“All this may seem to you intensely disagreeable, perhaps a little disloyal, but you wrong me. If I might answer your question without more evasion. I would peremptorily declare that I hoped that the new England in Australia would put on the lineaments, nay, incorporate the very breath and body of this land. I know it has not; possibly it could not; possibly pernicious and selfish instrumentalities have made it impossible. Pardon my intractable enthusiasm, but do not mistrust my heart. It is always England’s. The night is too calm, too beautiful, to disgrace it with wrangling. Let us tell the story of the last years to each other. Mine is a short one, and can come last; but yours? Ah! well I know some of it,” and Leacraft, without constraint or any show of vacillating envy, smiled up in the face of the pretty woman who looked down at him, and deeply that woman’s heart honored him for his magnanimous courage. There was a pause for an instant, and then Thomsen began. He rose from his chair, and walking to the railing of the piazza, sat on it, half turned to the paling East, half towards Leacraft, and told the story of the transplanted English nation. That story can be told in more exacting phraseology than the colloquial method permits, and until his narrative becomes more personal, let us authentically review the events he rehearsed, which form a unique historic episode. With the departure of the King from the shores of England, the actual evacuation of the island began, and the means and ways of transferring the people previously thought out, were carefully applied.