‘Very sorry, my man, and all that,’ continued Senior-Constable Taylor, who had not got the stripes for nothing, ‘in case your turn don’t square, but you must come before the police magistrate of Boonamarran and see what _he_ thinks about it. I won’t put the darbies on ye, if you’ll promise to come quietly, but by —— if you leave the track for a moment I’ll send a bullet through you before you can say knife.’ Under this proclamation of martial law, there was nothing to be done by any sane man but to submit; so Ernest made answer that he had no objection to walking as far as Boonamarran, where no doubt his innocence would be made clear. In a kind of procession, therefore, was Ernest Neuchamp forced, as the Captain would have said, ‘by circumstances’ to make his appearance in the small but not wholly unimportant town of Boonamarran. As they passed up the principal street, a very large proportion of the available inhabitants must have assembled to mark their arrival at the lock-up. Behind them rode the trooper with a mingled air of inflexible determination and successful daring. The Captain marched in front with his manacled hands almost disguised by his careless walk, remarking calmly on the appearance of the town, which he criticised freely, also the leading inhabitants. By his side, burning with rage and mortification, walked Ernest, feeling very like a galley slave, and wondering whether there was any possibility, in this strange land, of being sentenced mistakenly to a term of imprisonment. Thus feeling for the first time a keen sensation of distrust for his own obstinate predilections, coupled with an awakening respect for the opinion of others, the time passed in varieties of mental torture, till they arrived at the lock-up, a strong wooden building, into a small room of which they were unceremoniously bundled, while a heavy bolt closed behind them. ‘I really am extremely sorry, sir,’ quoth the Captain, after they were left to themselves, ‘to have brought you into this highly unpleasant position. But circumstances, my lifelong enemies, were too strong for me; and for you, too,’ he added reflectively. Mr. Neuchamp was not a vain man, though proud; above everything he was a philosophical experimentalist. Under any given position he could soon have ceased to struggle and rage, and have commenced to analyse, theorise, and deduce. ‘I ought to be so justly enraged with you,’ he replied, ‘that any apologies would only arouse contempt. You have deceived me, it appears, with a view to rob me of my money, and you have been instrumental in causing, for the first time in my life, the loss of my liberty. But I will confine myself for the present to asking, in all seriousness, why you, a man of culture and mental endowments, having enjoyed the advantages of travel and refined society, should voluntarily have lowered yourself to your present surroundings by a course of vulgar and short-sighted criminality?’