BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 PROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 1891 
 
 A:I/psj ,. u/^//M.. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4845.K5R3 1894 
 
 The recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn. 
 
 3 1924 013 492 974 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013492974 
 
THE EECOLLECTIONS OF GEOFPEY HAMLYN 
 
THE RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 GEOFFRY HAMLYN 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY KINGSLEY 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR OF HENRY KINGSLEY 
 
 BY 
 
 CLEMENT SHORTER 
 ILLUSTRATED BY HERBERT RAILTON 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 WARD, LOCK & Co., Limited, 
 
 WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. 
 
 NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE. 
 \All rights reserved.\ 
 
MY FATHBE AND MOTHER 
 
 THIS BOOK, 
 
 THE FRUIT OF SO MANY WEARY 
 
 YEARS OP SEPARATION, 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 J 
 
 WITH THE DEEPEST LOVE AND REVERENCE. 
 
BABNACK BECIOBT. 
 
 A NOTE ON HENRY KINGSLEY. 
 
 The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few 
 words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world 
 will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure unaccom- 
 panied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of Charles 
 Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was success, 
 victorious success, sufficient, indeed, to gladden the heart even of 
 Dr. Smiles — success in the way of Church preferment, success in 
 the way of public veneration, success, above aU, as a popular 
 novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon Kingsley's life has been 
 written in two substantial volumes containing abundant letters and 
 no indiscretions. In this biography the name of Henry Kingsley 
 is absolutely ignored. And yet it is not too much to say that, 
 when time has softened his memory for us, as it has softened 
 for us the memories of Marlowe and Bums and many another, the 
 public interest in Henry Kingsley wiU be stronger than in his 
 now more famous brother. 
 
X HBNEX KINGSLET. 
 
 " Life " of her husband, " was a fine old house, built in the four- 
 teenth century, and containing a celebrated haunted room called 
 Button Cap, which is still looked upon with mysterious dread by 
 the parishioners. On one occasion, when iU of brain fever, little 
 Charles was moved into this room, and for years afterwards his 
 imagination was haunted by the weird sights and sounds asso- 
 ciated with that time in his memory. To this he attributed his 
 strong dubility in the existence of ghosts in later years, telling 
 his own children he had heard too many ghosts in old Button 
 Cap's room at Bamack to have much respect for them." He de- 
 scribes the room to Mrs. Francis Pelham, writing from Eversley in 
 1864. " Of Button Cap — ^he lived in the Great North Boom at 
 Bamack. I knew him well. He used to walk across the room 
 in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves of books to find the 
 missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. 
 He was an old Eector of Bamack. Everybody heard him who 
 chose. Nobody every saw him ; but in spite of that, he wore a 
 flowered dressing-gown and a cap with a button on it. I never 
 heard of any skeleton being found ; and Button Cap's history had 
 nothing to do with murder, only with avarice and cheating. Some- 
 times he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the Germans 
 say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising noiser 
 which was undignified. So he was always ashamed of himself, 
 and put them all back in their place before morning. I suppose 
 he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated National 
 schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) as soon 
 as people give up believing in them go away in a huff — or perhaps 
 some one has been laying phosphoric paste about, and he ate 
 thereof and ran down to his pond, and drank till he burst. He 
 was rats ! " * Alas I a bay window has been added to the Button 
 Cap room; and as no self-respecting ghost could stand such 
 prosaic sacrilege, the venerable terror of the Kingsley children has 
 long since departed. At Barnack Henry Kingsley was bom in 
 
 • " Charles Kingsley : Hia Letters and Memoirs of his Life," edited by 
 his wife, vol. i. p. 84. 
 
CHELSEA CHUllCH, liOOKINQ WEST. 
 
HENBT KINGSLEY. xiii 
 
 January, 1830, and he at least, bad no inspiration or impulse from 
 the supernatural association of his birthplace, for his parents 
 removed to Clovelly in the same year. He was about seven 
 years of age when the removal to Chelsea took place. The old 
 Chelsea of his boyhood is described in " The HUlyars and the 
 Burtons." The vicarage is there still, and the old church, but 
 little enough else that was familiar to the boy even when, 
 some years later, he went every day to King's College School. 
 One of the rooms in the house is pointed out by the present vicar 
 as retaining some of the characteristics of that period, and as 
 having been the favourite sitting-room of the boys in their early 
 years. The fine old-fashioned garden, however, is the most 
 permanent feature. There may stiR be seen the mulberry-tree, 
 planted, tradition has it, by Queen Elizaheth, and as flourishing 
 now as in the days when the brothers flung themselves on the lawn 
 under its shade ; there also are two fine lime-trees which old Mr. 
 Kingsley planted some thirty years since. It is a restful spot, 
 this garden, in the midst of a fierce hubbub of struggling humanity ; 
 and two or three hundred yards away is the churchyard where 
 Woodfall, the publisher of " Junius," lies buried, not far from Sir 
 Thomas More. There also rests the Duchess of Northumberland, 
 mother of Elizabeth's Leicester and grandmother of Sir PhUip 
 Sidney. " Four hundred years of memory are crowded into that 
 dark old church," says Henry Kingsley's Joe Burton, "and the 
 great flood of change beats round the walls, and shakes the door 
 in vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there, 
 as if to make a brave resistance to the moving world outside, 
 which jars upon their slumber." The tombs of the Lawrences 
 in one of the small chapels have certainly a picturesquely weird 
 effect, which is incalculably enhanced by a re-reading of " The 
 HUlyars and the Burtons." 
 
 From King's College young Henry Kingsley went, in 1850, to 
 Worcester College, Oxford. His brother Charles had gone to 
 Magdalen College, Cambridge, twelve years earlier, and was now 
 doing clerical duty in his father's parish in Chelsea, and writing 
 '■' Alton Locke." For a brief glimpse of Henry Kingsley in his 
 
xiv HENRY KINGSLEY. 
 
 college days I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Edwin 
 Arnold.* 
 
 I knew Henry Kingsley very well and liked him very much," 
 he writes. " We were not at the same college. He was at 
 Worcester, I at University College. Nevertheless we were very 
 constantly together, belonging to the same set, also to an eccentric 
 club ca;lled 'The Fez.' At the University he did nothing com- 
 mensurate with his great natural abilities, for I consider him quite 
 the equal in genius of his brother Charles, and I think his novel 
 of ' G-eofifry Hamlyn ' one of the finest pieces of fiction ever 
 composed. He gave himself at Oxford to athletics and social life 
 — always being generous, manly, and of an inner temper nobler 
 than his external manners. I wagered him £10 one day that he 
 could not ' run a mile, row a mile, and trot a mile ' within fifteen 
 minutes ; yet he accomplished this remarkable feat : and as you 
 know he was one of our very best scuUers on the river : nay, I 
 believe he won the Diamond Sculls at Henley. No more lovable 
 or large-hearted fellow could be found, and always beneath his 
 levity there lay that love of nature and that passion for honourable 
 self-development which made him an Australian colonist, and gave 
 the world his' novels, and the Sydney Government a capital and 
 fearless policeman. If he had lived his life out, literature would 
 have been richer by many a good book, and England stronger by 
 a loyal and patriotic man." 
 
 Henry Kingsley left college in 1853 without taking his degi-ee, 
 and, accompanied by two friends named Venables and Irvine, went 
 to the Austrahan goldfields in search of fortune. It did not come, 
 but that a great deal of disaster came in its place is suggested 
 by his reticence about the episode in after years. " He never 
 talked of his Australian experiences," says his wife, " although 
 
 • Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson devotes some pages of his "EecoUeo- 
 tions " to Henry Engsley, but his notes are mere barren tittle-tattle. 
 Kingsley apparently asked Jeaffreson to back a small bill— which he met, 
 it may be added — and onee discussed with him his own personal appear- 
 ance, implying that he feared he was ugly. ' But these are not the things 
 which people usually print about the departed friends of their youth. 
 
:j 
 
 
 
 
 ■!''"=='-~^=S?ffi««i¥:~'r^^!65!? 
 
 SIB THOMAS UOBBl'S TOMB IN CHELSEA CHCBCH. 
 
 la 
 
HENRY KINGSLEY. xvii 
 
 they can of necessity be picked up here and there throughout his 
 novels." For some little time he was in the mounted police, 
 but, compelled by duty to attend an execution, he was so much 
 affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust. During 
 his absence in Australia his letters entirely ceased, and his name 
 was never mentioned to his mother, who believed him dead. To 
 this mother he gave unfaltering allegiance from childhood, and she 
 returned it as only mothers can. " Bom in the West Indies, but 
 brought up in England, she was," says Charles Kingsley's bio- 
 grapher, "a remarkable woman, fuU of poetry and enthusiasm." 
 Henry was, in a sense, the ne'er-do-weel of the family, sensitive, 
 undisciplined, and lacking in self-reliance — in every respect the 
 opposite of his brother Charles. 
 
 Henry Kingsley afterwards explained the absence of letters by 
 saying that he did not write because he was unsuccessful and was 
 rather ashamed of it. Later he continued silent because he 
 dreaded to receive bad news, and so year after year ran on until 
 in 1858 he suddenly made his appearance in Chelsea. On 
 the night of his return he walked up and down outside the rectory 
 door for over an hour, fearing to enter lest he might hear that 
 both his parents were dead. The house was actually tenanted by 
 old Mr. Kingsley's curate, among whose visitors was the young 
 lady who afterwards became Henry's wife. During these five 
 years in Australia many things had happened. The old vicar had 
 been eclipsed by his brilliant son. Charles had become Rector of 
 Eversley, had published " Hypatia " and " Westward Ho ! " and 
 was on the eve of a Royal chaplaincy and his first sermon at 
 Buckingham Palace. The father and mother had taken a cottage 
 about a mile from their son's rectory. Henry took the adjoining 
 cottage,* and, inspired, doubtlessly, by emulation of his brother, 
 commenced his own literary life. " Geoifry Hamlyn " was wi'itten 
 in 1859, " Ravenshoe " in 1861, " Austin EUiot " in 1863. In 
 
 • They Bhow you at Langywilly, Australia, the cottage in which 
 " Geoffry Hamlyn" was written, but I have the assurance of Mrs. Henry 
 Eingsley that it was positively written at Eversley. Doubtless copious 
 notes were made at Langywilly. 
 
ZVUl 
 
 HENEY KINGSLET. 
 
 1864 he married Miss Haselwood at St. Mary's Boltons, South 
 Kensington, where the marriage ceremony was performed hy his 
 brother Charles and hy the Eev. Gerald Blunt, the present Eector 
 of Chelsea. For the next seven years the married pair bved at 
 
 CHELSEA BECTOBY PBOM THE QABDEN. 
 
 Wargrave, Henley-on-Thames, and here an active literary life was 
 interrupted only by visits to London and some acquaintanceship 
 with Fleet Street journalism of the Bohemian order. It may have 
 been of this period that Mr. Joseph Hatton writes in the notes 
 with which he has kindly favoured me. 
 
HENEY KINGSLEY. xii 
 
 " I was surprised," he says, "on reading Mr. Cordy Jeaflfre- 
 son's ' Book of Eecollections ' to find emphatic reference to Henry 
 Kingsley's ugliness. Jeaffreson and he were at Oxford together, 
 and Kingsley's ugliness was so great that he was painfully con- 
 scious of it. But it seems he needed only ' the proverbial five 
 minutes for putting himself on equality with any personable 
 youngster in a woman's regard.' I met Kingsley occasionally 
 when he was fighting his way in literature and journalism in 
 London ; once I remember when I was editing ' The Gentleman's 
 Magazine ' over the Punch Offices in Bouverie Street. I recall 
 his appearance as that of a bright-eyed, pleasant-looking fellow, a 
 trifle, I should say, under the medium height, sensitive face and 
 manners, with an agreeable play of features and a ready tongue 
 that left no impression on my mind of ugliness physical or mental. 
 
 " He had in a comparatively small frame the carriage of an 
 athlete, a light-weight champion, or a crack rider in an artillery 
 regiment. At least, that is as I remember him ; and he took 
 no pains to let me know that he had had an University education, 
 nor did he talk about his famous brother Charles, nor in any way 
 try to impress me with his importance socially or otherwise. He 
 talked of his work and his hopes very modestly, and if it had 
 fallen to my lot to meet him often, I think he was the kind of man 
 I should have liked to be intimate with. It was a question of 
 work which brought us together. I remember that in response 
 to some slight bit of criticism, he remarked, ' My dear Mr. Hatton, 
 you are the editor, I am the contributor, I leave myself entirely 
 in your hands ; cut out anything you don't like, if I don't agree 
 with you I shall restore the passages when I reprint the chapters.' " 
 
 For the most sympathetic glimpse of Henry Kingsley that 
 remains to us I am indebted to a private letter from Mrs. 
 Thackeray Kitchie. 
 
 "A great many years ago," she writes, "I remember hearing 
 Mrs. Kingsley, the Kector's wife, at Chelsea Bectory, saying to 
 my father, ' You know my son Charles, I should like you to know 
 my son Henry too,' and she took up some new books which were 
 lying on the table and put them into my father's hand. ' He also 
 
HBNEY KINGSLEY. 
 
 can write books,' she said, smiling with motherly pride. She was 
 not unlike her son Henry in expression. Her straight smUe and 
 bright dark eyes put me in mind of his as I think of it now. 
 Indeed he could write books. He seemed to me to have lived his 
 own books, battled them out, and forced them into their livmg 
 shapes ; to have felt them and been them all ; writing not so 
 
 HENBY EINQSLEY S MOTHEB. 
 
 much from imagination as from personal experience and struggle. 
 I knew his books long before I knew him, specially ' Geoffry 
 Hamlyn,' which was written at Wargrave, and it was there that I 
 first knew Henry Kingsley, a kind, most kind and hospitable 
 host and friend. I lived for a time at Henley after my father's 
 death in a cottage by the river. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley were my 
 
HENBT KINGSLEY. xxi 
 
 neighbours, and friendly neighbours indeed. I do not remember 
 ever talking very much to Henry Kingsley, he was usually hard at 
 work, but we used to go out in boats together, and meet at odd 
 moments in gardens. He was perhaps more emphatic in conver- 
 sation than I could comfortably respond to, but my feeling of 
 respect and regard for him was very great, and my affectionate 
 admiration warm and smcere. My brother-in-law, Leslie Stephen, 
 was a great deal at ' Ivy Gate ' — so our cottage was called — and 
 had a very great regard for him. We used to row over to the 
 Kingsleys to the charming little cottage at Wargrave, where they 
 were living, and where, among other interesting people, I remem- 
 ber meeting Mr. Swinburne, who was also a neighbour. All sorts 
 of friendly greetings and gifts used to come forth from the little 
 cottage, chief among which certain flaming gladioli stUl bloom in 
 my remembrance. We had rabbits and a little dog, but the 
 Kingsleys had a garden full of flowers, cocks and hens, rabbits, 
 and tall dogs, one special big friend, a coUie, I think, whom they 
 loved dearly. He used to come in at meal times and lay his long 
 chin upon his master's knee. ' We never send him away when he 
 does this,' Henry Kingsley used to say, caressing the faithful 
 head. When my children's dog comes now in the same way, and 
 looks up in my face, I often send him away, but I always think ot 
 Henry Kingsley as I do so, and feel how hard-hearted he would 
 consider me. 
 
 " ' He is one of the kindest, the most chivalrous of men,' an 
 old friend of his used to say as we stood on the river banks dis- 
 cussing our neighbours, and it was true if ever it was true of any- 
 body. What the exact troubles were which fell upon that 
 hospitable couple I do not know, but trouble came. Mrs. Kings- 
 ley went north, Hem-y Kingsley went out as a war correspondent. 
 Somewhere about 1870 I saw him again in Edinburgh ; he had 
 come home for a few days only, to a furnished house, dark and 
 shabby, and contrasting with sunny Wargrave. The place was 
 full of boxes and packings. Mrs. Kingsley was anxious and 
 troubled, though even then she took me in. I happened to be ill, 
 and she sent for a lady doctor who cured me ; she also wrote to 
 
xxii HENET KINGSLEY. 
 
 Dr. John Brown, my father's old friend, who came to see me. I left 
 them after a couple of days and went south, grateful for their kind- 
 ness, but feeling as if I ought not to have imposed upon it. I 
 only saw Henry Kingsley once again. It was two or three years 
 after this time, that I travelled one day with Leslie Stephen, 
 who had told me Henry Kingsley was very ill, and asked 
 me to go with him to some place about an hour from London 
 on the Brighton line. We walked from the station along 
 a village road with trees on either side to a low sort of faim-house 
 cottage where the Kingsleys were then staying. Mrs. Kingsley 
 was lying down upstairs, he was alone to receive us in the latticed 
 sitting-room. He was himself, and yet different from himself; 
 his eager manner was gone ; he was very gentle, but he seemed 
 collected and cheerful only. ' They tell me I am going to die,' 
 he said ; ' I can't believe it, I don't feel like a dying man.' He 
 said this quite naturally, with a sort of simplicity and courage 
 which were a part of all his life. He went on to talk of books 
 and every-day things ; he seemed pleased that we should have 
 come to see him, and made us ashamed by making so much of it. 
 Very soon afterwards we heard that he was gone." 
 
 In 1869 Henry Kingsley went to Edinburgh to edit the Daily 
 Review. That this was a mistake his friends readily aeknowledgedj 
 His somewhat erratic life had scarcely fitted him for the editorial 
 chair. Concentration, application, tact in dealing with one's fellowa 
 — these are usually considered the qualifications for an editor. 
 Kingsley possessed none of them, nor had he the literary faculty 
 which makes a good journalist. " I remember his leaders," writes , 
 a friend of that time, " dictatorial, self-complacent, egotistical, and 
 ungrammatical." And, strange as it may seem of so good a writer,, 
 it is true that the hypercritical may find occasional lapses in the ^ 
 English of Henry Kingsley's best novels, and lapses more than 
 occasional in his worst. The proprietors of his newspaper were ' 
 thoroughly weary of him in a very little time, but it was not until 
 the outbreak of the war of 1870 that the opportunity came for 
 them and for him. He wished to serve as a war correspondent. 
 The proposal was accepted, and he went first to Luxembourg, 
 
HENBT KINGSLEY. xxiii 
 
 was present at Sedan, and claimed to have been the first English- 
 man to enter Metz. In 1872 he returned to London, where 
 "Valentin, a Story of Sedan," was the direct outcome of his 
 experiences. It is difficult to praise it, and indeed his work at 
 this time seems to have shown a gradual deterioration. It would 
 be impossible to conceive a worse novel written by a writer of 
 distinction than " The Grange Garden," which he published in 
 1875. It was his last effort. The collection of essays known as 
 " Fireside Studies," which appeared in the same year, did little 
 to enhance his reputation. And he was already at the beginning 
 of his fatal iUness. He removed with his wife to Cuckfield, in 
 Sussex, and there he died in May, 1876. He was buried in 
 Cuckfield churchyard. 
 
CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 Henry Kingsley bom at Bamack ... ... .•• Jan. 2, 1830 
 
 Residence at Chelsea •■• ••■ ••• 1836 
 
 Worcester College, Oxford 1860-53 
 
 Life in Australia ■• 1853-58 
 
 " Geo% Hamlyn " ... ... ... 185^ 
 
 "Ravenshoe" 1861 
 
 "Austin EUiot" 1863 
 
 Marriage and Removal to Wargrave 1864 
 
 " The HiUyars and the Burtons '^ 1865 
 
 " Leighton Court " 1866 
 
 " Silcote of Sileotes " 1867 
 
 " Mademoiselle Mathilda " 1868 
 
 " Tales of Old Travel " 1869 
 
 "Stretton" 1869 
 
 War Correspondent ... .. ... 1870-72 
 
 " Old Margaret " 1871 
 
 "Hetty" 1871 
 
 " The Lost Child " ., ... 1871 
 
 " The Boy in Grey " .. ... 1871 
 
 "Valentin", 1872 
 
 "ThombyMiUs" 1872 
 
 " Oakeshott Castle " 1873 
 
 " Reginald Hetheredge " 1874 
 
 " Number Seventeen " ... .. ... ... ... 1875 
 
 Charles Kingsley died ... ... ... 1875 
 
 "TheHarveys" 1876 
 
 " Fireside Studies " 1876 
 
 " The Grange Garden " 1876 
 
 Died May 24. 1876 
 
 Buried in Guckfield Churchyard May 29, 1876 
 
 " The Mystery of the Island " 1877 
 
Inteoductory . 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEB 1. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COUETSHIP AND MAEBIAGE OP JOHN THOENTON, 
 CLBEK, AND THE BIETH OF SOME ONE WHO TAKES 
 EATHEE A CONSPICUOUS PAET IN OUE STOEY . 4 
 
 CHAPTEB III. 
 
 THE HISTOEY OF (A CEETAIN FAMILY LIVING IN) eVtEOPE, 
 FEOM THE BATTLE OP TEAFALGAE TO THE PEACE 
 OF 1818, CONTAINING FACTS HITHBETO UN- 
 PUBLISHED .... 6 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 SOME NEW PACES . . . , .13 
 
 CHAPTEB V. 
 
 IN WHICH THE READEE IS MADE ACCOMPLICE TO A 
 
 MISPEISION OP FELONY . . . .21 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GEOEGE HAWKER GOBS TO THE FAJJl — WEESTLES, BUT 
 GETS THEOWN ON HIS BACK — SHOOTS AT A MAEK, 
 BUT MISSES IT . . . . .29 
 
 XT7 
 
xxvi CONTENTS. 
 
 FAOII 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MAJOR BUCKLEY GIVES HIS OPINION ON TBOUT-FISHINO, 
 
 ON BMIGEATION, AND ON GEOKGE HAWKBB . 43 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE VICAE HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE . 51 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 WHEN THE KYB CAME HAMB . . . .62 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 IN WHICH WE SEE A GOOD DEAL OF MISCHIEP BREWING 70 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 IN WHICH THE VICAR PREACHES A FAREWELL SERMON . 78 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN WHICH A NEW FACE IS INTRODUCED, BY MEANS 
 
 OF A RAT AND A TERRIER . . . .87 
 
 CHAPTER Xni. 
 THE DISCOVERY . . . . . .94 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE major's VISIT TO THE " NAg's-HEAD " . . 107 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 THE BRIGHTON RACES, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREAT 118 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE END OF MARY's EXPEDITION . . . 125 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 EXODUS ....... 139 
 
CONTENTS, xxvii 
 
 PAQB 
 
 CHAPTER XVni. 
 THE FIEST PUFF OF THE SOUTH WIND, , . 146 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 I HIBE A NEW HOBSEBBEAEEB .... 154 
 
 CHAPTER XX, 
 A WABM CHBISTMAS DAT .... 159 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 JIM STOCKBEIDGE BEGINS TO TAKE ANOTHEE VIEW OP 
 
 MATTBBS .... . . 167 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 SAM Buckley's education .... 172 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 toonabbin . , , . . • 188 
 
 chapter xxiv. 
 
 in which maby hawkeb loses one op hbb oldest 
 
 swebthbaets ..... 197 
 
 chapter xxv. 
 
 in which the new dean op b makes his appeae- 
 
 ance, and astonishes the majoe out of his 
 peopeiety ...... 210 
 
 chapter xxvi. 
 white heathens ..... 220 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 THE GOLDEN VINBYAED . . . 235 
 
xxviii CONTENTS. 
 
 OHAPTEE XXVnL 
 A GENTLEMAN FEOM THE WABS 
 
 TIME 
 
 253 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 SAM MEETS WITH A BIVAL, AND HOW HE TEEATBD HIM 267 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 HOW THE CHILD WAS LOST, AND HOW HE GOT FOUND 
 
 AGAIN WHAT CECIL SAID TO SAM WHEN THEY 
 
 FOUND HIM AND HOW IN CASTING LOTS, AL- 
 THOUGH CECIL WON THE LOT, HE LOST THE PEIZE 278 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 HOW TOM TEOUBEIDGB KEPT WATCH FOE THE FIEST 
 
 289 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 WHICH IS THE LAST CHAPTEE BUT ONE IN THE SECOND 
 
 VOLUME ...... 307 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 IN WHICH JAMES BEENTWOOD AND SAMUEL BUCKLEY, 
 BSQUIEBS, COMBINE TO DISTUEB THE BEST OF 
 CAPTAIN BEENTWOOD, E.A., AND SUCCEED IN DOING 
 
 SO . . . . . . .311 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOE SEA ANEMONES AT 
 
 CAPE CHATHAM AND HOW THE DOOTOE GOT A 
 
 TEEEIBLB FEIGHT — AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTEOP 
 SHOWED THAT THESE WAS GOOD EEASON FOE IT . 319 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 A COUNCIL OP WAE ..... 336 
 
CONTENTS. xxix 
 
 FAaB 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 AN EABTHQUAKE, A COLLIERY EXPLOSION, AND AN 
 
 ADVENTURE ..... 341 
 
 CHAPTEB XXXVn. 
 
 IN WHICH GEORGE HAWKEB SETTLES AN OLD SCORE 
 WITH WILLIAM LEE, MOST HANDSOMELY, LEAVING, 
 IN FACT, A LARGE BALANCE IN HIS OWN FAVOUR 361 
 
 CHAPTEB XXXVm. 
 
 HOW DR. MULHAU8 GOT BUSHED IN THE RANGES, AND 
 
 WHAT BEFEL HIM THERE .... 367 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 THE LAST GLEAM BEFORE THE STORM . . . 377 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 THE STORM BURSTS ..... 389 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 WIDDEBIN SHOWS CLEARLY THAT HE IS WORTH ALL 
 
 THE MONEY SAM GAVE FOR HIM . . . 391 
 
 CHAPTER Xlill. 
 THE FIGHT AMONG THE FERN-TREES . . . 404 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 ACROSS THE SNOW ..... 414 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 HOW MARY EL4WKEB HEARD THE NEWS . . 420 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEB XLV. 
 
 IN WHICH THERE ABE SOME ASTONISHING BEVEBATIONS 
 WITH REGABD TO DK. MULHAUS AND CAPTAIN 
 DBSBOKOUQH . ... 435 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 IN WHICH SAM MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT, 
 
 AND GETS CRIPPLED FOR LIFE . . . 442 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 HOW MARY HAWKER SAID " YES " . . 447 
 
 CHAPTER XLVni. 
 THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE .... 453 
 
THE RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTBODUCTORY. 
 
 Near the end of February, 1857, I think about the 20th or so, 
 though it don't much matter ; I only know it was near the latter 
 end of summer, burning hot, with the bushfires raging like volcanoes 
 on the ranges, and the river reduced to a slender stream of water, 
 almost lost upon the broad white flats of quartz shingle. It was 
 the end of February, I said, when Major Buckley, Captain Brent- 
 wood (formerly of the Artillery), and I, Geofiry Hamlyn, sat 
 together over our wine in the veranda at Baroona, gazing sleepily 
 on the grey plains that roUed away east and north-east towards 
 the sea. 
 
 We had sat silent for some time, too lazy to speak, almost to 
 think. The beautiful flower-garden which lay before us, sloping 
 towards the river, looked rather brown and sere, after the hot 
 winds, although the orange-trees were stiU green enough, and vast 
 clusters of purple grapes were ripening rapidly among the yellowing 
 vine-leaves. On the whole, however, the garden was but a poor 
 subject of contemplation for one who remembered it in all its full 
 November beauty, and so my eye travelled away to the left, to a 
 broad paddock of yellow grass which bounded the garden on that 
 side, and there I watched an old horse feeding. 
 
 A very old horse indeed, a horse which seemed to have reached 
 the utmost bounds of equine existence. And yet such a beautiful 
 
 2 
 
g THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 beast. Even as I looked some wild young colts were let out of 
 the stock-yard, and came galloping and whinnymg towards him, 
 and then it was a sight to see the old feUow as he trotted towards 
 them, with his nose in the air, and his tail arched, throwmg his 
 legs out before him with the ease and grace of a four-year-old, 
 and making me regret that he wasn't my property and ten years 
 younger ;— altogether, even then, one of the finest horses of his 
 class J had ever seen, and suddenly a thought came over me, and 
 I grew animated, 
 
 " Major Buckley," I said, " what horse is that? " 
 
 " What horse is that ? " repeated the major very slowly. " Why, 
 my good fellow, old Widderin, to be sure." 
 
 " Bless me ! " I said ; " You don't mean to say that that old 
 horse is alive still? " 
 
 " He looks like it," said the major. " He'd carry you a mile 
 or two yet." 
 
 " I thought he had died while I was in England," I said. " Ah, 
 major, that horse's history would be worth writing." 
 
 " If you began," answered the major, " to write the history of 
 the horse, you must write also the history of everybody who was 
 concerned in those circumst&,nces which caused Sam to take a 
 certain famous ride upon him. And you would find that the 
 history of the horse would be reduced into very small compass, 
 and that the rest of your book would assume proportions too vast 
 for the human intellect to grasp." 
 
 " How so ?" I said. 
 
 He entered into certain details, which I will not give. 
 
 "You would have," he said, "to begin at the end of the last 
 century, and bring one gradually on to the present time. Good 
 heavens ! just consider." 
 
 " I think you exaggerate," I said. 
 
 " Not at all," he answered. " You must begin the histories of 
 the Buckley and Thornton families in the last generation. 
 The Brentwoods also, must not be omitted, — why there's work for 
 several years. What do you say, Brentwood ? " 
 
 " The work of a life-time ; " said the captain. 
 
 "But suppose I were to write a simple narrative of the prin- 
 cipal events in the histories of the three families, which no one is 
 more able to do than myself, seeing that nothing important has 
 ever happened without my hearing of it, — how, I say, would you 
 like that?" 
 
 "If it amused you to write it, I am sure it would amuse us to 
 read it," said the major. 
 
 " But you are rather old to turn author," said Captain Brent- 
 
GEOPPET HAMLTN. 3 
 
 wood ; " you'll make a failure of it ; in fact, you'll never get 
 through with it." 
 
 I replied not, but went into my bedroom, and returning with a 
 thick roll of papers threw it on the floor — as on the stage the 
 honest notary throws down the long-lost will, — and there I 
 stood for a moment with my aims folded, eying Brentwood 
 triumphantly. 
 
 " It is already done, captain," I said. " There it lies." 
 
 The captain lit a cigar, and said nothing ; but the major said, 
 " Good gracious me I and when was this done ? " 
 
 " Partly here, and partly in England. I propose to read it 
 aloud to you, if it will not bore you." 
 
 "A really excellent idea," said the major. "My dear I" — 
 this last was addressed to a figure which was now seen ap- 
 proaching us up a long vista of trellised vines. A tall figure 
 dressed in grey. The figure, one could see as she came nearer, 
 of a most beautiful old woman. 
 
 Dressed I said in grey, with a white handkerchief pinned over 
 her grey hair, and a light Indian shawl hanging from her shoulders. 
 As upright as a dart, she came towards us through the burning 
 heat, as calmly and majestically as if the temperature had been 
 delightfully moderate. A hoary old magpie accompanied her, 
 evidently of great age, and fi'om time to time barked like an old 
 bulldog, in a wheezy whisper. 
 
 " My dear," said the major ; " Hamlyn is going to read aloud 
 some manuscript to us." 
 
 " That will be very delightful, this hot weather," said Mrs. 
 Buckley. " May I ask the subject, old friend ? " 
 
 " I would rather you did not, my dear madam ; you will soon 
 discover, in spite of a change of names, and perhaps somewhat of 
 localities." 
 
 " Well, go on," said the major ; and so on I went with the next 
 chapter, which is the first of the stoiy. 
 
 The reader will probably ask : 
 
 " Now, who on earth is Major Buckley ? and who is Captain 
 Brentwood ? and last, not least, who the Dickens are you ? " If 
 you will have patience, my dear sir, you will find it all out in a 
 very short time — Read on. 
 
THE BEC0LLECTI0N8 OP 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE COURTSHIP AND MAERIAGE OF JOHN THOKNTON, CLERK, AND 
 _THE BIRTH OF SOME ONE WHO TAKES RATHER A CONSPICUOUS 
 PART IN OUR STORY. 
 
 Sometime between the years 1780 and 1790, yoiong John 
 Thornton, then a Servitor at Christ Church, fell in love with 
 pretty Jane Hickman, whose father was a well-to-do fanner, 
 living not far down the river from Oxford ; and shortly before he 
 took his degree, he called formally upon old Hickman, and asked 
 his daughter's hand. Hickman was secretly well pleased that his 
 daughter should marry a scholar and a gentleman like John 
 Thornton, and a man too who could knock over his bird, or kill his 
 trout in the lasher with any one. So after some decent hesitation 
 he told him, that as soon as he got a living, good enough to 
 support Jane as she had been accustomed to live, he might take 
 her home with a father's blessing, and a hundred pounds to buy 
 furniture. And you may take my word for it, that there was not 
 much difficulty with the young lady, for in fact the thing had long 
 ago been arranged between them, and she was anxiously waiting 
 in the passage to hear her father's decision, all the time that John 
 was closeted with him. 
 
 John came forth from the room well pleased and happy. And 
 that evening when they two were walking together in the twilight 
 by the quiet river, gathering cowslips and fritillaries, he told her 
 of his good prospects, and how a young lord, who made much of 
 him, and treated him as a friend and an equal, though he was but 
 a Servitor — and was used to sit in his room talking with him long 
 after the quadrangle was quiet, and the fast men had reeled off to 
 their drunken slumbers — had only three days before promised him 
 a living of 3001. a year, as soon as he should take his priest's 
 orders. And when they parted that night, at the old stile in the 
 meadow, and he saw her go gliding home like a white phantom 
 under the dark elms, he thought joyfully, that in two short yeai-s 
 they would be happily settled, never more to pai-t in this world, in 
 his peaceful vicarage in Dorsetshire. 
 
 Two short years, he thought. Alas ! and alas ! Before two 
 years were gone, .poor Lord Sandston was lymg one foggy 
 November morning on Hampstead Heath, with a bullet through 
 his heart. Shot down at the commencement of a noble and useful 
 career by a brainless gambler— a man who did all things ill, save 
 billiards and pistol-shooting ; his beauty and his strength hmi-ied 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLTN. 5 
 
 to' corruption, and his wealth to the senseless debauchee who 
 hounded on his murderer to insult him. But I have heard old 
 Thornton tell, with proud tears, how my lord, though outraged 
 and insulted, with no course open to him hut to give the villain 
 the power of taking his life, still fired in the air, and went down 
 to the vault of his. forefathers without the guilt of blood upon his 
 soul. 
 
 So died Lord Sandston, and with him all John's hopes of 
 advancement. A curate now on 60/. a year ; what hope had he 
 of marrying ? And now the tearful couple, walking once more by 
 the river in desolate autumn, among the flying yellow leaves, 
 swore constancy, and agreed to wait tiU better times should 
 come. 
 
 So they waited. John in his parish among his poor people and 
 his school-children, busy always during the day, and sometimes 
 perhaps happy. But in the long winter evenings, when the snow 
 lay piled against the door, and the wind howled in the chinmey ; 
 or worse, when the wind was still, sead the rain was pattering from 
 the eaves, he would sit lonely and miserable by his desolate 
 hearth, and think with a sigh of what might have been had his 
 patron lived. And five-and-twenty years rolled on until James 
 Brown, who was bom during the first year of his curateship, 
 came home a broken man, with one arm gone, from the battle of 
 St. Vincent. And the great world roared on, and empires rose 
 and fell, and dull echoes of the great throes without were heard 
 in the peaceful English village, like distant thunder on a summer's 
 afternoon, but stiU no change for him. 
 
 But poor Jane bides her time in the old fann-house, sitting con- 
 stant and patient behind the long low latticed window, among the 
 geraniums and roses, watching the old wiUows by the river. Five- 
 and-twenty times she sees those willows grow green, and the 
 meadow brighten up with flowers, and as often she sees their yellow 
 leaves driven before the strong south wind, and the meadow grow 
 dark and hoar before the breath of autumn. Her father was long 
 since dead, and she was bringing up her brother's children. Her 
 raven hair was streaked with grey, and her step was not so light, 
 nor her laugh so loud, yet still she waited and hoped, long after 
 all hope seemed dead. 
 
 But at length a brighter day seemed to dawn for them ; for the 
 bishop, who had watched for years John Thomton's patient 
 industry and blameless conversation, gave him, to his great joy 
 and astonishment, the living of Drumston, worth 350/.. a-year. 
 And now, at last, he might marry if he would. True, the 
 morning of his life was gone long since, and its hot noon spent in 
 
6 THE BECOLLECTtONS OP 
 
 thanldess labour ; but the evening, the sober, quiet evening, yet 
 remained, and he and Jane might still render pleasant for one 
 another the downward road toward the churchyard, and hand-in- 
 hand walk more tranquilly forward to meet that dark tyrant 
 Death, who seemed so terrible to the solitary watcher. 
 
 A month or less after John was installed, one soft grey day in 
 March, this patient couple walked slowly arm-in-arm up the hiU, 
 under the lychgate, past the dark yew that shadowed the peaceful 
 graves, and so through the damp church porch, up to the old stone 
 altar, and there were quietly married, and then walked home 
 again. No feasting or rejoicing was there at that wedding ; the 
 very realisation of their long deferred hopes was a disappointment. 
 In March they were married, and before the lanes grew bright 
 with the primroses of another spring, poor Jane was lying in a 
 new-made grave, in the shadow of the old grey tower. 
 
 But, though dead, she yet lived to him in the person of a bright- 
 eyed baby, a little girl, born but three months before her mother's 
 death. Who can tell how Jolin watched and prayed over that 
 infant, or how he felt that there was something left for him in this 
 world yet, and thought that if his child would live, he should not 
 go down to the grave a lonely desolate man. Poor John ! — ^who 
 can say whether it would not have been better if the mother's 
 coffin had been made a little larger, and the baby had been carried 
 up the hill, to sleep quietly with its mother, safe from aU. the evil 
 of this world. 
 
 But the child lived and grew, and, at seventeen, I remember her 
 well, a beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless, with 
 black waving hair and dark blue eyes, and all the village loved her 
 and took jiride in her. For they said — " She is the handsomest 
 and the best in the parish." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF (a CERTAIN FAMILY LIVING In) EUBOPE, FROM 
 THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR TO THE PEACE OF 1818, CONTAINING 
 FACTS HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. 
 
 Among all the great old commoner families of the south of England, 
 who have held the lands of their forefathers through every change 
 of dynasty and religion, the Bucldeys of Clere stand desei-vedly 
 high among the brightest and the oldest. All down the stormy 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 7 
 
 page of this great island's history one sees, once in about a 
 hundred years, that name in some place of second-rate honour at 
 least, whether as admiral, general, or statesman ; and yet, at the 
 beginning of this present century, the representative of the good 
 old family was living at Clere House, a palace built in the golden 
 times of Elizabeth, on 900/. a-year, while aU the county knew 
 that it took 3001. to keep Olere in proper repair. 
 
 The two Stuart revolutions had brought them down from county 
 princes to simple wealthy squires, and the frantic efforts made by 
 Godfrey Buckley, in the "South Sea" scheme to retrieve the 
 family fortunes, had weU nigh broke them. Year by year they 
 saw acre after acre of the broad lands depart, and yet Marmaduke 
 Buckley lived in the home of his ancestors, and the avenue was 
 untouched by axe or saw. 
 
 He was a widower, with two sons, John and James. John had 
 been to sea from his earliest youth, and James had joined his 
 regiment a year or more. John had been doing the state good 
 service under his beloved CoUingwood ; and on the 19th October, 
 1805, when Nelson and Collingwood made tryst to meet at the 
 gates of hell, John Bucldey was one of the immortals on the deck 
 of the " Boyal Sovereign." And when the war fog rolled away to 
 leeward, and Trafalgar was won, and all seas were free, he lay 
 dead in the cockpit, having lived just long enough to comprehend 
 the magnitude of the victory. 
 
 Brave old Marmaduke was walking up and down the terrace at 
 Clere uneasy and impatient. Beside him was the good old curate 
 who had educated both the boys, and wearily and oft they turned to 
 watch down the long vista of the ancient avenue for the groom, who 
 had been despatched to Portsmouth to gain some tidings of the 
 lieutenant. They had heard of the victory, and, in their simple 
 way, had praised "Grod for it, drinking a bottle of the rarest old 
 wine to his Majesty's health and the confusion of his enemies, 
 before they knew whether they themselves were among the number 
 of the mourners. And now, as they paced the terrace, every 
 moment they grew more anxious and uneasy for the long delayed 
 intelligence. 
 
 Some trifle took them into the flower-garden, and, when they 
 came back, their hearts leapt up, for the messenger was there dis- 
 mounted, opening the gate. The curate ran down the steps, and 
 taking a black-edged letter from the sorrowful groom, gave it into 
 the trembling hands of the old man with a choking sob. He 
 opened it and glanced over it, and then, throwing it towards his 
 friend, walked steadily up the steps, and disappeared within the 
 dark porch. 
 
« THE EBCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 It was just three hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. 
 That hrave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had fomid 
 time to scrawl a word to his old schgolmate, and tell him that his 
 boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him like a son. 
 
 The old man sat that evening in the western gallery, tearless 
 and alone, brooding over his grief. Three times the curate had 
 peeped in, and as often had retreated, fearful of disturbing the 
 old man's solemn sorrow. The autumn sun had gone down in 
 wild and lurid clouds, and the gallery was growing dark and 
 gloomy, when the white figure of a beautiful girl entering silently 
 at the lower door came gliding up the darkening vista, past the 
 light of the windows and the shadow of the piers, to where the 
 old man sat under the high north window, and knelt at his feet, 
 weeping bitterly. 
 
 It was Agnes Talbot, the daughter of his nearest neighbour and 
 best friend,S9toiB~-the curate had slily sent for, thinking in his 
 honest heart that she would make a better comforter than he, and 
 rightly ; for the old man, bending over her, lifted up his voice and 
 wept, speaking for the first time since he heard of his bereavement, 
 and saying, " Oh, my boy, my boy ! " 
 
 " He is gone, sir," said Agnes, through her tears ; " and gone 
 the way a man should go. But there is another left you yet ; 
 remember him." 
 
 "Aye, James," said he; "alas, poor James! I wonder if he 
 knows it. I wish he were here." 
 
 " James is here," said she. " He heard of it before you, and 
 came posting over as fast as he could, and is waiting outside to 
 know if you can see him." 
 
 The door at the lower end of the gallery opened, and a tall and 
 noble-looking young man strode up and took his father's hand. 
 
 He was above the ordinai-y height of man, with a grand broad 
 forehead and bold blue eyes. Old Mannaduke's heart warmed up 
 as he parted his curling hair, and he said, 
 
 " Thank God, I've got one left still ! The old house will not 
 perish yet, while such a one as you remains to uphold it." 
 
 After a time they left him, at his own request; and walked out 
 together through the dark rooms towards the old hall. 
 
 "Agnes, my beloved, my darling!" said James, drawing his 
 arm round her waist ; " I knew I should find you with him like a 
 ministering angel. Say something to comfort me, my love. You 
 never could love John as I did ; yet I know you felt for him as 
 your brother, as he soon would have been, if he had lived." 
 
 " What can I say to you, my o^vn ? " she replied, " save to tell 
 you that he fell as your brother should fall, amongst the foremost. 
 
GEOEFEY HAMLYN. 9 
 
 fighting for his country's existence. And, Jaines, if you must go 
 hefore me, and leave me a widow before I am a bride, it would 
 render more tolerable the short time that would be left me before 
 I followed you, to think that you had fallen like him." 
 
 " There will be a chance of it, Agnes," said James, " for Stuart, 
 they say, is going to Italy, and I go with him. There will be a 
 long and bloody war, and who knows how it will end ? Stay you 
 here quiet with the old man, my love, and pray for me ; the end 
 will come some day. I am only eighteen and an ensign ; in ten 
 years I may be a colonel." 
 
 They parted that night with tears and kisses, and a few days 
 afterwards James went from among them to join his regiment. 
 
 From that time Agnes almost lived with old Marmaduke. Her 
 father's castle could be seen over the trees from the windows of 
 Clere, and every morning, wet or dry, the old man posted himself 
 in the great north window of the gallery to watch her coming. All 
 day she would pervade the gloomy old mansion like a ray of sun- 
 light, now reading to him, now leading him into the flower-garden 
 in fine weather, till he grew quite fond of flowers for her sake, and 
 began even to learn the names of some of them. But oftenest of 
 all she would sit working by his side, while he told her stories of 
 times gone by, stories which would have been dull to any but her, 
 but which she could listen to and applaud. Best of all she liked 
 to hear him talk of James, and his exploits by flood and field from 
 his youth up ; and so it was that this quiet couple never tired one 
 another, for their hearts were set upon the same object. 
 
 Sometimes her two sisters, noble and beautiful girls, would come 
 to see him ; but they, indeed, were rather intruders, kind and good 
 as they were. And sometimes old Talbot looked round to see his 
 old friend, and talked of bygone fishing and hunting, which roused 
 the old man up and made him look glad for half a day after. 
 Still, however, Agnes and the venerable curate were company 
 enough for him, for they were the only two who loved his absent 
 son as well as he. The love which had been divided between the 
 two, seemed now to be concentrated upon the one, and yet this 
 true old Briton never hinted at James' selling out and coming 
 home, for he said that the country had need of every one then, 
 more particularly such a one as James. 
 
 Time went on, and he came back to them fi'om Corunna, and 
 spending little more than a month at home, he started away once 
 more ; and next they heard of him at Busaco, wounded and pro- 
 moted. Then they followed him in their hearts along the path of 
 glory, from Talavera by Albuera and Vittoria, across the Pyrenees. 
 And while they were yet reading a long-delayed letter, written 
 
10 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 from Toulouse at midnight — after having been to the theatre with 
 Lord Wellington, wearing a white cockade — he broke in on them 
 again, to tell them the war was well-nigh over, and that he would 
 soon come and live with them in peace. 
 
 Then what delightful reunions were there in the old gallery 
 window, going over all the weary campaigns once more ; pleasant 
 rambles, too, down by the river-side in the sweet May evenings, 
 old Marmaduke and the curate discreetly walking in front, and 
 James and Agnes loitering far behind. And in the succeeding 
 winter after they were married, what pleasant rides had they to 
 meet the hounds, and merry evenings before the bright wood-fire 
 in the haU. Never were four people more happy than they. The 
 war was done, the disturber was confined, and peace had settled 
 down upon the earth. 
 
 Peace, yes. But not for long. Spring came on, and with it 
 strange disquieting rumours, growing more certain day by day, 
 till the terrible news broke on them that the faithless tyrant had 
 broke loose again, and that all Europe was to be bathed in blood 
 once more by his insane ambition. 
 
 James had sold out of the army, so that when Agnes first 
 heard the intelligence she thanked G-od that her husband at least 
 would be safe at home during the storm. But she was soon to be 
 undeceived. When the news first came, James had galloped off 
 to Portsmouth, and late in the evening they saw him come riding 
 slowly and sadly up the avenue. She was down at the gate 
 before he could dismount, and to her eager inquiries if the news 
 were true, he replied, 
 
 " All too true, my love ; and I must leave you this day 
 week." 
 
 " My God ! " said she ; " leave me again, and not six months 
 married ? Surely the king has had you long enough ; may not 
 your wife have you for a few short months ? " 
 
 " Listen to me, dear wife," he replied. "All the Peninsular 
 men are volunteering, and I must not be among the last, for every 
 man is wanted now. Buonaparte is joined by the whole army, 
 and the craven king has fled. If England and Prussia can com- 
 bine to strike a blow before he gets head, thousands and hundreds 
 of thousands of lives will be spared. But let him once get fii-mly 
 seated, and then, hey ! for ten years' more war. Beside the 
 thing is done ; my name went in this morning." 
 
 She said, " God's will be done ; " and he left his young bride 
 and his old father once again. The nightingale grew melodious 
 in the midnight woods, the swallows nestled again in the chimneys, 
 and day by day the shadows under the old avenue grew darker 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 11 
 
 and darker till merry June was half gone ; and then one Saturday 
 came the rumour of a great defeat. 
 
 All the long weary summer Sabbath that followed, Agnes and 
 Marmaduke silently paced the terrace, tiU the curate — having got 
 through his own services somehow, and broken down in the 
 "prayer during war and tumults," — came hurrying back to them 
 to give what comfort he could. 
 
 Alas 1 that was but little. He could only speculate whether or 
 not the duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. 
 If the two armies could eifect a union, they would be near about 
 the strength of the French, but then the Prussians were cut to 
 pieces ; so the curate broke dovm, and became the worst of the three. 
 
 Cheer up, good souls ! for he you love shall not die yet for 
 many long years. While you are standing there before the porch, 
 dreading the long anxious night, Waterloo has been won, and he 
 — having stood the appointed time in the serried square, watching 
 the angry waves of French cavalry dash in vain against the glitter- 
 ing wall of bayonets — is now leaning against a gun in the French 
 position, alive and well, though fearfully tired, listening to the 
 thunder of the Prussian artillery to the north, and watching the 
 red sun go down across the wild confusion of the battle-field. 
 
 But home at Clere none slept that night, but met again next 
 morning weary and harassed. All the long three days none of 
 them spoke much, but wandered about the house uneasily. About 
 ten o'clock on the Wednesday night they went to bed, and the old 
 man slept from sheer weariness. 
 
 It was twelve o'clock when there came a clang at the gate, and 
 a sound of horses' feet on the gravel. Agnes was at the window 
 in a moment. 
 
 " Who goes there ? " she cried. 
 
 "An orderly from Colonel Mountford at Portsmouth," said a 
 voice below. "A letter for Mr. Buckley." 
 
 She sent a servant to undo the door ; and going to the window 
 again, she inquired, trembling, — 
 
 " Do you know what the news is, orderly ? " 
 
 "A great victory, my dear," said the man, mistaking her for 
 one of the servants. " Your master is all right. There's a letter 
 from him inside this one." 
 
 "And I daresay," Mrs. Buckley used to add, when she would 
 tell this old Waterloo story, as we called it, " that the orderly 
 thought me a most heartless domestic, for when I heard what he 
 said, I burst out laughing so loud, that old Mr. Buckley woke up 
 to see what was the matter, and when heard, he laughed as loud 
 as I did." 
 
12 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 So he came back to them again with fresh laurels, but Agnes 
 never felt safe, till she heard that the powers had determmed to 
 chain up her bete noir, Buonaparte, on a lonely roek in the Atlantic, 
 that he might disturb the world no more. Then at last she began 
 to believe that peace might be a reality, and a few months after 
 Waterloo, to their delight and exultation, she bore a noble boy. 
 
 And as we shall see more of this boy, probably, than of any one 
 else in these following pages, we will, if you please, appoint him 
 hero, with all the honours and emoluments thereunto pertaining. 
 Perhaps when I have finished, you will think him not so much of 
 a hero after all. But at all events you shall see that he is an 
 honest upright gentleman, and in these times, perhaps such a 
 character is preferable to a hero. 
 
 Old Marmaduke had been long failing, and two years after this 
 he had taken to his bed, never to leave it again alive. And one 
 day when the son and heir was rolling and crowing on his grand- 
 father's bed, and Agnes was sewing at the window, and James was 
 tying a fly by the bedside, under the old man's directions, he 
 suddenly drew the child towards him, and beckoning Agnes from 
 the window, spoke thus : — • 
 
 " My children, I shan't be long with you, and I must be the 
 last of the Buckleys that die at Clere. Nay, I mean it, James ; 
 listen carefully to me : when I go, the house and park must go 
 with me. We are very poor as you well know, and you will be 
 doing injustice to this boy if you hang on here in this useless 
 tumble-down old palace, without money enough to keep up your 
 position in the county. You are still yoimg, and it would be hard 
 for you to break up old associations. It got too hard for me 
 lately, though at one time I meant to do it. Tlic land and the 
 house are the worst investment you can have for your money, and 
 if you sell, a man like you may make money in many ways. 
 Gordon the brewer is dying to have the place, and he has more 
 right to it than we have, for he has ten acres round to our one. 
 Let him have the estate and found a new family ; the people will 
 miss us at first, God bless 'em, but they'll soon get used to 
 Gordon, for he's a kindly man, and a just, and I am glad that we 
 shall have so good a successor. Remember your family and your 
 ancestors, and for that reason don't hang on here, as I said before, 
 in the false position of an old county family without money, like 
 the Singletons of Hurst, living in a ruined hall, with a miserable 
 overcropped farm, a comer of the old deer park, under their draw- 
 ing-room window. No, my boy, I would sooner see you take a 
 farm from my lord, than that. And now I am tired with talking, 
 and so leave mc, but after I am gone, remember what I have said." 
 
GEOPPRY HAMLTN. 13 
 
 A few days after this the old man passed peacefully from the 
 world without a sigh. 
 
 They huried him in the family vault under the chancel windows, 
 and he was the last of the Buckleys that slept in the grave of his 
 forefathers. The old arch beneath the east window is built up 
 for ever. 
 
 Soon after he was gone, the Major, as I shall call him in future, 
 sold the house and park, and the few farms that were left, and 
 found himself with twelve thousand pounds, ready to begin the 
 world again. He funded his money and made up his mind to 
 wait a few years and see what to do ; determining that if no other 
 course should open, he would emigrate to Canada — the paradise 
 of half-pay ofScers. But in the meantime he moved into Devon- 
 shire, and took a pretty little cottage which was to let, not a 
 quarter of a mile from Drnmston Vicarage. 
 
 Such an addition to John ThomtoiTsTrEEle circle of acquaintances 
 was very welcome. The Majgs^and he very soon became fast 
 friends, and noble Mrs^^^uckley was seldom a day without spend- 
 ing an hour at least, with the beautiful, wilful Mary Thornton. 
 
 CIL^PTEE IV. 
 
 SOME NEW FACES. 
 
 The twilight of a winter's evening, succeeding a short and stormy 
 day, was fast fading into night, and old John Thornton sat dozing 
 in his chair before the fire, waiting for candles to resume his read- 
 ing. He was now but little over sixty, yet his hair was snowy 
 white, and his face looked worn and aged. Any one who watched 
 his countenance now in the light of the blazing wood, might see 
 by the down-drawn brows and uneasy expression that the old man 
 was unhappy and disquieted. 
 
 The book that lay in his lap was a volume of Shakespeare, open 
 at the " Merchant of Venice." Something he had come across in 
 that play had set him thinking. The book had fallen on hia 
 knees, and he sat pondering till he had fallen asleep. Yet even 
 in his slumber the uneasy expression stayed upon his face, and 
 now and then he moved uneasily in his chair. 
 
 What could there be to vex him ? Not poverty at all events, 
 for not a year ago a relation, whom he had seldom seen, and of 
 late years entirely lost sight of, had left him 6,000i. and a like 
 
14 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 sum to his daughter Mary. And his sister, Miss Thornton, a 
 quiet, good old maid, who had heen a governess all her life, had 
 come to live with him, so that he was now comfortably off, with 
 the only two relations he cared about in the world staying with 
 him to make his old age comfortable. Yet notwithstanding aU 
 this, John was unhappy. 
 
 His daughter Mary sat sewing in the window, ostensibly for the 
 purpose of using the last of the daylight. But the piece of white 
 muslin in her hand claimed but a small part of her attention. 
 Sometimes she gave a stiteh or two ; but then followed a long 
 gaze out of the window, across the damp gravel and plushy lawn, 
 towards the white gate under the leafless larches. Again with an 
 impatient sigh she would address herself to her sewing, but once 
 more her attention would wander to the darkening garden ; so at 
 length she rose, and leaning against the window, began to watch 
 the white gate once more. 
 
 But now she starts, and her face brightens up, as the gate 
 swings on its hinges, and a tall man comes with rapid eager step 
 up the walk. John moves uneasily in his sleep, but unnoticed by 
 her, for she stands back in the shadow of the curtain, and eagerly 
 watches the new comer in his approach. Her father sits up in 
 his chair, and after looking sadly at her for a moment, then sinks 
 back with a sigh, as though he would wish to go to sleep again 
 and wake no more. 
 
 The maid, bringing in candles, met the new comer at the door, 
 and, carrying in the Eghts before him, announced — 
 
 " Mr. George Hawker." 
 
 I remember his face indistinctly as it was then. I remember it 
 far better as it was twenty years after. Yet I must try to recall 
 it for you as well as I can, for we shall have much to do with this 
 man before the end. As the light from the candles fell upon his 
 figure while he stood in the doorway, any man or woman who saw 
 it would have exclaimed immediately, " What a handsome feUow ! " 
 and with justice ; for if perfectly regular features, splendid red 
 and brown complexion, faultless white teeth, and the finest head 
 of curling black hair I ever saw, could make him handsome, hand- 
 some he was without doubt. And yet the more you looked at 
 him the less you liked him, and the more inclined you felt to 
 pick a quarrel with him. The thin lips, the everlasting smile, the 
 quick suspicious glance, so rapidly shot out from under the over- 
 hanging eyebrows, and as quickly withdrawn, were fearfully repul- 
 sive, as well as a trick he had of always clearing his throat before 
 he spoke, as if to gain time to frame a lie. But, perhaps, the 
 strangest thing about him was the shape of his head, which, I 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 15 
 
 believe, a child would have ohsei-ved. The young fellows in those 
 times knew little enough about plirenology. I doubt, indeed, if I 
 had ever heai'd the word, and yet among the village lads that man 
 went by the name of " flat-headed George." The forehead was 
 both low and naiTow, sloping a great way back, while tlie larger 
 pai't of the skuU lay low down behind the ears. All this was 
 made the more visible by the short curling hair which covered his 
 head. 
 
 He was tlie only son of a small fanner, in one of the distant 
 outlying hamlets of Drumston, called Woodlands. His mother 
 had died when he was very young, and he had bad but little 
 education, but had lived shut up with his father in the lonely old 
 fann- house. And strange stories were in cii-culation among the 
 villages about that house, not much to the credit of either father 
 or son, which stories John Thornton must in his position as clergy- 
 man have heard somewhat of, so that one need hardly wonder at 
 his uneasiness when he saw him enter. 
 
 For Mary adored him ; the rest of the village disliked and dis- 
 tiTisted him ; but she, with a sti'ange perversity, loved him as it 
 seldom falls to the lot of man to be loved — with her whole heart 
 and soul. 
 
 " I have brought you some snipes. Mi'. Thornton," said he, in 
 his most musical tones. ' ' The white fi-ost last night has scut 
 them down off the moor as thick as bees, and this wann rain will 
 soon send them aU back again. I only went round through Fem- 
 worthy and Combe, and I have killed five couple." 
 
 " Thank you, Mi-. George, thank you," said Jolm, " they are 
 not so plentiful as they were in old times, and I don't shoot so 
 well either as I used to do. My sight's going, and I can't walk 
 fai". It is neai'ly time for me to go, I think." 
 
 " Not yet, sir, I hope ; not yet for a long time," said George 
 Hawker, in an offhand sort of way. But Maiy slipped round, 
 kissed his forehead, and took his hand quietly in hers. 
 
 John looked from her to George, and dropped her hand with a 
 sigh, and soon the lovers were whispering together again in the 
 dai'kness of the window. 
 
 But now there is a fresh footfall on the garden walk, a quick, 
 rapid, decided one. Somebody bm-sts open the haU-door, and, 
 without shutting it, dashes into the parlour, accompanied by a 
 tornado of damp air, and announces in a loud, though not unplea- 
 sant voice, with a foreign accent — 
 
 " I have got the new Scolopax." 
 
 He was a broad, massive built man, about the middle height, 
 with a squai-e determined set of featm'es, brightened up by a pair 
 
16 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 of merry blue eyes. His forehead was, I think, the finest I ever 
 saw ; so high, so broad, and so upright ; and altogether he was 
 the sort of man that in a city one would turn round and look after, 
 wondering who he was. 
 
 He stood in the doorway, dripping, and without " Gpod-even," 
 or salutation of any sort, exclaimed — 
 
 " I have got the new Scolopax ! " 
 
 " No ! " cried old John, starting up all alive, " Have you 
 though ? How did you get him ? Are you sure it is not a young 
 Jack ? Come in and tell us all about it. Only think." 
 
 " The obstinacy and incredulity of you English," replied the 
 new comer, totally disregarding John's exclamations, and remain- 
 ing dripping in the doorway, " far exceeds an3rthing I could have 
 conceived, if I had not witnessed it. If I told you once, I told 
 you twenty times, that I had seen the bird on three distinct 
 occasions in the meadow below Reel's mill ; and you each time 
 threw your jacksnipe theory in my face. To-day I marked him 
 down in the bare ground outside Haveldon wood, then ran at fuU 
 speed up to the jager, and offered him five shillings if he would 
 come down and shoot the bird I showed him. He came, killed 
 the bird in a style that I would give a year's tobacco to be master 
 of, and remarked as I paid him his money, that he would like to 
 get five shillings for every one of those birds he could shoot in 
 summer time. The jolter-head thought it was a sandpiper, but he 
 wasn't much farther out than you with your jaeksnipes. Bah ! " 
 
 " My deQT Doctor Mulhaus," said John mildly, " I confess 
 myself to haveHBeen foolishly incredulous, as 'to our little place 
 being honoured by such a distinguished stranger as the new snipe. 
 But come in to the fire, and smoke your pipe, while you show me 
 your treasure. Mary, you know, likes tobacco, and Mr. George, 
 I am sure," he added, in a slightly altered tone, " will excuse 
 it." 
 
 Mr. George would be charmed. But the Doctor, standing 
 staring at him open-eyed for a moment, demanded in an audible 
 whisper — ■ 
 
 " Who the deuce is that ? " 
 
 " Mr. George Hawker, Doctor, from the Woodlands. I should 
 have thought you had met him before." 
 
 " Never," replied the Doctor. "And I don't — and I mean I 
 have had the honour of hearing of him from Stockbridge. Excuse 
 me, sir, a moment. I am going to take a liberty. !■ am a 
 phrenologist." He advanced across the room to where George 
 sat, laid his hand on his forehead, and drawing it lightly and 
 slowly back through his black cm-Is, till he reached the nape of his 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 17 
 
 neck, ejaculated a " Hah 1 " which might mean anything, and 
 retired to the fire. 
 
 He then began filling his pipe, but before it was filled set it 
 suddenly on the table, and drawing from his coat-pocket a card- 
 board box, exliibited to the delighted £yes of the vicar that beau- 
 tiful little brown-mottled snipe; which now bears the name of 
 Colonel Sabine, and having- lit his pipe, set to work with a tiny 
 penknife, and' a pot of arsenical soap, all of which were dis- 
 interred from the vast coat-pocket before mentioned, to reduce 
 the plump little bird to a loose mass of skin and feathers, fit to 
 begin again his new life in death in a glass-case in some collec- 
 tor's museum. 
 
 George Hawker had sat very uneasy since the Doctor's phreno- 
 logical examinpition, and every now and then cast fierce angry 
 glances at him from imder his lowered eyebrows, talking but little 
 to Mary. But now he grows more' uiieasy stUl, for the gate goes 
 again, and stiU another footfall is heard approaching through the 
 darkness. 
 
 That is James Stockbridge. I should know that step among a 
 thousand. Whether brushing through the long grass of an 
 English meadow in May time, or quietly pacing up and down the 
 orange alley in the New World, between the crimson snow and 
 the blazing west ; or treading lightly across the wet ground at 
 black midnight, when the cattle are restless, or the blacks are 
 abroad ; or even, I should think, staggering on the slippery deck, 
 when the big grey seas are booming past, and the good ship seems 
 plunging down to destruction. 
 
 He had loved Mary dearly since she was almost a child ; but 
 she, poor pretty fool, used to turn him to ridicule, and make him 
 fetch and caiTy for her like a dog. He was handsomer, cleverer, 
 stronger, and better tempered than George Hawker, and yet she I 
 had no eyes for him, or his good qualities. She liked him in a j 
 sort of way ; nay, it might even be said that she was fond of him. 
 But what she liked better than him was to gratify her vanity, by 
 showing her power over the finest young fellow in the village, and 
 to use him as a foil to aggravate George Hawker. My aunt Betsy 
 (spinster) used to say, that if she were a man, sooner than stand 
 that hussy's airs (meaning Mary's) in the way young Stockbridge 
 did, she'd cut and run to America, which, in the old. lady's esti- 
 mation, was the last resource left to an unfortunate human 
 creature, before suicide. 
 
 As he entered the parlour, John's face grew bright, and he held 
 out his hand to him. The Doctor, too, shoving his spectacles on 
 his forehead, greeted him with a royal salute, of about twenty-one 
 
 3 
 
18 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 short words ; but he got rather a cool reception from the lovers in 
 the window. Mary gave him a quiet good evening, and George 
 hoped with a sneer that he was quite well, but directly the pair 
 were whispering together once more in the shadow of the curtam. 
 
 So he sat down between the Doctor and the Vicar. James, 
 like all the rest of us, had a profound respect for the Doctor's 
 learning, and old John and he were as father and son; so a 
 better matched trio could hardly be found in the parish, as they 
 sat there before the cheerful blaze, smoking their pipes. 
 
 " A good rain, Jim ; a good, warm, kindly ram after the frost," 
 began the Vicar. 
 
 " A very good rain, sir," replied Jim. 
 
 " Some idiots," said the Doctor, " take the wing bones out first. 
 Now, my method of beginning at the legs and working forward, is 
 infinitely superior. Yet that ass at Crediton, after I had con- 
 descended to show him, persisted his own way was the best." All 
 this time he was busy skinning his bird. 
 
 " How are your Southdowns looking, Jim ? " says the Vicar. 
 " Foot-rot, eh ? " 
 
 "Well, yes, sir," says James, "they always will, you know, 
 in these wet clays. But I prefer 'em to the Leicesters, for all 
 that." ~1 
 
 " How is scapegrace Ilamlyn ? " asked the Vicar. 
 
 "He is very well, sin He and I have been out with the 
 harriers to-day." 
 
 " Ah ! taking you out with the harriers instead of minding his 
 business ; just like him. He'll be leading you astray, James, my 
 boy. Young men like you and he, who have come to be their 
 own masters so young, ought to be more careful than others. 
 Besides, you see, both you and Hamlyn, being 'squires, have got 
 an example to set to the poorer folks." 
 
 " We are neither of us so rich as some of the farmers, sir." 
 
 " No ; but you are both gentlemen bom, you see, and, there- 
 fore, ought to be in some way models for those who are not." 
 
 " Bosh," said the Doctor. " All this about Hamlyn's going 
 out hare-hunting." 
 
 " I don't mind it once a week," said the Vicai-, ignoring the 
 Doctor's interruption ; " hut four times is rather too much. And 
 Hamlyn has been out four days this week. Twice with Wrefords, 
 and twice with Holes. He can't deny it." 
 
 Jim couldn't, so he laughed. " You must catch him, sir," he 
 said, " and give him a real good wigging. He'll mind you. 
 But catch him soon, sir, or you won't get the chance. Doctor, do 
 you know anything about New South Wales ? " 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 19 
 
 " Botany Bay," said the Vicar abstractedly, " convict settle- 
 ment in South Seas. Jerry Shaw tTegged the Judge to hang him 
 instead of sending him there. Judge wouldn't do it though ; 
 Jerry was too bad for that." \ 
 
 " Hamlyn and I are thinkmg of sellmg up and going there,"/ 
 said Jim. " Do you Imow anything about it. Doctor ? " S 
 
 " What ! " said the Doctor ; . " the mysterious hidden land of 
 the great SolitlPSear^- Tasman's land, Nuyt's land, Leuwin's 
 land, De^'^WTtTslSEdTany fool's land who could sail round, and 
 never have the sense to land and make use of it — the new country 
 of Australasia. The land with' millions of acres of fertile soil, 
 under a splendid climate, calling aloud for some one to come and 
 cultivate them. The land of the Eucalypti and the Marsupials, 
 the land of deep forests and boundless pastures, which go rolling 
 away westward, plain beyond plain, to none knows where. Yes ; 
 I luiow something about it." 
 
 The Vicar was " knocked all of a heap " at James's announce- 
 ment, and now, slightly recovering himself, said — 
 
 " You hear him. He is going to Botany Bay. He is going 
 to sell his estate, 250 acres of the best land in Devon, and go 
 and live among the convicts. And who is going with him ? 
 Why, Hamlyn the wise. Oh dear me. And what is he going 
 for?" 
 
 That was a question apparently hard to answer. If there was a 
 reason, Jim was either unwilling or unable to give it. Yet I think 
 that the real cause was standing there in the window, with a look 
 of unbounded astonishment on her pretty face. 
 
 " Going to leave us, James ! " she cried, coming quickly towards 
 him. " Why, whatever shall I do without you ? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss Mary," said James somewhat huskily ; " I think I 
 may say that we have settled to go. Hamlyn has got a letter 
 from a cousin of his who went from down Plymouth way, and who 
 is making a fortune ; and besides, I have got tired of the old place 
 somehow, lately. I have nothing to keep me here now, and there 
 wiU be a change, and a new life there. In short," said he, in 
 despair of giving a rational reason, " I have made up my mind." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mary, while her eyes filled with tears, " I shall 
 be so sorry to lose you." 
 
 " I too," said James, " shall be sorry to start away beyond seas 
 and leave all the friends I care about save one behind me. But 
 times are hard for the poor folks here now, and if I, as 'squire, 
 set the example of going, I know many will follow. The^ old 
 country, Mr. Thornton," he continued, " is getting too crowded 
 for men to live in without a hard push, and depend on it, when 
 
20 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 poor men are afraid to marry for fear of having children which 
 they can't support, it is time to move somewhere. The hive is 
 too hot, and the hees must swarm, so that those that go wiU 
 hoth better themselves, and better those they leave behind them, 
 by giving them more room to work and succeed. It's hard to part 
 with the old fann and the old faces now, but perhaps in a few 
 years, one will get to like that country just as one does this, from 
 being used to it, and the old country will seem only like a pleasant 
 dream after one has awoke." 
 
 " Think twice about it, James, my boy," said the Vicar. 
 
 " Don't be such an ass as to hesitate," said the Doctor impa- 
 tiently. " It is the genius of your restless discontented nation to 
 go blundering about the world like buffaloes in search of fresh 
 pasture. You have founded already two or three grand new 
 empires, and you are now going to form another ; and men like 
 you ought to have their fingers in the pie."' 
 
 "Well, God speed you, and Hamlyn too, wherever you go. 
 ^e you going home, Mr. Hawker ? " 
 
 George, who hated James from the very bottom of his heart, 
 was not Hi-pleased to hear there would be a chance of soon getting 
 rid of him. He had been always ^alf jealous of him, though 
 without the slightest cause, and to-night he was more so than 
 ever, for Mary, since she had heard of James' intended departure, 
 had grown very grave and silent. He stood, hat in hand, ready 
 to depart, and, as usual, when he jneant mischief, spoke in his 
 sweetest tones. 
 
 "I am afraid I must be saying good evening, Mr. Thornton. 
 Why, James," he added, '" this is something quite new. So you 
 are going to Botany without waiting to be sent there. Ha ! ha ! 
 Well, I wish you every sort of good luck. My dear friend, 
 Hamlyn, too. What a loss he'U be to our little society, so 
 sociable and affable as he always is to us poor fanners' sons. 
 You'll find it lonely there, though. You should get a wife to 
 take with you. Oh, yes, I should certainly get married before I 
 went. Good night." 
 
 All this was meant to be as irritating as possible ; but as he 
 went out at the door he had the satisfaction to hear James' clear 
 honest laugh mingling with the Vicar's, for, as George had closed 
 the door, the Doctor had said, looking after him — 
 
 " Gott in Himmel, that young man has got a skull like a torn 
 cat." 
 
 This complimentary observation was lost on Mary, who had left 
 the room with George. The Vicar looked round for her, ancj 
 sighed when he missed her, 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 21 
 
 " Ah 1 " said he ; "I wish he was going instead of you." 
 
 " So does the new colony, I'll he hound," added the Doctor. 
 
 Soon after this the party separated. When James and the 
 Doctor stood outside the door, the latter demanded, " Where are 
 you going?" 
 
 "vICo_&'dney, I helieve. Doctor." 
 
 " GooseTTTneafrnow." 
 
 "Home." 
 
 "No, you ain't," said the Doctor, " you are going to walk up 
 to Hamlyn's with me, and hear me discourse." Accordingly, 
 about eleven o'clock, these two arrived at my house, and sat 
 before the fire till half-past three in the morning ; and in that 
 time the doctor had given us more information about New South 
 Wales than we had been able to gather from ordinary sources in 
 a month. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 IN WHICH THE HEADER IS MADE ACCOMPLICE TO A MISPRISION 
 OP FELONY. 
 
 Those who only know the river Taw as he goes sweeping, clear 
 and full, past orchards and farmhouses, by woods and parks, and 
 through long green meadows, after hp has left Dartmoor, have 
 little idea of the magnificent scene which rewards the persever- 
 ance of any one who has the curiosity to follow. him up to his 
 granite cradle between the two loftiest eminences in the West 
 of England. 
 
 On the left. Great Cawsand heaves up^down beyond c'own, a 
 vast sheet of purple heath and golden whin, while on the right 
 the lofty serrated ridge of Yestor starts boldly up, black against 
 the western sky,, throwing a long shadow over the wild waste of 
 barren stone at his feet. 
 
 Some Scotchmen, perhaps, may smile at my applying the word 
 "magnificent " to heights of only 2,100 feet. Yet I have been 
 among mountains which double Ben Nevis in height, and with the 
 exception of the Murray Gates in Australia, and a glen in Madeira, 
 whose name I have forgotten, I have never seen among them the 
 equal of some of the northern passes of Dartmoor for gloomy 
 magnificence. For I consider that scenei^ depends not sff'mucli 
 ""OTlTieigirraS'fin abruptness. 
 
22 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 It is an evil, depressing place. Far as the eye can reach up the 
 glen and to the right, it is one horrid waste of grey granite ; here 
 and there a streak of yellow grass or a patch of black bog ; not a 
 tree nor a shrub within the sky-line. On a hot summer's day it 
 is wearisome enough for the lonely angler to listen to the river 
 crawling lazily through the rooks that choke his bed, mingled with 
 the clocking of some water-moved boulder, and the chick-chick of 
 the stonechat, or the scream of the golden plover over head. _ But 
 on a wild winter's evening, when day is fast giving place to night, 
 and the mist shrouds the hill, and the wild wind is rushing 
 hoarse through tor and crag, it becomes awful and terrible in 
 the extreme. 
 
 On just such a night as that, at that time when it becomes 
 evident that the little light we have had all day is about to leave 
 us, ajoaab Mvatc her was standing by the angry swelling river in 
 the most desolate part of the pass, at a place where a vast con- 
 fusion of formless rocks crosses the stream, torturing it into a 
 hundred boiling pools and hissing cascades. 
 
 He stood on the summit of a cairn close to the river, and every 
 now and then, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked eastward 
 through the driving rain, as though expecting some one who came 
 not. But at length, grown tired of watching, he with an oath 
 descended to a sheltered comer among the boulders, where a 
 smouldering peat-fire was giving out more smoke than heat, and, 
 I'crouching over it, began to fan the embers with his hat. 
 
 He was a somewhat short, though powerful man, in age about 
 forty, very dark in complexion, with black whiskers growing half 
 over his chin. His nose was hooked, his eyes were black and 
 piercing, and his lips thin. His face was battered like an old 
 sailor's, and every careless, unstudied motion of his body was as 
 'wild and reckless as could be. There was something about his 
 tout ensemble, in short, that would have made an Australian police- 
 man swear to him as a convict without the least hesitation. 
 
 There were redeeming points in the man's face, too. There 
 was plenty of determination, for instance, in that lower jaw ; and 
 as he bent now over the fire, and his thoughts wandered away to 
 other times and places, the whole appearance of the man seemed 
 to change and become milder and kindlier ; yet when some slight 
 noise makes him lift his head and look round, there is the old 
 expression back again, and he looks as reckless and desperate as 
 ever ; what he is is more apparent, and the ghost of what he 
 might have been has not wholly departed. 
 
 I can picture to myself that man scowling behind the bayonet 
 line at Maida, or rapidly and coolly serving his gun at Trafalgar, 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 23 
 
 helping to win the dominion of all seas, or taking his trick at the 
 helm through arctic icehlocks with Parry, or toiling on with 
 steadfast Stnrt, knee-deep in the sand of the middle desert, 
 patiently yet hopelessly scanning the low quivering line of the 
 north-west horizon. 
 
 In fifty situations where energy and courage are required, I can 
 conceive that man a useful citizen. Yet here he is on the lone 
 moor, on the winter's "night, a reckless, cursing, thrice convicted 
 man. His very virtues, — his impatient energy and undeniable 
 courage, — his greatest stumbling-blocks, leading him into crimes 
 which a lazy man or a coward would have shrunk from. Deserted 
 apparently by God and man, he crouched there over the low fire, 
 among his native rocks^nd. meditated fresh villanies. 
 
 He had been traasported at eighteen" for" something, I know 
 not what, which earned transportation in those days, and since 
 then his naturally violent temper, aggravated instead of being 
 broken by penal discipline, had earned him three fresh convictions 
 in the colony. From the last of these .sente nces he had escaped, 
 with a cunning and address which had baffled the vigilance of 
 the Sydney police, good as they were, and had arrived home, two 
 years before this time, after twenty-one years' absence, at his 
 native village in the moor. 
 
 ^None thereTnew him, or even guessed who he was. His 
 brother, a small farmer, who would have taken him to his heart 
 had he recognised him, always regarded him as a suspicious 
 stranger ; and what cut him deeper still, his mother, bis old, half- 
 blind, palsied mother, whose memory he had in some sort cherished 
 through the horrors of the hulk, the convict-ship, the chain-gang, 
 and the bush, Imew him not. Only once, when he was speaking 
 in her presence, she said abruptly, — 
 
 " The voice of him is like the voice of my boy that was took 
 away. But he was smooth-faced, like a girl, and ye're a dark, 
 wrinkled man. 'Sides, he died years agone, over the water." 
 
 But the old lady grew thoughtful and silent from that day, and 
 three weeks after she was carried up to her grave, — 
 
 "By the little grey church on the windy hill." 
 
 At the funeral; William Lee^ the man whom I have been 
 describing, pushed quiitlythrough the little crowd, and as they 
 threw the first earth on the coffin, stood looking over the shoulder 
 of his brother, who was unconscious of his existence. 
 
 Like many men who have been much in great soUtudes, and 
 have gone days and weeks sometimes without meeting a fellow- 
 
24 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 creature, he had acquired the hahit of thinking aloud, and if 
 any one had been listening they would have heard much such 
 a soliloquy as the following, expletives omitted, or rather 
 softened : — 
 
 " A brutal cold country this, for a man to camp out m. Never 
 a buck-log to his fire, no, nor a stick thicker than your finger for 
 seven mile round ; and if there was, you'd get a month for cutting 
 it. If the young 'un milks free this time, I'U be off to the bay agam, 
 I know. But will he? By George, he shall though. The young 
 snob, I know he daren't but come, and yet it's my belief he's late 
 just to keep me soaking out in the rain. Whew ! it's cold enough 
 to freeze the tail off a tin possum ; and this infernal rubbish 
 won't burn, at least not to warm a man. If it wasn't for the 
 whisky I should be dead. There's a rush of wind ; I am glad 
 for one thing there is no dead timber overhead. He'U be drinking 
 at all the places coming along to get his courage up to bounce me, 
 but there ain't a public-house on the road six miles from this, so 
 the drink will have pretty much died out of him by the time he 
 gets to me, and if I can get him to sit in this rain, and smoke 
 'backer for five minutes, he won't be particular owdacious. 
 I'll hide the grog, too, between the stones. He'U be asking 
 for a drink the minute he comes. I liope Dick is ready {Jie 
 is pretty sure to be. He's a gooa~*"KtEIe chap,~ffiat Dick; 
 he has stuck to me w01 these -five years. I wouldn't like to 
 trust him with another man's horse, though. But~this other one 
 is no good ; he's got all the inclination to go the whole hog, and 
 none of the pluck necessary. If he ever is lagged, he.wiU be 
 a worse one than ever I was, or Dick either. There he is, for 
 a hundred pounds." 
 
 A faint " halloo ! " sounded above the war of the weather ; and 
 Lee, putting his hand to his mouth, replied with that sti-ange cry, 
 so well known to all Australians — " Coe6." 
 
 A man was now heard approaching through the darkness, now 
 splashing deep into some treacherous moss hole with a loud curse, 
 now blundering among loose-lying blocks of stone. Lee waited 
 till he was quite close, and then seizing a bunch of gorse lighted 
 it at his fire and held it aloft ; the bright blaze fell full upon the 
 face and features of ^leorge^ Hawker. 
 
 "A cursed place and a curseJ time," he began, "for an ap- 
 pointment. If you had wanted to murder me, I could have 
 understood it. But I am pretty safe, I think ; your interest, don't 
 lie that way." 
 
 "Well, well, you see," returned Lee, "I don't want any 
 meetings on the cross up at my place in the village. The 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 25 
 
 whole house ain't mine, and we don't know who may be listen- 
 ing. I am suspected enough already, and it wouldn't look well 
 for you to be seen at my place. Folks would have begun axing 
 what for." 
 
 " Don't see it," said George. "Besides, if you did not want 
 to see me at home, why the devil do you bring me out here in the 
 middle of the moor ? We might have met on the hiU underneath 
 the village, and when we had done business gone up to the public- 
 house. D d if I understand it." 
 
 He acquiesced sulkily to the arrangement, however, because he 
 saw it was no use taUting about it, but he was far from comfort- 
 able. He would have been stiU less so had he known thatX/ee's 
 shouthadjtrought up a-cojifederate, who was now peering over 
 the rocks, almost touching his shoulder. 
 
 " Well," said Lee, " here we are, so we had better be as com- 
 fortable as we can this devil's night." 
 
 " Got anything to drink ? " 
 
 " Deuce a swipe of grog have I. But I have got some real 
 Barret's twist, that never paid duty as I know'd on, so just smoke 
 a pipe before we begin talking, and show you ain't vexed." 
 
 " I'd sooner have had a drop of grog, such a night as this." 
 
 " We must do as the Spaniards do, when they can't get any- 
 thing," said Lee ; "go without." 
 
 They both lit their pipes, and smoked in silence for a few 
 minutes, till Lee resumed : — 
 
 " If the witches weren't all dead, there would be some of them 
 abroad to-night ; hear that ? " 
 
 " Only a whimbrel, isn't it ? " said George. 
 
 " That's something worse than a whimbrel, I'm thinking," said 
 the other. " There's some folks don't believe in witches and the 
 like," he continued ; " but a man that's seen a naked old hag of 
 a gin ride away on a myall-bough, knows better." 
 
 " Lord ! " said George. " I shouldn't have thought you'd have 
 believed in the like of that — but I do — -that old devil's dam, dame 
 Parker, that lives alone up in Hatherleigh Wood, got gibbering 
 some infernal nonsense at me the other day for shooting her black 
 cat. I made the cross in the road though, so I suppose it won't 
 come to anything." 
 
 " Perhaps not," said Lee ; " but I'd sooner kiR a man than a 
 black cat." 
 
 Another pause. The tobacco, so much stronger than any George 
 had been accustomed to, combined with the cold, made him feel 
 nervous and miserable. 
 
 " When I was a boy," resumed Lee, " there were two young 
 
26 THE BBCOLLEOTIONS OF 
 
 brothers made it up to rob the squire's house, down at Gidieigli. 
 They separated in the garden after they cracked the crib, agree- 
 ing to meet here in this very place, and share the swag, for they 
 had got nigh seventy pound. They met and quarreUed over 
 the sharing up ; and the elder one drew out a pistol, and shot 
 the younger dead. The poor boy was sitting much where you are 
 sitting now, and that long tuft of grass grew up from his blood." 
 
 " I believe that's all a lie," said George ; " you want to drive 
 me into the horrors with your humbugging tales." 
 
 Lee, seeing that he had gone far enough, if not too far, pro- 
 posed, somewhat sulkily, that they should begin to talk about 
 what brought them there, and not sit crouching in the wet 
 all night. 
 
 "Well," said George, "it's you to begin. What made you 
 send for me to this infernal place ? " 
 
 " I want money," said Lee. ) 
 
 "T'h^fl-ySu^d better axe about and get some," said George ; 
 " you'll get none from me. I am surprised that a man \nth 
 your knowledge of the world should have sent me such a letter as 
 you did yesterday, I am indeed — What the devil's that ? " 
 
 He started on his feet. A blaze of sudden light filled the nook 
 where they were sitting, and made it as bright as day, and a voice 
 shouted out, 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha I my secret coves, what's going on bare ? some- 
 thing quiet and sly, eh ? something worth a fifty-pound note, eh ? 
 Don't you want an arbitrator, eh ? Here's one, ready made." 
 
 " You're playing a dangerous game, my flashman, whoever you 
 are," said Lee, rising savagely. " I've shot a man down for less 
 than that. So you've been stagging this gentleman and me, and 
 listening, have you ? For just half a halfpenny," he added, strid- 
 ing towards him, and drawing out a pistol, " you shouldn't go home 
 this night." 
 
 " Don't you be a fool. Bill Lee," said the new comer.^ " I saw 
 the light and made towards it, and as I come up I heard some 
 mention made of money. Now then, if my company is disagree- 
 able, why I'll go, and no harm done." 
 
 " What ! it's you, is it? " said Lee ; " well, now you've come, 
 you may stop and hear what it's all about. I don't care, you are 
 not very squeamish, or at least usedn't to be." 
 
 George saw that the arrival of this man was preconcerted, and 
 cursed Lee bitterly in his heart, but he sat still, and thought how 
 he could out-manoeuvre them. 
 
 " Now," said Lee, " I ain't altogether soiTy that you have come, 
 for I want to tell you a bit of a yarn, and ask your advice about 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 27 
 
 my behaviour. This is about the state of the case. A young 
 gentleman, a great friend of mine, was not very many years ago 
 pretty much given up to fast living, cock-fighting, horse-racing, 
 and many other little matters which all young fellows worth 
 anything are pretty sure to indulge in, and which are very agree- 
 able for the time, but which cost money, and are apt to bring a 
 man into low society. When I teU you tliat he and I first met in 
 Exeter,^as principals' in crossing a fight, you may be sure that 
 these "pursuit§~frarf brought the young gentleman into very low 
 company indeed. In fact, he was over head and ears in debt, 
 raising money in every way he could, hook or crook, square or 
 cross, to satisfy certain creditors, who were becoming nasty 
 impatient and vexatious. I thought something might be made of 
 this young gentleman, so finding there was no pride about him, I 
 cultivated his acquaintance, examined his affairs, and put him up 
 to the neatest, little fakement in the .world, just showed him how 
 to raise two hundred pounds, and clear himself with everybody, 
 just by signingjiis^ father's name, thereby saving the old gent the 
 tr(ftrbleOTwrHing it (he is^^ry infirm, is dad), and anticipating 
 by a few years what must be his own at last. Not to mention 
 paying oif a lot of poor publicans and horse-dealers, who could 
 not afi'ord to wait for their money. Slowed if I don't think it the 
 most honest action he ever did in his life. Well, he committed 
 the — wrote the name, I mean — and stood two ten-pound notes for 
 the information, quite handsome. E utJiow this sajne^ J'oung gent 
 is going to j]iajry_a young lady with five thousand pounds_in_her 
 own right, and she nearly of age. Her father, I understand, is 
 worth another five thousand, and very old ; so that what he'll 
 get ultimately if he marries into that family, counting his own 
 expectations, won't be much less I should say than twenty 
 thousand pounds. Now, I mean to say, under these circum- 
 stances, I should be neglecting my own interests most culpably 
 if I didn't demand ^wjlJliS' *'^^® trifling sum of three h undre d 
 pounds for holding my tongue/' 
 
 "^■^hy, curse~you," broke in Hawker, "you said two hundred 
 yesterday." ^^ " ^' 
 
 " Exactly so," said Lee, " but that itas yesterday. To-morrow, 
 if the job ain't settled, it'll be four, and the day after five. It's 
 no use, George Hawker," he continued ; " you are treed, and you 
 can't help yourself. If I give information you swing, and you 
 know it ; but I'd rather have the money than see the man hanged. 
 But mind," said he, with a snarl, " if I catch you playing false, 
 by the Lord, I'U hang you for love." 
 
 For an instant the wretched George cast a hurried glance 
 
28 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 around, as if considermg what wild chance there was of mastering 
 his two enemies, hut that glance showed him that it was hopeless, 
 for they hoth stood close together, each holding in his hand a 
 cocked pistol, so in despair he dropped his eyes on the fire once 
 more, while Lee chuckled inwardly at his wise foresight in hring- 
 ing an accomplice. 
 
 "By Jove," he said to himself, "it's lucky Dick's here. If 
 I had heen alone, he'd have heen at me then like a tiger. It 
 would have heen only man to man, but he would have been as 
 good as me ; he'd have fought like a rat in a comer." 
 
 Greorge sat looking into the embers for a full half minute, while 
 the others waited for his answer, determined that he should speak 
 first. At length he raised his head, and said hoarsely, looking at 
 ijeither of. them — 
 
 " And where am I to get three hundred pounds ? " 
 
 "A simple question very easily answered," said Lee. "Do 
 what you did before, with half the difficulty. You manage nearly 
 everything now your father is getting blind, so you need hardly 
 take the trouble of altering the figures in the banker's hook, and 
 some slight hint about taking a new farm would naturally account 
 for the old man's drawing out four or five hundred. The thing's 
 easier than ever." 
 
 "Take my advice, young man," said Dick, "and take the 
 shortest cut out of the wood. You see my friend here, William, 
 has got tired of these parts, as being, you see, hardly free and 
 easy enough for him, and he wants to get back to a part of the 
 world he was rather anxious to leave a few years ago. If he likes 
 to take me back with him, why he can. I rather fancy the notion 
 myself. Give him the money, and in three__ months we'U both be 
 fourteen thousand* odd miles off. Meanwhile, you marry the young 
 lady, and "TiiiB in your ¥ed, an honest gentleman, at eighty-four, 
 instead of being walked out some cold morning to a gallows at 
 twenty- two." 
 
 "Needs must where the devil drives," replied George. "You 
 shall have the money this day week. And now let me go, for I 
 am nearly froze dead." 
 
 " That's the talk," said Lee ; " I knew you would be reason- 
 able. If it hadn't been for my necessities, I am sure I never 
 would have bothered you. WeU, good night." 
 
 George rose and departed eastward, towards tlie rising moon, 
 while Lee and his companion struck duo west across the moor. 
 The rain had ceased, and the sky was clear, so that there was not 
 much difficulty in picking their way through the stones and moss- 
 hags. Suddenly Lee stopped, and said to hiscomrade, with an oath — 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. gd 
 
 " Dick, my boy, I didn't half like the way that dog left us." 
 
 " Nor I either," replied the other. "He has got some new 
 move in his head, you may depend on it. He'U give you the slip 
 if he can." 
 
 " Let him try it," said Lee ; " oh, only just let him try it.'' 
 
 And then the pair of worthies walked home. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GEOEGE HAWKER GOES TO THE FAIR WEESTLES, BUT GETS THROWN 
 
 ON HIS BACK SHOOTS AT A MASK, BUT MISSES IT. 
 
 Lee had guessed rightly. When George found himself so 
 thoroughly entrapped, and heard aU his most secret relations 
 with Lee so openly discussed before a third man, he was in 
 utter despair, and saw no hope of extrication from his difficulties. 
 But this lasted for a very short time. Even while Lee and Dick 
 were stiU speaking, he was reflecting how to turn the tables on 
 them, and already began to see a sparkle of hope glimmering afar. 
 
 Lee was a returned convict, George had very little doubt of 
 that. A thousand queer expressions he had let fall in conversa- 
 tion had shown him that it was so. And now, if he could but 
 prove it, and get Lee sent back out of the way. And yet that 
 would hardly do after aU. It would be difficult to identify him. 
 His name gave no clue to who he was. There were a thousand 
 or two of Lees hereabouts, and a hundred William Lees at least. 
 StiU it was evident that he was originally from this part of the 
 country ; it was odd no one had recognised him. 
 
 So George gave up this plan as hopeless. " StiU," said he, 
 " there is a week left ; surely I can contrive to bowl him out 
 somehow." And then he walked on in deep thought. 
 
 He was crossing the highest watershed in the county by an 
 open, low-sided valley on the southern shoulder of Cawsand. To 
 the left lay the mountain, and to the right tors of weathered 
 granite, dim in the changing moonlight. Before him was a small 
 moor-pool, in summer a mere reedy marsh, but now a bleak tarn, 
 standing among dangerous mosses, sending ghostly echoes across 
 the solitude, as the water washed wearily against the black peat 
 shores, or rustled among the sere skeleton reeds in the shallow 
 bays. 
 
m THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 Suddenly he stopped with a jar in his brain and a chill at his 
 heart. His breath came short, and raising one hand, he stood 
 beating the ground for half a minute with his foot. He gave a 
 stealthy glance around, and then murmured hoarsely to himself — 
 
 " Aye, that would do ; that would do well. And I could do it, 
 too, when I was half-drunk." 
 
 Was that the devil, chuckling joyous to hunself across the bog ? 
 No, only an innocent Httle snipe, getting merry over the change 
 of weather, bleating to his companions as though breeding time 
 were come round again. 
 
 Crowd close, little snipes, among the cup-moss and wolf's foot, 
 for he who stalks past you over the midnight moor meditates a 
 foul and treacherous murder in his heart. 
 
 Yes, it had come to that, and so quickly. He would get this 
 man Lee, who held his life in his hand, and was driving him on 
 from crime to crime, to meet him alone on the moor if he could, 
 and shoot him. What surety had he that Lee would leave him 
 in peace after this next extortion ? none but his word — the word 
 of a villain like that. He knew what his own word was worth ; 
 what wonder if he set a small value on Lee's ? He might be hung 
 as it was ; he would be hung for something. Taw Steps was a 
 wild place, and none were likely to miss either Lee or his friend. 
 It would be supposed they had tramped off as they came. There 
 could be no proof against him, none whatever. No one had 
 ever seen them together. They must both go. Well, two men 
 were, no worse than one. Hatherleigh had killed four men with 
 his own hand at Waterloo, and they gave him a medal for it. 
 They were likely honest fellows enough, not such scoundrels as 
 these two. 
 
 So arguing confusedly with himself, only one thing certain in 
 his mind, that he was committed to the perpetration of this crime, 
 and that the time for drawing back was passed long ago, he . 
 walked rapidly onwards towards the little viUage where he had left 
 his horse in an outhouse, fearing to trust him among the danger- 
 ous bogs which he had himself to cross to gain the rendezvous at 
 Taw Steps. 
 
 He rapidly cleared the moor, and soon gained the litUe grey 
 street, lying calm and peaceful beneath the bright winter moon, 
 which was only now and then obscured for a moment by the last 
 flying clouds of the late storm hurrying after their fellows. The 
 rill which ran brawling loud through the viUage, swollen by the 
 late rains, at length forced on his perception that he was fearfully 
 thirsty, and that his throat was parched and dry. 
 
 " This is the way men feel in heU, I think," said he. " Lord ! 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 31 
 
 let me get a drink while I can. The rich man old Jack reads 
 about couldn't get one for all his money." 
 
 He walked up to 'a stone horse-trough, a little off the road. He 
 stooped to drink, and started back with an oath. What pale, wild, 
 ghastly face was that, looking at him out of the cool calm water ? 
 Not his own, surely? He closed his eyes, and, having drunk 
 deep, walked on refreshed. He reached the outhouse where his 
 horse was tied, and, as he was leading the impatient animal forth, 
 one of the children within the cottage adjoining woke up and 
 began to cry. He waited still a moment, and heard the mother 
 arise and soothe it ; then a window overhead opened, and a woman 
 said — 
 
 " Is that you, Mr. Hawker ? " 
 
 " Aye," said he, " it's me. Come for the horse." 
 
 He was startled at the sound of his own voice. It was like 
 another man's. But like the voice of some one he seemed to 
 know, too. A new acquaintance. 
 
 " It wiU be mom soon," resumed the woman. " The child is 
 much worse to-night, and I think he'll go before daybreak. Well, 
 well — much sorrow saved, maybe. I'll go to bed no more to- 
 night, lest my boy should be off while I'm sleeping. Good night, 
 sir. God bless you. May you never know the sotxsw of losing 
 a firstborn." 
 
 Years after he remembered those random words. But now he 
 only thought that if the brat should die, there would be only one 
 pauper less in Bickerton. And so thinking, mounted and rode on 
 his way. 
 
 He rode fast, and was soon at home. He had put his horse in 
 the stable, and, shoeless, was creeping up to bed, when, as he 
 passed his father's door, it opened, and the old man camejjut, 
 light inTfand'. 
 
 He was a very infirm old man, much bent, though evidently at 
 one time he had been of great stature. His retreating forehead, 
 heavy grey eyebrows, and loose sensual mouth, rendered him no 
 pleasing object at any time, and, as he stood in the doorway now, 
 with a half drunken, satyr-like leer on his face, he looked perfectly 
 hideous. 
 
 "Where's my pretty boy been ? " he piped out. " How pale 
 he looks. Are you drunk, my lad ? " 
 
 " No ! wish I was," replied George. " Give me the keys, d.id, 
 and let me get a drink of brandy. I've been vexed, and had 
 nought to drink aU. night. I shall be getting the horrors if ]' 
 don't have something before I go to bed." 
 
 The old man got liim half a tumbler of brandy from his room. 
 
32 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 where there was always some to be had, and following him into 
 his room, sat down on the bed. 
 
 " Who's been vexing my handsome son ? " said he ; " my son 
 that I've been waitmg up for all night. Death and gallows to 
 them, whoever they are. Is it that pale-faced little parson's 
 daughter ? Or is it her tight-laced hypocrite of a father, that 
 comes whining here with his good advice to me who know the 
 world so well ? Never mind, my boy. Keep a smooth face, and 
 play the humbug^tiir you've got her, and her moQey, ajid^tiien 
 break her impudent little heart'if 'jou wiU. Go to sleep, my boy, 
 and dream you are avengeTon them all." 
 
 "I mean to be, father, on some of them, I tell you," replied 
 George. 
 
 " That's right, my man. Good night." 
 
 " Good night, old dad," said George. As he watched him out 
 of the room, a kinder, softer expression came on his face. His 
 father was the only being he cared for in the world. 
 
 He slept a heavy and dreamless sleep that night, and when he 
 woke for the first time, the bright winter's sun was shining into 
 his room, and morning was far advanced. 
 
 He rose, strengthened and refreshed by his sleep, with a light 
 heart. He began whistling as he dressed himself, but suddenly 
 stopped, as the recollection of the night before came upon him. 
 Was it a reality, or only a dream ? No ; it was true enough. He 
 has no need to whistle this morning. He is entangled in a web 
 of crime and guUt from which there is no escape. 
 
 He dressed himself, and went forth into the fresh morning air 
 for a turn, walking up and down on the broad gravel walk before 
 the dark old porch. 
 
 A glorious winter's morning. The dismal old stone-house, 
 many-gabled, held aloft its tall red chimneys towards the clear 
 blue sky, and looked bright and pleasant in the sunshine. The 
 deep fir and hoUy woods which hemmed it in on all sides, save in 
 front, were cheerful with sloping gleams of sunlight, fallin g on 
 many a patch of green moss, red fern, and bright brown last yeai-'s 
 leaves. In front, far below him, rolled away miles of unbroken 
 woodlandj and in the far distance rose the moor, a dim cloud of 
 pearly grey. 
 
 A robin sat and sung loud beside him, sole songster left in the 
 wintry woods, but which said,~>as plain as bird could say, could he 
 have understood it, " See, the birds are not all dead in this dreary 
 winter time. I am stiU here, a pledge from my brothers. When 
 yon dim grey woods gi'ow green, and the brown hollows are yellow 
 with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so we4 
 
GEOPPEY HAMLYN. 83 
 
 shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer 
 to the golden-toned blackbird in the copse, saying — ' Our mother 
 is not dead, but has been sleeping. \ She is awake again — let all 
 the land rejoice.' " 
 
 Little part had that poor darkened mind in such thoughts as 
 these. If any softening influence were upon him this morning, 
 he gave no place to it. The robin ceased, and he only heard the 
 croak of a raven, an old inhabitant of these wild woods, coming 
 from the darkest and tallest of the fir-trees. Then he saw his 
 father approaching along the garden walk. 
 
 One more chance for thee, unhappy man. Go up to him now, 
 and tell him all. He has been a kind father to you, with all his 
 faidts. Get him on your side, and you may laugh Lee to scorn. 
 Have you not the courage to tell him ? 
 
 For a moment he hesitated, but the dread of his father's bm'st 
 of anger kept him silent. He hardened his heart, and, whistling, 
 waited for the old man to come up. 
 
 " How is he this morning ? " said his father. " What has he 
 got his old clothes on for, and such fine ones as he has in his 
 drawer? " 
 
 " Why should I put on my best clothes this day, father ? " 
 
 " Aint'ee going down to revels ?" 
 
 "True," said George. "I had forgotten all about it. Yes; 
 I shall go down, of course." 
 
 " Are you going to play (wrestle) ? " asked the father. 
 
 " Maybe I may. But come in to breakfast. Wliere's 
 Madge ? " 
 
 "In-doors," said the father, "waiting breakfast — ^mortal 
 cross." 
 
 " Curse her crossness," said George. " If I were ye, dad, I'd 
 kick her out in the lane next time she got on one of her tan- 
 trums." 
 
 A tall woman about forty stepped out of the house as he uttered 
 these words. " Ye hear what he says, William Hawker," she 
 said. " Ye hear what ye're own lawful son says. He'd kick me 
 out in the lane. And ye'd stand there and let him, ye old dog ; 
 I don't doubt." 
 
 " Hush, George," said the old man. " You don't know what 
 you're saying, boy. Go in, Madge, and don't be a fool ; you bring 
 it on yourself." 
 
 The woman turned in a contemptuous way and walked in. She 
 was a very remarkable looking person. Tall and upright, at least 
 six feet high, with swarthy complexion, black eyes, and coal-black 
 hair, looped up loosely in a knot behind, ^he must have been 
 
 4 
 
S4 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 very beautiful as a young girl, but was now too fierce and hawkish 
 looking, though you would still call her handsome. She was a 
 fulL--blooded.,gi£sy, of one ^f the best families, which, howeier^^he^ 
 JataJly_^eaied. When I sayTih^t she bore the worst of cjiaracters 
 il^ally, and had the reputation besides of being a witch of the 
 highest acquirements, — a sort of double first at Satan's university, 
 — -I have said all I need to say about her at present. 
 
 These three sat down to breakfast not before each of them, how- 
 ever, had refreshed themselves with a dram. All the meal through, 
 the old man and Madge were quarrelling with one another, till at 
 length the contest grew so fierce that George noticed it, a thing 
 he very seldom took the trouble to do. 
 
 " I tell thee," said the old man, " ye'll get no more money this 
 week. What have 'ee done with the last five pounds '? " 
 
 George knew well enough, she had given it to him. Many a 
 time did she contrive to let him have a pound or two, and blind 
 the old man as to where it was gone. The day before he had 
 applied to her for some money and she had refused, and in revenge, 
 George had recommended his father to turn her out, knowing that 
 she could hear every word, and little meaning it in reality. 
 
 "Ye stingy old beast," she replied, very slowly and distinctly, 
 " I wish ye were dead and out of the way. I'U be doing it my- 
 self some of these odd times." And looking at him fixedly and 
 pointing her finger, she began the Hebrew alphabet — Aleph, Beth, 
 &c. from the 119th Psalm. 
 
 " I won't have it," screamed the old man. " Stop, or I'll kiU 
 
 you, I will I George, you won't see your father took before 
 
 your eyes. Stop her ! " 
 
 " Come, quiet, old girl ! none of that," said George, taking 
 her round the waist and putting his hand before her mouth. " Be 
 reasonable now." She continued to look at the old man with a 
 smile of triumph for a short time, and then said, with a queer 
 laugh : 
 
 "It's lucky you stopped me. Oh, very lucky indeed. Now, 
 are you going to give the money, you old Jew ? " 
 
 She had carried the day, and the old man sulkily acquiesced. 
 George went up stairs, and having dressed himself to his taste, 
 got on horseback and rode down to the village, which was about 
 three miles. 
 
 This was the day of the Bevels, which corresponds pretty well 
 with what is called in other parts of England a pleasure fair ; that 
 is to say, although some business might be done, yet it was only 
 a secondary object to amusement. 
 
 The main village of Drumston was about a mile from the church 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 35 
 
 which I have before noticed, and consisted of a narrow street of 
 cobhouses, whitewashed and thatched, crossing at right angles, hy 
 a little stone bridge, over a pretty, clear trout-stream. All around 
 the village, immediately behind the backs of the houses, rose the 
 abrupt red hiUs, divided into fields by broad oak hedges, thickly 
 set with ehns. The water of the stream, intercepted at some point 
 higher up, was carried round the crown of the hills for the purposes 
 of irrigation, which, even at this dead season, showed its advan- 
 tages by the brilliant emerald green of the tender young grass on 
 the hillsides. Drumston, in short, was an excellent specimen of a 
 close, dull, dirty, and, I fear, not very healthy Devonshire village 
 in the red country. 
 
 On this day the main street, usually in a state of ankle-deep 
 mud six months in the year, was churned and pounded into an 
 almost knee-deep state, by four or five hundred hobnail shoes in 
 search of amusement. The amusements were various. Drinking 
 (very populai'), swearing (ditto), quarrelling, eating pastry ginger- 
 bread and nuts (female pastime), and looking at a filthy Italian, 
 leading a still more filthy monkey, who rode on a dog (the only 
 honest one of the three). This all day, tiU night dropped do^Ti 
 on a scene of drunkenness and vice, which we had better not seek 
 to look at further. Surely, if ever man was right, old Joey Bender, 
 the Methodist shoemaker, was right, when he preached against 
 the revels for four Sundays running, and said roundly that he 
 would sooner see all his congregation leave him and go up to 
 the steeple-house (church) in a body, than that they should attend 
 such a crying abomination. 
 
 The wrestling, the only honest sensible amusement to be had, 
 was not in much favour at Drumston. Such wrestling as there 
 was was carried on in a little croft behind the principal of thp 
 public-houses, for some trifling prize, given by the publicans. 
 Into this place, James Stogkiridge and myself had wandered on 
 the afternoon of the day in question, having come down to the 
 revel to see if we could find some one we wanted. 
 
 There was a small ring of men watching the performances, and 
 talking, each and all of them, not to his neighbour, or to himself, 
 but to the ambient air, in the most unintelligible Devonshire 
 jargon, rendered somewhat more barbarous than usual by intoxica- 
 tion. Frequently one of them would address one of the players 
 in language more forcible than choice, as he applauded some piece 
 oi finesse, or condemned some clumsiness on the part of the two 
 youths who were struggling about in the centre, under the impres- 
 sion they were wrestling. There were but two moderate wrestlers 
 in the parish, and those two were Ggorge Hawker and James 
 
36 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Stockbridge. And James and myself had hardly arrived on the 
 ground two minutes, before George, coming up, greeted us. 
 
 After a few common-place civilities, he challenged James to 
 play. " Let us show these muffs what play is," said he ; " it's a 
 disgrace to the county to see such work." 
 
 James had no objection ; so, having put on the jackets, they 
 set to work to the great admiration of the bystanders, one of 
 whom, a drunken tinker, expressed his applause in such remark- 
 able language that I mildly asked him to desist, which of course 
 made him worse. 
 
 The two wrestlers made very pretty play of it for some time, till 
 James, feinting at some outlandish manoeuvre, put George on his 
 back by a simple trip, akin to scholar' s-mate at chess. 
 
 George fell heavily, for they were both heavy men. He rose 
 from the ground and walked to where his coat was, sulkily. 
 James thinking he might have been hurt, went up to speak to him ; 
 but the other, greeting him with an oath, turned and walked away 
 through the crowd. 
 
 He was in a furious passion, and he went on to the little bridge 
 that crossed the stream. We saw him standing looking into the 
 water below, when a short light-looking man came up to him, and 
 having spoken to him for a few minutes, walked off in the direc- 
 tion of Exeter, at a steady, rapid pace. 
 
 That man was Dick, the companion of Lee (I Imew all this after- 
 wards). George waFstanding as I have described on the bridge, 
 when he came up to him, and touching him, said : 
 
 " I want to speak to you a moment, Mr. Hawker." 
 
 George turned round, and when he saw who it was, asked, 
 angrily, 
 
 " "What the do you want ? " 
 
 "No offence, sir. You see, I'm in trouble, there's a warrant 
 out against me, and I must fly. I am as hard-up as a poor cove 
 could be ; can you give me a trifle to help me along the road ? " 
 
 Here was a slice of good luck ; to get rid of this one so easily. 
 George gave him money, and having wished him farewell, watched 
 him striding steadily up the long hill towards Exeter with great 
 satisfaction ; then he went back to the public-house, and sat drink- 
 ing an hour or more. At last he got out his horse to ride home- 
 ward. 
 
 The crowd about the public-house door was as thick as ever, 
 and the disturbance greater. Some of the women were trying to 
 get their drunken husbands home, one man had fallen down dead- 
 drunk beside the door in the mud, and his wife was sitting 
 patiently beside him. Several girls were standing wearily about 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLYN. 37 
 
 the door, dressed in their best, each with a carefiilly-folded white 
 pocket-handkerchief in her hand for show, and not for use, waiting 
 for their sweethearts to come forth when it should suit them ; 
 while inside the tap all was a wild confusion of talk, quarrelling, 
 oaths, and smoke enough to sicken a scavenger. 
 
 These things are changed now, or are changing, year by year. 
 Now we have our rural policeman keeping some sort of order, and 
 some show of decency. And indeed these little fairs, the curse of 
 the country, are gradually becoming extinct by the exertions of a 
 more energetic class of county magistrates ; and though there is 
 probably the same amount of vice, public propriety is at all events 
 more respected. I think I may say that I have seen as bad, or 
 even worse, scenes of drunkenness and disorder at an English fair, 
 as ever I have in any Australian mining town. 
 
 George Hawker was so hemmed in by the crowd that he was 
 imable to proceed above a foot's pace. He was slowly picking his 
 way through the people, when he felt some one touching him on the 
 leg, and, looking round, saw Lee stagding beside^him. 
 
 " What, Lee, my boy, yoiniere"? " said he ; "I have just seen 
 your amiable comrade — he seems to be in trouble." 
 
 "Dick's always in trouble, Mr. Hawker," replied he. "He 
 has no care or reason ; he isn't a bad fellow, but I'm always glad 
 when he is out of my way ; I don't like being seen with him. 
 This is likely to be his last time, though. He is in a serious 
 scrape, and, by way of getting out of it, he is walking into Exeter, 
 along the high road, as if nothing was the matter. There's a 
 couple of traps in Belston after him now, and I came down here 
 to keep secure. By-the-bye, have you thought of that little matter 
 we were talking about the other night ? To tell you the truth, I 
 don't care how soon I am out of this part of the country." 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! " replied freorge, "I've thought of it, and it's aU 
 right. Can you be at the old place the_dajr_a£ter Jjunprrow ? " 
 
 " That can I," said Lee, " with much pleasure." 
 
 "You'll come alone this time, I suppose," said George. "I 
 suppose you don't want to share our little matter with the whole 
 country ? " 
 
 " No fear, Mr. George ; I wiU be there at eight punctual, and 
 alone." 
 
 " Well, bye-bye," said George, and rode off. 
 
 It was getting late in the evening when he started, and ere he 
 reached home it was nearly dark. For the last mile his road lay 
 through forest-land : noble oaks, with a plentiful under-growth of 
 holly, overshadowed a floor of brown leaves and red fern ; and at 
 the end of the wood nearest home, where the oaks joined his own 
 
38 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 fir plantations, one mighty gnarled tree, broader and older than all 
 the rest, held aloft its withered boughs against the frosty sky. 
 
 This oak was one of the bogie haunts of the neighbourhood. 
 AH sorts of stories were told about it, all of which George, of 
 course, believed ; so that when his horse started and refused to 
 move forward, and when he saw a dark figure sitting on the 
 twisted roots of the tree, he grew suddenly cold, and believed he 
 had seen a ghost. 
 
 The figure rose, and stalked towards him through the gathering 
 
 gloom ; he saw that it held a baby in its arms, and that it was taU 
 
 , and noble-looking. Then a new fear took possession of him, not 
 
 ^supernatural ; and he said in a low voice — " EUen ! " 
 
 \ " That was my name once, George Hawker," replied she, stand- 
 
 ' ing beside him, and laying her hand upon his horse's shoulder. 
 
 " I don't know what my name is now, I'm sure ; it surely can't 
 
 remain the same, and me so altered." 
 
 " What on earth brings you back just at this time, in God's 
 name ? " asked George. 
 
 " Hunger, cold, misery, drunkenness, disease. Those are the 
 merry companions that lead me back to my old sweetheart. Look 
 here, George, should you know him again? " 
 
 She held up a noble child about a year old, for-him to look at. 
 The child, distiirbed from her warm bosom, began to wail. 
 
 " What ! cry to see your father, chUd ?" she exclaimed. " See 
 what a bonnie gentleman he is, and what a pretty horse he rides, 
 while we tread along through the mire." 
 
 " What have you come to me for, EUen ? " asked George. " Do 
 you know that if you are seen about here just now you may do me 
 a great injury ? ' ' 
 
 " I don't want to hurt you, George," she replied ; " but I must 
 have money. I cannot work, and I dar^not show my face here. 
 Can't you take me in to-night, George, only just to-night, and let 
 me lie by the fire ? I'U go in the morning ; but I know it's going 
 to freeze, and I do dread the long cold hours so. I have lam out 
 two nights, now, and I had naught to eat all day. Do'ee take me 
 /in, George ; for old love's sake, do ! " 
 
 She was hJB own cousin, an orphan, brought up in the same 
 house with himlsy his father. Never very strong m her mind, 
 though exceedingly pretty, she had been early brought to min by 
 George. On the birth of a boy, about a year before, the old man's 
 eyes were opened to what was going on, and in a furious rage he 
 turned her out of doors, and refused ever ]to see her again. 
 George, to do him justice, would have married her, but his father 
 told him, if he did so, he should leave the house with her. So the 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 39 
 
 poor thing had gone away and tried to get needlework in Exeter, 
 but her health failing, and George having ceased to answer all 
 applications from her, she had walked over, and lurked about in 
 the woods to gain an interview with him. 
 
 She laid her hand on his, and he felt it was deadly cold. " Put 
 my coat over your shoulders, Nelly, and wait an instant while I go 
 and speak to Madge. I had better let her know you are coming ; 
 then we shan't have any trouble." 
 
 He rode quickly through the plantation, and gave his horse to a 
 boy who waited in front of the door. In the kitchen he found 
 Madge brooding over the fire, with her elbows on her knees, and 
 without raising her head or turning round, she said : 
 
 " Home early, and sober ! what new mischief are you up to ? " 
 
 "None, Madge, none! but here's the devil to pay. Ellen's 
 come back. She's been lying out these three nights, and^is awful 
 hard up. It's not my fault, I have sent her money enough, in all 
 conscience." 
 
 " Where is she? " inquired Madge, curtly. 
 
 " Outside, in the plantation." 
 
 " Why don't you loring her in, you treacherous young wolf? " 
 replied she. " What did you bring her to shame for, if you are 
 going to starve her ? " 
 
 " I was going to fetch her in," said George, indignantly ; " only 
 I wanted to find out what your temper was like, you vicious old 
 cow. How did I know but what you would begin some of your 
 tantrums, and miscall her ? " 
 
 " No fear o' that ! no fear of pots and kettles with me ! lead her 
 in, lad, before she's frozen ! " 
 
 George went back for her, and finding her still in the same 
 place, brought her in. Madge was standing erect before the fire, 
 and, walking up to the unfortunate EUen, took her baby from her, 
 and made her sit before the fire. 
 
 "Better not face the old man," said she ; "he's away to the 
 revels, and he'll come home drunk. Make yourself happy for to- 
 night, at all events." 
 
 The poor thing began to cry, which brought on such a terrible 
 fit of coughing that Madge feared she would rupture a blood- 
 vessel. She went to get her a glass of wine, and returned mth a 
 candle, and then, for the first time, they saw what a fearful object 
 she was. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said to George, " you see what I am now. I ain't 
 long for this world. Only keep me from worse, George, while I 
 am alive, and do something, for the boy afterwards, and I am 
 content. You're going to get married, I know, and I wish you 
 
40 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 well. But don't forget this poor little thing when it's motherless. 
 If you do, and let him fall into vice, you'll never be lucky, 
 George." 
 
 " Oh, you ain't going to die, old NeUy," said George ; " not for 
 many years yet. You're pulled down, and thin, but you'll pick up 
 again with the spring. Now, old girl, get some supper out before 
 he comes home." 
 
 They gave her supper, and put her to bed. In the morning, 
 very early, George heard the sound of wheels below his bedroom 
 window ; and looking out, saw that Madge was driving out of the 
 yard in a light cart, and, watching her closely, saw her pick up 
 Ellen and the child just outside the gate. Then he went to bed 
 again, and, when he awoke, he heard Madge's voice below, and 
 knew she was come back. 
 
 He went down, and spoke to her. " Is she gone ? " he asked. 
 
 "In course she is," replied Madge. "Do you think I was 
 going to let her stay till the old man was about ? " 
 
 " How much money did you give her, besides what she had 
 from me? " 
 
 " I made it five pounds in all ; that wiU keep her for some time, 
 and then you must send her some more. If yon let that wench 
 starve, you ought to be burnt alive. A man would have married 
 her in spite of his father." 
 
 " A likely story," said George, " that I was to disinherit myself 
 for her. However, she shan't want at present, or we shall have 
 her back again. And that won't do, you know." 
 
 "George," said Madge, "you promise to be as great a rascal 
 as your father." 
 
 The old man had, as Madge prophesied, come home very drunk 
 the night before, and had lain in bed later than usual, so that, 
 when he came to breakfast, he found George, gun in hand, ready 
 to go out. 
 
 "Going shooting, my lad?" said the father. "Where be 
 going?" 
 
 "Down through the hollies for a woodcock. I'U get one this 
 morning, it's near full moon." 
 
 All the morning they heard him firing in the bottom below the 
 house, and at one o'clock he came home, empty-handed. 
 
 " Why, George \ " said his father, " what hast thee been shoot- 
 ing at? I thought 'ee was getting good sport." 
 
 " I've been shooting at a mark," he repUed. 
 
 "Who bo going to shoot now, eh, George?" asked the old 
 man. 
 
 " No one as I know of," he replied. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 41 
 
 " Going over to Eggesford, eh, Georgey ? This nice full moon 
 is about the right thing for thee. They Fellowes he good fellows 
 to keep a fat haunch for their neighhours." 
 
 George laughed, as he admitted the soft impeachment of deer- 
 stealing, hut soon after grew sullen, and all the afternoon sat over 
 the fire brooding and drinking. He went to bed early, and had 
 just got off his boots, when the door opened, and Madge came in. 
 
 " What's up to now, old girl ? " said George. 
 
 " What are you going to be up to, eh ? " she asked, " with your 
 gun?" 
 
 " Only going to get an outlying deer," said he. 
 
 " That's folly enough, but there's a worse folly than that. It's 
 worse folly to wipe out money-scores in blood. It's a worse foUy 
 if you are in a difficulty to put yourself in a harder one to get but 
 of the first. It's a worse " 
 
 "Why, you're mad," broke in George. "Do you think I am 
 fool enough to make away with one of the keepers ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you are fool enough to do. Only mind my 
 words before it's too late." 
 
 She went out, and left him sitting moodily on the bed. " What 
 a clever woman she is," he mused. " How she hits a thing off. 
 She's been a good friend to me. I've a good mind to ask her 
 advice. I'll think about it to-morrow morning." 
 
 But on the morrow they quarrelled about something or another, 
 and her advice was never asked. George was moody and captious 
 all day ; and at evening, having drunk hard, he slipped off, and, 
 gun in hand, rode away through the darkening woods towards the 
 moor. 
 
 It was dark before he had got clear of the labyrinth of lanes 
 through which he took his way. His horse he turned out in a 
 small croft close to where the heather began ; and, having hid the 
 saddle and bridle in a hedge, strode away over the moor with his 
 gim on his shoulder. 
 
 He would not think ; he would sooner whistle ; distance seemed 
 like nothing to him ; and he was surprised and frightened to find 
 himself already looking over the deep black gulf through which 
 the river ran before he thought he was halfjway there. 
 
 He paused to look before he began to descend. A faint light 
 still lingered in the frosty sky to the south-west, and majestic 
 Yestor rose bold and black against it. Down far, far beneatli his 
 feet was the river, dimly heard, but not seen ; and, as he looked 
 to where it should be, he saw a little flickering star, which arrested 
 his attention. That must be Lee's fire— there he began to 
 descend. 
 
42 THE BEC0LLECTI0N3 OP 
 
 Boldly at first, but afterwards more stealthily, and now more 
 silently stiU, for the fire is close by, and it were well to give him 
 no notice. It is in the old place, and he can see it now, not ten 
 yards before him, between two rocks. 
 
 Nearer yet a little, with cat-like tread. There is Lee, close to 
 the fire, sitting on the ground, dimly visible, yet clearly enough 
 for his purpose. He rests the gun on a rock, and takes his aim. 
 
 He is pinioned from behind by a vigorous hand, and a voice he 
 knows cries in his ear — " Help, Bill, .or yQu/U bejhpt ! " 
 
 The gun goes off in the souffle, but hurts nobody, and Lee 
 running up, George finds the tables completely turned, and him- 
 self lying, after a few desperate struggles, helplessly pinioned on 
 
 theground. " 
 
 """iffiitiad .merely blinded^ him by appearing to ^o to Exeter. 
 They both thought it likely that he would attacE Lee, but neither 
 supposed he would have stolen on him so treacherously. Dick 
 had just noticed him in time, and sprung upon him, or Lee's 
 troubles would have been over for ever. 
 
 " You treacherous young sweep, you shall hang for this," were 
 Lee's first words. " Ten thousand pounds would not save you 
 now. Dick, you're a jewel. If I had listened to you, I shouldn't 
 have trusted my life to the murdering vagabond. I'll remember 
 to-night, my boy, as long as I live." 
 
 Although it appeared at first that ten thousand pounds would 
 not prevent Lee handing George over to justice, yet, after a long 
 and stormy argument, it appeared that the lesser sum of five 
 hundred would be amply sufficient to stay any ulterior proceedings, 
 provided the money was forthcoming in a week. So that ultimately 
 George found himself at liberty again, and, to his great astonish- 
 ment, in higher spirits than he could have expected. 
 
 "At all events," said he to himself, as he limped back, lame 
 and bruised, " I have not got that on my mind- Even if this 
 other thing was found out, there is a chance of getting off. 
 Surely my own father wouldn't prosecute — though I wouldn't like 
 to trust to it, unless I got Madge on my side." 
 
 His father, I think I have mentioned, was too blind to read, 
 and George used to keep all his accounts ; so that nothing would 
 seem at first to look more easy than to imitate his father's signa- 
 ture, and obtain what money he wished. But George knew well 
 that the old man was often in the habit of looking through his 
 banker's book, with the assistance of Madge, so that he was quite 
 unsafe without her. His former embezzlement he had kept secret, 
 by altering some figure in the banker's book ; but this next one, 
 of such a much larger amount, he felt somewhat anxious about. 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 43 
 
 He, however, Imew his woman well, and took his measures 
 accordingly. 
 
 On the day mentioned, he met Lee, and gave him the money 
 agreed on ; and having received his assurances that he valued his 
 life too much to trouble him any more, saw him depart, fully 
 expecting that he should have another application at an early date ; 
 under which circumstances, he thought he would take certain pre- 
 cautions which should he conclusive. 
 
 But he saw Lee no more. No more for many, many years. 
 But how and when they met again, and who came off best in the 
 end, this tale will truly and suflficiently set forth hereafter. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 MAJOK BUCKLEY GIVES HIS OPINION ON TROUT-FISHING, ON 
 EMIGRATION, AND ON GEOKGE HAWKER. 
 
 Spring had come again, after a long wet winter, and every 
 orchard-hollow blushed once more with apple-blossoms. In warm 
 sheltered southern valleys hedges were already green, and even 
 the tall hedgerow-ebns began, day after day, to grow more shady 
 and dense. 
 
 It was a bright April morning, about ten o'clock, when Mary 
 Thornton, throwing up her father's study-window from the outside, 
 challenged him to come out and take a walk ; and John, getting 
 his hat and stick, immediately joined her in front of the house. 
 
 " Where is your aunt, my love ? " said John. 
 
 " She is upstairs," said Mary. " I wiU call her." 
 
 She began throwing gravel at one of the upper windows, and 
 crying out, " Auntie ! Auntie ! " 
 
 The sash was immediately thrown (no, that is too violent a word 
 — say lifted) up, and a beautiful old lady's face appeared at the 
 window. 
 
 " My love," it said, in a small, soft voice, "pray be careful of 
 the windows. Did you want anything, my dear ? " 
 
 " I want you out for a walk. Auntie ; so come along." 
 
 " Certainly, my love. Brother, have you got your thick kerchief 
 in your pocket? " 
 
 "No," said the Vicar, "I have not, and I don't mean to have." 
 
 Commencement of a sore-throat lecture from the window, cut 
 short by the Vicar, who says — 
 
44: THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " My dear, I shall be late if you don't come." (Jesuitically on 
 his part, for he was going nowhere.) 
 
 So she comes accordingly, as sweet-looking an old maid as ever 
 you saw in your life. People have no right to use up such 
 beautiful women as governesses. It's a sheer waste of material. 
 Miss Thornton had been a governess all her life ; and now, at the 
 age of five-and-forty, had come to keep her brother's house for 
 him, add her savings to his, and put the finishing touch on Mary's 
 somewhat rough education. 
 
 " My love," said she, " I have brought you your gloves." 
 
 " Oh, indeed. Auntie, I won't wear them," said Mary. " I 
 couldn't be plagued with gloves. Nobody wears them here." 
 
 "Mrs. Buckley wears them, and it would relieve my mind if 
 you were to put them on, my dear. I fear my lady's end was 
 accelerated by, unfortunately, in her last illness, catching sight of 
 Lady Kate's hands after she had been assisting her brother to pick 
 green walnuts." 
 
 Mary was always on the eve of laughing at these aristocratic 
 recollections of her aunt ; and to her credit be it said, she always 
 restrained herself, though with great difficulty. She, so wildly 
 brought up, without rule or guidance in feminine matters, could 
 not be brought to comprehend that prim line-and-rule life, of which 
 her aunt was the very impersonation. Nevertheless, she heard 
 what Miss Thornton had to say with respect ; and if ever she com- 
 mitted an extreme gaucherie, calculated to set her aunt's teeth on 
 edge, she always discovered what was the matter, and mended it 
 as far as she was able. 
 
 They stood on the lawn while the glove controversy was going 
 on, and a glorious prospect there was that bright spring morning. 
 In one direction the eye was carried down a long, broad, and rich 
 vale, intersected by a gleaming river, and aU the way down set 
 thick with hamlet, farm, and church. In the dim soft distance 
 rose the two massive towers of a cathedral, now filling all the 
 country side with the gentle melody of their golden-toned beUs, 
 while beyond them, in the misty south, there was a gleam in the 
 horizon, showing where the sky 
 
 "Dipped down to sea and sands." 
 
 " It's as soft and quiet as a Sunday," said the Vicar ; " and 
 what a fishing day I I have half a mind — Hallo ! look here." 
 
 The exclamation was caused by the appearance on the walk of a 
 very tall and noble-looking man, about thirty, leading a grey pony, 
 on which sat a beautiful woman with a child in her arms. Our 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 45 
 
 pariy immediately moved forward to meet them, and a most friendly 
 greeting took place on both sides, Mary at once taking possession 
 of the child. 
 
 This was Major Buckley and his wife Agnes. I mentioned 
 before that, after Clere was sold, the Major had taken a cottage in 
 Dnimston, and was a constant visitor on the Vicar ; generally 
 calling for the old gentleman to come fishing or shooting, and 
 leaving his wife and his little son Samuel in the company of Mary 
 and Miss Thornton. 
 
 " I have come. Vicar, to take you out fishing," said he. " Get 
 your rod and come. A capital day. Why, here's the Doctor." 
 
 So there was, standing among them before any one had noticed 
 him. 
 
 " I announce," said he, " that I shall accept the most agreeable 
 invitation that any one will give me. What are you going to do. 
 Major ? " 
 
 " Going fishing." 
 
 " Ah ! and you, madam ? " turning to Miss Thornton. 
 
 " I am going to see Mrs. Lee, who has a low fever, poor 
 thing." 
 
 " Which Mrs. Lee, madam ? " 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Lee of Eyford. ' ' 
 
 " And which Mrs. Lee of Eyford, madam ? " 
 
 " Mrs. James Lee." 
 
 " Junior or senior ? " persevered the Doctor. 
 
 " Junior," replied Miss Thornton, laughing. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Doctor, " now we have it. I would suggest 
 that aU the Mrs. Lees in the parish should have a ticket with a 
 number on it, like the voituriers. Buckley, lay it before the 
 quarter-sessions. If you say the idea came from a foreigner, they 
 will adopt it immediately. Miss Thornton, I will do myself the 
 honour of accompanying you, and examine the case." 
 
 So the ladies went off with the Doctor, while the Vicar and 
 Major Buckley turned to go fishing. 
 
 " I shall watch you, Major, instead of fishing myself," said the 
 Vicar. " Where do you propose going ? " 
 
 " To the red water," said the Major. Accordingly they turn 
 down a long, deep lane, which looks certainly as if it would 
 lead one to a red brook, for the road and banks are of a brick- 
 colour. And so it does, for presently before them they discern a 
 red mill, and a broad, pleasant ford, where a crystal brook dimples 
 and sparkles over a bed of reddish-purple pebbles. 
 
 "It is very clear," says the Major. "What's the fly to be, 
 Vicar ? " 
 
46 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " That's a very hard question to answer," says the Vicar. 
 " Your Scotchman, eh ? or a small blue dun ? " 
 
 " We'll try both," says the Major ; and in a very short time it 
 becomes apparent that the small dun is the man, for the trout 
 seem to thmk that it is the very thing they have been looking for 
 all day, and rise at it two at a time. 
 
 They fish downwards ; and after killing half-a-dozen half-pound 
 fish, come to a place where another stream joins the first, making 
 it double its original size, and here there is a great oak-root jutting 
 into a large, deep pool. 
 
 The Viear stands back, intensely excited. This is a sure place 
 for a big fish. The Major, eager but cool, stoops down and puts 
 his flies in just above the root at once 'j not as a greenhorn would, 
 taking a few wide casts over the pool first, thereby standing a 
 chance of hooking a little fish, and ruining his chance for a big 
 one ; and at the second trial a deep-bodied brown fellow, about two 
 pounds, dashes at the treacherous little blue, and gulps him down. 
 
 Then what a to-do is there. The Vicar jumping about on the 
 grass, giving all sorts of contradictory advice. ' The Major, utterly 
 despairing of ever getting his fish ashore, fighting a losing battle 
 with infinite courage, determined that the trout shall remember 
 him, at all events, if he does get away. And the trout, furious 
 and indignant, but not in the least frightened, trying vainly to get 
 back to the old root. Was there ever such a fish ? 
 
 But the Major is the best man, for after ten minutes troutie is 
 towed up on his side to a' convenient shallow, and the Vicar 
 puts on his spectacles to see him brought ashore. He scien- 
 tifically pokes him in the flank, and spans him across the back, 
 and pronounces ex cathedra — 
 
 " You'll find, sir, there won't be a finer fish, take him all in all, 
 killed in the parish this season." 
 
 " Ah, it's a noble sport," says the Major. " I shan't get much 
 more of it, I'm afraid." 
 
 " Why shouldn't you ? " 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you," says the Major. "Do you know how 
 much property I have got ? " 
 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 "I have only ten thousand pounds; and how am I to bring 
 up a family on the interest of that ? " 
 
 " I should fancy it was quite enough for you," said tlie Vicar; 
 " you have only one son." 
 
 " How many more am I likely to have, eh ? And how should 
 I look to find myself at sixty with five boys grown up, and only 
 300/. a-year?" 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. i^ 
 
 ''That is rather an extreme case," said the Vicar; "you 
 would he poor then, certainly." 
 
 " Just what I don't want to he. Besides wanting to make 
 some money, I am leading an idle life here, and am getting 
 very tired of it. And so — " he hesitated. 
 " And so ? " said the Vicar. 
 
 " I am thinking of emigrating. To New South Wales. To go 
 into the slieep-farming line. ThereT" 
 
 " There indeed," said the Vicar. " And what has put you up 
 to it ? " 
 
 " Why, my wife and I have heen thinking of going to Canada for 
 some time, and so the idea is not altogether new. The other day 
 Hamlyn (you know him) showed me a letter from a cousin of his 
 who is making a good deal of money there. Having seen that 
 letter, I was much struck with it, and having made a great many 
 other inquiries, I laid the whole information hefore my wife, and 
 begged her to give me her opinion." 
 
 " And she recommended you to stay at home in peace and 
 comfort," interposed the Vioar. 
 
 " On the contrary, she said she thought we ought hy aU means 
 to go," returned the Major. 
 
 " Wonderful, indeed. And when shall you go ? " 
 " Not for some time, I think. Not for a year." 
 " I hope not. What a lonely old man I shall he when you 
 are all gone." 
 
 " Nay, Vicar, I hope not," said the Major. " You wiQ stay 
 behind to see your daughter happily married, and your grand- 
 children about your knees." 
 
 The Vicar sighed heavily, and the Major continued. 
 " By-the-bye, Miss Thornton seems to have made a conquest 
 already. Young Hawker seems desperately smitten ; did it ever 
 strike you ? " 
 
 " Yes, it has struck me ; very deep indeed," said the Vicar ; 
 "but what can I do?" ^ 
 
 " You surely would not allow her to marry him ? " 
 " How can I prevent it ? She is her own mistress, and I never 
 could control her yet. How can I control her when her whole 
 heart and soul is set on him ? " 
 
 " Good God ! " said the Major, " do you really think she cai-es 
 for him ? " 
 
 "Oh, she loves him with her whole heart. I have seen it 
 a long while." 
 
 " My dear friend, you should take her away for a short time, and 
 see if she will forget him. Anything sooner than let her marry him." 
 
48 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " Why should she not marry him ? " said the Vicar. " She is 
 (mly a farmer's grand-daughter. We are nobody, you know." 
 
 " But he is not of good character." 
 
 " Oh, there is nothing more agamst him than there is against 
 most young fellows. He will reform and be steady. Do you know 
 . anything special against him ? " asked the Vicar. 
 
 " Not actually against him ; but just conceive, my dear friend, 
 what a family to marry into ! His father — I speak the plain truth 
 — is a most disreputable, drunken old man, living in open sin with 
 a gipsy woman of the worst character, by whom George Hawker 
 has been brought up. What an atmosphere of vice ! The young 
 fellow himself is universally disliked, and distrusted too, all over 
 the village. Can you forgive me for speaking so plain?" 
 
 " There is no forgiveness necessary, my good friend ; " said 
 the Vicar. " I know how kind your intentions are. But I caimot 
 bring myself to have a useless quarrel with my daughter merely 
 because I happen to dislike the object of her choice. It would be 
 quite a useless quarrel. She has always had her own way, and 
 always will." 
 
 " What does Miss Thornton say ? " asked the Major. 
 
 " Nothing, she never does say anything. She regards Hawker 
 as Mary's accepted suitor ; and though she may think him vulgar, 
 she would sooner die than commit herself so far as to say so. She 
 has been so long under others, and without an opinion save theirs, 
 that she cannot form an opinion at all." 
 
 They had turned and were walking home, when the Vicar, 
 sticking his walking-cane upright in the grass, began again. 
 
 " It is the most miserable and lamentable thing that ever took 
 place in this world. Look at my sister again : what a delicate 
 old maid she is ! used to move and be respected, more than most 
 governesses are, in the highest society in the land. There'll be 
 a home for her when I die ! Think of her living in the house mth 
 any of the Hawkers ; and yet, sir, that woman's sense of duty is 
 such that she'd die sooner than leave her niece. Sooner be burnt 
 at the stake than go an inch out of the line of conduct she has 
 marked out for herself." 
 
 The Vicar judged his sister most rightly : we shall see that 
 hereafter. 
 
 " A man of determination and strength of character could have 
 prevented it at the beginning, you would say. I dare say he might 
 have ; but I am not a man of determination and strength of 
 character. I never was, and I never shall be." 
 
 " Do you consider it in the light of a settled question, then," said 
 the Major, " that your daughter should marry young Hawker ? " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 4S) 
 
 '• God knows. She will please herself. I spoke to her at first 
 about encouraging him, and she began by laughing at me, and 
 ended by making a scene whenever I spoke against him. I was 
 at one time in hopes that she would have taken a fancy to young 
 Stockbridge ; but I fear I must have set her against him by 
 praising him too much. It wants a woman, you know, to manage 
 those sort of things." 
 
 " It does, indeed." 
 
 " You see, as I said before, I have no actual reason to urge 
 against Hawker, and he will be very rich. I shall raise my voice 
 against her living in the house with that woman Madge — in fact, 
 I won't have it ; but take it all in all, I fear I shall have to make 
 the best of it." 
 
 Major Buckley said no more, and soon after they got home. 
 There was Mrs. Buckley, queenly and beautiful, waiting for her 
 husband ; and there was Mary, pretty, and full of fun ; there 
 also was the Doctor, smoking and contemplating a new fern ; 
 and Miss Thornton, with her gloved-hands folded, calculating 
 uneasily what amount of detriment Mary's complexion would 
 sustain in consequence of walking about without her bonnet in an 
 April sun. 
 
 One and all cried out to know what sport ; and little Sam 
 tottered forward demanding a fish for himself, which, having got, 
 he at once put into his mouth head foremost. The Doctor, 
 taking off his spectacles, examined the contents of the fish-basket, 
 and then demanded : 
 
 " Now, my good friend, why do you give yourself the trouble to 
 catch trout in that round-about way, requiring so much skiU and 
 patience ? In Germany we catch them with a net — a far superior 
 way, I assure you. Get any one of the idle young fellows about 
 the village to go down to the stream with a net, and they wiU 
 get more trout in a day than you would in a week." 
 
 "What!" said the Major, indignantly; "put a net in my 
 rented water ? — If I caught any audacious scoundrel carrying 
 a net within half a mile of it, I'd break his neck. You can't 
 appreciate the delights of fly-fishing, doctor — you are no sportsman." 
 
 " No, I ain't," said the Doctor ; " you never said anything truer 
 than that, James Buckley. I am nothing of the sort. When 
 I was a young man, I had a sort of brute instinct, which made me 
 take the same sort of pleasure in killing a boar that a cat does 
 in killing a mouse ; but I have outlived such barbarism." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " said the Vicar ; " and yet he gave ten shillings 
 for a snipe. And he's hand-and-glove with every rpoacher in the 
 palish." 
 
 6 
 
so THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " The snipe was a new species, sir," said the Doctor, in- 
 dignantly ; and if I do employ the hunters to collect for me, I see 
 no inconsistency in that. But I consider this fly-fishing mania 
 just of a piece yfith your idiotic, I repeat it, idiotic institution of 
 fox-hunting. Why, if you laid baits poisoned with nux vomica 
 about the haunts of those animals, you would get rid of them in 
 two years." 
 
 The Doctor used to delight in aggravating the Major by 
 attacking English sports ; but he had a great admiration for them 
 nevertheless. 
 
 The Major got out his wife's pony ; and setting her on it, and 
 handing up the son and heir, departed home to dhiner. They 
 were hardly inside the gate wheHjirs,Buckley_begaJi< 
 
 "My dear husband, did you bring him to speak of the subject 
 we were talking about? " _ — 
 
 " He went into it himself, wife, tooth and nail." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well ! indeed, my dear Agnes, do you know that, although 
 I love the old man dearly, I must say I think he is rather weak." 
 
