'Just as I expected,' said Harvey, when he had glanced over a few lines. 'He talks of coming home:--"There seems no help for it. Sibyl is much better in health since we left Queens land, but I see she would never settle out here. She got to detest the people at Brisbane, and doesn't like those at Hobart much better. I have left her there whilst I'm doing a little roaming with a very decent fellow I have come across, Mackintosh by name. He has been everywhere and done everything--not long ago was in the service of the Indo-European Telegraph Company at Tehran, and afterwards lived (this will interest you) at Badgered, where he got a _date-boil_, which marks his face and testifies to his veracity. He has been trying to start a timber business here; says some of the hard woods would be just the thing for street paving. But now his father's death is taking him back home, and I shouldn't wonder if we travel together. One of his ideas is a bicycle factory; he seems to know all about it, and says it'll be the most money-making business in England for years to come. What do you think? Does this offer a chance for _me_?"' Harvey interrupted himself with a laugh. Smelting of abandoned gold ores, by the method of the ingenious Dando, had absorbed some of Hugh's capital, with very little result, and his other schemes for money-making were numerous. '"The fact is, I must get money somehow. Living has been expensive ever since we left England, and it's madness to go on till one's resources have practically run out. And Sibyl _must_ get home again; she's wasting her life among these people. How does she write to your wife? I rather wish I could spy at the letters. (Of course, I don't seriously mean that.) She bears it very well, and, if possible, I have a higher opinion of her than ever."' Again Harvey laughed. 'Good old chap! What a pity he can't be cracking crowns somewhere!' 'Oh! I'm sure I'd rather see him making bicycles.' ''Tisn't his vocation. He ought to go somewhere and get up a little war of his own--as he once told me he should like to. We can't do without the fighting man.' 'Will you bring Hughie up to it, then?' Harvey fixed his eyes on a point far off. 'I fear he won't have the bone and muscle. But I should like him to have the pluck. I'm afraid he mayn't, for I'm a vile coward myself.' 'I should like a child never to hear or know of war,' said Mrs Frothingham fervently. 'And so should I,' Harvey answered, in a graver tone.