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Updated: May 18, 2025
Here, too, were flocks of black duck and teal, and as you rode past, the merry little snipe would rise from the water's edge, and whisk away like lightning through the trees. Altogether a pleasant woodland creek, alongside of which, under the mighty box-trees, ran a sandy road, bordered with deep beds of bracken fern, which led from Baroona of the Buckleys to Toonarbin of the Hawkers.
However, as I said, all clouds had cleared from the Toonarbin atmosphere, and, after a pleasant meal, Frank, Major and Mrs. Buckley, Sam, and Charles Hawker, rode home to Baroona under the forest arches, and reached the house in the gathering twilight. The boys were staying behind at the stable as the three elders entered the darkened sitting-room.
Go on two years. See Baroona, the Buckley's place, now. That hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day is degraded into the kitchen, for a new house is built a long, low house, with deep, cool verandas all round, already festooned with passion flowers, and young grape-vines.
When they had ridden up and dismounted, Mrs. Buckley presented Frank. "My dear," said she, "the Dean is honouring us by staying at Baroona for a week, and proposes to visit round at the various stations. To-morrow we go to the Mayfords, and next day to Garoopna." Mary bowed respectfully to Frank, and said, "that she felt highly honoured," and so forth.
The river, as it left Major Buckley's at Baroona, made a sudden bend to the west, a great arc, including with its minor windings nearly twenty-five miles, over the chord of which arc Sam had now been riding, making, from point to point, ten miles, or thereabouts. The Mayfords' station, also, lay to the left of him, being on the curved side of the arc, about five miles from Baroona.
Her father, Hungry Buckley, of Baroona a gentleman addicted to high living and extremely plain thinking had been snuffed-out by apoplexy, and abundantly filled a premature grave, some time in the early 'sixties, after seeing Baroona pass, by foreclosure, into the hands of a brainy and nosey financier.
And we all stood around, and the servants thronged in, and Sam, taking Alice's hand, went up and stood before Frank Maberly. Captain Brentwood, of the Artillery, would give this woman to be married to this man, with ten thousand blessings on her head; and Samuel Buckley, of Baroona, would take this woman as his wedded wife, in sickness and health, for richer, for poorer, till death did them part.
After all this, we old folks taking up our residence at Baroona had agreed to make common house of it. We were very dull at first, but I remember many pleasant evenings, when we played whist; and Mary Hawker, in her widow's weeds, sat sewing by the fireside contentedly enough. But one evening next spring in stalked Tom Troubridge; and, in short, he took her off with him, and they were married.
I must push on too, for there is a long period of dull stupid prosperity coming to our friends at Baroona and Toonarbin, which we must get over as quickly as is decent. Little Sam Buckley also, though at present a most delightful child, will soon be a mere uninteresting boy.
When the terrible news comes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest road is ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, and will they arrive before him? Sam's noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a hundred years old, stood in the stable.
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