‘You have my real thanks, sir,’ said Jack, pocketing the symbols of power; ‘I’ve been a good servant to you, sir, though I say it. I shan’t be any the worse if I’ve a good wife to keep me straight—that is if I get her.’
Here Mr. Windsor gave a short groan, followed by an equally brief imprecation, as he pictured the shining-faced giant, in a wondrous suit of colonial tweed, leading Carry away captive to his Flemish farm, evermore to languish, or grow unromantically plump, in a wilderness of maize-field varied by mountains of pumpkins.
Ernest watched him as he mounted Ben Bolt, whose ears lay back, whose white-cornered eyes stared, whose uneasy tail waved in the old feline fashion, sufficient to scare any stranger about to mount. He saw him take the long trail across the plain at a bounding canter, which was not changed until horse and rider travelled out of the small Rainbar world of vision, and were lost amid the mysteries of the far sky-line. Much he marvelled at this Australian edition of ‘Young Lochinvar,’ only convinced that if that enterprising gallant had been riding Ben Bolt, when
On to his croupe the fair ladye he swung,
the layers of the odds might have confidently wagered on a very different ending to the ballad. He did not anticipate that the reckless bushman would attempt to ‘cut out’ his sweetheart from the assembled company of friends and kinsfolk. Yet he could not clearly see how he proposed, so close was the margin left, to possess himself of the fair Carry. But that, if Ben Bolt did not break down, Jack Windsor would, in some shape or form, effect his purpose, and defeat the intended disposal of the Maid of the Inn, he was as certain as if he had witnessed their arrival at Rainbar.
It is not placed beyond the reach of doubt whether or not this matrimonial adventure in any way led Mr. Neuchamp to considerations involving similar possibilities. It may, however, be looked upon as an authenticated legend that although several letters of a congratulatory nature had passed between Paul Frankston and Mr. Neuchamp, ‘since the weather broke,’ the latter thought it necessary to write once more and acquaint him with the fact that early next month he should commence to send off fat cattle, and that he would come down himself in charge of the first drove.
In the austere boreal regions of the Old World all nature, dormant or pulsating, dumb or informed with speech, waits and hopes, prays and fears, until the unseen relaxation of the grasp of the winter god. Then the ice-fetters break, the river becomes once more a joyous highway, echoing with boat and song, and gay with ensigns. Once more the unlocked earth receives the plough; once more the leaf buds, the flower all blushing steals forth in woodland and meadow; once more the carol of bird, the whistle of the ploughman, the song of sturdy raftsmen, proclaim that the war of Nature with man is ended. So beneath the Southern Cross the unkind strife which Nature ever and anon wages with her children is accented not by wintry blast and iron frost-chain, but by burning heat and the long-protracted water famine. The windows of heaven are locked fast. The thirsty earth looks anguished and sorrow-stricken, daily, hourly, witnessing the torture, the death of her perishing children.
Then, wafted by unseen, unheard messengers, as in the frozen North, the fiat goes forth in the burning South. The soft touch of the Daughter of the Mist is felt upon plant and soil, pool and streamlet. They listen to the sound of softly-falling tear-drops from the sky, and, lo! they arise, rejoicing, to regain life and vigour, as the sick from the physician, as the babe from the mother’s tendance.
Once more was there joy in the broad Australian steppes and pastures, from the apple orchards of the south to the boundless ocean-plains of the far north-west, where the saltbush grows, and the myall and the mulgah, where the willowy coubah weeps over the dying streamlet, where the wild horse snorts at dawn on the lonely sandhill, where the emu stalks stately through the golden clear moonlight.
Now had arisen in good sooth for Ernest Neuchamp a day of prosperity and triumph. By every post came news of that uprising of prices which Mr. Levison had foretold, in stock and stations, in horses and in cattle, in land and in houses, in corn and in labour. This last consideration, though serious enough to the owners of sheep, in the comparatively unenlightened days which preceded the grand economy of fencing runs, was not of much weight with Ernest. His adherents were tried and trusty, and neither Charley Banks nor Jack Windsor would have abandoned him for all the gold in Ballarat and all the silver in Nevada. Piambook and Boinmaroo, incurious and taking no thought for the morrow, with the characteristic childishness of their race, dreamed of no adequate motive which should sever them from the light work and regularly-dispensed tobacco of Misser Noochum. With his own assistance they were amply sufficient for all the work of the establishment, now that the ‘circle dot’ cattle, thoroughly broken to the run, had taken up regular beats, and divided themselves by consent into mobs or subdivisions, each with its own leader.