Botany Bay | Page 2

forty-six--twenty- eight years ago. When I threw that stone at that man I little thought it would hit him, much less kill him; and that I should be sent here for manslaughter. But so it was."
"Why I recommend you, John, to go home is because you are always talking of home and your relations. As for the farm, I'd manage that for you while you are away."
"Thank you, Ned. I'll think about it."
Presently, the landlord entered the room, and Smith, addressing him, said, "What think you, Mr. Dean? Here is Mr. Fisher going home to England, to have a look at his friends and relations.
"Is that true, Mr. Fisher?" said the landlord.
"Oh, yes," was Fisher's reply, after finishing his glass of punch and knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
"And when do you think of going?" said the landlord.
"That'll depend," replied Fisher, smiling. "When I'm gone you will hear of it, not before; and neighbour Smith here, who is to manage the farm during my absence, will come and pay you any little score I may leave behind."
"But I hope you will come and say good-bye," said the landlord.
"Oh, of course," said Fisher, laughing. "If I don't, depend upon it you will know the reason why."
After a brief while the two farmers took their departure. Their farms adjoined each other and they were always on the very best of terms.
About six weeks after the conversation above given, Smith called one morning at the public house, informed the landlord that Fisher had gone, and offered to pay any little sum that he owed. There was a small score against him, and while taking the money the landlord remarked that he was sorry Mr. Fisher had not kept his word and come to bid him "good-bye." Mr. Smith explained that Fisher had very good reasons for having his departure kept a secret until after he had left the colony; not that he wanted to defraud anybody--far from it, he added; and then darkly hinted that one of Mr. Fisher's principal reasons for going off so stealthily was to prevent being annoyed by a woman who wanted him to marry her.
"Ah! I see," said the landlord; "and that's what he must have meant that night when he said, 'if I don't, you'll hear the reason why.'"
"I feel the loss of his society very much," said Smith, "for when we did not come here together to spend our evening he would come to my house, or I would go to his, to play cards, smoke a pipe and drink a glass of grog. Having taken charge of all his affairs under a power of attorney, I have gone to live at his place and left my overseer in charge of my own place. When he comes back in the course of a couple of years I am going home to England, and he will do for me what I am now doing for him. Between ourselves, Mr. Dean, he has gone home to get a wife."
"Indeed!" said the landlord. Here the conversation ended and Mr. Smith went home.
Fisher's sudden departure occasioned some surprise throughout the district; but when the explanation afforded by Mr. Smith was spread abroad by Mr. Dean, the landlord, people ceased to think any more about the matter.
A year elapsed, and Mr. Smith gave out that he had received a letter from Fisher, in which he stated that it was not his intention to return to Sydney and that he wished the whole of his property to be sold and the proceeds remitted to him. This letter Mr. Smith showed to several of Fisher's most intimate acquaintances, who regretted extremely that they would see no more of so good a neighbour and so worthy a man.
Acting on the power of attorney which he held, Mr. Smith advertised the property for sale--the farm, the livestock, the farming implements, the furniture, etc., in the farmhouse; also some cottages and pieces of land in and near Sydney and Parramatta; with Fisher's mortgagors, also, he came to an agreement for the repayment, within a few months, of the sums due by them.
CHAPTER II.
About a month previous to the day of sale, an old man, one David Weir, who farmed a small piece of land in the Penrith Road, and who took every week to the Sydney market, butter, eggs, fowls, and a few bushels of Indian maize, was returning to his home when he saw, seated on a rail, the well-known form of Mr. Fisher. It was very dark, but the figure and the face were as plainly visible as possible. The old man, who was not drunk, though he had been drinking at Dean's public house, pulled up and called out, "Halloa, Mr. Fisher! I thought you were at home in England!" There was