So their friend--a good and true one in every sense--shook hands with Jack and his wife, kissed Tottie, with whom he left a large parcel of sugar-plums, and departed. It was strange that he and the boarding-house keeper should have taken such a fancy to the party; but such was the fact, and in new countries and wild places outside the pale of ordinary society, sudden and chance-made friendships spring up and blossom into full fruition much more frequently than people in old countries would believe. They had nothing to gain from these emigrants. They only accepted the bare amount due for services rendered. They prevented them from being over-reached in the purchase of that vitally necessary equipment in goldfield days--the horse and cart. They saw, too, that unlike the hero in that exciting Anglo-Colonial romance 'It's Never too late to Mend,' they were put in possession of a horse that _would pull down hill_ as well as up. In fact they acted with simple good faith, generosity, and gratuitous courtesy, all through. This was not the conduct to be expected from perfect strangers in a 'lawless community' like Melbourne, _vide_ the fiction of the day. But it happened to be true nevertheless. CHAPTER IV It is unnecessary to accompany the little party along the somewhat tedious and decidedly muddy road which led the adventurers of the day to the spot 'where the root of all evil grew wild up the country.' O dear old friend, who used to quote this, and make merry over Governor Tarbox, where art thou now? They saw the Royal Mail dash by, drawn by six horses in an American coach, the leather-brace springs of which, and the plank road, were a constant wonder to Jack and Mrs. Polwarth. Now trotted along a dozen well-mounted police troopers, their boots and steel scabbards shining in the sun, conveying 50,000 ounces of gold in a four-horse drag. Anon, a drove of staring, long-horned fat cattle, engineered by a dog of high educational attainments, a black boy, and a couple of bearded, wild-looking stock-riders. Then, again, the bullock team of the period--fourteen bullocks drawing a laden canvas-covered waggon, with a tall Australian driver, the whip of him at times raising hair, at times volleying like musketry--was another unequivocal surprise. A flock of 2000 fat sheep, a drove of unbroken horses, a train of a dozen pack-mules, all these were fascinating novelties and wild surprises to the newly-arrived Britishers.