cting could desire; but the residents had drifted into
unenterprising methods of existence, and progress had stopped dead at
the foot of the Great Dividing Range. The great road winding over it
bore the mark of the convicts, and other traces of their solid
workmanship were to be found in occasional buildings within a radius
of twenty miles; but their day had passed as that of the bullock-dray
and mail-coach, superseded by the haughty "passenger-mail" and giant
two-engined "goods" trains,--while for quicker communication with the
city than these afforded, the West depended upon the telegraph wires.

In days gone by the swells had patronised Noonoon as a week-end resort,
and some of their homes were now used as boarding-houses,--while their
one-time occupants had other tenement, and their successors patronised
the cooler altitudes farther up the Blue Mountains, or had followed the
governor to Moss Vale.

Once upon a time Noonoon had rushed into an elaborate, unbalanced
water scheme, and had lighted itself with electricity. To do this it
had been forced to borrow heavily, so that now all the rates went to
the usurer, and no means were available for current affairs. The
sanitation was condemned, and the streets and roads for miles, as far
as the municipality extended, were a disgrace to it.

Exceedingly level, they possessed characteristics of some of the best
thoroughfares; but the wheel-ways were formed of round river stones
which neither powdered nor set, and to drive along them was cruel to
horses, ruinous to vehicles, and as trying on the nerves of travellers
as crossing a stony stream-bed. There seemed to be nothing possible in
the matter but to abuse the municipal council as numskulls and
crawlers, and this was done on every hand with unfailing enthusiasm.

Though so near the metropolis, Noonoon was less in touch with it than
many western towns,--in most respects was a veritable great-grandmother
for stagnation and bucolic rusticity, and in individuality suggested
one of the little quiet eddies near the emptying of a stream, and which,
being called into existence by a back-flow, contains no current. But
while thus falling to the rear in the ranks of some departments of
progress, the little town retained a certain degree of importance as one
of the busiest railway centres in the state, and its engine-sheds were
the home of many locomotives. Here they were coaled, cleaned, and oiled
ere taking their stiff two-engine