“Don’t give yourselves any uneasiness on that silly charge,” the commissioner said, with a smile that was intended to be engaging, but I shuddered at it, it was so cold and fiendish.  “I am perfectly satisfied that Follet lied to me, and any time you wish to proceed against him for perjury I will grant a warrant, and will also release you and your friend from bail.”

“May I ask what has caused such a change in your sentiments?” I inquired, half suspecting that he was setting a trap for me.

“You know as well as I do,” my companion answered, with a wink of his snaky eye.

I protested with some earnestness that I was ignorant on the subject, and while the commissioner turned his back to search amidst some papers which his desk contained, I slyly poured the contents of my wine glass through a crack of the floor, and watered the soil of Ballarat with a new species of liquor, such as was never known before.

“You see I have heard from Melbourne lately, and am satisfied how the land lays, and I am not going to weaken the cause of government by suspecting two of its greatest defenders.”  And while the plotting officer unfolded a letter his eye fell upon my empty glass, and, in defiance of my most strenuous denials, insisted that I should “not be afraid of the liquor, because there was plenty more where that came from,” (which the Lord forbid!) and once more I had the inexpressible misery of sitting with a wine glass full of the strange compound under my nostrils, which I dared not throw away, fearful that he would see me, and which I dreaded to drink.

“I got a letter from Mr. Murden, who is an officer of some rank in the police force at Melbourne, a day or two since, and he tells me that I must be very careful of you gentlemen, as the governor esteems you highly, and that his excellency would be apt to resent an act of injustice done you while stopping at the mines.”

I strongly suspected that the lieutenant had drawn on his imagination in that letter, for he thoroughly understood the character of the commissioner, and disliked him so much that while at Ballarat he had not even called upon him.

“When I obtain a position at Melbourne that I consider suitable for a fair display of my talents, I shall know how to be grateful for favors,” the commissioner insinuated, with a bland smile that suggested whole volumes of bribery.

The subject was painful to me, and to avoid making promises which I could not perform, I turned the conversation to the theme which I had uppermost in my mind,—­the discovery of Mr. Critchet’s deposit at the government office.  The commissioner was slightly astonished, and became more and more convinced that Fred and myself were innocent of any complicity in the plot.

“In fact,” Mr. Sherwin said, “so convinced am I that Follet and an unknown companion attempted the murder, that I shall this day order a full discharge from our court records, and of course you will no longer be under bail.  Nay, I don’t desire thanks,” the commissioner said, hastily, as I attempted to explain how grateful we should feel.  “There are other ways besides words in which a man can certify his good will.”