“’We have few conveniences for saving labour; but I see I need not explain anything to you; you can think of nothing but your thirty pounds a year; so, Mr. What’s-your-name, draw up the agreement for a year.’

“The agreement was drawn out and signed Walter Brandon and Margaret Walker, and the next day I was on the road, if road you could call it, for the like of it you never saw—­sometimes rough and tangled, sometimes soft and slumpy, sometimes scrubby and stony.  I marvelled often that they kept in the tracks.  I rode on the top of a dray through the day, and slept under it at night.  There were four men with us; two of them were inclined to be rough; but I soon let them see that they would need to keep a civil tongue in their heads to deal with me.  We were nigh a fortnight on the road, but somehow I did not weary of that as I did of the voyage, for my wages were going on, and something making for the bairns of that journey.”

Chapter IX.

Peggy Walker’s Adventures

“It was near dark on a Saturday when we got to Barragong, which was the name of Mr. Brandon’s station.  The master had got home long before us, for he had gone on his horse.

“‘Well, Peggy,’ said he, as I got off the dray, ’how do you like bush travelling?  Slow, but sure, is it not?’

“‘Uncommonly slow,’ said I.

“’Why, you have got worse burnt on the top of the dray than even on shipboard.  Spoiled your beauty, Peggy.’

“‘My beauty is of no manner of consequence,’ said I, ’it has not broke my work arm, and that is more to the purpose.  Will you please, Sir, to ask the mistress to show me the kitchen?’

“‘You ask to see what is not to be seen,’ said the master.  ’There is no kitchen to speak of, and as for the mistress, it is a pure invention of your own.’

“‘No mistress?’ I gasped out; ‘ye spoke of Mrs. Brandon.’

“’It was you that spoke of her, Peggy; and as I hope in time to have such a person on the premises, I made bold to say that you would suit her, and in the meantime I dare say we will get on very well.  You will be really the mistress here, for there is not another woman within twenty miles.’

“I started back, fairly cowed at the thought of being in that wild place alone, among I knew not how many men of all sorts of characters.

“‘It was not fair of you, Sir,’ I said; ’I never thought but what you were married when you took me up so natural.’

“’But really, Peggy, you are the very person we want here, and I can make it worth your while to stay.  You want good wages, and you will get them; you are not a child, and you can take care of yourself.  It is hard that because I am so unlucky as to have no wife, I am to have neither cleanliness nor comfort.  Make the best of a bad bargain, Peggy; I confess that your eagerness after good wages led me too far, but I felt the temptation strong.  Try the place for a week, and if you do not like it, you can go back.  Mr. Phillips’s drays are going into town, and if you cannot make up your mind to be contented here, you can return to Melbourne with them.’