sanitary measures carried out, by burning or
burying the putrid matter. He had been led
by the fœtid odour brought on the wind to a
hill which overlooked the flat, and there had
discovered a scene that made him stand in
utter astonishment. It was a slaughter-yard,
which had been recently deserted by the
butchers being actually driven away by the
intolerable stench, and the legions of flies
which enveloped them at their business, and
made it impossible to proceed. And what a
scene! The whole hill-top was one mass of
dried gore and piles of bullock's heads, all
rotting in an inconceivable fœtor, and blackened
over with flies, which rose up with a
sound as of thunder. Torrents of gore had
rolled down the sides of the hill, and the
fenced slaughter-yard was hung with hides
which had curled and dried to the hardness
of boards in the sun. No wonder at the
typhus which raged below.

Adam rode off to the government camp,
where an inspector lived with a salary of
three hundred pounds a-year, whose main
business was to prevent these very nuisances.
But the man said no men were to be got to
cover up the decomposing mass. Adam
appealed to the commissioners, who replied
with a shrug, and asked where the men at a
pound a-day each were to be found. Without
waiting to give a reply, he rode back to the
flat, called together the diggers, and told
them they must either relinquish the gold in
the flat, or their lives; or they must come to
the rescue, and bury the horrible Golgotha.
At once, and to a man, they shouldered pick
and shovel, mounted the hill of abomination,
and in a single day its horrors were buried
deep and secure from evil or offence.

This morning poor Adam, however, reeled
forward, as he rose from his bed, and fell on
the floor.

"Gracious heavens, Adam, what ails you?"
cried George, springing to his assistance.

But Adam had already partly recovered
himself, and sitting up, rubbed his hand
across his forehead, and said, "Oh my head!
my head! What's this ]"

"What is it?" asked George, in alarm;
"how do you feel, Adam?"

"Dizzy! dizzy!" said Adam, "the tent
goes round with me—the ground reels—
Heaven help me! I must lie down."

He lay down again on his bed, while
George, leaning over him in the utmost terror
and anxiety, said,

"I'll run for the doctor, Adam; you are
very, very ill, I know."

"Yes," said Adam, "do, dear George; I
know what it is—it is that fatal typhus."

George darted from the tent like one
possessed, with nothing on but his shirt and
trousers. With bare feet, careless of the
myriads of broken bottles which strew the
ground of every digging, he rushed along,
unmindful of wondering looks and numberless
inquiries from the surprised spectators.
The same kind-hearted medical man who had
attended Adam before was soon at his
bedside. Adam was lying still, but pale. The
slightest attempt to raise his head producing
the same reeling, rolling sensation. The
doctor at once pronounced it an attack of
typhus, and that it had seized powerfully on
the system. It must, he said, have been
gathering head for several days, but had been
unperceived by Adam from his state of active
exertion and excitement. He ordered the
tent to be kept cool and well open to the air,
and sent in immediately the necessary remedies.
He promised to see him again in a very
few hours, and to get another young surgeon
to attend Adam's patients. When he left
the tent, George threw himself on his knees
by the bed, and, seizing Adam's hand, he
said,—

"O, Adam! if I could but suffer this for
you—you who are so much wanted—so
useful—and I who am of no use to anybody."

"You, George! why you are everything to
me. What could I do without you now?
Listen, and yet don't frighten yourself, but
let me speak to you while I can, for I may
become delirious."

George gave a groan, and turned deathly
pale.

"Nay, now," continued Adam, "you are
frightening yourself, and yet all may be well,
and most likely will, for I am young and
strong, but it is necessaiy to be prepared.
Hear, then. If anything happens to me, you
are to take everything for the present—sell
everything; and with the money in the bank,
go down to Melbourne, and commence your
career; you will succeed; and when you can
do it without inconvenience, settle the few
hundred pounds on my mother and sister—
they are poor, and will miss me."

Here Adam was silent, as if serious thoughts
pressed on him, and George was weeping and
sobbing, strong man as he was, in an utter
abandonment of grief. But Adam said
again:

"Why, how now, Geordy! that is really
weak of you—I have no fear any way myself—
if the fever should carry me off, God's will
be done! but I am not imagining that; I
only tell you what I should, as a prudent
man, tell you. Pray get a branch, and drive
away these flies."

George recovered himself, brought at once
a leafy branch, and began waving it near
Adam's head to keep the flies from his
face.

"That is a delicious fan, too," said Adam,
witli a smile; "and if you could read to me
a little in the Gospels, that would indeed be
luxurious."

George took the book, and began. His
heart now clung to every word as to the sole
anchor of earthly existence.

But Adam's precautions soon showed
themselves just. The disease, spite of the most
skilful and unremitting efforts of the doctor,