When Mr. Neuchamp looked around, after completing his toilette, the
scene strongly stirred his imaginative mind; it was unique, unfamiliar,
and majestic. At his feet, down the long incline of the mountain, lay
the vast foreign-foliaged, primeval forests, the silver-threaded,
winding rivulets, the hoary crag-ramparts of yesterday’s travel
shrouded in billowing, rolling mists, or rich in combination of light
and shade, colour and effect, and at the bidding of the morning
sunbeam. As far as vision extended, nought but these characteristic
features of the mountain wilderness was visible. Immediately around
him, however, were decisive though humble evidences of the domination
of art over nature. The inn orchard, with its autumn-blushing apples,
stables, barn-yard, the cheerful smoking chimneys in the ’eager
air’—all these told of the limited but absolute sway of civilised man.
Ernest’s ideas gradually shaped themselves into the concrete fact of
breakfast.
After this luxurious meal Mr. Neuchamp felt his ardour for travel
and exploration rekindled. He inquired the road from the landlord
and boldly pushed on. Much the same fortune attended him, sometimes
traversing rugged and barren country, and at other times finding
cottages, farms, and orchards upon his route. When, however, he reached
the more open forest lands, he found that a portion of the carefully
graded highway was in process of being metalled. Here were many parties
of stonebreakers at work by contract, apparently preferring such labour
to the more monotonous daily wage.
Asking for water at one small camp, he found in the cook a
well-mannered youngster, doubtless a gentleman. Ernest was pressed to
take more substantial refreshment, but he declined the offer.
‘How far do you think of going to-day?’ inquired the affable
stone-compeller.
‘About half a dozen miles,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, who by this time had
completed the chief portion of a fair day’s trudge.
‘My reason for asking,’ continued the basaltic one, ‘is, that we are
going to have a little dinner at an inn just so far distant. The party
consists of my mates—very decent fellows—and our superintendent, who is
a regular brick. We shall be glad if you will join us.’
‘Most happy indeed,’ answered Ernest, especially gratified to enter
upon a new phase of life utterly outside of his previous experiences,
and perhaps more typically Australian than anything he could have
stumbled upon except by the merest accident. He had dined in many queer
places and met with strange company in his day, being always ready
to extend his observations in the interest of philosophical inquiry,
but a dinner of persons who broke stones upon a highroad for their
subsistence, and who were presumably gentlemen, he had never yet been
so fortunate as to hear of, much less to partake of.
‘If you don’t mind waiting half an hour,’ pursued the Amphitryon,
‘while I change my clothes, we can walk down comfortably together.’
‘Are you in the habit of having these little dinners to solace your
rather austere labours?’ inquired Ernest.
‘Well, not exactly; though we have not been so very uncomfortable
here for the last six months. We are all gentlemen, in our party,
out of luck; and a man might do worse, who is young and strong, than
earn six shillings a day by fair downright labour, in a cool climate.
All we have to do is to pile up so many yards of metal for the road
superintendent to measure. When he “passes it” our money is safe, and
we are as independent as le Roi d’Yvelôt. We live comfortably, smoke
our pipes in the evening, sleep unusually well, and enjoy real rest
on Sundays. But “little dinners” are expensive, and there would be a
slight probability of some of the party going “on the burst,” after
three or four months’ teetotalism.’
‘On the burst? I do not quite follow.’
‘On the burst,’ explained the colonist, ‘vernacular signifying a
protracted and utterly reckless debauch. It’s an Australian malady.
Hope you’ll never be in the way of infection. But as good men as
either of us have got inoculated and never wholly recovered. Now,
the occasion of this entertainment, which is given by me,’ continued
the metallician, ’is, like Mr. Weller’s new suit of clothes, a “wery
partic’ler and uncommon ewent.” Fact is, I’ve been left a few thousand
pounds by a good-for-nothing old uncle of mine in England, who never
gave me so much as a shilling knife all his life, and is now gone to
glory, and with all his earthly goods me endowed, much against the
grain. And so I’m going to Sydney by the coach to-morrow, and home by
mail steamer on Monday after. What do you think of that for a lark?’
inquired he, giving a leap, and shying his hat into the air with a
schoolboy joyousness much at variance with his previously imperturbable
demeanour.
