western country; men of all
qualities and shades of vice and virtue; stockmen, mailmen, and drovers;
stray gold-seekers, fossickers, or prospectors; swagsmen who were
_bona-fide_ bushmen, and swagsmen who, as sundowners, only arrived at a
station or a township too late in the day to be given work, but not too
late to participate in the open hospitality of the bush; shepherds,
selectors seeking land, and timber-getters moving on to the scrubs of
the table-land beyond the creek; but men, always men, who brought the
population of the township up to tens, but never yet to hundreds, and
who in a few days had gone further west--mostly--and whose places were
taken by others.

But to that township in the early days of its existence Taylor rarely
went, for even amidst a floating population there are floating jests,
and the man at whose expense they are made does not learn to appreciate
them any the more by reason of new arrivals learning them and keeping
them alive. To the men of the township his selection, which he had
proudly named Taylor's Flat, was known as Taylor's Folly; and the owner
of it, dull-witted and slow of speech, was loth to face the raillery his
presence always called forth.

Away to the south, forty miles from the Flat, was another township,
whither Taylor, when he first took up the land, was compelled to go to
pay the instalments of the purchase money to the local Government
official. On the occasion of the visit when the last instalment was
paid, Taylor saw at the hotel, where he stayed the night, a fresh-faced
immigrant girl. She had not been long enough in the country to lose the
fresh, ruddy hue from her plump cheeks, but long enough to be wearied by
the heat and the worry, of which, experience taught, the ideal life she
had dreamed about was really composed.

Perhaps it was the colour on her cheeks; perhaps it was the winsome look
which came into her eyes as he told her, in an unprecedented burst of
confidence, of the quiet contentment of his life on the selection; but
until he returned to it, in all the natural pride of actual
proprietorship, Taylor was unaware that anything had occurred to
interfere with the even tenor of his existence. As it was, everything
seemed to have suddenly lost its charm; the steadily increasing bulk of
the largest pumpkins no longer brought enthusiasm to him; the
satisfaction of sitting, when the sun was nearing the horizon, with his
pipe between his lips, and his legs stre