the foundations of their prosperity at Boola Boola had been laid.
Had Ambrose lived he would, no doubt, have become a leading man in
the colony, where he had heartily embraced his lot and shaped his
career.

Poor Eustace was, however, meant by nature for a quiet, refined
English gentleman, living in his affections. He would never have
transgressed ordinary bounds save for his brother's overmastering
influence. He drooped from the time of Ambrose's untimely death,
suffered much from the loss of several children, and gradually became
a prey to heart complaint. But his wife was full of sense and
energy, and Ambrose's plans were efficiently carried on, so that all
went well till Alice's marriage; and, a year or two later on,
Dorothy's death, in giving birth to her little girl, no woman was
left at the farm but a rough though kind-hearted old convict, who did
her best for the motherless child.

Harold, then sixteen, and master of his father's half of the
property, was already its chief manager. He was, of course, utterly
unrestrained, doing all kinds of daring and desperate things in the
exuberance of his growing strength, and, though kind to his feeble
uncle, under no authority, and a thorough young barbarian of the
woods; the foremost of all the young men in every kind of exploit, as
marksman, rider, hunter, and what-not, and wanting also to be
foremost in the good graces of Meg Cree, the handsome daughter of the
keeper of the wayside store on the road to Sydney, where young stock-
farmers were wont to meet, with the price of their wool fresh in
their hands. It was the rendezvous for all that was collectively
done in the district; and many were the orgies and revelries in which
Harold had shared when a mere boy in all but strength and stature,