I have an agreeable surprise for you, to learn that last Saturday I had the felicity of being united in the bonds of matrimony to a charming young lady whom you know well, Miss Louisa Philipeau, who is now Mrs. George Aylwin, and my beloved wife. I am sure, my dear son, George, you will be delighted to—"

Under an impulse of rage, I tore the letter to shreds, and rushed out of the house, amid the glare of that fearful day. Sheets had been hung from the verandah. I tore one aside, and dashed through the garden, and out of the gate. The smoke of the bushfires had already begun to invade the city, rolling in upon it like cannon smoke. The air was hot as a blasting breath from a gas furnace. I remember wandering out to the ti-tree scrub, and then lost consciousness under a sun-stroke, for I had gone without my hat.

I came to myself by night, lying at the bole of a great red gum tree. The air was still oppressive, and the smoke as a fog. page 31 The calls of the laughing jackasses, from tree to tree, with their loud "Ha, ha!" and "Ho, ho!" as the witches of Walpurgis Night, had awoke me. I was helpless, and cried like a child praying for death. Until dawn I remained on the spot, and a Ranger picked me up, taking me to his little white cottage, which was then the only dwelling in the forest on Richmond Hill, now one mass of mansions, villas, and cottages.

My passage to England was forfeited, but I would not have gone. After a daze lasting for weeks, I gradually picked myself together, and decided to strike for the goldfields. As I bowled out of Melbourne, towards Broadmeadows, on the box seat of one of Cobb's red coaches, swinging on its thick leather springs, or straps, and drawn by six gallopping horses, I felt I was beginning life all afresh. My backward glance at Melbourne is still imprinted vividly on my mental vision. The young Queen City was lovely in the blue haze, but 1 remember I thought it looked like a cemetery, and I turned with relief to the expanse of green fields and the flocculent sky.

I went to Ballarat first, and when the myriad of tents broke on our view, from the coach, with the busiest scene and human beehive imaginable, a clergyman, who was a passenger by the coach, said, "Eighteen months ago I was riding over this ground then wild forest. A shepherd said to me, "The stillness here, sir is so awful that I feel I cannot bear it!'"

I got a billet at the Magpie Flat, then a marvellous arena of mushroom activity, with a thick township, every trace and vestige of which has disappeared! Yes, the Magpie Rush might have been a dream, for all that remained. My experiences, however, are mostly connected with Bendigo or Sandhurst. Here I became a regular digger, after a few months at Mount Alexander, or Castlemaine. This was then an astonishingly lively place. It was an indescribable spectacle to watch the myriads of lights from the tents of an evening, from the hill. All around they resembled the sky turned upside down.

On Bendigo I became more settled. To some extent I joined in current dissipations, and well knew the Shamrock Concert Hall, when Thatcher was in vogue, with his topical songs. At the theatres I saw Brooke, Coppin, Rogers, Mary Provost, Sisters Gougenheim, Emily Glyndon, Kate O'Reilly, Kate Warde, and all the other favourites. Under female influence, and the powerfully eloquent sermons of the Rev. Joseph Dare, I joined the Wesleyan Church, and was made a class leader. I married a young Wesleyan, with whom I have lived happily ever since, and we have a large family.

So the old romance was worn off, like a face from a coin. I corresponded hardly at all with England. A strange feeling came over me when my father sent me a daguerreotype of his little page 32 daughter, and it was an object of interest to my own little daughters. How like she was to her mother—the very image!

Years rolled on. My father died. His wife died. I wrote home particularly to learn what became of the orphan girl, their only child, who was fifteen years old when left alone. I found she was not very comfortable. My wife urged me to send for her. Louisa was her name.

She wished ever so much to come to me in Australia, but considerations as to settling her property kept her back for five years. She was twenty years old when she took her passage by the ship Walmer Castle for Melbourne.

Of course I must go to the metropolis to meet her, and this was the first time I had been to Melbourne since I left it in 1851. The elder members of my family had been, but I never cared to go. Any attempt to describe the change would fall so far short of the imagination of the reader that I will only suggest the transformation.

With a singular tumult of feeling I walked down the Sandridge railway pier, clustered with ships, and saw "Walmer Castle, London," painted on the stern of one. Louisa awaited me there. She came running down the gangway before I reached the ship.

What a perfect new edition she was of her mother! The very same creature to whom I proposed in the Cloth of Gold rose arbour! But the new Louisa was infinitely more amiable and loveable, as she clung to the arm of the grizzled old miner—not so very old, though.

"So you are my brother!" exclaimed the delicious Louisa full of life, and laughter, and joy. "I think I must call you papa."

Well, I cannot tell you what a light this Louisa has been to our home, and how fond we all are of her. We have been a little sombre, you know, but Loo is so vivacious. A piano had to be got for her. I am sure that the education she has given my little girls far outweighs all they ever got at the State school.

And now I have penned this little chronicle on her wedding day. We know not whether to laugh or cry. My daughter Lizzie was married last November, and my daughter Lena is going to be. Louisa will live at Iron bark, and I am sure she will not altogether desert her poor old father—brother.