When they were quieted, Miss Thornton went up to tell the vicar.  The poor old man was far gone beyond feeling joy or grief to any great extent.  Mary, looking in, saw he was so altered she hardly knew him.

The good news soon got up to Major Buckley’s, and he was seen striding up the path, leading the pony carrying his wife and child.  While they were still busy welcoming Mary came a ring at the door.  Who but her cousin, Tom Troubridge?  Who else was there to raise her four good feet from the floor and call her his darling little sister?

This was her welcome home—­to the home she had dreaded to come to, where she had meant to come only as a penitent, to leave her child and go forth to die.

After dinner, Mrs. Buckley told Mary all the news, how her husband had heard from Stockbridge, how he and Hamlyn were so flourishing, and had written such an account of the country that Major Buckley, half persuaded before, had now made up his mind to go there himself, and Tom Troubridge was much inclined to go too.  Mary was sad to think of losing them all so soon, but Mrs. Buckley pointed out her father’s state gently to her, and asked her to think what she would do when he was gone.  Miss Thornton said she had made up her mind to go wherever Mary went, if it were to the other end of the earth.

Scarcely more than a week had passed when another messenger came to old John Thornton, and one so peremptory that he rose and followed it in the dead of night.

It was two months yet before the major intended to sail, and long before they had passed Mary and Miss Thornton had determined to cast in their lot with the others, and cross the sea towards a more hopeful land.

III.—­The New World

A new heaven, and a new earth.  All creation is new and strange.  The trees, the graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the very grass itself, are of species unknown in Europe, while flaming lories and brilliant paroquets fly whistling through the gloomy forest, and overhead countless cockatoos wheel and scream in noisy joy, as we may see the gulls do in England.

We are in Australia, three hundred and fifty miles south of Sydney, on the great watershed which divides the Belloury from the Maryburnong.

As the sun was going down, James Stockbridge and I, Geoffry Hamlyn, reined up our horses and gazed down the long gully at our feet.  For five days we had been passing from run to run, making inquiries about some cattle we had lost, and were now fifty long miles from home.

At this time Stockbridge and I had been settled in our new home about two years, and were beginning to get comfortable and settled.  We had had but little trouble with the blacks, and having taken possession of a fine piece of country, were flourishing and well-to-do.  I dismounted to set right some strap or other, and stood looking at the prospect, glad to ease my legs for a time, cramped with many hours’ riding.