night, where I recruited after the toils of the day. I informed my gallant and politic host that I thought I should go farther west. We parted on the morrow—to his relief, doubtless—with feelings of high mutual consideration.
Years afterwards we had many a laugh about the fright I gave him; and when I was safely settled at Squattlesea Mere, less than twenty miles to the westward, I nearly concluded an agreement with him to rent Tarrone for five years, with the option of purchase, while he went to England. This was a year or two before the gold. The rental asked for run, herd (the same numbers, ages, and sexes to be returned), and homestead was calculated upon the fat cattle prices of the period—£2: 10s. for cows, £3 for fat bullocks; so was the purchase money. I often thought how awfully sold my friend and neighbour would have been, as a shrewd man of business, not wholly unmindful of the main chance, had I closed with his offer. I finally declined it on the ground of the run being fully stocked up—our bête noir in those deliciously simple days, when we thought it took ten acres, more or less, to fatten a bullock.
But though it was not considered good form to settle down too close to a man's horse paddock, it would never have done to have taken the first occupier's word for what was his lawful right of run. By his own account there was never any permanent water "out back." All the decent land within twenty miles was his; the best thing the intending pastoralist could do was to go clean out of the district. Had the Dunmore people listened thus dutifully to Mr.
