re such a person.

Even an escort had been arranged, as a brother of the gentleman was in
England, and about to return with his wife to Australia; so that I was
at once to communicate with them, pack her up, and consign her to them.
To Mrs. Alison herself Harold wrote with the offer of the situation,
and a representation of her son's need and longing for her, telling her
the poor fellow's affectionate messages, and promising himself to meet
her at Sydney on her arrival.

He must needs await the arrival of Prometesky's pardon, in answer to
the recommendations that had gone by this very mail, and which he had
had no difficulty in obtaining. The squatters round Boola Boola would
have done anything for the man who had delivered them from the Red
Valley gang; and, besides, there was no one who had been long enough in
the country to remember anything adverse to the old hermit mechanist,
and most of them could hardly believe that he "had not come out at his
own expense." And at Sydney, as a visitor, highly spoken of by letters
from the Colonial Secretary, and in company with an English gentleman
connected as was Mr. Tracy, Harold found himself in a very different
sphere from that of the wild young sheep-farmer, coming down half for
business, half for roistering diversion. He emulated Eustace's
grandeur by appearances at Government House, and might have made
friends with many of the superior families, if, after putting things in
train for the sale of Boola Boola, he had not resolved on spending his
waiting time on a journey to New Zealand to see his mother.

He trusted himself the more from having visited the Crees, and having
found he could keep his temper when they sneered at him as a swell and
a teetotaller--nay, even wounded him more deeply by the old man's
rejection of his offers of assistance, as if he had wanted to buy the
family off from denouncing him as having been the death of their
daughter. Often Harold must have felt it well for him that Dermot
Tracy knew the worst beforehand--nay, that what he learnt in New South
Wales was mild compared with the Stympson version. Dermot himself
wrote to his uncle the full account of what he had learnt from Cree and
from Prometesky of Harold's real errors, and what Henry Alison had
confessed of those attributed to him, feeling that this was the best
mode of clearing the way for those hopes which Harold had not concealed
from him. Dermot was thoroughly happy, enchanted with