He took up the piece of bark too, and laid it with the daguerreotypes on the table.

He seemed afraid to give himself time to think, but went from room to room here and in the Old Humpey, dragging one thing after another out on to the veranda.

Some of the heavier articles he had to hoist over the steps connecting the two verandas, and then to drag them down the other steps into the front garden, where they strewed the gravel round the centre bed.
In spring and summer, when the Chinamen had been there to water and Lady Bridget to superintend the planting and pruning, this bed had always been gay with flowers, banking a tall shrub of scented verbena the perfume of which she had been particularly fond of.

Now there were weeds--most of them withered--instead of flowers.

The verbena bush had long been dead, and the dry leaves and branches, beaten down by the late storm, made a bed of kindling.
Never was there garden so desolate--the young ornamental trees and shrubs all dead; the creepers dead also; even the hardy passion vines upon the fence, mere leafless, fruitless withes of withered stems.
McKeith paused after lugging down two squatters' chairs--the first house carpentering he had done for his wife after their arrival at the head-station, and in which, he had resolved, no future owner of Moongarr should ever sit.