He chose the site for his house and outbuildings near the creek and the spot where they had bivouacked before the murder was discovered. It was near here too that Craig had made his firm resolve to be a free man—made it and kept it. The spot was charmingly beautiful too; and as his district included a large portion of the forest, he commenced clearing that, but in so scientific and tasteful a manner that it looked, when finished, like a noble park.
During this year Squire Broadbent also became a squatter. From Squire to Squatter may sound to some like a come-down in life; but really Broadbent did not think so.
He managed to buy out a station immediately adjoining Archie’s, and when he had got fairly established thereon he told his brother Ramsay that fifteen years had tumbled off his shoulders all in a lump—fifteen years of care and trouble, fifteen years of struggle to keep his head above water, and live up to his squiredom.
“I’m more contented now by far and away,” he told his wife, “than I was in the busy, boastful days before the fire at Burley Old Farm; so, you see, it doesn’t take much in this world to make a man happy.”
Rupert did not turn squatter, but missionary. It was a great treat for him to have Etheldene to ride with him away out into the bush whenever he heard a tribe had settled down anywhere for a time. Etheldene knew all their ways, and between the two of them they no doubt did much good.
It is owing to such earnest men as Rupert that so great a change has come over the black population, and that so many of them, even as I write, sit humbly at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in their right mind. To quote the words of a recent writer: “The war-paints and weapons for fights are seen no more, the awful heathen corroborees have ceased, the females are treated with kindness, and the lamentable cries, accompanied by bodily injuries, when death occurred, have given place to Christian sorrow and quiet tears for their departed friends.”
It came to pass one day that Etheldene and Archie, towards the end of the year, found themselves riding alone, through scrub and over plain, just as they were that day they were lost. The conversation turned round to Rupert’s mission.
“What a dear, good, young man your brother is, Archie!” said the girl.
“Do you really love him?”
“As a brother, yes.”