‘I think it’s a very pleasant story, with a capital ending,’ said
Ernest, ‘and that’s a great matter. I don’t suppose the stonebreaking
has done you any harm, except roughening your hands a little.’
‘Not a bit in the world—a good deal the other way. I was a lazy young
scamp while my money lasted. Now I can do a man’s work, know personally
what a day’s labour actually is, and shall respect (and be able
slightly to check) the task of the born labourer all my life after.
Here we are at the inn.’
Thus talking, they arrived at the inn, a roomy and respectable hotel,
where the up coach and the down daily met and deposited hungry
passengers, who were accommodated with hasty but highly-priced meals.
Here they were met by the landlord, a civil and capable personage, who
inducted them into bedrooms, and shortly after into a snug private
parlour, where, with considerable splendour of glass, flowers, and
table-linen, preparation for the dinner was partially made.
Here Mr. Neuchamp found several gentlemen-like men, in tweed morning
costume. Before long the superintendent appeared. Ernest was introduced
by his new friend. The conversation became general, and within a
reasonable time dinner was announced.
This repast was exceedingly well served, cooked, and, it may be added,
appreciated. The wines were fair, and so was the drinking, though
within the bounds of discretion.
Subjects of general interest and of political bearing were discussed
in a manner which showed that the _pabulum mentis_ had not been lost
sight of, toils notwithstanding. The health of their friend, ‘who by
an unexpected but by no means unkind freak of Fortune—a divinity of
whom they all had previous experience—was about to be translated to a
happier hemisphere,’ was suitably proposed and responded to; as was
the health of their excellent superintendent, who, a father to them in
counsel and admonition, had always treated them as gentlemen, though
temporarily filling unpretending positions.
Lastly was toasted the health of the gentleman who had done them the
honour to join the entertainment, at the invitation of their old friend
and comrade. The speaker trusted that ‘their honoured guest, not very
long since a resident in dear old Ireland, or England—sure it was
all one—would not immediately be reduced, he meant impelled, to make
choice of their healthy, manly, but somewhat monotonous occupation.
It was well enough in its way. He, Brian O’Loghlan, was not there to
find fault with an honourable means of subsistence. But he trusted
that his young friend would make trial of other colonial avocations,
before betaking himself to the geological experiments in which they
had been lately engaged. Of course he had it to fall back upon. And if
ever necessity compelled him, he spoke the sentiments, he felt sure,
of every man at the table when he said that they would be charmed to
welcome their esteemed though but lately acquainted friend to their
independent, industrious, and ancient order of free and accepted
stonebreakers.’ (Continued applause.)
This toast, to which Ernest ‘briefly but feelingly’ responded,
expressing his ‘admiration of the institutions of a country which
permitted access to industrial occupations generally esteemed as
close guilds and corporations in Europe, to gentlemen of culture and
refinement, such as his host and his friends whom he saw around him
that day, without detriment to their social position and prospects,’
closed the entertainment.
The fortunate legatee and his comrades departed to seek their tent,
while Ernest and the superintendent remained and smoked a pipe
together (the latter gentleman, at least, indulging in the narcotic),
while they talked over the somewhat exceptional circumstances of the
entertainment, and the accidental stroke of luck which had occasioned
it.
On the following morning they breakfasted together in much comfort, and
then separated, as so many pleasant chance comrades are compelled to do
in this life. The Government official drove off in his buggy to visit
another line of road, while Mr. Neuchamp, full of hope and rich with
the gathered spoils of his late adventure, paced cheerily along the
high road to fortune and the mystical desert interior.
