Page:Through South Westland.djvu/262

160 “I think,” he said, “this is a very healthy mode of sleeping.”

Outside our door was a long table or wide bench, I don’t know which, and here we decided to take all our meals. The plateau on which the cottage stood sloped off on three sides to the river-flat, and below us lay the old stock-yard and cattle-sheds, fast falling into ruin, the ten-foot fences mostly broken down, and all round them the remains of fenced paddocks. But the wandering cattle had broken into every place, and the garden was marked by one poor apple tree, and a few gooseberry bushes smothered in rank grass and fern. Yet it is not so long since this was a home, and its last inmate, we heard, had died but a short time back—but not here. There was a tragedy connected with the Old Homestead, and maybe it accounts for it being still untenanted. In the old days of the saw-mill a Highlander wandered up this far valley, and after the fire that eventually drove the saw-millers away, he remained behind and built himself a little homestead, and lived here with his wife. He had no neighbours except the family still living up the west Matukituki, and was cut off even from them because of a quarrel that lasted several years—indeed, it was not healed till after the tragedy. As time went on, Sandy (I shall call him) became more and more addicted to the whisky bottle, and so lazy that all the work on the bit of land and the garden was done by his active wife—Sandy contented himself with the