The Homecoming

THE HOMESTEAD of Barrakee Station was set, white-walled and red-roofed, in an oasis of brilliant green lawns and orange groves, the whole surrounded by a thick windbreak of ten-foot waving bamboo. The bottom extremity of the gardens was separated from the river by a dry billabong, some fifty-odd yards in width.

At thatpoint of the river were moored the station boats used chiefly to transport travellers to the farther side, as well as to provide anyone belonging to the station with recreation on the river.

To the south of the homestead, and close to it, were the offices, the barracks used by the bookkeeper and the jackeroos, the store, and the shops. Facing the offices and divided from them by a large clear space were the tennis-courts and the croquet-lawn.

The essential factor, which made Barrakee homestead one of the show places in the western division of New South Wales, was the limitless supply of water from the river. Mrs Thornton ruled the homestead; her husband reigned over the vast run, the thirty or forty employees, and the fifty to sixty thousand sheep. Neither interfered, by a single suggestion, in the domain of the other. Both were united in the one purpose of leaving Ralph Thornton a great inheritance.

At a quarter past three, one of the junior hands, who had been stationed on the staging supporting the great receiving tanks, observed through field-glasses the approach of the Barrakee high-powered car. He signalled its appearance by firing a shotgun.

Thornton and his wife were outside the garden gates which opened to the clear ground in front of the offices to receive their son. The car drew up close by with a noiseless application of brakes, and from it sprang a dark handsome boy dressed in grey tweed of most fashionable cut. He was followed more circumspectly by a young woman dressed in white.