from hands not too clean, morally or otherwise; and one or two tiny patchouli-scented notes, which he flung from him with a gesture of indifference which his fair correspondents, had they seen it, would scarcely have approved. There was one official letter, bearing the superscription of Her Majesty's Service, which he hurriedly broke open. Its contents, however, did not seem to please him, for with a muttered oath he threw it on one side. He opened one of the soiled ones we have alluded to, and began to peruse it, evidently with great interest, till turning the page he gave vent to a still stronger expletive, that made Tom look up with astonishment at this unusual display of annoyance on the part of his undemonstrative guest.

"What's up now, Aubrey?" he enquired, leaving his own letters, which mostly seemed advertisements from veterinary surgeons and vendors of every known kind of food for horses, cattle, and game. "What are you looking so savage about?

Has your latest flame extinguished herself by bolting with the Honourable Somebody? or has 'Stella,' the Doncaster favourite, been eclipsed by some other star?" and Tom, who was tolerably au courant with Aubrey's betting entanglements, looked interested and curious.

"Far worse, my dear fellow; I hear there is an ugly whisper of scratching Alabaster, and the betting on her has been tremendous. It's a shameful business; I am involved to the tune of some hundreds, and after last month's work the prospect is black indeed." Aubrey passed his hand over his brow like one in pain. "I might "I might tide over it as I have done so often, with my uncle's assistance, but just now-just now, when I hoped good luck was coming, about the only time I ever cared for it! Hitherto the excitement was all I wanted; win or lose little mattered, except the slight inconvenience of being temporarily hard up." He rose from his chair and walked up and down the room thoroughly perturbed, and what was stranger still, showing unmistakably his annoyance.

"Why man, what ever has upset you? Surely the disappointment of

not pocketing a few thousands, or the loss of some hundreds, will not make you give up like that. Is it a worse business than you admit, Aubrey? I am not a rich man, but you know, my dear fellow, a friend can call upon me if he need it-and no one more than yourself"

"I know it-I know it well;" and for once in his life Captain Aubrey Elliott felt really grateful; for there are few who cannot feel a thrill of gratitude at kindness offered in their extreme need, let them be what they may. As circumstances were, never before had Aubrey so desired wealth, or so coveted his neighbour's goods.

"Do not speak more of it; it's not the losses I am grieving for, but the flinging to the winds all the hopes and other thoughts I have entertained for weeks. Had luck attended me this time, I would have believed my good angel was in the ascendant, and that a future I had never dreamed of lay before me."

"Aubrey, you are not in your right. senses. If this piece of bad work takes place, it is the best thing that could happen to you. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and perhaps though you can now only see in it disappointment and misfortune, you will get out of it the best piece of good going. Your revelations of last night enable me to guess what you are driving at; and indeed you must be mad to throw everything you have hitherto considered desirable to the mischief, for the sake of the fair face of a girl, whom three weeks ago you did not know. I will suppose the best" (and Tom showed he could be sensible and give good advice when occasion called for it), "and say you had the money and married the girl. After the rush of sentiment was over, what sort of a position would you both find yourselves in? have not trained yourself to be satisfied with moderate means or prospects, and what you have required all your life would be met only by the gratification of a foolish passion that from its intensity must soon be over. Your

You

desires would then all revert to your former certain position, which would be lost for ever. Your wife being

unaccustomed to that which even your reduced circumstances would give her, could not understand your longing for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and would bitterly resent it. Thus your grand plans of eternal happiness would, I take it, soon vanish into thin air, to say nothing of your uncle and the rest of it. Come, my boy, give this business up. You are engaged to one girl; what is the use of thinking of another? I will say nothing further, than just that I should steadily set my face against it. Remember, though she is poor, it is a lady who is concerned ; and however seemingly unprotected, there are those about her who would take her part."

"It is easy for you to argue in that way, Tom," said Aubrey; "but the happiness of my life is at stake. I shall not lightly resign her."

Pray, what do you intend doing, then ?"

"I cannot say yet. I must, I expect, run up to town about those wretched debts. I have an intimation this morning that the regiment may be ordered to Malta shortly. Who knows what may turn up? If my uncle will only lend a helping hand this time, and I am sure he will, I shall get straight and start afresh."

"That won't be very honourable of you, to my thinking, Aubrey, to take the old man's money on the faith of

your engagement to his daughter, and then bolt with someone else. My dear fellow," Tom added, "if you will only reflect quietly, you will see the whole affair in the same light as I do. You will recognise that in honour there is but one line of action open to you." Tom rose as he spoke.. "We won't discuss this further now. I hear the dog-cart coming round. Will you soon be ready? A brisk drive will do you no end of good. Get the cobwebs out of your brain; and as confession is good for all things-mind, body, and soul-let's hear how this confounded: business came about, and let's look to the end while we can."

Aubrey said nothing further, but picked up his letters and left the room. He soon returned, however, to take his seat beside his host, who was already seated, reins in hand, saying the usual soft things to his restless mare; while Phil, the stable lad, seemed to be straining every sinew and joint in his body to hold her in. Aubrey was up in a moment, and on Phil letting her have her head, the beauty, for beauty she was, by way of thanks, nearly knocking off his, dashed off at lightning speed. Aubrey had regained his usual nonchalance, and Tom was not without hope as to the good effect of his remonstrances.

