the value they would soon reach in the hands of a more patient capitalist.
He wrote at the period of the agricultural panic in the colony which
preceded the discovery of its earliest gold-fields. But his geological
science had convinced him that strata within and around the property now
for sale were auriferous, and his intelligence enabled him to predict how
inevitably man would be attracted towards the gold, and how surely the
gold would fertilize the soil and enrich its owners. He described the
house thus to be sold--in case I might know of a purchaser. It had been
built at a cost unusual in those early times, and by one who clung to
English tastes amidst Australian wilds, so that in this purchase a settler
would escape the hardships he had then ordinarily to encounter; it was,
in short, a home to which a man more luxurious than I might bear a bride
with wants less simple than those which now sufficed for my darling
Lilian.

This communication dwelt on my mind through the avocations of the day on
which I received it, and in the evening I read all, except the supplement,
aloud to Mrs. Ashleigh in her daughter's presence. I desired to see if
Faber's descriptions of the country and its life, which in themselves were
extremely spirited and striking, would arouse Lilian's interest. At first
she did not seem to heed me while I read; but when I came to Faber's
loving account of little Amy, Lilian turned her eyes towards me, and
evidently listened with attention. He wrote how the child had already
become the most useful person in the simple household. How watchful the
quickness of the heart had made the service of the eye; all their
associations of comfort had grown round her active, noiseless movements;
it was she who bad contrived to monopolize the management, or supervision,
of all that added to Home the nameless, interior charm. Under her eyes
the rude furniture of the log-house grew inviting with English neatness;
she took charge of the dairy; she had made the garden gay with flowers