Having earned a few pounds, I left Bullock creek, and returned to Bendigo, but found my old comrades gone. Meeting however with an acquaintance whose mate was about to leave for town, we agreed to go together, and hearing Tarrangower well spoken of, we proceeded thither. We met with varying success, that barely covered our expenditure. My companion became anxious, his wife, left behind in Melbourne, being in great measure dependent on what he might send from time to time. One day, in speaking grudgingly of the cost of a quarter of mutton, it suddenly occurs to him that selling mutton is more profitable than buying it; he puts it to me, and I cannot see but that he is right, and make no opposition to his proposal to try the selling business. The arrangements necessary were of the simplest nature. We purchased a small frame tent, a dead bargain, from a butcher leaving for other diggings. Being already furnished with window board, table, block, and hooks, the place required only a few yards of chintz to make it in our eyes quite a trap for customers. A red and yellow pocket handkerchief nailed to the top of a light pole, would enable folks to find their way to us. We purchase half-a-dozen sheep from a passing dealer, and for want of another place pen them in a corner of the shop, and nervously prepare for our first job with them. He does the knife work while I hold the feet; but never having examined the neck of a sheep unboiled, he misses his way, and only ultimately gets the vital spark to take its leave. We hang the body to the branch of the tree, and he proceeds to flay it, my attention being wholly taken up with the leakage of the animal’s late dinner from its neck. Much water is needed, and when we hang the carcase up inside, we confess it has rather a washed appearance, and fear we may have the eating of it to do ourselves. We were busy with the second when a digger on his way home drew near and stopped to look. We thought we were doing rather better than last time; not quite so much water needed. Hopes of a customer made us wink at his presence till he asked leave to try. The victim’s groans lay heavy on my conscience, and I humbly hinted to my mate that there was murder enough upon our hands for one day, we had better give him the doing of the third, but for my answer I got a foot to hold straight out, and after the man’s departure, his services having been civilly declined, I was brought to task for compromising the business by my unbutcherlike compliance with his offer. I was not sure but that my frequent application of the wet clout was a confession of weakness to the stranger quite as much as my acknowledged willingness to be instructed, but as logic failed somehow to acquit me, I ceased to argue and hardened my heart for the third demonstration of our doubted skill. Before we turned into bed, we had transacted business to the extent of sixpence, for a paunch, which a lean dog that accompanied the purchaser by the eager interest he exhibited informed us was for him.

Early rising profited us nothing. Dull sales all day begat in us a doubt whether mutton was so much an article of food as formerly. To induce trade we patronised a home-brewed beer business that was carried on close by and got the woman to promise us her custom. My partner happened to be absent on the first visit that she made. The legs and head and tail of a sheep I knew, but whereabouts the piece she asked for lay I could not think, but making an attempt at sharpening a knife, I smilingly asked her to point out precisely where she would like the cuts made, and as this shift to save myself had occurred like a new idea, I thought it well to acquaint my partner with it, that the one idea might serve us both. Custom continuing shy, and fly blows appearing on the increase, we hold much private consultation, and reflecting on the weary sameness of mutton, roast and boiled, we resolve to try the effect of mincing it, and purchasing mint and spices, set to work within the hour—for we find there is no time to be lost. A new-killed sheep supplies us with skins, which we wash and dress to the best of our ability, and with a tin bottle filler to assist us, we have soon some ten or twelve yards of sausages, all nicely coiled in a large tin dish that has recently been washing bottom stuff. Certain inequalities in the filling detract from their appearance—corpulent bits, and spindly bits, with occasionally a windy looking vacancy—but we think the people will not be too fastidious about appearances, so far from town, and as they seem slow to come to us, we think it well to go in search of them, taking the sausages along with us. But here a difficulty arises, as to which of us should undertake the mission. I talk him over, and prevail on him to go, he being the elder, and the better able of the two to give an account of himself if asked. In less than an hour he returns in great glee with empty dish, having sold all the stock. Great hopes now arise; mincing with the knife too slow a process, and filling with the bottle funnel sore upon the thumbs after the first few yards have been rammed. Wish we had a machine. We sit up till far in the morning preparing a supply for customers’ breakfast. Wonder if we could not add pies to our stock in trade; think they would sell well, with nice crimped edges, and a paste button or something neatly clipped out of dough upon the top; think people would not grudge sixpence for them. Put lots of seasoning into the sausage meat, lest any change should happen to it while we slept. In the morning, after an absence of less than an half an hour, he returned perspiring and excited, without his cap, and with the dish full as when he left with it. He never told the tale of what had happened to him, but having heard a great clamour among the dogs in the direction he had come from, and seeing him put his nose to the dish as if in the act of smelling, I for the present forbore to question him, and made haste to cook a supply for our own use before it would be too late. We gave up business and separated after disposing of our effects for a mere trifle. He returned to Melbourne, and I, lonely and with only a shilling in my pocket, set out again in search of work upon some sheep station. Late in the afternoon of the third day I got from a drayman the direction to a station, known as M’Gregor’s.

