast and a good fencer, the property of one John Fitzgerald Leslie Foster--a guest at the time, and lent to me for the occasion. Only been a few days off grass, though otherwise in good buckle. The certainty of his being short of condition does not weigh with me, however, so anxious am I to have a throw in and sport my tops and cords. Tom Brannigan thinks "he has a great spring in him entirely," and encourages me to hope that a lucky chance may land me a winner. He relates an anecdote of his brother Jim, a well-known steeplechase jock, in a race where the fences were terrific. One of the country people was heard to say, "Sure the most of them would break their necks, but Jim Brannigan and the ould mare would have a leg to spare, somehow or somehow." Much comforted by this apposite reference, I shut the door, and inspect the rest of the stable.