"Now," said Mr. Sherwin, waving me to a seat opposite to the desk, "we can be comfortable and chatty. We have wine and good fellowship, and what more can we desire?
"And how is our friend Frederick?" the commissioner inquired, after filling the glasses and re-corking the bottle, as though he feared the strength of the black stuff would evaporate if left exposed to the air.
I replied that my friend and companion was as "well as could be expected" with such an accusation hanging over his head, and that he would have accompanied me had his presence not have been needed at the store to wait on customers, and to attend to the wants of the wounded man, Mr. Critchet.
"Don't give yourselves any uneasiness on that silly charge," the commissioner said, with a smile that was intended to be engaging, but I shuddered at it, it was so cold and fiendish. "I am perfectly satisfied that Follet lied to me, and any time you wish to proceed against him for perjury I will grant a warrant, and will also release you and your friend from bail."
"May I ask what has caused such a change in your sentiments?" I inquired, half suspecting that he was setting a trap for me.
"You know as well as I do," my companion answered, with a wink of his snaky eye.
I protested with some earnestness that I was ignorant on the subject, and while the commissioner turned his back to search amidst some papers which his desk contained, I slyly poured the contents of my wine glass through a crack of the floor, and watered the soil of Ballarat with a new species of liquor, such as was never known before.
"You see I have heard from Melbourne lately, and am satisfied how the land lays, and I am not going to weaken the cause of government by suspecting two of its greatest defenders." And while the plotting officer unfolded a letter his eye fell upon my empty glass, and, in defiance of my most strenuous denials, insisted that I should "not be afraid of the liquor, because there was plenty more where that came from," (which the Lord forbid!) and once more I had the inexpressible misery of sitting with a wine glass full of the strange compound under my nostrils, which I dared not throw away, fearful that he would see me, and which I dreaded to drink.
"I got a letter from Mr. Murden, who is an officer of some rank in the police force at Melbourne, a day or two since, and he tells me that I must be very careful of you gentlemen, as the governor esteems you highly, and that his excellency would be apt to resent an act of injustice done you while stopping at the mines."
I strongly suspected that the lieutenant had drawn on his imagination in that letter, for he thoroughly understood the character of the commissioner, and disliked him so much that while at Ballarat he had not even called upon him.