For miles around the domain was divided into paddocks, as they were there called; but these were so large that a stranger might wander in one of them for a day and never discover that he was inclosed.  There were five or six paddocks on the Gangoil run, each of which comprised over ten thousand acres, and as all the land was undulating, and as the timber was around you every where, one paddock was exactly like another.  The scenery in itself was fine, for the trees were often large, and here and there rocky knolls would crop up, and there were broken crevices in the ground; but it was all alike.  A stranger would wonder that any one straying from the house should find his way back to it.  There were sundry bush houses here and there, and the so-called road to the coast from the wide pastoral districts further west passed across the run; but these roads and tracks would travel hither and thither, new tracks being opened from time to time by the heavy wool drays and store wagons, as in wet weather the ruts on the old tracks would become insurmountable.

The station itself was certainly very pretty.  It consisted of a cluster of cottages, each of which possessed a ground-floor only.  No such luxury as stairs was known at Gangoil.  It stood about half a mile from the Mary River, on the edge of a creek which ran into it.  The principal edifice, that in which the Heathcotes lived, contained only one sitting-room, and a bedroom on each side of it; but in truth there was another room, very spacious, in which the family really passed their time; and this was the veranda which ran along the front and two ends of the house.  It was twelve feet broad, and, of course, of great length.  Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family.  Here stood Mrs. Heathcote’s sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife’s sister, read to him.  It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals.  Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular quadrangle.  The kitchen came first, with a small adjacent chamber in which slept the Chinese man-cook, Sing Sing, as he had come to be called; then the cottage, consisting also of three rooms and a small veranda, in which lived Harry’s superintendent, commonly known as Old Bates, a man who had been a squatter once himself, and having lost his all in bad times, now worked for a small salary.  In the cottage two of the rooms were devoted to hospitality when, as was not unusual, guests, known or unknown, came that way; and here Harry himself would sleep, if the entertainment of other ladies crowded the best apartments.  Then at the back of the quadrangle was the store, perhaps of all the buildings the most important.  In here was kept a kind of shop, which was supposed, according to an obsolete rule, to be open for custom for half a day twice a week.  The exigencies of