 "So I fear," said Mrs. Bucldey ; "but he is surely not so 
 weak as to ' allow that young fellow to haunt the house, after he 
 has had a hint that he is making love to Mary ? " 
 
 " My dear, he accepts him as her suitor. He says he has 
 been aware of it for some time, and that he has spoken to Mary 
 about it, and made no impression ; so that now he considers it 
 a settled thing." 
 
 " What culpable weakness ! So Mary encourages him, then ? " 
 
 " She adores him, and won't hear a word against him." 
 
 "Unfortunate girl!" said Mrs. Buckley, "and with such 
 a noble young fellow as Stockbridge ready to cut off his head 
 for her ! It is perfectly inconceivable." 
 
 " Young Hawker is very handsome, my dear, you must 
 remember." 
 
 " Is he ? " said Mrs. Buckley. " I call him one of the most 
 evil-looking men I ever saw." 
 
 " My dear Agnes, I think if you were to speak boldly to her, 
 you might do some good. You might begin to undermine this 
 unlucky infatuation of hers ; and I am sure, if her eyes were 
 once opened, that the more she saw him, the less she would like 
 him." 
 
 " I think, James," said Mrs. Buckley, " that it becomes the 
 duty of us, who have been so happy in our marriage, to prevent 
 our good old vicar's last days from being rendered miserable by 
 such a mesalliance as this. I am very fond of Mary ; but the 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 51 
 
 old Vicar, my dear, has taken the place ot your father to 
 me." 
 
 "He is like a second father to me too," said the Major; 
 " hut he wants a good many qualities that my own father had. 
 He hasn't his energy or determination. Why, if my father had 
 heen in his place, and such an ill-looking young dog as that came 
 hanging ahout the premises, my father would have laid his stick 
 ahout his hack. And it woiUd he a good thing if somehody 
 would do it now." 
 
 Such was Major Bucldey's opinion. 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 THE VICAR HEAES SOSrETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE. 
 
 "My dear," said old Miss Thopton, that evening, "I have 
 consulted Mrs. Buckley on the sleeves, and she is of opinion that 
 they should he pointed." 
 
 "Do you thifik," said Mary, " that she thought much ahout 
 the matter ? " 
 
 " She promised to give the matter her earnest attention," 
 said Miss Thornton ; " so I suppose she did. Mrs. Buckley 
 would never speak at random, if she once promised to give her 
 real opinion." 
 
 " No, I don't think she would, Auntie, hut she is not very 
 particular in her own dress." 
 
 " She always looks like a thorough lady, my dear : Mrs. 
 Buckley is a woman whom I could set hefore you as a model for 
 imitation far sooner than myself." 
 
 "She is a duck, at all events," said Mary; "and her 
 husband is a darling." 
 
 Miss Thornton was too much shocked to say anything. 
 To hear a young lady speak of a handsome military man as a 
 " darling," went quite heyond her experience. She was con- 
 sidering how much bread and water ^nd backboard she would 
 have felt it her duty to give Lady Kate, or Lady Fannys in old 
 times, for such an expression, when the Vicar, who had been 
 dozing, woke- up and said : — 
 
 " Bless us, what a night ! The equinoctial gales come back 
 again. This rain will make up for the dry March with a 
 vengeance ; I am glad I am safely housed before a good fire." 
 
52 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Unlucky words 1 he drew nearer to the fire, and began rubbing 
 his knees ; he had given them about three rubs, when the door 
 opened and the maid's voice was heard ominous of evil. 
 
 " Thomas Jewel is worse, sir, and if you please his missis 
 don't expect he'll ' last the iiight ; and could you just step 
 up ? " 
 
 "Just stepping up," was a pretty little euphemism for walking 
 three long miles dead in the teeth of a gale of wind, with a 
 fierce rushing tropical rain. One of the numerous tenders of 
 the ship Jewel (74), had just arrived before the wind under bare 
 poles, an attempt to set a rag of umbrella having ended in its 
 being blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the aforesaid tender 
 Jewel was now in the vicarage harbour of refuge, reflecting what 
 an awful job it would have in beating back against the monsoon. 
 
 " Who has come with this message ? " said the Vicar, entering 
 the kitchen followed by Miss Thornton and Mary. 
 
 "Me, sir," says a voice from the doorway. 
 
 " Oh, come in, will you," said the Vicar ; " it's a terrible 
 night, is it not ? " 
 
 " Oh Loord ! " said the voice in reply — intending the ejaculation 
 for a very strong afiirmative. And advancing towards the light, 
 displayed a figure in a long brown great-coat, reaching to the 
 ankles, and topped by some sort of head-dress, resembling very 
 closely a small black carpet bag, tied on with a red cotton 
 handkerchief. This was all that was visible, and the good 
 Vicar stood doubting whether it was male or female, till catching 
 sight of an immense pair of hob-nail boots peeping from the 
 lower extremity of the coat, he made up his mind at once, and 
 began : — 
 
 "My good boy — " 
 
 There was a cackling laugh from under the carpet-bag, and 
 a harsh grating voice replied : 
 
 "I be a gurl." 
 
 " Dear me," said the Vicar, " then what do you dress yourself 
 in that style for ? — So old Jewel is worse." 
 
 " Us don't think a '11 live the night." 
 
 " Is the doctor with him?" said the Vicar. 
 
 " The 'Talian's with un." 
 
 By which he understood her to mean Dr. Mulhaus, all foreigners 
 being considered to be Italians in Drumstpn. An idea they got, 
 I take it, from the wandering organ men being of that nation. 
 
 "WeU," said the Vicar, "I will start at once, and come. 
 It's a terrible night." 
 
 The owner of the great-coat assented with a fiendish cackle, and 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 63 
 
 departed. The Vicar, having heen well wrapped up by liis sister 
 and daughter, departed also, with a last injunction from Miss 
 Thornton to take care of himself. 
 
 Easier said than done, such a night as this. A regular south- 
 westerly gale, accompanied by a stinging, cutting rain, which made 
 it almost impossible to look to windward. Earth and sky seemed 
 mixed together, and each twig and bough sent a separate plaint 
 upon the gale, indignant at seeing their fresh-acquired honours 
 torn from them and scattered before the blast. 
 
 The Vicar put his head down and sturdily walked against it. 
 It was well for him that he knew every inch of the road, for his 
 knowledge was needed now. There was no turn in the road after 
 he had passed the church, but it took straight away over the high 
 ground up to Hawker's farm on the woodlands. 
 
 Old Jewel, whom he was going to see, had been a hind of 
 Hawker's for many years ; but about a twelvemonth before the 
 present time he had left his service, partly on account of increasing 
 infirmity, and partly in consequence of a violent quarrel with 
 Madge. He was a man of indifferent character. He had been 
 married once in his life, but his wife only lived a year, and left 
 him with one son, who had likewise manied and given to the 
 world seven as barbarous, neglected, young savages as any in the 
 parish. The old man, who was now lying on his deathbed, had been 
 a sort of confidential man to old Hawker, retained in that capacity 
 on'kccoiuil, the old man said once in his drink, of not having any 
 wife to worm family affairs out of him. So it was generally 
 believed by the village folks, that old Jewel was in possession of 
 some fearful secrets (such as a murder or two, for instance, or a 
 brace of forgeries), and that the Hawkers daren't turn him out of 
 the cottage where he lived for their lives. 
 
 Perhaps some of these idle rumours may have floated through 
 the Vicar's brain as he fought forwards against the storm ; but if 
 any did, they were soon dismissed again, and the good man's 
 thoughts carried into a fresh channel. And he was thinking 
 what a fearful night this would be at sea, and how any ship could 
 live against such a storm, when he came to a white gate, which 
 led into the deep woods surrounding Hawker's house, and in a 
 recess of which lived old Jewel and his family. 
 
 Now began the most difficult part of his journey. The broader 
 road that led from the gate up to the Hawkers' house was plainly 
 perceptible, but the little path which turned up to the cottage was 
 not so easily found, and when found, not easily kept on such a 
 black wild night as this. But, at length, having hit it, he began 
 to follow it with some difficulty, and soon beginning to descend 
 
54 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 rapidly, he caught sight of a light, and, at the same moment, 
 heard the rushing of water. 
 
 "Oh," said he to himself, "the water is come down, and I 
 shall have a nice job to get across it. Any people but the Jewels 
 would have made some sort of a bridge by now ; but they have 
 been content with a fallen tree ever since the old bridge was 
 carried away." 
 
 He scrambled down the steep hill side with great difficulty, and 
 not without one or two nasty slips, which to a man of his age, 
 wag no trifle, but at length stood trembling with exertion before a 
 flooded brook, across which lay a fallen tree, dimly seen in the 
 dark against the gleam of the rushing water. 
 
 " I must stand and steady my nerves a bit after that tumble," 
 he said, " before I venture over there. That's the ' Brig of 
 Dread ' with a vengeance. However, I never came to harm yet 
 when I was after duty, so I'll chance it." 
 
 The cottage stood just across the brook, and he halloed aloud 
 for some one to come. After a short time the door opened, and 
 a man appeared with a lantern. 
 
 " Who is there ? " demanded Dr. Mulhaus' well-known voice. 
 "Is it you, Vicar?" 
 
 "Aye," rejoined the other, "it's me at present; but it won't 
 be long if I slip coming over that log. Here goes," he said, as 
 he steadied himself and crossed rapidly, while the Doctor held 
 the light. "Ah," he added, when he was safe across, "I knew 
 I should get over all right." 
 
 " You did not seem very certain about it just now," said the 
 Doctor. " However, I am sincerely glad you are come. I knew 
 no weather would stop you." 
 
 "Thank you, old friend," said the Vicar; "and how is the 
 patient ? " 
 , " Going fast. More in your line than mine. The man believes 
 \ himself bewitched." 
 
 ' " Not uncommon," said the Vicar, " in these parts ; they are 
 always bothering me with some of that sort of nonsense." 
 
 They went in. Only an ordinary scene of poverty, dirt, and 
 vice, such as exists to some extent, in every parish, in every 
 country on the globe. Nothing more than that, and yet a 
 sickening sight enough. 
 
 A squalid, damp, close room, with the earthen floor sunk in 
 many places and holding pools of water. The mother smoking in 
 the chimney corner, the eldest daughter nursing an illegitimate 
 child, and quarrelling with her mother in a coarse, angry tone. 
 The children, ragged and hungry, fighting for the fireside. The 
 
GEOFPBY HAMLYN. 55 
 
 father away, at some unlawful occupation probably, or sitting 
 drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what they saw, aad 
 what any man may see to-day for himself in his own village, 
 whether in England or Australia, that working man's paradise. 
 Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, wiU 
 produce the same effects all over the world. 
 
 As they came in the woman of the house rose and cui-tseyed to 
 the Vicar, but the eldest girl sat stiU and turned away her head. 
 The Vicar, after saluting her mother, went gently up to her, and 
 patting the baby's cheek, asked her kindly how she did. The 
 girl tried to answer him, but could only sob. She bent down her 
 head again over the child, and began rocking it to and fro. 
 
 " You must bring it to be christened," said the Vicar kindly. 
 " Can you come on Wednesday ? " 
 
 " Yes, I'U come," she said with a sort of choke. And now the 
 woman having lit a fresh candle, ushered them into the sick man's 
 room. 
 
 ^^JTyphus and searlatinaTr^ said the Doctor. " How this place 
 smells after TjeingTnTEe~aif. He is sensible again, I think." 
 
 "Quite sensible," the sick man answered aloud. "So you've 
 come, Mr. Thornton ; I'm glad of it ; I've got a sad story to tell 
 you ; but I'll have vengeance if you do your duty. You see the 
 state I am in ! " 
 
 " Ague ! " said the Vicar. 
 
 " And who gave it me ? " 
 
 " Why, God sent it to you," said the Vicar. " All people 
 living in a narrow wet vaUey among woodlands like this, must 
 expect ague." 
 
 " I teU you she gave it to me. I tell you she has overlooked 
 me ; and all this doctor's stuff is no use, unless you can say a 
 charm as wiU undo her devil's work." 
 
 " My good friend," said the Vicar, "you should banish such 
 fancies from your mind, for you are in a serious position, and 
 ought not to die in enmity with any one." 
 
 " Not die in enmity with her ? I'd never forgive her tiU she 
 took off the spell." 
 
 " Whom do you mean ? " asked the Vicar. 
 
 " Why, that infernal witch, Madge, that lives with old Hawker," 
 said the man excitedly. " That's who I mean ! " 
 
 " Why, what injury has she done you ? " 
 
 "Bewitched me, I tell you! Given me these shaking fits. 
 She told me she would, when I left ; and so she has, to prevent 
 my speaking. I might a spoke out anytime this year, only 
 the old man kept me quiet with money ; but now it's nigh too late ! " 
 
58 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 M What might you have spoken about? " asked the Vicar. 
 ' " Well, I'll just relate the matter to you," said the man, 
 speaking fast and thick, " and I'll speak the truth. A twelve- 
 month agone, this Madge and me had a fierce quarrel, and I 
 miscalled her awful, and told her of some things she wasn't aware 
 I knew of ; and then she said, ' If ever a word of that escapes 
 your lips, I'll put such a spell on ye that your hones shall shake 
 apart.' Then I says, If yoirdo7 your bastard son shall swing." 
 
 " Who do you mean by her bastard son ? " 
 
 " Young George Hawker. He is not the son of old Mrs. 
 Hawker. Madge was- brought to bed of him a fortnight before 
 her mistress ; and when she bore a still-born child, old Hawker 
 and I buried it in the wood, and we gave Madge's child to Mrs. 
 Hawker, who never knew the difference before she died." 
 
 " On the word of a dying man, is that true ? " demanded the 
 Vicar. 
 
 " On the word of a dying man that's true, and this also. I 
 says to Madge, ' Your boy shall swing, for I know enough to 
 hang him.' And she said, ' Where are your proofs ? ' and t — 
 Lord ! Lord ! she's at me again." 
 
 He sank down again in a paroxysm of shivering, and they got 
 no more from him. Enough there was, however, to make the 
 Vicar a very silent and thoughtful man, as he sat watching the 
 sick man in the close stifling room. 
 
 " You had better go home. Vicar," said the Doctor ; " you will 
 make yourself ill staying here. I do not expect another lucid 
 interval." 
 
 " No," said the Vicar, " I feel it my duty to stay longer. For 
 my own sake too. What he has let out bears feai-fuUy on my 
 happiness. Doctor." 
 
 " Yes, I can understand that, my friend, from what I have 
 heard of the relations that exist between your daughter and that 
 young man. You have been saved from a terrible misfortune, 
 though at the cost, perhaps, of a few tears, and a little temporary 
 uneasiness." 
 
 " I hope it may be as you say," said the Vicai-. " Strange, only 
 to-day Major Buckley was urging me to stop that acquaintance." 
 
 " I should have ventured to do so too. Vicar, had I been as old 
 a friend of yours as Major Buckley." 
 
 " He is not such a very old friend," said the Vicar ; " only of 
 two years' standing, yet I seem to have known him ten." 
 
 At daybreak the man died, and made no sign. So as soon as 
 they had satisfied themselves of the fact, they departed, and came 
 out together into the clear morning air. The rain-clouds had 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 57 
 
 broken, though when they had scrambled up out of the nanwv 
 little valley where the cottage stood, they found that the wind was 
 still high and fierce, and that the sun was rising dimly through a 
 yellow haze of driving scud. 
 
 They stepped out briskly, revived by the freshness of all around, 
 and had made about half the distance home, when they descried a 
 horseman coming slowly towards them. It seemed an early time 
 for any one to be abroad, and their surprise was increased at 
 seeing that it was George Hawker returning home. 
 
 " Where can he have been so early ? " said the Doctor. 
 
 "So late, you mean," said the Vicar; "he has not been 
 home all night. Now I shall brace up my nerves and speak to 
 him." 
 
 " My good wishes go with you. Vicar," said the Doctor, and 
 walked on, while the other stopped to speak with George Hawker. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Thornton. You are early a-foot, sir." 
 
 "Yes, I have been sitting up all night with old Jewel. He is 
 dead." 
 
 " Is he indeed, sir ? " said Hawker. " He won't be much loss, 
 sir, to the parish. A sort of happy release, one may say, for 
 every one but himself." 
 
 " Can I have the pleasure of a few words with you, Mr. 
 Hawker ? " 
 
 " Surely, sir," said he, dismounting. " Allow me to walk a 
 little on the way back with you ? " ; 
 
 " What I have to say, Mr. Hawker," said the Vicar, " is very/ 
 short, and, I fear, also very disagreeable to all parties. I am' 
 going to request you to discontinue your visits to my house/ 
 altogether, and, in fact, di'op our acquaintance." i 
 
 " This is very sudden, sir," said Hawker. "Am I to under- 
 stand, sir, that you cannot be induced by any conduct of mine to 
 reconsider this decision ? " 
 
 " You are to understand that such is the case, sir." 
 
 " And this is final, Mr. Thornton ? " 
 
 " Quite final, I assure you," said the Vicar ; " nothing on earth 
 should make me flinch from my decision." 
 
 "This is very unfortunate, sir," said George. "For I had 
 reason to believe that you rather encouraged my visits than 
 otherwise." 
 
 " I never encouraged them. It is true I permitted them. But 
 since then circumstances have come to my ears which render 
 it imperative that you should drop all communication with the 
 members of my family, more especially, to speak plainly, with my 
 daughter." 
 
58 THE EEOOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 "At least, sir," said George, "let me know what charge you 
 bring against me." 
 
 " I make no charges of any sort," replied the Vicar. " All I 
 say is, that I wish the intercourse between you and my daughter 
 to cease ; and I consider, sir, that when I say that, it ought to be 
 sufficient. I conceive that I have the right to say so much without 
 question." 
 
 " I think you are unjust, sir ; I do, indeed," said George. 
 
 " I may have been unjust, and I may have been weak, in allowing 
 an intimacy (which I do not deny, mind yoi() to spring up between 
 my daughter and yourself. But I am not unjust now, when I 
 require that it should cease. I begm to be 'just." 
 
 " Do you forbid me your house, sir ? " 
 
 "I forbid you my house, sir. Most distinctly. And I wish 
 you good-day." 
 
 There was no more to be said on either side. George stood 
 beside his horse, after the Vicar had left him, till he was fairly 
 out of earshot. And then, with a fierce oath, he said, — 
 
 "You puritanical old humbug, I'U do you yet. You've heard 
 about Nell and her cursed brat. But the daughter ain't always 
 the same way of thinking with the father, old man." 
 
 The Vicar walked on, glad enough to have got the interview 
 over, till he overtook the Doctor, who was walking slowly till he 
 came up. He felt as though the battle was gained already, though 
 he still rather dreaded a scene with Mary. 
 
 " How have you sped, friend ? " asked the Doctor. " Have 
 you given the young gentleman his congee ! " 
 
 "I have," he replied. " DtSctor, now half the work is done, I 
 feel what a culpable coward I have been not to do it before. I 
 have been deeply to blame. I never should have allowed him to 
 come near us. Surely, the girl will not be such a fool as to 
 regret the loss of such a man. I shall tell her all I know about 
 him, and after that I can do no more. No more ? I never had 
 her confidence. She has always had a life apart from mine. The 
 people in the village, all so far below us in every way, have been 
 to me acquaintances, and only that ; but they have been her 
 world, and she has seen no other. She is a kind, aff'ectionate 
 daughter, but she would be as good a daughter to any of the 
 farmers round as she is to me. She is not a lady. That is the 
 truth. God help the man who brings up a daughter without a 
 wife." 
 
 " You do her injustice, my friend," said the Doctor. " I 
 understand what you mean, but you do her injustice. All the 
 female society she has ever seen, before Mrs. Buckley and your 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 59 
 
 sister came here, was of a rank inferior to herself, and she has 
 taken her impressions from that society to a great extent. But 
 still she is a lady ; compare her to any of the other girls in the 
 parish, and you will see the difference." 
 
 "Yes, yes, that is true," said the Vicar. " You must think 
 me a strange man to speak so plainly ahout my o^vn daughter, 
 Doctor, and to you, too, whom I have known so short a time. 
 But one must confide in somebody, and I have seen your dis- 
 cretion manifested so often that I trust you." 
 
 They had arrived opposite the Vicar's gate, but the Doctor, 
 resisting aU the Vicar's offers of breakfast, declined to go in. 
 He walked homeward toward his cottage-lodgings, and as he went 
 he mused to himself somewhat in this style, — 
 
 " What a good old man that is. And yet how weak. I used to 
 say to myself when I first Imew him, what a pity that a man with 
 such a noble intellect should be buried in a country village, a 
 pastor to a lot of ignorant hinds. And yet he is fit for nothing 
 else, with aU his intelligence, and aU his learning. He has no go 
 in him, — no back to his head. Contrast him with Buckley, and 
 see the difference. Now Bucldey, without being a particularly 
 clever man, sees the right thing, and goes at it through fire and 
 water. But our old Vicar sees the right, and leaves it to take 
 care of itself. He can't manage his own family even. That girl 
 is a fine girl, a very fine girl. A good deal of character about 
 her. But her animal passions are so strong that she would be a 
 Tartar for any one to manage. She will be too much for the 
 Vicar. She will marry that man in the end. And if he don't 
 use her properly, she'll hate him as much as she loves him now. 
 She is more like an Italian than an English girl. Hi I there's a 
 noble Ehamnea ! " 
 
 The Vicar went into his house, and found no one up but the 
 maids, who were keeping that saturnalia among the household 
 gods, which, I am given to understand, goes on in every well- 
 regulated household before the lords of the creation rise from 
 their downy beds. I have never seen this process myself, but I 
 am informed, by the friend of my heart, who looked on it once 
 for five minutes, and then fled, horror struck, that the first act 
 consists in turning all the furniture upside down, and beating it 
 with brooms. Further than this, I have no information. If any 
 male eye has penetrated these awful secrets beyond that, let the 
 owner of that eye preserve a decent silence. There are some 
 things that it is better not to know. Only let us hope, brother, 
 that you and I may always find ourselves in a position to lie in bed 
 till it is all over. In Australia, it may he worth while to remark, 
 
60 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 this custom, with many other religious ohservances, has fallen 
 into entire desuetude. 
 
 The Vicar was very cross this morning. He had been sitting 
 up all night, which was bad, and he had been thinking these last 
 few minutes that he had made a fool of himself, by talking so 
 freely to the Doctor about his private affairs, which was worse. 
 Nothing irritated the Vicar's temper more than the feeling of 
 having been too free and communicative with people who did not 
 care about him, a thing he was very apt to do. And, on this 
 occasion, he could not disguise from himself that he had been led 
 into talking about bis daughter to the Doctor, in a way which he 
 characterised in his own mind as being " indecent." 
 
 As I said, he was cross. And anything in the way of clearing 
 up or disturbance always irritated him, though he generally con- 
 cealed it. But there was a point at which his vexation always 
 took the form of a protest, more or less violent. And that point 
 was determined by any one meddling with his manuscript sermons. 
 
 So, on this unlucky morning, in spite of fresh-lit fires smoking 
 in his face, and fenders in dark passages throwing him headlong 
 into lurking coalscuttles, he kept his temper like a man, imtil 
 coming into his study, he found his favourite discourse on the 
 sixth seal lying on the floor by the window, his lectures on the 
 119th Psalm on the hearthrug, and the maid fanning the fire with 
 his chef d'ceuvre, the Waterloo thanksgiving. 
 
 Then, I am sorry to say, he lost his temper. Instead of calling 
 the girl by her proper name, he addressed her as a distinguished 
 Jewish lady, a near relation of King Ahab, and, snatching the 
 sermon from her hand, told her to go and call Miss Mary, or he'd 
 lay his stick about her back. 
 
 The girl was frightened — she had never seen her master in this 
 state of mind before. So she ran out of the room, and, having 
 fetched Mary, ensconced herself outside the door to hear what 
 was the matter. 
 
 Mary tripped into the room looking pretty and fresh. " Why, 
 father," she said, " you have been up aU night. I have ordered 
 you a cup of coffee. How is old Jewel ? " 
 
 " Dead," said the Vicar. " Never mind him. Mai^, I want 
 to speak to you, seriously, about something that concerns the 
 happiness of your whole life." 
 
 " Father," she said, " you frighten me.' Let me get you your 
 coffee before you begin, at all events." 
 
 " Stay where you are, I order you," said the father. " I will 
 have no temporising until the matter grows cold. I will speak 
 now ; do you hear ? Now, listen." 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLYN. 61 
 
 She was subdued, and knew what was coming. She sat down, 
 ai;d waited. Had he looked in her face, instead of in the fire, he 
 would have seen an expression there which he would little have 
 liked — a smile of obstinacy and self-wiU. 
 
 "I am not going to mince matters, and beat about the bush, 
 Mary," he began. " What I say I mean, and will have it 
 attended to. You are very intimate with young Hawker, and that 
 intimacy is very displeasing to me." 
 
 "Well?" she said. 
 
 " Well," he answered. " I say it is not well. I will not have 
 him here." 
 
 " You are rather late, father," she said. " He has had the 
 run of this house these six months. You should have spoken 
 before." 
 
 " I speak now, miss," said the Vicar, succeeding in working 
 himself into a passion, " and that is enough. I forbid him the 
 house, now ! " 
 
 " You had better tell him so, father. I won't." 
 
 " I daresay you won't," said the Vicar. " But I have told 
 him so already this morning." 
 
 " You have ! " she cried. " Father, you had no right to do 
 that. You encouraged him here. And now my love is given, 
 you turn round and try to break my heart." 
 
 " I never encouraged him. You all throw that in my face. 
 You have no natural affection, girl. I always hated the man. 
 And now I have heard things about him sufficient to bar him from 
 any honest man's house." 
 
 " Unjust ! " she said. " I wiU never believe it." 
 
 " I daresay you won't," said the Vicar. " Because you don't 
 want to. You are determined to make my life miserable. There 
 was Jim Stockbridge. Such a noble, handsome, gentlemanly 
 young fellow, and nothing would please you but to drive him wild, 
 till he left the country. Now, go away, and mind what I have 
 said. You mean to break my heart, I see." 
 
 She turned as she was going out. "Father," she said, "is 
 James Stockbridge gone ? " 
 
 " Yes ; gone. Sailed a fortnight ago. And all your doing. 
 Poor boy, I wonder where he is now." 
 
 Where is he now ? Under the cliffs of Madeira. Standing on 
 the deck of a brave ship, beneath a rustiing cloud of canvas, 
 watching awe-struck that noble island, like an aerial temple, brown 
 in the lights, blue in the shadows, floating between a sapphire sea 
 and an azure sky. Far aloft in the air is Kuivo, five thousand 
 feet overhead, father of the great ridges and sierras that run down 
 
62 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 jagged and abrupt, till they end in wild surf-washed promontories. 
 He is watching a mighty glen that pierces the mountain, dark with 
 misty shadows. He is watching the waterfalls that stream from 
 among the vineyards into the sea below, and one long white 
 monastery, perched up among the crags above the highway of the 
 world. 
 
 Borne upon the fuU north wind, the manhood and intelligence 
 of Europe goes past, day by day, in white-winged ships. And 
 above all, unheeding, century after century, the old monks have 
 vegetated there, saying their masses, and ringing their chapel 
 bells, high on the windy cliff. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHEN THE KYE CAME HAME. 
 
 And when Mary had left the room, the Vicar sat musing before 
 the fire in his study. " Well," said he to himself, " she took it 
 quieter than I thought she would. Now, I can't blame myself. I 
 think I have shown her that I am determined, and she seems 
 inclined to be dutiful. Poor dear girl, I am sorry for her. There 
 is no doubt she has taken a fancy to this handsome young scamp. 
 But she must get over it. It can't be so very serious as yet. At 
 all events I have done my duty, though I can't help saying that I 
 wish I had spoken before things went so far." 
 
 The maid looked in timidly, and told him that breakfast was 
 ready. He went into the front parloui', and there he found his 
 sister making tea. She looked rather disturbed, and, as the Vicar 
 kissed her, he asked her " where was Mary ? " 
 
 " She is not well, brother," she answered. " She is going to 
 stay up-stairs ; I fear something has gone wrong with her." 
 
 " She and I had some words this morning," answered he, " and 
 that happens so seldom, that she is a little upset, that is all." 
 
 " I hope there is nothing serious, brother," said Miss Thornton. 
 
 " No ; I have only been teUing her that she must give up 
 receiving George Hawker here. And she seems to have taken a 
 sort of fancy to his society, which might have grown to something 
 more serious. So I am glad I spoke in time." 
 
 ' ' My dear brother, do you think you have spoken in time ? I 
 have always imagined that you had determined, for some reason 
 which I was not master of, that she should look on Mr, Ha,wker 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 63 
 
 as her future husband. I am afraid you will have trouble. Mary 
 is self-willed." 
 
 Mary was very self-willed. She refused to come downstairs all 
 day, and, when he was sitting down to dinner, he sent up for her. 
 She sent him for an answer, that she did not want any dinner, and 
 that she was going to stay where she was. 
 
 The Vicar ate his dinner notwithstanding. He was vexed, but, 
 on the whole, felt satisfied with himself. This sort of thing, he 
 said to himself, was to be expected. She would get over it in 
 time. He hoped that the poor girl would not neglect her meals, 
 and get thin. He might have made himself comfortable if he had 
 seen her at the cold chicken in the back kitchen. 
 
 She could not quite make the matter out. She rather fancied 
 that her father and Hawker had had some quarrel, the effects of 
 which would wear off, and that all would come back to its old 
 course. She thought it strange too that her father should be so 
 different from his usual self, and this made her uneasy. One 
 thing she was determined on, not to give up her lover, come what 
 would. So far in life she had always had her own way, and she 
 would have it now. All things considered, she thought that sulks 
 would be her game. So sulks it was. To be carried on until the 
 Vicar relented. 
 
 She sat up in her room till it was evening. Twice during the 
 day her aunt had come up, and the first time she had got rid of 
 her under pretence of headache, but the second time she was 
 forced in decency to admit her, and listen entirely unedified to a 
 long discourse, proving, beyond power of contradiction, that it 
 was the duty of every young Englishwoman to be guided entirely 
 by her parents in the choice of a partner for life. And how that 
 Lady Kate, as a fearful judgment on her for marrying a captain of 
 artillery against the wishes of her noble relatives, was now 
 expiating her crimes on 400i. a-year, and when she might have 
 married a duke. 
 
 Lady Kate was Miss Thornton's " awful example," her "naughty 
 girl." She served to point many a moral of the old lady's. But 
 Lady Fanny, her sister, was always represented as the pattern of 
 alL Christian virtues — who had crowned the hopes of her family 
 and well-wishers by marrying a gouty marquis of sixty-three, with 
 fifty thousand a-year. On this occasion, Mary struck the old lady 
 dumb — " knocked her cold," our American cousms would say — 
 by announcing that she considered Lady Fanny to be a fool, but 
 that Lady Kate seemed to be a girl of some spirit. So Miss 
 Thornton left her to her own evil thoughts, and, as evening began 
 to fall, Mary put on her bonnet, and went out for a walk. 
 
64 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Out by the back door, and round through the shrubbery, so that 
 she gained the front gate unperceived from the windows ; but ere 
 she reached it she heard the latch go, and found herself face to 
 face with a man. 
 
 He was an immensely tall man, six foot at least. His long 
 heavy limbs loosely hung together, and his immense broad 
 shoulders slightly rounded. In -features he was hardly handsome, 
 but a kindly pleasant looking face made ample atonement for want 
 of beauty. He was dressed in knee breeches, and a great blue 
 coat, with brass buttons, too large even for him, was topped by a 
 broad-brimmed beaver hat, with fur on it half an inch long. In 
 age, this man was about five-and-twenty, and well known he was 
 to all the young fellows round there for skUl in all sporting 
 matters, as well as for his kind-heartedness and generosity. 
 
 When he saw Mary pop out of the little side walk right upon 
 him, he leaned back against the gate and burst out laughing. No, 
 hardly "burst out." His laughter seemed to begin internally 
 and silently, till, after one or two rounds, it shook the vast fabric 
 of his chest beyond endurance, and broke out into so loud and 
 joyous a peal that the blackbird fled, screeching indignantly, from 
 the ivy-tree behind^hijii. — --^ 
 
 " What ! Thomas. Troubridge," said Mary. " My dear cousin, 
 how are you ? "Now, don't stand-laughing there like a great gaby, 
 but come and shake hands. What on earth do you see to laugh 
 at in me ? " 
 
 " Nothing, my cousin Poll, nothing," he replied. " You know 
 that is my way of expressing approval. And you look so pretty 
 standing there in the shade, that I would break any man's neck 
 who didn't applaud. Shake hands, says you, I'U shake hands 
 with a vengeance." So saying, he caught her in his arms, and 
 covered her with kisses. 
 
 "You audacious," she exclaimed, when she writhed herself free. 
 " I'll never come within arm's-length of you again. How dare 
 you?" 
 
 " Only cousinly affection, I assure you. Poll. Rather more 
 violent than usual at finding myself back in Drumston. But 
 entirely cousinly." 
 
 " Where have you been, then, Tom ? " she asked. 
 
 " Why, to London, to be sure. Give us ano " 
 
 " You keep off, sir, or you'll catch it. What took you there ? " 
 
 " Went to see Stockbridge and Hamlyn off;" 
 
 " Then, they are gone ? " she asked. 
 
 " Oone, sure enough. I was the last friend they'U see iox 
 many a long year." 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 65 
 
 " How did Stockbridge look ? was he pretty brave ? " 
 
 " Pretty well. Braver than I was. Mary, my girl, why didn't 
 ye marry him ? " 
 
 "What — you are at me with the rest, are you? " she answered. 
 "Why, because he was a gaby, and you're another; and I wouldn't 
 marry either of you to save your lives — now then ! " 
 
 " Do you mean to say you would not have me, if I asked you ? 
 Pooh! pooh! I know better than that, you know." And again 
 the shrubbery rang with his laughter. 
 
 " Now, go in, Tom, and let me get out," said Mary. " I say, 
 Tom, dear, don't say you saw me. I am going out for a turn, and 
 I don't want them to know it." 
 
 Tom twisted up his great face into a mixture of mystery, admira- 
 tion, wonder, and acquiescence, and, having opened the gate for 
 her, went in. 
 
 But Mary walked quickly down a deep narrow lane, overarched 
 with oak, and melodious with the full rich notes of the thrush, till 
 she saw down the long vista, growing now momentarily darker, the 
 gleaming of a ford where the road crossed a brook. 
 
 Not the brook where the Vicar and the Major went fishing. 
 Quite a diiferent sort of stream, although they were scarcely half 
 a mile apart, and joined just below. Here all the soil was yellow 
 clay, and, being less fertile, was far more densely wooded than any 
 of the red country. The hills were very abrupt, and the fields but 
 sparely scattered among the forest land. The stream itself, where 
 it crossed the road, flowed murmuring over a bed of loose blue 
 slate pebbles, but both above and below this place forced its way, 
 almost invisible, through a dense oak wood, deeply tangled with 
 undergrowth. 
 
 A stone foot-bridge spanned the stream, and having reached this, 
 it seemed as if she had come to her jom-ney's end. For leaning 
 on the rail she began looking into the water below, though starting 
 and looking round at every sound. 
 
 She was waiting for some one. A pleasant place this to wait in. 
 So dark, so hemmed in with trees, and the road so little used ; 
 spring was early here, and the boughs were getting quite dense 
 already. How pleasant to see the broad red moon go up behind 
 the feathery branches, and listen to the evensong of the thrush, 
 just departing to roost, and leaving the field clear for the woodlark 
 all night. There were a few sounds from the village, a lowing 
 of cows, and the noise of the boys at play ; but they were so 
 tempered down by the distance, that they only added to the evening 
 harmony. 
 
 There is another sound now. Horses' feet approaching rapidly 
 6 
 
66 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 from the side opposite to that by which she has come; and soon 
 a horseman comes in sight, coming quickly down the hill. When 
 he sees her he breaks into a gallop, and only pulls up when he is 
 at the side of the brook below her. 
 
 This is the man she was expecting — George Hawker. Ah, 
 Vicar ! how useless is your authority when lovers have such intel- 
 ligence as this. It were better they should meet in your parlour, 
 under your own eye, than here, in the budding spring-time, in this 
 quiet spot under the darkening oaks. 
 
 Hawker spoke first. "I guessed," he said, "that it was just 
 possible you might come out to-night. Come down off the bridge, 
 my love, and let us talk together while I hang up the horse." 
 
 So as he tied the horse to a gate, she came down off the bridge. 
 He took her in his arms and kissed her. " Now, my Poll," said 
 he, " I know what you are going to begin talking about." 
 
 "I daresay you do, George," she answered. "You and my 
 father have quarrelled." 
 
 "The quarrel has been aU on one side, my love," he said; 
 " he has got some nonsense into his head, and he told me when I 
 met him this morning, that he would never see me in his house 
 again." 
 
 "What has he heard, George? it must be something very 
 shocking to change him like that. Do you know what it is ? " 
 
 "Perhaps I do," he said; "but he has no right to visit my 
 father's sins on me. He hates me, and he always did ; and he has 
 been racking his brains to find out something against me. That 
 rascally German doctor has found him an excuse, and so he throws 
 in my teeth, as fresh discovered, what he must have known yeajs 
 ago." 
 
 "I don't think that, George. I don't think he would be so 
 deceitful." 
 
 " Not naturally he wouldn't, I know ; but he is under the thumb 
 of that doctor ; and you know how he hates me — ^If you don't I 
 do." 
 
 " I don't know why Dr. Mulhaus should hate you, George." 
 
 " I do, though ; that sleeky dog Stockbridge, who is such a 
 favourite with him, has poisoned his mind, and all because he 
 wanted you and your money, and because you took up with me 
 instead of him." 
 
 " Well now," said Mary ; " don't go on about him— he is gone, 
 at all events ; but you must tell me what this is that my father 
 has got against you." 
 
 " I don't like to. I tell yon it is against my father, not me." 
 
 " Well ! " she answered ; " if it was any one but me, perhaps, 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 67 
 
 you ought not to tell it ; but you ought to have no secrets from 
 me, George — I have kept none from you." 
 
 " Well, my darling, I will tell you then ; you know Madge, at 
 our place? " 
 
 " Yes ; I have seen her." 
 
 " Well, it's about her. She and my father live together like 
 man and wife, though they ain't married; and the Vicar must 
 have known that these years, and yet now he makes it an excuse 
 for getting rid of me." 
 
 " I always thought she was a bad woman," said Mary ; " but 
 you are wrong about my father. He never knew it till now I am 
 certain ; and of course, you know, he naturally won't have me go 
 and live in the house with a bad woman." 
 _ "Does he think then, or do you think," repHed George, with 
 virtuous indignation, "that I would have thought of taking you 
 there ? No, I'd sooner have taken you to America ! " 
 
 " Well, so I believe, George." 
 
 " This won't make any difference in you, Mary ? No, I 
 needn't ask it, you wouldn't have come here to meet me to-night 
 if that had been the case." 
 
 " It ought to make a difference, George," she replied ; " I am 
 afraid I oughtn't to come out here and see you, when my father 
 don't approve of it." 
 
 " But yju will come, my little darling, for all that ; " he said. 
 " Not here though — the devil only knows who may be loitering 
 round here. Half a dozen pair of lovers a night perhaps — no, 
 meet me up in the croft of a night. I am often in at Gosford's of 
 an evening, and I can see your window from there, you put a 
 candle in the right-hand comer when you want to see me, and I'll 
 be down in a very few minutes. I shall come every evening and 
 watch." 
 
 " Indeed," she said, " I won't do anything of the sort ; at 
 least, unless I have something very particular to say. Then, 
 indeed, I might do such a thing. Now I must go home or they 
 will be missing me." 
 
 " Stay a minute, Mary," said he ; " you just listen to me. 
 They will, some of them, be trying to take my character away. 
 You won't throw me off without hearing my defence, dear Mary, I 
 know you won't. Let me hear what lies they tell of me, and 
 don't you condemn me unheard because I come from a bad house. 
 TeU me that you'll give me a chance of clearing myself with you, 
 my girl, and I'll go home in peace and wait." 
 
 What girl could resist the man she loved so truly, when he 
 pleaded so well ? With his arm about her waist, and his hand- 
 
68 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 some face bent over her, lit up with what she took to be love. 
 Not she, at all events. She drew the handsome face down towards 
 her, and as she kissed him fervently, said : 
 
 '' I will never believe what they say of you, love. I should die 
 if I lost you. I will stay by you through evil report and good 
 report. What is all the world to me without you ? " 
 
 And she felt what she said, and meant it. What though the 
 words in which she spoke were borrowed from the trashy novels 
 she was always reading — they were true enough for all that. 
 George saw that they were true, and saw also that now was the 
 time to speak about what he had been pondering over all day. 
 
 " And suppose, my- own love," he said ; " that your father 
 should stay in his present mind, and not come round ? " 
 
 "WeU!" she said. 
 
 " What are we to do ? " he asked ; "are we to be always 
 content with meeting here and there, when we dare ? Is there 
 nothing further ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she said in a whisper. " What shall 
 we do?" 
 
 " Can't you answer that ? " he said softly. " Try." 
 
 " No, I can't answer. You tell me what." 
 
 " Fly ! " he said in her ear. " Fly, and get married, that's 
 what I mean." 
 
 " Oh ! that's what you mean," she replied. " Oh, George, I 
 should not have courage for that." 
 
 " I think you will, my darling, when the time comes. Go home 
 and think about it." 
 
 He kissed her once more, and then she ran away homeward 
 ■ through the dark. But she did not run far before she began to 
 walk slower and think. 
 
 "Fly with him," she thought. " Eun away and get married. 
 What a delightfully wild idea. Not to be entertained for a 
 moment, of course, but still what a pleasant notion. She meant 
 to marry George in the end ; why not that way as well as any 
 other? She thought about it again and again, and the idea 
 grew more familiar. At all events, if her father should continue 
 obstinate, here was a way out of the difficulty. He would be 
 angry at first, but when he found he could not help himself he 
 would come round, and then they would all be happy. She would 
 shut her ears to anything they said against George. She could 
 not believe it. She would not. He should be her husband, 
 come what might. She would dissemble, and keep her father's 
 suspicions quiet. More, she would speak lightly of George, and 
 make them believe she did not care for him. But most of all. 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 69 
 
 she would wonn from her father everything she could ahout him. 
 Her curiosity was aroused, and she fancied, perhaps, George had 
 not told her all the truth. Perhaps he might be entangled with 
 some other woman. She would find it all out if she could." 
 
 So confusedly thinking she reached home, and approaching the 
 door, heard the noise of many voices in the parlour. There was 
 evidently company, and in her present excited state nothing would 
 suit her better ; so sliding up to her rooln, and changing her dress 
 a little, she came down and entered the parlour. 
 
 "Behold," cried the Doctor, as she entered the room, "the 
 evening-star has arisen at last. My dear young lady, we have 
 been loudly lamenting your absence and indisposition." 
 
 " I have been listening to your lamentations, Doctor," she 
 replied. " They were certainly loud, and from the frequent bursts 
 of laughter, I judged they were getting hysterical, so I came 
 down." 
 
 There was quite a party assembled. The Vicar and Major 
 Buckley were talking earnestly together. Troubridge and the 
 Doctor were side by side, while next the fire was Mrs. Buckley, 
 with young Sam asleep on her lap and Miss Thornton sitting 
 quietly beside her. 
 
 Having saluted them aU, Mary sat down by Mrs. Buckley, and 
 began talking to her. Then the conversation flowed back into 
 the channel it had been following before her arrival. 
 
 "I mean to say. Vicar," said the Major, "that it would be 
 better to throw the four packs into two. • Then you would have 
 less squabbling and bickering about the different boundaries, and 
 you would kill the same number of hares with half the dogs." 
 
 " And you would throw a dozen men out of work, sir," replied 
 the Vicar, " in this parish and the next, and that is to be con- 
 sidered ; and about half the quantity of meat and horseflesh would 
 be consumed, which is another consideration. I tell you I believe 
 things are better as they are." 
 
 "I hear they got a large stem-cabin; did they, Mr Trou- 
 bridge ? " said the Doctor. " I hope they'll be comfortable. They 
 should have got more amidships if they could. They wiU be sick 
 the longer in their position." 
 
 "Poor boys!" said Troubridge; "they'll be more heai-t-sick 
 than stomach-sick, I expect. They'd half-repented before they 
 sailed." 
 
 Mary sat down by Mrs. Buckley, and had half an hour's agree- 
 able conversation with her, till they all rose to go. Mrs. Buckley 
 was surprised at her sprightliness and good spirits, for she had 
 expected to find her in tears. The Doctor had met the Major in 
 
70 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 the morning, and told him what had passed the night before, so 
 Mrs. Buckley had come in to cheer Mary up for the loss of her 
 lover, and to her sui-prise found her rather more merry than 
 usual. This made the good lady suspect at once that Mary did 
 not treat the matter very seriously, or else was determined to defy 
 her father, which, as Mrs. Buckley reflected, she was perfectly 
 able to do, being rich in her own right, and of age. So when she 
 was putting on her shawl to go home, she kissed Mary, and said 
 kindly, — 
 
 " My love, I hope you will always honour and obey your father, 
 and I am sure you will always, under all circumstances, remember 
 that I am your true friend. Good night." 
 
 And having bidden her good night, Mary went in. The Doctor 
 was gone with the Major, but Tom Troubridge sat still before the 
 fire, and as she came in was just finishing ofi' one of his thundering 
 fits of laughter at something that the Vicar had said. 
 
 "My love," said the Vicar, "I am so sorry you have been 
 poorly, though you look better to-night. Your dear aunt has 
 been to Tom's room, so there is nothing to do, but to sit down 
 and talk to us." 
 
 " Why, cousin Tom," she said, laughing, " I had quite forgot 
 you ; at least, quite forgot you were going to stay here. Why, 
 what a time it is since I saw you." 
 
 "Isn't it?" he replied; "such a very long time. If I re- 
 member right, we met last out at the gate. Let's see. How 
 long was that ago ? " 
 
 " You ought to remember," she replied ; " you're big enough. 
 Well, good night. I'm going to bed." 
 
 She went to her room, but not to bed. She sat in the window, 
 looking at the stars, pale in the full moonlight, wondering. Won- 
 dering what George was doing. Wondering whether she would 
 listen to his audacious proposal. And wondering, lastly, what on 
 earth her father would say if she did. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN WHICH WE SEE A GOOD DEAL OP MISCHIEF BREWING. 
 
 A MONTH went on, and May was well advanced. The lanes had 
 grown dark and shadowy with their summer braveiy ; the banks 
 were a rich mass of verdure once more, starred with wild-rose and 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 71 
 
 eglantine ; and on the lesser woodland stream , the king fern was 
 again concealing the channel with brilliant golden fronds ; while 
 brown hare thorn-thickets, through which the wind had whistled 
 savagely all winter, were now changed into pleasant bowers, where 
 birds might build and sing. 
 
 A busy month this had been for the Major. Fishing every day, 
 and pretty near all day, determined, as he said, to make the most 
 of it, for fear it should be his last year. There was a beaten path 
 worn through the growing gi-ass all down the side of the stream by 
 his sole exertions ; and now the May-fly was coming, and there 
 would be no more fishing in another week, so he worked harder 
 than ever. Mrs. Buckley used to bring down her son and heir, 
 and sit under an oak by the river-side, sewing. Pleasant, long 
 days they were when dinner would be brought down to the old 
 tree, and she would spend the day there, among the long meadow- 
 grass, purple and yellow with flowers, bending under the soft west 
 wind. Pleasant to hear the corncrake by the hedge-side, or the 
 moorhen in the water. But pleasantest of aU was the time when 
 her husband, tired of fishing, would come and sit beside her, and 
 the boy, throwing his lately-petted flowers to the wind, would run 
 crowing to the spotted beauties which his father had laid out for 
 him on the grass. 
 
 The Vicar was busy in his garden, and the Doctor was often 
 helping him, although the most of his time was spent in natural 
 history, to which he seemed entirely devoted. One evening they 
 had been employed rather later than usual, and the Doctor was 
 just gone, when the Vicar turned round and saw that his sister 
 was come out, with her basket and scissors, to gather a fresh 
 bouquet for the drawing-room. 
 
 So he went to join her, and as he approached her he admired 
 her with an affectionate admiration. Such a neat, trim figure, 
 with the snow-white handkerchief over her head, and her white 
 garden gloves ; what a contrast to Mary, he thought ; " Both 
 good of their sort, though," he added. 
 
 "Good evening, brother," began Miss Thornton. " Was not 
 that Dr. Mulhaus went from you just now ? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear." 
 
 " You had letters of introduction to Dr. Mulhaus, when he came 
 to reside in this village ? " asked Miss Thornton. 
 
 " Yes ; Lord C , whom I knew at Oxford, recommended me 
 
 to him." — - 
 
 " His real name, I daresay, is not Mulhaus. 'Do you know what 
 his reaJrTialne4sr-brother ? " ^ — -^ 
 
 How very awkward plain plump questions of this kind are. 
 
72 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 The Vicar would have liked to answer "No," but he could not 
 tell a lie. He was also a very bad hand at prevaricating ; so with 
 a stammer, he said " Yes ! " 
 
 " So do 1 1 " said Miss Thornton. 
 
 " Good Lord, my dear, how did you find it out ? " 
 
 " I recognised him the first instant I saw him, and was strack 
 dumb. I was very discreet, and have never said a word even to 
 you till now ; and, lately, I have been thinking that you might 
 know, and so I thought I would sound you." 
 
 " I suppose you saw him when you were with her ladyship in 
 Paris, in '14? ", 
 
 "Yes; often," said Miss Thornton. "He came to the house 
 several times. How well I remember the last. The dear girls and 
 I were in the conservatory in the morning, and aU of a sudden we 
 heard the door thrown open, and two men coming towards us 
 talking from the breakfast-room. We could not see them for the 
 plants, but when we heard the voice of one of them, the girls got 
 into a terrible flutter, and I was very much frightened myself. 
 However, there was no escape, so we came round the comer on 
 them as bold as we could, and there was this Dr. Mulhaus, as we 
 call him, walking with him." 
 
 " With him ?— with who ? " 
 
 " The Emperor Alexander, my dear, whose voice we had recog- 
 nised ; I thought you would have known whom I meant." 
 
 "My dear love," said the Vicar, "I hope you reflect how 
 sacred that is, and what a good friend I should lose if the slightest 
 hint as to who he was, were to get aniong the gentry round. You 
 don't think he has recognised you? " 
 
 " How is it likely, brother, that he would remember an English 
 governess, whom he never saw but three times, and never looked 
 at once ? I have often wondered whether the Major recognised him." 
 
 " No ; Buckley is a Peninsular man, and although at Waterloo, 
 never went to Paris. ^ Lans — ^Mulliaiis, I mean, was not present at 
 Waterloo. So they neW-Sould have met. My dear discreet old 
 sister, what tact you have ! I have often said to myself, when I 
 have seen you and he together, ' If she only knew who he was ; ' — 
 and to think of your luiowing all the time. Ha ! ha ! ha ! That's 
 very good." 
 
 " I have lived long where tact is required, my deal- brother. 
 See, there goes young Mr. Hawker ! " 
 
 " I'd sooner see him going home than coming here. Now, I'd 
 go out for a turn in the lanes, but I know I should meet half a 
 dozen couples courting, as they call it. Bah ! ' So I'll stay in the 
 garden." 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 73 
 
 The Vicar was right about the lanes being full of lovers. Never 
 a vista that you looked down but what you saw a ghostly pair, 
 walking along side by side. Not arm in arm, you know. The man 
 has his hands in his pockets, and walks a few feet off the woman. 
 They never speak to one another — I think I don't go too far in 
 saying that. I have met them and overtaken them, and come 
 sharp round comers on to them, but I never heard them speak to 
 one another. I have asked the young men themselves whether 
 they ever said anything to their sweethearts, and those young men 
 have answered, " No ; that they didn't know as they did." So 
 that I am inclined to believe that they are contented with that 
 silent utterance of the heart which is so superior to the siUy 
 whisperings one hears on dark ottomans in drawing-rooms. 
 
 But the Vicar had a strong dislike to lovers' walks. He was a 
 practical man, and had studied parish statistics for some years, so 
 that his opinion is entitled to respect. He used to ask, why an 
 honest girl should not receive her lover at her father's house, or in 
 broad daylight, and many other impertinent questions which we 
 won't go into, but which many a west-country parson has asked 
 before, and never got an answer to. 
 
 Of all pleasant places in the parish, surely one of the pleasantest 
 for a meeting of this kind was the old oak at the end of Hawker's 
 plantation, where George met Nelly a night we know of. So quiet 
 and lonely, and such pleasant glimpses down long oaken glades, 
 with a bright carpet of springing fern. Surely there will be a couple 
 here this sweet May evening. 
 
 So there is I Walking this way too ! George Hawker is one 
 of them ; but we can't see who the other is. Who should it be 
 but Mary, though, with whom he should walk, with his arm round 
 her waist talking so affectionately. But see, she raises her head. ' 
 Why! that is not Mary. That is old JeweFs dowdy,^andsome, 
 brazen- faced granddaughter. 
 r "lHo-w I'm goihgTiomeTolupper, Miss Jenny,'' he says. " So 
 you pack off, or you'll have your amiable^ mother 'asEhgNifter 
 you. By-the-bye, your sister's going to be married, ain't 
 she ? " 
 
 He referred to her elder sister — the one that the Vicar and the 
 Doctor saw nursing a baby the night that old Jewel died. 
 
 " Yes," replied the girl. " Her man's going to have her at 
 last ; that's his baby she's got, you Imow ; and it seems he'll 
 sooner maie her work for keeping it, than pay for it hisself. So 
 they're going to be married ; better late than never." 
 
 George left her and went in ; into the gloomy old kitchen, now 
 darkening rapidly. There sat Madge before the fire, in her 
 
74 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 favourite attitude, with her chin on her hand and her elhow on her 
 knee. 
 
 " Well, old woman," said he, " where's the old man ? " 
 
 " Away to Colyton fair," she answered. 
 
 " I hope he'll have the sense to stay there to-night, then," said 
 George. " He'll fall off his horse in a fit coming home drunk 
 some of these nights, and he found dead in a ditch ! " 
 
 " Good thing for you if he was ! " 
 
 " May be," said George ; " but I'd he sorry for him, too ! " 
 
 "You would," she said laughing. "Why, you young fool, 
 you'd be better off in fifty ways ! " 
 
 " Why, you unnatural old vixen," said he, indignantly, " do you 
 miscall a man for caring for his own father ? Ay, and not such 
 a bad 'un either ; and that's a thing I'm best judge of ! " 
 
 "He's been a good father to you, George, and I like you the 
 better, lad, for speaking up for him. He's an awful old rascal, 
 my boy, but you'll be a worse if you live ! " 
 
 " Now, stop that talk of yours, Madge, and don't go on like a 
 mad woman, or else we shall quarrel ; and that I don't want, for 
 I've got something to tell you. I -want your help, old girl ! " 
 
 " Aye, and you'll get it, my pretty boy ; though you never tell 
 me aught till you are forced." 
 
 " Well, I'm going to tell you something now ; so keep your 
 ears open. Madge, where is the girl ? " 
 
 " Up-stairs." 
 
 " Where's the man ? " 
 
 " Outside, in the stable, doing down your horse. Bend over the 
 fire, and whisper in my ear, lad ! " 
 
 "Madge, old girl," he whispered, as they bent their heads to- 
 fgether, — " I've^jvrote the old man's name where I oughtn't to 
 i have done." 
 
 " What ! again ! " she answered. " Three times ! For God's 
 sake, mind what you are at, George." 
 
 "Why," said he, astonished, "did you know I'd done it 
 before?" 
 
 " Twice I know of," she said. " Once last year, and once last 
 month. How do you think he'd have been so long without finding 
 it out if it hadn't been for me ? And what a fool you were not to 
 tell me before. Why, you must be mad. I as near let the cat 
 out of the bag coming over that last business in the book without 
 being ready for it, as anything could be. However, it's all right 
 at present. But what's this last ? " 
 
 f' Why, the five hundred. I only did it twice." 
 
 r You mustn't do it again, George. You were a fool ever to do 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 75 
 
 it without me. We are hardly safe now, if he should get talking 
 to the hank people. However, he never goes there, and you must 
 take care he don't." 
 
 "I say, Madge," said George, "what would he do if he found 
 it out?" 
 
 " I couldn't answer for him," said she. "He likes you best of 
 anything next his money ; and sometimes I am afraid he wouldn't 
 spare even you if he knew he had been robbed. You might make 
 yourself safe for any storm, if you liked." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Marry that little doR Thornton, and get her money. Then, if 
 it came to a row, you could square it up." 
 
 " Well," said George, "I am pushing that on. The old man 
 won't come round, and I want her to go off with me, but she can't 
 get her courage up yet." 
 
 "Well, at aU events," said Madge, "you should look sharp. 
 There's a regular tight-laced mob about her, and they all hate you. 
 There's that Mrs. Buckley. Her conversation wiU be very different 
 from yours, and she'll see the difference, and get too proud for the 
 like of you. That woman's a real lady, and that's very dangerous, 
 for she treats her like an equal. Just let that girl get over her 
 first fancy for you, and she'll care no more about you than nothing. 
 Get hold of her before she's got tired of you." 
 
 " And there's another thing," said George. " That Tom Trou- 
 bridge is staying there again." 
 
 " That's very bad," sa,id Madge. " She is very likely to take a 
 fancy to him. He's a fine young fellow. You get her to go off 
 with you. I'll find the money, somehow. Here comes the old 
 man." 
 
 Old Hawker came in half-drunk and sulky. 
 
 "Why, George," he said; "you at home. I thought you'd 
 have been down, hanging about the parson's. You don't get on 
 very fast with that girl, lad. I thought you'd have had her by 
 now. You're a fool, boy." 
 
 He reeled up to bed, and left the other two in the kitchen. 
 
 " George," said Madge, " tell us what you did with that last 
 money." 
 
 " I ain't going to tell you," he answered. 
 
 " Ha, Ha ! " she said ; " you hadn't need to hide anything from 
 me now." 
 
 " Well, I hke to tell you this least of all," he said. " Thatlast 
 money went to hush up the first matter." 
 
 "Did any one know of the first matter, then?" said Madge 
 aghast. 
 
76 THE' RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " Yes ; the man who put me up to it." 
 
 " Who was that ? " 
 
 " No one you know. William Lee of Belston." 
 
 " No one I know," she answered sarcastically. " Not know my 
 I old sweetheart, Bill Lee of Belston. And I the only one that knew 
 .him when he came back. Well, I've kept that to myself, because 
 [no good was to be got by peaching on him, and a secret's always 
 worth money. Why, lad, I could have sent that man abroad again 
 quicker than he come, if I had a- wanted. Why hadn't you trusted 
 me at first ? You'd a-saved five hundred pound. You'll have him 
 back as soon as that's gone." 
 
 " He'd better mind himself, then," said George vindictively. 
 
 " None o' that now," said Madge ; " that's what you were after 
 the other night with your gun. But nothing came of it ; I saw 
 that in your face when you came home. Now get ofi" to bed ; and 
 if Bill Lee gives you any more trouble, send him to me." 
 
 He went to bed, but instead of sleeping lay thinking. 
 
 " It would be a fine thing," he thought, " to get her and her 
 money. I am very fond of her for her own sake, but then the 
 money would be the making of me. I ought to strike while the 
 iron is hot. Who knows but what Nell might come gandering 
 back in one of her tantrums, and spoil everything. Or some of 
 the other girls might get talking. And this cursed cheque, too ; 
 that ought to be provided against. Wliat a fool I was not to tell 
 Madge about it before. I wonder whether she is game to come, 
 though I think she is ; she has been very tender lately. It don't 
 look as if she was getting tired of me, though she might take a 
 fancy into her head about Troubridge. I daresay her father is 
 putting him up to it ; though, indeed, that would be sure to set 
 her against him. If he hadn't done that with Stockbridge, she'd 
 have married him, I believe. Well, I'll see her to-morrow night, 
 and carry on like mad. Terribly awkward it will be, though, if 
 she won't. However, we'll see. There's a way to make her ; " 
 and so he fell asleep. 
 
 As Somebody would have it, the very next day the Vicar and 
 Mary had a serious quarrel. Whether his digestion was out of 
 order ; whether the sight of so many love-couples passing his gate 
 the night before had ruffled him and made him bilious ; or whether 
 some one was behindhand with his tithe, we shall never know. 
 Only we know, that shortly after dinner they disagreed about some 
 trifle, and Mary remained sulky aU the afternoon ; and that at tea- 
 time, driven on by pitiless fate, little thinking what was hanging 
 over him, he made some harsh remark, which brought down a flood 
 of tears. Whereat, getting into a passion, he told Mary, somewhat 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 77 
 
 unjustly, that she was always sulking, and was making his life 
 miserable. That it was time that she was married. That Tom 
 Troubridge was an excellent young fellow, and that he considered 
 it was her duty to turn her attention immediately to gaining his 
 affections. 
 
 Mary said, with tearful indignation, that it was notorious that 
 he was making love to Miss Burrit of Paiskow. And that if he 
 wasn't, she'd never, never, think of him, for that he was a great, 
 lumbering, stupid, stupid fool. There now. 
 
 Then the Vicar got into an imholy frame of mind, and maddened 
 by Mary's tears, and the sight of his sister wiping her frightened 
 face with her handkerchief, said, with something like an assevera- 
 tion, that she was always at it. That she was moping about, and 
 colloguing with that infamous young scoundrel. Hawker. That he 
 would not have it. That if he found him lurking about his 
 premises, he'd either break his neck himself, or find some one who 
 could ; and a great deal more frantic nonsense, such as weak men 
 generally indulge in when they get in a passion ; much better left 
 unsaid at any time, but which on this occasion, as the reader 
 knows, was calculated to be ruinous. 
 
 Mary left the room, and went to her own. She was in a farious 
 passion against her father, against all the world. She sat on the 
 bed for a time, and cried herself quiet. It grew dark, and she lit 
 a candle, and put it in the right comer of the window, and soon 
 after, wrapping a shawl around her, she slipped down the back- 
 stairs, and went into the croft. 
 
 Not long before she heard a low whistle, to which she replied, 
 and in a very few minutes felt George's arm round her waist, and 
 his cheek against hers. 
 
 " I knew you would not disappoint me to-night, my love," he 
 began. " I have got something particular to say to you. You 
 seem out of sorts to-night, my dear. It's not my fault, is 
 it?" 
 
 " Not yours, George. Oh no," she said. " My father has been 
 very cruel and unjust to me, and I have been in a great passion, 
 and very miserable. I am so glad you came to-night, that I might 
 tell you how very unhappy I was." 
 
 " Tell me everything, my love. Don't keep back any secrets 
 from me." 
 
 "I won't indeed, George. I'U tell you everything. Though 
 some of it will make you very angry. My father broke out about 
 you at tea-time, and said that you were hanging about the place, 
 and that he wouldn't have it. And then he said that I ought to 
 marry Tom Troubridge, and that I said I'd never do. And then 
 
78 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 he went on worse again. He's quite changed lately, George. I 
 ain't at all happy with him." 
 
 " The cure is in your own hands, Mary. Come off with me. I 
 can get a licence, and we could be married in a week or so, or two. 
 Then, what follows ? Why, your father is very angry. He is that 
 at present. But he'll of course make believe he is in a terrible 
 way. Well, in a few weeks he'd see it was no use carrying on. 
 That his daughter had married a young man of property, who was 
 very fond of her, and as she was very fond of. And that matters 
 might be a deal worse. That a bird in hand is worth two in the 
 bush. And so he'll write a kind affectionate letter to his only 
 child, and say that he forgives her husband for her sake. That's 
 how the matter will end, depend upon it." 
 
 " Oh, George, George 1 if I could only think so." 
 
 " Can you doubt it ? Use your reason, my dear, and ask your- 
 self what he would gain by holding out. You say he's so fond of 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, I know he is." 
 
 " Well, my darling, he wouldn't show it much if he was angry 
 very long. You don't know what a change it will make when the 
 thing's once done. When I am his son-in-law he'll be as anxious 
 to find out that I'm a saint as he is now to make me out a sinner. 
 Say yes, my girl." 
 
 "I am afraid, George." 
 
 " Of nothing. Come, you are going to say yes, now." 
 
 " But when, George ? Not yet ? " 
 
 " To-morrow night." 
 
 " Impossible ! Sunday evening ? " 
 
 "The better the day the better the deed. Come, no refusal 
 now, it is too late, my darling. At ten o'clock I shall be here, 
 under your window. One kiss more, my own, and good night." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IN WHICH THE VICAE PREACHES A FAREWELL SERMON. 
 
 Who has not seen the misery and despair often caused in a family 
 by the senseless selfishness of one of its members ? Who has 
 not felt enraged at such times, to think that a man or woman 
 should presume on the affection and kindheartedness of their rela- 
 tives, and yet act as if they were wholly without those affections 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 79 
 
 themselves ? And, lastly, who of us all is guiltless of doing this ? 
 Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone. 
 
 The Spring sun rose on the Sabbath morning, as if no trouble 
 were in store for any mortal that day. The Vicar rose with the 
 sun, for he had certain arrears of the day's sermons to get 
 through, and he was in the habit of saying that his best and 
 clearest passages were written with his window open, in the brisk 
 morning air. 
 
 But although the air was brisk and pleasant this morning, and 
 aU nature was in fuU glory, the inspiration did not come to the 
 Vicar quite so readily as usual. In fact, he could not write at 
 all, and at one time was thinking of pleading ill health, and not 
 preaching, but afterwards changed his mind, and patched the 
 sermons up somehow, making both morning and afternoon five 
 minutes shorter than usual. 
 
 He felt queer and dull in the head this morning. And, after 
 breakfast, he walked to church with his sister and daughter, not 
 speaking a word. Miss Thornton was rather alarmed, he looked 
 so dull and stupid. But Mary set it all down to his displeasure 
 at her. 
 
 She was so busy with far other thoughts at church that she did 
 not notice the strange halting way in which her father read the 
 service — sometimes lisping, sometimes trying twice before he 
 could pronounce a word at all. But, after church, Miss Thornton 
 noticed it to her ; and she also noticed, as they stood waiting for 
 him under the lychgate, that he passed through the crowd of 
 neighbours, who stood as usual round the porch to receive him, 
 withput a word, merely raising his hat in salutation. Conduct 
 so strange that Miss Thornton began to cry, and said she was 
 sure her brother was very ill. But Mary said it was because he 
 was still angry with her that he spoke to no one, and that when 
 he had forgotten his cause of oflfence he would be the same again. 
 
 At lunch, the Vicar drank several glasses of wine, which seemed 
 to do him good ; and by the time he had, to Miss Thornton's 
 great astonishment, drunk half a bottle, he was quite himself 
 again. Mary was all this time in her room, and the Vicar asked 
 for her. But Miss Thornton said she was not very well. 
 
 "Oh, I remember," said the Vicar, " I quarrelled with her last 
 night. I was quite in the v?rong, but, my dear sister, all yester- 
 day and to-day I have been so nervous, I have not known what 
 I said or did. I shall keep myself up to the afternoon service 
 with wine, and to-morrow we will see the Doctor. Don't teU 
 Mary I'm iU. She will think she is the cause, poor girl." 
 
 Afternoon service went off well enough. When Mary heard his 
 
80 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 old familiar voice strong, clear, and harmonious, filling the aisles 
 and chapels of the heautiful old church, she was quite reassured. 
 He seemed stronger than usual even, and never did the congrega- 
 tion listen to a nohler or hetter sermon from his lips, than the 
 one they heard that spring afternoon ; the last, alas, they ever 
 had from their kind old Vicar. 
 
 Maiy could not listen to it. The old innocent interest she used 
 to have in her father's success in preaching was gone. As of old, 
 sitting beneath the carved oak screen, she heard the sweet simple 
 harmony of the evening hymn roll up, and die in pleasant echoes 
 among the lofty arches overhead. As of old, she could see 
 through the rich traceried windows the moor sloping far away, 
 calm and peaceful, bathed in a misty halo of afternoon sunshine. 
 All these familiar sights and sounds were the same, but she herself 
 was different. She was about to break rudely through from the 
 old world of simple routine and homely pleasure, and to cast 
 herself unthinking into a new world of passion and chance, and 
 take the consequences of such a step, let them be what they 
 might. She felt as if she was the possessor of some guilty secret, 
 and felt sometimes as if some one would rise in church and 
 denounce her. How would all these quiet folks talk of her to- 
 morrow morning ? That was not to be thought of. She must 
 harden her heart and think of nothing. Only that to-morrow she 
 would be far away with her lover. 
 
 Poor Maiy ! many a woman, and many a man, who sat so quiet 
 and calm in the old church that afternoon, had far guiltier secrets 
 than any you ever had, to trouble them, and yet they all drank, 
 slept, and died, as quietly as many honest and good men. Poor 
 girl ! let us judge as kindly of her as we can, for she paid a fearful 
 penalty for her self-will. She did but break through the preju- 
 dices of her education, we may say ; and if she was undutiful, what 
 girls are not, under the influence of passion? If such poor 
 excuses as these will cause us to think more kindly of her, let us 
 make them, and leave the rest to God. Perhaps, brother, you 
 and I may stand in a position to have excuses made for us, one 
 day ; therefore, we will be charitable. 
 
 My lord was at church that afternoon, a very rare circumstance, 
 for he was mostly at his great property in the north, and had 
 lately been much abroad for his health. So when Miss Thornton 
 and Mary joined the Vicar in the main aisle, and the three went 
 forth into the churchyard, they found the villagers drawn respect- 
 fully back upon the graves, and his lordship waiting in close 
 confabulation with farmer Wreford, to receive the Vicar as he 
 came out. 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLTN. 81 
 
 A tall, conrUy, grizzled -looking man he was, with clear grey 
 eyes, and a modiilat«d harmonioDs voice. Well did their lord- 
 ships of the npper-honse know that voice, when after a long 
 sleepy debate it aronsed them from ambrosial slumbers, with 
 biting sarcasm, and most disagreeably told truths. And most 
 heartily did a certain proportion of their lordships curse the owner 
 of that voice, for a talented, eloquent, meddlesome innovator. 
 But on aU his great estates he was adored by the labom-ers and 
 towu's-folk, though hated by the farmers and country 'squires ; 
 for he was the earliest and fiercest of the reform and free-ti-ade 
 warriors. 
 
 He came up to the Yiear with a pleasant smile. " I have to 
 thank you, Mr. Thornton, for a most charming sermon, though 
 having the fault common to all good things, of being too short. 
 
 Miss Thornton, I hope you are quite well ; I saw Lady D the 
 
 other day, and she begged that when I came down here, I would 
 convey her kindest love to you. I think she mentioned that she 
 was about to write to you." 
 
 " I received a letter from her ladyship last week," said Miss 
 Thornton ; '- informing me that dear Lady Fanny had got a son 
 and heir." 
 
 "Happy boy," said my Iiord; "fifty thousand a year, and 
 nothing to do for it, unless he likes. Besides a minority of at 
 
 least ten years ; for L is getting veiy shaky. Miss Thornton, 
 
 and is still devotedly given to stewed mushrooms. Nay, my dear 
 lady, don't look distressed, she will make a noble young dowager. 
 This must be your daughter, Mr. Thornton — ^pray introduce me." 
 
 Mary was introduced, and his Lordship addressed a few kindly 
 commonplaces to her, to which she replied with gracefid modesty. 
 Then be demanded of the Ticar, " where is Dr. Mulhaus, has he 
 been at church this afternoon ? " 
 
 At that moment the Doctor, attended by the old clerk, was head 
 and shoulders into the old oak chest that contained the parish 
 registers, looking for the book of burials for sixteen hundred and 
 something. Xot being able to get to the bottom, he got bodily 
 in, as into a bath, and after several dives sncoeeding in fishing it 
 up from the bottom, and standing there absorbed for a few minutes, 
 np to bis middle in dusty parchments and angry moths, he got 
 his finger on a partictdar date, and dashed out of church, book in 
 hand, and hatless, ciying, " Yicar, Vicar ! " just as the villagers 
 had cleared oft", and my lord was moving away with the Yicar to 
 the parsonage, to take dinner. 
 
 When his Lordship saw the wild dusty figure come running out 
 of the church porch with the parish register in his hand, and no 
 
82 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 hat on his head, he understood the position immediately. He sat 
 down on a tombstone, and laughed till he could laugh no longer. 
 
 " No need to tell me," he said through his laughter, " that he 
 is unchanged ; just as mad and energetic as ever, at whatever he 
 takes in hand, whether getting together impossible ministries, or 
 searching the parish -register of an English village. How do you 
 do, my dear old 'friend ? " 
 
 " And how do you do, old democrat?" answered the Doctor. 
 " Politics seem to agree with you ; I believe you would die with- 
 out vexation — just excuse me a moment. Look you here, you 
 infidel," to the Vicar, showing him the register; "there's his 
 name plain — ' Burrows, Curate of this parish, 1698.' — Now what 
 do you say? " 
 
 The Vicar acquiesced with a sleepy laugh, and proposed moving 
 homewards. Miss Thornton hoped that the Doctor would join 
 them at dinner as usual. The Doctor said of course, and went 
 back to fetch his hat, my Lord following him into the church. 
 When the others had gone down the hiU, and were waiting for the 
 nobleman and the Doctor at the gate. Miss Thornton watched the 
 two coming down the hill. My Lord stopped the Doctor, and 
 eagerly demonstrated something to him with his forefinger on the 
 palm of his hand ; but the Doctor only shook his head, and then 
 the pair moved on. 
 
 My Lord made himself thoroughly agreeable at dinner, as did 
 also the Doctor. Mary was surprised too at the cahn highbred 
 bearing of her aunt, the way she understood and spoke of every 
 subject of conversation, and the deference with which they lis- 
 tened to her. It was a side of her aunt's character she had never 
 seen before, and she felt it hard to believe that that intellectual 
 dignified lady, referred to on aU subjects, was the old maid she 
 had been used to laugh at, and began to feel that she was in an 
 atmosphere far above what she was accustomed to. 
 
 " All this is above me," she said to herself; "let them live in 
 this sphere who are accustomed to it, I have chosen wiser, out of 
 the rank in which I have been brought up. I would sooner be 
 George Hawker's wife than sit there, crushed and bored by their 
 high-flown talk." 
 
 Soon after dinner she retired with her aunt ; they did not talk 
 much when they were alone, so Mai7 soon retired to her room, 
 and having made a few very slight preparations, sat do^vn at the 
 window. The time was soon to come, but it was very cold ; the 
 maids were out, as they always were on Sunday evening, and 
 
 there was a fire in the kitchen, — she would go and sit there so 
 
 down she went. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 83 
 
 She wished to be alone, so when she saw a candle buming^ in 
 the kitchen she was disappointed, but went in nevertheless. My 
 Lord's groom, who had been sitting before the fire, rose up and 
 saluted her. A handsome young man, rather square and promi- 
 nent about the jaws, but nevertheless foolish and amiable looking. 
 The sort of man one would suppose, who, if his lord were to tell 
 him to jump into the pit Tophet, would pursue one of two courses, 
 either jump in himself, without further to do, or throw his own 
 brother in with profuse apologies. From the top of his sleek 
 round head to the sole of his perfect top-boot, the model and 
 living exponent of what a servant should be — fit to be put into a 
 case and ticketed as such. 
 
 He saluted her as she came in, and drawing a letter from his 
 hat, put it into her astonished hands. " My orders were. Miss, 
 that I was not to give it to you unless I saw you personally." 
 
 She thanked him and withdrew to read it. It was a scrawl 
 from George Hawker, the first letter she had ever received from 
 him, and ran as follows : — 
 
 " My Heart's Darling, 
 
 " I SHALL be in the croft to-night, according to promise, 
 ready to make you the happiest woman in England, so I know you 
 won't fail. My Lord is coming to church this afternoon, and will 
 be sure to dine with you. So I send this present by his groom, 
 Sam ; a good young chap, which I have Imown since he was so 
 high, and like well, only that he is soft, which is not to his dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 "G. H." 
 
 She was standing under the lamp reading this when she heard 
 the dining-room door open, and the men coming out from their 
 wine. She slipped into the room opposite, and stood listening in 
 the dark. ' She could see them as they came out. There was my 
 Lord and the Doctor first, and behind came Major Buckley, who 
 had dropped in, as his custom was, on Sunday evening, and who 
 must have arrived while she was upstairs. As they passed the 
 door, inside which she stood, his Lordship turned round and 
 said : — 
 
 "I tell you what, my dear Major, if that old Hawker was a 
 tenant of mine, I'd take away his lease, and, if I could, force him 
 to leave the parish. One man of that kind does incalculable 
 harm in a village, by lowering the tone of the morality of the 
 place. That's the use of a great landlord if he does his duty, 
 He can punish evildoers whom the law does not reach." 
 
84 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "Don't say anything more about him," said the Doctor in a 
 low voice. " It's a tender subject in this house." 
 
 "It is, ehl " said my Lord; "thanks for the hint, good— 
 bah !— Mulhaus. Let us go up and have half an hour with Miss 
 Thornton before I go ! " 
 
 They went up, and then her father foUowed. He seemed 
 flushed, and she thought he must have been drinking too much 
 wine. After they were in the drawing-room, she crept upstairs 
 and listened. They were all talking except her father. It was 
 half-past nine, and she wished they would go. So she went into 
 her bedroom and waited. The maids had come home, and she 
 heard them talking to the groom in the kitchen. At ten o'clock 
 the bell was rung, and my Lord's horse ordered. Soon he went, 
 and not long afterwards the Major and the Doctor followed. Then 
 she saw Miss Thornton go to her room, and her father walk slowly 
 to his ; and all was still throughout the house. 
 
 She took her hat and shawl and slipped down stairs shoeless 
 into her father's study. She laid a note on his chimney-piece, 
 which she had written in the morning, and opening the back-door 
 fled swiftly forth, not daring to look behind her. Quickly, under 
 the blinking stars, under the blooming apple-trees, out to the 
 croft-gate, and there was George waiting impatiently for her, 
 according to promise. 
 
 "I began to fear you were not coming, my dear. Quick, 
 p'ump ! " 
 
 1 She scrambled over the gate, and jumped into his arms ; he 
 hurried her down the lane about a hundred yards, and then became 
 aware of a dark object in the middle of the road. 
 
 " That's my gig, my dear. Once in that, and we are soon in 
 i Exeter. AU right, Bob ? " 
 
 [ " AU right ! " replied a strange voice in the dark, and she was 
 lifted into the gig quickly ; in another moment George was beside 
 her, and they were flying through the dark steep lanes at a dan- 
 gerous speed. 
 
 The horse was a noble beast — the finest in the country side — 
 and, like his driver, knew eveiy stock and stone on the road ; so 
 that ere poor Mary had recovered her first flurry, they had crossed 
 the red ford, and were four miles on the road towards the capital, 
 and began to feel a little more cheerful, for she had been crying 
 bitterly. 
 
 " Don't give way, Polly," said George. 
 
 " No fear of my giving way now, George. If I had been going 
 to do that, I'd have done it before. Now tell us what you are 
 going to do ? I have left everything to you." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 85 
 
 " I think we had better go straight on to London, my dear," he 
 replied, " and get married by licence. We could never stop in 
 Exeter ; and if you feel up to it, I should like to get off by early 
 coach to-morrow morning. What do you say ? " 
 
 "By all means ! Shall we be there in time ? " 
 
 " Yes ; two hours before the coach starts." 
 
 1' Have you money enough, George ? " she asked. 
 
 " Plenty 1" he replied. 
 
 " If you go short, you must come to me, you know," she said. 
 
 They rattled through the broad streets of a small country to^vn 
 just as the moon rose. The noble minster, which had for many 
 years been used as the parish church, slept quietly among the 
 yews and gravestones ; all the town was still ; only they two were 
 awake, flying, she thought, from the fellowship of all quiet men. 
 Was her father asleep now ? she wondered. What would Miss 
 Thornton say in the morning ? and many other things she was 
 asking herself, when she was interrupted by George saying, " Only 
 eight miles to Exeter ; we shall be in by daybreak." 
 
 So they left Crediton Minster behind them, and roUed away 
 along the broad road by the river, beneath the whispering 
 poplars. 
 
 ****** 
 
 As Miss Thornton was dressing herself next morning she 
 heard the Vicar go down into his study as usual. She con- 
 gratulated herself that he was better, from being up thus early, 
 but determined, nevertheless, that he should see a doctor that 
 day, who might meet and consult with Dr. Mulhaus. 
 
 Then she wondered why Mary had not been in. She generally 
 came into her aunt's room to hook-and-eye her, as she called it ; 
 but not having come this morning. Miss Thornton determined to 
 go to her, and accordingly went and rapped at her door. 
 
 No answer. "Could the girl have been fool enough?" 
 thought Miss Thornton. " Nonsense 1 no ! She must be 
 asleep ! " 
 
 She opened the door and went in. Everything tidy. The 
 bed had not been slept in. Miss Thornton had been in at an 
 elopement, and a famous one, before ; so she knew the symptoms 
 in a moment. Well she remembered the dreadful morning when 
 Lady Kate went off with Captain Brentwood, of the Artillery. 
 Well she remembered the Countess going into hysterics. But 
 this was worse than that ; this touched her nearer home. 
 
 " Oh you naughty girl ! Oh you wicked, ungrateful girl ; to 
 go and do such a thing at a time like this, when I've been 
 watching the paralysis creeping over him day by day I How shall 
 
86 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 I teU him ? How shall I ever tell him ? He will have a stroke 
 as sure as fate. He was going to have one without this. I 
 dare not tell him till breakfast, and yet I ought to tell him at 
 once. I was brought into the world to be driven mad by girls. 
 Oh, dear, I wish they were all boys, and we might send them to 
 Eton and wash our hands of them. Well, I must leave ciymg, 
 and prepare for telling him." 
 
 She went into his study, and at first could not see him ; but he 
 was there — a heap of black clothes lay on the hearthrug, and 
 Miss Thornton running up, saw that it was her brother, speech- 
 less, senseless, clasping a letter in his hand. 
 
 She saw that the worst was come, and nerved herself for 
 work, like a valiant soul as she was. She got him carried to his 
 bed by the two sturdy maids, and sent an express for . Dr. 
 Mulhaus, and another for the professional surgeon. Then she 
 took from her pocket the letter which she had found in the poor 
 Vicar's hand, and going to the window, read as follows : 
 
 " When you get this, father, I shall be many miles away. I 
 have started to London with George Hawker, and God only 
 knows whether you will see me again. Try to forgive me, father, 
 and if not, forget that you ever had a daughter who was only 
 bom to give you trouble. — Your erring but affectionate Mary." 
 
 It will be seen by the reader that this unlucky letter, written in 
 agitation and huriy, contained no allusion whatever to marriage, 
 but rather left one to infer that she was gone with Hawker as 
 his mistress. So the Vicar read it again and again, each time 
 more mistily, till sense and feeling departed, and he lay before his 
 hearth a hopeless paralytic. 
 
 At that moment Mary, beside George, was rolling through the 
 fresh morning air, up the beautiful Exe valley. Her fears were 
 gone with daylight and sunshine, and as he put his arm about her 
 v/aist, she said, 
 
 " I am glad we came outside." 
 
 " Are you quite happy now ? " he asked. 
 
 " Quite happy I " 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 87 
 
 CHAPTEE Xn. 
 
 IN WHICH A NEW FACE IS INTKODUCED, BY MEANS OP A RAT 
 AND A TEKRIBR. 
 
 For the first four weeks that the Vicar lay paralysed, the neigh- 
 houring clergymen had done his duty ; but now arose a new 
 difficulty at Drumston. Who was to do the duty while the poor 
 Vicar lay there on his back speechless ? 
 
 " How," asked Miss Thornton of Tom Troubridge, " are we to 
 make head against the dissenters now ? Let the duty lapse but 
 one single week, my dear friend, and you wrU see the chapels 
 overflowing once more. My brother has always had a hard fight to 
 keep them to church, for they have a natural tendency to dissent 
 here. And a great number don't care what the denominations 
 are, so long as there is noise enough." 
 
 " If that is the case," answered Tom, " old Mark Hook's place 
 of worship should pay best. I'd back them against Bedlam any 
 day." 
 
 " They certainly make the loudest noise at a Eevival," said 
 Miss Thornton. " But what are we to do ? " 
 
 " That I am sure I don't know, my dearest auntie," said Trou- 
 bridge, " but I am here, and my horse too, ready to go any 
 amount of errands." 
 
 "I see no way," said Miss Thornton, "but to write to the 
 Bishop." 
 
 " And I see no way else," said Tom, " unless you like to dress 
 me up as a parson, and see if I would do." 
 
 Miss Thornton wrote to the Bishop, with whom she had some 
 acquaintance, and told him how her brother had been struck 
 down with paralysis, and that the parish was unprovided for : that 
 if he would send any gentleman he approved of, she would gladly 
 receive him at Drumston. 
 
 Armed with this letter, Tom found himself, for the first time in 
 his life, in an episcopal palace. A sleek servant in black opened 
 the door with cat-like tread, and admitted him into a dark, warm 
 haU ; and on Tom's saying, in a hoarse whisper, as if he was in 
 church, that he had brought a note of importance, and would wait 
 for an answer, the man glided away, and disappeared through a 
 spring-door, which swung to behind him. Tom thought it would 
 have banged, but it didn't. Bishops' doors never bang. 
 
 Tom had a great awe for your peers spiritual. He could get 
 on well enough with a peer temporal, partictdarly if that proud 
 
88 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 aristocrat happened to be in want of a horse ; but a bishop was 
 quite another matter. 
 
 So he sat rather uncomfortable in the dark, warm hall, listening 
 to such dull sounds as could be heard in the gloomy mansion. A 
 broad oak staircase led up from the hall into lighter regions, and 
 there stood, on a landing above, a lean, wheezy old clock, all over 
 brass knobs, which, as he looked on it, choked, and sneezed 
 four. 
 
 But now there was a new sound in the hpuse. An indecent 
 secular sound. A door near the top of the house was burst 
 violently open, and there was a scuffle. A loud voice shouted 
 twice unmistakably and distinctly, " So-o, good bitch ! " And 
 then the astounded Tom heard the worrying of a terrier, and the 
 squeak of a dying rat. There was no mistake about it ; he heard 
 the bones crack. Then he made out that a dog was induced to 
 go into a room on false pretences, and deftly shut up there, and 
 then he heard a heavy step descending the stairs towards him. 
 
 But, before there was time for the perpetrator of these sacrileges 
 to come in sight, a side door opened, and the Bishop himself came 
 forth with a letter in his hand (a mild, clever, gentlemanly-looking 
 man he was too, Tom remarked) and said, — 
 
 " Pray is there not a messenger from Drumston here ? " 
 
 Tom replied that he had brought a letter from his cousin the 
 Vicar. He had rather expected to hear it demanded, " Where 
 is the audacious man who has dared to penetrate these sacred 
 shades ? "' and was agreeably relieved to find that the Bishop 
 wasn't angry with him. 
 
 " Dear me," said the Bishop ; " I beg a thousand pardons for 
 keeping you in the ball ; pray walk into my study." 
 
 So in he went and sat down. The Bishop resumed, — 
 
 " You are Mr. Thornton's cousin, sir ? " 
 
 Tom bowed. " I am about the nearest relation he has besides 
 his sister, my lord." 
 
 " Indeed," said the Bishop. " I have written to Miss Thornton 
 to say that there is a gentleman, a relation of my own, now living 
 in the house with me, who will undertake Mr. Thornton's duties, 
 and I dare say, also, without remuneration. He has nothing to 
 do at present. — Oh, here is the gentleman I spoke of ! " 
 
 Here was the gentleman he spoke of, holding a dead rat by 
 the tail, and crying out, — 
 
 "Look here, uncle; what did I tell you? I might have 
 been devoured alive, had it not been for my faithful Fly, your 
 enemy." 
 
 He was about six feet or nearly so in height, with a highly 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 89 
 
 intellectual though not a handsome face. His brown hair, care- 
 lessly brushed, fell over a forehead both broad and lofty, beneath 
 which shone a pair of bold, clear grey eyes. The moment 
 Troubridge saw him he set him down in his own mind as a 
 " goer," by which he meant a man who had go, or energy, in 
 him. A man, he thought, who was thrown away as a parson. 
 
 The Bishcipr-"ringiBg_4he beU, began again, " This is my 
 nephew, JSf^rjiaink Maber]y>^^ 
 
 The sle4k servantTnitered". 
 
 " My dear Frank, pray give that rat to Sanders, and let him 
 take it away. I don't like such things in the study." 
 
 " I only brought it to convince you, uncle," said the other. 
 " Here you are, Sanders ! " 
 
 But Sanders would have as soon shaken hands with the Pope. 
 He rather thought the rat was alive ; and taking the tongs, he 
 received the beast at a safe distance, while Tom saw a smile of 
 contempt pass over the young curate's features. 
 
 "You'd make a good missionary, Sanders," said he; and 
 turning to Troubridge, continued, " Pray excuse this interlude, 
 sir. You don't look as if you would refuse to shake me by my 
 ratty hand." 
 
 Tom thought he would sooner shake hands with him than fight 
 him, and was so won by Maberly's manner, that he was just going 
 to say so, when he recollected the presence he was in, and blushed 
 scarlet. 
 
 "My dear Frank," resumed his uncle, "Mr. Thornton of 
 Drumston is taken suddenly ill, and I want you to go over and 
 do his duties for him tiU he is better." 
 
 " Most certainly, my dear lord ; and when shall I go ? " 
 
 "Say to-morrow; will that suit your household, sir?" said 
 the Bishop. 
 
 Tom replied, " Yes, certainly,'' and took his leave. Then the 
 Bishop, turning to Frank, said, — 
 
 "The living of Drumston, nephew, is in my gift; and if Mr. 
 Thornton does not recover, as is very possible, I shall give it to 
 you. I wish you, therefore, to go to Drumston, and become 
 acquainted with your future parishioners. You will find Miss 
 Thornton a most charming old lady." 
 
 Frank Maberly was the second son of a country gentleman of 
 good property, and was a very remarkable character. His uncle 
 had always said of him, that whatever he chose to take up he would 
 be first in ; and his uncle was right. At Eton he was not only the 
 best cricketer and runner, but decidedly the best scholar of his 
 time. At Cambridge, for the first year, he was probably the 
 
90 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 noisiest man in his college, though he never lived what is called 
 " hard ; '■' but in the second year he took up his hooks once more, 
 and came forth third wrangler and first class, and the second day 
 after the class-list came out, made a very long score in the match 
 with Oxford. Few men were more popular, though the fast men 
 used to call him crotchety ; and on some subjects, indeed, he was 
 very impatient of contradiction. And most of his friends were a 
 little disappointed when they heard of his intention of going into 
 the Church. His father went so far as to say, — 
 
 "My dear Frank, I always thought you would have been a 
 lawyer." 
 
 " I'd sooner be a well, never mind what." 
 
 "But you might have gone into the army, Frank," said his 
 father. 
 
 " I am going into the army, sir," he said ; " into the army of 
 Christ." 
 
 Old Mr. Maberly was at first shocked by this last expression 
 from a son who rarely or never talked on religious matters, and 
 told his wife so that night. 
 
 "But," he added, "since I've been thinking of it, I'm sure 
 Frank meant neither blague nor irreverence. He is in earnest. I 
 never knew him tell a lie ; and since he was six years old he has 
 known how to call a spade a spade." 
 
 " He'll make a good parson," said the mother. 
 
 "He'll be first in that, as he is in everything else," said the 
 father. 
 
 "But he'll never be a bishop," said Mrs. Maberly. 
 
 " Why not? " said the husband, indignantly. 
 
 " Because, as you say yourself, husband, he will call a spade a 
 spade." 
 
 " Bah ! you are a radical," said the father. " Go to sleep." 
 
 At the time of John Thornton's illness, he had been ordained 
 about a year and a half. He got the title for orders, as a curate, 
 in a remote part of Devon, but had left it in consequence of a 
 violent disagreement with his rector, in which he had been most 
 fully borne out by his uncle, who, by the bye, was not the sort of 
 man who would have supported his own brother, had he been in 
 the wrong. Since then Frank Maberly had been staying with his 
 uncle, and, as he expressed it, " working the slums " at Exeter. 
 
 Miss Thornton sat in the drawing-room at Drumston the day 
 after Tom's visit to the Bishop, waiting dinner for the new Curate. 
 Tom and she had been wondering how he would come. Miss 
 Thornton said, probably in the Bishop's caiTiage ; but Tom was 
 inclined to think he would ride over. The dinner time was past 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 91 
 
 some ten minutes, when they saw a man in black put his hand on 
 the garden-gate, vault over, and run breathless up to the hall-door. 
 Tom had recognised him and dashed out to receive him, but ere he 
 had time to say "good-day " even, the new-comer pulled out his 
 watch, and having looked at it, said in a tone of vexation : — 
 
 " Twenty-one minutes, as near as possible ; nay, a little over. 
 By Jove I how pursy a fellow gets mewed up in town ! How far 
 do you call it, now, from the Buller Anns ? " 
 
 "It is close upon four miles," said Tom, highly amused. 
 
 " So they told me," replied Frank Maberly. " I left my port- 
 manteau there, and the landlord fellow had the audacity to say in 
 conversation that I couldn't run the four miles in twenty minutes. 
 It's lucky a parson can't bet, or I should have lost my money. 
 But the last mile is very much up-hill, as you must allow." 
 
 " I'll tell you what, sir," said Tom ; " there's isn't a man in 
 this parish would go that four mile under twenty minutes. If any 
 man could, I ought to know of it." 
 
 Miss Thornton had listened to this conversation with wonder not 
 unmixed with amusement. At first she had concluded that the 
 Bishop's carriage was upset, and that Frank was the breathless 
 messenger sent forward to chronicle the mishap. But her tact soon 
 showed the sort of person she had to deal with, for she was not 
 unacquainted with the performances of public schoolboys. She 
 laughed when she called to mind the houleversement that used to 
 take place when Lord Charles and Lord Frederick came home from 
 Harrow, and invaded her quiet school-room. So she advanced into 
 the passage to meet the new-comer with one of her pleasantest 
 smiles. 
 
 " I must claim an old woman's privilege of introducing myself, 
 
 Mr. Maberly," she said. "Your uncle was tutor to the B s, 
 
 when I was governess to the D s ; so we are old acquaintances." 
 
 "Can you forgive me. Miss Thornton," he said, "for running 
 up to the house in this lunatic sort of way ? I am still half a 
 schoolboy, you know. What an old jewel she is ! " he added to 
 himself. 
 
 Tom said : " May I show you your room, Mr. Maberly ? " 
 
 "If you please, do," said Frank; and added, " Get out, Fly; 
 what are you doing here ? " 
 
 But Miss Thornton interceded for the dog, a beautiful little 
 black and tan terrier, whose points Tom was examining with pro- 
 found admiration. 
 
 " That's a brave little thing, Mr. Maberly," said he, as he 
 showed him to his room. " I should like to put in my name for . 
 a pup." 
 
92 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 They stood face to face in the bed-room as he said this, and 
 Frank, not answering him, said abruptly : — 
 
 " By Jove ! what a splendid man you are ! What do you weigh, 
 now?" 
 
 " Close upon eighteen stone, just now, I should think ; " said 
 Tom. 
 
 " Ah, but you are carrying a little flesh," said Frank. 
 
 " Why, yes ; " said Tom. " I've been to London for a fort- 
 night." 
 
 " That accounts for it," said Frank. " Many dissenters m this 
 parish?" 
 
 " A sight of all sorts," said Tom. " They want attracting to 
 church here ; they don't go naturally, as they do in some parts." 
 
 " I see," said Frank ; " I suppose they'll come next Sunday, 
 though, to see the new parson ; my best plan will be to give them 
 a stinger, so that they'll come again." 
 
 " Why, you see," said Tom, " it's got about that there'll be no 
 service next Sunday, so they'll make an excuse for going to Meet- 
 ing. Our best plan will be, for you and I to go about and let them 
 know that there's a new minister. Then you'll get them together, 
 and after that I leave it to you to keep them. Shall we go down 
 to dinner? " 
 
 They came together going out of the door, and Frank turned 
 and said : — 
 
 " Will you shake hands with me ? I think we shall suit one 
 another." 
 
 " Aye ! that we shall," said Tom, heartily ; " you're a man's 
 parson ; that's about what you are. But," he added, seriously ; 
 " you wouldn't do among the old women, you know." 
 
 At dinner, Miss Thornton said, " I hope, Mr. Maberly, you are 
 none the worse after your run ? Are you not afraid of such violent 
 exercise bringing on palpitation of the heart ? " 
 
 " Not I, my dear madam," he said. " Let me make my defence 
 for what, otherwise, you might consider mere boyish folly. I am 
 passionately fond of athletic sports of all kinds, and indulge in them 
 as a pleasure. No real man is without some sort of pleasure, more 
 or less harmless. Nay, even your fanatic is a man who makes a 
 pleasure and an excitement of religion. My pleasures are very 
 harmless ; and what can be more harmless than keeping this shell 
 of ours in the highest state of capacity for noble deeds ? I know," 
 he said, turning to Tom, " what the great temptation is that such 
 men as you or I have to contend against. It is ' the pride of life ; ' 
 but if we know that and fight against it, how can it prevail against 
 us ? It is easier conquered than the lust of the flesh, or the lust 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 93 
 
 of the eye, though some will tell you that I can't construe my 
 Greek Testament, and that the ' pride of life ' means something 
 very different. I hold my opinion, however, in spite of them. 
 Then, again, although I have taken a good degree (not so good as 
 I might, though), I consider that I have only just begun to study. 
 Consequently, I read hard stiU, and shall continue to do so the 
 next twenty years, please God. I find my head the clearer, and 
 my intellect more powerful in consequence of the good digestion 
 produced by exercise ; so I mean to use it till I get too fat, which 
 will be a long while first." 
 
 " Ain't you afraid," said Tom, laughing, " of offending some of 
 your weaker brothers' consciences, by running four miles, because 
 a publican said you couldn't ? " 
 
 "Disputing with a publican might be an error of judgment," 
 said Frank. Bah 1 might be — it was; but with regard to running 
 four miles — no. It is natural and right that a man at five-and- 
 twenty should be both able and willing to run four miles, a parson 
 above all others, as a protest against effeminacy. With regard to 
 consciences, those very tender-conscienced men oughtn't to want a 
 parson at all." 
 
 Miss Thornton had barely left the room, to go up to the Vicar, 
 leaving Tom and Frank Maberly over their wine, when the hall- 
 door was thrown open, and the well-known voice of the Doctor was 
 heard exclaiming in angry tones : — 
 
 "If! sir, if! always at if's. 'If Blucher had destroyed the 
 bridge,' say you, as if he ever meant to be such a Vandal. And 
 if he had meant to do it, do you think that fifty WeUesleys in one 
 woidd have stayed him ? No, sir ; and if he had destroyed every 
 bridge on the Seine, sir, he would have done better than to be 
 overruled by the counsels of Wellington (glory go with him, how- 
 ever ! He was a good man). And why, forsooth ? — because the 
 English bore the brunt at Waterloo, in consequence of the Prussians 
 being delayed by muddy roads." 
 
 " And Ligny," said the laughing voice of Major Buckley. " Oh, 
 Doctor, dear ! I like to make you angry, because then your logic 
 is so veiy outrageous. You are like the man who pleaded not 
 guilty of murder : first, because he hadn't done it ; secondly, that 
 he was drunk when he did it ; and thirdly, that it was a case of 
 mistaken identity." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " laughed the Doctor, merrily, recovering his good 
 humour in a moment. " That's an Irish stoiy for a thousand 
 pounds. There's nothing English about that. Ha I ha ! " 
 
 They were presented to Frank as the new Curate. The Doctor, 
 afier a courteous salutation, put on his spectacles, and examined 
 
94 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 him carefully. Frank looked at him all the time with a quiet 
 smile, and in the end the Doctor said — 
 
 " Allow me the privilege of shaking hands with you, sir. Shall 
 I be considered rude if I say that I seldom or never saw a finer 
 head than yours on a man's shoulders ? And judging by the face, 
 it is well lined." 
 
 " Like a buck-basket," said Frank, " full of dirty linen. Plenty 
 of it, and of some quality, but not in a state fit for use yet. I will 
 have it washed up, and wear such of it as is worth soon." 
 
 The Doctor saw he had found a nian after his own heart, and it 
 was not long before Frank and he were in the seventh heaven of 
 discussion. Meanwhile, the Major had drawn up alongside of Tom, 
 and said — 
 
 " Any news of the poor little dove that has left the nest, old 
 friend?" 
 
 " Yes," said Tom, eagerly ; " we have got a letter. Good news, 
 too." 
 
 " Thank God for that," said the Major. " And where are they ? " 
 
 " They are now at Brighton." 
 
 "What's that?" said the Doctor, turning round. "Any 
 news? " 
 
 They told him, and then it became necessary to tell Frank 
 Maberly what he had not known before, that the Vicar had a 
 daughter who had "gone off." 
 
 " One of the prettiest, sweetest creatures, Mr. Maberly," said 
 the Major, " that you ever saw in your life. None of us, I believe, 
 knew how weU we loved her till she was gone." 
 
 "And a very remarkable character, besides," said the Doctor. 
 
 " Such a force of will as you see in few women of her age. 
 Obscured by passion and girlish folly, it seemed more like obstinacy 
 to us. But she has a noble heart, and, when she has outlived her 
 youthful fancies, I should not be surprised if she turned out a very 
 remarkable woman." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE DISCOVEEY. 
 
 One morning the man who went once a-week from old Hawker's, 
 at the Woodlands, down to the post, brought back a letter, which 
 ho delivered to Madge at the door. She turned it over and 
 
6E0FFEY HAMLYN. 95 
 
 txamined it more carefully than she generally did the old man's 
 letters, for it was directed in a clerk-like hand, and was sealed with 
 a big and important-looking seal, and when she came to examine 
 this seal, she saw that it bore the words " B. and F. Bank." " So, 
 they are at it again, are they ? " she said. " The deuce take 'em, 
 I say : though for that matter I can't exactly blame the folks for 
 looking after their own. Well, there's no mistake about one thing, 
 he must see this letter, else some of 'em wiU be coming over and 
 blowing the whole thing. He wiU ask me to read it for him, and 
 I'U do so, right to an end. Lord, what a breeze there'll be 1 I 
 hope I shall be able to puU my lad through, though it very 
 much depends on the old 'un's temper. However, I shall soon 
 know." 
 
 Old Hawker was nearly blind, and although an avaricious, sus- 
 picious old man, as a general rule, trusted implicitly on ordinary 
 occasions to George and Madge in the management of his accounts, 
 reflecting, with some reason, that it could not he their interest to 
 cheat him. Of late, however, he had been uneasy in his mind. 
 Madge, there was no denying, had got through a great deal more 
 money than usual, and he was not satisfied with her account of 
 where it had gone. She, we know, was in the habit of supplying 
 George's extravagances in a way which tried all her ingenuity to 
 hide from him, and he, mistrusting her statements, had determined 
 as far as he could to watch her. 
 
 On this occasion she laid the letter on the breakfast table, and 
 waited his coming down, hoping that he might be in a good 
 humour, so that there might be some chance of averting the storm 
 from George. Madge was much terrified for the consequences, but 
 was quite calm and firm. 
 
 Not long before she heard his heavy step coming do^vn the stairs, 
 and soon he came into the room, evidently in no favourable state of 
 mind. 
 
 " If you don't kiU or poison that black tom-cat," was his first 
 speech, " by the Lord I wiU. I suppose you keep him for some 
 of your witchwork. But if he's the devil himself, as I believe he 
 is, I'll shoot him. I won't be kept out of my natural sleep by such 
 a devil's brat as that. He's been keeping up such a growling and 
 a scrowling on the hen-house roof all night, that I thought it was 
 Old Scratch come for you, and getting impatient. If you must 
 keep an imp of Satan in the house, get a mole, or a rat, or some 
 quiet beast of that sort, and not such a vicious toad as him." 
 
 " Shoot him after breakfast if you like," she said. " He's no 
 Mend of mine. Get your breakfast, and don't be a fool. There's 
 a letter for you ; take and read it." 
 
98 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " Yah I Read it, she says, and knows I'm blind," said Hawker. 
 " You artful minx, you want to read it yourself." 
 
 He took the letter up, and turned it over and over. He knew 
 the seal, and shot a suspicious glance at her. Then, looking at 
 her fixedly, he put it in his breast-pocket, and buttoned up his 
 coat. 
 
 "There I" he said. "I'll read it. Oh yes, believe me, I'll 
 read it. You Jezebel ! " 
 
 "You'd better eat your meat like a Christian man," she 
 answered, " and not make such faces as them." 
 
 " Where's the man ? " he asked. 
 
 "Outside, I suppose." 
 
 " Tell him I want the gig. I'm going out for a drive. _A 
 pleasure drive, you know. All down the lane, and back again. 
 Cut along and tell him, before I do you a mischief." 
 
 She saw he was in one of his evil humours, when nothing was 
 to be done with him, and felt very uneasy. She went and ordered 
 the gig, and when he had finished breakfast, he came out to the 
 door. 
 
 " You'd best take your big coat," she said, " else you'll be 
 getting cold, and be in a worse temper than you are, — and that's 
 bad enough. Lord knows, for a poor woman to put up with." 
 
 " How careful she is ! " said Hawker. " What care she takes 
 of the old man I I've left you ten thousand pounds in my wiQ, 
 ducky. Good-bye." 
 
 He drove oflf, and left her standing in the porch. What a wUd, 
 tall figure she was, standing so stem and steadfast there in the 
 morning sun ! — a woman one would rather have for a Mend than 
 an enemy. 
 
 Hawker was fuU of other thoughts than these. Coupling his 
 other suspicions of Madge with the receipt of this letter from the 
 bank, he was growing very apprehensive of sometliing being wrong. 
 He wanted this letter read to him, but whom could he trust? 
 Who better than his old companion Burrows, who lived in the 
 valley below the Vicarage ? So, whipping up his horse, he 
 drove there, but found he was out. He turned back again, 
 puzzled, going slowly, and as he came to the bottom of the hiU, 
 below the Vicarage, he saw a tall man leaning against the gate, 
 and smoking. 
 
 " He'll do for want of a better," he said to himself. "He's 
 an honest-going fellow, and we've always been good friends, and 
 done good business together, though he is one of that cursed 
 Vicarage lot." 
 
 So he drew up when he came to the gate. " I beg yom* pardon, 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 97 
 
 Mr. Troubridge," he said, with a very different tone and manner 
 to what we have been accustomed to hear him use, "but could 
 you do a kindness for a blind old man ? I have no one about me 
 that I can trust since my son is gone away. I have reason to 
 believe that this letter is of importance ; could you be so good as 
 to read it to me ? " 
 
 " I shall be happy to oblige you, Mr. Hawker," said Tom. " I 
 am sorry to hear that your sight is so bad." 
 
 " Yes ; I'm breaking fast," said Hawker. " However, I shan't 
 be much missed. I do:i't inquire how the Vicar is, because I 
 know already, and because I don't think he would care much for 
 my inquiries, after the injury my son has done him. I wiU break 
 the seal. Now may I trouble you ? " 
 
 Tom Troubridge read aloud : — 
 
 " B. and P. Bank. [Such a date.] 
 " Sib, — May I request that you will favour me personally with 
 a call, at the earliest possible opportunity, at my private oiHce, 
 166, Broad Street? I have reason to fear that two forged cheques, 
 bearing your signature, have been inadvertently cashed by us. 
 The amount, I am sorry to inform you, is considerable. I need 
 not farther urge your immediate attention. This is the third 
 communication we have made to you on the subject, and are much 
 surprised at receiving no answer. I hope that you wiU be so good 
 as to call at once. 
 
 "Yours, sir, &c., P. Eollox, Manager." 
 
 " I thank you, Mr. Troubridge," said the old man, quietly and 
 politely. " You see I was not wrong when I thought that this 
 letter was of importance. May I beg as a favour that you would 
 not mention this to any one ? " 
 
 "Certainly, Mr. Hawker. I will respect your wish. I hope 
 your loss may not be heavy." 
 
 " The loss will not be mine, though, wiU it ? " said old Hawker. 
 " I anticipate that it wUl fall on the bank. It is surely at their 
 risk to cash cheques. Why, a man might sign for all the monev 
 I have in their hands, and surely they would be answerable for 
 it?" 
 
 " I am not aware how the law stands, Mr. Hawker," said Trou- 
 bridge. " Fortunately, no one has ever thought it worth while to 
 forge my name." 
 
 "Well, I wish you a good day, sir, with many thanks," said 
 Hawker. " Can I do anything for you in Exeter ? " 
 
 Old Hawker drove away rapidly in the direction of Exeter ; his 
 
 8 
 
98 THE EEOOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 horse, a fine black, clearing the ground in splendid style. Although 
 a cunning man, he was not quick in following a train of reasoning, 
 and he was half-way to Exeter before he had thoroughly compre- 
 hended his situation. And then, all he saw was that somebpdy 
 had forged his name, and he believed that Madge knew something 
 about it. 
 
 " I wish my boy George was at home," he said. " He'd save 
 me getting a lawyer now. I am altogether in the hands of those 
 Bank folks if they like to cheat me, though it's not likely they'd 
 do that. At all events I will take Dickbon with me." 
 
 Dickson was an attorney of good enough repute. A very clever 
 quiet man, and a good deal employed by old Hawker, when his 
 business was not too disreputable. Some years before. Hawker 
 had brought some such excessively dirty work to his office, that 
 the lawyer politely declined having anything to do with it, but 
 recommended him to an attorney who he thought would undertake 
 it. And from that time the old feUow treated him with marked 
 respect, and spoke everywhere of him as a man to be trusted : 
 such an effect had the fact of a lawyer refusing business had on 
 him ! 
 
 He reached Exeter by two o'clock, so rapidly had he driven. 
 He went at once to Dickson's, and found him at home, busy swing- 
 ing the poker, in deep thought, before the fireplace in his inner 
 office. He was a small man, with an impenetrable expressionless 
 face, who never was known to unbend himself to a human being. 
 Only two facts were known about him. One was, that he was the 
 best swimmer in Exeter, and had saved several lives from drown- 
 ing ; and the other was, that he gave away (for him) large sums in 
 private charity. 
 
 Such was the man who now received old Hawker, with quiet 
 politeness ; and having sent his horse round to the inn stable by 
 a clerk, sat down once more by the fire, and began swinging the 
 poker, and waiting for the other to begin the conversation. 
 
 "If you are not engaged, Mr. Dickson," said Hawker, "I 
 would be much obliged to you if you could step round to the B. 
 and F. Bank with me. I want you to witness what passes, and to 
 read any letters or papers for me that I shall require." 
 
 The attorney put down the poker, got his hat, and stood waiting, 
 all without a word. 
 
 "You won't find it necessary to remark on anything that occurs, 
 Mr. Dickson, unless I ask your opinion." 
 
 The attorney nodded, and whistled a tune. And then they 
 started together through the crowded street. 
 
 The bank was not far, and Hawker pushed his way in among 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 99 
 
 the crowd of customers. It was some time before he could get 
 hold of a clerk, there was so much business going on. When, at 
 last, he did so, he said — " I want to see Mr. EoUox ; he told me 
 to caU on him at once." 
 
 " He is engaged at present," said the clerk. " It is quite im- 
 possible you can see him." 
 
 "You don't know what you are talking about, man," said 
 Hawker. " Send in and tell him Mr. Hawker, of Drumston, is 
 here." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawker. I have only just come 
 here, and did not know you. Porter, show Mr. Hawker in." 
 
 They went into the formal bank parlour. There was the leather 
 writing table, the sheet almanac, the iron safe, and all the weapons 
 by which bankers war against mankind, as in aU other sanctuaries 
 of the kind. Moreover, there was the commander-in-chief him- 
 self, sitting at the table. A bald, clever, gentlemanly-looking 
 man, who bowed when they came in. " Good day, Mr. Hawker. 
 I am obliged to you for calling at last. Wo thought something 
 was wrong. Mr. Dickson, I hope you are well. Are you attending 
 with Mr. Hawker, or are you come on private business ? " 
 
 The attorney said — " I'm come at his request," and relapsed 
 into silence. 
 
 "Ah ! " said the manager. "I am, on the whole, glad that Mr. 
 Hawker has brought a professional adviser with him. Though," 
 he added, laughing, " it is putting me rathfer at a disadvantage, 
 you know. Two to one, — eh ? " 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, if you wiU be so good as to close the door 
 carefuUy, and be seated, I wiU proceed to business, hoping that 
 you will give me your best attention. About six or eight months 
 ago, — let me be particular, though," said he, referring to some 
 papers, — " that is rather a loose way of beginning. Here it is. 
 The fourth of September last year — yes. On that day, Mr. 
 Hawker, a cheque was presented at this bank, dra^n ' in favour of 
 bearer,' and signed in your name, for two hundred pounds, and 
 cashed, the person who presented it being well knov^Ti here." 
 
 " Who ? " interrupted Hawker. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir," said the manager; "allow me to come to 
 that hereafter. You were about to say, I anticipate, that you never 
 drew a cheque ' on bearer ' in your life. Quite true. That ought 
 to have excited attention, but it did not till a very few weeks ago, 
 our head-clerk, casting his eyes down your account, remarked on 
 the peculiarity, and, on examining the cheque, was inclined to 
 believe that it was not in your usual handwriting. He intended 
 communicating with me, but was prevented for some days by my 
 
100 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 absence ; and, in the meantime, another cheque, similar, but better 
 imitated, was presented by the same person, and cashed, without 
 the knowledge of the head-clerk. On the cheque coming into his 
 hands, he reprimanded the cashier, and he and I, having more 
 closely examined them, came to the conclusion that they were both 
 forgeries. We immediately communicated with you, and, to our 
 great surprise, received no answer either to our first or second 
 application. We, however, were not idle. We ascertained that 
 we could lay our hands on the utterer of the cheques at any 
 moment, and tried a third letter to you, which has been suc- 
 cessful." 
 
 " The two letters you speak of have never reached me, Mr. 
 Eollox," said Hawker. " I started off on the receipt of yours this 
 morning — the first I saw. I am sorry, sir, that the bank should 
 lose money through me ; but, by your own showing, sir, the fault 
 lay with your own clerks." 
 
 " I have never attempted to deny it, Mr. Hawker," said the 
 manager. " But there are other matters to be considered. 
 Before I go on, I wish to give you an opportunity of sending away 
 your professional adviser, and continuing this conversation with 
 me alone." 
 
 They both turned and looked at the lawyer. He was sitting 
 with his hands in his pockets, and one would have thought he was 
 whistling, only no sound came. His face showed no signs of 
 intelligence in any feature save his eyes, and they were expressive 
 of the wildest and most unbounded astonishment. 
 
 " I have nothing to do in this matter, sir," said Hawker, " that 
 I should not wish Mr. Dickson to hear. He is an honourable 
 man, and I confide in him thoroughly." 
 
 " So be it, then, Mr. Hawker," said the manager. " I have as 
 high an opinion of my friend Mr. Dickson as you have ; but I warn 
 you, that some part of what will follow mU touch you very un- 
 pleasantly." 
 
 " I don't see how," said Hawker ; "go on, if you please." 
 
 " WOl you be good enough to examine these two cheques, and 
 say whether they are genuine or not ? " 
 
 " I have only to look at the amount of this large one, to pro- 
 nounce it an impudent forgery,'-' said Hawker. "I have not 
 signed so large a cheque for many years. There was one last 
 January twelvemonth of £400, for the land at Highcot, and that 
 is the largest, I believe, I ever gave in my life." 
 
 " There can be no doubt they are forgeries. Your sight, I 
 believe, is too bad to swear easily to your own signature ; but that 
 is quite enough. Now, I have laid this case before our governor, 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 101 
 
 Lord C , and he went so far as to say that, under the painful 
 
 circumstances of the case, if you were to refund the money, the 
 bank might let the matter drop ; but that, otherwise, it would be 
 their most painful duty to prosecute." 
 
 "i refund the money!" laughed Hawker ; "you are playing 
 with me, sir. Prosecute the dog ; I wiU come and see him hung 1 
 Ha! Ha!" 
 
 " It win be a terrible thing if we prosecute the utterer of these 
 cheques," said the manager. 
 
 "Why?" said Hawker. " By-the-bye, you know who he is, 
 don't you ? TeU me who it is ? " 
 
 " Your own son, Mr. Hawker," said the manager, almost in a 
 whisper. 
 
 Hawker rose and glared at them with such a look of deadly rage 
 that they shrank from him appalled. Then, he tottered to the 
 mantelpiece and leant against it, trying to untie his neckcloth with 
 feeble, trembling fingers. 
 
 " Open your confounded window there, Rollox," cried the lawyer, 
 starting up. " Where's the wine? Look sharp, man ! " 
 
 Hawker waved to him impatiently to sit down, and then said, at 
 first gasping for breath, but afterwards more quietly : 
 
 " Are you sure it was he that brought those cheques ? " 
 
 " Certainly, sir," said the manager. "You may be sure it was 
 he. Had it been any one else, they would not have been cashed 
 without more examination ; and on the last occasion he accounted 
 rather elaborately for your drawing such a large sum." 
 
 •Hawker recovered himself and sat down. 
 
 " Don't be fi-ightened, gentlemen," he said. "Not this time, 
 I've something to do before that comes. It won't be long, the 
 doctor says, but I must transact some business first. Lord ! I 
 see it aU now. That cursed, cursed woman and her boy have been 
 hoodwinking me and playing with me all this time, have they ? 
 Oh, but I'U have my vengeance on 'em — one to the stocks, and 
 another to the gallows. I, unfortunately, can't give you any informa- 
 tion where that man is that has the audacity to bear my name, sir," 
 said he to the manager. " His mother at one time persuaded me 
 that he was a child of miile ; but such infernal gipsy drabs as that 
 can't be depended on, you know. I have the honour to wish you 
 a very good afternoon, sir, thanldng you for your information, and 
 hoping your counsel wiU secure a speedy conviction. I shall pro- 
 bably trouble you to meet me at a magistrate's to-morrow morning, 
 where I wiU take my oath in his presence that those cheques are 
 forgeries. You wiU find alterations in my banker's book, too, I 
 expect. We'U look into it all to-morrow. Come along, Dickson, 
 
X02 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 my sly little weasel ; I've a gay night's work for you ; I'm going 
 to le^ve all my property to my -cousin Nick, my bitteest enemy, 
 an^ a lawsuit with it that'U'break his hga3C"'There'rfBn_-fet the- 
 lawyers, — eh, my boy ! " 
 
 So talking, the old man strode firmly forth, with a bitter, malig- 
 nant scowl on his flushed face. The lawyer followed him, and, 
 when they were in the street. Hawker again asked him to come to 
 the inn and make his will for him. 
 
 " I'll stay by you. Hawker, and see that you don't make a fool 
 of yourself. I wish you would not be so vindictive. It's indecent ; 
 you'll be ashamed of it to-morrow ; but, in the meantime, it's 
 indecent." 
 
 "Ha, ha!" laughed Hawker; "how quietly he talks! One 
 can see that he hasn't had a bastard child fathered on him by a 
 gipsy hag. Come along, old fellow ; there's fifty pounds' worth of 
 work for you this week, if I only live through it ! " 
 
 He took the lawyer to the inn, and they got dinner. Hawker 
 ate but little, for him, but drank a good deal. Dickson thought he 
 was getting drunk ; but when dinner was over, and Hawker had 
 ordered in spirits-and-water, he seemed sober enough again. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Dickson," said he, "I am going to make a fresh 
 will to-morrow morning, and I shall want you to draw it up for me. 
 After that I want you to come home with me and transact business. 
 You win. do a good day's work, I promise you. You seem to me 
 now to be the only man in the world I can trust. I pray you don't 
 desert me." 
 
 "As I said before," replied the lawyer, "I won't desert you; 
 but listen to me. I don't half like the sudden way you have turned 
 against your own son. Why don't you pay this money, and save 
 the disgrace of that unhappy young man ? I don't say anything 
 about your disinheriting him — that's no business of mine — ^but don't 
 
 be witness against him. The bank, or rather my Lord C , has 
 
 been very kind about it. Take advantage of their kindness and 
 hush the matter up." 
 
 " I know you ain't in the pay of the bank," said Hawker, " so 
 I won't charge you with it. I know you better than to think you'd 
 lend yourself to anything so mean ; but your conduct looks suspicious. 
 If you hadn't done me a few disinterested kindnesses lately, I 
 should say that they'd paid you to persuade me to stop this, so as 
 they might get their money back, and save the cost of a prosecu- 
 tion. But I ain't so far gone as to believe that ; and so I teU you, 
 as one man to another, that if you'd come suddenly on such a mine 
 of treason and conspiracy as I have this afternoon, and found a lad 
 that you have treated as, and tried to believe was, your own son. 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 103 
 
 you'd be as bad as me. Every moment I think of it, it comes out 
 clearer. That woman that lives with me has palmed that brat of 
 hers on me as my child ; and he and she have been plundering me 
 these years past. The money that woman has made away with 
 would build a ship, sir. What she's done with it, her master, the 
 devil, only knows ; and I've said nought about it, because she's a 
 witch, and I was afraid of her. But now I've found her out. She 
 has stopped the letters that they wrote to me about this boy's 
 forgery, and that shows she was in it. She shall pack. I won't 
 prosecute her ; no. I've reasons against that ; but I'll turn her 
 out in the world without a sixpence. You see I'm quiet enough 
 now ! " 
 
 "You're quiet enough," said the lawyer, "and you've stated 
 your case very well. But are you sure this lad is not your 
 son? " 
 
 " If I was sure that he was," said Hawker, " it wouldn't make 
 any difference, as I know on. Ah, man, you don't know what a 
 rage I'm in. If I chose, I could put myself into such an infernal 
 passion at this moment as would bring on a 'plectic fit, and lay me 
 dead on the floor. But I won't do it, not yet. I'U have another 
 drop of brandy, and sing you a song. Shall I give 'ee ' Eoger 
 a-Maying,' or what'U ye have ? " 
 
 " I'll have you go to bed, and not take any more brandy," said 
 the lawyer. " If you sing, get in one of the waiters, and sing to 
 him ; he'd enjoy it. I'm going home, but I shall come to break- 
 fast to-morrow morning, and find you in a different humour." 
 
 " Good night, old mole," said Hawker ; " good night, old bat, 
 old parchment skin, old sixty per cent. Ha, ha ! If a wench 
 brings a brat to thee, old lad, chuck it out o' window, and her 
 after it. Thou can only get hung for it, man. They can only 
 hang thee once, and that is better than to keep it and foster it, 
 and have it turn against thee when it grows up. Good night." 
 
 Dickson came to him in the morning, and found him in the 
 same mind. They settled down to business, and Hawker made a 
 new will. He left all his property to his cousin (a man he had 
 had a bitter quarrel with for years), except £100 to his groom, 
 and £200 to Tom Troubridge, "for an act of civility" (so the 
 words ran), " in reading a letter for a man who ought to have been 
 his enemy." And when the wiU (a very short one) was finished, 
 and the lawyer proposed getting two of his clerks as witnesses, 
 Hawker told him to fold it up and keep it ; that he would get it 
 witnessed by-and-by. 
 
 "You're coming home with me," he said, "and we'U get it 
 witnessed there. You'U see why, when it's done." 
 
104 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Then they went to the manager of the bank, and got him to go 
 before a magistrate with him, whilst he deposed on oath that the 
 two cheques, before mentioned, were forgeries, alleging that his life 
 was so uncertain that the criminal might escape justice by his 
 sudden death. Then he and Dickson went back to the inn, and 
 after dinner started together to drive to Drumston. 
 
 They had been so engaged with business that they had taken 
 no notice of the weather. But when they were clear of the northern 
 suburbs of the town, and were flying rapidly along the noble turn- 
 pike-road that turning eastward skirts the broad Exe for a couple 
 of mUes before turning north again, they remarked that a dense 
 black cloud hung before them, and that everything foreboded a 
 violent thunder-storm. 
 
 " We shall get a drowning before we reach your place, Hawker," 
 said the lawyer. " I'm glad I brought my coat." 
 
 " Lawyers never get drowned," said Hawker, " though I believe 
 you have tried it often enough." 
 
 When they crossed the bridge, and turned to the north, along 
 the pretty banks of the Greedy, they began to hope that they would 
 leave it on the right ; but ere they reached Newton St. Gyres they 
 saw that it was creeping up overhead, and stopping a few minutes 
 in that village, perceived that the folks were aU out at their doors 
 talking to one another, as people do for company's sake when a 
 storm is coming on. 
 
 Before they got to Grediton they could distinguish, above the 
 sound of the wheels, the thunder groaning and muttering 
 perpetually, and as they rattled quickly past the grand old minster 
 a few drops of rain began to fall. 
 
 The boys were coming out of the Grammar School in shoals, 
 laughing, running, whooping, as the manner of boys is. Hawker 
 drove slowly as he passed through the crowd, and the lawyer took 
 that opportunity to put on his great-coat. 
 
 " We've been lucky so far," he said, " and now we are going 
 to pay for our good luck. Before it is too late. Hawker, pull up 
 and stay here. If we have to stop aU. night, I'll pay expenses ; I 
 will indeed. It wiU be dark before we are home. Do stop." 
 
 " Not for a thousand pound," said Hawker. " I wouldn't baulk 
 myself now for a thousand pound. Hey I fancy turning her out 
 such a night as this without sixpence in her pocket. Why, a man 
 like you, that all the county knows, a man who has got two gold 
 medals for bravery, ain't surely afraid of a thunderstorm ? " 
 
 " I ain't afraid of the thunderstorm, but I am of the rheumatism," 
 said the other. "As for a thunderstorm, you're as safe out of 
 doors as in ; some say safer. But you're mistaken if you 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLYN. 105 
 
 suppose I don't fear death, Hawker. I fear it as much as any 
 man." 
 
 " It didn't look like it that time you soused in over the weir 
 after the groom lad," said Hawker. 
 
 " Bah I man," said the lawyer; "I'm the best swimmer iu 
 Devon. That was proved by my living in that weir in flood time. 
 So I have less to fear than any one else. Why, if that boy 
 hadn't been as quiet and plucky as he was, I knew I could kick 
 him off any minute, and get ashore. Hallo ; that's nearer." 
 
 The storm burst on them in faU fury, and soon after it grew 
 dark. The good horse, however, stepped out gallantly, though 
 they made but little way ; for, having left the high road and taken 
 to the narrow lanes, their course was always either up hill or 
 down, and every bottom they passed grew more angry with the 
 flooding waters as they proceeded. Still, through darkness, rain, 
 and storm, they held their way tiU they saw the lights of Drum- 
 ston below them. 
 
 "How far is it to your house. Hawker?" said the lawyer. 
 " This stoi-m seems to hang about still. It is as bad as ever. 
 You must be very wet." 
 
 " It's three miles to my place, but a level road, at least all up- 
 hill, gently rising. Cheer up ! We won't be long." 
 
 They passed through the village rapidly, lighted by the light- 
 ning. The last three miles were done as quickly as any part of 
 the journey, and the lawyer rejoiced to find himself before the 
 white gate that led up to Hawker's house. 
 
 It was not long before they drew up to the door. The storm 
 seemed worse than ever. There was a light in the kitchen, and 
 when Hawker had halloed once or twice, a young man ran out to 
 take the horse. 
 
 "Is that you, my boy?" said Hawker. " Kub the horse 
 down, and come in to get something. This ain't a night fit for a 
 dog to be out in ; is it ? " 
 
 " No, indeed, sir," said the man. "I hope none's out in it 
 but what likes to be." 
 
 They went in. Madge looked up from aiTanging the table for 
 supper, and stared at Hawker keenly. He laughed aloud, and said, — 
 
 " So you didn't expect me to-night, deary, eh ? " 
 
 " You've chose a bad night to come home in, old man," she 
 answered. 
 
 " A terrible night, ain't it ? Wouldn't she have been anxious 
 if she'd a' known I'd been out ? " 
 
 " Don't know as I should," she said. "That gentleman had 
 better get dried, and have his supper." 
 
106 THE EECOLIiECTIONS OF 
 
 " I've got a bit of business first, deary. Wliere's the girl ? ' 
 
 " In the other kitchen." 
 
 " Call her.— Lord ! listen to that." 
 
 A crash of thunder shook the house, heard loud above the rain, 
 which beat furiously against the windows. Madge immediately 
 returned with the servant girl, a modest, quiet-looking creature, 
 evidently in terror at the storm. 
 
 " Get out that paper, Dickson, and we'U get it signed." 
 
 The lawyer produced the will, and Madge and the servant girl 
 were made to witness it. Dickson, having dried the signatures, 
 took charge of it again; and then Hawker turned round fiercely 
 to Madge. 
 
 "That's my new will," he said; "my new will, old woman. 
 Oh, you cat ! I've found you out." 
 
 Madge saw a storm was coming, worse than the one which raged 
 and rattled outside, and she braced her nerves to meet it. 
 
 " What have you found out, old man ? " she said quietly. 
 
 " I've found out that you and that young scoundrel have been 
 robbing and cheating me in a way that would bring me to the 
 workhouse in another year. I have found out that he has forged 
 my name for nearly a thousand pounds, and that you've helped 
 him. I find that you yourself have robbed me of hundreds of 
 pounds, and that I have been blinded, and cozened, and hood- 
 winked by two that I kept from the workhouse, and treated as well 
 as I treated myself. That's what I have found out, gipsy." 
 
 "Well?" was all Madge said, standing before him with her 
 arms folded. 
 
 "Sol say," said Hawker; "it is very well. The mother to 
 the streets, and the boy to the gallows." 
 
 " You wouldn't prosecute him, WiUiam ; your own son ? " 
 
 " No, I shan't," he replied ;— " but the Bank wiU." 
 
 " And couldn't you stop it ? " 
 
 " I could. But if holding up my little finger would save him, 
 I wouldn't do it." 
 
 "Oh, William," she cried, throwing herself on her knees; 
 " don't look like that. I confess everything ; visit it on me, but 
 spare that boy." 
 
 " You confess, do you ? " he said. " Get up. Get out of my 
 house ; you shan't stay here." 
 
 But she would not go, but hanging round him, kept saying, 
 " Spare the boy, William, spare the boy ! " over and again, till 
 he struck her in his fury, and fulled her towards the door. 
 
 " Get out and herd with the gipsies you belong to," he said. 
 " You witch, you can't cry now." 
 
GEOPFRY HAMIiTN. 107 
 
 " But," she moaned, " oh, not such a night as this, William ; 
 not to-night. I am frightened of the stonn. Let me stay to- 
 night. I am frightened of the lightning. Oh, I wouldn't turn 
 out your dog sueh a night as this." 
 
 " Out, out, you devil ! " 
 
 " Oh, William^ only one—" 
 
 " Out, you Jezebel, before I do you a mischief." 
 
 He had got the heavy door open, and she passed out, moaning 
 low to herself. Out into the fierce rain and the black darkness ; 
 and the old man held open the door for a minute, to see if she 
 were gone. 
 
 No. A broad, flickering riband of hght ineffable wavered for 
 an instant of time before his eyes, lighting up the country far and 
 wide ; but plainly visible between him and the blaze was a tall, 
 dark, bare-headed woman, wildly raising her hands above her 
 head, as if imploring vengeance upon him, and, ere the terrible 
 explosion which followed had ceased to shake the old house to its 
 foundations, he shut the door, and went muttering alone up to 
 his solitary chamber. 
 
 The next morning the groom came into the lawyer's room, and 
 informed him that when he went to call his master in the morning, 
 he had found the bed untouched, and Hawker sitting half un- 
 dressed in his arm-chair, dead and cold 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE major's visit TO THE " NAG's-HEAD." 
 
 Major Buckley and his wife stood together in the verandah of 
 their cottage, watching the storm. All the afternoon they had 
 seen it creeping higher and higher, blacker and more threatening 
 up the eastern heavens, until it grew painful to wait any longer 
 for its approach. But now that it had burst on them, and night 
 had come on dark as pitch, they felt the pleasant change in the 
 atmosphere, and, in spite of the continuous gleam of the lightning, 
 and the eternal roll and crackle of the thunder, they had come out 
 to see the beauty and majesty of the tempest. 
 
 They stood with their arms entwined for some time, in silence ; 
 but after a crash louder than any of those which had preceded it. 
 Major Buckley said : — 
 
108 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " My dearest Agnes, you are very courageous in a thunder- 
 storm." 
 
 " Why not, James ? " she said ; "you cannot avoid the light- 
 ning, and the thunder won't harm you. Most women fear the 
 sound of the thunder more than anything, but I suspect that 
 Ciudad Kodrigo made more noise than this, husband ? " 
 
 " It did indeed, my dear. More noise than I ever heard in any 
 storm yet. It is coming nearer." 
 
 " I am afraid it will shake the poor Vicar very much," said Mrs. 
 Buckley. " Ah, there is Sam crying." 
 
 They both went into the sitting-room ; little Sam had petitioned 
 to go to bed on the sofa till the storm was over, and now, 
 awakened by the thunder, was sitting up in his bed, crying out for 
 his mother. 
 
 The Major went in and lay down by the child on the sofa, to 
 quiet him. " What ! " said he, " Sammy, you're not afraid of 
 thunder, are you ? " 
 
 "Yes! I am," said the child; "very much indeed. I am 
 glad you are come, father." 
 
 " Lightning never strikes good boys, Sam," said the Major. 
 
 " Are you sure of that, father ? " said the little one. 
 
 That was a poser ; so the Major thought it best to counterfeit 
 sleep ; but he overdid it, and snored so loud, that the boy began 
 to laugh, and his father had to practise his deception with less 
 noise. And by degrees, the little hand that held his moustache 
 dropped feebly on the bedclothes, and the Major, ascertaining by 
 the child's regular breathing that his son was asleep, gently raised 
 his vast length, and proposed to his wife to come into the verandah 
 again. 
 
 " The storm is breaking, my love," said he ; " and the air is 
 deliciously cool out there. Put your shawl on and come out." 
 
 They went out again ; the lightning was still vivid, but the 
 thunder less loud. Straight down the garden from them 
 stretched a broad gravel walk, which now, cut up by the rain into 
 a hundred water channels, showed at each flash like rivers of 
 glittering silver. Looking down this path toward the black wood 
 during one of the longest continued illuminations of the lightning, 
 they saw for an instant a dark, tall figure, apparently advancing 
 towards them. Then all the prospect was wrapped again in ten- 
 fold gloom. 
 
 Mrs. Buckley uttered an exclamation, and held tighter to her 
 husband's arm. Every time the garden was lit up, they saw the 
 figure nearer and nearer, till they knew that it was standing 
 before them in the darkness ; the Major was about to speak, when 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 109 
 
 a hoarse voice, heard indistinctly above the rushing of the rain, 
 demanded : 
 
 " Is that Major Buckley ? " 
 
 At the same minute the stonn-hght blazed up once more, and 
 fell upon an object so fearful and startling that they both fell back 
 amazed. A woman was standing before them, tail, upright, and 
 bareheaded ; her long black hair falling over a face as white and 
 ghastly as a three days' corpse ; her wild countenance rendered 
 more terrible by the blue glare of the lightning shining on the 
 rain that streamed from every lock of her hair and every shred of 
 her garments. She looked like some wild daughter of the 
 storm, who had lost her way, and came wandering to them for 
 shelter. 
 
 "I am Major Buckley," was the answer. "What do you 
 want ? But in God's name come in out of the rain." 
 
 " Come in and get your things dried, my good woman," said 
 Mrs. Bucldey. " What do you want with my husband such a 
 night as this ? " 
 
 " Before I dry my things, or come in, I will state my business," 
 said the woman, coming under the verandah. " After that I will 
 accept your hospitality. This is a night when polecats and rabbits 
 would shelter together in peace ; and yet such a night as this, a 
 man turns out of his house the woman who has lain beside him 
 twenty years." 
 
 " Who are you, my good soul ? " said the Major. 
 
 " They call me Madge the Witch," she said ; "I lived with 
 old Hawker, at the Woodlands, till to-night, and he has turned me 
 out. I want to put you in possession of some intelligence that 
 may save much misery to some that you love." 
 
 " I can readily believe that you can do it," said the Major, " hut 
 pray don't stand there ; come in with my wife, and get your things 
 diied." 
 
 " Wait till you hear what I have to say : George Hawker, my 
 son—" 
 
 " Your son — good God I " 
 
 " I thought you would have known that. The Vicar does. 
 Well, this son of mine has run off with the Vicar's daughter." 
 
 "WeU?" 
 
 " WeU, he has committed forgery. It'll be known all over the 
 country to-morrow, and even now I fear the runners are after him. 
 If he is taken before he marries that girl, things will be only worse 
 than they are. But never mind whether he does or not, perhaps 
 you differ with me ; perhaps you think that, if you could find the 
 girl now, you could stop her and bring her home ; but you don't 
 
110 THE EBCOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 know where she is. I do, and if you will give me your solemn 
 word of honour as a gentleman to give him warning that his 
 forgery for five hundred pounds is discovered, I will give you his 
 direction." 
 
 The Major hesitated for a moment, thinking. 
 
 " If you reflect a moment, you must see how straightforward 
 my story is. What possible cause can I have to mislead you ? I 
 know which way you wiU decide, so I wait patiently." 
 
 " I think I ought to say yes, my love," said the Major to his 
 wife ; " if it turned out aftei-wards that I neglected any opportunity 
 of saving this poor girl (particularly if this tale of the forgery be 
 true), I should never forgive myself." 
 
 " I agree with you, my dear," said Mrs. Buckley. " Give your 
 promise, and go to seek her." 
 
 " Well, then," said the Major ; "I give you my word of 
 honour that I wiU give Hawker due warning of his forgery being 
 discovered, if you will give me his direction. I anticipate that 
 they are in London, and I shall start to-night, to be in time for 
 the morning coach. Now, will you give me the address ? " 
 
 "Yes ! " said Madge. " They are at the Nag's Head, Buck- 
 ingham StreetT'Strand, London ; can you remember that ? " 
 
 " I know where the street is," said the Major ; " now will you 
 go into the kitchen, and make youi:self comfortable ? My dear, 
 you will see my valise packed ? Ellen, get this person's clothes 
 dried, and get her some hot wine. By-the-bye," said he, 
 following her into the kitchen, " you must have had a terrible 
 quarrel with Hawker, for him to send you out such a night as 
 this ? " 
 
 " It was about this matter," she said : " the boy forged on his 
 father, and I knew it, and tried to screen him. My own son, you 
 know." 
 
 "It was natural enough," said the Major. "You are not 
 deceiving me, are you ? I don't see why you should, though." 
 
 " Before God, I am not. I only want the boy to get warning." 
 
 " You must sleep here to-night," said the Major; "and to- 
 morrow you can go on your way, though, if you cannot conveniently 
 get away in the morning, don't hurry, you know. My house is 
 never shut against unfortunate people. I have heard a great deal 
 of you, but I never saw you before ; you must be aware, however, 
 that the character you have held in the place is not such as 
 warrants me in asking you to stay hore for any time." 
 
 The Major left the kitchen, and crossed the yard. In a bed- 
 room above the stable slept his groom, a man who had been 
 through his campaigns with him from first to last. It was to 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. Ill 
 
 waken him that the Major took his way up the naiTOw stairs to- 
 wards the loft. 
 
 " Jim," he said, " I want my horse in an hour." 
 
 The man was out of bed in a moment, and while he was dressing, 
 the Major continued : — 
 
 " You know Buckingham Street, Strand, Jim, don't you ? When 
 you were recruiting you used to hang out at a public-house there, 
 unless I am mistaken." 
 