Feeling far from well, and looking forward rather anxiously to the expected shelter, I reached the neighbourhood just as the sun was setting. The buildings were in sight for some time before I reached them, and I wondered at the broken condition of the fences, and the silence: not a living thing was to be seen. Twilight was deeping into darkness in the surrounding wood when I drew near, and found the place deserted and in ruins, the doors and windows hanging loose, and rank weeds in masses overgrowing what had been the public yard. My heart sank at the sight, I shivered as if struck with sudden chill, and felt for the moment as if the blankets across my shoulders were bearing me to the ground. Sitting down on a heap of moss-grown stones, I tried to think, but there came to me only thoughts of home, of changes there, of deaths, of the young ones whom I had left crying on the door steps when I came away, and of all the expressions of affection that had been sent after me in the few letters that had reached my hand. For the first time for many a day I found myself crying, for it seemed as if I had been sent here to die, and that no word would ever reach home of the when and where. A white mist began to gather along the marshy flat, making me very cold, yet my head was burning hot. I rose and with weary effort, regained the road near where some grass grown water troughs were, and, seeing some draymen encamped, went forward and asked leave to sit down by them. Their tea billy was simmering by the fire, and they were busy kneading damper for their supper. I felt like one drunk and may have so appeared to them for they answered me that there was room enough in the bush for those who wished. I was not wanting in resignation, and moved away a few hundred yards, and managed to get a fire kindled, but had not strength to gather wood to keep it burning. Drawing a few withered branches together to save me from contact with the ground, I lay down upon them with my blankets.

The morning dawned, but I could not rise, and could hardly turn my head to look at the draymen as they yoked and slowly drove away. My lowly bed was at too great a distance from the road to be seen by passers by. Twice I heard the jolt of passing carts, but the sounds fell on a listless ear, for there was no hope of any one caring to be burdened with a sick man. As the sun got higher however, I began to take better heart. Having eaten but little since leaving Tarrangower, three days before, there was therefore but little grossness for the fever to work on, and it was sensibly abating. I rose to my feet, giddy and tottering, gathered my things together anyhow they would come, and after walking doggedly for a while broke out into a sweat, which made me feel quite clever on my legs, but more supple than strong. In about an hour I came upon a man reclining wearily on the limb of a fallen tree, weary looking and rather meditative. Hailing me to come to him, he handed me a bottle of brandy from his pocket, saying as his eye wandered over me “have a glass old fellow, you look as if you would be none the worse of it.” Feeling rather in want of a tonic, I was not slow in accepting, but gaped somewhat after the draught like a fish brought to the air, and for a reason somewhat similar, want of water, but recovered sufficiently bye and bye to recollect something about half a loaf which ought by rights to be somewhere among my blankets—my stomach had resumed its work again. My friend had that morning left the “Burn Bank” public house, where in a week he had squandered fifty pounds, his earnings for the previous six months at rail splitting. The bottle that he carried had been presented to him by the landlady on leaving, and was all that he had left to show for the money which he had sacrificed to a thirst for popularity amongst the idlers about the place, who on getting wind of him, had crowded to his levees, till on his resources failing, he had unfortunately gone a borrowing among them. Though I had inadvertently lain on the loaf all night, and it looked as if something of the kind had happened, he gladly accepted half of it, and went his way.