Halting at mid-day by a watercourse favourably situated for temporary
rest and refreshment, he heard the half-forgotten words of a favourite
operatic air trolled forth by a rich voice with unusual effect and
precision. Looking round for the performer, he descried, lying under
a noble casuarina tree, the roots of which spread halfway across the
little creek, a tall man, whose worn and somewhat shabby habiliments
were strongly at variance with the distinction of his air and the
aristocratic cast of his features. Beside him was a small black
camp kettle, from which he had been preparing the usual traveller’s
refreshment of ‘quartpot tea.’ He was smoking, of course, and as he
half raised himself and saluted Ernest, that observer of human nature
thought he had rarely seen a more striking countenance.
‘In which direction are you travelling?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp.
‘Towards Nubba,’ said the unknown, ‘and a devilish dull track it is. Do
you happen, by any chance, to be going there?’
‘My route lies past that place, I believe. As we are both apparently
on a walking tour we may as well be fellow-travellers, if you have no
objection.’
‘Most happy, I am sure,’ assented the stranger, with the ease of a man
of the world; ‘one so rarely has the pleasure of having a gentleman for
a comrade in this part of the creation. May I offer you some tea? Sorry
to say my flask is empty.’
‘Many thanks—I prefer the tea. Perhaps, on the other hand, you will
make trial of part of my provender?’
Here Mr. Neuchamp exhibited an ample store of solids, which he had had
the foresight to bring with him, and the stranger, after observing that
the brisk air gave one a most surprising appetite, made so respectable
a meal that he would almost have fancied that tea and tobacco had alone
composed that repast which he had just finished.
The mid-day halt over, the newly-made acquaintances took the road with
great cheerfulness, and, on Ernest’s part, a considerable accession of
spirits.
‘Here,’ thought he, ‘is one of those happy contretemps that so rarely
occur—out of books—in an old country. There, if you did meet a man,
under these circumstances, you would be afraid to speak to him until
you had actually gauged his social position and standing. Here, now,
is a gentleman evidently of culture, travel, refinement, who, like me,
prefers from time to time to lead this half-gipsy, half-hunter life
entirely for the pleasure of unconventional sensations.’
For the first hour or two Mr. Neuchamp kept up a sustained cross-fire
of conversation with this fortunately found travelling companion.
Whether formerly in the army or not he did not definitely state, but
from certain of his reminiscences and stray sentences, such as ‘when
we took Acre,’ Mr. Neuchamp thought he was not far wrong in assigning
him a military rank. Certainly his experiences were extensive. Had been
everywhere, had seen everything, knew all the colonies from Northern
Queensland to South Australia, the gold-fields, the stations, the
cities, the law courts. How lightly and airily did he touch upon these
different localities and institutions! Knew London, Paris, Vienna,
Florence, Rome, St. Petersburg. The _haute volée_ of many cities knew
him well evidently. His whole tone and bearing denoted so much; and
with an air half of philosophical unconcern, half of humorous complaint
against fate, he confessed that he had not been lucky.
‘No!’ he said, ‘they used to say in the old 108th I was too deuced
lucky in everything else to hold honours where the stakes were golden;
and so it has been with me ever since. The boy who ran up the whole
score of social success before his beard was grown, the man whom
princesses fought for, and world-famed diplomates, soldiers, and
savants flattered, has ended thus: to find himself growing old in a
colony where talent and social rank are mocked at if unassociated with
vulgar success; and here stands John Lulworth Broughton, without a
friend, a coin, or a home wherein to lay his head.’
‘You shall never need repeat that indictment against fate,’ cried
Ernest enthusiastically; ‘I, at least, can discriminate between the
talents and the qualities which should have controlled success and the
temporary obscurity which ill-fortune has accorded. Trust to me in
the future. Is there no enterprise which we could engage in jointly,
where, with my capital and your experience, we might work with mutual
advantage?’
