to the ball-room, they took a little
refreshment, and danced to the same old tunes, until they were tired.

Mother Murden's first ball was a grand success for all but Neddy.

"No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet,
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."

But morn reveals unsuspected truths, and wrinkled invisible in the
light of tallow candles. The first rays of the rising sun fell on
Neddy's ghastly face, and the "conditional pardon" man said, "Why,
he's dead and cold."

Mother Murden came to the door with a tumbler in her hand, containing
a morning nip for Neddy, "to kill the worm," as the Latins say; but
the worm was dead already. The merry-makers stood around; the men
looked serious and the ladies shivered. They said the air felt
chilly, so they bade one another good morning and hurried home.

It is hard to say why one sinner is taken and the other left.
Joshua's time did not arrive until many years afterwards, when we had
acquitted him at the General Sessions; but that is another story.

HOW GOVERNMENT CAME TO GIPPSLAND.

At this time there was no visible government in Gippsland. The
authorities in Sydney and Melbourne must have heard of the existence
of the country and of its settlement, but they were content for a
time with the receipt of the money paid into the Treasury for
depasturing licenses and for assessments on stock.

In 1840 the Land Fund received in New South Wales amounted to 316,000
pounds; in 1841 it was only 90,000 pounds; and in 1842 Sir George
Gipps, in his address to the Council severely reprimanded the
colonists for the reckless spirit of speculation and overtrading in
which they had indulged during the two preceding years. This general
reprimand had a more particular application to Mr. Benjamin Boyd, the
champion boomer of those days.

Labourers out of employment were numerous, and contractors were
informed by 'Gazette' notice that the services of one hundred
prisoners were available for purposes of public utility, such as
making roads, dams, breakwaters, harbours, bridges, watchhouses, and
police buildings. Assignees of convicts were warned that if they
wished to return them to the custody of the Government, they must pay
the expense of their conveyance to Sydney, otherwise all their
servants would be withdrawn, and they would become ineligible as
assignees of prisoners in future.

Between the first of July, 1840, and the first of November, 1841,
26,556