At sundown I camped about four miles from the Avoca diggings, and in the morning entered on them with the intention of passing through for the bush on the other side, should no friendly face meet me on the way. I had barely reached the inner circle of tents, when I observed a little man apparently eyeing me with rather more than ordinary interest. My breakfast had been anything but stimulating, and my gait in consequence was perhaps a little pensive, but I quickly mended that on drawing near him. His face somehow did not invite me to seek close acquaintance with him, yet I was glad when he asked if I wanted work, and soon engaged myself to serve him with stones and mortar in the building of an oven, for fourteen shillings a day and my rations. Taking me to his tent, he introduced me to his wife and child. The place looked clean and tidy, and wore an air of comfort I had long been a stranger to. My employer told me his name was Watty Scott, and that I would find him a good man and true if dealt fairly with. After much talk about the perfidy of former mates, he said that on the completion of the oven, he would take me for a partner and go digging; that meantime he thought he had read me sufficiently well to know me; I might consider the partnership already entered into, and might look upon all he possessed as half my own, all except—here he drew his wife tenderly to his side, and looked prayerfully in my face. I knew not what to say to this, and was perplexed about what might be coming next, so rapidly had events developed within two hours, but as he sat between me and the door I could only ask how he could think it of me, and look reproaches at him. Meanwhile the wife never spoke, but disengaging herself from him, went outside. He laughed, and, laying his hand upon my shoulder, said, “its all right, Jamie”—he had already familiarised my name—“I was only trying you, come let’s take a walk.” He does not care about beginning work that day, but next, meantime I can take a look about me.

Evening comes, and Watty is not sober. I try to guess his age, but fail to satisfy myself; he has no whiskers, seems never to have needed shaving, and has a crop of jet black curly hair. He seems to be between thirty and forty-five. His wife seldom speaks, seldom looks at either of us, and appears very sad. Watty regrets that I have no tent with me, but thinks an arrangement can be made for my accommodation. The night being too chilly and damp for camping outside under a bush cover, I was only too glad at the offer of a strip of bark upon the floor of their tent to make my bed on. The wife made up a pillow for me, spread a spare quilt upon the bare hollow of the bark, and then my own blankets over all, in so quiet and kindly a manner, that I felt moved with respectful gratitude, while somewhat ashamed of my intrusion on her privacy. On making some remarks to that effect, Watty poohed and bade me never mention it. I was to consider myself one of the family now. When bed time came, he and I discreetly went outside to the fire. A drunk man’s talk is none of the most edifying, and I had become weary of his during the long evening, but had borne with it so patiently, and so followed up his humours as at least to delay his very evident desire to quarrel with his wife. To this fact I in part attributed her motherly interest in the comfort of my bed. The little while we remained outside, he talked more rationally, but as the topic was mainly of the weather, with which the passions have but small concern, little positive conclusion could be drawn from the circumstance regarding the man.

On re-entering, we found as we expected the wife and child in bed. They lay upon a rude bench raised some eighteen inches from the ground, and which occupied at least one-half of the tent floor, which measured only about ten feet by eight; a narrow space of some twelve inches wide separated my humbler couch from theirs. I could not get to sleep for Watty’s talking to or rather at his wife, who maintained a singular silence, save once or twice when she ventured on a brief meekly-spoken answer; somehow this meekness did not suit him, but only excited him the more, until about three o’clock in the morning, his delirious abuse became outrageous. Sense and reason, judgment and humanity forsook him in the paroxysm he had wrought himself into, and I could only hear the ravings of a madman. I tremble for the wife and child—by the sounds he seems to be gathering himself together, and while I am still holding my breath in doubt about what he means to do, they are pushed bodily out of bed and fall heavily on me. The case was beyond my help, so I lay still; the cries of the child made it a hard task to do so. The madman’s delirium seemed to calm considerably on getting the whole bed to himself, and it might be towards four o’clock he muttered himself to sleep; the wife then taking courage rose from the floor, and ventured in again beside him. On awaking at break of day, I found him up and dressed; hearing me move he bade me good morning more heartily than I could answer him just then. A habit he had of raising his eyebrows, and which seemed to say “look within who may, there is nothing to conceal,” lent a certain air of candour to his face, that at first shook my faith in what had passed being more than a troubled dream. He got the fire lit, and the kettle boiled, and addressed his wife Eliza in accents so subdued, that I was almost inclined to doubt the evidence against him.

