Mac would never be other than our impetuous brither Scot, distinct from all other men, for the bush never robs her children of their individuality.  In some mysterious way she clean-cuts out the personality of each of them, and keeps it sharply clean-cut; and just as Mac stood apart from all men, so Tam also stood apart, the quiet self-reliant man, though, we had seen among the horses, for that was the real man; and as Mac built castles, and made calculations, Tam put his shoulder to the drudgery, and before Mac quite knew what had happened, he was hauling logs and laying foundations for a brumby trap in the south-east country, while Bertie’s Nellie found herself obliged to divide her attention between the homestead and the brumby camp.

As Mac hauled and drudged, the melons paid their first dividend; half-past eleven four weeks drew near; “Just-So Stories” did all they could, and Dan coming in found the Quiet Stockman away back in the days of old, deep in a simply written volume of Scottish history.

Dan had great news of the showers, but had to find other audience than Jack, for he was away in a world all his own, and, bent over the little volume, was standing shoulder to shoulder with his Scottish fathers, fighting with them for his nation.  All evening he followed where they led, enduring and suffering, and mourning with them and rejoicing over their final victory with a ringing “You can’t beat the Scots,” as the little volume, coming to with a bang, roused the Quarters at midnight.

“You can’t beat the Scots, missus!” he repeated, coming over in the morning for “more of that sort,” all unconscious how true he was to type, as he stood there, flushed with the victories of his forefathers, a strong, young Scot, with a newly conquered world of his own at his feet.

As we hunted for “more of that sort,” through a medley of odds and ends, the Quiet Stockman scanned titles and dipped here and there into unknown worlds, and Dan coming by, stared open-eyed.

“You don’t say he’s got the whole mob mouthed and reined and schooled in all the paces?” he gasped; but Jack put aside the word of praise.  “There’s writing and spelling yet,” he said, and Dan, with his interest in booklearning reviving, watched the square chin setting squarer, and was bewildered.  “Seems to have struck a mob of brumbies,” he commented.

But before Jack could “get properly going” with the brumbies, two travellers rode into the homestead, supporting between them a third rider, a man picked up off the track delirious with fever, and foodless; and at the sight of his ghastly face our hearts stood still with fear.  But the man was one of the Scots another Mac of the race that loves a good fight, and his plucky heart stood by him so well that within twenty-four hours he was Iying contentedly in the shade of the Quarters, looking on, while the homestead shared the Fizzer’s welcome with Mac and Tam and a traveller or two.