CHAPTER II.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER.

Marmot's store stood at the end of Birralong, at the top of the township
road, which was, in reality, the main road, along the sides of which
Birralong had sprung up. It stood on the summit of a rise which sloped
upwards through the town, so that it occupied a commanding position such
as became the local post-office--for Marmot had the distinction of being
postmaster as well as monopolist storekeeper of the district. One
advantage of the site was that from the verandah which graced the front
of the building a view could be obtained from end to end of the township
to the east, and away along the road to the west--the road which went,
_via_ Taylor's Flat, over Boulder Creek, away to the great expanse of
the West.

The store was a long, weather-board structure of four walls, and a
sloping roof of corrugated iron, unadorned save by an array of
cylindrical tanks--also of corrugated iron--at each corner, for being on
the top of a rise, there was no chance of possessing a well or a
waterhole; and upon the contents of the tanks, saved from the rain, the
residents depended for their water supply. The interior of the
structure was as simple as the exterior. A passage-way ran down the
centre between two counters, which extended the entire length of the
building, and upon which Marmot displayed some of the varied assortment
of articles he stocked for the benefit of his customers. Their range
being somewhat wide, the counters could not hold all the samples, and
upon shelves running along the walls behind the counters, upon the floor
on the passage in front of the counters, round the doorway and out on
the verandah, as well as from the cross-beams of the roof, other
articles were displayed. A man might not be able to buy anything from a
tin-tack to a sheet anchor on demand, but Marmot was quite prepared to
furnish him with tin ware and lamp-glasses, saddlery or axe heads and
handles, wool bales, sacking, pipes and tobacco, wax vestas and dress
materials, flannel, hardware and soft goods, canned provisions and
patent medicines, cotton for tents, boots, hats, flour, galvanized iron
for roofs and water-tanks, barbed wire, kerosene oil, "reach-me-downers"
or ready-made tweed suits, moleskins and Crimean shirts, sheath knives,
cartridges and firearms, fire and life assurance proposals, postal
notes, postage stamps, and money orders, as well as a few other minor
details which might from time to t