Some days later Bez came along, passed my tent for a mile, and then came back. He said he was ashamed of himself. I gave him also a feed of damper, tea, and jam limited. Dan had made me cautious in the matter of lavish hospitality. The Earl of Lonsdale lately spent fifty thousand pounds in entertaining the Emperor of Germany, but it was money thrown away. The next time the Kaiser comes to Westmoreland he will have to pay for his board and buy his preserves. Bez made a start for Melbourne, met an old convict, and with him took a job at foot-rotting sheep on a station owned by a widow lady. Here he passed as an engraver in reduced circumstances. He told lies so well, that the convict was filled with admiration, and said, "I'm sure, mate, you're a flash covey wot's done his time in the island."

The two chums foot-rotted until they had earned thirty shillings each, then they went away and got drunk at a roadside shanty; at least, Bez did, and when the convict picked his pockets, he kindly put back three shillings and sixpence, saying, "That will give him another start on the wallaby track."

Bez at last arrived at Flagstaff Hill, which was then bare, with a sand-hole on one side of it. He had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, and had only one shilling and sixpence in his pocket, which he was loath to spend for fear of arriving in Melbourne a complete beggar. He lay down famishing and weary on the top of the hill near Flagstaff, and surveyed the city, the bay, and the shipping. He had hoped by this time to have been ready to take a passage in one of those ships to Liverpool, and to return home a lucky digger. But he had only eighteen pence, so he said, "I am afraid, Bez, you will never see Manchester again."

There was at that time a small frame building at the west end of Flinders Street, with a hill behind it, on which goats were browsing; the railway viaduct runs now over the exact spot. Many parties of hopeful diggers from England and California had slept there on the floor the night before they started for Ballarat, Mount Alexander, or Bendigo. We called it a house of refuge, and Bez now looked for refuge in it. There he met Dan and Moran, who had both found employment in the city, and they fed the hungry Bez. Dan was labouring at his trade in the building business, and he set Bez to work roofing houses with corrugated iron. They soon earned more money than they had ever earned by digging for gold, but on Saturday nights and Sundays they took their pleasure in the old style, and so they went to the dogs. I don't know how Dan's life ended (his real name was Donald Fraser), but Bez died suddenly in the bar of a public-house, and he was honoured with an inquest and a short paragraph in the papers.

Moran had saved a hundred pounds by digging in Picaninny Gully, and he was soon afterwards admitted to serve Her Majesty again in the police department. On the Sunday after Price was murdered by the convicts at Williamstown I met Moran after Mass in the middle of Lonsdale Street. I reproached him for his baseness in deserting to the enemy--Her Majesty, no less--and in self-defence he nearly argued my head off. At last I threatened to denounce him as a "Joey" --he was in plain clothes--and have him killed by the crowd in the street. Nothing but death could silence Moran. The rest of his history is engraved on a monument in the Melbourne Cemetery; he, his wife, and all his children died many years ago.--R.I.P. He was really a good man, with only one defect--most of us have many--he was always trying to divide a hair 'twixt West and South-West side.

I met Santley after thirty years, sitting on a bench in front of the "Travellers' Rest" at Alberton, in Gippsland. He had a wrinkled old face, and did not recognise my beautiful countenance until he heard my name. He had half-a-dozen little boys and girls around him--his grandchildren, I believe--and was as happy as a king teaching them to sing hymns. I don't think Santley had grown rich, but he always carried a fortune about with him wherever he went, viz., a kind heart and a cheerful disposition. Nobody could ever think of quarrelling with Santlay any more than with George Coppin, or with that benevolent bandmaster, Herr Plock. He told me that he was now related to the highest family in the world, his daughter having married the Chinese giant, whose brothers and sisters were all of the race of Anak.

My mate, Philip, was so successful with his little school in the tent that he was promoted to another at the Rocky Waterholes, and then he went to the township at Lake Nyalong. Philip had never travelled as far as Lake Nyalong, but Picaninny Jack told him that he had once been there, and that it was a beautiful country. He tried to find it at another time, but got bushed on the wrong side of the lake; now he believed there was a regular track that way if Philip could only find it. The settlers and other inhabitants ought to be well off; if not, it was their own fault, for they had the best land in the whole of Australia.

Philip felt sure that he would find at least one friend at Nyalong-- viz., Mr. Barton, whom he had harboured in his tent at Bendigo, and had sheltered from the pursuit of the three bloodthirsty convicts. Some people might be too proud to look forward to the friendship of a flagellator, but in those days we could not pick and choose our chums; Barton might not be clubable, but he might be useful, and the social ladder requires a first step.

Thanks to such men as Dan and Bez, in Melbourne, and to other enterprising builders in various places, habitable dwellings of wood, brick, and bluestone began to be used, instead of the handy but uncomfortable tent, and, at the Rocky Waterholes, Philip had for some time been lodging in a weatherboard house with the respectable Mrs. Martin. Before going to look for Nyalong he introduced his successor to her, and also to the scholars. Her name was Miss Edgeworth.

The first virtue of a good master is gravity, and Philip had begun at the beginning. He was now graver even than usual while he briefly addressed his youthful auditors.