When Mr. Neuchamp looked around, after completing his toilette, the scene strongly stirred his imaginative mind; it was unique, unfamiliar, and majestic. At his feet, down the long incline of the mountain, lay the vast foreign-foliaged, primeval forests, the silver-threaded, winding rivulets, the hoary crag-ramparts of yesterday’s travel shrouded in billowing, rolling mists, or rich in combination of light and shade, colour and effect, and at the bidding of the morning sunbeam. As far as vision extended, nought but these characteristic features of the mountain wilderness was visible. Immediately around him, however, were decisive though humble evidences of the domination of art over nature. The inn orchard, with its autumn-blushing apples, stables, barn-yard, the cheerful smoking chimneys in the ’eager air’—all these told of the limited but absolute sway of civilised man. Ernest’s ideas gradually shaped themselves into the concrete fact of breakfast.

After this luxurious meal Mr. Neuchamp felt his ardour for travel and exploration rekindled. He inquired the road from the landlord and boldly pushed on. Much the same fortune attended him, sometimes traversing rugged and barren country, and at other times finding cottages, farms, and orchards upon his route. When, however, he reached the more open forest lands, he found that a portion of the carefully graded highway was in process of being metalled. Here were many parties of stonebreakers at work by contract, apparently preferring such labour to the more monotonous daily wage.

Asking for water at one small camp, he found in the cook a well-mannered youngster, doubtless a gentleman. Ernest was pressed to take more substantial refreshment, but he declined the offer.

‘How far do you think of going to-day?’ inquired the affable stone-compeller.

‘About half a dozen miles,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, who by this time had completed the chief portion of a fair day’s trudge.

‘My reason for asking,’ continued the basaltic one, ‘is, that we are going to have a little dinner at an inn just so far distant. The party consists of my mates—very decent fellows—and our superintendent, who is a regular brick. We shall be glad if you will join us.’

‘Most happy indeed,’ answered Ernest, especially gratified to enter upon a new phase of life utterly outside of his previous experiences, and perhaps more typically Australian than anything he could have stumbled upon except by the merest accident. He had dined in many queer places and met with strange company in his day, being always ready to extend his observations in the interest of philosophical inquiry, but a dinner of persons who broke stones upon a highroad for their subsistence, and who were presumably gentlemen, he had never yet been so fortunate as to hear of, much less to partake of.

‘If you don’t mind waiting half an hour,’ pursued the Amphitryon, ‘while I change my clothes, we can walk down comfortably together.’

‘Are you in the habit of having these little dinners to solace your rather austere labours?’ inquired Ernest.

‘Well, not exactly; though we have not been so very uncomfortable here for the last six months. We are all gentlemen, in our party, out of luck; and a man might do worse, who is young and strong, than earn six shillings a day by fair downright labour, in a cool climate. All we have to do is to pile up so many yards of metal for the road superintendent to measure. When he “passes it” our money is safe, and we are as independent as le Roi d’YvelÔt. We live comfortably, smoke our pipes in the evening, sleep unusually well, and enjoy real rest on Sundays. But “little dinners” are expensive, and there would be a slight probability of some of the party going “on the burst,” after three or four months’ teetotalism.’

‘On the burst? I do not quite follow.’

‘On the burst,’ explained the colonist, ‘vernacular signifying a protracted and utterly reckless debauch. It’s an Australian malady. Hope you’ll never be in the way of infection. But as good men as either of us have got inoculated and never wholly recovered. Now, the occasion of this entertainment, which is given by me,’ continued the metallician, ’is, like Mr. Weller’s new suit of clothes, a “wery partic’ler and uncommon ewent.” Fact is, I’ve been left a few thousand pounds by a good-for-nothing old uncle of mine in England, who never gave me so much as a shilling knife all his life, and is now gone to glory, and with all his earthly goods me endowed, much against the grain. And so I’m going to Sydney by the coach to-morrow, and home by mail steamer on Monday after. What do you think of that for a lark?’ inquired he, giving a leap, and shying his hat into the air with a schoolboy joyousness much at variance with his previously imperturbable demeanour.

‘I think it’s a very pleasant story, with a capital ending,’ said Ernest, ‘and that’s a great matter. I don’t suppose the stonebreaking has done you any harm, except roughening your hands a little.’

‘Not a bit in the world—a good deal the other way. I was a lazy young scamp while my money lasted. Now I can do a man’s work, know personally what a day’s labour actually is, and shall respect (and be able slightly to check) the task of the born labourer all my life after. Here we are at the inn.’

