THE AUTHOR'S DAUGHTER.
CHAPTER I.
A SAD WELCOME TO THE COLONY.
It was drawing towards evening in the later summer, when a young man was riding slowly and steadily homeward on a rather tired horse, along a rough district-road, which led—I will not say in what direction, or to what locality—in the colony of South Australia. Suffice it to say, that it was somewhere on the borderland where agricultural farming ceases and the great sheep-runs begin, and that it was as beautiful a country as could be seen in all the colony. Even at the season of the year when Australian scenery looks its worst, when the grass is burnt almost to the colour of the earth it covers, an experienced eye could tell, by the length and closeness of the herbage, by the lay of the country and the look of the soil, and more especially by the numbers of
