Tallangetta the Squatter's Home Author:William Howitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. XIV. A STARTLING EVENT THE DIGGERS' RUSH. We could willingly linger a long time relating all the joyful results of the remarkable trial described in ... more »the last chapter, but circumstances are already forming themselves which will very speedily close our narrative at the antipodes. We must hasten on. Enough that we say that there was joy unbounded in the family of the Popkinses. The misguided Abijah had sown his wild oats; the crop was not to his taste, it was bitterer than wormwood. Gladly he and his admirable little wife, looking still pale but happy, took their leave for the mill of Lahni with the aged parents, quiet, but much forgiving and thanksgiving. The buoyant- hearted Mr. Peter Martin rode along with them on his Bluebeard, never tired of talking of the trial, and of that wonderful coup-de-main of what he called the sandy-hued squatter of Bullarook. That arrogant but condignly punished attorney-general,he told them, had thrown up the rest of his briefs at the assizes, resigned his office, it was said, and gone, no one knewwhither, and no one, as he believed, cared. So they rode on to Lahni, whither Mr. Martin in a day or two brought his wife and daughter to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Patty Popkins. The Martin ladies were greatly taken with her, and with her enthusiastic delight in the delicious valley of Lahni. Already she looked more like a blooming, bright- eyed little fairy, than the pale agitated wife of the digging store; and already Abij ah was soberly carry ing corn-sacks in and meal-bags out of the mill, his coat and face most befitting, powdered with flour, and watching the meal come pouring silently down into the receptive hopper. Charles Fitzpatrick rode blithely home, for he had helped to do a good and kindly deed. No fear of his father's anger h...« less