By this time I had been introduced to most of the members of the club and some of their families. But it was quite evident that if I was to become a policeman I couldn't remain at the club, nor could I be on visiting terms with the elite of Adelaide. I therefore made up my mind to be a policeman, a real policeman, and give up social festivities for the time being. This decision met with the full approval of His Excellency and the general, and, I need hardly say, of the Commissioner. The only exceptions to this rule were that I would occasionally lunch at Government House and at the General's home when convenient. I duly joined, and, remembering my New Zealand experience, I swore to myself that I was not going to resign until after being duly appointed to my next billet. It is not to be wondered at that not only the corporal in charge of the barracks, but the mounted troopers under his charge, were surprised to see the Commissioner's young friend, who had been inspecting them a few days before, joining their ranks. Only the mounted police were quartered at the barracks, the foot police lived privately in their respective districts and suburbs. I spent my first night in the barrack-room, and I was glad to find that amongst the twenty-five or thereabouts of the number of troopers, no less than six or seven were ex-officers or N.C. officers of the army or navy, and the remainder were men who had been selected from the pick of the many candidates who were continually offering their services to the Commissioner. A word about the corporal in charge--Corporal Campbell, an ex-salt, a hard-headed, kind-hearted Scotsman. Corporal Campbell had to his credit some thirty-five years of mounted police work in South Australia. The greater number of those years he had spent in the northern districts of the then young colony. In those early days the duties of the mounted police in the far-off, unsettled districts were more than serious. They lived away from civilization, supervising huge tracts of country, necessitating travelling hundreds of miles at a stretch across uninhabited country, lacking in food and water. It required men of iron constitution and iron will to perform their duties. It wanted even more; it wanted self-confidence and a thorough knowledge of their work to deal equitably with the many points of dispute that from time to time arose between the settlers and the native tribes. Practically the mounted trooper was a magistrate. It was up to the mounted trooper to make all preliminary inquiries not only into criminal charges, but in many cases into civil disputes. Having done so it was up to him to prepare the cases for the justice of the peace before whose jurisdiction those cases had to be submitted.