And when, later, the Inspector (taken at first for the ‘Gov’ment’) puts in an appearance, the case is set before him precisely as above. But, instead of listening to reason, he only rated them, told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and dilated largely on the beauty and advantage of a State education at only threepence per week each child, and one shilling for seven or over. A paternal Government, he said, had long mourned over their degraded and benighted condition; and, at last, having, after much trouble, and at great expense, secured a most accomplished gentleman as a teacher, resolved that one of his first tasks should be that of making Dead Finish an ornament, in place of a reproach, to the district. This was, so the Inspector thought, putting the thing neatly indeed. But it was all of no avail. They not only unanimously refused to have anything to do with the erection of the school, but also to receive the teacher when he arrived. They swore, too, that their children should not leave work for education, and in the end, used language unrecordable here, and such as the Inspector had never in all his life heard before. But he persevered; and, bringing a couple of men from the township fifty miles away, set them to work. Dead Finish was situated at the extreme head of one of those short Australian coastal rivers whose existence begins in boggy swamps and ends in a big sand-bar. The country was mountainous and scrubby, abounding in ‘falls,’ springs, morasses, giant timber, dingoes, ticks, leeches, and creeks. The wonder was, not that anybody should ever have settled on it, but that, once there, they should ever manage to get out of it, as they did once in six months. But for these few families on Dead Finish Creek, the district was totally uninhabited. It was hard to say where they came from originally. They were not a communicative people; but they were a hard-working, hard-living one, whose only wish was to be left at peace on the little patches they had hewn for themselves out of the mighty primeval forest that, dark and solemn, walled them in on every side. The spot chosen by the Inspector as the site of the new school was on the extreme edge of one of the lesser falls that ran sloping swiftly down three hundred feet or more into a small valley, generally full of mist and the noise of running waters. A mile away lived a settler named Brown, who, after an infinity of coaxing and persuasion, and to the utter disgust of his neighbours, had consented to receive and board the teacher on trial. As with the rest of the Dead Finishers, ready money was so rare that the thoughts of that proffered twelve shillings a week tempted him, and he fell, and became a Judas to his fellows, and a mark for the finger of scorn—he and his wife and their ten children.