We commenced the building of the oven. I was not a weak man, but he proved so good a workman, that my back was never off the bend keeping him supplied. In an hour or so however, greatly to my relief, he became thirsty, crossed the road to a grog tent for a drink, and came back no more till dinner time. After dinner he said that this being now a broken day, he would wait till next day, and then begin work in earnest. I fetched water and firewood from a distance for the wife and began to talk with her, and keep the infant in amusement, and when Watty came home in the evening, continued to keep him in at least peaceable humour. His prodigious self-esteem made this comparatively easy so long as I continued feeding it, but I found it at times disposed to froth up into arrogance, and, at intervals, my ready consent to all he said and did, seemed likely to take a wrong direction. Taking my hand in his, and falling away into a whining mood, he said he had been an unfortunate and ill-used man all his days, that he ought to have been, and would have been an independent gentleman long before now, had he not been deceived, and robbed, and kept down among the dust by—here his eye glanced over to his wife, as she bent her head over some piece of sewing for the baby, and I felt uneasy at the glare of malice that reddened in his face. At haphazard I broke in upon him with as lively a sally as I could muster at the sudden call; for a moment he hung in the balance, I prepared myself for some extremity, but happily the fell grimness of his look relaxed, his overweening pride was recovering its seat. I had touched him rightly, and to my intense relief he broke out into a laugh, and for the present contented himself with merely blowing out the candle she was working by. I felt it dreary work, but for the woman’s sake I persevered, and so passed our second night together. I thought the drink that he had taken would surely overpower him when he went to bed, but the warmth seemed only to make him worse, and the frightful words that poured from him made it like a night in a cell of hell. He appeared to have lost all recollection of my presence, so that what I suffered I feared was but a little of what the poor wife would call her daily life with him. It had been taking place before I came to them; it could not go on so for ever, but the end I never knew.

The oven was not progressing, and on the fourth day I found him in the company of two slouching fellows in a beer shop. He introduced me with due form, for he liked to do things respectably, then taking me to one side, begged the loan of half-a-crown, but I could only promise him the loan of one when I received the wages due to me, and took the opportunity of calling his attention to the condition of my boots, the soles of which had quite loosened from the uppers, requiring some little management when walking to keep my toes within. My appeal was ill-timed, and he seemed for the moment ashamed of my dilapidated appearance, the eyes of his friends being at the time directed towards us. Having respect for my feelings, however, he said no more there, but led me out to the road, and reminded me of our partnership agreement, and that talking about wages was as good as mistrusting him. The oven he said would be soon finished, and then boots and whatever else was needed I would receive to my heart’s content.

Late in the afternoon I returned to the tent, and found the wife sitting pale and trembling, her eyes fixed with evidently unobservant gaze, and her lips twitching nervously apart. As I stood for a moment in the doorway, looking in at her, there fled once and for ever from my mind all doubt of the reality of broken hearts. For such distress I had no consolation adequate, but mute though I was at first and disconcerted, it seemed as if my coming had broken the rigour of her grief. I was sad with very pity for her, and my manner may have revealed that much as I quietly seated myself inside the door. I made an attempt to speak about something I had seen on my way back, but was stopped short by an indescribable working of her features, and while I was yet looking—my half-told story fast dropping out of mind—the tears started to her eyes, and for a few minutes I heard nothing but sobs, the like of which I had never before known. When her grief had somewhat spent itself, she told me I had better leave, or I would be getting into trouble, as Watty was after no good with the men I had seen him with, one of them she knew to be a common thief. After a fresh outburst of crying over her poor infant, she told me further with many an outbreak of shame and sorrow between, that he had brought this man to the tent for her specially to entertain, and had menaced her with his eye, because she would not, and that she looked for nothing short of death on his return. Her arms encircled her young child, and her eyes were at times bent sadly on its small upturned face as it lay innocently asleep upon her breast.