The stranger’s haughty features assumed a different expression at the
mention of the word capital, and his melancholy dark eye brightened as
he said promptly—
‘I know a splendid run, not very far from where we stand, large enough
and good enough to make any man’s fortune. I have been prevented from
occupying it hitherto by want of funds, but a hundred pounds would pay
all expenses at present. We could then take it up from Government, and
it would bring in, half-stocked, two or three thousand a year almost at
once.’
‘Not far from here—the very thing!’ exclaimed Mr. Neuchamp, who had had
nearly enough walking. ‘But I thought that all the good land was taken
up except what was a long way off.’
The stranger explained that by a lucky accident he had been trusted
with the secret of this magnificent country, which you entered by a
narrow and well-concealed gorge; that the old stockman was dead who
discovered it, and that a beautiful, open, park-like country, whenever
you got through the gorge, was waiting to reward the first fortunate
occupants who were liberal enough to meet the small but indispensable
preliminary disbursement.
Mr. Neuchamp thought he could see here a splendid opportunity of at
once making a rapid fortune, of demonstrating a rare perception of
local opportunity and judicious speculation, and of proving to Mr.
Frankston and to Antonia his ability to control colonial circumstances
without a novitiate.
He could imagine old Paul saying, ‘Well, Antonia, my pet, you see this
young friend of ours has shown us all the way. Here it is, in the
_Herald_: “Splendid discovery of new country, by E. Neuchamp, Esq.
Large area taken up by the explorer and partner. We must congratulate
Mr. Neuchamp, who has not been, we believe we are correct in stating,
many months in Australia, upon developing a masterly grasp of judicious
pastoral enterprise, which has left the majority of our older colonists
in the shade.”’
After this and other intoxicating presentiments, it was finally agreed
that they were to proceed to Nubba, where Ernest was to hand Mr.
Broughton his cheque for a hundred pounds for outfit and preliminary
expenses, upon which that gentleman would at once proceed to point out
and put him in possession of this long-concealed but none the less
virgin and glorious Eldorado.
With head erect and flashing eye, in which sparkled the ideal lustre
of imminent wealth and distinction, Ernest walked on towards the small
village which Mr. Broughton had indicated as their probable destination
for the night. That accomplished individual indeed, pedestrian feats
in the Oberland, South America, Norway, and Novogorod notwithstanding,
found it difficult to keep up with his future partner—his boots,
possibly, which were neither new nor apparently calculated to withstand
the wear and tear of rough country work, prevented his attaining a
high rate of speed. But had Ernest been less preoccupied he might have
marked a sour expression upon the aristocratic features, heard a savage
oath, vernacularly vulgar, issue from under the silken moustache.
Soon, however, in a break of his fairy tale, while he was deciding
whether he should send his brother Courtenay a cheque for ten thousand
pounds, or surprise him with a personal proffer of that amount as a
Christmas box, he became aware that he was outpacing his companion from
whom this golden tide of fortune was to date and issue. He stopped and
permitted him to come up. At the same instant a horseman, in the plain
but unmistakable uniform of a police trooper, rode at speed from the
angle of the forest track, and overtook them.
Pulling up his well-bred horse rather suddenly, he fixed a keen and
searching glance upon the pair. His features gradually relaxed into a
familiar and disrespectful expression as he addressed Mr. Broughton.
‘Why, Captain! what’s come to you? Here’s the whole force in a state
of mobilisation from Hartly to the Bogan about the last little plant
of yours—and now here you are, a-walking into our very arms, like a
blessed ‘possum into a blessed trap—-why, I’m ashamed of you; hold up
your hands.’
Mr. Neuchamp gazed upon the face of his illustrious friend as this
vulgar exordium was rattled off by the flippant but practical
man-at-arms, in wonder, consternation, sorrow, and expectancy.
Could it be anything but the most annoying and inexplicable of
mistakes, and would not this noble-minded victim of blind fortune
repudiate the shameful accusation with scorn in every line of the stern
sad features?
He gazed long and fixedly into that face; a deeply graven expression
_was_ there. But it was an alien, unsatisfactory expression. It
showed slight contempt, but habitual deference to that branch of the
civil power mingled with a sardonic, half-stoical, half despairing
resignation to ignoble circumstance.
