Marcus Clarke

“ Pretty Dick had come out just on the top of a little sandy rise, and he saw the big swamp right before him, speckled with feeding cattle, whose backs were just level with the tall rushes. And beyond the big swamp the ranges rose up, with the sunlight gleaming here and there upon jutting crags of granite, and with deep cool shadows in other places, where the noble waving line of hills sank in, and made dark recesses full of shade and coolness. The sky was bluer than ever, and the air was heavy with heat ”

“ He was dimly conscious that any moment some strange beast--some impossible monster, enormous and irresistible, might rise up out of the gloom of the gullies and fall upon him;--that the whole horror of the bush was about to take some tangible shape and appear silently from behind the awful rocks which shut out all safety and succour. His little soul was weighed down by the nameless terror of a solitude which was no solitude,--but a silence teeming with monsters. ”

“ On the right hand towered the Ranges, their roots sunk deep in scrub and dense morass, and their heads lifted into the sky, that was beginning to be streaked with purple flushes now. On the left, the bush rolled away beneath him--one level mass of treetops, broken here and there by an open space of yellow swamp, or a thin line of darker foliage, that marked the meanderings of some dried-up creek. The sun was nearly level with his face, and cast a long shadow behind him. Pretty Dick felt his heart give a great jump, and then go on beating quicker and quicker. ”

“ The cockatoos knew it was hot, and screamed themselves away into the bush. The kangaroos, who had come down like gigantic shadows out of the still night, had all hopped away back into the scrub under the mountains, while the mist yet hung about the trees around the creek-bed. The parrots were uneasy, and the very station dogs got under the shadow-lee of the huts, in case of a hot wind coming up. As for the sheep--when Pretty Dick's father let them out in the dawn, he said to his dog, "We shan't have much to do to-day, old woman, shall we?" ”

“ The way was more difficult now, and Pretty Dick left the bank of the creek, and made for the open space--sandy, and bunched with coarse clumps of grass. He went on for a long time, still upwards, and at last his little feet began to tire; and, after chasing a dragon-fly or two, and running a long way after a kangaroo rat, that started out from a patch of broom and ran in sharp diagonal lines away to hide itself in among the roots of a she-oak, he began to think of the piece of sweet cake in his pocket. ”

“ Once in the early spring when it was pleasant enough with a cool breeze blowing, and white clouds resting on the tops of the distant mountains, and the broad rolling levels of short, crisp, grass-land sweeping up from their feet to the horizon unceasingly. ”

“ At which Lassie wagged her tail and grinned, as intelligent dogs do.
But who was Pretty Dick?
Pretty Dick was the seven-years-old son of Richard Fielding, the shepherd. Pretty Dick was a slender little man, with eyes like pools of still water when the sky is violet at sunset, and a skin as white as milk--that is, under his little blue and white shirt, for where the sun had touched it, it was a golden brown, and his hands were the colour of the ripe chestnuts his father used to gather in England years ago. Pretty Dick had hair like a patch of sunlight, and a laugh like rippling water. ”

“ Pretty Dick A hot day. A very hot day on the plains. A very hot day up in the ranges, too. The Australian sun had got up suddenly with a savage swoop, as though he was angry at the still coolness of early morning, and was determined to drive the cattle, who were munching complacently in the long, rich grass of the swamp, back up under the hill among the thick she-oaks. It seemed to be a settled thing on the part of the sun to get up hotter and hotter every morning. ”

“ Pretty Dick's father lived in the Log Hut, on the edge of the plains, and had five thousand sheep to look after. He was away all day. Sometimes, when the sheep would camp near home, Pretty Dick would go down with some fresh tea in a "billy," for his father, and would have a very merry afternoon watching his father cut curious notches in his stick, and would play with Lassie, and look about for 'possums in the trees, or, with craning neck, cautiously inspect an ant-hill. ”