Page:Through South Westland.djvu/178

102 sleeping around you; will you ever draw us all these leagues again?

When we reached the shore the tide was out, and the horses set off at a gallop. Behind us a squall was working up from seawards, and in front the distant headlands, one behind the other, looked blue and unreal, their trees seeming to hang in the air, unattached to earth—a curious effect I had noticed once or twice before. Soon the first drops of rain fell, and in a few minutes it was lashing us fiercely, with the wind driving the sand in clouds along the beach, and when we got in we were as wet as though we had been in the Haast. There was a nice old man sitting in the kitchen, as I went in to leave my wet riding-things to dry. He seemed very pleased to see me, and reminded me we had met him a long way back, when he had been journeying on foot to make application for his old-age pension. “And I hope you got it,” I said. “Oh, aye, they gave it to me right enough,” and went on: “D’ye know a place they call Newtonairds?” I assured him I did. “Aye, it’s a fine town, and the Airds is a fine country. Scrabo Hill’s a fine hill, whiles I wisht I was there.”

Afterwards I heard how he had saved a good sum of money for his old age. Then came some smart speculators, who floated a bogus company to