Puzzled, doubtful, but by no means dismayed, Mr. Neuchamp indignantly
asked the trooper what he meant by speaking insolently to his friend,
Mr. Broughton—in stopping him without a warrant upon the highway?
‘Mr. Howard, alias Captain, alias the Knight of Malta, alias the
Aide-de-Camp, alias John Lulworth Broughton, is as much my friend as
yours; leastwise we know one another better; don’t we, Captain?’
Mr. Broughton, upon whose wrists the handcuffs were safely adjusted,
merely nodded, upon which the trooper requested Mr. Neuchamp to permit
his hands to be similarly fettered.
‘What?’ said Ernest, flushing so suddenly, at the same time making a
stride forward, that the wary official backed his horse, and taking out
his revolver, presented it full at his head.
‘What for?’ said the trooper; ‘why, on suspicion, of course, of being
concerned with the Captain here, in the Barrabri Bank robbery the other
night, that all the country is going mad about.’
Here the Captain found his tongue.
‘You’re going mad yourself, Taylor; the reward and the mobilisation, as
you call it, have been too much for you. There’s no evidence against
me this time, nothing that you could call evidence worth a rap; and
don’t you see that this is a gentleman just out from home, and green as
grass; or he wouldn’t go on foot with a thundering big knapsack on his
back, picking up with—ahem—shady characters like me.’
‘That’s all very well, Captain,’ assented the trooper; ‘but the cove’s
hair and complexion, and height, and age, as was with you in the plant,
and _Police Gazette_, corresponds with the other prisoner’s.’
Ernest’s face, at this description of himself, was a study; so sharply
engraved were the lines which indicated wrath, disgust, and horror.
‘Very sorry, my man, and all that,’ continued Senior-Constable Taylor,
who had not got the stripes for nothing, ‘in case your turn don’t
square, but you must come before the police magistrate of Boonamarran
and see what _he_ thinks about it. I won’t put the darbies on ye, if
you’ll promise to come quietly, but by —— if you leave the track for a
moment I’ll send a bullet through you before you can say knife.’
Under this proclamation of martial law, there was nothing to be done
by any sane man but to submit; so Ernest made answer that he had
no objection to walking as far as Boonamarran, where no doubt his
innocence would be made clear.
In a kind of procession, therefore, was Ernest Neuchamp forced, as the
Captain would have said, ‘by circumstances’ to make his appearance
in the small but not wholly unimportant town of Boonamarran. As
they passed up the principal street, a very large proportion of the
available inhabitants must have assembled to mark their arrival at the
lock-up.
Behind them rode the trooper with a mingled air of inflexible
determination and successful daring. The Captain marched in front with
his manacled hands almost disguised by his careless walk, remarking
calmly on the appearance of the town, which he criticised freely,
also the leading inhabitants. By his side, burning with rage and
mortification, walked Ernest, feeling very like a galley slave, and
wondering whether there was any possibility, in this strange land, of
being sentenced mistakenly to a term of imprisonment. Thus feeling
for the first time a keen sensation of distrust for his own obstinate
predilections, coupled with an awakening respect for the opinion of
others, the time passed in varieties of mental torture, till they
arrived at the lock-up, a strong wooden building, into a small room
of which they were unceremoniously bundled, while a heavy bolt closed
behind them.
‘I really am extremely sorry, sir,’ quoth the Captain, after they were
left to themselves, ‘to have brought you into this highly unpleasant
position. But circumstances, my lifelong enemies, were too strong for
me; and for you, too,’ he added reflectively.
Mr. Neuchamp was not a vain man, though proud; above everything he was
a philosophical experimentalist. Under any given position he could
soon have ceased to struggle and rage, and have commenced to analyse,
theorise, and deduce.
