scriptions, like all else that he wrote of the country,
breathe an unmistakable personal enjoyment. They are the natural
expression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with which
he surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim's
shins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, old
fellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends in
the sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden.
Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go on
shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, had
foreseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five pounds
on the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking
under the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung at
him, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend
Stockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning the
evaporation of his love for Mary Hawker.

Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or in
describing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figure
so often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own
happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure
mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's
interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance
of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach
an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if
they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good
fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness.

Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited by
persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with
only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of
their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical
exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at
Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice
Brentwood is almost unique in Australian literature.

Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one of
the most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimen
of Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who were
the terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in the
district, and, after