forgiveness, and, the fears of the blacks of punishment having been allayed, set them to work again.  One day a bucket of milk was brought to the camp at dinner-time and served out with pannikins.  The milk had been poisoned.  “One fella feel ’em here,” said my informant, clasping his stomach.  “Run away; tumbledown; finish.  ’Nother boy runaway; finish. just now plenty dead everywhere.  Some fella sing out all a same bullocky.”  Possibly this may be greeted as another version of the familiar story of poisoned flour or damper.  It is mentioned here as an instance from the bad old days when both blacks and whites were offhand in their relations with each other.  Such episodes are of the past.  The present is the age of official protection, and perhaps just a trifle too much interference and meddlesomeness.

Two blacks of the district confessed upon their trial that they had killed their master for so slight an offence as refusal to give them part of his own dinner of meat.  On the other hand, an instance of the callousness of the white man may be cited.  In a fit of the sulks one of the boys of the camp threw down some blankets he was carrying, and made off into the scrub.  It was considered necessary to impress the others, and unhappy chance gave the opportunity.  A strange and perfectly innocent boy appeared on the opposite bank of the creek.  The “boss” was a noted shot, and as the boy sauntered along he deliberately fired at him.  The body fell into the water and drifted down stream.  One of the boys for whose discipline the wanton murder was committed related the incident to me.

CHAPTER II

GEORGE:  A MIXED CHARACTER

George, who considered himself as accomplished and as cultivated as a white man, was assisting his master in the building of a dinghy.  Contemplating the work of his unaccustomed hands in a rueful frame of mind, the boss recited, “Thou fatal and perfidious barque, built in eclipse and rigged with curses dark!” “Ah,” said he, “you bin hear that before, George?” “No,” replied the boy; “I no bin hear ’em.  What that?  Irish talk?”

A few days after, George peered into one of the rooms of the house, the walls of which were decorated with prints, among them some studies of the nude.  He sniggered.  “What you laugh at, George?” “Me laugh along that picture—­naked.  That French woman, I think, Boss!” He was evidently of opinion that all true and patriotic Irishmen talk in verse, and in throaty tones, and that the customary habit of French ladies is “the altogether.”

Proud of his personal appearance, George shaved regularly once a week, borrowing a mirror to assist in the operation.  He was wont to apply the lather from pungent kerosene soap with a discarded tooth-brush which he had picked up.  Long use had thinned the bristles woefully, but the brush was used faithfully and with grave deliberation.  One morning he came and said—­“Boss, you got any more brush belonga shaving?  This fella close up lose ’em whisker altogether.”