On obtaining my ticket I proceeded
to Sydney, as the most likely place to fall in with some employment. On
this subject, however, I felt much at a loss; for not having been bred
to any mechanical trade, I could do nothing in that way. Farming was the
only business of which I knew anything; and in this, my father having
been an excellent farmer, I was pretty well skilled. My hope, therefore,
was, that I would find some situation as a farm overseer, and thought
Sydney, although a town, the likeliest place to fall in with or hear of
an employer. On arriving in Sydney, I proceeded to the house of a
countryman of the name of Lawson, who kept a tavern, and to whom I
brought a letter of introduction from a relative of his own who had been
banished for sedition, and who was one of my fellow-labourers in the
last place where I had served. On reading the letter, Lawson, who was a
kind-hearted man, exclaimed--
"Puir Jamie, puir fallow; and hoo is he standin't oot?"
I assured him that he was bearing his fate manfully, but that he had
been in the service of a remorseless master.
"Ay, I ken him," said Lawson. "A man that's no gude to his ain canna be
gude to ithers."
"You must speak of him now, however, in the past tense," said I.
"Mr.----- is dead."
"Dead!" exclaimed Lawson, with much surprise.
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