CHAPTER III
THE BROKEN COLUMN
The plantation of pines formed three sides of the station yard, which, indeed, suggested a clearing on the edge of a natural forest rather than a single acre left exactly as it was found. The square was completed by the first and foremost of the homestead buildings: a long, regular structure, framed in the customary veranda, but containing (what was less conventional) the family quarters and the station store beneath one vast, white, corrugated roof. Other offices had buildings to themselves, such as the kitchen and the cook's room, the school-room and those of the three young men, wash-house and dairy, iron-store and blacksmith's forge. All these stood in hollow square, looking inward on the yard. And
