“You are sentenced to imprisonment for three months in Melbourne gaol,” said the magistrate; “and mind you don’t come here again.”

“I ain’t done nothing, your worship,” replied the prisoner; “and I don’t want nothing.”

“Take him away, constable.”

Seven years afterwards, as I was riding home about sundown through Tarraville, I observed a solitary swagman sitting before a fire, among the ruins of an old public house, like Marius meditating among the ruins of Carthage.  There was a crumbling chimney built of bricks not worth carting away—­the early bricks in South Gippsland were very bad, and the mortar had no visible lime in it—­the ground was strewn with brick-bats, bottles, sardine tins, hoop iron, and other articles, the usual refuse of a bush shanty.  It had been, in the early times, a place reeking with crime and debauchery.  Men had gone out of it mad with drinking the poisonous liquor, had stumbled down the steep bank, and had ended their lives and crimes in the black Tarra river below.  Here the rising generation had taken their first lessons in vice from the old hands who made the house their favourite resort.  Here was planned the murder of Jimmy the Snob by Prettyboy and his mates, whose hut was near the end of the bridge across the river, and for which murder Prettyboy was hanged in Melbourne.

In the dusk I mistook the swagman for a stray aboriginal who had survived the destruction of his tribe, but on approaching nearer, I found that he was, or at least once had been, a white man.  He had gathered a few sticks, which he was breaking and putting on the fire.  I did not recognise him, did not think I had ever seen him before, and I rode away.

During the next twenty-four hours he had advanced about half-a-mile on his journey, and in the evening was making his fire in the Church paddock, near a small water-hole opposite my house.  I could see him from the verandah, and I sent Jim to offer him shelter in an outbuilding.  Jim was one of the two boys who had represented the public in the jury box at the Palmerston court seven years before.  He came back, and said the man declined the offer of shelter; never slept under a roof winter or summer, if he could help it; had lived in the open air for twelve years, and never stayed a night in any building, except for three months, when he was in Melbourne gaol.  He had been arrested by a constable near Palmerston seven years before, although he had done nothing, and a fool of a beak, with a long grey beard, had given him three months, while two puppies of boys were sitting in the jury box laughing at him.

He also gave some paternal advice to the youth, which, like a great deal of other paternal advice, was rejected as of no value.

“Never you go to Melbourne, young man,” he said, “and if you do, never stop in any boarding-house, or public.  They are full of vermin, brought in by bad characters, mostly Government officers and bank clerks, who have been in Pentridge.  Don’t you never go near ’em.”