‘I had driven oxen at home and soon got into the ways of the colony, when, one day, the master came down to see a new piece of land I had been breaking up near a house he was building, and was so pleased that he began to talk quite kindly, although every second word was an oath, and asked me all about myself. Well, I told him, and made bold to say that, as he was going to build a large dairy, if he would send for my wife and child we would serve him for any wages he choose, all the days of our lives. He turned on me like a tiger, he cursed me, he told me he wanted no women or brats on his estate, no canting saints, no parsons, all he wanted was men that could work, and work they should. “If, you fool,” he said, “you had asked for a gallon of rum among the gang you might have had it, and drowned all your troubles, but I’ll have no women here, wives or no wives.” ‘I think at that moment Satan took possession of me. I was ready to do anything for my liberty, or to be free from my tyrant, and there were tempters enough all round me. A few days afterwards one of my fellow servants, an old hand, who had heard the last part of my master’s speech, came to me in the evening, and, after telling me that he supposed I had found out that nothing was to be got by fair means, that my master was a rogue, in fact that every one was a rogue who was not a fool, he began to hint that he could tell me a way to get my wife out and my liberty too. I swallowed the bait, I listened; then he went on to show how with money anything could be done in the colony, told me instances of tickets and conditional pardons, besides escapes managed by bribing, and then, when I was thoroughly poisoned, he swore me to secrecy and explained how, out of a thousand bullocks, a few pair would never be missed; so that all I had to do when I took a bullock team to Sydney was to yoke an extra pair of young bullocks, making ten or twelve pair, instead of eight or ten—a butcher, near where the drays generally stood, was all ready prepared to take and pay for, as many pair of bullocks as I chose to drive in. They were worth from 10_l._ to 12_l._ each, and I was to have 6_l._ for every pair.