The exodus from Melbourne was exhaustive. There, daily to be seen in red shirt and thick but very neat boots, stood the handsome doctor of 'our street' by the cradle, for which he had abandoned patients and practice. Next to him, with constant care lowering the ever-recurring shaft-bucket, was a rising barrister. Hotel servants, tradespeople, farmers, market-gardeners, civilians, cab-drivers, barbers, even the tragic and the comic muse, had enrolled themselves among the players at this theatre, where the popular drama of 'Golden Hazard' was having a run till further notice. The ranks of the 50th Regiment were thinned by desertions in spite of the utmost vigilance; while the ships in the bay were likely to be reduced to the condition of the world's fleet in Campbell's Last Man.

Pitiable the while was the position of the squatters, especially of those who held sheep. On a cattle station the proprietor or manager, with the assistance of a boy or two, can do much. It is not so with sheep. Particularly was it not so in those pre-fencing days. In vain the sheep-owner doubles his men's wages and removes apparent discontent. He tries to think that matters will go on pretty well till shearing. One night comes a traveller, a wretch with a bag of gold. Next morning a shepherd is missing, and so on.

We gave a little festa one evening in honour of a friend who had sold his share in the claim and wisely gone back to follow his profession in town. The conversation had a philosophical turn, and it was debated whether or no the country would come well out of the ordeal to which, particularly on account of its uneducated classes, it was being subjected. Some one expressed an opinion adverse to the result upon national morality and progress.

'I hold a directly opposite conviction,' said Jack Freshland. 'So do all the men who, like me, have seen order produced from chaos in California. "Scum of the universe" was a complimentary description of her population. "Hell upon earth" was a weak metaphor explanatory of her social state. Look at her now—self-regenerate, orderly, honestly progressive in every phase of industry. I don't say that you run no chance of being shot; accidents will happen when fellows' belts and coat pockets are full of loaded revolvers, whisky being cheap. But you run far less chance of being robbed than in London or Paris. When I came away you might leave your valuables scattered about your tent for days. No one dared to touch them. I don't know whether we shall come to ear-marking pilferers and hanging horse-stealers, but this is an Anglo-Saxon population, and in some way, I will stake my existence, order will be preserved.'

'Talking of horse-stealers, I found Fred Charbett's "Grey Surrey" the other day,' said Moore O'Donnell, 'in rather queer company.'

'That's the horse he won the Ladies' Bag at the Port Western Races with,' I cried out eagerly, 'a tremendous mile horse, but no stayer. Had he a large D brand?'

'He had then; and a large S—if that stands for sore back—that ye could see a mile off.'

'He is a flat-ribbed horse,' I explained, 'and any one with a bad saddle might give him a back in a day that a week couldn't cure. How glad old Fred will be to see him again! Who is the ruffian that has him now?'

'One Moore O'Donnell. Maybe ye wouldn't mind putting your interrogation in another form, Mr. Boldrewood, if it's agreeable to ye?'

'A thousand pardons, really—but I didn't understand that you had taken possession of him.'