The day was already near its close, there was barely time to seek out and prepare some sleeping place in the bush, even did I start at once, and the weather was too wintry for an unsheltered bed upon the ground. I had not yet determined what to do, when there came to the door one of five rough looking men who had erected a couple of blankets for a tent early in the day a few hundred yards from Watty’s. Being acquaintances of Watty’s this was a friendly visit. After a little talk, making known to him my intention of leaving, he kindly invited me to pass the night with him and his mate. I gladly accepted, and left with him shortly after. On getting among my new acquaintances, I found that one of them called Bill, had only the day before returned, the victor in a prize fight at Tarrangower. He was a short but strong and heavy-bodied man, with a dark stolid-looking eye, and very deaf. He no sooner learnt that the little mason was ill-using his wife than he swore he would have her from him in the morning. He appeared to have no thought of her objecting to the change; his faith had very likely grown to this assurance by considerable practice in similar disinterested knight-errantry among the distressed wives of the society he moved in. By their conversation I learnt that they were all old convicts, that Watty was one also, and that they were mostly natives of the town of Paisley. One of them had only half served his sentence of seven years in Van Diemen’s Land, and had stolen away in a passenger ship bound for Melbourne. On this account he was living as quietly as circumstances would permit. There seemed no lack of money, for liquor was in plenty, and they appeared fond of it. I was luckily in time to hear how Bill had fought and won his battle, in which he had received but little damage. His opponent, a “new chum” fresh from England and conceited with excess of science, had looked on him as an unlearned bumpkin upon whom his subtleties of art would be almost wasted. In part this estimate was right, Bill was brute enough not to see the beauty of the other’s fence, and being of the old barbaric school had at once rushed to blows and buttocking; feints and manoeuvres he snuffed at, and going in straight at his man was ever quickly bringing him to grief. His knuckles were his pride, he had before now driven nails up to the head in pine boards with them, and cushioning one blow upon the new chum’s stomach quickly brought to light what he had been eating last and all but broke his back, a feat that he gleefully styled “doubling him up.”

It was my general habit to be civil and conciliatory in strange company and I felt no inclination to be otherwise now—whichever way my “fur” was rubbed, I made that the right way, and so succeeded that when bed time came there were two who claimed me to lie next them. Our sleeping place was the floor on a litter of brushwood; each rolled his blanket round about him, but the space was so limited, that one had scarce room to turn without jostling his neighbours. On the one hand I had to fend my face from the long greasy uncombed hair of the Vandiemonian, and on the other from the sour beery breath of Bill’s brother.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when Watty came tumbling in amongst us with an air of muddled defiance, and yet with an evident desire to put himself on the best of terms with us. Slapping as many shoulders as he could well get at, and ruffling one head of hair, by way of provoking the owner to say something pleasant, and failing in his object, the situation was becoming awkward for us all, when the dish of beef and bread from which we had been eating caught his eye. With a “hie Joe reach that dish here, the very thing I wanted,” he took it on his knee, and without uncovering commenced with his knife upon the victuals. Regardless of the coolness apparent in his hosts, he called on one of them for mustard, saying “that beef was nothing without a relish,” then nudged another with his elbow to see if there was any tea left in the billy. Wiping his lips when he had at length taken his fill—and that was not a little—he replenished his pipe with borrowed tobacco, and set himself to talk. He had a perfect command of words, and a pointed manner of expressing himself that readily attracted attention in his more earnest moods, so that the discussion he now entered on soon found interested listeners. He began by drawing a picture of their defenceless condition were misfortune or sickness to come upon them. Pointing to the disordered brushwood of the beds, and the damp dirty looking piles of blankets huddled together at the far end, he painted them lying there through days and nights of sickness, dependent on chance friendships for all those little attentions that a sick man needs, and when he had apparently sobered them to think how it might be thus, he shifted ground, and asked them to look at the men of Manchester and Liverpool, placed in like circumstances with them, but banded together in a common cause against bad times—relieving their needy, and from their mutual sympathy and support, never knowing want, while they of Paisley went their ways in solitary pairs or single tentfuls, stretching no helping hand to save a brother in distress, but with close-fisted narrow meanness, with a single eye to self, leaving fellow townsmen, old schoolmates even, to fight with their troubles as they best could, and drift away on their necessities if they could do no better. His heart, he said, was pained at the estrangements and cold-shoulderings of those whom a long life of misfortune such as theirs should rather have drawn together in the fellow-feeling of fellow-sufferers—it led him at times, through very shame, to disown being a native of the town that had raised men possessed of so little generosity. The times in short were so grievously hard upon the working man, that with the counsel of a friend he advised the establishing of a fund, from which relief might be given as need required, and contributions from the more successful among the brethren might for this purpose be deposited in the hands of some well known party. As his subject grew upon him, his manner became more earnest, till at the close he bore the look of one ready to sacrifice himself to any extent in the good enterprise; his pipe had gone out in his enthusiasm, his eyes sought to gather the feeling of the company, but a more stolid lot of faces I never before saw grouped together. Vexed by their apathetic treatment of the scheme, he stretched out his hand to them saying “Well now men how is it to be, for the honour of our town how is it to be,” on which the Vandiemonian broke the spell by crying “to blazes with the town, much reason have we to mind its honour.” The others fell back in a roar of laughter. Watty in a fury dashed his pipe into fragments in the beef dish, and cursing their stupidity hurried from the tent in the direction of his own, the cries that shortly afterwards arose from which made known to us that his gentle partner was expiating our indifference, on which Bill, recollecting his vow of the previous night, to see to her relief, abruptly rose and catching Watty as he was coming out of his own door with the air of a conqueror, thrashed him well, but only with his open hand, for “he never made his hand a fist,” he said, “but when he had to do with men.” The wife cried bitterly when she saw it. It was not likely to help her any, and I could not help thinking that the sight of his suffering under the chastisement reanimated her old abused affection for him into throbs of tender but timid compassion. The weather was stormy and wet, which made me glad to accept my friends’ hospitality for at least twenty-four hours longer. I repaid their kindness by becoming hewer of wood and drawer of water to them.