Thus talking, they arrived at the inn, a roomy and respectable hotel, where the up coach and the down daily met and deposited hungry passengers, who were accommodated with hasty but highly-priced meals. Here they were met by the landlord, a civil and capable personage, who inducted them into bedrooms, and shortly after into a snug private parlour, where, with considerable splendour of glass, flowers, and table-linen, preparation for the dinner was partially made.

Here Mr. Neuchamp found several gentlemen-like men, in tweed morning costume. Before long the superintendent appeared. Ernest was introduced by his new friend. The conversation became general, and within a reasonable time dinner was announced.

This repast was exceedingly well served, cooked, and, it may be added, appreciated. The wines were fair, and so was the drinking, though within the bounds of discretion.

Subjects of general interest and of political bearing were discussed in a manner which showed that the pabulum mentis had not been lost sight of, toils notwithstanding. The health of their friend, ‘who by an unexpected but by no means unkind freak of Fortune—a divinity of whom they all had previous experience—was about to be translated to a happier hemisphere,’ was suitably proposed and responded to; as was the health of their excellent superintendent, who, a father to them in counsel and admonition, had always treated them as gentlemen, though temporarily filling unpretending positions.

Lastly was toasted the health of the gentleman who had done them the honour to join the entertainment, at the invitation of their old friend and comrade. The speaker trusted that ‘their honoured guest, not very long since a resident in dear old Ireland, or England—sure it was all one—would not immediately be reduced, he meant impelled, to make choice of their healthy, manly, but somewhat monotonous occupation. It was well enough in its way. He, Brian O’Loghlan, was not there to find fault with an honourable means of subsistence. But he trusted that his young friend would make trial of other colonial avocations, before betaking himself to the geological experiments in which they had been lately engaged. Of course he had it to fall back upon. And if ever necessity compelled him, he spoke the sentiments, he felt sure, of every man at the table when he said that they would be charmed to welcome their esteemed though but lately acquainted friend to their independent, industrious, and ancient order of free and accepted stonebreakers.’ (Continued applause.)

This toast, to which Ernest ‘briefly but feelingly’ responded, expressing his ‘admiration of the institutions of a country which permitted access to industrial occupations generally esteemed as close guilds and corporations in Europe, to gentlemen of culture and refinement, such as his host and his friends whom he saw around him that day, without detriment to their social position and prospects,’ closed the entertainment.

The fortunate legatee and his comrades departed to seek their tent, while Ernest and the superintendent remained and smoked a pipe together (the latter gentleman, at least, indulging in the narcotic), while they talked over the somewhat exceptional circumstances of the entertainment, and the accidental stroke of luck which had occasioned it.

On the following morning they breakfasted together in much comfort, and then separated, as so many pleasant chance comrades are compelled to do in this life. The Government official drove off in his buggy to visit another line of road, while Mr. Neuchamp, full of hope and rich with the gathered spoils of his late adventure, paced cheerily along the high road to fortune and the mystical desert interior.

Halting at mid-day by a watercourse favourably situated for temporary rest and refreshment, he heard the half-forgotten words of a favourite operatic air trolled forth by a rich voice with unusual effect and precision. Looking round for the performer, he descried, lying under a noble casuarina tree, the roots of which spread halfway across the little creek, a tall man, whose worn and somewhat shabby habiliments were strongly at variance with the distinction of his air and the aristocratic cast of his features. Beside him was a small black camp kettle, from which he had been preparing the usual traveller’s refreshment of ‘quartpot tea.’ He was smoking, of course, and as he half raised himself and saluted Ernest, that observer of human nature thought he had rarely seen a more striking countenance.

‘In which direction are you travelling?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp.

‘Towards Nubba,’ said the unknown, ‘and a devilish dull track it is. Do you happen, by any chance, to be going there?’

‘My route lies past that place, I believe. As we are both apparently on a walking tour we may as well be fellow-travellers, if you have no objection.’

‘Most happy, I am sure,’ assented the stranger, with the ease of a man of the world; ‘one so rarely has the pleasure of having a gentleman for a comrade in this part of the creation. May I offer you some tea? Sorry to say my flask is empty.’

‘Many thanks—I prefer the tea. Perhaps, on the other hand, you will make trial of part of my provender?’

