Squash came a stick down over my head, then he flew at my throat and kicked and belaboured me in a terrible way. At last he flung me with awful violence out on the verandah, got hold of me again and threw me outside. He was two or three times as big a man as I, and I could not at all defend myself against him, nor had I any idea why he had thus maltreated me; but as there was no one to appeal to, I, in a terrible rage, ran home to my tent for the gun. It stood there loaded, and I took it up and started back again along the main street. The blood was running down my face, and I howled to myself with rage as I ran. I meant to shoot him as dead as a herring. "Halloa!" cried the people, "there is a fellow running amuck," and soon there was a whole crowd behind me, intent on watching the sport. But I must now go back in time a little. There was at that period in Ravenswood a Danish digger, whom I had met and who had been very friendly to me, and both because he plays an important part in the next few pages I have to write, and because I have entitled this book "Missing Friends," I think he deserves mention, as he indeed had been, and is no doubt yet, "a missing friend." He had been a farmer in Denmark, what we in Danish call a yardsman, who owned his own freehold. When the war with Germany in 1864 broke out, he was called on to serve in the artillery. He was married then, had two children, and was, like all Danish farmers, in extremely good circumstances. During the war he was taken prisoner by the Germans, but was by some mistake reported dead by the Danish authorities. He told me that he wrote home as soon as he could, but the letter never reached his wife. Shortly after he tried to escape from the Germans, and, being caught, defended himself desperately. For this offence he was condemned to three years' hard labour on the fortifications of some place in the south of Germany. For one reason and another he did not write from there. Partly he was not much of a writer, partly he objected to the enemy reading his efforts, and as he knew his wife had plenty to live on, and that his neighbours at home would help her to run the farm, he neglected writing, and as the time went on pictured to himself in rosy colours the happy surprise he would give his wife and them all at home when he _did_ return. At last the time arrived when he was set free, and started for home. Meanwhile his wife had bemoaned him as dead, and what little hope his friends might have had for him died when he did not return at the end of the war. It did not take long before one suitor after the other presented themselves, and a couple of years later the wife got married again, with the full consent and approval of all concerned.