“Yes, I am,” laughed Mat, as he glanced at the advertisement. “As you are pleased to say I shall pass, thanks to you, I shall go at it with a light heart.”
The much-thought-of evening had arrived. Though Mat and his party, supported by the Governor and suite, arrived early, they found the large building already crammed, every seat having been engaged some days beforehand.
Having gained the platform, the Governor introduced his friends in a few happily chosen phrases, and Mat, as soon as the applause was over, at once commenced; his brother and the two natives standing by him.
He told his audience that he had never addressed a meeting of his fellow-countrymen in his life, and that he hoped they would forgive any shortcomings.
When he and his brother were told that not only the citizens, who had received them so warmly at the steamer, but that also many influential squatters had expressed a wish to hear how they had passed their time with the northern blacks, they determined to come to that house to-night and obey the call. He said,—
“To begin with, we are gipsies, born and bred in the New Forest, in England—”
At these words, a stentorian voice in the audience called out,—
“I knew it; the lad I broke in myself.”
Mat looked in vain to see who spoke, but only noticed in the quarter from whence the voice proceeded, a burly individual with a purple face, and a long white beard, sitting rather prominently amongst the audience, so he continued,—
“I did not come out at the expense of my country, but for all that I helped to break the Forest laws by being out with a friend when he shot a deer.”