Billabong homestead lay calm and peaceful in the slanting rays of the sum that crept down the western sky. The red roofs were half hidden in the surrounding trees-pine and box and mighty blue gums towering above the tenderer green of the orchard, and the wide-flung tendrils of the Virginia creeper that was pushing slender fingers over the old walls. If you came nearer, you found how the garden rioted in colour under the touch of early summer, from...