prayer that the travellers might be kept under the shadow of the Almighty, as under a sheltering wing, the disappointed matron was rising to re-enter her habitation, when an eager cry from Letty arrested her steps; and turning once more to the spot towards which she had been so long and so vainly gazing, she saw dimly, through the evening mist, four horsemen advancing at a rapid pace into the more open plain. For a minute or two a thick clump of trees and scrub intercepted her vision; then the travellers re-appeared, and were more distinctly visible. Once more they were lost to sight, and once more they emerged, yet more distinctly.

"My husband and boy!" said Mrs. Wilson, with a sigh of strong relief, and with a tone and look of grateful acknowledgment adding, "Thank God, they have returned safely! But who are the strangers?"

The question was put to ears which were even then beyond the reach of her voice; for, on looking round for her companion, she saw, to her extreme amazement, that Letty had vanished from her side, and was hastening down the river bank, reaching which she sprang across the diminutive stream, pursued her course up the opposite bank, and then directed her hurrying steps towards the horsemen.

CHAPTER IX.

SYDNEY, A LONG WHILE AGO-ITS FIRST PRINTING-OFFICE-AN ADVERTISEMENT.

SEVE

EVERAL days previous to the evening of which we have spoken, a large vessel, but half a wreck, struggled into Sydney Cove, and cast anchor opposite the port.

Necessarily she was a convict ship; and in due time she

disgorged her freight of misery and recklessness, and was glad to get rid of it; and the freight was similarly glad to get rid of her. For though there had been many wretched voyages made before this time, there had scarcely, probably, been a more wretched one made than by this particular ship, at this particular time. She had encountered one terrific storm after another—a succession of storms from her first sailing, ten months beforewhich had disabled and dismasted her. She had been beaten out of her course; she had lost one-fourth of her crew, and one-half of her captive passengers, by scurvy and hard fare, and fatigue and jail-fever; she had witnessed mutiny and bloodshed, and violent deaths. But she had reached port at last, to the wonder and astonishment of all who knew what a rotten, battered, worn-out, leaky old hulk she was before ever she left the shores to which she would never return. She had reached her destination notwithstanding; and this was something to be thankful for.

Our business, however, is not with the half-wrecked convict ship, which was condemned to be broken up for firewood; nor with the convicts themselves, who were marched off to the Government barracks, some to die of diseases contracted on the voyage, and others to commence their years of servitude as soon as they recovered strength.

Yet we may say, in passing, that many changes-and all of them for the better-had taken place in the convict colony since the first rough experiments of the system had been tried. Some degree of order had been wrought out of chaos and confusion; incompetent governors and lawless tyrants had been removed and replaced by others, who had at least some touches of human feeling, and some appreciation of the duties and difficulties they had undertaken to fulfil and overcome. So encouraging had these new experiments been, that by slow and cautious degrees

the little influx of free emigration which had been commenced years ago, by one or two exceedingly bold or altogether desperate spirits, had gradually increased to a small but pretty constant stream, destined, as our readers know, to swell, in less than a half-century, to a mighty rushing torrent, while yet the broad land craving for a people would still be stretching out its hands, east, north and west, and crying (like the horse-leech's daughters, but with kinder intent), "Give, give." Meanwhile, some of the first convicts who had survived the fiery ordeal through which they had been made to pass, and had regained their freedom, had betaken themselves to the easiest course which remained open to them in the colony-that of honest industry.

Had these very men been turned loose upon society at home they would probably-almost certainly-have returned to crime; but where there are none to be robbed, robbers cannot well thrive; and where the alternative is between prosperous and enjoyable labour, and voluntary starvation, the laziest of mortals will generally work. So the scum and refuse and dregs of the people in the old country, for whom hanging was considered by some to be too good, settled down in the new, reclaiming the wilderness, cultivating the soil, raising and rearing flocks and herds; in a word, prospering exceedingly, till their foul origin was almost forgotten, or, at any rate, practically ignored, and they had learned to talk fluently of the rights of property, and the duty of those who held it to punish any who lawlessly infringed upon those rights.

By this time, too, the little settlement of squalid huts, with its convict camp and Government stores, had undergone a striking alteration. Apart from the convict establishments, a town of free and industrious inhabitants had begun to raise its head. Irregular streets of brick and wood buildings witnessed daily some sort of profitable trading; a printing-press had

ventured, beyond the intention and expectation of its first projectors, to issue its weekly sheet (under authority, too), which was dignified by the name of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, and it prospered-albeit the printer was an enlarged convict; and a church, substantially built of brick, well filled with Sunday worshippers, had superseded the barn-like edifice which had been out-grown by the rising settlement, but which, a dozen years before, had been an improvement upon the open-air services (when Divine service was held) of the first colonists.

Modern inhabitants of Sydney may indeed look with contempt and abhorrence upon the unfashionable and disreputable, and probably morally vile quarter of their city known as "The Rocks;" but they will not deny that there lay the germ of its present superior grandeur and prosperity.

Two days succeeding that on which he left his home in the bush, Mr. George Wilson, with his son, entered the office to which reference has just been made-that of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser-to make some inquiries respecting the chief object of his visit to the city. At that moment the printer was speaking to two sailors, or men who appeared by their dress to be such, who had only by a minute preceded the farmer. As soon as the printer saw and recognised Mr. Wilson, however, he rather unceremoniously bade his first customers wait a bit, while he transacted business with his well-known and more reputable-looking client-not that he added this latter part of the sentence aloud; but he meant it internally.

"No, no, friend Howe," said Mr. Wilson; "first come, first served, is a good rule all over the world. I can wait; and don't hurry for me."

Thus admonished, Mr. Howe turned again to his first customers, whose business seemed to consist in handing over an advertisement for the next week's Gazette; and while the printer was deliberately scanning the manuscript, Mr. Wilson took mental notes of the two men.

There was not much to note, perhaps; but what there was we may as well put down.

The men, then, who, as we have observed, were clad like common seamen, were of considerably different ages. The elder of the two was at least fifty years old, and looked older; the younger would not have been much over one or two and twenty. They were both good, honest-looking fellows; but both were pale and emaciated, and evidently weather-beaten. The latter appearance was doubtless of long standing; the former was probably the result of recent hardships and privations. The few words which passed between them and the printer were spoken in a low tone; but what little reached the ears of the undesigned listener betrayed, in his opinion, a greater degree of polish and education than might have been expected from their appearance.

Mr. Wilson had thus far pursued his observations, when an exclamation from the printer, directed to himself, effectually diverted his attention.

"Very singular this, Mr. Wilson," said Howe, passing over to that gentleman the strip of paper he had been reading, and which was written in a good bold hand. It read thus:

"Whereas, in or about the year -, a young person named Martha White, being then in the service of the Reverend Charles Haydon, landed, or is supposed to have landed, in this colony, and has not since been heard of by her friends in England; and whereas it has been ascertained that the said Reverend Charles Haydon has been long deceased——”