Red O'Shaughnessy by J.H.M. Abbott — Read

IN the morning O'Shaughnessy woke to the singing of birds, just as the rising sun was turning the long reach of river below the tents into a burnished sheet of gold between the tall trees lining the low bank on either shore. He stepped over the prostrate forms of his sleeping comrades, and went out of the tent.

Mr. Aylmer's station at the Green Hills--it was where Morpeth is to-day--had only been in occupation for half a year, but much had been done in this brief space of time to make it homelike and comfortable. A substantial stone cottage, with slab outbuildings behind it, faced eastward down the river, and a few acres of forest further back had been cleared for cultivation. Round the homestead were the beginnings of a garden, encircled by a white-painted wicket fence, and by the gateway grew a couple of little Norfolk Island pines, not yet four feet high, one of which still survives, a towering giant, wearing its age proudly and austerely. But the stone cottage is only a kitchen now, and all the place is so unlike what it was in the latter half of 1812 that it is only from the river, and the distant mountains, and the little eminence on which it stands, you may be able to identify the spot where Edward O'Shaughnessy paused this morning and met with Life.