 " Exactly so, sir ! We did ; and a many good chaps we picked 
 up there, gents and all sorts. Why, it was in that werry place. 
 Major, as we 'listed Lundon ; him as was afterwards made ser- 
 geant for being the first man into Subastian, and arterwards 
 married Skettles : her as fell out of eighteen stories at Brussels 
 looking after the Duke, and she swore at them as came to pick 
 her up, she did ; and walked in at the front door as bold as 
 brass." 
 
 " There, my good lad," said the Major ; "what's the good of 
 telling such stories as that ? Nobody believes them, you know. 
 Do you know the Nag's Head there ? It's a terribly low place, is 
 it not?" 
 
 " It's a much changed if it ain't, sir," said Jim, putting on his 
 breeches. " I was in there not eighteen months since. It's a 
 fighting-house ; and there used to be a dog show there, and a 
 reunion of vocal talent, and all sorts of viUanies." 
 
 " Well, see to the horse, Jim, and I'll sing out when I'm 
 ready," said the Major, and went back into the house. 
 
 He came back through the kitchen, and saw that Madge was 
 being treated by the maids with that respect that a reputed witch 
 never faUs to command ; then, having sat for some time talking 
 to his wife, and finding that the storm was cleared off, he kissed 
 his sleeping child and its mother, and mounting his horse in the 
 stable-yard, rode off towards Exeter. 
 
 In the morning, when Mrs. Buckley came down stairs, she 
 inquired for Madge. They told her she had been up some time, 
 and, having got some breakfast, was walking up and down in 
 front of the house. Going there, Mrs. Buckley found her. Her 
 dress was re-arranged with picturesque neatness, and a red 
 handkerchief pinned over her rich dark hair, that last night had 
 streamed wild and wet in the tempest. Altogether, she looked an 
 utterly different being firom the strange, storm-beaten creature 
 who had craved their hospitality the night before. Mrs. Buckley 
 admired the bold, upright, handsome figure before her, and gave 
 her a cheery " good morning." 
 
 "I only stayed," said Madge, "to wish you good-bye, and thank 
 
112 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 you for your kindness. When they who should have had some pity 
 on me turned me out, you took me in ! " 
 
 " You are heartily welcome," said Mrs. Buckley. " Cannot I 
 do more for you ? Do you want money ? I fear you must ! " 
 
 " None, I thank you kindly," she replied ; " that would break 
 the spell. Good-hye ! " 
 
 " Good-bye ! " said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 Madge stood in front of the door and raised her hand. 
 
 " The blessing of God," she said, " shall be upon the house of 
 the Buckleys, and more especially upon you and your husband, 
 and the boy that is sleeping inside. He shall be a brave and a 
 good man, and his wife shall be the fairest and best in the country 
 side. Your kine shall cover the plains until no man can number 
 them, and your sheep shall be like the sands of the sea. When 
 misfortune and death and murder faJl upon your neighbours, you 
 shall stand between the dead and the living, and the troubles that 
 pass over your heads shall be like the shadow of the light clouds 
 that fly across the moor on a suimy day. And when in your ripe 
 and honoured old age you shall sit with your husband, in a garden 
 of your own planting, in the lands far away, and see your grand- 
 children playing around you, you shall think of the words of the 
 wild, lost gipsy woman, who gave you her best blessing before she 
 went away and was seen no more." 
 
 Mrs. Buckley tried to say "Amen," but found herself crying. 
 Something there was in that poor creature, homeless, penniless, 
 friendless, that made her heart like wax. She watched her as 
 she strode down the path, and afterwards looked for her re- 
 appearing on a high exposed part of the road, a quarter of a mUe 
 off, thinking she would take that way. But she waited long, and 
 never again saw that stem, tall figure, save in her dreams. 
 
 She turned at last, and one of the maids stood beside her. 
 
 " Oh, missis," she said, " you're a lucky woman to-day. 
 There's some in this parish would have paid a hundred pounds 
 for such a fortune as that from her. It'll come true, — you will 
 see ! " 
 
 " I hope it may, you silly girl," said Mrs. Buckley ; and then 
 she went in and knelt beside her sleeping boy, and prayed that 
 the blessing of the gipsy woman might be fulfilled. 
 
 ****** 
 
 It was quite late on the evening of his second day's jom-ney that 
 the Major, occupying the box-seat of the " Extenninator," dashed 
 with comet-like speed through so much of the pomps and vanities 
 of this wicked world as showed itself in Piccadilly at half-past 
 B3veu on a spring afternoon. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 113 
 
 "Hah!" he sohloquised, passing Hyde-park Comer, "these 
 should he the folks going out to dinner. They dine later and 
 later every year. At this rate they'll dine at half-past one in 
 twenty years' time. That's the Duke's new house ; eh, coach- 
 man ? By George, there's his Grace himself, on his hrown cob ; 
 God bless him ! There are a pair of good-stepping horses, and 
 
 old Lady E behind 'em, by Jove ! — in her war-paint and 
 
 feathers — pinker than ever. She hasn't got tired of it yet. 
 She'd dance at her own funeral if she could. And there's Charley 
 Bridgenorth in the club balcony — I wonder what he finds to do in 
 
 peace time ? — and old B talking to him. What does Charley 
 
 mean by letting himself be seen in the same balcony with that 
 disreputable old fellow? I hope he won't get his morals cor- 
 rupted ! Ah ! So here we are ! eh ? " 
 
 He dismounted at the White Horse Cellar, and took a hasty 
 dinner. His great object was speed ; and so he hardly allowed 
 himself ten minutes to finish his pint of port before he started 
 into the street, to pursue the errand on which he had come. 
 
 It was nearly nine o'clock, and he thought he would be able to 
 reach his destination in ten minutes. But it was otherwise 
 ordered. His evil genius took him down St. James's Street. He 
 tried to persuade himself that it was the shortest way, though he 
 knew aU the time that it wasn't. And so he was punished in this 
 way : he had got no further than Crockford's, when, in the glare 
 of light opposite the door of that establishment, he saw three 
 men standing, one of whom was talking and laughing in a tone 
 perhaps a little louder than it is customary to use in the streets 
 nowadays. Buckley knew that voice well (better, perhaps, among 
 the crackle of musketry than in the streets of London), and, as 
 the broad-shouldered owner of it turned his jolly, handsome face 
 towards him, he could not suppress a low laugh of satisfaction. 
 At the same moment the before-mentioned man recognised him, 
 and shouted out his name. 
 
 " Busaco Buckley, by the Lord," he said, "revisiting once more 
 the glimpses of the gas lamps ! My dear old fellow, how are you, 
 and where do you come from ? " 
 
 The Major found himself quickly placed under a lamp for in- 
 spection, and surrounded by three old and well-beloved fellow- 
 campaigners. What could a man do under the circumstances ? 
 Nothing, if human and infallible, I should say, but what 
 the Major did — stay there, laughing and joking, and talking 
 of old times, and freshen up his honest heart, and shake his 
 honest sides with many an old half-forgotten tale of fiin and 
 mischief. 
 
 9 
 
X14 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 " Now," he said at last, " you must let me go. You Barton 
 (to the first man he recognised), you are a married man; what 
 are you doing at Crockford's ? " 
 
 " The same as you are," said the other, — " standing outside 
 the door. The pavement's free, I suppose. I haven't been in 
 such a place these five years. Where are you staying, old boy ? " 
 
 The Major told them, and they agreed to meet at breakfast next 
 morning. Then, after many farewells, and callings back, he pur- 
 sued his way towards the Strand, finding to his disgust that it was 
 nearly ten o'clock. 
 
 He, nevertheless, held on his way undiscouraged, and turning 
 by degrees into narrower and narrower streets, came at last on 
 one quieter than the others, which ended abruptly at the river. 
 
 It was a quiet street, save at one point, and that was where a 
 blaze of gas (then recently introduced, and a great object of curio- 
 sity to the Major) was thrown across the street, from the broad 
 ornamented windows of a flash public-house. Here there was 
 noise enough. Two men fighting, and three or four more en- 
 couraging, while a half-drunken woman tried to separate them. 
 From the inside, too, came a noise of singing, quarrelling, and 
 swearing, such as made the Major cross the road, and take his 
 way on the darker side of the street. 
 
 But when he got opposite the aforesaid public-house, he saw 
 that it was called the " Nag's Head," and that it was kept by one 
 J. Trotter. "What an awful place to take that girl to !" said the 
 Major. " But there may be some private entrance, and a quiet 
 part of the house set by for a hotel." Nevertheless, having looked 
 well about him, he could see nothing of the sort, and perceived 
 that he must storm the bar. 
 
 But he stood irresolute for a moment. It looked such a very 
 low place, clean and handsome enough, but still the company 
 about the door looked so very disreputable. " J. Trotter! " he 
 reflected. " Why, that must be Trotter the fighting-man. I 
 hope it may be ; he wUl remember me." 
 
 So he crossed. When he came within the sphere of the gas 
 lamps, those who were assisting at the fight grew silent, and 
 gazed upon him with open eyes. As he reached the door one of 
 them remarked, with a little flourish of oaths as a margin or gar- 
 land round his remark, that "of all the swells he'd ever seen, 
 that 'un was the biggest, at all events." 
 
 Similarly, when they in the bar saw that giant form, the blue 
 coat and brass buttons, and, above all, the moustache (sure sign 
 of a military man in thos^days), conversation ceased, and the 
 Major then and there became the event of the evening. He 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 115 
 
 looked round as he came in, and, through a door leading inwards, 
 he saw George Hawker himself, standing talking to a man with a 
 dog under each arm. 
 
 The Major was not deceived as to the identity of J. Trotter. 
 J. Trotter, the hero of a hundred fights, stood himselT hehind his 
 own har, a spectacle for the gods. A chest like a bull, a red 
 neck, straight up and down with the back of his head, and a fist 
 like a seal's flipper, proclaimed him the prize-fighter ; and his 
 bright grey eye, and ugly laughing face, proclaimed him the merry, 
 good-humoured varlet that he was. 
 
 What a wild state of amazement he was in when he realised 
 the fact that Major Buckley of the — th was actually towering 
 aloft under the chandelier, and looking round for some one to 
 address ! With what elephantine politeness and respect did he 
 show the Major into a private parlour, sweeping off at one round 
 nearly a dozen pint-pots that covered the table, and then, shutting 
 the door, stand bowing and smiling before his old pupU ! 
 
 " And so you are gone into business, John, are you ? " said the 
 Major. " I'm glad to see it. I hope you are doing as well as 
 you deserve." 
 
 " Much better than that," said the prize-fighter. " Much 
 better than i/iai,. sir, I assure you." 
 
 " Well, I'm going to get you to do something for me," said 
 the Major. " Do you know, John, that you are terribly f at ? " 
 
 " The business alius does make flesh, sir. More especially 
 to coves as has trained much." 
 
 " Yes, yes, John, I am going from the point. There is a 
 young man of the name of Hawker here ? " 
 
 The prize-fightec remained silent, but a grin gathered on his 
 face. "I never contradicts a gentleman," he said. "And if 
 you say he's here, why, in course, he is here. But I don't say 
 he's here ; you mind that, sir." 
 
 " My good fellow, I saw him as I came in," said the Major. 
 
 "Oh, indeed," said the other; "then that absolves me fi-om any 
 responsibihty. He told me to deny him to everybody but one, 
 and you ain't she. He spends a deal of money with me, sir ; so, 
 in course, I don't want to ofiend him. By-fhe-bye, sir, excuse 
 me for a moment.'' 
 
 The Major saw that he had got hold of the right man, and 
 waited willingly. The fighting-man went to the door, and called 
 out, " My dear." A tall, good-looking woman came to the bar, 
 who made a low curtsey on being presented to the Major. " My 
 dear," repeated Trotter, " the south side." " The particular, 
 J suppose," she said. " In course," s^id he, 8o she soon ap- 
 
116 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 peared with a bottle of Madeira, which was of such quality that 
 the Major, having tasted it, winked at the prize-fighter, and the 
 latter laughed, and rubbed his hands. 
 
 " Now," said the Major, " do you mind telling me whether this 
 Hawker is here alone ? " 
 
 "He don't live here. He only comes here of a day, and 
 sometimes stays till late. This evening a pretty young lady — yes, 
 a lady — come and inquired for him in my bar, and I was struck 
 all of a heap to see such a creature in such a place, all frightened 
 out of her wits. So I showed her through in a minute, and 
 up stairs to where my wife sits, and she waited there till he come 
 in. And she hadn't been gone ten minutes when you come." 
 
 The Major swore aloud, without equivocation or disguise. 
 " Ah," he said, " if I had not met Barton I Pray, Trotter, have 
 you any idea where Hawker lives ? " 
 
 ^ " Not the least in the world, further than it's somewhere 
 Hampstead way. That's a thing he evidently don't want 
 known." 
 
 " Do you think it likely that he and that young lady live in the 
 same house ? I need not disguise from you that I am come after 
 her, to endeavour to get her back to her family." 
 
 " I know they don't live in the same house," said Trotter, 
 "because I heard her say to-night, before she went away, 'Do 
 look round, George,' she says, ' at my house for ten minutes, 
 before you go home.' " 
 
 " You have done me a great kindness," said the Major, " in 
 what you have told me. I don't know how to thank you." 
 
 " It's only one," said the prize-fighter, " in return for a many 
 you done me ; and you are welcome to it, sir. Now, I expect 
 you'd like to see this young gent ; so foUow me if you please." 
 
 Through many passages, past many doors, he followed him, 
 \until they left the noise of the revelry behind, and at last, at the 
 lend of a long dark passage, the prize-fighter suddenly threw open 
 a door, and announced — "Major Buckley ! " 
 
 There were four men playing at cards, and the one opposite to 
 him was George Hawker. The Major saw at a glance, almost 
 before any one had time to speak, that George was losing money, 
 and that the other three were confederates. 
 
 The prize-fighter went up , to the table and seized the cards ; 
 then, after a momentary examination, threw both packs in the 
 fire. 
 
 " When gents play cards in my house, I expect them to use the 
 cards I provides at tiie bar, and not private packs, whether marked 
 or not. Mr. Hawker, I warned you before about this ; you'll lose 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 117 
 
 every sixpence you're worth, and then you will say it was done at 
 my house, quite forgetting to mention that I warned you of it 
 repeatedly." 
 
 But George took no notice of him. " EeaUy, Major Buckley," 
 he hegan, " this is rather — " 
 
 " Rather an intrusion, you would say — eh, Mr. Hawker ? " 
 said the Major ; " so it is, but the urgency of my business must 
 be my apology. Can you give me a few words alone ? " 
 
 George rose and came out with them. The prize-fighter 
 showed them into another room, and the Major asked him to 
 stand in the passage, and see that no one was listening ; " you 
 see, John," he added, "we are very anxious not to be over- 
 heard." 
 
 " I am not at all particular myself," said George Hawker. "I 
 have nothing to conceal." 
 
 " You will alter your mind before I have done, sir," said the 
 Major. 
 
 George didn't like the look of affairs. — How came it that the 
 Major and the prize-fighter knew one another so well ? What did 
 the former mean by aU this secrecy ? He determined to put a 
 bold face on the matter. 
 
 " Miss Thornton is living with you, sir, I believe ? " began the 
 Major. 
 
 " Not at all, sir ; Miss Thornton is in lodgings of her own. I 
 have the privilege of seeing her for a few hours every day. In 
 fact, I may go as far as to say that I am engaged to be married 
 to her, and that that auspicious event is to come off on Thursday 
 week." 
 
 ' ' May I ask you to favour me with her direction ? ' ' said the Major. 
 
 " I am sorry to disoblige you, Major Buckley, but I must reaUy 
 decline," answered George. "I am not unaware how disinclined 
 her family are to the connexion ; and, as I cannot but believe that 
 you come on their behalf, I cannot think that an interview would 
 be anything but prejudicial to my interest. I must remind you, 
 too, that Miss Thornton is of age, and her own mistress in every 
 way." 
 
 While George had been speaking, it passed through the 
 Major's mind : " What a checkmate it would be, if I were to 
 withhold the information I have, and set the runners on him, here ! 
 I might save the girl, and further the ends of justice ; but my 
 hands are tied by the promise I gave that woman, — how un- 
 fortunate I " 
 
 " Then, Mr. Hawker," he said aloud, "I am to understand 
 that you refuse me this address ? " 
 
118 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " I am necessitated to refuse it most positively, sir." 
 
 " I am sorry for it. I leave it to your conscience. Hiiow, I 
 have got a piece of intelligence to give you, which I fear will he 
 somewhat unpalatable — I got your address at this place from a 
 woman of the name of Madge — " 
 
 " You did 1 " exclaimed-Creorge. 
 
 " Who was turned out of doors by your father, the night before 
 last, in consequence, I understood, of some misdeeds of hers 
 having come to light. She came immediately to my house, and 
 offered to give me your direction, on condition of my passing my 
 word of honour to deliver you this message : ' that the forgery 
 (£500 was the sum mentioned, I think) was discovered, and that 
 the Bank was going to prosecute.' I of course form no judgment 
 as to the truth or falsehood of this : I leave you to take your own 
 measures about it — only I once again ask you whether you will 
 give me an interview with Miss Thornton ? " 
 
 George had courage enough left to say hoarsely and firmly, 
 "No!" 
 
 " Then," replied the Major, " I must call you to witness that I 
 have performed my errand to you faithfully. I beg, also, that you 
 will carry all our kindest remembrances to Miss Thornton, and tell 
 her that her poor father was struck with paralysis when he missed 
 her, and that he is not expected to live many weeks. And I wish 
 you good night." 
 
 He passed out, and down the stairs ; as he passed the public 
 parlour-door, he heard a man bawling out a song, two or three 
 lines of which he heard, and which made him blush to the tips of 
 his ears, old soldier as he was. 
 
 As he walked up the street, he soliloquised : "A pretty mess 
 I've made of it — done him all the service I could, and not helped 
 her a bit — I see there is no chance of seeing her, though I shall 
 try. I will go round Hampstead to-morrow, though that is a poor 
 chance. In Paris, now, or Vienna, one could find her directly. 
 What a pity we have no police ! " 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 THE BRIGHTON EAOES, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEBEAT. 
 
 George Hawker just waited till he heard the retiring footsteps 
 of the Major, and then, leaving the house, held his way rapidly 
 towards Mary's lodgings, which were in Hampstead ; but finding 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 119 
 
 he would be too late to gain admittance, altered his course when 
 he was close to the house, and went to his own house, which was 
 not more than a few hundred yards distant. In the morning he 
 went tftjier, and she ran down the garden to meet him before the 
 servant had time to open the door, looking so pretty and bright. 
 " Ah, George I " said she, "you never came last night, after all 
 your promises. I shall be glad when it's all over, George, and we 
 are together for good." 
 
 "It won't be long first, my dear," he answered; "we must 
 manage to get through that time as well as we can, and then 
 we'H begin to sound the old folks. You see I am come to 
 breakfast." 
 
 " I expected you," she said ; " come in and we will have such 
 a pleasant chat, and after that you must take me down the town, 
 George, and we wiU see the carriages." 
 
 " Now, my love," said George ; " I've got to tell you something 
 that will vex you ; but you must not be down-hearted about it, 
 you know. The fact is, that your friends, as they call themselves, 
 moving heaven and earth to get you back, by getting me out of 
 the way, have hit on the expedient of spreading false reports 
 about me, and issuing scandals against me. They found out my 
 address at the Nag's Head, and came there after me not half an 
 hour after you were gone, and I only got out of their way by good 
 luck. You ought to give me credit for not giving any living soul 
 the secret of our whereabouts, so that all I have got to do is to 
 keep quiet here until our little business is settled, and then 
 I shall be able to face them boldly again, and set everything 
 straight." 
 
 " How cruel ! " she said ; "how unjust ! I wiU never believe 
 anything against you, George." 
 
 " I am sure of that, my darling ; " he said, kissing her. " But 
 now, there is another matter I must speak about, though I don't 
 like to, — I am getting short of money, love." 
 
 "I have got nearly a hundred pounds, George," she said; 
 " and, as I told you, I have five thousand pounds in the funds, 
 which I can sell out at any time I hke." 
 
 " We shall do well, then, my PoUy. Now let us go for a 
 walk." 
 
 All that week George stayed with her quietly, till the time of 
 residence necessary before they could be married was expired. 
 He knew that he was treading on a mine, which at any time 
 might burst and blow his clumsy schemes to the wind. But 
 circumstances were in his favour, and the time came to an end at 
 last. He di-ank hard all the time without letting Mary suspect it. 
 
120 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 but afterwards, when it was all over, wondered at his nerve and 
 self-possession through all those trying days, when he was forced 
 eternally to have a smile or a laugh ready, and could not hear a 
 step behind him without thinking of an officer, or look bver his 
 head without thinking he saw a gallows in the air. 
 
 It was during this time that he nursed in his heart a feeling of 
 desperate hatred and revenge against WiUiam Lee, which almost 
 became the leading passion of his life. He saw, or thought he 
 saw, that this man was the author of all the troubles that were 
 gathering so thick around his head, and vowed, if chance threw 
 the man in his way again, that he would take ample and fearful 
 vengeance, let it cost what it might. And though this feeling 
 may have sometimes grown cold, yet he never (as we shall see), 
 to the last day forgot or forgave the injuries this man had done 
 him. 
 
 Mary was as innocent of business as a chUd, and George found 
 little difficulty in persuading her, that the best thing she could do 
 under present circumstances, was to sell out the money she had 
 in the funds, and place it in a bank, to be drawn on as occasion 
 should require ; saying that they should be so long perhaps, before 
 they had any other fund to depend on, that they might find it 
 necessary to undertake some business for a living, in which case, 
 it would be as well to have their money under command at a 
 moment's notice. 
 
 There was, not far from the bank, an old Stock-broker, who 
 had known her father and herself for many years, and was well 
 acquainted with all their affairs, though they had but little inter- 
 course by letter. To him she repaired, and, merely informing 
 him that she was going to marry without her father's consent, 
 begged him to manage the business for her ; which he, compli- 
 menting her upon her good fortune in choosing a time when the 
 funds were so high, immediately undertook ; at the same time 
 recommended her to a banker, where she might open an account. 
 
 On the same day that this business was concluded, a licence 
 was procured, and their wedding fixed for the next day. " Now," 
 thought George, as he leapt into bed on that night, " let only 
 to-morrow get over safely, and I can begin to see my way out of 
 the wood again." 
 
 And in the morning they were married in Hampstead church. 
 Parson, clerk, pew-opener, and beadle, aU remarked what a hand- 
 some young couple they were, and how happy they ought to be ; 
 and the parson departed, and the beadle shut up the church, and 
 the mice came out again, and ate the Bibles, and the happy pair 
 walked away down the road, bound together by a strong chain. 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 121 
 
 which nothing could loose hut death. They went to Brighton. 
 Mary had said she would so like to see the sea ; and the morning 
 after they arrived there — the morning after their wedding — Mary 
 wrote an affectionate penitential letter to her father, telling him 
 that she was married, and praying his forgiveness. 
 
 They were quite gay at Brighton, and she recovered her spirits 
 wonderfully at first. George soon made acquaintances, who soon 
 got very familiar, after the manner of their kind, — greasy, tawdry, 
 bedizened bucks, — never asleep, always proposing a game of cards, 
 always carrying off her husband. Mary hated them, while she was 
 at times proud to see her husband in such fine company. 
 
 Such were the eagles that gathered round the carcass of George 
 Hawker ; and at last these eagles began to bring the hen-birds 
 with them, who frightened our poor little dove with the amplitude 
 and splendour of their feathers, and their harsh, strange notes. 
 George knew the character of those women well enough ; but 
 already he cared little enough about his wife, even before they had 
 been a month married, going on the principle that the sooner she 
 learned to take care of herself, the better for her ; and after they 
 had been manied little more than a month, Mary thought she 
 began to see a change in her husband's behaviour to her. 
 
 He grew sullen and morose, even to her. Every day almost he 
 would come to her with a scowl upon his face ; and when she 
 asked if he was angry with her, would say, " No, that he wasn't 
 angry with her ; but that things were going wrong — altogether 
 wrong ; and if they didn't mend, he couldn't see his way out of it 
 at all." 
 
 But one night he came home cheerful and hilarious, though 
 rather the worse for liquor. He showed her a roll of notes which 
 he had won at roulette — over a hundred pounds — and added, 
 " That shall be the game for me in future, Polly ; all square and 
 above board there." 
 
 " My dear George, I wish you'd give up gambling." 
 
 " So I will, some of these fine days, my dear. I only do it to 
 pass the time. It's cursed dull having nothing to do." 
 
 " To-morrow is the great day at the races, George. I wish you 
 would take me ; I never saw a horse-race." 
 
 " Ay, to he sure," said he ; " we'U go, and, what's more, we'll 
 go alone. I won't have you seen in public with those dowdy 
 drabs." 
 
 So they went alone. Such a glorious day as it was — the last 
 happy day she spent for very long ! How delightful it was, all 
 this rush and crush, and shouting and hubbub around, wliUe you 
 were seated in a phaeton, secm-e above the turmoil ! What delight 
 
122 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to see all the beautiful women in the carriages, and, grandest sight 
 of aU, which struck awe and admiration into Mary's heart, was the 
 great Prince himself, that noble gentleman, in a gutter-sided hat, 
 and a wig so fearfully natural that Mary secretly longed to puU his 
 hair. 
 
 But princes and duchesses were alike forgotten when the course 
 was cleared for the great event of the day, and, one by one, the 
 sleek beauties came floating along, above the crowd, towards the 
 starting-post. Then George, leaving Mary in the phaeton to the 
 care of their landlady, pushed his way among the crowd, and, by 
 dint of hard squeezing, got against the rail. He had never seen 
 such horses as these ; he had never known what first-class horse- 
 racing was. Here was a new passion for him, which, hke all his 
 others, should only by its perversion end in his ruin. 
 
 He had got some money on one of the horses, though he, of 
 course, had never seen it. There was a cheer all along the line, 
 and a dark bay fled past towards the starting-post, seeming rather 
 to belong to the air than the ground. " By George," he said, 
 aloud, as the blood mounted to his face, and tingled in his ears, 
 " I never saw such a sight as that before." 
 
 He was ashamed of having spoken aloud in his excitement, but 
 a groom who stood by said, for his consolation, — 
 
 " I don't suppose you ever did, sir, nor no man else. That's 
 young Velocipede, and that's Chiffhey a-ridin' him. You'll see 
 that horse walk over for everything next year." 
 
 But now the horses come down, five of them abreast, at a walk, 
 amid a dead silence from the crowd, three of them steady old 
 stagers, but two jumping and pulling. " Back, Velocipede ; back, 
 Lara ! " says the starter ; down goes the flag, they dart away, and 
 then there is a low hum of conversation, until a murmur is heard 
 down the course, which swells into a roar as you notice it. The 
 horses are coming. One of the royal huntsmen gallops by, and 
 then, as the noise comes up towards you, you can hear the mad- 
 dening rush of the horses' feet upon the turf, and, at the same 
 time, a bay and a chestnut rush past in the last fierce struggle, 
 and no man knows yet who has won. 
 
 Then the crowd poured once more over the turf, and surged 
 and cheered round the winning horses. Soon it came out that 
 Velocipede had won, and George, turning round delighted, stood 
 face to face with a gipsy woman. 
 
 She had her hood low on her head, so that he could not see her 
 face, but she said, in a low voice, " Let me tell your fortune." 
 
 "It is told already, mother," said George. "Velocipede has 
 won ; you won't tell me any better news than that this day, I know." 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 123 
 
 " No, George Hawker, I shan't," replied the gipsy, and, raising 
 her hood for an instant, she discovered to his utter amazement the 
 familiar countenance of Madge. 
 
 " Will you let me tell your fortune now, my boy ? " she said. 
 
 " What, Madge, old girl ! By Jove, you shall. Well, who'd 
 a' thought of seeing you here ? " 
 
 "I've been following you, and looking for you ever so long," 
 she said. " They at the Nag's Head didn't know where you were 
 gone, and if I hadn't been a gipsy, and o' good family, I'd never 
 have found you." 
 
 "You're a good old woman," he said. "I suppose you've 
 some news for me ? " 
 
 " I have," she answered ; " come away after me." 
 
 He followed her into a booth, and they sat down. She began 
 the conversation. 
 
 " Are you married ? " she asked. 
 
 " Ay ; a month since." 
 
 " And you've got her money ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " but I've been walking into it." 
 
 " Make the most of it," said Madge. " Your father's dead." 
 
 "Dead!" 
 
 " Ay, dead. And what's worse, lad, he lived long enough to 
 alter his will." 
 
 " Oh, Lord 1 What do you mean ? " 
 
 "I mean," she said, "that he has left all his money to your 
 cousin. He found out everything, all in a minute, as it were ; 
 and he brought a new will home from Exeter, and I witnessed it. 
 And he turned me out of doors, and, next morning, after I was 
 gone, he was found dead in his bed. I got to London, and found 
 no trace of you there, till, by an accident, I heard that you had 
 been seen down here, so I came on. I've got my living by casting 
 fortius, and begging, and cadging, and such like. Sometimes I've 
 slept in a bam, and sometimes in a hedge, hut I've fought my way 
 to you, true and faithful, through it all, you see." 
 
 " So he's gone," said George, between his teeth, " and his 
 money with him. That's awful. What an unnatural old villain ! " 
 
 " He got it into his head at last, George, that you weren't his 
 son at all." 
 
 " The lunatic ! — and what put that into his head ? " 
 
 " He knew you weren't his wife's son, you see, and he had 
 heard some stories about me before I came to live with him, and 
 so, at the last, he took to saying he'd nought to do with you." 
 
 " Then you jnean to say " 
 
 'That you are my boy," she said, " my own boy. Why, lad. 
 
124 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 who but thy own mother would a' done for thee what I have? 
 And thou never thinking of it all these years ! Blind lad ! " 
 
 " Good God ! " said George. "And if I had only known that 
 before, how diflferently I'd have gone on. How I'd have sneaked 
 and truckled, and fetched and carried for him ! Bah, it's enough 
 to drive one mad. All this hide-and-seek work don't pay, old 
 woman. You and I are bowled out with it. How easy for you 
 to have given me a hint of this years ago, to make me careful 1 
 But you delight in mystery and conglomeration, and you always 
 will. There — I ain't ungrateful, hut when I think of what we've 
 lost, no wonder I get wild. And what the devil am I to do 
 now ? " 
 
 " You've got the girl's money to go on with," she said. 
 
 " Not so very much of it," he replied. " I teU you I've been 
 playing like — never mind what, this last month, and I've lost 
 every night. Then^Tve got another woman i^ tow, that costs 
 • — -oh curse her, \^at^do?t she cost, vrhat with money "Tand 
 bother ? — In short, if I don't get something from somewhere, in 
 a few months I shall be in Queer Streets. What chance is there 
 of the parson's dying ? " 
 
 " It don't matter much to you when he dies, I expect," said 
 she, " for you may depend that those that's got hold of him won't 
 let his money come into your hands. He's altered his will, you 
 may depend on it." 
 
 " Do you really think so ? " 
 
 " I should think it more probable than not. You see that old 
 matter with the Bank is known all over the country, although they 
 don't seem inclined to push it against you, for some reason. Yet 
 it's hardly likely that the Vicar would let his money go to a man 
 who couldn't be seen for fear of a rope." 
 
 "You're a raven, old woman," he said. "What am I to 
 do?" 
 
 " Give up play, to begin with." 
 
 "WeU?" 
 
 " Start some business with what's left." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! WeU, I'll think of it. You must want some money, 
 old girl ! Here's a fipunnote." 
 
 " I don't want money, my boy ; I'm all right," she said. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ; take it." 
 
 " I won't," she answered. " Give me a kiss, George." 
 
 He kissed her forehead, and bent down his head reflecting. 
 When he looked up she was gone. 
 
 He ran out of the booth and looked right and left, but saw her 
 nowhere. Then he went sulkily back to his wife. Ho hai-dly 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 125 
 
 noticed her, but said it was time to go home. All the way back, 
 and after they had reached their lodgings, he kept the same 
 moody silence, and she, frightened at some unheard-of-calamity, 
 forbore to question him. But when she was going to bed she 
 could withhold her anxiety no longer, and said to him, — 
 
 " Oh, George, you have got some bad news ; let me share it 
 with you. If it is anything about my father, I implore you to 
 tell me. How is it I have got no answer to the letter I wrote a 
 month ago ? " 
 
 He answered her savagely, " I don't know anjfthing about your 
 father, and I don't care. I've got bad news, d — d bad news, if 
 that win make you sleep the sounder. And, once for all, you'll 
 find it best, when you see me sulky, not to give me any of 
 your tantrums in addition. Mind that." 
 
 He had never spoken to her like that before. She went to her 
 bed crushed and miserable, and spent the night in crying, while 
 he went forth and spent the night with some of his new companions, 
 playing wildly and losing recklessly, till the summer morning sun 
 streamed through the shutters, and shone upon him desperate 
 and nigh penniless, ripe for a fall lower than any he had had as 
 yet. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE END OP MAKY's EXPEDITION. 
 
 Let us hurry over what is to follow. I who knew her so well can 
 have no pleasure in dwelling over her misery and degradation. 
 And he who reads these pages wiU, I hope, have little sympathy 
 with the minor details of the life of such a man as George 
 Hawker. 
 
 Some may think that she has been punished enough already, 
 for leaving her quiet happy home to go away with such a man. 
 " She must have learnt already," such would say, " that he cares 
 nothing for her. Let her leave her money behind, and go back 
 to her father to make such amends as she may for the misery she 
 has caused him." Alas, my dear madam, who would rejoice in 
 such a termination of her troubles more than myself? But it is not 
 for me to mete out degrees of punishment. I am trying with the 
 best of my poor abilities to wTite a true history of certain people 
 whom I knew. And I, no more than any other human creature. 
 
126 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 can see the consequences that will follow on any one act of foUy or 
 selfishness, such as this, poor foolish girl has committed. We 
 must wait and watch, judging with all charity. Let you and me 
 go on with her even to the very end. 
 
 Good men draw together very slowly. Yet it is one of the 
 greatest happinesses one is capable of, to introuace two such to 
 one another, and see how soon they become friends. But bad 
 men congregate like crows or jackals, and when a new one 
 appears, he is received into the pack without question, as soon as 
 he has given proof sufficient of being a rascal. 
 
 This was the case with George Hawker. His facility for 
 making acquaintance with rogues and blacklegs was perfectly 
 marvellous. Any gentleman of this class seemed to recognise 
 him instinctively, and became familiar immediately. So that soon 
 he had round him such a circle of friends as would have gone 
 hard to send to the dogs the most honourable and virtuous young 
 man in the three kingdoms. 
 
 When a new boy goes to school, his way is smoothed very 
 much at first by the cakes and pocket-money he brings with him. 
 TiU these are gone he must be a weak boy indeed who cannot (at 
 a small school) find some one to fight his battles and fetch and 
 carry for him. Thackeray has thought of this (what does he not 
 think of?) in his little book, "Dr. Birch," where a young 
 sycophant is represented saying to his friend, who has just 
 received a hamper, " Hurrah, old fellow, I'll lend you my knife." 
 This was considered so true to nature, on board a ship in which I 
 once made a long voyage, that it passed into a proverb with us, 
 and if any one was seen indulging in a luxury out of the way at 
 dinner, — say an extra bottle of wine out of his private store, — 
 half-a-dozen would cry out at once, " Hurrah, old fellow, I'U lend 
 you my knife : " a modest way of requesting to be asked to take 
 a glass of wine better than that supplied by the steward. 
 
 In the same way, George Hawker was treated by the men he 
 had got round him as a man who had a little property that he had 
 not got rid of, and as one who was to be used with some civUity, until 
 his money was gone, and he sank down to the level of the rest of 
 them — to the level of living by his wits, if they were sharp enough 
 to make a card or billiard sharper ; or otherwise to find his level 
 among the proscribed of society, let that be what it might. 
 
 And George's wits were not of the first order, or tlie second ; 
 and his manners and education were certainly not those of a 
 gentleman, or, likely to be useful in attracting such unwary 
 persons as these Arabs of the metropolis preyed upon. So it 
 happened that when all his money was played away, which came 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 127 
 
 to pass in a month or two, the higher and cleverer class of rascals 
 began to look uncommonly cold upon him. 
 
 At first poor crushed Mary used to entertaiu of an evening 
 some of the elite among the card-sharpers of London — men who 
 actually could have spoken to a gentleman in a puhUc place, and 
 not have got kicked. These men were polite, and rather agree- 
 able, and ore of them, a Captain Saxon, was so deferential to her, 
 and seemed so entirely to understand her position, that she grew 
 very fond of him, and was always pleased to see him at her 
 house. 
 
 Though, indeed, she saw but little of any men who came there, 
 soon after any of them arrived, she used to receive a signal from 
 George, which she dared not disohey, to go to bed. And when 
 she lay there, lonely and sleepless, she could detect, from the 
 absence of conversation, save now and then a low, fierce oath, 
 that they were playing desperately, and at such times she would 
 lie trembUng and crying. Once or twice, during the time she 
 remembered these meetings, they were rudely hroken upon by 
 oaths and blows, and on one particular occasion, she heard one of 
 the gamesters, when infuriated, call her husband " ad — d swindling 
 dog of a forger." 
 
 In these times, which lasted but a few months, she hegan to 
 reflect what a fool she had been, and how to gratify her fancy she 
 had thrown from her everything solid and worth keeping in the 
 world. She had hrought herself to confess, in bitterness and 
 anguish, that he did not love her, and never had, and that she was 
 a miserable unhappy dupe. But, notwithstanding, she loved him 
 still, though she dreaded the sight of him, for she got little from 
 him now hut oaths and taimts. 
 
 It was soon after their return from Brighton that he broke out, 
 first on some trivial occasion, and cursed her aloud. He said he 
 hated the sight of her pale face, for it always reminded him of 
 ruin and misery ; that he had the greatest satisfaction in telling 
 her that he was utterly ruined ; that his father was dead, and had 
 left his money elsewhere, and that her father was little better ; 
 that she would soon he in the workhouse ; and, in fine, said 
 everything that his fierce, wUd, hrutal temper could suggest. 
 
 she never tempted another outbreak of the kind ; that one was 
 too horrible for her, and crushed her spirit at once. She only 
 tried by mildness and submission to deprecate his rage. But 
 every day he came home looking fiercer and wilder ; as time went 
 on her heart sank within her, and she dreaded something more 
 fearful than she had experienced yet. 
 
 As I said, after a month or two, his first companions hegan to 
 
128 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 drop oflf, or only came, bullying and swearing, to demand money. 
 And now another class of men began to take their place, the sight 
 of whom made her blood cold— ^worse dressed than the others, and 
 worse mannered, with strange, foul oaths on their lips. And then, 
 after a time, two ruffians, worse looking than any of the others, 
 began to come there, of whom the one she dreaded most was 
 called Maitland. 
 
 He was always very civil to her ; but there was something 
 about him, his lowering, evil face, and wild looks, which made 
 him a living nightmare to her. She knew he was flying from 
 justice, by the way he came and went, and by the precaution 
 always taken when he was there. But when he came to live in 
 the room over theirs, and when, by listening at odd times, she 
 found that he and her husband were engaged in some great 
 villainy, the nature of which she could not understand, then she 
 saw that there was nothing to do, but in sheer desperation to sit 
 down and wait the catastrophe. 
 
 About this time she made another discovery, that she was 
 penniless, and had been so some time. George had given her 
 money from time to time to carry on household expenses, and she 
 contrived to make these sums answer well enough. But one day, 
 determined to know the worst, she asked him, at the risk of another 
 explosion, how their account stood at the bank ? He replied, in the 
 best of his humours, apparently, " that the five thousand they had 
 had there had been overdrawn some six weeks, and that, if it hadn't 
 been for his exertions in various ways, she'd have been starved 
 out before now." 
 
 " All gone ! " she said ; " and where to ? " 
 
 " To the devil," he answered. " And you may go after it." 
 
 ," And what are we to do now, George ? " 
 
 /" The best we can." 
 
 I" But the baby, George ? I shall lie-in in three months." 
 
 " You must take your chance, and the baby too. As long as 
 there's any money going you'll get some of it. If you wrote to 
 your father you might get some." 
 
 " I'U never do that," she said. 
 
 " Won't you ? " said he ; " I'll starve you into it when money 
 gets scarce." 
 
 Things remained like this till it came to be nearly ten months 
 from their marriage. Mary had never written home but once, from 
 Brighton, and then, as we know, the answer had miscarried ; so 
 she, conceiving she was cast oflf by her father, had never attempted 
 to communicate mth him again. The time drew nigh that she 
 should be confined, and she got very sick and iU, and still the 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 129 
 
 man Maitland lived in the house, and he and George spent much 
 of their time away together at night. 
 
 Yet poor Mary had a friend who stayed by her through it all — 
 Captain Saxon, the great billiard sharper. Many a weary hour, 
 when she was watching up anxious and iU, for her husband, this 
 man would come and sit with her, talking agreeably and weU about 
 many things ; but chiefly about the life he used to lead before he 
 fell so low as he was then. 
 
 He used to say, " Mrs. Hawker, you cannot tell what a relief 
 and pleasure it is to me to have a lady to talk to again. You 
 must conceive how a man brought up like myself misses it.'' 
 
 "Surely, Captain Saxon," she would say, "you have some 
 relations left. Why not go back to them ? " 
 
 " They wouldn't own me," he said. " I smashed everything, 
 a fine fortune amongst other things, by my goings on ; and they 
 very properly cast me off. I never got beyond the law, though. 
 Many well-known men speak to me now, but they won't play with 
 me, though ; I am too good. And so you see I play dark to win 
 from young fellows, and I am mixed up with a lot of scoundrels. 
 A man brought an action against me the other day to recover two 
 hundred pounds I won of him, but he couldn't do anything. And 
 the judge said, that though the law couldn't touch me, yet I was 
 mixed up notoriously with a gang of sharpers. That was a pleasant 
 thing to hear in court, wasn't it? — but true." 
 
 " It has often surprised me to see how temperate you are. Cap- 
 tain Saxon," she said. 
 
 " I am forced to be," he said ; "I must keep my hand steady. 
 See there ; it's as firm as a rock. No ; the consolation of drink 
 is denied me ; I have something to live for stiU. I'll teU you a 
 secret. I've insured my life very high in favour of my little sister 
 whom I ruinSSTahd who is out as a governess. If I don't pay up 
 to the last, you see, or if I commit suicide, she'U lose the money. 
 I pay very high, I assure you. On one occasion not a year ago, 
 I played for the money to pay the premium only two nights before 
 it would have been too late. There was touch and go for you ! 
 But my hand was as steady as a rock, and after the last game was 
 over I fainted." 
 
 " Good Lord," she said, " what a terrible life ! But suppose 
 you fall into sickness and poverty. Then you may faD. into 
 arrear, and she will lose everything after all." 
 
 He laughed aloud. A strange wild laugh. " No," said he ; 
 " I am safe there, if physicians are to be believed. Sometimes, 
 when I am falling asleep, my heart begins to flutter and whirl, 
 and I sit up in bed, breathless and perspiring till it grows still 
 
 10 
 
130 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 again. Then I laugh to myself, and say, ' Not this time then, 
 hut it can't he long now.' Those palpitations, Mrs. Hawker, are 
 growing worse and worse each month. I have got a desperate 
 incurahle heart complaint, that will carry me off, sudden and 
 sure, without warniug, I hope to a hetter sort of world than this." 
 
 " I am sorry for you, Captain Saxon," she said, sohhing, "so 
 very, very sorry for you ! " 
 
 " I thank you kindly, my good fi-iend," he replied. " It's long 
 since I had so good a friend as you. Now change the suhject. I 
 want to talk to you ahout yourself. You are going to he con- 
 fined." 
 
 " In a few days, I fear," she said. 
 
 " Have you money ? " 
 
 " My hushand seems to have money enough at present, hut we 
 have none to fall back upon." 
 
 " What friends have you ? " 
 
 "None that I can apply to." 
 
 " H'm," he said. " Well, you must make use of me, and as 
 far as I can manage it, of my purse too, in case of an emergency. 
 I mean, you know, Mrs. Hawker," he added, looking full at her, 
 " to make this offer to you as I would to my own sister. Don't 
 in God's name refuse my protection, such as it is, from any mis- 
 taken motives of jealousy. Now tell me, as honestly as you dare, 
 how do you believe your husband gets his living ? " 
 
 " I have not the least idea, hut I fear the worst." 
 
 " You do right," he said. " Forewarned is forearmed, and, at 
 the risk of frightening you, I must bid you prepare for the worst. 
 Although I know nothing about what he is engaged in, yet I 
 know that the man Maitland, who lives above, and who you say is 
 your husband's constant companion, is a desperate man. K any- 
 thing happens, apply to me straightway, and I will do all I can. 
 My principal hope is in putting you in communication with your 
 friends. Could you not trust me with your story, that we might 
 take advice together ? " 
 
 She told him aU from beginning to the end, and at the last she 
 said, " If the worst should come, whatever that may be, I would 
 write for help to Major Buckley, for the sake of the child that is 
 to come." 
 
 " Major Buckley ! " — he asked eagerly, — " do you mean James 
 Bucldey of the — th ? " 
 
 " The same man," she replied, " my kindest friend." 
 
 "Oh, Lord! " he said, growing pale, "I've got one of these 
 spasms coming on. A glass of water, my dear lady, in God's 
 name ! " 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 131 
 
 He held both hands on his heart, and lay hack in his chair a 
 little, with livid lips, gasping for breath. By degrees his white 
 hands dropped upon his lap, and he said with a sigh, " Nearer 
 still, old friend, nearer than ever. Not far off now." 
 
 But he soon recovered and said, " Mrs. Hawker, it you ever see 
 that man Buckley again, tell him that you saw Charley Biddulph^ ) 
 who was once his friend, fallen to be the consbl1r?)f'r!5fiies~aSd ( 
 thieves, cast off by every one, and dying of a heart complaint ; but 
 tell him he could not die without sending a tender love to his good 
 old comrade, and that he remembered him and loved him to the 
 very end." 
 
 " And I shall say too," said Mary, " when all neglected me, and 
 forgot me, this Charles Biddulph helped and cheered me ; and 
 when I was fallen to the lowest, that he was still to me a courteous 
 gentleman, and a faithful adviser ; and that but for him and his 
 goodness I should have sunk into desperation long ago. Be sure 
 that I wiQ say this too." 
 
 The door opened, and George Hawker came in. 
 
 " Good evening, Captain Saxon," said he. " My wife seems to 
 make herself more agreeable to you than she does to me. I hope 
 you are pleased with her. However, you are welcome to he. I 
 thank God I ain't jealous. AVhere's Maitland ? " 
 
 " He has not been here to-night, George," she said, timidly. 
 
 " Curse him, then. Give me a candle ; I'm going up-stairs. 
 Don't go on my account. Captain Saxon. Well, if you will, good 
 night." 
 
 Saxon bade him good night, and went. George went up into 
 Maitland's room, where Mary was never admitted ; and soon she 
 heard him hammer, hammering at metal, overhead. She was too 
 used to that sound to take notice of it ; so she went to bed, but 
 lay long awake, thinking of poor Captain Saxon. 
 
 Less than a week after that she was confined. She had a boy, 
 and that gave her new life. Poorly provided for as that child 
 was, he could not have been more tenderly nursed or more prized 
 and loved, if he had been bom in the palace, with his Majesty's 
 right honourable ministers in the ante-room, drinking dry SUlery 
 in honour of the event. 
 
 Now she could endure what was to come better. And less than 
 a month after, just as she was getting well again, all her strength 
 and courage were needed. The end came. 
 
 She was sitting before the fire, about ten o'clock at night, nurs- 
 ing her baby, when she heard the street-door, opened by a key ; 
 and the nextrmoment her husband and Maitland were in the room. 
 
 " Sit quiet, now, or I'U knock your brains out with the poker," 
 
132 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 said George ; and, seizing a china ornament from the chimney- 
 piece, he thrust it into the fire, and heaped the coals over it. 
 
 " We're caught hke rats, you fool, if they have tracked us," 
 said Maitland ; " and nothing but your consummate folly to thank 
 for it. I deserve hanging for mixing myself up with such a man 
 in a thing like this. Now, are you coming ; or do you want half- 
 an-hour to wish your wife good-bye ? " 
 
 George never answered that question. There was a noise of 
 breaking glass down-stairs, and a moment after a sound of several 
 feet on the stair. 
 
 " Make a fight for it," said Maitland, " if you can do nothing 
 else. Make for the back-door." 
 
 But George stood aghast, while Mary trembled in every limb. 
 The door was burst open, and a tall man coming in said, " In the 
 King's name, I arrest you, George Hawker and William Maitland, 
 : for coining." 
 
 Maitland threw himself upon the man, and they fell crashing 
 over the table. George dashed at the door, but was met by two 
 others. For a minute there was a wUd scene of confusion and 
 struggling, while Mary crouched against the wall with the child, 
 shut her eyes, and tried to pray. When she looked round again 
 she saw her husband and Maitland securely handcufied, and the 
 tall man, who first came in, wiping the blood from a deep cut in 
 his forehead, said, 
 
 " There is nothing against this woman, is there, Sanders ? " 
 
 " Nothing, sir, except that she is the prisoner Hawker's wife." 
 
 "Poor woman I " said the tall man. "She has been lately 
 confined, too. I don't think it will be necessary to take her into 
 custody. Take away the prisoners ; I shall stay here and 
 search." 
 
 He began his search by taking the tongs and pulling the fire to 
 pieces. Soon he came to the remnants of the china ornament 
 which George had thrown in ; and, after a little more raking, two 
 or three round pieces of metaJ fell out of the grate. 
 
 "A very green trick," he remarked. "Well, they must stay 
 there to cool before I can touch them ; " and turning to Mary said, 
 "Could you obhge me with some stickmg-plaster ? Your hus- 
 band's confederate has given me an ugly blow." 
 
 She got some, and put it on for him. " Oh, sir ! " she said, 
 " Can you tell me what this is all about ? " 
 
 " Easy, ma'am," said he. " Maitland is one of the most noto- 
 rious coiners in England, and your husband is his confederate and 
 assistant. We've been watching, just to get a case that there 
 would be no trouble about, and we've got it." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 133 
 
 " And if it is proved ? " she asked, trembling. 
 He looked very serious. "Mrs. Hawker, I know your history, 
 as well as your husband's, the same as if you told it to me. So I 
 am sorry to give a lady who is in misfortune more pain than I can 
 help ; but you know coiniug is a hanging matter." 
 
 She rocked herself wildly to and fro, and the chair where she 
 sat, squeezing the child against her bosom till he cried. She 
 soothed him again without a word, and then said to the officer, who 
 was searching every nook and cranny in the room : 
 
 " Shall you be obliged to turn me out of here, or may I stay a 
 few nights ? " 
 
 " You can stay as long as you please, madam," he said ; 
 " that's a matter with your landlady, not me. But if I was you 
 I'd communicate with my friends, and get some money to have my 
 husband defended." 
 
 "They'd sooner pay for the rope to hang him," she said. 
 " You seem a kind and pitiful sort of man ; teU me honestly, is 
 there any chance for him ? " 
 
 " Honestly, none. There lay be some chance of his life ; but 
 there is evidence enough on this one charge, leave alone others, 
 mind you, to convict twenty men. Why, we've evidence of two 
 forgeries committed on his father before ever he married you ; so 
 that, if he is acquitted on this charge, he'U be arrested for another 
 outside the court." 
 
 AH night long she sat up nursing the child before the fire, which 
 from time to time she replenished. The officers in possession 
 slept on sofas, and dozed in chairs ; but when the day broke she 
 was still there, pale and thoughtful, sitting much in the same 
 place and attitude as she did before all this happened, the night 
 before, which seemed to her like a year ago, so great was the 
 change since then. " So," thought she, " he was nothing but a 
 villain after all. He had merely gained her heart for money's 
 sake, and cast her off when it was gone. What a miserable fool 
 she had been, and how rightly served now, to be left penniless in 
 the world 1 " 
 
 Penniless, but not friendless. She remembered Captain Saxon, 
 and determined to go to him and ask his advice. So when the 
 strange weird morning had crept on, to such time as the accustomed 
 crowd began to surge through the street, she put on her bonnet, 
 and went away for the first time to seek him at his lodgings, in a 
 small street, leading off Piccadilly. 
 
 An old woman answered the door. " The Captain was gone," 
 she said, " to Boulogne, and wouldn't be back yet for a fortnight. 
 Would she leave any name ? " 
 
134 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 She hardly thought it worth while. All the world seemed to have 
 deserted her now ; but she said, more in absence of mind than for 
 any other reason, "Tell him that Mrs. Hawker called, if you 
 please." 
 
 " Mr. Hawker ! " the old woman said ; " there's a letter for you, 
 ma'am, I believe ; and somethmg particular too, 'cause he told me 
 to keep it in my desk till you called. Just step in, if you please." 
 
 Mary followed her in, and she produced a letter directed to Mrs. 
 Hawker. When Mary opened it, which she did in the street, after 
 Che door was shut, the first thing she saw was a bank-note for five 
 pounds, and behind it was the following note : — 
 
 "I am forced to go to Boulogne, at a moment's notice, with a 
 man whom I must not lose sight of. Should you have occasion to 
 apply to me during my absence (which is fearfully probable), I 
 have left this, begging your acceptance of it, in the same spirit as 
 that in which it was offered ; and I pray you to accept this piece of 
 advice at the same time : — 
 
 " Apply instantly to your friends, and go back to them at once. 
 Don't stop about London on any excuse. You have never known 
 what it is to be without money yet ; take care you never do. When 
 a man or a woman is poor and hungry, there is a troop of devils 
 who always follow such, whispering all sorts of things to them. 
 They are all, or nearly aU, known to me : take care you do not 
 make their acquaintance. 
 
 " Yours most affectionately, 
 
 " ChASLES BrODULPH." 
 
 A^at a strange letter, she thought. He must be mad. Yet 
 there was method in his madness, too. Devils such as be spoke 
 of had leant over her chair and whispered to her before now, plain 
 to be heard. But that was in the old times, when she sat brood- 
 ing alone over the fire at night. She was no longer alone now, 
 and they had fled — fled, scared at the face of a baby. 
 
 She went home and spoke to the landlady. But little was owing, 
 and that she had money enough to pay without the five pounds that 
 the kind gambler had given her. However, when she asked the 
 landlady whether she could stay there a week or two longer, the 
 woman prayed her with tears to begone ; that she and her husband 
 had brought trouble enough on them already. 
 
 But there was still a week left of their old tenancy, so she held 
 possession in spite of the landlady ; and from the police-ofiicers, 
 who were still about the place, she heard that the two prisoners 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 135 
 
 had been committed for trial, and that that trial would take place 
 early in the week at the Old Bailey. 
 
 Three days before the trial she had to leave the lodgings, with 
 but little more than two pounds in the world. For those three days 
 she got lodging as she could in coffee-houses and such places, 
 always meeting, however, with that sort of kindness and sympathy 
 from the women belonging to them which could not be bought for 
 money. She was in such a duU state of despair, that she was 
 happily insensible to all smaller discomforts, and on the day of the 
 trial she endeavoured to push into the court with her child in her 
 arms. 
 
 The crowd was too dense, and the heat was too great for her, 
 so she came outside and sat on some steps on one side of a 
 passage. Once she had to move as a great personage came up, 
 and then one of the officers said — 
 
 " Come, my good woman, you mustn't sit there, you know. 
 That's the judge's private door." 
 
 " I beg pardon," she said, " and I wiU move, if you wish me. 
 But they are trying my husband for coining, and the court is too 
 hot for the child. If you will let me sit there, I wiU be sure to 
 get out of the way when my lord comes past." 
 
 The man looked at her as if it was a case somewhat out of his 
 experience, and went away. Soon, however, he came back again, 
 and after staring at her a short time, said — 
 
 " Do you want anything, missis ? Anything I can get ? " 
 
 " I am much obliged to you, nothing," she said ; " but if you 
 can tell me how the trial is going on, I shall be obliged to you." 
 
 He shook his head and went away, and when he returned, 
 telling her that the judge was summing up, he bade her foUow 
 him, and found her a place in a quiet part of the court. She 
 could see her husband and Maitland standing in the dock, quite 
 close to her, and before them the judge was calmly, slowly, and 
 distinctly giving the jury the histoiy of the case from beginning 
 to end. She was too much bewildered and desperate to listen to 
 it, but she was attracted by the buzz of conversation which arose 
 when the jury retired. They seemed gone a bare minute to her, 
 when she heard and understood that the prisoners were found 
 guUty. Then she heard Maitland sentenced to death, and George 
 Hawker condemned to be transported beyond the seas for the 
 term of his natural life, in consideration of his youth ; so she 
 brought herself to understand that the game was played out, and 
 turned to go. 
 
 The officer who had been kind to her stopped her, and asked 
 her " where she was going ? " She answered, " To Devonshire," 
 
136 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and passed on, but almost immediately pushed back to him through 
 the crowd, which was pouring out of the doors, and thanked him 
 for his kindness to her. Then she went out with the crowd into 
 the street, and almost instinctively struck westward. 
 
 Through the western streets, roaring with carriages, crowded 
 with foot passengers, like one in a dream ; past the theatres, and 
 the arches, and all the great, rich world, busy seeking its after- 
 noon pleasure : through the long suburbs, getting more scattered 
 as she went on, and so out on to the dusty broad western high- 
 way : a lonely wanderer, with only one thought in her throbbing 
 head, to reach such home as was left her before she died. 
 . At the first quiet spot she came to she sat down and forced 
 herself to think. Two hundred miles to go, and fifteen shillings 
 to keep her. Never mind, she could beg ; she had heard that 
 some made a trade of begging, and did well ; hard if she should 
 die on the road. So she pushed on through the evening toward 
 the sinking sun, tiU the milestones passed slower and slower, and 
 then she found shelter in a tramps' lodging-house, and got what 
 rest she could. In a week she was at Taunton. Then the 
 weather, which had hitherto been fair and pleasant, broke up, 
 and stiU she held on (with the rain beating from the westward in 
 her face, as though to stay her from her refuge), dizzy and con- 
 fused, but determined stLU, along the miry high-road. 
 
 She had learnt from a gipsy woman, with whom she had walked 
 in company for some hours, how to carry her chUd across her 
 hack, slung in her shawl. So, with her breast bai-e to the storm, 
 she fought her way over the high bleak downs, glad and happy 
 when the boy ceased his wailing, and lay warm and sheltered 
 behind her, swathed in every poor rag she coilld spare from her 
 numbed and dripping body. 
 
 Late on a wild rainy night she reached Exeter, utterly penni- 
 less, and wet to the skin. She had had nothing to eat since noon, 
 and her breast was failing for want of nourishment and over- 
 exertion. StiU it was only twenty miles further. Surely, she 
 thought, God had not saved her through two hundred such miles, 
 to perish at last. The child was dry and warm, and fast asleep, 
 and if she could get some rest in one of the doorways in the lower 
 part of the town, till she was stronger, she could fight her way on 
 to Drumston ; so she held on to St. Thomas's, and finding an archway 
 drier than the others, sat down, and took the child upon her lap. 
 
 Rest ! — rest was a fiction ; she was better walking — such aches, 
 and cramps, and pains in every joint 1 She would get up and 
 push on, and yet minute after minute went by, and she could 
 not summon courage. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 137 
 
 She was sitting with her beautiful face in the light of a lamp. 
 A woman well and handsomely dressed was passing rapidly through 
 the rain, but on seeing her stopped and said — 
 
 " My poor girl, why do you sit there in the damp entry such a 
 night as this ? " 
 
 " I am cold, hungry, ruined ; that's why I sit under the arch," 
 replied Mary, rising up. 
 
 " Come home with me," said the woman : "I will take care of 
 you." 
 
 " I am going to my friends," replied she. 
 
 " Are you sure they wiU be glad to see you, my dear? " said 
 the woman, " with that pretty little pledge at your bosom ? " 
 
 " I care not," said Mary. " I told you I was desperate." 
 
 " Desperate, my pretty love," said the woman ; " a girl with 
 beauty like yours should never be desperate ; come with me." 
 
 Mary stepped forward and struck her, so full and true that the 
 woman reeled backwards, and stood whimpering and astonished. 
 
 " Out ! you false jade," said Mary ; " you are one of those devils 
 that Saxon told me of, who come whispering, and peering, and 
 crowding behind those who are penniless and deserted ; but I have 
 faced you, and struck you, and I tell you to go back to your master 
 and say that I am not for him." 
 
 The woman went crying and frightened down the street, think- 
 ing that she had been plying her infamous trade on a lunatic ; but 
 Mary sat down again and nursed the child. 
 
 But the wind changed a little, and the rain began to beat in on 
 her shelter ; she arose, and went down the street to seek a new 
 one. 
 
 She found a deep arch, well sheltered, and, what was better, a 
 lamp inside, so that she could sit on the stone step, and see her 
 baby's face. Dainty quarters, truly ! She went to take possession, 
 and started back with a scream. 
 
 What delusion was this ? There, under the lamp, on the step, 
 sat a woman, her own image, nursing a baby so Hke her own that 
 she looked down at her bosom to see if it was safe. It must be a 
 fancy of her own disordered brain ; but no — for when she gathered 
 up her courage, and walked towards it, a woman she knew well 
 started up, and, laughing wildly, med out, 
 
 "Ha! ha! Mary Thornton." '^^v,^ 
 
 " EUen Lee ? " said Mary, aghast. ^-^ 
 
 "That's me, dear," replied the other; "you're welcome, my 
 love, welcome to the cold stones, and wet streets, and to hunger 
 and drunkenness, and evil words, and the abomination of desola- 
 tion. That's what we aU come to, my dear. Is that his child ? " 
 
138 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 " Whose ? " said Mary. " This is George Hawker's child." 
 
 " Hush, my dear 1 " said the other ; "we never mention his 
 name in our society, you know. This is his too — a faT_finer^ one^ 
 than yours. Cis Jewdl^had one of fiSTooTa poor little rat of a 
 thing that dTedT^d now the minx is flaunting ahout the High- 
 street every night, in her silks and her feathers as bold as brass. 
 I hope you'll have nothing to say to her ; you and I wiU keep 
 house together. They are looking after me to put me iu the 
 madhouse. You'll come too, of course." 
 
 " God have mercy on you, poor NeUy ! " said Mary. 
 
 "Exactly so, my dear," the poor lunatic replied. " Of course 
 He wiU. But about him you know. You heard the terms of his 
 bargain ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Mary. 
 
 " Why, about him you know, G H: , Madge the witch's 
 
 son. He sold himself to the deuce, my dear, on condition" of 
 ruining a poor girl every year. And he has kept his contract 
 
 hitherto. If he don't, you know come here, I want to whisper 
 
 to you." 
 
 The poor girl whispered rapidly in her ear ; but Mary broke 
 away from her and fled rapidly down the street, poor EUen shout- 
 ing after her, " Ha, ha ! the parson's daughter, too — ha, ha ! " 
 
 " Let me get out of this town, Lord ! " she prayed most 
 earnestly, " if I die in the fields." And so she sped on, and 
 paused not till she was fuH two miles out of the town towards 
 home, leaning on the parapet of the noble bridge that even then 
 crossed the river Exe. 
 
 The night had cleared up, and a soft and gentle westerly breeze 
 was ruffling the broad waters of the river, where they slept deep, 
 dark, and full above the weir. Just below where they broke over 
 the low rocky barrier, the rising moon showed a hundred silver 
 spangles among the broken eddies. 
 
 The cool breeze and the calm scene quieted and soothed her, 
 and, for the first time for many days, she began to think. 
 
 She was going back, but to what ? To a desolated home, to a 
 heart-broken father, to the jeers and taunts of her neighbours. 
 The wife of a convicted felon, what hope was left for her in this 
 world ? None. And that child that was sleeping so quietly on 
 her bosom, what a mark was set on him from this time forward ! — 
 the son of Hawker the coiner ! Would it not be better if they 
 both were lying below there in the cold still water, at rest ? 
 
 But she laughed aloud. " This is the last of the devils he talked 
 of,'' said she. " I have fought the others and beat them. I won't 
 yield to this one." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 139 
 
 She paused abashed, for a man on horseback was standing 
 before her as she turned. Had she not been so deeply engaged 
 in her own thoughts she might have heard him merrily whistling 
 as he approached from the town, hut she heard him not, and -was 
 first aware of his presence when he stood sUently regarding her, 
 not two yards off. 
 
 " My girl," he said, " I fear you're in a had way. I don't like 
 to see a young woman, pretty as I can see you are even now, 
 standing on a bridge, with a baby, talking to herself." 
 
 " You mistake me," she said, " I was not going to do that ; I 
 was resting and thinking." 
 
 " Where are you going ? " he asked. 
 
 " To Crediton," she replied. " Once there, I should almost fancy 
 myself safe." 
 
 "See here," he said; "my waggon is coming up behind. I 
 can give you a lift as far as there. Are you hungry ? " 
 " Ah," she said, " if you knew. If you only knew ! " 
 They waited for the waggon's coming up, for they could hear 
 the horses' bells chiming cheerily across the valley. "I had an 
 only daughter went away once," he said. "But, glory to God I 
 I got her back again, though she brought a child with her. And 
 I've grown to be fonder of that poor little base-bom one than 
 anything in this world. So cheer up." 
 
 " I am married," she said ; " this is my lawful boy, though it 
 were better, perhaps, he had never been bom." 
 
 " Don't say that, my girl," said the old farmer, for such she 
 took him to be, " but thank God you haven't been deceived like 
 so many are." 
 
 The waggon came up and was stopped. He made her take 
 such refreshment as was to be got, and then get in and lie quiet 
 among the straw till in the grey morning they reached Crediton. 
 The weather had grown bad again, and long before sunrise, after 
 thanking and blessing her benefactor, poor Mary struck off once 
 more, with what strength she had left, along the deep red lanes, 
 through the driving rain. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 But let us turn and see what has been going forward in ihe old 
 parsonage this long weary year. Not much that is noteworthy, I 
 
140 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 fear. The chronicle of a year's sickness and unhappiness, would 
 he rather uninteresting, so I must get on as quick as I can. 
 
 The Vicar only slowly revived from the fit in which he fell on 
 the morning of Mary's departure to find himself hopelessly 
 paralytic, unahle to walk without support, and harely ahle to 
 articulate distinctly. It was when he was in this state, being led 
 up and down the garden by the Doctor and Frank Maberly, the 
 former of whom was tryiug to attract his attention to some of their 
 old favourites, the flowers, that Miss Thornton came to him with 
 the letter which Mary had written from Brighton, immediately 
 after their marriage. 
 
 It was, on the whole, a great relief for the Vicar. He had 
 dreaded to hear worse than this. They had kept from him all 
 knowledge of Hawker's forgery on his father, which had been 
 communicated to them by Major Buckley.. So that he began to 
 prepare his mind for the reception of George Hawker as a son-in- 
 law, and to force himself to like him. So with shaking palsied 
 hand he wrote : — 
 
 " Dear Girl, — In sickness or sorrow, remember that I am still 
 your father. I hope you wiU. not stop long in London, but come 
 back and stay near me. We must forget all that has passed, and 
 make the best of it. — John Thoknton." 
 
 Miss Thornton wrote : — 
 
 " My dearest foolish Mary, — How could you leave us like that, 
 my love I Oh, if you had only let us know what was going on, I 
 could have told you such things, my dear. But now you will 
 never know them, I hope. I hope Mr. Hawker wiU use you 
 kindly. Your father hopes that you and he may come down and 
 live near him, but we know that is impossible. If your father 
 were to know of your husband's fearful delinquencies, it would kUl 
 him at once. But when trouble comes on you, my love, as it 
 must in the end, remember that there is stUl a happy home left 
 you here." 
 
 These letters she never received. George burnt them without 
 giving them to her, so that for a year she remained under the im- 
 pression that they had cast her off. So only at the last did she, 
 as the sole hope of warding off poverty and misery from her child, 
 determine to cast herself upon their mercy. 
 
 The year had nearly passed, when the Vicar had another stroke, 
 a stroke that rendered him childish and helpless, and precluded 
 all possibility of his leaving his bed agaiu. Miss Thornton found 
 that it was necessary to have a man servant in the house now, to 
 move him, and so on. So one evening, when Major and Mrs. 
 Buckley and the Doctor had come down to sit with her, she 
 
GEQFFEY HAMLYN. 141 
 
 asked, "did they know a man who could undertake the 
 business ? " 
 
 " I do," said the Doctor. " I know a man who would suit you 
 exactly. A strong knave enough. An old soldier." 
 
 " I don't think we should like a soldier in the house, Doctor," 
 said Miss Thornton. " They use such very odd language some- 
 times, you know." 
 
 " This man never swears," said the Doctor. 
 
 " But soldiers are apt to drink sometimes, you know. Doctor," 
 said Miss Thornton. " And that wouldn't do in this case." 
 
 " I've known the man all my life," said the Doctor with anima- 
 tion. " And I never saw him drunk." 
 
 " He seems faultless. Doctor," said the Major, smiling. 
 
 " No, he is not faultless, hut he has his qualifications for the 
 office, nevertheless. He can read passably, and might amuse our 
 poor old friend in that way. He is not evil tempered, though 
 hasty, and I think he would be tender and kindly to the old man. 
 He had a father once himself, this man, and he nursed him to his 
 latest day, as well as he was able, after his mother had left them 
 and gone on the road to destruction. And my man has picked up 
 some knowledge of medicine too, and might be a useful ally to the 
 physician." 
 
 "A paragon! " said Mrs. Buckley, laughing. "Now let us 
 hear his faults, dear Doctor." 
 
 " They are many," he rephed, " I don't deny. But not such 
 as to make him an ineligible person in this matter. To begin 
 with, he is a fool — a dreaming fool, who once mixed himself up 
 with politics, and went on the assumption that truth would prevail 
 against humbug. And when he found his mistake, this fellow, 
 instead of staying at his post, as a man should, he got disgusted, 
 and beat a cowardly retreat, leaving his duty unfulfilled. When 
 I look at one side of this man's life, I wonder why such useless 
 fellows as he were born into the world. But I opine that every 
 man is of some use, and that my friend may still have manhood 
 enough left in him to move an old paralytic man in his bed." 
 
 "And his name. Doctor? You must teU us that," said Mrs. 
 Buckley, looking sadly at him. 
 
 "I am that man," said the Doctor, rising. "Dear Miss 
 Thornton, you wiU allow me to come do^vn and stay with you. I 
 shall be so glad to be of any use to my old friend, and I am so 
 utterly useless now." 
 
 Wliat could she say, but "yes," with a thousand thanks, far 
 more than she could express ? So he took up his quarters at the 
 Vicarage and helped her in the labour of love. 
 
142 THE EECOLLECTIQNS OF 
 
 The Sunday morning after he came to stay there, he was going 
 down stairs, shortly after daybreak, to take a walk in the fresh 
 morning air, when on the staircase he met Miss Thornton, and she, 
 putting sixpence into his hand, said, 
 
 " My dear Doctor, I looked out of window just now, and saw a 
 tramper woman sitting on the door-step. She has black hair and 
 a baby, like a gipsy. And I am so nervous about gipsies, you 
 know. Would you give her that and tell her to go away ? " 
 
 The Doctor stepped down with the sixpence in his hand to do as 
 he was bid. Miss Thornton followed, him. He opened the front 
 d.oor, and there sure enough sat a woman, her hair, wet with the 
 last night's rain, knotted loosely up behind her hatless head. She 
 sat upon the door-step rocking herself to and fro, partly it would 
 seem from disquietude, and partly to soothe the baby which was 
 lying on her lap crying. Her back was towards him, and the 
 Doctor only had time to notice that she was young, when he 
 began, — 
 
 " My good soul, you mustn't sit there, you know. It's Sunday 
 morning, and " 
 
 No more. He had time to say no more. Mary rose from the 
 step and looked at him. 
 
 " You are right, sir, I have no business here. But if you will 
 tell him that I only came back for the child's sake, he wiU hear me. 
 I couldn't leave it in the workhouse, you know." 
 
 Miss Thornton ran forward, laughing wildly, and hugged her to 
 her honest heart. " My darling ! " she said, " My own darling ! 
 I knew she would find her home at last. In trouble and in 
 sorrow I told her where she was to come. Oh happy trouble, that 
 has brought our darling back to us ! " 
 
 " Aunt ! auat 1 " said Mary, " don't kiU me. Scold me a little, 
 aunt dear, only a little." 
 
 " Scold you, my darling ! Never, never I Scold you on this 
 happy Sabbath mom I Oh ! never, my love." 
 
 And the fooUshness of these two women was so great that the 
 Doctor had to go for a walk. Eight down the garden, round the 
 cow-yard, ^d in by the back way to the kitchen, where he met 
 Frank, and told him what had happened. And there they were at 
 it again. Miss Thornton kneeling, wiping poor Mary's blistered 
 feet before the fire ; while the maid, foolishly giggUng, had got 
 possession of the baby, and was talking more affectionate nonsense 
 to it than ever baby heard in this world before. 
 
 Mary held out her hand to him, and when he gave her his vast 
 brown paw, what does she do, but put it to her lips and kiss it ? — 
 as if there was not enough without that. And, to make matters 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 143 
 
 worse, she quoted Scripture, and said, "Forasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me." So our 
 good Doctor had nothing left but to break through that cloak of 
 cynicism which he delighted to wear (Lord knows why), and to 
 kiss her on the cheek, and to tell how happy she had made them 
 by coming back, let circumstances be what they might. 
 
 Then she told them, with bursts of wild weeping, what those 
 circumstances were. And at last, when they were all quieted. 
 Miss Thornton boldly volunteered to go up and teU the Vicar that 
 his darling was returned. 
 
 So she went up, and Mary and the Doctor waited at the bed- 
 room door and listened. The poor old man was far gone beyond 
 feeling joy or grief to any great extent. When Miss Thornton 
 raised him in his bed, and told him that he must brace up his 
 nerves to hear some good news, he smiled a weary smile, and 
 Mary looking in saw that he was so altered that she hardly knew 
 him. 
 
 " I know," he said, lisping and hesitating painfully, " what you 
 are going to tell me, sister. She is come home. I knew she 
 would come at last. Please teU her to come to me at once ; but 
 I can't see him yet. I must get stronger first." So Mary went 
 in to him, and Miss Thornton came out and closed the door. And 
 when Mary came down stairs soon afterwards she could not talk to 
 them, but remained a long time silent, crying bitterly. 
 
 The good news soon got up to Major Buckley's, and so after 
 church they saw him striding up the path, leading the pony 
 carrying his wife and baby. And while they were stOl busy 
 welcoming her back, came a ring at the door, and a loud voice, 
 asking if the owner of it might come in. 
 
 Who but Tom Troubridge ! Who else was there to raise her 
 four good feet off the ground, and kiss her on both cheeks, and 
 call her his darling little sister ! Who else was there who could 
 have changed their tears into laughter so quick that their merri- 
 ment was wafted up to the Vicar's room, and made him ring his 
 bell, and tell them to send Tom up to him I And who but Tom 
 could have lit the old man's face up with a smile, with the history 
 of a new colt, that my lord's mare Thetis had dropped last week ! 
 
 That was her welcome home. To the home she had dreaded 
 coming to, expecting to be received with scorn and reproaches, the 
 home she had meant to come' to only as a penitent, to leave her 
 child there and go forth into the world to die. And here she found 
 herself the honoured guest — treated as one who had been away on 
 a journey, whom they had been waiting and praying for all the 
 time, and who came back to them sooner than expected. None 
 
144 THE BECOLLEOTIONS OF 
 
 hold the force of domestic affection so cheap as those who violate 
 it most rudely. How many proud unhappy souls are there at this 
 moment, voluntarily absenting themselves from all that love them 
 in the world, because they dread sneers and cold looks at home ! 
 And how many of these, gomg back, would find only tears of joy to 
 welcome them, and hear that ever since their absence they had 
 been spoken of with kindness and tenderness, and loved, perhaps, 
 above all the others ! 
 
 After dinner, when the women were alone together, Mrs. 
 Buckley began, — 
 
 " Now, my dear Mary, you must hear all the news. My 
 husband has had a letter from Stockbridge." 
 
 " Ah, dear old Jim ! " said Mary ; "and how is he ? " 
 " He and Hamlyn are quite well," said Mrs. Buckley, " and 
 settled. He has written such an account of that country to Major 
 Buckley, that he, half persuaded before, is now wholly determined 
 to go there himself." 
 
 "I heard of this before," said Mary. "Am I to lose you, 
 then, at once ? " 
 
 " We shall see," said Mrs. Buckley ; " I have my ideas. Now, 
 who do you think is going beside ? " 
 
 " Half Devonshire, I should think," said Mary ; " at least, all 
 whom I care about." 
 
 " It would seem so, indeed, my poor girl," said Mrs. Buckley ; 
 " for your cousin Troubridge has made up his mind to-come." 
 
 " There was a time when I could have stopped him," she 
 thought; "but that is gone by now." And she answered Mrs. 
 Buckley : — 
 
 " Aunt and I wiU stay here, and think of you all. Shall we 
 ever hear from you ? It is the other side of the world, is it 
 not?" 
 
 " It is a long way ; bat we must wait, and see how things turn 
 out. We may not have to separate after all. See, my deai- ; are 
 you fully aware of your father's state ? I fear you have only come 
 home to see the last of him. He probably will be gone before this 
 month is out. You see the state he is in. And when he is gone, 
 have yau reflected what to do ? " 
 
 Mary, weeping bitterly, said, " No ; only that she could never 
 live in Drumston, or anywhere where she was known." 
 
 " That is wise, my love," said Mrs. Bucldey, " under the cir- 
 cumstances. Have you made up your mind where to go. Miss 
 Thornton, when you have to leave the Vicarage for a new in- 
 cumbent ? " 
 
 " I have made up my mind," answered Miss Thornton, " to go 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 145 
 
 wherever Mary goes, if it be to the other end of the earth. We 
 will be Kuth and Naomi, my dear. You would never get on 
 without me." 
 
 " That is what I say," said Mrs. Buckley. " Never leave her. 
 Why not come away out of all unhappy associations, and from the 
 scorn and pity of your neighbours, to live safe and happy with all 
 the best friends you have in the world ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Mary. " Ah, if we could only 
 do so ! " 
 
 " Come away with us," said Mrs. Buckley, with animation ; 
 " come away with us, and begin a new life. There is Troubridge 
 looking high and low for a partner with five thousand pounds. 
 Why should not Miss Thornton and yourself be his partners ? " 
 
 " Ah me ! " said Miss Thornton. " And think of the voyage ! 
 But I shall not decide on anything ; Mary shall decide." 
 ****** 
 
 Scarcely more than a week elapsed from the day that Mary 
 • came home, when there came a third messenger for old John 
 Thornton, and one so peremptory that he arose and followed it in 
 the dead of night. So, when they came to his bedside in the 
 morning, they found his body there, laid as it was when he 
 wished them good night, but cold and dead. He himself was 
 gone, and nothing remained but to bury his body decently beside 
 his wife's, in the old churchyard, and to shed some tears, at the 
 thought that never, by the fireside, or in the solemn old church, 
 they should hear that kindly voice again. 
 
 And then came the disturbance of household goods, and the 
 rupture of hfe-old associations. And although they were begged 
 by the new comer not to hurry or incommode themselves, yet they 
 too wished to be gone from the house whence everything they 
 loved had departed. 
 
 Their kind true friend Frank was presented with the living, and 
 they accepted Mrs. Buckley's invitation to stay at their house tiU 
 they should have decided what to do. It was two months yet 
 before the Major intended to sail, and long before those two 
 months were past, Mary and Miss Thornton had determined that 
 they would not rend asunder the last ties they had this side of the 
 grave, but would cast in then' lot with the others, and cross the 
 weary sea with them towards a more hopeful land. 
 
 One more scene, and we have done with the Old World for 
 many a year. Some of these our friends will never see it more, 
 and those who do will come back with new thoughts and associa- 
 tions, as strangers to a strange land. Only those who have done 
 so know how much effort it takes to say, " I will go away to a land 
 
 11 
 
146 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 where none know me or care for me, and leave for ever all that I 
 know and love." And few know the feeling which comes upon 
 all men after it is done, — the feeling of isolation, almost of 
 terror, at having gone so far out of the bounds of ordinary life ; 
 the feeling of self-distrust and cowardice at being alone and 
 friendless in the world, like a child in the dark. 
 
 A golden summer's evening is fading into a soft cloudless 
 summer's night, and Doctor Mulhaus stands upon Mount Edge- 
 combe, looking across the trees, across the glassy harbour, over 
 the tail men-of-war, out beyond the silver line of surf on the 
 breakwater, to where a tall ship is rapidly spreading her white 
 wings, and speeding away each moment more rapidly before a fair 
 wind, towards the south-west. He watches it growing more dim, 
 minute by minute, in distance and in darkness, till he can see no 
 longer ; then brushing a tear from his eye he says aloud : — 
 
 " There goes my English microcosm. AH my- new English 
 friends with whom I was going to pass the rest of my life, peaceful 
 and contented, as a village surgeon. Pretty dream, two years 
 long ! Truly man hath no sure abiding place here. I will go 
 back to Prussia, and see if they are all dead, or only sleeping." 
 
 So he turned down the steep path under the darkening trees, 
 towards where he could see the town lights along the quays, 
 among the crowded masts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE FIB&T PUFF OF THE SOUTH WIND. 
 
 A NEW heaven and a new earth ! Tier beyond tier, height above 
 height, the great wooded ranges go rolling away westward, tiU on 
 the lofty sky-line they are crowned with a gleam of everlasting 
 snow. To the eastward they sink down, breaking into isolated 
 forest-fringed peaks, and rock-crowned eminences, tiU with rapidly 
 straightening lines they fade into the broad grey plains, beyond 
 which the Southern Ocean is visible by the white sea-haze u^on 
 the sky. 
 
 All creation is new and strange. The trees, surpassing in size 
 the largest English oaks, are of a species we have never seen 
 before. The graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the 
 very grass itself, are of species unknown in Europe ; while flaming 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 147 
 
 lories and brilliant parroquets fly whistling, not unmusically, 
 through the gloomy forest, and over head in the higher fields of 
 air, stiU lit up by the last rays of the sim, countless cockatoos 
 wheel and scream in noisy joy, as we may see the gulls do about 
 an English headland. 
 
 To the northward a great glen, sinking ^ddenly from the saddle 
 on which we stand, stretches away in long vista, until it joins a 
 broader valley, through which we can dimly see a full-fed river 
 winding along in gleaming reaches, through level meadow land, 
 interspersed with clumps of timber. 
 
 We are in Australia. Three hundred and fifty miles south of 
 Sydney, on the great watershed which divides the BeUoury from 
 the Marybumong, since better known as the Snowy-river of Gipps- 
 land. 
 
 As the sun was going down on the scene I have been describmg, 
 James Stockbridge and I, Geoffry Hamlyn, reined up our horses 
 on the ridge above-mentioned, and gazed down the long guUy 
 which lay stretched at our feet. Only the tallest trees stood with 
 their higher boughs glowing with the gold of the departing day, 
 and we stood undetermined which route to pursue, and half in- 
 clined to camp at the next waterhole we should see. We had 
 lost some cattle, and among others a valuable imported bull, which 
 we were very anxious to recover. For five days we had been 
 passing on from run to run, making inquiries without success, and 
 were now fifty long miles irom home in a southerly direction. We 
 were beyond the bounds of all settlement ; the last station we had 
 been at was twenty miles to the north of us, and the occupiers of 
 it, as they had told us the night before, had only taken up their 
 country about ten weeks, and were as yet the furthest pioneers to 
 the southward. 
 
 At this time Stockbridge and I had been settled in our new home 
 about two years, and were beginning to get comfortable and con- 
 tented. We had had but little trouble with the blacks, and having 
 taken possession of a fine piece of country, were flourishing and 
 well to do. 
 
 We had never heard from "home but once, and that was from 
 Tom Troubridge, soon after our departure, telling us that if we 
 succeeded he should follow, for that the old place seemed changed 
 now we were gone. We had neither of us left any near relations 
 behind us, and already we began to think that we were cut off for 
 ever from old acquaintances and associations, and were beginning 
 to be resigned to it. 
 
 Let us return to where he and I were standing alone in the 
 forest. I dismounted to set right some strap or another, and, 
 
148 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 instead of getting on my horse again at once, stood leaning against 
 him, looking at the prospect, glad to ease my legs for a time, for 
 they were cramped with many hours' riding. 
 
 Stockbridge sat in his saddle immoveable and silent as a statue, 
 and when I looked in his face I saw that his heart had travelled 
 further than his eye could reach, and that he was looking far 
 beyond the horizon that bounded his earthly vision, away to the 
 pleasant old home which was home to us no longer. 
 
 " Jim," said I, " I wonder what is going on at Drumston now ? " 
 
 " I wonder," he said softly. 
 
 A pause. 
 
 Below us, in the valley, a mob of jackasses * were shouting and 
 laughing uproariously, and a magpie was chanting his noble vesper 
 hymn from a lofty tree. 
 
 " Jim," I began again, " do you ever think of poor little Mary 
 now?" 
 
 "Yes, old boy, I do," he replied; "I can't help it; I was 
 thinking of her then — I am always thinking of her, and, what's 
 more, I always shall be. Don't think me a fool, old friend, but 
 I love that girl as well now as ever I did. I wonder if she has 
 married that fellow Hawker ? " 
 
 " I fear there is but little doubt of it," I said ; " try to forget 
 her, James. Get in a rage with her, and be proud about it ; 
 you'll make all your life unhappy if you don't." 
 
 He laughed. " That's all very well, Jeff, but it's easier said 
 than done. — Do you hear that ? There are cattle down the gully." 
 
 There was some noise in the air, beside the evening rustle of 
 the south wind among the tree-tops. Now it sounded like a far- 
 off hubbub of waters, now swelled up harmonious, like the booming 
 of cathedral bells across some rich old English valley on a still 
 summer's afternoon. 
 
 " There are cattle down there, certainly," I said, " and a very 
 large number of them ; they are not ours, depend upon it : there 
 are men with them, too, or they would not make so much noise. 
 Can it be the blacks driving them off from the strangers we stayed 
 with last night, do you thmk ? If so, we had best look out for 
 ourselves." 
 
 " Blacks could hardly manage such a large mob as there arc 
 there," said James. "I'll tell you what I think it is, old Jeff; 
 it's some new chums going to cross the watershed, and look for 
 new country to the south. If so, let us go down and meet them : 
 they will camp down by the river yonder." 
 
 James was right. All doubt about what the new comers were 
 * Daeelo Gigantea. 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 149 
 
 was solved before we reached the river, for we could hear the 
 rapid detonation of the stock-whips loud above the lowing of the 
 cattle ; so we sat and watched them debouche from the forest into 
 the broad river meadows in the gathering gloom : saw the scene 
 so venerable and ancient, so seldom seen in the Old World — the 
 patriarchs moving into the desert with all their wealth, to find a 
 new pasture-ground. A simple primitive action, the first and 
 simplest act of colonisation, yet producing such great results on 
 the history of the world, as did the parting of Lot and Abraham 
 in times gone by. 
 
 First came the cattle lowing loudly, some trying to stop and 
 graze on the rich pasture after their long day's travel, some head- 
 ing noisily towards the river, now beginning to steam with the 
 rising evening mist. Now a lordly bull, followed closely by two 
 favourite heifers, tries to take matters into his own hands, and 
 cut out a route for himself, hut is soon driven ignominiously back 
 in a lumbering gallop by a quick-eyed stockman. Now a sOly 
 calf takes it into his head to go for a small excursion up the 
 range, followed, of course, by his doting mother, and has to be 
 headed in again, not without muttered wrath and lowerings of the 
 head from madame. Behind the cattle come horsemen, some six 
 or seven in number, and last, four drays, bearing the household 
 goods, come crawling up the pass. 
 
 We had time to notice that there were women on the foremost 
 dray, when it became evident that the party intended camping in a 
 turn of the river just below. One man kicked his feet out of the 
 stirrups, and sitting loosely in his saddle, prepared to watch the 
 cattle for the first few hours till he was relieved. Another lit a 
 fire against a fallen tree, and while the bullock-drivers were busy 
 unyoking their beasts, and the women were clambering from the 
 dray, two of the horsemen separated from the others, and came 
 forward to meet us. 
 
 Both of them I saw were men of vast stature. One rode up- 
 right, with a military seat, while his companion had his feet out 
 of his stirrups, and rode loosely, as if tired with his joiu-ney. 
 Further than this, I could distinguish nothing in the darkening 
 twilight ; but, looking- at James, I saw that he was eagerly 
 scanning the strangers, with elevated eyebrow and opened lips. 
 Ere I could speak to him, he had dashed forward with a shout, 
 and when I came up with him, wondering, I found myself shaking 
 hands, talking and laughing, everything in fact short of crying, 
 with Major Buckley and Thomas Troubridge. 
 
 " Range up alongside here, Jefi', you rascal," said Tom, " and 
 let me get a fair hug at you. What do you think of this for a 
 
150 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 lark ; eh ? — ^to meet you out here, all promiscuous, in the forest 
 like Prince Arthur 1 We could not go out of our way to see you, 
 though we knew where you were located, for we must hurry on 
 and get a piece of country we have heen told of on the next river. 
 We are going to settle down close by you, you see. We'll make 
 a new Drumston in the wilderness." 
 
 " This is a happy meeting, indeed, old Tom," I said, as we 
 rode towards the drays, after the Major and James. " We shall 
 have happy times, now we have got some of our old friends round 
 us. Who is come with you ? How is Mrs. Buckley ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Buckley is as well as ever, and as handsome. My pretty 
 little cousin, Mary Hawker, and old Miss Thornton are with us ; 
 the poor old Vicar is dead." 
 
 "Mary Hawker with you?" I said. "And her husband, 
 Tom ? " 
 
 "Hardly, old friend. We travel in better company," said he. 
 " George Hawker is transported for life." 
 
 " Alas, poor Mary ! " I answered. " And what for ? " 
 
 " Coining," he answered. " I'll tell you the story another 
 time. To-night let us rejoice." 
 
 I could not but watch James, who was riding before us, to see 
 how he would take this news. The Major, I saw, was telling him 
 all about it, but James seemed to take it quite quietly, only nod- 
 ding his head as the other went on. I knew how he would feel 
 for his old love, and I turned and said to Troubridge, — 
 
 " Jim will be very sorry to hear of this. I wish she had 
 married him." 
 
 " That's what we all say," said Tom. " I am sorry for poor 
 Jim. He is about the best man I know, take him all in all. If 
 that fellow were to die, she might have him yet, Hamlyn." 
 
 We reached the drays. There sat Mrs. Buckley on a log, a 
 noble, happy matron, laughing at her son as he toddled about, 
 busy gathering sticks for the fire. Beside her was Mary, paler 
 and older-looking than when we had seen her last, with her child 
 upon her lap, looking sad and worn. But a sadder sight for me 
 was old Miss Thornton, silent and frightened, glancing uneasily 
 round, as though expecting some new horror. No chUd for her 
 to cling to and strive for. No husband to watch for and anticipate 
 every wish. A poor, timid, nervous old maid, thrown adrift in 
 her old age upon a strange sea of anomalous wonders. Every old 
 favourite prejudice torn up by the roots. All old fonnulas of life 
 scattered to the winds I 
 
 She told me in confidence that evening that she had been in sad 
 trouble all day. At dinner-time some naked blacks had come up 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 151 
 
 to the dray, and had frightened and shocked her. Then the dray 
 had been nearly upset, and her hat crushed among the trees. A 
 favourite and precious bag, which never left her, had been dropped 
 in the water ; and her Prayer-book, a parting gift from Lady Kate, 
 had been utterly spoiled. A hundred petty annoyances and griefs, 
 which Mary barely remarked, and which brave Mrs. Buckley, in 
 her strong determination of following her lord to the ends of the 
 earth, and of being as much help and as little incumbrance to him 
 as she could, had laughed at, were to her great misfortunes. 
 Why, the very fact, as she told me, of sitting on the top of a 
 swinging jolting dray was enough to keep her in a continual state 
 of agony and terror, so that when she alit at night, and sat down, 
 she could not help weeping silently, dreading lest any one should 
 see her. 
 
 Suddenly, Mary was by her side, kneeling down. 
 
 " Aunt," she said, " dearest aunt, don't break down. It is all 
 my wicked fault. You will break my heart, auntie dear, if you 
 cry like that. Why did ever I bring you on this hideous 
 journey? " 
 
 " How could I leave you in your trouble, my love ? " said Miss 
 Thornton. " You did right to come, my love. We are among old 
 friends. We have come too far for trouble to reacii us. We shall 
 soon have a happy home again now, and all will be well." 
 
 So she, who needed so much comforting herself, courageously 
 dried her tears and comforted Mary. And when we reached the 
 drays, she was sitting with her hands folded before her in serene 
 misery. 
 
 " Mary," said the Major, " here are two old friends." 
 
 He had no time to say more, for she, recognising Jim, sprang 
 np, and, running to him, burst into hysterical weeping. 
 
 "Oh, my good old friend!" she cried; "oh, my dear old 
 friend ! Oh, to meet you here in this lonely wilderness ! Oh, 
 James, my kind old brother ! " 
 
 I saw how his big heart yearned to comfort his old sweetheart 
 in her distress. Not a selfish thought found place with him. 
 He .could only see his old love injured and abandoned, and nought 
 more. 
 
 " Mary," he said, " what happiness to see you among all your 
 old friends come to live among us again ! It is almost too good 
 to believe in. Believe me, you will get to like this country as 
 well as old Devon soon, though it looks so strange just now. And 
 what a noble boy, too I We will make him the best bushman in 
 the country when he is old enough." 
 
 So he took the child of his rival to his bosom, and when the 
 
152 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 innocent little face looked into his, he would see no likeness to 
 George Hawker there. He only saw the mother's countenance as 
 he knew her as a child in years gone by. 
 
 " Is nobody going to notice me or my boy, I wonder ? " said 
 Mrs. Buckley. " Come here immediately, Mr. Stoekbridge, before 
 we- quarrel." 
 
 In a very short time all our party were restored to their equani- 
 mity, and were laying down plans for pleasant meetings hereafter. 
 And long after the women had gone to bed in the drays, and the 
 moon was riding high in the heavens, James and myself, Trou- 
 bridge and the Major, sat before the fire ; and we heard, for the 
 first time, of all that had gone on since we left England, and of 
 all poor Mary's troubles. Then each man rolled himself in his 
 blanket, and slept soundly under the rustling forest-boughs. 
 
 In the bright cool morning, ere the sun was up, and the belated 
 opossum had run back to his home in the hollow log, James and I 
 were a-foot looking after our horses. We walked silently side by 
 side for a few minutes, until he turned and said : — 
 
 " Jeff, old fellow, of course you will go on with them, and stay 
 until they are settled ? " 
 
 " Jim, old fellow," I replied, " of course you will go on with 
 them, and stay till they are settled ? " 
 
 He pondered a few moments, and then said, " Well, why not ? 
 I suppose she can be stiU to me what she always was ? Yes, I 
 will go with them." 
 
 When we returned to the dray we found them all astir, pre- 
 paring for a start. Mrs. Buckley, with her gown tucked up, was 
 preparing breakfast, as if she had been used to the thing aU her 
 life. She had an imperial sort of way of manoeuvring a fiying- 
 pan, which did one good to see. It is my belief, that if that 
 woman had been called upon to groom a horse, she'd have done it 
 in a ladylike way. 
 
 While James went among the party to announce his intention 
 of going on with them, I had an opportunity of looking at the son 
 and heir of all the Buckleys. He was a sturdy, handsome child 
 about five years old, and was now standing apart from the oth-ers, 
 watching a bullock-driver yoking-up his beast. I am very fond of 
 children, and take great interest in studying their characters ; so 
 I stood, not unamused, behind this youngster, as he stood looking 
 with awe and astonishment at the man, as he managed the great, 
 formidable beasts, and brought each one into his place ; not, how- 
 ever, without more oaths than one would care to repeat. Suddenly 
 the child, turning and seeing me behind him, came back, and took 
 my hand. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 153 
 
 " Why is he so angry with them ? " the child asked at once. 
 " Why does he talk to them like that ? " 
 
 " He is swearing at them," I said, "to make them stand in 
 their places." 
 
 " But they don't understand him," said the boy. " That black 
 and white one would have gone where he wanted it in a minute ; 
 but it couldn't understand, you know ; so he hit it over the nose. 
 Why don't he find out how they talk to one another ? Then he'd 
 manage them much better. He is very cruel." 
 
 " He does not know any better," I said. " Come with me and 
 get some flowers." 
 
 " Will you take me up ? " he said. " I mustn't run about, for 
 fear of snakes." 
 
 I took him up, and we went to gather flowers. 
 
 " Your name is Samuel Buckley, I think," said I. 
 
 " How did you know that ? " 
 
 "I remember you when you were a baby," I said. " I hope 
 you may grow to be as good a man as your father, my lad. See, 
 there is mamma calling for us." 
 
 " And how far south are you going. Major ? " I asked at break- 
 fast. 
 
 " No further than we can help," said the Major. " I stayed a 
 night with my old friend Captain Brentwood, by the way ; and 
 there I found a man who knew of some unoccupied country down 
 here, which he had seen in some bush expedition. We found the 
 ground he mentioned taken up ; but he says there is equally good 
 on the next river. I have bought him and his information." 
 
 " We saw good country away to the south yesterday," I said. 
 " But are you wise to trust this man ? Do you know anything 
 about him ? " 
 
 " Brentwood has known him these ten years, and trusts him 
 entirely ; though, I believe, he has been a convict. K you are 
 determined to come with us, Stockbridge, I wiU call him up, and 
 examine him about the route. William Lee, just step here a 
 moment." 
 
 A swarthy and very powerfully built man came up. No other 
 than the man I have spoken of under that name before. He was 
 quite unknown either to James or myself, although, as he told us 
 afterwards, he had recognised us at once, but kept out of our sight 
 as much as possible, tiU by the Major's summons he was forced to 
 come forward. 
 
 " What route to-day, William ? " asked the Major. 
 
 " South and by east across the range. We ought to get down 
 to the river by night, if we're lucky." 
 
154 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 So, while the drays were getting under way, the Major, Tom, 
 James, and myself rode up to the saddle where we had stood the 
 night before, and gazed south-east across the broad prospect, in 
 the direction that the wanderers were to go. 
 
 " That," said the Major, " to the right there, must be the great 
 glen out of which the river comes ; and there, please God, we wiU. 
 rest our weary bodies and build our house. Odd, isn't it, that I 
 should have been saved from shot and shell when so many better 
 men were put away in the trench, to come and end my days in a 
 place like this ? Well, I think we shall have a pleasant life of it, 
 watching the cattle spread further across the plains year after year, 
 and seeing the boy grow up to be a good man. At all events, for 
 weal or woe, I have said good-bye to old England, for ever and a 
 day." 
 
 The cattle were past, and the drays had arrived at where we 
 stood. With many a hearty farewell, having given a promise to 
 come over and spend Christmas-day with them, I turned my 
 horse's head homewards and went on my solitary way. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 I HIKE A NEW HOKSEBREAKER. 
 
 I MUST leave them to go their way towards their new home, and 
 follow my own fortunes a little, for that afternoon I met with an 
 adventure quite trifling indeed, but which is not altogether mthout 
 interest in this story. 
 
 I rode on till high noon, till having crossed the valley of the 
 Belloury, and followed up one of its tributary creeks, I had come 
 on to the water system of another main river, and the rapid 
 widening of the gully whose course I was pursuing assured me 
 that I could not be far from the main stream itself. At length I 
 entered a broad flat intersected by a deep and tortuous creek, and 
 here I determined to camp till the noon-day heat was past, before 
 I continued my journey, calculating that I could easily reach home 
 the next day. 
 
 Having watered my hoi'se, I turned him loose for a graze, and, 
 making such a dinner as was possible under the circumstances, I 
 lit a pipe and lay down on the long grass, under the flowering 
 wattle-trees, smoking, and watching the manceuvres of a little 
 tortoise, who was disporting himself in the waterhole before me. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 155 
 
 Gretting tired of that I lay back on the grass, and watched the 
 green leaves waving and ^shivering against the clear blue sky, 
 given up entirely to the greatest of human enjoyments — the after- 
 dinner pipe, the pipe of peace. 
 
 Which is the pleasantest pipe in the day ? We used to say at 
 home that a man should smoke but four pipes a-day : the matutinal, 
 another I don't specify, the post-prandial, and the symposial or 
 convivial, which last may be infinitely subdivided, according to the 
 quantity of drink taken. But in Australia this division won't 
 obtain, particularly when you are on the tramp. Just when you 
 wake from a dreamless sleep beneath the forest boughs, as the 
 east begins to blaze, and the magpie gets musical, you dash to 
 the embers of last night's fire, and after blowing many fire-sticks 
 find one which is alight, and proceed to send abroad on the morn- 
 ing breeze the scene of last night's dottle. Then, when breakfast 
 is over and the horses are caught up and saddled, and you are jog- 
 ging across the plain, with the friend of your heart beside you, the 
 burnt incense once more goes up, and conversation is unnecessary. 
 At ten o'clock when you cross the creek (you always cross a creek 
 about ten if you are in a good country), you halt and smoke. So 
 after dinner in the lazy noon-tide, one or perhaps two pipes are 
 necessary, with, perhaps, another about four in the afternoon, and 
 last, and perhaps best of all, are the three or four you smoke 
 before the fire at night, when the day is dying and the opossums 
 are beginning to chatter in the twilight. So that you find that a 
 fig of Barret's twist, seventeen to the pound, is gone in the mere 
 hours of day-hght, without counting such a casualty as waking up 
 cold in the night, and going at it again. 
 
 So I lay on my back dreaming, wondering why a locust who was 
 in fuU screech close by, took the trouble to make that terrible row 
 when it was so hot, and hoping that his sides might be sore with 
 the exertion, when to my great astonishment I heard the sound of 
 feet brushing through the grass towards me. "Black fellow," I 
 said to myself ; but no, those were shodden feet that swept along 
 so wearily. I raised myself on my elbow, with my hand on my 
 pistol, and reconnoitred. 
 
 There approached me fi-om down the creek a man, hardly 
 reaching the middle size, lean and active-lookirig7 narrow in~ the 
 flanks, thin in the jaws, his knees well apart ; with-a-keen bright 
 eye in his head. His clothes looked as if they had belonged to 
 ten different men ; and his gait was heavy, and his face red, as if 
 from a long hurried walk ; but I said at once, " Here comes a 
 riding man, at all events, be it for peace or war." 
 
 " Good day, lad," said I. 
 
156 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " Good day, sir." 
 
 " You're rather off the tracks for a footman," said I. "Are 
 you looking for your horse ? " 
 
 " Deuce a horse have I got to my name, sir, — have you got a 
 feed of anything ? I'm nigh starved." 
 
 " Ay, surely : the tea's cold ; put it on the embers and warm it 
 a bit ; here's beef, and damper too, plenty." 
 
 I lit another pipe and watched his meal. I like feeding a real 
 hungry man ; it's almost as good as eating oneself — sometimes 
 better. 
 
 When the edge of his appetite was taken off he began to talk ; 
 he said first — 
 
 " Got a station anywheres about here, sir ? " 
 
 " No, I'm Hamljrn of the Dumongs, away by Maneroo." 
 
 " Oh 1 ay ; I know you, sir ; which way have you come this 
 morning ? " 
 
 " Southward ; I crossed the Beljoury about seven o'clock." 
 
 " That, indeed 1 You haven't seen anything of three buUock 
 drays and a mob of cattle going south ? " 
 
 " Yes ! I camped with such a lot last night ! " 
 
 " Not Major Buckley's lot ? " 
 
 "The same." 
 
 " And how far were they on ? " 
 
 " They crossed the range at daylight this morning; — they're 
 thirty miles away by now." 
 
 He threw his hat on the ground with an oath : "I shall never 
 catch them up. I daren't cross that range on foot into the new 
 country, and those black devils lurking round. He shouldn't have 
 left me like that ; — aH my own fault, though, for staying behind ! 
 No, no, he's true enough — aU my own fault. But I wouldn't 
 have left him so, neither ; but, perhaps, he don't think I'm so far 
 behind." 
 
 I saw that the man was in earnest, for his eyes were swimming ; 
 — he was too dry for tears ; but though he looked a desperate , 
 scamp, I couldn't help pitying him and saying, — 
 
 " You seem vexed you couldn't catch them up ; were you going 
 along with the Major, then ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; I wasn't hired with him ; but an old mate of mine, 
 BiU Lee, is gone along with him to show him some country, and 
 I was going to stick to him and see if the Major would take me ; 
 we haven't been parted for many years, not Bill and I haven't ; 
 and the worst of it is, that he'U think I've slipped away from him, 
 instead of following him fifty mile on foot to catch him. Well ! 
 it can't be helped now ; I must look round and get a job some- 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 157 
 
 where till I get a chance to join him. Were you travelling with 
 them, sir?" 
 
 " No, I'm after some cattle I've lost ; a fine imported buU, too, 
 — worse luck ! We'U never see him again, I'm afraid, and if I 
 do find them, how I am to get them home single-handed, I don't 
 know." 
 
 " Do you mean a short-homed Durham bull with a key brand ?i 
 Why, if that's him, I can lay you on to him at once ; he's up at' 
 Jamieson's, here to the west. I was staying at Watson's last 
 night, and one of Jamieson's men stayed in the hut — a young 
 hand ; and, talking about beasts, he said that there was a fine 
 short-horned bull come on to their run with a mob of heifers and 
 cows, and they couldn't make out who they belonged to ; they 
 were all different brands." 
 
 " That's our lot for a thousand," says I ; " a lot of store cattle 
 we bought this year from the Hunter, and haven't branded yet — 
 more shame to us." 
 
 " If you could get a horse and saddle from Jamieson's, sir," 
 said he, " I could give you a hand home with them : I'd like to 
 get a job somehow, and I am well used to cattle." , 
 
 "Done with you," said I ; "Jamieson's isn't ten miles from/ 
 here, and we can do that to-night if we look sharp. Come along,-, 
 my lad." 
 
 So I caught up the horse, and away we went. Starting at right 
 angles with the sun, which was nearly overhead, and keeping to 
 the left of him — holding such a course, as he got lower, that an 
 hour and half, or thereabouts, before setting, he should be in my 
 face, and at sundown a little to the left ; which is the best 
 direction I can give you for going about due west in November, 
 without a compass — which, by the way, you always ought to have. 
 My companion was foot-sore, so I went slowly ; he, however, 
 shambled along bravely when his feet got wai'm. He was a talk- 
 ative, lively man, and chattered continually. 
 
 " You've got a nice place up at the Durnongs, sir," said he ; 
 " I stayed in your huts one night. It's the comfortablest bachelor 
 station on this side. You've got a smart few sheep, I expect ? " 
 " Twenty-five thousand. Do you know these parts well ? " 
 " I knew that country of yours long before any of it was took 
 up." 
 
 " You've been a long while in the country, then ? " 
 " I was sent out when I was eighteen ; spared, as the old judge 
 said, on account of my youth : that's eleven years ago." 
 " Spared, eh ? It was something serious, then." 
 " Trifling enough : only for having a rope in my hand." 
 
158 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " They wouldn't lag a man for that," said I. 
 
 "Ay, but," he replied, "there was a horse at the end of the 
 rope. I was brought up in a training stable, and somehow there's 
 something in the smell of a stable is sure to send a man wrong if he 
 don't take care. I got betting and drinking, too, as young chaps 
 will, and lost my place, and got from bad to worse tiU I shook a 
 nag, and got bowled out and lagged. That's about my history, 
 sir ; will you give me a job now ? " And he looked up, laughing. 
 
 " Ay, why not ? " said I. " Because you tried hard to go to 
 the devil when you were young and foolish, it don't follow that 
 you should pursue that line of conduct all your life. You've been 
 in a training stable, eh ? If you can break horses, I may iind you 
 something to do." 
 
 " I'll break horses against any man in this country — though 
 that's not saying much, for I ain't seen not what I call a breaker 
 since I've been here ; as for riding, I'd ridden seven great winners 
 before I was eighteen ; and that's what ne'er a man alive can say. 
 Ah, those were the rosy times ! Ah for old Newmarket ! " 
 
 " Are you a Cambridgeshire man, then ? " 
 
 " Me ? Oh, ho ; I'm a Devonshire man. I come near from 
 where Major Buckley lived some years. Did you notice a pale, 
 pretty-looking woman, was with him — Mrs. Hawker? " ' 
 
 I grew all attention. " Yes," I said, "I noticed her." 
 
 " I knew her husband well," he said, " and an awful rascal he 
 was : he was lagged for coining, though he might have been for 
 half-a-dozen things besides." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said I ; " and is he in the colony ? " 
 
 " No ; he's over the water, I expect." 
 
 " In Van Diemen's Land, you mean ? " 
 
 " Just so," he said ; " he had better not show Bill Lee much of 
 his face, or there'll be mischief." 
 
 " Lee owes him a grudge, then ? " 
 
 "Not exactly that," said my communicative friend, "but I 
 don't think that Hawker will show much where Lee is." 
 
 "I am very glad to hear it," I thought to myself. " I hope 
 Mary may not have some trouble with her husband still." 
 
 " What is the name of the place Major Buckley comes from ? " 
 I inquired. 
 
 " Drumston." 
 
 " And you belong there too ? " I knew very well, however, 
 that he did not, or I must have known him. 
 
 "No," he answered; " Okehampton is my native place. But 
 you talk a little Devon yourself, sir." 
 
 The conversation came to a close, for we heard the barking of 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 159 
 
 dogs, and saw the station where we were to spend the night. In 
 the morning I went home, and my new acquaintance, who called 
 himself Dick, along with me. Finding that "he was a first-rate 
 rider, and gentle and handy among horses, I took him into my 
 service permanently, and soon got to like him very well. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A WARM CHRISTMAS DAY. 
 
 All through November and part of December, I and our Scotch 
 overseer, George Kyle, were busy as bees among the sheep. 
 Shearers were very scarce, and the poor sheep got fearfully 
 "tomahawked" by the new hands, who had been a very short 
 time from the barracks. Dick, however, my new acquaintance, 
 turned out a valuable ally, getting through more sheep and taking 
 off his fleece better than any man in the shed. The prisoners, 
 of course, would not work effectually without extra wages, and 
 thus gave a deal of trouble ; knowing that there was no fear 
 of my sending them to the magistrate (fifty miles off) during such 
 a busy time. However, all evils must come to an end some time 
 or another, and so did shearing, though it was neai'ly Christmas 
 before our wool was pressed and ready for the drays. 
 
 Then came a breathing time. So I determined, having heard 
 nothing of James, to go over and spend my Christmas with the 
 Buckleys, and see how they were getting on at their new station ; 
 and about noon on the day before Boxing-day, having followed the 
 track made by their drays from the place I had last parted with 
 them, I reined up on the cliffs above a noble river, and could see 
 their new huts, scarce a quarter of a mile off, on the other side of 
 the stream. 
 
 They say that Christmas -day is the hottest day in the year in 
 those countries, but some days in January are, I think, generally 
 hotter. To-day, however, was as hot as a salamander could wish. 
 All the vast extent of yellow plain to the eastward quivered 
 beneath a fiery sky, and every littie eminence stood like an island 
 in a lake of mirage. Used as I had got to this phenomenon, I 
 was often tempted that morning to turn a few hundred yards from 
 my route, and give my horse a drink at one of the broad glassy 
 pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I 
 was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets 
 
160 THK BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo ! when I was 
 a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and 
 I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up by 
 the midsummer sun. 
 
 For many miles I had distinguished the new huts, placed at the 
 apex of a great cape of the continent of timber which ran down 
 from the mountains into the plains. I thought they had chosen a 
 strange place for their habitation, as there appeared no signs of a 
 water-course near it. It was not till I pulled up within a quarter 
 of a mile of my destination that I heard a hoarse roar as if from 
 the bowels of the earth, and found that I was standing on the edge 
 of a glen about four hundred feet deep, through which a magnifi- 
 cent snow-fed river poured ceaselessly, here flashing bright among 
 bars of rock, there lying in dark, deep reaches, under tall, white- 
 stemmed trees. 
 
 The scene was so beautiful and novel that I paused and gazed 
 at it. Across the glen, behind the houses, rose up a dark mass of 
 timbered ranges, getting higher and steeper as far as the eye could 
 reach, while to the north-east the river's course might be traced 
 through the plains by the timber that fringed the water's edge, and 
 sometimes feathered some tributary gully almost to the level of the 
 flat lofty table-land. On either side of it, down behind down 
 folded one over the other, and, bordered by great forests, led the 
 eye towards the river's source, till the course of the deep valley 
 could no longer be distinguished, lost among the distant ranges ; 
 but above where it had disappeared, rose a tall blue peak mth 
 streaks of snow. 
 
 I rode down a steep pathway, and crossed a broad gravelly ford. 
 As my horse stopped to drink I looked delighted up the vista which 
 opened on my sight. The river, partly overshadowed by tall trees, 
 was hurrying and spouting through upright columns of basalt, 
 which stood in groups everywhere like the pillars of a ruined city ; 
 in some places solitary, in others, clustered together like fantastic 
 buildings ; while a hundred yards above was an island, dividing 
 the stream, on which, towering above the variety of low green 
 shrubs which covered it, three noble fern trees held their plumes 
 aloft, shaking with the concussion of the falling water. 
 
 I crossed the river. A gully, deep at first, but getting rapidly 
 shallower, led up by a steep ascent to the table-land above, and 
 as I reached the summit I found myself at Major Bucldey's front 
 door. They had, with good taste, left such trees as stood near the 
 house — a few deep-shadowed light-woods and black wattles, which 
 formed pretty groups in what I could see was marked out for a 
 garden. Behind, the land began to rise, at first, in park-like 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 161 
 
 timbered forest glades, and further back, closing into dense deep 
 woodlands. 
 
 " What a lovely place they will make of this in time ! " I said 
 to myself; but I had not much time for cogitation. A loud, 
 cheerful voice shouted : " Hamlyn, you are welcome to Baroona ! " 
 and close to me I saw the Major, carrying his son and heir in his 
 arms advancing to meet me from the house -door. 
 
 "You are welcome to Baroona 1" echoed the boy; "and a 
 merry Christmas and a happy New-year to you ! " 
 
 I went into the house and was delighted to find what a change 
 a few weeks of busy, quiet, and home had made in the some- 
 what draggle-tailed and disconsolate troop that I had parted 
 vrith on their road. Miss Thornton, with her black mittens, 
 white apron, and spectacles, had found herself a cool comer by 
 the empty fire-place, and was stitching away happily at baby linen. 
 Mrs. Buckley, in the character of a duchess, was picking raisins, 
 and Mary was helping her ; and, as I entered, laughing loudly, they 
 greeted me kindly with all the old sacred good wishes of the season. 
 
 " I very much pity you, Mr. Hamlyn," said Mrs. Buckley, " at 
 having outlived the novelty of being scorched to death on 
 Christmas-day. My dear husband, please refresh me with reading 
 the thermometer ! " 
 
 " One hundred and nine in the shade," replied the Major, with 
 a chuckle. 
 
 "Ah, dear ! " said Mrs. Buckley. " If the dear old rheumatic 
 creatures from the alms-house at Clere could only spend to-morrow 
 with us, how it would wanii their old bones ! Fancy how they are 
 crouching before their little pinched grate just now 1 " 
 
 "Hardly that, Mrs. Buckley," I said laughing; "they are all 
 snug in bed now. It is three o'clock in the morning, or there- 
 abouts, at home, you must remember. Miss Thornton, I hope you 
 have got over your journey." 
 
 " Yes, and I can laugh at all my mishaps now," she replied ; 
 " I have just got homely and comfortable here, but we must make 
 one more move, and that wiU be the last for me. Mary and Mr. 
 Troubridge have taken up their country to the south-west, and as 
 soon as he has got our house built, we are going to live there." 
 
 " It is not far, I hope," said I. 
 
 "A trifle: not more than ten miles," said Miss Thornton; 
 " they call the place Toonarbin. Mary's run joins the Major's 
 on two sides, and beyond again, we already have neighbours, the 
 Mayfords. They are on the river again ; but we are on a small 
 creek towards the ranges. I should like to have been on the 
 river, but they say we are very lucky." 
 
 12 
 
162 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " I am so glad to see you," said Mary ; " James Stockbridge 
 said you would be sure to come ; otherwise we should have sent 
 over for you. What do you think of my boy ? " 
 
 She produced him from an inner room. He was certainly a 
 beautiful child, though very small, and with a certain painful like- 
 ness to his father, which even I could see, and I could not help 
 comparing him unfavourably, in myovm mind, with that noble six- 
 year-old Sam Buckley, who had come to my knee where I sat, and 
 was looking in my face as if to make a request. 
 
 " What is it, my prince ? " I asked. 
 
 He blushed, and turned his handsome gray eyes to a silver- 
 handled riding-whip that I held in my hand. " I'll take such care 
 of it," he whispered, and, having got it, was soon astride of a 
 stick, full gallop for Banbury Cross. 
 
 James and Troubridge came in. To the foimer I had much to 
 tell that was highly satisfactory about our shearing ; and from 
 the latter I had much to hear about the state of both the new 
 stations, and the adventures of a journey he had had back to- 
 wards Sydney to fetch up his sheep. But these particulars will be 
 but little interesting to an English reader, and perhaps still less 
 so to an Australian. I am writing a history of the people them- 
 selves, not of their property. I will only say, once for all, that 
 the Major's run contained very little short of 60,000 acres of 
 splendidly grassed plain-land, which he took up originally with 
 merely a few cattle, and about 3,000 sheep ; but which, in a few 
 years, carried 28,000 sheep comfortably. Mrs. Hawker and 
 Troubridge had quite as large a run ; but a great deal of it was 
 rather worthless forest, badly grassed ; which Tom, in his wisdom, 
 like a great many other new chums, had thought superior to the 
 bleak plains on account of the shelter. Yet, notwithstanding this 
 disadvantage, they were never, after a year or two, vdth less than 
 15,000 sheep, and a tolerable head of cattle. In short, in a very 
 few years, both the Major and Troubridge, by mere power of accu- 
 mulation, became very wealthy people. 
 
 Christmas mom rose bright ; but ere the sun had time to wreak 
 his fury upon us, every soul in the household was abroad, under 
 the shade of the lightwood trees, to hear the Major read the 
 Litany. 
 
 A strange group we were. The Major stood with his back 
 against a tree-stem, and all his congregation were ranged around 
 him. To his right stood Miss Thornton, her arms folded placidly 
 before her ; and with her, Mary and Mrs. Buckley, in front of 
 whom sat the two boys : Sam, the elder, trying to keep Charles, 
 the younger, quiet. Next, going round the circle, stood the old 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 163 
 
 housekeeper, servant of the Buckleys for thirty years ; who now 
 looked askance off her Prayer-book to see that the two convict- 
 women under her charge were behaving with decorum. Next, and 
 exactly opposite the Major, were two free servants : one a broad, 
 brawny, athletic -looking man, with, I thought, not a bad counten- 
 ance ; and the other a tall, handsome, foolish -looking Devonshire 
 lad. The round was completed by five convict man-servants, 
 standing vacantly looking about them ; and Tom, James, and 
 myself, who were next the Major. 
 
 The service, which he read in a clear manly voice, was soon over, 
 and we returned to the house in groups. I threw myself in the 
 way of the two free servants, and asked, — 
 
 " Pray, which of you is William Lee ? " — for I had forgotten 
 him. 
 
 The short thickset man I had noticed before touched his hat 
 and said that he was. That touching of the hat is a very rare 
 piece of courtesy from working men in Australia. The convicts 
 are forced to do it, and so the free men make it a point of honour 
 not to do so. 
 
 " Oh ! " said I, " I have got a groom who calls himself Dick. 
 I found him sorefooted in the bush the day I met the Major. He 
 was trying to pick you up. He asked me to tell you that he was 
 afraid to cross the range alone on account of the blacks, or he 
 would have come up with you. He seemed anxious lest you should 
 think it was his fault." 
 
 " Poor chap ! " said Lee. " What a faithful little fellow it is I 
 Would it he asking a liberty if you would take back a letter for 
 me, sir? " 
 
 I said, " No, certainly not." 
 
 " I am much obliged to you, sir," he said. " I am glad Dick 
 has got with a gentleman." 
 
 That letter was of some importance to me, though I did not 
 know it till after, hut I may as well say why now. Lee had been 
 a favourite servant of my father's, and when he got into trouble 
 my father had paid a counsel to defend him. Lee never forgot 
 this, and this letter to Dick was shortly to the effect that I was 
 one of the right sort, and was to he taken care of, which injunc- 
 tion Dick obeyed to the very letter; doing me services for pure 
 good will, which could not have been bought for a thousand 
 a-year. 
 
 After breakfast arose the question, "What is to be done?" 
 Which Troubridge replied to , by saying : " What could any 
 sensible man do such weather as this, but get into the water and 
 stop there?" 
 
164 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " Shall it be, ' All hands to bathe,' then ? " said the Major. 
 
 " You won't be without company," said Mrs. Buckley, " for the 
 black fellows are camped in the bend, and they spend most of their 
 time in the water such a day as this." 
 
 So James and Troubridge started for the river with their towels, 
 the Major and I promising to follow them immediately, for I 
 wanted to look at my horse, and the Major had also something to 
 do in the paddock. So we walked together. 
 
 " Major," said I, when we had gone a little way, " do you never 
 feel anxious about Mary Hawker's husband appearing and giving 
 trouble ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said he. " The man is safe in Van Diemen's 
 Land. Besides, what could he gain ? I, for one, without con- 
 sulting her, should find means to pack him off again. There is 
 no fear." 
 
 " By the bye. Major," I said, " have you heard from our friend 
 Doctor Mulhaus since your arrival ? I suppose he is at Drumston 
 still?" 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! " said he. "He is gone iack to- Germany. 
 He is going to settle there again. He was so sickened of England 
 when all his friends left, that he determined to go home. I under- 
 stood that he had some sort of patrimony there, on which he will 
 end his days. Wherever he goes, God go with him, for he is a 
 noble fellow ! " 
 
 ■ ""Amen," I answered. And soon after, having got towels, we 
 proceeded to the river ; making for a long reach a little below 
 where I had crossed the night before. 
 
 "Look there!" said the Major, "There's a bit for one of 
 your painters ! I wish Wilkie or Martin were here." 
 
 I agreed with him. Had Etty been on the spot he would have 
 got a hint for one of his finest pictures ; and though I can give but 
 little idea of it in writing, let me try. Before us was a long reach 
 of deep, still water, unbroken by a ripple, so hemmed in on all 
 sides by walls of deep green black wattle, tea-tree, and delicate 
 silver acacia, that the water seemed to flow in a deep shoreless rift 
 of the forest, above which the taller forest trees towered up two 
 hundred feet, hiding the lofty cliifs, which had here receded a little 
 back from the river. 
 
 The picture had a centre, and a strange one. A little ledge of 
 rock ran out into deep water, and upon it, rising from a heap of 
 light-coloured clothing, like a white pillar, in the midst of the 
 sombre green foliage, rose the naked carcass of Thomas Trou- 
 bridge, Esq., preparing for a header, while at his feet were grouped 
 three or four black fellows, one of whom as we watched slid off 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 1G5 
 
 the rock like an otter. The reach was covered with black heads 
 belonging to the savages, who were swimming in all directions, 
 while groups of all ages and both sexes stood about on the bank 
 in Mother Nature's foil dress. 
 
 We had a glorious bathe, and then sat on the rock, smoking, 
 talking, and watching the various manoeuvres of the blacks. An 
 old lady, apparently about eighty, with a head as white as snow, 
 topping her black body (a flourbag cobbler, as her tribe would call 
 her), was punting a canoe along in the shallow water on the 
 opposite side of the river. She was entirely without clothes, and 
 in spite of her decrepitude stood upright in the cockleshell, hand- 
 ling it with great dexterity. When she was a little above us, she 
 made way on her barque, and shot into the deep water in the 
 middle of the stream, evidently with the intention of speaking to us. 
 As, however, she was just half-way across, floating helplessly, un- 
 able to reach the bottom with the spear she had used as a puntpole 
 in the shallower water, a mischievous black imp canted her over, 
 and souse she went into the river. It was amazing to see how 
 boldly and well the old woman struck out for the shore, keeping 
 her white head well out of the water ; and having reached dry land 
 once more, sat down on her haunches, and began scolding with a 
 volubility and power which would soon have silenced the loudest 
 tongue in old Billingsgate. 
 
 Her anger, so far from wearing out, grew on what fed it ; so 
 that her long-drawn yells, which seemed like parentheses in hei- 
 jabbering discourse, were getting each minute more and more acute, 
 and we were just thinking about moving homewards, when a voice 
 behind us sang out, — 
 
 " Hallo, Major 1 Having a little music, eh ? What a sweet 
 song that old girl is singing ! I must write it down from dicta- 
 tion, and translate it, as Walter Scott used to do with the old 
 wives' ballads in Scotland." 
 
 " I have no doubt it would be quite Ossianic — equal to any of 
 the abusive scenes in Homer. But, my dear Harding, how are 
 you ? You are come to eat your Christmas dinner with us, I 
 hope ? " 
 
 " That same thing. Major," answered the newcomer. " Trou- 
 bridge and Stockbridge, how are you ? This, I presume, is your 
 partner, Hamlyn ? " 
 
 We went back to the house. Harding, I found, was half-owner 
 of a station to the north-east, an Oxford man, a great hand at 
 sky-larking, and an inveterate writer of songs. He was good- 
 looking too, and gentlemanlike, in fact, a very pleasant companion 
 in every way. 
 
166 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Dinner was to be at six o'clock, in imitation of home hours ; but 
 we did not find the day hang heavy on our hands, there was so 
 much to be spoken of by all of us. And when that important 
 meal was over we gathered in the open air in front of the house, 
 bent upon making Christmas cheer. 
 
 " What is your last new song, eh, Harding ? " said the Major ; 
 " now is the time to ventilate it." 
 
 " I've been too busy shearing for song-writing, Major." 
 
 Soon after this we went in, and there we sat till nearly ten 
 o'clock, laughing, joking, singing, and drinking punch. Mary 
 sat between James Stoekbridge and Tom, and they three spoke 
 together so exclusively and so low, that the rest of us were quite 
 forgotten. Mary was smiling and laughing, first at one and then 
 at the other, in her old way, and now and then as I glanced at her 
 I could hardly help sighing. But I soon remembered certain 
 resolutions I had made, and tried not to notice the trio, but to 
 make myself agreeable to the others. Still my eyes wandered 
 towards them again intuitively. I thought Mary had never looked 
 so beautiful before. Her complexion was very full, as though she 
 were blushing at something one of them had said to her, and while 
 I watched I saw James rise and go to a jug of flowers, and bring 
 back a wreath of scarlet Kennedia, saying : — 
 
 " Do us a favour on Christmas night, Mary ; twine this in your 
 hair." 
 
 She blushed deeper than before, but she did it, and Tom helped 
 her. There was no harm in that, you say, for was he not her 
 cousin ? But stiR I could not help saying to myself, " Oh, Mary, 
 Mary, if you were a widow, how long would you stay so ? " 
 
 " What a gathering it is, to be sure ! " said Mrs. Buckley ! — • 
 " all the old Drumstonians who are alive collected under one 
 roof." 
 
 " Except the Doctor," said the Major. 
 
 " Ah, yes, dear Doctor Mulhaus. I am so sad sometimes to 
 think that we shall never see him again." 
 
 "I miss him more than any one," said the Major. "I have 
 no one to contradict me now." 
 
 " I shall have to take that duty upon me, then," said his wife. 
 
 " Hark ! there is Lee come back from the sheep station. Yes, 
 that must be his horse. Call him in and give him a glass of gi'og. 
 I was sorry to send him out to-day." 
 
 "He is coming to make his report," said Mrs. Bucldey ; " there 
 is his heavy tramp outside the door." 
 
 The door was opened, and the new comer advanced to where the 
 glare of the candles fell upon his face. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 167 
 
 Had the Gentleman in Black himself advanced out of the dark- 
 ness at that moment, with his hlue bag on his arm and his bundle 
 of documents in. his hand, we should not have leapt to our feet and 
 cried out more suddenly than we did then. For Doctor Mulhaus 
 stood in the middle of the room, looking around him with a bland 
 smile. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 JIM STOCKBRIDGE BEGINS TO TAKE ANOTHER VIEW OF MATTERS. 
 
 He stood in the candle-light, smiling blandly, while we all stayed 
 for an instant, after our first exclamation, speechless with astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 The Major was the first who showed signs of consciousness, for 
 I verily beheve that one half of the -company at least believed 
 him to be a ghost. "You are the man," said the Major, " who 
 in the flesh called himself Maximilian Mulhaus ! Why ai"e you 
 come to trouble us, spirit ? — not that we shouldn't be glad to 
 see you if you were alive, you know, but — my dear old friend, how 
 are you ? " 
 
 Then we crowded round him, all speaking at once and trying to 
 shake hands with him. Still he remained silent, and smiled. I, 
 looking into his eyes, saw that they were swimming, and divined 
 why he would not trust himself to speak. No one hated a show 
 of emotion more than the Doctor, and yet his brave warm heart 
 would oiten flood his eyes in spite of himself. 
 
 He walked round to the fire-place, and, leaning against the 
 board that answered for a chimney-piece, stood looking at us with 
 beaming eyes, while we anxiously waited for him to speak. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said at length, with a deep sigh, " this does me 
 good. I have not made my journey in vain. A man who tries to 
 live in this world without love must, if he is not a fool, commit 
 suicide in a year. I went to my own home, and my own dogs 
 barked at me. Those I had raised out of the gutter, and set on 
 horseback, splashed mud on me as I walked. I will go back, I 
 said, to the little English family who loved and respected me for 
 my own sake, though they be at the ends of tlie earth. So I left 
 those who should have loved mo with an Hi-concealed smile on 
 their faces, and when I come here I am welcomed with tears of 
 joy from those I have not kno^vn five years. Bah ! Here is my 
 home, Buckley : let me live and die with you." 
 
168 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "Live ! " said the Major — " ay, while there's a place to live 
 in ; don't talk about dying yet, though, — we'll think of that pre- 
 sently. I can't find words enough to give him welcome. Wife, 
 can you? " 
 
 " Not I, indeed," she said ; " and what need ? He can see a 
 warmer welcome in our faces than an hour's clumsy talk could give 
 him. I say. Doctor, you are welcome, now and for ever. Will 
 that serve you, husband ? " 
 
 I could not help looking at Miss Thornton. She sat silently 
 staring at him through it all, with her hands clasped together, 
 beating them upon her knee. Now, when all was quiet, and 
 Mrs. Buckley and Mary had run off to the kitchen to, order the 
 Doctor some supper, he seemed to see her for the first time, and 
 bowed profoundly. She rose, and, looking at him intently, sat 
 down again. 
 
 The Doctor had eaten his supper, and Mrs. Buckley had made 
 him something to drink with her own hands ; the Doctor had lit 
 his pipe, and we had gathered round the empty fire-place, when 
 the Major said, — 
 
 " Now, Doctor, do tell us your adventures, and how you have 
 managed to drop upon us from the skies on Christmas-day." 
 
 ■' Soon told, my friend," he answered. " See here. I went 
 back to Germany because all ties in England were broken. I 
 went to Lord C : I said, ' I will go back and see the palin- 
 genesis of my country ; I will see what they are doing, now the 
 French are in the dust.' He said, ' Go, and God speed you ! ' I 
 went. What did I find ? Beggars on horseback everywhere, 
 riding post-haste to the devil — ^not as good horsemen, either, but 
 as tailors of Brentford, and crowding one another into the mud to 
 see who would be there first. ' Let me get out of this before they 
 ride over me,' said I. So I came forth to England, took ship, and 
 here I am." 
 
 " A most lucid and entirely satisfactory explanation of what you 
 have been about, I must say," answered the Major ; " however, I 
 must be content." 
 
 At this moment little Sam, who had made his escape in the 
 confusion, came running in, breathless. " Papa I Papa ! " said 
 he, " Lee has come home with a snake seven feet long." Lee was 
 at the door with the reptile in his hand — a black snake, with a 
 deep salmon-coloured belly, deadly venomous, as I knew. All the 
 party went out to look at it, except the Doctor and Miss Thornton, 
 who stayed at the fire-place. 
 
 " Mind your hands, Lee I " I heard James say ; " though the 
 brute is dead, you might prick your fingers with him," 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 169 
 
 I was behind all the others, waiting to look at the snake, which 
 was somewhat of a large, one, and worth seeing, so I could not help 
 overhearing the conversation of Miss Thornton and the Doctor, and 
 having heard the first of it my ears grew so unnaturally quickened, 
 that I could not for the life of me avoid hearing the whole, though 
 I was ashamed of playing eavesdropper. 
 
 " My God, sir ! " I heard her say, " what new madness is this ? 
 Why do you persist in separating yourself from your family in this 
 fanner ? " 
 
 "No madness at all, my dear madam," he answered; "you 
 would have done the same under the circumstances. My brother 
 was civil, but I saw he would rather have me away and continue 
 his stewardship. And so I let him." 
 
 Miss Thornton put another question which I did not catch, and 
 the sense of which I could not supply, but I heard his answer 
 plainly : it was, — 
 
 " Of course I did, my dear lady, and, just as you may suppose, 
 when I walked up the Ritter Saal, there was a buzz and a giggle, 
 
 and not one held out his hand save noble Von H ; long life to 
 
 him ! " 
 
 " But ? " said Miss Thornton, mentioning somebody, whose 
 
 name I could not catch. 
 
 " I saw him bend over to M as I came up to the Presence, 
 
 and they both laughed. I saw a slight was intended, made my 
 devoirs, and backed off. The next day he sent for me, but I was 
 oflF and away. I heard of it before I left England." 
 
 " And wiU you never go back ? " she said. 
 
 " When I can with honour, not before ; and that will never be 
 till he is dead, I fear ; and his life is as good as mine. So, hey 
 for natural history, and quiet domestic life, and happiness with my 
 English friends ! Now, am I wise or not ? " 
 
 " I fear not," she said. 
 
 The Doctor laughed, and taking her hand, kissed it gallantly ; 
 by this time we had all turned round, and were coming in. 
 
 " Now, Doctor," said the Major, " if you have done flirting with 
 Miss Thornton, look at this snake." 
 
 " A noble beast, indeed," said the Doctor. " Friend," he added 
 to Lee, " if you don't want him, I will take him oif your hands for 
 a sum of money. He shall be pickled, as I hve." 
 
 " He is very venomous, sir," said Lee. " The blacks eat 'em, 
 it's true, but they always cut the head off first. I'd take the 
 head off, sir, before I ventured to taste him." 
 
 We all laughed at Lee's supposing that the Doctor meant to make 
 a meal of the deadly serpent, and Lee laughed as loudly as anybody. 
 
170 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "You see, sir," he said, "I've always heard that you French 
 gents ate frogs, so I didn't know as snakes would come amiss." 
 
 " Pray don't take me for a Frenchman, my good lad," said the 
 Doctor ; " and as for frogs, they are as good as chickens." 
 
 "Well, I've eaten guaners myself," said Lee, "though I can't 
 say much for them. They're uglier than snakes any way." 
 
 Lee was made to sit down and take a glass of grog. So, very 
 shortly, the conversation flowed on into its old channel, and, after 
 spending a long and pleasant evening, we all went to bed. 
 
 James and I slept in the same room ; and, when we were going 
 to bed, I said, — 
 
 " James, if that fellow were to die, there would be a chance for 
 you yet." 
 
 " With regard to what ? " he asked, 
 
 "You know well enough, you old humbug," I said; "with 
 regard to Mary Hawker, — nee Thornton ! " 
 
 " I doubt it, my lad," he said. " I very much doubt it indeed ; 
 and, perhaps, you have heard that there must be two parties to a 
 bargain, so that even if she were willing to take me, I very much 
 doubt if I would ask her." 
 
 " No one could blame you for that," I said, " after what has 
 happened. There are but few men who would like to marry the 
 widow of a coiner." 
 
 " You mistake me, Jeff. You mistake me altogether," he 
 answered, walking up and down the room with one boot off. 
 " That would make but little difference to me. I've no relations 
 to sing out about a mesalliance, you know. No, my dear old 
 fellow, not that ; but — Jeff, Jeff ! you are the dearest friend I 
 have in the world." 
 
 " Jim, my boy," I answered, " I love you like a brother. What 
 is it?" 
 
 "I have no secrets from you, Jeff," he said; " so I don't 
 mind telling you." Another hesitation ! I grew rather anxious. 
 "What the deuce is coming?" I thought. "What can she 
 have been up to? Go on, old feUow," I added aloud; "let's 
 hear all about it." 
 
 He stood at the end of the room, looking rather sheepish. 
 " Why, the fact is, old fellow, that I begin to suspect that I have 
 outlived any little attachment I had in that quarter. I've been 
 staying in the house two months with her, you see : and, in fact I 
 — in fact I " — hero he brought up short again. 
 
 " James Stockbridgo," I said, sitting up in bod, " you atrocious 
 humbug ; two months ago you informed me, with a sigh like a 
 groggy pair of bellows, that her image could only be effaced from 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. XTl 
 
 your heart by death. You have seduced me, whose only fault 
 was loving you too well to part with you, into coming sixteen 
 thousand miles to a barbarous land, far from kindred and country, 
 on the plea that your blighted affections made England less 
 endurable than — ^France, I'U say for argument ; — and now, 
 having had two months' opportunity of studying the character of 
 the beloved one, you coolly inform me that the whole thing was a 
 mistake. I repeat that you are a humbug." 
 
 " If you don't hold your tongue, and that quick," he replied, 
 " I'U send this boot at your ugly head. Now then ! " 
 
 I ducked, fully expecting it was coming, and laughed silently 
 under the bed-clothes. I was very happy to hear this — I was 
 very happy to hear that a man, whom I really liked so well, had 
 got the better of a passion for a woman who I knew was utterly 
 incapable of being to him what his romantic high-flown notions 
 required a wife to be. " K this happy result," I said to myself, 
 " can be rendered the more sure by ridicule, that shaJl not be 
 wanting. Meanwhile, I wiU sue for peace, and see how it came 
 about." 
 
 I rose again and saw he had got his other boot half off, and was 
 watching for me. " Jim," said I, " you ain't angry because I 
 laughed at you, are you ? " 
 
 "Angry! " he answered. " I am never angry with you, and 
 you know it. I've been a fool, and I ought to be laughed at." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said I, "no more a fool than other men have been 
 before you, from father Adam downwards." 
 
 " And he was a most con — " 
 
 "There," I interrupted: "don't abuse your ancestors. Tell 
 me why you have changed your mind so quick ? " 
 
 " That's a precious hard thing to do, mind you," he answered. 
 " A thousand trifling circumstances, which taken apart are as 
 worthless straws, when they are bound up together become a 
 respectable truss, which is marketable, and ponderable. So it is 
 with little traits in Mary's character, which I have only noticed 
 lately, nothing separately ; yet, when taken together, are, to say 
 the least, different to what I had imagined whQe my eyes were 
 blinded. To take one instance among fifty ; there's her cousin 
 Tom, one of the finest fellows that ever stepped ; but stiU I don't 
 like to see her, a married woman, allowing him to pull her hair 
 about, and twist flowers in it." 
 
 This was very true, but I thought that if James instead of Tom 
 had been allowed the privilege of decorating her hair, he might 
 have looked on it with different eyes. James, I saw, cared too 
 little about her to be very jealous, and so I saw that there was no fear 
 
172 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of any coolness between him and Troubridge, which was a thing 
 to be rejoiced at, as a quarrel would have been a terrible blow on 
 our little society. 
 
