Billy’s first impulse was to drive his spear through the curate. But, restraining himself with a sigh, another idea entered into his mischievous head. A large stump stood close by, overlooking the unsuspecting Spicer and the _débris_ of his meal. Upon this stump, with a bound, Billy sprung, and, letting fall his cloak, disclosing to view his whole body, hideously chalked, skeleton-wise, he began, in a tone and with an enunciation far superior to that of the reverend gentleman himself, to declaim, with pointed spear,— ‘_Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?_ ‘_They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine._ ‘_Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright._ ‘_At the last_—’ But here, poor Spicer, who had risen to his feet, and stood horror-stricken at hearing himself, as he imagined, reproved and threatened for his bibbing propensities through the mouth of a fiend, or even, as his staring eyes took in Billy’s _tout ensemble_, it might be the Arch Enemy of mankind himself, uttered a shriek and fled, terror lending unwonted speed to his legs, down the gully; whilst Billy, with a wild whoop, descending from his perch, took the flask and what remained of the provisions to the buggy, and drove off into the Bush. Late that night, a weary, footsore traveller entered the principal public-house in Dingo Creek, and began to ask incoherent questions about a buggy and a black-fellow, the latter, he averred, an emissary of Satan, who had led him into the wilderness, and there deserted him—a story that the rough host and his equally rough customers could make neither head nor tail of. ‘It’s a rum go altogether,’ said the former to one of his digger friends, after poor Spicer had retired, nearly dead beat, to his rough-slabbed room, whence he could hear all that went on in the bar. ‘The rummest thing I’ve heard on for some time,’ assented the other. ‘He looks somethin’ like as a parson should look, right enough. But either he’s just off of a rather heavy spree, or else he’s more’n a shingle short. Sez he seen Ole Nick back there in the Bush, an’ the old ’un shook his buggy.’ ’Bin on the bust, down at the “Jolly Bushman’s,” I ’spects,’ put in another. ‘You fellers knows as some _do_ see the old chap arter a ’ard bust. As for me, I takes it out in snakes mostly. But there’s my mate, Bill, he allus has cats. I seen him one time a-huntin’ ’em round the tent all night long, arter bein’ on the spree for a week.’ Confidence in the Reverend Spicer was, however, a little restored, when, next morning, the buggy was found intact in the public-house yard; and his confused appearance and rambling statements of the previous night were charitably ascribed by the majority to ‘a touch of the sun.’