in such an enterprise; and Medlicot was certainly not a man likely to talk much to others of his private concerns.  The mill had just been built, and he had lived there himself as soon as a water-tight room had been constructed.  It was only within the last three months that he had completed a small cottage residence, and had brought his mother to live with him.  Hitherto he had hardly made himself popular.  He was not either fish or fowl.  The squatters regarded him as an interloper, and as a man holding opinions directly averse to their own interests--in which they were right.  And the small free-selectors, who lived on the labor of their own hands—­or, as was said of many of them, by stealing sheep and cattle—­knew well that he was not of their class.  But Medlicot had gone his way steadfastly, if not happily, and complained aloud to no one in the midst of his difficulties.  He had not, perhaps, found the Paradise which he had expected in Queensland, but he had found that he could grow sugar; and having begun the work, he was determined to go on with it.

Heathcote was his nearest neighbor, and the only man in his own rank of life who lived within twenty miles of him.  When he had started his enterprise he had hoped to make this man his friend, not comprehending at first how great a cause for hostility was created by the very purchase of the land.  He had been a new-comer from the old country, and, being alone, had desired friendship.  He was Harry Heathcote’s equal in education, intelligence, and fortune, if not in birth—­which surely, in the Australian bush, need not count for much.  He had assumed, when first meeting the squatter, that good-fellowship between them, on equal terms, would be acceptable to both; but his overtures had been coldly received.  Then he, too, had drawn himself up, had declared that Heathcote was an ignorant ass, and had unconsciously made up his mind to commence hostilities.  It was in this spirit that he had taken Nokes into his mill, of whose character, had he inquired about it, he would certainly have heard no good.  He had now brought his mother to Medlicot’s Mill.  She and the Gangoil ladies had met each other on neutral ground, and it was almost necessary that they should either be friends or absolute enemies.  Mrs. Heathcote had been aware of this, and bad declared that enmity was horrible.

“Upon my word,” said Harry, “I sometimes think that friendship is more so.  I suppose I’m fitted for bush life, for I want to see no one from year’s end to year’s end but my own family and my own people.”  And yet this young patriarch in the wilderness was only twenty-four years old, and had been educated at an English school!

Medlicot’s cottage was about a hundred and fifty yards from the mill, looking down upon the Mary, the banks of which at this spot were almost precipitous.  The site for the plantation had been chosen because the river afforded the means of carriage down to the sea, and the mill had been so constructed that the sugar hogsheads could be lowered from the buildings into the river boats.  Here Mrs. Heathcote and Kate Daly found the old lady sitting at work, all alone, in the veranda.  She was a handsome old woman, with gray hair, seventy years of age, with wrinkled face, and a toothless mouth, but with bright eyes, and with no signs of the infirmity of age.