"The dead warden had been a sailor, and liked his `quid.' He was generally to be seen with his mouth full of tobacco, and this was the case at the time he was killed. I saw the quid taken from his mouth, scarce ten minutes after he had become a corpse, by one of the convicts, who the instant after transferred it to his own! "The overseer, at the time he got knocked down, was smoking a pipe. Scarce three minutes after, I saw the same pipe in the mouth of one of the men; and from its head was rolling a thick cloud of smoke! "The fire in the pipe had not been allowed to expire; and the man who was smoking it was one of those afterwards hung for the murder of the warden!" Volume Three, Chapter VI. SQUATTERS' JUSTICE. The old convict, as if reminded by the queer incidents he had related: that he himself stood in need of a smoke, here took out his pipe. After filling and lighting it, he resumed his narrative. "Owing to refractory conduct on my part, and a dislike to crawling for the purpose of currying favour with overseers, I did not get a `ticket-of-leave' until five years after landing in the colony. "I then received one--with permission to go as shepherd to a `squatter's station' up the country. For acting in this capacity, I was to receive ten pounds a year of wages. "I found the shepherd's life a very weary one. The labour was not sufficient to keep me from thinking. During the whole day I had but little to do--except to indulge in regrets for the past, and despair of the future. Each day was so much like the one preceding it, that the time was not only monotonous, but terribly tiresome. "Had I deserted my employment, I knew that I should be re-captured; and a new sentence passed upon me. My only hope of obtaining full freedom-- at the end of my ten years' term--was by doing my duty as well as I could. "One morning, after I had been about ten months in my shepherd's berth, as I was letting the sheep out of the enclosure, the squatter who owned the station, his overseer, and another man, came riding up. "The sun was more than half an hour above the horizon; and as I ought to have had the sheep out upon the grass by sunrise, I was afraid the squatter would blame me for neglecting my duty. I was agreeably surprised at his not doing so. "He bade me `good morning,' lit his pipe, took a look at the sheep; and then rode away along with the others. "This treatment, instead of making me more neglectful, only rendered me more attentive to my duty; and every morning for three weeks after, the sheep were out of the yard by the first appearance of day-break. "It was summer time, and the nights being very short, I could not always wake myself at such an early hour. The consequence was, that about three weeks before the expiration of the year, for which I was bound, my employer again caught me napping--nearly an hour after sun-up--with the sheep still in the penn.