 " Jim," said I, " I have got something to tell you. Do you 
 know, I believe there is some mystery about Doctor Mulhaus." 
 
 "He is a walking mystery," said Jim : "but he is a noble 
 good fellow, though unhappily a frog-eater." 
 
 " Ah 1 but I believe Miss Thornton knows it." 
 
 " Very like," said Jim, yawning. 
 
 I told him aD. the conversation I overheard that evening. 
 
 " Are you sure she said ' the king ' ? " he asked. 
 
 " Quite sure," I said ; " now, what do you make of it? " 
 
 " I make this of it," he said : " that it is no earthly business of 
 ours, or we should have been informed of it ; andT if I were you 
 I wouldn't breathe a word of it to any mortal soul, or let the 
 Doctor suspect that you overheard anything. Secrets where 
 kings are concerned are precious sacred things, old Jeff. Good 
 night 1" 
 
 CHAPTEK XXII. 
 
 SAM Buckley's education. 
 
 This narrative which I am now writing is neither more nor less 
 than an account of what befel certain of my acquaintances during 
 a period extending over nearly, or quite, twenty years, interspersed, 
 and let us hope embellished, with descriptions of the country in 
 which these circumstances took place, and illustrated by conver- 
 sations well known to me by frequent repetition, selected as 
 throwing light upon the characters of the persons concerned. 
 Episodes there are, too, which I have thought it worth while to 
 introduce, as being more or less interesting, as bearing on the 
 manners of a country but little known, out of which materials it is 
 difficult to select those most proper to make my tale coherent ; 
 yet it has been my object, neither to dwell on the one hand 
 unnecessarily on the more unimportant passages, nor on the other 
 hand to omit anything which may be supposed to bear on the 
 general course of events. 
 
 Now, during all the time above mentioned, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, 
 have happened to lead a most uninteresting, and with few excep- 
 tions prosperous existence. I was but little concerned, save as a 
 hearer, in the catalogue of exciting accidents and offences which I 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 173 
 
 chronicle. I have looked on with the deepest interest at the love- 
 making, and ended a bachelor ; I have witnessed the fighting afar 
 off, only joining the battle when I covdd not help it, yet I am a 
 steady old fogey, with a mortal horror of a disturbance of any sort. 
 I have sat drinking with the wine-bibbers, and yet at sixty my 
 hand is as steady as a rock. Money has come to me by mere 
 accumulation ; I have taken more pains to spend it than to 
 make it ; in short, all through my life's dream, I have been a 
 spectator and not an actor, and so in this story I shall keep my- 
 self as much as possible in the background, only appearing 
 personally when I cannot help it. 
 
 Acting on this resolve I must now make my congS, and bid you 
 farewell for a few years, and go back to those few sheep which 
 James Stockbridge and I own in the wildemess, and continue the 
 history of those who are more important than myself. I must 
 push on too, for there is a long period of dull stupid pros- 
 perity coming to our friends at Baroona and Toonarbin, which we 
 must get over as quickly as is decent. Little Sam Buckley also, 
 though at present a most delightful child, wiU soon be a mere 
 uninteresting boy. We must teach him to read and write, and 
 ride, and what not, as soon as possible, and see if we can't find a 
 young lady — well, I won't anticipate, but go on. Go on, did I 
 say ? — jump on, rather — two whole years at once. 
 
 See Baroona now. Would you know it ? I think not. That 
 hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day you know of is 
 degraded into the kitchen, and seems moved backwai'd, although 
 it stands in the same place, for a new house is built nearer the 
 river, quite overwhelming the old slab hut in its grandeur — a long 
 low wooden house, with deep cool verandahs aU round, ah-eady 
 festooned with passion flowers, and young grape-vines, and fronted 
 by a flower-garden, all a-blaze with petunias and geraniums. 
 
 It was a summer evening, and aU the French ^vindows reaching 
 to the ground were open to admit the cool south wind, which had 
 just come up, deliciously icily cold after a scorching day. In the 
 verandah sat the Major and the Doctor over their claret (for the 
 Major had taken to dining late again now, to his great comfort), 
 and in the garden were Mrs. Buckley and Sam watering the 
 flowers, attended by a man who drew water from a new-made 
 reservoir near the house. 
 
 "I think, Doctor," said the Major, "that the habit of dining 
 in the middle of the day is a gross abuse of the gifts of Providence, 
 and I'U prove it to you. What does a man dine for ? — answer me 
 that." 
 
 " To satisfy his hunger, / should say," answered the Doctor. 
 
174 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " Pooh I pooh ! stuff and nonsense, my good friend," said the 
 Major; "you are speaking at random. I suppose you will say, 
 then, that a black fellow is capable of dining ? " 
 
 " Highly capable, as far as I can judge from what I have seen," 
 replied the Doctor. " A full-grown fighting black would be 
 ashamed if he couldn't eat a leg of mutton at a sitting." 
 
 "And you call that dining?" said the Major. "I call it 
 gorging. Why, those fellows are more uncomfortable after food 
 than before. I have seen them sitting close before the fire and 
 rubbing their stomachs with mutton fat to reduce the swelling. 
 Ha I ha ! ha !— dining, eh ? Oh, Lord ! " 
 
 " Then if you don't dine to satisfy your hunger, what the deuce 
 do you eat dinners for at all ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 " Why," said the Major, spreading his legs out before him with 
 a benign smile, and leaning back in his chair, " I eat my dinner, 
 not so much for the ' sake of the dinner itself, as for the after- 
 dinnerish feeling which follows : a feeling that you have nothing 
 to do, and that if you had you'd be shot if you'd do it. That, to 
 return to where I started from, is why I won't dine in the middle 
 of the day." 
 
 " If that is the way you feel after dinner, I certainly wouldn't." 
 
 "All the most amiable feelings in the human breast," continued 
 the Major, " are brought out in their fuU perfection by dinner. K 
 a fellow were to come to me now and ask me to lend him ten 
 pounds, I'd do it, provided, you know, that he would fetch out the 
 cheque-book and pen and ink." 
 
 "Laziness is nothing," said the Doctor, " unless well carried 
 out. I only contradicted you, however, to draw you out ; I agree 
 entirely. Do you know, my friend, I am getting marvellously fond 
 of this climate." 
 
 "So am I. But then you know. Doctor, that we are sheltered 
 from the north wind here by the snow-ranges. The summer in 
 Sydney, now, is perfectly infernal. The dust is so thick you can't 
 see your hand before you." 
 
 " So I believe," said the Doctor. " By the bye, I got a new 
 butterfly to-day : rather an event, mind you, here, where there are 
 so few." 
 
 "What is he?" 
 
 " An Hipparchia," said the Doctor, " Sam saw him first and 
 gave chase." 
 
 " You seem to be making quite a naturalist of my boy, Doctor. 
 I am sincerely obliged to you. If we can make him take to that 
 sort of thing it may keep him out of much mischief." 
 
 "He wiU never get into much," said the Doctor, "unless I 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 175 
 
 am mistaken ; he is the most docUe child I ever came across. It 
 is a pleasure to be with him. What are you going to do with 
 him ? " 
 
 " He must go to school, I am afraid," said the Major with a 
 sigh ; "I can't bring my heart to part with him ; but his mother 
 has taught him all she knows, so I suppose he must go to school, 
 and fight, and get flogged, and come home with a pipe in his 
 mouth, and an oath on his lips, with his education completed. I 
 don't fancy his staying here among these convict servants, when 
 he is old enough to learn mischief." 
 
 " He'U learn as much mischief at a colonial school, I expect," 
 said the Doctor, "and more too. All the evil he hears from these 
 fellows wiU be like the water on a duck's back ; whereas, if you 
 send him to school in a town, he'U learn a dozen vices he'll never 
 hear of here. Get him a tutor." 
 
 " That's easier said than done, Doctor. It is very hard to get 
 a respectable tutor in the colony." 
 
 "Here is one at your hand," said the Doctor. "Take 
 me." 
 
 " My dear friend," said the Major, jumping up, " I would not 
 have dared to ask such a thing. If you would undertake him for 
 a short time? " 
 
 "I will undertake the boy's education altogether. Potztausend, 
 and why not ! It will be a labour of love, and therefore the more 
 thoroughly done. What shall he learn, now ? " 
 
 " That I must leave to you." 
 
 "A weighty responsibility," said the Doctor. "No Latin or 
 Greek, I suppose ? They will be no use to him here." 
 
 " Well — no ; I suppose not. But I should like him to leam 
 his Latin grammar. You may depend upon it there's something 
 in the Latin grammar." 
 
 " What use has it been to you. Major ? " 
 
 " Why, the least advantage it has been to me is to give me an 
 insight into the construction of languages, which is some use. 
 But while I was learning the Latin grammar, I learnt other things 
 besides, of more use than the construction of any languages, living 
 or dead. First, I leamt that there were certain things in this world 
 that vwst be done. Next, that there were people in this world, of 
 whom the Masters of Eton were a sample, whose orders must be 
 obeyed without question. Third, I found that it was pleasanter 
 in ail ways to do one's duty than to leave it undone. Aid last, I 
 found out how to bear a moderate amount of birching without any 
 indecent outcry." 
 
 I'f AH very useful things," said the Doctor. " Teach a boy one 
 
176 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 thing well, and you show him how to learn others. History, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 " As much as you like, Doctor. His mother has taught him 
 his catechism, and all that sort of thing, and she is the fit person, 
 you know. With the exception of that and the Latm grammar, I 
 trust everything to your discretion." 
 
 " There is one thing I leave to you. Major, if you please, and 
 that is corporal chastisement. I am not at all sure that I could 
 bring myself to flog Sam, and, if I did, it would be very inefficiently 
 done." 
 
 " Oh, I'll undertake it," said the Major, " though I believe I 
 shall have an easy task. He won't want much flogging." 
 
 At this moment Mrs. Buckley approached with a basketfiil of 
 fresh-gathered flowers. "The roses don't flower well here, 
 Doctor," she said, "but the geraniums run mad. Here is a 
 salmon-coloured one for your button-hole." 
 
 " He has earned it well, Agnes," said her husband. " He has 
 decided the discussion we had last night by offering to undertake 
 Sam's education himself." 
 
 "And God's blessing on him for it ! " said Mrs. Buckley, warmly. 
 " You have taken a great load off my mind, Doctor. I should 
 never have been happy if that boy had gone to school. Come 
 here, Sam." 
 
 Sam came bounding into the verandah, and clambered up on 
 his father, as if he had been a tree. He was now eleven yeai-s 
 old, and very tall and well-formed for his age. He was a good- 
 looking boy, with regular features, and curly chestnut hair. He 
 had, too, the large grey-blue eye of his father, an eye that never 
 lost for a moment its staring expression of kindly honesty, and 
 the lad's whole countenance was one which, without being parti- 
 cularly handsome, or even very intelligent, won an honest man's 
 regard at first sight. 
 
 " My dear Sam," said his mother, " leave off' playing with yom' 
 father's hair, and listen to me, for I have something serious to say 
 to you. Last night your father and I were debating about 
 sending you to school, but Doctor Mulhaus has himself offered to 
 be your tutor, thereby giving you advantages, for love, which you 
 never could have secured for money. Now, the least we can 
 expect of you, my dear boy, is that you will be docile and attentive 
 to him." 
 
 " I will try. Doctor dear," said Sam. " But I am very stupid 
 sometimes, you Imow." 
 
 So the good Doctor, whose head was stored with nearly as much 
 of human knowledge as mortal head could hold, took simple, 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 177 
 
 guileless little Sam by the hand, and led him into the garden of 
 knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, these two will pick more 
 flowers than they will dig potatoes in the aforesaid garden, but I 
 don't think that two such honest souls will gather much unwhole- 
 some fruit. The danger is that they will waste their time, which 
 is no danger at all, but a certainty. 
 
 I believe that such an education as our Sam got from the Doctor 
 would have made a slattern and a faineant out of half the boys in 
 England. If Sam had been a clever boy, or a conceited boy, he 
 would have ended with a superficial knowledge of things in general, 
 imagining he knew everyth ing when he knew nothing, and would 
 have been left in the end, without a faith either religious or 
 political, a useless, careless man. 
 
 This danger the Doctor foresaw in the first month, and going 
 to the Major abruptly, as he walked up and down the garden, took 
 his arm, and said, — 
 
 " See here, Buckley. I have undertaken to educate that boy 
 of yours, and every day I hke the task better, and yet every day 
 I see that I have undertaken something beyond me. His appetite 
 for knowledge is insatiable, but he is not an intellectual boy ; he 
 makes no deductions of his own, but takes mine for granted. He 
 has no commentary on what he learns, but that of a dissatisfied 
 idealist like me, a man who has been thrown among circumstances 
 sufficiently favourable to make a prime minister out of some men, 
 and yet who has ended by doing nothing. Another thing : this is 
 my first attempt at education, and I have not the schoolmaster's 
 art to keep him to details. Every day I make new resolutions, 
 and every day I break them. The boy turns his great eyes upon 
 me in the middle of some humdrum work, and asks me a question. 
 In answering, I get off the turnpike road, and away we go from 
 lane to lane, from one subject to another, until lesson-time is over, 
 and nothing done. And, if it were merely time wasted, it could 
 be made up, but he remembers every word I say, and believes in 
 it like gospel, when I myself couldn't remember half of it to save 
 my life. Now, my dear fellow, I consider your boy to be a very 
 sacred trust to me, and so I have mentioned all this to you, to 
 give you an opportunity of removing him to where he might be 
 under a stricter discipline, if you thought fit. If he was like 
 some boys, now, I should resign my post at once ; but, as it is, I 
 shall wait till you turn me out, for two reasons. The first is, that 
 I take such dehght in my task, that I do not care to relinquish it ; 
 and the other is, that the lad is naturally so orderly and gentle, 
 that he does not need discipline, like most boys." 
 
 " My dear Doctor," replied Major Bucldey, " listen to me. If 
 13 
 
178 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF . 
 
 we were in England, and Sam could go to Eton, which, I take it, 
 you know, is the best school in the world, I would still earnestly 
 ask you to continue your work. He wiU probably inherit a great 
 deal of money, and will not have to push his way in the world by 
 his brains ; so that close scholarship will be rather unnecessary. 
 I should like him to know history well and thoroughly ; for he 
 may mix in the political life of this little colony by and by. Latin 
 grammar, you know," he said, laughing, " is indispensable. Doctor, 
 I trust my boy with you because I know that you wiU make him a 
 gentleman, as his mother, with God's blessing, wiU make him a 
 Christian." 
 
 So the Doctor buckled to his task again, with renewed energy ; 
 to Euclid, Latin grammar, and fractions. Sam's good memory 
 enabled him to make light of the grammar, and the fractions too 
 were no great difficulty, but the Euclid was an awful trial. He 
 couldn't make out what it was all about. He got on very well 
 until he came nearly to the end of the first book, and then getting 
 among the parallelogram "props," as we used to call them (may 
 their fathers' graves be defiled !), he stuck dead. For a whole 
 evening did he pore patiently over one of them till A B, setting to 
 C D, crossed hands, poussetted, and whirled round " in Sahara 
 waltz" through his throbbing head. Bed-time, but no rest! 
 Whether he slept or not he could not tell. Who could sleep with 
 that long-bodied, iU-tempered-looking parallelogram A H standing 
 on the bed-clothes, and crying out in tones loud enough to waken . 
 the house, that it never had been, nor ever would be equal to the 
 fat jolly square C K ? So, in the morning, Sam woke to the 
 consciousness that he was farther off from the solution than ever, 
 but, having had a good cry, went into the study and tackled to it 
 again. 
 
 No good ! Breakfast time, and matters much worse ! That 
 long peaked-nose vixen of a triangle A H 0, which yesterday Sam 
 had made out was equal to half the parallelogram and half the 
 square, now had the audacity to declare that She had nothing to 
 do with either of them ; so what was to be done now ? 
 
 After breakfast Sam took his book and went out to his father, 
 who was sitting smoking in the verandah. He clambered up on 
 to his knee, and then began : — 
 
 " Father, dear, see here ; can you understand this ? You've 
 got to prove, you know,— oh, dear ! I've forgot that now." 
 
 " Let's see," said the Major ; " I'm afraid this is a little above 
 me. There's Brentwood, now, could do it ; he was in the 
 Artillery, you know, and learnt fortification, and that sort of 
 thing. I don't think I can make much hand of it, Sam." 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 179 
 
 But Sam had put his head upon his father's shoulder, and was 
 crying bitterly. 
 
 " Come, come, my old man," said the Major, " don't give way, 
 you know ; don't be beat." 
 
 "I can't make it out at all," said Sam, sobbing. "I've got 
 such a buzzing in my head with it ! and if I can't do it I must 
 stop ; because I can't go on to the next till I understand this. 
 Oh, dear me ! " 
 
 " Lay your head there a little, my boy, tiU it gets clearer : then 
 perhaps you wiU be able to make it out. You may depend on it 
 that you ought to learn it, or the good Doctor wouldn't have set it 
 to you ; never let a thing beat you, my son." 
 
 So Sam cried on his father's shoulder a little, and then went in 
 with his book ; and not long after, the Doctor looked in un- 
 peroeived, and saw the boy with his elbows on the table and the 
 book before him. Even while he looked a big tear fell plump into 
 the middle of A H ; so the Doctor came quietly in and said, — 
 
 " Can't you manage it, Sam ? " 
 
 Sam shook his head. 
 
 " Just give me hold of the book ; will you, Sam ? " 
 
 Sam complied without word or comment ; the Doctor sent it 
 flying through the open window, half-way down the garden. 
 " There ! " said he, nodding his head, " that's the fit place for 
 him this day : you've had enough of him at present ; go and tell 
 one of the blacks to dig some worms, and we'U make holiday and 
 go a fishing." 
 
 Sam looked at the Doctor, and then through the window at his 
 old enemy lying in the middle of the flower-bed. He did not like 
 to see the poor book, so lately his master, crumpled and helpless, 
 fallen from its high estate so suddenly. He would have gone to 
 its assistance, and picked it up and sihoothed it, the more so as 
 he felt that he had been beaten. 
 
 The Doctor seemed to see everything. " Let it lie here, my 
 child," he said; "you are not in a position to assist a faUen 
 enemy ; you are still the vanquished party. Go and get the 
 worms." 
 
 He went, and when he came back he found the Doctor sitting 
 beside his father in the verandah, with a penknife in one hand and 
 the ace of spades in the other. He cut the card into squares, tri- 
 angles, and parallelograms, while Sam looked on, and, demonstra- 
 ting as he went, fitted them one into the other, tiU the boy saw 
 his bugbear of a proposition made as clear as day before his eyes. 
 
 " Why," said Sam, " that's as clear as need be. I understand 
 it- Now may I pick the book up. Doctor ? ' ' 
 
180 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 History was the pleasantest part of all Sam's tasks, for they would 
 sit in the little room given up for a study, with the French 
 windows open looking on the flower-garden, Sam reading aloud 
 and the Doctor making discursive commentaries. At last, one 
 day the Doctor said, — 
 
 " My boy, we are making too much of a pleasure of this : you 
 must really learn your dates. Now tell me the date of the 
 accession of Edward the Sixth." 
 
 No returns. 
 
 "Ah! I thought so: we must not be so discursive. We'll 
 learn the dates of the Grecian History, as being an effort of 
 memory, you not having read it yet." 
 
 But this plan was rather worse than the other ; for one morning, 
 Sam having innocently asked, at half-past eleven, what the battle 
 of Thermopylae was, Mrs. Buckley coming in, at one, to call them 
 to lunch, found the Doctor, who had begun the account of that 
 glorious fight in English, and then gone on to German, walking up 
 and down the room in a state of excitement, reciting to Sam, who 
 did not know d from i^, the soul-moving account of it from 
 Herodotus in good sonorous Greek. She asked, laughing, 
 " Wliat language are you talking now, my dear Doctor?" 
 
 " Greek, madam, Greek ! and the very best of Greek ! " 
 
 " And what does Sam think of it ? I should like you to learn 
 Greek, my boy, if you can." 
 
 " I thought he was singing, mother," said Sam ; but after that 
 the lad used to sit delighted, by the river side, when they were 
 fishing, while the Doctor, with his musical voice, repeated some 
 melodious ode of Pindar's. 
 
 And so the intellectual education proceeded, with more or less 
 energy ; and meanwhile the physical and moral part was not 
 forgotten, though the two latter, like the former, were not very 
 closely attended to, and left a good deal to Providence. (And, 
 having done your best for a boy, in what better hands can you 
 leave him ?) But the Major, as an old soldier, had gained a 
 certain faith in the usefulness of physical training ; so, when Sam 
 was about twelve, you might have seen him any afternoon on the 
 lawn with his father, the Major, patiently teaching him singlestick, 
 and Sam as patiently learning, untU the boy came to be so 
 marvellously active on his legs, and to show such rapidity of eye 
 and hand, that the Major, on one occasion, having received a more 
 than usually agonising cut on the forearm, remarked that he 
 thought he was not quite so active on his pins as formerly, and 
 that he must hand the boy over to the Doctor. 
 
 " Doctor," said he that dajf, " I have taught my boy ordinary 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 181 
 
 sword play till, by Jove, sir, he is getting quicker than I am. 
 I wish you would take him in hand and give him a little fencing." 
 
 " Who told you I could fence ? " said the Doctor. 
 
 " Why, I don't know ; no one, I think. I have judged, I fancy, 
 more by seeing you flourish your waUsing-gtick than anything else. 
 You are a fencer, are you not ? " 
 
 The Doctor laughed. He was in fact a consummate viaitre 
 d'armes ; and Captain Brentwood, before spoken of, no mean 
 fencer, coming to Baroona on a visit, found that our friend could 
 do exactly as he liked with him, to the Captain's great astonish- 
 ment. And Sam soon improved under his tuition, not indeed to 
 the extent of being a master of the weapon ; he was too large and 
 loosely built for that ; but, at all events, so far as to gain an up- 
 right and elastic carriage, and to learn the use of his limbs. 
 
 The Major issued an edict, giving the most positive orders 
 against its infringement, that Sam should never mount a horse 
 without his special leave and licence. He taught him to ride, 
 indeed, but would not give him much opportunity for practising it. 
 Once or twice a-week he would take him out, but seldom oftener. 
 Sam, who never dreamt of questioning the wisdom and excellence 
 of any of his father's decisions, rather wondered at this ; pondering 
 in his own mind how it was that, while aU the lads he knew 
 around, now getting pretty numerous, lived, as it were, on horse- 
 back, never walking a quarter of a mile on any occasion, he alone 
 should be discouraged from it. "Perhaps," he said to himself 
 one day, " he doesn't want me to make many acquaintances. It 
 is true, Charley Delisle smokes and swears, which is very un- 
 gentlemanly ; but Cecil Mayford, Dad says, is a perfect little 
 gentleman, and I ought to see as much of him as possible, and yet 
 he wouldn't give me a horse to go to their muster. Well, I 
 suppose he has some reason for it." 
 
 One holiday the Doctor and the Major were sitting in the veran- 
 dah after breakfast, when Sam entered to them, and, clambering 
 on to his father as his wont was, said, — 
 
 " See here, father ! Harry is getting in some young beasts at 
 the stock-yard hut, and Cecil Mayford is coming over to see if any 
 of theirs are among them ; may I go out and meet him ? " 
 
 " To be sure, my boy ; why not ? " 
 
 " May I have Bronsewing, father? He is in the stable." 
 
 " It is a nice cool day, and only four miles ; why not walk out, 
 my boy?" 
 
 Sam looked disappointed, but said nothing. 
 
 " I know all about it, my child," said the Major ; " Cecil will 
 be there on Blackboy, and you would like to show him that 
 
182 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Bronsewing is the superior pony of the two. That's all very 
 natural ; hut stiU I say, get your hat, Sam, and trot through the 
 forest on your own two legs, and hring Cecil home to dinner." 
 
 Sam stiU looked disappointed, though he tried not to show it. 
 He went and got his hat, and, meeting the dogs, got such a wild 
 welcome from them that he forgot all about Bronsewing. Soon 
 his father saw him merrily crossing the paddock with the whole 
 kennel of the establishment, Kangaroo dogs, cattle dogs, and 
 coUies, barking joyously around him. 
 
 "There's a good lesson manfully learnt. Doctor," said the 
 Major ; "he has learnt to sacrifice his will to mine without 
 argument, because he knows I have always a reason for things. 
 I want that boy to ride as little as possible, but he has earned an 
 exception in his favour to-day. — Jerry I " (After a few calls the 
 stableman appeared.) " Put Mr. Samuel's saddle on Bronsewing, 
 and mine on Ricochette, and bring them round." 
 
 So Sam, walking cheerily forward singing, under the light and 
 shadow of the old forest, surrounded by his dogs, hears horses' 
 feet behind him, and looking back sees his father riding and 
 leading Bronsewing saddled. 
 
 " Jump up, my boy," said the Major ; " Cecil shall see what 
 Bronsewing is like, and how well you can sit him. The reason 
 I altered my mind was that I might reward you for acting like 
 a man, and not arguing. Now, I don't want you to ride much 
 yet for a few years. I don't want my lad to grow up with a pair 
 of bow legs like a groom, and probably something worse, from 
 living on horseback before his bones are set. You see I have 
 good reason for what I do." 
 
 But I think that the lessons Sam liked best of all were the 
 swimming lessons, and at a very early age he could swim and dive 
 like a black, and Qnce when disporting himself in the water, when 
 not more than thirteen, poor Sam nearly had a stop put to his 
 bathing for ever, and that in a very frightful manner. 
 
 His father and he had gone down to bathe one hot -noon ; the 
 Major had swum out and was standing on the rock wiping himself, 
 while Sam was still disporting in the mid-river ; as he watched 
 the boy he saw what seemed a stick upon the water, and then, as 
 he perceived the ripple around it the horrible truth burst on the 
 affrighted father : it was a large black snake crossing the river, 
 and poor littlo Sam was swimming straight towards it, all un- 
 conscious of his danger. 
 
 The Major cried out and waved his hand ; the boy seeing some- 
 thing was wrong, turned and made for the shore, and ttie next 
 mompijt his father, bending his body back, hurled himself through 
 
GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 183 
 
 the air and alighted in the water alongside of him, clutching him 
 round the body, and heading down the river with furious strokes. 
 
 " Don't cling, Sam, or get frightened ; make for the shore." 
 
 The lad, although terribly frightened at he knew not what, with 
 infinite courage seconded his father's efibrts although he felt sink- 
 ing. In a few minutes they were safe on the bank, in time for 
 them to see the reptile land, and crawling up the bank disappear 
 among the rocks. 
 
 " God has been very good to us, my son. You have been 
 saved from a terrible death. Mind you don't breathe a word to 
 your mother about this." 
 
 That night Sam dreamt that he was in the coils of a snake, but 
 waking up found that his father was laid beside him in his clothes 
 with one arm round his neck, so he went to sleep again and 
 thought no more of the snake. 
 
 " My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not " — a saying 
 which it is just possible you have heard before. I can tell you 
 where it comes from : it is one of the apothegms of the king of a 
 little eastern nation who at one time were settled in Syria, and 
 whose writings are not much read now-a-days, in consequence of 
 the vast mass of literature of a superior kind which this happy 
 century has produced. I can recommend the book, however, as 
 containing some original remarks, and being generally worth read- 
 ing. The meaning of the above quotation (and the man who said 
 it, mind you, had at one time a reputation for shrewdness), is, as 
 I take it, that a man's morals are very much influenced by the 
 society he is thrown among ; and although in these parliamentary 
 times we know that kings must of necessity be fools, yet in this 
 instance I think that the man shows some glimmerings of reason, 
 for his remark tallies singularly with my own personal observa- 
 tion ; so, acting on this, while I am giving you the history of this 
 little wild boy of the bush, I cannot do better than give some 
 account of the companions with whom he chiefly assorted out of 
 scliool-hours. 
 
 With broad intelligent forehead, with large loving hazel eyes, 
 with a frill like Queen Elizabeth, with a brush like a fox ; deep in 
 the brisket, perfect in markings of black, white, and tan ; in 
 sagacity a Pitt, in courage an Anglesey, Kover stands first on my 
 list, and claims to be king of Collie-dogs. In politics I should 
 say Conservative of the high Protectionist sort. Let us have no 
 strange dogs about the place to grub up sacred bones, or we wiU 
 shake out our frills and tumble them in the dust. Domestic cats 
 may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line 
 must be drawn ; after that they must be chased up trees and 
 
184 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are 
 unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, 
 wherever possible. Cows and other homed animals must not 
 come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under 
 penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their dogs 
 chased to the uttermost limits of the habitable globe. Such were 
 the chief points of the creed subscribed to by Sam's dog Rover. 
 
 All the love that may be between dog and man, and man and 
 dog, existed between Sam and Eover. Never a fresh cheery 
 morning when the boy arose with the consciousness of another 
 happy day before him, but that the dog was waiting for him as he 
 stepped from his window into clear morning air. Never a walk in 
 the forest, but that Rover was his merry companion. And what 
 would lessons have been without Rover looking in now and then 
 with his head on one side, and his ears cocked, to know when he 
 would be finished and come out to play ? 
 
 Oh, memorable day, when Sam got separated from his father in 
 Yass, and, looking back, saw a cloud of dust in the road, and 
 dimly descried Rover, fighting valiantly against fearful odds, with 
 all the dogs in the township upon him ! He rode back, and 
 prayed for assistance from the men lounging in front of the public- 
 house ; who, pitying his distress, pulled off all the dogs till there 
 were only left Rover and a great white bulldog to do battle. The 
 fight seemed going against Sam's dog ; for the bulldog had him 
 by the neck, and held him firm, so that he could do nothing. 
 Nevertheless, mind yourself, master bulldog ; you've only got a 
 mouthful of long hair there ; and when you do let go, I think, 
 there is danger for you in those fierce gleaming eyes, and terrible 
 grinning fangs. 
 
 Sam was crying ; aad the men round were saying, " Oh I take 
 the bulldog off; the coUie's no good to him," — ^when a man sud- 
 denly appeared at Sam's side, and called out, 
 
 " I'll back the collie for five pounds, and here's my money ! " 
 
 Half-a-dozen five pound notes were ready for him at once ; and 
 he had barely got the stakes posted before the event proved he was 
 right. In an evil moment for him the bulldog loosed his hold, 
 and, ere he had time to turn round. Rover had seized him below 
 the eye, and was dragging him about the road, worrying him as 
 he would an opossum : so the discomfited owner had to remove 
 his bulldog to save his life. Rover, after showing his teeth and 
 shaking himself, came to Sam as fresh as a daisy ; and the new 
 comer pocketed his five pounds. 
 
 " I am so much obliged to you," said Sara, turning to him, 
 " for taking my dog's part I They were all against me." 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 185 
 
 " I'm much obliged to your dog, sir, for winning me five pounds 
 so easy. But there ain't a many bad dogs or bad men either, 
 about Major Buckley's house." 
 
 " Then you know us ? " said Sam. 
 
 " Ought to it, sir. An old Devonshire man. Mr. Hamlyn's 
 stud-groom, sir — Dick." 
 
 Well, as I am going to write Eover's life, in three volumes post 
 octavo, I won't any further entrench on my subject matter, save to 
 say that, while on the subject of Sam's education, I could not well 
 omit a notice of the aforesaid Eover. For I think all a man can 
 learn from a dog, Sam learnt from him ; and that is something. 
 Now let us go on to the next of his notable acquaintances. 
 
 Who is this glorious, blue-eyed, curly-headed boy, who bursts 
 into the house like a whirlwind, making it ring again with merry 
 laughter ? This is Jim Brentwood, of whom we shall see much 
 anon. 
 
 At Waterloo, when the French cavalry were coming up the hill, 
 and our artillerymen were running for the squares, deftly trundling 
 their gun-wheels before them, it happened that there came running 
 towards the square where Major Buckley stood like a tower of 
 strength (the tallest man in the regiment), an artillery officer, 
 begrimed with mud and gunpowder, and dragging a youth by the 
 collar, or rather, what seemed to be the body of a youth. Some 
 cried out to him to let go ; but he looked back, seeming to measure 
 the distance between the cavalry and the square, and then, never 
 loosing his hold, held on against hope. Every one thought he 
 would be too late ; when some one ran out of the square (men said 
 it was Buckley), and, throwing the wounded lad over his shoulder, 
 ran with him into safety ; and a cheer ran along the line from 
 those who saw him do it. Small time for cheering then ; for 
 neither could recover his breath before there came a volley of 
 musketry, and all around them, outside the bayonets, was a wild 
 sea of fierce men's faces, horses' heads, gleaming steel, and 
 French blasphemy. A strange scene for the commencement of an 
 acquaintance ! And yet it throve ; for that same evening, Buckley, 
 talking to his Colonel, saw the artillery officer coming towards 
 them, and asked who he might be ? 
 
 " That," said the Colonel, " is Brentwood of the Artillery, who 
 ran away with Lady Kate Bingley, and they haven't a rap to bless 
 themselves with, sir. It was her brother that you and he fetched 
 into the square to-day." 
 
 And so began a friendship which lasted the lives of both men ; 
 and, I doubt not, will last their sons' lives too. For Brentwood 
 lived within thirty miles of the Major, and their sons spent much 
 
186 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of their time together, having such a friendship for one another 
 as only boys can have. 
 
 Captain Brentwood's son Jim was a very different boy to Sam, 
 though a very fine fellow too. Mischief and laughter were the 
 apparent objects of his life ; and when the Doctor saw him ap- 
 proaching the house, he used to put away Sam's lesson-books with 
 a sigh and wait for better times. The Captain had himself under- 
 taken his son's education, and, being a somewhat dreamy man, 
 excessively attached to mathematics, Jim had got, altogether, a 
 very remarkable education indeed ; which, however, is hardly to 
 our purpose just now. Brentwood, I must say, was a widower, 
 and a kind-hearted easy-going man ; he had, besides, a daughter, 
 who was away at school. Enough of them at present. 
 
 The next of Sam's companions who takes an important part in 
 this history is Cecil Mayford — a delicate, clever little dandy, and 
 courageous withal ; with more brains in his head, I should say, 
 than Sam and Jim could muster between them. His mother was 
 a widow, who owned the station next down the river from the 
 Buckleys', distant about five miles, and which, since the death of 
 her husband. Doctor Mayford, she had managed with the assist- 
 ance of an overseer. She had, beside Cecil, a little daughter of 
 great beauty. 
 
 Also, I must here mention that the next station below Mrs. 
 Mayford's, on the river, distant by the windings of the valley 
 fifteen miles, and yet, in consequence of a bend, scarcely ten from 
 Major Buckley's at Baroona, was owned and inhabited by Yahoos 
 (by name Donovan), with whom we had nothing to do. But this 
 aforesaid station, which is called Garoopna, will shortly fall into 
 other hands, when you will see that many events of deep impor- 
 tance will take place there, and many pleasant hours spent there 
 by aU our friends, more particularly one — by name Sam. 
 
 There is one other left of whom I must say something here, 
 and more immediately. The poor, puling little babe, bom in 
 misery and disaster, Mary Hawker's boy Charles I 
 
 Toonarbin was but a short ten miles from Baroona, and, of 
 course, the two families were as one. There was always a 
 hostage from the one house staying as a visitor in the other ; and, 
 under such circumstances, of course, Charles and Sam w^re much 
 together, and, as time went on, got to be fii-m friends. 
 
 Charles was two years younger than Sam ; the smallest of all 
 the lads, and perhaps the most unhappy. For the truth must be 
 told : he was morose and uncertain in his temper ; and although 
 all the other boys bore with him most generously, as one of whom 
 they had heard that he was born under some great misfortune, yet 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 187 
 
 he was hardly a favourite amongst them ; and the poor boy, some- 
 times perceiving this, would withdraw from his play, and sulk 
 alone, resisting all the sober, kind inducements of Sam, and the 
 merry, impetuous persuasions of Jim, to return. 
 
 But he was a kind, good-hearted boy, nevertheless. His temper 
 was not under control ; but, after one of his fierce, volcanic bursts 
 of ill-humour, he would be acutely miserable and angry with him- 
 self for days, particularly if the object of it had been Jim or Sam, 
 his two especial favourites. . On one occasion, after a causeless fit 
 of anger with Jim, while the three were at Major Buckley's 
 together, he got his pony and rode away home secretly, speaking 
 to no one. The other two lamented all the afternoon that he had 
 taken the matter so seriously, and were debating even next 
 morning going after him to propitiate him, when Charles reappeared, 
 having apparently quite recovered his temper, but evidently bent 
 upon something. 
 
 He had a bird, a white con-eUa, which could talk and whistle 
 sui-prisingly, probably, in fact, the most precious thing he owned. 
 This prodigy he had now brought back in his basket as a peace- 
 offering, and refused to be comforted, unless Jim accepted it as a 
 present. 
 
 "But see, Charley," said Jim, " I was as much in the wrong 
 as you were " (which was not fact, for Jim was perfectly innocent). 
 " I wouldn't take your bird for the world." 
 
 But Charles said that his mother approved of it, and if Jim 
 didn't take it he'd let it fly. 
 
 " Well, if you will, old fellow," said Jim, " I'U tell you what I 
 would rather have. Give me Fly's dun pup instead, and take the 
 bird home." 
 
 So this was negotiated after a time, and the corrella was taken 
 hack to Toonarbin, wildly excited by the journey, and calling for 
 strong liquor all the way home. 
 
 Those who knew the sad circumstances of poor Charles's birth 
 (the Major, the Doctor, and Mrs. Buckley) treated him with such 
 kindness and consideration that they won his confidence and love. 
 In any of his Berserk fits, if his mother were not at hand, he would 
 go to Mrs. Buckley and open his griefs ; and her motherly tact and 
 kindness seldom failed to still the wild beatings of that poor, sen- 
 sitive, sUly little heart, so that in time he grew to love her as only 
 second to his mother. 
 
 Such is my brief and imperfect, and I fear tedious account of 
 Sam's education, and of the companions with whom he lived, until 
 the boy had grown into a young man, and his sixteenth birthday 
 came round, on which day, as had been arranged, he was considered 
 
188 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to have finished his education, and stand up, young as he was, as 
 a man. 
 
 Happy morning, and memorable for one thing at least — that his 
 father, coming into his bedroom and kissing his forehead, led him 
 out to the front door, where was a groom holding a horse handsomer 
 than any Sam had seen before, which pawed the gravel impatient 
 to be ridden, and ere Sam had exhausted half his expressions of 
 wonder and admiration — that his father told him the horse was his, 
 a birthday-present from his mother. 
 
 CHAPTER XXni. 
 
 TOONAKBIN. 
 
 " But," I think I hear you say, " what has become of Mary Hawker 
 all this time ? You raised our interest about her somewhat, at first, 
 as a young and beautiful woman, villain-beguiled, who seemed, too, 
 to have a temper of her own, and promised, under circumstances, 
 to turn out a bit of a b — ^mst — ^ne. What is she doing all this time ? 
 Has she got fat, or had the small-pox, that you neglect her like 
 this ? We had rather more than we wanted of her and her 
 villainous husband in the first part of this volume ; and now nothing. 
 Let us, at all events, hear if she is dead or alive. And her husband, 
 too, — although we hope, under Providence, that he has left this 
 wicked world, yet we should be glad to hear of it for certain. 
 Make inquiries, and let us know the result. Likewise, be so good 
 as to inform us, how is Miss Thornton ? " 
 
 To all this I answer humbly, that I will do my best. If you will 
 bring a dull chapter on you, duUer even than all the rest, at least 
 read it, and exonerate me. The fact is, my dear sir, that women 
 like Mary Hawker are not particularly interesting in the piping 
 times of peace. In volcanic and explosive times they, with their 
 wild animal passions, become tragical and remarkable, like 
 baronesses of old. But in tranquil times, as I said, they fall into 
 the background, and show us the value and excellence of such 
 placid, noble helpmates, as the serene, high-bred Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 A creek joined the river about a mile below the Bucldeys' 
 station, falling into the main stream with rather a pretty cascade, 
 which even at the end of the hottest summer poured a tiny silver 
 thread across the black rocks. Above the cascade the creek cut 
 deep into the table land, making a charming glen, with precipitous 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 189 
 
 bluestone walls, some eighty or ninety feet in height, fringed with 
 black wattle and lightwood, and here and there, among the fallen 
 rocks nearest the water, a fern tree or so, which last I may say are 
 no longer there. Dr. Mulhaus having cut the hearts out of them 
 and eaten them for cabbage. Should you wander up this little 
 gully on a hot summer's day, you would be charmed with the 
 beauty of the scenery, and the shady coolness of the spot ; till 
 coming upon a black snake coiled away among the rocks, hke a 
 rope on the deck of a man of war, you would probably withdraw, 
 not without a strong inclination to " shy " at every black stick you 
 saw for the rest of the day. For this lower part of the Moira 
 creek was, I am sorry to say, the most troubled locality for 
 snakes, diamond, black, carpet, and other, which I ever happened 
 to see. 
 
 But following this creek you would find that the banks got rapidly 
 less precipitous, and at length it swept in long curves through open 
 forest glades, spreading, too, into deep dark water-holes, only con- 
 nected by gravelly fords, with a slender stream of clear water run- 
 ning across the yellow pebbles. These water-holes were the haunts 
 of the platypus and the tortoise. Here, too, were flocks of black 
 duck and teal, and as you rode past, the merry little snipe would 
 rise from the water's edge, and whisk away like lightning through 
 the trees. Altogether, a pleasant woodland creek, alongside of 
 which, under the mighty box-trees, ran a sandy road, bordered 
 with deep beds of bracken fern, which led from Baroona of the 
 Buckleys to Toonarbin of the Hawkers. 
 
 A pleasant road, indeed, winding through the old forest straight 
 towards the mountains, shifting its course so often that every 
 minute some new vista opened upon you, till at length you came 
 suddenly upon a clear space, beyond which rose a picturesque little 
 granite cap, at the foot of which you saw a charming house, 
 covered with green creepers, and backed by huts, sheepyards, a 
 woolshed, and the usual concomitants of a flourishing Australian 
 sheep station. Behind all again towered lofty, dark hanging 
 woods, closing the prospect. 
 
 This is Toonarbin, where Mary Hawker, with her leal and trusty 
 cousin Tom Troubridge for partner, has pitched her tent, after all 
 her spasmodic, tragical troubles, and here she is leading as happy, 
 and by consequence as uninteresting, an existence as ever fell to 
 the lot of a handsome woman yet. 
 
 Mary and Miss Thornton had stayed with the Buckleys until 
 good cousin Tom had got a house ready to receive them, and then 
 they moved up and took possession. Mary and Tom were from the 
 first co-partners, and latterly. Miss Thornton had invested her 
 
190 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 money, about £2,000, in the station. Matters were very prosperous 
 and, after a few years, Tom began to get weighty and didactic in 
 his speech, and to think of turning his attention to politics. 
 
 To Mary the past seemed like a dream — as an old dream, well- 
 nigh forgotten. The scene was so changed that at times she could 
 hardly believe that all those dark old days were real. Could she, 
 now so busy and happy, be the same woman who sat worn and 
 frightened over the dying fire with poor Captain Saxon ? Is she 
 the same woman whose husband was hurried off one wild night, 
 and transported for coining ? Or is all that a hideous 
 imagination ? 
 
 No. Here is the pledge and proof that it is all too terribly real. 
 This boy, whom she loves so wildly and fiercely, is that man's son, 
 and his father, for aught she knows, is alive, and only a few poor 
 hundred miles off. Never mind ; let it be forgotten as though it 
 never was. So she forgot it, and was happy. 
 
 But not always. Sometimes she could not but remember what 
 she was, in spite of the many kind friends who surrounded her, and 
 the new and busy life she led. Then would come a fit of despon- 
 dency, almost of despair, but the natural elasticity of her temper 
 soon dispersed these clouds, and she was her old self again. 
 
 Her very old self, indeed. That delicate-minded, intellectual 
 old maid, Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on 
 what she called Mary's levity of behaviour with men, but more 
 especially with honest Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the 
 old lady was sitting darning (she was always darning ; she used to 
 begin darning the things before they were a week out of the draper's 
 shop), would her tears fall upon her work, as she saw Mary sitting 
 with her child in her lap, smiling, while the audacious Tom twisted 
 a flower in her hair, in the way that pleased him best. To see 
 anything wrong, and to say nothing, was a thing impossible. She 
 knew that speaking to Mary would only raise a storm, and so, 
 knowing the man she had to deal with, she determined to speak 
 to Tom. 
 
 She was not long without her opportunity. Duly darning one 
 evening, while Mary was away putting her boy to bed, Tom entered 
 from his wine. Him, with a combination of valour and judgment, 
 she immediately attacked, acting upon a rule once laid down to 
 Mary — " My dear, if you want to manage a man, speak to him 
 after dinner." 
 
 " Mr. Troubridge," said Miss Thornton. " May I speak a few 
 words to you on private affairs ? " 
 
 " Madam," said Tom, drawing up a chaii', " I am at your service 
 night or day." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 191 
 
 '•■ A younger woman," said Miss Thornton, " might feel some 
 delicacy in saying what I am going to say. But old age has its 
 privileges, and so I hope to be forgiven." 
 
 "Dear Miss Thornton," said Tom, " You must be going to say 
 something very extraordinary if it requires forgiveness from me." 
 
 " Nay, my dear kinsman," said Miss Thornton ; " if we begin 
 exchanging compliments, we shaU talk all night, and never get to 
 the gist of the matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It 
 seems to me that your attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat 
 more than cousinly, and it behoves me to remind you that she is 
 still a married woman. Is that too blunt ? Have I offended 
 you ? " 
 
 " Nay — no," said Tom ; " you could never offend me. I think 
 you are right too. It shall be amended, madam." 
 
 And after this Mary missed many delicate little attentions that 
 Tom had been used to pay her. She thought he was sulky on 
 some account at first, but soon her good sense showed her that, 
 if they two were to live together, she must be more circumspect, or 
 mischief would come. 
 
 For, after aU, Tom had but small place in her heart. Heart 
 fiUed almost exclusively with this poor sulky little lad of hers, who 
 seemed bom to trouble, as the sparks went upward. In teething 
 even, aggravating beyond experience, and afterwards suffering from 
 the whole list of juvenile evils in such a way as boy never did 
 before ; coming out of these troubles too, with a captious, dis- 
 agreeable temper, jealous in the extreme, — not a member who, on 
 the whole, adds much to the pleasure of the little household, — yet 
 with the blindest love towards some folks. Instance his mother, 
 Thomas Troubridge, and Sam Buckley. 
 
 For these three the lad had a wild hysterical affection, and yet 
 none of them had much power over him. Onee by one uncon- 
 sidered word arouse the hoy's obstinacy, and all chance of con- 
 trolling him was gone. Then, your only chance was to call in 
 Miss Thornton, who had a way of managing the boy, more potent 
 than Mary's hysterics, and Tom's indignant remonstrances, or 
 Sam's quiet persuasions. 
 
 For instance, — onoe, when he was about ten years old, his 
 mother set him to learn some lesson or another, when he had been 
 petitioning to go off somewhere with the men. He was furiously 
 naughty, and threw the book to the other end of the room, all the 
 threats and scoldings of his mother proving insufficient to make 
 him pick it up again. So that at last she went out, leaving him 
 alone, triumphant, with Miss Thornton, who said not a word, but 
 only raised her eyes off her work, from time to time, to look re- 
 
192 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 proaohfuUy on the rebellious boy. He could stand his mother's 
 anger, but he could not stand those steady wondering looks that 
 came from under the old lady's spectacles. So that, when Mary 
 came in again, she found the book picked up, and the lesson learned. 
 Moreover, it was a fortnight before the lad misbehaved himself 
 again. 
 
 In sickness and in health, in summer and in winter, for ten long 
 years after they settled at Toonarbin, did this noble old lady stand 
 beside Mary as a rock of refuge in all troubles, great or small. 
 Always serene, patient, and sensible, even to the last ; for the time 
 came when this true and faithful servant was removed from among 
 them to receive her reward. 
 
 One morning she confessed herself unable to leave her bed ; that 
 was the first notice they had. Doctor Mayford, sent for secretly, 
 visited her. "Break up of the constitution," said he, — "no 
 organic disease," — but shook his head. " She will go," he added, 
 "with the first frost. lean do nothing." And Dr. Mulhaus, 
 being consulted, said he was but an amateur doctor, but con- 
 curred with Dr. Mayford. So there was nothing to do but to wait 
 for the end as patiently as might be. 
 
 During the summer she got out of bed, and sat in a chair, 
 which Tom used to lift dexterously into the verandah. There she 
 would sit very quietly; sometimes getting Mrs. Buckley, who 
 came and lived at Toonarbin that summer, to read a hymn for 
 her ; and, during this time, she told them where she would like to 
 be buried. 
 
 On a little knoll, she said, which lay to the right of the house, 
 barely two hundred yards from the window. Here the grass grew 
 shorter and closer than elsewhere, and here freshened more rapidly 
 beneath the autumn rains. Here, on winter's evenings, the slant- 
 ing sunbeams lingered longest, and here, at such times, she had 
 been accustomed to saunter, listening to the sighing of the wind, 
 in the dark funeral sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon 
 a sandy shore. Here, too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock 
 of lories, making the dark low trees gay with flying living blos- 
 soms. And here she would lie with her feet towards the east, her 
 sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean which she would never 
 cross again. 
 
 One fresh spring morning she sat up and talked serenely to Mrs. 
 Buckley, about matters far higher and more sacred than one likes 
 to deal with in a tale of this kind, and, after a time, expressed a 
 wish for a blossom of a great amaryllis which grew just in front of 
 her window. 
 
 Mrs. Buckley got the flower for her ; and so, holding the crim- 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. , 193 
 
 son-striped lily in her delicate, wasted fingers, the good old lady 
 passed from this world without a struggle, as decently and as 
 quietly as she had always lived in it. 
 
 * -;:- * * * * 
 
 This happened when Charles was about ten years old, and, for 
 some time, the lad was suhdued and sad. He used to look out of 
 the window at night towards the grave, and wonder why they had 
 put her they all loved so well, to lie out there under the wild- 
 sweeping winter rain. But, by degrees, he got used to the little 
 square white railing on the sheoak knoll, and, ere half a year was 
 gone, the memory of his aunt had become very dim and in- 
 distinct. 
 
 Poor Mary, too, though a long while prepared for it, was very 
 deeply and sincerely grieved at Miss Thornton's death ; but she 
 soon recovered from it. It came in the course of nature, and, 
 although the house looked blank and dull for a time, yet there 
 was too much life all around her, too much youthful happy life, to 
 make it possible to dwell very long on the death of one who had 
 left them full of years and honour. But Lord Frederick (before 
 spoken of incidentally in this narrative), playing billiards at 
 Gibraltar, about a year after this, had put into his hand a letter, 
 from which, when opened, there fell a lock of silver grey hair on 
 the green cloth, which he carefully picked up, and, leaving his 
 game, went home to his quarters. His comrades thought it was 
 his father who was dead, and when they heard it was only his 
 sister's old governess, they wondered exceedingly; "for Fred," 
 said they, " is not given to be sentimental." 
 
 And now, in a year or two, it began to be very diificult to keep 
 Master Charley in order. When he was about thirteen, there was 
 a regular guerilla-war between him and his mother, on the subject 
 of learning, which ended, ultimately, in the boy flatly refusing to 
 learn anything. His natural capacities were but small, and, under 
 any ciixumstances, knowledge would only have been acquired by 
 him with infinite pains. But, as it was, with his selfishness 
 fostered so excessively by his mother's indulgence, and Tom's 
 good-humoured carelessness, it became totally impossible to teach 
 him anything. In vain his mother scolded and wept, in vain Tom 
 represented to him the beauties and excellences of learning — leam 
 the boy would not ; so that at fourteen he was given up in despair 
 by his mother, having learnt nearly enough of reading, writing, and 
 ciphering, to carry on the most ordinary business of life, — a most 
 lamentable state of things for a lad who, in after life, would be a 
 rich man, and who, in a young and rapidly-rising country, might 
 become, by the help of education, politically influential. 
 
 14 
 
194 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 I think that when Samuel Buckley and James Brentwood were 
 grown to be young men of eighteen or nineteen, and he was about 
 seventeen or so, a stranger would have seen a great deal of dif- 
 ference between the two former and the latter, and would, probably, 
 have remarked that James and Sam spoke and behaved like two 
 gentlemen, but that Charles did not, but seemed as though he had 
 come from a lower grade in society, — with some truth too, for there 
 was a circumstance in his bringing up which brought him more 
 harm than all his neglect of learning, and all his mother's foolish 
 indulgences. 
 
 Both Major Buckley and Captain Brentwood made it a law of 
 the Medes and Persians, that neither of their sons should hold any 
 conversation with the convict servants, save in the presence of 
 competent authorities; and, indeed, they both, as soon as 
 increased emigration enabled them, removed their old household 
 servants, and replaced them by free men, newly arrived : a lazy 
 independent class, certainly, with exaggerated notions of their own 
 importance in this new phase of their life, but without the worse 
 vices of the convicts. This rule, even in such well-regulated 
 households, was a very hard one to get observed, even under 
 flogging penalties ; and, indeed, formed the staple affliction of 
 poor thoughtless Jim's early life, as this little anecdote will 
 show : — 
 
 One day going to see Captain Brentwood, when Jim was about 
 ten years old, I met that young gentleman (looking, I thought, a 
 little out of sorts) about two hundred yards from the house. He 
 turned with me to go back, and, after the first salutations, I 
 said, — 
 
 " Well, Jim, my boy, I hope you've been good since I saw you 
 last?" 
 
 " Oh dear, no," was the answer, with a shake of the head that 
 meant volumes. 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear that ; what is the matter ? " 
 
 " I've been catching it," said Jim, in a whisper, coming close 
 alongside of me. " A tea-stick as thick as my forefinger all over." 
 — ^Here he entered into particulars, which, however harmless m 
 themselves, were not of a sort usually written in books. 
 
 " That's a bad job," I said ; " what was it for ? " 
 
 " Why, I slipped off with Jerry to look after some colts on the 
 black swamp, and was gone all the afternoon ; and so Dad missed 
 me ; and when I got home didn't I catch it / Oh Lord, I'm all 
 over blue wales ; but that ain't the worst." 
 
 " What's the next misfortune? " I inquired. 
 
 " Why, when he got hold of me he said, ' Is this the first time 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 196 
 
 you have been away with Jerry, sir ? ' and I said ' Yes ' (which 
 was the awfullest lie ever you heard, for I went over to Barker's 
 with him two days before) ; then he said, ' Well, I must believe 
 you if you say so. I shall not disgrace you by making inquiries 
 among the men ; ' and then he gave it me for going that time, and 
 since then I've felt like Cain and Abel for telling him such a lie. 
 What would you do — eh ? " 
 
 " I should tell him all about it," I said. 
 
 " Ah, but then I shall catch it again, don't you see ! Hadn't I 
 better wait till these wales are gone down ? " 
 
 "Iwouldn't, if Iwereyou," lanswered; "I'd tell him at once." 
 
 " I wonder why he is so particular," said Jim ; " the Delisles 
 and the Donovans spend as much of their time in the huts as they 
 do in the house." 
 
 " And fine young blackguards they'll turn out," I said ; in 
 which I was right in those two instances. And although I have 
 seen young fellows brought up among convicts who have turned 
 out respectable in the end, yet it is not a promising school for 
 good citizens. 
 
 But at Toonarbin no such precautions as these were taken with 
 regard to Charles. Tom was too careless, and Mary too indulgent. 
 It was hard enough to restrain the boy during the lesson hours, 
 falsely so called. After that he was allowed to go where he Uked, 
 and even his mother sometimes felt reUeved by his absence ; so 
 that he was continually in the men's huts, listening to their yams 
 — sometimes harmless bush adventures, sometimes, perhaps, ribald 
 stories which he could not understand ; but one day Tom Trou- 
 bridge coming by the hut looked in quietly, and saw Master 
 Charles smoking a black pipe (he was not more than fourteen), 
 and heard such a conversation going on that he advanced suddenly 
 upon them, and ordered the boy home in a sterner tone than he 
 had ever used to him before, and looked out of the door till he had 
 disappeared. Then he turned round to the men. 
 
 There were three of them, all convicts, one of whom, the one he 
 had heard talking when he came in, was a large, desperate-looking 
 fellow. When these men mean to deprecate your anger, I have 
 remarked they always look you blankly in the face ; but if they 
 mean to defy you and be impudent, they never look at you, but 
 always begin fnmbbng and fidgetting with something. So when 
 Tom saw that the big man before mentioned (Daniel Harvey by 
 name) was stooping down before the fire, he knew he was going to 
 have a row, and waited. 
 
 " So boss," began the rufiian, not looking at him, " we ain't fit 
 company for the lakes of that kinchin, — eh ? " 
 
196 THE EECOLLECTIONS. OP 
 
 " You're not fit company for any man except the hangman,'' 
 said Tom, looking more hke six-foot-six than six-foot-three. 
 
 " Oh my colonial oath ! " said the other ; " oh my 
 
 ' cabhage tree ! ' So there's going to be a coil about that scrubby 
 little myrnonger ; eh ? Don't you fret your bingy,* boss ; he'll 
 be as good a man as his father yet." 
 
 For an instant a dark shadow passed over Tom's face. 
 
 "So," he thought, "these fellows know all about George 
 Hawker, eh ? Well, never mind ; what odds if they do ? " And 
 then he said aloud, turning round on Harvey, " Look you here, 
 you dog ; if I ever hear of your talking in that style before that 
 boy, or any other boy, by George I'll twist your head off ! " 
 
 He advanced towards him, as if to perform that feat on the spot; 
 in a moment the convict had snatched his knife from his belt and 
 rushed upon him. 
 
 Very suddenly indeed ; but not quite quick enough to take the 
 champion of Devon by surprise. Ere he was well within reach 
 Tom had seized the hand that held the knife, and with a backward 
 kick of his left foot sent the embryo assassin sprawling on his back 
 on the top of the fire, whence Tom dragged him by his heels, far 
 more astonished than burnt. The other two men had, meanwhile, 
 sat taking no notice, or seeming to take none, of the disturbance. 
 Now, however, one of them spoke, and said, — 
 
 " I'm sure, sir, you didn't hear me say nothing wrong to the 
 young gent," and so on, in a whining tone, till Tom cut him short 
 by saying that, "if he had any more nonsense among them, he 
 would send 'em all three over to Captain Desborough, to the tune 
 of fifty (lashes) a-piece." 
 
 After this little imeiite Charles did not dare to go into the huts, 
 and soon after these three men were exchanged. But there 
 remained one man whose conversation and teaching, though not, 
 perhaps, so openly outrageously villainous as that of the worthy 
 Harvey, still had a very unfortunate effect on his character. 
 
 This was a rather smaU, wiry, active man, by name Jackson, a 
 native, colonially convicted,t very clever among horses, a capital 
 light-weight boxer, and in running superb, a pupil and protege of 
 the immortal " flying pieman," { (May his shadow never be less !) 
 a capital cricketer, and a supreme humbug. This man, by his 
 various accomplishments and great tact, had won a high place in 
 
 * Aa a specimen of colonial slang the above is not in the least exag- 
 gerated. 
 
 t A man born in the colony, of European parents, convicted of some 
 crime committed in the colony. 
 
 \ A great Australian pedestrian ; now, I believe, gathered to his fathers. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 197 
 
 Tom Troubridge's estimation, and was put in a place of trust 
 among the horses ; consequently having continual access to 
 Charles, to whom he made himself highly agreeable, as being heir 
 to the property ; giving him such insights into the worst side of 
 sporting life, and such truthful accounts of low life in Sydney, as 
 would have gone far to corrupt a lad of far stronger moral prin- 
 ciple than he. 
 
 And so, between this teaching of evil and neglect of good, Mary 
 Hawker's boy did not grow up all that might be desired. And at 
 seventeen, I am sorry to say, he got into a most disreputable con- 
 nexion with a Highland girl, at one of the Donovans' out-station 
 huts ; which caused his kindly guardian, Tom Troubridge, a great 
 deal of vexation, and his mother the deepest grief, which was much 
 increased at the same time by something I will relate in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 So sixteen years rolled peacefully away, chequered by such 
 trifling lights and shadows as I have spoken of. The new gene- 
 ration, the children of those whom we knew at first, are now 
 ready to take their places, and bear themselves with more or less 
 credit in what may be going on. And now comes a period which 
 in the memory of all those whom I have introduced to you ranks 
 as the most important of their lives. To me, looking back upon 
 nearly sixty years of memory, the events which are coming stand 
 out from the rest of my quiet life, well defined and remarkable, 
 above all others. As looking on our western moors, one sees the 
 long straight sky-line, broken only once in many miles by some 
 fantastic "Tor. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 IN WHICH MAEY HAWKER LOSES ONE OF HER OLDEST 
 SWEETHEARTS. 
 
 Sixteen years of peace and plenty had roUed over the heads of 
 James Stockbridge and myself, and we had grown to be rich. Our 
 agent used to rub his hands, and bow, whenever our high mighti- 
 nesses visited town. There was money in the bank, there was 
 claret in the cellar, there were race-horses in the paddock ; in 
 short, we were wealthy prosperous men — James a magistrate. 
 
 November set in burning hot, and by the tenth the grass was as 
 dry as stubble ; still we hoped for a thunder-storm and a few days' 
 
198 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 rain, but none came. December wore wearily on, and by Christ- 
 mas the smaller creeks, except those which were snow-fed, were 
 reduced to a few muddy pools, and vast quantities of cattle were 
 congregated within easy reach of the river, from other people's 
 runs, miles away. 
 
 Of course, feed began to get very scarce, yet we were hardly so 
 bad oflf yet as our neighbours, for we had just parted with every 
 beast we could spare, at high prices, to Port Phillip, and were only 
 waiting for the first rains to start after store cattle, which were 
 somewhat hard to get near the new colony. 
 
 No rain yet, and we were in the end of January ; the fountains 
 of heaven were dried up, but now all round the northern horizon 
 the bush fires burnt continually, a pillar of smoke by day, and a 
 pillar of fire by night. 
 
 Nearer, by night, like an enemy creeping up to a beleaguered 
 town. The weather had been very still for some time, and we took 
 precaution to burn great strips of grass all round the paddocks to 
 the north, but, in spite of all our precautions, I knew that, should 
 a strong wind come on from that quarter, nothing short of a 
 miracle would save us. 
 
 But as yet the weather was very still, not very bright, but rather 
 cloudy, ^nd a dense haze of smoke was over everything, making 
 the distances look ten times as far as they reaUy were, and ren- 
 dering the whole landscape as grey and melancholy as you can 
 conceive. There was nothing much to be done, but to sit in the 
 verandah, drinking claret-and-water, and watching and hoping for 
 a thunder-storm. 
 
 On the third of February the heat was worse than ever, but 
 there was no wind ; and as the sun went down among the lurid 
 smoke, red as blood, I thought I made out a few white brush- 
 shaped clouds rising in the north. 
 
 Jim and I sat there late, not talking much. "We knew that if 
 we were to be burnt out our loss would be very heavy ; but we 
 thanked God that even were we to lose everything it would not be 
 irreparable, and that we should still be wealthy. Our brood mares 
 and racing stock were our greatest anxiety. We had a good stack 
 of hay, by which we might keep them alive for another month, 
 supposing all the grass was burnt ; but if we lost that our horses 
 would probably die. I said at last, — 
 
 " Jim, we may make up our minds to have the run swept. The 
 fire is burning up now." 
 
 " Yes, it is brightening,'' said he, " but it must be twenty miles 
 off still, and if it comes down with a gentle wind we shall save tlie 
 paddocks and hay. There is a good deal of grass in the lower 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 199 
 
 paddock. I am glad we had the forethought not to feed it down. 
 Well, fire or no fire, I shall go to hed." 
 
 We went to bed, and, in spite of anxiety, mosquitoes, and heat, 
 I fell asleep. In the grey morning I was awakened, nearly suffo- 
 cated, by a dull continuous roar. It was the wind in the chimney. 
 The north wind, so long imprisoned, had broke loose, and the 
 boughs were crashing, and the trees were falling, before the majesty 
 of his wrath. 
 
 I ran out, and met James in the verandah. "It's all up," I 
 said. " Get the women and children into the river, and let the 
 men go up to windward with the sheep-skins.* I'U get on horse- 
 back, and go out and see how the Morgans get on. That obstinate 
 fellow will wish he had come in now." 
 
 Morgan was a stockman of ours, who lived, with a wife and two 
 children, about eight miles to the northward. We always thought 
 it would have been better for him to move in, but he had put it 
 off, and now the fire had taken us by surprise. 
 
 I rode away, dead-up wind. Our station had a few large trees 
 about it, and then all was clear plain and short grass for two 
 miles ; after that came scrubby ranges, in an open glade of which 
 the Morgans' hut stood. I feared, from the density of the smoke, 
 that the fire had reached them already, but I thought it my duty 
 to go and see, for I might meet them fleeing, and help them with 
 the children. 
 
 I had seen many bush-fires, but never such a one as this. The 
 wind was blowing a hurricane, and, when I had ridden about two 
 miles into scrub, high enough to brush my horse's belly, I began 
 to get frightened. Still I persevered, against hope ; the heat grew 
 more fearful every moment ; but I reflected that I had often ridden 
 up close to a bush-fire, turned when I began to see the flame 
 through the smoke, and cantered away from it easily. 
 
 Then it struck me that I had never yet seen a bush-fiie in such 
 a hurricane as this. Then I remembered stories of men riding 
 for their lives, and others of burnt horses and men found in the 
 bush. And, now, I saw a sight which made me turn in good 
 earnest. 
 
 I was in lofty timber, and, as I paused, I heard the mighty 
 crackling of fire coming through the wood. At the same instant 
 the blinding smoke burst into a million tongues of flickering flame, 
 and I saw the fire — not where I had ever seen it before — not 
 creeping along among the scrub — but up aloft, a hundred and fifty 
 feet overhead. It had caught the dry bituminous tops of the 
 
 * Sheep-skins, on sticks, used for beating out the fire when in short 
 grass. 
 
200 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 higher boughs, and was flying along from tree-top to tree-top like 
 lightning. Below, the wind was comparatively moderate,^but, up 
 there, it was travelling twenty miles an hour. I saw one tree 
 ignite like gun-cotton, and then my heart grew small, and I turned 
 and fled. 
 
 I rode as I never rode before. There were three miles to go 
 ere I cleared the forest, and got among the short grass, where I 
 could save myself — three miles ! Ten minutes nearly of intolerable 
 heat, blinding smoke, and mortal terror. Any death but this ! 
 Drowning were pleasant, glorious to sink down into the cool spark- 
 ling water. But, to be burnt alive ! Fool that I was to venture 
 so far ! I would give all my money now to be naked and penniless, 
 rolling about in a cool pleasant river. 
 
 The maddened, terrified horse went like the wind, but not like 
 the hurricane — that was too swift for us. The fire had outstripped 
 us over-head, and I could see it dimly through the infernal choking 
 reek, leaping and blazing a hundred yards before us, among the 
 feathery foliage, devouring it, as the south wind devours the 
 thunder clouds. Then I could see nothing. Was I clear of the 
 forest ? Thank the Lord, yes — I was riding over grass. 
 
 I managed to pull up the horse, and as I did so, a mob of kan- 
 garoos blundered by, blinded, almost against me, noticing me no 
 more in their terror than if I had been a stump or a stone. Soon 
 the fire came hissing along through the grass scarcely six inches 
 high, and I walked my horse through it ; then I tumbled ofi' on 
 the blackened ground, and felt as if I should die. 
 
 I lay there on the hot black ground. My head felt like a block 
 of stone, and my neck was stiff so that I could not move my head. 
 My throat was swelled and dry as a sand-hill, and there was a 
 roaring in my ears like a cataract. I thought of the cool water- 
 falls among the rocks far away in Devon. I thought of everything 
 ' that was cold and pleasant, and then came into my head about 
 Dives praying for a drop of water. I tried to get up, but could 
 not, so lay down again with my head upon my arm. 
 
 It grew cooler, and the atmosphere was clearer. I got up, and, 
 mounting my horse, turned homeward. Now I began to think 
 about the station. Could it have escaped ? Impossible ! The fire 
 would fly a hundred yards or more such a day as this even in low 
 plain. No, it must be gone I There was a gi-eat roU in the plain 
 between me and home, so that I could see nothing of our place — 
 all around the country was black, without a trace of vegetation. 
 Behind me were the smoking ruins of the forest I had escaped 
 from, where now the burnt-out trees began to thunder down rapidly, 
 and before, to the south, I could see the fixe raging miles away. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 201 
 
 So the station is burnt, then ? No ! For as I top the ridge, 
 there it is hefore me, standing as of old — a bright oasis in the 
 desert of burnt country round. Ay ! the very hay-stack is safe ! 
 And the paddocks ?— all right 1 — glory be to Grod ! 
 
 I got home and James came running to meet me. 
 
 " I was getting terribly frightened, old man," said he. " I 
 thought you were caught. Lord save us, you look ten years older 
 than you did this morning I " 
 
 I tried to answer, but could not speak for drought. He ran and 
 got me a great tumbler of claret-and-water ; and, in the evening, 
 having drunk about an imperial gallon of water, and taken after- 
 wards some claret, I felt pretty well revived. 
 
 Men were sent out at once to see after the Morgans, and found 
 them perfectly safe, but very much frightened ; they had, however, 
 saved their hut, for the fire had passed before the wind had got 
 to its full strength. 
 
 So we were delivered from the fire ; but still no rain. All day, 
 for the next month, the hot north wind would blow till five o'clock, 
 and then a cool southerly breeze would come up and revive us ; but 
 still the heavens were dry, and our cattle died by hundreds. 
 
 On the eighteenth of March, we sat in the verandah looking still 
 over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with 
 hope ; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the 
 scarlet and -purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness 
 gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering 
 harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but 
 falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain 
 of rain that hung from the black edge of a teeming thunder- 
 cloud. 
 
 We had asked our overseer in that night, being Saturday, to 
 drink with us ; he sat very still, and talked but little, as was his 
 wont. I slapped him on the back, and said : — 
 
 " Do you remember, Greordie, that muff in Thalaba who chose 
 the wrong cloud ? He should have got you or me to choose for 
 him ; we wouldn't have made a mistake, I know. We would have 
 chosen such a one as yon glorious big-bellied fellow. See how 
 grandly he comes growling up ! " 
 
 " It's just come," said he, " without the praying for. When 
 the fire came owre the hill the other day, I just put up a bit 
 prayer to the Lord, that He'd spare the hay-stack, and He spared 
 it. (I didna stop working, ye ken ; I worked the harder ; if ye 
 dinna mean to work, ye should na pray.) But I never prayed for 
 rain, — I didna, ye see, like to ask the Lord to upset all His gran' 
 laws of electricity and evaporation, just because it would suit us. 
 
202 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 I thocht He'd likely ken better than mysel. Hech, sirs, but that 
 chiel's riding hard ! " 
 
 A horseman appeared making for the station at full speed ; 
 when he was quite close, Jim called out, " By Jove, it is Doctor 
 Mulhaus I " and we ran out into the yard to meet him. 
 
 Before any one had time to speak, he shouted out : " My dear 
 boys, I'm so glad I am in time : we are going to see one of the 
 grandest electrical disturbances it has ever been my lot to witness. 
 I reined up just now to look, and I calculated that the southern 
 point of explosion alone is discharging nine times in the minute. 
 How is your barometer ? " 
 
 " Haven't looked. Doctor." 
 
 "Careless fellow," he replied, "you don't deserve to have 
 one." 
 
 " Never mind, sir, we have got you safe and snug out of the 
 thunder-storm. It is going to be very heavy I think. I only hope 
 we will have plenty of rain." 
 
 " Not much doubt of it," said he. " Now come into the 
 verandah and let us watch the storm." 
 
 We went and sat there ; the highest peaks of the great cloud 
 alps, lately brilliant red, were now cold silver grey, harshly defined 
 against a faint crimson background, and we began to hear the 
 thunder rolling and muttering. All else was deadly still and 
 heavy. 
 
 " Mark the lightning ! " said the Doctor ; " that which is be- 
 fore the rain-wall is white, and that behind violet-coloured. Here 
 comes the thundergust." 
 
 A fierce blast of wind came hurrying on, carrying a cloud of dust 
 and leaves before it. It shook the four comers of the house and 
 passed away. And now it was a fearful sight to see the rain-spouts 
 pouring from the black edge of the lower cloud as from a pitcher, 
 nearly overhead, and lit up by a continuous blaze of lightning. 
 Another blast of wind, now a few drops, and in ten minutes you 
 could barely distinguish the thunder above the rattle of the rain 
 on the shingles. 
 
 It warred and banged around us for an hour, so that we could 
 hardly hear one another speak. At length the Doctor bawled, — 
 
 " We shall have a crack closer than any yet, you'll see ; we 
 always have one particular one ; our atmosphere is not restored to 
 its balance yet, — there I " 
 
 The curtains were drawn, and yet, for an instant, the room was 
 as bright as day. Simultaneously there came a crack and an 
 explosion, so loud and terrifying, that, used as I was to such an 
 event, I involuntarily jumped up from my seat. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 203 
 
 " Are you all right here ? " said the Doctor ; and, running out 
 into the kitchen, shouted, " Any one hurt ? " 
 
 The kitchen girl said that the lightning had run all down her 
 back like cold water, and the housekeeper averred that she thought 
 the thunder had taken the roof of the house off. So we soon per- 
 ceived that nothing was the matter, and sat down again to our 
 discourse, and our supper. "Well," hegan I, " here's the rain 
 come at last. In a fortnight there will be good grass again. We 
 ought to start and get some store cattle." 
 
 " But where ? " replied James. " We shall have to go a long 
 way for them ; every one will be wanting the same thing now. 
 We must push a long way north, and make a depot somewhere 
 westward. Then we can pick them up by sixes and sevens at a 
 time. When shall we go ? " 
 
 " The sooner the better." 
 
 " I think I will come with you," said the Doctor. " I have not 
 been a journey for some time." 
 
 "Your conversation, sir," I said, "will shorten the journey by 
 one half" — which was sincerely said. 
 
 Away we went northward, with the mountains on our left, leaving 
 snow-strealied Kosciusko nearly behind us, till a great pass, 
 through the granite walls, opened up to the westward, up which 
 we turned. Mount Murray towering up the south. Soon we were 
 on the Murrumbidgee, sweeping from side to side of his mountain 
 valley in broad curves, sometimes rushing hoarse, swollen by the 
 late rains, under beds of high timber, and sometimes dividing 
 broad meadows of rich grass, growing green once more under the 
 invigorating hand of autumn. All nature had awakened from her 
 deep summer sleep, the air was brisk and nimble, and seldom 
 did three happier men ride ca their way than James, the Doctor, 
 and I. 
 
 Good Doctor ! How he beguiled the way with his learning — in 
 ecstasies all the time, enjoying everything, animate or inanimate, 
 as you or I would enjoy a new play or a new opera. How I envied 
 him ! He was like a man always reading a new and pleasant book. 
 At first the stockmen rode behind, talking about beasts, and horses, 
 and what not — often talking about nothing at all, but riding along 
 utterly without thought, if such a thing could be. But soon I 
 noticed they would draw up closer, and regard the Doctor with 
 some sort of attention, till towards the evening of the second day, 
 one of them, our old acquaintance Dick, asked the Doctor a ques- 
 tion, as to why, if I remember right, certain trees should grow in 
 certain localities, and there only. The Doctor reined up alongside 
 him directly, and in plain forcible language explained the matter : 
 
204 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 how that some plants required more of one sort of substance than 
 another, and how they get it out of particular soils ; and how, in 
 the lapse of years, they had come to thrive best on the soil that 
 suited them, and had got stunted and died out in other parts. 
 "See," said he, "how the turkey holds to the plains, and the 
 pheasant (lyre-bird) to the scrub, because each one finds its food 
 there. Trees cannot move ; but by time, and by positively re- 
 fusing to grow on unkindly soils, they arrange themselves in the 
 localities which suit them best." 
 
 So after this they rode with the Doctor always, both hearing 
 him and asking him questions, and at last, won by his blunt kindli- 
 ness, they grew to like and respect him in their way, even as we did. 
 
 So we fared on through bad weather and rough country, en- 
 joying a journey which, but for him, would have been a mere trial 
 of patience. Northward ever, through forest and plain, over 
 mountain and swamp, across sandstone, limestone, granite, and 
 rich volcanic land, each marked distinctly by a varying vegetation. 
 Sometimes we would camp out, but oftener managed to reach a 
 station at night. We got well across the dry country between the 
 Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, now abounding with pools of 
 water ; and, having crossed the latter river, held on our course to- 
 wards Croker's Kange, which we skirted ; and, after having been 
 about a fortnight out, arrived at the lowest station on the Mac- 
 quarrie late in the afternoon. 
 
 This was our present destination. The owner was a friend of 
 ours, who gave us a hearty welcome, and, on our inquiries as to 
 store cattle, thought that we might pick up a good mob of them 
 from one station or another. " We might," said he, " make a 
 depot for them, as we collected them, on some unoccupied land 
 down the river. It was poor country, but there was grass enough 
 to keep them alive. He would show us a good place, in a fork, 
 where it was impossible to cross on two sides, and where they 
 would be easily kept together ; that was, if we liked to risk it." 
 
 "Eiskwhat?" he asked. 
 
 "Blacks," said he. " They are mortal troublesome just now 
 down the river. I thought we had quieted them, but they have 
 been up to their old games lately, spearing cattle, and so on. I 
 don't like, in fact, to go too far down there alone. I don't think 
 they are Macquarrie blacks ; I fancy they must have come up from 
 the Darling through the marshes." 
 
 We thought we should have no reason to be afraid witli such a 
 strong party as ours ; and Owen, our host, having some spare 
 cattle, we were employed for the next three days in getting them 
 in. We got nearly a hundred head from him. 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 205 
 
 The first morning we got there the Doctor had vanished ; hut 
 the third evening, as we were sitting down to supper, in he came, 
 dead heat, with a great hag full of stones. When we had drawn 
 round the fire, I said : 
 
 " Have you got any new fossils for us to see ? " 
 
 " Not one," said he ; " only some minerals." 
 
 " Do not you think, sir," said Owen, our host, " that there are 
 some ores of metals round this country ? The reason I ask you is, 
 we so often pick up curious-coloured stones, like those we get from 
 the miners at home, in Wales, where I come from." 
 
 " I think you will find some rich mines near here soon. Stay ; 
 it can do you no harm. I will tell you something : three days ago 
 I followed up the river, and ahout twenty miles above this spot I 
 became attracted by the conformation of the country, and re- 
 marked it as being very similar to some very famous spots in 
 South America. ' Here,' I said to myself, ' Maximilian, you have 
 your' volcanic disturbance, your granite, your clay, slate, and 
 sandstone upheaved, and seamed with quartz ; — why should you 
 not discover here, what is certainly here, more or less ? ' — I looked 
 patiently for two days, and I wUl show you what I found." 
 
 He went to his bag and fetched an angular stone about as big 
 as one's fist. It was white, stained on one side with rust-colour, 
 but in the heart veined with a bright yellow metallic substance, in 
 some places running in delicate veins into the stone ; in others 
 breaking out in large shining lumps. 
 
 " That's iron-pyrites," said I, as pat as you please. 
 
 " Goose ! " said the Doctor ; " look again." 
 
 I looked again, it was certainly difierent to iron-pyrites ; it was 
 brighter, it ran in veins into the stone ; it was lumpy, solid, and 
 clean. I said, " It is very beautiful ; teU us what it is ? " 
 
 " Gold ! " said he, triumphantly, getting up and walking 
 ahout the room in an excited way; "that little stone is worth a 
 pound ; there is a quarter of an ounce in it. Give me ten tons, 
 only ten cartloads such stone as that, and I would buy a principality." 
 
 Every one crowded round the stone open-mouthed, and James 
 said : 
 
 " Are you sure it is gold. Doctor ? " 
 
 " He asks me if I know gold, when I see it, — me, you under- 
 stand, who have scientifically examined all the best mines in 
 Peru, not to mention the Minas Geraes in the Brazils ! My dear 
 fellow, to a man who has once seen it, native gold is unmistak- 
 able, utterly so ; there is nothing at all hke it." 
 
 " But this is a remarkable discovery, sir," said Owen. " What 
 are you going to do ? " 
 
206 THE KECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 " I shall go to the Government," said he, " and make the best 
 bargain I can." 
 
 I had better mention here that he afterwards did go to the 
 Government, and announce his discovery. Rather to the Doctor's 
 disgust, however, though he acknowledged the wisdom of the 
 thing, the courteous and able gentleman who then represented 
 His Majesty, informed him that he was perfectly aware of the 
 existence of gold, but that he for one should assert the prerogative 
 of the Crown, and prevent any one mining on Crown-lands ; as he 
 considered that, were the gold abundant, the effects on the 
 convict population would be eminently disastrous. To which 
 obvious piece of good sense the Doctor bowed his head, and the 
 whole thing passed into oblivion — so much so, that when I heard 
 of Hargreave's discovery in 1851, I had nearly forgotten the 
 Doctor's gold adventure ; and I may here state my belief that the 
 knowledge of its existence was confined to very few, and those 
 well-educated men, who never guessed (how could they without 
 considerable workings ?) how abundant it was. As for the stories 
 of shepherds finding gold and selling it to the Jews in Sydney, 
 they are very mythical, and I for one entirely disbelieve them. 
 
 In time we had collected about 250 head of cattle from various 
 points into the fork of the river, which lay further down, some 
 seven miles, than his house. As yet we had not been troubled 
 by the black fellows. Those we had seen seemed pretty civU, and 
 we had not allowed them to get familiar ; but this pleasant state 
 of things was not to last. James and the Doctor, with one man, 
 were away for the very last mob, and I was sitting before the 
 fire at the camp, when Dick, who was left behind with me, asked 
 for my gun to go and shoot a duck. I lent it him, and away he 
 went, while I mounted my horse and rode slowly about, heading 
 back such of the cattle as appeared to be wandering too far. 
 
 I heard a shot, and almost immediately another ; then I heard 
 a queer sort of scream, which puzzled me extremely. I grew 
 frightened and rode towards the quarter where the shots came 
 from, and almost immediately heard a loud co'oe. I replied, and 
 then I saw Dick limping along through the bushes, peering about 
 him and holding his gun as one does when expecting a bird to 
 rise. Suddenly he raised his gun and fired. Out dashed a 
 black fellow from' his hiding place, running across the open, and with 
 his second barrel Dick rolled him over. Then I saw half-a-dozen 
 others rise, shaking their spears ; but seeing me riding up, aad 
 supposing I was armed, they made off. 
 
 " How did this come about, Dick, my lad ? " said I. "This 
 is a bad job." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 207 
 
 " Well," he said, " I just fired at a duck, and the moment my 
 gun was gone off, up jumped half-a-dozen of them, and sent a 
 shower of spears at me, and one has gone into my leg. They 
 must a' thought that I had a single-harrel gun and waited till I'd 
 fired it ; hut they found their mistake, the devils ; for I gave one 
 of them a charge of shot in his stomach at twenty yards, and 
 dropped him ; they threw a couple more spears, but both missed, 
 and I hobbled out as well as I could, loading as I went with a 
 couple of tallow cartridges. I saw this other beast skulking, and 
 missed him first time, but he has got something to remember me 
 by now." 
 
 " Do you think you can ride to the station and get some help ? " 
 said I. " I wish the others were back." 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " I wiU manage it, but I don't like to leave 
 you alone." 
 
 " One must stay," I said, " and better the sound man than the 
 wounded one. Come, start off, and let me get to the camp, or 
 they will be plundering that next." 
 
 I started him off and ran back to the camp. Everything was 
 safe as yet, and the ground roimd being clear, and having a 
 double-barrel gun and two pistols, I was not so very much 
 frightened. It is no use to say I was perfectly comfortable, 
 because I wasn't. A Frenchman writing this would represent him- 
 self as smoking a cigar, and singing with the greatest nonchalance. 
 I did neither. Being an Englishman, I may be allowed to confess 
 that I did not like it. 
 
 I had fuUy made up my mind to fire on the first black who 
 showed himself, but I did not get the opportunity. In about two 
 hours I heard a noise of men shouting and whips cracking, and 
 the Doctor and James rode up with a fresh lot of cattle. 
 
 I told them what had happened, and we agreed to wait and 
 watch till news should come from the station, and then to start. 
 There was, as we thought, but little danger while there were four 
 or five together ; but the worst of it was, that we were but poorly 
 armed.. However, at nightfall, Owen and one of his men came 
 down, reporting that Dick, who had been speared, was getting aU 
 right, and bringing also three swords and a brace of pistols. 
 
 James and I took a couple of swords and began fencing, in 
 play. 
 
 " I see," said the Doctor, " that you know the use of a sword, 
 you two." 
 
 " Lord bless you ! " I said, " we were in the Yeomanry 
 (Landwehr you call it) ; weren't we, Jim ? I was a corporal." 
 
 " I wish," said Owen, " that, now we are together, five of us. 
 
208 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 you would come and give these fellows a lesson ; they want it 
 badly." 
 
 "Indeed," I said, "I think they have had lesson enough for 
 the present. Dick has put down two of them. Beside, we could 
 not leave the cattle." 
 
 " I am sorry," said James, " that any of our party has had 
 this collision with them. I cannot bear shooting the poor brutes. 
 Let us move out of this, homeward, to-morrow morning." 
 
 Just before dark, who should come riding down from the station 
 but Dick I — evidently in pain, but making believe that he was 
 quite comfortable. 
 
 " Why, Dick, my boy," I said, "I thought you were in bed; 
 you ought to be, at any rate." 
 
 " Oh, there's nothing much the matter with me, Mr. Hamlyn," 
 he said. " You will have some trouble with these fellows, unless 
 I am mistaken. / tvas told to look after you once, and I mean to 
 do it." 
 
 (He referred to the letter that Lee had sent him years before.) 
 
 That night Owen stayed with us at the camp. We set a watch, 
 and he took the morning spell. Everything passed off quietly ; 
 but when we came to examine our cattle in the morning, the lot 
 that James had brought in the night before were gone. 
 
 The river, flooded when we first came, had now lowered con- 
 siderably, so that the cattle could cross if they really tried. 
 These last, being wild and restless, had gone over, and we soon 
 found the marks of them across the river. 
 
 The Doctor, James, Dick, and I started off after them, and we 
 armed ourselves for security. We took a sword a-piece, and each 
 had a pistol. The ground was moist, and the beasts easily 
 tracked ; so we thought an easy job was before us, but we soon 
 changed our minds. 
 
 Following on the trail of the cattle, we very soon came on the 
 footsteps of a black fellow, evidently more recent than the hoof- 
 marks ; then another footstep joined in, and another, and at last 
 we made out that above a dozen blacks were tracking our cattle, 
 and were between us and them. 
 
 Still we followed the trail as fast as we could. I was uneasy, 
 for we were insufficiently armed, but I found time to point out to 
 the Doctor, what he had never remarked before, the wonderful 
 diiference between the naked foot-print of a white man and a 
 savage. The white man leaves the impression of his whole sole, 
 every toe being distinctly marked, while your black fellow leaves 
 scarce any toe-marks, but seems merely to spurn the ground with 
 the ball of his foot. 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 209 
 
 I felt very ill at ease. The morning was raw, and a dense fog 
 was over everything. One always feels wretched on such a morn- 
 ing, but on that one I felt miserable. There was an indefinable 
 horror over me, and I talked more than any one, glad to hear the 
 sound of my own voice. 
 
 Once the Doctor turned round and looked at me fixedly from 
 under his dark eyebrows. " Hamlyn," he said, " I don't think 
 you are well ; you talk fast, and are evidently nervous. We are 
 in no danger, I think, but you seem as if you were frightened." 
 
 " So I am. Doctor, but I don't know what at." 
 
 Jim was riding first, and he turned and said, " I have lost the 
 black fellows' track entirely : here are the hoof-marks, safe enough, 
 but no foot-prints, and the ground seems to be rising." 
 
 The fog was very thick, so that we could see nothing above a 
 hundred yards from us. We had come through forest aH the way, 
 and were wet with pushing through low shrubs. As we paused 
 came a puff of air, and in five minutes the fog had rolled away, 
 and a clear blue sky and a bright sun were overhead. 
 
 Now we could see where we were. We were in the lower end 
 of a precipitous mountain guUey, narrow where we were, and 
 growing rapidly narrower as we advanced. In the fog we had 
 followed the cattle-track right into it, passing, unobserved, two 
 great heaps of tumbled rocks which waUed the glen ; they were 
 thickly fringed with scrub, and it immediately struck me that 
 they stood just in the place where we had lost the tracks of the 
 black fellows. 
 
 I should have mentioned this, but, at this moment, James caught 
 sight of the lost cattle, and galloped off after them ; we followed, 
 and very quickly we had headed them down the glen, and were 
 posting homeward as hard as we could go. 
 
 I remember well there was a young bull among them that took 
 the lead. As he came nearly opposite the two pUes of rock which 
 I have mentioned, I saw a black fellow leap on a boulder, and send 
 a spear into him. 
 
 He headed back, and the other beasts came against him. Be- 
 fore we could puU up we were against the cattle, and then all was 
 confusion and disaster. Two hundred black fellows were on us at 
 once, shouting like devils, and sending down their spears upon us 
 like rain. I heard the Doctor's voice, above aU the infernal din, 
 crying " Viva ! Swords, my boys ; take your swords ! " I heard 
 two pistol shots, and then, with deadly wrath in my heart, I 
 charged at a crowd of them, who were huddled together, throwing 
 their spears wildly, and laid about me with my cutlass like a 
 madiuau , 
 
 16 
 
210 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 , I saw them scrambling up over the rocks in wild confusion ; 
 then I heard the Doctor calling me to come on. He had reined 
 up, and a few of the discomfited savages were throwing spears at 
 him from a long distance. When he saw me turn to come, he 
 turned also, and rode after James, who was two hundred yards 
 ahead, reeling in his saddle like a drunken man, grinding his 
 teeth, and making fierce clutches at a spear which was buried 
 deep in his side, and which at last he succeeded in tearing out. 
 He went a few yards further, and then fell olf Ms horse on the 
 ground. 
 
 We were both oflf in a moment, but when I got his head on my 
 lap, I saw he was dying. The Doctor looked at the wound, and 
 shook his head. I took his right hand in mine, and the other I 
 held upon his true and faithful heart, unixi. I felt it flutter, and 
 stop for ever. 
 
 Then I broke down altogether. " Oh ! good old friend ! Oh ! 
 dear old friend, could you not wait for me ? Shall I never see you 
 again ? " 
 
 Yes ! I think that I shall see him again. When I have crossed 
 the dark river which we must all cross, I think he wiU be one of 
 those who come down to meet me from the gates of the Everlast- 
 ing City. 
 
 ■'A man," said 'the Doctor to me, two days after, when we 
 were sitting together in the station parlour, " who approached as 
 nearly the model which our Great Master has left us as any man 
 I know. I studied and admired him for many years, and now I 
 cannot tell you not to mourn. I can give you no comfort for the 
 loss of such a man, save it be to say that you and I may hope to 
 meet him again, and learn new lessons from him, in a better place 
 than this." 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 IN WHICH THE NEW DEAN OP B MAKES HIS APPEARANCE, 
 
 AND ASTONISHES THE MAJOR OUT OF HIS PROPRIETY. 
 
 One evening towards the end of that winter Mrs. Buckley and 
 Sam sat alone before the fire, in the quickly-gathering darkness. 
 The candles were yet unlighted, but the cheerful flickering light 
 produced by the combustion of three or four logs of sheoak, topped 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN, 211 
 
 by one of dead gum, shone most pleasantly on the well-ordered 
 dining-room, on the close-drawn curtains, on the nicely-polished 
 furniture, on the dinner-table, laid with fair array of white linen, 
 silver, and glass, but, above all, on the honest, quiet face of Sam, 
 who sat before his mother in an easy chair, with his head back, 
 fast asleep. 
 
 While she is alternately casting glances of pride and affection 
 towards her sleeping son, and keen looks on the gum-log, in search 
 of centipedes, let us take a look at her ourselves, and see how 
 sixteen years have behaved to that handsome face. There is 
 change here, but no deterioration. It is a little rounder, perhaps, 
 and also a little fuller in colour, but there are no lines there yet. 
 " Happiness and ceaseless good temper don't make many wrinkles, 
 even in a wanner climate than old England," says the Major, and 
 says also, confidentially, to Brentwood, "Put a red camelia in her 
 hair, and send her to the opera even now, and see what a sensa- 
 tion she would make, though she is nearer fifty than forty," — 
 which was strictly true, although said by her husband, for the 
 raven hair is as black as it was when decorated with the moss-roses 
 of Clere, and the eye is as brilliant as when it flashed with the 
 news of Trafalgar. 
 
 Now, the beautiful profile is turned again towards the sleeper as 
 he moves. " Poor boy ! " she said. " He is quite knocked up. 
 He must have been twenty-four hours in the saddle. However, 
 he had better be after cattle than in a billiard-room. I wonder if 
 his father wUl be home to-night." 
 
 Suddenly Sam awoke. " Heigho I " said he. " I'm nice com- 
 pany, mother. Have I been asleep ? " 
 
 " Only for an hour or so, my boy," said she. " See ; I've been 
 defending you while you slumbered. I have kiUed three centipedes, 
 which came out of that old gum log. I cut this big one in half 
 with the fire-shovel, and the head part walked away as if nothing 
 had happened. I must teU the man not to give us rotten wood, 
 or some of us will be getting a nip. It's a long fifty mQes from 
 Captain Brentwood's," said Mrs. Buckley after a time. " And 
 that's a very good day's work for little Bronsewing, carrying your 
 father." 
 
 " And what has been the news since I have been away, — eh, 
 mother? " 
 
 " Why, the greatest news is that the Donovans have sold their 
 station, and are off to Port Phillip." 
 
 " All the world is moving there," said Sam. "Who has he 
 sold it to?" 
 
 " That I can't find out. — There's your father, my love." 
 
212 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 There was the noise of horses' feet and merry voices in the little 
 gravelled yard behind the house, heard above a joyous barking of 
 dogs. Sam ran out to hold his father's horse, and soon came 
 into the room again, aceompanied by his father and Captain 
 Brentwood. 
 
 After the first greetings were over, candles were lighted, and the 
 three men stood, on the hearth-rug together — a very remarkable 
 group, as you would have said, had you seen them. You might 
 go a long while in any country without seeing three such men in 
 company. 
 
 Captain Brentwood, of Artillery renown, was a square, power- 
 fully built man, say five-foot-ten in height. His face, at first 
 sight, appeared rather a stupid one beside the Major's, expressing 
 rather determination than intelligence ; but once engage him in a 
 conversation which interested him, and you would be surprised to 
 see how animated it would become. Then the man, usually so 
 silent, would open up the storehouse of his mind, speaking with 
 an eloquence and a force which would surprise one who did not 
 know him, and which niade the Doctor often take the losing side 
 of an argument for the purpose of making him speak. Add to 
 this that he was a thoroughly amiable man, and, as Jim would tell 
 you (in spite of a certain severe whipping you wot of), a most 
 indulgent and excellent father. 
 
 Major Buckley's shadow had grown no less, — nay, rather 
 greater, since first we knew him. In other respects, there was 
 very little alteration, except that his curling brown hair had grown 
 thinner . about the temples, and was receding a little from his 
 forehead. But what cared he for that I He was not the last of 
 the Buckleys. 
 
 One remarks now, as the two stand together, that Sara, though 
 but nineteen, is very nearly as tall as his father, and proniisus to 
 be as broad across the shoulders, some day, being an exception to 
 coloniaUy-bred men in general, who are long and narrow. He is 
 standing and talking to his father. 
 
 " Well, Sam," said the Major, " so you're back safe,— eh, my 
 boy I A rough time, I don't doubt. Strange store-cattle arc 
 queer to drive at any time, particularly such weathur as you have 
 had." 
 
 " And such a lot, too ! " said Sam. " Tcdl you what, father, 
 it's lucky you've got them cheap, for the half of them are off the 
 ranges." 
 
 " Scrubbers, ch ? " said the Major ; well, we must take what we 
 can catch, with this Port Phillip i-ush. Let's sit down to dinner ; 
 I've got some news that will please you. Fish, eh ? See there, 
 
GEOFFET ETAMLYN. 213 
 
 Brentwood ! What do you think of that for a black-fish ? What 
 was his weight, my dear ? " 
 
 " Seven pounds and a half, as the black fellows brought him 
 in," said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " A very pretty fish," said the Major. " My dear, what is the 
 news? " 
 
 " Why, the Donovans have sold their station." 
 
 " Ha I ha I " laughed the Major. " Why, we have come fi'om 
 there to-day. Why, we were there last night at a grand party. 
 All the Irishmen in the country side. Such a turmoil I haven't 
 seen since I was quartered at Cove. So that's your news, — eh ? " 
 
 " And so you stepped on there without calling at home, did 
 you ? " said Mrs. Buckley. " And perhaps you know who the 
 purchaser is ? " 
 
 " Don't you know, my love ? " 
 
 " Xo, indeed ! " said Mrs. Buckley. " I have been trying to 
 find out these two days. It would be very pleasant to have a 
 good neighbour tiiere, — not that I wish to speak evil of the 
 Donovans ; but really they did go on in such terrible style, you 
 know, that one could not go there. Now, tell me who has bought 
 Garoopna." 
 
 " One Brentwood, captain of Artillery." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Mrs. Buckley. "Is he not joking now, 
 Captain Brentwood ? That is far too good news to be true." 
 
 "It is true, nevertheless, madam," said Captain Brentwood. "I 
 thought it would meet with your approval, and I can see by Sam's 
 face that it meets with his. You see, my dear, Buckley has got 
 to be rather necessary to me. I miss him when he is absent, and 
 I want to be more with him. Again, I am very fond of my son 
 Jim, and my son Jim is very fond of your son Sam, and is always 
 coming here after him when he ought to be at home. So I think 
 I shall see more of him when we are ten miles apart than when we 
 are fifty. And, once more, my daughter Alice, now completing 
 her education in Sydney, comes home to keep house for me in a 
 few months, and I wish her to have the advantage of the society 
 of the lady whom I honour and respect above ail others. So I 
 have bought Garoopna." 
 
 "K that courtly bow is intended for me, my dear Captain," 
 said Mrs. Buckley, " as I cannot but think it is, believe me that 
 your daughter shall be as my daughter." 
 
 " Teach her to be in some slight degree like yourself, Mrs. 
 Buckley," said the Captain, " and you will put me under obliga- 
 tions which I can never repay." 
 
 " Altogether, wife," said the Major, " it is the most glorious 
 
214 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 arrangement that ever was come to. Let us take a glass of sherry 
 all round on it. Sam, my lad, your hand I Brentwood, we have 
 none of us ever seen your daughter. She should be hand- 
 some." 
 
 " You remember her mother ? " said the Captain. 
 
 " Who could ever forget Lady Kate who had once seen her ? " 
 said the Major. 
 
 " Well, Alice is more beautiful than her mother ever was." 
 
 There went across the table a bright electric spark out of Mrs. 
 Buekley's eye into her husband's, as rapid as those which move 
 the quivering telegraph needles, and yet not unobserved, I think, 
 by Captain Brentwood, for there grew upon his face a pleasant 
 smile, which, rapidly broadening, ended in a low laugh, by no 
 means disagreeable to hear, though Sam wondered what the joke 
 could be until the Captain said, — 
 
 " An altogether comical party that last night at the Donovans', 
 Buckley I the most comical I ever was at." 
 
 Nevertheless, I don't believe that it was that which made him 
 laugh at all. 
 
 " A capital party I " said the Major, laughing. " Do you know, 
 Brentwood, I always liked those Donovans, under the rose, and 
 last night I liked them better than ever. They were not such very 
 bad neighbours, although old Donovan wanted to fight a duel with 
 me once. At all events, the welcome I got last night wiU make 
 me remember them kiadly in future." 
 
 " J, must go down and call there before they go," said Mrs. 
 Buckley. " People who have been our neighbours so many years 
 must not go away without a kind farewell. Was Desborough 
 there ? " 
 
 "Indeed, he was. Don't you know he is related to the 
 Donovans ? " 
 
 "Impossible! " 
 
 " Fact, my dear, I assure you, according to Mrs. Donovan, who 
 told me that the De Novans and the Desboroughs were cognate 
 Norman families, who settled in Ireland together, and have since 
 frequently intermarried." 
 
 "I suppose," said Mrs. Buckley, laughing, "that Desborough 
 did not deny it." 
 
 " Not at all, my dear : as he said to me privately, ' Buckley, 
 never deny a relationship with a man worth forty thousand pounds, 
 the least penny, though your ancestors' bones should move in their 
 graves.' " 
 
 "I suppose," said Mrs. Buckley, "that he made himself as 
 agreeable as iisual." 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 215 
 
 " As usual, my dear. He made even Brentwood laugh ; he 
 danced aU the evening with that giddy girl Lesbia Burke, who let 
 slip that she remembered me at Naples, in 1805, when she was 
 there with that sad old set, and who consequently must be nearly 
 as old as myself." 
 
 " I hope you danced with her," said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " Indeed I did, my dear. And she wore a wreath of yellow 
 chrysanthemum, no other flowers being obtainable. I assure you 
 we ' kept the flure ' in splendid style." 
 
 They were all laughing at the idea of the Major dancing, when 
 Sam exclaimed, " Good Lord I " 
 
 " What's the matter, my boy ? " said the Major. 
 
 "I must cry peccavi," said Sam. "Father, you will never 
 forgive me 1 I forgot till this moment a most important message. 
 I was rather knocked up, you see, and went to sleep, and that sent 
 it out of my head." 
 
 " You are forgiven, my boy, be it what it may, I hope it is 
 nothing very serious." 
 
 " Well, it is very serious," said Sam. " As I was coming by 
 Hanging Rock, I rode up to the door a minute, to see if Cecil was 
 at home, — and Mrs. Mayford came out and wanted me to get ofi' 
 and come in, but I hadn't time ; and she said, ' The Dean is 
 coming here to-night, and he'll be with you to-morrow night, I 
 expect. So don't forget to tell your mother.' " 
 
 " To-morrow night I " said Mrs. Buckley, aghast. " Why, my 
 dear boy, that is to-night ! What shall I do ? " 
 
 " Nothing at aU, my love," said the Major, " but make them 
 get some supper ready. He can't have expected us to wait dinner 
 till this time." 
 
 "I thought," said Captain Brentwood, "that the Dean was gone 
 back to England." 
 
 " So he is," said the Major. " But this is a new one. The 
 good old Dean has resigned." 
 
 " What is the new one's name ? " said the Captain. 
 
 " I don't know," said the Major. " Desborough said it was a 
 Doctor Maypole, and that he was very like one in appearance. But 
 you can't trust Desborough, you know; he never remembers names. 
 I hope he may be as good a man as his predecessor." 
 
 " I hope he may be no worse," said Captain Brentwood ; " but 
 t hope, in addition, that he may be better able to travel, and look 
 after his outlying clergy a little more." 
 
 " It looks like it," said the Major, "to be down as far as this, 
 before he has been three months installed." 
 
 Mrs. Buckley went out to the kitchen to give orders ; and after 
 
216 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 that they sat for an hour or more over their wine, till at length the 
 Major said, — 
 
 " We must give him up in another hour." 
 
 Then, as if they had heard him, the dogs began to bark. Rover, 
 who had, against rules, sneaked into the house, and lain perdu 
 under the sofa, discovered his retreat by low growling, as though 
 determined to do his duty, let the consequences be what they 
 might. Every now and then, too, when his feelings overpowered 
 him, he would discharge a ' Woof,' like a minute gun at sea. 
 
 " That must be him, father," said Sam. " You'll catch it, Mr. 
 Rover I " 
 
 He ran out ; a tall black figure was sitting on horseback before 
 the door, and a pleasant cheery voice said, " Pray, is this Major 
 Buckley's ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Sam ; "we have been expecting you." 
 
 He called for the groom, and held the stranger's horse while he 
 dismounted. Then he assisted him to unstrap his valise, and 
 carried it in after him. 
 
 The Major, Mrs. Buckley, and the Captain had risen, and were 
 standing ready to greet the Church dignitary as he came in, in the 
 most respectful manner. But when the Major had looked for a 
 moment on the tall figure in black which advanced towards the 
 fire ; instead of saying, " Sir, I am highly honoured by your 
 visit," or " Sir, I bid you most heartily welcome," he dashed 
 forward in the most undignified fashion, upsetting a chair, and 
 seizing the reverend Dean by both hands, exclaimed, " God bless 
 my heart and soul 1 Frank Maberly ! " 
 
 It was he : the mad curate, now grown into a colonial dean, — 
 sobered, apparently, but unchanged in any material point : stiD 
 elastic and upright, looking as if for twopence he would take off 
 the black cutaway coat and the broad-brimmed hat, and row seven 
 in the University eight, at a moment's notice. There seemed 
 something the matter with him though, as he held the Major's two 
 hands in his, and looked on his broad handsome face. Something 
 like a shortness of breath prevented his speech, and, strange, the 
 Major seemed troubled with the same complaint ; but Frank got 
 over it first, and said, — 
 
 " My dear old friend, I am so glad to see you ! " 
 
 And Mrs. Buckley said, laymg her hand upon his arm, " It 
 ssemi as if all things were arranged to make my husband and 
 mysslf the happiest couple in the world. If we had been asked 
 to-night, whom of all people in the world we should have been 
 most glad to see as the new Dean, we should have answered at 
 once, Frank Maberjy ; and here he is t " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMT.YN. 217 
 
 " Then, you did not know whom to expect ? " said Frank. 
 
 " Not we, indeed," said the Major. " Desborongh said the new 
 Dean was a Doctor Maypole ; and I pictured to myself an old 
 schoolmaster with a birch rod in his coat tail-pocket. And we 
 have been in sach a stew all the evening abont giving the great 
 man a proper reception. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " And will you introduce me to this gentleman ? " said the 
 Dean, moving towards Sam, who stood behind his mother. 
 
 " This," said the Major, with a radiant smile, " is my son 
 Samuel, whom, I believe, you have seen before." 
 
 " So, the pretty boy that I knew at Dmmston," said the Dean, 
 laying his hands on Sam's shoulders, " has grown into this noble 
 gentleman ! It makes me feel old, but I am glad to feel old under 
 such circumstances. Lot me turn your fiice to the light and see 
 if I can recognise the little lad whom I used to carry pickaback 
 across Hatherleigh Water." 
 
 Sam looked in his fiaee — such a kindly good placid face, that it 
 seemed beautiful, though by some rules it was irregular and ugly 
 enough. The Dean laid his hand on Sam's curly head, and said, 
 "God bless you, Samuel Buckley," and won Sam's heart for ever. 
 
 All this time Captain Brentwood had stood with his back against 
 the chimney-piece, perfectly silent, having banished all expression 
 from his countenance ; now, however. Major Buckley brought up 
 the Dean and introduced biin : — 
 
 " My dear Brentwood, the Dean of B ; not Dean to us 
 
 though, so much as our dear old friend Frank Maberly." 
 
 " Involved grammar," said the Captain to himself, but, added 
 aloud : "A Churchman of your position, sir, will do me an 
 honour by using my house ; but the Mr. Maberly of whom I have 
 so often heard from my friend Buckley, will do me a still higher 
 honour if he will allow me to enrol him among the number of my 
 friends." 
 
 Frank the Dean thought that Captain Brentwood's speech would 
 have made a good piece to turn into Greek prose, in the style of 
 Demosthenes ; but he didn't say so. He looked at the Captain's 
 stolid face for a moment, and said, as Sam thought, a little 
 abruptly : 
 
 " I think, sir, that you and I shall get on very well together 
 when we understand one another." 
 
 The Captain made no reply in articulate speech, but laughed 
 internally, till his sides shook, and held out his hand. The Dean 
 laughed too, as he took it, and said : 
 
 " I met a young lady at the Bishop's the other day, a Miss 
 Brentwood." 
 
218 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " My daughter, sir," said the Captain. 
 
 " So I guessed — partly from the name, and partly from a certain 
 look about the eyes, rather unmistakable. Allow me to say, sir, 
 that I never remember to have seen such remarkable beauty in my 
 life." 
 
 They sat Frank down to supper, and when he had done, the 
 conversation was resumed. 
 
 " By-the-bye, Major Buckley," said he, " I miss an old friend, 
 who I heard was living with you ; a very dear old friend, — ^where 
 is Doctor Mulhaus ? " 
 
 " Dear Doctor," said Mrs. Buckley, " this is his home indeed, 
 but he is away at present on an expedition with two old Devon 
 friends, Hamlyn and Stockbridge." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Frank, " I have heard of those men ; they came 
 out here the year before the Vicar died. I never knew either of 
 them, but I well remember how kindly Stockbridge used to be 
 spoken of by every one in Drumston. I must make his ac- 
 quaintance." 
 
 " You will make the acquaintance of one of the finest fellows in 
 the world. Dean," said the Major ; " I know no worthier man than 
 Stockbridge. I wish Mary Thornton had married him." 
 
 " And I hear," said Frank, " that the pretty Mary is your next 
 door neighbour, in partnership with that excellent giant Troubridge. 
 I must go and see them to-morrow. I will produce one of those 
 great roaring laughs of his, by reminding him of our first intro- 
 duction at the Palace, through a rat." 
 
 "I am sorry to say," said the Major, " that Tom is away at 
 Port Phillip, with cattle." 
 
 " Port Phillip again," said Frank ; "I have heard of nothing 
 else throughout my journey. I am getting bored with it. Will 
 you tell me what you know about it for certain ? " 
 
 " Well," said the Major, " it lies about 250 miles south of this, 
 though we cannot get at it without crossing the mountains in con- 
 sequence of some terribly dense scrub on some low ranges close to 
 it, which they call, I believe, the Dandenong. It appears, how- 
 ever, when you are there, that there is a great harbour, about forty 
 miles long, surrounded with splendid pastures, which stretch west 
 further than any man has been yet. Take it all in all, I should 
 say it was the best watered and most available piece of country 
 yet discovered in New Holland." 
 
 " Any good rivers ? " asked the Dean. 
 
 " Plenty of small ones, only one of any size, apparently, which 
 seems to rise somewhere in this direction, and goes in at the head 
 of the bay. They tried years ago to form a settlement on this bay, 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 219 
 
 but Collins, the man entrusted with it, could find no clean water, 
 which seems strange, as there is, according to aU accounts, a fine 
 fuU-flowing river running by the town." 
 
 " They have formed a town there, then ? " said the Dean. 
 
 " There are a few wooden houses gone up by the river side. I 
 believe they are going to make a town there, and call it Melbourne : 
 we may live to see it a thriving place." 
 
 The Major has lived to see his words fulfilled — fulfilled in such 
 marvellous sort, that bald bare statistics read like the wildest 
 romance. At the time he spoke, twenty-two years ago from this 
 present year, 1858, the Yarra roUed its clear waters to the sea 
 through the unbroken solitude of a primeval forest, as yet unseen 
 by the eye of a white man. Now there stands there a noble city, 
 with crowded wharves, containing with its suburbs not less than 
 120,000 inhabitants. 1,000 vessels have lain at one time side by 
 side, off the mouth of that little river ; and through the low sandy 
 heads that close the great port towards the sea, thirteen millions 
 sterling of exports is carried away each year by the finest ships in 
 the world. Here, too, are waterworks constructed at fabulous 
 expense, a service of steam- ships, between this and the other great 
 cities of AustraUa, vying in speed and accommodation with the 
 coasting steamers of Great Britain ; noble churches, handsome 
 theatres. In short, a great city, which, in its amazing rapidity of 
 growth, utterly surpasses aU human experience. 
 
 I never stood in Venice contemplating the decay of the grand 
 palaces of her old merchant princes, whose time has gone by for 
 ever. I never watched the slow downfall of a great commercial 
 city ; but I have seen what to him who thinks aright is an equally 
 grand subject of contemplation — the rapid rise of one. I have 
 seen what but a small moiety of the world, even in these days, has 
 seen, and what, save in this generation, has never been seen before, 
 and wiU, I think, never be seen again. I have seen Melbourne. 
 Five years in succession did I visit that city, and watch each year 
 how it spread and grew until it was beyond recognition. Every 
 year the press became denser, and the roar of the congregated 
 thousands grew louder, tiU at last the scream of the flying engine 
 rose above the hubbub of the streets, and two thousand miles of 
 electric wire began to move the clicking needles with ceaseless 
 intelligence. 
 
 Unromantic enough, but beyond all conception wonderful. I 
 stood at the east end of Bourke Street, not a year ago, looking at 
 the black swarming masses, which thronged the broad thorough- 
 fare below. AU the town lay at my feet, and the sun was going 
 down beyond the distant mountains ; I had just crossed from the 
 
220 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 front of the new Houses of Legislature, and had nearly been run 
 over by a great omnibus. Partly to recover my breath, and partly, 
 being not used to large cities, to enjoy the really fine scene before 
 me, I stood at the corner of the street in contemplative mood. I 
 felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked round, — it was Major 
 Buckley. 
 
 " This is a Wonderful sight, Hamlyn," said he. 
 
 " When you think of it," I said, " reaUy think of it, you know, 
 how wonderful it is ! " 
 
 " Brentwood," said the Major, " has calculated by his mathe- 
 matics that the progress of the species is forty- seven, decimal 
 eight, more rapid than it was thirty-five years ago." 
 
 " So I should be prepared to believe," I said ; " where will it all 
 end ? Will it be a grand universal republic, think you, in which 
 war is unknown, and universal prosperity has banished crime ? I 
 may be too sanguine, but such a state of things is possible. This 
 is a sight which makes a man look far into the future." 
 
 "Prosperity," said the Major, "has not done much towards 
 abolishing crime in this town, at all events ; and it would not take 
 much to send all this back into its primeval state." 
 
 " How so. Major? " said I ; " I see here the cradle of a new 
 and mighty empire." 
 
 " Two rattling good thumps of an earthquake," said the Major, 
 " would pitch Melbourne into the middle of Port Phillip, and bury 
 all the gold far beyond the reach even of the Ballarat deep-sinkers. 
 The world is very,very young, my dear Hamlyn. Come down and 
 dine with me at the club." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 WHITE HEATHENS. 
 
 Captain Bkentwood went back to Garoopna next morning ; but 
 Frank Maberly kept to his resolution of going over to see Mary ; 
 and, soon after breakfast, they were all equipped ready to accom- 
 pany him, standing in front of the door, waiting for the horses. 
 Frank was remarking how handsome Mrs. Bucldey looked in her 
 hat and habit, when she turned and said to him, — 
 
 " My dear Dean, I suppose you never jump over five-barred 
 gates now-a-days? Do you remember how you used to come over 
 the white gate at the Vicarage ? I suppose you are getting too 
 dignified for any such thing ? " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 221 
 
 There was a three-railed fence dividing the lower end of the 
 yard from the paddock. He rammed his hat on tight, and took it 
 flying, with his black coat-tails fluttering like wings ; and, coming 
 back laughing, said, — 
 
 " There's a bit of the old Adam for you, Mrs. Buckley I Be 
 careful how you defy me again." 
 
 The sun was bright overhead, and the land in its fuU winter 
 verdure, as they rode along the banks of the creek that led to 
 Toonarbin. Frank Maberly was as humorous as ever, and many a 
 merry laugh went ringing through the woodland solitudes, sending 
 the watchman cockatoo screaming aloft to alarm the flock, or 
 startling the brilliant thick-clustered lories (richest coloured of all 
 parrots in the world), as they hung chattering on some silver-leaved 
 acacia, bending with their weight the fragile boughs down towards 
 the clear still water, lighting up the dark pool with strange, bright 
 reflections of crimson and blue ; startling, too, the feeding doe- 
 kangaroo, who skipped slowly away, followed by her young one — 
 so slowly that the watching travellers expected her to stop each 
 moment, and could scarcely believe she was in fuU flight till she 
 topped a low ridge and disappeared. 
 
 " That is a strange sight to a European, Mrs. Buckley," said 
 Frank ; "a real wild animal. It seems so strange to me, now, to 
 think that I could go and shoot that beast, and account to no man 
 for it. That is, yon know, supposing I had a gun, and powder and 
 shot, and, also, that the kangaroo would be fool enough to wait till 
 I was near enough ; which, you see, is pre-supposing a great deal. 
 Are they easily approached ? " 
 
 " Easily enough, on horseback," said Sam, " but very difficult 
 to come near on foot, which is also the case with all wild animals 
 and birds worth shooting in this country. A footman,* you see, 
 they all mistake for their hereditary enemy, the blackfeUow ; but, 
 as yet, they have not come to distinguish a man on horseback from 
 a fourfooted beast. And this seems to show that animals have 
 their traditions like men." 
 
 " Pray, Sam, are not these pretty beasts, these kangaroos, 
 becoming extinct? " 
 
 " On sheep-runs, very nearly so. Sheep drive them off directly : 
 but on cattle-runs, so far from becoming extinct, they are becom- 
 ing so numerous as to be a nuisance ; consuming a most valuable 
 quantity of grass." 
 
 " Let not Charles or Jeames suppose that they or their brethren 
 of the plush are here spoken of. Could they be mistaken for black- 
 fellows ? No ; the word footman merely means one who Roes afoot 
 instead of riding. 
 
222 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " How can you account for that ? " 
 
 "Very easily," said Sam; "their enemies are all removed. 
 The settlers have poisoned, in well-settled districts, the native 
 dogs and eagle-hawks, which formerly kept down their numhers. 
 The blacks prefer the beef of the settlers to bad and hard-earned 
 kangaroo venison ; and, lastly, the settlers never go after them, 
 but leave them to their own inventions. So that the kangaroo has 
 better times of it than ever." 
 
 " That is rather contrary to what one has heard, though," said 
 Prank. 
 
 " But Sam is right, Dean," said the Major. " People judge 
 from seeing none of them on the plains, from which they have 
 been driven by the sheep ; but there are as many in the forest as 
 ever." 
 
 " The Emu, now," said Frank, " are they getting scarce ? " 
 
 " They will soon be among the things of the past," said the 
 Major ; " and I am sorry for it, for they are a beautiful and harm- 
 less bird." 
 
 " Major," said Frank, " how many outlying huts have 
 you?" 
 
 " Five," said the Major. " Four shepherds' huts, and one 
 store-keeper's in the range, which we call the heifer station." 
 
 "You have no church here, I know," said Frank; "but do 
 these men get any sort of religious instruction ? " 
 
 " None whatever," said the Major. " I have service in my 
 house on Sunday, but I cannot ask them to come to it, though 
 sometimes the stockmen do come. The shepherds, you know, are 
 employed on Sunday as on any other day. Sheep must eat 1 " 
 
 " Are any of these men convicts ? " 
 
 " All the shepherds," said the Major. " The stockman and his 
 assistant are free men, but their hut-keeper is bond." 
 
 " Are any of them married ? " 
 
 " Two of the shepherds ; the rest single; but I must tell you 
 that on our run we keep up a regular circulation of books among 
 the huts, and my wife sticks them fuU of religious tracts, which is 
 really about all that we can do without a clergyman." 
 
 " Do you find they read your tracts, Mrs. Buckley ? " asked 
 Frank. 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Buckley, " with the exception, perhaps, of 
 ' Black Giles the Poacher,' which always comes home very dirty. 
 Narrative tracts they will read when there is nothing more lively 
 at hand ; but such treatises as ' Are You Eeady ? ' and ' The 
 Sinner's Friend,' fall dead. One copy lasts for years." 
 
 " One copy of either of them," said Frank, " would last me 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 223 
 
 some time. Then these fellows Major, are entirely godless, I 
 suppose? " 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you, Dean," said the Major, stopping short, 
 " it's about as had as bad can he t it can't he worse, sir. If by 
 any means you could make it worse, it would he by sending such 
 men round here as the one who was sent here last. He served as 
 a standing joke to the hands for a year or more ; and I believe he 
 was sincere enough, too." 
 
 " I must invade some of these huts, and see what is to be done," 
 said Frank. " I have had a hard spell of work in London since 
 old times ; but I have seen enough already to tell me that that 
 work was not so hopeless as this will be. I think, however, that 
 there is more chance here than among the UtUe farmers in the 
 settled districts. Here, at all events, I shan't have the rum-bottle 
 eternally standing between me and my man. What a glorious, 
 independent, happy set of men are those said small freeholders, 
 Major ! What a happy exchange an English peasant makes when 
 he leaves an old, well-ordered society, the ordinances of rehgion, 
 the various give-and-take relations between rank and rank, which 
 make up the sum of English life, for independence, godlessness, 
 and rum I He gains, say you I Yes, he gains meat for his 
 dinner every day, and voild tout ! Contrast an English workhouse 
 schoolboy — I take the lowest class for example, a class which 
 should not exist — with a small farmer's son in one of the settled 
 districts. Which will make the most useful citizen ? Give me 
 the workhouse lad ! " 
 
 " Oh, but you are over-stating the case, you know. Dean," said 
 the Major. " You must have a class of small farmers ! Wherever 
 the land is fit for cultivation it must be sold to agriculturists ; or, 
 otherwise, in case of a war, we shall be dependent on Europe and 
 America for the bread we eat. I know some excellent and exem- 
 plary men who are farmers, I assure you." 
 
 " Of course ! of course ! " said Frank. " I did not mean quite 
 all I said ; but I am angry and disappointed. I pictured to my- 
 self the labourer, English, Scotch, or Irish — a man whom I Imow, 
 and have lived with and worked for some years, emigrating, and, 
 after a few years of honest toil, which, compared to his old hard 
 drudgery, was child's-play, saving money enough to buy a farm. 
 I pictured to myself this man accumulating wealth, happy, honest, 
 godly, bringing up a family of brave boys and good girls, in a 
 country where, theoretically, the temptations to crime are all but 
 removed : this is what I imagined. I come out here, and what 
 do I find ? My friend the labourer has got his farm, and is pros- 
 pering, after a sort. He has turned to be a drunken, godless, im- 
 
224 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 pudent fellow, and his wife little better than himself ; his daughters 
 dowdy hussies; his sons lanky, lean, pasty-faced, blaspheming 
 blackguards, drinking rum before breakfast, and living by cheating 
 one another out of horses. Can you deny this picture ? " 
 
 "Yes," said the Major, "I can disprove it by many happy 
 instances, and yet, to say the truth, it is fearfully true in as many 
 more. There is no social influence in the settled districts ; there 
 are too many men without masters. Let us wait and hope. 
 
 " This is not to the purpose at present, though," said Mrs. 
 Buckley. " See what you can do for us in the bush, my dear 
 Dean. You have a very hopeless task before you, I fear." 
 
 " The more hopeless, the greater glory, madam," said Frank, 
 taking off his hat and waving it. Called, Chosen, and Faithful. 
 " There is a beautiful house ! " 
 
 "That is Toonarbin," said the Major; 'Sand there's Mary 
 Hawker in the verandah." 
 
 " Let us see," said Mrs. Buckley, " if she wUl know him. If 
 she does not recognise him, let no one speak before me." 
 
 When they had ridden up and dismounted, Mrs. Buckley pre- 
 sented Frank. "My dear," said she, "the Dean is honouring 
 us by staying at Baroona for a week, and proposes to visit round 
 at the various stations. To-morrow we go to the Mayfords, and 
 next day to Garoopna." 
 
 Mary bowed respeetfiiUy to Frank, and said, " that she felt 
 highly honoured," and so forth. "My partner is gone on a 
 journey, and my son is away on the run, or they would have joined 
 with me in bidding you welcome, pir." 
 
 Frank would have been highly honoured at making their 
 acquaintance. 
 
 Mary started, and looked at him again. " Mr. Maberly ! Mr. 
 Maberly ! " she said, " your face is changed, but your voice is un- 
 changeable. You are discovered, sir ! " 
 
 " And are you glad to see me ? " 
 
 " No ! " said Mary, plainly. 
 
 " Now," said Mrs. Buckley to herself, " she is going to give us 
 one of her tantrums. I wish she would behave like a reasonable 
 being. She is always bent on making a scene ; " but she kept this 
 to herself, and only said aloud : " Mary, my dear ; Mary ! " 
 
 " I am sorry to hear you say so, Mrs. Hawker," said Frank : 
 " but it is just and natural." 
 
 "Natural," said Mary, " and just. You are connected in my 
 mind with the most unhappy and most degraded period of my Ufe. 
 Can you expect that I should be glad to see you ? You were kind 
 to me then, as is your nature to be, kind and good above all men 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 225 
 
 whom I Imow. I thought of you always with love and admiration, 
 as one whom I deeply honoured, but would not care to look upon 
 again. As the one of aU whom I would have forget me in my dis- 
 grace. And now, to-day of aU days, just when I have found the 
 father's vices confirmed in the son, you come before me, as if from 
 the bowels of the earth, to remind me of what I was." 
 
 Mrs. Buckley was very much shocked and provoked by this, but 
 held her tongue magnanimously. And what do you think, my dear 
 reader, was the cause of aU this hysteric tragic nonsense on the 
 part of Maiy ? Simply this. The poor soul had been put out of 
 temper. Her son Charles, as I mentioned before, had had a 
 scandalous liaison with one Meg Macdonald, daughter of one of 
 the Donovans' (now Brentwood's) shepherds. That morning, this 
 brazen hussy, as Mary very properly called her, had come coolly up 
 to the station and asked for Charles. And on Mary's shaking her 
 fist at her, and bidding her be gone, she had then and there rated 
 poor Mary in the best of Gaehc for a quarter of an hour ; and 
 Mary, instead of venting her anger on the proper people, had 
 taken her old plan of making herself disagreeable to those who had 
 nothing to do with it, which naturally made Mrs. Buckley very 
 angry, and even rufiled the placid Major a Httle, so that he was 
 not sorry when he saw in his wife's face, from the expression he 
 Imew so well, that Mary was going to " catch it." 
 
 " I wish, Mary Hawker," said Mrs. Buckley, " that you would 
 remember that the Dean is our guest, and that on our account 
 alone there is due to him some better welcome than what you have 
 given him." 
 
 " Now, you are angi-y with me for speaking truth too abruptly," 
 said Mary, crying. 
 
 " Well, I am angry with you," said Mrs. Buckley. " If that 
 was the truth, you should not have spoken it now. You have no 
 right to receive an old Mend Mke this." 
 
 " You are very unkind to me," said Mary. " Just when after 
 so many years' peace and quietness my troubles are beginning 
 again, you are all turning against me." And so she laid down 
 her head and wept. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Hawker," said Frank, coming up and taking her 
 hand, " if you are in trouble, I know well that my visit is weU 
 timed. Where trouble and sorrow are, there is my place, there 
 lies my work. In prosperity my friends sometimes forget me, but 
 my hope and prayer is, that when affliction and disaster come, I 
 may be with them. You do not want me now ; but when you do, 
 God grant I may be with you ! Remember my words." 
 
 She remembered them well. 
 16 
 
226 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 Frank made an excuse to go out, and Mary, crying bitterly, 
 went into her bedroom. Wlien she was gone, the Major, who had 
 been standing by the window, said, — 
 
 " My dear wife, that boy of hers is aggravating her. Don't be 
 too hard upon her." 
 
 " My dear husband," said Mrs. Buckley, "I nave no patience 
 with her, to welcome an old friend, whom she has not seen for 
 nearly twenty years, in that manner ! It is too provoking." 
 
 "You see, my love," said the Major, "that her nerves have 
 been very much shaken by misfortune, and at times she is reaUy 
 not herself." 
 
 " And I tell you what, mother dear," said Sam, " Charles 
 Hawker is going on very badly. I tell you, in the strictest con- 
 fidence, mind, that he has not behaved in a very gentlemanlike 
 way in one particular, and if he was any one else but who he is, I 
 should have very little to say to him." 
 
 " Well, my dear husband and son," said Mrs. Buckley, " I wiU 
 go in and make the amende to her. Sam, go and see after the 
 Dean." 
 
 Sam went out, and saw Frank across the y^rd playing with the 
 dogs. He was going towards him, when a man entering the yard 
 suddenly came up and spoke to him. 
 
 It was WiUiam Lee — grown older, and less wild-looking, since 
 we saw him first at midnight on Dartmoor, but a striking person 
 stUl. His hair had become grizzled, but that was the only sign 
 of age he showed. There was stiQ the same vigour of motion,, 
 the same expression of enormous strength about him as formerly ; 
 the principal change was in his face. Eighteen years of honest 
 work, among people who in time, finding his real value, had got to 
 treat him more as a Mend than a servant, had softened the old 
 expression of reckless ferocity into one of good-humoured indepen- 
 dence. And Tom Troubridge, no careless observer of men, had 
 said once to Major Buckley, that he thought his face grew each 
 year more like what it must have been when a boy. A bold flight 
 of fancy for Tom, but, like all else he said, true. 
 
 Such was William Lee, as he stopped Sam in the yard, and, 
 with a bold, honest look of admiration, said, — 
 
 " It makes me feel young to look at you, Mr. Buckley. You 
 are a great stranger here lately. Some young lady to run after, I 
 suppose ? Well, never mind ; I hope it ain't Miss Blake." 
 
 " A man may not many his grandmother, Lee," said Sam, 
 laughing. 
 
 " True for you, sir," said Lee. " That was wrote up in Drum- 
 ston church, I mind, and some other things alongside of it, which 
 
GEOITEY HAMLTN. 227 
 
 I could say by heart once on a time — all on black boards, with 
 yellow letters. And also, I remember a spick and span new board, 
 about how Anthony Hamlyn (that's Mr. Geoffry Hamlyn's father) 
 ' repaired and beautified this church ; ' which meant that he built 
 a handsome new pew for himself in the chancel. Lord, I think I 
 see him asleep in it now. But never mind that — I've kept a pup 
 of Fly's for you, sir, and got it through the distemper. Fly's pup, 
 by EoHicker, you know." 
 
 " Oh, thank you," said Sam. " I am really much obliged to 
 you. But you must let me know the price, you know, Lee. The 
 dog should be a good one." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Buckley," said Lee, "I have been cosseting this 
 little beast up in the hopes you'd accept it as a present. And 
 then, says I to myself, when he takes a new chum out to see some 
 sport, and the dog puUs down a flying doe, and the dust goes up 
 like smoke, and the dead sticks come flying about his ears, he 
 win say to his friends, ' That's the dog Lee gave me. Where's 
 his equal ? ' So don't be too proud to take a present from an old 
 friend." 
 
 " Not I, indeed, Lee," said Sam. " I thanlc you most 
 heartily." 
 
 " Who is this long gent in black, sir ? " said Lee, looking to- 
 wards Frank, who was standing and talking with the Major. " A 
 parson, I reckon." 
 
 " The Dean of B " answered Sam. 
 
 " Ah ! so," — said Lee, — " come to give us some good advice ? 
 Well, we want it bad enough, I hope some on us may foUer it. 
 Seems a man, too, and not a monkey." 
 
 "My father says," said Sam, " that he was formerly one of the 
 best boxers lie ever saw." 
 
 Any further discussion of Frank's physical powers was cut short 
 by his coming up to Sam and saying, — ■ 
 
 " I was thinking of riding out to one of the outlying huts, to 
 have a little conversation with the men. Will you come with 
 me?" 
 
 "If you will allow me, I shall be delighted beyond aU 
 measure." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir," said Lee, " but I understood you to 
 say that you were going to one of our huts to give the men a dis- 
 course. Would you let me take you out to one of them ? I'd 
 like well to hear what you'd got to say myself, sir, and I promise 
 you the lads I'H show you want good advice as well as any." 
 
 " You will do me infinite service," said Frank. " Sam, if you 
 will excuse me, let me ask you to stay behind. I have a fancy for 
 
228 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 going up alone. Let me take these men in the rough, and see 
 what I can do unassisted." 
 
 " You -will be apt to find them uncivil, sir," said Sam. " I am 
 known, and my presence would ensure you outward respect at aU 
 events." 
 
 " Just what I thought," said Frank. " But I want to see what 
 I can do alone and unassisted. No ; stay, and let me storm the 
 place single-handed." 
 
 So Lee and he started toward the ranges, riding side by side. 
 
 " You win find, sir," said Lee, " that these men, in this here 
 hut, are a rougher lot than you think for. Very like they'll be 
 cheeky. I would almost have wished you'd a' let Mr. Buckley 
 come. He's a favourite round here, you see, and you'd have gone 
 in as his friend." 
 
 " You see," said Frank, turning confidentially to Lee, " I am 
 not an ordinary parson. I am above the others. And what I 
 want is not so much to see what I can do myself, but what sort of 
 a reception any parson coming hap-hazard among these men will 
 get. That is why I left Mr. BucUey behind. Do you understand 
 me?" 
 
 " I understand you, sir," said Lee. " But I'm afear'd." 
 
 " What are you afraid of ? " said Frank, laughing. 
 
 " Why, if you'U excuse me, sir, that you'U only get laughed 
 at." 
 
 " That all ! " said Frank. " Laughter breaks no bones. What 
 are these men that we are going to see ? " 
 
 " Why, one," said Lee, " is a young Jimmy (I beg your pardon, 
 sir, an emigrant), the other two are old prisoners. Now see here. 
 These prisoners hate the sight of a parson above all mortal men. 
 And, for why ? Because, when they're in prison, all their indul- 
 gences, and half their hopes of liberty depend on how far they can 
 manage to humbug the chaplain with false piety.* And so, when 
 they are free again, they hate him worse than any man. I am an 
 old prisoner myself, and I know it." 
 
 " Have you been a prisoner, then ? " said Frank, surprised. 
 
 " I was transported, sir, for poaching." 
 
 " That all ! " said Frank. " Then you were the victim of a 
 villainous old law. Do you know," he added, laughing, " that I 
 rather believe I have earned transportation myself? I have a 
 horrible schoolboy recollection of a hare who would squeak in my 
 pocket, and of a keeper passing within ten yards of where I lay 
 hidden. If that is all, give me your hand." 
 
 • It must be remembered that Lee's prison experiences went so far back 
 a3 about 1811.— H. K. 
 
GEOPFBY HAMLTN. 229 
 
 Lee shook his head. " That is what I was sent out for," said 
 he, " but since then there are precious few villainies I have not 
 committed. You hadn't ought to shake hands with me, sir." 
 
 Frank laid his hand kindly on his shoulder. "I am not a 
 judge," he said. " I am a priest. We must talk together again. 
 Now, we have no time, for, if I mistake not, there is our destination." 
 
 They had been riding through splendid open forest, growing 
 denser as they approached the ranges. They had followed a creek 
 all the way, or nearly so, and now came somewhat suddenly on a 
 large reedy waterhole, walled on all sides by dense stringy-bark 
 timber, thickly undergrown with scrub.''' Behind them opened a 
 long vista formed by the guUy, through which they had been 
 approaching, down which the black burnt stems of the stringy- 
 bark were agreeably relieved by the white stems of the red and 
 blue gum, growing in the moister and more open space near the 
 creek. + In front of them was a slab hut of rich mahogany colour, 
 by no means an unpleasing object among the duU unbroken green 
 of the forest. In front of it was a trodden space littered with the 
 chips of firewood. A pile of the last article lay a few yards in 
 front of the door. And against the walls of the tenement was a 
 long bench, on which stood a calabash, with a lump of soap and a 
 coarse towel ; a camp oven, and a pair of black-top boots, and 
 underneath which lay a noble cattle dog, who, as soon as he saw 
 them, burst out into furious barking, and prepared to give battle. 
 
 " Will you take my horse for me," said Frank to Lee, " while 
 I go inside? " 
 
 " Certainly, sir," said Lee. " But mind the dog." 
 
 Frank laughed and jumped off. The dog was unprepared for 
 this. It was irregular. The proper and usual mode of proceed- 
 ing would have been for the stranger to have stayed on horseback, 
 and for him (the dog) to have barked himself hoarse, till some one 
 came out of the hut and pacified him by throwing biUets of wood 
 at him ; no conversation possible till his barking was turned into 
 mourning. He was not up to the emergency. He had never seen 
 a man clothed in black from head to foot before. He probably 
 thought it was the D — 1. His sense of duty not being strong 
 enough to outweigh considerations of personal safety, he fled round 
 the house, and being undecided whether to bark or to howl, did 
 both, while Frank opened the door and went in. 
 
 * Scrub. — I have used, and shall use, this word so often, Ihat some 
 explanation is due to the English reader. I can give no better definition 
 of it than by saying that it means "shrubbery." 
 
 t Greek. — The English reader must understand that a creek means a 
 succession of waterholes, unconnected for nine months in the year. 
 
230 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 The hut was like most other bush huts, consisting of one undi- 
 vided apartment, formed of split logs, called slabs, set upright in 
 the ground. The roof was of bark, and the whole interior was 
 stained by the smoke into a rich dark brown, such as Teniers or 
 our own beloved Cattermole would delight in. You entered by a 
 door in one of the long sides, and saw that the whole of the end 
 on your right was taken up by a large fireplace, on which blazed a 
 pile of timber. Bound the walls were four bed places, like the 
 bunks on board ship, each fiUed with a heap of frouzy blankets, 
 and in the centre stood a rough table, surrounded by logs of wood, 
 sawed square off, which served for seats. 
 
 The living occupants of the hut were scarcely less rude than 
 the hut itself. One of the bed places was occupied by a sleepy, 
 black-haired, not bad-looking young fellow, clad in greasy red 
 shirt, greasy breeches and boots, and whose shabby plated spurs 
 were tangled in the dirty blankets. He was lying on his back, 
 playing with a beautiful little parrot. Opposite him, sitting up in 
 his bunk, was another young fellow, with a singularly coarse, repul- 
 sive countenance, long yellow hair, half-way down his back, clothed 
 like the other in greasy breeches. This last one was puffing at a 
 short black pipe, in an affected way, making far more noise than 
 was necessary in that operation, and seemed to be thinking of 
 something insolent to say to the last speaker, whoever he may have 
 been. 
 
 Another man was sitting on the end of the bench before the fire, 
 with his legs stretched out before it. At the first glance Frank 
 saw that this was a superior person to the others. He was 
 dressed like the others in black-top boots, but, unlike the others, 
 he was clean and neat. In fact the whole man was clean and 
 neat, and had a clean-shaved face, and looked respectable, as far 
 as outward appearances were concerned. The fourth man was the 
 hut-keeper, a wicked-looking old villain, who was baking bread. 
 
 Frank looked at the sleepy young man with the parrot, and said 
 to himself, " There's a bad case." He looked at the flash, 
 yeUow-haired young snob who was smoking, and said, " There's a 
 worse." He looked at the villainous grey-headed old hut-keeper, 
 and said, " There's a hopeless case altogether." But when he 
 looked at the neatly dressed man, who sat in front of the fire, he 
 said, " That seems a more likely person. There is some sense of 
 order in him, at all events. See what I can do with him." 
 
 He stood with his towering tall black figure in the doorway. 
 The sleepy young man with the black hair sat up and looked at him 
 in wonder, while his parrot whistled and chattered loudly. The 
 yellow-haired young man looked round to see if he could get the 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 231 
 
 others to join him in a laugh. The hut-keeper said, " Oh, h — 1 " 
 and attended once more to the cooking ; hut the neat-looking man 
 rose up, and gave Franlt courteously " Good day." 
 
 " I am a clergyman," said Frank, " come to pay you a visit, if 
 you will allow me." 
 
 Black-hair looks as if astonishment were a new sensation to 
 him, and he was determined to have the most of it. Meanwhile, 
 little parrot taking advantage of his ahsence of mind, clambers up 
 his breast and nips off a shirt-button, which he holds in his claw, 
 pretending it is immensely good to eat. Hut-keeper clatters pots 
 and pans, while YeUow-hair lies down whistling insolently. These 
 last two seemed inclined to constitute themselves his Majesty's Op- 
 position in the present matter, while Black-hair and the neat man 
 are evidently inclined towards Frank. There lay a boot in front 
 of the fire, which the neat man, without warning, seized and hurled 
 at Yellow-hair, with such skill and precision that the young feUow 
 started upright in bed and demanded, with many verbs and adjec- 
 tives, what he meant by that ? 
 