Here Mr. Neuchamp exhibited an ample store of solids, which he had had the foresight to bring with him, and the stranger, after observing that the brisk air gave one a most surprising appetite, made so respectable a meal that he would almost have fancied that tea and tobacco had alone composed that repast which he had just finished.

The mid-day halt over, the newly-made acquaintances took the road with great cheerfulness, and, on Ernest’s part, a considerable accession of spirits.

‘Here,’ thought he, ‘is one of those happy contretemps that so rarely occur—out of books—in an old country. There, if you did meet a man, under these circumstances, you would be afraid to speak to him until you had actually gauged his social position and standing. Here, now, is a gentleman evidently of culture, travel, refinement, who, like me, prefers from time to time to lead this half-gipsy, half-hunter life entirely for the pleasure of unconventional sensations.’

For the first hour or two Mr. Neuchamp kept up a sustained cross-fire of conversation with this fortunately found travelling companion. Whether formerly in the army or not he did not definitely state, but from certain of his reminiscences and stray sentences, such as ‘when we took Acre,’ Mr. Neuchamp thought he was not far wrong in assigning him a military rank. Certainly his experiences were extensive. Had been everywhere, had seen everything, knew all the colonies from Northern Queensland to South Australia, the gold-fields, the stations, the cities, the law courts. How lightly and airily did he touch upon these different localities and institutions! Knew London, Paris, Vienna, Florence, Rome, St. Petersburg. The haute volÉe of many cities knew him well evidently. His whole tone and bearing denoted so much; and with an air half of philosophical unconcern, half of humorous complaint against fate, he confessed that he had not been lucky.

‘No!’ he said, ‘they used to say in the old 108th I was too deuced lucky in everything else to hold honours where the stakes were golden; and so it has been with me ever since. The boy who ran up the whole score of social success before his beard was grown, the man whom princesses fought for, and world-famed diplomates, soldiers, and savants flattered, has ended thus: to find himself growing old in a colony where talent and social rank are mocked at if unassociated with vulgar success; and here stands John Lulworth Broughton, without a friend, a coin, or a home wherein to lay his head.’

‘You shall never need repeat that indictment against fate,’ cried Ernest enthusiastically; ‘I, at least, can discriminate between the talents and the qualities which should have controlled success and the temporary obscurity which ill-fortune has accorded. Trust to me in the future. Is there no enterprise which we could engage in jointly, where, with my capital and your experience, we might work with mutual advantage?’

The stranger’s haughty features assumed a different expression at the mention of the word capital, and his melancholy dark eye brightened as he said promptly—

‘I know a splendid run, not very far from where we stand, large enough and good enough to make any man’s fortune. I have been prevented from occupying it hitherto by want of funds, but a hundred pounds would pay all expenses at present. We could then take it up from Government, and it would bring in, half-stocked, two or three thousand a year almost at once.’

‘Not far from here—the very thing!’ exclaimed Mr. Neuchamp, who had had nearly enough walking. ‘But I thought that all the good land was taken up except what was a long way off.’

The stranger explained that by a lucky accident he had been trusted with the secret of this magnificent country, which you entered by a narrow and well-concealed gorge; that the old stockman was dead who discovered it, and that a beautiful, open, park-like country, whenever you got through the gorge, was waiting to reward the first fortunate occupants who were liberal enough to meet the small but indispensable preliminary disbursement.

Mr. Neuchamp thought he could see here a splendid opportunity of at once making a rapid fortune, of demonstrating a rare perception of local opportunity and judicious speculation, and of proving to Mr. Frankston and to Antonia his ability to control colonial circumstances without a novitiate.

He could imagine old Paul saying, ‘Well, Antonia, my pet, you see this young friend of ours has shown us all the way. Here it is, in the Herald: “Splendid discovery of new country, by E. Neuchamp, Esq. Large area taken up by the explorer and partner. We must congratulate Mr. Neuchamp, who has not been, we believe we are correct in stating, many months in Australia, upon developing a masterly grasp of judicious pastoral enterprise, which has left the majority of our older colonists in the shade.”’

After this and other intoxicating presentiments, it was finally agreed that they were to proceed to Nubba, where Ernest was to hand Mr. Broughton his cheque for a hundred pounds for outfit and preliminary expenses, upon which that gentleman would at once proceed to point out and put him in possession of this long-concealed but none the less virgin and glorious Eldorado.

