“While I and my fellow-colonists are thoroughly loyal to our Sovereign Lady, the Queen, we do not, and will not, respect her men servants, her maid servants, her oxen, or her asses.”

A Commission was coming to Ballarat to report on wrong doings there, and they were looking for witnesses.  On Friday, December 8th, the camp surgeon and Dr. Carr had a narrow escape from being shot.  While the former gentleman was entering the hospital he was fired at by one of the sentries.  The ball passed close to the shoulder of Dr. Carr, who was reading inside, went through the lid of the open medicine chest, and some splinters struck him on the side.  There were in the hospital at that time seven diggers seriously wounded and six soldiers, including the drummer boy.  Troubles were coming in crowds, and the bullet, the splinters, and the Commission put the little doctor to flight.  He left the seven diggers, the five soldiers, and the drummer boy in the hospital, and made straight for Colac.  Fear dogged his footsteps wherever he went, and the mere sight of him had sent the impudent thief Lilias to hide behind the tussocks.

I always hate a man who won’t talk to me and tell me things, and the doctor was so silent and unsociable, that, by way of revenge, I left him to the care and curses of old “Specs.”

After four days he departed, and he appeared again at Ballarat on January 15th, giving evidence at an inquest on one Hardy, killed by a gunshot wound.  In the meantime a total change had taken place among the occupants of the Government camp.  Commissioner Rede had retired, Dr. Williams, the coroner, and the district surgeons had received notice to quit in twenty-four hours, and they left behind them twenty-four patients in and around the camp hospital.

Dr. Carr left the colony, and the next report about him was from Manchester, where he made a wild and incoherent speech to the crowd at the Exchange.  His last public appearance was in a police-court on a charge of lunacy.  He was taken away by his friends, and what became of him afterwards is not recorded.

Doctors, when there is a dearth of patients, sometimes take to war, and thus succeed in creating a “practice.”  Occasionally they meet with disaster, of which we can easily call to mind instances, both ancient and modern.

III.

Diggers do not often turn their eyes heavenwards; their treasure does not lie in that direction.  But one night I saw Bez star-gazing.

“Do you know the names of any of the stars in this part of the roof?” I asked.

“I can’t make out many of the Manchester stars,” he replied.  “I knew a few when I was a boy, but there was a good deal of fog and smoke, and latterly I have not looked up that way much; but I can spot a few of them yet, I think.”

Bez was a rather prosy poet, and his eye was not in a fine frenzy rolling.