handsome, ladylike, and well-educated girl, and an accomplished
musician. The doctor was smitten, proposed to her, and married her
quietly. On the day on which we first heard of the event we happened to
be sitting with some acquaintances in the public room of the White Hart
Hotel, when Dr. T---- entered, and walking over to the fire, called for
a glass of water, nodding to us all round in his usual friendly way. On
receiving the water, he threw into it and stirred up a powder which he
took from his pocket, and immediately drank off the mixture. "I've done
it now," he said; "I have taken strychnine!" and remained standing with
his back to the fire in an unconcerned manner. We scarcely heeded his
remark, taking it as a joke, till he suddenly crossed to a sofa, and
called to us for God's sake to send for a doctor. One was sent for, but
he arrived too late, if indeed his presence could have been of use at
any time. A doctor knows how much to take to ensure death. After a few
fits of convulsions, very terrible to witness, Dr. T---- was a corpse.
The cause of his committing suicide was due to his discovery, very soon
after his marriage, of the true character of the woman he had taken to
his home.

I do not know whether the custom of sending out to the Colonies persons
of this class still exists, but it certainly cannot be a good one, and I
fear that but a very small percentage of them really turn over a new
leaf. There must be now, at any rate, better means of disposing of the
surplus members of reformatory establishments in the Old Country than
sending them to run wild amidst the freedom and temptations of the new
world--a custom as hurtful to them as to the Colony which receives them.

C---- and I at length decided to commence work as carriers; we rented a
four-acre paddock, and built a small wooden hut, and were in treaty for
the purchase of the necessary drays and teams, but it was all being done
in a half-hearted way, as well as in opposition to the best of our
advisers. C----'s aversion to undertake anything where he was not
entirely his own master was unconquerable. Doubtless the carrying
business would have answered very well, for a time at any rate, and
there was no actual hurry, so long as we were employed and earning a
living, but it was not to be.

We were invited to meet at dinner at the Chief Justice's a Mr. and Mrs.
Lee from Nelson Province. Mr. Lee was a large sheep-farmer, and before
we left that evening w