With head erect and flashing eye, in which sparkled the ideal lustre of imminent wealth and distinction, Ernest walked on towards the small village which Mr. Broughton had indicated as their probable destination for the night. That accomplished individual indeed, pedestrian feats in the Oberland, South America, Norway, and Novogorod notwithstanding, found it difficult to keep up with his future partner—his boots, possibly, which were neither new nor apparently calculated to withstand the wear and tear of rough country work, prevented his attaining a high rate of speed. But had Ernest been less preoccupied he might have marked a sour expression upon the aristocratic features, heard a savage oath, vernacularly vulgar, issue from under the silken moustache.

Soon, however, in a break of his fairy tale, while he was deciding whether he should send his brother Courtenay a cheque for ten thousand pounds, or surprise him with a personal proffer of that amount as a Christmas box, he became aware that he was outpacing his companion from whom this golden tide of fortune was to date and issue. He stopped and permitted him to come up. At the same instant a horseman, in the plain but unmistakable uniform of a police trooper, rode at speed from the angle of the forest track, and overtook them.

Pulling up his well-bred horse rather suddenly, he fixed a keen and searching glance upon the pair. His features gradually relaxed into a familiar and disrespectful expression as he addressed Mr. Broughton.

‘Why, Captain! what’s come to you? Here’s the whole force in a state of mobilisation from Hartly to the Bogan about the last little plant of yours—and now here you are, a-walking into our very arms, like a blessed ‘possum into a blessed trap—- why, I’m ashamed of you; hold up your hands.’

Mr. Neuchamp gazed upon the face of his illustrious friend as this vulgar exordium was rattled off by the flippant but practical man-at-arms, in wonder, consternation, sorrow, and expectancy.

Could it be anything but the most annoying and inexplicable of mistakes, and would not this noble-minded victim of blind fortune repudiate the shameful accusation with scorn in every line of the stern sad features?

He gazed long and fixedly into that face; a deeply graven expression was there. But it was an alien, unsatisfactory expression. It showed slight contempt, but habitual deference to that branch of the civil power mingled with a sardonic, half-stoical, half despairing resignation to ignoble circumstance.

Puzzled, doubtful, but by no means dismayed, Mr. Neuchamp indignantly asked the trooper what he meant by speaking insolently to his friend, Mr. Broughton—in stopping him without a warrant upon the highway?

‘Mr. Howard, alias Captain, alias the Knight of Malta, alias the Aide-de-Camp, alias John Lulworth Broughton, is as much my friend as yours; leastwise we know one another better; don’t we, Captain?’

Mr. Broughton, upon whose wrists the handcuffs were safely adjusted, merely nodded, upon which the trooper requested Mr. Neuchamp to permit his hands to be similarly fettered.

‘What?’ said Ernest, flushing so suddenly, at the same time making a stride forward, that the wary official backed his horse, and taking out his revolver, presented it full at his head.

‘What for?’ said the trooper; ‘why, on suspicion, of course, of being concerned with the Captain here, in the Barrabri Bank robbery the other night, that all the country is going mad about.’

Here the Captain found his tongue.

‘You’re going mad yourself, Taylor; the reward and the mobilisation, as you call it, have been too much for you. There’s no evidence against me this time, nothing that you could call evidence worth a rap; and don’t you see that this is a gentleman just out from home, and green as grass; or he wouldn’t go on foot with a thundering big knapsack on his back, picking up with—ahem—shady characters like me.’

‘That’s all very well, Captain,’ assented the trooper; ‘but the cove’s hair and complexion, and height, and age, as was with you in the plant, and Police Gazette, corresponds with the other prisoner’s.’

Ernest’s face, at this description of himself, was a study; so sharply engraved were the lines which indicated wrath, disgust, and horror.

‘Very sorry, my man, and all that,’ continued Senior-Constable Taylor, who had not got the stripes for nothing, ‘in case your turn don’t square, but you must come before the police magistrate of Boonamarran and see what he thinks about it. I won’t put the darbies on ye, if you’ll promise to come quietly, but by —— if you leave the track for a moment I’ll send a bullet through you before you can say knife.’

Under this proclamation of martial law, there was nothing to be done by any sane man but to submit; so Ernest made answer that he had no objection to walking as far as Boonamarran, where no doubt his innocence would be made clear.

In a kind of procession, therefore, was Ernest Neuchamp forced, as the Captain would have said, ‘by circumstances’ to make his appearance in the small but not wholly unimportant town of Boonamarran. As they passed up the principal street, a very large proportion of the available inhabitants must have assembled to mark their arrival at the lock-up.

