settled elsewhere.  They grieved that I had been banished from the romantic associations and the high civilization of Melrose to rough it in the wilds, while my heart was full of thankfulness that I had moved to the wider spaces and the more varied activities of a new and progressive colony.  My dear old teacher was still alive, though the school had been closed for many years.  She lived at St. Mary’s with her elder sister, who had taught me sewing and had done the housekeeping, but she herself was almost blind, and a girl came every day to read to her for two or three hours.  She told me what a good thing it was that she knew all the Psalms in the prose version by heart, for in the sleepless nights which accompany old age so often they were such a comfort to her in the night watches.  I had sent her my two novels when they were published, “Clara Morison” and “Tender and True.”  She would have been glad if they had been more distinctly religious in tone.  Indeed, the novel I began at 19 would have suited her better, but my brother’s insistence on reading it every day as I wrote it somehow made me see what poor stuff it was, and I did not go far with it.  But Miss Phin was, on the whole, pleased with my progress, and glad that I was able to go to see her and talk of old times.  How very small the village of Melrose looked!  How little changed!  The distances to the neighbouring villages of Darnick and Newstead, and across the Tweed to Gattonsville, seemed so shrunken.  It was not so far to Abbotsford as to Norwood.  The very Golden Hills looked lower than my childish recollection of them.  Aunt Janet Reid rejoiced over me sufficiently.  “You are not like your mother in the face, but, oh, Katie, you are like dear Mrs. David in your ways.  How I was determined to hate her when she came to Melrose first.  I was not 13 and she was taking away the best of my brothers, the one that I liked best; but it did not take long before I was as fond of her as of David himself.”

I also had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Murray, the parish schoolmaster. who taught my three brothers, then retired, living with his daughter, Louisa, an old schoolfellow at Miss Phin’s.  There was an absurd idea current in 1865 that all visiting Australians were rich and I could not disabuse people of that notion.  Of all the two families of Brodies and Spences who came out in 1839 there was only my brother John who could be called successful.  He was then manager of the Adelaide branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank.  If it had not been for help from the wonderful aunts from time to time both families would have been stranded.  I had the greatest faith in the future of Australia, but I felt that for such gifts as I possessed there was no market at home.  Possibly I should have tried literature earlier if I had remained in Scotland, but I am not at all sure that I could have succeeded as well.  For the first time in my life I had as much money as I wanted.  I am surprised now that I spent that 200 pounds when