enty of go in them and willingness to work, will get on up country here
if they can once manage to get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one
penny to rattle against another.

'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it is a wild border-land
I live on. There are wild beasts in the hill jungles yet, and there are
wilder men--the Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live to
fight them once again.'

'I don't think _we'll_ fear the Indians _very_ much,' said my bold brother
Donald.

'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to solve the problem
that we stood face to face with--namely, how to begin to do something.'

'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've taken out with me
waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as a wife. Next week, too, I expect a
ship from Glasgow to bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I
picked myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices, hands
as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's. And, more than all this, we
are trying to form a little colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold
our own against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse. Ah!
boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it! We have just to
settle down a bit and work with a will and a steady purpose, then we'll
fear competition neither with Australia nor the United States of America
either.

'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you face to face with fate
and fortune.

"Now's the day and now's the hour,
See the front of battle lower."

Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for any lad who
feared to face it.

'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking up, and she'll want a
cup o' tea.'

CHAPTER IX.

SHOPPING AND SHOOTING.

We all went to Moncrieff's wedding, and it passed off much the same way as
do weddings in other parts of the world. The new Mrs. Moncrieff was a very
modest and charming young person indeed, and a native of our sister
island--Ireland. I dare say Moncrieff loved his wife very much, though
there was no extra amount of romance about his character, else he would
hardly have spoken about his wife and a truck-load of wire fencing in the
self-same sentence. But I dare say this honest Scot believed that wire
fencing was quite as much a matter of necessity in the Silver West as a
wife was.

As for my brothers and me, and even aunt, we wer