Roland Massinger remained in New Zealand until his health was thoroughly re-established, when, having received the welcome intelligence that Mr. Hamon de Massinger, an old bachelor and a distant relation, had left him a very large fortune, he so far modified his thirst for adventure and heroic colonization as to take his passage to England, where his lawyers advised that his presence was absolutely necessary. Upon his arrival, he lost no time in visiting his county and looking up his friends, who made a tremendous hero of him, and would by no means allow him to deny astonishing feats of valour performed during the Maori war. He also discovered that his Australian successor, though most popular in the county, had become tired of the unrelieved comfort and too pronounced absence of adventure in English country life. The sport, the society, the farming even, so restricted as to be minute in his eyes, all had become uninteresting to the ex-pioneer, not yet old enough to fall out of the ranks of England's empire-makers. These considerations, coupled with a fall in wool, and the rumour of a drought, widespread and unprecedented in severity, decided Mr. Lexington to return to the land of his birth. His elder daughter had married satisfactorily, and settled in the county. "She had," she averred, "no ultra-patriotic longings. England, with an annual trip to the Continent, was good enough for her. She doubted whether George would care for Australia. Then there was the dear baby, who was too young to travel. She was truly sorry to part from her family, but as the voyage was now only a matter of five weeks by the P. and O. or the Messageries boats, she could come out and see them every other year, at any rate." As for the younger girl, she began to pine for the plains and forests amid which her childhood had been passed. England was a sort of fairyland, no doubt. Climate lovely and cool, and the people kind and charming; but somehow the old country--that is, the new country--where they had been born and bred, seemed to have prior claims. She would not be sorry to see the South Head Lighthouse again and Sydney Harbour. The eldest son had gone more than a year ago. He was very glad, he wrote, that he had done so. One manager had become extravagant; another had taken to drinking. Everybody seemed to think that they (the family) had left Australia for good. There was such a thing as the master's eye, without doubt. Such had been his experience. He would tell them more when he saw them.