good cattle-dog or two, which last he made the nucleus of a profitable
breed. The cows and bullocks he left at Bungroopim when the time came
for him to push out, reclaiming them after they had increased and
multiplied in those pleasant pastures like Jacob's herds in the fields
of Laban.

Not that there was any seven years matrimonial question. There had been
no Leah. Or if Joan Gildea had ever played the part of Rachel in Colin
McKeith's sentimental dreams, those boyish dreams had left no serious
mark upon him. He had gone north to a newly-formed station and had
there out-bushed the bushman in his knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of
cattle and sheep and his amazing faculty for spotting country suitable
for either. Here no doubt his descent from generations of herdsmen had
stood him in good stead.

He sold his knowledge to rich squatters in the settled districts who
employed him to take up new country for them and to manage the hundreds
of square miles and the thousands of stock from which they derived the
best part of their wealth. But he only managed for other men until he
had made enough money of his own to take up and stock new country for
himself.

In a few years he had acquired a moderate-sized herd and established
himself with it on the almost unexplored reaches of the Upper Leura.
Life on that river never lacked dangerous adventure. McKeith's father
had owned a station on the Lower Leura--the bank took it in payment of
their mortgage after the catastrophe occurred. That station had been
the scene of one of the most horrible native outrages in the history of
Australia. The tragedy had set its mark on Colin McKeith. Left a
penniless boy after having worked his way to independent manhood he had