the back of the quadrangle was the store, perhaps of all the
buildings the most important. In here was kept a kind of shop, which
was supposed, according to an obsolete rule, to be open for custom
for half a day twice a week. The exigencies of the station did not
allow of this regularity; but after some fashion the shop was
maintained. Tea was to be bought there, and sugar, tobacco, and
pickles, jam, nails, boots, hats, flannel shirrs, and mole-skin
trowsers. Any body who came might buy, but the intention was to
provide the station hands, who would otherwise have had to go or send
thirty miles for the supply of their wants. Very little money was
taken here, generally none. But the quantity of pickles, jam, and
tobacco sold was great. The men would consume large quantities of
these bush delicacies, and the cost would be deducted from their
wages. The tea and sugar, and flour also, were given out weekly, as
rations--so much a week--and meat was supplied to them after the same
fashion. For it was the duty of this young autocratic patriarch to
find provisions for all who were employed around him. For such
luxuries as jam and tobacco the men paid themselves.

On the fourth side of the quadrangle was a rough coach-house, and
rougher stables. The carriage part of the establishment consisted of
two "buggies"--so called always in the bush--open carriages on four
wheels, one of which was intended to hold two and the other four
sitters. A Londoner looking at them would have declared them to be
hopeless ruins; but Harry Heathcote still made wonderful journeys in
them, taking care generally that the wheels were sound, and using
ropes for the repair of dilapidations. The stables were almost
unnecessary, as the horses, of which the supply at Gangoil was very
large, roamed in the horse paddock, a comparatively small inclosure
containing not above three or four hundred acres, and were driven up