It is difficult for the inhabitants of settled districts in Australia, where the villages, surrounded by farms or grazing estates, are now as well ordered as in rural England, to realise the nature of outrages which, in earlier colonial days, not infrequently affrighted these sylvan shades. It is well, however, occasionally to recall the sterner conditions under which our pioneers lived. The half-explored wilds saw strange things, when émeutes with murder and robbery thrown in compelled decisive action. In the year 1836 immense areas in the interior, described officially as \'Waste Lands of the Crown,\' were occupied by graziers under pastoral licenses. Caution was exercised in the granting of these desirable privileges. It was required by the Government of the day that only persons of approved good character should receive them. Being merely permissive, they were liable to be withdrawn from the holders for immoral or dishonest conduct. When it is considered that the men employed in guarding the flocks and herds in these limitless solitudes were, in the great majority of cases, prisoners of the Crown, or \'ticket-of-leave\' men, whose partially-expired sentences entitled them to quasi-freedom, it is not surprising that horse-and cattle-stealing, highway robbery, ill-treatment of aboriginals, and even darker crimes were rife.

The labourers of the day were composed of three classes, officially described as free, bond, and \'free by servitude.\' This last designation, obscure only to the newly-arrived colonist, meant that the individual thus privileged had served his full term of imprisonment, or such proportion of it as entitled him to freedom under certain restrictions. He was 235permitted to come and go, to work for any master who chose to employ him (and most valuable servants many of them were), to accept the wages of the period, and generally to comport himself as a \'free man.\' But he was restricted to a specified district, compelled at fixed periods to report himself to the police authorities, and he went in fear lest at any time through misconduct or evil report his \'ticket-of-leave\' might be withdrawn, in which case he was sent back to penal servitude. The alternative was terrible. The man who the week before had been riding a mettled stock-horse amid the plains and forests of the interior, or peacefully following his flocks, with food, lodging, and social privileges, found himself virtually a slave in a chain-gang, dragging his heavy fetters to and fro in hard, distasteful labour. This deposition from partial comfort and social equality, though possibly caused by his own misconduct, occasionally resulted from the report of a vindictive overseer, or betrayal by a comrade. It may be imagined, therefore, what vows of vengeance were registered by the sullen convict, what bloody expiation was often exacted.

Taking into consideration the ludicrous disproportion of the police furnished by the Government of the day to the area \'protected\'—say a couple of troopers for a thinly-populated district about the size of Scotland—it seems truly astonishing that malefactors should have been brought to justice at all. Even more so that armed and desperate felons should have been followed up and arrested within comparatively short distances of the scene of their misdeeds.

It says much for the alertness and discipline of the mounted police force of the day that in by far the greater number of these outrages the criminals were tracked and secured; more, indeed, for the active co-operation and public spirit of the country gentlemen of the land, who were invariably ready to render aid in carrying out the law at the risk of their lives, and, occasionally, to the manifest injury of their property.

Circumstances have placed in my hands the record of a murder which, in careful premeditation, as well as in the satanic malignity with which the details were carried out, seems pre-eminent amid the dark chronicles of guilt.

More than sixty years ago Mr. Thursby, a well-known 236magistrate and proprietor, residing upon his station, which was distant two hundred and fifty miles from Sydney, was awakened before daylight, when a note to this effect from the constable in charge at the nearest police-station was delivered to him:—

\'Last night the lock-up was entered by armed men, and two prisoners removed. One man knocked at the door, stating that he was a constable with a prisoner in charge. I opened it; when two men rushed in, one of whom, presenting a pistol at me, ordered me into a corner, and covered my head with a blanket. I heard the door unlocked. When I freed myself the cell was empty.\'

Upon receipt of this information, Mr. Thursby despatched a report to the Officer in charge of Police at Murphy\'s Plains, distant eighty-five miles. Taking with him the manager of a neighbouring station, and the special constable quartered there (a custom of the day), Mr. Thursby started in pursuit of the outlaws. Their tracks were not hard to follow in the dew of early morn, but near Major Hewitt\'s station, seven miles distant, they became indistinct. After losing much time the station was reached, and here a black boy was fortunately procured. With his aid the trail was regained, and followed over rough, mountainous country. Mr. Jones, the manager who had accompanied the party, informed Mr. Thursby that five of the convict servants assigned to the owner had run away previously—\'taken to the bush.\' They had committed depredations, and had been unsuccessfully followed by the mounted police, whose horses, after coming more than eighty miles, were fagged. However, two of them surrendered themselves next day. One man (Driscoll) was suspected of having spoken incautiously of the leader\'s doings (a man named Gore), who had vowed vengeance accordingly. Driscoll had been placed in the lock-up, along with Woods, a suspicious character, who said he was a native of Windsor, New South Wales. Gore and the other men were still at large.

After leading the party for some distance through the ranges, the black boy halted, and pointing to a thin thread of smoke, barely perceptible, said, \'There \'moke!\' When they came to the fire from which it proceeded, what a spectacle presented itself! On the smouldering embers was a human body, bound and partially roasted. It lay on its back, with 237legs and arms drawn up. The middle portion of the body was burned to a cinder, leaving the upper and lower extremities perfect. Mr. Thursby recognised the features of the man called Woods, who had been imprisoned the day before. The black boy was so horrified that he became useless as a tracker, and as the day was far advanced, Mr. Thursby had the body removed to Engleroi, a station not more than a mile distant.

Here fresh information was furnished. The tragedy deepened. Before daylight on the previous morning, Driscoll had knocked at the door of the shepherd\'s hut, breathless and half insane with terror, imploring them for the love of God to admit him as \'he was a murdered man.\' Nothing more could be elicited from the shepherds, th............