was
really a good man, with only one defect--most of us have many--he
was always trying to divide a hair 'twixt West and South-West side.

I met Santley after thirty years, sitting on a bench in front of the
"Travellers' Rest" at Alberton, in Gippsland. He had a wrinkled old
face, and did not recognise my beautiful countenance until he heard
my name. He had half-a-dozen little boys and girls around him--his
grandchildren, I believe--and was as happy as a king teaching them
to sing hymns. I don't think Santley had grown rich, but he always
carried a fortune about with him wherever he went, viz., a kind heart
and a cheerful disposition. Nobody could ever think of quarrelling
with Santlay any more than with George Coppin, or with that
benevolent bandmaster, Herr Plock. He told me that he was now
related to the highest family in the world, his daughter having
married the Chinese giant, whose brothers and sisters were all of the
race of Anak.

My mate, Philip, was so successful with his little school in the tent
that he was promoted to another at the Rocky Waterholes, and then he
went to the township at Lake Nyalong. Philip had never travelled as
far as Lake Nyalong, but Picaninny Jack told him that he had once
been there, and that it was a beautiful country. He tried to find it
at another time, but got bushed on the wrong side of the lake; now he
believed there was a regular track that way if Philip could only find
it. The settlers and other inhabitants ought to be well off; if not,
it was their own fault, for they had the best land in the whole of
Australia.

Philip felt sure that he would find at least one friend at Nyalong--
viz., Mr. Barton, whom he had harboured in his tent at Bendigo, and
had sheltered from the pursuit of the three bloodthirsty convicts.
Some people might be too proud to look forward to the friendship of a
flagellator, but in those days we could not pick and choose our
chums; Barton might not be clubable, but he might be useful, and the
social ladder requires a first step.

Thanks to such men as Dan and Bez, in Melbourne, and to other
enterprising builders in various places, habitable dwellings of wood,
brick, and bluestone began to be used, instead of the handy but
uncomfortable tent, and, at the Rocky Waterholes, Philip had for some
time been lodging in a weatherboard house with the respectable Mrs.
Martin. Before going to look for Nyalong he introduced his successor
to her, and also