A sheep severely infected with scab becomes a pitiful object.  The body gets covered with a yellow scaly substance, the wool falls off or is rubbed off in patches, the disease causing intense itchiness, the animal loses flesh and appetite, and unless relieved sickens and dies.

The Nelson settlers, although they could not hope to speedily eradicate the pest, were nevertheless bound by the Provincial Government to adopt certain precautions against its spreading.  Every station was provided with a scab yard and a tank in which the flocks were periodically bathed in hot tobacco water, and such animals as were unusually afflicted received special attention and hand-dressing.  These arrangements strictly enforced proved successful to a great extent in keeping the disease in check.

Mr. Lee’s run was scabby, although not so bad as some of his neighbour’s, and the strictest precautions were observed to keep it as clean as possible.

Upon arrival at Highfield we had immediate opportunity to see for ourselves the most interesting part of the working of the run.  The cutting season had just commenced, and the mustering and shearing would ere long follow.

My chum C——­ was a particularly smart fellow at everything appertaining to this kind of life.  He speedily picked up the routine, and made himself so generally valuable that Mr. Lee offered him the post of overseer, with L60 a year as a beginning, and all found.  But C——­, on the plea that the pay was too small, refused it.  This was his great mistake, to refuse what ninety-nine men in a hundred would have jumped at in his circumstances!  It would have been the first step on the ladder, and with his abilities and experience he had only to wait a certain time to become a partner.  But his heart was not in the country, and nothing would reconcile him to remaining in it.  Within two months of our coming to Highfield he determined to return home.

This resolution being taken, nothing would shake it, and the day was fixed for his departure.  He and I were badly suited I fear to work together, and had he had some other chum perhaps he might have agreed with the new life better, and turned out a successful colonist; for most certainly, although we were not able to see it at the time, he had eminent opportunities open to him for becoming one.

I rode twenty miles with him on his way to Christchurch.  He was to stay the first night at a station twenty-five miles from Highfield.  On the bank of the Waiou river we parted—­we two chums who had come all the way from the Old Country to work and stick together.  I thought it then hard of C——­, although I had no right to expect him to stay in New Zealand in opposition to his own wishes and judgment to please me.  As I watched him cross the river and presently disappear between the hills further on, a feeling of strange loneliness came over me.  Well, I was not much more than a child!