It was all true. Is true. For the matter of that, something very like it happened only the other day under nearly similar circumstances. Hugh Tressider will never more need to undertake to drive cattle from Kiandra (let us say) to the Paroo, or from Mount Cornish to Adelaide, at per head. Elinor and Fairy will have such private lessons and masters and general embellishment that they will do more than pass muster among their European kinsfolk. Bob will graduate at Oxford or Cambridge, and if ever he revisits Australia—as being a younger brother he probably will—it will be impossible to tell him, at first sight, from the imported Anglo-Saxon aristocrat.
And Hugh Tressider, what of him? As he smokes his pipe that evening by the camp-fire—one of the last of the series he is likely to warm himself by—what avenues of enjoyment, hitherto undreamed of, seem lengthening out into vast and endless grandeur, like the Sphinx-guarded paths of Egyptian cities, all ending in wondrous palaces, purple-draped and gold-illumined! The hard and homely present nearly faded out of sight; only by an effort could he recall himself to the rude primeval surroundings he was so soon to quit for ever. A peer of England! A man of fortune! The heir of an ancient name! Free to meet and mingle with the world's best and fairest, bravest and most exalted, on terms of freedom and equality. His foot slipped into a pool of ice-cold water amid the tussocks of frosted grass as he thought of all this, and with a light laugh at the incongruity of his situation and prospects, he resumed his walk around the recumbent drove.
At no distant date the Tressider family sailed for England, when doubtless most of the good things in keeping with their altered fortunes were duly dispensed to and appreciated by them.
IN BUSHRANGING DAYS
The practice of 'intromitting with the lieges travelling on their lawful business'—as Captain Dugald Dalgetty (sometime of Marischal College, Aberdeen) hath it—is an ancient and fascinating, if irregular mode of financial reconstruction. It has always commended itself as a combination of business and pleasure to those bolder spirits who chafe at the restriction of an over-timorous social system.
From the days of the mad Prince and Poins there were those 'for sport sake content to do the profession some grace.' Risks of death and dishonour were thus taken in countries boasting a high civilisation—a short shrift and a high gallows constituting the accepted termination of a period of riot and revelry; and though the strong hand of the law rarely failed to bring the bold outlaw to his doom, certain alleviations always served to cast a glamour around the pleasant and profitable, if perilous career of the highwayman.
Brigand or bandit, pirate or smuggler, bushranger or buccaneer, as might be, he rarely failed to enlist the feminine sympathy, which has flowed forth in all ages towards the doer of bold deeds—the scorner of gold save for revel and gift—the fearless withstander of the law.
The feats of these heroes of Alsatia have been sung and their valour vaunted in the ballads of all lands and ages; indeed they have formed no inconsiderable portion of the material. 'Yo Soy Contrabandista' never fails to evoke a storm of applause from every Spanish audience.
They have flourished alike under the rule of kings and the co-operative coercion of democracy. Monarchies fail to extirpate, republics to suppress them. They apparently owe their existence to some unexplained ordinance of Dame Nature, whose enfans gatés they are. Her forest children they. Lords of the Waste, roamers through wood and wold, formulating thus a world-old protest against the dulness of respectability, the greed of industrialism, the selfishness of property.
Products as well of the careless ordering of new countries as of the stern discipline of older communities, small wonder that they should have arisen in this brand-new, scarce century-old Austral land of ours, hugging the South Pole and dissevered from many of the formalities of civilisation. Small wonder, I say, that amid our pathless woods and sea-like plains, with every natural advantage and conceivable aid from the habits of a migratory, restless, centaur-like population, these unlicensed tax-gatherers should have appeared. Thus the profession and practice of what is now called 'Bushranging' occurred at a very early period of Australian history. The term easily grew out of the natural desire of the escaped felon, desperate from harsh treatment, or perhaps merely averse to toil, to hide himself in the woods which then surrounded the settlements.