Jackman's Gulch recovered from this blow, and is now a flourishing township. Social reformers are not in request there, however, and morality is at a discount. It is said that an inquest has been held lately upon an unoffending stranger who chanced to remark that in so large a place it would be advisable to have some form of Sunday service. The memory of their one and only pastor is still green among the inhabitants, and will be for many a long year to come. _MY FRIEND THE MURDERER._ "Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door. "Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the _Australian Sketcher_. "And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for him?" "He's a walking drug shop," said I. "He has the whole British pharmacop[oe]ia inside him. I believe his tubes are as sound as yours are." "Then there's 7 and 108, they are chronic," continued the warder, glancing down a blue slip of paper. "And 28 knocked off work yesterday--said lifting things gave him a stitch in the side. I want you to have a look at him, if you don't mind, Doctor. There's 31, too--him that killed John Adamson in the _Corinthian_ brig--he's been carrying on awful in the night, shrieking and yelling, he has, and no stopping him neither." "All right, I'll have a look at him afterwards," I said, tossing my paper carelessly aside, and pouring myself out a cup of coffee. "Nothing else to report, I suppose, warder?" The official protruded his head a little further into the room. "Beg pardon, Doctor," he said, in a confidential tone, "but I notice as 82 has a bit of a cold, and it would be a good excuse for you to visit him and have a chat, maybe." The cup of coffee was arrested half-way to my lips as I stared in amazement at the man's serious face. "An excuse?" I said. "An excuse? What the deuce are you talking about, McPherson? You see me trudging about all day at my practice, when I'm not looking after the prisoners, and coming back every night as tired as a dog, and you talk about finding an excuse for doing more work." "You'd like it, Doctor," said Warder McPherson, insinuating one of his shoulders into the room. "That man's story's worth listening to if you could get him to tell it, though he's not what you'd call free in his speech. Maybe you don't know who 82 is?" "No, I don't, and I don't care either," I answered, in the conviction that some local ruffian was about to be foisted upon me as a celebrity. "He's Maloney," said the warder, "him that turned Queen's evidence after the murders at Bluemansdyke."