 " I'U teach you to whistle when a gentleman comes into the hut 
 — you Possumguts ! Lie dovm now, wiU you ? " 
 
 YeUow-hair lay down, and there was no more trouble with him. 
 Hut-keeper, too, seeing how matters were going, left off clattering 
 his pots, and Frank was master of the field. 
 
 "Very glad to see you, sir," says the neat man; "very 
 seldom we get a visit from a gentleman in a black coat, I assure 
 you." 
 
 Frank shook hands with him and thanked him, and then, turning 
 suddenly upon Black-hair, who was sitting with his bird on his 
 knee, one leg out of his bunk, and his great black vacant eyes 
 fixed on Fraoiik, said, — 
 
 " What an exceedingly beautiful bird you have got there ! Pray, 
 what do you call it ? " 
 
 Now it so happened that Black-hair had been vacantly wonder- 
 ing to himself whether Frank's black coat would meet across his 
 stomach, or whether the lower buttons and buttonholes were 
 " dummies." So that when Frank turned suddenly upon him he 
 was, as it were, caught in the fact, and could only reply in a guilty 
 whisper, " Mountain blue." 
 
 " Will he talk ? " asked Frank. 
 
 " Whistle," says Black-hair, stiU in a whisper, and then, clear- 
 ing his throat continued, in his natural tone, " Whistle beautiful. 
 Black feUowfi get 'em young out of the dead trees. I'U give you 
 this one if you've a mind." 
 
 Frank couldn't think of it ; but could Black-hair get him a 
 
232 THE BEC0LLECTI0N3 OP 
 
 young cockatoo, and leave it with Mr. Sam Buckley for trans- 
 mission ? — would be exceedingly obliged. 
 
 Yes, Black-hair could. Thinks, too, what a pleasant sort of 
 chap this parson was. " Will get him a cockatoo certainly." 
 
 Then Frank asks, may he read them a bit out of the Bible, and 
 neat man says they wDl be highly honoured. And Black-hair gets 
 out of his bunk and sits listening in a decently respectful way. 
 Opposition are by no means won over. The old hut-keeper sits 
 sulkily smoking, and the yellow-haired man lies in his bunk with 
 his back towards them. Lee had meanwhile come in, and, after 
 recognitions from those inside, sat quietly down close to the door. 
 Franlc took for a text, " Servants, obey your masters," and 
 preached them a sermon about the relations of master and 
 servant, homely, plain, sensible and interesting, and had succeeded 
 in awakening the whole attention and interest of the three who 
 were listening, when the door was opened and a man looked in. 
 
 Lee was next the door, and cast his eyes upon the new comer. 
 No sooner had their eyes met than he uttered a loud oath, and, 
 going out with the stranger, shut the door after him. 
 
 " What can be the matter with our friend, I wonder ? " asked 
 Frank. " He seems much disturbed." 
 
 The neat man went to the door and opened it. Lee and the 
 man who had opened the door were standing with their backs 
 towards them, talking earnestly. Lee soon came back without a 
 word, and, having caught and saddled his horse, rode away with 
 the stranger, who was on foot. He was a large, shabbUy-dressed 
 man, with black curly hair ; this was all they could see of him, 
 for his back was always towards them. 
 
 " Never saw BiU take on like that before," said the neat man. 
 " That's one of his old pals, I reckon. He ain't very fond of 
 meeting any of 'em, you see, since he has been on the square. 
 The best friends in prison, sir, are the worst friends out." 
 
 " Were you ever in prison, then ? " said Frank. 
 
 "Lord bless you!" said the other, laughing, " I was lagged 
 for forgery." 
 
 " I will make you another visit if I can," said Frank. " I am 
 much obliged to you for the patience with which you heard me." 
 
 The other ran out to get his horse for him, and had it saddled 
 in no time. " If you will send a parson round," he said, when 
 Frank was mounted, " I will ensure him a hearing, and good bye, 
 sir." 
 
 " And God speed you," says Frank. But, lo ! as he turned to 
 ride away. Black-hair the sleepy-headed comes to the hut-door, 
 looking important, and says, "Hi I " Frank is glad of this, for 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 233 
 
 he likes the stupid-looking young fellow better than he fancied he 
 would have done at first, and says to himself, " There's the 
 making of a man in that fellow, unless I am mistaken." So he 
 turns politely to meet him, and, as he comes towards him, remarks 
 what a fine, good-humoured young fellow he is. Black-hair 
 ranges alongside, and, putting his hand on the horse's neck, says, 
 mysteriously — 
 
 " Would you like a native conjpanion ? " * 
 
 " Too big to carry, isn't it? " says Frank. 
 
 " I'll tie his wings together, and send him down on the ration 
 dray," says Black-hair. "You'll come round and see us again, 
 will you ? " 
 
 So Frank fares back to Toonarbin, wondering wnere Lee has 
 gone. But Black-hair goes back into the hut, and taking his 
 parrot from the bed-place, puts it on his shoulder, and sits rubbing 
 his Imees before the fire. Yellow-hair and the hut-keeper are now 
 in loud conversation, and the former is asking, in a loud authori- 
 tative tone (the neat man being outside), " whether a chap is to be 
 
 hunted and badgered out of his bed by a parcel of parsons ? " 
 
 To which Hut-keeper says, " No, by I A man might as 
 
 well be in barracks again." YeUow-haLr, morally comforted and 
 sustained by this opinion, is proceeding to say, that, for his part, 
 a parson is a useless sort of animal in general, who gets his living 
 by frightening old women, but that this particular parson is an 
 unusually ofi'ensive specimen, and that there is nothing in this 
 world that he (YeUow-hair) would like better than to have him out 
 in front of the house for five minutes, and see who was best man, 
 — when Black-hair, usually a taciturn, peaceable fellow, astonishes 
 the pair by turning his black eyes on the other, and saying, with 
 lowering eyebrows, — 
 
 " You d d humbug ! Talk about fighting him ! Always 
 
 talk about fighting a chap when he's out of the way, when you 
 know you've no more fight in you than a bronsewing. Why, he'd 
 kill you, if you only waited for him to hit you ! And see here : if 
 you don't stop your jaw about him, yeu'll have to fight me, and 
 that's a little more than you're game for, I'm thinking." 
 
 This last was told me by the man distinguished above as " the 
 neat man," who was standing outside, and heard the whole. 
 
 But Frank arrived in due time at Toonarbin, and found all there 
 much as he had left it, save that Mary Hawker had recovered her 
 serenity, and was standing expecting him, with Charles by her 
 
 * A great crane, common in Australia. A capital pet, though danger- 
 ous among children ; having that strange propensity common to all the 
 cranes and herons, of attacking the eye. 
 
234 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 side. Sam asked him, " Where was Lee ? " and Frank, thinking 
 more of other things, said he had left him at the hut, not thinking 
 it worth whUe to mention the circumstance of his having heen 
 called out — a circumstance which hecame of great significance 
 hereafter ; for, though we never found out for certain who the man 
 was, we came in the end to have strong suspicions. 
 
 However, as I said, all clouds had cleared from the Toonarhin 
 atmosphere, and, after a pleasantj meal, Frank, Major and Mrs. 
 Buckley, Sam, and Charles Hawker, rode home to Baroona under 
 the forest arches, and reached the house in the gathering twiUght. 
 
 The boys were staying behind at the stable as the three elders 
 entered the darkened drawing-room. A figure was in one of the 
 easy chairs by the fire — a figure which seemed famiUar there, 
 though the Major could not make out who it was untU a well- 
 known voice said, — • 
 
 " Is that you, Buckley ? " 
 
 It was the Doctor. They both welcomed him warmly home, 
 and waited in the gloom for him to speak, but only saw that he 
 had bent down his head over the fire. 
 
 " Are you iU, Doctor ? " said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " Sound in wind and Umb, my dear madam, but rather sad at 
 heart. We have had some very severe black fighting, and we 
 have lost a kind old friend — James Stockbridge." 
 
 "Is he wounded, then ? " said Mrs. Buckley. 
 ' "Dead." 
 
 "Dead!" 
 
 " Speared in the side. EoUed off' his horse, and was gone in 
 five minutes." 
 
 " Oh, poor James ! " cried Mrs. Buckley. " He, of aU men ! 
 The man who was their champion. To think that he, of all men, 
 should end in that way ! " 
 
 * 4f- * -S * * 
 
 Charles Hawker rode home that night, and went into the room 
 where his mother was. She was sitting sewing by the fire, and 
 looked up to welcome him home. 
 
 " Mother," said he, " there is bad news to tell. We have lost 
 a good friend. James Stockbridge is killed by the blacks on the 
 Macquarrie." 
 
 She answered not a word, but buried her face in her hands, and 
 very shortly rose and left the room. When she was alone, she 
 began moaning to herself, and saying,^ — ■ 
 
 " Some more fruit of the old cursed tree ! If ho had never seen 
 me, he would have died at home, among his old friends, in a ripe, 
 honoured old age." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 235 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn. 
 
 THE GOLDEN VINEYAED. 
 
 On a summer's morning, almost before the dew had left the grass 
 on the north side of the forest, or the belated opossum had gone to 
 his nest, in fact just as the East was blazing with its brightest fire, 
 Sam started off for a pleasant canter through the forest, to visit one 
 of their out- station huts, which lay away among the ranges, and 
 which was called, from some old arrangement, now fallen into dis- 
 use, " the heifer station." 
 
 There was the hut, seen suddenly down a beautiful green vista 
 in the forest, the chimney smoking cheerily. " What a pretty 
 contrast of colours! " says Sam, in a humour for enjoying every- 
 thing. " Dark-brown hut among the green shrubs, and blue smoke 
 rising above all ; prettily, too, that smoke hangs about the foliage 
 this still morning, quite in festoons. There's Matt at the door I " 
 A lean, long-legged, clever-looking feUow, rather wide at the 
 knees, with a brown complexion, and not unpleasant expression of 
 face, stood before the- door plaiting a cracker for his stockwhip. 
 He looked pleased when he saw Sam, and indeed it must be a surly 
 fellow indeed, who did not greet Sam's honest face with a smUe. 
 Never a dog but wagged his tail when he caught Sam's eye. 
 
 " You're abroad early this morning, sir," said the man ; " nothing 
 the matter, is there, sir? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Sam, " save that one of Captain Brentwood's 
 bulls is missing, and I came out to teU you to have an extra look 
 round." 
 
 " I'll attend to it, sir." 
 
 " Hi ! Matt," said Sam, " you look uncommonly smart." 
 Matt bent down his head, and laughed, in a rather sheepish 
 sort of way. 
 
 " Well, you see, sir, I was coming in to the home station to see 
 if the Major could spare me for a few days." 
 
 " What, going a courting, eh ? Well, I'U make that all right 
 for you. Who is the lady, — eh ? " 
 
 " Why, it's Elsy Macdonald, I believe." 
 " Elsy Macdonald ! " said Sam. 
 
 " Ay, yes, sir. I know what you mean, but she ain't like her 
 sister ; and that was more Mr. Charles Hawker's fault than her 
 own. No ; Elsy is good enough for me, and I'm not very badly 
 off, and begin to fancy I would like some better sort of welcome in 
 
236 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the evening than what a cranky old hrute of a hut-keeper can give 
 me. So I think I shall bring her home." 
 
 " I wish you well, Matt," said Sam ; "I hope you are not 
 going to leave us, though." 
 
 " No fear, sir ; Major Buckley is too good a master for that ! " 
 
 " Well, I'll get the hut coopered up a bit for you, and you 
 shall be as comfortable as circumstances wiU permit. Good 
 morning ! " 
 
 " Good morning, sir ; I hope I may see you happily married 
 yourself some of these days." 
 
 Sam laughed ; " that would be a fine joke," he thought, " but 
 why shouldn't it be, eh ? I suppose it must come some time or 
 another. I shall begin to look out ; I don't expect I shall be very 
 easily suited. Heigh ho ! " 
 
 I expect, however, Mr. Sam, that you are just in the state of 
 mind to fall headlong in love with the first girl you meet with a 
 nose on her face ; let us hope, therefore, that she may be eligible. 
 
 But here is home again, and here is the father standing majestic 
 and broad in the verandah, and the mother -with her arm round 
 his neck, both waiting to give him a hearty morning's welcome. 
 And there is Doctor Mulhaus kneeling in spectacles before his new 
 GreviUea Victoriae, the first bud of which is bursting into life ; and 
 the dogs catch sight of him and dash forward, barking joyfully ; 
 and as the ready groom takes his horse, and the fat housekeeper 
 looks out aU smiles, and retreats to send in breakfast, Sam thinks 
 to himself, that he could not leave his home and people, not for 
 the best wife in broad Australia ; but then, you see, he knew no 
 better. 
 
 " What makes my boy look so happy this morning ? " asked 
 his mother. " Has the bay mare foaled, or have you negotiated 
 James Brentwood's young dog? Tell us, that we may 
 participate." 
 
 " None of these things have happened, mother ; but I feel in 
 rather a holiday humour, and I'm thinking of going down to 
 Garoopna this morning, and spending a day or two with Jim." 
 
 " I wiU throw a shoe after you for luck," said his mother. 
 " See, the Doctor is calling you." 
 
 Sam went to the Doctor, who was intent on his flower. " Look 
 here, my boy ; here is something new : the handsomest of the 
 Grevilleas, as I Uve. It has opened since I was here." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Sam, " this is the one that came from the Quartz 
 Ranges, last year, is it not? It has not flowered with you 
 before." 
 
 "If Linnaeus wept and prayed over the first piece of English 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 237 
 
 furze which he saw," said the Doctor, " what everlasting smelling- 
 bottle hysterics he would have gone into in this country ! I don't 
 sympathise with his tears much, though, myself ; though a new 
 flower is a source of the greatest pleasure to me.'-' 
 
 "And so you are going to Garoopna, Sam? " said his father, 
 at breakfast. "Have you heard, my dear, when the young lady 
 is to come home ? " 
 
 "Next month, I understand, my dear," said Mrs. Buckley. 
 " When she does come I shall go over and make her a visit." 
 
 " What is her name, by the bye ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 "Alice." 
 
 So, behold Sam starting for his visit. The very Brummel of 
 bush-dandies. Hunt might have made his weU-fitting cord 
 breeches, Hoby might have made those black-top boots, and 
 Chifney might have worn them before royalty, and not been 
 ashamed. It is too hot for coat or waistcoat ; so he wears his 
 snow-white shirt, topped by a blue "bird's-eye-handkerchief," and 
 keeps his coat in his valise, to be used as occasion shall require. 
 His costume is completed with a cabbage-tree hat, neither too new 
 nor too old ; light, shady, well- ventilated, and three pounds ten, 
 the production, after months of labour, of a private in her 
 Majesty's Fortieth Regiment of Foot : not with long streaming 
 ribands down his back, like a Pitt Street buUy, but with short and 
 modest ones as becomes a gentleman, — altogether as fine a looking 
 young fellow, as well dressed, and as well mounted too, as you will 
 find on the country side. 
 
 Let me say a word about his horse, too ; horse Widderin. 
 None ever knew what that horse had cost Sam. The Major even had 
 a delicacy about asking. I can only discover by inquiry that, at 
 one time, about a year before this, there came to the Major's a 
 traveller, an Irishman by nation, who bored them all by talking 
 about a certain " Ai'cturus " colt, which had been dropped to a 
 happy proprietor by his mare " Larkspur," among the Shoalhaven 
 gullies ; described by him as a colt the Uke of which was never 
 seen before ; as indeed he should be, for his sire Arcturus, as all 
 the world knows, was bought up by a great Hunter-river horce- 
 
 breeder from the Duke of C ; while his dam. Larkspur, had 
 
 for grandsire the great Bombshell himself. What more would 
 you have than that, unless yon would like to drive Veno in our 
 dog-cart ? However, it so happened that, soon after the Irish- 
 man's visit, Sam went away on a journey, and came back riding a 
 new horse ; which when the Major saw, he whistled, but discreetly 
 said nothing. A very large colt he was, with a neck like a rain- 
 bow, set into a splendid shoulder, and a marvellous way of 
 
238 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 throwing his legs out; — very dark chestnut in colour, almost 
 black, with longish ears, and an eye so fuU, honest, and impudent, 
 that it made you laugh in his face. Widderin, Sam said, was his 
 name, price and history being suppressed ; called after Mount 
 Widderin, to the northward there, whose loftiest sublime summit 
 bends over hke a horse's neck, with two peaked crags for ears. 
 And the Major comes somehow to connect this horse with the 
 Arcturus colt mentioned by our Irish friend, and observes that 
 Sam takes to wearing his old clothes for a twelvemonth, and 
 never seems to have any ready money. "We shall see some day 
 whether or no this horse wUl carry Sam ten miles, if required, on 
 such direful emergency too as falls to the lot of few men. However, 
 this is aU to come. Now in holiday clothes and in holiday mind 
 the two noble animals cross the paddock, and so down by the fence 
 towards the river ; towards the old gravel ford you may remember 
 years ago. Here is the old flood, spouting and streaming as of 
 yore, through the basalt piUars. There stand the three fern trees, 
 too, above the dark scrub on the island. Now up the rock bank, 
 and away across the breezy plains due North. 
 
 Brushing through the long grass tussocks, he goes his way 
 singing, his dog Eover careering joyously before him. The horse 
 is clearly for a gaUop, but it is too hot to-day. The tall, flat- 
 topped volcanic hUl which hung before him hke a grey faint cloud 
 when he started, now rears its fluted columns overhead, and now is 
 getting dim again behind him. But ere noon is high he once more 
 hears the brawling river beneath his feet, and Garoopna is before 
 him on the opposite bank. 
 
 The river, as it left Major Buckley's at Baroona, made a sudden 
 bend to the west, a great arc, including with its minor windings 
 nearly twenty-five miles, over the chord of which arc Sam had now 
 been riding, making, from point to point, ten mQes or thereabouts. 
 The Mayfords' station, also, lay to the left of him, being en the 
 curved side of the arc, about five miles from Baroona. The reader 
 may, if he please, remember this. 
 
 Garoopna is an exceedingly pretty station ; in fact, one of the 
 most beautiful I have ever seen. It stands at a point where the 
 vast forests, which surround the mountains in a belt, from ten to 
 twenty miles broad, run down into the plains and touch the river. 
 As at Baroona, the stream runs in through a deep cleft in the table 
 land, which herfe, though precipitous on the eastern bank, on the 
 western breaks away into a small natural amphitheatre bordered 
 by fine hanging woods, just in advance of which, about two hundred 
 yards from the river, stands the house, a long, low building densely 
 covered with creepers of all sorts, and fronted by a beautiful garden. 
 
GEOFPBT HAMLYN. 239 
 
 Right and left of it are the woolsheds, sheepyards, stockyards, men's 
 huts, &c. ; giving it ahnost the appearance of a little village ; and 
 behind the wooded ranges begin to rise, in some places broken beauti- 
 fully by sheer scarps of grey rock. The forest crosses the river a 
 little way ; so that Sam, gradually descending from the plains to 
 cross, went the last quarter of a rnile through a shady sandy forest 
 tract, fringed with bracken, which led down to a broad crossing 
 place, where the river sparkled under tall over-arching red gums 
 and box-trees ; and then following the garden fence, found himself 
 before a deep cool-looking porch, in a broad neatly-kept courtyard 
 behind the house. 
 
 A groom* came out and took his horse. Eover has enough to 
 do ; for there are three or four sheep dogs in the yard, who walk 
 round him on tiptoe, slowly, with their friUs out and their tails 
 arched, growling. Rover, also, walks about on tiptoe, arches his 
 tail, and growls with the best of them. He knows that the 
 slightest mistake would be disastrous, and so manoeuvres tiU he 
 gets to the porch, where, a deal of gravel having been kicked back- 
 wards, in the same way as the ancients poured out their wine when 
 they drank a toast, or else (as I think is more probable) as a symbol 
 that animosities were to be buried. Rover is admitted as a guest, 
 and Sam feels it safe to enter the house. 
 
 A cool, shady hall, hung round with coats, hats, stockwhips ; a 
 gun in the comer, and on a slab, the most beautiful nosegay you 
 can imagine. Remarkable that for a bachelor's establishment ; — 
 but there is no time to think about it, for a tail, comfortable -looking 
 housekeeper, whom Sam has never seen before, comes in from the 
 kitchen and curtseys. 
 
 " Captain Brentwood not at home, is he ? " said Sam. 
 " No, sir ! Away on the run with Mr. James." 
 " Oh ! very well," says Sam ; " I am going to stay a few days." 
 " Very well, sir ; wiU you take anything before lunch ? " 
 " Nothing, thank you." 
 
 " Miss Alice is somewhere about, sir. I expect her in every 
 minute." 
 
 " Miss Alice ! " says Sam, astonished. " Is she come home ? " 
 
 " Came home last week, sir. Will you walk in and sit down ? " 
 
 Sam got his coat out of his vaHse and went in. He wished that 
 
 he had put on his plain blue necktie instead of the blue one with 
 
 • Do not let Bob or Tom, when they read this book in the sixteenth 
 edition, before the harness-room stove, suppose that an Australian groom 
 resembles in any way the very neat young man who follows the young 
 ladies in their canters. The dirtiest helper at a university stable would 
 cume nearer the mark. 
 
240 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OP 
 
 white spots. He would have liked to have worn his new yellow 
 riding-trousers, instead of breeches and boots. He hoped his hair 
 was in order, and tried to arrange his handsome brown curls with- 
 out a glass, but, in the end, concluded that things could not be 
 mended now, so he looked round the room. 
 
 What a charming room it was I A couple of good pictures, and 
 several fine prints on the walls. Over the chimneypieee, a sword, 
 and an old gold-laced cap, on which Sam looked with reverence. 
 Three French windows opened on to a dark cool verandah, beyond 
 which was a beautiful flower-garden. The floor of the room, 
 unoarpeted, shone dark and smooth, and the air was perfumed by 
 vases of magnificent flowers, a hundred pounds worth of them, I 
 should say, if you could have taken them to Covent-garden that 
 December morning. But what took Sam's attention more than 
 anything was an open piano, in a shady recess, and on the keys a 
 little fairy white glove. 
 
 " White kid gloves, eh, my lady ? " says Sam ; " that don't look 
 well." So he looked through the book-shelves, and, having lighted 
 on "BosweU's Johnson," proceeded into the verandah. A coUie 
 she-dog was lying at one end, who banged her taU against the floor 
 in welcome, but was too utterly prostrated by the heat and by the 
 persecution of her puppy to get up and make friends. The pup, 
 however, a baU of curly black wool, with a brown-striped face, who 
 was sitting on the top of her with his head on one side, seemed to 
 conclude that a game of play was to be got out of Sam, and came 
 blundering towards him ; but Sam was, by this time, deep in a 
 luxurious rocking-chair, so the puppy stopped half way, and did 
 battle with a great black tarantula spider who happened to be 
 abroad on business. 
 
 Sam went to the club with his immortal namesalie, bullied 
 Bennet Langton, argued with Beauclerk, put down Goldsmith, and 
 extinguished Boswell. But it was too hot to read ; so he let the 
 book fall on his lap, and lay a dreaming. 
 
 What a delicious verandah is this to dream in ! Through the 
 tangled passion-flowers, jessamines and magnolias, what a soft 
 gleam of bright hazy distance, over the plains and fai- away ! 
 The deep river-glen cleaves the table-land, which, here and there, 
 swells into breezy downs. Beyond, miles away to the North, is a 
 great forest-barrier, above which there is a blaze of late snow, 
 sending strange light aloft into the burning haze. All this is seen 
 through an arch in the dark mass of verdure which clothes the 
 trellis-work, only broken through in this one place, as though to 
 make a frame for the pictui-e. He leans back, and gives himsslf 
 up to watching trifles. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 241 
 
 See here. A magpie comes furtively out of the house with a key 
 in his mouth, and seeing Sam, stops to consider if he is likely to 
 hetray him. On the whole, he thinks not ; so he hides the key in 
 a crevice, and whistles a tune. 
 
 Now enters a cockatoo, waddling along comfortahly and talking 
 to himself. He tries to enter into conversation with the magpie, 
 who, however, outs him dead, and walks oflf to look at the prospect. 
 
 Flop ! flop ! A great foolish-looking kangaroo comes through 
 the house and peers round him. The cockatoo addresses a few 
 remarks to him, which he takes no notice of, but goes blundering 
 out into the garden, right over the contemplative magpie, who gives 
 him two or three indignant pecks on his clumsy feet, and sends him 
 flying down the gravel walk. 
 
 Two bright-eyed little kangaroo rats come out of their box peering 
 and blinking. The cockatoo finds an audience in them, for they 
 sit hstening to him, now and then catching a flea, or rubbing the 
 backs of their heads with their fore-paws. But a buck 'possum, 
 who stealthily descends by a pillar from unknown realms of mis- 
 chief on the top of the house, evidently discredits cockey's stories, 
 and departs down the garden to see if he can find something to 
 eit. 
 
 An old cat comes up the garden walk, accompanied by a wicked 
 kitten, who ambushes round the comer of the flower-bed, and pounces 
 out on her mother, knocking her down and severely maltreating her. 
 But the old lady picks herself up without a murmur, and comes into 
 the verandah followed by her unnatural offspring, ready for any 
 mischief. The kangaroo rats retire into their box, and the cockatoo, 
 rather nervous, lays himself out to be agreeable. 
 
 But the puppy, bom under an rmlucky star, who has been 
 watching all these things from behind his mother, thinks at last, 
 " Here is some one to play with," so he comes staggering forth 
 and challenges the kitten to a lark. 
 
 She receives him with every symptom of disgust and abhorrence, 
 but he, regardless of all spitting, and tail swelling, roUs her over, 
 spurring and swearing, and makes believe he will worry her to 
 death. Her scratching and biting tell but little on his wooUy hide, 
 and he seems to have the best of it out and out, till a new ally 
 appears unexpectedly, and quite turns the tables. The magpie 
 hops up, ranges alongside of the combatants, and catches the puppy 
 such a dig over the tail as sends him howling to his mother with 
 a flea in his ear. 
 
 Sam lay sleepily amused by this little drama ; then lie looked at 
 the bright green arch which separated the dark verandah from the 
 bright hot garden. The arch was darkened, and looking he saw 
 
 17 
 
242 THiB EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 something which made his heart move strangely, something that 
 he has not forgotten yet, and never will. 
 
 Under the arch between the sunlight and the shade, bareheaded, 
 dressed in white, stood a girl, so amazingly beautiful, that Sam 
 wondered for a few moments whether he was asleep or awake. 
 Her hat, which she had just taken off, hung on her left arm, and 
 with her delicate right hand she arranged a vagrant tendril of the 
 passion-flower, which in its luxuriant growth had broken bounds 
 and faUen from its place above. — A girl so beautiful that I in aU 
 my life never saw her superior. They showed me the other day, 
 in a carriage in the park, one they said was the most beautiful girl 
 in England, a descendant of I know not how many noblemen. But, 
 looking back to the times I am speaking of now, I said at once 
 and decidedly, "Alice Brentwood twenty years ago was more 
 beautiful than she." 
 
 A Norman style of beauty, I believe you would call it. Light 
 hair, deep brilliant blue eyes, and a very fair complexion. Beauty 
 and high-bred grace in every limb and every motion. She stood 
 there an instant on tiptoe, with the sunlight fuU upon her, while 
 Sam, buried in gloom, had time for a delighted look, before she 
 stepped into the verandah and saw him. 
 
 She floated towards him through the deep shadow. " I think," 
 she said in the sweetest, most musical little voice, " that you are 
 Mr. Buckley. If so, you are a very old friend of mine by report." 
 So she held out her little hand, and with one bold kind look from 
 the happy eyes, finished Sam for life. 
 
 Father and mother, retire into the chimney comer and watch. 
 Your day is done. Doctor Mulhaus, put your good advice into your 
 pocket and smoke your pipe. Here is one who can exert a greater 
 power for good or evil than aU of you put together. It was written 
 of old, — " A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto 
 his " Hallo I I am getting on rather fast, I am afraid. 
 
 He had risen to meet her. " And you, Miss Brentwood," he 
 said, " are tolerably well known to me. Do you know now that I 
 believe by an exertion of memory I could tell you the year and the 
 month when you began to learn the harp ? My dear old friend 
 Jim has kept me quite an fait with all your accomplishments." 
 
 " I hope you are not disappointed in me," said Alice, laughing. 
 
 " No," said Sam. " I think rather the contrary. Are you ? " 
 
 " I have not had time to tell yet," she said. " I wUl see how 
 you behave at lunch, which we shall have in half an hoiir tete-a- 
 tete. "Sou have been often here before, I believe ? Do you see 
 much change ? " 
 
 " Not much. I noticed a new piano, and a little glove that 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 243 
 
 I had never seen before. Jim's menagerie of wild beasts is as 
 numerous as ever, I see. He would have liked to be in Noah's 
 Ark." 
 
 " And so would you and I, Mr. Buckley," she answered, laugh- 
 ing, " if we had been caught in the flood." 
 
 Good gracious ! Think of being in Noah's Ark with her ! 
 
 " You find them a little troublesome, don't you, Miss Brent- 
 wood ? " 
 
 " Well, it requires a good deal of administrative faculty to keep 
 the kitten and the puppy from open coUision, and to prevent the 
 magpie from pecking out the cockatoo's eye and hiding it in the 
 flower bed. Last Sunday morning he (the magpie) got into my 
 father's room, and stole thirty-one shillings and sixpence. We 
 got it all back but half a sovereign, and that we shall never see." 
 
 The bird thus alluded to broke into a gush of melody, so rich, 
 fuU, and metallic, that they both turned to look at him. Having 
 attracted attention, he began dancing, crooning a little song to 
 himself, as though he would say, " I know where it is." And 
 lastly he puffed out his breast, put back his biU, and swore two 
 or three oaths that would have disgraced a London scavenger, 
 with such remarkable distinctness too, that there was no mis- 
 understanding him ; so Sam's affectation of not having caught 
 what the bird said, was a dead failure. 
 
 " Mr. Buckley," said she, " if you wiU excuse me I will go and 
 see about lunch. Can you amuse yourself there for half an 
 hour ? " Well, he would try. So he retired agaiu to the rocking- 
 chair, about ten years older than when he rose from it. For he 
 had grown from a boy into a man. 
 
 He had fallen over head and ears in love, and all in five minutes. 
 Fallen deeply, seriously in love, to the exclusion of all other sub- 
 lunary matters, before he had well had time to notice whether she 
 spoke with an Irish brogue or a Scotch (happily she did neither). 
 Sudden, you say : well, yes ; but, in lat. 34°, and lower, whether 
 in the southern or northern atmosphere, these "feoit-c^ affairs come 
 on with a rapidity and violence only equalled by the thunder-storms 
 of those regions, and utterly surprising to you who perhaps read 
 this book in 52° north, or perhaps higher. I once went to a ball 
 with as free-and-easy, heart-whole a young fellow as any I know, 
 and agreed with him to stay half an hour, and then come away and 
 play pool. In twenty-five minutes by my watch, which keeps time 
 like a ship's chronometer, that man was in the tragic or cut-throat 
 stage of the passion with a pretty httle thing of forty, a cattle- 
 dealer's widow, who stopped Ms pool-playing for a time, until she 
 married the great ironmonger JB George Street. Romeo and 
 
244 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Juliet's little matter was just as sudden, and very Australian in 
 many points. Only mind, that Komeo, had he lived in Australia, 
 instead of taking poison, would prohahly have 
 
 "Took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Baily," 
 
 for fuU twenty-four hours after the catastrophe. 
 
 At least, such would have been the case in many instances, but 
 not in all. With some men these suddenly-conceived passions last 
 their lives, and, I should be incUned to say longer, were there not 
 strong authority against it. 
 
 But Sam ? He saw the last twinkle of her white gown dis- 
 appear, and then leant back and tried to think. He could only 
 say to himself, " By Jove, I wonder if I can ever bring her to like 
 me. I wish I had known she was here ; I'd have dressed myself 
 better. She is a precious superior girl. She might come to like 
 me in time. Heigh ho ! " 
 
 The idea of his having a rival, or of any third person stepping 
 in between him and the young lady to whom he had thrown his 
 handkerchief, never entered into his Sultanship's head. Also, 
 when he came to think about it, he really saw no reason why she 
 should not be brought to think well of him. " As well me as 
 another," said he to himself; "that's where it is. She must 
 marry somebody, you know ! " 
 
 Why is she gone so long ? He begins to doubt whether he has 
 not after all been asleep and dreaming. There she comes again, 
 however, for the arch under the creepers is darkened again, and 
 he looks up with a pleasant smile upon his face to greet her. 
 
 God save us ! What imp's trick is this ? There, in the porch, 
 in the bright sun, where she stood not an hour ago in all her 
 beauty and grace, stands a hideous, old savage, black as Tophet, 
 grinning ; showing the sharp gap-teeth in her apish jaws, her lean 
 legs shaking with old age and rheumatism. 
 
 The collie shakes out her friU, and, raising the hair all down 
 her back, stands griiming and snarling, while her puppy barks 
 potvaliantly between her legs. The little kangaroo rats ensconce 
 themselves once more in their box, and gaze out amazed from 
 their bright little eyes. The cockatoo hooks and clambers up to 
 a safe place in the trellis, and Sam, after standing thunder-struck 
 for a moment, asks, what she wants ? 
 
 " Make a light," * says the old girl, in a pathetic squeak. 
 
 * " Make a light," in blaokfellow's gibberish, means simply " See.'' 
 Here it meins, " I'm only come to see how you are getting on," or some- 
 thing of that sort. 
 
GEOFPBY HAMLYN. 245 
 
 Further answer she makes none, but squats down outside, and 
 begins a petulant whine : sure sign that she has a tale of woe to 
 unfold, and is going to ask for something. 
 
 " Can that creature," thinks Sam, "be of the same species as 
 the beautiful Alice Brentwood ? Surely not 1 There seems as 
 much difference between them as between an angel and an ordinary 
 good woman." Hard to believe, truly, Sam ; but perhaps, in 
 some of the great European cities, or even nearer home, in some 
 of the prison barracks, you may chance to find a white woman or 
 two fallen as low as that poor, starved, ill-treated, filthy old 
 savage ! 
 
 Ahce comes out once more, and brings sunshine with her. She 
 goes up to the old lubra with a look of divine compassion on her 
 beautiful face ; the old woman's whine grows louder as she rocks 
 herself to and fro. " Yah marah. Yah boorah. Oh boora Yah ! 
 Yah Ma I " 
 
 "What! old SaUy ! " says the beautiful giii. "What is the 
 matter ? Have you been getting waddy again ? " 
 
 " Baal ! " says she, with a petulant burst of grief. 
 
 " What is it, then ? " says Alice. " Where is the gown I gave 
 you?" 
 
 Alice had evidently vibrated the right chord. The " Yarah 
 Moorah " coronach was begun again ; and then suddenly, as if her 
 indignation had burst bounds, she started off with a shrillness and 
 rapidity astonishing to one not accustomed to blackfeUows, into 
 something Hke the following : "Oh Yah (very loud), oh Mah ! 
 Barkmaburrawurrah, Barkmamurrahwurrah Oh Ya Barkmanurra- 
 wah Yee (in a scream. Then a pause). Oh Mooroo (pause). 
 Oh hinaray (pause). Oh BarknamuiTwun-ah Yee ! " 
 
 Alice looked as if she understood every word of it, and waited 
 till the poor old soul had " blown ofi' the steam," and then asked 
 again : 
 
 " And what has become of the gown, SaUy ? " 
 
 " Oh dear ! Young lubra, Betty (big thief that one) tear it up 
 and stick it along a fire. Oh, plenty cold this old woman. Oh, 
 plenty hungry this old woman. Oh, Yarah Moorah," &c. 
 
 " There ! go round to the kitchen," said Alice, " and get some- 
 thing to eat. Is it not abominable, Mr. Buckley ? I cannot give 
 anything to this old woman but the young lubras take it from her. 
 However, I will ' put the screw on them.' They shall have nothing 
 from me till they treat her better. It goes to my heart to see a 
 woman of that age, with nothing to look forward to but kicks and 
 blows. I have tried hard to make her understand something of 
 the next world : but I can't get it out of her head that when she 
 
246 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 dies she will go across the water and come back a young white 
 woman with plenty of money. Mr. Sandford, the missionary, says 
 he has never found one who could be made to comprehend the 
 existence of God. However, I came to call you to lunch ; wiU you 
 give me your arm ? " 
 
 Such a self-possessed, intrepid little maiden, not a bit afraid of 
 him, but seeming to understand and trust him so thoroughly. Not 
 all the mock-modesty and blushing in the world would have won 
 him half so surely, as did her bold, quiet, honest look. Although 
 a very young man, and an inexperienced, Sam could see what a 
 candid, honest, gentle soul looked at him from those kind blue 
 eyes ; and she, too, saw something in Sam's broad noble face 
 which attracted her marvellously, and in aR innocence she told 
 him so, plump and plain, as they were going into the house. 
 
 " I fancy I shall hke you very much, Mr. Buckley. We ought 
 to be good friends, you know ; your father saved the lives of my 
 father and uncle." 
 
 " I never heard of that before," said Sam. 
 
 "I dare say not," said Alice. " Your father is not the man 
 to speak of his own noble deeds ; yet he ran out of his square and 
 pulled my father and uncle almost from under the hoofs of the 
 French cavalry at Waterloo. It makes my cheeks tingle to tell of 
 it now." 
 
 Indeed it did. Sam thought that if it brought such a beautiful 
 flush to her face, and such a flash from her eyes, whenever she 
 told it, that he would get her to tell it again more than once. 
 
 But lunch ! Don't let us starve our new pair of turtle-doves, 
 in the outset. Sam is but a growing lad, and needs carbon for 
 his muscles, lime for his bones, and all that sort of thing ; a glass 
 of wine won't do him any harm either, and let us hope that his 
 new passion is not of such lamentable sort as to prevent his using 
 a knife and fork with credit and satisfaction to himself. 
 
 Here, in the dark, cool parlour, stands a banquet for the gods, 
 white damask, pretty bright china, and clean silver. In the 
 corner of the table is a frosted claret-jug, standing, with freezing 
 politeness, upright, his hand on his hip, waiting, to be poured out. 
 In the centre, the grandfather of water-melons, half-hidden by 
 peaches and pomegranates, the whole heaped over by a confusion 
 of ruby cherries (oh, for Lance to paint it !). Ai'e you hungi'y, 
 though ? If so, here is a mould of potted-head and a cold wild 
 duck, while, on the sideboard, I see a bottle of pale ale. My 
 brother, let us breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Ausla-alia, and dine 
 in France, till our lives' end. 
 
 And the banquet being over, she said, as pleasantly as possible, 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 247 
 
 " Now, I know you Vant to smoke in the verandah. For my 
 part, I should like to bring my work there and sit with you, but, 
 if you had rather not have me, you have only to say that ' you 
 could not think,' &c., &c., and I wiU obediently take myself off." 
 
 But Sam didn't say that. He said that he couldn't conceive 
 anything more delightful, if she was quite sure she did not mind. 
 
 Not she, indeed ! So she brought her work out, and they sat 
 together. A cool wind came up, bending the flowers, swinging 
 the creepers to and fro, and raising a rushing sound, like the sea, 
 from the distant forest. The magpie having been down the garden 
 when the wind came on, and having been blown over, soon joined 
 them in a very captious frame of mind ; and, when Alice dropped 
 a ball of red worsted, he seized it as lawful prize, and away in the 
 house with a hop and a flutter. So both Sam and Alice had to 
 go after him, and hunt him under the sofa, and the bird, finding 
 that he must yield, dropped the ball suddenly, and gave Sam two 
 vicious digs on the fingers to remember him by. But when Alice 
 just touched his hand in taking it from him, he wished it had been 
 a whipsnake instead of a magpie. 
 
 So the ball of worsted was recovered, and they sat down again. 
 He watched her nimble fingers on the delicate embroidery ; he 
 glanced at her quiet face and down-turned eyelids, wondering who 
 she was thinking of. Suddenly she raised her eyes and caught 
 him in the fact. You could not swear she blushed ; it might 
 only be a trifling reflection fi'om one of the red China roses that 
 hung between her and the sun ; yet, when she spoke, it was not 
 quite with her usual self-possession ; a little hurriedly perhaps. 
 
 " Are you going to be a soldier, as your father was ? " 
 
 Sam had thought for an instant of saying " yes," and then to 
 prove his words true of going to Syiiey, and enlisting in the 
 "Half Hundred." * Truth, however, prompting him to say 
 "no," he compromised the matter by saying he had not thought 
 of it. 
 
 " I am rather glad of that, do you know," she said. " Unless 
 in India, now, a man had better be anything than a soldier. I 
 am afraid my brother Jim will be begging for a commission some 
 day. I wish he would stay quietly at home." 
 
 That was comforting. He gave up all thoughts of enhsting at 
 once. But now the afternoon shadows were beginning to slant 
 longer and longer, and it was nearly time that the Captain and 
 Jim should make their appearance. So Alice proposed to walk 
 out to meet them, and as Sam did not say no, they went forth 
 together. 
 
 • The fiftieth, buffs. 
 
248 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 Down the garden, faint with the afternoon scents of the flowers 
 before the western sun, among petunias and roses, oleander and 
 magnolia ; here a towering Indian lily, there a thicket of scarlet 
 geranium and fiichsia. By shady young orange trees, covered 
 with fruit and blossom, between rows of trellised vines, bearing 
 rich promise of a purple vintage. Among fig trees and pome- 
 granates, and so leaving the garden, along the dry slippery grass, 
 towards the hoarse rushing river, both silent till they reached it. 
 There is a silence that is golden. 
 
 They stood gazing on the foaming tide an instant, and then 
 Alice said, — 
 
 " My father and Jim will come home by the track across there. 
 Shall we cross and meet them ? We can get over just below." 
 
 A little lower down, all the river was collected into one head- 
 long race ; and a giant tree, undermined by winter floods, had 
 fallen from one bank to the other, offering a giddy footway across 
 the foaming water. 
 
 " Now," said Alice, " if you wiU go over, I wiU follow you." 
 
 So he ran across, and then looked back to see the beautiful 
 figure tripping fearlessly over, with outstretched arms, and held 
 out his great brown hand to take her tiny fingers as she stepped 
 down from the upturned roots, on to the soft white sand. He 
 would like to have taken them again, to help her up the bank, 
 but she sprang up, like a deer, and would not give him the 
 opportunity. Then they had a merry laugh at the magpie, who 
 had fluttered down all this way before them, to see if they were on 
 a foraging expedition, and if there were any plunder going, and 
 now could not summon courage to cross the river, but stood 
 crooning and cursing by the brink. Then they sauntered away 
 through the forest, side by side, along the sandy track, among the 
 knolls of bracken, with the sunlit boughs overhead whispering 
 knowingly to one another in the evening breeze, as they passed 
 beneath. — An evening walk long remembered by both of them. 
 
 " Oh see ye not that pleasant road, 
 That winds along the ferny brae ? 
 Oh that's the road to fairy land. 
 Where thou and I this e'en must gae." 
 
 " And so you caimot remember England, Mr. Buckley ? " says 
 Alice. 
 
 " Oh dear, no. Stay though, I am speaking too fast. I can 
 remember some few places. I remember a steep, red road, that 
 led up to the church, and have some dim recollection of a vast 
 grey building, with a dark porch, which must have been the 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 249 
 
 church itself. I can see, too, at this moment, a broad green flat, 
 beside a creek, which was covered with yellow and purple flowers, 
 which mother and I made into nosegays. That must be the place 
 my father speaks of as the Hatherleigh Meadows, where he used 
 to go fishing, and, although I must have been there often, yet 
 I can only remember it on one occasion, when he emptied out 
 a basket of fish on the grass for me to look at. My impression 
 of England is, that everything was of a brighter colour than here ; 
 and they tell me I am right." 
 
 " A glorious country," said Alice ; " what would I give to see 
 it ? — so ancient and venerable, and yet so amazingly young and 
 vigorous. It seems like a waste of existence for a man to stay 
 here tending sheep, when his birthright is that of an Englishman : 
 the right to move among his peers, and find his fit place in the 
 greatest empire in the world. Never had any woman such a 
 noble destiny before her as this young lady who has just ascended 
 the throne." 
 
 But the conversation changed here, and her Majesty escaped 
 criticism for the time. They came to an open space in the forest, 
 thickly grown with thickets of bracken fern, prickly acacia, and 
 here and there a solitary dark-foliaged hghtwood. In the centre 
 rose a few blackened posts, the supports of what had once been 
 a hut, and as you looked, you were surprised to see an English 
 rose or two, flowering among the dull-coloured prickly shrubs, 
 which were growing around. A place, as any casual traveller 
 would have guessed, which had a history, and Sam, seeing Alice 
 pause, asked her, " what old hut was this ? " 
 
 " This," she said, " is the Donovans' old station, where they 
 were burnt out by the blacks." 
 
 Sam knew the story well enough, but he would like to hear her 
 tell it ; so he made believe to have heard some faint reports of the 
 occurrence, and what could she do, but give him the particulars ? 
 
 "They had not been here a year," she said; "and Mrs. 
 Donovan had been confined only three days ; there was not a soul 
 on the station but herself, her son Murtagh, and Miss Burke. 
 All day the blackfeUows were prowling about, and getting more 
 and more insolent, and at night, just as Murtagh shut the door, 
 they raised their yell, and nished against it. Murtagh Donovan 
 and Miss Burke had guessed what was coming all day, but had 
 kept it from the sick woman, and now, when the time came, they 
 were cool and prepared. They had two double-barrelled guns 
 loaded with slugs, and with these they did such fearful execution 
 from two loop-holes they had made in the slabs, that the savages 
 ■ quickly retired ; but poor Miss Burke, incautiously looking out to 
 
250 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 get a shot, received a spear wound in her shoulder, which she 
 bears the mark of to this day. But the worst was to come. The 
 blackfellows mounted on the roof, tried to take off the bark, and 
 throw their spears into the hut, but here they were foiled again. 
 Wherever a sheet of hark was seen to move they watched, and on 
 the first appearance of an enemy, a charge of shot at a few yards' 
 distance told with deadly effect. Mrs. Donovan, who lay in bed 
 and saw the whole, told my father that Lesbia Burke loaded and 
 fired with greater rapidity and precision than did her cousin. A 
 noble woman, I say." 
 
 " Good old Lesbia ! " said Sam ; " and how did it end ? " 
 
 " Why, the foohsh blacks fired the woolshed, and brought the 
 Delisles upon them ; they tried to fire the roof of the hut, but it 
 was raining too hard : otherwise it would have gone hard with 
 poor Miss Burke. See, here is a peach-tree they planted, covered 
 with fi^it ; let us gather some ; it is pretty good, for the Donovans 
 have kept it pruned in memory of their escape." 
 
 " But the hut was not burnt," said Sam, " where did it stand ? " 
 
 " That pile of earth there, is the remains of the old turf 
 chimney. They moved across the river after it happened." 
 
 But peaches, when they grow on a high tree, must he climbed 
 for, particularly if a young and pretty girl expresses a wish for 
 them. And so it fell out, that Sam was soon astride of one of 
 the lower boughs, throwing the fruit down to Alice, who put them 
 one by one into the neatest conceivable little basket that hung on 
 her arm. 
 
 And so they were employed, busy and merry, when they heard 
 a loud cheery voice, which made both of them start. 
 
 " Quite a scene from ' Paradise Lost,' I declare ; only Eve 
 ought to be up the tree handing down the apples to Adam, and 
 not vice versa. I miss a carpet snake, too, who would represent 
 the Deuce, and make the thing complete. — Sam Buckley, how are 
 you?" 
 
 It was Captain Brentwood who had come on them so inaudihly 
 along the sandy track, on horseback, and beside him was son Jim, 
 looking rather mischievously at Sam, who did not show to the 
 best of advantage up in the peach-tree ; but, having descended, 
 and greetings being exchanged, father and son rode on to dress 
 for dinner, the hour for which was now approaching, leaving Sam 
 and Alice to follow at leisure, which they did ; for Captain 
 Brentwood and Jim had time to dress and meet in the verandah, 
 before they saw the pair come sauntering up the garden. 
 
 "Father," said Jim, talcing the Captain's hand, "how would 
 that do ? " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 261 
 
 ■' Marvellous well, I should say ; " replied the Captain. 
 
 " And so I think, too," said Jim. " Hallo ! you two ; dinner 
 is ready, so look sharp." 
 
 After dinner the Captain retired silently to the chimney-comer, 
 and read his hook, leaving the three young people to amuse them- 
 selves as they would. Nothing the Captain liked so much as 
 quiet, whUe he read some abstruse work on Gunnery, or some 
 scientific voyage ; but I am sorry to say he had got very Httle 
 quiet of an evening since Alice came home, and Jim had got some 
 one to chatter to. This evening, however, seemed to promise 
 well, for Alice brought out a great book of coloured prints, and 
 the three sat down to turn them over, Jim, of course, you know, 
 being in the middle. 
 
 The book was " Wild Sports of the East," a great volume of 
 coloured lithographs, worth some five-and-twenty guineas. One 
 never sees such books as that now-a-days, somehow ; people, I 
 fancy, would not pay that price for them. What modem travels 
 have such plates as the old editions of " Cook's Voyages " ? The 
 number of illustrated books is increased tenfold, but they are 
 hardly improved in quality. 
 
 But Sam, I think, would have considered any hook beautiful in 
 such company. " This," said Alice, " is whatwe call the ' Tiger 
 Book ' — why, you will see directly. — You turn over, Jim, and 
 don't crease the pages." 
 
 So Jim turned over, and kept them laughing by his simple 
 remarks, more often aifected than real, I suspect. Now they went 
 through the tangled jungle, and seemed to hear the last mad howl 
 of the dying tiger, as the elephant knelt and pinned him to the 
 ground with his tusks. Now they chased a lordly buifalo from 
 his damp lair in the swamp ; now they saw the EngUsh ofiicers 
 flying along on their Arabs through the high grass with well- 
 poised spears after the snorting hog. They have come un- 
 expectedly on a terrible old tiger ; one of the horses swerves, and 
 a handsome young man, losing his seat, seems just falling into 
 the monster's jaws, while the pariah dogs scud away terrified 
 through the grass. 
 
 " That chap will be eaten immediately," says Jim. 
 
 "He has been in that position ever since I can remember," 
 says Alice ; " so I think he is pretty safe." 
 
 Now they are with the British army on the march. A scarlet 
 bar stretches across the plain, of which the further end is lost in 
 the white mirage — all in order ; walking irresistibly on to the 
 conquest of an empire greater than Haroun Al Kasohid's. So 
 naturally done too, that as you look, you think you see the columns 
 
232 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 swing as they advance^ and hear the heavy, weary tramp of the 
 troops ahove the din and shouting 6f the crowd of camp-followers, 
 on camels and elephants, which surrounds them. Beyond the 
 plain the faint hlue hiUs pierce the grey air, harred with a few 
 long white clouds, and far away a gleaming river winds through a 
 golden country spanned with long bridges, and fringed with many 
 a fantastic minaret. 
 
 " How I should like to see that I " said Alice. 
 
 " Would you like to he a countess," said Jim, " and ride on an 
 elephant in a howitzer ? " 
 
 " Howdah, you goose ! " said Alice. " Besides, that is not a 
 countess ; that is one of the soldiers' wives. Countesses don't go 
 to India : they stay at home to mind the Queen's clothes." 
 
 " What a pleasant job for them," said Jim, " when her Most 
 Gracious Majesty has got the toothache ! I wonder whether she 
 wears her crown under her bonnet or over it ? " 
 
 Captain Brentwood looked up. "My dear boy," he said, "does 
 it not strike you that you are talking nonsense ? " 
 
 " Did you ever see the old King, father ? " said Jim. 
 
 " I saw King George the Third many times." 
 
 " Ah, but I mean to speak to him." 
 
 " Once only, and then he was mad. He was sitting up with 
 her Majesty, waiting for intelligence which I brought. His Eoyal 
 Highness took the despatches from me, but the King insisted on 
 seeing me." 
 
 "And what did he say, father ? Do tell us," said Alice eagerly. 
 
 " Little enough, my love," said the Captain, leaning back. 
 " He asked, ' Is this the officer who brought the despatches, 
 York ? ' And his Royal Highness said ' Yes.' Then the King 
 said, ' You bring good news, sir : I was going to ask you some 
 questions, but they are all gone out of my head. Go and get your 
 supper ; get your supper, sir.' Poor old gentleman. He was a 
 kindly old man, and I had a great respect for him. Alice, sing us 
 a song, my love." 
 
 She sang them ." The Burial of Sir John Moore" with such 
 perfect taste and pathos that Sam felt as if the candle had gone 
 out when she finished. Then she turned round and said to him, 
 "You ought to like that song ; your father was one of the actors 
 in it." 
 
 "He has oiten told me the story," said Sam, "but I never 
 knew what a beautiful one it was till I heard you sing it." 
 
 AH pleasant evenings must end, and at last she rose to go to 
 bed. But Sam, before he went off to the land of happy dreams, 
 saw that the little white glove which he had noticed in the mom- 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 253 
 
 ing was lying neglected on the floor ; so he quietly secured and 
 kept it. And, last year, opening his family Bihle to refer to 
 certain entries, now pretty numerous, in the beginning, I found a 
 little white glove pinned to the fly-leaf, which I heheve to be the 
 same glove here spoken of. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVm. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN FROM THE WAKS. 
 
 I NEED hardly say that Sam was sorry when the two days which 
 he had allowed himself for his visit were over. But that evening, 
 when he mentioned the fact that he was going away in the morn- 
 ing, the Captain, Alice, and Jim, aU pressed him so eagerly to 
 stay another week, that he consented ; the more as there was no 
 earthly reason he knew of why he should go home. 
 
 And the second morning from that on which he should have 
 been at home, going out to the stable before breakfast, he saw his 
 father come riding over the plain, and, going to meet him, found 
 that he, too, meditated a visit to the Captain. 
 
 " I thought you were come after me, father," said Sam. " By 
 the bye, do you know that the Captain's daughter. Miss Alice, is 
 come home ? " 
 
 "Indeed! " said the Major; " and what sort of a body is she?" 
 
 " Oh, she is well enough. Something like Jim. Plays very 
 well on the piano, and all that sort of thing, you know. Sings 
 too." 
 
 " Is she pretty ? " asked the Major. 
 
 " Oh, well, I suppose she is," said Sam. " Yes ; I should say 
 that a great many people would consider her pretty." 
 
 They had arrived at the door, and the groom had taken the 
 Major's horse, when AUce suddenly stepped out and confronted 
 them. 
 
 The Major had been prepared to see a pretty girl, but he was 
 by no means prepared for such a radiant, lovely, blushing creature 
 as stepped out of the darkness into the fresh morning to greet 
 him, clothed in white; bareheaded, with 
 
 "A single rose in her hair." 
 
 As he told his wife, a few days after, he was struck " aU of a 
 
254 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 heap ; " and Sam heard him whisper to himself, " By Jove ! " 
 before he went up to Alice and spoke. 
 
 " My dear young lady, you and I ought not to he strangers, for 
 I recognise you from my recollections of your mother. Can you 
 guess who I am? " 
 
 "I recognise you from my recollections of your son, sir," said 
 Alice, with a sly look at Sam ; " I should say that you were Major 
 Buckley." 
 
 The Major laughed, and, taking her hand, carried it to his lips ; 
 a piece of old-fashioned courtesy she had never experienced before, 
 and which won her heart amazingly. 
 
 "Come, come, Buckley!" said the quiet voice of Captain 
 Brentwood from the dark passage ; " what are you at there with 
 my daughter ? I shall have to call out and fight some of you 
 young fellows yet, I see." 
 
 Alice went in past her father, stopping to give him a kiss, and 
 disappeared into the breakfast-room. The Captain came out, and 
 shook hands warmly with the Major, and said, 
 
 " What do you think of her,— eh ? " 
 
 " I never saw such beauty before," answered the Major ; 
 " never, by Jove ! I tell you what, Brentwood, I wish she could 
 come out this season in London. Why, she might marry a duke." 
 
 " Let us get her a rouge-pot and a French governess, and send 
 her home by the next ship; eh, Bucldey?" said the Captain, with 
 his most sardonic smile. " She would be the better for a little 
 polishing ; wouldn't she, eh ? Too hoydenish and forward, I am 
 afraid ; too fond of speaking the truth. Let's have her taught to 
 amble, and mince, and — ^Bah, come to breakfast! " 
 
 The Major laughed heartily at this tirade of the Captain's. He 
 was fond of teasing him, and I believe the Captain liked to be 
 teased by him. 
 
 " And what are you three going to do with yourselves to-day, 
 eh? " asked the Captain at brealdast. "It is a matter of total 
 indiflference to me, so long as you take yourselves oflf somewhere, 
 and leave me in peace." 
 
 Alice was spokesman : — " We are going up to the Limestone 
 Gates ; Mr. Samuel Buckley has expressed a desire to see them, 
 and so Jim and I thought of taking him there." 
 
 This was rather a Jesuitical speech. The expedition to the 
 Limestone Gates involved a long ride through very pretty scenery, 
 which she herself had proposed. As for Sam, bless you ! he 
 didn't care whether they rode east, west, north, or south, so long 
 as he rode beside her ; however, having got his cue, he expressed 
 a strong wish to examine, geologically, the great band of limestone 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 255 
 
 which pltemated with the slate towards the mountains, the more 
 particularly as he knew that the Captain and the Major intended 
 to ride out in another direction, to examine some new netting for 
 sheep-yards which the Captain had imported. 
 
 If Major Buckley thought Alice heautiful as he had seen her in 
 the morning, he did not think her less so when she was seated on 
 a heautiful little horse, which she rode gracefully and courageously, 
 in a hlue riding-hahit, and a sweet little grey hat with a plume of 
 companion's feathers hanging down on one side. The cockatoo 
 was on the door-step to see her start, and talked so incessantly in 
 his excitement, that even when the magpie, (who wanted, you 
 know, to see the thing quietly and form his opinion, not to have 
 everybody talking at once,) assaulted him and puUed a feather out 
 of his tail, he could not he quiet. Sam's horse Widderin capered 
 with delight, and Sam's dog Rover coursed far and wide before 
 them, with joyful bark. So they three went off through the 
 summer's day as happy as though all life were one great summer's 
 holiday, and there were no storms below the horizon to rise and 
 overwhelm them ; through the grassy flat, where the quail whirred 
 before them, and dropped again as if shot ; across the low roUing 
 forest land, where a million parrots fled whistUng to and fro, like 
 jewels in the sun ; past the old stock-yard, past the sheep-wash 
 hut, and then through forest which grew each moment more dense 
 and lofty, along the faint and narrow track which led into one of 
 the most abrupt and romantic gullies which pierce the Australian 
 Alps. 
 
 AH this became classic ground to them afterwards, and the 
 causes which made it so were now gathering to their fulfilment, 
 even now, while these three were making happy holiday together, 
 little dreaming of what was to come. Afterwards, years after, 
 they three came and looked on this valley again ; not as now, with 
 laughter and jokes, but silently, speaking in whispers, as though 
 they feared to wake the dead. 
 
 The road they followed, suddenly rising from the forest, took 
 over the shoulder of a rocky hiU, and then, plunging down again, 
 followed a little running creek, up to where a great ridge of slate, 
 crossing the valley, hemmed them in on either side, leaving only 
 room for the creek and the road. Following it further, the glen 
 opened out, sweeping away right and \eit in broad curves, while 
 straight before them, a quarter of a mUe distant, there rose out of 
 the low scrub and fern a mighty waU of limestone, utterly barring 
 aU further progress save in a single spot to the left, where the 
 vast grey wall was split, giving a glimpse of another glen beyond. 
 This great natural cleft was the limestone gate which they had 
 
236 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 come to see, and which was rendered the more wonderful by a tall 
 pinnacle of rock, which stood in the centre of the gap about 300 
 feet in height, not unlike one of the same kind in Dovedale. 
 
 "I don't think I ever saw anything so beautiful," said Alice. 
 " How fine that spire of rock is, shooting up from the feathered 
 shrubs at the base ! I wiU come here some day and try to draw 
 it." 
 
 " Wait a minute," said Jim ; " you have not seen half yet." 
 
 He led them through the narrow pass, among the great boulders 
 which lined the creek. The instant they came beyond, a wind, 
 icy cold, struck upon their cheeks, and Alice, dropping her reins, 
 uttered a cry of awe and wonder, and Sam too exclaimed aloud ; 
 for before them, partly seen through crowded tree-stems, and 
 partly towering above the forest, lay a vast level wall of snow, 
 flecked here and there by the purple shadow of some flying summer 
 cloud. 
 
 A sight so vast and magniflcent held them sUent for a little ; 
 then suddenly, Jim, looking at Alice, saw that she was shivering. 
 
 " What is the matter, Alice, my dear ? " he said ; "let us come 
 away : the snow-wind is too much for you." 
 
 " Oh ! it is not that ! " she said. " Somebody is walking over 
 my grave." 
 
 " Oh, that's aU ! " said Jim ; " they are always at it with me, 
 in cold weather. Let 'em. It won't hurt, that I know of." 
 
 But they turned homeward, nevertheless ; and coming through 
 the rock walls again, Jim said, 
 
 " Sam, what was that battle the Doctor and you were reading 
 about one day, and you told me all about it afterwards, you 
 know ? " 
 
 " Malplacquet ? " 
 
 " No ; something like that, though. Where they got bailed up 
 among the rocks, you know, and fought tiU they were all killed." 
 
 " Thermopylae ? " 
 
 " Ah I This must be just such anothej: place, I should think." 
 
 " Thermopylae was by the sea-shore," said Alice. 
 
 " Now, I should imagine," said Sam, pointing to the natural 
 glacis formed by the decay of the great wall which they had seen 
 fronting them as they came up, " that a few determined men with 
 rifles, posted among thdse fern-trees, could make a stand against 
 almost any force." 
 
 " But, Sam," said Jim, " they might be cut up by cavalry. 
 Horses could travel right up the face of the slope there. Now, 
 suppose a gang of bushrangers in that fern- scrub ; do you think 
 an equal number of police could not turn them out of it ? Why, 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 257 
 
 I have seen the place where Moppy's gang turned and fought 
 Deshorough on the Macquarrie. It was stronger than this, and 
 yet — ^you know what he did with them, only kept one small one for 
 hanging, as he elegantly expressed it." 
 
 " But I ain't talking of hushrangers," said Sam. " I mean such 
 fellows as the Americans in the War of Independence. See what 
 a dance they led our troops with their hushfighting." 
 
 " I wonder if ever there wiU be a War of Independence here," 
 said Alice. 
 
 " I know which side I should he on, if there was," said Sam. 
 
 " Which would that he ? " asked Jim. 
 
 " My dear friend," said Sam, testily, " how can you, an officer's 
 son, ask me, an officer's son, such a question ? The King's (I 
 beg pardon, the Queen's) side, of course." 
 
 " And so would I," said Jim, " if it came to that, you know." 
 
 " You would never have the honour of speaking to your sweet 
 sister again, if you were not," said Alice. 
 
 " But I don't think those Americans were in the wrong; do you. 
 Miss Brentwood ? " said Sam. 
 
 "Why no; I don't suppose that such a man as General 
 Washington, for instance, would have had much to do with them 
 if they had been." 
 
 "However," said Sam, "we are talking of what wiU never 
 occui' here. To begin with, we could never stand alone against a 
 great naval power. They would shut us up here to starve. We 
 have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by a separation. I 
 would hardly Hke, myself, for the sake of a few extra pounds taxes, 
 to sell my birthright as an Englishman." 
 
 " Conceive," said Alice, "being in some great European city, 
 and being asked if you were British, having to say, No ! " 
 
 They were coming through the lower pass, and turned to look 
 back on the beautiful rock-waUed amphitheatre, sleeping peacefiil 
 and stiU under the afternoon sun. The next time (so it happened) 
 that Sam and Jim looked at that scene together, was under very 
 different circumstances. Now the fronds of the fern-trees were 
 scarce moved in the summer's breeze, and aU was silent as the 
 grave. They saw it again ; — ^when every fern tuft blazed with 
 musketry, and the ancient cliffs echoed with the shouts of fighting, 
 and the screams of dying men and horses. 
 
 "It is very early," said Alice. " Let us ride to the left, and 
 see the great waterfall you speak of, Jim." 
 
 It was agreed. Instead of going home they turned through the 
 forest, and debouched on the plains about two miles above Garoopna, 
 and, holding their course to the river, came to it at a place where 
 
 18 
 
258 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 a great trap dike, crossing, formed a waterfall, over which the river, 
 now full with melting snow, fell in magnificent confusion. They 
 stood watching the grand scene with dehght for a short time, and 
 then, crossing the river hy a broad shallow ford, held their way 
 homeward, along the eastern and more level hank, sometimes rein- 
 ing up their horses to gaze into the tremendous glen below them, 
 and watch the river crawling on through many impediments, and 
 beginning to show a golden light in its larger pools beneath the 
 sloping, westering sun. 
 
 Just as they sighted home, on the opposite side of the river, 
 they perceived two horsemen before them, evidently on the track 
 between Major Buckley's and Garoopna. They pushed on to 
 " overhaul them," and found that it was Doctor Mulhaus, whom 
 they received vrith boisterous welcome, and a tall, handsome' young 
 gentleman, a stranger. 
 
 "A young gentleman, Sam," said the Doctor, "Mr. Halhert 
 by name, who arrived during your father's absence with letters of 
 introduction. I begged him to foUow your father over here, 
 and as his own horse was knocked up, I mounted him at his own 
 request on Jezebel, he preferring her to all the horses in the 
 paddock on account of her beauty, after having been duly warned 
 of her wickedness. But Mr. Halbert seems of the Centaur 
 species, and rather to enjoy an extra chance of getting his neck 
 broke." 
 
 Politeness to strangers was one of the first articles of faith in 
 the Buckley and Brentwood families : so the young folks were soon 
 on the best of terms. 
 
 " Are you fi:om Sydney way, Mr. Halbert ? " said Sam. 
 
 " Indeed," said the young man, " I have only landed in the 
 country six weeks. I have got three years' leave of absence from 
 my regiment in India, and, if I can see a chance, I shall cut the 
 army and settle here." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Alice, " are you a soldier, Mr. Halbert ? " 
 
 " I have that honour. Miss Brentwood. I am a heutenant in 
 the Bengal Horse Artillery." 
 
 " That is delightful. I am a soldier's daughter, and Mr. 
 Buckley here also, as you know, I suppose." 
 
 " A soldier's daughter, is he ? " said impudent Jim. " A veiy 
 fine girl, too I " 
 
 Sam, and Jim too, had some disrespectful ideas about soldiers' 
 riding qualities ; Sam could not help saying, — 
 
 " I hope you will be careful with that mare, Mr. Halbert ; I 
 should not like a guest of ours to be damaged. She's a desperate 
 brute, — I am afi-aid of her myself." 
 
GEOFFBY HiMLTN. 259 
 
 "I think I know the length of her ladyship's foot," said Hal- 
 hert, laughing good-naturedly. 
 
 As they were speaking, they were passing through a narrow way 
 in a wattle scruh. Suddenly a blundering kangaroo, with Rover 
 in fuU chase, dashed right under the mare's nose and set her 
 plunging furiously. She tried to wheel round, hut, finding herself 
 checked, reared up three or four times, and at last seemed to stand 
 on her hind legs, almost overbalancing herself. 
 
 Halbert sat like a statue till he saw there was a real chance of 
 her falling back on him ; then he slipped his right foot quickly out 
 of the stirrup, and stood with his left toe in the iron, balancing 
 himself till she was quieter ; then he once more threw his leg 
 across the saddle, and regained his seat, laughing. 
 
 Jim clapped his hands ; " By Jove, Sam, we must get some of 
 these army men to teach us to ride, after all ! " 
 
 " We must do so," said Sam. "If that had been you or I, Jim, 
 with our rough clumsy hands, we should have had the mare back 
 atop of us." 
 
 " Indeed," said Alice, " you are a splendid rider, Mr. Halbert : 
 but don't suppose, from Mr. Buckley's account of himself, that he 
 can't ride weU ; I assure you we are all very proud of him. He 
 can sit some bucking horses which very few men wiU attempt to 
 mount." 
 
 " And that same bucking. Miss Brentwood," said Halbert, " is 
 just what puzzles me utterly. I got on a bucking horse in Sydney 
 the other day, and had an ignominious tumble in the sale-yard, to 
 everybody's great amusement." 
 
 " We must give one another lessons, then, Mr. Halbert," said 
 Sam ; — " but I can see already, that you have a much finer hand 
 than I." 
 
 Soon alter they got home, where the rest of the party were 
 watching for them, wondering at their late absence. Halbert was 
 introduced to the Major by the Doctor, who said, " I deliver over 
 to you a guest, a young conqueror from the Himalayas, and son 
 of an old brother warrior. If he now breaks his neck horse-riding, 
 his death wiU not be at my door ; I can now eat my dinner in 
 peace." 
 
 Alter dinner the three young ones, Sam, Alice, and Jim, 
 gathered round the fire, leaving Halbert with the Major and the 
 Captain talking military, and the Doctor looking over an abstruse 
 mathematical calculation, with which Captain Brentwood was not 
 altogether satisfied. Alice and Sam sat in chairs side by side, 
 like Christians, but Jim lay on the floor, between the two, like a 
 blaekfeUow ; they talked in a low voice about the stranger. 
 
260 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " I safy," said Jim, " ain't he a handsome chap, and can't he 
 ride ? I dare say he's a devil to fight, too, — hear him tell how 
 they pounded away at those Indians in that battle. I expect 
 they'd have made a general of him before now, only he's too 
 young. Dad says ha's a very distinguished young officer. Alice, 
 my dear, you should see the wound he's got, a great seam all down 
 his side. I saw it when he was changing his shirt in my room 
 before dinner." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Alice ; "I like him very much. Don't 
 you, Mr. Buckley ? " 
 
 " I like him exceedingly; — I hope he'U stop with us," continued 
 Jim. 
 
 " And I also," said Sam, " but what shall we do to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Let's have a hunt," said Jim. " Halbert, have you ever 
 been kangaroo hunting ? " 
 
 " Never ! — I want to go ! " 
 
 " Well, we can have a capital hunt to-morrow : Sam has got 
 his dog Fly here, and I'll take one of my best dogs, and we'll 
 have a good run, I dare say." 
 
 " I shall come, too," said Alice : " that is," added she, looking 
 shyly at Sam, " if you would be kind enough to take care of me, 
 and let Mr. Halbert and Jim do the riding. But I'm afraid 
 I shall be sadly in your way." 
 
 " If you don't go," said Sam, " I shall stay at home : now then ! " 
 
 At this minute, the housekeeper came in bearing jugs and 
 glasses. " Eleanor," said Jim, " Is Jerry round ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir ; he's coiled somewhere in the woodhouse," said she. 
 
 " Just rouse him out and send him in." 
 
 " Who is this Jerry who coils in woodhouses ? " said Halbert. 
 
 " A tame black belonging to us. He is great at all sorts of 
 hunting ; I want to see if he can find us a flying doe for to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Jerry entered, and advanced with perfect self-possession towards 
 the fire. He was a tail savage, with a big black beard, and 
 wavy hair like a Cornishman. He was dressed in an old paii' of 
 dandy riding breeches of Jim's, which reached a short way below 
 the knees, fitting closely, and a blue check shirt rolled up above 
 the elbow showing his lean wiry forearm, seamed and scarred with 
 spear wounds and bruises. He addressed nobody, but kept his 
 eyes wandering all over the room ; at length he said, looking at 
 the ceiling, — 
 
 " Gobbon thirsty this fellow : you got a drop of brandy ? " 
 
 " Jerry," said Jim, having produced the brandy, " you make 
 a light kangaroo." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 261 
 
 " All about plenty kangaroo," said Jeny. 
 
 " Yowi ;* but mine want it big one flying doe." 
 
 " Ah-h-h I Mine make a light flying doe along a stockyard 
 this morning ; close by, along a fent, you see ! " 
 
 " That'll do," says Jim. " We'U be up round the old stock- 
 yard after breakfast to-morrow. You, Jerry, come with us." 
 
 It was a fresh breezy autumn morning in April, when the four 
 sallied forth, about nine o'clock, for their hunt. The old stock- 
 yard stood in the bush, a hundred yards from the comer of the 
 big paddock fence, and among low rolling ranges and gullies, 
 thickly timbered with gum, cherry, and sheoak : a thousand 
 parrots flew swiftly in flocks, whistling and screaming from tree 
 to tree, while wattled-birds and numerous other honey-eaters 
 clustered on the flowering basksias. The spur-winged plover and 
 the curlew ran swiftly among the grass, and on a tail dead tree 
 white cockatoos and blue cranes watched the intruders curiously. 
 
 Alice and Sam rode together soberly, and before them were 
 Halbert and Jim, girt up, ready for the chase. Before them, 
 again, was the active blackfeUow, holding the dogs in a leash, — 
 two tall hounds, bred of foxhound and greyhound, with a dash of 
 collie. 
 
 A mob of kangaroos crosses their path, but they are all small ; 
 so the dogs, though struggling fiercely, are stiU held tight by 
 Jerry ; now he crosses a little ridge before them and looks down 
 into the guUy beyond, holding up his hand. 
 
 The two young men gather up their reins and settle themselves 
 in their seats. "Now, Halbert," says Jim, "sit fast and mind 
 the trees." 
 
 They ride up to the blackfellow ; through the low wattles, they 
 can see what is in the gully before them, though the dogs cannot. 
 
 " Baal, flying doe this one," says Jerry in a whisper. " Old 
 man this fellow, cobbon matong,t mine think it." 
 
 A great six-foot kangaroo was standing about two hundred 
 yards from them, staring stupidly about him. 
 
 " Let go, Jerry," said Jim. The dogs released, sprang for- 
 ward, and, in an instant, saw their quany, which, with a loud puff 
 of alarm, bounded away up the opposite slope at full speed, 
 taking twenty feet at each spring. 
 
 Halbert and Jim dashed off after the dogs, who had got a good 
 start of them, and were laying themselves out to their work right 
 gallantly ; Sam's dog. Fly, slightly leading. Both dogs were close 
 on the game, and Halbert said, — 
 
 * Yowi means yes. But Mr. Hamlyn is a little inoorrect in using it 
 here. It is more of a Moreton Bay word. — H. K. f " Very strong." 
 
262 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " We are going to have a short run, I'm afraid." 
 
 " Talk about that twenty minutes hence," said Jim, settling to 
 his work. 
 
 Over range after range they hold their headlong course. Now 
 a bandicoot scuttles away from under their feet to hide in his 
 hollow log ; now a mob of terrified cattle huddle together as they 
 sweep by ; now they are flying past a shepherd's hut, and the 
 mother runs out to snatch up a child, and bear him out of harm's 
 way, after they are safe past. A puppy, three weeks old, joins 
 the chase with heai:t and soul, but "caves in" at about fifty 
 yards, and sits him down to bark. Now they are rushing on 
 through a broad flat, with another great range before them. Stijl 
 always the grey bounding figure holds on, through sunlight and 
 shadow, with the dogs grim and steadfast close in his wake. 
 
 The work begins to tell on the horses. Fat Jezebel, who could 
 hardly be held at first, now is none the worse for a little spur ; 
 and Jim's lean, long-legged horse, seems to consider that the 
 entertainment ought to conclude shortly. " Well done, Fly ! " he 
 shouts ; " bravely tried, my girl ! " She had drawn herself ahead, 
 and made a bold strike at the kangaroo, but missed him. Now 
 the other dog. Bolt, tries it, but without luck ; and now they have 
 both dropped a little back, and seem in for another mile or so. 
 
 WeE done, lass ! — there she goes again ! With a fiirious effort 
 she pushes ahead, and seizes the flying beast by the hock — ^this 
 time with some luck, for down he goes in a cloud of dust and 
 broken sticks, and both the dogs are on him at once. Now he is 
 up again and running, but feebly. And see, what is the matter 
 with the young dog ? He runs on, but keeps turning, snapping 
 fiercely at his side, and his footsteps are marked with blood. 
 Poor lad ! he has got a bad wound in that last tumble, — the 
 kangaroo has ripped up his flank with a kick from his hind foot. 
 But now the chase is over, — the hunted beast has turned, and is 
 at bay against a tree, Fly standing before him, waiting for 
 assistance, snarling fiercely. 
 
 They puUed up. Jim took out a pistol and presented it to 
 Halbert. 
 
 " Thank you," said he. " Hair trigger ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He balanced it for a second, and in another the kangaroo was 
 lying quivering on the ground, shot through the heart. 
 
 " Well done ! " said Jim. " Now I must look to this dog." 
 
 All his flank along the ribs was laid open, and Jim, producing 
 a needle and thread, proceeded to sew it up. 
 
 " Will you let me do that for you ? " said Halbert. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 263 
 
 " I wish you would. I'm fond of the poor thing, and my hand 
 shakes. You've seen the surgeons at work, I expect." 
 
 "Yes, iudeed." And he tenderly and carefully stitched up the 
 dog's side, while Jim held him. 
 
 " What do we do with the game ? " said he. 
 
 " Oh, Jerry wiU be along on our tracks presently," said Jim. 
 " He brings me the tail, and does what he likes with the rest. 
 I wonder where Sam and Alice are ? " 
 
 " Oh, they are right enough," said Halbert, laughing. " I dare 
 say they are not very anxious about the kangaroo, or anything 
 else. That's ' a case,' I suppose ? " 
 
 "Well, I hope it is," said Jim; " but you see I don't know. 
 Girls are so odd." 
 
 " Perhaps he has never asked her." 
 
 " No ; I don't think he has. I wish he would. You are not 
 married, are you ? " 
 
 " My God — no I " said Halbert, " nor ever shall be." 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 " Never, Jim. Let me tell you a story as we ride home. You 
 and I shall be good friends, I know. I like you already, though 
 we have only known one another two days. I can see well what 
 you are made of. They say it eases a man's mind to tell his 
 grief. I wish it would mine. Well ; before I left England I had 
 secretly engaged myself to marry a beautiful girl, very much like 
 your sister, a governess in my brother-in-law's family. I went off 
 to join my regiment, and left her there with my sister and her 
 husband. Lord Carstone, who treated her as if she was already 
 one of the family — God bless them I Two years ago my father 
 died, and I came into twenty thousand pounds ; not much, but 
 enough to get married on in India, particularly as I was getting 
 on in my profession. So I wrote to her to come out to me. She 
 sailed in the Assam, for Calcutta, but the ship never arrived. 
 She was spoken off the Mauritius, but never seen after. The 
 underwriters have paid up her insurance, and everyone knows now 
 that the Assam went down in a typhoon, with aU hands." 
 
 " God bless you ! " said Jim, " I am very sorry for that." 
 
 " Thank you. I have come here for change of scene more than 
 anything, but I think I shall go back soon." 
 
 " I shall come with you," said Jim. " I have determined to 
 be a soldier, and I know the governor has interest enough to get 
 me into some regbnent in India." (I don't believe he had ever 
 thought of it before that morning.) 
 
 " If you are determined, he might. His services in India were 
 too splendid to have been forgotten yet." 
 
264 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " I wonder," said Jim, " if he will let me go ? I'd like to see 
 Alice married first." 
 
 They jogged on in silence for a little, and slowly, on accoant of 
 the wounded dogs. Then Jim said, — 
 
 " Well, and how did you like your sport ? " 
 
 " Very much indeed ; but I thought bush-riding was harder 
 work. We have only had one or two leaps over fallen logs 
 altogether." 
 
 " There ain't much leaping, that's a fact. I suppose you have 
 been fox-hunting? " 
 
 " My father was a master of hounds," replied Halbert. " On 
 ,the first day of the season, when the hounds met at home, there 
 would be two hundred horsemen on our terrace, fifty of them, at 
 least, in pink. It was a regular holiday for all the country round. 
 Such horses, too. My father's horse, the Elk, was worth £300, 
 and there were better horses than him to be seen in the field, 
 I promise you." 
 
 " And ail after a poor little fox ! " 
 
 "You don't know Charley, I can see," said Halbert. "Poor 
 little fox, indeed ! Why, it's as fair a match between the best- 
 tried pack of hounds in England, and an old dog-fox, as one 
 would wish to see. And as hard work as it is to ride up to them, 
 even without a stiff fence at every two hundred yards, to roU you 
 over on your head, if your horse is blown or clumsy. Just con- 
 sider how many are run, and how few are killed. I consider a fox 
 to be the noblest quarry in the world. His speed, courage, and 
 cunning are wonderfd. I have seen a fox run fifteen miles as the 
 crow flies, and only throe of us in at the death. That's what 
 I call sport." 
 
 " So do I, by Jove ! " said Jim. " You have some good sport 
 in India, too ? " 
 
 "Yes. Pig-sticking is pretty — veiy pretty, I may say, if you 
 have two or three of the right sort with you. All the Griffins 
 ought to hunt together, though. There was a young feUow, a 
 King's-officer, and a nobleman, too, came out with us the other 
 day, and rode well forward, but as the pig turned, he contrived to 
 spear my horse through the pastern. He was full of apologies, 
 and I was outwardly highly polite and indifi'erent, but internally 
 cursing him up hiU and down dale. I went home and had the 
 horse shot ; but when I got up next morning, there was a Syce 
 leading up and down a magnificent Australian, a fai' finer beast 
 than the one which I had lost, which my Lord had sent up to replace 
 my unfortunate nag. I went down to his quarters and refused to 
 accept it ; but he forced me in the end, and it gave me a good 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 2C5 
 
 lesson about keeping my temper oyer an unavoidable accident, 
 which I don't mean to forget. Don't you think it was prettily 
 done?" 
 
 " Yes, I do," said Jim ; " but you see these noblemen are so 
 rich that they can aiford to do that sort of thing, where you or I 
 couldn't. But I expect they are very good fellows on the whole." 
 " There are just as large a proportion of good noblemen as there 
 are of any other class — more than that you have no right to expect. 
 I'm a liberal, as my father was before me, and a pretty strong one 
 too ; but I think that a man with sixty thousand acres, and a seat 
 in the House of Lords, is entitled to a certain sort of respect. A 
 Grand Seigneur is a very capital institution it he wiU only stay on 
 his estates some part of the year." 
 
 " Ay I " said Jim ; who was a shrewd fellow in his way. 
 '.' They know that here, well enough ; look at our Macarthurs and 
 Wentworths, — but then they must be men, and not snobs, as the 
 governor says. 
 
 When they got home, they found Sam and Alice sitting in the 
 verandah as comfortable as you please. 
 
 " Well," said Jim ; " you are a nice lot ! This is what you 
 call kangaroo-hunting ! " 
 
 "Oh, you went too fast for us. Have you killed ? " 
 
 " Yes ! out by the big swamp." 
 
 " You have taken your time to get home then." 
 
 " Poor Bolt is cut up, and we couldn't go out of a walk. Now 
 give us something to eat, will you, Alice ? " 
 
 " Well, ring the bell and we frill have lunch." 
 
 But just as Jim rang the beU, there was a loud voice outside, 
 and the three young men went out to see who it was, and found 
 two horsemen in front of the door. 
 
 One, who was stiU sitting on his horse, was a dark-haired slight 
 young man, Charles Hawker in fact, whom we know already, but 
 the other, who had dismounted, and was leaning against his horse, 
 was a highbred, delicate little fellow, to whom we have yet to be 
 introduced. 
 
 He was a slight lad, perhaps not more than eighteen, with one 
 of the pleasantest, handsomest faces of his own that you could 
 wish to see, and also a very intellectual look about him, which 
 impressed you at once with the idea that if he lived he would have 
 made some sort of figure in life. He was one of the greatest 
 dandies, also, in those parts, and after the longest ride used to look 
 as if he had been turned out of a bandbox. On the present 
 occasion he had on two articles of dress which attracted Jim's 
 attention amazingly. The first was a new white hat, which was 
 
266 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 a sufficiently remarkable thing in those parts at that time ; and 
 the second, a pair of yellow leather riding-trousers. 
 
 ' ' Why, Cecil Mayford ! ' ' said Sam, ' ' how do you do ? Charley, 
 how are you ? Just in time for lunch. Come in." 
 
 Jim was walking round and round Cecil without speaking a word. 
 At last the latter said, " How do you do, James Brentwood ? " 
 
 " How do your breeches do, Cecil ? " answered Jim ; " that is 
 a much more important question. By the bye, let me introduce 
 you to Mr. Halbert. Also, allow me to have the honour to inform 
 you that my sister Alice is come home from school." 
 
 " I am aware of that, and am come over to pay my respects. 
 Sam, leave me alone. If I were to disarrange my dress before I 
 was presented to Miss Brentwood, I would put a period to my 
 existence. Jim, my dear soul, come in and present me; Don't 
 all you fellows come mobbing in, you know." 
 
 So Jim took Cecil in, and the other young fellows lounged about 
 the door in the sun. " Where have you come from, Charley ? " 
 asked Sam. 
 
 " I have been staying at the Mayfords' ; and this morning, 
 hearing that you and your father were here, we thought we would 
 come over and stay a bit." 
 
 " By the bye," said Sam, " EUen Mayford was to have come 
 home from Sydney the same time as Alice Brentwood, or there- 
 abouts. Pray, is she come ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said Charles; "she is come this fortnight, or 
 more." 
 
 " What sort of a girl has she grown to be ? " 
 
 " Well, I call her an uncommonly pretty girl. A very nice 
 girl indeed, I should say. Have you heard the news from the 
 north ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Bushrangers I Nine or ten devUs, loose on the upper Mac- 
 quarrie, caught the publican at Marryong alone in the bush : he 
 had been an overlooker, or some such thing, in old times, so they 
 stripped him, tied him up, gave him four dozen, and left him to 
 the tender mercies of the blowflies, in consequence of which he 
 was found dead next day, with the cords at his wrists cutting down 
 to the bone with the struggles he made in his agony." 
 
 " Whew ! " said Sam. " We are going to have some of the 
 old-fashioned work over again. Let us hope Desborough wiU get 
 hold of them before they come this way." 
 
 " Some of our fellow-countrymen," said Halbert, " are, it seems 
 to me, more detestably ferocious than savages, when they once get 
 loose." 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 267 
 
 " Much of a muchness — no better, and perhaps no worse," said 
 -Sam. " All men who act entirely without any law in their actions 
 arrive at much the same degree, whether white or black." 
 
 " And will this Captain Desborough, whom you speak of, have 
 much chance of catching these fellows ? " asked Halbert. 
 
 " They will most likely disperse on his approach if he takes any 
 force against them," said Sam. " I heard him say, myself, that 
 the best way was to tempt them to stay and show fight, by taking 
 a small force against them, as our admirals used to do to the French, 
 in the war. By the bye,- how is Tom Troubridge ? He is quite 
 a stranger to me. I have only seen him twice since he was back 
 from Port Phillip." 
 
 " He is off again now, after some rams, up to the north." 
 
 " I hope he won't fall in with the bushrangers. Anybody with 
 him ? " 
 
 "William Lee," answered Charles. 
 
 " A good escort. There is lunch going in,^come along." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 SAM MEETS WITH A KIVAL, AND HOW HE TREATED HIM. 
 
 That week one of those runs upon the Captain's hospitality took 
 place which are common enough in the bush, and, although causing 
 a temporary inconvenience, as generally as much enjoyed by the 
 entertainer as entertained. Everybody during this next week 
 came to see them, and nobody went -back again. So by the end 
 of the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all 
 uninvited, and apparently bent on making a good long stay of it. 
 
 Alice, who had expected to be rather put out, conducted eveij- 
 thing with such tact and dignity that Mrs. Buckley remarked to 
 Mrs. Mayford, when they were alone together, " that she had 
 never seen such beauty and such charming domestic grace combined, 
 and that he would be a lucky young fellow who got her for a 
 wife." 
 
 " Well, yes, I should be inclined to say so too," answered Mrs. 
 Mayford. " Rather much of the boarding-school as yet, but that 
 wUl wear off, I dare say. I don't think the young lady will go 
 very long without an offer. Pray, have you remarked anything, 
 my dear madam ? " 
 
 Yes, Mrs. Buckley had remarked something on her arrival the 
 
268 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 day before yesterday. She had remarked Sam and Alice come 
 riding over the paddock, and Sam, by way of giving a riding- 
 lesson, holding the little white hand in his, teaching it (the dog !) 
 to hold the reins properly. And on seeing Alice she had said to 
 herself, " That wiU do." But all this was not what Mrs. Mayford 
 meant — in fact, these two good ladies were at cross-purposes. 
 
 " Well, I thought I did," replied Mrs. Buckley, referring to 
 Sam. " But one must not be premature. They are both very 
 young, and may not know their own minds." 
 
 " They seem as if they did," said Mrs. Mayford. " Look 
 there ! " Outside the window they saw something which gave 
 Mrs. Buckley a sort of pang, and made Mrs. Mayford laugh. 
 
 There was no one in the garden visible but Cecil Mayford and 
 Alice, and she was at that moment busily engaged in pinning a 
 rose into his buttonhole. " The audacious girl ! " thought Mrs. 
 Buckley; " I am afraid she will be a daughter of debate among 
 us. I wish she had not come home." While Mrs. Mayford 
 continued, — ■ 
 
 " I am far from saying, mind you, my dear Mrs. Buckley, that 
 I don't consider CecU might do far better for himself. The girl is 
 pretty, very pretty, and wUl have money. But she is too decided, 
 my dear. Fancy a girl of her age expressing opinions ! Why, if 
 
 I had ventured to express opinions at her age, I 1 don't Imow 
 
 what my father would have said." 
 
 " Depend very much on what sort of opinions they were ; 
 wouldn't it ? " said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " No ; I mean any opinions. Girls ought to have no opinions 
 at all. There, last night when the young men were talking all 
 together, she must needs get red in the face and bridle up, and 
 say, ' She thought an Englishman who wasn't proud of Oliver 
 CromweU was unworthy of the name of an Englishman.' Her very 
 words, I assure you. Why, if my daughter EUen had dared to 
 express herself in that way about a murderous Papist, I'd have 
 slapped her face." 
 
 "I don't think Cromwell was a Papist; was he ? " said Mrs. 
 Buckley. 
 
 "A Dissenter, then, or something of that sort," said Mrs. 
 Mayford. " But that don't alter the matter. What I don't like 
 to see is a young girl thrusting her oar in in that way. However, I 
 shall make no opposition, I can assure you. Cecil is old enough 
 to choose for himself, and a mother's place is to submit. Oh, no, 
 I assure you, whatever my opinions may be, I shall offer no opposi- 
 tion." 
 
 " I shouldn't think you would," said Mrs. Buckley, as the other 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 269 
 
 left the room : " rather a piece of luck for your boy to marry the 
 handsomest and richest girl in the country. However, madam, if 
 you think I am going to play a game of chess with you for that 
 girl, or any other girl, why, you are mistaken." 
 
 And yet it was very provoking. Ever since she had begun to 
 hear from various sources how handsome and clever Alice was, she 
 had made up her mind that Sam should marry her, and now to be 
 put out like this by people whom they had actually introduced into 
 the house ! It would be a great blow to Sam too. She wished he 
 had never seen her. She would sooner have lost a limb than 
 caused his honest heart one single pang. But, after aU, it might 
 be only a little flirtation between her and Cecil. Girls would flirt ; 
 but then there would be Mrs. Mayford manoeuvring and scheming 
 her heart out, while she, Agnes Buckley, was constrained by her 
 principles only to look on and let things take their natural course. 
 
 Now, there arose a coolness between Agnes Buckley and the 
 Mayfords, mother and son, which was never made up — never, oh, 
 never ! Not very many months after this she would have given 
 ten thousand pounds to have been reconciled to the kind-hearted 
 old busy-body ; but then it was too late. 
 
 But now, going out into the garden, she found the Doctor busy 
 planting some weeds he had found in the bush, in a quiet comer, 
 with an air of stealth, intending to privately ask the gardener to 
 see after them till he could fetch them away. The magpie, having 
 seen from the window a process of digging and burying going on, 
 had attended in his official capacity, standing behind the Doctor, 
 and encouraging him every now and then with a dance, or a few 
 flute-Hke notes of music. I need hardly mention that the moment 
 the Doctor's back was turned the bird rooted up every one of the 
 plants, and buried them in some secret spot of his own, where they 
 lie, I beheve, till this day. 
 
 To the Doctor she told the whole matter, omitting nothing, and 
 then asked his advice. " I suppose," she said, " you wiU only 
 echo my own determination of doing nothing at all ? " 
 
 " Quite so, my dear madam. If she loves Sam, she wiU marry 
 him ; if she don't, he is better without her." 
 
 " That is true," said Mrs. Buckley. " I hope she wUl have 
 good taste enough to choose my boy." 
 
 " I hope so too, I am sure," said the Doctor. " But we must 
 not be very furious if she don't. Little Cecil Mayford is both 
 handsomer and cleverer than Sam. We must not forget that, you 
 know." 
 
 That evening was the first thoroughly unhappy evening, I think, 
 that Sam ever passed in his life. I am inclined to imagine thai 
 
270 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 his digestion was out of order. If any of my readers ever find 
 themselves in the same state of mind that he was in that night, let 
 them be comforted by considering that there is always a remedy at 
 hand, before which evil thoughts and evil tempers of all kinds fly 
 like mist before the morning sun. How many serious family 
 quarrels, marriages out of spite, alterations of wiUs, and secessions 
 to the Church of Rome, might have been prevented by a gentle 
 dose of blue piU ! What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia are 
 presented to our view by the immortal bard in the characters of 
 Hamlet and Othello ! I look with awe on the digestion of such a 
 man as the present King of Naples. Banish dyspepsia and 
 spirituous liquors from society, and you would have no crime, or 
 at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning. 
 
 However, to return to Sam. He, Halbert, Charles Hawker, and 
 Jim had been away riding down an emu, and had stayed out all 
 day. But Cecil Mayford, having made excuse to stay at home, 
 had been making himself in many ways agreeable to Alice, and at 
 last had attended her on a ride, and on his return had been re- 
 vyarded with a rose, as we saw. The first thing Sam caught sight 
 of when he came home was Alice and CecU walking up and down 
 the garden very comfortably together, talking and laughing. He 
 did not like to see this. He dreaded Cecil's powers of entertain- 
 ment too much, and it made him angry to hear how he was making 
 Alice laugh. Then, when the four came into the house, this 
 offending couple took no notice of them at aU, but continued 
 walking up and down in the garden, till Jim, who, not being in 
 love, didn't care twopence whether his sister came in or not, went 
 out to the verandah, and called out " Hi ! " 
 
 " What now ? " said Alice, turning round. 
 
 " Why, we're come home," said Jim, " and I want you." 
 
 " Then you won't get me, impudence," said Alice, and begaji 
 walking up and down again. But not long after, having to come 
 in, she just said, " How do, Mr. Halbert ? " and passed on, never 
 speaking to Sam. Now there was no reason why she should have 
 spoken to him, but " Good evening, Mr. Buckley," would not have 
 hurt anybody. And now in came Cecil, with that unlucky rose, 
 and Jim immediately began, — 
 
 " Hallo, Ois, where did you get your flower ? " 
 
 "Ah, that's a secret," said Cecil, with an affected look. 
 
 "No secret at aU," said Alice, coming back. "I gave it to 
 him. He had the civility to stay and take me out for a ride, in- 
 stead of going to run down those poor pretty emus. And that is 
 his reward. I pinned it into his coat for him." And out she 
 went again. 
 
GBOFFEY HAMLYN. 271 
 
 Sam was very sulky, Taut he couldn't exactly say with whom. 
 With himself more than anybody, I believe. 
 
 " Like Cecil's consummate impudence ! " was his first thought; 
 but after he had gone to his room to dress, his better nature 
 came to him, and before dinner came on he was his old self 
 again, unhappy stiU, but not sulky, and determined to be just. 
 
 " What right have I to be angry, even suppose she does come to 
 care more for him than for me ? What can be more likely ? he 
 is more courtly, amusing, better-looking, they say, and certainly 
 cleverer ; oh, decidedly cleverer. He might as well make me his 
 enemy as I make him mine. No ; dash it all ! He has been like 
 
 a brother to me ever since he was so high, and I'U be d d if 
 
 there shan't be fair play between us two, though I should go into 
 the army through it. But I'U watch, and see how things go." 
 
 So he watched at dinner and afterwards, but saw little to comfort 
 him. Saw one thing, nay, two things, most clearly. One was, 
 that Cecil Mayford was madly in love with Alice ; and the other 
 was, that poor Cecil was madly jealous of Sam. He treated him 
 differently to what he had ever done before, as though on that 
 evening he had first found his rival. Nay, he became almost rude, 
 so that once Jim looked suddenly up, casting his shrewd blue eyes 
 first on one and then on the other, as though to ask what the 
 matter was. But Sam only said to himself, " Let him go on. 
 Let him say what he wUl. He is beside himself now, and some 
 day he wUl be sorry. He shall have fair play, come what wiU." 
 
 But it was hard for our lad to keep his temper sometimes. It 
 was hard to see another man sitting alongside of her aU the 
 evening, paying her all those nameless little attentions which 
 somehow, however unreasonably, he had brought himself to think 
 were his right, and no one else's, to pay. Hard to wonder, and 
 wonder whether or no he had angered her, and if so, how ? 
 Halbert, good heart, saw it all, and sitting all the eyening by 
 Sam, made himself so agreeable, that for a time even Alice herself 
 was forgotten. But then, when he looked up, and saw Cecil stUl 
 beside her, and her laughing and talking so pleasantly, while he 
 was miserable and unhappy, the old chiU came on his heart again, 
 and he thought — was the last happy week only a deceitful gleam 
 of sunshine, and should he ever take his old place beside her 
 again? 
 
 Once or twice more during the evening CecU was almost insolent 
 to him, but stUl his resolution was strong. 
 
 " If he is a fool, why should I be a fool ? I will wait and see if 
 he can win her. If he does, why there is India for me. It he 
 does not, I will try again. Only I will not quarrel with CecU, be- 
 
272 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 cause he is blinded. Little Cecil, who used to bathe with me and 
 ride pickaback round the garden ! No ; he shall have fair play. 
 By Jove, he shall have fair play, if I die for it." 
 
 And he had some little comfort in the evening. When they had 
 all risen to go to bed, and were standing about in confusion light- 
 ing candles, he suddenly found Ahce by his side, who said in a 
 sweet, low, musical tone, — 
 
 " Can you forgive me ? " 
 
 " What have I to forgive, my dear young lady ? " he said softly. 
 " I was thinking of asking your forgiveness for some unknown 
 fault." 
 
 " I have behaved so ill to you to-day," she said, " the first of 
 my new friends ! I was angry at your going out after our poor 
 emus, and I was cross to you when you came home. Do let us be 
 friends again." 
 
 There was a chance for a reconciliation ! But here was Cecil 
 Mayford thrusting between them with a lit candle just at the wrong 
 moment ; and she gave him such a sweet smile, and such kind 
 thanks, that Sam felt nearly as miserable as ever. 
 
 And next morning everything went wrong again. Whether it 
 was merely coquetry, or whether she was angry at their hunting 
 the emus, or whether she for a time preferred Cecil's company, I 
 know not ; but she, during the next week, neglected Sam altogether, 
 and refused to sit beside him, making a most tiresome show of 
 being unable to get on without Cecil Mayford, who squired her 
 here, there, and everywhere, in the most provoking fashion. 
 
 But it so happened that the Doctor and the Major sat up later 
 than the others that night, taking a glass of punch together before 
 the fire, and the Major said, abruptly, — 
 
 " There will be mischief among the young fellows about that 
 girl. It is a long while since I saw one man look at another as 
 young Mayford did at our Sam to-night. I wish she were out of 
 the way. Sam and Mayford are both desperately in love with her, 
 and one must go to the wall. I wish that boy of mine was keener ; 
 he stayed aloof from her all to-night." 
 
 " Don't you see his intention ? " said the Doctor. " I am very 
 much mistaken if I do not. He is determined to leave the field 
 clear for all comers, unless she herself makes some sort of advances 
 to him. 'If she prefers Mayford,' says Sam to himself, 'in the 
 way she appears to, why^ she is welcome to him, and I can go 
 home as soon as I am assured of it.' And go home he would, too, 
 and never say one word of complaint to any living soul." 
 
 " What a clear, brave, honest soul that lad has 1 " said the 
 Major. 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 273 
 
 "Truly," said the Doctor, " lonlyknow one man who is hisequal." 
 
 " And who is he ? " 
 
 " His father. Good-night : good dreams ! " 
 
 * * * -fc * * 
 
 So Sam kept to his resolution of finding out whether or no Alice 
 was likely to prefer Cecil to him. And, for all his watching and 
 puzzling, he couldn't. He had never confided one word of all this 
 to his mother, and yet she knew it all as well as he. 
 
 Meanwhile, Cecil was quite changed. He almost hated Sam, 
 and seldom spoke to him, and at the same time hated himself for 
 it. He grew pale, too, and never could be persuaded to join any 
 sport whatever ; while Sam, being content to receive only a few 
 words in the day from My Lady, worked harder than ever, both in 
 the yards and riding. AU day he and Jim would be working like 
 horses, with Halhert for their constant companion, and, half an 
 hour before dinner, would run whooping down to the river for their 
 bathe, and then come in clean, happy, hungry — so full of life and 
 youth, that in these sad days of deficient grinders, indigestion, and 
 liver, I can hardly realise that once I myself was as fuU of blood 
 and as active and hearty as any of them. 
 
 There was much to do the week that Alice and Sam had their 
 little tiff. The Captain was getting in the " scrubbers," cattle 
 which had been left, under the not very careful rule of the 
 Donovans, to run wild in the mountains. These beasts had now 
 to he got in, and put through such processes as cattle are bom to 
 undergo. The Captain and the Major were both fully stiff for 
 working in the yards, but their places were well supplied by Sam 
 and Jim. The two fathers, with the assistance of the stockman, 
 and sometimes of the sons, used to get them into the yards, and 
 then the two young men would go to work in a style I have never 
 seen surpassed by any two of the same age. Halbert would some- 
 times go into the yard and assist, or rather hinder ; but he had 
 to give up just when he was beginning to be of some use, as the 
 exertion was too violent for an old wound he had. 
 
 Meanwhile Cecil despised all these things, and, though a capital 
 hand among cattle, was now grown completely effeminate, hanging 
 about the house all day, making, in fact, "rather a fool of himself 
 about that girl," as Halbert thought, and thought, besides, "What 
 a confounded fool she will make of herself if she takes that little 
 dandy ! — not that he isn't a very gentlemanlike little feUow, but 
 that Sam is worth five hundred of him." 
 
 One day, it so happei^ed that every one was out but Cecil and 
 Alice ; and Alice, who had been listening to the noises at the 
 stockyard a long while, suddenly proposed to go there. 
 
 19 
 
274 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 " I have never been," she said ; "I should so like to go ! I 
 know I am not allowed, but you need not betray me, and I am 
 sure the others won't. I should so like to see what they are 
 about ! " 
 
 " I assure you" Miss Brentwood, that it is not a fit place for a 
 lady." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Cecil blushed scarlet. If women only knew what awkward 
 questions they ask sometimes I In this instance he made an ass 
 of himself, for he hesitated and stammered. 
 
 " Come along ! " said she ; " you are going to say that it is 
 dangerous — (nothing was further from his thoughts) ; I must learn 
 to face a little danger, you know. Come along." 
 
 "I am afraid," said Cecil, "that Jim will be very angry with 
 me ; " which was undoubtedly very likely. 
 • " Never mind Jim," she said ; " come along." 
 
 So they went, and in the rush and confusion of the beasts' feet 
 got to the yard unnoticed. Sam and Jim were inside, and Hal- 
 bert was perched upon the rails ; she came close behind him and 
 peeped through. 
 
 She was frightened. Close before her was Sam, hatless, in shirt 
 and breeches only, almost unrecognisable, grimed with sweat, dust, 
 and filth beyond description. He had been nearly homed that 
 morning, and his shirt was torn fi-om his armpit downwards, 
 showing rather more of a lean muscular flank than would have 
 been desirable in a drawing-room. He stood there with his legs 
 wide apart, and a stick about eight feet long and as thick as one's 
 wrist in his hand ; while before him, crowded into a comer of the 
 yard, were a mob of infuriated, temfied cattle. As she watched, 
 one tried to push past him and get out of the yard ; he stepped 
 aside and let it go. The next instant a lordly young bull ti'ied the 
 same game, but he was " wanted ; " so, just as he came nearly 
 abreast of Sam, he received a frightful blow on the nose from the 
 stick, which turned him. 
 
 But only for a moment. The maddened beast shaking his head 
 with a roar rushed upon Sam like a thunderbolt, driving him 
 towards the side of the yard. He stepped on one side rapidly, 
 and then tumbled himself bodily through the rails, and fell with 
 his fine brown curls in the dust, right at the feet of poor Alice, 
 who would have screamed, but could not find the voice. 
 
 Jim and Halbert roared with laughter, and Sara, picking himself 
 up, was beginning to join as loud as anybody, when he saw Alice, 
 looking very white and pale, and went towards her. 
 
 " I hope you haven't been frightened by that evil-disposed buU. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 275 
 
 Miss Brentwood," he said pleasantly ; " you must get used to that 
 sort of work." 
 
 " HaUo, sister! " shouted Jim; "what the deuce brings you 
 here ? I thought you were at home at your worsted work. You 
 should have seen what we were at, Cecil, before you brought her 
 up. Now, miss, just mount that rail alongside of Halbert, and 
 keep quiet." 
 
 " Oh, do let me go home, Jim dear ; I am so frightened I " 
 
 " Then you must learn not to be frightened," he said. " Jump 
 up now 1 " 
 
 But meanwhile the buU had the best of it, and had got out of 
 the yard. A long lithe lad, stationed outside on horseback, was 
 in full chase, and Jim, leaping on one of the horses tied to the 
 rails, started off to his assistance. The two chased the unhappy 
 buU as a pair of greyhounds chase a hare, with their whips 
 cracking as rapidly and as loudly as you would fire a revolver. 
 After an excursion of about a mile into the forest, the beast was 
 turned and brought towards the yard. Twice he turned and 
 charged the lad, with the same success. The cunning old stock- 
 horse wheeled round or sprang aside, and the buU went blundering 
 into empty space with two fourteen-foot stockwhips playing on his 
 unlucky hide like rain. At length he was brought in again, and 
 one by one those entitled to freedom were passed out by Sam, 
 and others reserved unto a day of wrath — all but one cow with 
 her calf. 
 
 All this time Alice had sat by Halbert. Cecil had given no 
 assistance, for Jim would have done anything rather than press a 
 guest into the service. Halbert asked her what she thought of 
 the sport. 
 
 " Oh, it is horrible," she said. " I should like to go home. I 
 hope it is all over." 
 
 "Nearly," said Halbert; "that cow and calf have got to 
 go out. Don't get frightened now ; watch your brother and 
 Buckley." 
 
 It was a sight worth watching ; Sam and Jim advanced towards 
 the maddened beasts to try and get the cow to bolt. The cattle 
 were huddled up at the other end of the yard, and having been so 
 long in hand, were getting dangerous. Once or twice young 
 beasts had tried to pass, but had been driven back by the young 
 men, with a courage and dexterity which the bohiest matador in 
 Spain could not have surpassed. Cecil Mayford saw, with his 
 well-accustomed eye, that matters were getting perilous, and placed 
 himself at the raUs, holding one ready to shp if the beasts should 
 break. In a moment how, or why none could tell, they made a, 
 
276 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 sudden rush : Jim was borne back, dealing blows about him like a 
 Paladin, and Sam was down, roUed over and over in the dust, just 
 at Alice's feet. 
 
 Half-a-dozen passed right over him as he lay. Jim had made 
 good his retreat from the yard, and Cecil had quietly done just 
 the right thing : put up the rail he held, and saved the day's 
 work. The cattle were stiU safe, but Sam lay there in the dust, 
 motionless. 
 
 Before any of them had appreciated what had happened, Alice 
 was down, and, seizing Sam by the shoulders, had dragged him to 
 the fence. Halbert, horrified to see her actually in the presence 
 of the cattle, leaped after her, put Sam through the rails, ajid lifted 
 her up to her old post on the top. In another instant the beasts 
 swept furiously round the yard, just over the place where they had 
 been standing. 
 
 They gathered round Sam, and for an instant thought he was 
 dead ; but just as Jim hurriedly knelt down, and raising his head 
 began to untie his handkerchief, Sam uprose, and, shaking himself 
 and dusting his clothes, said, — 
 
 "If it had been any other beast which knocked me down but 
 that poley heifer, I should have been hurt; " and then said that 
 " it was bathing-time, and they must look sharp to be in time for 
 dinner : " three undeniable facts, showing that, although he was a 
 little unsteady on his legs, his intellect had in nowise suffered. 
 
 And Halbert, glancing at Alice, saw something in her fece that 
 made him laugh ; and dressing for dinner in Jim's room, he said 
 to that young gentleman, — 
 
 " Unless there are family reasons against it, Jim, which of 
 course I can't speak about, you know, I should say you would 
 have Sam for your brother-in-law in a very short time." 
 
 " Do you really think so, now ? " said Jim ; " I rather fancied 
 she had taken up with Cecil. I like Sam's fist, mind you, better 
 than Cecil's whole body, though he is a good little fellow, too." 
 
 " She has been doing that, I think, rather to put Sam on his 
 mettle ; for I think he was talcing things too easy with her at first ; 
 but now, if Cecil has any false hopes, he may give them up ; the 
 sooner the better. No woman who was fancy free could stand 
 seeing that noble head of Sam's come rolling down in the dust at 
 her feet ; and what courage and skill he exhibited, too ! Talk of 
 bull-fights ! I have seen one. Bah I it is like this nail-brush to 
 a gold watch, to what I saw to-day. Sam, sir, has won a wife by 
 cattle-drafting." 
 
 " If that is the case," said Jim, pensively brushing his hair, " I 
 am very glad that Cecil's care for his fine clothes prevented his 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 277 
 
 coming into the yard ; for he is one of the bravest, coolest hands 
 among cattle, I know ; he beats me." 
 
 " Then he beats a precious good fellow, Jim. A man who could 
 make such play as you did to-day, with a stick, ought to have 
 nothing but a big three-foot of blue steel in his hand, and her 
 Majesty's commission to use it against her enemies." 
 
 " That will come," said Jim, " the day after Sam has got the 
 right to look after Alice ; not before ; the governor is too fond of 
 his logarithms." 
 
 When Sam came to dress for dinner he found that he was 
 bruised all over, and had to go to the Captain for " shin plaster," 
 as he called it. 
 
 Captain Brentwood had lately been trying homoeopathy, which 
 in his case, there being nothing the matter with him, was a decided 
 success. He doctored Sam with Arnica externally, and gave him 
 the five-hundredth of a grain of something to swallow ; but what 
 made Sam forget his bruises quicker than these dangerous and 
 violent remedies, was the delightful change in Alice's behaviour. 
 She was so agreeable that evening, that he was in the seventh 
 heaven ; the only drawback to his happiness being poor Cecil May- 
 ford's utter distraction and misery. Next morning, too, after a 
 swim in the river, he handled such a singularly good knife and 
 fork, that Halbert told Jim privately, that if he, Sam, continued 
 to sport such a confoundedly good appetite, he would have to be 
 carried half-a-mile on a heifer's horns, and left for dead, to keep 
 up the romantic effect of his tumble the day before. 
 
 They were sitting at breakfast, when the door opened, and there 
 appeared before the assembled company the lithe lad I spoke of 
 yesterday, who said, — 
 
 " Beg your pardon, sir ; child lost, sir.'' 
 
 They all started up. " Whose child ? " asked the Captain. 
 
 "James Grewer's chUd, sir, at the wattle hut." 
 
 " Oh 1 " said Alice, turning to Sam, "it is that pretty little boy 
 up the river that we were admiring so last week." 
 
 " When was he lost? " asked Major Buckley. 
 
 " Two days now, sir," said the lad. 
 
 "But the hut is on the plain side of the river," said the Major; 
 " he can't be lost on the plains." 
 
 " The river is very low, sir," said the lad ; " hardly ancle-deep 
 just there. He may have crossed." 
 
 " The black fellows may have foimd him," suggested Mrs. 
 Buckley. 
 
 " They would have been here before now to tell us, if they had, 
 I am afraid," said Captain Brentwood, "Let us hope they may 
 
278 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 have got him ; however, we had better start at once. Two of us 
 may search the river between this and the hut, and two may follow 
 it towards the Mayfords'. Sam, you have the best horse; go down 
 to the hut, and see if you can find any trace across the river, on 
 this side, and follow it up to the ranges. Take some one with 
 you, and, by-the-bye, take your dog Rover." 
 
 They were all quickly on the alert. Sam was going to ask Jim 
 to come with him ; but as he was putting the saddle on Widderin 
 he felt a hand on his arm, and, turning, saw Cecil Mayford. 
 " Sam Buckley," said Cecil, "let me ride with you; will you?" 
 "Who sooner, old friend?" answered Sam heartily: "let us 
 come together by all means, and if we are to go to the ranges, we 
 had better take a blanket a-piece, and a wedge of damper. So if 
 you will get them from the house, I wiU saddle your horse." 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 HOW THE CHILD WAS LOST, AND HOW HE GOT FOUND AGAIN WHAT 
 
 CECIL SAID TO SAM WHEN THEY FOUND HIM ^AND HOW IN CASTING 
 
 LOTS, ALTHOUGH CECIL WON THE LOT, HE LOST THE PRIZE. 
 
 Four or five miles up the river from Garoopna stood a solitary hut, 
 snug — sheltered by a lofty bare knoll, round which the great river 
 chafed among the boulders. Across the stream was the forest 
 sloping down in pleasant glades from the mountain ; and behind 
 the hut rose the plain four or five hundred feet over head, seem- 
 ing to be held aloft by the blue-stone columns which rose from 
 the river side. 
 
 In this cottage resided a shepherd, his wife, and one little boy, 
 their son, about eight years old. A strange, wild little bush child, 
 able to speak articulately, but utterly without knowledge or experi- 
 ence of human creatures, save of his father and mother ; unable to 
 read a line ; without religion of any sort or kind ; as entire a little 
 savage, in fact, as you could find in the worst den in your city, 
 morally speaking, and yet beautiful to look on ; as active as a roe, 
 and, with regard to natural objects, as fearless as a lion. 
 
 As yet unfit to begin labour. All the long summer he would 
 wander about the river bank, up and down the beautiful rock- 
 walled paradise whore he was confined, sometimes looking eagerly 
 across the water at the waving forest boughs, and fancying he 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 279 
 
 could see other children far up the vistas beckoning to him to 
 cross and play in that merry land of shifting lights and shadows. 
 
 It grew quite into a passion with the poor little man to get 
 across and play there ; and one day when his mother was shifting 
 the hurdles, and he was handing her the strips of green hide whicF 
 bound them together, he said to her, — 
 
 " Mother, what country is that across the river ? " 
 
 " The forest, child." 
 
 " There's plenty of quantongs over there, eh, mother, and rasp- 
 berries ? Why mayn't I get across and play there ? " 
 
 " The river is too deep, child, and the Bunyip lives in the 
 water under the stones." 
 
 " Who are the children that play across there ? " 
 
 " Black children, likely." 
 
 " No white children ? " 
 
 " Pixies ; don't go near 'em, child ; they'll lure you on. Lord 
 knows where. Don't get trying to cross the river, now, or you'll 
 be drowned." 
 
 But next day the passion was stronger on him than ever. Quite 
 early on the glorious cloudless midsummer day he was down by 
 the river side, sitting on a rock, with his shoes and stockings off, 
 paddling his feet in the clear tepid water, and watching the million 
 fish in the shallows — black fish and grayling — leaping and flashing 
 in the sun. 
 
 There is no pleasure that I have ever experienced like a child's 
 midsummer holiday. The time, I mean,, when two or three of us 
 used to go away up the brook, and take our dinners with us, and 
 come home at night tired, dirty, happy, scratched beyond recog- 
 nition, with a great nosegay, three little trout, and one shoe, the 
 other one having been used for a boat till it had gone down vrith 
 all hands out of soundings. How poor our Derby days, our 
 Greenwich dinners, our evening parties, where there are plenty of 
 nice girls, are after that 1 Depend on it, a man never experiences 
 such pleasure or grief after fourteen as he does before : unless in 
 some cases in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to 
 him. 
 
 But, meanwhile, there sat our child, barelegged, watching the 
 forbidden ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving 
 the trees, and making the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light 
 <ind shadow. He sat so stiU that a glorious violet and red king- 
 fisher perched quite close, and, dashing into the water, came forth 
 with a fish, and fled like a ray of light along the winding of the 
 river. A colony of little shell parrots, too, crowded on a bough, 
 and twittered and ran to and fro quite busily, as though they said 
 
280 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to him^ " We don't mind you, my dear ; you are quite one of 
 us." 
 
 Never was the river so low. He stepped in ; it scarcely reached 
 his ancle. Now surely he might get across. He stripped him- 
 self, and, carrying his clothes, waded through, the water never 
 reaching his middle all across the long, yellow, gravelly shallow. 
 And there he stood naked and free in the forhidden ground. 
 
 He quickly dressed himself, and began examining his new king- 
 dom, rich beyond his utmost hopes. Such quantongs, such rasp- 
 berries, surpassing imagination ; and when tired of them, such 
 fern boughs, six or eight feet long ! He would penetrate this 
 region, and see how far it extended. 
 
 What tales he would have for his father to-night. He would 
 bring him here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he 
 would build a new hut over here, and come and live in it ? 
 Perhaps the pretty young lady, with the feathers in her hat, lived 
 somewhere here, too ? 
 
 There ! There is one of those chUdren he has seen before 
 across the river. Ah ! ah I it is not a child at aU, but a pretty 
 grey beast, with big ears. A kangaroo, my lad ; he won't play 
 with you, but skips away slowly, and leaves you alone. 
 
 There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A 
 snake ! Now a sounding rush through the wood, and a passing 
 shadow. An eagle I He brushes so close to the child, that he 
 strikes at the bird with a stick, and then watches him as he shoots 
 up like a rocket, and, measuring the fields of air in ever-widen- 
 ing circles, hangs like a motionless speck upon the sky ; though, 
 measure his wings across, and you wUl find he is nearer fifteen 
 feet than fourteen. 
 
 Here is a prize, though ! A wee little native bear, barely 
 eight inches long, — a little grey beast, comical beyond expression, 
 with broad flapped ears, sits on a tree within reach. He makes 
 no resistance, but cuddles into the child's bosom, and eats a leaf 
 as they go along ; while his mother sits aloft, and grunts in- 
 dignant at the abstraction of her ofispring, but, on the whole, 
 takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on with her dinner of pepper- 
 mint leaves. 
 
 What a short day it has been I Here is the sun getting low, 
 and the magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before 
 roosting. 
 
 He would turn and go back to the river. Alas ! which way ? 
 
 He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he 
 thought, the way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, pre- 
 cipitous cliif, which, by some infernal magic, seemed to have got 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 281 
 
 between him and the river. Then he broke down, and that 
 strange madness came on him which comes even on strong men 
 when lost in the forest : a despair, a confusion of intellect, which 
 has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be with a 
 child ! 
 
 He was fully persuaded that the chff was between him and 
 home, and that he must cHmb it. Alas ! every step he took aloft 
 carried him farther from the river and the hope of safety ; and 
 when he came to the top, just at dark, he saw nothing but chfi 
 after cliff, range after range, all around him. He had been 
 wandering through steep gullies aU day unconsciously, and had 
 penetrated far into the mountains. Night was coming down, still 
 and crystal-clear, and the poor little lad was far away from help 
 or hope, going his last long journey aJone. 
 
 Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he 
 got through the night ; and when the solemn morning came up 
 again he was still tottering along the leading range, bewildered ; 
 crying, from time to time, "Mother, mother! " still nursing his 
 little bear, his only companion, to his bosom, and holding stiU in 
 his hand a few poor flowers he had gathered the day before. Up 
 and on all day, and at evening, passing out of the great zone of 
 timber, he came on the bald, thunder-smitten summit ridge, where 
 one ruined tree held up its skeleton arms against the sunset, and 
 the wind came keen and frosty. So, with failing, feeble legs, 
 upward stUl, towards the region of the granite and the snow ; 
 towards the eyrie of the kite and the eagle. 
 
 -,' -rfi ^ '^ ^ ^ 
 
 Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil 
 and Sam. Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam 
 asked him to go with Jim ; and, long before the others were 
 ready, our two had strapped their blankets to their saddles, and, 
 followed by Sam's dog Rover, now getting a little grey about the 
 nose, cantered off up the river. 
 
 Neither spoke at first. They knew what a solemn task they 
 had before them ; and, while acting as though everything depended 
 on speed, guessed well that their search was only for a little 
 corpse, which, if they had luck, they would find stiff and cold 
 under some tree or crag. 
 
 Cecil began : " Sam, depend on it that child has crossed the 
 river to this side. If he had been on the plains he would have 
 been seen from a distance in a few hours." 
 
 " I quite agree," said Sam. " Let us go down this side tiU we 
 are opposite the hut, and search for marks by the river side." 
 
 So they agreed ; and in half an hour were opposite the hut. 
 
282 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and, riding, across to it to ask a few questions, found the poor 
 mother sitting on the door-step, with her apron over her head, 
 roeking herself to and fro. 
 
 " We have come to help you, mistress," said Sam. " How do 
 you think he is gone ? " 
 
 She said, with frequent bursts of grief, that " some days before 
 he had mentioned having seen white children across the water, 
 who beckoned him to cross and play ; that she, knowing well that 
 they were fairies, or perhaps worse, had warned him solemnly not 
 to mind them ; but that she had very little doubt that they had 
 helped him over and carried him away to the forest ; and that her 
 husband would not believe in his having crossed the river." 
 
 " Why, it is not knee-deep across the shallow," said CecU. 
 
 " Let us cross again," said Sam : "he may be drowned, but 
 I don't think it." 
 
 In a quarter of an hour from starting they found, slightly up 
 the stream, one of the child's socks, which in his hurry to dress 
 he had forgotten. Here brave Kover took up the trail like a 
 bloodhound, and before evening stopped at the foot of a lofty cliff. 
 
 " Can he have gone up here ? " said Sam, as they were brought 
 up by the rock. 
 
 " Most likely," said Cecil. " Lost children always climb from 
 height to height. I have heard it often remarked by old bush 
 hands. Why they do so, God, who leads them, only knows ; but 
 the fact is beyond denial.* Ask Eover what he thinks ? " 
 
 The brave old dog was half-way up, looking back for them. It 
 took them nearly till dark to get their horses up ; and, as there 
 was no moon, and the way was getting perilous, they determined 
 to camp, and start again in the morning. 
 
 They spread their blankets and lay down side by side. Sam 
 had thought, from Cecil's proposing to come with him in pre- 
 ference to the others, that he would speak of a subject nearly 
 concerning them both, but CecU went off to sleep and made no 
 sign ; and Sam, ere he dozed, said to himself, " By Jove, if he 
 don't speak this journey, I will. It is unbearable, that we should 
 not come to some understanding. Poor Cecil ! " 
 
 At early dawn they caught up their horses, which had been 
 hobbled with the stirrup leathers, and started afresh. Both were 
 more silent than over, and the dog, with his nose to the ground, 
 
 * The Author of this book knew a child who, being lost by his father 
 out shooting on one of the flats bordering the Eastern Pyrenees, in Port 
 Phillip, on a Sunday afternoon, was found on the Wednesday following, 
 dead, at an elevation above the Avooa township of between two and three 
 thousand feet. 
 
GKOFFBY HAMLYN. 288 
 
 led them slowly along the rocky rib of the mountain, ever going 
 higher and higher. 
 
 "It is inconceivable," said Sam, "that -the poor child can 
 have come up here. There is Tuokerimbid close to our right, 
 five thousand feet above the river. Don't you think we must be 
 mistaken? " 
 
 " The dog disagrees with you," said Cecil. " He has some- 
 thing before him not very far off. Watch him." 
 
 The trees had become dwarfed and scattered ; they were getting 
 out of the region of trees ; the real forest zone was now below 
 them, and they saw they were emerging towards a bald elevated 
 down, and that a few hundred yards before them was a dead tree, 
 on the highest branch of which sat an eagle. 
 
 " The dog has stopped," said Cecil ; " the end is near." 
 
 " See," said Sam, " there is a handkerchief under the tree." 
 
 " That is the boy himself," said CecU. 
 
 They were up to him and off in a moment. There he lay, dead 
 and stiff, one hand still grasping the flowers he had gathered on 
 his last happy play-day, and the other laid as a pillow, between 
 the soft cold cheek and the rough cold stone. His midsummer 
 holiday was over, his long journey was ended. He had found out 
 at last what lay beyond the shining river he had watched so long. 
 
 Both the young men knelt beside him for a moment in silence. 
 They had found only what they had expected to find, and yet, now 
 that they had found it, they were far more touched and softened 
 than they could have thought possible. They stayed in silence a 
 few moments, and then Cecil, lifting up his head, said suddenly, — 
 
 " Sam Buckley I there can be no debate between us two, with 
 this lying here between us. Let us speak now." 
 
 " There has never been any debate, Cecil," said he, " and there 
 never would be, though this little corpse was buried fathoms deep. 
 It takes two to make a quarrel, Cecil, and I will not be one." 
 
 " Sam," said Cecil, "I love Alice Brentwood better than aU 
 the world besides." 
 
 "I know it." 
 
 " And you love her too, as well, were it possible, as I do." 
 
 " I know that too." 
 
 "Why," resumed Cecil hurriedly, " has this come to pass? 
 Why has it been my unlucky destiny, that the man I love and 
 honour above all others should become my rival ? Are there no 
 other women in the world ? TeU me, Sam, why is it forced on 
 me to choose between my best friend and the woman I love dearer 
 than life ? Why has this terrible emergency come between us ? " 
 
 "I vriU teU you why," said Sam, speaking very quietly, as 
 
84 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 bough fearing to awaken the dead : "to teaeh us to behave like 
 len of honour and gentlemen, though our hearts break. That is 
 'hy, Cecil." 
 
 " What shall we do ?" said CecU. 
 
 " Easily answered," said Sam. " Let her decide for herself. 
 t may be, mind you, that she will have neither of us. There has 
 een one living in the house with her lately, far superior in every 
 oint to you or I. How if she thought fit to prefer him ? " 
 
 " Halbert ! " 
 
 " Yes, Halbert ! What more likely ? Let you and I find out 
 he truth, CecU, like men, and abide by it. Let each one ask her 
 1 his turn what chance he has." 
 
 "Who first?" 
 
 " See here," said Sam ; " draw one of these pieces of grass out 
 f my hand. If you draw the longest piece ask her at once. 
 ViU you abide by this ? " 
 
 He said " Yes," and drew — ^the longest piece. 
 
 " That is well," said Sam. " And now no more of this at 
 resent. I wiQ sling this poor little fellow in my blanket and 
 arry him home to his mother. See, Cecil, what is Kover at? " 
 
 Eover was on his hind legs against the tree, smelling at some- 
 hing. When they came to look, there was a wee little grey bear 
 erched in the hoUow of the tree. 
 
 " What a very strange place for a young bear ! " said CecU. 
 
 " Depend on it," said Sam, " that the chUd had caught it from 
 ;s dam, and brought it up here. Take it home with you, CecU, 
 nd give it to Alice." 
 
 Cecil took the little thing home, and in time it grew to be 
 etween three and four feet high, a grandfather of bears. The 
 lagpie protested against his introduction to the establishment, 
 nd used to pluck biUfuUs of hair from his stomach under pretence 
 f lining a nest, which was never made. But in spite of this, the 
 ood gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie — long enough 
 ) be caressed by the waxen fingers of little chUdren, who would 
 fterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had 
 een carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who 
 )st his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the 
 ear that the bushrangers came down. 
 
 Sam carried the little corpse back in his blanket, and that 
 vening helped the father to bury it by the river side. Under 
 ome fern trees they buried him, on a kJQoU which looked across 
 lie river, into the treacherous beautiful forest which had Im-ed 
 im to his destruction. 
 
 Alice was very sad for a day or two, and thought and talked 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 285 
 
 much about this sad accident, but soon she recovered her spirits 
 again. And it fell out that a bare week after this, the party 
 being all out in one direction or another, that Cecil saw Alice 
 alone in the garden, tending her flowers, and knew that the time 
 was come for him to keep his bargain with Sam and speak to her. 
 He felt like a man who was being led to execution ; hut screwed 
 his courage to the highest point, and went down to where she was 
 tying up a rose-tree. 
 
 "Miss Brentwood," he said, "I am come to petition for a 
 flower." 
 
 " You shaU have a dozen, if you will," she answered. " Help 
 yourself ; wiU you have a peony or a sun-flower ? If you have 
 not made up your mind, let me recommend a good large yellow 
 sun-flower." 
 
 Here was a pretty beginning 1 
 
 "Miss Brentwood, don't laugh at me, but listen to me a 
 moment. I love you above all earthly things besides. I worship 
 the ground you walk on. I loved you from the first moment 
 I saw you. I shall love you as well, ay, better, if that could be, 
 on the day my heart is stiU, and my hand is cold for ever : can 
 you tell me to hope ? Don't drive me, by one hasty half-con- 
 sidered word, to despair and misei^ for the rest of my life. Say 
 only one syllable of encouragement, and I will bide your time for 
 years and years." 
 
 Alice was shocked and stunned. She saw he was in earnest 
 by his looks, and by his hurried, confused way of speaking. She 
 feared she might have been to blame, and have encouraged him, 
 in her thoughtlessness, more than she ought. " I will make him 
 angry with me," she said to herself. " I wiU treat him to ridi- 
 cule. It is the only chance, poor fellow !•" 
 
 "Mr. Mayford," she said, " if I thought you were in jest, I 
 should feel it necessary to tell my father and brother that you 
 had been impertinent. I can only believe that you are in earnest, 
 and I deeply regret that your personal vanity should have urged 
 you to take such an unwarrantable liberty with a girl you have 
 not yet known for ten days." 
 
 He turned and left her without a word, and she remained 
 standing where she was, half inclined to cry, and wondering if she 
 had acted right on the spur of the moment — sometimes half 
 inclined to believe that she had been unladylike and rude. When 
 a thing of this kind takes place, both parties generally put them- 
 selves in immediate correspondence with a confidant. Miss Smith 
 totters into the apartments of her dearest friend, and falls weeping 
 on the sofa, while Jones rushes madly into Brown's rooms in the 
 
286 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Temple, and shying his best hat into the coalscuttle, announces 
 that there is nothing now left for him but to drown the past in 
 iebauchery. Whereupon Brown, if he is a good fellow, as all the 
 Browns are, produces the whisky and hears all about it. 
 
 So in the present instance two people were informed of what 
 dad taken place before they went to bed that night ; and those 
 two were Jim and Doctor Mulhaus. Alice had stood where Cecil 
 fiad left her, thinking, could she confide it to Mrs. Buckley, and 
 isk for advice ? But Mrs. Buckley had been a little cross to her 
 that week for some reason, and so she was afraid : and, not 
 blowing anybody else well enough, began to cry. 
 
 There was a noise of horses' feet just beyond the fence, and a 
 roice calling to- her to come. It was Jim, and, drying her eyes, 
 ahe went out, and he, dismounting, put his arm roimd her waist 
 anH kissed her. 
 
 "Why, my beauty," he said, "who has been making you 
 ery?" 
 
 She put her head on his shoulder and began sobbing louder 
 than ever. " Cecil Mayford," she said in a whisper. 
 
 " Well, and what the d 1 has he been at ? " said Jim, in a 
 
 rather startling tone. 
 
 "Wants to marry me," she answered, in a whisper, and hid 
 ber face in his coat. 
 
 " The deuce doubt he does," said Jim, " who does not? What 
 aid you tell him ? " 
 
 " I told him that I wondered at his audacity." 
 
 " Sent him off with a flea in his ear, in fact," said Jim. 
 " Well, quite right. I suppose you would do the same for any 
 man ? " 
 
 " Certainly I should," she said, looking up. 
 
 " If Doctor Mulhaus, now.^eh ? " 
 
 "I'd box his ears, Jim," she said, laughing: " I would, indeed.'' 
 
 " Or Sam Buckley ; would you box his ears, if he were to — 
 — you know? " 
 
 " Yes," she said. But there spread over her face a sudden 
 crimson blush like the rosy arch which heralds the tropical sun,* 
 which made Jim laugh aloud. 
 
 " If you dared to say a word, Jim," she said, " I would never, 
 never " 
 
 Poor Cecil had taken his horse and had meant to ride home, 
 but came back again at night, "just," he thought, " to have one 
 
 * A horrible plagiarism, Mr. Hamlyn — 
 
 " Your ripe lipa moved not, but your oheek 
 Mushed like the coming of the day." — H. K. 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 287 
 
 more look at her, before lie entered on some line of life which 
 would take him far away from Garoopna and its temptations." 
 
 The Doctor (who has heen rather thrust aside lately in the 
 midst of all this love-making and so on) saw that something had 
 gone very wrong with Cecil, who was a great friend of his, and, 
 as he could never bear to see a man in distress without helping 
 him, he encouraged Cecil to stroll down the garden with him, and 
 then kindly and gently asked him what was wrong. 
 
 Cecil told him all, from beginning to end, and added that life 
 was over for him, as far as all pleasure and excitement went; and, 
 in short, said what we have all said, or had said to us in our 
 time, after a great disappointment in love ; which the Doctor took 
 for exactly what it was worth, although poor little Cecil's distress 
 was very keen ; and, remembering some old bygone day when he 
 had suffered so himself, he cast about to find some comfort for him. 
 
 " You win get over this, my boy," said he, " if you would only 
 believe it." 
 
 " Never, never ! " said Cecil. 
 
 " Let me tell you a story as we walk up and down. If it 
 does not comfort you, it wiU amuse you. How sweet the orange 
 bloom smells ! Listen : — Had not the war broke out so suddenly, 
 I should have been married, two months to a day, before the 
 battle of Saarbruck. Catherine was a distant cousin, beautiful 
 and talented, about ten years my junior. Before Heaven, sir, on 
 the word of a gentleman, I never persecuted her with my ad- 
 dresses, and if either of them say I did, teU them from me, sir, 
 that they lie, and I will prove it on their bodies. Bah ! I was 
 forgetting. I, as head of the family, was her guardian, and, 
 although my younger brother was nearer her age, I com-ted 
 her, in all honour and humility proposed to her, and was 
 accepted with even more willingness than most women con- 
 descend to show on such occasions, and received the hearty 
 congratulations of my brother. Few women were ever loved 
 better than I loved Catherine. Conceive, Cecil, that I loved her 
 aS well as you love Miss Brentwood, and listen to what follows. 
 
 " The war-cloud hurst so suddenly that, leaving my bride that 
 was to be, to the care of my brother, and putting him in charge 
 over my property, I hurried off to join the Landsturm, two regi- 
 ments of which I had put into a state of efficiency by my sole 
 exertions. 
 
 "You know partly what followed, — in one day an army of 
 150,000 men destroyed, the King in flight to Konigsberg, and 
 Prussia a province of France. 
 
 " I fled, wounded badly, desperate and penniless, from that 
 
288 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 field. I leaiait from the peasants, that what I had thought to he 
 merely a serious defeat was an irretrievable disaster ; and, in 
 spite of wounds, hunger, and want of clothes, I held on my way 
 towards home. 
 
 " The enemy were in possession of the country, so I had to travel 
 by night alone, and beg from such poor cottages as I dared to 
 approach. Sometimes I got a night's rest, but generally lay 
 abroad in the fields. But at length, after every sort of danger 
 and hardship, I stood above the broad, sweeping Maine, and saw 
 the towers of my own beloved castle across the river, perched as 
 of old above the vineyards, looking protectingly down upon the 
 little to^vn which was clustered on the river bank below, and 
 which owned me for its master. 
 
 " I crossed at dusk. I had to act with great caution, for I did 
 not know whether the French were there or no. I did not make 
 myself known to the peasant who ferried me over, further than as 
 one from the war, which my appearance was sufficient to prove. I 
 landed just below a long high wall which separated the town fi-om 
 the river, and, ere I had time to decide what I should do first, a 
 figure coming out of an archway caught me by the hand, and I 
 recognised my own major-domo, my foster-brother. 
 
 " ' I knew you would come back to me,' he said, ' if it was only 
 as a pale ghost : though I never believed you dead, and have 
 watched here for you night and day to stop you.' 
 
 " 'Are the French in my castle, then ? ' 
 
 " ' There are worse than the French there,' he said ; 'worse than 
 the devil Bonaparte himgelf. Treason, treachery, adultery ! ' 
 
 " ' Who has proved false? ' I cried. 
 
 " ' Your brother-! False to his king, to his word, to yourself. 
 He was in correspondence with the French for six months past, 
 and, now that he believes you dead, he is living in sin with her 
 who was to have been your wife.' 
 
 " I did not cry out or faint, or anything of that sort. I only 
 said, ' I am going to the castle, Fritz,' and he came with me. 
 My brother had turned him out of the house when he usurped my 
 property, but by a stiU faithful domestic we were admitted, and I, 
 knowing every secret passage in my house, came shoeless from 
 behind some arras, and stood before them as they sat at supper. 
 I was a ghastly sight. I had not shaved for a fortnight, and my 
 uniform hung in tatters from my body ; round my head was the 
 same bloody white handkerchief with which I had bound up my 
 head at Jena. I was deadly pale from hunger, too ; and from 
 my entering so silently they believed they had seen a ghost. My 
 brother rose, and stood pab and horrified, and Catherine fell 
 
GEOFPET HAMLTN. 289 
 
 fainting on the floor. This was all my revenge, and ere my 
 brother could speak, I was gone — away to England, where I had 
 money in the funds, accompanied by my faithful Fritz, whom 
 Mary Hawker's father buried in Drumston churchyard. 
 
 " So in one day I lost a brother, a mistress, a castle, a king, 
 and a fatherland. I was a ruined, desperate man. And yet I 
 lived to see old Blucher with his dii-ty boots on the silken sofas at 
 the Tuileries, and to become as stout and merry a middle-aged 
 man as any Prussian subject in her young Majesty's dominions." 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXI. 
 
 HOW TOM TKOUBEIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME. 
 
 HuMAK affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes 
 and complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules 
 for individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a 
 failure. Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to be a 
 failure, only used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of 
 their own. Thus, if you have a chance of selling your station at 
 fifteen shillings, and buying in, close to a new gold-field on the 
 same terms, where fat sheep are going to the butcher at from 
 eighteen shillings to a pound, butter, eggs, and garden produce at 
 famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and renders you uncertain 
 and miserable by saying that " rolling stone "fathers no moss ; " 
 as if you wanted moss ! Again, having worked harder than the 
 Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie iu bed tiU 
 eleven o'clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half- 
 past seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep 
 out an hour or so of the heat, and informs you that the " early 
 bird gets the worms." I had a partner, who bought in after Jim 
 Stockbridge was killed, who was always flying this early bird, 
 when he couldn't sleep for musquitoes. I have got rid of him 
 now ; but for the two years he was with me, the dearest wish of 
 my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua could have had a quiet 
 two minutes with that early bird before any" one was up to separate 
 them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as " the late 
 early bird" after that. In short, I consider proverbs as the 
 refuge of weak minds. 
 
 The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be ques- 
 tioned ; their application may. I will proceed to give it. I have 
 
 20 
 
290 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 written down the above tirade, nearly, as far as I can guess, a 
 printed pageful (may be a little more, looking at it again), in 
 order to call down the wrath of all wise men, if any such have 
 done me the honour of getting so far in these volumes, on the 
 most trashy and false proverb of the whole : " Coming events cast 
 their shadows before." 
 
