ugly kick or butt'----

"'As if I had never seen Highland kyloes! I am not at all feared.
Providence will protect me on land, as it has protected me by water.
After five months of the sea, with only a plank between me and
eternity, you cannot terrify me with kye.'

"'We have few conveniences for saving labour; but I see I need not
explain anything to you; you can think of nothing but your thirty
pounds a year; so, Mr. What's-your-name, draw up the agreement for a
year.'

"The agreement was drawn out and signed Walter Brandon and Margaret
Walker, and the next day I was on the road, if road you could call it,
for the like of it you never saw--sometimes rough and tangled,
sometimes soft and slumpy, sometimes scrubby and stony. I marvelled
often that they kept in the tracks. I rode on the top of a dray through
the day, and slept under it at night. There were four men with us; two
of them were inclined to be rough; but I soon let them see that they
would need to keep a civil tongue in their heads to deal with me. We
were nigh a fortnight on the road, but somehow I did not weary of that
as I did of the voyage, for my wages were going on, and something
making for the bairns of that journey."

Chapter IX.

Peggy Walker's Adventures

"It was near dark on a Saturday when we got to Barragong, which was the
name of Mr. Brandon's station. The master had got home long before us,
for he had gone on his horse.

"'Well, Peggy,' said he, as I got off the dray, 'how do you like bush
travelling? Slow, but sure, is it not?'

"'Uncommonly slow,' said I.

"'Why, you have got worse burnt on the top of the dray than even on
shipboard. Spoiled your beauty, Peggy.'

"'My beauty is of no manner of consequence,' said I, 'it has not broke
my work arm, and that is more to the purpose. Will you please, Sir, to
ask the mistress to show me the kitchen?'

"'You ask to see what is not to be seen,' said the master. 'There is no
kitchen to speak of, and as for the mistress, it is a pure invention of
your own.'

"'No mistress?' I gasped out; 'ye spoke of Mrs. Brandon.'

"'It was you that spoke of her, Peggy; and as I hope in time to have
such a person on the premises, I made bold to say that you would suit
her, and in the meantime I dare say we will get on very well. You will
be really the mistress here, for there is not another woman within
twenty miles.'

"I started back, fairly cowed at the thought of being in that wild
place a