‘I ought to be so justly enraged with you,’ he replied, ‘that any
apologies would only arouse contempt. You have deceived me, it appears,
with a view to rob me of my money, and you have been instrumental in
causing, for the first time in my life, the loss of my liberty. But
I will confine myself for the present to asking, in all seriousness,
why you, a man of culture and mental endowments, having enjoyed the
advantages of travel and refined society, should voluntarily have
lowered yourself to your present surroundings by a course of vulgar and
short-sighted criminality?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you the real naked truth, as far as I know it when
I see it,’ said the Captain, cutting off a solid piece of negrohead
tobacco and putting it into his mouth. ’I have had an immense quantity
of what the world calls advantages, there’s no denying, and yet they
would have been all well exchanged for one simple bit of luck, which
I did _not_ happen to possess—that of being born honest! That, I
distinctly state and affirm, I was not. Whatever the reason is, I was
always an infernal rogue from the time I could write myself man, and
long before. Whether the faculty of passionate and sensuous enjoyment
was intensified in my idiosyncracy, while at the same time my reasoning
powers were feeble and my conscientiousness absolutely nil—I can’t say.
The fact, _unde derivata_, remained (and a _fait générateur_, as the
French say, it was), when I wanted anything it always occurred to me
with restless force, that the shortest, most natural, and obvious way
to possession was to steal, take, and unlawfully carry away the same.
I should have made a famous king; in him annexation is a virtue of
the highest order. As a general, could I have overleaped the earlier
grades, I should have gone amid shouting thousands to an honoured
grave, for I am cool and cheerful in danger, and a demon when my slow
blood is fairly up. But as the son of an eminent clergyman, as a mere
unit in refined society, my sphere was wretchedly circumscribed.
Society became my foe, my fatal foe. Young man, if you hurl yourself
upon society, she laughs at the superincumbent hostile weight. If
she merely reclines upon you, moral asphyxia results. I have, mind,
cast away home, friends, love, honour, position. If I hadn’t such an
infernally good constitution, death would have long ago squared the
account. I am sorry when I think of it. But present troubles once
over—“_Libem, libem!_”’
Here he broke forth into the great drinking song, which he trolled out
until the massive timbers of the building echoed.
‘And your intention, as far as I was concerned?’ asked Ernest, unable
to refrain a certain toleration for the ‘larcenous epicurean.’
‘Well, I couldn’t resist trying to appropriate your hundred pounds. You
threw it at a fellow’s head, as it were. It was partly your own fault.’
‘My own fault,’ echoed Ernest, in astonishment, ‘and why, may I ask?’
‘When people are very _very_ imprudent, they, as the Methodists phrase
it, “put temptation in the way” of other folks, not afflicted, let us
say, with severe morals. Now why don’t you ride a decent horse when
you’re travelling, like a gentleman?’
‘But surely a man may walk in a new country, if he likes?’ pleaded
Ernest, half amused at his arguing the question so seriously with a
swindler and convicted felon.
‘Excuse me,’ answered the man of experience, with the readiness of
a practical advocate; ‘you might drive a tax-cart down Rotten Row,
or wear a wideawake and a tourist suit at a flower-show, as far as
the power to do so is concerned. But you wouldn’t do it, because it
would be unfashionable, therefore incorrect. It’s unfashionable for
a gentleman to walk in this country, therefore nobody does walk on a
journey, except labourers, drunkards, persons of bad character like me,
or inexperienced young gentlemen like you.’
‘Many thanks for your neat explanation and wholesome advice,’ said
Ernest. ‘I don’t know whether I shall not act upon it.’
‘And may you better rede the advice than ever did the adviser,’ quoted
the Captain gravely, sonorously, and in final conclusion.
Next morning, after experiencing what fully justified Clarence’s
exclamation, Mr. Neuchamp and his fellow-traveller were ‘haled’ before
the stipendiary magistrate, who looked at Mr. Neuchamp in a manner so
unsympathising that it hurt his feelings.
