The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West

As a Commissioner of Goldfields, and Police Magis-trate, in New South Wales, it is hardly necessary to say that Arnold Banneret's pay was not conspicuously in ad-vance of the necessaries of life. Necessaries which may be thus catalogued: a couple of decent ride-and-drive horses, a light, much-enduring buggy, clothes and books, boots and shoes, bread and butter, for half-a-dozen growing boys and girls--with an occasional trip to the seaside, and a regularly recurring doctor's bill; while the Rev. Mr. Wilson's quarterly accounts for the eldest boy's board and tuition had also a knack of turning up inconveniently soon, as it appeared to paterfamilias, after his departure to school.