Among these latter was John Short, a man of about four-and-thirty years of age; his brother-in-law, William Wakeham, five or three years his junior, accompanied him: both were skilled and experienced miners. Mary Short, the, wife of the former, remained with old Wakeham, her father, who was a small farmer, living in the neighbourhood of Penzance. She had been married some twelve years before this separation from her husband, and had two surviving children, both of them young and helpless. Her father had been much angered at her marriage; as in those days her young husband bore no very steady character, and was better known in the tap-room of the alehouse than at the labour-muster of the Captain of the mine. Indeed, the father had threatened to turn her out of doors for persisting in keeping acquaintance with the idle miner; and her brother, William Wakeham, a very robust and quick-tempered young man, had beaten her lover severely in a drunken quarrel, originating in the same cause. The injuries were so severe that John Short was carried to an hospital, where his kind-hearted but violent assailant paid him the most careful and anxious attention. A friendship was there formed which resulted in William Wakeham becoming a miner and John marrying his sister. The father was finally and with much difficulty reconciled to both these arrangements. The young couple toiled on well enough through their hard life; the alehouse was abandoned, and but that poor John was sometimes weak and ailing and could not work, Polly had no reason to regret her choice. William, who lived with them, was not quite so steady as they could have wished: he often staid out all night, and they were not without suspicion that the employment of these hours of darkness was scarcely reconcileable with strict obedience to the very arbitrary game-laws. In short, he was “had up” several times, and more indebted to good luck, than either his innocence or any mild weakness of legislation, that he did not become one of those whom we have driven forth from among ourselves to be the founders of that great future empire, whose principal geographical feature is Botany Bay.