r of sun-stroke or head-ache, and a delicious lightness in
the atmosphere all the time, which merged into a cool bracing air
the moment the sun had slowly travelled behind the high hills to the
westward.

But all these details, though necessary to make you understand what I
had been doing, are not the story itself, so to that we will hurry on.
The shearing was over; Saturday evening had come, as welcome to poor
imprisoned me as to any one, and the great work of the New Zealand year
had been most successfully accomplished. F---- was in such good humour
that he even deigned to admit that his own comfort had been somewhat
increased by my living at the home station, so I felt quite rewarded
for my many dreary hours. The shearers had been paid, and were even
then picking their way over the hills in little groups of two and three;
some, I grieve to say, bound for the nearest accommodation-house or
wayside inn, and others for the next station, across the river, where
the skillions were full, and waiting for them to begin on Monday
morning. Only half-a-dozen people, instead of thirty, were left at our
place, and there would not even have been so many if it had not
been thought well to keep a few there until the bale-loft was empty.
Generally it was arranged for the wool-drays to follow each other every
two days with a load down to Christchurch; for the greatest risk a
sheep-farmer runs is from his shed taking fire whilst it is full of
bales of wool. This had happened often enough in the colony, and even in
our neighbourhood, to make us more and more careful every year; and, as
I have said, amongst our precautions, was that of keeping as little wool
as possible in the shed. Most flock-owners waited until the shearing
should be quite over before they carted the wool away; but in that case,
a spark from a pipe, a match carelessly dropped in a tussock outside,
when a nor'-wester was blowing,--and the slight wooden building would be
blazing like a torch, and your year's income vanishing in the smoke!

Even at the last moment, when the cart had already started homewards,
with the tin bath balanced once more on the top of the mattresses and
boxes; when the house was empty, and I was waiting, my hat and jacket
on, and flax-stick in hand, eager to set out, a doubt arose about the
expediency of our return home. Some accidental delay had prevented the
dray from arriving in time to start for Christchurch with the last load,
and between tw