Duly arriving, sore and jaded, at the sign of the ‘Jolly Bushman,’ he found the host an obliging sort of a fellow enough, who said he would himself have driven the gentleman to Dingo Creek, but that his wife was ill. However, his buggy should be at his disposal the next morning; and also the publican promised Cooronga Billy should go as guide, and, if necessary, bring both buggy and parson back again. Early on the following morning the buggy and a pair of good-looking ponies put in an appearance at the door of the ‘Jolly Bushman’; so did Cooronga Billy. But now we must for a while drop the thread of the story, and go back to the time when, as a baby, Billy lay sound asleep in his black mother’s arms under the shadow of the far-away Cooronga ranges—back to that fearful morning whose earliest dawn heralded the pitiless swoop of the native troopers on to the quiet camp. His tribe ‘dispersed,’ baby Billy, the sole survivor, was brought to B——, sent, in due course, to the best schools, and received a special education, with a view to fitting him for the ministry, and a sphere of what, it was fervently hoped by many good men, would prove congenial and profitable labour amongst his own benighted countrymen. As he grew towards man’s estate, Billy became quite one of the lions of B——, and was proudly exhibited and put through his paces before distinguished strangers, as a splendid specimen of ‘what can be done with our aborigines.’ Suddenly, and just when all this gratulation was at its height, William Cooronga Morris—he was indebted to the white officer who had commanded the ‘dispersers’ of his tribe for the first and last of these names, duly received at the font of St Jude’s—disappeared totally, turning up months afterwards, clad in his native skins, armed with his native weapons, at one of the far-out townships; and had ever since loafed around the outskirts of Northern Settlement, a degrading example of what over-civilisation can do for a black-fellow. Periodical visits would Billy make far out in the Bush towards the wild Coorongas—for some strange instinct had led him at his first departure towards the land of his birth—and there, instead of, as had been so fondly expected, bending his energies towards the cure of souls amongst his dark brethren, it was freely reported that Mr W. C. Morris constituted himself their leader in many a fat-cattle spearing expedition, if nothing worse. Billy, at the moment we have chosen to introduce him to the reader, had just returned from one of those forays, and a terrible figure he appeared to the Reverend Spicer.