le of the articles purchased,
with the bold signature of Mr. Brown as a witness of the transaction,
we returned to our tent, and thought that our labors for the day were
over. In this, we were unhappily disappointed, for, to our extreme
amusement, a dozen or twenty persons were seated in the vicinity of our
temporary home, and a more wretched, woe-begone set I never saw in my
life.

"Hullo! what is the meaning of this?" I asked in surprise, as I surveyed
the crowd.

"We've come to be doctored by you," said an Irishman, exposing his hand,
wrapped in a dirty bandage.

"But there is some mistake here. You have applied to the wrong man," I
replied.

"No mistake, yer honor," answered a sturdy, good-looking, bronzed
fellow, with a military air and a military salute; "we've heard of yer
honors, and we know that ye can do us good without wringing the last
shilling from us, like those blood-sucking sawbones."

"They take us for physicians," muttered Fred, in astonishment.

"You are mistaken," replied Mr. Brown; "they are poor devils, who cannot
afford to employ a surgeon, so come to you to get their wounds dressed.
If you have any knowledge of cuts and bruises, assist them, and you will
be no loser by it."

The advice was good, but the idea of our prescribing and dressing all
the wounds of the poor of Ballarat was something that we had not
bargained for.

"You see, your honor, I got an ugly cut on my hand with a shovel, a few
days since, and, somehow, I don't think that it's doing very well," the
military man said, exposing his right hand, which looked in a horrible
condition.

"You should ask the advice of a physician," I said, after a brief
inspection of the poor fellow's injury; "inflammation has set in, and
you will have trouble, unless the cut is attended to."

"I know that, yer honor; but it's little the doctors around here care
for me, unless I visit 'em with a gold piece in my hand. I've paid six
pound already, and I think I'm getting worse very fast."

I could not help pitying the poor fellow, he was such a sample of manly
strength, and bore himself like a true soldier. He had been discharged
from the British army, at the expiration of his time, and was in hopes
of making money enough to go home and live in peace with his parents.

All this I learned after a few minutes' conversation; and when I saw
that he regarded us as superior in medical intelligence to the few
practising surgeons at Ballarat, and al