 Now, they don't, you know. They never did, and never wUl. 
 I myself used to be a strong believer in pre-(what's the word? — 
 prevarications, predestinations) — ^no — ^presentiments ; until I found 
 by experience that, although I was always having presentiments, 
 nothing ever came of them. Sometimes somebody would walk 
 over my grave, and give me a creeping in the back, which, as far 
 as I can find out, proceeded from not having my braces properly 
 buttoned behind. Sometimes I have heard the death-watch, pro- 
 duced by a small spider (may the deuce confound him !), not to 
 mention many other presentiments and depressions of spirits, which 
 I am now firmly persuaded proceed from indigestion. I am far 
 from |denying the possibility of a coincidence in point of time 
 between a fit of indigestion and a domestic misfortune. I am far 
 from denying the possibility of more remarkable coincidences than 
 that. I have read in books, novels by the very best French 
 authors, how a man, not heard of for twenty years, having, in 
 point of fact, been absent during that time in the interior of 
 Africa, may appear at Paris at a given moment, only in time to 
 save a young lady from dishonour, and rescue a property of ten 
 million francs. But these great writers of fiction don't give us 
 any warning whatever. The door is thrown heavily open, and he 
 stalks up to the table where the wiU is lying, quite unexpectedly ; 
 stalks up always, or else strides. (How would it be, my dear 
 Monsieur Dumas, if, in your next novel, he were to walk in, or 
 run in, or hop in, or, say, come in on aU-fours like a dog ? — any- 
 thing for a change, you know.) And these masters of fiction are 
 right—" Coming events do not cast their shadows before." 
 
 If they did, how could it happen that Mary Hawker sat there in 
 her verandah at Toonarbin singing so pleasantly over her work ? 
 And why didder handsome, kindly face light up with such a radiant 
 smile when she saw her son Charles come riding along undesr the 
 shadow of the great trees only two days after Cecil Mayford had 
 proposed to Alice, and'had been refused ? 
 
 He came out of the forest shadow with the westering sunlight 
 upon his face, riding slowly. She, as she looked, was proud to 
 see what a fine seat he had on his horse, and how healthy and 
 handsome he looked. 
 
 He rode round to the back of the house, and she went through 
 
GKOFPJRY HAMLYN. 291 
 
 to meet him. There was a square court behind, round which the 
 house, huts, and store formed a quadrangle, neat and bright, with 
 white quartz gravel. By the bye, there was a prospecting party 
 who sank two or three shafts in the flat before the house last year ; 
 and I saw about eighteen pennyweights of gold which they took 
 out. But it did not pay, and is abandoned. (This in passing, 
 a'propos of the quartz.) 
 
 "Is Tom Troubridge come home, mother?" said he, as he 
 leaned out of the saddle to kiss her. 
 
 " Not yet, my boy," she said. " I am all alone. I should 
 have had a dull week, but I knew you were enjoying yourself with 
 your old friend at Garoopna. A great party there, I believe ? " 
 
 " I am glad to get home, mother," he said. " We were jolly at 
 first, but latterly Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford have been 
 looking at one another like cat and dog. Stay, though ; let me 
 be jiist ; the fierce looks were all on Cecil Mayford's side." 
 
 " What was the matter ? " 
 
 " Alice Brentwood was the matter, I rather suspect," he said, 
 getting off his horse. " Hold him for me, mother, while I take 
 the saddle off." 
 
 She did as requested. " And so they two are at loggerheads, 
 eh, about Miss Brentwood ? Of course. And what sort of a girl 
 is she ? " 
 
 "Oh, very pretty ; deuced pretty, in fact. But there is one 
 there takes my fancy better." 
 
 " Who is she ? " 
 
 " Ellen Mayford ; the sweetest little mouse — Dash it all ; look 
 at this horse's back. That comes of that infernal flash military 
 groom of Jim's putting on the saddle without rubbing his back 
 down. Where is the bluestone ? " 
 
 She went in and got it for him as naturally as if it was her 
 place to obey, and his to command. She always waited on him, 
 as a matter of course, save when Tom Troubridge was with them, 
 who was apt to rap out something awkward about Charles being a 
 lazy young hound, and aboiit his waiting on himself, whenever he 
 saw Mary yielding to that sort of thing. ■» 
 
 " I wonder when Tom will be back ? " resumed Charles. 
 
 " I have been expecting him this last week ; he may come any 
 night. I hope he wiU not meet any of those horrid bush- 
 rangers." 
 
 " Hope not either," said Charles ; " they would have to go a 
 hundred or two of miles out of their way to make it likely. 
 Driving rams is slow work ; they may not be here for a week." 
 
 " A nice price he has paid ! " 
 
292 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "It will pay in the end, in the quality of the wool," said 
 Charles. 
 
 They sat in silence. A little after, Charles had turned his horse 
 out, when at once, without preparation, he said to her, — 
 
 " Mother, how long is it since my father died ? " 
 
 She was very much startled. He had scarcely ever alluded to 
 his father hefore ; but she made shift to answer him quietly. 
 
 "How old are you?" 
 
 "Eighteen ! " he said. 
 
 " Then he has been dead eighteen years. He died just as you 
 were born. Never mention him, lad. He was a bad man, and 
 by God's mercy you are delivered from him." 
 
 She rose and went into the house quite cheerfully. Why 
 should she not? Why should not "a handsome, still young, 
 wealthy widow be cheerful ? For she was a widow. For years 
 after settling at Toonarbin, she had contrived, once in two or 
 three years, to hear some news of her husband. After about ten 
 years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the 
 chain-gang for life : and lastly, that he was dead. About his 
 being sentenced for life there was no doubt, for she had a piece of 
 newspaper which told of his crime, — and a fiightfiil piece of 
 villainy it was, — and after that, the report of his death was so 
 probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth. Men did 
 not live long in the chaiu-gang, in Van Diemen's Land, in those 
 days, brother. Men would knock out one another's brains in 
 order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the 
 judge to hang them out of the way ! It was the most terrible 
 punishment known, for it was hopeless. Penal servitude for life, 
 as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in 
 old times. With a little trouble I could teU you the weight of iron 
 carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would 
 strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two 
 together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape ; 
 there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct ; there was 
 hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement 
 climate, in all weathers : what wonder if men died off like rotten 
 sheep ? And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest 
 accident, — such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a 
 prisoner, produced a sudden rising, unpreconcerted, objectless, 
 the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many 
 lunatic women, and iive or six stations lighting up the hill-side, 
 night after night, while the whole available force of the colony 
 was unable to stop the ruin for months ? 
 
 But to the point. Mary was a widow. When she heard of her 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 293 
 
 husband's death, she had said to herself, " Thank God ! " But 
 when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she 
 seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up 
 with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker — another 
 husband bearing the same name ; but surely that handsome, 
 curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in 
 the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this 
 desperate convict ? She was glad the convict was dead and out 
 of the way ; there was no doubt of that ; but she could still find a 
 corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover, — her hand- 
 some old lover, — ah me ! 
 
 But that even was passed now, and George Hawker was as one 
 who had never lived. Now on this evening we speak of, his 
 memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of 
 the father, but it was gone again directly. She called her 
 servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles 
 looked suddenly in, and said, — " Here they are ! " 
 
 There they were, sure enough, putting the rams into the sheep- 
 yard. Tom Troubridge, as upright, brave-looking a man as ever, 
 and, thanks to bush-work, none the fatter. William Lee, one of 
 our oldest acquaintances, was getting a little grizzled, but other- 
 wise looked as broad and as strong as ever. 
 
 They rode into the yard, and Lee took the horses. 
 
 " Well, cousin," said Tom ; " I am glad to see you again." 
 
 " You are welcome home, Tom ; you have made good speed." 
 
 Tom and Charles went into the house, and Mary was about 
 following them, when Lee said, in so low a tone that it did not 
 reach the others, — " Mrs. Hawker ! " 
 
 She turned round and looked at him ; she had welcomed him 
 kindly when he came into the yard with Tom, and yet he stood 
 still on horseback, holding Tom's horse by the bridle. A stem, 
 square -looking figure he was ; and when she looked at his fac^ 
 she was much troubled, at — she knew not what. 
 
 " Mrs. Hawker," he said, " can you give me the favour of ten 
 minutes' conversation alone, this evening? " 
 
 " Surely, WiUiam, now I " 
 
 " Not now, — my story is pretty long, and, what is more, ma'am, 
 somebody may be listening, and what I have got to tell you must 
 be told in no ear but your own." 
 
 " You frighten me, Lee I You frighten me to death." 
 
 " Don't get irightened, Mrs. Hawker. Remember if anything 
 comes about, that you have good friends about you ; and, that I, 
 William Lee, am not the worst of them." 
 
 Lee went off with the horses, and Mary returned to the house. 
 
294 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 What mystery had this man to tell her, " that no one might hear 
 but she " ? — very strange and alarming ! Was he drunk? — no, 
 he was evidently quite sober ; as shp looked out once more, she 
 could see him at the stable, cool and self-possessed, ordering the 
 lads about ; something very strange and terrifying to one who 
 had such a dark blot in her life. 
 
 But she went in, and as she came near the parlour, she heard 
 Charles and Tom roaring with laughter. As she opened the door 
 she heardTom saying : " And, by Jove, I sat there like a great 
 snipe, face to face with him, as cool and unconcerned as you like. 
 I took him for a flash overseer, sporting his salary, and I was as 
 thick as you like with him. And, ' Matey,' says I (you see I was 
 familiar, he seemed such a joUy sort of bird), ' Matey, what station 
 are you on?' ' Maraganoa,' says lie. 'So,' says I, 'you're 
 rather young there, ain't you ? I was by there a fortnight ago.' 
 He saw he'd made a wrong move, and made it worse. ' I mean,' 
 says he, ' Maraganoa on the Clarence side.' ' Ah ! ' says I, ' in 
 the Cedar country?' 'Precisely,' says he. And there we sat 
 drinking together, and I had no more notion of its being him than 
 you would have had." 
 
 She sat stUl listening to him, caring nothing. " Lee's words 
 outside had, she knew not why, struck a chUl into her heart, and 
 as she listened to Tom's story, although she could make nothing 
 of it, she felt as though getting colder and colder. She shivered, 
 although the night was hot. Through the open window she could 
 hear all those thousand commingled indistinguishable sounds 
 that make the night-life of the bush, with painful distinctness. 
 She arose and went to the window. 
 
 The night was dark and profoundly stiU. The stars were over- 
 head, though faintly seen through a haze ; and beyond the narrow 
 enclosures in front of the house, the great forest arose like a black 
 wall. Tom and Charles went on talking inside, and yet, though 
 their voices wer^ loud, she was hardly conscious of hearing them, 
 but found herself watching the high dark wood and listening 
 to the sound of the frogs in the creek, and the rustle of a 
 miUion crawling things, heard only in the deep stiUness of 
 night. 
 
 Deep in the forest somewhere, a bough cracked, and fell 
 crashing, then all was silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial 
 wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering 
 leaves to life for a moment, passed away ; then again a silence, 
 deeper than ever, so that she could hear the cattle and horses 
 feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile off; then a low 
 wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 295 
 
 in torment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to 
 settle on the sheep -wash dam. 
 
 The stillness was awful ; it boded a storm, for behind the forest 
 blazed up a sheet of lightning, showing the shape of each fantastic 
 elevated bough. Then she turned round to the light, and said, — 
 
 " My dear partner, I had a headache, and went to the window. 
 What was the story you were telling Charles just now? Who 
 was the man you met in the public-house, who seems to have 
 frightened you so ? " 
 
 " No less a man than Captain Touan, my dear cousin I " said 
 Tom, leaning back with the air of a man who has made a point, 
 and would be glad to hear " what you have to say to that, sir." 
 
 "Touan?" repeated Mary. "Why, that's the gi-eat bush- 
 ranger, that is out to the north ; is it not ? " 
 
 " The same man, cousin ! And there I sat hob and nob with 
 him for half an hour in the ' Lake George ' public-house. If Des- 
 borough had come in, he'd have hung me for being found in bad 
 company. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 "My dear partner," she said, "what a terrible escape! 
 Suppose he had risen on you ? " 
 
 " Why I'd have broken his back, cousin," said Tom, " unless 
 my right hand had forgot her cunning. He is a fine man of his 
 weight : but. Lord, in a struggle for life and death, I could break 
 his neck, and have one more claim on heaven for doing so ; for he 
 is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God's earth, and 
 that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil's raids, 
 tore a baby from its mother's breast by the leg, dashed its brains 
 out against a tree, and then — I daren't tell a woman what 
 happened."* 
 
 " Tom ! Tom ! " said Mary, " how can you talk of such 
 things ? " 
 
 " To show you what we have to expect if he comes this way, 
 cousin ; that is all." 
 
 " And is there any possibility of such a thing ? " asked Mary. 
 
 "Why not? Why should he not pay us the compliment of 
 looking round this way ? " 
 
 " Why do they call him Touan, Tom ? " asked Charles. 
 
 " Can't you see ? " said Tom ; "the Touan, the little grey 
 flying squirrel, only begins to fly about at night, and slides down 
 
 * Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually 
 did commit this frightful atrocity ; but I never heard that the former 
 actually combined the two crimes in this way. We must remember that 
 barely four years from this present time (1858) a crime, exceeding this in 
 atrocity, was committed in Van Diemen's Land, in open day. I refer to 
 the murder of a lad returning from school. 
 
296 THE BECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 from his bough sudden and sharp. This fellow has made some of 
 his most terrible raids at night, and so he got the name of 
 Touan." 
 
 " God deliver us from such monsters ! " said Mary, and left 
 the room. 
 
 She went into the kitchen. Lee sat there smoking. When 
 she came in he rose, and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, 
 touched his forehead and stood looking at her. 
 
 " Now then, old friend," she said, " come here." 
 
 He followed her out. She led the way swiftly, through the 
 silent night, across the yard, over a small paddock, up to the 
 sheep-yard beside the woolshed. There she turned shortly round, 
 and, leaning on the fence, said abruptly — 
 
 " No one can hear us here, William Lee. Now, what have you 
 to say ? " 
 
 He seemed to hesitate a moment, and then began : "Mrs. Haw- 
 ker, have I been a good servant to you ? " 
 
 " Honest, faithful, kindly, active ; who could have been a better 
 servant than you, William Lee ! A friend, and not a servant ; 
 God is my witness ; now then ? " 
 
 "I am glad to hear you say so," he answered. " I did yon 
 a terrible injury once ; I have often been sorry for it since I knew 
 you, but it cannot he mended now." 
 
 " Since you knew me ? " she said. " Why, you have known 
 me ever since I have been in the country, and you have never 
 injured me since then, surely." 
 
 " Ay, but at home," he said. " In England. In Devon- 
 shire." 
 
 " My God ! " 
 
 " I was your husband's companion in all his earlier villainies. 
 I suggested them to him, and egged him on. And now, mind 
 you, after twenty years, my punishment is coming." 
 
 She could only say still, " My God ! " while her throat was as 
 dry as a kiln. 
 
 " Listen to what I have got to teU you now. Hear it all in 
 order, and try to bear up, and use your common sense and 
 courage. As I said before, you have good friends around you, 
 and you at least are innocent." 
 
 " Guilty ! guilty I " she cried. " Guilty of my father's death ! 
 Eead me this horrible riddle, Lee." 
 
 "Wait and listen," said Lee, imable to forego, even in her 
 terror, the great pleasure that aU his class have of spinning a yam, 
 and using as many words as possible. " See here. We came by 
 Lake George, you know, and heard everywhere accounts of a 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 297 
 
 great gang of bushrangers being out. So we didn't feel exactly 
 comfortable, you see. We came by a bush public-house, and Mr. 
 Troubridge stops, and says he, ' Well, lad, suppose we yard these 
 rams an hour, and take drink in the parlour?' 'All right,' 
 I says, with a wink, ' but the tap for me, if you please. That's 
 my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the where- 
 abouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're 
 one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'AH right,' says he. So in 
 I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, 
 drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and 
 one of Old Tom ; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy ; when 
 in comes an old chap as I knew for a lag in a minute. Well, he 
 and I cottoned together, and found out that we had been prisoners 
 together five-and-twenty years agone. And so I shouted for him, 
 and he for me, and at last I says, ' Butty,' says I, ' who are these 
 chaps roimd here on the lay ' (meaning, Who are the bush- 
 rangers) ? And he says, ' Young 'uns — ^no one as we know.' 
 And I says, ' Not likely, matey ; I've been on the square this 
 twenty year.' ' Same here,' says the old chap ; ' give us your 
 flipper. And now,' says he, ' what sort of a cove is your boss ' 
 (meaning Mr. Troubridge) ? ' One of the real right sort,' says I. 
 ' Then see here,' says he, ' I'U tell you something : the head man 
 of that there gang is at this minute a-sitting yarning with your 
 boss in the parlour.' ' The devil ! ' says I. ' Is so,' says he, 
 ' and no flies.' So I sings out, ' Mr. Troubridge, those sheep wiU 
 be out ; ' and out he came running, and I whispers to him, ' Mind 
 the man you're sitting with, and leave me to pay the score.' So 
 he goes back, and presenUy he sings out, ' WiU, have you got 
 any money ? ' And I says, ' Yes, thirty shillings.' ' Then,' says 
 he, ' pay for this, and come along.' And thinks I, I'U go in and 
 have a look at this great new captain of bushrangers ; so I goes to 
 the parlour door, and now who do you think I saw ? " 
 
 " I know," she said. " It was that horrible viUain they caU 
 Touan." 
 
 " The same man," he answered. " Do you know who he is ? " 
 
 She found somehow breath to say, " How can I ? How is it 
 possible? " 
 
 " I wiU teU you," said Lee. " There, sitting in front of Mr. 
 Troubridge, hardly altered in aU these long years, sat George 
 Hawker, formerly of Drumston, — your husband ! " 
 
 She gave a low cry, and beat the hard rail with her head tiU it 
 bled. Then, turning fiercely round, she said, in a voice hoarse 
 and strangely altered, — 
 
 " Have you anything more to teU me, you croaking raven ? " 
 
198 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 He had something more to tell, but he dared not speak now. 
 5o he said, " Nothing at present, but if laying down my life " 
 
 She did not wait to hear him, but, with her hands clasped 
 ibove her head, she turned and walked swiftly towards the house. 
 5he could not cry, or sob, or rave ; she could only say, " Let it 
 all on me, God, on me I " over and over again. 
 
 Also, she was far too crushed and stunned to think precisely 
 vhat it was she dreaded so. It seemed afterwards, as Frank 
 Haberly told me, that she had an indefinable horror of Charles 
 ueeting his father, and of their coming to know one another. 
 5he balf feared that her husband would appear and carry away 
 ler son with him, and even if he did not, the lad was reckless 
 snough as it was, without being known and pointed at through the 
 sountry as the son of Hawker the bushranger. 
 
 These were after-thoughts, however ; at present she leaned 
 jiddily against the house-side, tryrug, in the wild hurrying night- 
 ■ack of her thoughts, to distinguish some tiny star of hope, or 
 !ven some glimmer of reason. Impossible ! Nothing but swift, 
 ionfused clouds everywhere, driving wildly on, — whither ? 
 
 But a desire came upon her to see her boy again, and compare 
 lis face to his father's. So she slid quietly into the room where 
 Com and Charles were still talking together of Tom's adventure, 
 md sat looking at the boy, pretending to work. As she came in, 
 le was laughing loudly at something. And his face was alive and 
 nerry. " He is not like what his father was at his age," she 
 said. 
 
 But they continued their conversation. " And now, what sort 
 )f man was he, Tom? " said Charles. "Was he like any one 
 fou ever saw ? " 
 
 " Why, no. Stay, let's see. Do you know, he was something 
 ike you in the face." 
 
 "Thank you!" said Charles, laughing. "Wait till I get 
 I chance of paying you a compliment, old feUow. A powerful 
 fellow— eh?" 
 
 " Why, yes, — a tough-looking subject," said Tom. 
 
 " I shouldn't have much chance with him, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No ; he'd be too powerful for you, Charley." 
 
 A change came over his face, a dark, fierce look. Mary could 
 see the likeness now plain enough, and even Tom looked at him 
 ibr an instant with a puzzled look. 
 
 "Nevertheless," continued Charles, "I would have a turn 
 ivith him if I met him. I'd try what six inches of cold steel 
 between -" 
 
 " Forbear, boy I Would you have the roof fall in and crush 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 299 
 
 jou dead ? " said Mary, in a voice that appalled both of them. 
 " Stop such foolish talk, and pray that we may be delivered from 
 the very sight of these men, and suffered to get away to our graves 
 in peace, without any more of these horrors and surprises. I 
 would sooner," she said, increasing in rapidity as she went on, "I 
 would far sooner live like some one I have heard of, with a sword 
 above his head, than thus. If he comes and looks on me, I shall 
 die." 
 
 She had risen and stood in the fireUght, deadly pale. Somehow 
 one of the bands of her long black hair had fallen down, and half 
 covered her face. She looked so unearthly that, coupling her 
 appearance with the wild, senseless words she had been uttering, 
 Tom had a horrible suspicion that she was gone mad. 
 
 " Cousin," he said, " let me beseech you to go to bed. 
 Charles, run for Mrs. Barker. Mary," he added, as soon as he 
 was gone, " come away, or you'll be saying something before that 
 boy you'll be sorry for. You're hysterical ; that's what is the 
 matter with you. I am afraid we have frightened you by our talk 
 about bushrangers." 
 
 " Yes, that is it ! that is it ! " she said ; and then, suddenly, 
 " Oh ! my dear old ffiend, you wiU not desert me ? " 
 
 " Never, Mary ; but why ask such a question now ? " 
 
 " Ask Lee," she said, and the next moment Mrs. Barker, the 
 housekeeper, came bustling in with smelling-salts, and so on, to 
 minister to a mind diseased. And Mary was taken off to bed, 
 
 " What on earth can be the matter with her, cousin Tom? " 
 said Charles, when she was gone. 
 
 " She is out of sorts, and got hysterical : that's what it is," 
 said Tom. 
 
 " What odd things she said ! " 
 
 " Women do when they are hysterical. It's nothing more than 
 that." 
 
 But Mrs. Barker came in with a different opinion. She said 
 that Mary was very hot and restless, and had very little doubt that 
 a fever was coming on. " Terribly shaken she had been," said 
 Mrs. Barker, " hoped nothing was wrong." 
 
 " There's something decidedly wrong, if your mistress is going 
 to have a fever," said Tom. " Charley, do you think Doctor 
 Mulhaus is at Baroona or Garoopna? " 
 
 " Up at the Major's," said Charles. " Shall I ride over for 
 him ? There will be a good moon in an hour." 
 
 " Yes," said Tom, " and fetch him over at once. Tell him we 
 think it's a fever, and he wiU know what to bring. Kide like 
 h— 1, Charley." 
 
300 THE BEC0LLECTI0N8 OF 
 
 As soon as he was alone, he began thinking. " What the doose 
 is the matter ? " was his first exclamation, and, after half-an-hour's 
 cogitation, only had arrived at the same point, " What the doose 
 is the matter ? " Then it flashed across him, what did she mean 
 by " ask Lee " ? Had she any meaning in it, or was it nonsense ? 
 There was an easy solution for it ; namely, to ask Lee. And so 
 arising he went across the yard to the kitchen. 
 
 Lee was bending low over the fire, smoking. " William," said 
 Tom, " I want to see you in the parlour." 
 
 " I was thinking of coming across myself," said Lee. " In fact 
 I should have come when I had finished my pipe." 
 
 " Bring your pipe across, then," said Tom. " Girl, take in 
 some hot water and tumblers." 
 
 " Now, Lee," said Tom, as soon as Lee had gone through the 
 ceremony of " Well, here's my respex, sir," " Now, Lee, you have 
 heard how ill the mistress is." 
 
 " I have indeed, sir," said he ; " and very sorry I am, as I am 
 partly the cause of it." 
 
 "AH that simplifies matters. Will, considerably," said Tom. 
 " I must tell you that when I asked her what put her in that state, 
 she said, ' Ask Lee.' " 
 
 " Shows her sense, sir. What she means is, that you ought to 
 hear what she and I have heard ; and I mean to tell you more 
 than I have her. If she knew everything, I am afraid it would 
 kiU her." 
 
 " Ay ! I know nothing as yet, you know." 
 
 Lee in the first place put him in possession of what we already 
 know — the fact of Hawker's reappearance, and his identity with 
 " The Touan " ; then he paused. 
 
 " This is very astonishing, and very terrible, Lee," said he. 
 " Is there anything further ? " 
 
 " Yes, the worst. That man has followed us home ! " 
 
 Tom had exhausted all his expressions of astonishment and 
 dismay before this ; so now he could only give a long whistle, and 
 say, " Followed us home ? " 
 
 " Followed us home ! " said Lee. "As we were passing the 
 black swamp, not two miles from here, this very morning, I saw 
 that man riding parallel with us through the bush." 
 
 " Why did not you teU me before ? " 
 
 "Because I had not made up my mind how to act. First I 
 resolved to tell the mistress ; that I did. Then after I had 
 smoked a pipe, I resolved to tell you, and that I did, and new 
 here we are, you see." 
 
 That was undeniable. There they were, with about as pretty a 
 
GEOPPEY HAMLTN. 801 
 
 complication of mischief to unravel as two men could wish to 
 have. Tom felt so foolish and nonplussed, that he felt inclined 
 to laugh at Lee, when he said, " Here we are." It so exactly 
 expressed the state of the case ; as if he had said, " AH so and so 
 has happened, and a deuce of a job it is, and here sit you and I, 
 to deliberate what's to be done with regard to so and so." 
 
 He did not laugh, however ; he bit his lip, and stopped it. 
 Then he rose, and, leaning his great shoulders against the mantel- 
 piece, stood before the fireless grate, and looked at Lee. Lee 
 also looked at him, and I think that each one thought what a 
 splendid specimen of his style the other was. If they did not 
 think so, " they ought to it," as the Londoners say. But neither 
 spoke a few minutes ; then Tom said, — 
 
 " Lee, WiU Lee, though you came to me a free man, and have 
 served me twenty years, or thereabouts, as free man, I don't 
 conceal from myself the fact that you have been convict. Pish, 
 man ! don't let us mince matters now, — a lag." 
 
 Lee looked him full in the face, without changing countenance, 
 and nodded. 
 
 " Convicted more than once, too," continued Tom. 
 
 " Three times," said Lee. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Tom. " And if a piece of work was set before 
 me to do, which required pluck, honesty, courage, and cunning, 
 and one were to say to me, ' Who wUl you have to help you ? ' I 
 would answer out boldly, ' Give me WiU Lee, the lag ; my old 
 friend, who has served me so true and hearty these twenty 
 years.' " 
 
 "And you'd do right, sir," said Lee quietly. And rising up, 
 he stood beside Tom, with one foot on the fender, bending down 
 and looking into the empty grate. 
 
 " Now, WiU," said Tom, turning round and laying his hand on 
 his shoulder, " this feUow has foUowed us home, having found out 
 who we were. Why has he done so ? " 
 
 " Evident," said Lee, " to work on tne fears of the mistress, 
 and get some money from her." 
 
 " Good ! " said Tom. " WeU answered. We shaU-get to the 
 bottom of our difficulty like this. Only answer the next question 
 as weU, and I wUl caU you a Poly — , Poly — ; d — ^n the Greek." 
 
 " Not such a bad name as that, I hope, sir," said Lee, smiling. 
 "Who might she have been? A bad im, I expect. You don't 
 happen to refer to Hobart-town PoUy, did you, sir? " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, you vUlain," said Tom, "or you'U make 
 me laugh ; and these are not laughing times." 
 
 ''• WeU, what is your question, sir? " asked Lee. 
 
302 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " Why, simply this : What are we to do ? " 
 
 " I'll teU you," said Lee, speaking in an animated whisper. 
 " Watch, watch, and watch again, tiU you catch him. Tie him 
 tight, and hand him over to Captain Deshorough. He may he 
 ahout the place to-night : he will he sure to he. Let us watch to- 
 night, you and I, and for many nights, till we catch him." 
 
 " But," whispered Tom, " he wiU he hung." 
 
 " He has earned it," said Lee. " Let him he hung." 
 
 " But he is her hushand," urged Tom, in a whisper. " He is 
 that boy's father. I cannot do it. Can't we buy him off? " 
 
 "Yes," answered Lee in the same tone, "tiU his money is 
 gone. Then you will have a chance of doing it again, and again, 
 all your life." 
 
 " This is a terrible dilemma," said Tom ; and added in a per- 
 plexity almost comical, "Drat the girl ! Why didn't she marry 
 poor old Jim Stockbridge, or sleepy Hamlyn, or even your humble 
 servant ? Though, in all honour I must confess that I never 
 asked her, as those two others did. No ! I'D. teR you what, Lee : 
 we wiU watch for him, and catch him if we can. After that we 
 wlU think what is to be done. By the bye, I have been going to 
 ask you : — do you think he recognised you at the public-house 
 there?" 
 
 " That puzzles me," said Lee. " He looked me in the face, 
 but I could not see that he did. I wonder if he recognised you ? " 
 
 " I never saw him in my life before," said Tom. " It is very 
 likely that he knew me, though. I was champion of Devon and 
 Cornwall, you know, before little Abraham Cann kicked my legs 
 from under me that unlucky Easter Monday. (The deuce cm-1 his 
 hair for doing it !) I never forgave him tiU I heard of that fine 
 bit of play with Polkinghom. Yes 1 he must have known me." 
 
 Lee lit the fire, whUe Tom, blowing out the candles, drew the 
 curtains, so that any one outside could not see into the room. 
 Nevertheless, he left the French window open, and then went out- 
 side, and secured all the dogs in the dog-house. 
 
 The night was wonderfully still and dark. As he paused before 
 entering the house, he could hear the bark falling from the trees 
 a quarter of a mile off, and the opossums scratching and snapping 
 little twigs as they passed from bough to bough. Somewhere, 
 apparently at an immense distance, a morepork was chanting his 
 monotonous cry. The frogs in the creek were silent even, so hot 
 was the night. "A good night for watching," said he to Lee 
 when he came in. " Lie you down ; I'll take the first watch." 
 
 They blew out the candle, and Lee was in the act of lying down, 
 when he arrested himself, and held up his finger to Tom. 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 303 
 
 They both listened, motionless and in silence, until they could 
 hear the spiders creeping on the ceiling. There it was again I a 
 stealthy step on the gravel. 
 
 Troubridge and Lee crouched down breathless. One minute, 
 two, five, but it did not come again. At length they both moved, 
 as if by concert, and Lee said, " 'Possum." 
 
 " Not a bit," said Troubridge ; and then Lee lay down again, 
 and slept in the light of the flickering fire. One giant arm was 
 thrown around his head, and the other hung down in careless 
 grace ; the great chest was heaved up, and the head thrown back ; 
 the seamed and rugged features seemed more stem and marked 
 than ever in the chiaroscuro ; and the whole man was a picture of 
 reckless strength such as one seldom sees. Tom had dozed and 
 had awoke again, and now sat thinking, " What a terrible tough 
 customer that fellow would be 1" when suddenly he crouched on 
 the floor, and, reaching out his hand, touched Lee, who woke, 
 and silently rolled over with his face towards the window. 
 
 There was no mistake this time — that was no opossum. There 
 came the stealthy step again ; and now, as they lay silent, the 
 glass-door was pushed gently open, showing the landscape beyond. 
 The gibbous moon was just rising over the forest, all blurred 
 with streaky clouds, and between them and her light they could 
 see the figure of a man, standing inside the room. 
 
 Tom could wait no longer. He started up, and fell headlong 
 with a crash over a little table that stood in his way. They both 
 dashed into the garden, but only in time to hear flying footsteps, 
 and immediately after the gallop of a horse, the echoes of which 
 soon died away, and all was still. 
 
 " Missed him, by George ! " said Lee. " It was a precious 
 close thing, though. What could he mean by coming into the 
 house, eh? " 
 
 " Just as I expected ; trying to get an interview with the 
 mistress. He will be more cautious in fature, I take it." 
 
 " I wonder if he will try again? ". 
 
 " Don't know," said Troubridge ; " he might : not to-night, 
 however." 
 
 They went in and lay down again, and Troubridge was soon 
 asleep ; and very soon that sleep was disturbed by dreadful dreams. 
 At one time he thought he was riding madly through the bush for 
 his bare life ; spurring on a tired horse, which was failing every 
 moment more and more. But always through the tree-stems on 
 his right he saw glancing, a ghost on a white horse, which kept 
 pace with him, do what he would. Now he was among the preci- 
 pices on the ranges. On his left, a lofty inaccessible cliff; on the 
 
804 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 right, a frightful blue abyss ; while the slaty soil kept sliding from 
 beneath his horse's feet. Behind him, unseen, came a phantom^ 
 always gaining on him, and driving him along the giddiest wallaby 
 tracks. If he could only turn and face it, he might conquer, but 
 he dare not. At length the path grew narrower and narrower, 
 and he turned in desperation and awoke — woke to see in the dim 
 morning light a dark figure bending over him. He sprang up, and 
 clutched it by the throat. 
 
 " A most excellent fallow this ! " said the voice of Dr. MuUiaus. 
 " He sends a frantic midnight message for his friend to come to 
 him, regardless of personal convenience and horseflesh : and when 
 this friend comes quietly in, and tries to wake him without dis- 
 turbing the sick folks, he seizes him by the throat and nearly 
 throttles him." 
 
 " I beg a thousand pardons, Doctor," said Tom ; " I had been 
 dreaming, and I took you for the devU. I am glad to find my 
 mistake." 
 
 " You have good reason," said the Doctor ; " but now, how is 
 the patient ? " 
 
 " Asleep at present, I believe ; the housekeeper is with her." 
 
 " What is the matter with her ? " 
 
 " She has had a great blow. It has shaken her intellect, I am 
 afraid." 
 
 " What sort of a blow ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 Tom hesitated. He did not know whether to teU him or not. 
 
 " Nay," said the Doctor, " you had better let me know. I can 
 help then, you know. Now, for instance, has she heard of her 
 husband ? " 
 
 " She has. Doctor. How on earth came you to guess that ? " 
 
 " A mere guess, though I have always thought it quite possible, 
 as the accounts of his death were very uncertain." 
 
 Tom then set to work, and told the Doctor all that we know. 
 He looked very grave. " This is far worse than I had thought," 
 he said, and remained thoughtful. 
 
 Mary awoke in a fever and delirious. They kept Charles as 
 much from her as possible, lest she should let drop some hint of 
 the matter to the boy; but even in her delirium she kept her secret 
 well ; and towards the evening the Doctor, finding her quieter, 
 saddled his horse, and rode away ten mUes to a township, where 
 resided a drunken surgeon, one of the greatest blackguards in tht 
 country. 
 
 The surgeon was at home. He was drunk, of com-se ; he always, 
 was, but hardly more so to-day than usual. So the Doctor hoped 
 for success in his object, which was to procm-e a certain drug which 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 305 
 
 was neither in the medicine-chest at the Buckleys' nor at Toonar- 
 bin ; and putting on his sweetest smile when the surgeon came to 
 the door, he made a remark about the beauty of the weather, to 
 which the other very gruffly responded. 
 
 " I come to beg a favour," said Dr. Mulhaus. " Can you let 
 mc have a little — so and so ? " 
 
 " See you d d first," was the polite reply. " A man comes 
 
 a matter of fourteen thousand miles, makes a pretty little practice, 
 and then gets it cut into by a parcel of ignorant foreigners, whose 
 own country is too hot to hold them. And not content with this, 
 they have the brass to ask for the loan of a man's drugs. As I 
 
 said before, I'U see you d d first, and then I won't." And 
 
 so saying, he slammed the door. 
 
 Doctor Mulhaus was beside himself with rage. For the first 
 and last time since I have known him he forgot his discretion, and 
 instead of going away quietly, and treating the man with contempt, 
 he began kicking at the door, calling the man a scoundrel, &c., 
 and between the intervals of kicking, roaring through the keyhole, 
 " Bring out your diploma ; do you hear, you impostor ? " and then 
 fell to work kicking again. " Bring out your forged diploma, wiU 
 you, you villain ? " 
 
 This soon attracted the idlers from the public-house : a couple 
 of sawyers, a shepherd or two, aU tipsy of course, except one of the 
 sawyers, who was drunk. The drunken sawyer at length made 
 out to his own complete satisfaction that Dr. Mulhaus' wife was in 
 labour, and that he was come for the surgeon, who was probably 
 drunk and asleep inside. So, being able to sympathise, having 
 had his wife in the straw every thirteen months regularly for the 
 last fifteen years, he prepared to assist, and for this purpose took 
 a stone about half a hundredweight, and coming behind the Doctor, 
 when he was in fuU kick, he balanced himself with difiiculty, and 
 sent it at the lock with all the force of his arm, and of course 
 broke the door in. In throwing the stone, he lost his balance, came 
 full butt against Dr. Mulhaus, propelled him into the passage, into 
 the arms of the surgeon, who was rushing out infuriated to defend 
 his property, and down went the three in the passage together, 
 the two doctors beneath, and the drunken sawyer on the top of 
 them. 
 
 The drunken surgeon, if, to use parliamentary language, he wUl 
 allow me to call him so, was of course underneath the others ; but, 
 being a Londoner, and consequently knowing the use of his fists, 
 ere he went down delivered a "one, two," straight from the 
 shoulder in our poor dear Doctor's face, and gave him a most 
 disreputable black eye, besides cutting his upper lip open. This 
 
 21 
 
306 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OF 
 
 our Doctor, being, you must remember, a foreigner, and not having 
 the rules of the British Eing before his eyes, resented by getting 
 on the top of him, taking him round the throat, and banging the 
 back of his head against the brick floor of the passage, until he 
 began to goggle his eyes and choke. Meanwhile the sawyer, 
 exhilarated beyond measure in his drunken mind at having raised 
 a real good promising row, having turned on his back, lay pro- 
 cumbent upon the twain, and kicking everything soft and human 
 he came across with his heels, struck up "The Bay of Biscay, 
 Oh," until he was dragged forth by two of his friends ; and being 
 in a state of wild excitement, ready to fight the world, hit his 
 own mate a violent blow in the eye, and was only q^uieted by 
 receiving a sound thrashing, and being placed in a sitting posture 
 in the verandah of the public-house, from which he saw Doctor 
 Mulhaus come forth from the surgeon's with rumpled feathers, but 
 triumphant. 
 
 I am deeply grieved to have recorded the above scene, but I 
 could not omit it. Having undertaken to bring the character of 
 that very noble gentleman. Doctor Mulhaus, before my readers, I 
 was forced not to omit this. As a general rule, he was as self- 
 contained, as calm and as frigid as the best Englishman among 
 us. But under aU this there was, to speak in carefully-selected 
 scientific language, a substratum of pepper-box, which has been 
 apparent to me on more than one occasion. I have noticed the 
 above occasion perforce. Let the others rest in oblivion. A man 
 so true, so wise, so courteous, and so kindly, needs not my poor 
 excuses for having once in a way made a fool of himself. He will 
 read this, and he will be angry with me for a time, but he knows 
 well that I, like aU who knew him, say heartily, God bless you, 
 old Doctor ! 
 
 But the consequences of the above were, I am sorry to say, 
 eminently disastrous. The surgeon got a warrant against Doctor 
 Mulhaus for burglary with violence, and our Doctor got a warrant 
 against him for assault with intent to rob. So there was the deuce 
 to pay. The affair got out of the hands of the bench. In fact 
 they sent both parties for trial (what do you think of that, my Lord 
 Campbell ?) in order to get rid of the matter, and at sessions, the 
 surgeon swore positively that Dr. Mulhaus had, assisted by a 
 convict, battered his door down with stones in open day, and nearly 
 murdered him. Then ip defence Doctor Mulhaus called the 
 sawyer, who, as it happened, had just completed a contract for 
 fencing for Mrs. Mayford, the proceeds of which bargain he was 
 spending at the public-house when the thing happened, and had 
 just undertaken another for one of the magistrates ; having also 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 307 
 
 a large family dependent on him ; being, too, a man who prided 
 himself in keeping an eye to windward, and being slightly confused 
 by a trifling attack of delirium tremens (diddleums, he called it) : 
 he, I say, to our Doctor's confusion and horror, swore positively 
 that he never took a stone in his hand on the day in question ; 
 that he never saw a stone for a week before or after that date ; 
 that he did not deny having rushed into the passage to assist the 
 complainant (drunken surgeon), seeing him being murdered by 
 defendant ; and, lastly, that he was never near the place on the 
 day specified. So it would have gone hard with our Doctor, had 
 not his Honour called the jury's attention to the discrepancies in 
 this witness's evidence ; and when Dr. Mulhaus was acquitted, 
 delivered a stinging reproof to the magistrates for wasting public 
 time by sending such a trumpery case to a jury. But, on the other 
 hand. Dr. Mulhaus' charge of assault with intent fell dead ; so that 
 neither party had much to boast of. 
 
 The night or so after the trial was over, the Doctor came back 
 to Toonarbin, in what he intended for a furious rage. But, having 
 told Tom Troubridge the whole affair, and having vmluckily caught 
 Tom's eye, they two went off into such hearty fits of laughter that 
 poor Mary, now convalescent, but stiU in bed, knocked at the wall 
 to know what was the matter. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXn. 
 
 WHICH IS THE LAST CHAPTER BUT ONE IN THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 The state of terror and dismay into which poor Mary Hawker was 
 thrown on finding that her husband, now for many years the bete 
 noire of her existence, was not only alive, but promising fairly to 
 cause her more trouble than ever he did before, superadded, let 
 me say, for mere truth's sake, to a sKght bilious attack, brought 
 on by good hving and want of exercise, threw her into a fever, 
 from which, after several days' deUrium, she rose much shattered, 
 and looking suddenly older. All this time the Doctor, like a 
 trusty dog, had kept his watch, and done more, and with a better 
 wiU than any paid doctor would, have been likely to do. He was 
 called away a good deal by the prosecution arising out of that 
 unhappy affair with the other doctor, and afterwards with a 
 prosecution for peq'ury, which he brought against the sawyer ; 
 but he was generally back at night, and was so kind, so attentive, 
 
308 THE EEOOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and so skilful that Mary took it into her head, and always affirmed 
 afterwards, that she owed her life to him. 
 
 She was not one to receive any permanent impression from 
 anything. So now, as day hy day she grew stronger, she tried to 
 undervalue the mischief which had at first so terrified her, and 
 caused her iUness ; — tried, and with success, in broad dayUght ; 
 but, in the silent dark nights, as she lay on her lonely bed, she 
 would fully appreciate the terrible cloud that hung over her, and 
 would weep and beat her pillow, and pray in her wild fantastic 
 way to be delivered from this frightful monster, cut off from com- 
 munion with all honest men by his unutterable crimes, but who, 
 nevertheless, she was bound to love, honour, and obey, till death 
 should part her from him. 
 
 Mrs. Buckley, on the first news of her iUness, had come up and 
 taken her quarters at Toonarbin, acting as gentle a nurse as man 
 or woman could desire to have. She took possession of the house, 
 and managed everything. Mrs. Barker, the housekeeper, the 
 only one who did not submit at once to her kindly rule, protested, 
 obstructed, protpcolled, presented an ultimatum, and, at last, was 
 so Ul advised as to take up arms. There was a short campaign, 
 lasting only one morning, — a decisive battle, — and Mrs. Barker 
 was compelled to sue for peace. " Had Mr. Troubridge been 
 true to himself," she said, " she would never have submitted ; " 
 but, having given Tom warning, and Tom, in a moment of irrita- 
 tion, having told her, without hesitation or disguise, to go to the 
 devil (no less), she bowed to the circumstances, and yielded. 
 
 Agnes Buckley encouraged Dr. Mulhaus, too, in his legal 
 affairs, and, I fear, was the first person who proposed the pro- 
 secution for perjury against the sawyer : a prosecution, however, 
 which failed, in consequence of his mate and another friend, who 
 was present at the affair, coming forwai'd to the sawyer's rescue, 
 and getting into such a labyrinth and mist of peijury, that the 
 Bench (this happened just after quarter sessions) positively refused 
 to hear anything more on either side. Altogether, Agnes Buckley 
 made herself so agreeable, and kept them all so alive, that Tom 
 wondered how he had got on so long without her. 
 
 At the end of three weeks Mary was convalescent ; and one day, 
 when she was moved into the verandah, Mrs. Buckley beside her, 
 Tom and the Doctor sitting on the step smoking, and Charles 
 sleepily reading aloud "Hamlet," with a degree of listlessness 
 and want of appreciation unequalled, I should say, by any reader 
 before ; at such time, I say, there entered suddenly to them a 
 little cattle-dealer, as brimful of news as an egg of meat. Little 
 Bumside it was : a mt^n about eight stone nothing, who always 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 309 
 
 wore top-boots and other people's clothes. As he came in, Charles 
 recognised on his legs a pair of cord breeches of his own, with a 
 particular grease patch on the thigh ; a pair of breeches he had 
 lent Bumside, and which Bumside had immediately got altered 
 to his own size. A good singer was Bumside. A man who could 
 finish his bottle of brandy, and not go to bed in his boots. A man 
 universally liked and trusted. An honest, hearty, little fellow, 
 yet one who always lent or spent his money as fast as he got it, 
 and was as poor as Job. The greatest vehicle of news in the 
 district, too. " Snowy river Times," he used to be called. 
 
 After the usual greetings, Tom, seeing he was bursting with 
 something, asked him, " Wliat's the news ? " 
 
 Bumside was in the habit of saying that he was like the Lord 
 Mayor's fool — fond of everything that was good. But his greatest 
 pleasure, the one to which he would sacrifice everything, was 
 retaUing a piece of news. This was so great an enjoyment with 
 him that he gloried in dwelling on it, and making the most of it. 
 He used to retail a piece of news, as a perfect novel, in three 
 volumes. In his first he would take care to ascertain that you 
 were acquainted with the parties under discussion ; and, if you 
 were not, make you so, throwing in a few anecdotes illustrative of 
 their characters. In his second, he would grow discursive, giving 
 an episode or two, and dealing in moral reflections and knowledge 
 of human nature rather largely. And in his third he would come 
 smash, crash down on you with the news itself, and leave you 
 gasping. 
 
 He followed this plan on the present occasion. He answered 
 Tom's question by asking, — 
 
 " Do you know Desborough ? " 
 
 " Of course I do," said Tom ; " and a noble good fellow he is." 
 
 " Exactly," said Bumside ; " super of police ; distinguished in 
 Indian wars ; nephew of my Lord Covetown. An Irishman is 
 Desborough, but far fi-om objectionable." 
 
 This by way of first volume : now comes his second : — 
 
 " Now, sir, I, although a Scotchman born, and naturally proud 
 of being so, consider that until these wretched national distinctions 
 between the three great nations are obliterated we shall never get 
 on, sir ; never. That the Scotch, sir, are physically and intel- 
 lectually superior " 
 
 " Physically and intellectually the devil," burst in Tom. " Pick 
 out any dozen Scotchmen, and I'U find you a dozen Londoners 
 who will fight them, or deal with them till they'd be glad to get 
 over the borders again. As for the Devon and Cornish lads, find 
 me a Scotchman who wiU put me on my back, and I'U write you 
 
310 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 a cheque for a hrmdred pounds, my boy. We English opened the 
 trade of the world to your little two millions and a half up in the 
 north there ; and you, being pretty well starved out at home, have 
 had the shrewdness to take advantage of it ; and now, by Jove, 
 you try to speak small of the bridge that carried you over. What 
 did you do towards licking the Spaniards, eh ? And where would 
 you be now, if they had not been licked in 1588, eh? Not in 
 Australia, my boy ! A Frenchman is conceited enough, but, by 
 George, he can't hold a candle to a Scotchman." 
 
 Tom spoke in a regular passion ; but there was some truth in 
 what he said, I think. Bumside didn't like it, and merely saying, 
 " You interrupt me, sir," went on to his third volume without a 
 struggle. 
 
 " You are aware, ladies, that there has been a gang of bush- 
 rangers out to the north, headed by a miscreant, whom his com- 
 panions call Touan, but whose real name is a mystery." 
 
 Mrs. Buckley said, " Yes ; " and Tom glanced at Mary. She 
 had grown as pale as death, and Tom said, "Courage, cousin; 
 don't be frightened at a name." 
 
 " Well, sir," continued Bumside, putting the forefinger and 
 thumb of each hand together, as if he was making " windows " 
 with soapsuds, " Captain Desborough has surprised that gang in 
 a gully, sir, and," spreading his hands out right and left, " ob- 
 literated them." 
 
 "The devil! " said Tom, while the Doctor got up and stood 
 beside Mary. 
 
 " Smashed them, sir," continued Bumside ; " extinguished them 
 utterly. He had six of his picked troopers with him, and they 
 came on them suddenly and brought them to bay. You see, two 
 troopers have been murdered lately, and so our men, when they 
 got face to face with the cowardly hounds, broke discipline, and 
 wouldn't be held. They hardly fired a shot, but drew their sabres, 
 and cut the dogs down almost to a man. Three only out of twelve 
 have been captured alive, and one of them is dying of a wound in 
 the neck." And, having finished, little Bumside folded his arms 
 and stood in a military attitude, with the air of a man who had 
 done the thing himself, and was prepared to receive his meed of 
 praise with modesty. 
 
 " Courage, Mary," said Tom ; " don't be frightened at shadows." 
 — He felt something sticking in his throat, but spoke out never- 
 theless. 
 
 " And their redoubted captain," he asked ; " what has become 
 of him ? " 
 
 " What, Touan himself? " said Bumside. " Well, I am sorry 
 
GEOFPKT HAMLYN. 311 
 
 to Bay that that chivah-ous and high-minded gentleman was found 
 neither among the dead nor the Jiving. Not to mince matters, sir, 
 he has escaped." 
 
 The Doctor saw Mary's face quiver, but she bore up bravely, 
 and listened. 
 
 " Escaped, has he ? " said Tom. " And do they Imow anything 
 about him ? " 
 
 " Desborough, who told me this himself," said Bumside, " says 
 no, that he is utterly puzzled. He had made sure of the arch- 
 rascal himself ; but, with that remarkable faculty of saving his 
 own skin which he has exhibited on more than one occasion, he 
 has got off for the time, with one companion." 
 
 " A companion ; eh ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Bumside, " whereby hangs a bit of romance, if I 
 may profane the word in speaking of such men. His companion is 
 a young fellow, described as being more like a beautiful woman 
 than a man, and bearing the most singular likeness in features to 
 the great Captain Touan himself, who, as you have heard, is a 
 handsome dog. In short, there is very little doubt that thev are 
 father and son." 
 
 Tom thought _to himself, " Wlio on earth can this be? What 
 son can George Hitwker liave^and we not know of it?" He 
 turned to Bumside. 
 
 " What age is the young man you speak of ? " he asked. 
 
 ^ TwSn<5E-or thereabouts, by all description," said the other. 
 
 Tom^thtJught again ; " This gets very strange. He could have 
 no son of that age got in Van Dieman's Land : it was eight years 
 before he was free. It must be some one we know of. He had 
 some byeblows in Devon, by all accounts. If this is one of them, 
 how the deuce did he get here ? " 
 
 But he could not thinlc. We shall see presently who it was. 
 Now we must leave these good folks for a time, and just step over 
 to Garoopna, and see how affairs go there. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXin. 
 
 IN WHICH JAMES BEENTWOOD ATJD SAMUEL BUCKLEY, ESQUIRES, 
 COMBINE TO DISTUEB THE BEST OP CAPTAIN BHENTWOOD, E.A., 
 AND SUCCEED IN DOING SO. 
 
 The morning after Cecil Mayford had made his unlucky offer to 
 Alice, he appeared at Sam's bedside very early, as if he had come 
 
312 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 to draw Priam's curtains ; and told him shortly, that he had 
 spoken, and had been received with contempt ; that he was a 
 miserable brute, and that he was going back home to attend to 
 his business ; — under the circumstances, the best thing he could 
 possibly do. 
 
 So the field was clear for Sam, but he let matters stay as they 
 were, being far too pleasant to disturb lightly ; being also, to tell 
 the truth, a little uncertain of his ground, after poor Cecil had 
 suffered so severely in the encounter. The next day, too, his 
 father and mother went home, and he thought it would be only 
 proper for him to go with them, but, on proposing it, Jim quietly 
 told him he must stay where he was and work hard for another 
 week, and Halbert, although a guest of the Buckleys, was con- 
 strained to remain stiU at the Brentwoods', in company with Sam. 
 
 But at the end of a week they departed, and Jim went back 
 with them, leaving poor Alice behind, alone with her father. 
 Sam turned when they had gone a little way, and saw her white 
 figure stiU in the porch, leaning in rather a melancholy attitude 
 against the door-post. The audacious magpie had perched him- 
 self on the top of her head, from which proud elevation he hurled 
 wrath, scorn, and mortal defiance against them as they rode away. 
 Sam took off his hat, and as he went on kept wondering whether 
 she was thinking of him at all, and hoping that she might be 
 sorry that he was gone. " Probably, however," he thought, " she 
 is only sorry for her brother." 
 
 They three stayed at Baroona a week or more, one of them 
 riding up every day to ask after Mary Hawker. Otherwise they 
 spent their time shooting and fishing, and speculating how soon 
 the rains would come, for it was now March, and autumn was 
 fairly due. 
 
 But at the end of this week, as the three were sitting together, 
 one of those long-legged, slab-sided, lean, sunburnt, cabbage-tree- 
 hatted lads, of whom Captain Brentwood kept always, say half-a- 
 dozen, and the Major four or five (I should fancy, no relation to 
 one another, and yet so exactly alike, that Captain Brentwood 
 never called them by their right names by any chance) ; lads who 
 were employed about the stable and the paddock, always in some 
 way with the horses ; one of those representatives of the rising 
 Australian generation, I say, looked in, and without announcing 
 himself or touching his hat (an Australian never touches his hat if 
 he is a free man, because the prisoners are forced to), came up to 
 Jim across the drawing-room, as quiet and self-possessed as if he 
 was quite used to good society, and, putting a letter in his hand, 
 said merely, " Miss Alice," and relapsed into silence, amusing 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 313 
 
 himself by looking round Mrs. Buckley's drawing-room, the like of 
 which he had never seen before. 
 
 Sam envied Jim the receipt of that little three-cornered note. 
 He wondered whether there was anything about him in it. Jim 
 read it, and then folded it up again, and said " Hallo ! " 
 
 The lad, — I always call that sort of individual a lad ; there is 
 no other word for them, though they are of all ages, from sixteen 
 to twenty, — the lad, I say, was so taken up with the contemplation 
 of a blown-glass pressepapier on the table, that Jim had to say, 
 " HaUo there, John ! " 
 
 The lad turned round, and asked in a perfectly easy maimer, 
 " What the deuce is this thing for, now ? " 
 
 " That," said Jim, " is the button of a Chinese mandarin's hat, 
 who was killed at the battle of Waterloo in the United States by 
 Major Buckley." 
 
 " Is it now ? " said the lad, quite contented. " It's very pretty ; 
 may I take it up? " 
 
 " Of course you may," said Jim. " Now, what's the foal 
 like ? " 
 
 " Eather leggy, I should say," he returned. "Is there any 
 answer?" 
 
 Jim wrote a few lines with a pencil on half his sister's note, and 
 gave it him. He put it in the lining of his hat, and had got as 
 far as the door, when he turned again. He looked wistfully 
 towards the table where the pressepapier was lying. It was too 
 much for him. He came back and took it up again. What he 
 wanted with it, or what he would have done with it if he had got 
 it, I cannot conceive, but it had taken his simple fancy more, 
 probably, than an emerald of the same size would have done. At 
 last he put it to his eye. 
 
 "Why, dam my cabbage-tree," he said, "if you can't see 
 through it ! He wouldn't sell it, I suppose, now? " 
 
 Jim pursed his lips and shook his head, as though to say that 
 such an idea was not to be entertained, and the lad, with a sigh, 
 laid it down and departed. Then Jim with a laugh threw his 
 sister's note over to Sam. I discovered this very same note only 
 last week, while searching the Buckley papers for information 
 about the family at this period. I have reason to believe that it 
 has never been printed before, and, as far as I know, there is no 
 other copy extant, so I proceed to give it in full. 
 
 "What a dear, disagreeable old Jim you are," it begins, " to 
 stay away there at Baroona, and me moping here with our 
 daddy, who is calculating the explosive power of shells under water 
 
314 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 at various temperatures. I have a good mind to learn the 
 Differential Calculus myself, only on purpose to bore you with it 
 when you come home." 
 
 " By the bye, Corrella has got a foal. Such a dear little duck 
 of a thing, with a soft brown nose, and sweet long ears, like 
 leaves ! Do' come back and see it ; I am so very, very 
 lonely ! " 
 
 " I hope Mr. Halbert is pretty well, and that his wound is 
 getting quite right again. Don't let him undertake cattle-drafting 
 or anything violent. I wish you could bring him back with you, 
 he is such a nice, agreeable creature." 
 
 "Your magpie* has attacked cocky, and pulled a yeUow feather 
 out of his crest, which he has planted in the flower-bed, either as 
 a trophy, or to see if it will grow." 
 
 Now this letter is historically important, when taken in con- 
 nexion with certain dates in my possession. It was written on 
 a Monday, and Halbert, Jim, and Sam started back to Garoopna 
 the next day, rather a memorable day for Sam, as you will see 
 directly. Now I wish to call attention to the fact, that Sam, far 
 from being invited, is never once mentioned in the whole letter. 
 Therefore what does Miss Burke mean by her audacious calum- 
 nies ? What does she mean by saying that Alice made love to 
 Sam, and never gave the " poor boy " a chance of escape ? Can 
 she, Lesbia, put her hand on her heart and say that she wasn't 
 dying to marry Sam herself, though she was (and is still, very 
 likely) thirty years his senior ? The fact is, Lesbia gave herself 
 the airs, and received the privileges of being the handsomest 
 woman in those parts, till Alice came, and put her nose out of 
 joint, for which she never forgave her. 
 
 However, to return to this letter. I wonder now, as I am 
 looking at the age-stained paper and faded writing, whether she 
 who wrote it contemplated the possibility of its meeting Sam's eye. 
 I rather imagine that she did, from her provoking silence about 
 him. At any rate, Jim was quite justified in showing him the 
 letter, '| for you know," he said, " as there is nothing at all about 
 you in it, there can be no breach of confidence." 
 
 " Well ! " said Sam, when he had read it. 
 
 " Well ! " said Jim. " Let us all three ride over and look at 
 the foal." 
 
 ♦ Magpie, a large, pied crow. Of all the birds I have ever seen, the 
 cleverest, the most grotesque, and the most musical. The splendid 
 melody of his morning and evening song is as unequalled as it is 
 in H p.c!p.rihniJle. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 315 
 
 So they went, and were strictly to be home at dinner-time ; 
 whereas not one of them came home for a week. 
 
 When they came to the door at Garoopna, there was Alice, most 
 bewitchingly beautiful. Papa was away on the run, and Dr. 
 Mulhaus with him ; so the three came in. Alice was veiy glad to 
 see Haibert — was glad also to see Sam ; but not so glad, or, at all 
 events, did not say so much about it. 
 
 " Alice, have you seen the newspaper ? " said Jim. 
 
 "No; why?" 
 
 " There is a great steamer gone down at sea, and three 
 hundred persons drowned."* 
 
 " What a horrible thing I I should never have courage to cross 
 the sea." 
 
 " You would soon get accustomed to it, I think," said Haibert. 
 
 "I have never even seen it as yet," she said, "save at a 
 distance." 
 
 " Strange, neither have I," said Sam. " I have dim recollec- 
 tions of our voyage here, but I never stood upon the shore in my 
 life." 
 
 " I have beat you there," said Jim. " I have been down to 
 Cape Chatham, and seen the great ocean itself : a very different 
 thing from Sydney Harbour, I promise you. ' You see the great 
 Cape running out a mile into the sea, and the southern rollers 
 tumbling in over the reefs lilce cascades." 
 
 " Let us go and see it ! — ^how far is it ? " said Alice. 
 
 " About thirty miles. The Barkers' station is about half a mile 
 from the Cape, and we could sleep there, you know." 
 
 " It strikes me as being a most brilliant idea," said Sam. 
 
 And so the arrangement was agreed to, and the afternoon went 
 on pleasantly. Alice walked up and down with Sam among the 
 flowers, while Jim and Haibert lay beneath a mulberry tree and 
 smoked. 
 
 They talked on a subject which had engaged their attention 
 a good deal lately. Jim's whim for going soldiering had grown 
 and struck root, and become a determination. He would go back 
 to India when Haibert did, supposing that his father could be 
 tempted to buy him a commission. Surely he might manage to 
 join some regiment in India, he thought. India was the only 
 place worth living in just nov/. 
 
 " I hope, Haibert," he said, " that the Governor will consent. 
 I wouldn't care when I went ; the sooner the better. I am tired 
 of being a cattle-dealer on a large scale ; I want to get at some 
 man's work. If one thing were settled I would go to-morrow." 
 * Can this be the ' ' President " ?— H. K. 
 
316 THE BECOLLECTIONS Oi 
 
 " And what is that ? " said Halbert. 
 
 Jim said nothing, but looked at the couple among the flower-beds. 
 
 "Is that all?" said Halbert. " What will you bet me that 
 that aifair is not concluded to-night ? " 
 
 " I'U bet you five pounds to one it ain't," said Jim ; " nor any 
 time this twelvemonth. They'll go on shilly-shallying half their 
 lives, I believe." 
 
 " Nevertheless I'U bet with you. Five to one it comes ofi" to- 
 night I Now I There goes your sister into the house ; just go in 
 after her." 
 
 Jim sauntered oflf, and Sam came and laid his great length 
 down by the side of Halbert. 
 
 They talked on different matters for a few minutes, tiU the 
 latter said, — 
 
 " You are a lucky fellow, Sam." 
 I " With regard to what ? " said Sam. 
 ' " With regard to Miss Brentwood, I mean." 
 
 " What makes you"1Kiiik so ? " 
 
 " Are you blind, Sam ? Can't you see thattslie lo^^syou better 
 than any man in the world ? " 
 
 He answered nothing, but turning his eyes upon Halbert, gazed 
 at him a moment to see whether he was jesting or no. No, he 
 was in earnest. So he looked down on the grass again, and, 
 tearing little tufts up, said, — 
 
 " What earthly reason have you for thinking that ? " 
 
 " What reason ! — fifty thousand reasons. Can you see no- 
 thing in her eyes when she speaks to you, which is not there at 
 other times ; hey, Bat? — I can, if you can't." 
 
 " If I could think so ! " said Sam. " If I could find out ! " 
 
 "When I want to find out anything, I generally ask," said 
 Halbert. 
 
 Sam gave him the full particulars of Cecil's defeat. 
 
 "AH the better for you," said Halbert; "depend upon it. I 
 don't know much about women, it is true, but I know more than 
 you do." 
 
 " I wish I knew as much as you do," said Sam. 
 
 " And I wish I knew as little as you do," said Halbert. 
 
 Dinner-time came, but the Captain and the Doctor were not to 
 the fore. After some specidations as to what had become of them, 
 and having waited an hour, Jim said, that, in the unexplained 
 absence of the crowned head, he felt it his duty to the country, 
 to assume the reins of government, and order dinner. Prime 
 Minister Alice, having entered a protest, offered no further oppo- 
 sition, and dinner was brought in. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 317 
 
 ■foung folks don't make so much of dinner as old ones at any 
 time, and this dinner was an unusually dull one. Sam was silent 
 and thoughtful, and talked httle ; Alice, too, was not quite herself. 
 Jim, as usual, ate like a hero, but talked little ; so the conversa- 
 tion was principally carried on by Halbert, in the narrative style, 
 who really made himself very useful and agreeable, and I am 
 afraid they would have been a very " slow " party without him. 
 
 Soon after the serious business of eating was over, Jim said, — 
 
 " Alice, I wonder what the Governor will say ? " 
 
 " About what, brother ? " 
 
 " About my going soldiering." 
 
 " Save us ! What new crotchet is this ? " 
 
 " Only that I'm going to bother the Governor tiU. he gets me a 
 commission in the army." 
 
 " Are you really serious, Jim ? " 
 
 " I never was more so in my life." 
 
 "So, Mr. Halbert," said Alice, looking round at him, "you 
 are only come to take my brother away from me ! " 
 
 " I assure you. Miss Brentwood, that I have only aided and 
 abetted : the idea was his own." 
 
 " Well, well, I see how it is ; — we were too happy, I suppose." 
 
 "But, Alice," said Jim, "won't you be proud to see your 
 brother a good soldier ? " 
 
 " Proud! I was always proud of you. But I wish the idea had 
 never come into your head. If it was in war time I would say 
 nothing, but now it is very different. Well, gentlemen, I shall 
 leave you to your wine. Mr. Halbert, I hke you very much, 
 but I wish you hadn't turned Jim's head," 
 
 She left them, and walked down the garden ; through the twi- 
 light among the vines, which were dropping their yeUow leaves 
 lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening. So 
 Jim was going, — going to be killed probably, or only coming back 
 after ten years' absence, " fuU of strange oaths and bearded like 
 a pard." She knew well how her father would jump at his first 
 hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to 
 get him a commission, — yes, he would go — her own darling, 
 funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone. 
 
 No, not quite ! There is a step on the path behind her that 
 she knows ; there is an arm round her waist which was never 
 there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says, — 
 
 " Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you 
 that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides. 
 Can you love me half as well as I love you ? Alice, will you be 
 my wife ? " 
 
318 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 What answer ? Her hands pressed to her face, with a flooA of 
 happy tears, she only says, — 
 
 " Oh ! I'm so happy, Sam I So glad, so glad ! " 
 
 " Pipe up there, golden-voiced magpie ; give us one song more 
 hefore you go to roost. Laugh out, old jackass, tiU you fetch an 
 echo hack from the foggy hollow. Up on your bare boughs, it is 
 dripping, dreary autumn : but down here in the vineyard are 
 bursting the first green buds of an immortal spring. 
 
 There are some scenes which should only be undertaken by the 
 hand of a master, and which, attempted by an apprentice like 
 myself, would only end in disastrous failure, calling down the 
 wrath of aU honest men and true critics upon my devoted head, — 
 not undeservedly. Three men in a century, or thereabouts, could 
 write with suflScient delicacy and purity, to tell you what two 
 such young lovers as Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood said to 
 one another in the garden that evening, walking up and down 
 between the yellow vines. I am not one of those three. Where 
 Charles Dickens has failed, I may be excused from being difiident. 
 I am an old bachelor, too — a further excuse. But no one can 
 prevent my guessing, and I guess accordingly, — that they talked 
 in a very low tone, and when, after an hour, Alice said it was 
 time to come in, that Sam was quite astonished to find how little 
 had been said, and what very long pauses there had been. 
 
 They came in through the window into the sitting-room, and 
 there was Doctor Mulhaus, Captain Brentwood, and also, of all 
 people, Major Buckley, whom the other two had picked up in their 
 ride and brought home. My information about this period of my 
 history is very fuU and complete. It has come to my knowledge 
 on the best authority, that when Sam came forward to the light, 
 Halbert kicked Jim's shins under the table, and whispered, 
 " You have lost your money, old fellow 1 " and that .Tim answeredj 
 " I wish it was ten pounds instead of five." 
 
 But old folks are astonishingly obtuse. Neither of the three 
 seniors saw what had happened ; but entered con amove into the 
 proposed expedition to Cape Chatham, and when bedtime came. 
 Captain Brentwood, honest gentleman, went oflF to rest, and 
 having said his prayers and wound up his watch, prepared for a 
 comfortable night's rest, as if nothing was the matter. 
 
 He soon found his mistake. He had got his boots off, and was 
 sitting pensively at his bedside, meditating farther disrobements, 
 when Jim entered mysteriously, and quietly announced that his 
 whole life in future would be a weary burden if he didn't get a 
 commission in the army, or at least a cadetship in the East liidia 
 Company's service. Him the Captain settled by telling, that if 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLYN. 319 
 
 he didn't change his mind in a month he'd see about it, and so 
 packed him off to bed. Secondly, as he was taking off his coat, 
 wondering exceedingly at Jim's communication, Sam appeared, 
 and humbly and respectfully informed him that he had that day 
 proposed . to his daughter and been accepted, — provisionally ; 
 hoping that the Captain would not disapprove of him as a son-in- 
 law. He was also rapidly packed off to bed, by the assurance 
 that he (Brentwood) had never felt so happy in his life, and had 
 been sincerely hoping the young folks would fall in love with one 
 another for a year past. 
 
 So, Sam dismissed, the Captain got into bed ; but as soon as 
 the light was blown out two native cats began grunting under the 
 washing-stand, and he had to get out, and expel them in his 
 shirt ; and finally he lost his temper and began swearing. " Is a 
 man never to get to sleep?" said he. "The devil must be 
 abroad to-night, if ever he was in his Ufe." 
 
 No sleep that night for Captain Brentwood. His son, asking 
 for a commission in the army, and his daughter going to be 
 married 1 Both desirable enough in their way, but not the sort 
 of facts to go to sleep over, particularly when fired off in his ear 
 just as he was lying down. So he lay tossing about, more or less 
 uncomfortable all night, but dozed off just as the daylight began 
 to show more decidedly in the window. He appeared to have 
 slept from thirty to thirty-five seconds, when Jim woke him with, — 
 
 " It's time to get up, father, if you are going to Cape Chatham 
 to-day." 
 
 " D — ^n, Cape Chatham," was his irreverent reply when Jim 
 was gone, which sentiment has been often re-echoed by various 
 coasting skippers in later times. " Why, I haven't been to sleep 
 ten minutes, — and a frosty morning, too. I wish it would rain. 
 I am not vindictive, but I do indeed. Can't the young fools go 
 alone, I wonder ? No ; hang it, I'U make myself agreeable to- 
 day, at all events I " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOE SEA ANEMONES AT CAPE 
 
 CHATHAM AND HOW THE DOCTOR GOT A TBBEIBLE FBIGHT 
 
 AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTKOP SHOWED THAT THERE WAS 
 GOOD REASON FOR IT. 
 
 And presently, the Captain, half dressed, working away at his 
 hait with two very stiff brushes, betook himself to Major Buck- 
 
320 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 ley's room, whom he found shaving. " I'll wait till you're done," 
 said he ; "I don't want you to out yourself." 
 
 And then he resumed : " Buckley, your son wants to marry my 
 daughter." 
 
 "Shows his good taste," said the Major. "What do you 
 think of it?" 
 
 " I am very much delighted," said the Captain. 
 
 " And what does she say to it ? " 
 
 " She is very much delighted." 
 
 " And I am very much delighted, and I suppose Sam is too. 
 So there we are, you see : all agreed." 
 
 And that was the way the marriage negotiations proceeded ; 
 indeed, it was nearly all that was ever said on the subject. But 
 one day the Major brought two papers over to the Captain 
 (who signed them), which were supposed to refer to settlements, 
 and after that all the arrangements were left to Alice and Mrs. 
 Buckley. 
 
 I They started for Cape Chatham about nine o'clock in the day ; 
 Halbert and Jim first, then Sam and Alice, and lastly the three 
 elders. This arrangement did not last long, however ; for very soon 
 Sam and Alice called aloud to Halbert and Jim to come and ride 
 with them, for that they were boring one another to death. This 
 they did, and now the discreet and sober conversation of the old- 
 sters was much disturbed by the loud laughter of the younger folks, 
 in which, however, they could not help joining. It was a glorious 
 crystal clear day in autunm ; all nature, aroused from her 
 summer's rest, had put off her suit of hodden grey, and was 
 flaunting in gaudiest green. The atmosphere was so amazingly 
 pure, that miles away across the plains the travellers could dis- 
 tinguish the herds of turkeys (bustards) stalking to and fro, whUe 
 before them, that noble maritime mountain Cape Chatham towered 
 up, sharply defined above the gleaming haze which marked the 
 distant sea. 
 
 For a time their way lay straight across the broad well-grassed 
 plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just 
 left it. Then a green swamp ; through the taU reeds the native 
 companion, king of cranes, waded majestic ; the brUliant porphyry 
 water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire 
 among the emerald green water-sedge. A shallow lake, dotted 
 with wild ducks, here and there a group of wUd swan, black with 
 red biUs, floating calmly on its bosom. — A long stretch of grass as 
 smooth as a bowling-green. — A sudden rocky rise, clothed with 
 native cypress (Exooarpus. — Oh my botanical readers ! "), honey- 
 suckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and there a 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 321 
 
 stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer, 
 topping all ; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy 
 heath that lay along the shore. 
 
 " Here," said the Doctor, riding up, " we leave the last limit 
 of the lava streams from Mimgish and the Organ-hill. Immedi- 
 ately you shall see how we pass from the richly-grassed volcanic 
 plains, into the barren sandstone heaths ; fi'om a productive 
 pasture land into a useless flower-garden. Nature here is 
 economical, as she always is ; she makes her choicest ornamental 
 efforts on spots otherwise useless. You wUl see a greater variety of 
 vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath than on two square miles 
 of the thickly-grassed country we have been passing over." 
 
 It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath ; a dark 
 dreary expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the 
 bright green grass. It stretched away right and left intermin- 
 ably, only broken here and there with islands of dull-coloured 
 trees ; as melancholy a piece of coxmtry as one could conceive ; 
 yet far more thickly peopled with animal, as well as-vegetable life, 
 than the rich pastoral downs further inland. Now they began to 
 see the little red brush kangaroo, and the grey forester, skipping 
 away in all directions ; and had it been summer they would have 
 been startled moi'e than once by the brown snake, and the copper 
 snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail and the brush 
 quail (the largest of Australian game birds, I believe) whiiTed 
 away from beneath their horses' feet ; and the ground parrot, 
 green, with mottlings of gold and black, rose like a partridge 
 from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a 
 " White's thrush," close to an outlying belt of forest, and got 
 into a great state of excitement about it. "The only known 
 bird," he said, "which is found in Europe, America, and 
 Australia alike." Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little 
 tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting fr-om bush 
 to bush ; and then, leaving ornithology, he called their attention to 
 the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding 
 through ; Hakeas, Acacias, GreviUeas, and what not. In spring 
 this brown heath would have been a brilliant mass of flowers ; 
 but now, nothing was to be seen save a few tall crimson spikes of 
 Epacris, and here and there a bunch of lemon-coloured Correas. 
 Altogether, he kept them so well amused, that they were 
 astonished to come so quickly upon the station, placed in a snug 
 cove of the forest, where it bordered on the heath beside a slug- 
 gish creek. Then, seeing the mountain towering up close to 
 them, and hearing, as they stayed at the door, a low continuous 
 thunder behind a high roU in the heath which lay before them, 
 
 22 
 
322 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 they knew that the old ocean was close at hand, and that their 
 journey was done. 
 
 The people at the station were very glad to see them, of course. 
 Barker, the paterfamilias, was an old friend of both the Major and 
 the Captain, and they found so much to talk about, that after a 
 heavy midday-meal, excellent in kind, though that kind was 
 coarse, and certain libations of pale ale and cold claret and water, 
 the older of the party, with the exception of Dr. Mulhaus, refused 
 to go any farther ; so the young people started forth to the Cape, 
 under the guidance of George Barker, the fourth or fifth son, who 
 happened to be at home. 
 
 " Doctor," said Alice, as they were starting, "do you remark 
 what beautiful smooth grass covers the Cape itself, while here we 
 have nothing but this scrubby heath ? The mountain is, I 
 suppose, some different formation ? " 
 
 " Granite, my dear young lady," said the Doctor. " A cap of 
 granite rising through and partly overlying this sandstone." 
 
 " You can always teU one exactly what one wants to know," 
 said Alice ; and, as they walked forwards, somehow got talking to 
 Halbert, which I believe most firmly had been arranged before- 
 hand with Sam. For he, falling back, ranged alongside of the 
 Doctor, and managing to draw him behind, the others, turned to 
 him and said suddenly, — 
 
 " My dear old friend ! my good old tutor ! " 
 
 The Doctor stopped short, pulled out a pair of spectacles, wiped 
 them, put them on, and looked at Sam through them for nearly a 
 minute, and then said : 
 
 " My dear boy, you don't mean to say " 
 
 "I do. Doctor. — Last night. — And, oh ! if you could only 
 tell how happy I am at this moment 1 If you could but guess at 
 it! " 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! " said the Doctor ; " I am not so old as that, 
 my dear boy. Why, I am a marrying man myself. Sam, I am 
 so very, very glad I you have won her, and now wear her, like a 
 pearl beyond' all price. I think that she is worthy of you : more 
 than that she could not be." 
 
 They shook hands, and soon Sam was at her side again, toiling 
 up the steep ascent. They soon distanced the others, and went 
 forwards by themselves. 
 
 There was such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad 
 ocean was invisible till they were half way up the grassy down. 
 Then right and left they jiegan to sec the nether firmament, 
 stretching awsty infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till 
 they stood upon the loftiest breezy loioll, and seemed alone 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLTN. 323 
 
 together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure- 
 sphere which lay beneath their feet. 
 
 A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. Far beneath theiii they 
 heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain. A 
 few white albatrosses skimmed and sailed below, and before, sea- 
 ward, the sheets of turf, falling away, stretched into a shoreless 
 headland, fringed with black rock and snow-white surf. 
 
 She stood there flushed and excited with the exercise, her bright 
 hair dishevelled, waving in the free sea-breeze, the most beautiful 
 object in that glorious, landscape, her noble mate beside her. 
 Awe, wonder, and admiration kept both of them silent for a few 
 moments, and then she spoke. 
 
 " Do you know any of the choruses in the ' Messiah ' ? " asked 
 she. 
 
 " No,. I do not," said Sam. 
 
 " I am rather sorry for it," she said, " because this is so very 
 like some of them." 
 
 " I can quite imagine that," said Sam. " I can quite imagine 
 music which expresses what we see now. Something infinitely 
 broad I should say. Is that nonsense now ? " 
 
 " Not to me," said Alice. 
 
 " I imagined," said Sam, " that the sea would be much rougher 
 than this. In spite of the ceaseless thunder below there, it is very 
 calm." 
 
 "Calm, eh?" said the Doctor's voice behind them. "God 
 help the ship that should touch that reef this day, though a 
 nautilus might float in safety ! See how the groundsweU is 
 tearing away at those rocks ; you can just distinguish the long 
 heave of the water before it breaks. There is the most dangerous 
 groundsweU in the world off this coast. Should this country ever 
 have a large coast-trade, they will find it out, in calm weather 
 with no anchorage." 
 
 A great coasting trade has arisen ; and the Doctor's remark has 
 proved terribly true. Let the Monumental City and the Schom- 
 berg, the Duncan Dunbar and the Catherine Adamson bear witness 
 to it. Let the drowning cries of hundreds of good sailors, who 
 have been missed and never more heard of, bear witness that this 
 is the most pitiless and unprotected, and, even in calm weather, 
 the most dangerous coast in the world. 
 
 But Jim came panting up, and throwing himself on the short 
 turf, said — 
 
 " So this is the great Southern Ocean ; eh ! How far can one 
 see, now, Halbert? " 
 
 ''About thirty miles." 
 
324 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " And how far to India ; eh ? " 
 
 " About seven thousand." 
 
 " A long way," said Jim. " However, not so far as to 
 England." 
 
 "Fancy," said Halbert, "one of those old Dutch voyagers 
 driving on this unknown coast on a dark night. What a sudden 
 end to their voyage 1 Yet that must have happened to many 
 ships which have never come home. Perhaps when they come to 
 explore this coast a little more they may find some old ship's ribs 
 jammed on a reef ; the ribs of some ship whose name and memory 
 has perished." 
 
 " The very thing you mention is the case," said the Doctor. 
 " Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic clifif, is to 
 be seen the wreck of a very, very old ship, now covered with 
 coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to 
 examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very 
 old ; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not.* You English 
 should never sneer at those two nations ; they were before you 
 everywhere." 
 
 "And the Chinese before any of us in Australia," replied 
 Halbert. 
 
 " If you will just come here," said Alice, "where those black 
 rocks are hid by the bend of the hill, you get only three coloui's in 
 your landscape ; blue sky, grey grass, and purple sea. But look, 
 there is a man standing on the promontory. He makes quite an 
 eyesore there. I wish he would go away." 
 
 " I suppose he has as good a right there as any of us," answered 
 the Doctor. " But he certainly does not harmonise very well with 
 the rest of the colouring. What a strange place he has chosen to 
 stand in, looking out over the sea, as though he were a shipwrecked 
 mariner — the last of the crew." 
 
 " A shipwrecked mariner would hardly wear breeches and boots, 
 my dear Doctor," said Jim. " That man is a stockman." 
 
 " Not one of ours, however," said George Barker; " even at 
 this distance I can see that. See, he's gone ! Strange ! I know 
 of no way down the clifi" thereabouts. Would you like to come 
 down to the shore ? " 
 
 So they began their descent to the shore by a winding path of 
 turf, among tumbled heaps of granite ; down towards the rock- 
 walled cove ; a horseshoe of smooth white sand lying between two 
 long black reefs, among whose isolated pinnacles the groundswell 
 leapt and spouted ceaselessly. 
 
 * Such a ship may be seen in the eastern end of Portland Bay, near 
 the modern town of Port Fairy. 
 
GEOPPEY HAMLYN. ,325 
 
 Halbert remarked, " This granite coast is hardly so remarkable 
 as our Cornish one. There are none of those queer pinnacles and 
 tors one sees there, just ready to topple down into the sea. This 
 granite is not half so fantastic." 
 
 " Earthquakes, of which you have none in Cornwall," said the 
 Doctor, " win just account for the diiference. I have felt one near 
 here quite as strong as your famous lieutenant, who capsized the 
 Logan stone." 
 
 But now, getting on the level sands, they fell to gathering shells 
 and sea- weeds like children. Jim, trying to see how near he could 
 get to a wave without being caught, got washed up like jetsam. 
 Alice took Sam's pocket-handkerchief, and fiUed it indiscrimi- 
 nately with flotsam, and everything she could lay her hand on, 
 principally, however, lagend. Trochuses, as big as one's fist, 
 and "Venus-ears," scarlet outside. And after an hour, wet- 
 footed and happy, dragging a yard or so of sea-tang behind her, 
 she looked round for the Doctor, and saw him far out on the reef, 
 lying flat on his stomach, and closely examining a large still pool 
 of salt water, contained in the crevices of the rocks. 
 
 He held up his hand and beckoned. Sam and Alice advanced 
 towards him over the slippery beds of sea-weed, Sam bravely 
 burying his feet in the wet clefts, and holding out his hand to 
 help her along. Once there was a break in the reef, too broad to 
 be jumped, and then for the first time he had her fairly in his 
 arms and swung her across, which was undoubtedly veiy delight- 
 ful, but unfortunately soon over. At length, however, they reached 
 the Doctor, who was seated like a coimorant on a wet rock, light- 
 ing a pipe. 
 
 " What have you collected ? " he asked. " Show me." 
 
 Alice proudly displayed the inestimable treasures contained in 
 Sam's handkerchief. 
 
 " Rubbish ! Rubbish ! " said the Doctor. " Do you believe in 
 mennaidens ? " 
 
 " Of course I do, if you wish it," said Alice. " Have you seen 
 one?" 
 
 " No, but here is one of their flower-gardens. Bend down and 
 look into this pool." 
 
 She bent and looked. The first thing that she saw was her 
 own exquisite face, and Sam's brown phiz peering over her shoulder. 
 A golden tress of hair, loosened by the sea breeze, fell down 
 into the water, and had to be looped up again. Then gazing 
 down once more, she saw beneath the crystal water a bed of 
 flowers ; dahlias, ranunculuses, carnations, chrysanthemums, of 
 every colour in the rainbow save blue. She gave a cry of 
 
326 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 pleasure : " What are they, Doctor ? What do you call 
 them ? " 
 
 " Sea anemones, in English, I believe," said the Doctor, 
 " actinias, serpulas, and sabellas. You may see something like 
 that on the European coasts, on a small scale, but there is 
 nothing I ever have seen like that great crimson fellow with 
 cream-coloured tentacles. I do not know his name. I suspect 
 he has never been described. The common European anemone 
 they call ' crassicomis ' is something like him, but not half as 
 fine." 
 
 " Is there any means of gathering and keeping them. Doctor? " 
 asked Sam. " We have no flowers in the garden like them." 
 
 " No possible means," said the Doctor. "They a're but lumps 
 of jelly. Let us come away and get round the headland before 
 the tide comes in." 
 
 They wandered on from cove to cove, under the dark clifis, till 
 rounding a little headland the Doctor called out, — 
 
 " Here is something in your Cornish style, Halbert." 
 
 A thin wall of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, 
 pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey 
 stone : below, wherever the salt water had reached, a mass of dark 
 clinging weed : while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was 
 a soft glimpse of a blue sky and snow-white seabirds. 
 
 " There is nothing so grand as that in Cornwall, Doctor," said 
 Halbert. 
 
 " Can we pass under it, Mr. Barker ? " said Alice. " I should 
 like to go through ; we have been into none of the caves yet." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said George Barker. " You may go through for 
 the next two hours. The tide has not turned yet." 
 
 " I'll volunteer first," said the Doctor, " and if there's anything 
 worth seeing beyond, I'll come for you." 
 
 It was, as I said, a thin wall of granite, which ran out from the 
 rest of the hill, seaward, and was pierced by a tall arch ; the blocks 
 which had formerly filled the void now lay, weed-grown, half buried 
 in sand, forming a slippery threshold. Over these the Doctor 
 climbed and looked beyond. 
 
 A litt le sa,nd y cove, reef-bound, like those they had seen before, 
 lay undei: the~dark clifis ; and on a water-wasEeS' rock, net a 
 hundred yards from him, stood the man they had seen on the 
 downs above, looking steadily seaward. 
 
 The Doctor slipped over the rocks likejaotteivand ajgroached 
 the man across the smooth sand, unheard in the thunder of the 
 surf. When he was close upon him, the stranger turned, and the 
 Doctor uttered a low cry of wonder and alarm. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 827 
 
 It was George Hawker 1 The Doctor knew him in a moment : 
 bufwhetEer'the Recognition was mutual, he never found out, for 
 Hawker, stepping rapidly from stone to stone, disappeared round 
 the headland, and the thunderstruck Doctor retraced his steps to 
 the arch. 
 
 There were all the yoimg people gathered, wondering and de- 
 lighted. But Alice came to meet him, and said, — 
 
 " Who was that with you just now ? " 
 
 " A mermaid I " replied he. 
 
 " That, indeed ! " said Alice. " And what did she 
 say?" 
 
 " She said, ' Go home to your supper ; you have seen quite 
 enough ; go home in good time.' " 
 
 "Doctor, there is something wrong ! " said Alice. " I see it 
 in your face. Can you trust me, and teU me what it is ? " 
 
 " I can trust you so far as to teU you that you are right. I 
 don't like the look of things at all. I fear there are evil times 
 coming for some of our friends ! Further than this I can say 
 nothing. Say your prayers, and trust God ! Don't tell Sam 
 anything about this : to-morrow I shall speak to him. We won't 
 spoil a pleasant holiday on mere suspicion." 
 
 They rejoined the others, and the Doctor said, " Come away 
 home now ; we have seen enough. Some future time we will 
 come here again : you might see this fifty times, and never get 
 tired of it." 
 
 After a good scramble they stood once more on the down above, 
 and turned to take a last look at the broad blue sea before they 
 descended inland ; at the first glance seaward, Halbert exclaimed, — 
 
 " See there. Doctor ! see there ! A boat ! " 
 
 " It's only a whale, I think," said George Barker. 
 
 There was a black speck far out at sea, but no whale ; it was 
 too steady for that. All day the air had been calm ; if anything, 
 the breeze was from the north, but now a strong wind was coming 
 up from the south-east, freshening every moment, and bringing 
 with it a pent bank of dark clouds ; and, as they watched, the 
 mysterious black speck was topped with white, and soon they saw 
 that it was indeed a boat driving before the wind under a spritsaU, 
 which had just been set. 
 
 " That is very strange I " said George Barker. " Can it be a 
 shipwrecked party ? " 
 
 " More likely a mob of escaped convicts from Van Dieman's 
 Land," said Jim. " If so, look out for squaUs, you George, and 
 keep your guns loaded." 
 
 " I don't think it can be that, Jim," said Sam. " What could 
 
328 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 bring them so far north ? They would have landed, more likely, 
 somewhere in the Straits, about tbe big lakes." 
 
 " They may have been driven off shore by these westerly winds 
 which have been blowing the last few days," replied Jim, " and 
 kept their boat's head northward, to get nearer the settlements. 
 They will be terribly hungry when they do land, for certain. 
 What's your opinion. Doctor? " 
 
 "I think that wise men should be always prepared. We should 
 communicate with Captain I)fisb.orough, and set the police on the 
 alert." ~ "^ 
 
 " I wonder," said Sam, " if that mysterious maiLwe sawjw^day, 
 watching on the cliff, could have iad-any- connexion with this 
 Qgually__ mysterious boat. Ntit likely, though. However; if -they 
 are going to land to-night, they had better look sharp, for it is 
 coming on to blow." 
 
 The great bank of cloud which they had been watching, away to 
 the south-east, was growing and spreading rapidly, sending out 
 little black avant-com'iers of scud, which were hurrying fanlike 
 across the heavens, telling the news of the coming storm. Land- 
 ward, in the west, the sun was going down in purple and scarlet 
 splendour, but seaward, aU looked dark and ominous. 
 
 The young folks stood together in the verandah before they went 
 in to dinner, listening to the wind which was beginning to scream 
 angrily round the comers of the house. The rain had not yet 
 gathered strength to fall steadily, but was whisked hither and 
 thither by the blast, in a few uncertain drops. They saw that a 
 great gale was coming up, and knew that, in a few hours, earth 
 and sky would be mingled in furious war. 
 
 " How comfortable it is to think that aU the animals are under 
 shelter to-night ! " said Sam. " Jim, my boy, I am glad you and 
 I are not camped out with cattle this evening. We have been out 
 on nights as bad as this though ; eh ? Oh, Lord ! fancy sitting 
 the saddle all to-night, under the breaking boughs, wet through ! " 
 
 "No more of that for me, old Sam. No more joUy gallops 
 after cattle or horses for me. But I was always a good hand at 
 anything of that sort, aad I mean to be a good soldier now. You'U 
 see." 
 
 At dark, while they were sitting at dinner, the storm was raging 
 round the house in full fury ; but there, in the weU-ligMed room, 
 before a good fire, they cared little for it. When dinner was over, 
 the Doctor called the Captain and the Major aside, and told them 
 in what manner he had seen and recognised George Hawker on 
 the beach that day ; and raised their fears stiU more by telling^ 
 them of that mysterious boat which the Doctor thought Hawker 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 329 
 
 had been watching for. None of them could understand it, hut 
 all agreed that these things boded no good ; and so, having called 
 their host into their confidence, with regard to the boat, they 
 quietly loaded all the fire-arms in the -place, and put them to- 
 gether in "the hall. This done, they returned to the sitting-room, 
 and, having taken their grog, retired to bed. 
 
 It must be remembered that hitherto Major Buckley knew 
 nothing of George Hawker's previous appearance, but the Doctor 
 now let him into the secret. The Major's astonishment and wrath 
 may be conceived, at finding that his old protegee Mary, instead 
 of being a comfortoblewidow, was the persecuted wife of one of 
 the greates t: biiiKiimg er^known. At first he was stunned and 
 confused, but, ere heUept, his clear straightforward mind had 
 come to a determination that the first evU was the worst, and that, 
 God give him grace, he would hand the scoundrel over to justice 
 on the first opportunity, sure that he was serving Mary best by 
 doing so. 
 
 That night Jim and Sam lay together in a ■ little room to the 
 windward of the house. They were soon fast asleep, but, in the 
 middle of the night, Jim was awoke by a shake on the shoulder, 
 and, rousing himself, saw that Sam was sitting up in the bed. 
 
 "My God, Jim!" said he, — "I have had such an awful 
 dream ! I dreamed that those fellows in the boat were carrrying 
 off Alice, and I stood by and saw it, and could not move hand or 
 foot. I am terribly frightened. That was something more than 
 a dream, Jim." 
 
 "You ate too much of that pie at dinner," said Jim, "and 
 you've had the nightmare, — that is what is the matter with you. 
 Lord bless you, I often have the nightmare when I have eaten 
 too much at supper, and lie on my back. Why, I dreamed the 
 other night that the devil had got me under the wool-press, 
 screwing me down as hard as he could, and singing the Hun- 
 dredth Psalm all the time. That was a much worse dream than 
 yours." 
 
 Sam was obliged to confess that it was. "But still," said he, " I 
 think mine was something more than a dream. I'm frightened 
 still." 
 
 "Oh, nonsense ; lie down again. You are pulling aU the clothes 
 off me." 
 
 They lay down, and Jim was soon asleep, but not so Sam. His 
 dream had taken such hold of his imagination, that he lay awake, 
 listening to the storm howling around the house. Now and then 
 he could hear the unearthly scream of some curlew piercing the 
 din, and, above all, he could hear the continuous earth-shaking 
 
330 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 thunder of the surf upon the beach. Soon after daylight, getting 
 Halbert to accompany him, he went out to have a look at the shore, 
 and, forcing their way against the driving, cutting rain, they looked 
 over the low cliff at the furious waste of waters beneath thena, and 
 saw mountain after mountain of water hurl itself, in a cloud of 
 spray, upon the shore. 
 
 " What terrible waves, now ! " said Sam. 
 
 " Yes," replied Halbert ; " there's no land to windward for six 
 thousand miles or more. I never saw heaviei* seas than those. I 
 enjoy this, Sam. It reminds me of a good roaring winter's day in 
 old ComwaU." 
 
 " I like it, too," said Sam. " It freshens you up. How calm 
 the water is to the leeward of the Cape ! " 
 
 " Yes ; a capital harbour of refuge that. Let us go home to 
 breakfast." 
 
 He turned to go, but was recalled by a wild shout from Sam. 
 
 " A ship ! A ship I " 
 
 He ran back and looked over into the seething hell of waters 
 below. Was it only a thicker spot in the driving mist, or was it 
 really a ship ? If so, God help her. 
 
 Small time to deliberate. Ere he could think twice about it, a 
 full-rigged ship, about five-hundred tons, with a close-reefed top- 
 sail, and a rag of a foresail upon her, came rushing, rolling, 
 diving, and plunging on, apparently heading for the deadly white 
 line of breakers which stretched into the sea at the end of the 
 promontory. 
 
 " A Queen's ship, Sam ! a Queen's ship ! The Tartar, for a 
 thousand pounds I Oh, what a ^ty ; what a terrible pity ! " 
 
 " Only a merchant ship, surely," said Sam. 
 
 " Did you ever see a merchant ship with six such guns as those 
 on her upper deck, and a hundred blue-jackets at quarters? 
 That is the Tartar, Sam, and in three minutes there wiU be no 
 Tartar." 
 
 They had run in their excitement out to the very end of the 
 Cape, and now the ship was almost under their feet, an awful sight 
 to see. She was rolling fearfully, going dead before the wind. 
 Now and then she would slop tons of water on her deck, and her 
 mainyard would almost touch the water. But still the dark clusters 
 of men along her bulwarks held steadfast, and the ship's head 
 never veered half a point. Now it became apparent that she would 
 clear the reef by a hundred yards or more, and Halbert, waving 
 his hat, cried out, — 
 
 " Well done, Blockstrop I Bravely done, indeed I He is 
 running under the lee of the Cape for shelter. Her Majesty 
 
GEOFPBY HAMLYN. 331 
 
 has one more ship-of-war than I thought she would have had, five 
 minutes ago." 
 
 As he spoke, she had passed the reef. The yards, as if hy 
 magic, swung round, and, for a moment, she was broadside on to 
 the sea. One wave broke over her, and nought but her masts 
 appeared above a sheet of white foam ; but, ere the water had 
 well done pouring from her open deck ports, she was in smooth 
 water, her anchor was down, and the topsail yard was black with 
 men. 
 
 " Let us come down, Sam," said Halbert : " very likely they 
 will send a boat ashore." 
 
 As they were scrambling down the leeward side of the chff, they 
 saw a boat put off from the ship, and gained the beach in time 
 to meet a midshipman coming towards them. He, seeing two 
 well-dressed gentlemen before him, bowed, and said, — ■ 
 
 " Good morning ; very rough weather." 
 
 " Very, indeed," said Halbert^^ " Is that the Tartar, 
 pray?" 
 
 " That is the Tartar ; yes. We were caught in the gale last 
 night, and we lay-to. This morning, as soon as we recognised 
 the Cape, we determined to run for this cove, where we have been 
 before. We had an anxious night last night, I assiire you. We 
 have been terribly lucky. If the wind had veered a few more 
 points to the east, we should have been done for. We never could 
 have beaten off in such a sea as this." 
 
 " Are you going to Sydney ? " 
 
 " No ; we are in chase of a boat Ml of escaped convicts from 
 Launeeston. Cunning dogs ; they would not land in the Straits. 
 We missed them and got across to Port PhiUip, and put Captain 
 
 D and his black police on the alert; and the convicts have got 
 
 a scent of it, and coasted up north. We have examined the coast 
 all along, but I am afraid they have given us the slip ; there is 
 such a system of intelligence among them. However, if they had 
 not landed before last night, they have saved us aU trouble ; and 
 if they are ashore we wash our hands of them, and leave them to 
 the police." 
 
 Halbert and Sam looked at one another. Then the former 
 said, — 
 
 " Last night, about an hour before it came on to blow, we saw a 
 boat making for this very headland, which puzzled us exceedingly ; 
 and, what was stranger stUl, we saw a man on the Cape, who 
 seemed to be on the look-out." 
 
 " That is quite possible," replied the midshipman ; " these 
 fellows have a queer system of communication. The boat you saw 
 
332 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 must certainly have been them ; and if they landed at aU they 
 
 jnust have landed here." 
 
 ^ — •J' — * * * * 
 
 I must change the scene here, if you please, my dear reader, 
 and get you to come with me on board his (I beg pardon, her) 
 Majesty's ship Tartar, for a few minutes, foron the quarter-deck of 
 that noble sloop there are at this moment,'^03en worth rescuing 
 from oblivion. 
 
 The first is a stoutish, upright, middle-aged man, in a naval 
 uniform, with a brickdust complexion, and very light scanty 
 whiskers : the joUiest, cheeriest-looking fellow you are likely to 
 meet in a year's journey. Such a bright merry blue eye as he 
 has, too ! This is Qaptain^Blockatrop^ now, I am happy to say, 
 C.B. ; a right valiant officer, as the despatches of Lyons and Peel 
 will testify. 
 
 The other is a very different sort of man ; — a long, wiry, brown- 
 faced man, with a big forehead, and a comical expression about his 
 eyes. This is no less a person than the Colonial Secretary of one 
 of our three great colonies : of which I decline to mention. Those 
 who know the Honourable^Aljirani-Pollifigx^do not need to be told ; 
 and those who do not must find out for themselves. I may mention 
 that he has been known to retain of&ce seven years in succession, 
 and yet he seldom threatens to resign his office and throw himself 
 upon the country fewer than three times, and sometimes four, per 
 annum. Latterly, I am sorry to say, a miserable faction, taking 
 advantage of one of his numerous resignations, have assumed the 
 reins of government, and in spite of three votes of want of con- 
 fidence, persist in retaining the seals of office. Let me add to this, 
 that he is considered the best hand at quiet "chafi" in the House, 
 and is allowed, both by his supporters and opponents, to be an 
 honourable man, and a right good fellow. 
 
 Such were the two men who now stood side by side on the 
 quarterdeck, looking eagerly at Sam aud Halbert through a pair 
 of telescopes. 
 
 " PoUifex," said the Captain, " what do you make of these ? " 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the Secretary, cm-tly» 
 
 " So I make out," said the Captain : " and apparently in good 
 condition, too. A veiy well fed man that biggest, I should say." 
 
 " Ye-es ; well, ye-es," said the Secretary ; " he does look well- 
 fed enough. He must be a stranger to these parts ; probably from 
 the Maneroo * plains, or thereabout." 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " 
 
 "Dear me," said the Secretary; "have you been stationed 
 • " Maneroo " is always pronounced " Maneera." 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLTN. 333 
 
 nearly three years on this coast, and ask how a man could possihly 
 be in good condition living in those scrubby heaths ? " 
 
 " Bad-looking country ; eh ? " said the Captain. 
 
 " Small cattle-stations, sir," said the Secretary, " I can see at 
 a glance. Salt beef, very tough, and very little of it. I shall run 
 ft bill through the House for the abolition of smaU cattle-stations 
 next session." 
 
 " Better get your estimates through first, old fellow. The 
 bagpipes wiU play quite loud enough over them to last for some 
 time." 
 
 " I know it, but tremble not," replied the undaunted Secretary ; 
 " I have got used to it. I fancy I hear CaUaghan beginning now : 
 ' The unbridled prodigality, sir, and the reckless profligacy, sir, 
 of those individuals who have so long, under the name of govern- 
 ment '" 
 
 " That'll do, now," said the Captain ; " you are worse than the 
 reality. I shall go ashore, and take my chance of getting break- 
 fast. WiU you come ? " 
 
 " Not if I Imow it, sir, with pork chops for breakfast in the 
 cabin. Blockstrop, have you duly reflected what you are about to 
 do ? You are about to land alone, unarmed, unprovisioned, among 
 the offscourings of white society, scarcely superior in their habits 
 of life to the nomadic savages they have unjustly displaced. Pause 
 and reflect, my dear fellow. What guarantee have you that they 
 will not propose to feed you on damper, or some other nameless 
 abomination of the same sort ? " 
 
 " It was only the other day in the House," said the Captain, 
 " that you said the small squatters and freehold farmers repre- 
 sented the greater part of the intelligence and education of the 
 colony, and now " 
 
 " Sir ! sir ! " said the Secretary, " you don't know what you 
 are talking about. Sir, we are not in the House now. Are you 
 determined, then ? " 
 
 The Captain was quite determined, and they went down to the 
 waist. They were raising a bag of potatoes from somewhere, and 
 the Colonial Secretary, seizing two handfuls of them, presented 
 them to the Captain. 
 
 " If you will go," he said, " take these with you, and teach the 
 poor benighted white savages to plant them. So if you fall a 
 victim to indigestion, we will vote a monument to you on the 
 summit of the Cape, and write : — ' He did not live in vain. He 
 introduced the potato among the smaU cattle-stations around 
 Cape Chatham.' " 
 
 He held out his potatoes towards the retifing Captain with the 
 
334 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 air of Burke producing the dagger. His humour, I perceive, 
 reads poor enough when written down, hut when assisted hy his 
 comical impassible face, and solenan drawling delivery, I never 
 heard anything much better. 
 
 Good old PoUifex t my heart warms towards him now. When 
 I think what the men were whose clamour put him out of office in 
 184 — , I have the conviction forced upon me, that the best among 
 them was not worth his little finger. He left the colony in a 
 most prosperous state, and, retiring honourably to one of his 
 stations, set to work, as he said, to begin life again on a new 
 principle. He is wealthy, honoured, and happy, as he deserves 
 to be. 
 
 I cannot help, although somewhat in the wrong place, telling 
 the reader under what circumstances I saw him last. Only two 
 years ago, fifteen after he had left ofiice, I happened to be 
 standing with him, at the door of a certain club, in a certain 
 capital, just after lunch time, when we saw the then Colonial 
 Secretary, the man who had succeeded PoUifex, come scurrying 
 round the comer of the street, fresh from his office. His face 
 was flushed and perspiring, his hat was on wrong-side before, 
 with his veil hanging down his back. In the one hand he held 
 papers, in the other he supported over his fevered brow his white 
 cotton umbrella ; altogether he looked harassed beyond the 
 bounds of human endurance, but when he caught sight of the 
 open club-doors, he freshened a bit, and mended his pace. His 
 troubles were not over, for ere he reached his haven, two Irish- 
 men, with two different requests, rose as if from the earth, and 
 confronted him. We saw him make two promises, contradictory 
 to each other, and impossible of fulfilment, and as he came up the 
 steps, I looked into the face of Ex-Secretary PoUifex, and saw 
 there an expression which is beyond description. Say that of 
 the ghost of a man who has been hanged, attending an execution. 
 Or say the expression of a Catholic, converted by torture, watching 
 the action of the thumb -screws upon another heretic. The air, in 
 short, of a man who had been through it all before. And as the 
 then Secretary came madly rushing up the steps, PoUifex con- 
 fronted him, and said, — 
 
 " Don't you wish you were me, T ? " 
 
 "Sir!" said the Secretary, "dipping" his umbreUa and 
 dropping his papers, for the purpose of rhetoricaUy pointing with 
 his left hand at nothing ; " Sir ! flesh and blood can't stand it. 
 I resign to-morrow." And so he went in to his lunch, and is in 
 office at this present moment. 
 
 1 must apologise most heartily for this long digression. The 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLTN. 355 
 
 Captain's gig, impelled by the "might of England's pride," was 
 cleverly beached alongside of the other boat, and the Captain 
 stepped out and confronted the midshipman. 
 
 " Got amy news, Mr. Vang? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said pae midshipman. " These gentlemen saw 
 the boat yesterday afternoon." 
 
 Sam and Halbert, who were standing behind him, came 
 forward. The Captain bowed, and looked with admiration at the 
 two highbred-looking men, that this unpromising desert had pro- 
 duced. They told him what they had told the midshipman, and 
 the Captain said, — " It will be a very serious thing for this 
 country side, if these dogs have succeeded in landing. Let us 
 hope that the sea has done good service in swallowing fourteen of 
 the vilest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Pray, are 
 either of you gentlemen magistrates? " 
 
 "My father, Major Buckley, is a magistrate," said Sam. 
 " This gentleman is Lieutenant Halbert, of the Bengal Artillery." 
 
 The Captain bowed to Halbert, and turning to Sam, said, — 
 " So you are the son of my old iiiend Major Buckley ! I was 
 midshipman in the ' Phelgethon ' when she took him and part of 
 his regiment to Portugal, in 1811. I met him at dinner in 
 Sydney, the other day. Is he in the neighbourhood ? " 
 
 "He is waiting breakfast for us not a quarter of a mile off," 
 said Sam. " Will you join us ? " 
 
 " I shall be delighted ; but duty first. If these fellows have 
 succeeded in landing, you will have to arm and prepare for the 
 worst. Now, unless they were caught by the gale and drowned, 
 which I believe to be the case, they must have come ashore in 
 this very bay, about five o'clock last night. There is no other 
 place where they could have beached their boat for many miles. 
 Consequently, the thing lies in a nutshell : if we find the boat, 
 prepare yourselves, — if not, make yourselves easy. Let us use our 
 wits a little. They would round the headland as soon as possible, 
 and probably run ashore in that furthest cove to our right, just 
 inside the reef. I have examined the bay through a telescope, 
 and could make out nothing of her. Let us come and examine 
 carefully. Downhaul ! " (to his Coxswain). " Come with me." 
 
 They passed three or four indentations in the bay, examining as 
 they went, finding nothing, but when they scrambled over the 
 rocks which bounded the cove the Captain had indicated, he 
 waved his hat, and laughing, said, — 
 
 " Ha, ha ! just as I thought. There she is." 
 
 "Where, Captain Blockstrop?" said Halbert. "I don't see 
 her." 
 
33*5 THE REGOLLFCTIONS OF 
 
 " Nor I either," said the Captain. " But I see the heap of 
 seeweed that the cunning dogs have raked over her. Downhaul ; 
 heave away at this weed, and show these gentlemen what is 
 below it." 
 
 The Cockswain began throwing away a pile of sea-tang heaped 
 against a rock. Bit by bit was disclosed the clear run of a 
 beautiful white whale boat, which when turned over discovered 
 her oars laid neatly side by side, with a small spritsaU. The 
 Captain stood by with the air of a man who had made a hit, while 
 Sam and Halbert stared at one another with looks of blank dis- 
 comfiture and alarm. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 A COUNCIL OP WAR. 
 
 " This is a very serious matter for us, Captain Blockstrop," said 
 S;im, as they were walking back to the boats. " An exceedingly 
 serious matter." 
 
 " I have only one advice to give you, Mr. Buckley," said the 
 Captain ; " which is unnecessary, as it is just what your father 
 will do. Fight, sir ! — hunt 'em down. Shoot 'em ! they will 
 give you no quarter : be sure you don't give them any." 
 
 A wild discordant bellow was here heard from the ship, on 
 which the Captain slapped his leg and said, — 
 
 "Dash my buttons, if he hasn't got hold of my speaking- 
 trumpet." 
 
 The midshipman came up with a solemn face, and, touching his 
 cap, " reported," — 
 
 " Colonial Secretary hailing, sir." 
 
 " Bless my soul, Mr. Vang, I csin hear that," said the Captain. 
 " I don't suppose any of my officers would dare to make such an 
 inarticulate, no saUor-like bellow as that on her Majesty's quarter- 
 dack. Can you make out what he says ? That would be more 
 to the purpose." 
 
 Again the unearthly beUow came floating over the water, 
 happily deadened by the wind, which was roaring a thousand 
 feet over head. 
 
 " Can you make out anything, Mr. Vang ? " said the Captain. 
 
 " I make out ' pork chops ! ' sir," said the midshipman. 
 
 " Take one of the boats on board, Mr. Vang. My compliments, 
 
GEOPFRY HAMLYN. 337 
 
 and will be much obliged if be will come ashore immediately ! on 
 important business, say. Tell him the convicts have landed, will 
 you ? Also, tell the lieutenant of the watch that I want either 
 Mr. Tacks, or Mr. Sheets : either will do." 
 
 The boat was soon seen coming back with the Colonial 
 Secretary in a statesmanlike attitude in the stem sheets, and 
 beside him that important officer Mr. Tacks, a wee little dot of 
 a naval cadet, apparently about ten years old. 
 
 " What were you bellowing about pork-chops, PoUifex ? " asked 
 the Captain, the moment the boat touched the shore. 
 
 " A failure, sir," said the Colonial Secretary ; " burnt, sir ; dis- 
 gracefully burnt up to a cinder, sir. I have been consulting the 
 honourable member of the Cross-jack-yard (I allude to Mr. Tacks, 
 N.C., my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so) as 
 to the propriety of calling a court-martial on the cook's mate. 
 He informs me that such a course is not usual in naval juris- 
 prudence. I am, however, of opinion that in one of the civil 
 courts of the colony an action for damages would lie. Surely 
 I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Bucldey of Baroona ? " 
 
 Sam and he had met before, and the Secretary, finding himself 
 on shore, and where he was Imown, dropped his King Canibyses' 
 vein and appeared in his real character of a shrewd, experienced 
 man. They walked up together, and when they arrived at the 
 summit of the ridge, and saw the magnificent plains stretching 
 away inland, beyond the naiTOw belt of heath along the shore, the 
 Secretaiy whispered to the Captain, — 
 
 " I have been deceived. We shall get some breakfast, after 
 all. As fine a country as I eTer saw in my life ! " 
 
 The party who were just sitting down to breakfast at the station 
 were sufficiently astonished to see Captain Blockstrop come rolling 
 up the garden walk, with that small ship-of-war Tacks sailing in 
 his wake, convoying the three civilians ; but on going in and ex- 
 plaining matters, and room having been made for them at the 
 table, Sam was also astonished on looking round to see that a new 
 arrival had taken place that mornmg. 
 
 It was that of a handsome singular-looking man. His hair was 
 light, his whiskers a little darker, and his blonde moustache curled 
 up towards his eyes like corkscrews or ram's horns (congratulate 
 me on my simile). A very merry laughing eye he had, too, blue 
 of course, with that coloured hair ; altogether a very pleasant- 
 looking man, and yet whose face gave one the idea that it was not 
 at all times pleasant, but on occasions might look terribly tigerish 
 and fierce. A man who won you at once, and yet one with whom 
 one would hardly like to quarrel. Add to this, also, that when he 
 
 23 
 
338 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 opened hia mouth to speak, he diselosed a splendid set of white 
 teeth, and the moment he'd uttered a word, a stranger would 
 remark to himself, " That is an Irishman." 
 
 Sam, who had ensconced himself heside Alice, looked up the 
 long tahle towards him with astonishment. "Why, good gracious, 
 Captain Desborough," he said, " can that he you ? " 
 
 "I have been waiting," said Desborough, "with the greatest 
 patience, to see how long you would have the audacity to ignore 
 my presence. How do you do, my small child ? Sam, my dear, 
 if ever I get cashiered for being too handsome to remain in the 
 Service, I'U carry you about and exhibit you, as the biggest and 
 ugliest-boy in the Australian colonies." 
 
 "^-Captain Desborougbhas been mentioned before in these pages. 
 He was an ofHoer in the army, at the present time holding the 
 situation of Inspector of Police in this district. He was a very 
 famous hunter -down of bushrangers, and was heartily popular with 
 every one^ he was thrown against, except the aforesaid bushrangers. 
 Sam and he were very old friends, and were very fond of one 
 another. 
 
 Desborough was sitting now at the upper end of the table, with 
 the Colonial Secretary, Major Buckley, Captain Blockstrop, Cap- 
 tain Brentwood, and Doctor Mulhaus. They looked very serious 
 indeed. 
 
 "It was a very lucky thing, Desborough," said the Major, 
 " that you happened to meet Captain Blockstrop. He has now, 
 you perceive, handed over the care of these rascals to you. It is 
 rather strange that they should have landed here." 
 
 "I believe that they were expected," said the Doctor. "I 
 believe that there is a desperate scheme of villainy afloat, and that 
 some of us are the objects of it." 
 
 " If you mean," said Desborough, " that that man you saw on 
 ' the Cape last night was watching for the boat, I don't beheve it 
 possible. It was, possibly, some stockman or shepherd, having a 
 look at the weather." 
 
 The Doctor had it on the tip of his tongue to speak, and astoimd 
 them by disclosing that the lonely watcher was none other than 
 the ruffian Touan, alias George .Hawker ; but the Majof pressed 
 his ^itStiSeiieath tlie^aBIe7~and he was silent. 
 
 " Well," said Desborough, " and that's about all that's to be 
 said at present, except that the settlers must arm and watch, and 
 if necessary fight." 
 
 " If they will only do that," said the Colonial Secretary ; " if 
 they will only act boldly in protecting their property and lives, the 
 evil is reduced by one-half; but when Brallagan was out, nothing 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 339 
 
 that I or the Governor could do would induce the majority of them 
 to behave like men." 
 
 " Look here, now," said Barker, the host, " I was over the 
 water when BraUagan was out, and when Howe was out too. 
 And what could a lonely squatter do against half-a-dozen of 'em ? 
 Answer me that ? " 
 
 "I don't mean that," said the Colonial Secretary; "what I 
 refer to is the cowardly way in which the settlers allowed them- 
 selves to he prevented by threats from giving information. I speak 
 the more boldly, Mr. Barker, because you were not one of those 
 who did so." 
 
 Barker was appeased. " There's five long guns in my haU, 
 and there's five long lads can use 'em," he said. "By-the-bye, 
 Captain Desborough, let me congratulate you on the short work, 
 you made with that gang to the north, the other day. I am sorrj^^ 
 to hear that the principal rascal of the lot, Captain Touan, gave.C 
 vou the slip." ~ i 
 
 '^rEe Doctor had been pondering, and had made up his mind to 
 a certain course ; he bent over the table, and said — 
 
 " I think, on the whole, that it is better to let you aU know the 
 worst. That man whom we saw on the cliff last night I met after- 
 wards, alone, down on the shore, and that man is no other than 
 the one you speak of. Captain Touan." 
 
 Anyone watching Desborough's face as the Doctor spoke would 
 have seen his eyebrows contract heavily, and a fierce scowl settle 
 on his face. The name the Doctor mentioned was a very unwel- 
 come one. He had been taunted and laughed at, at Grovemment- 
 house, for having allowed Hawker to outwit him. His hot Irish 
 blood couldn't stand that, and he had vowed to have the fellow 
 somehow. Here he had missed him, again, and by so little, too. 
 He renewed his vow to himself, and in an instant the cloud was 
 gone, and the merry Irishman was there again. 
 
 " My dear Doctor," he said, " I am aware that you never speak 
 at random, or I should ask you, were you sure of the man ? Are 
 you not mistaken ? " 
 
 " Mistaken m him, — eh? " said the Doctor. " No, I was not 
 mistaken." 
 
 " You seem to know too much of a very suspicious character. 
 Doctor ! " said Desborough. " I shall have to keep my eye on 
 you, I see 1 " 
 
 ****** 
 
 MeanwbUe, at the other end of the table, more agreeable sub- 
 jects were being talked of. There sat our young coterie, laughing 
 loudly, grouping themselves round some exceedingly minute object, 
 
340 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 which apparently was between Sam and Alice, and which, on close 
 examination, turned out to be little Tacks, who was evidently 
 making himself agreeable in a way hardly to be expected in one 
 of his tender years. And this is the way he got there : — 
 
 When Captain Blockstrop came in, Alice was duly impressed by 
 the appearance of that warrior. But when she saw little Tacks 
 slip in behind him, and sit meekly down by the door ; and when 
 she saw how his character was appreciated by the cattle-dogs, 
 one of whom had his head in the lad's lap, whUe the other was 
 licking his face — when she saw, I say, the little blue and gold 
 apparition, her heart grew pitiful, and, turning to Halbert, she 
 said, — 
 
 "Why, good gracious me ! You don't mean to tell me that 
 they take such a child as that to sea ; do you ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, yes I " said Halbert, " and younger, too. Don't you 
 remember the story about Collingwood offering his cake to the first 
 lieutenant ? He became, remember, a greater man than Nelson, 
 in all except worldly honour." 
 
 " Would you ask him to come and sit by me, if you please ? " 
 said Alice. 
 
 So Halbert went and fetched him in, and he sat and had his 
 breakfast between Alice and Sam. They were all delighted with 
 him ; such a child, and yet so bold and self-helpful, making 
 himself quietly at home, and answering such questions as were 
 put to him modestly and well. Would that aU. midshipmen were 
 like him ! 
 
 But it became time to go on board, and Captain Blockstrop, 
 coming by where Alice sat, said, laughing, — 
 
 " I hope you are not giving my officer too much marmalade. 
 Miss Brentwood ? He is over-young to be trusted with a jam-pot, 
 —eh. Tacks ? " 
 
 " Too young to go to sea, I should say," said Alice. 
 
 " Not too young to be a brave-hearted boy, however ! " said the 
 Captain. " The other day, in Sydney harbour, one of my marines 
 who couldn't swim went overboard and this boy soused in after 
 him, and carried the life-buoy to him, in spite of sharks.. What 
 do you think of that for a ten-year-old ? " 
 
 The boy's face flushed scarlet as the Captain passed on, and he 
 held out his hand to Alice to say good-bye. She took it, looked 
 at him, hesitated, and then bent down and kissed his cheek — a 
 tender, sisterly kiss — something, as Jim said, to caiTy on board 
 with him ! 
 
 Poor little Tacks ! He was a great friend of mine ; so I have 
 been tempted to dweU on him. He came to me with letters of 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLTN. 341 
 
 introduction, and stayed at my place six weeks or more. He served 
 brilliantly, and rose rapidly, and last year only I heard that Lieu- 
 tenant Tacks had fallen in the dust, and never risen again, just at 
 the moment that the gates of Delhi were burst down, and our 
 fellows went swarming in to vengeance. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 AN EAETHQUAKE, A COLLIERY EXPLOSION, AND AN ADVENTURE. 
 
 So the Captain, the Colonial Secretary, and the small midshipman 
 left the station and went on board again, disappearing from this 
 history for evermore. The others all went home and grew warlike, 
 arming themselves against the threatened danger ; but still weeks, 
 ^jajjnonths^rolJbd^ and winter was turning into spring, and yet 
 the country side remained so profoundly tranquil that every one 
 began to believe that the convicts must after all have been drowned, 
 and that the boat found by sagacious Blockstrop had been capsized 
 and thrown bottom upwards on the beach. So that, before the 
 brown flocks began to be spotted with white lambs, all alarm had 
 gone by. ' , 
 
 Only four persons, besides Mary Hawker herself, were conversant I 
 of the fact that the Bushranger and George Hawker were the same / 
 man. Of these only three, the Doctor, Major Buckley, and Cap- 
 tain Brentwood, knew of his more recent appearance on the shore, 
 and they, after due consultation, took honest Tom Troubridge into* 
 their confidence. 
 
 But, as I said, all things went so quietly for__two_ffionths, that 
 at the end of that time no one thought any more of bushrangers 
 than they would of tigers* And just about this time, I, Greoffry 
 Hamlyn, having finished my last consignment of novels from 
 England, and having nothing to do, determined to ride over, and 
 spend a day or two with Major Buckley. 
 
 But when I rode up to the door at Baroona, having pulled my 
 shirt collar up, and rapped at the door with my whip, out came the 
 housekeeper to inform me there was not a soul at home. This 
 was deeply provoking, for I had got on a new pair of riding trousers, 
 which had cost money, and a new white hat with a blue net veil 
 (rather a neat thing too), and I had ridden up to the house under 
 the idea that fourteen or fifteen persons were looking at me out of 
 window. I had also tickled my old horse, Chanticleer, to make 
 him caper and show the excellency of my seat, But when I came 
 
342 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to remember that the old horse had nearly/ bucked me over his 
 head instead of capering, and to find that my hat was garnished 
 with a large cobweb of what is called by courtesy native silk, with 
 half-a-dozen dead leaves sticking in it, I felt consoled that no one 
 had seen me approach, and asked the housekeeper with tolerable 
 equanimity where they were all gone. 
 
 They were all gone, she said, over to Captain Brentwood's, and 
 goodness gracious knew when they would be back again. Mrs. 
 Hawker and Mr. Charles were gone with them. For her part, she 
 should not be sorry when Mr. Sam brought Miss Brentwood over 
 for good and all. The house was terrible lonesome when they 
 were aU away. 
 
 I remarked, " Oho ! " and asked whether she knew if Mr. 
 Troubridge was at Toonarbin. 
 
 No, she said ; he was away again at Port Phillip with store 
 cattle ; making a deal of money, she understood, and laying out a 
 deal for the Major in land. She wished he would marry Mrs. 
 Hawker and settle down, for he was a pleasant gentleman, and fine 
 company in a house. Wouldn't I get off and have a bit of cold 
 wild duck and a glass of sherry ? 
 
 Certainly I would. So I gave my horse to the groom and went 
 in. I had hardly cut the first rich red slice from the breast of a 
 fat teal, when I heard a light step in the passage, and in walked 
 my man Dick. You "remember him, reader. The man we saw 
 five and twenty yea rs ago on Dartmoor, combining with WiUiam 
 Lee to~urgi~the unhappy Georgfe Hawker on to ruin and forgery, 
 which circumstance, remember; I knew nothing of at this time. 
 The same man I had picked up footsore and penniless in the bush 
 sixteen years ago, and who had since lived with me, a most 
 excellent and clever servant — the best I ever had. This man now 
 came into Major Buckley's parlour, hat in hand, looking a little 
 foolish, and when I saw him my knife and fork were paralysed with 
 astonishment. - ' 
 
 " Why, what the Dickens " (I used that strong expression) 
 " brings you here, my lad ? " 
 
 " I went to Hipsley's about the colt," he said, " and when I got 
 home I found you were gone off unexpectedly ; so I thought it 
 better to come after you and teU you all about it. He won't taJce 
 less than thirty-five." 
 
 " Man ! man ! " I said, " do you mean to say that you have 
 ridden fifty miles to tell me the price of a leggy beast like that, 
 after I had told you that twenty-four was my highest offer ? " 
 
 He looked very silly, and I saw very well he had some other 
 reason for coming than that. But with a good servant I never ask 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 343 
 
 too many questions, and when I went out a short time after, and 
 found him leaning against a fence, and talking earnestly to our old 
 acquaintance William Lee, I thought, " He wanted an excuse to 
 come up and see his old friend Lee. That is quite just and proper, 
 and fully accounts for it." 
 
 Lee always paid me the high compliment of touching his hat to 
 me, for old Devon' sake I suppose. " How's all at Toonarbin, 
 Lee ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well and hearty, sir. How is yourself, sir ? " 
 
 " Getting older, Lee. Nothing worse than that. Dick, I am 
 going on to Captain Brentwood's. If you like to go back to 
 Toonarbin and stay a day or two with Lee, you can do so." 
 
 " I would rather come on with you, sir," he said eagerly. 
 
 " Are you sure ? " I said. 
 
 " Quite sure, sir." And Lee said, " You go on with Mr. 
 Hamlyn, Dick, and do your duty, mind." 
 
 I thought this odd ; but knowing it useless to ask questions of 
 an old hand, or try to get any information which was not volunteered, 
 I held my tongue and departed, taking Dick with me. 
 
 I arrived at Captain Brentwood's about three o'clock in the 
 afternoon. I flatter myself that I made a very successful approach, 
 and created rather a sensation among the ' fourteen or fifteen 
 people who were sitting in the verandah. They took me for a 
 distinguished stranger. But when they saw who it was they all 
 began calling out to me at once to Imow how I was, and to 
 come in (as if I wasn't coming in), and when at last I got among 
 them, I nearly had my hand shaken off ; and the Doctor, putting 
 on his spectacles and looking at me for a minute, asked what I 
 had given for my hat. 
 
 Let me see, who was there that day ? There was Mary Hawker, 
 looking rather older, and a little worn ; and there was her son 
 Charles sitting beside pretty EUen Mayford, and carrying on a 
 terrible flirtation with that young lady, in spite of her fat joUy- 
 looking mother, who sat with folded hands beside her. Next to 
 her sat her handsome brother Cecil, looking, poor lad ! as miser- 
 able as he well could look, although I did not know the cause. 
 Then came Sam, beside his mother, whose noble happy face was 
 still worth riding fifty miles to see ; and then, standing beside her 
 chair, was Alice Brentwood. 
 
 I had never seen this exquisite creature before, and I immedi- 
 ately fell desperately and hopelessly in love with her, and told her 
 so that same evening, in the presence of Sam. Finding that my 
 affection was not likely to be returned, I enrolled myself as one of 
 her knights, and remain so to this present time. 
 
344 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 The Major sat beside his wife, and the Doctor and Captain 
 Brentwood walked up and down, talking politics. There were also 
 present, certain Hawbucks, leggy youths with brown faces and 
 limp hair, in appearance and dress not unlike English steeple- 
 chase-riders who had been treated, on the face and hands, with 
 wahiut-juice. They never spoke, and the number of them then 
 present I am uncertain about, but one of them I recoUect could 
 spit a good deal farther than any of his brothers, and proved it 
 beyond controversy about twice in every three minutes. 
 
 I missed my old friend Jim Brentwood, and was informed that 
 he had gone to Sydney, " on the spree," as Sam expressed it, 
 along with' a certain Lieutenant Halbert who was staying on a 
 visit with Major Buckley. 
 
 First I sat down by Mary Hawker, and had a long talk with 
 her about old times. She was in one of her gay moods, and 
 laughed and joked continuously. Then I moved up by invitation, 
 to a chair between the Major and his wife, and had a long private 
 and confidential conversation with them. 
 
 " How," I began, " is Tom Troubridge ? " 
 
 " Tom is perfectly well," said the Major. " He stiU carries on 
 his old chronic flirtation with Mary ; and she is as ready to be 
 flirted with as ever." 
 
 " Why don't they marry ? " I asked, peevishly. " Why on 
 earth don't they marry one another ? What is the good of 
 carrying on that old folly so long ? They surely must have made up 
 their minds by now. She knows she is a widow, and has known 
 it for years." 
 
 " Grood God ! Hamlyn, are you so ignorant ? " said the Major. 
 And then he struck me dumb by telling me of all that had 
 happened latterly : of George Hawker's reappearance, of his 
 identity with the great bushranger, and, lasUy, of his second 
 appearance, not two months before. 
 
 " I tell you this in strict confidence, Hamlyn, as one of my 
 oldest and best friends. I know how deeply your happiness is 
 affected by aU this." : " 
 
 I remained silent and thunderstruck for a time, and then I tried 
 to turn the conversation : — 
 
 " Have you had any alarm from bushrangers lately? I heard 
 a report of some convicts having landed on the coast." 
 
 " All a false alarm I " said the Major. " They were drowned, 
 and the boat washed ashore, bottom upwards." 
 
 Here the Doctor broke in : " Hamlyn, is not this very queer 
 weather ? " 
 
 When he called my attention to it, I remarked that the 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 345 
 
 weather was really different from any I had seen before, and 
 said so. 
 
 The sky was grey and dull, the distances were clear, and to the 
 eye it appeared merely a soft grey autumnal day. But there was 
 something very strange and odd in the deadly stiUness of aU nature. 
 Not a leaf moved, not a bird sang, and the air seemed like lead. 
 At once Mrs. Buckley remarked, — ■ 
 
 " I can't work, and I can't talk. I am so wretchedly nervous 
 that I don't know what to do with myself, and you know, my 
 dear," she said, appealing to her husband, " that I am not given 
 to that sort of thing." 
 
 Each man looked at his neighbour, for there was a sound in the 
 air now — a weird and awful sound like nothing else in nature. 
 To the south arose upon the ear a hoUow quivering hum, which 
 swelled rapidly into a roar beneath our feet ; then there was a 
 sickening shake, a thump, a crash, and away went the Earth- 
 quake, groaning off to the northward. 
 
 The women behaved very well, though some of them began to 
 cry ; and hearing a fearful row in the kitchen I dashed off there, 
 followed by the Doctor. The interior was a chaos of pots and 
 kettles, in the centre of which sat the cook, Eleanor, holding on 
 by the floor. Every now and then she would give a scream 
 which took all the breath out of her ; so she had to stop and fetch 
 breath before she could give another. The Doctor stepped through 
 the saucepans and camp-ovens, and trying to raise her, said — 
 
 " Come, get up, my good woman, and give over screaming. AU 
 danger is over, and you wUl frighten the ladies." 
 
 At this moment she got her " second wind," and as he tried to 
 get her up she gave such a yell that he dropped her again, and 
 bolted, stopping his ears ; bolted over a teakettle which had been 
 thrown down, and fell prostrate, resounding, like an Homeric 
 hero, on to a heap of kitchen utensils, at the feet of Alice, who 
 had come in to see what the noise was about. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " said he, picking himself up, " what lungs she 
 has got ! I shall have a singing in my ears to my dying day. 
 Yar I it went through my head like a knife." 
 
 Sam picked up the cook, and she, after a time, picked up her 
 pots, giving, however, an occasional squall, and holding on by the 
 dresses, under the impression that another earthquake was coming. 
 We left her, however, getting dinner under way, and went back to 
 the others, whom we soon set laughing by telling poor Eleanor's 
 misadventures. 
 
 We were all in good spirits now. A brisk cool wind had come 
 up from the south, following the earthquake, making a pleasant 
 
346 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 rustle as it swept across the plain or tossed the forest boughs. 
 The sky had got clear, and the nimble air was so inviting that we 
 rose as one body to stroU in groups about the garden and wander 
 down to the river. 
 
 The brave old river was rushing hoarsely along, clear and full 
 between bis ruined temple-columns of basalt, as of old. " What 
 a grand salmon-river this would be, Major ! " said I ; " what pools 
 and stickles are here I Ah I if we only could get the salmon- 
 spawn through the tropics without its germinating. — Can you tell 
 me, Doctor, why these rocks should take the form of columns ? 
 Is there any particular reason for it that you know ? " 
 
 " You have asked a very puzzling question," he replied, " and 
 I hardly know how to answer it. Nine geologists out of ten will 
 tell you that basalt is lava cooled under pressure. But I have 
 seen it in places where that solution was quite inapplicable. 
 However, I can teU you that the same cause which set these 
 pillars here, to wall the river, piled up yon Organ-hiU, produced 
 the caves of Widderin, the great crater-hollow of Mimgish, and 
 accommodated us with that brisk little earthquake which we felt 
 just now. For you know that we mortals stand only on a thin 
 crust of cooled matter, but beneath our feet is all molten metal." 
 
 " I wish you could give us a lecture on these things. Doctor," 
 I said. 
 
 " To-morrow," said he, " let us ride forth to Mimgish and have 
 a picnic. There I will give you a little sketch of the origin of 
 that hill." 
 
 In front of the Brentwoods' house the plains stretched away for 
 a dozen miles or so, a bare sheet of grass with no timber, grey in 
 summer, green in winter. About five miles off it began to roll 
 into great waves, and then heaved up into a high bald hiU, a lofty 
 down, capped with black rocks, bearing in its side a vast round 
 hollow, at the bottom of which was a little swamp, perfectly cir- 
 cular, fringed with a ring of white gmn-trees, standing in such an 
 exact circle that it was hard to persuade oneself that they were 
 not planted by the hand of man. This was the crater of tiie old 
 volcano. Had you stood in it you would have remarked that one 
 side was a shelving steep bank of short grass, while the other 
 reared up some five hundred feet, a precipice of fire-eaten rock. 
 At one end the lip had broken down, pouring a torrent of lava, 
 now fertQe grass-land, over the surrounding country, which little 
 gap gave one a delicious bit of blue distance. All else, as I said, 
 was a circular wall of grass, rock, and tumbled slag. 
 
 This was Mimgish. And the day after the earthquake there was 
 a fresh eruption in the crater. An eruption of horsemen and 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 347 
 
 horsewomen. An eruption of talk, laughter, pink-bonnets, knives 
 and forks, and champagne. Many a pleasant echo came ringing 
 back from the old volcano-walls overhead, only used for so many 
 ages to hear the wild rattle of the thunder and the scream of the 
 hungry eagle. 
 
 Was ever a poor old worn-out grass-grown volcano used so 
 badly? Here into the very pit of Tophet had the audacious 
 Captain that very morning sent on a spring-cart of all eatables 
 and drinkables, and then had followed himself with a dozen of his 
 friends, to eat and drink, and talk and laugh, just in the very 
 spot where of old roared and seethed the &e and brimstone of 
 Erebus. 
 
 Yet the good old mountain was civil, for we were not blown into 
 the air, to be a warning to all people picnicing in high places ; but 
 when we had eaten and drunk, and all the ladies had separately and 
 collectively declared that they were so fond of the smell of tobacco 
 in the open air, we followed the Doctor, who led the way to the 
 summit of the hiU. 
 
 I arrived last, having dragged dear fat old Mrs. Mayford up the 
 slippery steep. The Doctor had perched himself on the highest 
 lame-worn crag, and when we all had grouped ourselves below 
 him, and while the wind swept pleasantly through the grass, and 
 rushed humming through the ancient rocks, he in a clear melo- 
 dious voice thus began : — 
 
 " Of old the great sea heaved and foamed above the ground on 
 which we stand ; aye, above this, and above yon farthest snowy 
 peak, which the westering sun begins to tinge with crimson. 
 
 " But in the lapse of ten thousand changing centuries, the lower 
 deeps, acted on by some Plutonic agency, began to grow shallow ; 
 and the imprisoned tides began to foam and roar as they struggled 
 to follow the moon, their leader, angry to find that the stillness of 
 their ancient domain was year by year invaded by the ever-rising land. 
 
 " At that time, had man been on the earth to see it, those 
 towering Alps were a cluster of lofty islands, each mountain pass 
 which divides them was a tide-swept fiord, in and out of which, 
 twice in the day, age after age, rushed the sea, bringing down 
 those vast piles of water-worn gravel which you see accumulated, 
 and now covered with dense vegetation, at the mouth of each 
 great valley. 
 
 " So twenty thousand years went on, and all this fair champaign 
 country which we overlook became, first a sand-bank, then a dreary 
 stretch of salt-saturated desert, and then, as the roar of the re- 
 tiring ocean grew fainter and fainter, began to sustain such vege- 
 tation as the Lord thought fit. 
 
348 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " A thousand years are but as yesterday to Him, and I can give 
 you no notion as to how many hundred thousand years it took to 
 do all this ; or what productions covered the face of the country. 
 It must have been a miserably poor region : nothing but the debris 
 of granite, sandstone, and slate ; perhaps here and there partially 
 fertilised by rotting sea-weed, dead fish and shells ; things which 
 would, we may assume, have appeared and flourished as the water 
 grew shallower. 
 
 " New elements were wanting to make the country available for 
 man, so soon to appear in his majesty ; and new elements were 
 forthcoming. The internal fires so long imprisoned beneath the 
 weight of the incumbent earth, having done their duty in raising 
 the continent, began to find vent in every weak spot caused by its 
 elevation. 
 
 " Here, where we stand, in this great crack between the granite 
 and the sandstone, they broke out with all their wildest fury; hurl- 
 ing stones high in the air, making midday dark with clouds of 
 ashes, and pouring streams of lava far and wide. 
 
 " So the country was desolated by volcanoes, but only desolated 
 that it might grow greener and richer than ever, with a new and 
 hitherto unknown fertility ; for, as the surface of the lava disinte- 
 grated, a new soil was found, containing all the elements of the old 
 one, and many more. These are your black clay, and your red 
 burnt soil, which, I take it, are some of the richest in the world. 
 
 " Then our old volcano, our familiar Mimgish, in whose crater 
 we have been feasting, grew stiU for a time, for many ages probably ; 
 but after that I see the traces of another eruption ; the worst, 
 perhaps, that he ever accomplished. 
 
 " He had exhausted himself, and gradually subsided, leaving a 
 perfect cup or crater, the accumulation of the ashes of a hundred 
 eruptions ; nay, even this may have been filled with water, as is 
 Mount Gambler, which you have not seen, forming a lake without 
 a visible outlet ; the water draining off at that level where the 
 looser scoriae begin. 
 
 " But he burst out again, filling this great hollow with lava, till 
 the accumulation of the molten matter broke through the weaker 
 part of the wall, and rolled away there, out of that gap to the 
 northward, and forming what you now call the ' stony rises,' — 
 turning yon creek into steam, which by its explosive force formed 
 that fantastic cap of rocks, and, swelling into great bubbles under 
 the hot lava, made those long underground hollows which we now 
 know as the caves of Bar-ca-nah. 
 
 " Is he asleep for ever? I know not. He may arise again in 
 his wrath and fiU the land with desolation ; for that earthquake we 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 349 
 
 felt yesterday was but a wild throe of the giant struggling to be 
 free. 
 
 " Let us hope that he may not break his chains, for as I stand 
 here gazing on those crimson Alps, the spirit of prophecy is upon 
 me, and I can see far iuto the future, and aU the desolate land- 
 scape becomes peopled with busy figures. 
 
 " I see the sunny slopes below me yellow with treUissed vines. 
 They have gathered the vintage, and I hear them singing at the 
 wine-press. They sing that the exhausted vineyards of the old 
 world yield no wine so rare, sq rich, as the fresh volcanic slopes 
 of the southern continent, and that the princes of the earth send 
 their wealth that their hearts may get glad from the juice of the 
 Australian grapes. 
 
 " Beyond I see fat black ridges grow yeUow with a thousand 
 cornfields. I see a hundred happy homesteads, half-hidden by 
 clustering wheatstacks. What do they want with all that com ? 
 say you ; where is their market ? 
 
 " There is their market ! Away there on the barren forest 
 ranges. See, the timber is gone, and a city stands there instead. 
 What is that on the crest of the hiU ? A steam-engine : nay, 
 see, there are five of them, working night and day, fast and busy. 
 Their cranks gleam and flash under the same moon that grew red 
 and lurid when old Mimgish vomited fire and smoke twenty thou- 
 sand years ago. As I listen I can hear the grinding of the busy 
 quartz-miU. What are they doing ? you ask. They are gold-mining. 
 
