the bounty of himself or the lieutenant for clothing while
we possessed a dollar with which we could purchase for ourselves.

While the officers were conversing, the sergeants had formed their men
in such a manner that the crowd, which began to press eagerly forward,
was completely excluded from the cart, and could only get a sight at the
prisoners through a broken rank, or by peeping between the horses' legs.

Our entire into Melbourne was a perfect triumph; and to this day, I am
uncertain which excited the most curiosity--the chained bushrangers,
confined in the body of the cart, or Fred and myself, with our short
beards and unshaven faces, ragged clothes, and deadly array of rifles,
revolvers, and bowie knives.

The escort of policemen cleared the crowd, who stopped to gaze and ask
questions, and as the former advanced with their heavy horses and drawn
sabres, the latter receded to the right and left, leaving a space for
the procession to pass.

Down through Collins Street we went, every window on the thoroughfare
filled with eager faces anxious to get a sight of the novel procession,
and I don't know how many times Fred and I were pointed at by women, who
appeared to possess as much curiosity to see murderers as the sterner
sex, and called us bushrangers and villains; and once we were hooted at
by an excitable old lady, who did not for a long time discover her
mistake; and Smith afterwards told us in confidence, that he heard her
muttering, that if we were not bushrangers, our countenances belied us
shamefully, and she would not like to trust herself with us, after dark.

"Where do you intend to confine the prisoners, sir?" asked Murden of his
captain.

"At the barracks; as I consider them safer than the jail at the present
time," replied the captain of police.

"Why safer now than at any other time, sir?" inquired the lieutenant.

"Because, I do not know how many of the faces which I see around me may
belong to men who have an interest in the escape of the bushrangers.
Since you have been gone some strange things have come to light, and I
am induced to believe that men living here under our protection, and
trusted with our secrets, have been in league with the robbers of the
plains for months. How have the bushrangers always known when an
expedition was to be started for their extermination, and so faced it,
or kept out of the way, according to the numbers we sent, unless word
was carried by people who had