e 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."

"Three men who want to kill you, eh? Do you expect me to believe
that anybody among the crowd there would murder you in broad
daylight? My impression is, my friend, that you are a sneaking
thief, and that you came here to look for gold. I'll send a man to
the police to come and fetch you, and if you stir a step I'll shoot
you."

"For goodness' sake, mate, keep quiet. I am not a burglar, not now at
any rate. I'll tell you the truth. I was a Government flagellator,
a flogger, you know, on the Sydney side, and I flogged those three
men. Couldn't help it, it was my business to do it. I know they are
looking for me, and they will follow me and take the first chance to
murder me. They are most desperate characters. One of them was
insubordinate when he was assigned servant to a squatter, and the
squatter, who was on horseback, gave him a cut with his stockwhip.
Then this man jumped at his master, pulled him off his horse, dragged
him to the wood-heap, held his head on the block, seized the axe, and
was just going to chop his master's head off, when another man
stopped him. That is what I had to flog him for, and then he was
sent back to Sydney. So you can just think what a man like that
would do. When my time was up I went as a trooper to the Nyalong
district under Captain Foster, the Commissioner, and after a while I
settled down and married an immigrant woman from Tipperary, a
Catholic. That's the way I happened to be here at Mass with my
mates, who are Catholics; but I'll never do it again; it's as much as
my life is worth. I daresay there are lots of men about Bendigo w