leave that answer to another opportunity;"
and with a nod and very knowing look he
stalked on.

"Odd fellow! " said my brother Uriah. " He
is very jocose for a ruined man. What is one to
think? " and he waded on. After making a
considerable circuit, and actually losing himself
in the wood somewhere about where the
Reverend Mr. Morrison's chapel now stands
in Collins' Street, he again came across
Robinson who stood at the door of a
considerable erection of wattle-and-dab, that is, a
building of boughs wattled on stakes, and
dabbed over with mud; then not uncommon
in Melbourne, and still common enough in
the bush. It stood on the hill-side with a
swift muddy torrent produced by the rains
rushing down the valley below it, towards
the river, as it has often done since it bore
the name of Swanston Street.

"Here, Tattenhall! here is a pretty go!"
shouted Robinson; " a fellow has cut with
bag and baggage to-night who owes me four
thousand pounds, and has left me a lot more
houses and land. That's the way every day.
But look, here is a house ready for you. You
can't have a better, and you can pay me any
trifle you like, something is better than
nothing." .

He led Uriah in. The house was thoroughly
and comfortably furnished; though, of course,
very simply, with beds and everything. Uriah
in less than a week, was safely established
there, and had time to ramble about with his
boys, and learn more fully the condition of
the colony. It was melancholy beyond
description. Wild, reckless speculation brought
to a sudden close by the cessation of
immigration, had gone like a hurricane over the
place, and had left nothing but ruin and
paralysis behind it. No words that Robinson
had used, or that any man could use,
could overpaint the real condition of
prostration and of misery. Two hundred and
eighty insolvencies in a population of ten
thousand, told the tale of awful reality.
Uriah was overwhelmed with consternation
at the step he had taken. O! how pleasant
seemed that Trumpington Cottage, Peckham,
and that comfortable warehouse in the Old
Jewry, as he viewed them from the Antipodes
in the midst of rain and ruin.

What, however, was my brother Uriah's
astonishment to see Robinson stalk in the
next day, his tall figure having to stoop at
every door, and in his brusque, noisy way, go
up to Mrs. Tattenhall, and shaking her hand
as you would shake the handle of a pump,
congratulate her on her arrival in the colony.

"A lucky hit, madam, a most lucky, scientific
hit! Ah! trust Tattenhall for knowing
what he is about."

Mrs. Tattenhall stood with a singular
expression of wonder and bewilderment on her
countenance, for the condition of the place,
and the condolings of several female neighbours
who had dropped in in Uriah's absence,
had induced her to believe that they had
made a fatal move of it.

"Why, sir," said she, " what can you mean,
for as I hear, the place is utterly ruined,
and certainly it looks like it?"

"Ruined! to be sure it is, at least the
people are, more's the pity for me, and the
like of me who have lost everything; but
for Tattenhall who has everything to gain,
and money to win it with, why it is the
golden opportunity, the very thing! If he
had watched at all the four corners of the
world, and for a hundred years, he could
not have dropped into such a chance. Ah!
trust Tattenhall, make me believe he did not
plan it." Thrusting his knuckles into Uriah's
side, and laughing with a thunder-clap of
a laugh that seemed to come from lungs of
leather.

"Why, look here now," he continued,
drawing a chair and seating himself on its
front edge; " look here now, if you had come
six months ago, you could have bought
nothing except out of the fire. Town
allotments, land, houses, bread, meat, sugar,
everything ten times the natural price:
and, now! cheap, dog cheap! of no value
at all, you might have them for asking
for; nay, I could go into a dozen deserted
shops, and take any quantity for nothing.
And property! why three thousand pounds
cash would almost buy all the place—all the
colony."

'What is the use," asked Mrs. Tattenhall,
"of buying a ruined colony?"

"A ruined colony! " said Robinson, edging
himself still more forward in his chair, and
seeming actually to sit upon nothing, his
huge figure and large ruddy face appearing
still larger. " The colony, madam, is not
ruined; never was ruined, never can be
ruined. The people are ruined, a good lot
of them; but the colony is a good and a
grand colony. God made the colony, and
let me tell you, madam," looking very serious,
'' Providence is no speculator, up to-day, down
to-morrow. What he does he does. Well, the
people have ruined themselves; but it is
out of their power to ruin the colony; no,
nor the town. The town and the colony
are sound as a bell, never were sounder,
never had more stuff in them; never had
so much. There is the land still, not a yard
of it is gone; no great fellow has put that
on his back and gone off with it. The land
is there, and the houses, and the merchandise,
and the flocks, and herds, and horses:
and—what concerns you—"

He sate and looked at Mrs. Tattenhall,
who stood there intently listening, and Uriah
stood just behind her listening too, and all
the children with their mouths open, gazing
on the strange man.

"Well, what—what concerns us? " said
Mrs. Tattenhall.

"To get a huge, almighty heap of
something for nothing," said the large man,