One day in passing Philip’s school I peeped in at the flap of the tent.  He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster.  He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me.  He smiled and blushed, and came outside.  He said he was getting along capitally, and did not want to try digging any more.  He had obtained a small treatise called “The Twelve Virtues of a Good Master,” and he was studying it daily in order to qualify himself for his new calling.  He had undertaken to demonstrate one of Euclid’s propositions every night by way of exercising his reasoning faculties.  He was also making new acquaintances amongst men who were not diggers—­doctors, storekeepers, and the useful blacksmiths who pointed our picks with steel.  He had also two or three friends at the Governmnt camp, and I felt inclined to look upon him as a traitor to the diggers’ cause but although he had been a member of the party of Young Irelanders, he was the most innocent traitor and the poorest conspirator I ever heard of.  He could keep nothing from me.  If he had been a member of some secret society, he would have burst up the secret, or the secret would have burst him.

He had some friends among the diggers.  The big gum tree in front of the church tent soon became a kind of trysting place on Sundays, at which men could meet with old acquaintances and shipmates, and convicts could find old pals.  Amongst the crowd one Sunday were five men belonging to a party of six from Nyalong; the sixth man was at home guarding the tent.  Four of the six were Irish Catholics, and they came regularly to Mass every Sunday; the other two were Englishmen, both convicts, of no particular religion, but they had married Catholic immigrants, and sometimes went to church, but more out of pastime than piety.  One of these men, known as John Barton—­ he had another name in the indents—­stood under the gum tree, but not praying; I don’t think he ever thought of praying except the need of it was extreme.  He was of medium height, had a broad face, snub nose, stood erect like a soldier, and was strongly built.  His small ferrety eyes were glancing quickly among the faces around him until they were arrested by another pair of eyes at a short distance.  The owner of the second pair of eyes nudged two other men standing by, and then three pairs of eyes were fixed on Barton.  He was not a coward, but something in the expression of the three men cowed him completely.  He turned his head and lowered it, and began to push his way among the crowd to hide himself.  After Mass, Philip found him in his tent, and suspecting that he was a thief put his hand on a medium-sized Colt’s revolver, which he had exchanged for his duelling pistols, and said: 

“Well, my friend, and what are you doing here?”

“For God’s sake speak low,” whispered Barton.  “I came in here to hide.  There are three men outside who want to kill me.”