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PLAIN LIVING
A BUSH IDYLL
CHAPTER I
Mr. Stamford was riding slowly, wearilyhomeward in the late autumnal twilight alongthe dusty track which led to the Windāhgilstation. The life of a pastoral tenant of theCrown in Australia is, for the most part, free,pleasant, and devoid of the cares which assail somordantly the heart of modern man in cities.
But striking exceptions to this rule arefurnished periodically. “A dry season,” in thebush vernacular, supervenes. In the drearmonths which follow, “the flower fadeth, thegrass withereth” as in the olden Pharaoh days.The waters are “forgotten of the footstep”;the flocks and herds which, in the years ofplenty, afford so liberal an income, so untrammelledan existence to their proprietor, are aptto perish if not removed. Prudence and energymay serve to modify such a calamity. Nohuman foresight can avert it.
2In such years, a revengeful person coulddesire his worst enemy to be an Australiansquatter. For he would then behold him hardlytried, sorely tormented, a man doomed to watchhis most cherished possessions daily fadingbefore his eyes; nightly to lay his head on hispillow with the conviction that he was so muchpoorer since sunrise. He would mark him dayby day, compelled to await the slow-advancingmarch of ruin—hopeless, irrevocable—which hewas alike powerless to hasten or evade.
If he were a husband and a father, hisanxieties would be ingeniously heightened andcomplicated. The privations of poverty, thesocial indignities which his loved ones might bef