“What! begin with another sheep station, and a small one?” interrupted Jack. “Let me die first.”
“There, again, allow me to differ with you, and to state another peculiarity of misadventure. A fellow always insists upon changing his stock. A cattle-man takes to sheep, after a knock-down, and vice versâ. Whereas, it is just the thing he should not do. He knows, or fancies he knows, all the expenses and drawbacks of one division of stock farming; of the peculiar troubles of the other he is ignorant, and so over-estimates the advantages. By this shuttle-cocking, he abandons one sort when their turn for profit is at hand, and generally gets well launched into the other as their turn is departing. Besides, all the accumulation of experience—a fair capital in itself—is thus wasted.”
“Hang experience,” swore Jack, with peculiar bitterness; “it’s the light that illumines the ship’s wake, as some unlucky beggar like me must have said; and which leaves the look-out as dim as ever.”
“You persist in doing yourself injustice,” continued his patient friend; “everybody will concede that you have had very hard luck; you have lost by one fluke—you may get your revenge by another, if you have the wherewithal to put on the card; not otherwise though. As I said before, sheep are down to nothing—at that painful price you are compelled to sell. Why not buy some other fellow’s place at the same figure? When the tide rises, as it surely will, you will float into deep water with the rest of them.”
“What do you fancy the real value of runs to be?”
“From six to ten shillings for sheep and stations, according to quality, not a halfpenny more.” Jack could not repress a groan. “Well, with five thousand pounds you ought to be able to buy a good property with twenty thousand sheep—half cash, half at two years.”
“Where’s the money to come from?” demanded Jack, from the depths of his beard.
“My dear fellow,” Stangrove said, getting up and walking over to him, “you don’t think me such a beast as to have bored you all this time if I had not intended to act as well as talk. I will find the money; you know I have always been a screwing, saving kind of chap. You can relieve your conscience by giving me a second mortgage till you pay up.”
Jack grasped the hand of his entertainer till the strong man half flinched from the crushing pressure.
“You are a good fellow, true friend, and worthy to be the brother of the sweetest girl that ever gladdened a man’s heart. But I cannot accept your offer, noble and self-sacrificing as it is. I am an unlucky devil; I have no faith in my future fortune; and I will not be base enough to run the risk of dragging down others into the pit of my own poverty and wretchedness.”