(To be continued.)

AMONG THE HILLS.

BY JAMES HINGSTON.

"A change of air" is held to be a
good thing, though we see many people
get on very well without it. A million-
aire, of multiplied millions strength, is
known to me as not having had a
holiday or change of air for forty years.
In feminine utterances a few words
mean much, though many words often
enough mean nothing. "Wanting a
change" is a formula used by the
ladies, and great is the meaning there-
of. If notice be given to it, the fact
will be observed that womankind are
generally first in the favouring and
making of changes. While our bachelor
friends stick on, decade after decade, at
the same residences, most of our mar-
ried acquaintances have changed their
localities
many times.
A married
friend of mine tells me that he has
had seventeen changes of residence in
the sixteen years of his married life.
"It is not my doings," he says, as if he
thought some apology necessary for
such erratic instability.

After breathing town atmosphere, a
sniff of sea air is very gratefully re-
ceived. So, after much inhaling of a
marine air, is the aroma of the bush,
the smell of gum and of gumtrees, and
that indescribable odour which would
tell us, though blindfolded, of our
being in the bush as plainly as the salt
water bespeaks its presence to sea-
shore visitors. Tiring for a time of all
the agreeable things which civilisation
supplies at head-quarters, we seek a
change with all its attendant discom-
forts. We never know when we are
well off. At home we picture happi-
ness in being abroad. We go away,
only the better to perceive how much
better off we were when at home.
"As You Like It," the fool gives the
philosophy of travel. He says "And
now I am in the Forest of Arden; and
the more fool I! When I was at home
I was in a much better place, but
travellers must be content." Shak-

In

speare's fools say many wise things. By their lips he uttered much of what was the advanced thought not of his time but of one who thought for all time.

For a change from a seaside atmo sphere to an inland one, I am bid to go among the hills. In the bush on the north side of the Gippsland line, I shall find a tract of hilly country between the Beaconsfield Station and the Dandenong Ranges. Perched there among the sunny hills I shall find one, the scene from which the eyesight fills-so extensive is the view all around. A bush-built hotel, called the Beaconsfield House, will supply all the tourist needs for a short spell, as also a change of air of a very decided character from that of Brighton, St. Kilda, Sorrento, or Queenscliff. So now for two nights, and the best of two days of bush life.

A midday train from Princes Bridge Station takes one on a trip of nearly two hours to Beaconsfield Station. It is a pretty and often a picturesque road on either side of the rail for the little time of the travel. Country lanes of inviting look are here and there visible, tempting one to leave the cars. The prospect for doing so is that of a pleasant stroll between old Englishlooking hedges upon red-gravelly soil. These attractions do not delay one however, being but glimpses of the good things which are in expectancy further ahead. In about an hour's time from starting, the train reaches Rosstown. What memories of the struggles of colonial life are brought back to me in that name of Rosstown! The romance of it is a little Victorian idyll worth telling, and well illustrative of what may happen to a man in Australia.

Thirty years ago or thereabouts there came to Victoria the enterprising and energetic Mr. Murray Ross, whose

name I am pleased to see will be preserved to future generations, in that given to what was his once princely estate in this quarter. Mr. Ross made his first purchase here twentyseven years since, buying two hundred acres in what was then wild and remote country. With that farsightedness which can see into the future, this first purchase was followed up by others, until, only ten years ago, Mr. Ross looked upon a thousand acres hereabout as his own property, at a cost of some twenty-two thousand pounds. With the whole

heartedness which was needed to such a venture, he now gave up his Insurance Company managership to begin here a new Victorian industry. That was the manufacture of beetroot sugar. The undertaking was a praiseworthy one, and to its success, or as help to it, there was the Government project of line of railway touching the Rosstown

estate.

The Government railway was not made as proposed-the line diverged elsewhere. In this dilemma Mr. Ross determined on constructing a branch line himself. At such project he laboured to pass a private bill session after session, for years and years, until he obtained what he asked for. Few folks know, happily for themselves, the cost of private bills, but that heavy expense, and the five years lost over it compelled the enterprising owner to mortgage his estate. All along he had looked for promised aid from the Hobson's Bay Railway Company, whom he expected to take over the construction of this branch line. Unhappily, as soon as the permission to make it was obtained, the Hobson's Bay Company's line was sold to the Government, and Mr. Ross was left in

the lurch.

The sugar-works had commenced well, but were found to need much capital. A company was projected for working them, but now came strong opposition from the rival Victoria Sugar Company, and the Footscray representatives of that industry. Those enquiring about sugar and its prospects were bluffed off from joining Mr. Ross, and thus, with multiplying difficulties, his beet-root sugar-works had to

be suspended. Troubles never come
alone, and they come most heavily
upon pioneers. While money had
been draining away over the railway
project, Mr. Ross had, as stated, to
mortgage his estate, relying upon the
sugar-works project to provide funds
for paying the interest. Now that
such enterprise had been compulsorily
suspended, he found, like Samson,
the Philistines come down upon him.
For breach in payment of what was
due for interest, the fine Rosstown
estate was sold privately by the mort-
gagees, on insufficient notice, for little
more than what the unimproved land
had cost long years before.

