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16 helped. I am not sorry that you have got it, nevertheless," said Hugh Lindsay.

It was a five miles' ride for George Copeland to the Hammonds' home-station. It was one of the perversities of fate that had planted the Hammonds so that their nearest neighbours were people who could not be visited, though they might be very worthy people in their way. The Lindsays, though Hugh Lindsay (or rather his wife for him, for she was more skilled in genealogical lore) could count kin with the Balcarras family, had begun their colonial career in a humble way, and indeed for many generations had been poor plain people. But Hugh Lindsay had brought to the colony habits of industry and frugality, and a useful though limited education. He was shrewd and clear-headed; he had a sensible and active wife, and a family of children whom he made useful to him; so that from his original position of a shepherd for another in the early days of the colony, he had risen to be a considerable stock-holder and landowner. He was, of course, a very much poorer man than Mr. Hammond, who had begun life with some capital, while Hugh Lindsay had his capital to create, and who had been equally fortunate in his opportunities and pretty nearly as shrewd in business.