Behind them rode the trooper with a mingled air of inflexible determination and successful daring. The Captain marched in front with his manacled hands almost disguised by his careless walk, remarking calmly on the appearance of the town, which he criticised freely, also the leading inhabitants. By his side, burning with rage and mortification, walked Ernest, feeling very like a galley slave, and wondering whether there was any possibility, in this strange land, of being sentenced mistakenly to a term of imprisonment. Thus feeling for the first time a keen sensation of distrust for his own obstinate predilections, coupled with an awakening respect for the opinion of others, the time passed in varieties of mental torture, till they arrived at the lock-up, a strong wooden building, into a small room of which they were unceremoniously bundled, while a heavy bolt closed behind them.

‘I really am extremely sorry, sir,’ quoth the Captain, after they were left to themselves, ‘to have brought you into this highly unpleasant position. But circumstances, my lifelong enemies, were too strong for me; and for you, too,’ he added reflectively.

Mr. Neuchamp was not a vain man, though proud; above everything he was a philosophical experimentalist. Under any given position he could soon have ceased to struggle and rage, and have commenced to analyse, theorise, and deduce.

‘I ought to be so justly enraged with you,’ he replied, ‘that any apologies would only arouse contempt. You have deceived me, it appears, with a view to rob me of my money, and you have been instrumental in causing, for the first time in my life, the loss of my liberty. But I will confine myself for the present to asking, in all seriousness, why you, a man of culture and mental endowments, having enjoyed the advantages of travel and refined society, should voluntarily have lowered yourself to your present surroundings by a course of vulgar and short-sighted criminality?’

‘Well, I’ll tell you the real naked truth, as far as I know it when I see it,’ said the Captain, cutting off a solid piece of negrohead tobacco and putting it into his mouth. ’I have had an immense quantity of what the world calls advantages, there’s no denying, and yet they would have been all well exchanged for one simple bit of luck, which I did not happen to possess—that of being born honest! That, I distinctly state and affirm, I was not. Whatever the reason is, I was always an infernal rogue from the time I could write myself man, and long before. Whether the faculty of passionate and sensuous enjoyment was intensified in my idiosyncracy, while at the same time my reasoning powers were feeble and my conscientiousness absolutely nil—I can’t say. The fact, unde derivata, remained (and a fait gÉnÉrateur, as the French say, it was), when I wanted anything it always occurred to me with restless force, that the shortest, most natural, and obvious way to possession was to steal, take, and unlawfully carry away the same. I should have made a famous king; in him annexation is a virtue of the highest order. As a general, could I have overleaped the earlier grades, I should have gone amid shouting thousands to an honoured grave, for I am cool and cheerful in danger, and a demon when my slow blood is fairly up. But as the son of an eminent clergyman, as a mere unit in refined society, my sphere was wretchedly circumscribed. Society became my foe, my fatal foe. Young man, if you hurl yourself upon society, she laughs at the superincumbent hostile weight. If she merely reclines upon you, moral asphyxia results. I have, mind, cast away home, friends, love, honour, position. If I hadn’t such an infernally good constitution, death would have long ago squared the account. I am sorry when I think of it. But present troubles once over—“Libem, libem!”’

Here he broke forth into the great drinking song, which he trolled out until the massive timbers of the building echoed.

‘And your intention, as far as I was concerned?’ asked Ernest, unable to refrain a certain toleration for the ‘larcenous epicurean.’

‘Well, I couldn’t resist trying to appropriate your hundred pounds. You threw it at a fellow’s head, as it were. It was partly your own fault.’

‘My own fault,’ echoed Ernest, in astonishment, ‘and why, may I ask?’

‘When people are very very imprudent, they, as the Methodists phrase it, “put temptation in the way” of other folks, not afflicted, let us say, with severe morals. Now why don’t you ride a decent horse when you’re travelling, like a gentleman?’

‘But surely a man may walk in a new country, if he likes?’ pleaded Ernest, half amused at his arguing the question so seriously with a swindler and convicted felon.

‘Excuse me,’ answered the man of experience, with the readiness of a practical advocate; ‘you might drive a tax-cart down Rotten Row, or wear a wideawake and a tourist suit at a flower-show, as far as the power to do so is concerned. But you wouldn’t do it, because it would be unfashionable, therefore incorrect. It’s unfashionable for a gentleman to walk in this country, therefore nobody does walk on a journey, except labourers, drunkards, persons of bad character like me, or inexperienced young gentlemen like you.’

