white apron before him, sweeping out the
shop of the eminent grocer and baillie,
Sandeman Glas, and grinding at the peppermill.
Anon, he was behind the counter, anon,
mounted upon a high stool in the counting-
house behind the shop, and five years
afterwards was out of his apprenticeship,
and off to London with a letter of
recommendation to an eminent Scotch house in
the sugar-trade in Eastcheap. David
Macleod, for it was no other, was one of
those corks, that if you will only fling
them into the world's waters anywhere
will float away to the world's end. No
storm can sink them for more than a
minute; they are sure to bob up again, and
go swimming and dimpling forward, through
fair and foul.

David did not stay long in London. Some
brilliant chance, as he thought, lured him
out to the Cape; from the Cape to Sydney,
from Sydney to Van Diemen's Land, and,
finally, he turned up in the right nick of
time in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, as a
small grocer and dealer in sundries. Here
David plodded on, as it appeared for some
time in profound obscurity. Nobody seemed
to know nor cared to know the rather uncouth,
slow, Scotch bodie, that hung cocoa-nut
mats at his door, and tied up old-fashioned
conical pounds of sugar, at a very small
counter, in a very small shop, elbowed up by
all sorts of miscellaneous articles—soap,
candles, besoms, bags of very brown sugar,
drums of figs, and Bath bricks. But David's
obscurity was like the mole's, though little
observed, it was onwards, and people were
presently astonished by David's purchasing a
great warehouse in Market Square, and
standing forth in great prominence in the
wholesale line. Many a heavy-loaded
bullock-dray was seen to leave his ample
warehouse door, and direct its course up the
country. As time advanced, many a squatter
stood deep in David's books, and when the
evil day came that shook the colony to its
yet but loosely-laid foundations, many were
the wonderings and the queries how it could
stand with the man whose beginnings were
remembered to have been a few years ago so
little and obscure.

But David was one of those men who, in
building the fabrics of their fortune, knock
their bricks well down into their mortar, and
make every nail and screw fast as they go on.
Squatters fell before the blast, and owed
David large sums, but he was found to have
taken secure liens on their stock and stations,
and cork-like, he floated on even more
buoyantly than before. True, David pulled a fearful
long face, shook portentously his head,
and bemoaned himself dolefully, as the most
unfortunate of men. All these dead, useless,
worthless properties falling upon his hands!
What was to become of him? The colony
ruined, ruined for ever, gone out and out,
and past redemption; his money all gone;
his good hard-earned money, and what to
show for it? Heaps of good-for-nothing
sheep that would not pay for shepherds at
twenty pounds a-year each, and rations, tea,
and sugar, and flour,—heaven help us! and
wool just no price at all! And the flocks all
eaten up with scab, and foot-rot, and catarrh !
Was he to run from Dan to Beersheba, from
Gippsland to the Wimmera, after them, to
see them dressed, and washed, and clipped,
or to trust them to overseers, expensive
fellows at forty pounds a-year, and their
keep? Goodness guide us! it was enough
to craze the strongest head in Christendom.
Was he to be the Atlas of the South, and
carry the whole country on his back?
Was one man to bear up under a pile
of burdens, each single one of which had
sunk its man, and all better men than
himself.

Yet David did manage to bear up under it
all; to bear up, ay, and to float gallantly
onward too, bobbing and nodding, though
solemnly, to all that passed him on the
stream. David knew very well that it was
one thing for a man to be crushed that was
already struggling under a burden of years,
and under the high pressure of sixteen and
twenty per cent. ; and another for a substantial
man to "wait a wee," for better times,
with flocks and herds grazing by thousands
on lands that paid a mere nominal rent.
That what was obtained for almost nothing
could not well get less. Nay, David had
most comfortable inward inklings that things
were very likely to grow rather than to diminish.
He had profound faith in the old saw
that when things are come to the worst, they
begin to mend. And now at the worst they
assuredly were,—so this was the turning
point; the cold hour before dawn. Come
the worst that might, his stations, and
herds and flocks would balance themselves
in his ledger, at least half the cost of
purchase being his sixteen per cent.
interest. Come good times and David was a
millionnaire!

And very soon the soundness of David's
reasonings began to show themselves. Wool
was evidently on the advance in the market,
and Australian wool growing in favour.
Next came a wonderful rumour of a mode
of turning the overgrown flocks into tallow,
by which sheep bought at one shilling would
realise ten! David sat down and calculated,
and rose up and rubbed his hands. "All
right!" said David, when he had shut the
door. "Thirty thousand sheep at a shilling,
—fifteen hundred pounds; thirty thousand
at ten shillings,—fifteen thousand pounds!
Good!" And then all the cattle and horses,
and the good-will of the stations under these
improved circumstances!

David had much ado to force down the
mighty exultation, and keep it out of sight.
Keep it down in the lowest corner of his
heart, and keep down the corners of his mouth,