the loss of all the higher spirits of the elder
generation. For the first few years after my brothers had won their
liberation, and could hold property, they had been very happy, and the
foundations of their prosperity at Boola Boola had been laid. Had
Ambrose lived he would, no doubt, have become a leading man in the
colony, where he had heartily embraced his lot and shaped his career.

Poor Eustace was, however, meant by nature for a quiet, refined English
gentleman, living in his affections. He would never have transgressed
ordinary bounds save for his brother's overmastering influence. He
drooped from the time of Ambrose's untimely death, suffered much from
the loss of several children, and gradually became a prey to heart
complaint. But his wife was full of sense and energy, and Ambrose's
plans were efficiently carried on, so that all went well till Alice's
marriage; and, a year or two later on, Dorothy's death, in giving birth
to her little girl, no woman was left at the farm but a rough though
kind-hearted old convict, who did her best for the motherless child.

Harold, then sixteen, and master of his father's half of the property,
was already its chief manager. He was, of course, utterly
unrestrained, doing all kinds of daring and desperate things in the
exuberance of his growing strength, and, though kind to his feeble
uncle, under no authority, and a thorough young barbarian of the woods;
the foremost of all the young men in every kind of exploit, as
marksman, rider, hunter, and what-not, and wanting also to be foremost
in the good graces of Meg Cree, the handsome daughter of the keeper of
the wayside store on the road to Sydney, where young stock-farmers were
wont to meet, with the price of their wool fresh in their hands. It
was the rendezvous for all that was collectively done in the district;
and many were the orgies and revelries in which Harold had shared when
a mere boy in all but strength and stature, and ungovernable in
proportion to the growing forces within him.

Of course she accepted him, with his grand physical advantages and his
good property. There was rivalry enough to excite him, her beauty was
sufficient to fire his boyish fancy; and opposition only maddened his
headstrong will. A loud, boisterous, self-willed boy, with already
strength, courage, and power beyond those of most grown men; his
inclination light and unformed, as the attachments of his age usually
are, was so backed th