AN AUSTRALIAN ROMANCE.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 174, 21 June 1859, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN ROMANCE.

■;"■",': '...'.:7 By Peter 'Possum. :: 7":. : I was sitting the other night in the Cogers' Hall in Shoe-lane, waiting for the session of the queer Pot-house Parliament that assembles in that place to discuss stout, brandy, gin, tobacco, and the national affairs, when I heard Australia mentioned by a sun 7 burnt and very talkative. toper., seated at a table near me/ -I pricked up my ears, as I always do. when I hear that welcome word, and found that the speaker had just returned from New South Wales, and was. giving a knot of open-mouthed listeners a narrative of his own very remarkable adventures, and those of equally enterprising spirits, in that far-off land.—Amongst other tales he told the following, in reference to two graves, which, he asserted, may still be seen in the bush, about seven miles from Singleton. Can any of my readers tell me whether there be such- graves? And,if so, whether they have such a legend connected with them?

Here-us the story—as well as I can remember. I shall only " cook" the language a little—l give the facts as I heard them. Harry ■ • was a dashing young Londoner—a banker's clerk—who, to gratify his taste for Green Rooms and Cider Cellars, was compelled to make free with his employer's money, and was sent out, in consequence, to "the Bay." " The " pink bonnets," whom he had treated at Greenwich and Richmond grieved for a' night, no doubt, when they learnt that he was committed to Newgate; but also, no doubt, had forgotten all about him long before he found himself .in a serge suit of brown and canary, creeping down the Thames in a cream-coloured transport. He was destined to meet with a more faithful heart in Australia. Harry was what is commonly called a "gentlemanly young fellow"—very handsome—not bad dispositioned—profusely liberal, indeed—but, as we have seen, not at all particular as to whether it was alienum or suum with which he played the Lord Bountiful. His'looks, his bearing, and his education made him find favour with1 the authorities when he arrived in Sydney. I don't know why "gentlemanly young men," who ought to have known better, should be punished less heavily for crimes than benighted boors; but so it generally is. Instead of being put upon the roads, Harry was appointed to a subordinate clerkship in one of the, Government offices. Here, by his respectful behaviour, and occasional glimpses that he suffered to steal.out, of his capacity for amusing, he so won upon the heart of his superior, a convivial gentleman weary of the monotonous company of his coofficials—that the said superior sometimes condescended to have him up at his house, suffering his convict clerk at such times to doff his vonvict garb. Dress has a marvellous mental influence on a man. After miserable months ef seediness, my hardup brother quill, get -some deluded tailor to give you credit for a.new suit of clothes, and don't you feel as if you could defy the whole horrid army of duns—as if you wouldnever again want a dinner, when you encase your once more, manly limbs ■in their glossy, unwrinkled attire ? Harry, v the gentleman" again, forgot for hours together that he was a convicted criminal, a poor serf employed to lighten the leisure of the lord to whom the very clothes that enlivened him belonged, and rattled and sang away as gaily as in by-gone days in Maiden and in Drury Lane.

He did more. He saw, and dared to love, his master's daughter.; and she, poor silly girl, returned his love., With such a face and such a form, bo sweet a voice, so white vl hand, so bright a smile—-thus woman's logic runs —she was sure he could not be guilty. There had beensome vile conspiracy against his character. She felt sincere compassion for the poor young man. And when woman begins to pity, we know what follows soon. . .

Their eyes had told each other their secret, long before their lips had been able to utter it; but one 'Sunday*whence slave had been summoned to amuse his master, and, having his thoughts pre-occupied' with the daughter, had proved less amusing than usual, the father bade him pettishly begone. He was crossing the back verandah oh°his road to the back garden-gate, (by! which he always entered), when, in the shade of a lustrous-leaved, golden-globed orange-tree in the corner, with .cheeks as softly red as the roses on the trellis near her, he saw his Mary. The temptation was too great to be resisted. Flushed with, wine,- smarting .beneath indignity, longing for " sympathy, he rushed .towards her, clasped her in his arms, and stammered out his love ; punctuating his declaration with hot- kisses—that were returned. The lovers were'standing locked in each.others arms, oblivious of everything but their love, when a wild oath startled the drowsy stillness of the calm summer afternoon-, and a horse came crashing over the^ga'rden-fence. The rider, one of'the garrison-officers 'and a rejected suitor of Mary's, struck with'his whip at Harry, as though he were a dog. "It was too much to bear in the presence of his mistress. Harry's blood boiled, and, regardless of all consequences, he knocked his-contemptuous rival from his saddle into the neighbouring aloes. .( The original unsentimental narrator of the story dwelt

with great emphasis on this'part of it, evidently thinking it the cream.) With rage, pricked into madness ,foy the punctures he had received from the points' of the spearlike leaves, the soldier drew his sword, and, rushing on the abject thing that had presumed to have a human heart and crawl up to his flower, would—hero that he was —have run it through the heart, had not the father, roused by the noise of tlie scuffle, interfered. By him Harry's sentence of instant murder was commuted into imprisonment and cruel scourging. Strange _tb say, when the time came for the infliction of'the latter part of the punishment, no Harry could be found. ; How he escaped, no one (unless,, perchance, Mary, and the warder whose little girl she had nursed through a fever) was able to tell, but escape he did: • . For two years afterwards the colony rang with the exploits of a regular Claude Duval. Bravest, best-looking, most courteous, most übiquitous of bush-rangers —now on the Hunter, now in Ilia-' warra, last heard of at Broken Bay, to-day, seen by the Blue Mountains —he was the terror of all free settlers, the secret gloryof all emancipists (whom he made it a point ( of honour not (o rob), and the hero of all the "women-folk throughout the colony _ (whom he ever treated with the most chivalrous respect.) At the end of the two years his course was run. Rendered reckless by long impunity, he ventured almost into Sydney; was '"nabbed" at Homebush, marched, handcuffed, into town, tried in King-street, and sentenced to' be hanged at the old Gaol. But again, Aristomenes-like, he escaped. Tho gibbet barred with its black arm the sapphire sky, but he was not to dangle from it. He had gone; and Mary had gone with him. Wrathful as bear robbed of its whelps, the ■ father joined the troopers who scoured the country in pursuit. Guided by a blackfellow," whom they had employed to | track, they came upon their prey at the place which I have mentioned. Their horses dead, their food and strength exhausted, the fugitives were tramping sadly through the bush, when their pursuers overtook them. Summoned to yield, Harry haughtily refused, and levelled his gun at Captain-—-, the leader of the'troopers,..;-, A seo're-of carbines- were instantly-levelled at -him. Mary rushed before, him to intercept the balls.: Too late the firers saw.their second mark; clinging to each other, even, in death, the lovers fell, a pair of riddled corpses, and were buried where they fell. To, me "the whole story appears, as I headed it, "An Australian Romance". However, I send it over to its 'asserted scene, as a specimen of the tales current in England anent. its much-talked-of, but only half understood, dependency, New South Wales.

For my own part, I should like the legend to turn out historical, rather than mythic, in the main. It would redeem Australia from the imputation of hard prose that her own sons seem proud of fixing on her. ■■.■ ,' ...'''■' v: