“In your place I should accept the situation. I should not probe after reasons,” answered the chaplain with characteristic suavity. “Gammon, parson! I’ve got to know. See? An’ if you don’t tell me now, I’ll repeat the question in the columns of my paper!” exclaimed this Australasian _littérateur_. “Sounds rather like a threat, don’t you think?” observed Bachelor, with perfect temper; “and, if you _will_ have it, I think I may now give you his lordship’s reason for declining to invite you.” “Let her go!” said the editor encouragingly. “The Bishop’s reason for omitting your name is simply this: that, in the old country, a man conducting a paper on your lines would be considered outside the social pale.” The editor laughed uproariously. When he had recovered his breath, he answered in these remarkable words: “Innercent lambs! Outside the social pale, hey! Lookye here, parson! You jest tell his lordship from me that, _in Tasmania_, _no man is outside the social pale—until he’s hanged_!” In Sydney once it became the duty of Bachelor to see a well-known man out of the world through the trap of a gallows. Captain Knatchbull, a cadet of an old Kentish family, had been, while in command of one of H.M.’s ships, guilty of an offence against the civil law, for which he was tried and transported. He escaped from the convict settlement, and turned up in Sydney half mad with exposure and starvation. In the Bush he had probably perpetrated a crime which was never laid to his charge, for he had got rid of his convict garb, and appeared in New South Wales fully attired in the clothes of a victim who was probably done to death before parting with them. The desperate man entered a baker’s shop in a back street. The shop was empty. The man stretched his arm over the counter, and pulled out the till. The woman owning the shop suddenly appeared on the scene, and caught hold of the marauder’s wrist, screaming the while for assistance. Knatchbull flung himself free, picked up the bread-knife from the counter, and silenced the poor woman for ever. He was caught red-handed. He was brought to trial, when the prosecuting counsel was Robert Lowe, destined for future fame in England, where he was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and a peer of the realm. On the scaffold he was attended by Bachelor. “Is there any last word you would like to say?” whispered the chaplain in his ear. Knatchbull looked up, cast a critical eye over the ghastly apparatus, and, nodding his head in the direction of a defect, said, with the utmost composure: “Yes. _There’s a kink in that rope_!” In another second his lifeless body was swinging at the end of the incriminated hemp. He afforded, then, did Captain Knatchbull, the supreme instance of “the ruling passion strong in death.” He must pay the extreme penalty, but he had respectfully suggested that the execution should be ship-shape.