said it," he exclaimed. "Who could tell you
such a malicious falsehood?"

"Calm yourself," added Ellen, taking the
young man's hand. "I shall tell you all.

"Hear me patiently; for I must impress
first on you the strange likelihood of what
was reported to me. You were driven to a
stockman's hut, it was said, by a storm
—you and a young friend. You were very
merry, and this friend congratulated you in a
sportive style on having won what he was
pleased to call the richest young woman in
the colony. And with a merry laugh you
were made to add, 'and the daughter of the
most illustrious of lags!'"

Robert Patterson, with a calmness of
concentrated wrath, asked, in a low measured
tone: "Who said that?"

"The woman whom you lately saved with
all her family. It was Nelly Fehan."

"Nelly Fehan!" said Robert, in amazement;
"what have I ever done to her that
deserved such a stab?"

"You threatened to send Fehan to prison
for bush-ranging. You reminded him of his
former life and unexpired sentence."

"That is true," said Robert, after a pause
of astonishment. "And this was the deadly
revenge—the serpents! But, O Ellen! why
could you not speak? One word, and all
would have been explained."

"I could not speak, Robert. Wounded
pride silenced me. But I have suffered
severely; have been fearfully punished. I
can only say—forgive me!"

One long embrace obliterated the past.

The late Mr. Maxwell had been transported
for the expression of his liberal political
principles in hard and bigoted times. There
was not a man in the penal settlement,
who did not honour his political integrity
and foresight, and who did not reverence
his character. But the convicts as a body
were proud to claim him as of their own
class, though sent thither only for the crime
of a Hampden or a Sidney. Whenever
reproach was thrown on the convict section of
society, the insulted party pointed to the
venerable exile, and triumphantly hailed him
as their chief. No endeavours, though they
were many, and conducted by powerful
hands, had ever been able to procure a
reversal of his sentence. The injuries of a man
of his high talents and noble nature might be
comparatively buried at the antipodes; at
home they would be a present, a perpetual
and a damaging reproach. He had lived and
died a banished, but a highly-honoured man.
Still, as he rose to a higher estimation and an
unusual affluence, there were little minds who
delighted occasionally to whisper—"After
all, he is but a lag." And it was on this
tender point that the minds of his children
whose ears such remarks had reached and
wounded, had become morbidly sensitive.

Amid the general calamity, this reconciliation
was like a song of thanksgiving in the
generous heart of Robert Patterson, and
quickened it to tenfold exertions in alleviating
the sufferings of his neighbours. His joy
was made boundless and overflowing by a
circumstance which appeared to be little short
of a miracle. When Robert rode up to his
own station, he beheld his mother—not seated
in her wheeled chair—but on foot; light,
active, and alert, going to and fro amongst
the people whose destitution still kept them
near his house. The mass of misery that
she saw around her and the exertion which
it stimulated burst the paralytic bonds
which had enchained her for years. The
same cause which had disabled her limbs had
restored them.

The conflagration had extended over a
space of three hundred miles by a hundred
and fifty, and far away beyond the Gouburn,
the Broken River, and the Ovens, we have
witnessed the remaining traces of its desolation.
Over all this space, flocks and herds in
thousands had perished. Houses, ricks, fences
and bridges had been annihiliated. Whole
families had been destroyed. Solitary travellers,
flying through the boundless woods before
the surging flame, had fallen, and perished.
For weeks and months, till the kindly rains of
autumn had renewed the grass, people
journeying through the bush, beheld lean and
famishing cattle, unable to rise from the
ground, and which by faint bellowings
seemed to claim the pity and aid of man.
Perhaps no such vast devastation ever fell on
any nation; and the memory of Black Thursday
is an indelible retrospect in Victoria.

A BRITISH INTEREST BETRAYED.

On behaf of the best interests of the
British public, sir, i claim a spaice in HOUSEHOLD
WORDS to represent the ingustice done
me by her Majesty's Civil Service
Comissioners. i do not, sir, address you on a mere
persinal question; sure i am that the blarsting
of my own prospects in life by the
ungrasious refusal to admit me to an offisial
sitiation under governmen wood not have
been deemed by me suffisient reson for thus
introoden upon you persanel detales, but i
feel how well I am able to corrborobate the
staitmens of the press that the Civil Service
Examminations are repungaut to the habbits
of this county, that the absurd noshen of
reqiring for a meer Clark's situaton and
celery the ataiments of a Nooten or a Porsen,
to make the exammination an affair for
senyer-anglers and duble-firstes, is inerently
falacious polisy besides being ungust to the
middle classes of this contry. Sir, / am a
regected man.

In the first plaice I am set down as if I
was one of the eighty-nine candates nairned
in the Bleubook as having been turned back
for ingorance of spellin. That calunmy i treat
with sheer contenpmt. i am not ingorant of
spellin and i never wars. A few errers in