"No; I'm from the old country." "From what part of it?" "From about Glasgow." "What is your name?" "Sholto ----." "Sholto!--that is rather an uncommon name, is it not?" "I was called Sholto after a son of Lord Douglas. My father was Lord Douglas's gardener." "How long have you been here?" "I came over with my father about five years, ago." (In 1832.) "How came your father to emigrate?" "My father was one of the commuted pensioners, as they call them.[10] He was an old soldier in the veteran battalion, and he sold his pension of fivepence a day for four years and a grant of land, and came out here. Many did the like." "But if he was gardener to Lord Douglas, he could not have suffered from want." "Why, he was not a gardener _then_; he was a weaver; he worked hard enough for us. I remember often waking in the middle of the night, and seeing my father working still at his loom, as if he would never give over, while my mother and all of us were asleep." "All of us!--how many of you?" "There were six of us: but my eldest brother and myself could do something." "And you all emigrated with your father?" "Why, you see, at last he couldn't get no work, and trade was dull, and we were nigh starving. I remember I was always hungry then--always." "And you all came out?" "All but my eldest brother. When we were on the way to the ship, he got frightened and turned back, and wouldn't come. My poor mother cried very much, and begged him hard. Now the last we heard of him is, that he is very badly off, and can't get no work at all." "Is your father yet alive?" "Yes, he has land up in Adelaide." "Is your mother alive?" "No; she died of the cholera, coming over. You see the cholera broke out in the ship, and fifty-three people died, one after t'other, and were thrown into the sea. My mother died, and they threw her into the sea. And then my little sister, only nine months old, died, because there was nobody to take care of her, and they threw _her_ into the sea--poor little thing!" "Was it not dreadful to see the people dying around you? Did you not feel frightened for yourself?" "Well--I don't know--one got used to it--it was nothing but splash, splash, all day long--first one, then another. There was one Martin on board, I remember, with a wife and nine children--one of those as sold his pension: he had fought in Spain with the Duke of Wellington. Well, first his wife died, and they threw her into the sea; and then _he_ died, and they threw _him_ into the sea; and then the children, one after t'other, till only two were left alive; the eldest, a girl about thirteen, who had nursed them all, one after another, and seen them die--well, _she_ died, and then there was only the little fellow left." "And what became of him?" "He went back, as I heard, in the same ship with the captain." "And did you not think sometimes it might be your turn next." "No--I didn't; and then I was down with the fever." "What do you mean by _the fever?_"