of our long journey, and began
to realize the fact that we were no longer children of the desert, no
longer nomads and gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty
good-will that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new homes we,
and all the other settlers of this infant colony as well, enjoyed the same
kind of pleasure that Robinson Crusoe must have done when he and his man
Friday set up house for themselves in the island of Juan Fernandez.

Even the labourers or 'hands' whom Moncrieff had imported had their own
dwellings to erect, but instead of looking upon this as a hardship, they
said that this was the fun of the thing, and that it was precisely here
where the laugh came in.

Moreover they worked for themselves out of hours, and I dare say that is
more than any of them would have done in the old country.

Never once was the labour of the _estancia_ neglected, nor the state of
the aqueducts, nor Moncrieff's flocks and herds, nor his fences.

Some of these men had been ploughmen, others shepherds, but every one of
them was an artisan more or less, and it is just such men that do
well--men who know a good deal about country life, and can deftly use the
spade, the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the axe, the
saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear father had brought us up, my
brothers and I were handy with all sorts of tools, and we were rather
proud than otherwise of our handicraft.

I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table, after looking at his
hands--they had become awfully brown--suddenly said to Moncrieff,

'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing that I'm ready to
wager you forgot to bring out with you from England.'

'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.

'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'

We all laughed.

'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun supplies the kid
gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a pair of coloured ones already.'

'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'

'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad like mittens,
I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'

'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that mither o'
moine--"shortly shank a curn."[5] Who but an Aberdonian could understand
that?'

But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her 'shank,' as she called her
knitting, and almost every third day she turned off a splendid pair of
rough woollen stockings for o