e town.
Strangers kept pouring in from everywhere round about, and all the
hotels were crammed full. Just as I was wondering whether Starlight was
going to turn up till next day I saw a four-in-hand drag rattle down
the street to the principal inn, and a crowd gather round it as three
gentlemen got out and went into the inn.

'You'll see after all our luggage, will you, ostler?' says one of them
to the groom, 'and whatever you do don't forget my umbwella!'

Some of the diggers laughed.

'Know those coves?' I said to a man that stopped at the same house as I
did.

'Don't you know? Them's the two Mr. Dawsons, of Wideview, great sporting
men, natives, and ever so rich. They've some horses to run to-morrow.
That's a new chum from England that's come up with 'em.'

I hardly knew him at first. His own mother wouldn't, I believe. He'd
altered himself that wonderful as I could hardly even now think it was
Starlight; and yet he wasn't a bit like the young Englishman he gammoned
to be last year, or the Hon. Frank Haughton either. He had an eyeglass
this time, and was a swell from top to toe. How and when he'd picked
up with the Mr. Dawsons I couldn't tell; but he'd got a knack of making
people like him--especially when they didn't know him. Not that it was
worse when they did. It wasn't for that. He was always the same. The
whitest man I ever knew, or ever shall--that I say and stick to--but of
course people can't be expected to associate with men that have 'done
time'. Well, next day was the races. I never saw such a turn-out in the
colony before. Every digger on the field had dropped work for the day;
all the farmers, and squatters, and country people had come in for miles
round on all sides. The Commissioner and all the police were out in full
uniform, and from the first moment the hotels were opened in the morning
till breakfast time all the bars were full, and the streets crowded with
miners and strangers and people that seemed to have come from the ends
of the earth. When I saw the mob there was I didn't see so much to
be jerran about, as it was fifty to one in favour of any one that was
wanted, in the middle of such a muster of queer cattle as was going on
at Turon that day.

About eleven o'clock every one went out to the course. It wasn't more
than a mile from town. The first race wasn't to be run till twelve; but
long before that time the road was covered with horsemen, traps of every
kind and sort, every horse an