would have trembled for the horse; but the
bush steed knows best what he needs, eats
and drinks as likes him best, and flourishes
on it. Smoking hot, the rider lets him drink
his fill, and all goes well. The heat
produces perspiration, and the evaporation
cools and soothes him. Robert Patterson did
not lose a moment in following Sorcerer's
example. He flung himself headlong from
the saddle, dressed as he was, dived, and
splashed, and drank exuberantly. He held
again and again his smarting face and singed
hands in the delicious water; then threw it
over the steed, that now, satiated, stood panting
in the flood. He laved and rubbed down the
grateful animal with wave after wave, cleaning
the dried perspiration from every hair,
giving him refreshment at every pore. Then
up and away again.

He had not ridden two hundred yards,
before he saw, lying on the plain, a horse that
had fallen in saddle and bridle, and lay with
his legs under him, and head stretched
stiffly forward, with glaring eyeballs; but
dead. Near him was a man, alive, but sunk
in exhaustion. His eyes turned wildly on
the young squatter, and his parched lips
moved, but without a sound. Robert Patterson
comprehended his need; and, running
to the lake, brought his pannikin full of
water, and put it to his mouth. It was the
water of life to him. His voice and some
degree of strength came quickly back. He
had come from the north, and had ridden a
race with the fire, till horse and man had
dropped here, the horse never to rise again.
But Patterson's need was too urgent for
delay. He found the man had no lack of
provisions; he carried him in his arms to the
margin of the lake, mounted, and rode on.

As he galloped forward, it was still fire—fire
everywhere. He felt convinced that the
conflagration—fanned by the strong wind, and
acting upon fires in a hundred quarters—
extended over the whole sun-dried colony.

It was still early noon, when, with straining
eyes, and a heart which seemed almost to
stand still with a terrible anxiety, he came
near his own home. He darted over the
brow of a hill—there it lay safe! The circle
within his cleared boundary was untouched by
the fire. There were his paddocks, his cattle,
his huts, and home. With a lightning
thought his thanks flew up to heaven, and he
was the next moment at his door, in his
house, in his mother's arms.

Robert's anxiety had been great for the
safety of his mother, her anxiety was tripled
for him. Terror occasioned by a former
conflagration had paralysed her lower
extremities; and now, the idea of her only
son, her only remaining relative in the colony,
being met by this unexampled fire in the
dense defiles of the terrible Otway Forest,
kept her in a state of the most fearful tension
of mind. Mrs. Patterson, though confined to
her wheeled chair, was a woman of pre-
eminent energy and ability. Left with her
boy a mere infant, she had managed all her
affairs with a skill and discretion that had
produced great prosperity. Though her heart
was kind, her word was law; and there was
no man on her run who dared in the slightest
to disobey her; nor one within the whole
country round who did not respect and
revere her. She had been a remarkably
handsome woman. The whole of the floors of
the station being built upon one level, in her
wheeled chair she could be at any moment in
any part of her house or premises.

The moment the first joy of mother and
son was over, what a scene presented
itself! The station was like a fair. From
the whole country round people had fled from
the fire, and had instinctively fled there.
There was a feeling that the Patterson
precautions, which they themselves had
neglected, were the guarantees of safety.
Thither shepherds had driven their flocks,
stockmen their herds, and whole families,
compelled to fly from their burning houses,
had hurried thither with the few effects
that they could snatch up, and bear with
them. Patterson's paddocks were crowded
with horses and cattle; the bush round his
station was literally hidden beneath his own
and his neighbour's flocks. Stockmen,
shepherds, substantial squatters, now houseless
men, were in throngs. Families, with
troops of children, had encamped on the open
ground near his house, beneath temporary
tents of sheets and blankets. His house was
crammed with fugitives, and was one scene of
crowding, confusion and sorrow. Luckily the
Patterson store-room was well stocked with
flour, and there could be no want of meat with
all those flocks and herds about them. But for
the cattle themselves there must soon be a
famine; and the moment that the fire abated,
scouts must be sent off in all directions— but
especially to the high plains around Lake
Corangamite— in search of temporary pasture.
Meantime fires were lighted in a dozen
places; and frying-pans and kettles fully
employed  for, spite of flight, and loss, and
grief, hunger, as Homer thousands of years
ago asserted, is impudent, and will be fed.

The stories that the people had to tell
were most melancholy. Houses burnt down,
flocks destroyed, children suffocated in
the smoke or lost in the rapid flight;
shepherds and bullock-drivers consumed
with their cattle. Numbers had fled to
creeks and pools, and yet had been severely
burnt; the flames driving over the surface of
the water with devouring force. Some had
lain in shallow brooks, turning over and
over, till finally forced to get up and fly.
Still, as the day went on, numbers came
pouring in with fresh tales of horror and
devastation. The whole country appeared to be
the prey of the flames; and men who were, a
few hours before, out of the reach of poverty
or calamity, were now homeless paupers.