 " They have found gold here, and gold in abundance, and hither 
 have come, by ship and steamship, all the unfortunate of the eai'th. 
 The English factory labourer and the farmer-ridden peasant ; the 
 Irish pauper ; the starved Scotch Highlander. I hear a grand 
 swelling chorus rising above the murmur of the evening breeze ; 
 that is sung by German peasants revelling in such plenty as they 
 never knew before, yet stiU regretting fatherland, and then I hear 
 a burst of Italian melody replying. Hungarians are not wanting, 
 for all the oppressed of the earth have taken refuge here, glorying 
 to live under the free government of Britain ; for she, warned by 
 American experience, has granted to all her colonies such rights 
 as the British boast of possessing." 
 
 I did not understand him then. But, since I have seen the 
 living wonder of BaUarat, I understand him well enough. 
 
 He ceased. But the Major cried out, " Go on. Doctor, go on. 
 Look farther yet, and teU us what you see. Give us a bit more 
 poetry while your hand is in." 
 
 He faced romid, and I fancied I could detect a latent smile 
 about his mouth. 
 
350 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 "I see," said he, "a vision of a nation, the colony of the 
 greatest race on the earth, who began their career with more 
 advantages than ever fell to the lot of a young nation yet. War 
 never looked on them. Not theirs was the lot to fight, like the 
 Americans, through bankruptcy and inexperience towards freedom 
 and honour. No. Freedom came to them, Heaven-sent, red- 
 tape-bound, straight from Downing-street. MUlions of fertile 
 acres, gold in bushels, were theirs, and yet- " 
 
 "G-o on," said the Major. 
 
 " I see a vision of broken railway arches and ruined farms. I 
 see a vision of a people surfeited with prosperity and freedom 
 grown factious, so that now one party must command a strong 
 majority ere they can pass a law the goodness of which no one 
 denies. I see a bankrupt exchequer, a drunken Governor, an 
 Irish ministry, a " 
 
 " Come down out of that," roared the Major, " before I pull 
 you down. You're a pretty fellow to come out for a day's 
 pleasure I Jeremiah was a saint to him," he added, turning 
 appealingly to the rest of us. " Hear my opinion, 'per contra,' 
 Doctor. rU be as near right as you." 
 
 " Go on, then," said the Doctor. 
 
 " I see," began the Major, " the Anglo-Saxon race " 
 
 " Don't forget the Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese, and other 
 barbarians," interrupted the Doctor. 
 
 " Asserting," continued the Major, scornfully, " as they always 
 do, their right to all the unoccupied territories of the earth " 
 
 (" Blaekfellow's claims being ignored," interpolated the Doctor.) 
 
 " And fiUing all the harbours of this magnificent country " 
 
 (" Want to see them.") 
 
 " With their steamships and their sailing vessels. Say there 
 be gold here, as I believe there is, the time must come when the 
 mines will be exhausted. What then ? With our coals we shall 
 ■ supply—" 
 
 (" Newcastle," said the Doctor, again.) 
 
 " The British fleets in the East Indies- 
 
 " And compete with Borneo," said the Doctor, quietly, " which 
 contains more coal than ever India will bum, at one-tenth the 
 distance from her that we are. If that is a specimen of your 
 prophecies. Major, you are but a Micaiah, after all." 
 
 " Well," said the Major, laughing, " I cannot reel it off quite 
 so quick as you ; but think we shall haa-dly have time for any 
 more prophesying ; the sun is getting very low." 
 
 We turned and looked to westward. The lofty rolling snow- 
 aowns had changed to duU lead-coloui-, as the sun went down in a 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 351 
 
 red haze behind them ; only here and there some little elevated 
 pinnacle would catch the light. Below the mountain lay vast 
 black sheets of woodland, and nearer stiU was the river, marked 
 distinctly by a dense and rapidly-rising line of fog. 
 
 "We are going to have a fog and a frost," said the Major. 
 " We had better hurry home." 
 
 Behind all the others rode Alice, Sam, and myself. I was 
 fearful ot being " de trop," but when I tried to get forward to the 
 laughing, chattering crowd in front, these two young lovers raised 
 such an outcry that I was fain to stay with them, which I was 
 well pleased to do. 
 
 Behind us, however, rode three mounted servants, two of Cap- 
 tain Brentwood's, and my man Dick. 
 
 We were almost in sight of the river, nearly home in fact, when 
 there arose a loud lamentation from Alicb. 
 
 " Oh, my bracelet ! my dear bracelet ! I have lost it." 
 
 " Have you any idea where you dropped it? " I inquired. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said. " I am sure it must have been when I 
 fell down, scrambling up the rocks, just before the Doctor began 
 his lecture. Just as I reached the top, you know, I fell down, 
 and I must have lost it there." 
 
 " I wiU ride back and find it, then, in no time," I 
 said. 
 
 " No, indeed. Uncle Jeff," said Sam. " I wiU go back." 
 
 "I use an uncle's authority," I replied, "and I forbid you. 
 That miserable old pony of yours, which you have chosen to bring 
 out to-day, has had quite work enough, without ten miles extra. 
 I condescend to no argument ; here I go." 
 
 I turned, with a kind look from both of them, but ere I had 
 gone ten yards, my servant Dick was alongside of me. 
 
 " Where are you going, sir? " said he. 
 
 " I am going back to Mimgish," I replied. " Miss Alice has 
 dropped her bracelet, and I am going back for it." 
 
 " I wiU come with you, sir," he said. 
 
 " Indeed no, Dick ; there is no need. Go back to your 
 supper, lad, I shan't be long away." 
 
 " I am coming with you, sir," he replied. " Company is a good 
 thing sometimes." 
 
 " Well, boy, I said, if you will come, I shall be glad of your 
 company; so come along." 
 
 I had noticed lately that Dick never let me go far alone, but 
 would always be with me. It gave rise to no suspicion in my 
 mind. He had been tried too often for that. But still, I thought 
 it strange. 
 
352 THE EEOOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 On this occasion, we had not ridden far hefore he asked me a 
 question which rather surprised me. He said, — 
 
 " Mr. Hamlyn ; do you carry pistols ? " 
 
 " Why, Dick, hoy ? " I said, " why should I ? " 
 
 " Look you here, Mr. Hamlyn," said he. " Have you tried 
 me?" 
 
 " I have tried you for twenty years, Dick, and have not found 
 you wanting." 
 
 " Ah ! " said he, " that's good hearing. You're a magistrate, 
 sir, though only just made. But you know that coves like me, 
 that have heen iu trouble, get hold of information which you 
 beaks can't. And I tell you, sir, there's bad times coming for 
 this country side. You carry your pistols, sir, and, what's more, 
 you use 'etn. See here." 
 
 He opened his shirt, and showed me a long sharp knife inside. 
 
 " That's what I carries, sir, in these times, and you ought to 
 carry ditto, and a brace of barkers besides. We shan't get back 
 to the Captain's to-night." 
 
 We were rising on the first shoulder of Mimgish, and daylight 
 was rapidly departing. I looked back. Nothing but a vast sea of 
 fog, one snow peak rising from it like an iceberg from a frozen sea, 
 piercing the clear frosty air like a crystal of lead and silver. 
 
 " We must hurry on," I said, "or we shall never have day- 
 light to find the bracelet. We shall never find our way home 
 through that fog, without a breath of wind to guide us. What 
 shall we do ? " 
 
 " I noticed to-day, sir," said Dick, " a track that crossed the 
 hill to the east ; if we can get on that, and keep on it, we are 
 sure to get somewhere. It would be better to foUow that than go 
 blundering across the plain through such a mist as that." 
 
 As he was speaking, we had dismounted and commenced our 
 search. In five minutes, so well did our recollection serve us, 
 Dick had got the bracelet, and, having mounted our horses, we 
 deliberated what was next to be done. 
 
 A thick fog covered the whole country, and was rapidly creep- 
 ing up to the elevation on which we stood. To get home over 
 the plains without a compass seemed a hopeless matter. So we 
 determined to strike for the track which Dick had noticed in the 
 morning, and get on it before it was dark. 
 
 We plunged down into the sea of fog, and, by carefully keeping 
 the same direction, we found our road. The moon was nearly 
 fuU, which enabled us to distmguish it, though we could never see 
 above five yards in front of us. 
 
 We followed the road above an hour ; then we began to sec 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 353 
 
 ghostly tree-stems through the mist. They grew thicker and 
 more frequent. Then we saw a light, and at last rode up to a 
 hut-door, cheered by the wann light, emanating from a roaring 
 fire within, which poured through every crack in the house-side, 
 and made the very fog look warm. 
 
 I held Dick's horse while he knocked. The door was opened 
 by a wee feeble old man, about sixty, with a sharp clever face, 
 and an iron-grey rough head of hair. 
 
 " Night, daddy," said Dick. " Can me and my master stay 
 here to-night ? We're all abroad in this fog. The governor wiU 
 leave something handsome behind in the morning, old party, I 
 know." (This latter was in a whisper.) 
 
 "Canst thou stay here, say'st thou?" rephed the old fellow. 
 " In course thou canst. But thy master's money may bide in a's 
 pouch. Get thy saddles ofi', lad, and come in ; 'tis a smittle 
 night for rheumatics." 
 
 I helped Dick to take ofif the saddles, and, having hobbled our 
 horses with stirrup-leathers, we went in. 
 
 Our little old friend was the hut-keeper, as I saw at a glance. 
 The shepherd was sitting on a block before the fire, in his shirt, 
 smoking his pipe and warming his legs preparatory to turning in. 
 
 I understood him in a moment, as I then thought (though I 
 was much deceived). A short, wiry, black-headed man, with a 
 cunning face — convict all over. He rose as we came in, and gave 
 us good evening. I begged he would not disturb himself ; so he 
 moved his block into the comer, and smoked away with that lazy 
 indifference that only a shepherd is master of. 
 
 But the old man began bustling about. He made us sit down 
 before the fire, and make ourselves comfortable. He never 
 ceased talking. 
 
 " I'U get ye lads some supper just now," said he. "There's na 
 but twa bunks i' the hut ; so master and man must lie o' the floor, 
 'less indeed the boss lies in my bed, which he's welcome to. 
 We've a plenty blankets, though, and sheepskins. We'll mak ye 
 comfortable, boys. There's a mickle back log o' the fire, and 
 ye'U he warm, I'se warrant ye. There's cowd beef, sir (to me), 
 and good breed, no' to mind hoggins o' tea. Ye'll be comfort- 
 able, will ye. What's yer name? " 
 
 " Haanlyn," I said. 
 
 " Oh, ay! Ye 're Hamlyn and Stockbridge ! I ken ye well ; 
 I kenned yer partner : a good man — a very good man, a man o' 
 len thousand. He was put down up north. A bad job, a very 
 bad job ! Ye gat terrible vengeance, though. He hewed Agag 
 vn pieces ! T' Governor up there to Sydney was wild angry at 
 
 84 
 
354 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 what ye did, but he darena' say much. He knew that every free 
 man's heart went with ye. It were the sword of the Lord and of 
 Gideon that ye fought with 1 Ye saved many good lives by that 
 raid of yours after Stoekbridge was killed. The devUs wanted a 
 lesson, and ye gar'd them read one wi' a vengeance ! " 
 
 During this speech, which was uttered in a series of inter- 
 jections, he had made our supper, and drawn back to the fire. 
 The shepherd had tumbled into his blankets, and was snoring. 
 The old man, having cleared away the things, came and 
 sat down beside us. The present of a fig of tobacco won his 
 heart utterly, and he, having cut up a pipeful, began talking 
 again. 
 
 "Why," said he, "it's the real Barret's twist — the very real 
 article ! Eh, master, ye're book-learned : do you ken where this 
 grows ? It must be a fine country lo bring up such backer as 
 this ; some o' they Palm Isles, I reckon." 
 
 " Virginia," I told him, "or Carolina, one of the finest countries 
 in the world, where they hold slaves." 
 
 " Ah," said he, " they couldn't get white men to mess with 
 backer and such in a hot country, and in course, every one knows 
 that blacks won't work tiU they're made. That's why they 
 bothers themselves with 'em, I reckon. But, Lord ! they are 
 useless trash. White convicts is useless enough ; think what 
 black niggers must be ! " 
 
 How about the gentleman in bed ? I thought ; but he was 
 snoring comfortably. 
 
 " I am a free man, myself," continued the old man. " I never 
 did aught, ay, or thought o' doing aught, that an honest man 
 should not do. But I've lived among convicts twenty odd year, 
 and, do you know, sir, sometimes I hardly know richt frae wrang. 
 Sometimes I see things that whiles I think I should inform of, 
 and then the devil comes and tells me it would be dishonourable. 
 And then I believe him tiU the time's gone by, and after that I 
 am miserable in my conscience. So I haven't an easy time of it, 
 though I have good times, and money to spare." 
 
 I was getting fond of the honest, talkative old fellow ; so when 
 Dick asked him if he wanted to turn in, and he answered no, I 
 was weU pleased. 
 
 " Can't you pitch us a yam, daddy? " said Dick. " Tell us 
 something about the old countiy. I should like well to hear what 
 you were at home." 
 
 "I'U pitch ye a yam, lad," he replied, "if the master don't want 
 to turn in. I'm fond of talking. AH old men are, I think," he 
 said, appealing to me. " The time's coming, -ye see, when tiie 
 
GEOFFBT HAMLTN. 355 
 
 gift of speech will be gone from me. It's a great gift. But 
 happen we won't lose it after all." 
 
 I said, "No, that I thought not; that I thought on the other 
 side of the grave we should both speak and hear of higher things 
 than we did in the flesh." 
 
 " Happen so," said he ; "I think so too, sometime. I'U give 
 ye my yam ; I have told it often. Howsoever, neither o' ye have 
 heard it, so ye're the luckier that I tell it better by frequent re- 
 petition. Here it is : — ■ 
 
 " I was- a collier lad, always lean, and not well favoured, though 
 I was active and strong. I was small too, and that set my father's 
 heart agin me somewhat, for he was a gran' man, and a mighty 
 fighter. 
 
 " But my elder brother Jack, he was a mighty fellow, God bless 
 him ; and when he was eighteen he weighed twelve stone, and was 
 earning man's wages, tho' that I was hurrying stUl. I saw that 
 father loved him better than me, and whiles that vexed me, but 
 most times it didn't, for I cared about the lad as well as father 
 did, and he liked me the same. He never went far without me ; 
 and whether he fought, or whether he drunk, I must be wi' him 
 and help. 
 
 " Well, so we went on tiU, as I said, I was seventeen, and he 
 eighteen. We never had a word tiU then ; we were as brothers 
 should be. But at this time we had a quarrel, the first we ever 
 had ; ay, and the last, for we got something to mind this one by. 
 
 " We both worked in the same pit. It was the Southstone Pit ; 
 happen you've heard of it. No ? Well, these things get soon 
 forgot. Father had been an overman there, but was doing better 
 now above ground. He and mother kept a bit shop, and made 
 money. 
 
 " There was a fair in our village, a poor thing enough ; but 
 when we boys were children we used to look forward to it eleven 
 months out o' twelve, and the day it came round we used to 
 go to father, and get sixpence, or happen a shiEing apiece to 
 spend. 
 
 " Well, time went on tiU we came to earn money ; but still we 
 kept up the custom, and went to the old man reg'lar for ourfairin', 
 and he used to laugh and chaff us as he'd give us a fourpeimy or 
 such, and we liked the joke as well as he. 
 
 " Well, this time — it was in '12, just after the comet, just the 
 worst times of the war, the fair came round 24th of May, I well 
 remember, and we went in to the old man to get summut to spend — 
 just for a joke, like, 
 
556 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 " He'd lost money, and been vexed ; so when Jack asked him 
 for his fairin' he gi'ed him five shillin', and said, ' I'll go to gaol 
 but what my handsome boy shan't have summut to treat his friends 
 to beer.' But when I axed him, he said, ' Earn man's wages 
 and thee'U get a man's' fairin',' and heaved a penny at me. 
 
 " That made me wild mad, I teU you. I wasn't only angry wi' 
 the old man, but I was mad wi' Jack, poor lad ! The devil of 
 jealousy had got into me, and, instead of kicking him out I nursed 
 him. I ran out o' the house, and away into the fair, and drunk, 
 and fought, and swore like a mad one. 
 
 "I was in one of the dancing booths, half drunk, and a 
 young fellow came to me, and said, ' Where has thee been ? Do 
 thee know thy brother has foughten Jim Perry, and beaten 
 him?' 
 
 " I felt like crying, to think my brother had- fought, and I not 
 there to set him up. But I swore, and said, ' I wish Jim Perry 
 had killed un ; ' and then I sneaked off home to bed, and cried 
 like a lass. 
 
 " And next morning I was up before him, and down the pit. 
 He worked a good piece from me, so I did not see him, and it came 
 on nigh nine o'clock before I began to wonder why the viewer 
 had not been round, for I had heard say there was a foul place cut 
 into by some of them, and at such times the viewer generally looks 
 into every corner. 
 
 " Well, about nine, the viewer and underviewer came up with 
 the overman, and stood talking alongside of me, when there came 
 a something sudden and sharp, as tho' one had boxed your ears, 
 and then a ' whiz, whiz,' and the viewer stumbled a one side, and 
 cried out, ' God save us ! ' 
 
 " I hardly knew what had happened till I heai-d him singing 
 out clear and firm, ' Come here to me, you lads ; come here. 
 Keep steady, and we'll be all right yet.' Then I knew it was a 
 fire, and a sharp one, and began crying out for Jack. 
 
 "I heard him calling for me, and then he ran up and got hold 
 of me ; and so ended the only quarrel we ever had, and that was 
 a one-sided one. 
 
 " ' Are you all here ? ' said the viewer. ' Now follow me, and 
 if we meet the afterdamp hold yovu- breath and nm. I am afi-aid 
 it's a bad job, but we may get through yet.' 
 
 " We had not gone fifty yards before we came on the afterdamp, 
 filling the headway like smoke. Jack and I took hold of each 
 other's collars and ran, but before we were half way through, he 
 fell. I kept good hold of his shirt, and dragged him on on the 
 ground. I felt as strong as a horse ; and in ten seconds, which 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLTN. 857 
 
 seemed to me like ten hours, I dragged him out under the shaft 
 into clear air. At first I thought he was dead, but he was still 
 alive, and very little of that. His heart beat very slow, and I 
 thought he'd die ; but I knew if he got clear air that he might 
 come round. 
 
 " When we had gotten to the shaft bottom we found it all full of 
 smoke ; the waft had gone straight up, and they on the top told us 
 after that all the earth round was shook, and the black smoke and 
 coal-dust flew up as though from a gun-barrel. Any way it was 
 strong enough to carry away the machine, so we waited there ten 
 minutes and wondered the basket did not come down ; but they 
 above, meanwhile, were rigging a rope to an old horse-whim, 
 and as they could not get horses, the men run the poles round 
 themselves. 
 
 " But we at the bottom knew nothing of all this. There were 
 thirty or so in the shaft bottom, standing there, dripping wet wi' 
 water, and shouting for the others, who never came ; now the 
 smoke began to show in the west drive, and we knew the mine 
 was fired, and yet we heard nought from those above. 
 
 " But what I minded most of all was, that Jack was getting 
 better. I knew we could not well be lost right under the shaft, so 
 I did not swear and go on like some of them, because they did not 
 mind us above. When the basket came down at last, I and Jack 
 went up among the first, and there I saw such a sight, lad, as ye'U 
 never see tUl ye see a colliery explosion. There were hundreds 
 and hundreds there. Most had got friends or kin in the pit, and 
 as each man came up, his wife or his mother would seize hold of 
 him and carry on terrible. 
 
 " But the worst were they whose husbands and sons never came 
 up again, and they were many ; for out of one hundred and thirty- ; 
 one men in the pit, only thirty-nine came up alive. Directly we 
 came to bank, I saw father ; he was first among them that were 
 helping, working like a horse, and directing everj thing. When he 
 saw us, he said, ' Thank the Lord, there's my two boys. I am 
 not a loser to-day I ' and came running to us, aud helped me to 
 carry Jack down the bank. He was very weak and sick, but the 
 air freshened him up wonderful. 
 
 " I told father aU about it, and he said, ' I've been wrong, and 
 thou'st been wrong. Don't thou get angry for nothing ; thou hast 
 done a man's work to-day, at all events. Now come and bear a 
 hand. T'owd 'ooman wUl mind the lad.' 
 
 " We went back to the pit's mouth ; the men were tearing round 
 the whim faster than horses would a' done it. And first amongst 
 'em all was old Mrs. Cobley, wi' her long grey hair down her back, , 
 
358 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 doing the work o' three men ; for her two boys were down still, and 
 I knew for one that they were not with us at the bottom ; but when 
 the basket came up with the last, and her two boys missing, she 
 went across to the master, and asked him what he was going to 
 do, as quiet as possible. 
 
 " He said he was going to ask some men to go down, and my 
 father volunteered to go at once, and eight more went with him. 
 They were soon up again, and reported that all the mine was 
 fuU. of smoke, and no one had dared leave the shaft bottom fifty 
 yards. 
 
 " ' It's clear enough, the mine's fired, sir,' said my father to 
 the owner. ' They that's down are dead. Better close it, sir.' 
 
 " ' What ! ' screamed old Mrs. Cobley, ' close the pit, ye dog, 
 and my boys down there ? Ye wouldn't do such a thing, master 
 dear?' she continued ; 'ye couldn't do it.' Many others were 
 wild when they heard the thing proposed ; but while they raved 
 and argued, the pit began to send up a reek of smoke like the 
 mouth of hell, and then the master gave orders to close the shaft, 
 and a hundred women knew they were widows, and went weeping 
 home. 
 
 " And Jack got well. And after the old man died, we came out 
 here. Jack has gotten a public-house in Yass, and next year 
 I shall go home and live with him. 
 
 " And that's the yam about the fire at the Southstone Pit." 
 
 We applauded it highly, and after a time began to talk about 
 lying down, when on a sudden we heard a noise of horses' feet 
 outside ; then the door was opened, and in came a stranger. 
 
 He was a stranger to me, but not to my servant, who I could 
 see recognised him, though he gave no sign of it in words. I also 
 stared at him, for he was the handsomest young man I had ever 
 seen. 
 
 Handsome as an Apollo, beautiful as a leopard, but with such a 
 peculiar style of beauty, that when you looked at him you instinc- 
 tively felt at your side for a weapon of defence, for a more reckless, 
 dangerous looking man I never yet set eyes on. And while I 
 looked at him I recognised him. I had seen his face, or one like 
 it, before, often, often. And it seemed as though I had known 
 him just as he stood fthere, years and years ago, on the other side 
 of the world. I was almost certain it was so, and yet he seemed 
 barely twenty. It was an impossibility, and yet as I looked I 
 grew every moment more certain. 
 
 He dashed in in an insolent way. " I am going to quarter 
 here to-night and chance it," he said. "Hallo! Dick, my 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 359 
 
 prince 1 You here ? And what may your name be, old cock ? " 
 he added, turning to me, now seeing me indistinctly for the first 
 time, for I was sitting back in the shadow. 
 
 " My name is Geoffry Hamlyn. I am a Justice of the Peace, 
 and I am at your service," I said. " Now perhaps you wiU favour 
 me with your name ? " 
 
 The young gentleman did not seem to like coming so suddenly 
 into close proximity with a " beak," and answered defiantly, — 
 
 " Charles Sutton is my name, and I don't know as there's 
 anything against me at present." 
 
 " Sutton," I said ; " Sutton ? I don't know the name. No, 
 I have nothing against you, except that you don't appear very 
 civil." 
 
 Soon after I roUed myself in a blanket and lay down. Dick 
 lay at right angles to me, his feet nearly touching mine. He 
 began snoring heavily almost immediately, and just when I was 
 going to give him a kick, and teU him not to make such a row, I 
 felt him give me a good sharp shove with the heel of his boot, by 
 which I understood that he was awake, and meant to keep awake, 
 as he did not approve of the strangers. 
 
 I was anxious about our horses, yet in a short time I could 
 keep awake no longer. I slept, and when I next woke, I heard 
 voices whispering eagerly together. I silently turned, so. that I 
 could see whence the voices came, and perceived the hut-keeper 
 sitting up in bed, in close confabulation with the stranger. 
 
 " Those two rascals are plotting some villainy," I said to myself; 
 " somebody wiH be minus a horse shortly, I expect." And then I 
 fell asleep again ; and when I awoke it was broad day. 
 
 I found the young man was gone, and, what pleased me better 
 still, had not taken either of our horses with him. So, when we 
 had taken some breakfast, we started, and I left the kind little old 
 man something to remember me by. 
 
 We had not ridden a hundred yards, before I turned to Dick 
 and said, — 
 
 " Now mind ; I don't want you to tell me anything you don't 
 like, but pray reheve my mind on one point. Who was that young 
 man ? Have I ever seen him before ? " 
 
 " I think not, sir ; but I can explain how you come to think you 
 have. You remember, sir, that I knew all about Mrs. Hawker's 
 history?" 
 
 " Yes I yes ! Go on." 
 
 " That young fellow is George -Hawker's, son.'- 
 
 It came upon me like a thunderbolt. This, then, was the illegi- 
 timate son that he had by his cousin Ellen. Oh miserable child 
 
360 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ' of sin and shame ! to what end, I wondered, had he been saved till 
 now? 
 
 We shall see soon. Meanwhile I turned to my companion and 
 said, " Tell me how he came to be here." 
 
 " Why you see, sir, he went on in his father's ways, and got 
 lagged. He found his father out as soon as he was free, which 
 wasn't long first, for he is mortal cunning, and since then they two 
 have stuck together. Most times they quarrel, and sometimes they 
 fight, but they are never far apart. Hawker ain't far off 
 now." 
 
 "Now, sir," he continued, "I am going to tell you something 
 which, if it ever leaks out of your lips again, in such a way as to 
 show where it came from, will end my life as sure as if I was hung. 
 You remember three months ago that a boatfiil of men were sup- 
 posed to have landed from Cockatoo ? " 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I heard it from Major Buckley. But the 
 police have been scouring in all directions, and can find nothing 
 of them. My opinion is that the boat was capsized, and they 
 were all drowned, and that the surf piled the boat over with sea- 
 weed. Depend on it they did not land." 
 
 " Depend on it they did, sir ; those men are safe and well, and 
 ready for any mischief. Hawker was on the look-out for them, and 
 they all stowed away till the police cleared ofi", which they did last 
 week, ^here will be mischief soon. There ; I have told you 
 enough to cut my throat, and I'll tell you more, and convince you 
 that I am right. That shepherd at whose hut we stayed last night 
 was one of them ; that fellow was the celebrated Captain Mike. 
 What do you think of that ? " 
 
 I shuddered as I heaxd the name of that fell rufiiam, and thought 
 that I had slept in the hut with him. But when I remembered 
 how he was whispering with the stranger in the middle of the 
 night, I came to the conclusion that serious mischief was brewing, 
 and pushed on through the fog, which still continued as dense as 
 ever, and, guided by some directions fi-om the old hut-keeper, I 
 got to (^aptg,in Brentwood's about ten o'clock, and told him and 
 the Major the night's adventures. 
 
 We three armed ourselves secretly and quietly, and went back 
 to the hut with the determination of getting possession of the 
 person of the shepherd Mike, who, were he the man Dick accused 
 him of being, would have been a prize indeed, being one of the 
 leading Van Diemen's Land rangers, and one of the men reported 
 as missing by Captain Blockstrop. 
 
 " Suppose," said Captain Brentwood, " that we seize the fellow, 
 and it isn't him after all ? " 
 
GEOPFBY HAMLYN. 361 
 
 "Then," said the Major, "an action for false imprisonment 
 would lie, sir, decidedly. But we will chance it." 
 
 And when we got there we saw the old hut-keeper, he of the 
 colliery explosion experiences, shepherding the sheep himself, and 
 found that the man we were in search of had left the hut that 
 morning, apparently to take the sheep out. But that going out 
 about eleven the old man had found them still in the yard, whereby 
 he concluded that the shepherd was gone, which proved to be the 
 case. And making fm'ther inquiries we found that the shepherd 
 had only been hired a month previously, and no man knew whence 
 he came : all of which seemed to confirm Dick's story wonderfully, 
 and made us excessively uneasy. And in the end the Major asked 
 me to prolong my visit for a time and keep my servant with me, as 
 every hand was of use ; and so it fell out that I happened to be 
 present at and chronicle all which follows. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVn. 
 
 IN WHICH GEOEGE HAWKEB SETTLES AN OLD SCORE WITH WILLIAM 
 LEE, MOST HANDSOMELY, LEAVING, IN FACT, A LARGE BALANCE 
 IN HIS OWN FAVOUR. 
 
 I PAUSE here — I rather dread to go on. Although our course has 
 been erratic and irregular ; although we have had one character 
 disappearing for a long time (like Tom Troubridge) ; and, although 
 we have had another entirely new, coming bobbing up in the 
 manner of Punch's victims, unexpected, and apparently unwanted ; 
 although, I say, the course of this story may have been ill-arranged 
 in the highest degree, and you may have been continually coming 
 across some one in Vol. II. who forced you to go back to Vol. I. 
 to find out who he was ; yet, on the whole, we have got on 
 pleasantly enough as things go. Now, I am sorry to say I have 
 to record two or three fearful catastrophes. The events of the 
 next month are seldom alluded to by any of those persons men- 
 tioned in the preceding pages ; they are too painful. I remark 
 that the Luclmow and Cawnpore men don't much like talking 
 about the afiairs of that terrible six weeks ; much for the same 
 reason, I suspect, as we, going over our old recollections, always 
 omit the occurrences of this lamentable spring. 
 
 The facts contained in the latter end of this chapter I got from 
 the Gaol Chaplain at Sydney. 
 
362 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 The Major, the Captain, and I, got home to dinner, confirmed 
 in our suspicions that mischief was ahroad, and very vexed at 
 having missed the man we went in search of. Both Mrs. Buckley 
 and Alice noticed that something was wrong, but neither spoke a 
 word on the subject. Mrs. Buckley now and then looked anxiously 
 at her husband, and Alice cast furtive glances at her father. The 
 rest took no notice of our silence and uneasiness, little dreaming 
 of the awful cloud that was hanging above our heads, to burst, 
 alas ! so soon. 
 
 I was sitting next to Mary Hawker that evening, talking over 
 old Devon days and Devon people, when she said, — 
 
 " I think I am going to have some more quiet peaceful times. 
 I am happier than I have been for many years. Do you know 
 why ? Look there." 
 
 I shuddered to hear her say so, knowing what I knew, but 
 looked where she pointed. Her son sat opposite to us, next to 
 the pretty EUen Mayford. She had dropped the lids over her 
 eyes and was smiling. He, with his face turned toward her, was 
 whispering in his eager impulsive way, and tearing to pieces a slip 
 of paper which he held in his hand. As the firelight fell on his 
 face, I felt a chilL come over me. The likeness was so fearful ! — ■ 
 not to the father (that I had been long accustomed to), but to the 
 son, to the half-brother — to the poor lost yomig soul I had seen 
 last night, the companion of desperate men. As it struck me I 
 could not avoid a start, and a moment after I would have given a 
 hundred pounds not to have done so, for I felt Mary's hand on my-' 
 arm, and heard her say, in a low voice, — 
 
 " Cruel I cruel ! Will you never forget ? " 
 
 I felt guilty and confused. As usual, on such occasions, Satan 
 was at my elbow, ready mth a lie, more or less clumsy, and I said, 
 " You do me injustice, Mrs. Hawker, I was not thinking of old 
 times. I was astonished at what I see there. Do you think 
 there is anything in it ? " 
 
 " I sincerely hope so," she said. • 
 
 " Indeed, and so do I. It will be excellent on eveiy account. 
 Now," said I, " Mrs. Hawker, wiU you tell me what has become 
 of your old servant, Lee ? I have reasons for asking." 
 
 "He is in my service stiU," she said ; " as useful and faithful 
 as ever. At present he is away at a little hut in the ranges, 
 looking after our ewes." 
 
 " Who is with him ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well, he has got a Hew hand with him, a man who came 
 about a month or so ago, and stayed about splitting wood. I 
 fancy I heard Lee remark that he had known him before. How- 
 
GEOPPBY HAMLYN. 368 
 
 ever, when Lee had to go to the ranges, he wanted a hut-keeper ; 
 so this man went up with him." 
 
 " What sort of a looking man was he ? " 
 
 " Oh, a rather large man, red-haired, much pitted with the 
 small-pox." 
 
 All this made me uneasy. I had asked these questions by the 
 advice of Dick, and, from Mrs. Hawker's description tallying so 
 well with his, I had little doubt that another of the escaped gang 
 •was living actually in her service, alone, too, in the hut with Lee. 
 
 The day that we went to Mimgish, the circumstances I am 
 about to relate took place in Lee's hut, a lonely spot, eight miles 
 from the home station, towards the mountain, and situated in a 
 dense dark stringy-bark forest — a wild desolate spot, even as it 
 was that afternoon, with the parrots chattering and whistling 
 around it, and the bright winter's sun lighting up the green 
 tree-tops. 
 
 Lee was away, and the hut-keeper was the only living soul 
 about the place. He had just made some bread, and having 
 carried out his camp-oven to cool, was sitting on the bench in 
 the sun, lazily thinking what he would do next. 
 
 He was a long, rather powerfully-built man, and seemed at first 
 sight, merely a sleepy half-witted fellow, but at a second glance 
 you might perceive that there was a good deal of cunning, and 
 some ferocity in his face. He sat for some time, and beginning 
 to think that he would like a smoke, he got out his knife pre- 
 paratory to cutting tobacco. 
 
 The hut stood at the top of a lone gully, stretching away in 
 a vista, nearly bare of trees for a width of about ten yards or so, 
 all the way down, which gave it the appearance of a grass-ride, 
 walled on each side by tall dark forest. Looking down this, om- 
 hut-keeper saw, about a quarter of a mile off, a horseman cross 
 from one side to the other. 
 
 He only caught a momentary glimpse of him, but that was 
 enough to show him that it was a stranger. He neither kne^ 
 horse nor man, at least judging by his dress ; and while he was 
 stiU puzzling his brains as to what stranger would be coming to 
 such an out-of-the-way place, he heard the " Chuck, kuk, kuk, 
 kuk," of an opossum close behind the hut, and started to his feet. 
 
 It would of course have startled any bushman to hear an opossum 
 cry in broad day, but he knew what this meant well. It was the 
 arranged signal of his gang, and he ran to the place from whence 
 the sound came. 
 
 George Hawker was there — well dressed, sitting on a noble 
 chestnut horse. They greeted one another with a friendly curse. 
 
364 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 As is my custom, when recording the conversations of this 
 class of worthies, I suppress the expletives, thereby shortening 
 them by nearly one half, and depriving the public o&much valuable 
 information. 
 
 " Well, old man," began Hawker, " is the coast clear ? " 
 
 " No one here but myself," replied the other. " I'm hut- 
 keeping here for one BUI Lee, but he is away. He was one of the 
 right sort once himself, I have heard ; but he's been on the square 
 for twenty years, so I don't like to trust him." 
 
 " You are about right there. Moody, my lad," said Hawker. 
 " I've just looked up to talk to you about him, and other matters, 
 — I'U come in. When will he be back ? " 
 
 " Not before night, I expect," said the other. 
 
 " Well," said Hawker, " we shall have the more time to talk ; 
 I've got a good deal to tell you. Our chaps are all safe and snug, 
 and the traps are oflf. Only two, that's you and Mike, stayed this 
 side of the hill ; the rest crossed the ranges and stowed away in 
 an old lair of mine in one of the upper Murray gullies. They've 
 had pretty hard times, and if it hadn't been for the cash they 
 brought away, they'd have had worse. Now the coast is clear, 
 they're coming back by ones and twos, and next week we shall be 
 ready for business. I'm going to be head man this bout, because 
 I know the country better than any ; and the most noble Michael 
 has consented, for this time only, to act as lieutenant. We haven't 
 decided on any plans yet, but some think of beginning from the 
 coast, because that part will be clearest of traps, they having 
 satisfied themselves that we ain't there. In fact, the wiseacres 
 have fully determined that we are all drowned. There's one devil 
 of a foreign doctor knows I'm round though : he saw me the night 
 before you came ashore, and I am nigh sure he knew me. I have 
 been watching him, and I could have knocked him over last week 
 as clean as a whistle, only, thinks I, it'll make a stir before the 
 time. Never mind, I'U have him yet. This Lee is a black sheep, 
 lad. I'm glad you are here ; you must watch him, and if you 
 see him flinch, put a knife in him. He raised the country on me 
 once before. I teU you, Jerry, that I'd be hung, and willing, 
 to-moiTOW, to have that chap's life, and I'd have had it before 
 now, only I had to keep still for the sake of the others. That man 
 served me the meanest, dirtiest trick, twenty years ago, in the old 
 country, that ever you or any other man heard of, and if he catches 
 sight of me the game's up. Mind, if you see cause, you deal 
 
 with him, or else, " (with an awful oath) " you answer to the 
 
 others." 
 
 " If he's got to go, he'U go," replied the other, doggedly. 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLTN. 365 
 
 " Don't you fear me ; Moody the cannibal ain't a man to 
 flinch." 
 
 " What, is that tale true, then ? " asked Hawker, looking at his 
 companion with a new sort of interest. 
 
 "Why, in course it is," replied Moody; "I thought no one 
 doubted that. That Van Diemen's Land bush would starve a 
 bandicoot, and Shiner and I walked two days before we knocked 
 the boy on the head ; the lad was getting beat, and couldn't a' 
 gone much further. After three days more we began to watch one 
 another, and neither one durst walk first, or go to sleep. Well, 
 Shiner gave in first ; he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. 
 And then, you know, of course, my own life was dearer than 
 his'n." * 
 
 " My God I That's worse than ever I did ! " said Hawker. 
 
 " But not worse thaij you may do, if you persevere. You 
 promise well," said Moody, with a grin. 
 
 Hawker bent and whispered in his ear ; the other listened for a 
 time, and then said, — 
 
 " Make it twenty." 
 
 Hawker after a little consideration nodded — then the other 
 nodded — then they whispered together again. Something out of 
 the common this must be, that they, not very particular in their 
 confidences, should whisper about it. 
 
 They looked up suddenly, and Lee was standing in the doorway. 
 
 Hawker and he started when they saw one another, but Lee 
 recovered himself first, and said, — 
 
 " George Hawker, it's many years since we met, and I'm not so 
 young as I was. I should like to make peace before I go, as I well 
 know that I'm the chief one to blame for you getting into trouble. 
 I'm not humbugging you, when I say that I have been often sorry 
 for it of late years. But sorrow won't do any good. If you'll 
 forgive and forget, I'U do the same. You tried my life once, and 
 that's worse than ever I did for you. And now I'll tell you, that 
 if you want money to get out of the country and set up anywhere 
 else, and leave your poor wife in peace, I'U find it for you out of 
 my own pocket." 
 
 " I don't bear any malice," said Hawker ; " but I don't want to 
 
 * This story is true in every particular, and is, or was, notorious in 
 Van Diemen's Land. Two convicts and a toy escaped, and, trying to 
 cross the island, got short of provisions. They killed the boy, and lived 
 on his flesh while it lasted. After that, one of the men murdered the 
 other, whose flesh lasted long enough to take him back to the settlement, 
 where he surrendered himself. I ought to apologise for telling such a 
 terrible tale, but it is strictly true. 
 
366 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 leave the country just yet. I suppose you won't peach about 
 having seen me here ? " 
 
 " I shan't say a word, George, if you keep clear of the home 
 station ; but I won't have you come about there. So I warn 
 you." 
 
 Lee held out his hand, and George took it. Then he asked him 
 if he would stay there that night, and George consented. 
 
 Day was fast sinking behind the trees, and making golden 
 boughs overhead. Lee stood at the hut door watching the sun 
 set, and thinking, perhaps, of old Devon. He seemed sad, and 
 let us hope he was regretting his old crimes while time was left 
 him. Night was closing in on him, and having looked once more 
 on the darkeiiing sky, and the fog coldly creeping up the gully, 
 he turned with a sigh and a shudder into the hut, and shut the 
 door. 
 
 Near midnight, and all was still. Then arose a cry upon the 
 /night so hideous, so wild, and so terrible, that the roosting birds 
 ' dashed off affrighted, and the dense mist, as though in sympa- 
 thising fear, prolonged the echoes a hundredfold. One articulate 
 cry, " Oh ! you treacherous dog I " given with the fierce energy 
 of a dying man, and then night returned to her stiUness, and the 
 listeners heard nothing but the weeping of the moistmre firom the 
 wintry trees. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The two perpetrators of the atrocity stood silent a minute or 
 more, recovering themselves. Then Hawker said in a fierce 
 whisper, — 
 
 " You clumsy hound ; why did you let him make_ that noise ? 
 I shall never get it out of my head again, if I live tiU a hundred.^ 
 Let's get out of this place before I go mad ; I could not stay in 
 the house with it for salvation. Get his horse, and come along." 
 
 They got the two horses, and rode away into the night ; but 
 Hawker, in his nervous anxiety to get away, dropped a handsome 
 cavalry pistol, — a circumstance which nearly cost Doctor Mulhaus 
 his life. 
 
 They rode tiU after daylight, taking a course toward the sea, and 
 had gone nearly twelve miles before George discovered his loss, and 
 broke out into petulant imprecations. 
 
 " I wouldn't have lost that pistol for five pounds,'' he said; 
 " no nor more. I shall never have one like it again. I've put 
 over a parrot at twenty yards with it." 
 
 " Go back and get it then," said Moody, "if it's so valuable. 
 I'll camp and wait for you. We want all the arms we can 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLyN. 367 
 
 " Not I," said George ; " I would not go back into that cursed 
 hut alone for all the sheep in the country." 
 
 "You coward," replied the other; ''afraid of a dead man) 
 Well, if you won't, I will : and, mind, I shall keep it for my own 
 use." 
 
 "You're welcome to it, if you like to get it," said George. 
 And so Moody rode back. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVm. 
 
 HOW DE. MULHAUS SOT BUSHED IN THE RANGES, AND WHAT 
 BEFEL HIM THERE. 
 
 I MUST recur to the same eventful night again, and relate another 
 circumstance that occurred on it. As events thicken, time gets 
 more precious ; so that, whereas at first I thought nothing of 
 giving you the events of twenty years or so in a chapter, we are 
 now compelled to concentrate time so much that it takes three 
 chapters to twenty-four hours. I read a long novel once, the 
 incidents of which did not extend over thirty-six hours, and yet 
 it was not so profoundly stupid as you would suppose. 
 
 All the party got safe home from the picnic, and were glad 
 enough to get housed out of the frosty air. The Doctor, above 
 all others, was rampant at the thoughts of dinner, and a good 
 chat over a warm fire, and burst out, in a noble bass voice, with 
 an old German student's song about wine and Gretohen, and what 
 not. 
 
 His music was soon turned into mourning ; for, as they rode into 
 the courtyard, a man came up to Captain Brentwood, and began 
 talking eagerly to him. 
 
 It was one of his shepherds, who lived alone with his wife 
 towards the mountain. The poor woman, his wife, he said, was 
 taken in labour that morning, and was very bad. Hearing there 
 was a doctor staying at the home station, he had come down to see 
 if he could come to their assistance. 
 
 " I'll go, of course," said the Doctor ; " but ,let me get some- 
 thing to eat first. Is anybody with her ? " 
 
 "Yes, a woman was with her; had been staying with them 
 some days." 
 
 " I hope you can find the way in the dark," said the Doctor, 
 "for I can tell you I can't." 
 
368 THE BECOLLECTIONS OB 
 
 " No fear, sir," said the man ; " there's a track all the way, 
 and the moon's full. If it wasn't for the fog it would be as bright 
 as day." 
 
 He took a hasty meal, and started. They went at a foot's pace, 
 for the shepherd was on foot. The track was easily seen, and 
 although it was exceedingly cold, the Doctor, being well wrapped 
 up, contrived, with incessant smoking, to be moderately com- 
 fortable. All external objects being a blank, he soon turned to 
 his companion to see what he could get out of him. 
 
 " What part of the country are you from, my friend ? " 
 
 " Fra' the Isle of Skye," the man answered. " I'm one of the 
 Macdonalds of Skye." 
 
 " That's a very ancient famUy, is it not ? " said the doctor at a 
 venture, knowing he could not go wrong with a Highlander. 
 
 " Very ancient, and weel respeckit," the man answered. 
 
 " And who is your sheik, rajah, chieftain, or what you call 
 him ? " 
 
 " My lord Macdonald. I am cousin to my lord." 
 
 " Indeed I He owns the whole island, I suppose ? " 
 
 " There's Mackinnons live there. But they are interlopers ; 
 they are worthless trash," and he spit in disgust. 
 
 " I suppose," said the Doctor, " a Mackinnon would return the 
 compliment, if speaking of a Macdonald." 
 
 The man laughed, and said, he supposed " Yes," then added, 
 " See ! what's yon ? " 
 
 " A white stump burnt black at one side, — what did you think 
 it was ? " 
 
 " I jaloused it might be a ghaist. There's a many ghaists and 
 bogles about here."." 
 
 "I should have thought the country was too young for those 
 gentry," said the Doctor. 
 
 " It's a young country, but there's been muckle wickedness done 
 in it. And what are those blacks do you think ? — ^next thing to 
 devils — at all events they're no' exactly human." 
 
 " Impish, decidedly," said the Doctor. " Have you ever seen 
 any ghosts, friend ? " 
 
 " Ay ! many. A fortnight agone, come to-morrow, I saw the 
 ghost of my wife's brother in broad day. It was the time of the 
 high wind ye mind of ; and the rain drove so thick I could no' see 
 all my sheep at once. And a man on a white horse came fleeing 
 before the wind close past me ; I knew him in a minute ; it was 
 my wife's brother, as I tell ye, that was hung fifteen years agone 
 for sheep-stealing, and he wasn't so much altered as ye'd think." 
 
 " Some one else like him ? " suggested the Doctor. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 869 
 
 " Deil a fear," replied the man, " for when I cried out and said, 
 ' What, Col, lad ! Gang hame, and lie in yer grave, and dinna 
 trouble honest folk,' he turned and rode away through the rain, 
 straight from me." 
 
 " Well ! " said the Doctor, " I partly agree with you that the 
 land's bewitched. I saw a man not two months ago who ought to 
 have been dead five or six years at least. But are you quite sure 
 the man you saw was hung ? " 
 
 " Well nigh about," he replied. " When we sailed from Skye 
 he was under sentence, and they weren't over much given to re- 
 prieve for sheep-stealing in those days. It was in consequence o' 
 that that I came here." 
 
 " That's a very tolerable ghost story," said the Doctor. " Have 
 you got another ? If you have, I shouldn't mind hearing it, as it 
 will beguile the way." 
 
 " Did ye ever hear how Faithful's lot were murdered by the 
 blacks up on the Merrimerangbong ? " 
 
 " No, but I should like to ; is it a ghost story ? " 
 
 " Deed ay, and is it. This is how it happened : — When Faith- 
 ful came to take up his country across the mountains yonder, they 
 were a strong party, enough to have been safe in any country, but 
 whether it was food was scarce, or whether it was on account of 
 getting water, I don't know, but they separated, and fifteen of 
 them got into the Yackandandah country before the others. 
 
 " Well, you see, they were pretty confident, being stUl a strong 
 mob, and didn't set any watch or take any care. There was one 
 among thorn (Cranky Jim they used to call him — he has told me 
 this yam — he used to be about Reid's mill last year) who always 
 was going on at them to take more care, but they never heeded 
 him at all. 
 
 'f They found a fine creek, with plenty of feed and water, and 
 camped at it to wait till the others came up. They saw no blacks, 
 nor heard of any, and three days were past, and they began to 
 wonder why the others had not overtaken them. 
 
 " The third night they were all sitting round the fire, laughing 
 and smoking, when they heard a loud co'ee on the opposite side 
 of the scrub, and half-a-dozen of them started up and sang out, 
 ' There they are ! ' 
 
 " WeU, they all began co'eeing again, and they heard the others 
 m reply, apparently all about in the scrub. So off they starts, 
 one by one, into the scrub, answering and hallooing, for it seemed 
 to them that their mates were scattered about, and didn't know 
 where they were. WeU, as I said, fourteen of them started into 
 the scrub, to collect the pai'ty and bring them up to the fire ; only 
 
 25 
 
370 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 old Cranky Jim sat still in the camp. He believed, with the 
 others, that it was the rest of their party coming up, but he soon 
 began to wonder how it was that they were so scattered. Then he 
 heard one of them scream, and then it struck him all at once that 
 this was a dodge of the blacks to draw the men from the camp, 
 and, when they were abroad, cut them off one by one, plunder the 
 drays, and drive off the sheep. 
 
 " So he dropped, and crawled away in the dark. He heard the 
 co'ees grow fewer and fewer as the men were speared one by one, 
 and at last everything was quiet, and then he knew he was right, 
 and he rose up and fled away. 
 
 " In two days he found the other party, and told them what had 
 happened. They came up, and there was some sharp fighting, but 
 they got a good many of their sheep back. 
 
 " They found the men lying about singly in the scrub, aU 
 speared. They buried them just where they found each one, for 
 it was hot weather. They buried them four foot deep, but they 
 wouldn't lie stiU. 
 
 " Every night, about nine o'clock, they get up again, and begiu 
 co'eeing for an hour or more. At first there's a regular coronach 
 of them, then by degrees the shouts get fewer and fewer, and, just 
 when you think it's all over, one will break out loud and clear close 
 to you, and after that all's still again." 
 
 " You don't believe that story, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Jf you press me very hard," said the Doctor, " I must confess, 
 with aU humility, that I don't ! " 
 
 " No more did I," said Macdonald, " till I heard 'em ! " 
 
 " Heard them ! " said the Doctor. 
 
 " Ay, and seen them 1 " said the man, stopping and turning 
 round. 
 
 " You most agreeable of men 1 pray, tell me how." 
 
 " Why, you see, last year I was coming down with some wool- 
 drays fi'om Parson Dorken's, and this Cranky Jim was with us, 
 and told us the same yam, and when he had finished, he said, 
 ' You'U know whether I speak the truth or not to-night, for ue're 
 going to camp at the place where it happened.' 
 
 " Well, and so we did, and as well as we could reckon, it was 
 a little past nine when a curlew got up and began crying. That 
 was the signal for the ghosts, and in a minute they were co'eeing 
 like mad all round. As Jim had told us, one by one ceased untU 
 all was quiet, and I thought it was over, when I looked, and saw, 
 about a himdred yards off, a tall man in grey crossing a belt of 
 open ground. He put his hand to his mouth, gave a wild shout, 
 and disappeared I " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLIN. 371 
 
 " Thank you," said the Doctor. " I think you mentioned that 
 your wife's confinement was somewhat sudden." 
 
 " Yes, rather," replied the man. 
 
 " Pray, had you been relating any of the charming little tales to 
 her lately — just, we will suppose, to while away the time of the 
 evening ? " 
 
 "Well, I may have done so," said Maedonald, "hut I don't 
 exactly mind." 
 
 " Ah, so I thought. The next time your good lady happens to 
 be in a similar situation, I think I would refrain from ghost 
 stories. I should not like to commit myself to a decided opinion, 
 but I should be inclined to say that the tales you have been telling 
 me were rather horrible. Is that the light of your hut ? " 
 
 Two noble coUie dogs bounded to welcome them, and a beautiful 
 bare-legged girl, about sixteen, ran forth to tell her father, in 
 Gaelic, that the trouble was over, and that a boy was bom. 
 
 On going in, they found the mother asleep, while her gossip held 
 the baby on her knee ; so the Doctor saw that he was not needed, 
 and sat down, to wait until the woman should wake, having first, 
 however, produced from his saddle two bottles of port wine, a 
 present from Alice. 
 
 The woman soon woke, and the Doctor, having felt her pulse, 
 and left some medicine, started to ride home again, carrying with 
 him an incense of good wishes from the warm-hearted Highlanders. 
 
 Instead of looking carefully for the road, the good Doctor was 
 soon nine fathoms deep into the reasons why the mountaineers 
 and coast folk of all northern countries should be more blindly 
 superstitious than the dwellers in plains and in towns ; and so it 
 happened that, coming to a fork in the track, he disregarded the 
 advice of his horse, and instead of taking the right hand^ as he 
 should have done, he held straight on, and, about two o'clock in 
 the morning, found that not only had he lost his road, but that the 
 track had died out altogether, and that he was completely abroad 
 in the bush. 
 
 He was in a very disagreeable predicament. The fog was 
 thicker than ever, without a breath of au- ; and he knew that it 
 was as likely as not that it might last for a day or two. He was 
 in a very wild part of the mountain, quite on the borders of all the 
 country used by white men. 
 
 After some reflection, he determined to follow the fall of the 
 land, thinking that he was still on the water-shed of the Snowy- 
 river, and hoping, by following down some creek, to find some place 
 he knew. 
 
 Gradually day broke, cold and cheerless. He was wet and 
 
372 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 miserable, and could merely give a guess at the east, for the sun 
 was quite invisible ; but, about eight o'clock, he came on a track, 
 running at right fmgles to the way he had been going, and marked 
 with the hoofs of two horses, whose riders had apparently passed 
 not many hours before. 
 
 Which way should he go ? He could not determine. The 
 horsemen, it seemed to him, as far as he could guess, had been 
 going west, while his route lay east. And, after a time, having 
 registered a vow never to stir out of sight of the station agaiu 
 without a compass, he determined to take a contrary du-ection 
 from them, and to find out where they had come from. 
 
 The road crossed guUy after guUy, each one like the other. The 
 timber was heavy stringy-bark, and, in the lower part of the shallow 
 gullies, the tall white stems of the blue gums stood up in the mist 
 like ghosts. All nature was dripping and dull, and he was chUled 
 and wretched. 
 
 At length, at the bottom of a guUy, rather more dreary looking, 
 if possible, than all the others, he came on a black reedy water- 
 hole, the first he had seen in his ride, and perceived that the 
 track turned short to the left. Casting his eye along it, he made 
 out,the dark indistinct outline of a hut, standing about forty yards 
 o£f.^-~^ - - 
 
 He rode up to it. AU was as still as death. No man came out 
 to welcome him, no dog jumped, barking forth, no smoke went up 
 fi:om the chimney ; and, looking round, he saw that the track ended 
 here, and that he had ridden all these miles only to find a deserted 
 hut. 
 
 But was it deserted ? Not very long so, for those two horse- 
 men, whose tracks he had been on so long, ha3~s1;arted frorTEice. 
 Here, on this bare spot in front of the door," they had' motmted. 
 One of their horses liad~been capfering ; nay, here were their foot- 
 steps on the threshold. And, while he looked, there was a light 
 fall inside, and the chimney began smoking. " At all events," 
 said the Doctor, " the fire's in, and here's the camp-oven, too. 
 Somebody will be here soon. I will go in and light my pipe." 
 
 He lifted the latch, and went in. Nobody there. Stay — ^yes, 
 there is a man asleep in the bed-place. " The watchman, prob- 
 ably," thought the Doctor, " he's been up all night with the sheep, 
 and is taking his rest by day. Well, I won't waie him ; I'U hang 
 up my horse a bit, and take a pipe. Perhaps I may as well turn 
 the horse out. WeU, no. I shan't wait long ; he may stand a 
 little without hurting himself." 
 
 So soliloquised the Doctor, and ht his pipe. A quai-ter of an 
 hour passed, and the man still lay there without moving. The 
 
GEOFFEX.HAMLTN. 373 
 
 Doctor rose and went close to him. He could not even hear him 
 breathe. 
 
 His flesh began to creep, but his brows contracted, and his face 
 grew firm. He went boldly up, and pulled down the blanket, and 
 then, to his horror and amazement, recogaised^^the distorted_ca!in- 
 tenance of the unfortunate WLUiam Lee. 
 
 He covefed^the face over again, and stood thinkiug of his situa- 
 tion, and how this had come to pass. How came Lee here, and 
 how had he met his death ? At this moment something bright, 
 half hidden by a blue shirt lying on the floor, caught his eye, and, 
 going to pick it up, he found it was a beautiful pistol, mounted in 
 silver, and richly chased. 
 
 He turned it over and over, tiU in a lozenge behind the hammer, 
 he found, apparently scratched with a knife, the name, " G. 
 Hawker." 
 
 Here was light with a vengeance 1 But he had little time to 
 think of his discovery, ere he was startled by the sound of horses' 
 feet rapidly approaching the hut. 
 
 Instinctively he thrust the pistol into his pocket, and stooped 
 down, pretending to light his pipe. He heard some one ride up 
 to the door, dismount, and enter the hut. He at once turned 
 round, pipe in mouth, and confronted him. 
 
 He was a tall, iU-looking, red-haired man, and to the Doctor's 
 pleasant good morning, he replied by sulkily asking what he 
 wanted. 
 
 " Only a Ught for my pipe, friend," said the Doctor ; " having 
 got one, I will bid you good morning. Our Mend here sleeps weU." 
 
 The new comer was between him and the door, but the Doctor 
 advanced boldly. When the two men were opposite their eyes 
 met, and they understood one another. 
 
 Moody (for it was he) threw himself upon the Doctor with an 
 oath, trying to bear him down ; but, although the taller man, he 
 had met his match. He was held in a grasp of iron ; the Doctor's 
 hand was on his coUar, and his elbow against his face, and' thus 
 his head was pressed slowly backwards till he fell to avoid a broken 
 neck, and fell, too, with such force that he lay for an instant 
 stunned and motionless, and before he came to himself the Doctor 
 was on horseback, and some way along the track, glad to have 
 made so good an escape fi:om such an awkward customer. 
 
 " If he had been armed," said the Doctor, as he rode along, 
 "I should have been killed; he evidently came back after that 
 pistol. Now, I wonder where I am ? I shall soon know at thi^ 
 pace. The little horse keeps up well, seeing he has been out all 
 night." 
 
374 THE BECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 In about two hours he heard a dog bark to the left of the track, 
 and, turning off in that direction, he soon found himself in a 
 courtyard, and before a door which he thought he recognised : 
 the door opened at the sound of his horse, and out walked Tom 
 Troubridge. 
 
 " Good Lord I " said the Doctor, " a friend's face at last ; tell 
 me where I am, for I can't see the end of the house." 
 
 " Why, at our place, Toonarbinj Doctor." 
 
 "Well, take me in, 'and ^ve me some food ; I have terrible 
 tidings for you. When did you last see Lee ? " 
 
 " The day before yesterday ; he is up at an outlying hut of ours 
 in the ranges." 
 
 "He is lying murdered in his bed there, for I saw him so not 
 three hours past." 
 
 He then told Troubridge all that had happened. 
 
 " What sort of a man was it that attacked you ? " said Trou- 
 bridge. 
 
 The Doctor described Moody. 
 
 " That's his hut-keeper that betook from herewith him : a man 
 he said he knew, and you say he was on horseback. What sort of 
 a horse had he ? " 
 
 " A good-looking roan, with a new bridle on him." 
 
 " Lee's horse," said Troubridge ; " he must have murdered him 
 for it. Poor William I " 
 
 But when Tom saw the pistol and read the name on it, he 
 said, — 
 
 " Things are coming to a crisis. Doctor; the net seems closing 
 round my unfortunate partner. God grant the storm may come 
 and clear the air I Anything is better than these continual 
 alarms." 
 
 "It wUl be very terrible when it does come, my dear friend," 
 said the Doctor. 
 
 " It cannot be much more terrible than this," said Tom, " when 
 our servants are assassinated in their beds, and travellers in lonely 
 huts have to wrestle for their lives. Doctor, did you ever nourish 
 a passion for revenge ? " 
 
 " Yes, once," said the Doctor, " and had it gratified in fair and 
 open duel ; but when I saw him lying white on the grass before 
 me, and thought that he was dead, I was like one demented, and 
 prayed that my life might be taken instead of his. Be sure, Tom, 
 that revenge is of the devil, and, like everything else you get from 
 him, is not worth having." 
 
 " I do not in the least doubt it, Doctor," said Tom ; " but oh, 
 if I could only have five minutes with him on the turf yonder, with 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 375 
 
 no one to interfere between us ! I want no weapons ; let us meet 
 in our shirts and trowsers, like Devon lads." 
 
 " And what would you do to him ? " 
 
 " If you weren't there to see, he'd never tell you." 
 
 " Why nourish this feeling, Tom, my old friend ? you do not 
 know what pain it gives me to see a noble open character like 
 yours distorted like this. Leave him to Desborough, — why should 
 you feel so deadly towards the man ? He has injured others more 
 than you." 
 
 " He stands between me and the hopes of a happy old age. 
 He stands between me and the light, and he must stand on one 
 side." 
 
 That night they brought poor Lee's body down in a dray, and 
 buried him in the family burying-ground close beside old Miss 
 Thornton. Then the next morning he rode back home to the 
 Buckleys', where he found that family with myself, just arrived 
 from the Brentwoods'. I of course was brimful of intelligence, 
 but when the Doctor arrived I was thrown into the shade at once. 
 However, no time was to be lost, and we despatched a messenger, 
 post haste, to fetch back Captain Desborough and his troopers, who 
 had now been moved off about a week, but had not been as yet 
 very far withdrawn, and were examining into some " black " out- 
 rages to the northward. 
 
 Mary Hawker was warned, as delicately as possible, that her 
 husband was in the neighbourhood. She remained buried in 
 thought some time, and then, rousing herself, said, suddenly, — 
 
 " There must be an end to all this. Get my horse, and let me 
 go home." 
 
 In spite of all persuasions to the contrary, she still said the 
 same. 
 
 " Mrs. Buckley, I wiU go home, and see if I can meet him alone. 
 AH I ask of you is to keep Charles with you. Don't let the father 
 and son meet, in God's name." 
 
 " But what can you do ? " urged Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " Something, at all events. Find out what he wants. Buy 
 him off, perhaps. Pray don't argue with me. I am quite deter- 
 mined." 
 
 Then it became necessary to tell her of Lee's death, though the 
 fact of his having been murdered was concealed ; but it deeply 
 aifected her to hear of the loss of her old faithful servant, faithful 
 to her at all events, whatever his faults may have been. Neverthe- 
 less, she went off alone, and took up her abode with Troubridge, 
 and there they two sat watching in the lonely station, for him who 
 was to come. 
 
376 THE BECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 Though they watched together, there was no sympathy or con- 
 fidence between them. She never guessed what purpose was in 
 Tom's heart ; she never guessed what made him so pale and 
 gloomy, or why he never stirred from the house, but slept half the 
 day on the sofa. But ere she had been a week at home, she found 
 out. Thus : — 
 
 They would sit, those two, silent and thoughtfiil, beside that 
 unhappy hearth; watching the fire, and brooding over the past. 
 Each had that in their hearts which, made them sUent to one 
 another, and each felt the horror of some overflowing formless 
 calamity, which any instant might take form, and overwhelm them. 
 Mary would sit late, dreading the weary night, when her over- 
 strained senses caught every sound in the distant forest ; but, 
 however late she sat, she always left Tom behind, over the fire, 
 not taking his comfortable glass, but gloomily musing — as much 
 changed from his old self as man could be. 
 
 She now lay always in her clothes, ready for any emergency ; 
 and one night, about a week after Lee's murder, she dreamt that 
 her husband was in the hall, bidding her in a whisper which 
 thrilled her heart, to come forth. The fancy was so strong upon 
 her, that saying aloud to herself, " The end is come ! " she irose 
 in a state little short of delirium, and went into the hall. There 
 was no one there, but she went to the front door, and, looking out 
 into the profoundly black gloom of the night, said in a low voice, — 
 
 " George, George, come to me ! Let me speak to you, George. 
 It will be better for both of us to speak." 
 
 No answer : but she heard a slight noise in the sitting-room 
 behind her, and, opening the door gently, saw a light there, and 
 Tom sitting with parted lips watching the door, holding in his hand 
 a cocked pistol. 
 
 She was not in the least astonished or alarmed. She was too 
 much tete montSe to be surprised at anything. She said only, 
 with a laugh, — 
 
 " What ! are you watching, too, old mastiff? — Would you grip 
 the wolf, old dog, if he came ? " 
 
 " Was he there, Mary ? Did you speak to him ? " 
 
 " No 1 no 1 " she said. "A dream, a wandering dream. 
 What would you do if he came, — eh, cousin ? " 
 
 "Nothmg! nothing!" said Tom. " Go to bed." 
 
 " Bed, eh? " she answered. " Cousin ; shooting is an easier 
 death than hanging, — eh ? " 
 
 Tom felt a creeping at the roots of his hair, as he answered, — 
 " Yes, I believe so." 
 
 " Can you shoot straight, old man ? Could you shoot straight 
 
GEOFFRT HAMLTN. 377 
 
 and true if he stood there before you ? Ah, you think you could 
 now, but your hand wotdd shake when you saw him." 
 
 " Go to bed, Mary," said Tom. " Don't talk like that. Let. 
 the future lie, cousin." 
 
 She turned and went to her room again. 
 
 AU this was told me long after by Tom himself. Tom believed, 
 or said he believed, that she was only sounding him, to see what 
 his intentions were in case of a meeting with^G;eoige_Hawker. I 
 would not for the world have had him suppose I disagreed with 
 him ; but I myself take another and darker interpretation of her 
 strange words that night. I think that she, never a very strong- 
 minded person, and now grown quite desperate from terror, 
 actually contemplated her husband's death with complacency, 
 nay, hoped, in her secret heart, that one mad struggle between 
 him and Tom might end the matter for ever, and leave her a free 
 woman. I may do her injustice, but I think I do not. One 
 never knows what a woman of this kind, with strong passions 
 and a not over-strong inteUeot, may be driven to. I knew her for 
 forty years, and loved her for twenty. I knew in spite of all her 
 selfishness and violence that there were many good, nay, noble 
 points in her character ; but I cannot disguise from myself that 
 that night's conversation with Tom showed me adarker point in L 
 her character than I knew of before. Let us forget it. I would 
 wish to have none but kindly recollections of the woman I loved 
 so truly and so long. 
 
 For the secret must be told sooner or later, — I loved her before 
 any of them. Before James Stockbridge, beforeGFeorge Hawker, 
 before Thomas Troubridge, and I loved her more deeply and more 
 truly than any of them. But the last remnant of that love 
 departed from my heart twenty years ago, and that is why I can 
 write of her so calmly now, and that is the reason, too, why I 
 remain an old bachelor to this day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE LAST GLEAM BEFORE THE STOBM. 
 
 But with us, who were staying down at Major Buckley's, a 
 fortnight passed on so pleasantly that the horror of poor Le.e's 
 murder had begun to wear oflf, and we were getting once more 
 as merry and careless as though we were living in the old 
 times of profound peace. Sometimes we would think of poor 
 
378 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Mary Hawker, at her lonely watch up at the forest station ; but 
 that or any other unpleasant subject was soon driven out of our 
 heads by ' Captain Desborough, who had come back with six 
 troopers, declared the country in a state of siege, proclaimed 
 martial law, and kept us aU laughing and amused from daylight 
 to dark. 
 
 Captain Brentwood and his daughter Alice (the transcendently 
 beautiful !) had come up, and were staying there. Jim and his 
 friend Halbert were still away, but were daily expected. I never 
 passed a pleasanter time in my life than during that fortnight's 
 lull between the storms. 
 
 " Begorra (that's a Scotch expression. Miss Brentwood, but 
 very forcible)," said Captain Desborough. "I owe you more 
 than I can ever repay for buying out the Donovans. That girl 
 Lesbia Burke would have forcibly abducted me, and married me 
 against my wiU, if she hadn't had to follow the rest of the family 
 to Port Phillip." 
 
 " A fine woman, too," said Captain Brentwood. 
 
 " I'd have called her a little coarse, myself," said Desborough. 
 
 " One of the finest, strangest sights I ever saw in my Ufe," 
 resumed Captain Brentwood, " was on the morning I came to 
 take possession. None of the family were left but Murtagh 
 Donovan and Miss Burke. I rode over from Buckley's, and when 
 I came to the door Donovan took me by the arm, and saying 
 ' whist,' led me into the sitting-room. There, in fi:ont of the 
 empty fireplace, crouched down on the floor, bareheaded, with her 
 beautiful hair hanging about her shoulders, sat Miss Burke. 
 Every now and then she would utter the strangest low wailing 
 cry you ever heard : a cry, by Jove, sir, that went straight to your 
 heart. I turned to Donovan; and whispered, ' Is she ill ? ' and 
 he whispered again, ' Her heart's broke at leaving the old place 
 where she's lived so long. She's raising the keen over the cold 
 hearthstone. It's the way of the Burkes.' I don't know when 
 I was so affected in my hfe. Somehow, that exquisite line came 
 to ray remembrance, — 
 
 ' And the hare shall kindle on the cold hearthstone, 
 
 and I went back quietly with Donovan ; and, by Jove, sir, when 
 we came out the great ass had the tears running down his cheeks. 
 I have always felt kindly to that man since." 
 
 "Ah, Captain," said Desborough, "with all our vanity and 
 absurdity, we Irish have good warm hearts under our waistcoats. 
 We are the first nation in the world, sir, saving the Jews." 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 379 
 
 This was late in the afternoon of a temperate spring day. We 
 were watching Desborough as he was giving the finishing touches 
 to a beautiful water-colour drawing. 
 
 " Doctor," he said, " come and pass your opinion." 
 
 " I think you have done admirably, Captain," said the Doctor ; 
 " you have given one a splendid idea of distance in the way you 
 have toned down the plain, from the grey appearance it has ten 
 miles oflf to the rich, delicate green it shows close to us. And 
 your mountain, too, is most aerial. You would make an artist." 
 
 " I am not altogether displeased with my work, Doctor, if you, 
 who never flatter, can praise it with the original before you. 
 How exceedingly beautifiil the evening tones are becoming ! " 
 
 We looked across the plain ; the stretch of grass I have 
 described was lying before one like a waveless sea, from the 
 horizon of which rose the square abrupt-sided mass of basalt 
 which years ago we had named the Organ-hiU, from the regular 
 fluted columns of which it was composed. On most occasions, as 
 seen from Major Buckley's, it appeared a dim mass of pearly grey, 
 but to-night, in the clear frosty air, it was of a rich purple, 
 shining on the most prominent angles with a dull golden light. 
 
 " The more I look at that noble fire -temple, the more I admire 
 it," said the Doctor. "It is one of the most majestic objects I 
 ever beheld." 
 
 " It is not unlike Stafia," said Desborough. " There come two 
 travellers." 
 
 Two dots appeared crawling over the plain, and making for the 
 river. For a few minutes Alice could not be brought to see them, 
 but when she did, she declared that it was Jim and Halbert. 
 
 " You have good eyes, my love," said her father, " to see what 
 does not exist. Jim's horse is black, and Halbert's roan, and 
 those two men are both on grey horses." 
 
 " The wish was parent to the thought, father," she replied, 
 laughing. "I wonder what is keeping him away from us so 
 long ? If he is to go to India, I should like to see him as much 
 as possible." 
 
 " My dear,'' said her father, " when he went off with Halbert 
 to see the Markhams, I told him that if he liked to go on to 
 Sydney, he could go if Halbert went with him, and draw on the 
 agent for what money he wanted. By his being so long away, I 
 conclude he has done so, and that he is probably at this moment 
 getting a lesson at billiards from Halbert before going to dinner. 
 I shaJOl have a nice little account from the agent just now, of 
 Cash advanced to J. Brentwood, Esq.' " 
 
 " I don't think Jim's extravagant, papa," said Alice. 
 
380 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " My dear," said Captain Brentwood, " you do him injustice. 
 He hasn't had the chance. I must say, considering his limited 
 opportunities, he has spent as much money on horses, saddlery, &c., 
 as any young gentleman on this country side. Eh, Sam ? " 
 
 "Well, sir," said Sam, "Jim spends his money, hut he 
 generally makes pretty good investments in the horse line." 
 
 " Such as that sweet-tempered useful animal Stampedo," replied 
 the Captain, laughing, " who nearly killed a groom, and staked 
 himself trying to leap out of the stockyard the second day he had 
 him. Well, never mind ; Jim's a good boy, and I am proud of 
 him. I am in some hopes that this Sydney journey will satisfy his 
 wandering propensities for the present, and that we may keep him 
 at home. I wish he would fall in love with somebody, providing 
 she wasn't old enough to be his grandmother. — Couldn't you send 
 him a letter of introduction to some of your old schoolfellows, Miss 
 Puss ? There was one of them, I remember, I fell in love with 
 myself one time when I came to see you ; Miss Green, I think it 
 was. She was very nearly being your mamma-in-law, my dear." 
 
 " Why, she is a year younger than me," said Alice, " and, oh 
 goodness, such a temper 1 She threw the selections from 
 Beethoven at Signor Smitherini, and had bread and water-melon 
 for two days for it. Serve her right I " 
 
 " I have had a narrow escape, then," replied the father. " But 
 we shall see who these two people are immediately, for they are 
 crossing the river." 
 
 When the two travellers rose again in sight on the near bank of 
 the river, one of them was seen galloping forward waving his 
 hat. 
 
 " I knew it was Jim," said Alice, " and on a new grey horse. 
 I thought he would not go to Sydney." And in a minute more 
 she had run to meet him, and Jim was off his horse, kissing his 
 sister, laughing, shouting, and dancing around her. 
 
 "Well, father," he said, "here I am back again. Went to 
 Sydney and stayed a week, when we met the two Marstons, and 
 went right up to the Clarence with them. That was a pretty 
 journey, eh ? Sold the old horse, and bought this one. I've 
 got heaps to tell you, sister, about what I've seen. I went home, 
 and only stayed ten minutes ; when I heard you were here, I came 
 right on." 
 
 " I am glad to see you back, Mr. Halbert," said Major Buckley. 
 " I hope you have had a pleasant journey. You have met Captain 
 Desborough ? " 
 
 " Captain Desborough, how are you ? " says Jim. " I am very 
 glad to see you. But between you and I, you're always a bird of 
 
GEOFPBY HAMLYN. 381 
 
 ill omen. Whose pig's dead now ? What brings you back ? I 
 thought we should he rid of you by this time." 
 
 " But you are not rid of me, Jackanapes," said Desborough, 
 laughing. " But I'U tell you what, Jim ; there is really some- 
 thing wrong, my boy, and I'm glad to see you back." And he 
 told him all the news. 
 
 Jim grew very serious. "Well," said he, "I'm glad to be 
 home again ; and I'm glad, too, to see you here. One feels safer 
 when you're in the way. We must put a cheerful face on the 
 matter, and not frighten the women. I have bought such a 
 beautiful brace of pistols in Sydney. I hope I may never have 
 the chance to use them in this country. Why, there's Cecil 
 Mayford and Mrs. Buckley coming down the garden, and Charley 
 Hawker, too. Why, Major, you've got all the world here to 
 welcome us." 
 
 The young men were soon busy discussing the merits of Jim's 
 new horse, and examining with great admiration his splendid new 
 pistols. Charley Hawker, poor boy I made a mental resolution 
 to go to Sydney, and also come back with a new grey horse, and a 
 pair of pistols more resplendent than Jim's. And then they went 
 in to get ready for dinner. 
 
 When Jim unpacked his valise, he produced a pretty bracelet 
 • for his sister, and a stockwhip for Sam. On the latter article he 
 was very eloquent. 
 
 "Sam, my boy," said he, "there is not such another in the 
 country. It was made by the celebrated Bill Mossman of the 
 Upper Hunter, the greatest swearer at bullocks, and the most 
 accomplished whipmaker on the Sydney side. He makes only 
 one in six months, and he makes it a favour to let you have it for 
 five pounds. You can take a piece of bark off a blue gum, big 
 enough for a canoe, with one cut of it. There's a fine of two 
 pounds for cracking one within a mile of Government House, they 
 make such a row. A man the other day cracked one of them on 
 the South Head, and broke the windows in Pitt Street." 
 
 " You're improving. Master Jim," said Charles Hawker. 
 " You'll soon be as good a hand at a yam as Hamlyn's Dick." 
 At the same time he wrote down a stockwhip, similar to this one, 
 on the tablets of his memory, to be procured on his projected visit 
 to Sydney. 
 
 That evening we all sat hstening to Jim's adventures ; and 
 pleasantly enough he told them, with not a little humorous 
 exaggeration. It is always pleasant to hear a young fellow tell- 
 ing his first impressions of new things and scenes, which have 
 been so long familiar to ourselves, but Jim had really a very good 
 
382 THE EEOOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 power of narration, and he kept us laughing and amused till long 
 after the usual hour for going to bed. 
 
 Next day we had a pleasant ride, all of us, down the banks of 
 the river. The weather was slightly frosty, and the air clear and 
 elastic. As we followed the windings of the noble rushing stream, 
 at a height of seldom less than three hundred feet above his bed, 
 the Doctor was busy pointing out the alternations of primitive 
 sandstone and slate, and the great streams of volcanic bluestone 
 which had poured from various points towards the deep glen in 
 which the river flowed. Here, he would tell us, was formerly a 
 lofty cascade, and a lake above it, but the river had worn through 
 the sandstone bar, drained the lake, leaving nothing of the water- 
 fall but two lofty cliffs, and a rapid. There again had come down 
 a lava-stream from MLmgish, which, cooled by the waters of the 
 river, had stopped, and, accumulating, formed the lofty over- 
 hanging cliff on which we stood. He showed us how the fern- 
 trees grew only in the stiU sheltered elbows facing northward, 
 where the sun raised a warm steam from the river, and the cold 
 south wind could not penetrate. He gathered for Mrs. Buckley a 
 bouquet of the tender sweet-scented yeUow oxalis, the winter flower 
 of Australia, and showed us the copper-lizard basking on the red 
 rocks, so like the stone on which he lay, that one could scarce 
 see him till a metallic gleam betrayed him, as he sHpped to his 
 lair. And we, the elder of the party, who followed the Doctor's 
 handsome little brown mare, kept our ears open, and spoke little, 
 — ^but gave ourselves fuUy up to the enjoyment of his learning 
 and eloquence. 
 
 But the Doctor did not absorb the whole party ; far from it. 
 He had a rival. AH the young men, and Miss Alice besides, 
 were grouped roimd Captain Desborough. Frequently we elders, 
 deep in some Old World history of the Doctor's, would be dis- 
 turbed by a ringing peal of laughter from the other party, and 
 then the Doctor would laugh, and we would all join ; not that we 
 had heard the joke, but from sheer sympathy with the hilarity of 
 the young folks. Desborough was making himself agreeable, and 
 who could do it better ? He was telling the most outrageous of 
 Irish stories, and making, on purpose, the most outrageous of 
 Irish buUs. After a shout of laughter louder than the rest, the 
 Doctor remarked, — 
 
 " That's better for them than geology, — eh, Mrs. Buckley ? " 
 
 "And so my grandmother," we heard Desborough say, " waxed 
 mighty wrath, and she up with her gold-headed walking-stick in 
 the middle of SackviUe Street, and says she, ' Ye villain, do ye 
 think I don't know my own Blenheim spannel when I see him ? ' 
 
GEOPFET HAMLTN. 383 
 
 'Indeed, my lady,' says Mike, ' 'twas himself tould me he helanged 
 to Barney.' ''Who tould you?' says she. 'The dog himself 
 tould me, my lady.' ' Ye thief of the world,' says my aunt, ' and 
 ye'd believe a dog before a dowager countess ? Give him up, ye 
 villain, this minute, or I'll hit ye I ' " 
 
 These were the sort of stories Desborough delighted in, making 
 them up, he often confessed, as he went on. On this occasion, 
 when he had done his story, they all rode up and joined us, and 
 we stood admiring the river, stretching westward in pools of gold 
 between black cliffs, toward the setting sun; then we turned home- 
 ward. 
 
 That evening Alice said, "Now do tell me, Captain Des- 
 borough, was that a true story about Lady Covetown's dog ? " 
 
 " Truel " said he. " What story worth hearing ever was true? 
 The old lady lost her dog certainly, and claimed him of a dog- 
 stealer in SackviUe Street ; but all the rest, my dear young lady, 
 is historic romance." 
 
 " Mr. Hamlyn knows a good story," said Charley Hawker, 
 " about Bougong Jack. Do tell it to us. Uncle Jeff." 
 
 "I don't think," I said, " that it has so much foundation in 
 fact as Captain Desborough's. But there must be some sort of 
 truth in it, for it comes from the old hands, and shows a little 
 more sign of imagination than you would expect from them. It 
 is a very stupid story too." 
 
 " Do tell it," they all said. So I complied, much in the same 
 language as I tell it now : — 
 
 You know that these great snow-ranges which tower up to the 
 west of us are, farther south, of great breadth, and that none 
 have yet forced their way from the country of the Ovens and the 
 Mitta Mitta through here to Gipp's-land. 
 
 The settlers who have just taken up that country trying to 
 penetrate to the eastward here towards us, find themselves stopped 
 by a mighty granite wall. Any adventurous men, who may top 
 that barrier, see nothing before them but range beyond range of 
 snow Alps, intersected by precipitous cliffs, and frightful 
 chasms. 
 
 This westward range is called the Bougongs. The blacks during 
 summer are in the habit of coming thus far to coUect and feed 
 on the great grey moths (Bougongs) which are found on the rocks. 
 They used to report that a fine available country lies to the east 
 embosomed in mountains, rendered fertile by perpetual snow-fed 
 streams. This is the more credible, as it is evident that between 
 the Bougong range on the west and the Warragoug range on the 
 
384 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 extreme east, towards us, there is a breadth of ^t least eighty 
 miles. 
 
 There lived a few years ago, not very far from the Ovens-river, a 
 curious character, by name John Sampson. He had been educated 
 at one of the great English universities, and was a good scholar, 
 though he had been forced to leave the university, and, as report 
 went, England too, for some great irregularity. 
 
 He had money, and a share in his brother-in-law's station, 
 although he never stayed there many months in the year. He 
 was always away at some mischief or another. No horse-race or 
 prize-fight could go on without him, and he himself never left one 
 of these last-mentioned gatherings without finding some one to 
 try conclusions with him. Beside this, he was a great writer and 
 singer of comic songs, and a consummate horseman. 
 
 One fine day he came back to his brother's station in serious 
 trouble. Whether he had mistaken another man's horse for his 
 own or not, I cannot say ; but, at all events, he announced that a 
 warrant was out against him for horse-stealing, and that he must 
 go into hiding. So he took up his quarters at a little hut of his 
 brother-in-law's, on the ranges, inhabited only by a stock-keeper 
 and a black boy^ and kept a young lubra in pay to watch down the 
 glen for the police. 
 
 One morning she came running into the hut, breathless, to say 
 that a lieutenant and three troopers were riding towards the hut. 
 Jack had just time to saddle and mount his horse before the 
 police caught sight of him, and started after him at fall speed. 
 
 They hunted him into a narrow glen ; a single cattle-track, not 
 a foot broad, led on between a swollen rocky creek, utterly impas- 
 sable by horse or man, and a lofty precipice of loose broken slate, 
 on which one would have thought a goat could not have found a 
 footing. The young police lieutenant had done his work well, 
 and sent a trooper round to head him, so that Jack found himself 
 between the devil and the deep sea. A tail armed trooper stood 
 in front of him, behind was the heutenant, on the right the creek, 
 and on the left the precipice. 
 
 They called out to him to surrender ; but, giving one look 
 before and behind, and seeing escape was hopeless, he hesitated 
 not a moment, but put his horse at the cliff, and clambered up, 
 rolling down tons of loose slate in his course. The lieutenant 
 shut his eyes, expecting to see horse and man roll down into 
 the creek, and only opened them in time to see Jack stand for a 
 moment on the summit against the sky, and then disappear. 
 
 He disappeared over the top of the cliff, and so he was lost to 
 the ken of white men for the space of four years. His sister and 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 385 
 
 brother-in-law mourned for him as dead, and mourned sincerely, 
 for they and all who knew him liked him well. But at the end 
 of that time, on a wild winter's night, he came back to them, 
 dressed in opossum skins, with scarce a vestige of European 
 clothing about him. His beard had grown down over his chest, 
 and he had nearly forgotten his mother tongue, but, when speech 
 came to him again, he told them a strange story. 
 
 It was winter time when he rode away. All the table lands 
 were deep with snow ; and, when he had escaped the policemen, 
 he had crossed the first of the gi-eat ridges on the same night. 
 He camped in the valley he had found on the other side ; and, 
 having his gun and some ammunition with him, he fared well. 
 
 He was beyond the country which had ever been trodden by 
 white men, and now, for the mere sake of adventure, he deter- 
 mined to go further still, and see if he could cross the great White 
 Mountains, which had hitherto been considered an insurmountable 
 barrier. 
 
 For two days he rode over a high table-land, deep in snow. 
 Here and there, in a shallow sheltered valley, he would find just 
 grass enough to keep his horse alive, but nothing for himself. 
 On the third night he saw before him another snow-ridge, too far 
 off to reach without rest, and, tethering his horse in a little crevice, 
 between the rocks, he prepared to walk to and fro all night, to 
 keep off the deadly snow sleepiness that he felt coming over him. 
 " Let me but see what is beyond that next ridge," he said, " and 
 I win lie down and die." 
 
 And now, as the stillness of the night came on, and the Southern 
 Cross began to twinkle brilliantly above the blinding snow, he was 
 startled once more by a sound which had fallen on his ear several 
 times during his toilsome afternoon journey : a sound as of a 
 sudden explosion, mingled, strangely too, with the splintering of 
 broken glass. At first he thought it was merely the booming in 
 his ears, or the rupture of some vessel in his bursting head. Or 
 was it fancy ? No ; there it was again, clearer than before. That 
 was no noise in his head, for the patient horse turned and looked 
 toward the place where the sound came from. Thunder ? The 
 air was clear and frosty, and not a cloud stained the sky. There 
 was some mystery beyond that snow-ridge worth living to see. 
 
 He lived to see it. For, an hour after daybreak next morning, 
 he, leading his horse, stumbled over the snow-covered rocks that 
 bounded his view, and, when he reached the top, there burst on 
 his sight a scene that made him throw up his arms and shout 
 aloud. 
 
 Before him, pinnacle after pinnacle, towered up a mighty Alp, 
 
 26 
 
386 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 blazing in the morning sun. Down througli a black rift on its 
 side, wound a gleaming glacier, which hurled its shattered ice 
 crystals over a dark cliff, into the deep profound blue of a lake, 
 which stretched north and south, studded with green woody islets, 
 almost as far as the eye could see. Toward the mountain the lake 
 looked deep and gloomy, but, on the other side, showed many a 
 pleasant yeUow shallow, and sandy bay, while between him and 
 the lake lay a mile or so of park-like meadow-land, in the full 
 verdure of winter. As he looked, a vast dislocated mass of ice 
 fell crashing from the glacier into the lake, and solved at once the 
 mystery of the noises he had heard the night before. 
 
 He descended into the happy valley, and found a small tribe of 
 friendly blacks, who had never before seen the face of white man, 
 and who supposed him to be one of their own tribe, dead long ago, 
 who had come back to them, renovated and beautified, fi:om the 
 other world. With these he lived a pleasant slothful life, whUe 
 four years went on, forgetting all the outside world, till his horse 
 was dead, his gun rusted and thrown aside, and his European 
 clothes long since replaced by the skin of the opossum and the 
 koala. He had forgotten his own tongue, and had given up all 
 thoughts of crossing again the desolate barriers of snow which 
 divided him from civilization, when a slight incident brought 
 back old associations to his mind, and roused him from 
 sleep. 
 
 In some hunting excursion he got a slight scratch, and, searching 
 for some linen to tie it up, found in his mi-mi an old waistcoat, 
 which he had worn when he came into the valley. In the lining, 
 while tearing it up, he found a crumpled paper, a note from his 
 sister, written years before, full of sisterly kindness and tenderness. 
 He read it again and again before he laid down, and the next 
 morning, collecting such small stock of provisions as he could, he 
 started on the homeward track, and after incredible hardships 
 reached his station. 
 
 His brother-in-law tried in vain with a strong party to reach the 
 lake, but never succeeded. What mountain it was he discovered, 
 or what river is fed by the lake he lived on, no man knows to this 
 day. Some say he went mad, and lived in the ranges all the 
 time, and that this was al a mere madman's fancy. But, whether 
 he was mad or not then, he is sane enough now, and has married 
 a wife, and settled down to be one of the most thriving men in 
 that part of the country.* 
 
 * This legend is said to be among the " Archives " of one of our best 
 North Border families. It is but little altered, since the author beard it 
 narrated at a camp-fire, one night, in the western Port Phillip country. 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 387 
 
 "Well," said the Doctor, thrusting his fists deep into his 
 breeches pockets, " I don't believe that story." 
 
 " Nor I either. Doctor," I replied. " But it has amused you all 
 for half an hour ; so let it pass." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Doctor, rather peevishly, " if you put it on 
 those grounds, I am bound, of course, to withhold a few little 
 criticisms I was inclined to make on its probability. I hope you 
 won't go and pass it off as authentic, you know, because if we 
 once begin to entertain these sort of legends as meaning anything, 
 the whole history of the country becomes one great fog-bank, 
 through which the devil himself could not find his way." 
 
 " Now, for my part," said mischievous Alice, " I think it a 
 very pretty story. And I have no doubt that it is every word of 
 it true." 
 
 "Oh, dear me, then," said the Doctor, "let us vote it true. 
 And, while we are about it, let us believe that the Sydney ghost 
 actually did sit on a three-rail fence, smoking its pipe, and 
 directing an anxious crowd of relatives where to find its body. 
 By all means let us believe everything we hear." 
 
 The next morning our pleasant party suffered a loss. Captain 
 Brentwood and Alice went off home. He was wanted there, and 
 all things seemed so tranquil that he thought it was foolish to 
 stay away any longer. Cecil Mayford, too, departed, carrying 
 with him the affectionate farewells of the whole party. His plea- 
 sant even temper, and his handsome face, had won every one who 
 knew him, and, though he never talked much, yet, when he was 
 gone, we all missed his merry laugh, after one of Desborough's 
 good stories. Charley Hawker went off with him, too, and spent 
 a few hours with EUen Mayford, much to his satisfaction, but 
 came in again at night, as his mother had prayed of him not to 
 leave the Major's till he had seen her again. 
 
 That night, the Major proposed punch, and, after Mrs. Buckley 
 had gone to bed, Sam sang a song, and Desborough told a story, 
 about a gamekeeper of his uncle's, whom the old gentleman desired 
 to start in an independent way of business. So he built him a 
 new house, and gave him a keg of whiskey, to start in the spirit- 
 selling line. "But the first night," said Desborough, "the 
 villain finished the whiskey himself, broke the keg, and burnt the 
 house down ; so my uncle had to take him back into service again 
 after aU." And after this came other stories, equally preposterous, 
 and we went rather late to bed. 
 
 And the next morning, too, I am afraid, we were rather late 
 for breakfast. Jijst as we were sitting down, in came Captain 
 Brentwood. 
 
388 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " HaJlo," said the Major; what brings you back so soon, old 
 friend. Nothing the matter, I hope ? " 
 
 " Nothing but business," he replied. " I am going on to 
 Dickson's, and I shall he back home to-night, I hope. I am glad 
 to find you so late, as I have had no breakfast, and have ridden 
 ten miles." 
 
 He took breakfast with us and went on. The mommg passed 
 somewhat heavily, as a morning is apt to do, after sitting up late 
 and drinking punch. Towards noon Deshorough said, — 
 
 " Now, if anybody will confess that he drank just three drops 
 too much punch last night, I wUl do the same. Mrs. Buckley, 
 my dear lady, I hope you wUl order plenty of pale ale for lunch." 
 
 Lunch passed pleasantly enough, and afterwards the Major, 
 telling Sam to move a table outside into the verandah, dis- 
 appeared, and soon came back with a very "curious" bottle of 
 Madeira. We sat then in the verandah smoking for about a 
 quarter of an hour. 
 
 I remember every word that was spoken, and every trivial 
 circumstance that happened during that quarter of an hour ; they 
 are burnt into my memory as if by fire. The Doctor was raving 
 about English poetry, as usual, saying, however, that the modem 
 English poets, good as they were, had lost the power of melody a 
 good deal. This the Major denied, quoting : — 
 
 "By torch and trumpet fast array 'd." 
 
 " Fifty such lines, sir, are not worth one of Milton's," said 
 the Doctor. 
 
 " ' The trumpet spake not to the armed throng.' 
 
 There's melody for you; there's a blare and a clang; there's 
 a " 
 
 I heard no more. Mrs. Buckley's French clock, in the house 
 behind, chimed three quarters past one, and I heard a sound of 
 two persons coming quickly through the house. 
 
 Can you tell the step of him who brings evil tidings ? I think 
 I can. At all events, I felt my heart grow cold when I heard 
 those footsteps. I heard them coming through the house, across 
 the hoarded floor. The one was a rapid, firm, military footstep, 
 accompanied tvith the clicking of a spur, and the other was un- 
 mistakably the " pad, pad " of a black-fellow. 
 
 We all turned round and looked at the door. There stood the 
 sergeant of Desborough's troopers, pale and silent, and close 
 
GEOFPBY HAMLYN. 889 
 
 behind him, clinging to him as if for protection, was the lithe 
 naked figure of a black lad, looking from behind the sergeant, 
 with terrified visage, first at one and then at another of us. 
 
 I saw disaster in their faces, and would have held up my hand 
 to warn him not to speak before Mrs. Buckley. But I was too 
 late, for he had spoken. And then we sat for a minute, looking 
 at one another, each man seeing the reflection of his own horror 
 in his neighbour's eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 THE STOBM BUKSTS. 
 
 Poor little Cecil Mayford had left us about nine o'clock in the 
 morning of the day before this, and, accompanied by Charles 
 Hawker, reached his mother's station about eleven o'clock in the 
 day. 
 
 AH the way Charles had talked incessantly of EUen, and Cecil 
 joined in Charles's praises of his sister, and joked with him for 
 being " awfully spooney " about her. 
 
 " You're worse about my sister, Charley," said he, " than old 
 Sam is about Miss Brentwood. He takes things quiet enough, 
 but if you go on in this style till you are old enough to marry, by 
 Jove, there'll be nothing of you left ! " 
 
 " I wonder if she would have me ? " said Charles, not heeding 
 him. 
 
 " The best thing you can do is to ask her," said Cecil. " I 
 think I Imow what she would say, though." 
 
 They reached Mrs. Mayford's, and spent a few pleasant hours 
 together. Charles started home again about three o'clock, and 
 having gone a little way, turned to look back. The brother and 
 sister stood at the house-door still. He waved his hand in fare- 
 well to them, and they replied. Then he rode on and saw them 
 no more. 
 
 Cecil and Ellen went into the house to their mother. The 
 women worked, and Cecil read aloud to them. The book was 
 " Waverley ; " I saw it afterwards, and when supper was over he 
 took it up to begin reading again. 
 
 " Not that book to-night, my boy," said his mother. " Read 
 us a chapter out of the Bible. I am very low in my mind, and at 
 such times I like to hear the Word." 
 
 He read the good book to them tUl quite late. Both he and 
 
390 THE EEOOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 Ellen thought it strange that their mother should insist on that 
 book on a week-night ; they never usually read it, save on Sunday 
 evenings. 
 
 The morning broke bright and frosty. CecU was abroad be- 
 times, and went down the paddock to fetch the horses. He put 
 them m the stock-yard, and stood for a time close to the stable, 
 talking to a tame black lad, that they employed about the place. 
 
 His attention was attracted by a noise of horses' feet. He 
 looked up and saw about a dozen men riding swiftly and silently 
 across the paddock towards the house. 
 
 For an instant he seems to have idly wondered who they were, 
 and have had time to notice a thickset gaudily dressed man, who 
 rode in front of the others, when the kitchen-door was thrown 
 suddenly open, and the old hut-keeper, with his grey hair waving 
 in the wind, run out, crying, — ■" Save yourself, in God's name. 
 Master Cecil. The Bushrangers ! " 
 
 Cecil raised his clenched hands in wild despair. They were 
 caught like birds in a trap. No hope ! — no escape ! Nothing 
 left for it now, but to die red-handed. He dashed into the house 
 with the old hut-keeper and shut the door. 
 
 The black lad ran up to a little rocky knoll within two hundred 
 yards of the house, and, hiding himself, watched what went on. 
 He saw the bushrangers ride up to the door and dismount. Then 
 they began to beat the door and demand admittance. Then 
 the door was burst down, and one of them fell dead by 
 a pistol-shot. Then they rushed in tumultuously, leaving one 
 outside to mind the horses . Then the terrified boy heard the 
 duU sound of shots fired rapidly inside the building (pray that you 
 may never hear that noise, reader : it always means mischief), 
 and then all was comparatively still for a time. 
 
 Then there began to arise a wild sound of brutal riot within, 
 and after a time they poured out again, and mounting, rode away. 
 
 Then the black boy slipt down from bis lair like a snake, and 
 stole towards the house. All was still as death. The door was 
 open, but, poor little savage as he was, he dared not enter. 
 Once he thought he heard a movement within, and listened 
 intently with aU his faculties, as only a savage can listen, but all 
 was stUI again. And then gathering courage, he went in. 
 
 In the entrance, stepping over the body of the dead bushranger, 
 he found the poor old white-headed hut-keeper loiocked down and 
 kiUed in the first rush. He went on into the parlour ; and there, 
 — oh, lamentable sight I — was Cecil ; clever, handsome little Cecil, 
 our old favourite, lying across the sofa, shot through the heart, 
 dead. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 391 
 
 But not alone. No ; prone along the floor, covering six feet or 
 more of ground, lay the hideous corpse of Moody, the cannibal. 
 The red-headed miscreant, who had murdered poor Lee, under 
 George Hawker's directions. 
 
 I think the poor black boy would have felt in his dumb darkened 
 heart some sorrow at seeing his kind old master so cruelly 
 murdered. Perhaps he would have raised the death-cry ol his 
 tribe over him, and burnt himself with fire, as their custom is ; 
 but he was too terrified at seeing so many of the lordly white 
 race prostrated by one another's hands. He stood and trembled, 
 and then, almost in a whisper, began to call for Mrs. Mayford. 
 
 " Missis ; " he said, " Miss EUen ! All puU away, bushranger 
 chaps. Make a light, good Missis. Plenty frightened this 
 fellow." 
 
 No answer. No sign of Mrs. Mayford or Ellen. They must 
 have escaped then. We will try to hope so. The black boy 
 peered into one chamber after another, but saw no signs of them, 
 only the stiUness of death over all. 
 
 Let us leave this aijcursed house, lest prying too closely, we 
 may find crouching in some dark comer a Gorgon, who will freeze 
 us into stone. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The black lad stripped himself naked as he was bom, and 
 running like a deer, sped to Major Bucldey's before the south 
 wind, across the plain. There he found the Sergeant, and told 
 him his tale, and the Sergeant and he broke in on us with the 
 terrible news as we were sitting merrily over our wine. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 WIDDERIN SHOWS CLEABLY THAT HE IS WORTH ALL THE MONEY 
 SAM GAVE FOB HIM. 
 
 The Sergeant, as I said, broke in upon us with the fearful news 
 as we sat at wine. For a minute no man spoke, but all sat silent 
 and horror-struck. Only the Doctor rose quietly, and slipped out 
 of the room unnoticed. 
 
 Desborough spoke first. He rose up with deadly wrath in his 
 fece, and swore a fearful oath, an oath so fearftd, that he who 
 endorsed every word of it then, wiU not write it down now. To 
 the effect " That, he would take neither meat, nor drink, nor 
 
392 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 pleasure, nor rest, beyond what was necessary to keep body and 
 soul together, before he had purged the land of these treacherous 
 villains ! " 
 
 Charles Hawker went up to the Sergeant, with a livid face and 
 shaking hands ; " WiU you tell me again, Bobinson, are they all 
 dead? " 
 
 The Sergeant looked at him compassionately. "Well, sir," 
 he said ; " the boy seemed to think Mrs. and Miss Mayford had 
 escaped. But you mustn't trust what he says, sir." 
 
 ' ' You are deceiving me, " said Charles. ' ' There is something you 
 are hiding from me. I shall go down there this minute and see." 
 
 "You will do nothing of the kind, sir," said Mrs. Buckley, 
 coming into the doorway and confronting him ; " your place is 
 with Captain Desborough. I am going down to look after Ellen." 
 
 During these few moments, Sam had stood stupefied. He 
 stepped up to the Sergeant, and said, — 
 
 " Would you tell me which way they went from the 
 Mayfords' ? " 
 
 " Down the river, sir." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Sam ; " towards Captain Brentwood's, and Alice 
 at home, aild alone I — There may be time yet." 
 
 He ran out of the room and I after him. " His first trouble," 
 I thought, — " his first trial. How will our boy behave now ? " 
 
 Let me mention again that the distance from the Mayfords' to 
 Captain- Brentwood's, following the windings of the river on its 
 right bank, was nearly twenty miles. From Major Buckley's to 
 the same point, across the plains, was barely ten ; so that there 
 was still a chance that a brave man on a good horse, might reach 
 Captain Brentwood's before the bushrangers, in spite of the start 
 they had got. 
 
 Sam's noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a 
 hundred years old, stood in the stable. The buying of that horse 
 had been Sam's only extravagance, for which he had often re- 
 proached himself, and now this day, he would see whether he 
 would get his money's worth out of that horse, or no. 
 
 I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting the 
 bridle on Widderin's beautiful little head. Neither of us spoke, 
 only when I handed him the saddle, and helped him with the 
 girths, he said, " God bless you." 
 
 I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he rode by 
 he said, " Good-bye, Uncle Jeff, perhaps you won't see me 
 again ; " and I cried out, " Remember your God and your 
 mother, Sam, and don't do anything foolish." 
 
 Then he was gone ; and looking across the plains the way he 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 398 
 
 should go, I saw another horseman toiUng far away, and recog- 
 nised Doctor Mulhaus. Good Doctor ! he had seen the danger 
 in a moment, and hy his ready wit had got a start of erery one 
 else hy ten minutes. 
 
 The Doctor, on his handsome long-hodied Arahian mare, was 
 making good work of it across the plains, when he heard the rush 
 of horses' feet behind him, and turning, he saw tall Widderin 
 bestridden by Sam, springing over the turf, gaining on him stride 
 after stride. In a few minutes they were alongside of one 
 another. 
 
 " Good, lad 1 " cried the Doctor ; " On, forwards ; catch her, 
 and away to the woods with her. Bloodhound Deshorough will be 
 on their trail in half-an-hour. Save her, and we will have noble 
 vengeance." 
 
 Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on across the 
 plain like a solitary ship at sea. He steered for a single tree, 
 now becoming dimly visible, at the foot of the Organ hiU. 
 
 The good horse, with elastic and easy motion, fled on his course 
 like a bird ; lifting his feet clearly and rapidly through the grass. 
 The brisk south wind filled his wide nostrUs as he turned his 
 gracefiil neck from side to side, tUl, finding that work was meant, 
 and not play, he began to hold his head straight before him, and 
 rush steadily forward. 
 
 And Sam, poor Sam I all his hopes for life are now brought 
 down to this : to depend on the wind and pluck of an unconscious 
 horse. One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the 
 plain and die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He 
 said one short prayer, but that towards the end was interrupted 
 hy the wild current of his thoughts. 
 
 Was there any hope ? They, the devils, would have been 
 drinking at the Mayfords', and perhaps would go slow ; or would 
 they ride fast and wild ? After thinking a short time, he feared 
 the latter. They had tasted blood, and knew that the country 
 would be roused on them shortly. On, on, good horse I 
 
 The lonely shepherd on the plains, sleepily watching his feeding 
 sheep, looked up as Sam went speeding by, and thought how fine 
 a thing it would be to be dressed like that, and have nothing to do 
 but to ride blood-horses to death. Mind your sheep, good 
 shepherd ; perhaps it were better for you to do that and nothing 
 more aU your life, than to carry in your breast for one short hour 
 such a volcano of rage, indignation and terror, as he does who 
 hurries unheeding through your scattered flock. 
 
 Here are a brace of good pistols, and they, with care, shall give 
 account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were 
 
394 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 better, so much better, not to live if one were only ten minutes too 
 late. The Doctor would be up soon ; not much matter if he were, 
 though, only another life gone. 
 
 The Organ hill, a cloud of misty blue when he started, now 
 hung in aerial fluted cliffs above his head. As he raced across 
 the long glacis which lay below the hill, he could see a solitary 
 eagle wheeling round the topmost pinnacles, against the clear 
 blue sky ; then the hill was behind him, and before him another 
 stretch of plain, bounded by timber, which marked the course of 
 the river. 
 
 Brave Widderin had his ears back now, and was throwing his 
 breath regularly through his nostrils in deep sighs. Good horse, 
 only a little longer; bear thyself bravely this day, and then plea- 
 sant pastures for thee till thou shalt go the way of all horses. 
 Many a time has she patted, with kind words, thy rainbow neck, 
 my horse ; help us to save her now. 
 
 Alas ! good willing brute, he cannot understand ; only he knows 
 that his kind master is on his back, and so he will run till he 
 drop. Good Widderin I think of the time when thy sire rushed 
 triumphant through the shouting thousands at Epsom, and all 
 England heard that Arcturus had won the Derby. Think of the 
 time when thy grandam, carrying Sheik Abdullah, bore down in a 
 whirlwind of sand on the toiling affrighted caravan. Ah I thou 
 knowest not of these things, but yet thy speed flags not. We are 
 not far off now, good horse, we shall know all soon. 
 
 Now he was in the forest again, and now, as he rode quickly 
 down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the 
 hoarse rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well- 
 nigh come. 
 
 No drink now, good Widderin ! a bucket of champagne in an 
 hour's time, if thou wilt only stay not now to bend thy neck down 
 to the clear gleaming water ; flounder through the ford, and just 
 twenty yards up the bank by the cherry-tree, we shall catch sight 
 of the house, and know our fate. 
 
 Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some wild 
 inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful as 
 ever, and Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah, 
 feeding her birds. 
 
 As he rode up he shouted out to her and beckoned. She came 
 running through the house, and met him breathless at the door- 
 way. 
 
 " The bushrangers I Alice, my love," he said. " We must fly 
 this instant, they are close to us now." 
 
 She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty weU, for 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 395 
 
 her father had often told her what to do. No tears ! no hysterics ! 
 She took Sam's hand without a word, and placing her fairy foot 
 upon his boot, vaulted up into the saddle before him, crying, — 
 " Eleanor, Eleanor ! " 
 
 Eleanor, the cook, came running out. " Fly 1 " said Alice. 
 " Get away into the bush. The gang are coming ; close by." 
 She, an old Vandemonian, needed no second warning, and as the 
 two young people rode away, they saw her clearing the paddock 
 rapidly, and making for a dense clump of wattles, which grew just 
 beyond the fence. 
 
 " Whither now, Sam ? " said Alice, the moment they were 
 started. 
 
 " I should feel safer across the river," he replied ; " that little 
 wooded knoll would be a fine hiding-place, and they will- come down 
 this side of the river from Mayford's." 
 
 " From Mayford's ! why, have they been there ? " 
 
 " They have, indeed. Alas ! poor Cecil." 
 
 " What has happened to him ? nothing serious ? " 
 
 " Dead 1 my love, dead." 
 
 " Oh 1 poor little Cecil," she cried, " that we were all so fond 
 of. And Mrs. Mayford and EUen ? " 
 
 " They have escaped I — they are not to be found — they have 
 hidden away somewhere." 
 
 They crossed the river, and dismounting, they led the tired 
 horse up the steep slope of turf that surrounded a little castellated 
 tor of bluestone. Here they would hide till the storm was gone 
 by, for from here they could see the windings of the river, and aU 
 the broad plain stretched out beneath their feet. 
 
 "I do not see them anywhere, Alice," said Sam presently. 
 " I see no one coming across the plains. They must be either 
 very near us in the hollow of the river-valley, or else a long way 
 off. I have very little doubt they will come here, though, sooner 
 or later." 
 
 " There they are 1 " said Alice. " Surely there are a large 
 party of horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or eight miles off." 
 
 " Ay, ten," said Sam. "I am not sure they are horsemen." 
 Then he said suddenly in a whisper, "Lie down, my love, in God's 
 name I Here they are, close to us ! " 
 
 There burst on his ear a confused sound of talking and laughing, 
 and out of one of the rocky guUies leading towards the river, came 
 the men they had been flying from, in number about fourteen. 
 They had crossed the river, for some unknown reason, and to the 
 fear- struck hiders it seemed as though they were making straight 
 towards their lair. 
 
396 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 He had got Widderin's head in his breast, blindfolding him with 
 his coat, for should he neigh now, they were imdone indeed I As 
 the bushrangers approached, the horse began to get uneasy, and 
 paw the ground, putting Sam in such an agony of terror that the 
 sweat rolled down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on 
 his arm, and Alice's voice, which he scarcely recognised, said, in 
 a fierce whisper, — 
 
 " Give me one of your pistols, sir I " 
 
 " Leave that to me !" he replied in the same tone. 
 
 " As you please," she said; "but I must not fall alive into 
 their hands. Never look your mother in the face again if I do." 
 
 He gave one more glance round, and saw that the enemy would 
 come within a hundred yards of their hiding-place. Then he held 
 the horse faster than ever, and shut his eyes. 
 
 Was it a minute only, or an hour till they heard the sound of 
 the voices dying away in the roar of the river ; and, opening their 
 eyes once more, looked into one another's faces ? 
 
 Faces, they thought, that they had never seen before, — so each 
 told the other afterwards, — so wild, so haggard, and so strange I 
 And now that they were safe and free again — ^free to arise and leave 
 their dreadful rock prison, and wander away where they would, 
 they could scarcely believe that the danger was past. 
 
 They came out silently from among the crags, and took up an- 
 other station, where they could see all that went on. They saw 
 the miscreants swarming about the house, and heard a pistol-shot 
 — only one. 
 
 " Who can they be firing at ? " said Alice, in a subdued tone. 
 They were both so utterly appalled by their late danger, that 
 they spoke in whispers, though the enemy were a quarter of a 
 mile off. 
 
 " Mere mischief, I should fancy," said Sam ; " there is no one 
 there. Oh I Alice, my love, can you realise that we are 
 safe ? " 
 
 " Hardly yet, Sam I But who could those men be we saw at 
 such a distance on the plain ? Could they have been cattle ? I 
 am seldom deceived, you know ; I can see an immense distance." 
 
 " Why," said Sam, " I had forgotten them ! They must be our 
 friends, on these fellows' tracks. Desborough would not be long 
 starting, I know." 
 
 " I hope my father," said Alice, " will hear nothing till he sees 
 me. Poor father ! what a state he will be in. See, there is a 
 horseman close to us. It is the Doctor ! " 
 
 They saw Dr. Mulhaus ride up to one of the heights overlook- 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 897 
 
 ing the river, and reconnoitre. Seeing the men in the house, he 
 began riding down towards them. 
 
 "He will he lost I" said Alice. "He thinks we are there. 
 Co'ee, Sam, at all risks." 
 
 Sam did so, and they saw the Doctor turn. Alice showed her- 
 self for a moment, and then he turned hack, and rode the way he 
 had come. In a few minutes he joined them from the rear, and, 
 taking Alice in his arms, kissed her heartily. 
 
 " So our jewel is safe, then^praise be to God 1 Thanks due 
 also to a brave man and a good horse. This is the last station 
 those devils will ruin, for our friends are barely four miles off. I 
 saw them just now." 
 
 " I wish, I only wish," said Sam, " that they may delay long 
 enough to be caught. I would give a good deal for that." 
 
 There was but little chance of that though ; their measures were 
 too weU taken. Almost as Sam spoke, the three listeners heard 
 a shrill whistle, and immediately the enemy began mounting. 
 Some of them were evidently drunk, and could hardly ge^on their 
 horses, but were assisted by the others. But very shortly they 
 were all clear off, heading to the north-west. 
 
 "Now we may go down, and see what destruction has been 
 done," said Alice. " Who would have thought to see such times 
 as these I " 
 
 "Stay a little, ' ' said the Doctor, ' ' and let us watch these gentle- 
 men's motions. Where can they be going nor'-west — straight on 
 to the mountains ? " 
 
 "I am of opinion," said Sam, " that they are going to lie up in 
 one of the guUies this evening. They are fuU of drink and mad- 
 ness, and they don't know what they are about. If they get into 
 the main system of gullies, we shall have them hke rats in a trap, 
 for they can never get out by the lower end. Do you see. Doctor, 
 a little patch of white road among the trees over theje ? That 
 leads to the Limestone Gates, as we call it. If they pass those 
 walls upwards, they are confined as in a pound. Watch the white 
 road, and we shall see." 
 
 The piece of road alluded to was about two miles off, and wind- 
 ing round a steep hiU among trees. Only one turn in it was visible, 
 and over this, as they watched, they saw a dark spot pass, followed 
 by a crowd of others. 
 
 " There they go," said Sam. The madmen are safe now. 
 See, there comes Desborough, and all of them ; let us go down." 
 
 They turned to go, and saw Jim coming towards them, by the 
 route that Sam had come, all bespattered with clay, limping and 
 leading his new grey horse, dead lame. 
 
398 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 He threw up his hat when he saw them, and gave a feeble 
 hurrah ! but even then a twinge of pain shot across his face, and, 
 when he was close, they saw he was badly hurt. 
 
 " God save you, my dear sister," he said ; " I have been in such 
 a state of mind ; God forgive me, I have been cursing the day I 
 was born. Sam, I started about three minutes after you, and had 
 very nearly succeeded in overhauling the Doctor, about two miles 
 from here, when this brute put his foot in a crab hole, and came 
 down, rolling on my leg. I was so bruised I couldn't mount again, 
 and so I have walked. I see you are all right though, and that is 
 enough for me. Oh, my sister — my darling Alice ! Think what 
 we have escaped ! " 
 
 So they went towards the house. And when Major Buckley 
 caught sight of Alice, riding between Dr. Mulhaus and Sam, he 
 gave such a stentorian cheer that the retreating bushrangers must 
 have heard it. 
 
 " WeU ridden, gentlemen," he said. " And who won the race ? 
 Was it'Widderin, or the Arabian, or the nondescript Sydney 
 importation ? " 
 
 ".The Sydney importation, sir, would have beaten the Arabian, 
 barring accident," said Jim. " But, seriously speaking, I should 
 have beetf far too late to be of any service." 
 
 " And I," said the Doctor, " also. Sam won the race, and has 
 got the prize. Now, let us look forward, and not backward." 
 
 They communicated to Desborough all particulars, and told him 
 of the way they had seen the bushrangers go. Every one was 
 struck with the change in him. No merry stories now. The 
 laughing Irishman was gone, and a stem gloomy man, more like 
 an Englishman, stood in his place. I heard after, that he deeply 
 blamed himself for what had occurred (though no one else thought 
 of doing so), and thought he had not taken full precautions. On 
 the present occasion he said, — 
 
 " WeU, gentlemen, night is closing in. Major Buckley, I think 
 you wiU agree with me that we should act more effectually if we 
 waited till daylight, and refresh both horses and men. More par- 
 ticularly as the enemy in their drimken madness have hampered 
 themselves in the mountains. Major, Doctor Mulhaus, and Mr. 
 Halbert, you are military men — ^what do you say ? " 
 
 They agreed that there was no doubt. It would be much the 
 best plan. 
 
 " I would sooner he'd have gone to-night and got it over," said 
 Charles Hawker, taking Sam's arm. " Oh ! Sam, Sam ! Think 
 of poor Cecil ! Think of poor EUen, when she hears what has 
 happened. She must know by now ! " 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 39n 
 
 "Poor Charley," said Sam, "I am so sorry for you I Lie down, 
 and get to sleep ; the sun is going down." 
 
 He lay down as he was bid, somewhere out of the way. He was 
 crushed and stunned. He hardly seemed to know at present what 
 he was doing. After a time, Sam went in and found him sleeping 
 uneasily. 
 
 But Alice was in sad tribulation at the mischief done. All her 
 pretty little womanly ornaments overturned and broken, her piano 
 battered to pieces, and, worst of aU, her poor kangaroo shot dead, 
 lying in the verandah. " Oh ! " said she to Major Buckley, " you 
 must think me very wicked to think of such things at a time like 
 this, but I cannot help it. There is something so shocking to me 
 in such a sudden houleversement of old order. Yet, if it shocks 
 me to see my piano broken, how terrible must a visitation like the 
 Mayfords' be ! These are not the times for moralising, however. 
 I must see about entertaining the garrison." 
 
 Eleanor, the cook, had come back from her lair quite uncon- 
 cerned. She informed the company, in a nonchalant sort of way, 
 that this was the third adventure of the kind she had been engaged 
 in, and, that although they seemed to make a great fuss about it, 
 on the other side (Van Diemen's Land), it was considered a mere 
 necessary nuisance ; and so proceeded to prepare such supper as 
 she could. In the same off-hand way she remarked to Sam, when 
 he went into the kitchen to get a light for his pipe, that, if it was 
 true that Mike Howe had crossed and was among them, they had 
 better look out for squalls, for that he was a devil, and no 
 mistake. 
 
 Desborough determined to set a watch out on the road towards 
 the mouth of the guUy, where they were supposed to be. " We 
 shaU have them in the morning," said he. " Let every one get 
 to sleep who can sleep, for I expect every one to follow me 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Charles Hawker had lain down in an inner room, and was sleep- 
 ing uneasily, when he was awakened by some one, and, looking up, 
 saw Major Buckley, with a light in his hand, bending over him. 
 He started up. 
 
 " What is the matter, sir ? " he asked. " Why do you look at 
 me so strangely ? Is there any new misfortune ? " 
 
 " Charles," said the Major, " you have no older friend than me." 
 
 " I know it, sir. What do you want me to do ? " 
 
 " I want you to stay at home to-morrow." 
 
 " Anything but that, sir. They wiU call me a coward." 
 
 " No one shall do so. I swear that he who calls you a coward 
 shall feel the weight of my arm." 
 
400 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " Why am I not to go with them ? Why am I to he separated 
 from the others ? " 
 
 " You must not ask," said the Major ; " perhaps you will know 
 some day, hut not yet. All I say to you is, go home to your 
 mother to-morrow, and stay there. Should you fire a shot, or 
 strike a hlow against those men we are going to hunt down, you 
 may do a deed which would separate you from the rest of man- 
 kind, and leave you to drag on a miserahle guilty life. Do you 
 promise ? " 
 
 " I will promise," said Charles ; "hut I wonder " 
 
 " Never mind wondering. Good night." 
 
 The troopers lay in the hall, and in the middle of the night 
 there was a sound of a horse outside, and he who was the nearest 
 the door got up and went out. 
 
 " Who is there ? " said the voice of Captain Brentwood. 
 
 "Jackson, sir." 
 
 " My house has heen stuck up, has it not ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " And my daughter ? " 
 
 " Safe, sir. Young Mr. Buckley rode over and caught her up 
 out of it ten minutes hefore they got here." 
 
 " Long life to him, and glory to God. Who is here ? " 
 
 The trooper enumerated them. 
 
 " And what has become of the gang ? " asked the Captain. 
 
 " Gone into the limestone gully, sir. Safe for to-morrow." 
 
 " Ah, well, I shall come in and lie in the hall. Don't make a 
 noise. What is that ? " 
 
 They hoth started. Some one of the many sleepers, with that 
 strange hoarse voice peculiar to those who talk in their dreams, 
 said, with singular energy and distinctness, — 
 
 " I will go, sir ; they wiU call me coward." 
 
 "That's young Mr. Hawker, sir," said the trooper. "Hie 
 sweetheart's brother, Mr. Mayford, was killed by them yesterday. 
 The head of this very gang, sir, that villain Touan — his name is 
 Hawker. An odd coincidence, sir." 
 
 " Very odd," said the Captain. " At the same time, Jackson, 
 if I were you, I woiddn't talk about it. There are many things 
 one had best not talk about, Jackson. PuU out the comer of that 
 blanket, will you ? So we shall have some fun to-morrow, up in 
 the pass, I'm thinking." 
 
 " They'll fight, sir," said the trooper. " If we can bail them 
 up, they'U fight, believe me. Better so ; I think we shall save 
 the hangman some trouble. Good night, sir." 
 
 So Captain Brentwood lay down beside the trooper, and slept 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 401 
 
 the sleep of the just among his broken chairs and tables. The 
 others slept too, sound and quiet, as though there were no fight 
 on the morrow. 
 
 But ere the moon grew pale they were woke by Desborough, 
 tramping about with clicking spurs among the sleepers, and giving 
 orders in a loud voice. At the first movement, whUe the rest were 
 yawning and stretching themselves, and thinking that battle was 
 not altogether so desirable a thing on a cold morning as it was 
 overnight. Major Buckley was by Charles Hawker's bedside, and, 
 reminding him of his promise, got him out unperceived, helped 
 him to saddle his horse, and started him off to his mother with a 
 note. 
 
 The lad, overawed by the Major's serious manner, went without 
 debate, putting the note in his pocket. I have seen that note ; 
 Sam showed it to me the next day, and so I can give you the 
 contents. It was from Major Buckley to Mary Hawker, and ran 
 thus : — 
 
 " I have sent your boy to you, dear old friend, bearing this. 
 You wiU have heard by now what has happened, and you will 
 give me credit for preventing what might come to be a terrible 
 catastrophe. The boy is utterly unconscious that his own father 
 is the man whose life is sought this day above aU. others. He is 
 at the head of this gang, Mary. My own son saw him yesterday. 
 My hand shall not be raised against him ; but further than that I 
 will not interfere. Your troubles have come now to the final and 
 most ten-ible pass ; and all the advice I have to give you is to 
 pray, and pray continually, till this awfiil storm is gone by. 
 Remember, that come what may, you have two friends entirely 
 devoted to you — my wife and myself." 
 
 Hurriedly written, scrawled rather as this note was, it showed 
 me again plainer than ever what a noble clear-hearted man he was 
 who had written it. But this is not to the purpose. Charles 
 Hawker departed, carrying this, before the others were stirring, 
 and held his way through the forest-road towards his mother's 
 station. 
 
 This same two days' business was the best stroke of work that 
 the DevU did in that part of the country for many years. With 
 his usual sagacity he had busied himself in drawing the threads of 
 mischief so paraUel, that it seemed they must end in one and only 
 one lamentable issue ; namely, that Charles Hawker and his father 
 should meet, pistol in hand, as deadly enemies. But at this last 
 period of the game, our good honest Major completely check-mated 
 
 27 
 
402 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 him, by sending Charles Hawker home to his mother. In this 
 terrible pass, after this unexpected move of the Major's, he (the 
 Devil, no other) began casting about for a scoundrel, by whose 
 assistance he might turn the Major's flank. But no great rogue 
 being forthcommg he had to look roimd for the next best substi- 
 tute, a great fool, — and one of these he found immediately, riding 
 exactly the way he wished. Him he subpoenaed immediately, and 
 found to do his work better even than a good rogue would have 
 done. We shall see how poor Charles Hawker, pricking along 
 through the forest, getting every moment further from danger and 
 mischief, met a man charging alo;ig the road, fall speed, who 
 instantly pulled up and spoke to him. 
 
 This was the consummate fool, sent of the Devil, whom I have 
 mentioned above. We have seen him before. He was the longest, 
 brownest, stupidest of the Hawbuck family. The one who could 
 spit further than any of his brothers. 
 
 "Well, Charley," he said, "is this all true about the bush- 
 rangers?" 
 
 Charles said it was. And they were bailed up in the limestone 
 guUy, and aU the party were away after them. 
 
 " Where are you going then ? " asked the unfortunate young 
 idiot. 
 
 " Home to my mother," blurted out poor Charles. 
 
 "Weill" said the other, speaking unconsciously exactly the 
 words which the enemy of mankind desired. " Well, I couldn't 
 have believed that. If a chap had said that of you in my hearing, 
 I'd have fought him if he'd been as big as a house. I never 
 thought that of you, Charley." 
 
 Charles cursed aloud. " What have I done to be talked to like 
 this ? Major Buckley has no right to send me away like this, to 
 be branded as coward through the country side. Ten times over 
 better to be shot than have such words as these said to me. I 
 shall go back with you." 
 
 " That's the talk," said the poor fool. " I thought I wasn't 
 wrong in you, Charley." And so Charles galloped back with 
 him. 
 
 We, in the meantime, had started from the station, ere day was 
 well broke. Foremost of the company rode Desborough, cahn and 
 serene, and on either side of him Captain Brentwood and Major 
 Buckley. Then came the Doctor, Sam, Jim, Halbert, and myself; 
 behind us agaiu, five troopers and the Sergeant. Each man of us 
 all was armed with a sword ; and every man in that company, as 
 it happened, Imew the use of that weapon well. The troopers 
 carried carbines, and all of us carried pistols. 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 403 
 
 The glare in the east changing from pearly green to golden 
 yellow, gave notice of the coming sun. One snow peak, Tambo, 
 I think, began to catch the light, and blaze like another morning 
 star. The day had begun in earnest, and, as we entered the 
 mouth of the glen to which we were bound, slanting gleams of 
 light were already piercing the misty gloom, and lighting up the 
 loftier crags. 
 
 A deep, rock-walled glen it was, open and level ; though, in the 
 centre, ran a tangled waving line of evergreen shrubs, marking 
 the course of a pretty bright creek, which, half-hidden by luxuriant 
 vegetation, ran beside the faint track leading to one of Captain 
 Brentwood's mountain huts. Along this track we could plainly 
 see the hoof marks of the men we were after. 
 
 It was one of the most beautiful guUies I had ever seen, and I 
 turned to say so to some one who rode beside me. Conceive my 
 horror at finding it was Charles Hawker I I turned to him fiercely, 
 and said, — 
 
 " Get back, Charles. Go home. You don't know what you 
 are doing, lad." 
 
 He defied me. And I was speaking roughly to him again, when 
 there came a puff of smoke from among the rocks overhead, and 
 down I went, head over heels. A bullet had grazed my thigh, 
 and killed my horse, who, throwing me on my head, rendered me 
 hors de combat. So that during the fight which followed, I was 
 sitting on a rock, very sick and very stupid, a mile from the scene 
 of action. 
 
 My catastrophe caused only a temporary stoppage ; and, during 
 the confusion, Charles Hawker was unnoticed. The man who had 
 fired at me (why at me I cannot divine), was evidently a solitary 
 guard perched among the rocks. The others held on for about a 
 quarter of an hour, tiU the valley narrowed up again, just leaving 
 room for the track, between the brawling creek and the tall lime- 
 stone cliff. But after this it opened out into a broader amphi- 
 theatre, waUed on all sides by inaccessible rock, save in two 
 places. Sam, from whom I get this account of affairs, had just 
 time to notice this, when he saw Captain Brentwood draw a pistol 
 and fire it, and, at the same instant, a man dashed out of some 
 scrub on the other side of the creek, and galloped away up the 
 valley. 
 
 " They have had the precaution to set two watches for us, 
 which I hardly expected," said Captain Desborough. " They will 
 fight us now, they can't help it, thank God. They have had a 
 sharp turn and a merry one, but they are dead men, and they 
 know it. The Devil is but a poor paymaster, Buckley. After 
 
404 THE EECOLLEOTIONS OF 
 
 all this hide and seek work, they have only got two days' 
 liberty." 
 
 The troopers now went to the front with Halbert and the other 
 military men, while Sam, Jim, and Charles, the last all unper- 
 ceived by the Major in his excitement, rode in the rear. 
 
 " We are going to have a regular battle," said Jim. "They 
 are bailed up, and must fight : some of us will go home feet fore- 
 most to-day." 
 
 So they rode on through the open forest till they began to see 
 one or two horsemen through the tree-stems, reconnoitring. The 
 ground began to rise towards a lofty cliflf that towered before them, 
 and aU could see that the end was coming. Then they caught 
 sight of the whole gang, scattered about among the low shrubs, 
 and a few shots were fired on both sides, before the enemy turned 
 and retreated towards the wall of rock, now plainly visible through 
 the timber. Our party continued to advance steadily in open 
 order. 
 
 Then under the beetling crags, where the fern-trees began to 
 feather up among the fallen boulders, the bushrangers turned like 
 hunted wolves, and stood at bay. 
 
 CHAPTER XLn. 
 
 THE FIGHT AMONG THE FERN-TEEES. 
 
 Then Captain Deshorough cried aloud to ride at them, and spare 
 no man. And, as he spoke, every golden fern-bough, and every 
 ooigne of vantage among the rocks, began to blaze and crackle 
 with gun and pistol shot. Jim's horse sprang aloft and fell, 
 hurling him forcibly to the ground, and a tall young trooper, 
 dropping his carbine, rolled heavily ofi' his saddle, and lay on the 
 grass face downward, quite still, as if asleep. 
 
 " There's the first man killed," said the Major, veiy quietly. 
 " Sam, my boy, don't get excited, but close on the first fellow you 
 see a chance at." And Sam, looking in his father's face as he 
 spoke, saw a light in his eyes, that he had never seen there before 
 — the light of battle. The Major caught a carbine fi-om the hands 
 of a trooper who rode beside him, and took a snap-shot, quick as 
 lightning, at a man whom they saw running from one cover to 
 another. The poor wretch staggered and put his hands to his 
 head, then stumbled and fell heavily down. 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLTN. 405 
 
 Now the fight became general and confused. All about among 
 the fern and the flowers, among the lemon-shrubs, and the tangled 
 vines, men fought, and fired, and struck, and cursed ; while the 
 little brown bandicoots scudded swiftly away, and the deadly snake 
 hid himself in his darkest lair, afirighted. Shots were cracking on 
 all sides, two riderless horses, confused in the melee, were gallop- 
 ing about neighing, and a third lay squealing on the ground in the 
 agonies of death. 
 
 Sam saw a man fire at his father, whose horse went down, whUe 
 the Major arose unhurt. He rode at the ruffian, who was dis- 
 mounted, and cut him so deep between the shoulder and the neck, 
 that he fell and never spoke again. Then seeing Halbert and the 
 Doctor on the right, fiercely engaged with four men who were 
 fighting with clubbed muskets and knives, he turned to help them, 
 but ere he reached them, a tall, handsome young fellow dashed out 
 of the shrub, and pulling his horse short up, took deliberate aim 
 at him, and fired. 
 
 Sam heard the bullet go hissing past his ear, and got mad. 
 " That young dog shall go down," said he. " I know him. He 
 is one of the two who rode first yesterday." And as this passed 
 through his mind, he rode straight at him, with the sword hand 
 upon his left shoulder. He came full against him in a moment, 
 and as the man held up his gun to guard himself, his cut descended, 
 so full and hard, that it shore through the gunbarrel as through a 
 stick,* and ere he could bring his hand to his cheek, his opponent 
 had grappled him, and the two rolled oflf their horses together, 
 locked in a deadly embrace. 
 
 Then began an awful and deadly fight between these two young 
 fellows. Sam's sword had gone fi-om his hand in the fall, and he 
 was defenceless, save by such splendid physical powers as he had 
 by nature. But his adversary, though perhaps a little lighter, was 
 a terrible enemy, and fought with the strength and litheness of a 
 leopard. He had his hand at Sam's throat, and was trying to 
 choke him. Sam saw that one great effort was necessary, and 
 with a heave of his whole body, threw the other beneath him, and 
 struck downwards, three quick blows, with the whole strength of 
 his ponderous fist, on the face of the man, as he lay beneath him. 
 The hold on his throat loosened, and seeing that they had rolled 
 within reach of his sword, in a moment he had clutched it, and 
 drawing back his elbow, prepared to plunge it into his adversary's 
 chest. 
 
 But he hesitated. He could not do it. Maddened as he was 
 
 * Lieutenant Anderson, unless I am mistaken, performed the same feat 
 at the capture of a bushranger in '52. 
 
406 THE EECOLLKCTIONS OP 
 
 with fighting, the sight of that bloody face, bruised beyond recog- 
 nition by his terrible blows, and the wild fierce eyes, full of rage 
 and terror, looking into his own, stayed his hand, and while he 
 paused the man spoke, thick and indistinctly, for his jaw was 
 broken. 
 
 " If you wiU spare me," he said, " I will be King's evidence." 
 
 " Then turn on your face," said Sam ; " and I will tie you 
 up." 
 
 And as he spoke a trooper ran up, and secured the prisoner, who 
 appealed to Sam for his handkerchief. " I fought you fair," he 
 said ; " and you're a man worth fighting. But you have broken 
 something in my face with your fist. Give me something to tie jt 
 up with." 
 
 " God save us all! " said Sam, giving him his handkerchief. 
 " This is miserable work ! I hope it is aU over." 
 
 It seemed so. AU we heard were the fearful screams of a 
 wounded man lying somewhere among the fern. 
 
 " Where are they aU, Jackson ? " said he. 
 
 " AU away to the right, sir," said the trooper. " One of my 
 comrades is killed, your father has had his horse shot, the Doctor 
 is hit in the arm, and Mr. James Brentwood has got his leg broke 
 with the fall of his horse. They are minding him now. We've 
 got aU the gang, alive or dead, except two. Captain Desborough 
 ' is up the vaUey now after the head man, and young Mr. Hawker 
 is with him. D ^n it all ! hark to that. 
 
 Two shots were fired in quick succession in the direction indi- 
 cated ; and Sam, having caught his horse, gaUoped off to see what 
 was going on. 
 
 ;;< ::: :}s * * * 
 
 Desborough fought neither against small nor great, but only 
 against one man, and he was George Hawker. Him he had sworn 
 he would bring home, dead or alive. When he and his party had 
 first broken through the fern, he had caught sight of his quarry, 
 and had instantly made towards him, as quick as the broken 
 scrub-tangled ground would aUow. 
 
 They knew one another ; and, as soon as Hawker saw that he 
 was recognised, he made to the left, away from the rest of his 
 gang, trying to reach, as Desborough could plainly see, the only 
 practicable way that led from the amphitheatre in which they were 
 back into the mountains. 
 
 They fired at one another without efiect at the first. Hawker 
 was now pushing in fuU flight, though the scrub was so dense that 
 neither made much way. Now the ground got more open and 
 easier travelled, when Desborough was aware of one who came 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 407 
 
 charging recklessly up alongside of him, and looking rqund, he 
 recognised Charles Hawker. 
 
 " Good lad," he said ; " come on. I must have that fellow 
 before us there. He is the arch-devil of the lot. If we follow 
 him to h — 11, we must have him ! " 
 
 " We'll have him safe enough ! " said Charles. " Push to the 
 left, Captain, and we shall get him against those fallen rocks." 
 
 Desborough saw the excellence of this advice. This was the 
 last piece of broken ground there was. On the right the cliff rose 
 precipitous, and from its side had tumbled a confused heap of 
 broken rock, running out into the glen. Once past this, the man 
 they were pursuing would have the advantage, for he was splendidly 
 mounted, and beyond was clear galloping ground. As it was, he 
 was in a recess, and Desborough and Charles pushing forward, 
 succeeded in bringing him to bay. Alas, too well ! 
 
 George Hawker reined up his horse when he saw escape was 
 impossible, and awaited their coming with a double-barrelled 
 pistol in his hand. As the other two came on, calling on him to 
 surrender, Desborough's horse received a bullet in his chest, and 
 down went horse and man together. But Charles pushed on^tiU 
 he was within ten yards of the bushranger, and levelled his pistol 
 to fire. 
 
 So met father and son, the second time in their lives, all 
 unconsciously. For an instant they glared on one another with 
 wild threatening eyes, as the father made his aim more certain 
 and deadly. Was there no lightning in heaven to strike him 
 dead, and save him from this last horrid crime ? Was there nio 
 warning voice to tell him that this was his son, ? 
 
 None. The bullet sped, and the poor boy tumbled from his 
 saddle, clutching wildly, with crooked, convulsive fingers; at the 
 grass and flowers— shot through the chest I 
 
 Then, ere Desborough had disentangled himself from his fallen 
 horse, George Hawker rode off laughing — out through the upper 
 rock walls into the presence of the broad bald snow-line that rolled 
 above his head in endless lofty tiers towards the sky. 
 
 Desborough arose, swearing and stamping ; but, ere he could 
 pick up his cap, Sam was alongside of him, breathless, and with 
 him another common-looking man — my man, Dick, no other — 
 and they both cried out together, " What has happened ? " 
 
 " Look there ! " said Desborough, pointing to something dark 
 among the grass, — that's what has happened. What lies there 
 was Charles Hawker, and the villain is off." 
 
 " Who shot Charles Hawker? " said Dick. 
 
 " His namesake," said Desborough. 
 
408 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " His own father I " said Dick ; " that's terrible." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " they both asked aghast. 
 
 " Never mind now," he answered. " Captain Desborough, what 
 are you going to do ? Do you know where he's gone ? " 
 
 " Up into the mountain, to lie by, I suppose," said Desborough. 
 
 " Not at aU, sir ! He is going to cross the snow, and get to 
 the old hut, near the Murray Gate." 
 
 " What I Merryman's hut ? " said the Captain. " Impossible ! 
 He could not get through that way." 
 
 " I tell you he can. That is where they came from at first; 
 that is where they went to when they landed ; and this is the 
 gnRy they came through." 
 
 "Are you deceiving me?" said Desborough. "It will be 
 worse for you if you are ! I ain't in a humour for that sort of 
 thing. Who are you ? " 
 
 " I am Mr. Hamlyn's groom — Dick. Strike me dead if I ain't 
 telling the truth ! " 
 
 " Do you know this man, Buckley? " said Desborough, calling 
 out to Sam, who was sitting beside poor Charles Hawker, holding 
 his head up. 
 
 " Know hini I of course I do," he replied ; " ever since I was a 
 child." 
 
 "Then, look here," said Desborough to Dick, "I shall trust 
 you. Now, you say he will cross the snow. If I were to go 
 round by the Parson's I shouldn't get much snow." 
 
 " That's just it, don't you see ? You can be round at the 
 huts before him. That's what I mean," said Dick. "Take Mr. 
 Buckley's horse, and ride him till he drops, and you'll get another 
 at the Parson's. If you have any snow, it wiU be on Broadsaddle ; 
 but it won't signify. You go round the low side of Tambo, and 
 sight the lake, and you'll be there before him." 
 
 "How far?" 
 
 " Sixty miles, or thereabouts, plain sailing. It ain't eleven 
 o'clock yet." 
 
 " Good ; I'U remember you for this. Buckley, I want your 
 horse, Is the lad dead ? " 
 
 " No ; but he is very bad. I'll try to get him home. Take 
 the horse ; he is not so good a one as Widderin, but he'U carry 
 you to the Parson's. God speed you." 
 
 They watched him ride away almost south, skirting the ridges of 
 the mountain as long as he could ; then they saw him scrambling 
 up a lofty wooded ridge, and there he disappeared. 
 
 They raised poor Charles Hawker up, and Sam, mounting Dick's 
 horse, took the wounded man up before him, and started to go 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 409 
 
 slowly home. After a time, he said, " Do you feel worse, Charles ? " 
 and the other replied, " No ; but I am very cold." After that, he 
 stayed quite still, with his arm round Sam Buckley's neck, until 
 they reached the Brentwoods' door. 
 
 Some came out ta the door to meet them, and, among others, 
 Alice. " Take him from me," said Sam to one of the men. " Be 
 very gentle ; he is asleep." And so they took the dead man's 
 arm from off the iiving man's shoulder, and carried him in ; for 
 Charles Hawker was asleep indeed — in (he sleep that knows no 
 waking. 
 
 That was one of the fiercest and firmest stands that was ever 
 made by bushrangers against the authorities. Of the fonner five 
 were shot down, three wounded, and the rest captured save two. 
 The gang was destroyed at once, and life and property once more 
 secure, though at a sad sacrifice. 
 
 One trooper was shot dead at the first onset, — a fine young 
 fellow, just picked from his regiment for good conduct to join the 
 police. Another was desperately wounded, who died the next day. 
 On the part of the independent men assisting, there were Charles 
 Hawker killed, Doctor Mulhaus shot in the left arm, and Jim with 
 his leg broke ; so that, on that evening. Captain Brentwood's house 
 was like a hospital. 
 
