number of thieves were preparing for an
expedition into our peninsula, in order to
avenge the supposed injury the three cattle-
stealers had sustained. I was summoned to my
post. After this, the Captain and his followers
proceeded to the second French settlement.

I must confess I was in no haste to dress,
Go and fight for the cattle of the Irish
Captain! I did not much like the idea.
While I was thus musing, I heard the report
of fire-arms. The cracks of discharged rifles,
possess the particularly intoxicating power
upon most men's minds that commonly
is ascribed to the smell of gunpowder alone.
In one moment I was out of the house, had
locked the door, and had run up to the most
prominent part of the mountain-range, in order
to ascertain where the fight was going on.
All had become silent again.

After I had been watching there for some
time, I saw suddenly my house lighted up.
Was it burning? No. There was a large
fire kindled before the door, and some strange
forms moved round it. I doubted not for a
moment that these men were the vanguard of
the expected army of thieves. I descended
the hill in search of the Irish Captain. When
I met him and his little army, I was informed
that they had encountered no enemy, and that
the shots I had heard were from their own guns.
Then I told them what I had observed before
my house. In a moment all were in marching
order. I was dispatched with two men to
fetch the boat, and so to cut off the retreat
of the enemy, whom the Irish Captain, at
the head of the main force, was to attack
directly.

When, having dragged the boat high up
in the sand, and taken away with me the
oars and sail, I joined the main body of
the army, I found that they had taken two
prisoners. The Irish Captain was just
fastening a rope round the neck of one of
them, and the Portuguese Premier was busily
engaged in fixing a beam to the corner of my
house, which was intended to serve as the
gibbet. The prospect of two human bodies
hanging all night so near my bed, was not a
cheerful one. Perhaps influencedby this feeling,
I inquired if the prisoners, in so short a
time, could have been tried and condemned?
The Irish Captain, excited with brandy and
vengeance, returned me a rather coarse
rebuke for my troublesome question. "Read
the testimonial of crime written in their
faces," he exclaimed; "and if you, after
having done so, can doubt any longer about
their being thieves, you must be out of your
senses."

In spite of so positive an assertion, I saw
only two unhappy wretches, who had
committed on former occasions probably more
tlutn one crime, but who were now too
miserable to be dangerous. It was wholly
repugnant to my feelings to permit the execution
to take place on sucli slight grounds. I
won over the Frenchman to my side, and
then, being in the majority, I unfastened the
ropes from the necks of the chosen victims,
and pulled down the intended gallows.

The prisoners I locked up in one of the
empty houses. The next morning, at eleven
o'clock, they were still sleeping; and when I
awoke them, "Sir," said the most communicative
of the two, to me, "we slept delightfully
in this comfortable mansion. For more
than five months we have not had the
opportunity of passing a single night under the
shelter of a roof."

"And were you not afraid last night, when
you had the rope round your neck?"

"No, sir," was the reply. "Death, with a
clear conscience, is no misfortune. I was
more afraid of being eaten by a grisly bear;
as with respect to these ferocious beasts, I
have not so good a conscience, being bent on
hunting and killing them. In order to prevent
the bears from approaching us during
the night, we kindled that large fire."

At the distance of more than fifteen miles,
there were no grisly bears to be found; and
had my prisoners, by an unaccountable caprice
of fate, encountered one of these beasts, they
would not have dared to attack it with such a
weapon as their only gun was, even if they
had been as courageous as the proudest
preux-chevalier of bygone ages. Therefore,
it seemed to me very improbable that my
interlocutor and his companion really were
hunters.

"You are Sydney men?" I said to him.

"O yes, sir, we are. I lived six years a
convict's life in Australia, and my friend
eight. But I was innocent."

In consequence of such slang, my interlocutor
was afterwards called the Pharisee. I
ordered the prisoners to collect and bring to
my house as much wood as they had burnt
last night; and then, after having cautioned
both not to return, lest they should place
their lives in danger, I sent them away. The
next morning, however, the Pharisee came
again to my house. He wished to buy, for
one real, provisions worth some hundred
reals. I gave him what little I could spare.

"Now go," I said to him; "and do
remember that it would be utter madness to
return any more."

"Madness!" he exclaimed, with a sneer.
"Madness! I have been much more mad
than I should be in exposing myself to be
hanged. 'It is impossible to love and be
wise; for whosoever esteemeth too much
amorous affection, quitteth both riches and
wisdom.' I did so, sir—I did so, and became
the miserable wretch I am now.—But the
will of God must be fulfilled," he added,
after a pause, resuming his usual expression
of devotion.

Certainly he was a strange fellow, and his
quotation from Bacon's Essays struck me the
more, as I had not, for a long time, heard any
word that betrayed a better education than
that essential for a common mercantile