and sobriety. One night Dan set fire to my tent in
order to rouse his banker. I dragged Bez outside the tent and
extinguished the fire. There was bloodshed afterwards--from Dan's
nose--and his account was closed. After a while some policemen in
plain clothes came along and examined the dray. They found fourteen
kegs of rum in it, which they seized, together with four horses and
the dray.

I worked for seven months in various parts of the Ovens district
until I had acquired the value in gold of my vanished twenty-dollar
pieces; that was all my luck. During this time some of us paid the
L2 license fee for three months. We were not hunted by the military.
Four or five troopers and officials rode slowly about the diggings
and the cry of "Joey" was never raised, while a single unarmed
constable on foot went amongst the claims to inspect licenses. He
stayed with us awhile, talking about digging matters. He said the
police were not allowed to carry carbines now, because a digger had
been accidentally shot. He was a very civil fellow, and his price,
if I remember rightly was half-a-crown. Yet the digger hunting was
continued at Ballarat until it ended in the massacre of December 3rd
1854.

At that time I was at Colac, and while Dr. Ignatius was absent, I had
the charge of his household, which consisted of one old convict known
as "Specs," who acted in the capacity of generally useless, received
orders most respectfully, but forgot them as much as possible. He
was a man of education who had gone astray in London, and had fallen
on evil days in Queensland and Sydney. When alone in the kitchen he
consoled himself with curses. I could hear his voice from the other
side of the slabs. He cursed me, he cursed the Doctor, he cursed the
horses, the cat, the dog, and the whole world and everything in it.
It was impossible to feel anything but pity for the man, for his life
was ruined, and he had ruined it himself. I had also under my care a
vegetable garden, a paddock of Cape barley, two horses, some guinea
fowls, and a potato patch. One night the potatoes had been
bandicooted. To all the early settlers in the bush the bandicoot is
well known. It is a marsupial quadruped which lives on bulbs, and
ravages potato patches. It is about eighteen inches in length from
the origin of its tail to the point of its nose. It has the habits
of a pickpocket. It inserts its delicate fore paws under the stalks
of the potato, a