want grog and stores; come to your depot; you take their money; Q. E.
D.! Shares,--eh, you dog? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a
paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves."

Pisistratus (vehemently).--"Not for all the mines of Potosi."

Uncle Jack (good-humoredly).--"Well, it sha'n't be the worse for you. I
sha'n't alter my will, in spite of your want of confidence. Your young
friend,--that Mr. Vivian, I think you call him: intelligent-looking
fellow; sharper than the other, I guess,--would he like a share?"

Pisistratus.--"In the grog depot? You had better ask him!"

Uncle Jack.--"What! you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush? Too
good. Ha, ha--they're calling to me; we must be off."

Pisistratus.--"I will ride with you a few miles. What say you, Vivian?
and you, Guy?" (As the whole party now joined us.)

Guy prefers basking in the sun and reading the "Lives of the Poets."
Vivian assents; we accompany the party till sunset. Major MacBlarney
prodigalizes his offers of service in every conceivable department of
life, and winds up with an assurance that if we want anything in those
departments connected with engineering,--such as mining, mapping,
surveying, etc.,--he will serve us, bedad, for nothing, or next to it.
We suspect Major MacBlarney to be a civil engineer suffering under the
innocent hallucination that he has been in the army.

Mr. Speck lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that Mr. Bullion is
monstrous rich, and has made his fortune from small beginnings, by never