Dan gave me his money to take care of while he and Bez were living on rum from the dray, and I gave out as little cash as possible in order to promote peace and sobriety.  One night Dan set fire to my tent in order to rouse his banker.  I dragged Bez outside the tent and extinguished the fire.  There was bloodshed afterwards—­from Dan’s nose—­and his account was closed.  After a while some policemen in plain clothes came along and examined the dray.  They found fourteen kegs of rum in it, which they seized, together with four horses and the dray.

I worked for seven months in various parts of the Ovens district until I had acquired the value in gold of my vanished twenty-dollar pieces; that was all my luck.  During this time some of us paid the L2 license fee for three months.  We were not hunted by the military.  Four or five troopers and officials rode slowly about the diggings and the cry of “Joey” was never raised, while a single unarmed constable on foot went amongst the claims to inspect licenses.  He stayed with us awhile, talking about digging matters.  He said the police were not allowed to carry carbines now, because a digger had been accidentally shot.  He was a very civil fellow, and his price, if I remember rightly was half-a-crown.  Yet the digger hunting was continued at Ballarat until it ended in the massacre of December 3rd 1854.

At that time I was at Colac, and while Dr. Ignatius was absent, I had the charge of his household, which consisted of one old convict known as “Specs,” who acted in the capacity of generally useless, received orders most respectfully, but forgot them as much as possible.  He was a man of education who had gone astray in London, and had fallen on evil days in Queensland and Sydney.  When alone in the kitchen he consoled himself with curses.  I could hear his voice from the other side of the slabs.  He cursed me, he cursed the Doctor, he cursed the horses, the cat, the dog, and the whole world and everything in it.  It was impossible to feel anything but pity for the man, for his life was ruined, and he had ruined it himself.  I had also under my care a vegetable garden, a paddock of Cape barley, two horses, some guinea fowls, and a potato patch.  One night the potatoes had been bandicooted.  To all the early settlers in the bush the bandicoot is well known.  It is a marsupial quadruped which lives on bulbs, and ravages potato patches.  It is about eighteen inches in length from the origin of its tail to the point of its nose.  It has the habits of a pickpocket.  It inserts its delicate fore paws under the stalks of the potato, and pulls out the tubers.  That morning I had endeavoured to dig some potatoes; the stalks were there, but the potatoes were gone.  I stopped to think, and examined the ground.  I soon discovered tracks of the bandicoot, but they had taken the shape of a small human foot.  We had no small human feet about our premises, but at the other side of the fence there was a bark hut full of them.  I turned toward the hut suspiciously, and saw the bandicoot sitting on a top-rail, watching me, and dangling her feet to and fro.  She wore towzled red hair, a short print frock, and a look of defiance.  I went nearer to inspect her bandicoot feet.  Then she openly defied me, and said: