Yarra had been ordered by Mrs. Macdougal to consider himself Mr. Ryder's servant during the latter's stay at Boobyalla, and as there was always a danger of a man of the Honourable Walter's inexperience being bushed if he rode alone, Yarra followed him on many of his long rides into the ranges, and helped him to explore the gorges and secret recesses of the heavily-timbered hills; but as a rule Mrs. Macdougal accompanied the Englishman, and then Yarra's services were not required. On occasions Miss Lucy Woodrow made a third, riding a hardy little chestnut mare her mistress had placed at her disposal.

These parties were usually very merry, for Lucy had been transformed into quite a daring Bush-rider, and Mrs. Macdougal, accustomed to the use of many horses since her babyhood, could sit anything in reason with the ease with which she reclined in her invalid chair when her languishing mood was upon her; while Ryder, to repeat Monkey Mack's compliment, rode 'like a cattle thief.'

Ryder's horsemanship and his interest in horses formed something like a bond of sympathy between him and his host, too. Macdougal never walked a hundred yards from his own door; he rode every where, and rode hard always. Mike Burton's description of him was quite accurate in this respect. He no sooner got across a good horse, or behind one, than he seemed to become possessed with a sort of frenzy of speed, and rode and drove like a madman. He had killed many horses, and once a fine animal died under him, leaving him about fifty miles from home, with one pint in his water-bag and he was nearly dead himself when at length he succeeded in dragging his misshapen limbs to one of the huts on the run. When Ryder first saw Mack on a galloping horse he was reminded of a goat-riding monkey he had seen at a fair in his youth, and had a convulsive disposition to laughter; but he learned to respect the horseman who pushed a spirited animal through timber at a speed that an ordinary rider rarely indulged in on an open road.

The Honourable Walter was at some little trouble to win the good graces of his host; he admired his horses with unaffected enthusiasm, particularly Wallaroo, the beautiful bay entire that had excited Mike's admiration, reputedly the fastest animal in the colony, and Macdougal's pride and joy. He even consented to be educated on the points of cattle, and to absorb useful information in homeopathic doses about the various breeds of sheep; but Mack never at any time seemed grateful to Ryder for his kindly condescension, and the affliction under the influence of which Mack indulged in strange and disconcerting gymnastics with his tongue rendered conversation with him something of an ordeal, even to a man of Ryder's insensitive character. Mack's tongue seemed to become too large for his mouth at times, and then he obtruded it, rolled it first in one cheek and then in the other, chewed it, and finished with an amazing gulp, implying that the troublesome organ was at length effectually disposed of.

'He's been like that as long as I've known him, and I met him first on the Liverpool Plains in New South twenty years ago,' said Martin Cargill of Longabeena to Ryder. 'He seems exactly the same man now as then.'

'Yet these little peculiarities did not make him impossible in the eyes of the fair,' answered Ryder. 'He has a charming wife.'

'Oh yes but he had heaps of gold.'

'Enough to gild that dome on his back!'

'And a girl had not many opportunities of picking and choosing in the
Bush here ten years ago.'

'Besides, the sex is so compassionate, Mr. Cargill; the ladies love us for our imperfections.'