A HAPPY CONVICT.

“Thrice did I receive forty stripes, save one.”

It was court day at Palmerston, and there was an unusual amount of business that morning.  A constable brought in a prisoner, and charged him with being a vagrant—­having no lawful visible means of support.  I entered the charge in the cause list, “Police v.  John Smithers, vagrancy,” and then looked at the vagrant.  He was growing aged, was dressed in old clothes, faded, dirty, and ill-fitting; he had not been measured for them.  His face was very dark, and his hair and beard were long and rough, showing that he had not been in gaol lately.  His eyes wandered about the court in a helpless and vacant manner.  Two boys about eight or nine years old entered the court, and, with colonial presumption, sat in the jury box.  There were no other spectators, so I left them there to represent the public.  They stared at the prisoner, whispered to each other, and smiled.  The prisoner could not see anything to laugh at, and frowned at them.  Then the magistrate came in, rubbing one of his hands over the other, glanced at the prisoner as he passed, and withered him with a look of virtuous severity.  He was our Black Wednesday magistrate, and was death on criminals.  When he had taken his seat on the bench, I opened the court, and called the first and only case.  It was not often we had a man to sit on, and we sat heavily on this one.  I put on my sternest look, and said “John Smithers”—­here the prisoner instantly put one hand to his forehead and stood at “attention”—­ “you are charged by the police with vagrancy, having no lawful visible means of support.  What have you to say to that charge?”

“I am a blacksmith looking for work,” said the prisoner; “I ain’t done nothing, your worship, and I don’t want nothing.”

“But you should do something,” replied the magistrate; “we don’t want idle vagabonds like you wandering about the country.  You will be sent to gaol for three months.”

I stood up and reminded the justice respectfully that there was as yet no evidence against the prisoner, so, as a matter of form, he condescended to hear the constable, who went into the witness-box and proved his case to the hilt.  He had found the man at nightfall sitting under the shelter of some tea-tree sticks before a fire; asked him what he was doing there; said he was camping out; had come from Melbourne looking for work; was a blacksmith; took him in charge as a vagrant, and locked him up; all his property was the clothes he wore, an old blanket, a tin billy, a clasp knife, a few crusts of bread, and old pipe, and half a fig of tobacco; could find no money about him.

That last fact settled the matter.  A man travelling about the bush without money is a deep-dyed criminal.  I had done it myself, and so was able to measure the extent of such wickedness.  I never felt really virtuous unless I had some money in my pocket.