The Argosy, Volume XXIV — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a Gabriel’s Appointment. II The doctor, whose property they had learned to look upon as their own, having no time to investigate the matter, allowed them to take the live stock, with the exception of some of the poultry, which he presented to Martin, in the joy of getting this painful investment fairly off his hands. <A fine young setter, purchased from the landlord, with whom it had been left by a traveller, was also to accompany Mr. Bruce’s confidential servant into his new quarters; and Mrs. Medland loudly declared among her intimates that times was changed indeed when gentlemen’s servants gave themselves such airs, and wore shooting-jackets, and stood over you with guns in their hands when you was packing your bits of things, till you was that terrified you wouldn’t have slept under the same roof with him, not if it was ever so! Patting his dog, too, with such a look in his wicked eyes, as much as to say that for half a farthing he’d let it fly at your throat. She didn’t know what sort of a gentleman the master could be to send down such a person, as that, to turn out poor honest, hard- working creatures; and she only hoped he’d never be sorry for it— that was all! | | Nobody else seemed particularly sorry: the general impression being that the hardworking creatures had had a capital berth on very easy terms, and had made a good thing of it altogether. But the mysterious interest excited in Martin was enhanced by the reports of his skill as a marksman—reports which he rather encouraged—with the additional comment that, according to the custom of bush life, he always kept his gun ready for action. At the suggestion of his friend the hostess, he employed a poor widow of her acquaintance to clean the place after the departure of its occupants, while he was laying in stores for his independent house- * keeping ; and fain would that good woman have entered his service altogether ; for, as she said, no young gentleman could be civiller or more open-handed. It quite went to her heart to leave him there by himself at night; if he would but have asked her to stop, she wouldn’t have been afraid of nothing, not she, with him and his dog and his gun to take care of her. No; she hadn’t seen or heard nothing in the house ; that Mrs. Medland had left muddle and dust enough to keep her hard at it, and she had no time for thinking of noises. She would have cooked and done everything for the young gentleman, if he would have let her stop; but he said he liked best to be quite alone. There is no doubt that this was true, strange as it appeared to lovers of conversation. It was with an unwonted sense of repose that Erasmus Martin found himself once more solitary, though in a dwelling as unlike the log-house of his boyhood as the valley of the Level to the Australian bush. He lingered at first on the drive before the door, listening to the rush of the river below, and looking up at the starry sky. His dog, who had attached himself to his new master with the passionate ardour of love at first sight, lay quietly on the Comiclooks.com .