and " Terror " once more ready with a yarn
about Christmas at the Pole, to help out a
Christmas in England.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE BUSH.

IN 1840, on a burning Christmas eve—real
summer weather—two young gentlemen, in
very light costume, were sitting opposite each
other in a bark Bush hut, weary, dusty, and
rather disconsolate. The stockwhips and
saddles on the ground, with half-boots kicked
off beside them, showed that they had just
returned from a long ride. The hut was
evidently recently built, and it was plain that
this was a new station.

"Well, Jack," said the shorter of the two,
"this is a pleasant look out for Christmas
Day,—no dray up, our last flour gone today,
and our last sugar melted away last
week; that disgusting emu has eaten up
all the pumpkins and melons, so we may
dine to-morrow on tea, au naturel, and the
remains of the last cask of salt beef; unless
you prefer to kill a bit of fresh, and eat it
without damper, salt or pickles. No doubt
the dray's hard and fast in some gully, or
safe on one wheel by the Sugar-loaf Range,
and Bald-faced Dick and his mate, if they are
the sensible fellows I take them to be, are
now picking the plums and weighing out the
flour for their Christmas pudding."

"Or, perhaps," put in Jack, "amiably dividing
your stores with a party of Bushrangers. A
pleasant prospect, truly, for a man who has
ridden four hundred miles to spend his Christmas
Day with an old chum—no dinner, no
books, no tobacca. It almost makes one wish to
be sitting wigged, gowned, and briefless, in the
back benches of the Queen's Bench, drawing
caricatures; or reading three services a day
to a Low Church congregation, upon fifty
pounds a year."

"A bright thought strikes me," said the
host, Martyn by name, commonly called
Betty Martyn, because he commenced his
career in the Bush by wearing gloves and
blacking his boots. " Let us ride over to
that Devonshire man's station,—I mean the
man with the pretty daughters. There's a
short cut across the range Bald-faced Dick
made out the other day, that won't make it
above thirty-five miles, instead of a hundred
and twenty, by swimming one creek and
climbing over one awkward bit of hill work.
We'll start at sunrise, and do it comfortably
by ten o'clock, if we can only make out the
bearing right. Our but too true excuse—
the missing dray—is a safe card for a dinner,
if not a dance and a pleasant day or two."

"Agreed," said jolly Jack Bullar.

By day-break they were off, combed and
trimmed, in the blue and red Jerseys, belts,
trowsers, and broad-brimmed hats, that form
the picturesque costume of the Bush: Bullar
on a big-boned thorough-bred: Martyn on his
half-bred prancing Arab, over hill and dale and
plain, through a broad creek, with a quarter of a
mile's swimming, guided by Bushman's signs
and instincts. About ten o'clock they had
struck the river, and running it down soon
came where it swelled to a broad lake or
water hole before the Devonshire man's
station.

They did not know his name, but rode up
confidently, according to the custom of the
country." Hurrah," cried Jack, "no starvation
here: there's a six pair oxen dray unloading,
by a whole generation of younkers;
sugar-plums in plenty; and look at the black
fellow grinding away at the hand-mill—how
fat the rascal looks. Well, we 've reached the
land of plenty this time."

"Why you see, Bullar," said Martyn, " in
this country all the rules go by contraries. It
is Christmas Day, and, instead of frost and
snow, it is a burning sun and green leaves
we are perspiring under. Instead of a skate,
I am thinking of a swim; and, in the same
way, while in old England, very often it's the
more mouth, the less to eat; here, as every
mouth has a pair of hands under it, the more
mouths, the more food. So you see, Jack,
while you and I, with a balance at the bank
to start with, often have to put up with
Lenten fare, this hard worker has contrived
to make comforts we can't buy."

"How be'ee, gentlemen," said a voice in a
strong Devonshire accent, as the owner came
up alongside them, mounted on an ugly piebald
stock-horse, which had stolen over the soft
ground unheard during their conversation.
He was a little slim man, with thin grey
hair hanging long under his broad-brimmed
hat, round an intelligent face, burned a deep
brown; he sat his horse awkwardly, with long
stirrups, his toes pointing down and his bridle-
hand poked out, like most men who have only
taken to horsemanship late in life. But he
wore an air of content, self-satisfaction, and
well-to-do-ism, that bespoke, at a glance, a
man with whom the world went well.

"Have 'ee come var?" asked the host.

"From the next station," said Bullar.

"Zo, we be neabours, be us! " he continued.
"Well, I 'm cruel glad to zee 'ee. Here, Bat,
take the gentlemen's horses and put 'em in
the paddock!"

Bartholomew, a wild Indian-looking urchin,
about two feet high, in a kilt composed of a
Jersey strapped round his middle, forthwith
clambered upon the thorough-bred: how, it
is impossible to say, but something after the
manner of a monkey ascending a camel; and
not a little to the astonishment of the young
travellers, for children were not the kind of
young stock they had been accustomed to.
With a cluck, and a crack of his miniature
stockwhip, the boy sent the big horse off at a
swing gallop, and slap over the fence of the
paddock. Returning as calmly as if he had been
doing the most proper and natural thing in
the world, young Flibbertigibbet observed,