The white dress drew nearer, and its grey tweed companion.  The host was once more wasting his story on deaf ears.  “So we started off; and when we got here we went in together.  He had enough to buy a mob of cattle and a dray and team, and so had I. We loaded up with all the necessaries, and hired three good men, and travelled till we found country.  Took us about five months.  At last we came here, and put our pegs in, and I started off to Melbourne for the license—­ten pounds, and leave to renew at the end of the year—­and here I’ve stuck ever since.  Billy, he took up other land, and got married, and died, poor chap!  And that’s his boy over there,” pointing with his pipe—­“and he’ll never be the man his father was, if he lives to a hundred.”

The person referred to was he in the grey tweed, who sauntered with such assurance at white-robed Deborah’s side.  He was a tall, graceful and most distinguished-looking young fellow; but Guthrie Carey was prepared to believe heartily the statement that Dalzell junior would never be the man his father was.

“You shall see the identical hut,” Mr Pennycuick kindly promised.  “Down by the creek, where those big willows are—­I planted them myself.  Not good enough for a dog-kennel, my daughters say; but the best thing I can wish for them is that they may be as happy in their good houses as I was in that old shanty—­aye, in spite of many a hard time I had there, with blacks and what not.  We cut the stuff, Billy and I, and set the whole thing up; and all our furniture was our sleeping-bunks and a few stools and a table.  We washed in a tin bowl on a block outside the door.  Not so particular about tubbing and clean shirts in those days.  Our windows were holes of a handy size for gun barrels, and the shutters we put up o’ nights were squares of bark hung on to nails by strips of green hide.  Many’s the time I’ve woke to see one of ’em tilted up, and a pair of eyes looking in—­sometimes friends, sometimes foes; we were ready for either.  When Billy went, and I thought I’d get married too, then I built a better house—­brick this time, and workmen from Melbourne to do it; that’s it over there, now the kitchens and store-rooms—­and imported furniture—­er—­I am not boring you, I hope?”

“Oh, dear, no!  I am deeply interested.”

“Well, Billy and I”—­the tale seemed interminable—­“Billy and I, we gave sixty pounds apiece for our stock horses, and the same for a ton of flour; and went right over Ballarat without knowing it.  Camped there, sir, and didn’t see the gold we must actually have crunched under our boot heels.  And Billy had misfortunes, and died poor as a rat.  It was in the family.  Mrs D. was all right, though.  She used to send a brother of hers to Melbourne market with her cattle, and cash being scarce, he would sometimes have to take land deeds for them, and she’d be wild with him for it.  But what was the consequence?  Those bits of paper that she thought so worthless