Towards sundown the Vandiemonian and another who was a barber to trade quarrelled about some trifle. They were both the worse of liquor, but the barber having apparently a little more mind than the other for the liquor to work upon, was the more demonstrative of the two. The others soon interfered to see justice done, but so managed that the disputants saw no other way to get their rights than fighting for them. They set themselves and footed the ground unsteadily for awhile watching for what was called an opening, but the Vandiemonian being evidently deficient in strategy, went straight to business at once, by lowering his head and rushing with it full tilt upon the barber’s stomach, lifting him off his feet, and, as it so happened, sending him sprawling with his back across the great log fire that was blazing opposite the door. He was quickly laid hold of and lifted off, loudly protesting against that manner of fighting, but one of his hands being apparently necessary now for the rubbing of his back parts, he was content with argument for the rest of the battle, and became quite companionable again, on the Vandiemonian informing him that on account of a rupture he could fight no other way.

About two hours after sundown we were all inside, playing at cards by the light of a slim candle, when Watty appeared at the door in company with a tall, robust, rough-bearded and unwashed man, rather past the prime of life, whom he introduced in rather a stiff manner as his friend “Scottie Stratton.” They seemed both the worse of liquor, but as regards that, the others were fairly on equal terms with them. My impression was that the mental habits of the company tended little to reflection, and that the things of the passing moment were generally sufficient for their attention, but I detected an air of wariness in Bill, attributing it to his small transaction with Watty in the morning, and to his deafness, which called for the more active use of his eyes. However that may be, room was made for the new comers, and the cards were reshuffled that a new game might be begun to include them. All went well enough for a while, and the bottle passed freely from hand to hand, the absence of a glass obliging them to measure their takings in their mouths. At length a hitch occurred, Watty declared that Stratton was being imposed upon, on which Stratton knocked the candle out, and in the darkness all struggled to their feet. I was farthest from the door, and for a moment thought from the shaking of the tent pole that a fight had commenced upon the spot, and was glad on hearing Bill in the midst of the stumbling and confusion say with steady voice “O, if that’s your little game I’m ready for you, come, get outside.” A couple of candles were got and lighted. The two men, Bill and Stratton stripped, Bill shorter by a head than the other. The candles glared in the damp breeze, as they were held high above the level of our eyes. The places were taken, the word “all ready” was given, and I heard a rush and the dull sound of blows upon a face, then a lumbering fall upon the ground. Again and again was this repeated, till I began to wonder how much beating it took to kill a man. Stratton’s height and length of arm were of no avail against the determined energy of his opponent. I saw the bustling and the rushing leaps; I heard the deep muttered curses of the losing man, and the shouts and imprecations of the others, and felt as if accessory to a mad revel of damned spirits. Could I have got my blankets out unseen, the dark bush that night would have been my bed. When becoming faint with compassion for the man whose flesh was being so bruised, I heard another fall, followed by a third, and an “ugh” exclamation, that plainly told me the uppermost man had fallen with his knees upon the body of the other, but before I had time to think, there came a succession of mashing sounds that needed no interpretation. Stratton was being beaten on the ground, Bill’s blood was up, and had not his fellows rushed in and taken him off, there would have been murder done. Bill was forced into the tent, Watty with difficulty getting his man raised to his feet, staggered off with him, and I saw him no more.

