sure to find a housewife, for shepherds are as handy as sailors with
a needle and thread.

I shall always believe that some bird of the air had "carried the
matter" to Salter, because not only was he at home, and in his
Sunday clothes, but he had made a cake the evening before, and that
was a very suspicious circumstance. However we pretended not to
imagine that we were expected, and Jim pretended with equal success
to be much surprised at our visit, so both sides were satisfied.
Nothing could be neater than the inside of the little hut; its cob
walls papered with, old Illustrated London News,--not only pictures
but letter-press,--its tiny window as clean as possible, a new
sheep-skin rug laid down before the open fireplace, where a bright
wood fire was sputtering and cracking cheerily, and the inevitable
kettle suspended from a hook half-way up the low chimney. Outside,
the dog-kennels had been newly thatched with tohi grass, the garden
weeded and freshly dug, the chopping-block and camp-oven as clean as
scrubbing could make them. It was too late in the year for fruit,
but Salter's currant, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes gave us a
good idea of how well he must have fared in the summer. The fowls
were just devouring the last of the green-pea shoots, and the
potatoes had been blackened by our first frosts.

It was all very nice and trim and comfortable, except the
loneliness; that must have been simply awful. It is difficult to
realise how completely cut off from the society of his kind a New
Zealand up-country shepherd is, especially at an out-station like
this. Once in every three months he goes down to the homestead,
borrows the pack horse, and leads it up to his hut, with a quarter's
rations of flour, tea, sugar and salt; of course he provides himself