Stangrove’s run was about the same size as Gondaree, but, save the cottages and buildings of the homestead, there were no “improvements” of any kind other than the shepherds’ huts. For stock, he had seventeen or eighteen thousand sheep, a herd of cattle, and two or three hundred horses. These last were within their boundaries in a general way, but were occasionally outside of these merely moral frontiers. So also the neighbouring stock wandered at will inside of the said imaginary subdivisions.
“You see,” commenced Stangrove, in explanation, when they were fairly out on the plain, “that I came into possession here some ten years past, just after I had left school. My poor old governor, who was rather a scientific literary character, lived at one of those small comfortable estates near town, where a man can spend lots of money, but can’t by any possibility make a shilling. Decent people, in those days, would as soon have gone out to spend a few years with Livingstone as have come to live permanently on the Warroo. We had a surly old overseer, of the old sort, who managed a little and robbed a great deal. When I came here, after the poor old governor died, you never saw such a place as it was.”
“I can partly imagine,” Jack said.
“Well, I worked hard, and lived like a black fellow for a few years, got the property out of debt, improved the stock, and here we are. I get a reasonable price for my wool, I sell a draft of cattle now and then, and some horses, and am increasing the stock slowly, and putting by something every year.”
“No doubt you are,” said Jack; “but here you have to live and keep your wife and family in this out-of-the-way place; and at the present rate of progress it may be years before you can make money or sell out profitably. Why not concentrate all the work and self-denial into three or four years—sell out, and enjoy life?”
“A tempting picture—but consider the risk. Debt always means danger; and why should I incur that danger? At present I don’t owe a shilling, and call no man master. As for happiness, I am not so miserable now (if I could only find those sheep). I have a day’s work to do every day, or to decline, if I see fit; and I would just as soon be here—a place endeared to me by old association—as anywhere else.”
“But your family?” asked Jack, rather insincerely, as he was thinking of Maud chiefly, and the stupendous sacrifice of her life. “But,” he said, “your children are growing up.”
“Yes, but only growing up. By the time they need masters and better schooling I shall be a little better off. Some change will probably take place—stock will rise—or it will rain for two or three years without stopping, as is periodically probable in New South Wales; and then I shall sell, go back to the paternal acres in the county of Cumberland, and grow prize shorthorns and gigantic cucumbers, and practise all the devices by which an idle man cheats himself into the belief that he is happy.”
“By which time you will have lost most of the zest for the choicer pleasures of life.”
“Even so—but I am a great believer in the ‘in that state of life’ portion of the catechism. I was placed and appointed here, and hold myself responsible for the safety and gradual increase of my ‘one talent.’ Maud, too, has a share. I am compelled to be a stern guardian in her interest.”