little ones; sorry am I to report that he left
them to weep and complain, while he went
forward and smoked his pipe, and sang, and
drank grog with a jolly party in the forecastle
—for John's heart was hardened, and he cared
little for God or man.

This old, fond love for his wife and children
seemed to have died away. He left them,
through the most part of the voyage, to
shift for themselves—sitting forward, sullenly
smoking, looking into vacancy, and wearying
the sailors with asking, "How many knots
to-day, Jack? When do you think we shall see
land?" So that the women passengers took
a mortal dislike to him; and it being
gossipped about, that when his wife was in the
hospital, he never went to see her for two
days, they called him a brute. So "Bodger
the Brute" he was called until the end of the
voyage. Then they were all dispersed, and
such stories driven out of mind by new scenes.

John was hired to go into the far interior,
where it was difficult to get free servants at
all; so his master put up with the dead-
weight encumbrance of the babies, in
consideration of the clever wife and string of
likely lads. Thus, in a new country, he began
life again in a blue jersey and ragged corduroys,
but the largest money income he had
ever known.

SCENE THE SECOND.

IN 1842, my friend Mrs. C. made one of her
marches through the bush with an army of
emigrants. These consisted of parents with
long families, rough country-bred single girls,
with here and there a white-handed, useless
young lady—the rejected ones of the Sydney
hirers. In these marches she had to depend
for the rations of her ragged regiment on the
hospitality of the settlers on her route, and
was never disappointed, although it often
happened that a day's journey was commenced
without any distinct idea of who would furnish
the next dinner and breakfast.

On one of these foraging excursions—starting
at day-dawn on horseback followed by
her man Friday, an old lag (prisoner), in a
light cart to carry the provender—she went
forth to look for the flour, milk, and mullet,
for the breakfast of a party whose English
appetites had been sharpened by travelling at
the pace of the drays all day, and sleeping
in the open air all night.

The welcome smoke of the expected station
was found; the light cart, with the complements
and empty sack despatched; when
musing, at a foot-pace, perhaps, on the future
fortune of the half-dozen girls hired out the
previous day, Mrs. C. came upon a small
party which had also been encamping on the
other side of the hills.

It consisted of two gawky lads in docked
smock frocks, woolly hats, rosy sleepy countenances;
fresh arrivals, living monuments of
the care bestowed in developing the intelligence
of the agricultural mind in England,
they were hard at work on broiled mutton.
A regular hard-dried Bushman, had just
driven up a pair of blood mares from their
night's feed, and a white-headed brisk kind
of young old man, the master of the party,
was sitting by the fire trying to feed an
infant with some sort of mess compounded
with sugar. A dray heavily laden with a
bullock-team ready harnessed, stood ready
to start under the charge of the bullock-
watchman.

The case was clear to a colonial eye; the
white-headed man had been down to the port
from his Bush-farm to sell his stuff, and was
returning with two blood mares purchased,
and two emigrant lads hired; but what was
the meaning of the baby? We see strange
things in the bush, but a man-nurse is strange
even there.

Although they had never met before, the
white-headed man almost immediately
recognised Mrs. C.—, for who did not know her, or
of her, in the Bush?—so was more communicative
than he otherwise might have been,
and so he said,

"You see ma'am, my lady, I have only got
on my own place this three years; having a
long family, we found it best to disperse
about where the best wages was to be got.
We began saving the first year, and my
daughters have married pretty well, and my
boys got to know the ways of the country.
There's three of them married, thanks to
your ladyship; so we thought we could set
up for ourselves. And we've done pretty
tidy. So, as they were all busy at home,
I went down for the first time to get a
couple of mares and see about hiring some
lads out of the ships to help us. You see I
have picked up two newish ones; I have
docked their frocks to a useful length, and I
think they'll do after a bit; they can't read,
neither of them—no more could I when I
first came—but our teacher, (she's one my
missis had from you,) will soon fettle them;
and I've got a power of things on the
dray; I wish you could be there at unloading;
for it being my first visit, I wanted something
for all of them. But about this babby
is a curious job. When I went aboard the
ship to hire my shepherds, I looked out for
some of my own country; and while I
was asking, I heard of a poor woman whose
husband had been drowned in a drunken fit
on the voyage, that was lying very ill, with
a young babby, and not likely to live.

"Something made me go to see her; she had
no friends on board, she knew no one in the
colony. She started, like, at my voice; one
word brought on another, when it came out
she was the wife of the son of my greatest
enemy.

"She had been his father's servant, and
married the son secretly. When it was
found out, he had to leave the country;
thinking, that once in Australia, the father
would be reconciled, and the business that
put her husband in danger might be settled.