omestead, gathering
round a great, crackling log-fire to talk over the wonderful days ahead.

Early in the morning they were again on the road for a small country
town where lived Mac's Colonel. Pleasant indeed were those hours,
riding ever over the glorious hills and down in the valleys, and as
they rode along the world seemed a wonderful place.

The Colonel met Mac's anxious inquiries, as to whether there was any
chance of his getting away, with a cheery laugh.

"No doubt about it, my boy. You'll be all right."

But he was not able to relieve Charley's anxiety as to what was taking
place in infantry regiments. He told them of the Advance Guard which
lay at anchor in Port Nicholson awaiting orders to sail at any moment
for an unknown destination, but said it was no use trying to get away
with it, as it was composed only of infantry regiments from the cities.

It was well towards midnight when they returned, Mac in absolute peace
of mind, but Charley still unsettled. His headquarters were a hundred
miles away, and their sport of a host spent the following day running
them down in his car, so that Charley might have final satisfaction,
and that night, as the car spun homeward hour after hour through the
darkness, there was no marring thought in the minds of the two would-be
campaigners.

Mac seized two hours' sleep on a sofa, and then crept away into the
night to catch a mail train which, rumbling northwards through the
hills in the small hours, sometimes stopped near here to water. Late
the next afternoon he acquainted his relatives of his intentions, spent
a day or two with them, wished them a cheery farewell, and early the
next Sunday, ere the morning mists in the gullies had fled before the
first rays, he was again riding up the hill to the old homestead. He
slung his civilian clothes into his tin box, cast his eye rather
sorrowfully over his agricultural books as he stowed them away in a
kerosene case, and regarded his bare walls whimsically as he removed
from them his few precious photos and one or two quaint sketches. He
wondered vaguely while he donned his khaki breeches and puttees what
strange lands he might wander in, what queer beds might be his, and
what great adventures he might have ere he would again take that mufti
from the tin trunk. And would this fine old station life ever be his
again? In the evening he rode to neighbouring homesteads to bid
farewell to many whose homes had been his, a