Our good-natured cadet, who at this moment appeared on the scene, was only too happy to find some outlet for _his_ superfluous benevolence, and hastened off, to return in a moment or two with an old flannel shirt, dry and whole, in spite of its faded stripes, a pair of moleskin trousers, and a huge pair of canvas cricketing shoes.

It was no time for ceremony, so we women retreated for a few minutes into the store-room, whilst F---- and Mr.A---- made the swagger's toilette, getting so interested in their task as even to part his dripping hair out of his eyes.

He had no swag, poor fellow, having lost his roll of red blankets in one of the treacherous bog-holes across the range.
That man was exactly like a lost, starving dog.

He ate an enormous breakfast, curled himself upon some empty flour-sacks in a dry corner of the kitchen, and slept till dinner time; then another sleep until the supper hour, and so on, the round of he clock.

All this time he never spoke, though we were dying to hear how he had come into such a plight.
The "sou'-wester" still raged furiously out of doors without a moment's cessation, and we were obliged to have recourse to the tins of meat kept in the store-room for such an emergency.