You will be
sent to gaol for three months."
I stood up and reminded the justice respectfully that there was as
yet no evidence against the prisoner, so, as a matter of form, he
condescended to hear the constable, who went into the witness-box and
proved his case to the hilt. He had found the man at nightfall
sitting under the shelter of some tea-tree sticks before a fire;
asked him what he was doing there; said he was camping out; had come
from Melbourne looking for work; was a blacksmith; took him in charge
as a vagrant, and locked him up; all his property was the clothes he
wore, an old blanket, a tin billy, a clasp knife, a few crusts of
bread, and old pipe, and half a fig of tobacco; could find no money
about him.
That last fact settled the matter. A man travelling about the bush
without money is a deep-dyed criminal. I had done it myself, and so
was able to measure the extent of such wickedness. I never felt
really virtuous unless I had some money in my pocket.
"You are sentenced to imprisonment for three months in Melbourne
gaol," said the magistrate; "and mind you don't come here again."
"I ain't done nothing, your worship," replied the prisoner; "and I
don't want nothing."
"Take him away, constable."
Seven years afterwards, as I was riding home about sundown through
Tarraville, I observed a solitary swagman sitting before a fire,
among the ruins of an old public house, like Marius meditating among
the ruins of Carthage.
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