What a glorious morning! We'll take a sweep round, and meet the waggon three or four miles on." The sun was now up, and sending its brilliant rays horizontally beneath the great trees, making every branch and leaf glow; and, as Nic's nag paced gently along, the boy felt as if he were riding upon the glorious elastic air.

He felt very little of the stiffness, only a bit sore inside the knees, where they were pressed against the saddle.
As they passed in among the trees the waggon was soon lost to sight, and Nic glanced again and again in its direction.
"Afraid we shan't find our way back to the waggon ?" said his father.
"I was thinking something of the kind," avowed Nic.
"Ah, that is a great danger away in the bush, and you may as well know it; but we could not go very far now without finding a track or some station." "A police station ?" "No, no," said the doctor, smiling.

"We have police here--mounted police--to look after the convicts and mind they don't escape; but we call farmhouses-squatters' places--stations here.

Our home--Blue Mountain Bluff; as we named it--is called a station by my neighbours." "Then you have neighbours, father ?" "Oh yes, a few miles away.

Mr Dillon, the magistrate, Leather's late employer, is the nearest--ten miles distant." "Then home must be a very lonely place." "We have never found it so, Nic," said his father drily.