‘Many thanks for your neat explanation and wholesome advice,’ said Ernest. ‘I don’t know whether I shall not act upon it.’

‘And may you better rede the advice than ever did the adviser,’ quoted the Captain gravely, sonorously, and in final conclusion.

Next morning, after experiencing what fully justified Clarence’s exclamation, Mr. Neuchamp and his fellow-traveller were ‘haled’ before the stipendiary magistrate, who looked at Mr. Neuchamp in a manner so unsympathising that it hurt his feelings.

‘John Lulworth Broughton,’ said the trooper, in a loud matter-of-fact voice, ‘alias Captain Spinks, alias the Knight of Malta, and Ernest Neuchum appears before this court, in custody, your worship, charged with robbery under arms. How do you plead?’

‘Not guilty, of course,’ replied the Captain, with a shocked expression.

‘Not guilty,’ said Ernest, in an anxious and horrified tone; ‘I wish to explain, I am travelling to the station of——’

‘Any statement that you or the other prisoner may wish to make, after the evidence is complete, I shall be happy to hear. Until then,’ said the police magistrate, with mild but icy intonation, ‘I must request you to keep silence, except when cross-examining the witnesses for the Crown.’

Ernest felt outraged and choked. The evidence then being ‘gone into,’ showed how a certain bank manager at a lonely branch had been awakened at midnight by two men masked and armed; one tall, dark, spoke with a fashionable drawl; the other middle-sized, active, fair-haired, with blue eyes, about twenty-four, spoke rather slowly. Here the police magistrate, the clerk of the bench, the spectators, and the other police constable turned their heads towards Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Speaks like a native. Ah! very strong point.’

Witness after witness being examined piled up the evidence that a tall dark man and a middle-sized fair one had been seen at the scene of the robbery, near the place, the day before, the day after. Every sort of circumstantial evidence was forthcoming, except a link or two which the jury might or might not consider necessary. The magistrate thought a primÂ-facie case for committal had been made out. He was commencing the impressive formula—‘Having heard the evidence, do you wish to make any statement, etc. etc.,’ when a telegram was put into the hand of the senior constable of police.

Reading it rapidly, and handing it to the police magistrate, that official said: ‘In consequence of the information just received from my superior officer, by telegram, I beg to apply for the discharge of the younger prisoner.’ The police magistrate acceded. Thereupon the door or the gate of the dock was opened and Mr. Neuchamp, permitted egress through the same, much like a rabbit from a hutch, was formally discharged.

‘It would appear,’ said the stipendiary magistrate, ‘from the latest information in the hands of the police, that an instance of mistaken identity has in your case occurred, leading to your—a—apprehension and detention, which, under the circumstances, I regret. Senior-Constable Taylor was fully justified in arresting you as the companion of a notoriously bad and desperate character’ (here the Captain smiled serenely, and stroked his moustache)—‘in arresting you on suspicion of felony. It appears that the person described in the Police Gazette, and whom you unfortunately appear to resemble, has been arrested, and is now in custody at Warren. You are therefore discharged, and as you are a young man of respectable appearance, I trust that it will be a warning to you; a—that is to say, as to the choice of your associates. John Lulworth Broughton, you stand committed to take your trial at the next Quarter Sessions,’ etc. etc.

The telegram which had so suddenly and effectually changed the current of Ernest’s destiny ran as follows: ‘From Sub-Inspector Hawker, Warren, to the officer in charge of police, Boonamarran. The right man, Captain Spinks’s mate, arrested here, 4 A.M. Discharge fair prisoner forthwith.’

Ernest left the court certainly a sadder and a presumably wiser man, and sought a private room in the chief inn, having some difficulty in evading the invitations to liquor pressed upon him by the chief inhabitants, who, having fully agreed that if ever a man looked guilty he did, were anxious now, in reactionary regret, to make him amends for their unfounded and evil thoughts.

Among the persons firmly, perhaps unceremoniously, repelled, was a pale young man with longish hair and an intelligent countenance. This personage sat down and hastily wrote a report of the proceedings, in the course of which he dilated upon the hardship of an untried man suffering the degrading and mental torture to which, if innocent, he is perforce subjected, in the present state of the law. This was at once forwarded to a leading metropolitan journal. A telegram of a sensational nature was also despatched for the evening paper: ‘Arrest of a gentleman newly arrived, for robbery under arms. The case broke down. He is now at liberty.’