‘John Lulworth Broughton,’ said the trooper, in a loud matter-of-fact
voice, ‘alias Captain Spinks, alias the Knight of Malta, and Ernest
Neuchum appears before this court, in custody, your worship, charged
with robbery under arms. How do you plead?’
‘Not guilty, of course,’ replied the Captain, with a shocked expression.
‘Not guilty,’ said Ernest, in an anxious and horrified tone; ‘I wish to
explain, I am travelling to the station of——’
‘Any statement that you or the other prisoner may wish to make, _after_
the evidence is complete, I shall be happy to hear. Until then,’ said
the police magistrate, with mild but icy intonation, ‘I must request
you to keep silence, except when cross-examining the witnesses for the
Crown.’
Ernest felt outraged and choked. The evidence then being ‘gone into,’
showed how a certain bank manager at a lonely branch had been awakened
at midnight by two men masked and armed; one tall, dark, spoke with a
fashionable drawl; the other middle-sized, active, fair-haired, with
blue eyes, about twenty-four, spoke rather slowly. Here the police
magistrate, the clerk of the bench, the spectators, and the other
police constable turned their heads towards Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Speaks like
a native. Ah! very strong point.’
Witness after witness being examined piled up the evidence that a tall
dark man and a middle-sized fair one had been seen at the scene of the
robbery, near the place, the day before, the day after. Every sort of
circumstantial evidence was forthcoming, except a link or two which the
jury might or might not consider necessary. The magistrate thought a
_primâ-facie_ case for committal had been made out. He was commencing
the impressive formula—‘Having heard the evidence, do you wish to make
any statement, etc. etc.,’ when a telegram was put into the hand of the
senior constable of police.
Reading it rapidly, and handing it to the police magistrate, that
official said: ‘In consequence of the information just received from
my superior officer, by telegram, I beg to apply for the discharge of
the younger prisoner.’ The police magistrate acceded. Thereupon the
door or the gate of the dock was opened and Mr. Neuchamp, permitted
egress through the same, much like a rabbit from a hutch, was formally
discharged.
‘It would appear,’ said the stipendiary magistrate, ‘from the latest
information in the hands of the police, that an instance of mistaken
identity has in your case occurred, leading to your—a—apprehension and
detention, which, under the circumstances, I regret. Senior-Constable
Taylor was fully justified in arresting you as the companion of a
notoriously bad and desperate character’ (here the Captain smiled
serenely, and stroked his moustache)—‘in arresting you on suspicion of
felony. It appears that the person described in the _Police Gazette_,
and whom you unfortunately appear to resemble, has been arrested, and
is now in custody at Warren. You are therefore discharged, and as you
are a young man of respectable appearance, I trust that it will be a
warning to you; a—that is to say, as to the choice of your associates.
John Lulworth Broughton, you stand committed to take your trial at the
next Quarter Sessions,’ etc. etc.
The telegram which had so suddenly and effectually changed the current
of Ernest’s destiny ran as follows: ‘From Sub-Inspector Hawker, Warren,
to the officer in charge of police, Boonamarran. The right man, Captain
Spinks’s mate, arrested here, 4 A.M. Discharge fair prisoner forthwith.’
Ernest left the court certainly a sadder and a presumably wiser man,
and sought a private room in the chief inn, having some difficulty
in evading the invitations to liquor pressed upon him by the chief
inhabitants, who, having fully agreed that if ever a man looked guilty
he did, were anxious now, in reactionary regret, to make him amends for
their unfounded and evil thoughts.
Among the persons firmly, perhaps unceremoniously, repelled, was a
pale young man with longish hair and an intelligent countenance. This
personage sat down and hastily wrote a report of the proceedings, in
the course of which he dilated upon the hardship of an untried man
suffering the degrading and mental torture to which, if innocent, he
is perforce subjected, in the present state of the law. This was at
once forwarded to a leading metropolitan journal. A telegram of a
sensational nature was also despatched for the evening paper: ‘Arrest
of a gentleman newly arrived, for robbery under arms. The case broke
down. He is now at liberty.’