"mere songs," so I cautiously inquired, "Where is it?" F--- seemed
a little dashed that the only question which he could not answer
favourably should be the first I asked, and he replied vaguely,
"Well, it is rather a long way off, but I am sure we can manage it."
A little more sifting elicited the fact that this "desirable
investment" stretched along the shores of Lake Wanaka, famous for
its beautiful scenery, and was to be had for what. certainly seemed
a ridiculously small sum;--only a few hundred pounds. "Of course it
has no sheep on it," added F---; "but that is all the better. I'll
burn it this year, and then turn some cattle on it, and after next
shearing we'll have a good mob of sheep to draft out and stock it."
He further added, that he had invited his man of business and the
individual who owned this magnificent property to dine with us that
evening, and that then I should hear all about it And I may truly
say that I _did_ hear about it, for my brain reeled with figures and
calculations. By bedtime I was wondering if we could possibly spend
the enormous fortune which would be quite certain to accrue to us in
a few years if only we could make up our minds to invest the modest
balance at our bankers in this tempting bargain. I remember well
that I found myself wishing we were not going to be _quite_ so rich;
half our promised income would have been ample, I thought. My
anxieties on that score turned out to have been, to say the least,
premature.

Not to make my story too long, I may briefly say that after making
due allowance for the natural exaggeration of the owner, the run on
Lake Wanaka's shores seemed certainly to offer many attractions.
Besides thousands of acres of beautiful sheltered sheep country, it
was said to possess a magnificent bush, in which sawyers were
already hard at work. Of course all this timber would become our