."

"May I ask what has caused such a change in your sentiments?" I
inquired, half suspecting that he was setting a trap for me.

"You know as well as I do," my companion answered, with a wink of his
snaky eye.

I protested with some earnestness that I was ignorant on the subject,
and while the commissioner turned his back to search amidst some papers
which his desk contained, I slyly poured the contents of my wine glass
through a crack of the floor, and watered the soil of Ballarat with a
new species of liquor, such as was never known before.

"You see I have heard from Melbourne lately, and am satisfied how the
land lays, and I am not going to weaken the cause of government by
suspecting two of its greatest defenders." And while the plotting
officer unfolded a letter his eye fell upon my empty glass, and, in
defiance of my most strenuous denials, insisted that I should "not be
afraid of the liquor, because there was plenty more where that came
from," (which the Lord forbid!) and once more I had the inexpressible
misery of sitting with a wine glass full of the strange compound under
my nostrils, which I dared not throw away, fearful that he would see me,
and which I dreaded to drink.

"I got a letter from Mr. Murden, who is an officer of some rank in the
police force at Melbourne, a day or two since, and he tells me that I
must be very careful of you gentlemen, as the governor esteems you
highly, and that his excellency would be apt to resent an act of
injustice done you while stopping at the mines."

I strongly suspected that the lieutenant had drawn on his imagination in
that letter, for he thoroughly understood the character of the
commissioner, and disliked him so much that while at Ballarat he had not
even called upon him.

"When I obtain a position at Melbourne that I consider suitable for a
fair display of my talents, I shall know how to be grateful for favors,"
the commissioner insinuated, with a bland smile that suggested whole
volumes of bribery.

The subject was painful to me, and to avoid making promises which I
could not perform, I turned the conversation to the theme which I had
uppermost in my mind,--the discovery of Mr. Critchet's deposit at the
government office. The commissioner was slightly astonished, and became
more and more convinced that Fred and myself were innocent of any
complicity in the plot.

"In fact," Mr. Sherwin said, "so convinced am I that Follet and an
unknown companion at