 Captain Brentwood set his son's leg, under Dr. Mulhaus' direc- 
 tions, the Doctor keeping mighty brave, though once or twice his 
 face twisted with pain, and he was nearly fainting. Alice was 
 everywhere, pale and calm, helping every one who needed it, and 
 'saying nothing. Eleanor, the cook, pervaded the house, doing 
 the work of seven women, and having the sympathies of fourteen. 
 She told them that this was as bad a job as she'd ever seen ; 
 worse, in fact. That the nearest thing she'd ever seen to it was 
 when Mat Steeman's mob were broke up by the squatters ; " But 
 then," she added, " there were none but prisoners killed." 
 
 But when AUce had done all she could, and the house was 
 quiet, she went up to her father, and said, — 
 
 " Now, father, comes the worst part of the matter for me. Who 
 is to teU Mrs. Hawker ? " 
 
 "Mrs. Buckley, my- dear, would be the best person. But she 
 is at the Mayfords', I am afraid." 
 
 " Mrs. Hawker must be told at once, father, by some of us. I 
 do so dread her hearing of it by some accident, when none of 
 her friends are with her. Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! I never thought 
 to have had such times as these." 
 
 " Alice, my darling," said her father, " do you think that you 
 
410 THE BBOOLLEOTIONS OP 
 
 have strength to carry the news to her ? If Major Buckley went 
 with you, he could tell her, you know ; and it would be much 
 better for her to have him, an old friend, beside her. It would 
 be such a delay to go round and fetch his wife. Have you 
 courage ? " 
 
 "I wiU make courage," she said. " Speak to Major Buckley, 
 father, and I will get ready." 
 
 She went to Sam. " I am going on a terrible errand," she said ; 
 " I am going to tell Mrs. Hawker about this dreadful, dreadful 
 business. Now, what I want to say is, that you mustn't come ; 
 your father is going with me, and I'U get through it alone, Sam. 
 Now, please," she added, seeing Sam was going to speak, "don't 
 argue about it ; I am very much upset as it is, and I want you to 
 stay here. You won't foUow us, wiU you ? " 
 
 "Whatever you order, Alice, is law," said Sam. "I won't 
 come if you don't wish it ; but I can't see " 
 
 " There now. Will you get me my horse ? And please stay 
 by poor Jim, for my sake." 
 
 Sam complied ; and Alice, getting on her riding-habit, came 
 back trembling, and trying not to cry, to tell Major Buckley that 
 she was ready. 
 
 He took her in his arms, and kissed her. " You are a brave 
 noble girl," he said; "I thank God for such a daughter-in-law. 
 Now, my dear, let us hurry off, and not think of what is to 
 come." 
 
 It was about five o'clock when they went off. Sam and Halbert 
 having let them out of the paddock, went in-doors to comfort poor 
 Jim's heart, and to get something to eat, if it were procurable. ' 
 Jim lay on his bed tossing about, and the Doctor sat beside him, 
 talking to him, pale and grim, waiting for the doctor who had 
 been sent for ; no other than his drunken old enemy. 
 
 " This is about as nice a kettle of fish," said Jim, when they 
 came and sat beside him, " as a man could possibly wish to eat. 
 Poor Cecil and Charley ; both gone, eh ? Well, I know it ain't 
 decent for a fellow with a broken leg to feel wicked ; but I do, 
 nevertheless. I wish now that I had had a chance at some of 
 them before that stupid brute of a horse got shot." 
 
 "If you don't lie still, you Jim," said Sam, "your leg will 
 never set ; and then you must have it taken off, you know. How 
 is your arm. Doctor? " 
 
 " Sliooting a httle," said the Doctor; "nothing to signify, I 
 believe. At least, nothing in the midst of such a tragedy as this. 
 Poor Mary Hawker ; the pretty little village-maid we all loved so 
 well. To come to such an end as this 1 " 
 
GEOPFET HAMLYN. 411 
 
 "Is it true, then, Doctor, that Hawker, the bushranger, is her 
 husband?" 
 
 " Quite true, alas ! Every one must know it now. But I pray 
 you, Sam, to keep the darkest part of it all from her ; don't let 
 her know that the boy feU by the hand of his father." 
 
 " I could almost swear," said Sam, " that one among the gang 
 is his son too. When they rode past Alice and myself yesterday 
 morning, one was beside him so wonderflilly like him, that even 
 at that time I set them down for father and son." 
 
 "If Hamlyn's strange tale be true, it is so," said the Doctor. 
 " Is the young man you speak of among the prisoners, do you 
 know ? " 
 
 "Yes; I helped to capture him myself," said Sam. "What 
 do you mean by Hamlyn's story ? " 
 
 " Oh, a long one. He met him in a hut the night after we 
 picnic'd at Mirngish, and found out who he was. The secret not 
 being ours, your father and I never told any of you young people 
 of the fact of this bushranger being poor Mrs.. Hawker's husband. 
 I wish we had ; aH this might have been avoided. But the poor 
 soul always desired that the secret of his birth might be kept from 
 Charles, and yon see the consequence. I'll never keep a secret 
 again. Come here with me ; let us see both of them." 
 
 They foUowed him, and he turned into a little side room at the 
 back of the house. It was a room used for chance visitors or 
 strangers, containing two small beds, which now bore an unac- 
 customed burden, for beneath the snow-white coverlets lay two 
 figures, indistinct indeed, but unmistakable. 
 
 " Which is he ? " whispered the Doctor. 
 
 Sam raised the counterpane from the nearest one, but it was 
 not Charles. It was a young, handsome face that he saw, lying 
 so quietly and peacefully on the white piUow, that he exclaimed — 
 
 " Surely this man is not dead ! " 
 
 The Doctor shook his head, " I have often seen them like 
 that," he said. " He is shot through the heart." 
 
 Then they went to the other bed, where poor Charles lay. 
 Sam gently raised the black curls from his face, but none of them 
 spoke a word for a few minutes, till the Doctor said, " Now let us 
 come and see his brother." 
 
 They crossed the yard, to a slab outbuilding, before which one 
 of the troopers was keeping guard, with a loaded carbine ; and, 
 the Sergeant coming across, admitted them. 
 
 Seven or eight fearfuUy iU-looking ruffians lay about on the 
 floor, handcuffed. They were most of them of the usual convict 
 stamp ; dark, saturnine-looking fellows, though one offered a 
 
412 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 strange contrast by being an Albino, and another they could not 
 see plainly, for he was huddled up in a dark comer, bending down 
 over a basin of water, and dabbing his face. The greater part of 
 them cursed and blasphemed desperately, as is the manner of such 
 men when their blood is up, and they are reckless ; while the 
 wounded ones lay in a fierce sullen silence, more terrible almost 
 than the foul language of the others. 
 
 "He is not here," said Sam. " Stay, that must be him wiping 
 his face." 
 
 He went towards him, and saw he was right. The young 
 man he had taken looked wildly up like a trapped animal into his 
 face, and the Doctor could not suppress an exclamation when he 
 saw the likeness to his father. 
 
 " Is your face very bad ? " said Sam quietly. 
 
 The other turned away in silence. 
 
 " I'U tie it up for you, if you like," said Sam. 
 
 " It don't want no tying up." 
 
 He turned his face to the wall, and remained obstinately silent. 
 They perceived that nothing more was to be got from him, and 
 departed. But, turning at the door, they stUI saw him crouched 
 in the comer like a wild beast, wiping his bruised face every now 
 and then with Sam's handkerchief, apparently thinking of nothing, 
 hoping for nothing. Such a pitiful sight — such an example of 
 one who was gone beyond feeling, hope, or sorrow, or aught else, 
 save physical pain, that the Doctor's gorge rose, and he said, 
 stamping on the gravel, — 
 
 " A man, who says that that is not the saddest, saddest sight 
 he ever saw, is a disgrace to the mother that bore him. To see 
 a young fellow like that with such a physique — and God only 
 knows what undeveloped qualities in him — only ripe for the gal- 
 lows at five-and-twenty, is enough to make the angels weep. He 
 knows no evil but physical pain, and that he considers but a 
 temporary one. He knows no good, save, perhaps, to be faithful 
 to his confederates. He has been brought up from his cradle to 
 look on every man as his enemy. He never knew what it was to 
 love a human being in his life. Why, what does such a man 
 regard this world as ? As the antechamber of hell, if he ever 
 heard of such a place. I want to Imow what either of us three 
 would have been if we had had his training. I want to know 
 that now. We might have been as much worse than he is as a 
 wolf is worse than an evil- tempered dog." 
 
 A beautiful collie came up to the Doctor and fawned on 
 him, looking into his face with her deep, expressive, hazel 
 eyes. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 413 
 
 " We must do something for that fellow, Sam. If it's only for 
 his name's sake," said the Doctor. 
 
 * •» -ji- * * * 
 
 That poor boy sitting crouched there in the comer, with a 
 broken jaw, and just so much of human feeling as one may sup- 
 pose a pole-cat to have, caught in a gin, is that same baby that 
 we saw EUen Lee nursing on the door-step in the rain, when our 
 poor Mary came upon her on one wild night in Exeter. 
 
 Base-bom, workhouse-bred I Tossed from workhouse to prison, 
 from prison to hulk — every man's hand against him — an Arab of 
 society. As hopeless a case, my lord judge, as you ever had to 
 deal with ; and yet I think, my lord, that your big heart grows a 
 little pitiful, when you see that handsome face before you, blank 
 and careless, and you try, fruitlessly, to raise some blush of 
 shame, or even anger in it, by your eloquence. 
 
 Gone beyond that, my lord. Your thunderbolts fall harmless 
 here, and the man you say is lost, and naturally. Yet, give that 
 same man room to breathe and act ; keep temptation from him, 
 and let his good qualities, should he have any, have fair play, and, 
 even yet, he may convert you to the belief that hardened crimi- 
 nals* may be reformed, to the extent of one in a dozen ; beyond 
 that no reasonable man wiU go. 
 
 Let us see the end of this man. For now the end of my tale 
 draws near, and I must begin gathering up the threads of the 
 story, to tie them in a knot, and release my readers from duty. 
 Here is all I can gather about him, — 
 
 Sam and the Doctor moved heaven, earth, and the Colonial 
 Secretary, to get his sentence commuted, and with success. So 
 when his companions were led out to execution, he was held back; 
 reserved for penal servitude for life. 
 
 He proved himself quiet and docile ; so much so that when our 
 greatest, boldest explorer was starting for his last hopeless journey 
 to the interior, this man was selected as one of the twelve convicts 
 who were to accompany him. What follows is an extract which 
 I have been favoured with from his private journal. You wiU not 
 find it in the published histoiy of the expedition : — 
 
 " Date — lat. — long. — Morning. It is getting hopeless now, 
 and to-morrow I turn. Sand, and nothing but sand. The salso- 
 laceous plants, so long the only vegetation we have seen, are gone ; 
 and the little sienite peak, the last symptom of a water-bearing 
 country, has disappeared behind us. The sandhills still roll 
 away towards the setting sun, but get less and less elevated. 
 The wild fowl are still holding their mysterious flight to the north- 
 west, but I have not wings to foUow them. Oh, my God I if I 
 
414 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 onlj' knew what those silly hirds know. It is hopeless to go on. 
 and, I hegin to fear, hopeless to go back. Will it never rain 
 again ? 
 
 " Afternoon, — -My servant Hawker, one of the convicts assigned 
 to me by Government, died to-day at noon. I had got fond of 
 this man, as the most patient and the bravest, where all have 
 been so patient and so brave. He was a very silent and reserved 
 man, and had never complained, so that I was deeply shocked, on 
 his sending for me at dinner-time, to find that he was dying. 
 
 " He asked me not to deceive him, but to tell him if there was 
 any truth in what the gaol-chaplain had said, about there being 
 another life after death. I told him earnestly that I knew it as 
 surely as I knew that the earth was under my feet ; and went on 
 comforting him as one comforts a dying man. But he never spoke 
 again ; and we buried him in the hot sand at sundown. The first 
 wind will obliterate the little mound we raised over him, and none 
 wiU ever cross this hideous desert again. So that he will have as 
 quiet a grave as he could wish. 
 
 "Eleven o'clock at night. — God be praised. Heavy clouds 
 and thunder to the north. — " 
 
 So this poor workhouse-bred lad lies out among the sands of 
 the middle desert. 
 
 CHAPTEE XLin. 
 
 ACROSS THE SNOW. 
 
 Hawkeb the elder, as I said, casting one glance at the body of 
 his son, whom he knew not, and another at Captain Desborough, 
 who was just rising from the ground after his fall, set spurs to his 
 noble chestnut horse, and pushing through the contracted baniers 
 of slate which closed up the southern end of the amphitheatre 
 where they had been surprised, made for the broader and rapidly 
 rising valley which stretched beyond. 
 
 He soon reached the rocky gate, where the vast ridge of lime- 
 stone alternating with the schist, and running north and south in 
 high serrated ridges, was cut through by a deep fissure, formed 
 by the never idle waters of a little creek, that in the course of 
 ages had mined away the softer portions of the rock, and made a 
 practicable pass toward the mountains. 
 
 He picked his way with difficulty through the tumbled boulders 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 41B 
 
 that lay in the chasm ; and then there was a cool brisk wind on 
 his forehead, and a glare in his eyes. The chill breath of the 
 west wind from the mountain — the glare of the snow that filled up 
 the upper end of the valley, rising in level ridges towards the 
 sky-line. 
 
 He had been this path before ; and if he had gone it a hundred 
 times again, he would only have cursed it for a rough desperate 
 road, the only hope of a desperate man. Not for him to notice the 
 thousand lessons that the Lord had spread before him in the wilder- 
 ness 1 not for him to notice how the vegetation changed when the 
 limestone was passed, and the white quartz reefs began to seam 
 the slaty sides of the valley like rivers of silver ! Not for him to 
 see how, as he went up and on, the hardy Dicksonia stiU nestled 
 in stunted tufts among the more sheltered side guUies, long after 
 her tenderer sister, the queenly Alsophylla* had been left behind. 
 He only knew that he was a hunted wild beast, and that his lair 
 was beyond the snow. 
 
 The creek flashed pleasantly among the broken slate, full and 
 turbid under the mid-day sun. After midnight, when its foun- 
 tains are sealed again by the frosty breath of night, that creek 
 would be reduced to a trickling rill. His horse's feet brushed 
 through the delicate asplenium, the Venus' -hair of Australia ; 
 the sarsapariUa still hung in scant purple tufts on the golden 
 wattle, and the scarlet correa lurked among the broken quartz. 
 
 Upwards and onwards. In front, endless cycles agone, a lava 
 stream from some crater we know not of, had burst over the slate, 
 with fearful clang and fierce explosion, forming a broad roadway 
 of broken basalt up to a plateau twelve hundred feet or more above 
 us, and not so steep but that a horse might be led up it. Let us 
 go up with him, not cursing heaven and earth, as he did, but 
 noticing how, as we ascend, the scarlet wreaths of the Kennedia 
 and the crimson GrreviUea give place to the golden GreviUea and 
 the red Epacris ; then comes the white Epacris, and then the 
 grass trees, getting smaller and scantier as we go, till the little 
 blue Gentian, blossoming boldly among the slippery crags, tells us 
 that we have nearly reached the limits of vegetation. 
 
 He tm-ned when he reached this spot, and looked around him. 
 To the west a broad roUing down of snow, rising gradually ; to the 
 east, a noble prospect of forest and plain, hill and gully, with old 
 Snowy winding on in broad bright curves to the sea. He looked 
 over all the beauty and undeveloped wealth of Gipp's Land, which 
 shaU yet, please God, in fulness of time, be one of the brightest 
 jewels in the King of England's crown, but with eyes that saw not. 
 * The two species o£ fern-tree. 
 
416 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 He turned towards the snow and mounting his horse which he had 
 led up the cliff, held steadily westward. 
 
 His plans were well laid. Across the mountain, north of Lake 
 Omeo, not far from the mighty cleft in which the infant Murray 
 spends his youth, were two huts, erected years before by some 
 settler, and abandoned. They had been used by a gang of bush- 
 rangers, who had been attacked by the police, and dispersed. 
 Nevertheless, they had been since inhabited by the men we know 
 of, who landed in the boat from Van Diemen's Land, in conse- 
 quence of Hawker himself having found a pass through the ranges, 
 open for nine months in the year. So that, when the police were 
 searching Gipp's Land for these men, they, with the exception of 
 two or three, were snugly ensconced on the other water-shed, wait- 
 ing tin the storm should blow over. Li these huts Hawker intended 
 to lie by for a short time, living on such provisions as were left, 
 until he could make his way northward on the outskirts of the 
 settlements, and escape. 
 
 There was no pursuit, he thought : how could there be ? Who 
 knew of this route but himself and his mates ? hardly likely any of 
 them would betray him. No creature was moving in the valley he 
 had just ascended, but the sun was beginning to slope towards the 
 west, and he must onwards. 
 
 Onwards, across the slippery snow. At first a few tree-stems, 
 blighted and withered, were visible right and left, proving that at 
 some time during their existence, these bald downs had either a 
 less elevation or a warmer climate than now. Then these even 
 disappeared, and aU around was one white blinding glare. To the 
 right, the snow-fields rolled up into the shapeless lofty mass called 
 Mount Tambo, behind which the hiU they now call Kosciusko,* — 
 as some say, the highest ground in the country, — began to take a 
 crimson tint from the declining sun. Far to the south, black and 
 gaunt among the whitened hiUs, towered the rounded hump of Buf- 
 faloe, while the peaks of BuUer and Aberdeen showed like dim 
 blue clouds on the furthest horizon. 
 
 Snow, and nothing but snow. Sometimes plunging shoulder 
 
 * Mr. Macarthur, companion of Count Strzelecki, seems to believe that 
 Kosciusko is actually the highest point. But I believe Mr. Selwyn is of 
 opinion that there is a peak (" down " would be a more correct word) 
 higher yet. Mount Kosciusko is between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above the 
 sea, from which it is visible. It is hard to believe, however, that this is 
 the highest point in the Australian Alps. The nautical charts lay down 
 here, " snowy mountains, visible twenty-five leagues at sea." And con- 
 sidering that thwy are at least fifteen leaguts inland, I cannot help think- 
 ing, either that Kosciusko is not the highest point, or that its height is 
 underrated. 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 417 
 
 deep into some treacherous hollow, sometimes guiding the tired 
 horse across the surface frozen over unknown depths. He had 
 been drinking hard for some days, and, now the excitement of 
 action had gone off; was fearfully nervous. The snow-glint had 
 dizzied his head, too, and he began to see strange shapes forming 
 themselves in the shade of each hollow, and start at each stumble 
 of his horse. 
 
 A swift-flying shadow upon the snow, and a rush of wings over- 
 head. An eagle. The lordly scavenger is following him, impa- 
 tient for him to drop and become a prey. Soar up, old bird, and 
 bide thy time ; on yonder precipice thou shalt have good chance 
 of a meal. 
 
 Twilight, and then night, and yet the snow but half past. There 
 is a rock in a hollow, where grow a few scanty tufts of grass which 
 the poor horse may eat. Here he will camp, fireless, foodless, and 
 walk up and down the livelong night, for sleep might be death. 
 Though he is not in thoroughly Alpine regions, yet still, at this 
 time of the year, the snow is deep and the frost is keen. It were 
 as well to keep awake. 
 
 As he pacpd up and down beneath the sheltering rock, when 
 night had closed in, and the frosty stars were twinkling in the cold 
 blue firmament, strange ghosts and fancies came crowding on him 
 thick and fast. Down the long vista of a misspent, ruined life, he 
 saw people long since forgotten trooping up towards him. His 
 father tottered sternly on, as with a fixed purpose before him ; his 
 gipsy-mother, Madge, strode forward pitiless ; and poor ruined 
 EUen, holding her child to her heart, joined the others and held 
 up her withered hand as if in mockeiy. But then there came a 
 face between him and all the other figures which his distempered 
 brain had summoned, and blotted them out ; the face of a young 
 man, bearing a strange likeness to himself ; the face of the last 
 human creature he had seen ; the face of the boy that he had shot 
 down among the fern. 
 
 Why should this face grow before him wherever he turned, so 
 that he could not look on rock or sky without seeing it ? Why 
 should it glare at him through a blood-red haze when he shut his 
 eyes to keep it out, not in sorrow, not in anger, but even as he had 
 seen it last, expressing only terror and pain, as the lad rolled off 
 his horse, and lay a black heap among the flowers ? Up and 
 away ! anything is better than this. Let us stumble away across 
 the snow, through the mirk night once more, rather than be driven 
 mad by this pale boy's face. 
 
 Morning, and the pale ghosts have departed. Long shadows of 
 horse and man are thrown before him now, as the slope dips 
 
 28 
 
418 THE BECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 away to the westward, and he knows that his journey is well-nigh 
 over. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon before, having left the snow some 
 hours, he began to lead his horse down a wooded precipice, through 
 vegetation which grew more luxuriant every yard he descended. 
 The glen, whose bottom he was trying to reach, was a black pro- 
 found gulf, with perpendicular, or rather, over-hanging walls, on 
 every side, save where he was scrambling down. Here indeed it 
 was possible for a horse to keep his footing among the belts of 
 trees, that, alternating with precipitous granite cliff, formed the 
 upper end of one of the most tremendous glens in the world — the 
 Gates of the Murray. 
 
 He was barely one-third of the way down this mountain wall, 
 when the poor tired horse lost his footing and fell over the edge, 
 touching neither tree nor stone for five hundred feet, while George 
 Hawker was left terrified, hardly daring to peer into the dim abyss, 
 where the poor beast was gone. 
 
 But it was little matter. The hut he was making for was barely 
 four miles off now, and there was meat, drink, and safety. Perhaps 
 there might be company, he hoped there might, — some of the gang 
 might have escaped. A dog would be some sort of fiiend. Any- 
 thing sooner than such another night as last night. 
 
 gkjgistols were gone with the saddle, and he was unarmed. 
 He reached the base of the^ cliff in~ saJFety, and forced his way 
 through the tangled scrub that fringed the infant river, towards the 
 lower end of the pass. Here the granite walls, overhanging, bend 
 forward above to meet one another, almost forming an arch, the 
 height of whieh, from the river-bed, is computed to be nearly, if 
 not quite, three thousand feet. Through this awful gate he forced 
 his way, overawed and utterly dispirited, and reached the gully 
 where his refuge lay, just as the sun was setting. 
 
 There was a slight track, partly formed by stray cattle, which 
 led up it ; and casting his eyes upon this, he saw the marks of a 
 horse's feet. " Some one of the gang got home before me," he 
 said. " I'm right glad of that, anything better than such another 
 night." 
 
 He turned a sharp angle in the path, just where it ran round an 
 abrupt cliff. He saw a horseman within ten yards of him with his 
 face towards him. Captain Desborougb, holding a pistol at his 
 head. 
 
 " Surrender, George Hawker ! " said Desborough. " Or, by the 
 living Lord 1 you are a dead man." 
 
 Hungry, cold, desperate, unarmed ; he saw that he was undone, 
 and that hope was dead. The Captain had an easier prey than he 
 
GEOFPET HAMLYN. 419 
 
 had anticipated. Hawker threw tip his arms, and ere he could 
 fully appreciate his situation, he was chained fast to Deshorough's 
 saddle, only to be loosed, he knew, by the gallows. 
 
 Without a word on either side they began their terrible journey, 
 Desborough riding, and Hawker manacled by his right wrist to 
 the saddle. Fully a mile was passed before the latter asked 
 sullenly, — 
 
 " Where are you going to take me to-night ? " 
 
 " To Dickenson's," replied Desborough. " You must step out, 
 you know. It will be for your own good, for I must get there to- 
 night." 
 
 Two or three miles further were got over, when Hawker said 
 abruptly, — 
 
 " Look here, Captain, I want to talk to you." 
 
 " You had better not," said Desborough. " I don't want to 
 have any communication with you, and every word you say will go 
 against you." 
 
 " Bah ! " said Hawker. " I must swing. I know that. I shan't 
 make any defence. Why, the devils out of heU would come into 
 court against me if I did. But I want to ask you a question or 
 two. You haven't got the character of being a brutal feUow, like 
 
 . It can't hurt you to answer me one or two things, and 
 
 ease my mind a bit." 
 
 "God help you, unhappy man," said Desborough. "I wiU 
 answer any questions you ask." 
 
 " Well, then, see here," said Hawker, hesitating. " I want to 
 know — I want to know first, how you got round before me ? " 
 
 " Is that all? " said Desborough. " Well, I came round over 
 -Broadsaddle, and got a fi-esh horse at the Parson's." 
 
 " Ah 1 " said Hawker. " That young fellow I shot down when 
 you were after me, is he dead ? " 
 
 " By this time," said Desborough. " He was just dying when 
 I came away." 
 
 " Would you mind stopping for a moment, Captain ? Now teU 
 me, who was he? " 
 
 " Mr. Charles Hawker, son of Mrs. Hawker, of Toonarbin." 
 
 He gave such a yell that Desborough shrunk from him appalled, 
 — a cry as of a wounded tiger, and struggled so wildly with his 
 handcuff that the blood poured from his wrist. Let us close this 
 scene. Desborough told me afterwards, that that wUd, fierce, 
 despairing cry, rang in his ears for many years afterwards, and 
 would never be forgotten tUl those ears were closed with the dust 
 of the grave. 
 
420 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 HOW MAEY HAWKEE HEAKD THE NEWS. 
 
 Teoubeidge's Station, Toonarbin, lay so far back from the river, 
 and so entirely on the road to nowhere, that Tom used to remark, 
 that he would back it for being the worst station for news in the 
 country. So it happened while these terrible scenes were enacting 
 within ten miles of them, down, in fact, to about one o'clock in 
 the day when the bushrangers were overtaken and punished, Mary 
 and her cousin sat totally unconscious of what was going on. 
 
 But about eleven o'clock that day, Bumside, the cattle dealer, 
 mentioned once before in these pages, arrived at Major Buckley's, 
 from somewhere up country, and found the house apparently 
 deserted. 
 
 But having coee'd for some time, a door opened in one of the 
 huts, and a sleepy groom came forth, yawning. 
 
 " Where are they all ? " asked Bumside. 
 
 " Mrs. Buckley and the women were down at Mrs. Mayford's, 
 streaking the bodies out," he believed. " The rest were gone 
 away after the gang." 
 
 This was the first that Bumside had heard about the matter. 
 And now, bit by bit, he extracted everything from the sleepy 
 groom. 
 
 I got him afterwards to confess to me, that when he heard of 
 this terrible affair, his natural feeling of horror was considerably 
 alloyed with pleasure. He saw here at one glance a fund of small 
 talk for six months. He saw himself a welcome visitor at every 
 station, even up to furthest lonely Condamine, retailing the news 
 of these occurrences with all the authenticity of an eye witness, 
 improving his narrative by each repetition. Here was the basis of 
 a new tale. Ode, Epic, Saga, or what you may please to call it, 
 which he, Bumside, the bard, should sing at each fireside through- 
 out the land. 
 
 "And how are Mrs. and Miss Mayford, poor souls?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "They're as well," answered the groom, " as you'd expect folks 
 to be after such a mishap. They ran out at the back way and 
 down the garden towards the river before the chaps could burst 
 the door down. I am sorry for that little chap, Cecil, I am, by 
 Jove I A straightforward, manly little chap as ever crossed a 
 horse. Last week he says to me, says he, ' Benjy, my boy,' says 
 he, 'come and be groom to me. I'll give you thirty pound a-year.' 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLTN. 421 
 
 And I says, 'If Mr. Sam ' Hallo, there they are at it, hammer 
 
 and tongs ! Sharp work that I " 
 
 They both listened intently. They could hear, borne on the 
 west wind, a distant dropping fire and a shouting. The groom's 
 eye began to kindle a bit, hut Bumside, sitting yet upon his horse, 
 grasped the lad's shoulder and cried, " God save us, suppose our 
 men should be beaten ! " 
 
 " Suppose," said the groom, contemptuously shaking him off; 
 " why then you and I should get our throats cut." 
 
 At this moment the noise of the distant fight breezed up louder 
 than ever. 
 
 " They're beat back," said Bumside. " I shall be off to 
 Toonarbin, and give them warning. I advise you to save your- 
 self." 
 
 " I was set to mind these here things," said Benjy, " and I'm 
 a-going to mind 'em. And they as meddles with 'em had better 
 look out." 
 
 Bumside started off for Toonarbin, and when half-way there he 
 paused and listened. The firing had ceased. When he came to 
 reflect, now that his panic was over, he had very little doubt that 
 Desborough's party had gained the day. It was impossible, he 
 thought, that it could be otherwise. 
 
 Nevertheless, being half-way to Toonarbin, he determined to 
 ride on, and, having called in a moment, to follow a road which 
 took a way past Lee's old hut towards the scene of action. He 
 very soon pulled up at the door, and Tom Troubridge came slowly 
 out to meet him. 
 
 " Hallo, Bumside I " said Tom. " Get off, and come in." 
 
 " Not I, indeed. I am going off to see the fight." 
 
 " What fight ? " said Mary Hawker, looking over Tom's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Do you mean to say you have not heard the news 7 " 
 
 " Not a word of any news for a fortnight." 
 
 For once in his life, Bumside was laconic, and told them all 
 that had happened. Tom spoke not a word, but ran up to the 
 stable and had a horse out, saddled in a minute, he was dashing 
 into the house again for his hat and pistols when he came against 
 Mary in the passage, leaning against the wall. 
 
 " Tom," she whispered hoarsely. " Bring that boy back to me 
 safe, or never look me in the face again ! " 
 
 He never answered her, he was thinking of some one beside the 
 boy. He pushed past her, and the next moment she saw him 
 gallop away with Bumside, followed by two men, and now she was 
 left alone indeed, and helpless. 
 
422 THE EECOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 There was not a soul about the place but herself; not a soul 
 within ten miles. She stood looking out of the door fixedly, at 
 nothing, for a time ; but then, as hour by hour went on, and 'the 
 afternoon stillness fell upon the forest, and the shadows began 'to 
 slant, a terror began to grow upon her which at length became 
 unbearable, and well-nigh drove her mad. 
 
 At the first she understood that aU these years of anxiety had 
 come to a point at last, and a strange feeling of excitement, almost 
 joy, came over her. She was one of those impetuous characters 
 who stand suspense worse than anything, and now, although terror 
 was in her, she felt as though relief was nigh. Then she began 
 to think again of her son, but only for an instant. He was under 
 Major Buckley's care, and must be safe ; so that she dismissed 
 that fear from her mind for a time, but only for a time. It came 
 back to her again. Why did he not come to her ? Why had not 
 the Major sent him off to her at once ? Could the Major have 
 been kiUed ? even if so, there was Doctor Mulhaus. Her terrors 
 were absurd. 
 
 But not the less terrors, that grew in strength hour by hour, as 
 she waited there, looking at the pleasant spring forest, and no one 
 came. Terrors that grew at last so strong, that they took the 
 place of certainties. Some hitch must have taken place, and her 
 boy must be gone out with the rest. 
 
 Having got as far as this, to go further was no difficulty. He 
 was killed, she felt sure of it, and none had courage to come and 
 teU her of it. She suddenly determined to verify her thoughts at 
 once, and went indoors to get her hat. 
 
 She had fully made up her mind that he must be kUled at this 
 time. The hope of his having escaped was gone. We who know 
 the real state of the case, should tremble for her reason, when she 
 finds her fears so terribly true. ' We shall see. 
 
 She determined to start away to the Brentwoods', and end her 
 present state of terror one way or another. Tom had taken the 
 only horse in the stable, but her own brown pony was running in 
 the paddock with some others ; and she sallied forth, worn out, 
 feverish, half-mad, to try to catch him. 
 
 The obstinate brute would not be caught. Then she spent a 
 weary hour trying to drive them all into the stockyard, but in vain. 
 Three times, she, with infinite labour, drove them up to the slip- 
 rail, and each time the same mare and foal broke away, leading off 
 the others. The third time, when she saw them all run whinnying 
 down to the further end of the paddock, after half an hour or so of 
 weary work driving them up, when she had run herself off her 
 poor tottermg legs, and saw that all her toil was in vain, then she 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 423 
 
 sank down on the cold hard gravel in the yard, with her long black 
 hair streaming loose along the ground, and prayed that she might 
 die. Down at fuU length, in front of her own door, like a dead 
 woman, moaning and crying, from time to time, " Oh, my boy, my 
 boy." 
 
 How long she lay there she knew not. She heard a horse's 
 feet, but only stopped her ears from the news she thought was 
 coming. Then she heard a steady heavy footstep close to her, and 
 some one touched her, and tried to raise her. 
 
 She sat up, shook the hair from her eyes, and looked at the man 
 who stood beside her. At first she thought it was a phantom of 
 her own brain, but then looking wildly at the calm, solemn features 
 and the kindly grey eyes which were gazing at her so inquiringly, 
 she pronounced his name^" Frank Maberly." 
 
 " God save you, madam," he said. " What is the matter ? " 
 
 " Misery, wrath, madness, despair ! " she cried wildly, raising 
 her hand. " The retribution of a lifetime fallen on my luckless 
 head in one unhappy moment." 
 
 Frank Maberly looked at her in real pity, but a thought went 
 through his head. " What a magnificent actress this woman 
 would make." It merely passed through his brain and was gone, 
 and then he felt ashamed of himself for entertaining it a 
 moment ; and yet it was not altogether an unnatural one for him 
 who knew her character so well. She was lying on the ground in 
 an attitude which would have driven Siddons to despair; one white 
 arm, down which her sleeve had fallen, pressed against her fore- 
 head, while the other clutched the ground ; and her splendid 
 black hair fallen down across her shoulders. Yet how could he 
 say how much of all this wild despair was real, and how much 
 hysterical ? 
 
 " But what is the matter, Mary Hawker ? " he asked. " Tell 
 me, or how can I help you ? " 
 
 "Matter?" she said. "Listen. The bushrangers are come 
 down fi-om the mountains, spreading ruin, murder, and destruction 
 far and wide. My husbapd is captain of the gang : and my son, 
 my only son, whom I have loved better than my Grod, is gone with 
 the rest to hunt them down — to seek, unknowing, his own father's 
 life. There is mischief beyond your mending, priest ! " 
 
 Beyond his mending, indeed. He saw it. " Rise up," he said, 
 " and act. TeH me all the circumstances. Is it too late ? " 
 
 She told him how it had come to pass, and then he showed her 
 that aU her terrors were but anticipations, and might be false. He 
 got her pony for her, and, as night was falling, rode away with her 
 along the mountain road that led to Captain Brentwood's. 
 
424 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 The sun was down, and ere they had gone far, the moon was 
 bright overhead. Frank, having fully persuaded himself that aU 
 her terrors were the effect of an overwrought imagination, grew 
 cheerful, and tried to laugh her out of them. She, too, with the 
 exercise of riding through the night-air, and the company of a 
 handsome, agreeable, weU-bred man, began to have a lurking idea 
 that she had been making a fool of herself; when they came 
 suddenly on a hut, dark, cheerless, deserted, standing above a 
 black, stagnant, reed-grown waterhole. 
 
 The hut where Frank had gone to preach to the stockmen. The 
 hut where Lee had been murdered — an iU-omened place ; and as 
 they came opposite to it, they saw two others approaching them in 
 the moonlight — Major Buckley and Alice Brentwood. 
 
 Then Alice, pushing forward, bravely met her, and told her all 
 — all, from beginning to end : and when she had finished, having 
 borne up nobly, fell to weeping as though her heart would break. 
 But Mary did not weep, or cry, or fall down. She only said, "Let 
 me see him," and went on with them, silent and steady. 
 
 They got to Garoopna late at night, none having spoken all the 
 way. Then they showed her into the room where poor Charles lay, 
 cold and stiff, and there she stayed, hour after hour through the 
 weary night. Alice looked in once or twice, and saw her sitting 
 on the bed which bore the corpse of her son, with her face buried 
 in her hands ; and at last, summoning courage, took her by the 
 arm and led her gently to bed. 
 
 Then she went into the drawing-room, where, besides her father, 
 were Major Buckley, Doctor Mulhaus, Frank Maberly, and the 
 drunken doctor before spoken of, who had had the sublime pleasure 
 of cutting a buHet from his old adversary's arm, and was now in a 
 fair way to justify the -lobrigtiet I have so often applied to him. I 
 myself also was sitting next the fire, alongside of Frank Maberly. 
 
 " My brave girl," said the Major, " how is she ? " 
 
 " I hardly can tell you, sir," said Alice ; " she is so very quiet. 
 If she would cry now, I should be very glad. It would not frighten 
 me so much as seeing her like that. I fear she wiU die ! " 
 
 " If her reason holds," said the Doctor, " she wiU get over it. 
 She had, from all accounts, gone through every phase of passion 
 down to utter despair, before she knew the blow had fallen. Poor 
 Mary 1 " 
 
 ****** 
 
 There, we have done. All this misery has come on her from one 
 act of foUy and selfishness years ago. How many lives are. ruined, 
 how many families broken up, by one false step ! If ever a poor 
 soul has expiated her own offence, she has. Let us hope that 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLTN. 423 
 
 brighter times are in store for her. Let us have done with moral 
 reflections ; I am no hand at that work. One more dark scene, 
 reader, and then. — 
 
 It was one wild dreary day in the spring ; a day of furious wind 
 and cutting rain ; a day when few passengers were abroad, and when 
 the boatmen were gathered in knots among the sheltered spots upon 
 the quays, waiting to hear of disasters at sea; when the ships creaked 
 and groaned at the wharfs, and the harbour was a sheet of wind- 
 driven foam, and the domain was strewed with broken boughs. On 
 such a day as this, Major Buckley and myself, after a sharp walk, 
 found ourselves in front of the principal gaol in Sydney. 
 
 We were admitted, for we had orders ; and a small, wiry, clever- 
 looking man, about fifty, bowed to us as we entered the whitewashed 
 corridor, which led from the entrance hall. We had a few words 
 with him, and then followed him. 
 
 To the darkest passage in the darkest end of that dreary place ; 
 to the condemned cells. And my heart sunk as the heavy bolt 
 shot back, and we went into the first one on the right. 
 
 Before us was a kind of bed-place. And on that bed-place lay 
 the figure of a man. Though it is twenty years ago since I saw it, 
 I can remember that scene as though it were yesterday. 
 
 He lay upon a heap of tumbled blankets, with his face buried in 
 a pillow. One leg touched the ground, and round it was a ring, 
 connecting the limb to a long iron bar, which ran along beneath the 
 bed. One arm also hung listlessly on the cold stone floor, and the 
 other was thrown around his head. A head covered with short 
 black curls, worthy of an Antinous, above a bare muscular neck, 
 worthy of a Famese Hercules. I advanced towards him. 
 
 The governor held me back. " My God, sir," he said, " take 
 care. Don't, as you value your life, go within length of his chain." 
 But at that moment the handsome head was raised from the pillow, 
 and my eyes met George Hawker's. Oh, Lord ! such a piteous 
 wild look. I could not see the fierce desperate villain who had 
 kept our country-side in terror so long. No, thank God, I could 
 only see the handsome curly-headed boy who used to play with 
 James Stockbridge and myself among the gravestones in Drumston 
 churchyard. I saw again the merry lad who used to bathe with 
 us in Hatherleigh water, and whom, with all his faults, I had once 
 loved well. And seeing him, and him only, before me, in spite of 
 a terrified gesture from the governor, I walked up to the bed, and, 
 sitting dowp beside him, put my arm round his neck. 
 
 " George ! George ! Dear old friend I " I said. "0, George, 
 my boy, has it come to this ? " 
 
426 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 I don't want to be instructed in my duty. I know what my duty 
 was on that occasion as well as any man. My duty as a citizen and 
 a magistrate was to stand at the further end of the cell, and give 
 this hardened criminal a moral lecture, showing how honesty and 
 virtue, as in my case, had led to wealth and honour, and how 
 yielding to one's passions had led to disgrace and infamy, as in 
 his. That was my duty, I allow. But then, you see, I didn't do 
 my duty. I had a certain tender feeling about my stomach which 
 prevented me from doing it. So I only hung there, with my arm 
 round his neck, and said, from time to time, " George, George! " 
 like a fool. 
 
 He put his two hands upon my shoulders, so that his fetters 
 hung acrofs my breast, and he looked me in the face. Then he 
 said, after a time, " What ! Hamlyn ? Old Jeff Hamlyn ! The 
 only man I ever knew that I didn't quarrel with ! Come to see 
 me now, eh ? Jeff, old boy, I'm to be hung to-morrow." 
 
 " I know it," I said. " And I came to ask you if I could do 
 anything for you. For the sake of dear old Devon, George." 
 
 " Anything you like, old Jeff," he said, with a laugh, " so long 
 as you don't get me reprieved. If I get loose again, lad, I'd do 
 worse than I ever did yet, believe me. I've piled up a tolerable 
 heap of wickedness as it is, though. I've murdered my own son, 
 Jeff. Do you know that ? " 
 
 I answered — " Yes ; I know that, George ; but that was an 
 accident. You did not know who he was." 
 
 " He came at me to take my life," said Hawker. " And I tell 
 you, as a man who goes out to be hung to-morrow, that, if I had 
 guessed who he was, I'd have blown my own brains out to save him 
 from the crime of killing me. Who is that man ? " 
 
 " Don't you remember him ? " I said. " Major Buckley." 
 
 The Major came forward, and held out his hand to George 
 Hawker. " You are now," he said, " like a dead man to me. 
 You die to-morrow ; and you know it ; and face it like a man. I 
 come to ask you to forgive me anything you may have to forgive. 
 I have been your enemy since I first saw you : but I have been an 
 honest and open enemy ; and now I am your enemy no longer. I 
 ask you to shake hands with me. I have been warned not to 
 come within arm's length of you, chained as you are. But I am 
 not afraid of you." 
 
 The Major came and sat on the bed-place beside him. 
 
 " As for that little animal," said George Hawker, pointing to the 
 governor, as he stood at the further end of the cell, " if he comes 
 within reach of me, I'll beat his useless little brains out agamst the 
 wall, and he knows it. He was right to caution you not to come 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 427 
 
 too near me. I nearly killed a man yesterday ; and to-morrow, 
 
 when they come to lead me out But, with regard to you, Major 
 
 Buckley, the case is different. Do you know I should be rather 
 sorry to tackle you ; I'm afraid you would be too heavy for me.. 
 As to my having anything to forgive. Major, I don't know that 
 there is anything. If there is, let me tell you that I feel more 
 kind and hearty toward you and Hamlyn for coming to me like 
 this to-day, than I've felt toward any man this twenty year. By- 
 the-bye, let no man go to the gaUows without clearing himself as 
 far as he may. Do you know that I set on that red-haired villain. 
 Moody, to throttle Bill Lee, because I hadn't pluck to do it 
 myself." 
 
 " Poor Lee," said the Major. 
 
 " Poor devil," said Hawker. " Why that man had gone through 
 every sort of villainy, from " (so and so up to so and so, he said ; 
 I shall not particularise) " before my beard was grown. Why that 
 man laid such plots and snares for me when I was a lad, that a 
 bishop could not have escaped. He egged me on to forge my own 
 father's name. He drove me on to ruin. And now, because it 
 suited his purpose to turn honest, and act as faithful domestic to 
 my wife for twenty years, he is mourned for as an exemplary cha- 
 racter, and I go to the gallows. He was a meaner villain than 
 ever I was." 
 
 " George," I asked, " have you any message for your 
 wife ? " 
 
 " Only this,'' he said ; " tell her I always liked her pretty face, 
 and I'm sorry I brought disgrace upon her. Through all my ras- 
 calities, old Jeff, I swear to you that I respected and Hked her to the 
 last. I tried to see her last year, only to tell her that she needn't 
 be afraid of me, and should treat me as a dead man ; but she and 
 her blessed pig-headed lover, Tom Troubridge, made such knife 
 and pistol work of it, that I never got the chance of saying the word 
 I wanted. She'd have saved herself much trouble if she hadn't 
 acted so much like a frightened fool. I never meant her any 
 harm. You may tell her all this if you judge right, but I leave it 
 to you. Time's up, I see. I ain't so much of a coward, am I, 
 Jeff? Good-bye, old lad, good-bye." 
 
 That was the last we saw of him ; the next morning he was 
 executed with four of his comrades. But now the Major and I, 
 leaving him, went off again into the street, into the rain and the 
 furious wind, to beat up against it for our hotel. Neither spoke a 
 word till we came to a comer in George Street, nearest the wharf; 
 and then the Major turned back upon me suddenly, and I thought 
 he had been unable to face the terrible gust which came sweeping 
 
428 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 up from the harbour : but it was not so. He had turned on 
 purpose, and putting his hands upon my shoulders, he said, — 
 
 " Hamlyn, Hamljrn, you have taught me a lesson." 
 
 "I suppose so," I said. "I have shown you what a fool a 
 tender-hearted soft-headed fellow may make of himself by yielding 
 to his impulses. But I have a defence to offer, my dear sir, the 
 best of excuses, the only real excuse existing in this world. I 
 couldn't help it." 
 
 " I don't mean that, Hamlyn," he answered. " The lesson you 
 have taught me is a very different one. You have taught me that 
 there are bright points in the worst man's character, a train of good 
 feeling which no tact can bring out, but yet which some human 
 spark of feeling may light. Here is this man Hawker, of whom 
 we heard that he was dangerous to approach, and whom the good 
 Chaplain was forced to pray for and exhort from a safe distance. 
 The man for whose death, till ten minutes ago, I was rejoicing. 
 The man I thought lost, and beyond hope. Yet you, by one burst 
 of unpremeditated foUy, by one piece of siUy sentimentality, by 
 ignoring the man's later life, and carrying him back in imagination 
 to his old schoolboy days, have done more than our good old friend 
 the Chaplain could have done without your assistance. There is a 
 spark of the Divine in the worst of men, if you can only find it." 
 
 In spite of the Major's parliamentary and didactic way of speak- 
 ing, I saw there was truth at the bottom of what he said, and 
 that he meant kindly to me, and to the poor fellow who was even 
 now among the dead ; so instead of arguing with him, I took his 
 arm, and we fought homewards together through the driving rain. 
 
 Imagine three months to have passed. That stormy spring 
 had changed into a placid, burning summer. The busy shearing- 
 time was past ; the noisy shearers were dispersed, heaven knows 
 where (most of them probably suffering from a shortness of cash, 
 complicated with delirium tremens). The grass in the plains had 
 changed from green to duU grey ; the river had changed his 
 hoarse roar for a sleepy murmur, as though too lazy to quarrel 
 with his boulders in such weather. A hot dull haze was over 
 forest and mountain. The snow had perspired tiU it showed long 
 black streaks on the highest eminences. In short, summer had 
 come with a vengeance ; every one felt hot, idle, and thirsty, and 
 " there was nothing doing." 
 
 Now that broad cool verandah of Captain Brentwood's, with its 
 deep recesses of shadow, was a place not to be lightly spoken of. 
 Any man once getting footing there, and leaving it, except on 
 compulsion, would show himself of weak mind. Any man once 
 comfortably settled there in an easy chair, who fetched anything 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 429 
 
 'or himself when he could get any one else to fetch it for him, 
 vould show himself, in my opinion, a man of weak mind. One 
 ,hing only was wanted to make it perfect, and that was niggers. 
 Co the winds with " Uncle Tom's Cahin," and " Dred " after it, 
 n a hot wind ! What can an active-minded, self-helpful lady like 
 \S.rs. Stowe, freezing up there in Connecticut, ohliged to do some- 
 ;hing to keep herself warm, — what can she, I ask, know about 
 .he requirements of a southern gentleman when the thermometer 
 stands at 125° in the shade ? Pish I Does she know the 
 sxertion required for cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north 
 vind ? No ! Does she know the amount of perspiration and 
 mger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in 
 Fanuary? Does she know the physical prostration which is 
 jaused by breaking up two lumps of hard white sugar in a 
 oawnee before a thunderstorm ? No, she doesn't, or she would 
 jry out for niggers with the best of us I When the thermometer 
 jets over 100° in the shade, all men would have slaves if they 
 were allowed. An Anglo- Saxon conscience will not, save in rare 
 instances, bear a higher average heat than 95°. 
 
 But about this verandah. It was the model and type of all 
 rerandahs. It was made originally by the Irish family, the 
 Donovans, before spoken of; and, like all Irish-made things, was 
 aobly conceived, beautifully carried out, and then left to take care 
 jf itself, so that when Alice came into possession, she found it a 
 leglected mine of rare creepers run wild. Here, for the first 
 iime, I saw the exquisite crimson passion-flower,* then a great 
 ■arity. Here, too, the native passion-flower, scarlet and orange, 
 vas tangled up with the common purple sarsaparilla and the 
 English honeysuckle and jessamine. 
 
 In this verandah, one blazing morning, sat Mrs. Buckley and 
 yice making believe to work. Mrs. Buckley really was doing 
 something. Alice sat with her hands fallen on her lap, so still 
 md so beautiful, that she might then and there have been photo- 
 graphed off by some enterprising artist, and exhibited in the print 
 shops as " Argia, Goddess of Laziness." 
 
 They were not alone, however. Across the very coolest, darkest 
 jomer was swung a ham-mock, looking at which you might per- 
 seive two hands elevating a green paper-covered pamphlet, as 
 hough the owner were reading — the aforesaid .owner, however, 
 )eing entirely invisible, only proving his existence by certain 
 )ulges and angles in the canvas of the hammock. 
 
 Now having made a nice little mystery as to who it was lying 
 here, I will proceed to solve it. A burst of laughter came from 
 • Passiflor .Loudonin, I believe. 
 
430 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the hidden man, so uproarious and violent, that the hammock- 
 strings strained and shook, and the magpie, waking up from a 
 sound sleep, cursed and swore in a manner fearful to hear. 
 
 " My dearest Jim 1 " said Alice, rousing herself, " What is the 
 matter with you? " 
 
 Jim read aloud the immortal hattle of the two editors, with the- 
 carpet bag and the fire-shovel, in " Pickwick," and, ere he had 
 half done, Alice and Mrs. Buckley had mingled their laughter 
 with his, quite as heartily, if not so loudly. 
 
 " Hallo ! " said Jim, " here's a nuisance ! There's no more of 
 it. Alice, have you got any more ? " 
 
 " That is all, Jim. The other numbers will come by the next 
 mail." 
 
 " How tiresome 1 I suppose the governor is pretty sure to be 
 home to-night. He can't be away much longer." 
 
 " Don't be impatient, my dear," said Alice. " How is your 
 leg?" 
 
 Please remember that Jim's leg was broken in the late wars, 
 and, as yet, hardly well. 
 
 " Oh, it's a good deal better. Heigho ! This is very duU." 
 
 " Thank you, James ! " said Mrs. Buckley. " Dear me ! the 
 heat gets greater every day. If they are on the road, I hope they 
 won't hurry themselves." 
 
 Our old friends were just now disposed in the following man- 
 ner : — 
 
 The Major was at home. Mary Hawker was staying with him. 
 Doctor Mulhaus and Halbert staying at Major Buckley's, while 
 Captain Brentwood was away with Sam and Tom Troubridge to 
 Sydney ; and, having been absent some weeks, had been expected 
 home now for a day or two. This was the day they came home, 
 riding slowly up to the porch about five o'clock. 
 
 When all greetings were done, and they were sat down beside 
 the others, Jim opened the ball by asking, " What news, father ? " 
 
 " What a particularly foolish question ! " said the Captain. 
 " Why, you'U get it all in time — none the quicker for being im- 
 patient. May be, also, when you hear some of the news, you 
 won't like it ! " 
 
 " Oh, indeed 1 " said Jim. 
 
 " I have a letter for you here, from the Commander-in-Chief. 
 You are appointed to the 3 — th Regiment, at present quartered in 
 India." 
 
 Alice looked at him quickly as she heard this, and, as a natural 
 consequence, Sam looked too. They had expected that he would 
 have hurra'd aloud, or thrown up his hat, or danced about when 
 
GEOPFEY HAMLYN. 431 
 
 le heard of it. But no ; he only sat bolt upright in his hammock, 
 ;hough his face flushed scarlet, and his eyes glistened strangely. 
 
 His father looked at him an instant, and then continued, — 
 
 " Six months' leave of absence procured at the same time, 
 which will give you about three months more at home. So you 
 see you now possess the inestimable privilege of wearing a red 
 3oat ; and what is still better, of getting a hole made in it ; for 
 there is great trouble threatening with the Affghans and Beloochs, 
 ind the chances are that you wiU smell powder before you are up 
 in your regimental duties. Under which circumstances I shall 
 iake the liberty of requesting that you inform yourself on these 
 poiuts under my direction, for I dont't want you to join your 
 regiment in the position of any other booby. Have the goodness 
 JO lie down agaia and not excite yourself. You have anticipated 
 this some time. Surely it is not necessary for you to cry about it 
 like a great girl." 
 
 But that night, after dark, when Sam and Alice were taking 
 me of those agreeable nocturnal walks, which aU young lovers are 
 prone to, they came smoothly gliding over the lawn close up to 
 the house, and then, unseen and unheard, they saw Captain 
 Brentwood with his arm round Jim's neck, and heard him say, — 
 
 " James I James 1 why did you want to leave me ? " 
 
 And Jim answered, "Father, I didn't know. I didn't know 
 my own mind. But I can't caU back now." 
 
 Sam and Alice slipt back again, and continued their walk. Let 
 IS hear what conversation they had been holding together before 
 this little interruption. 
 
 " Alice, my darling, my love, you are more beautiful than ever ! " 
 
 " Thanks to your absence, my dear Sam. You see how well I 
 ihrive without you." 
 
 " Then when we are " 
 
 " Well ? " said Alice. For this was eight o'clock in the even- 
 ng, you know, and the moon being four days past the full, it was 
 pitch dark. " Well ? " says she. 
 
 " When we are married," says Sam, audaciously, " I suppose 
 you wiU pine away to nothing." 
 
 "Good gracious me!" she answered. "Married? Why 
 3urely we are well enough as we are." 
 
 " Most excellently well, my darling," said Sam, " I wish it 
 30uld last for ever." 
 
 " Oh, indeed I " said Alice, almost inaudibly though. 
 
 "Alice, my love," said Sam, "have you thought of one 
 thing ? Have you thought that I must make a start in life for 
 myself? " 
 
432 ikE EECOLLECnONS OF 
 
 No, she hadn't thought of that. Didn't see why Baroona 
 wasn't good enough for him. 
 
 " My dear I " he said. " Baroona is a line property, but it is 
 not mine. I want money for a set purpose. For a glorious pur- 
 pose, my love ! I will not tell you yet, not for years perhaps, 
 what that purpose is. But I want fifty thousand pounds of my 
 own. And fifty thousand pounds I will have." 
 
 Good gracious 1 What an avaricious creature. Such a quan- 
 tity of money. And so she wasn't to hear what he was going to 
 do with it, for ever so many years. Wouldn't he tell her now ? 
 She would so like to know. Would nothing induce him ? 
 
 Yes, there was something. Nay, what harm ! Only an honest 
 lover's kiss, among the ripening grapes. In the dark, you say. 
 My dear madam, you would not have them kiss one another in 
 broad day, with the cook watching them out of the kitchen 
 window ? 
 
 •" Alice," he said, " I have had one object before me from my 
 boyhood, and since you told me that I was to be your husband, 
 that object has grown from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. 
 Alice, I want to buy back the acres of my forefathers ; I wish, I 
 intend, that another Buckley shall be the master of Clere, and 
 that you shall be his wife." 
 
 "Sam, my love ! " she said, turning on him suddenly. "What 
 a magnificent idea. Is it possible ? " 
 
 "Easy," said Sam. "My father could do it, but will not. 
 He and my mother have severed every tie with the old country, 
 and it would be at their time of life only painful to go back to the 
 old scenes and interests. But with me it is difierent. Think of 
 you and I taking the place we are entitled to by birth and educa- 
 tion, in the splendid society of that noble island. Don't let me 
 hear all that balderdash about the founding of new empires. 
 Empires take too long in growing for me. What honours, what 
 society, has this little colony to give, compared to those open to a 
 fourth-rate gentleman in England ? I want to be a real English- 
 man, not half a one. I want to throw in my lot heart and hand 
 with the greatest nation in the world. I don't want to be young 
 Sam Buckley of Baroona. I want to be the Buckley of Clere. 
 Is not that a noble ambition ? " 
 
 " My whole soul goes with you, Sam," said Alice. " My whole 
 heart and soul. Let us consult, and see how this is to be done." 
 
 "This is the way the thing stands," said Sam. "The house 
 and park at Clere, were sold by my father for 12,000i. to a 
 brewer. Since then, this brewer, a most excellent fellow by all 
 accounts, has bought back, acre by acre, nearly half the old 
 
GEOFFET HAMLTN. 433 
 
 riginal property as it existed in my great grandfather's time, so 
 lat now Clere must be worth fifty thousand pounds at least, 
 'his man's children are aU dead ; and as far as Captain Brentwood 
 as been able to find out for me, no one knows exactly how the 
 roperty is going. The present owner is the same age as my 
 ither ; and at his death, should an advantageous offer be made, 
 lere would be a good chance of getting the heirs to sell the 
 roperty. We should have to pay very highly for it, but 
 onsider what a position we should buy with it. The county 
 'ould receive us with open arms. 'That is all I know at 
 resent.'-' 
 
 " A noble idea," said Alice, " and well considered. Now what 
 re you going to do ? " 
 
 " Have you heard tell yet," said Sam, " of the new country to 
 lie north, they call the Darling Downs ? " 
 
 " I have heard of it from Burnside the cattle dealer. He 
 escribes it as a paradise of wealth." 
 
 "He is right. When you get through the Cypress, the plains 
 re endless. It is undoubtedly the finest piece of country found 
 et. Now do you know Tom Troubridge ? " 
 
 " Slightly enough," said Alice, laughing. 
 
 " Well," said Sam. " You know he went to Sydney with us, 
 nd before he had been three days there he came to me fuU of this 
 )arling Down country. Quite mad about it in fact. And in the 
 nd he said : ' Sam, what money have you got ? ' I said that 
 ly father had promised me seven thousand pounds for a certain 
 urpose, and that I had come to town partly to look for an invest- 
 lent. He said, ' Be my partner ; ' and I said, ' What for ? ' 
 Darling Downs,' he said. And I said I was only too highly 
 onoured by such a mark of confidence fi-om such a man, and that 
 closed with his offer at once. To make a long matter short, he 
 ! off to the new country to take up ground under the name of 
 'roubridge and Buckley. There ! " 
 
 " But oughtn't you to have gone up with him, Sam ? " 
 
 " I proposed to do so, as a matter of course," said Sam. " But 
 'hat do you think he said ? " 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "He gave me a great slap on the back," said Sam; "and, 
 aid he, ' Go home, my old lad, marry your wife, and fetch her up 
 3 keep house.' That's what he said. And now, my own love, 
 ly darling, wOl you tell me, am I to go up alone, and wait for 
 ou ; or win you come up, and make a happy home for me in that 
 reary desert ? Will you leave your home, and come away with 
 le into the grey hot plains of the west ? " 
 
 29 
 
434 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "I have no home in future, Sam," she said, " but where you 
 are, and I will gladly go with you to the world's end." 
 
 And so that matter was settled. 
 
 And now Sam disclosed to her that a visitor was expected at the 
 station in about a fortnight or three weeks ; and he was no less a 
 person than our old friend the dean, Frank Maberly. And then 
 he went to ask, did she think that she could manage by that time 
 to — eh ? Such an excellent opportunity, you know ; seemed 
 almost as if his visit had been arranged ; which, between you and 
 I, it had. 
 
 She thought it wildly possible, if there was any real necessity 
 for it. And after this they went in ; and Alice went into her bed- 
 room. 
 
 " And what have you been doing out there with Alice aU this 
 time, eh ? " asked the Captaia. 
 
 " I've been asking a question, sir." 
 
 " You must have put it in a pretty long form. What sort of an 
 answer did you get ? " 
 
 " I got ' yes ' for an answer, sir." 
 
 "Ah, well! Mrs. Buckley, can you lend Baroona to a new 
 married couple for a few weeks, do you think ? There is plenty 
 of room for you here." 
 
 And then into Mrs. Buckley's astonished ear all the new plans 
 were poured. She heard that Sam and Alice were to be married 
 in a fortnight, and that Sam had gone into partnership with Tom 
 Troubridge. 
 
 " Stop there," she said ; " not too much at once. What becomes 
 of Mary Hawker ? " 
 
 " She is left at Toonarbin, with an overseer, for the present." 
 
 " And when," she asked, " shall you leave us, Sam ? " 
 
 " Oh, in a couple of months, I suppose. I must give Tom time 
 to get a house up before I go and join him. What a convenient 
 thing a partner like that is, eh ? " , 
 
 " Oh, by-the-bye, Mrs. Buckley," said Captain Brentwood, "what 
 do you make of this letter ? " 
 
 He produced a broad thick letter, directed in a bold running 
 hand, 
 
 " Major Buckley, 
 
 " Baroona, Combermere County, 
 
 " Gipps-land. 
 
 " If absent, to be left with the nearest magistrate, and a receipt 
 taken for it." 
 
 "How very strange," said Mrs, Buckley, turning it over. 
 " Where did you get it ? " 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLTN. 435 
 
 " Sergeant Jackson asked me, as nearest magistrate, to take 
 charge of it ; and so I did. It has been forwarded by orderly 
 from Sydney." 
 
 " And the Governor's private seal, too," said Mrs. Buckley. 
 " I don't know when my curiosity has been so painfully excited. 
 Put it on the chimney-piece, Sam ; let us gaze on -the outside, 
 even if we are denied to see the inside. I wonder if your father 
 win come to-night ? " 
 
 "No; getting too late," said Sam. -"Evidently Halbert and 
 the Doctor have found themselves there during their ride, and are 
 keeping him and Mrs. Hawker company. They will all three be 
 over to-morrow morning, depend on it." 
 
 " What a really good fellow that Halbert is," said Captain 
 Brentwood. " One of the best companions I ever met. I wish 
 his spirits would improve with his health. A sensitive fellow like 
 him is apt not to recover from a blow like his." 
 
 " What blow ? " said Mrs. Buckley. 
 
 " Did you never hear ? " said the Captain. " The girl he was 
 going to be married to, got drowned coming out to him in the 
 Assam." 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 IN WHICH THERE ABE SOME ASTONISHING- REVELATIONS WITH 
 BBGAED TO DR. MULHAUS AND CAPTAIN DESBOROUGH. 
 
 At ten o'clock the next morning arrived the Major, the Doctor, 
 and Halbert ; and the first notice they had of it was the Doctor's 
 voice in the passage, evidently in a great state of excitement. 
 
 " No more the common bower-bird than you, sir ; a new species. 
 His eyes are red instead of blue, and the whole plumage is lighter. 
 I win call it after you, my dear Major." 
 
 " You have got to shoot him first," said the Major. 
 
 "I'U soon do that," said the Doctor, bursting into the room- 
 door. " How do you do, all of you ? Sam, glad to see you back 
 again. Brentwood, you are welcome to your own house. Get me 
 your gun — where is it ? " 
 
 " In my bedroom," said the Captain. 
 
 The Doctor went off after it. He reappeared again to complain 
 that the caps would not fit ; but, being satisfied on that score, he 
 disappeared down the garden, on murderous thoughts intent. 
 
 Sam got his f3.th?r away into the verandah, and told him all his 
 
436 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 plans. I need hardly say that they met with the Major's entire 
 approval. AH his plans, I said ; no, not all. Sam never hinted 
 at the end and ohject of all his endeavora's ; he never said a word 
 about his repurchase of Clere. The Major had no more idea that 
 Sam had ever thought of such a thing, or had been making 
 inquiries, than had the owner of Clere himself. 
 
 " Sam, my dear boy," said he, "I am very sorry to lose you, 
 and we shall have but a duU time of it henceforth ; but I am sure 
 it is good for a man to go out into the world by- himself " (and all 
 that sort of thing). " When you are gone, Brentwood and I mean 
 to live together to console one another." 
 
 " My dear, are you coming in ? " said Mrs. Buckley. " Here 
 is a letter for you, which I ought to have given you before." 
 
 The Major went in and received the mysterious epistle which 
 the Captain had brought the night before. When he saw it he 
 whistled. 
 
 They sat waiting to know the contents. He was provokingly 
 long in opening it, and when he did, he said nothing, but read it 
 over twice, with a lengthening visage. Now also it became appa- 
 rent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of 
 which the Major having looked, put it in nis pocket, and turning 
 round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began 
 drumming against the fender with his foot, musingly. 
 
 A more aggravating course of proceeding he could not have 
 resorted to. Here they were all dying of curiosity, and not a 
 ' word did he seem inclined to answer. At last, Mrs. Buckley, not 
 able to hold out any longer, said, — 
 
 " From the Governor, was it not, my love ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " from the Governor. And very important 
 too," and then relapsed into silence. 
 
 Matters were worse than ever. But after a few minutes he 
 turned round to them suddenly, and said, — 
 
 " You have heard of Baron Landstein ? " 
 
 " What," said Sam, " the man that the Doctor's always abusing 
 so ? Yes, I know all about him, of course." 
 
 " The noble Landstein," said Alice. " In spite of the Doctor's 
 abuse he is a great favourite of mine. How well he seems to have 
 behaved at Jena with those two Landwehr regiments." 
 
 " Landsturm, my love," said the Major. 
 
 " Yes, Landsturm, I mean. I wonder if he is stiU alive, or 
 whether he died of his wounds." 
 
 " The Doctor," said Sam, "always speaks of him as dead." 
 
 "He is not only alive," said the Major, " but he is coming 
 here. He will be here to-day. He may come any minute." 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 437 
 
 " What ! the great Landstein ? " said Sam. 
 
 " The same man," said the Major. 
 
 ' ' The Doctor will have a quarrel with him, father. He is always 
 abusing him. He says he lost the battle of Jena, or something." 
 
 " Be quiet, Sam, and don't talk. Watch what follows." 
 
 The Doctor was seen hurrying up the garden-walk. He put 
 down his gun outside, and bursting open the glass door, stepped 
 into the room, holding aloft a black bird, freshly kiUed, and look- 
 ing round him for applause. 
 
 " There ! " he said ; " I told you so." 
 
 The Major walked across the room, and put a letter in his hand, 
 the one which was enclosed in the mysterious epistle before men- 
 tioned. " Baron," he said, " here is a letter for you." 
 
 The Doctor looked round as one would who had received a blow, 
 and knew not who smote him. He took the letter, and went into 
 the window to read it. 
 
 No one spoke a word. "This, then, my good old tutor," 
 thought Sam, " turns out to be the great Landstein. Save us, 
 what a piece of romance." But, though he thought this, he never 
 said anything; and catching Alice's eye, followed it to the window. 
 There, leaning against the glass, his face buried in his hands, and 
 his broad back shaking with emotion, stood Doctor Mulhaus. 
 Alas I no. Our kindly, good, hearty, learned, irritable, but 
 dearly -beloved friend, is no more. There never was such a man 
 in reality : but in his place stands Baron von Landstein of the 
 Niederwald. 
 
 What the contents of the Doctor's (I must still call him so) 
 letter, I cannot tell you. But I have seen the letter which Major 
 Buckley received enclosing it, and I can give it you word for word. 
 It is from the Governor himself, and runs thus : — 
 
 " My deab Majok, 
 
 " I am informed that the famous Baron von Landstein has 
 been living in your house for some years, under the name of Dr. 
 Mulhaus. In fact, I believe he is a partner of yours. I therefore 
 send the enclosed under cover to you, and when I tell you that it 
 has been forwarded to me through the Foreign Office, and the 
 Colonial Office, and is, in point of fact, an autograph letter from 
 
 the King of P to the Baron, I am sure that you will ensure 
 
 its safe delivery. 
 
 " The Secretary is completely ' fixed ' with his estimates. The 
 salaries for the Supreme Court Office are thrown out. He must 
 resign. Do next election send us a couple of moderates. 
 
 " Yours, &c., G. Q." 
 
438 THE EBCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 This was the Major's letter. But the Doctor stood still there, 
 moved more deeply than any had seen him before, while Alice and 
 Sam looked at one another in blank astonishment. 
 
 At length he turned and spoke, but not to them, to the empty 
 air. Spoke as one aroused from a trance. Things hard to under- 
 stand, yet having some thread of sense in them too. 
 
 " So he has sent for me," he said, " when it seems that he may 
 have some use for me. So the old man is likely to go at last, and 
 we are to have the golden age again. If talking could do it, 
 assuredly we should. He has noble instincts, this young fellow, 
 
 and some sense. He has sent for me. If H , and B- , 
 
 and Von U , and myself can but get his ear I 
 
 " Oh, Bhineland ! my own beloved Bhineland, shall I see you 
 ^gain ? Shall I sit once more in my own grey castle, among the 
 vineyards, above the broad gleaming river, and hear the noises 
 from the town come floating softly up the hiEside ! I wonder are 
 there any left who will remember " 
 
 He took two short turns through the room, and then he turned 
 and spoke to them again, looking all the time at Sam. 
 
 " I am the Baron von Landstein. The very man we have so 
 often talked of, and whose character we have so fi-eely discussed. 
 When the French attacked us, I threw myself into the foremost 
 ranks of my countrymen, and followed the Queen with two regi- 
 ments which I had raised almost entirely myself. 
 
 "I fled away from the blood-red sun of Jena, wounded and 
 desperate. ' That sun,' I thought, ' has set on the ruins of 
 Great Frederick's kingdom. Prussia is a province of France : 
 what can happen worse than this ? I wUl crawl home to my castle 
 and die.' 
 
 " I had no castle to crawl to. My brother, he who hung upon 
 the same breast with me, he who learnt his first prayer beside me, 
 he whom I loved and trusted above all other men, had turned 
 traitor, had sold himself to the French, had deceived my bride 
 that was to be, and seized my castle. 
 
 " I fled to England, to Drumston, Major. I had some know- 
 ledge of physic, and called myself a doctor. I threw myself into 
 the happy English domestic life which I found there, and soon got 
 around me men and women whom I loved fuU well. 
 
 " Old John Thornton and his sister knew my secret, as did 
 Lord Crediton ; but they ktept it well, and by degrees I began to 
 hope that I would begin a new life as a useful village apothecary, 
 and forget for ever the turmoils of politics. 
 
 " Then you know what happened. There was an Exodus. All 
 those I had got to love, arose, in the manner of their nation, and 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 439 
 
 went to the other end of the earth, so that one night I was left 
 alone on the cliff at Plymouth, watching a ship which was bearing 
 away all that was left me to love in the world. 
 
 " I went to Prussia. I found my brother had made good use 
 of his prosperity, and slandered me to the King. His old treachery 
 seemed forgotten, and he was high in power. The King, for whom 
 I had suffered so much, received me coldly, and leaving the palace, 
 I spoke to my brother, and said, — ' Send me so much yearly, and 
 keep the rest for a time.' And then I followed you, Major, out 
 here. 
 
 " Shall I tell you any more, Sam ? " 
 
 "No! " said Sam, smiting his fist upon the table. "I can 
 tell the rest, Baron, to those who want to know it. I can tell 
 of ten years' patient kindness towards myself. I can tell — I can 
 tell " 
 
 Sam was the worst orator in the world. He broke down, sir. 
 He knew what he meant very well ; and so I hope do you, reader, 
 but he couldn't say it. He had done what many of us do, tried 
 to make a fine speech when his heart was fuU, and so he failed. 
 
 But Alice didn't fail, — not she, though she never spoke a word. 
 She folded up- her work ; and going up to the good old man, took 
 both his hands in hers and kissed him on both his cheeks. A fine 
 piece of rhetorical action, wasn't it ? And then they all crowded 
 round him, and shook hands with him, and kissed him, and 
 God-blessed him, for their kind, true old friend ; and prayed that 
 every blessing might light upon his noble head, tiU he passed 
 through them speechless and wandered away to his old friend, the 
 river. 
 
 * -;;■ * -iS- -;;- * 
 
 About the middle of this week, there arrived two of our former 
 friends, — ^Frank Maberly and Captain Desborough, riding side by 
 side. The Elders, with the Doctor, were outside, and detained 
 the Dean, talking to him and bidding him welcome. But Captain 
 Desborough, passing in, came into the room where were assembled 
 Alice, Sam, and Jim, who gave him a most vociferous greeting. 
 
 They saw in a moment that there was some fun in the wind. 
 They knew, by experience, that when Desborough' s eyes twinkled 
 like that, some absurdity was preparing, though they were quite 
 unprepared for the mixture of reality and nonsense which followed. 
 
 " Pace," said Desborough, in his affected Irish accent, " be on 
 this house, and all in it. The top of the morning to ye all." 
 
 '.' Now," said Alice, " we are going to have some fun ; Captain 
 Desborough has got his brogue on." 
 
 " Ye'll have some fun directly, Misis Brentwood," he said. 
 
440 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " But there's some serious, sober earnest to come first. My 
 cousin, Slievedonad, is dead." 
 
 "Lord Slievedonad?" 
 
 " The same. That small Viscount is at this moment in pur . 
 
 God forgive me, and him too.' 
 
 "Poor fellow! " 
 
 " That's just half. My uncle Lord Covetown was taken with a 
 fit when he heard of it, and is gone after him, and the Lord forgive 
 him too. He turned me, his own brother's son, out into the world 
 with half an education, to sink or swim ; and never a kind word 
 did he or his son ever give me in their lives. It must have broken 
 the old man's heart to think how the estate would go. But as I 
 said before, God forgive him." 
 
 "You must feel his loss. Captain Desborough," said Alice. "I 
 am very sorry for you." 
 
 "Ahem I my dear young lady, you don't seem to know how this 
 ends." 
 
 "-Why, no," said Alice, looking up wonderingly ; " I do not." 
 
 " Why, it ends in this," said Desborough ; " that I myself am 
 Earl of Covetown, Viscount Slievedonad, and Baron Avoca, with 
 twenty thousand a year, me darlin, the laste penny ; see to there 
 now ! " 
 
 " Brogue again," said Alice. " Are you joking ? " 
 
 "True enough," said Desborough. "I had a letter fi-om my 
 grandmother, the Dowager (she that lost the dog), only this very 
 day. And there's a thousand pounds paid into the Bank of 
 New South Wales to my account. Pretty good proof that last, 
 eh?" 
 
 " My dear lord," said Alice, "I congratulate you most heartily. 
 All the world are turning out to be noblemen. I should not he 
 surprised to find that I am a duchess myself." 
 
 " It rests with you. Miss Brentwood," said Desborough, with 
 a wicked glance at Sam, "to be a countess. I now formally 
 make you an offer of me hand and heart. Oh ! tell me. Miss 
 
 Brentwood, will ye be Mrs. Mars I beg pardon. Countess of 
 
 Covetown ? " 
 
 " No, I thank you, my lord," said Alice, laughing and blushing. 
 " I am afraid I must decline." 
 
 " I was afraid ye would," said Lord Covetown. " I had heard 
 that a great six-foot villain had been trifling with your affections, 
 so I came prepared for a refusal. Came prepared with this, 
 Miss Brentwood, which I pray you to accept ; shall I be too bold 
 if I say, as a wedding present, from one of your most sincere 
 admirers." 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 441 
 
 He produced a jewel case, and took from it a bracelet, at the 
 sight of which Alice gave an honest womanly cry of delight. 
 And well she might, for-the bauble cost 150^ It was a bracelet 
 of gold, representing a snake. Half-way up the reptile's back 
 began a row of sapphires, getting larger towards tha neck, each 
 of which was surromided by small emeralds. The back of the 
 head contained a noble brilliant, and the eyes were two nibies. 
 Altogether, a thorough specimen of Irish extravagance and good 
 taste. 
 
 " Can you clasp it on for her, Sam ? " said Lord Covetown. 
 
 "Oh, my lord, I ought not to accept such a princely present ! " 
 said Alice. 
 
 " Look here, Miss Brentwood," said Covetown, laying his hand 
 on Sam's shoulder. " I find that the noblest and best fellow I 
 know is going to marry the handsomest woman, saving your 
 presence,- that I ever saw. I myself have just come into an 
 earldom, and twenty thousand a-year ; and if, under these cir- 
 cumstances, I mayn't make that woman a handsome present, why 
 then the deuce is in it, you know. Sam, my boy, your hand. 
 Jim, your hand, my lad. May you be as good a soldier as your 
 father." 
 
 " All ! " said Jim. " So you're an earl, are you ? What does 
 it feel like, eh ? Do you feel the blue blood of a hundred sires 
 coursing in your veins ? Do you feel the hereditary class preju- 
 dices of the Norman, aristocracy cutting you off from the sympa- 
 thies of the inferior classes, and raising you above the hopes and 
 fears of the masses ? How very comical it must be ! So you are 
 going to sit among the big-wigs in the House of Lords. I hope 
 you won't forget yourself, and cry ' Fang a BaUagh,' when one of 
 the bishops rises to speak. And whatever you do, don't sing, 
 ' Gama crem'ah cruiskeen ' in the lobby." 
 
 " My dear fellow," said he, "I am not in the House of Lords 
 •at aU. Only an Irish peer. I intend to get into the Commons 
 though, and produce a sensation by introducing the Australian 
 ' Co'ee ' into the seat of British Legislature." 
 
 How long these four would have gone on talking unutterable 
 nonsense, no man can say. But Frank Maberly coming in, greeted 
 them courteously, and changed the conversation. 
 
 Poor Frank ! Hard and incessant work was beginning to tell 
 on that noble frame, and the hard marked features were getting 
 more hard and marked year by year. Yet, in spite of the deep 
 lines that now farrowed that kindly face, those who knew it best, 
 said that it grew more beautiful than it had ever been before. As 
 that magnificent physique began to fail, the noble soul within 
 
442 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 began to show clearer through its earthly tenement. That noble 
 soul was getting purified and ready for what happened but a few 
 years after this in Patagonia. When we heard that that man had 
 earned the crown of glory, and had been thought worthy to sit 
 beside Stephen and Paul in the Kingdom ; none of us wept for 
 him, or mourned. It seemed such a fitting reward for such a pure 
 and noble life. But even now, when I wake in the night, I see 
 him before me as he was described in the last scene by the only 
 survivor. Felled down upon the 'sand, with his arms before his 
 eyes, crying out, as the spears struck him one after another, 
 " Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 IN WHICH SAM MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT, AND GETS 
 CRIPPLED FOR LIFE. 
 
 What morning is this, when Sam, waking from silver dreams to a 
 golden reality, turns over in his bed and looks out of the open 
 glass door ; at dog Rover, propped up against the lintel, chopping 
 at the early flies ; at the flower-garden, dark and dewy ; at the 
 black wall of forest beyond, in which the magpies were beginning 
 to pipe cheerily ; at the blessed dawn which was behind and above 
 it, shooting long rays of primrose and crimson half-way up the 
 zenith ; hearing the sleepy ceaseless crawling of the river over the 
 shingle bars ; hearing the booming of the cattle-herds far over the 
 plain; hearing the chirrup of the grasshopper among the rasp- 
 berries, the chirr of the cicada anuong the wattles — what happy 
 morning is this ? Is it the Sabbath ? 
 
 Ah, no ! the Sabbath was yesterday. This is his wedding 
 morn. 
 
 My dear brother bachelor, do you remember those old first-love 
 sensations, or have you got too old, and too fat ? Do you remem- 
 ber the night when you parted from her on the bridge by the lock, 
 the night before her father wrote to you and forbade you the 
 house ? Have you got the rose she gave you there ? Is it in 
 your Bible, brother ? Do you remember the months that followed 
 — months of mad grief and wild yearning, till the yearning grew 
 less — less wild — and the grief less desperate ; and then, worst of 
 all, the degrading consciousness that you were, in spite of yourself, 
 getting rid of your love, and that she was not to you as she had 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 443 
 
 been ? Do you remember all this ? When you come across the 
 rose in your Bible, do you feel that you would give all the honour 
 and wealth of the world to feel again those happy, wretched old 
 sensations ? Do you not say that this world has nothing to give 
 in comparison to that ? 
 
 Not this world, I believe. You and I can never feel that again. 
 So let us make up our minds to it — it is dead. In God's name 
 don't let us try to galvanise an old corpse, which may rise upon us 
 hideous, and scare us to the lower pit. Let us be content as we 
 are. Let us read that Book we spoke of just now with the rose in 
 it, and imitate the Perfect Man there spoken of, who was crucified 
 1800 years ago, believing, like Him, that all men are our brothers, 
 and acting up to it. And then, Lord knows what may be in store 
 for us. 
 
 Here's a digression. If I had had a good wife to keep me in 
 order, I never should have gone so far out of the road. Here is 
 Sam in bed, sitting up, with his happy head upon his hands, tiying 
 to believe that this dream of love is going to be realised — trying 
 to believe that it is really his wedding morn. 
 
 It evidently is ; so he gets out of bed and says his prayers like 
 an honest gentleman — he very often forgot to do this same, but he 
 did it this morning carefully — much I am afraid as a kiad of charm 
 or incantation, tiU he came to the Load's Prayer itself, and then 
 his whole happy soul wedded itself to the eternal words, and he 
 arose calm and happy, and went down to bathe. 
 
 Happy, I said. Was he really happy ? He ought to have 
 been ; for every wish he had in this life was fulfilled. And yet, 
 when Jim, and he, and Halbert, were walking, towel in hand, down 
 the garden, they held this conversation : — 
 
 "Sam, my dear old brother, at last," said Jim, "are you 
 happy ? " 
 
 " I ought to be, Jim," said Sam ; " but I'm in the most con- 
 founded fright, sir." — They generally are in a fright, when they 
 are going to be married, those Benedicts. What the deuce are 
 they afraid of ? 
 
 Our dear Jim was in anything but an enviable frame of mind. 
 He had found out several things which did not at all conduce to 
 his happiness ; he had found out that it was one thing to propose 
 going to India, or No-man's-land, and cutting off every tie and 
 association which he had in the world ; and that it was quite 
 another thing to do that same. He had found out that it was one 
 thing to leave his sister in the keeping of his friend Sam, and 
 another to part from her probably for ever ; and, last of all, he 
 had found out, ever since his father had put his arm round his 
 
444 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 neck and kissed him that night we know of, that he loved that 
 father beyond all men in this world. It was a new discovery ; he 
 had never known it till he found he had got to part with him. 
 And now, when he woke in the night, our old merry-hearted Jim 
 sat up in bed and wept ; aye, and no shame to him for it, when 
 he thought of that handsome, cahn, bronzed face, tearless and 
 quiet there, over the fortifications and the mathematics, when he 
 was far away. 
 
 " He will never say a word, Sam," said Jim, as they were walk- 
 ing down to bathe this very morning of the wedding ; " but he'U 
 think the more. Sam, I am afraid I have done a selfish thing in 
 going ; but if I were to draw back now, I should never be the same 
 to him again. He couldn't stand that. But I am sorry I ever 
 thought of it." 
 
 ' ' I don't know, Jim, ' ' said Halbert, pulling ofi' his trowsers, ' ' I 
 really don't know of any act of parliament passed in favour of the 
 Brentwood family, exempting them from the ordinary evUs of 
 humanity. Do you think now, that when John Nokes, aged nine- 
 teen, goes into market at Cambridge, or elsewhere, and 'lists, and 
 never goes home again ; do you think, I say, that that lad don't 
 feel a very strange emptiness about the epigastric region when he 
 thinks of the grey-headed old man that is sitting waiting for him 
 at the cottage-door? And," added Halbert, standing on the 
 plunging-stage Adamically, without a rag upon him, pointing at 
 Jim with his finger in an oratorical manner ; "do you think that 
 the old man who sits there, year after year, waiting for him who 
 never comes, and telling the neighbours that his lad who is gone 
 for a sodger, was the finest lad in the village, do you think that old 
 man feels nothing ? Give up fine feelings, Jim. You don't know 
 what trouble is yet." 
 
 And so he went souse into the water. 
 
 And after the bathe all came up and dressed ; — white trowsers 
 and brilliant ties being the order of the day. Then we all, from 
 the bachelor side of the house, assembled in the verandah, for 
 the ceremony was not to be performed till eight, and it was not 
 more than half-past seven. There was the promise of a very 
 awkward half hour, so I was glad of a diversion caused by my 
 appearing in a blue coat with gUt buttons, and pockets in the tails, 
 ■ — a coat I had not brought out for twenty years, but as good as 
 new, I give you my honour. Jim was very fuimy about that coat, 
 and I encouraged him by defending it, and so we got through ten 
 minutes, and kept Sam amused. Then one of the grooms, a lad 
 I mentioned before as bringing a note to Bai'oona on one occasion, 
 a long brown-faced lad, bom of London parents in the colony. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 445 
 
 made a diversion by coming romid to look at us. He admired us 
 very much, but my gilt buttons took his attention principally. He 
 guessed they must have cost a matter of twenty pound, but on my 
 telling him that the whole aifair was bought for three poimds, he 
 asked, I remember :— 
 
 " What are they made on, then ? " 
 
 Brass I supposed, and gilt. So he left me in disgust, and took 
 up with Jim's trowsers, wanting to know " if they was canvas." 
 
 " Satin velvet," Jim said ; and then the Major came out and 
 beckoned us into the drawing-room. 
 
 And there she was, between Mrs. Buckley and Mary Hawker, 
 dressed all in white, looking as beautiful as morning. Frank 
 Maberly stood beside a little table, which the women had made 
 into an altar, with the big Prayer-book in his hand. And we all 
 stood around, and the servants thronged in, and Sam, taking 
 Alice's hand, went up and stood before Frank Maberly. 
 
 Captain Brentwood, of the Artillery, would give this woman to 
 be married to this man, with ten thousand blessings on her head ; 
 and Samuel Buckley, of Baroona, would take this woman as his 
 wedded wife, in sickness and health, for richer, for poorer, till 
 death did them part. And, " Yes, by George, he wiU," says Jim 
 to himself, — but I heard him, for we were reading out of the same 
 Prayer-book. 
 
 And BO it was all over. And the Doctor, who had all the morn- 
 ing been invisible, and had only slipt into the room just as the 
 ceremony had begun, wearing on his coat a great star, a prodigy, 
 which had drawn many eyes from their Prayer-books, the Doctor, 
 I say, came up, star and all, and taking Alice's hand, kissed her 
 forehead, and then clasped a splendid necklace round her throat. 
 
 Then followed aU the usual kissings and congratulations, and 
 then came the breakfast. I hope Alice and Sam were happy, as 
 happy as young folks can be in such a state of flutter and excite- 
 ment ; but all I know is, that the rest of the party were thoroughly 
 and utterly miserable. The certainty that this was the break-up 
 of our happy old society, that all that was young, and merry, and 
 graceful, among us, was about to take wing and leave us old folks 
 sitting there lonely and dull. The thought, that neither Baroona 
 nor Garoopna could ever be again what they had once been, and 
 that never again we should hear those merry voices, wakening us 
 in the morning, or ringing pleasant by the river on the soft sum- 
 mer's evening ; these thoughts, I say, made us but a dull party, 
 although Covetown and the Doctor made talking enough for the 
 rest of us. 
 
 There was something I could not understand about the Doctor. 
 
446 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 He talked loud and "nervously all breakfast time, and afterwards, 
 when Alice retired to change her dress, and we were aU standing 
 about talking, he came up to me in a quiet comer where I was, 
 and took me by the hand. " My dear old friend," he said, "you 
 will never forget me, will you ? " 
 
 " Forget you. Baron ! never," I said. I would have asked him 
 more, but there was Alice in the room, in her pretty blue riding- 
 habit and hat, ready for a start, and Sam beside her, whip in hand ; 
 so we all crowded out to say good-bye. 
 
 That was the worst time of all. Mrs. Buckley had said farewell 
 and departed. Jim was walking about tearless, but quite unable 
 to answer me when I asked him a question. Those two grim old 
 warriors, the Captain and the Major, were taking things very 
 quietly, but did not seem inclined to talk much, while the Doctor 
 was conducting himself like an amiable lunatic, getting in every- 
 body's way as he followed Sam about. 
 
 " Sam," he said, after Alice had been lifted on her horse, " my 
 dear Sam, my good pupil, you wiU never forget your old tutor, will 
 you?" 
 
 " Never, never I " said Sam ; " not likely, if I lived to be a 
 hundred. I shall see you to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh yes, surely," said the Baron; "we shall meet to-morrow 
 for certain. But good-bye, my boy ; good-bye." 
 
 And then the young couple rode away to Baroona, which was 
 empty, swept, and garnished, ready for their reception. And the 
 servants cheered them as they went away, and tall Eleanor sent 
 one of her husband's boots after them for luck, with such force 
 and dexterity that it fell close to the heels of Widderin, setting 
 him capering ; — ^then Sam turned round and waved his hat, and 
 they were gone. 
 
 And we turned round to look at one another, and lo ! another 
 horse, the Doctor's, was being led up and down by a groom, saddled ; 
 and, while we wondered, out came the Doctor himself and began 
 strapping his valise on to the saddle. 
 
 " And where are you going to-day, Baron? " asked the Major. 
 
 "I am going," said he, "to Sydney. I sail for Europe in a 
 week." 
 
 Our astonishment was too great for ejaculations j; we kept an 
 awful silence ; this was the first hint he had given us of his 
 intention. 
 
 " Yes," said he, " I sail from Sydney this day week. I could 
 not embitter my boy's wedding-day by letting him know that he 
 was to lose me ; better that he should come back and find me 
 gone. I must go, and I foresaw it when the letter came ; but I 
 
GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 447 
 
 would not tell you, because I knew you would be so sorry to part. 
 I have been inside and said farewell to Mrs. Buckley. And now, 
 my friends, shorten this scene for me. Night and day, for a 
 month, I have been dreading it, and now let us spare one another. 
 Why should we tear our hearts asunder by a long leave-taking ? 
 Oh, Buckley, Buckley 1 after so many years — " 
 
 Only a hurried shaking of hands, and he was gone. Down by 
 the paddock to the river, and when he reached the height beyond, 
 he turned and waved his hand. Then he went on his way across 
 the old plains, and we saw him lessening in the distance until he 
 disappeared altogether, and we saw him no more. No more ! 
 
 In two months from that time Jim and Halbert were gone to 
 India, Sam and Alice were away to the Darling Downs, Desborough 
 and the Doctor had sailed for Europe, and we old folks, taking up 
 our residence at Baroona, had agreed to make common house of 
 it. Of course we were very dull at first, when we missed half of 
 the faces which had been used to smile upon us ; but this soon 
 wore off. During the succeeding winter I remember many plea- 
 sant evenings, when the Captain, the Major, Mrs. Buckley, and 
 myself played whist, shilling points and the rigour of the game, 
 and while Mary Hawker, in her widow's weeds, sat sewing by the 
 fireside, contentedly enough. 
 
 CHAPTEE XLVn. 
 
 HOW MAEY HAWKBK SAID "YES." 
 
 It was one evening during the next spring, and the game of whist 
 was over for the night. The servant had just brought in tumblers 
 with a view to whiskey and water before bed. I was preparing to 
 pay fourteen shillings to Mrs. Buckley, and was rather nervous 
 about meeting my partner, the Major's eye, when he, tapping the 
 table with his hand, spoke : — 
 
 " The most childish play, Hamlyn ; the most childish play." 
 " I don't defend the last game," I said. " I thought you were 
 short of diamonds — at least I calculated on the chance of your 
 being so, having seven myself. But please to remember, Major, 
 that you yourself lost two tricks in hearts, in the first game of the 
 second rubber." 
 
 " And why, sir ?" said the Major. " Tell me that, sir. Because 
 you confused me by leading queen, when you had ace, king, queen. 
 
448 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 The most utterly schoolboy play. I wouldn't have done such a 
 thing at Eton." 
 
 " I had a flush of them," I said eagerly. " And I meant to 
 lead ace, and then get trumps out. But I put down queen by 
 mistake." 
 
 " You can make what excuses you like, Hamlyn," said the 
 Major. " But the fact remains the same. There is one great 
 fault in your character, the greatest fault I know of, and which 
 you ought to study to correct. I tell you of it boldly as an old 
 friend. You are too confoundedly chary in leading out your trumps, 
 and you can't deny it." 
 
 " Hallo ! " said Captain Brentwood, " who comes so late ? " 
 
 Mary Hawker rose from her chair, and looked eagerly towards 
 the door. "I know who it is," she said, blushing. "I heard 
 him laugh." 
 
 In another moment the door was thrown open, and in stalked 
 Tom Troubridge. 
 
 " By George ! " he said. " Don't all speak to me at once. I 
 feel the queerest wambling in my innards, as we used to say in 
 Devon, at the sight of so many old faces. Somehow, a man can't 
 make a new home in a hurry. It's the people make the home, 
 not the house and furniture. My dear old cousin, and how are 
 you?" 
 
 " I am very quiet, Tom. I am much happier than I thought to 
 have been. And I am deeply thankful to see you again." 
 
 " How is my boy, Tom ? " said the Major. 
 
 " And how is my girl, Tom ? " said the Captain. 
 
 " Sam," said Tom, " is a sight worth a guinea, and Mrs. SauMiel 
 looks charming, but — In point of fact, you know, I believe she 
 expects — " 
 
 " No ! " said the Captain. " You don't say so." 
 
 " Fact, my dear sir." 
 
 " Dear me," said the Major, drumming on the table. " I hope 
 it will be a b — . By the bye, how go the sheep ? " 
 
 " You never saw such a country, sir ! " said Tom. " We have 
 got nearly five thousand on each run, and there is no one crowding 
 up yet. If we can hold that ground with our produce, and such 
 store-sheep as we can pick up, we shall do wonders." 
 
 By this time Tom was at supper, and between the business of 
 satisfying a hunger of fifteen hours, began asking after old friends. 
 
 " How are the Mayfords ? " he asked. 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Mayford is better," said Mrs. Buckley. " She and 
 Ellen are just starting for Europe. They have sold their station, 
 and we have bought it." 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 449 
 
 " What are they going to do in England ? " asked Tom. 
 
 " Going to live with their relations in Hampshire." 
 
 " Ellen will he a fine match for some young English squire," 
 said Tom. " She wiU have twenty thousand pounds some day, I 
 suppose." 
 
 And then we went on talking ahout other matters. 
 
 A little scene took place in the garden next morning, which may 
 astonish some of my readers, but which did not surprise me in the 
 least. I knew it would happen, sooner or later, and when I saw 
 Tom's air, on his arrival the night before, I said to myself, " It is 
 coming," and so sure enough it did. And I got all the circum- 
 stances out of Tom only a few days afterwards. 
 
 Mary Hawker was now a very handsome woman, about one and 
 forty. There may have been a grey hair here and there among 
 her long black tresses, but they were few and far between. I used 
 to watch her sometimes of an evening, and wonder to myself how 
 she had come through such troubles, and lived ; and yet there she 
 was on the night when Tom arrived, for instance, sitting quite 
 calm and cheerful beside the fire in her half-mourning (she had 
 soon dropped her weeds, perhaps, considering who her husband 
 had been, a piece of good taste), with quite a placid, contented 
 look on her fine black eyes. I think no one was capable of feeling 
 deeper for a time, but her power of resilience was marvellous. I 
 have noticed that before. It may, God forgive me, have given 
 me some slight feeling of contempt for her, because, forsooth, she 
 did not brood over and nurse an old grief as I did myself. I am 
 not the man to judge her. When I look back on my own wasted 
 hfe ; when I see how for one boyish fancy I cut myself off from 
 all the ties of domestic life, to hold my selfish way alone, I some- 
 times think that she has shown herself a better woman than I have 
 a man. Ah 1 well, old sweetheart, not much to boast of either of 
 us. Let us get on. 
 
 She was walking in the garden next morning, and Tom came 
 and walked beside her ; and after a little he said, — 
 
 " So you are pretty well contented, cousin ? " 
 
 "I am as well content," she said, " as a poor, desolate, old 
 childless widow could hope to be. There is no happiness left for 
 me in this life ! " 
 
 " Who told you that ? " said Tom. " Who told you that the 
 next twenty years of your hfe might not be happier than any that 
 have gone before ? " 
 
 " How could that be ? " she asked. " What is left for me now, 
 but to go quietly to my grave ? " 
 
 " Grave ! " said Tom. " Who talks of graves for twenty years 
 
 30 
 
450 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to come ! Mary, my darling, I have waited for you so long and 
 faithfully, you will not disappoint me at last ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? What can you mean ? " 
 
 " Mean ! " said he ; " why, I mean this, cousin : I mean you 
 to he my wife — to come and live with me as my honoured wife, for 
 the next thirty years, please God ! " 
 
 " You are mad ! " she said. " Do you know what you say ? 
 Do you know who you are speaking to ? " 
 
 " To my old sweetheart, PoUy Thornton ! " he said, with a 
 laugh — " to no one else in the world." 
 
 " You are wrong," she said ; " you may try to forget now, but 
 you will remember afterwards. I am not Mary Thornton. I am 
 an old broken woman, whose husband was transported for coining, 
 and hung for murder, and worse ! " 
 
 " Peace be with him ! " said Tom. " I am not asking who 
 your husband was ; I have had twenty years to think about that, 
 and at the end of twenty years, I say, my dear old sweetheart, you 
 are free at last : wiU you marry me ? " 
 
 " Impossible ! " said Mary. " AU the country-side knows who 
 I am. Think of the eternal disgrace that cUngs to me. Oh, 
 never, never ! " 
 
 " Then you have no objection to me ? eh, cousin ? " 
 
 " To you, my kind, noble old partner ? Ah, I love and honour 
 you above all men 1 " 
 
 " Then," said Tom, putting his arm round her waist, "to the 
 devil with all the nonsense you have just been talking, about eternal 
 disgraces and so forth ! I am an honest man and you're an honest 
 woman, and, therefore, what cause or impediment can there be ? 
 Come, Mary, it's no use resisting ; my mind is made up, and you 
 must I ' 
 
 " Oh, think ! " she said ; " oh, think only once, before it is too 
 late for ever ! " 
 
 " I have thought," said Tom, " as I told you before, for twenty 
 years ; and I ain't likely to alter my opinion in ten minutes. 
 Come, Mary. Say yes ! " 
 
 And so she said yes. 
 
 " Mrs. Buckley," said Tom, as they came up arm in arm to the 
 house, " it will be a good thing if somebody was to go up to our 
 place, and nurse Mrs. Sam in her confinement." 
 
 " I shall go up myself," said Mrs. Buckley, " though how I am 
 to get there I hardly know. It must \& nearly eight hundred 
 miles, I am afraid." 
 
 " I don't think you need, my dear madam," said he. " My 
 wife will make an excellent nurse ! " 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 451 
 
 " Your wife ! " 
 
 Tom looked at Mary, who blushed, and Mrs. Buckley came up 
 and kissed her. 
 
 " I am so glad, so very glad, my love ! " she said. " The very 
 happiest and wisest thing that could be ! I have been hoping for 
 it, my love, and I felt sure it would be so, sooner or later. How 
 glad your dear aunt would be if she were ahve ! " 
 
 And, in short, he took her oflfwith him, and they were married, 
 and went up to join Sam and his wife in New England — reducing 
 our party to four. Not very long after they were gone, we heard 
 that there was a new Sam Buckley bom, who promised, said the 
 wise woman, to be as big a man as his father. Then, at an 
 interval of very little more than two years, Mrs. Buckley got a 
 long letter from Alice, announcing the birth of a little girl to the 
 Troubridges. This letter is still extant, and in my possession, 
 having been lent me, among other family papers, by Agnes 
 Buckley, as soon as she heard that I was bent upon correcting 
 these memoirs to fit them for the press. I wiU give you some 
 extracts from it : — 
 
 ..." Dear Mary Troubridge has got a little girl, a sweet, 
 quiet, bright-eyed little thing, taking, I imagine, after old Miss 
 Thornton. They are going to caU it Agnes Alice, after you and 
 I, my dearest mother. 
 
 " You cannot imagine how different Mary is grown from what 
 she used to be ! Stout, merry, and matronly, quite ! She keeps 
 the house alive, and I think I never saw a couple more sincerely 
 attached than are she and her husband. He is a most excellent 
 companion for my Sam. Not to make matters too long, we are 
 just about as happy as four people can be. Some day we may all 
 come to live together again, and then our delight will be perfect. 
 
 " I got Jim's letter which you sent me. . . . Sam and his 
 partner are embarking every sixpence they can spare in buying 
 town and suburban lots at Melbourne. I know every street and 
 alley in that wonderful city (containing near a hundred houses) on 
 the map, but I am not very likely to go there ever. Let us hope 
 that Sam's speculations wiU turn out profitable. 
 
 " Best love to Mr. Hamlyn." . . . 
 
 I must make a note to this letter. Alice refers to a letter 
 received fi-om Jim, which, as near as I can make the dates agree, 
 must be the one I hold in my hand at this moment. I am not 
 sure, but I think so. This one runs — 
 
 " Dear Dad, ... I have been down among the dead men, and 
 
452 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 since then up into the seventh heaven, in consequence of being 
 not only gazetted, but promoted. The beggars very nearly did 
 for us. All our fortifications, the prettiest things ever done under 
 the circumstances, executed under Bobby's own eye, were thrown 
 down by — ^what do you think ? — an earthquake ! Perhaps we 
 didn't swear — Lord forgive us ! Akbar had a shy at us immedi- 
 ately, but got a most immortal licking ! 
 
 " Is not this a most wonderful thing about Halbert ? The girl 
 that he was to be married to was supposed to be lost, coming out 
 in the Assam. And now it appears that she wasn't lost at aU (the 
 girl I mean, not the ship), but that she was wrecked on the east 
 coast of Madagascar, and saved, with five-and-twenty more. She 
 came on to Calcutta, and they were married the week after he got 
 his troop. She is uncommonly handsome and ladylike, but looks 
 rather brown and lean fi-om living on birds' nests and sea-weed for 
 above six months of her life." 
 
 [AUow me to remark that this must be romance on Jim's part ; 
 birds' nests and trepang are not found in Madagascar.] 
 
 " My wound is nearly all right again. It was only a prick with 
 a spear in my thigh — " 
 
 It is the very deuce editing these old letters without anything to 
 guide me. As far as I can make out by myself (Jim being now 
 down at Melton, hunting, and not having answered my letter of 
 inquiries), this letter must have come accompanied by an Indian 
 newspaper containing the account of some battle or campaign in 
 which he was engaged. Putting this and that together, I am in- 
 clined to believe that it refers to the defence of JeUalabad by Sir 
 Kobert Sale, in which I know he was engaged. I form this opinion 
 from the fact of his mentioning that the fortifications were destroyed 
 by an earthquake. And I very much fear that the individual so 
 disrespectfuUy mentioned above as " Bobby," was no other than 
 the great Hero himself. In my second (or if that goos off too 
 quick, in tay third) edition, I will endeavour to clear this point up 
 in a satisfactory manner. 
 
 After this time there was a long dull time with no news from 
 him or from any one. Then Sam came down from New England, 
 'and paid us a visit, which freshened us up a little. But in spite 
 of this and other episodes,, there was little change or excitement 
 for us four. We made common house of it, and never parted from 
 one another more than a day. Always of an evening came the old 
 friendly rubber, I playing with the Major, and Captain Brentwood 
 with Mrs. Buckley. The most remarkable event I have to 
 chronicle during the long period which followed, is, that one day 
 a bushfire came right up to the garden rails, and was beaten out 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 453 
 
 with difficulty ; and that same evening I held niDe trumps, Ace, 
 Queen, Knave, Nine of hearts, and the rest small. I camiot for 
 the life of me rememher what year it was in, somewhere between 
 forty-two and forty-five, I believe, because within a year or two of 
 that time we heard that a large comet had appeared in England, 
 and that Sir Robert Peel was distrusted on the subject of Protec; 
 tion. After all, it is no great consequence, though it is rather 
 provoking, because I never before or since held more than eight 
 trumps. Burnside, the cattle-dealer, claims to have had eleven, 
 but I may state, once for all, that I doubt that man's statements 
 on this and every other subject on which he speaks. — He knows 
 where I am to be found. 
 
 My man Dick, too, somehow or another constituted himself my 
 groom and valet. And the Major was well contented with the 
 arrangement. So we four. Major and Mrs. Buckley, Captain 
 Brentwood and I, sat there in the old station night after night, 
 playing our whist, till even my head, the youngest of the four, 
 began to be streaked with grey, and sixteen years were past. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVni. 
 
 THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 It is March, 1856. The short autumn day is rapidly giving place 
 to night ; and darkness, and the horror of a great tempest, is 
 settling down upon the desolate grey sea, which heaves and seethes 
 for ever around Cape Horn. 
 
 A great clipper ship, the noblest and swiftest of her class, is 
 hurling along her vast length before the terrible west wind. Hour 
 by hour through the short and gloomy day, sail after sail has gone 
 fluttering in ; till now, at night-fall, she reels and roUs before the 
 storm under a single, close reefed, maintopsail. 
 
 There is a humming, and a roaring, and a rushing of great 
 waters, so that they who are chnging to the bulwarks, and 
 watching, awe-struck, this great work of the Lord's, cannot 
 hear one another though they shout. Now there is a grey 
 mountain which chases the ship, overtakes her, pours cataracts 
 of water over her rounded stern, and goes hissing and booming 
 past her. And now a roU more frantic than usual, nigh dips 
 her mainyard, and sends the water spouting wildly over her 
 bulwarks. 
 
454 THE EEOOI(LKCTIONS OF 
 
 (" Oh, you very miserable ass," said Captain Brentwood ; " to 
 sit down and try to describe the indescribable. Do you think 
 that because you can see all the scene before you now, because 
 your flesh creeps, and your blood moves, as you call it to mind, 
 do you think, I say, that you can describe it ? Do you think 
 that you can give a man, in black and white, with ink, and on 
 paper, any real notion of that most tremendous spectacle, a 
 sharp bowed ship running before a gale of wind through the 
 ice in the great South Sea, where every wave roUs round the 
 world ? Go to — ^read Tom Cringle, who has given up his whole 
 soul to descriptions, and see how many pictures dwell in your 
 mind's eye, after reading his books. Two, or at most three, and 
 they, probably, quite diflferent from what he intended you to see, 
 lovely as they are ; — leave describing things, man, and give us 
 some more facts." 
 
 Said Major Buckley, " Go on, Hamlyn, and do the best you can. 
 Don't mind him." And so I go on accordingly.) 
 
 61° 30" South. The Horn, storm-beaten, desolate, four 
 hundred miles to the North, and barely forty miles to the South, 
 that cruel, gleaming, ice barrier, which we saw to-day when the 
 weather lifted at noon, and which we know is there yet, though we 
 dare not think about it. There comes to us, though, in spite of 
 ourselves, a vision of what may happen at any hour. A wild cry 
 from the foretop. A mass, grey, indistinct, horrible, rising from 
 the wild waters, scarce a hundred yards from her bowsprit. A 
 mad hurrying to and fro. A crash. A great ruin of masts and 
 spars, and then utter, hopeless destruction. That is the way the 
 poor old Madagascar must have gone. The Lord send us safe 
 through the ice. 
 
 Stunned, drenched to the skin, half-frightened, but wildly excited 
 and determined to see out, what a landsman has but seldom a 
 chance of seeing, a great gale of wind at sea, I clung tight to the 
 starboard bulwarks of Mr. Bichard Green's new clipper. Sultan, 
 Captain Sneezer, about an hour after dark, as she was rounding 
 the Horn, watching much such a scene as I have attempted to give 
 you a notion of above. And as I held on there, wishing that the 
 directors of my insurance office could see me at that moment, the 
 first mate, coming from forward, warping himself from one belay- 
 ingpin to another, roared in my ear, " that he thought it was 
 going to blow." 
 
 " Man ! man ! " I said, " do you mean to teU me it is not 
 blowing now? " 
 
 " A bit of a breeze," he roared ; but his roar came to me like a 
 whisper. However, I pretty soon found out that this was some- 
 
GKOPFEY HAMLYN. 455 
 
 thing quite out of the common ; for, crawling up, along the gang- 
 way which runs between the poophouse and the bulwarks, I came 
 with great difficulty to the stem ; and there I saw the two best 
 men in the larboard watch (let us immortalise them, they were 
 Deaf Bob, and Harry the digger), lashed to the wheel, and the 
 Skipper himself, steadfast and anxious, alongside of them, lashed 
 to a cleat on the afterpart of the deck-house. So thinks I, if 
 these men are made fast, this is no place for me to be loose in, 
 and crawled down to my old place in the waist, at the after end 
 of the spare topsaU-yard, which was made fast to the starboard 
 bulwarks, and which extended a little abaft of the main shrouds. 
 
 If any gentleman can detect a nautical en-or in that last sentence, 
 I shall feel obliged by his mentioning it. 
 
 Somebody who came forth from the confusion, and was gone 
 again, informed me that " He * was going to lay her to, and that 
 I'd better hold on." I comfoi-ted myself with the reflection that I 
 was doing exactly the right thing, holding on like grim death. 
 
 Then something happened, and I am soiTy to say I don't exactly 
 know what. I find iu my notes, taken shortly afterwards, from the 
 dictation of an intelligent midshipman, " that the fore-royal yard 
 got jammed with the spanker-boom, and carried away the larboard 
 quarterboat." Nautical friends have since pointed out to me that 
 this involves an impossibility. I daresay it does. I know it in- 
 volved an impossibility of turning in without subjecting yourself to 
 a hydropathic remedy of violent natui-e, by going to bed in wet 
 blankets, and of getting anything for breakfast besides wet biscuit 
 and cold tea. Let it go ; something went wi'ong, and the con- 
 sequences were these. 
 
 A wall of water, looming high above her mainyard, came rushing 
 and booming along, dark, terrible, opaque. For a moment I saw 
 it curling overhead, and would have cried out, I believe, had there 
 been time ; but a midshipman, a mere child, slipped up before me, 
 and caught hold of my legs, while I tried to catch his coUar. 
 Then I heard the skipper roar out, in that hoarse throaty voice 
 that seamen use when excited, " Hold on, the sea's aboard," and 
 then a stunning, blinding rush of water buried us altogether. The 
 Sultan was on her beam-ends, and what was more, seemed inclined 
 to stay there, so that I, holding on by the bulwarks, saw the sea 
 seething and boiling almost beneath my feet, which were swinging 
 clear off the deck. 
 
 But the midshipman sung out that she was righting again, which 
 she did rather quicker than was desirable, bringing every loose 
 article on deck down to our side again with a rush. A useless, 
 * "He," on board ship, always means " the skipper." 
 
456 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 thimdering, four-pounder gun, of which terrible implements of war 
 we carried six, came plunging across from the other side of the 
 deck, and went crashing through the bulwarks, out into the sea, 
 within two feet of my legs. 
 
 " I think," I said, trying to persuade myself that I was not 
 frightened, " I think I shall go into the cuddy." 
 
 That was not very easy to do. I reached the door, and got hold 
 of the handle, and, watching my opportunity slipped dexterously in, 
 and making a plunge, came against the surgeon, who, seated on a 
 camp-stool, was playing piquette, and overthrew him into a comer. 
 
 "Eepique, by jingo," shouted Sam Buckley,who was the sur- 
 geon's opponent. " See what a capital thing it is to have an old 
 friend like Hamlyn, to come in and knock your opponent down just 
 at the right moment." 
 
 " And papa was losing, too. Uncle Jeff," added a handsome lad, 
 about fifteen, who was leaning over Sam's shoulder. 
 
 " What are they doing to you. Doctor ? " said Alice Buckley, n&e 
 Brentwood, coming out of a cabin, and supporting herself to a seat 
 by her husband and son. 
 
 " Why," replied the surgeon, " Hamlyn knocked me down just 
 in a moment of victory, but his nefarious project has failed, for I 
 have kept possession of my cards. Play, Bucldey." 
 
 Let us give a glance at the group which is assembled beneath 
 the swing lamp in the reeling cabin. The wife and son are both 
 leaning over the father's shoulder, and the three faces are together. 
 Sam is about forty. There is not a wrinkle in that honest fore- 
 head, and the eyes beam upon you as kindly and pleasantly as 
 ever they did ; and when, after playing to the surgeon, he looks 
 up and laughs, one sees that he is just the same old Sam that 
 used to lie, as a lad, dreaming in the verandah at Garoopna. No 
 trouble has left its shadow there, Alice, whose face is pressed 
 against his, is now a calm young matron of three or four-and- 
 thirty, if it were possible, more beautiful than ever, only she has 
 grown from a Hebe into a Juno. The boy, the son and heir, is 
 much such a stripling as I can remember his father at the same 
 age, but handsomer. And while we look, another face comes 
 peering over his shoulder ; the laughing face of a lovely girl, with 
 bright sunny hair, and soft blue eyes ; the face of Maud Buckley, 
 Sam's daughter. 
 
 They are going home to England. Sam — what between his 
 New England runs, where there are now, under Tom Troubridge's 
 care, 118,000 sheep,' and his land speculations at Melbourne, 
 which have turned him out somewhere about 1,000 per cent, since 
 the gold discovery — Sam, I say, is one of the richest of her 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 457 
 
 Majesty's subjects in the SoutLem hemisphere. I would give 
 200,000/. for Sam, and make a large fortune in the surplus. 
 "And so," I suppose you say, " he is going home to buy Clere." 
 Not at all, my dear sir. Clere is bought, and Sam is going home 
 to take possession. " Marry, how ? " Thus, — 
 
 Does any one of my readers remember that our dear old friend 
 Agnes Buckley's maiden name was Talbot, and that her father 
 owned the property adjoining Clere? "We do not remember," 
 you say ; " or at least, if we do, we are not bound to ; you have 
 not mentioned the circumstance since the very beginning of this 
 excessively wearisome book, forty years ago." Allow me to say, 
 that I have purposely avoided mentioning them all along, in order 
 that, at this very point, I might come down on you like a thunder- 
 bolt with this piece of information ; namely : — That Talbot of 
 Beaulieu Castle, the towers of which were visible from Clere 
 Terrace, had died without male issue. That Marian and Gertrude 
 Talbot, the two pretty girls, Agnes Buckley's eldest sisters, who 
 used to come in and see old Marmaduke when James was cam- 
 paigning, had never married. That Marian was dead. That 
 Gertrude, a broken old maid, was sole owner of Beaulieu Castle, 
 with eight thousand a-year ; and that Agnes Buckley, her sister, 
 and consequently, Sam as next in succession, was her heir.* 
 
 All the negotiations for the purchase of Clere had been carried 
 on through Miss Gertrude and her steward. The brewer died, the 
 property was sold, and Sam, by his agents, bought old Clere back, 
 eight months before this, for 48,000/. 
 
 " Then, why on earth," says. Mrs. Councillor Wattlegum (our 
 colonial Mrs. Grundy), " didn't they go home overland ? How 
 could people with such wealth as you describe, demean themselves 
 by going home round the Horn, like a parcel of diggers ? " 
 
 " Because, my dear Madam, the young folks were very anxious 
 to see an iceberg. Come, let us get on." 
 
 The gale has lasted three days, and in that time we have run 
 before it on our course 970 miles. The fourth morning breaks 
 gloriously bright, with the shadows of a few fleecy clouds flying 
 across the bright blue heaving sea. The ship, with all canvas 
 crowded on her, alow and aJoft, is racing on, fifteen knots an hour, 
 with a brisk cold wind fuU on her quarter, heeling over till the 
 water comes rushing and spouting through her leeward ports, and 
 
 * If you will examine the most successful of our modern novels, you 
 will find that the great object of the author is to keep the reader in a 
 continual state of astonishment. Following this rule, I give myself great 
 credit for this coup de theatre. I am certain that the most experienced 
 novel reader could not have foreseen it. I may safely say that none of 
 my readers will be half so much astonished as I was myself. 
 
458 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 no man can stand without holding on, but aU are merry and happy 
 to see the water fly past like blue champagne, and to watch the 
 seething wake that the good ship leaves behind her. Ah ! what 
 is this, that all are crowding down to leeward to look at ? Is 
 this the Crystal Palace, of which we have read, come out to sea to 
 meet us ? No ! the young folks are going to be gratified. It is 
 a great iceberg, and we shall pass about a mUe to windward. 
 
 Certainly worth seeing. Much more tremendous than I had 
 expected, though my imagination had rather run riot in expec- 
 tation. Just a great floating cluster of shining splintered crystals, 
 about a mile long and 300 feet high, with the cold hungry sea 
 leaping and gnawing at its base, — that is aU. Send up those 
 German musicians here, and let us hear the echo of one of 
 Strauss' Waltzes come ringing back from the chill green caverns. 
 Then away ; her head is northward again now, we may sight the 
 Falklands the day after to-morrow. 
 
 Hardly worth telling you much more about that happy voyage, 
 I think, and really I remember but few things more of note. A 
 great American ship in 45°, steaming in the teeth of the wind, 
 heaving her long gleaming sides through the roU of the South 
 Atlantic. The Eoyal Charter * passing us like a phantom ship 
 through the hot haze, when we were becalmed on the line, waking 
 the silence of the heaving glassy sea with her throbbing propeller. 
 A valiant vain-glorious little gun-boat going out all the way to 
 China by herself, giving herself the airs of a seventy-fom-, re- 
 quiring boats to be sent on board her, as if we coiddn't have 
 stowed her, guns and all, on our poop, and never crowded our- 
 selves ! A noble transport, with 53 painted on her bows, swarm- 
 ing with soldiers for India, to whom we gave three times three. 
 All these things have faded from my recollection in favour of a 
 bright spring morning in April. 
 
 A morning which, beyond all others in my life, stands out clear 
 and distinct, as the most memorable. Jim Buckley shoved aside 
 my cabin door when I was dressing, and says he, — " Uncle Jefi', 
 my Dad wants you immediately ; he is standing by the davits of 
 the larboard quarterboat." 
 
 And so I ran up to Sam, and he took my arm and pointed 
 northward. Over the gleaming morning sea rose a purple moun- 
 tain, shadowed here and there by travelling clouds ; and a little 
 red-sailed boat was diving and plunging towards us, with a red 
 flag fluttering on her mast. 
 
 * Alas I alas ! how little did I think that in my second edition, I should 
 have to remind my readers that this, the most beautiful of ships, had 
 perished on the coast of Anglesey, with her 500 souls 1 
 
GEOFPEY HAMLYN. 459 
 
 " What ! " I said, — but I could say no more. 
 
 " The Lizard ! " 
 
 But I could not see it now for a blinding haze, and I bent down 
 my head upon the bulwarks — Bah ! I am but a fool after all. 
 What could there have been to cry at in a Cornish moor, and a 
 FaJmouth pUot boat ? I am not quite so young as I was, and my 
 nerves are probably failing. That must have been it. " When I 
 saw the steeple," says M. Tapley, " I thought it would have choked 
 me." Let me say the same of Eddystone Lighthouse, which we 
 saw that afternoon ; and have done with sentiment for good. If 
 my memory serves me rightly, we have had a good deal of that 
 sort of thing in the preceding pages. 
 
 I left the ship at Plymouth, and Sam went on in her to London. 
 I satisfied my soul with amazement at the men of war, and the 
 breakwater ; and, having bought a horse, I struck boldly across 
 the moor for Drumston, revisiting on my way many a well-known 
 snipe-ground, and old trout-haunt ; and so, on the third morning, 
 I reached Drumston once more, and stabled my horse at a little 
 public-house near the church. 
 
 It was about eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning ; nevertheless, 
 the church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. 
 I was a little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where 
 my father and mother lay, and then passed on to the simple head- 
 stone which marked the resting place of John Thornton and his 
 wife, I brushed through the docks and nettles, towards the lych- 
 gate, in the shadow of which stood the clergyman, a gentlemanly 
 looking young man, talking to a very aged woman in a red cloak. 
 
 He saluted me courteously, and passed on, talking earnestly and 
 kindly to his aged companion, and so the remarkable couple went 
 into the church, and the bell stopped. 
 
 I looked around. Close to me, leaning against the gate, was a 
 coarse looking woman about fifty, who had just set down a red 
 earthen pitcher to rest herself, and seemed not disinclined for a 
 gossip. And at the same moment I saw a fat man, about my own 
 age, with breeches unbuttoned at the Imee, grey worsted stockings 
 and slippers, and looking altogether as if he was just out of bed, 
 having had too much to drink the night before ; such a man, I say, 
 I saw coming across the road, towards us, with his hands in his 
 pockets. 
 
 " Good morning," I said to the woman. " Pray what is the 
 clergyman's name ? " 
 
 " Mr. Montague," she answered, with a curtsey. 
 
 " Does he have prayers every morning ? " 
 
 " Every mamin' of his life," she said. " He's a Papister." 
 
460 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 " You'm a fool, Cis Jewel," said the man, who had by this 
 time arrived. " You'm leading the gentleman wrong, he's a 
 Pussyite." 
 
 " And there bain't much difference, I'm thinking, James Gos- 
 ford," said Cis Jewell. 
 
 I started. James Gosford had been one of my favourite old 
 comrades in times gone by, and here he was. Could it be he ? 
 Could this fat red-faced man of sixty-one, be the handsome hard- 
 riding young dandy of forty years ago ? It was he, doubtless, 
 and in another moment I should have declared myself, but a new 
 interruption occurred. 
 
 The bell began again, and service was over. The old woman 
 came out of the porch and slowly do^vn the path towards us. 
 
 " Is that all his congregation ? " I asked. 
 
 " That's all, sir," said Gosford. " Sometimes some of they 
 young villains of boys gets in, and our old clerk, Jerry, hunts 
 'em round and round all prayer time ; but there's none goes 
 regular except the old 'ooman." 
 
 " And she had need to pray a little more than other folks," 
 said Cis Jewell, folding her arms, and balancing herself in a 
 conversational attitude. " My poor old grandfather " 
 
 Further conversation was stopped by the near approach of the 
 old woman herself, and I looked up at her with some little curiosity. 
 A very old woman she was surely ; and while I seemed struggling 
 with some sort of recollection, she fixed her eyes upon me, and we 
 knew one another. 
 
 " Geoffry Hamlyn," she said, without a sign of surprise. " You 
 are welcome back to your native village. When your old comrade 
 did not know you, I, whose eyes are dim with the sorrow of eighty 
 years, recognised you at once. They may well call me the wise 
 woman." 
 
 " Good God !" was all I could say. " Can this be Madge ? " 
 
 " This is Madge," she said, " who has lived long enough to see 
 and to bless the man who saw and comforted her poor lost boy in 
 prison, when all beside fell off from him. The Lord reward you 
 for it." 
 
 " How did you know that, Madge ? " 
 
 " Ask a witch where she gets her information ! " laughed she. 
 " God forgive me. I'U tell you how it was. One of the turnkeys 
 in that very prison was a Cooper, a Hampshire gipsy, and he, 
 knowing my boy to be half-blooded, passed all the facts on through 
 the tribes to me, who am a mother among them ! Did you see him 
 dis ? " she added, eagerly putting her great bony hand upon my 
 arm, and looking up in my face. 
 
GEOFFET HAMLYN. 46J 
 
 " No ! no ! mother," I answered : " I hadn't courage for that." 
 
 " I heard he died game," she continued, half to herself. " He 
 should a done. There was a deal of wild blood in him from both 
 ■ sides. Are you going up to the woodlands, to see the old place ? 
 'Tis aU in ruins now ; and the choughs and stares are building and 
 brooding in the chimney nook where I nursed him. I shall not 
 have much longer to wait ; I only stayed for this. Good-bye." 
 
 And she was gone ; and Gosford, relieved by her departure, was 
 affectionately lugging me off to his house. Oh, the mixture of 
 wealth and discomfort that house exhibited ! Oh, the warm-hearted 
 jollity of every one there ! Oh, to see those three pretty, well- 
 educated girls taking their father off by force, and making him 
 clean himself in honour of my arrival ! Oh, the merry evening we 
 had ! What, though the cyder disagreed with me ? What, though 
 I knew it would disagree with me at the time I drank it ? That 
 noisy, joUy night in the old Devonshire grange was one of the 
 pleasantest of my life. 
 
 And, to my great surprise, the Vicar came in in the middle of 
 it, and made himself very agreeable to me. He told me that old 
 Madge, as far as he could see, was a thoroughly converted and 
 orderly person, having thrown aside all pretence of witchcraft. 
 That she lived on some trifle of hoarded money of her own, and a 
 small parish allowance that she had ; and that she had only come 
 back to the parish some six years since, after wandering about as 
 a gipsy in almost every part of England. He was so good' as to 
 undertake the delivery of a small sum to her weekly from me, 
 quite sufficient to enable her to refiise the parish allowance, and 
 live comfortably (he wrote to me a few months afterwards, and 
 told me that it was required no longer, for that Madge was gone 
 to rest at last) ; and a good deal more news he gave me, very little 
 of which is interesting here. 
 
 He told me that Lord C , John Thornton's friend, was 
 
 dead ; that he never thoroughly got over the great Keform debate, 
 in which he over-exerted himself ; and that, after the passing of 
 that Bill, he had walked joyfully home and had a fit, which 
 prevented his ever taking any part in politics afterwards, though 
 he lived above ten years. That his son was not so popular as his 
 father, in consequence of his politics, which were too conservative 
 for the new class of tenants his father had brought in ; and his 
 religious opinions, which, said the clergyman, were those of a 
 sound Churchman ; by which he meant, I rather suspect, that he 
 was a pretty smart Tractarian. I was getting won with this young 
 gentleman, in spite of religious difference, when he chose to say 
 that the parish had never been right since Maberly had it, and 
 
462 THE BEOOLLBCTIONS OF 
 
 that the Dissenters always raved about him to this day ; whereby, 
 he concluded, that Frank Maberly was far from orthodox. I took 
 occasion to say that Frank was the man of all others in this world 
 whom I admired most, and that, considering he had sealed his 
 faith with his life, I thought that he ought to be very reverently 
 spoken of. After this there arose a little coolness, and he went 
 home. 
 
 I went up to town by the Great Western, and, for the first time, 
 knew what was meant by railway travelling. True, I had seen and 
 travelled on that monument of human industry, the Hobson's Bay 
 Eaikoad, but that stupendous work hardly prepared me for the 
 Great Western. And on this journey I began to understand, for 
 the first time in my life, what a marvellous country this England 
 of ours was. I wondered at the wealth and traffic I saw, even in 
 comparatively unimportant towns. I wondered at the beauty and 
 solidity of the railway works ; at the vast crowds of people which 
 I saw at every station ; at the manly, independent bearing of the 
 men of the working classes, which combined so well with their 
 civility and intelligence ; and I thought, with a laugh, of the fate 
 of any eighty thousand men who might shove their noses into this 
 bee-hive, while there was such material to draw upon. Such were 
 the thoughts of an Englishman landing in England, from whom the 
 evils produced by dense population were as yet hidden. 
 
 But when I got into the whirl of London, I was completely over- 
 whelmed and stupefied. I did not enjoy anything. The eternal 
 roar was so difierent to what I had been used to ; and I had stayed 
 there a couple of months before I had got a distinct impression of 
 anything, save and except the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. 
 
 It was during this visit to London that I heard of the fall of 
 Von Landstein's (Dr. Mulhaus') Ministry, which had happened a 
 year or two before. And now, also, I read the speech he made on 
 his resignation, which, for biting sarcasm and bitter truth rudely 
 told, is unequalled by any speech I ever read. A more witty, 
 more insolent, more audacious tirade, was never hurled at a 
 successful opposition by a fallen minister. The K— — ■ party sat 
 furious, as one by one were seized on by our ruthless Mend, held 
 up to ridicule, and thrown aside. They, however, meditated 
 vengeance. 
 
 Our friend, in the heat of debate, used the word, " Drummer- 
 kopf," which answers, I believe, to our "wooden head." He 
 applied it to no one in particular ; but a certain young nobleman 
 (Bow-wow Von Azelsberg was his name) found the epithet so 
 applicable to his own case, that he took umbrage at it ; and, being 
 egged on by his comrades, challenged Von Landstein to mortal 
 
GEOPFET HAMLYN. 463 
 
 combat. Von Landstein received his fire without sufiering, adjusted 
 his spectacles, and shot the young gentleman in the knee, stopping 
 Ms waltzing for ever and a day. He then departed for his castle, 
 where he is at this present speaking (having just gone there after 
 a visit to Clere) busy at hiiB great book, " The History of Fanatics 
 and Fanaticism, from Mahomet to Joe Smith." Beloved by all 
 who come in contact with him ; happy, honoured, and prosperous, 
 as he so well deserves to be. 
 
 But I used to go and see everything that was to be seen, 
 though, having no companion (for Sam was down at Clere, putting 
 his house in order), it was very wretched work. I did, in fact, 
 all the public amusements in London, and, as a matter of course, 
 found myself one night, about eleven o'clock, at Evans's in 
 Covent Garden. 
 
 The place was crowded to suffocation, but I got a place at a 
 table about half-way up, opposite an old gentleman who had been 
 drinking a good deal of brandy and water, and was wanting some 
 more. Next me was an honest-looking young fellow enough, and 
 opposite him his friend. These two looked like shop-lads, out for 
 a "spree." 
 
 A tall old gentleman made me buy some cigars, with such an 
 air of condescending goodwill, that I was encouraged to stop a 
 waiter and humbly ask for a glass of whiskey and water. He 
 was kind enough to bring it for me ; so I felt more at ease, and 
 prepared to enjoy myself. 
 
 A very gentlemanly-looking man sang us a song, so unutterably 
 funny that we were dissolved in inextinguishable laughter ; and 
 then, from behind a curtain, began to come boys in black, one 
 after another, as the imps in a pantomime come from a place 
 I dare not mention, to chase the clown to his destruction. I 
 counted twelve of them and grew dizzy. They ranged themselves 
 in a row, with their hands behind them, and began screeching 
 Tennyson's " Miller's Daughter " with such a maximum of shrill- 
 ness, and such a minimum of expression, that I began to think 
 that tailing wild cattle on the mountains, at midnight, in a 
 thunderstorm, with my boots fuU of water, was a far preferable 
 situation to my present one. 
 
 They finished. Thank goodness. Ah ! delusive hope. The 
 drunken old miscreant opposite me got up an encore with the 
 bottom of his tumbler, and we had it all over again. Who can 
 tell my delight when he broke his glass applauding, and the waiter 
 came down on him sharp, and made him pay for it. I gave that 
 waiter sixpence on the spot. 
 
 Then came some capital singing, which I reaUy enjoyed ; and 
 
464 THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 then came a remarkable adventoe ; "an adventure ! " you say ; 
 "and at Evans's!" My dear sir, do you suppose that, at a 
 moment like this, when I am pressed for space, and just coming 
 to the end of my story ; do you suppose that, at a moment like 
 this, I would waste your time at a singing-house for nothing ? 
 
 A tall, upright looking man passed up the lane between the 
 tables, and almost touched me as he passed. I did not catch his 
 face, but there was something so distingue about him that I 
 watched him. He had his hat oflf, and was smoothing down his 
 close-cropped hair, and appeared to be looking for a seat. As he 
 was just opposite to us, one of the young clerks leant over to the 
 other, and said, — 
 
 " That is ." I did not catch what he said. 
 
 " By George," said the other lad. " Is it now ? " 
 
 " That's him., sir," said the first one, vrith a slight disregard 
 of grammar. 
 
 The new comer was walking slowly up the room, and there 
 began to arise a little breeze of applause, and then some one called 
 out, " Three cheers for the Inkerman pet," and then there was a 
 stamping of feet, and a little laughter and cheering in various 
 parts of the room ; but the new comer made one bow and walked 
 on. 
 
 "Pray, sir," said I, bending over to one of those who had 
 spoken before, " who is that gentleman ? " 
 
 He had no need to tell me. The man we spoke of reached the 
 orchestra and turned round. It was Jim Brentwood! 
 
 There was a great white seam down his face, and he wore a 
 pair of light curling moustachios, but I knew him in a moment ; 
 and, when he faced round to the company, I noticed that his 
 person seemed known to the public, for there was not a little 
 applause with the bottoms of tumblers, not unlike what one remem- 
 bers at certain banquets I have been at, with certain brethren. 
 Sons of ApoUo. 
 
 In one moment we were standing face to face, shaking one 
 another by both hands ; in another, we were arm in arm, walking 
 through the quiet streets towards Jim's lodgings. He had been in 
 Ireland with his regiment, as I knew, which accounted for my not 
 having seen him. And that night, Major Brentwood recounted to 
 me all his part in the last great campaign, from the first fierce 
 rush up the hill at the Alma, down to the time when our Lady 
 pinned a certain bit of gun metal on to his coat in St. James's 
 Park. 
 
 A few days after this, Jim and I were standing together on the 
 platform of the Wildmoor Station, on the South-Westem Rail- 
 
GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 465 
 
 way, and a couple of porters were carrying our portmanteaus 
 towards a pair-horse phaeton, in which stood Sam Buckley, shout- 
 ing to us to come on, for the horses wouldn't stand. So, in a 
 moment, I was alongside of Sam in the front seat, with Jim 
 standing up behind, between the grooms, and leaning over be- 
 tween us, to see after Sam's driving ; and away we went along a 
 splendid road, across a heath, at what seemed to me a rather 
 dangerous pace. 
 
 "Let tbem go, my child," said Jim to Sam, "you've got a 
 fair mile before you. You sit at your work in capital style. Give 
 me time and I'll teach you to drive, Sam. How do you like this, 
 Uncle Jeff? " 
 
 I said, " That's more than I can teU you. Master Jim. I know 
 so little of your wheeled vehicles that I am rather alarmed." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Jim, " you should have been in Calcutta when the 
 O'Eourke and little Charley Badminton tried to drive a pair of 
 fresh imported Australians tandem through the town. Eed Mac- 
 lean and I looked out of the billiard-room, and we saw the two 
 horses go by with a bit of a shaft banging about the wheeler's 
 hooks. So we ran and found Charley, with his head broke, 
 standing in the middle of the street, mopping the blood off his 
 forehead. ' Charley,' says I, ' how the deuce did this happen ? ' 
 ' We met an elephant,* says he, in a faint voice." 
 
 " Have you heard anything of the Mayfords lately ? " said Jim. 
 
 " You know EUen is married ? " said Sam. 
 
 " No. Is she ? " I said. " And pray to whom ? " 
 
 " The Squire of Monkspool," he answered. " A very fine 
 young fellow, and clever withal." 
 
 "Did old Mrs. Mayford," asked Jim, "ever recover her reason 
 before she died ? " 
 
 " Never, poor soul," said Sam. " To the last she refused to 
 see my mother, believing that the rivalry between Cecil and my- 
 self in some way led to his death. She was never sane after that 
 dreadful morning." 
 
 And so with much pleasant talk we beguiled the way, tiU I saw, 
 across a deep valley on our right, a line of noble heights, well 
 timbered, but broken into open grassy glades, and smooth sheets 
 of bright green lawn. Between us and these bills flowed a 
 gleaming river, from which a broad avenue led up to the eye of 
 the picture, a noble grey stone mansion, a mass of turrets, gables, 
 and chimneys, which the afternoon sun was lighting up right 
 pleasantly 
 
 " That is the finest seat I have seen yet, Sam," I said. 
 "Whose is that?" 
 
 31 
 
466 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 " That," said Sam, " is Clere. My house and your home, old 
 friend." 
 
 Swiftly up under the shadow of the ehn avenue, past the 
 herds of dappled deer, up to the broad gravelled terrace which 
 ran along in front of the brave old house. And there beneath the 
 dark wild porch, above the group of servants that stood upon the 
 steps to receive their master, was Alice, with her son and daugh- 
 ter beside her, waiting to welcome us, with the happy sunligbt on 
 her face. 
 
 * * * -;;■ * * 
 
 I bought a sweet cottage, barely a mile from Clere, with forty 
 acres of grass-land round it, and every convenience suited for an 
 old bachelor of my moderate though comfortable means. 
 
 I took to fishing, and to the breeding of horses on a small scale, 
 and finding that I could make myself enormously busy with these 
 occupations, and as much hunting as I wanted, I became very 
 comfortable, and considered myself settled. 
 
 I had plenty of society, the best in the land. Above all men 
 I was the honoured guest at Clere, and as the county had rallied 
 round Sam with acclamation, I saw and enjoyed to the fullest 
 extent the charming English country-life, the like of which, I take 
 it, no other country can show. 
 
 I was a great favourite, too, with old Miss Gertrude Talbot at 
 the castle. Her admiration and love for Sam and his wife was 
 almost equal to mine. So we never bored one another, and so, 
 by degrees, gaining the old lady's entire confidence, I got en- 
 trusted with a special mission of a somewhat peculiar character. 
 
 The leading desire of this good old woman's life was, that her 
 sister Agnes should come back with her husband, the Major, and 
 take possession of the castle. Again, Alice could not be content, 
 unless her father could be induced to come back and take up his 
 residence at Clere. And letters having faUed to produce the 
 desired effect in both instances, the Major saying that he was 
 quite comfortable where he was, and the Captain urging that the 
 English winters would be too rigorous for his constitution ; under 
 these circumstances, I say, I, the confidant of the family, within 
 fifteen months of landing at Plymouth, found myself in a hot 
 omnibus with a Mahomedan driver, jolting and bumping over 
 the desert of Suez on my way back to Australia, charged to bring 
 the old folks home, or never show my face again. 
 
 And it was after this journey that the scene described in the 
 first chapter of this book took place ; when I read aloud to them 
 from the roll of manuscript mentioned there, my recollections of 
 all that had happened to us during so many years. But since I 
 
GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 467 
 
 have come back to England, these " Kecollections " have heen 
 very much enlarged and improved by the assistance of Major 
 Buckley, Agnes, and Captain Brentwood. 
 
 For I succeeded in my object, and brought them back in 
 triumph through the Red Sea, across the Isthmus of Suez, and 
 so by way of the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English 
 Channel, Southampton Water, the South-Westem Railway, and 
 Alice's new dark-blue barouche, safe and sound to Clere and the 
 castle, where they all are at present speaking, unless some of 
 them are gone out a-walking. 
 
 As for Tom Troubridge and Mary, they are so exceedingly 
 happy and prosperous, that they are not worth talking about. 
 They will come either by the Swifbsure or the Norfolk, and we 
 have got their rooms ready for them. They say that their second 
 child, the boy, is one of the finest riders in the colony. 
 
 " You haVe forgotten some one after all," says the reader after 
 due examination. " A man we took some little interest in. It is 
 not much matter though, we shall be glad when you have 
 done." 
 
 " Is this the man you mean ? " 
 
 I am sitting in Sam's " den " at Clere. He is engaged in 
 receiving the " afterdavy " of a man who got his head broke by a 
 tinker at the cricket-match in the park (for Sam is in the com- 
 mission, and sits on the bench once a month " a perfect Midas," 
 as Mrs. Wattlegum would say). I am busy rigging up one of 
 those wonderful new Yankee spoons with a view to killing a 
 villainous pike, who has got into the troutwater. I have just tied 
 on the thirty-ninth hook, and have got the fortieth ready in my 
 fingers, when a footman opens the door, and says to me, — 
 
 "If you please, sir, your stud-groom would be glad to see 
 you." 
 
 I keep two horses of all work and a grey pony, so that the word 
 " stud" before the word " groom " in the last sentence must be 
 taken to refer to my little farm, on which I rear a few colts 
 annually. 
 
 " May he come in, Sam ? " I ask. 
 
 " Of course I Uncle Jeff," says he 
 
 And so there comes a little old man, dressed in the extreme of 
 that peculiar dandyism which is affected by retired jockeys and 
 trainers, and which I have seen since attempted, with indifferent 
 success, by a few yoimg gentlemen at our great universities. He 
 stands in the door and says, — 
 
 " Mr. Plowden has offered forty pound for the dark chestnut 
 colt, sir," 
 
468 THE BECOLLECTIONS OF GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 
 
 " Dick," I say (mark that if you please), " Dick, I think he 
 may have the hrute." 
 
 And so, my dear reader, I must at last hid you heartily fare- 
 well ; I am not entirely without hope that we may meet again. 
 
 TTKWIN BBOTHSBS, THE OBESHAM PBESB, WOEINO ANC I/ONSOIT. 
 
 • VKS 
 
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