however long established and secure the occupant might fancy himself to be.
So, as he afterwards told one of the neighbours, he determined to show me every courtesy; after which, appealing to all chivalrous feelings in my nature, he felt that I could not, in common decency, annex any portion of his (Mr. Chamberlain's) run. This was a shade of diplomacy sometimes roughly described as characteristic of "the old soldier." If so, my host's military experiences, as on another historical occasion, served him well. When I left Tarrone that morning, with a guide, towards the Heifer Station, I would have driven on to Western Australia—a pastoral Vanderdecken—rather than infringe on the tolerably liberal boundaries which he claimed for Tarrone.
I rode along and passed the great Tarrone Marsh, with its well-defined wooded banks and its miles upon miles of mournful reeds, wild-duck and bittern haunted. My guide pointed out to me a place where, riding one day a mare that he described as "touchy," by the edge of the marsh, suddenly a blackfellow jumped out from behind a tree—"a salvage man accoutred proper." The touchy mare gave so sudden a prop, accompanied by a desperate plunge, that he was thrown almost at the feet of the "Injun." Others appeared—like Roderick Dhu's clansmen—from every bush and "stony rise," which had till this moment sheltered them. He raised himself doubtfully, much expectant of evil; relations had certainly been strained of late between the races. However, they did not (apparently) kill him, he being there to relate the story. I forget what trifle prevented them.