When, after a time, I ventured in among them, the bottle had resumed its work. Bill was singing ballads, and the others were so elated with his fighting merits, that daylight was close at hand before they went to bed—possibly they would not have lain down at all had the liquor lasted. In the morning, after breakfast, I bade them good-bye, and wandered forth, not caring whither. I had now tasted of both frying-pan and fire, and felt truly thankful on finding myself once more breathing the air of solitude among the ranges. The low-toned sighing of the breeze among the branches overhead had a peculiar tranquillizing effect upon my mind, and set me adreaming of things old and new, of home and gold, of my ill-clad feet, and the number of days I could do without food, in the event of falling in with none. I was in the gold country, on the lower ranges of the Pyrenees, from the heights of which it was thought by many the gold found on the flats had been washed down. I had often heard the unlucky joke with one another about the pots of precious stuff yet to be discovered up there on the mountains, their jest savouring of just so much sincerity that I thought want of means alone prevented them from venturing up to seek for those real pots of the molten stuff, of which that found in the valleys was but the boilings over, the mere tricklings from the lips. But what about the quarrying of such blocks? I had no tools; and what about the carrying when thus quarried? While yet discussing these matters, I had almost without knowing it begun the ascent. The extreme summits appeared so near that I thought to reach them in time to return to the plain, if necessary, before sundown. I was charmed with the scenery. The romantic glens and shady recesses among wood and rock, with floor of bright green grass, made me at times linger on the way with what would have been a feeling of true enjoyment had I been less eager about what might be found further on. Now and again I got sight of the plain spread out below, with tents peeping out among the trees in the neighbourhood of the diggings, and with light blue smoke curling up in many places from fires that, judging by the position of the sun, would soon be engaged with pots and frying pans for dinner. My heart softened at the sight. I felt myself in for a little hardship, but tightening my belt, I resumed my toil, and arguing with as much philosophy as the circumstances allowed, saw no reason to suppose that hunger was different on the hills from what it was on the flats. Upward and onward I sped, not neglectful the while to eye the ground in hopes of seeing something to my advantage. Much rain had fallen previously, and the surface stones and broken quartz were clean and bright, as would also be the case with the projecting knobs of the surface nuggets when I came upon them. After some hours’ fatigue, the upper summits appeared but little nearer than at first. I had still hope enough and to spare, however, until brought to a pause on the spur of a high ridge by finding myself separated from them by a deep valley about a mile in width; and I abandoned the attempt on observing that between that valley and the summits lay many another hollow, whose extent I could guess at only from the hazy atmosphere that filled them. I felt as a very atom in the scene. When the sun went down, I made a fire and prepared to pass the night, impressed with a notion that it would be well for me to retrace my steps at daybreak. When I rose with the first light of the dawn, I felt like one who has been in a night-mare, and is unable at first to assure himself it has been all a dream. Recollection coming, I got up and started to regain the beaten road, and falling in with an “old hand” also in search of work, gladly put myself under his guidance. He appeared like one just recovering from a fit of drunkenness, out of patience with himself and everything else. He was very clean, however, and his chin looked as if newly shaved with a dull razor, his nose as if he had been blowing it overmuch, though I could see no handkerchief that he used and his eyes as if he had been recklessly smoking a pipe too short to carry the smoke clear of them. Hunger and fatigue were beginning to distress me, and I felt quite of his humour to talk none but to make the best use of our legs in the hope of reaching the next station before dark. I was the more content to remain silent from observing the irritation the slightest hindrances raised in his mind, on which my air of composure had by no means a soothing effect. I was glad when we reached “The Amphitheatre” sheep station, so called on account of its situation among surrounding hills. A hutkeeper and cook being wanted for a new slaughter-yard at the Avoca diggings, which lay about twelve miles off, I was engaged, and, passing the night in the men’s hut, started in the morning to make my appearance on old ground in a new character.