as they were wanted. One horse was always kept close at home with
which to catch the others; but this horse, for handiness, was
generally hitched to a post outside the kitchen door. Harry was proud
of his horses, and was sometimes heard to say that few men in England
had a lot of thirty at hand as he had, out of which so many would be
able to carry a man eighty miles in eight hours at a moment's notice.
But his stable arrangements would not have commanded respect in the
"Shires." The animals were never groomed, never fed, and many of them
never shod. They lived upon grass, and, Harry always said, "cut their
own bread-and-butter for themselves."

Gangoil was certainly very pretty. The veranda was covered in with
striped blinds, so that when the sun shone hot, or when the rains
fell heavily, or when the mosquitoes were more than usually
troublesome, there might be something of the protection of an
inclosed room. Up all the posts there were flowering creepers, which
covered the front with greenery even when the flowers were wanting.
From the front of the house down to the creek there was a pleasant
failing garden--heart-breaking, indeed, in regard to vegetables, for
the opossums always came first, and they who followed the opossums
got but little. But the garden gave a pleasant home-like look to the
place, and was very dear to Harry, who was, perhaps, indifferent in
regard to pease and tomatoes. Harry Heathcote was very proud of the
place, for he had made it all himself, having pulled down a wretched
barrack that he had found there. But he was far prouder of his wool-
shed, which he had also built, and which he regarded as first and
foremost among wool-sheds in those parts. By-and-by we shall be
called on to visit the wool-shed. Though Heathcote had done all this
for Gangoil, it must be understood that the vast extent of territory
over which his sheep ran was by no means his own property. He was