he
ex-inspector, with a laugh.

"More--you refused to accept of a reward that I offered for the recovery
of the money."

"I must have been dreaming. I am glad to think that there is one
circumstance in my life that I can refer to and not blush," cried my
friend, jocosely.

"Bah!" cried the farmer, who didn't believe that Mr. Brown was speaking
what he felt. "You gave me good advice, and from it I trace all my
property."

"I am glad to think that I have given one person good advice in my
lifetime. I wish that I had taken some of it myself."

"I followed your directions and bought stock with my hundred pounds, and
now look around and see my flocks. I count my cattle by the thousands,"
continued Mr. Wright, pointing to his immense pens.

"I remember you," my friend said, "and knew you the instant you spoke,
but I preferred to let you recall reminiscences of by-gone days, to see
if there is any gratitude in the world."

"Gratitude?" echoed Mr. Wright; "darn it, man, when you are tired of
stopping with me I'll give you a hundred head of cattle."

"Don't do it, for mercy's sake. I prefer that you should give us
something to eat now. Show your liberality that way, for we are
famishing."

"Eat, man! you shall have the best that I can get. Here, Mike, Pat,
Peter, where am you all? Take charge of the gentlemen's horses, and give
them a feed of grain and a thorough rubbing down. Put supper on the
table instantly, and brew us a bowl of punch that will make us sing like
nightingales, and sleep like honest men. This way, gentlemen, there is
my house--rough and uncouth, but better than the shelter of a tree
during a rainy night. You are welcome to my hospitality."

CHAPTER LXXV.

SUPPER.--RETURN OF MR. WRIGHT'S SCOUTS.

The room into which Mr. Wright conducted us was on the ground floor, and
was about thirty feet deep and fifteen feet wide. Around the walls were
hung skins of kangaroos, stuffed parrots, and other birds of gaudy
plumage, while confined in brackets were old muskets in sufficient
quantities to frighten all the natives of Australia, but their
appearance, imposing as they were, would not have sufficiently impressed
a bushranger of nerve into the belief that they were dangerous, even if
loaded with their proper quantum of powder and lead.

We had hardly crossed the threshold of the building when a shrill voice
greeted us with,--

"D----n bushrangers--d----n bushrangers--caught at last!--ha, ha!--I