"I know it will be so; but be you ever so exalted or humble, Smith, there's no man on the island we would sooner call friend."
"Then let them call me convict--if I but possess the esteem of two honest men, who know me thoroughly, hard epithets will fall harmless."
Not another word was spoken during our walk through the streets of the city to the suburbs, where stood the rough board house of Smith, exactly as we had left it a month before. A dozen or twenty buildings had been thrown together in the vicinity during our absence, and were occupied by respectable looking people, who were engaged in business in Melbourne.
A number of fresh, rosy-faced women, true models of English wives, came to their doors as we stopped, and apparently wondered who we were.
We unlocked the door, and found every thing undisturbed; and while Smith drove off his team for the purpose of taking his oxen to pasture, I started a fire in the old stove, and Fred went after water, and to get the materials of a good supper together, which, by long fasting, we keenly felt the need of.
By the time we had eaten our meal it was past sunset, when, recollecting the business which was laid out for the morrow, we pressed Smith into service, and started towards Collins Street for the purpose of buying clothing suitable to wear when ushered into the presence of the lieutenant-governor, who, we were given to understand, did not relish flannel shirts and heavy boots, even if they did cover valued colonists.
By good luck we found a man who kept an assortment of really excellent ready-made clothing, and after chatting with the fellow until he had reduced his prices one half, we purchased two complete suits.
Pleased with our purchases, we carried them to the house, drank one bowl of good punch, which Smith made as a sort of night-cap, as he termed it, and then lighting our pipes, turned in, and after a brief review of the events of the day, sank into a deep sleep.
LARGE FIRE IN MELBOURNE.--ENGLISH MACHINES AT FAULT.
I know not what the others were dreaming about, but I imagined myself standing by a pile of brush and branches, on which was placed the dead bodies of Black Darnley and his gang, and I thought that I had just applied a match to the dry wood, and that the flames were soaring heavenward, filling the sky with a luminous, blood-red color, and that the corpses, as the fire licked their bodies, began shouting, in derisive tones, for more fuel, when a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and my dreams vanished in an instant. I sprang to my feet, and even then but half awake, I reached for my revolver, and tried to recollect where I was, and how I came there. The room, was as light as day, and through the single window streamed the glare of such a fire as I had seen in my dream.