Mr. Ross might have died broken-
hearted, or have been driven to suicide,
at such ill turns of fortune. He took
a third course, however, in going to
law to get back what he considered had
been unjustly taken from him. The
law does sometimes help a poor man.
In this case it helped him, and he was
again declared owner of the Rosstown
estate-plenty of aid forthcoming now
to pay off the hungry mortgagees. He
set about completing his railway pro-
ject-understanding that he could join
his branch line to the main one. To
do this it was necessary to cross the
line then making to Frankston, which
it was afterwards found he could not
be allowed to do on the level first pro-
jected. It was impossible to meet the
new demands of the Government; who
for relief, proposed to buy this branch
line, and from time to time repeated
a yet unfulfilled promise to do so.

Relying upon these promises Mr.
Ross went ahead with the dormant
sugar-works-importing the best im-
proved machinery needed for it. The
cost of constructing the railway and
renewing the sugar business again
brought their struggling projector into
financial difficulties. "That curse of
public men-the want of pence" has
hampered most of the pioneers of Vic-
toria, and crushed many "enterprises
of great pith and merit." If the good
man struggling with difficulties "is the
sight the gods best love," they had a fine
prospect afforded them in Mr. Ross'
troubles. He had now to sell his large
estate to pay creditors, and, unfortun-
ately for him, to sell in that depressed

W

104

time, a few years back, when property buyers were few and loth to purchase country lands. The freaks of fortune! He can look now at an estate worth many hundreds of thousands, which might have been his to-day had he not tried to improve it. To let it lay idle was not to help "advance Australia" but yet it would have enriched him with that "unearned increment" so many others have undeservedly obtained. The romance of Rosstown will not have been told in vain, if it prove a warning of what troubles await the zealous, the earnest, and hardworking pioneers of industry, and projectors of useful enterprises. Mr. Ross unfortunately seems likely to be solaced only with such sympathy, for the loss of life-long labour, and at cost of his whole hard earnings, savings, and borrowings, some £40,000.

None other of the stations that we pass have such a story to be told of their surroundings, and it is as well perhaps that they have not. "Blessed is the country that has no history," and it is to be observed generally, and as a rule, that in nine cases out of ten bygone remembrances are mournful ones. It is something, however, to meet with a story of any kind and of any place in this new land of ours, in which there is so little that is legendary. I can half believe in the bunyip now, when I hear a fellow passenger talking of some wonders of natural history to be found along this line of rail. He avers that he, assisting at the making of the line, saw that of which he tells. In excavating the rich red soil lying a little further ahead of us, it was common, he said, for the shovel to cut in half earthworms as abnormally long and thick as eels and snakes. I may, I think, put this information away with the tales of those who aver that they have seen seaserpents.

It

Some of the stations, if they recall no memories, cause enquiry. It is as to the meaning of their prettily sounding native names. Very euphonious are Murrumbeena and Narrewarren, the latter meaning, I am told, "road to the sea." Such, and the like, remind one that it is a fine Australian day that I am joying and not an English one-a

en

thing quite necessary when so much that is English-looking is to be seen hereabout. The line is, all the way, a single-railed one, and the pace of that quiet-going kind which takes from one all fear of the disquieting of the nervous system which rapid travelling is said to produce.

Beaconsfield station is quite in the bush. There are but two or three cottages visible from it. A waggonette is in waiting to take up those like myself bound to Beaconsfield House. As it holds but four, and there are five of us besides the driver, I draw his attention to the necessity of progressing with the times. He is alive to the necessity, and tells me that a larger and better vehicle has been built for him, and will the following week be in use. Five minutes on the road we turn a corner and see the Beaconsfield Hotel-a neat little house kept by host Gissing, with an intimation outside that those desiring independent exploration may be here provided with horses and vehicles. To those having a week to spare among the hills to which we are bound, such accommodation becomes a great help.

The driver is an old stager in this quarter- a quarter that eight or nine years back had no settlers in it. He tells me of the history of the place. That fine house on the hill to the right, shortly after passing the hotel, is Mr. Armytage's, formerly Mr. Ramsden's. It is finely situated, overlooking its one or two hundred acres of well-grassed land. To the left are the house and extensive lands of Mr. Gibbs, the M.L.A. for the district and a well-known grazier. The road now becomes hilly, and the occasional walking pace to which we are reduced in consequence gives time for talk.

Our driver is a selector, and one of the earliest in this locality. That is his house-there to the right-in its forty acres of selected land, a comfortablelooking affair of apparently too large a size. The reason given is that it is used as a boarding-house, and, being well known as such, is seldom wanting in lodgers, seeking like myself a change of air. To the left of the road, quite hidden among the trees, is building a ladies' college of some pretentions-of the name of which I have not taken