We’d only just heard that the new Inspector of Police had come on to the field; so of course everybody began to talk about him and wanted to have a look at him. Next to the Commissioner and the P.M., the Inspector of Police is the biggest man in a country town or on a goldfield. He has a tremendous lot of power, and, inside the law, can do pretty much what he pleases. He can arrest a man on suspicion and keep him in gaol for a month or two. He can have him remanded from time to time for further evidence, and make it pretty hot for him generally. He can let him out when he proves innocent, and nobody can do anything. All he has to say is:“There was a mistake in the man’s identity”; or, “Not sufficient proof.” Anything of that sort. He can walk up to any man he likes (or dislikes) and tell him to hold up his hands for the handcuffs, and shoot him if he resists. He has servants to wait on him, and orderly troopers to ride behind him; a handsome uniform like a cavalry officer; and if he’s a smart, soldierly, good-looking fellow, as he very often is, he’s run after a good deal and can hold his head as high as he pleases. There’s a bit of risk sometimes in apprehending desperate—ahem!—bad characters, and with bush-rangers and people of that sort, but nothing more than any young fellow of spirit would like mixed up with his work. Very often they’re men of good family in the old eountry that have found nothing to do in this, and have taken to the police. When it was known that this Ferdinand Morringer was a real baronet and had been an officer in the Guards, you may guess how the flood of goldfields’ talk rose and flowed and foamed all round him. It was Sir Ferdinand this and Sir Ferdinand that wherever you went. He was going to lodge at the Royal. No, of course he was going to stay at the camp! He was married and had three children. Not a bit of it; he was a bachelor, and he was going to be married to Miss Ingersoll, the daughter of the bank manager of the Bank of New Holland. They’d met abroad. He was a tall, fine-looking man. Not at all, only middle-sized; hadn’t old Major Trenck, the superintendent of police, when he came to enlist and said he had been in the Guards, growled out,“Too short for the Guards!”

“But I was not a private,” replied Sir Ferdinand.

“Well, anyhow there’s a something about him. Nobody can deny he looks like a gentleman; my word, he’ll put some of these Weddin Mountain chaps thro’ their facin’s, you’ll see,” says one miner.