A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door, not otherwise over-neat, and smoking a black pipe.
‘Can you tell me where Baredoun is?’ demanded Ernest: ‘it ought to be somewhere about here, I should think.’
‘This is the place,’ said the shirt-sleeved one coolly.
‘And is this the home station of Baldacre Brothers?’ inquired Ernest, vainly trying to disguise his astonishment.
‘It’s all that’s of it,’ said the smoker, with an attempt at jocularity. ‘I’m William Baldacre; won’t you come in and stay the night? It’s rather late, and there is no place within fifteen miles.’
Ernest stared before him, around, and finally behind, before he answered the hospitable question. He made a mental calculation as to whether it was worth while to push Osmund on for fifteen miles over an unknown road in the dark. Finally, he decided to sacrifice his comfort for that night to the welfare of the gallant grey, and to accept the ultra-primitive hospitality of Mr. Baldacre.
‘I met your brother, whom I had the pleasure of knowing,’ he said, ‘a few miles back. He was good enough to ask me to take up my quarters here to-night. I shall be very glad to stay with you.’
‘All right,’ said the elder man, a plain and unpolished personage when compared with his handsome, well-dressed younger brother, who swelled about the metropolis, by no means as if he had emerged from such a hovel. ‘Give me your horse; he’ll be safe in this paddock. Ours is rather a rough shop, but you must make allowances for the bush.’
Sadly and sorrowfully, after he had seen Osmund left free in the small moderately-grassed paddock, did Mr. Neuchamp follow his host into the hut. That building consisted of two small rooms. There was an earthen floor, one or two stools, a small fixed table, far from clean. A bed at the side of the room offered a more comfortable seat than the stools, and upon this Ernest deposited his weary bones and disappointed entity, wondering doubtfully whether sleep would be uninterrupted or otherwise.
The usual meal of corned meat, damper, and milkless tea was brought in by the hutkeeper of the period, whose moleskins were strictly in keeping with the prevailing tone of the furniture and apartment. Much Ernest wondered at the precise mental condition which could suffer two free agents of legal age, the owners of a proverbially rich and extensive run, of a well-known highly-bred herd, free from debt and incumbrances, to live in a state of squalid savagery. He did not exactly put his questionings into this shape, but his manner had expressed a patent astonishment, which his host seemed to consider himself called upon to answer.