turn, gaze at them for a moment, and then
with flying tails and manes, and snorting
nostrils, bound away with a grace of motion,
a conscious enthusiasm of freedom and
strength, that the steed of the wilderness
only displays.

"Whose are these fine horses?" would ask
David, and "Yours, sir," was Donald's reply.
Ever and anon, a huge herd of wild cattle
would run startled at their approach, and, led
by a number of stupendous bulls, dash with
crashing fury and thundering hoofs through
the dark bush of wattle, or the green
hopscrub, and away in the limitless woods.
"Whose are these, Donald?" "Your's, sir."

Ever and anon, on some lonely upland, a
flock of kangaroos would turn their tall heads,
gaze silently a moment, and leap rapidly
away. Anon, thousands of wild fowl rose
with a stunning rush and thunder, from a
rarely-visited swamp, and myriads of parrots,
wild pigeons, and other birds, glanced in the
tree-tops, or saluted you with their quaint
cries. To David's wondering mind, it appeared
like some chapter of romance, like some
hidden kingdom reserved for some great
prince, and stocked with everything that
could enrich the table, fill the purse, and
supply the most boundless passion for the
chace. He returned to his station an
immensely greater man, in his own estimation,
than he even was before.

Here, one of these days he would come
and build a castle befitting his own
importance, a very palace of the wilderness.
Around him he found at some twenty or
thirty miles distance, other aristocrats of the
wild. These were, most of them, half-pay
officers, medical men, or lawyers, who had
found it slow work in Europe, and had just
been drawn to Victoria by fame, in the very
nick of time, when the crisis had swept away
the original race of squatters—the veritable
pioneers of the wilderness—and left them their
places on the easiest possible terms. These
gentlemen's hope and expectation had been,
not the achievement of great fortunes, but
that of an easy and care-free life, a rural peace
and plenty, and a wider horizon for their
children. But a more wondrous fate was in
reserve for them. They thought they had
bought merely an old lamp, but it was the
genuine miracle-machine of Aladdin. They
dreamed only of being gentlemen graziers,
and they sprung up at once, the lords and
princes of a new empire.

Several of these had made a morning ride
of thirty or fifty miles to call on their new
neighbour; and David felt that they were
of a caste, an education, an intelligence, far
beyond his own homespun actuality. How
was he to put himself upon a due footing
with them? The upshot of his reflections
was, what it only could be—a big, fine house,
and a gorgeous equipage.

It was while meditating deeply on these
future glories one summer's forenoon, alone
in the inner apartment of the hut, that,
raising his eyes, he saw a strange and
startling figure standing motionless before
him. He had heard some one enter, but
supposing it the cook, had not even given him a
glance. The man, if man it were, stood tall,
gaunt, and clad in a rude, coarse, green jacket,
ragged and soiled. A belt round his waist
showed a brace of large pistols, his left hand
held upright as a support a long gun. On
his head was a slouching brown wide-awake,
and an enormous beard buried the lower half
of his face. It was a face that seemed shaped
to inspire horror; long, bony, and withered;
tanned by sun and breeze into a mahogany
hue, and from the deep sunken sockets, his
eyes gleamed fiery, yet still and fixed with a
spectral expression on the squatter.

"Who are you ?" exclaimed David, "and
what is your business ?"

"Justice!" said the man, with a singular
emphasis.

"Justice! And why came you here? Who
has wronged you ?"

"You!" retorted the man, and the fire
gleamed more fiercely in his eyes, but he
moved not a limb, nor a muscle.

"Me! Now, Heaven help me! I never
saw you before," said the evidently alarmed
David. He looked hastily round, as if for
assistance; but Donald Ferguson was out
in the woods, and the cook was in the distant
kitchen; if he shouted he would never hear
him. He glanced out of the front window;
all was silent and basking without. The sun
blazed and glanced on the little lake, and not
a living thing seemed to stir. He cast a look
out at the side window near him. He could
see far down the slope, where lay the shadow
of the woods: but all was motionless and
soundless as at midnight. A feeling of faintness
and desperation came over him; he would
have shouted, but the fear of the man's
firearms kept him silent.

"You never saw me before?" said the
uncouth and gloomy figure. "No! this man
you never saw. This blasted, withered, cursed,
and deformed frame you never saw. It was
before the thunder-bolt had fallen on me;
before the scourge of misery had consumed
me, and the vengeance of blood and massacre
had stamped the devil upon me. Then you
saw me, then—young, strong, full of hope,
happy, though fighting with the frightful odds
of life, because there stood precious ones
beside me to cheer me on. Then you saw Tom
Scott."

"Tom Scott!"

"Yes; Tom Scott. Listen! I am a blighted
and blasted tree. In all the world of forests
for thousands of leagues round us, there
stands no such spectre of the woods as stands
here. On me there remains no leaf; in my
veins circulates no sap of life. I am rootless,
branchless, heartless, and yet I live, and for
what? To slay, as mine were slain; to crush,
as mine were crushed; to burn, as mine were