"We bade all the camp good-bye next day, and with our convoy started for Melbourne.
"Day after day, day after day, through forest and bush, living on damper and wretched tea, and sleeping by night under the stars, but light-hearted and happy.
"'Hold! Put up your hands!'
"It was a shout of command, given by two men on horseback as we rode through a beautiful gully one day.
"We had no time to draw and defend ourselves, and our servants were paralysed with fear.
"The robbers were the self-same Irish green-hands we had entertained in camp.
"Of all our pile they left us barely fifty pounds a piece, and this, they told us, they gave us out of charity.
* * * * *
"Two months after this I was serving as a common sailor on a merchant ship bound for San Francisco.
"During the long, hard years in the Australian bush I had not quite forgotten my art, and I hoped to make it pay in a new land.