one he would speedily return, I sat down
to await him; but he came not. An entire hour elapsed, and still he did
not make his appearance. Beginning now to suspect that some accident had
happened him, I hurried home to inquire if they had seen or heard
anything of him there. They had not. His family became much alarmed for
his safety--a feeling in which my conscience forbids me to say that I
participated.

Two of my fellow-servants now accompanied me back to the wood, which it
was proposed we should search. This, so soon as we had reached the spot
where my master had appointed to meet me, and where, as already
mentioned, he had evidently been, we began to do, whooping and hallooing
at the same time to attract his attention should he be anywhere within
hearing.

For a long while our searching and shouting were vain. At length one of
my companions, who had entered a tangled patch of underwood which we had
not before thought of looking, suddenly uttered a cry of horror. We ran
up to him, and found him gazing on the dead body of our master, who lay
on his face, transfixed by a native spear, which still stood upright in
his back. It was one of those spears which the aborigines of New South
Wales use, on occasion, as missiles, and which they throw with an
astonishing force and precision.

Such, then, was the end of this cruel man; and that it exceeded his
deserts can hardly be maintained.

Luckily for me, my period of service with my late master was at this
time about out. A few days more, and I became entitled to my ticket of
leave. For this indulgence I applied when the time came, and it was
immediately granted me for one year. On obtaining my ticket I proceeded
to Sydney, as the most likely place to fall in with some employment. On
this subject, however, I felt much at a loss; for not having been bred
to any mechanical trade, I could do nothing in that way. Farming was the
only business of which I knew anything; and in this, my father having
been an excellent farmer, I was pretty well skilled. My hope, therefore,
was, that I would find some situation as a farm overseer, and thought
Sydney, although a town, the likeliest place to fall in with or hear of
an employer. On arriving in Sydney, I proceeded to the house of a
countryman of the name of Lawson, who kept a tavern, and to whom I
brought a letter of introduction from a relative of his own who had been
banished for sedition, and who was one of my fellow-labourers in t