lity of gentleness peculiar to the best type of strong
man.

Despite my assurance that I never had felt better, they insisted upon
supporting me on either side; so slipping a hand through each of the
young elbows conveniently bent, I playfully put the large hand on the
right of me over the dimpling one on the left.

"There!" I said, taking advantage of the liberties extended a probable
invalid, "I've made a breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young
friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at
that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very
carefully retained the little one, so passive and warm, in its shy
grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark
that he wasn't _quite_ such a fool as usual, which interpreted meant
that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as he sometimes
was.

The trains once more entertained my waking hours that night. Under
Andrew's tutorage I had learned to distinguish the rumble of a "goods"
from the rush of a "passenger," a two-engine haul from a single, and
even the heavy voice of the big old "shunter" that lived about the
Noonoon station had grown familiar; but the haughtiest of all was a
travelling engine attended only by its tender, and speeding by with
lightsome action, like a governor thankfully free from officialdom
and hampered only by a valet.

Musing on what a little time had elapsed since the work of the
passenger trains had been done by the coaches with their grey and bay
teams of five, swinging through the town at a gallop, and with their
occupants armed to the teeth against bushrangers, I dozed and dreamt.
I dreamt that I was in one of the sleeping-cars which had superseded
Cobb & Co.'s accommodation for travellers, and that from it I could
see in a bird's-eye view not only the magnificent belt of mountains,
the bluest in the world, but whirling down their westward slopes with
a velocity outstripping the scented winds from sandal ridges and myall
plains, I slid across that great western stretch of country where a
portion of the railway line runs for a hundred and thirty-six miles
without rise or fall or curve in the longest straight ribbon of steel
that is known. But ere I reached its end I wakened with a start
through something falling in Miss Flipp's room.

Surely I had not slept for more than half an hour, because the light
which had shone in the adjoining room as we returned from Grosvenor'