4.08 The Wreck. 



he could not tell where he had lost his mates ; he knew that they 

 left Williamstown together, and that is all he recollected. His 

 description of the funeral was graphic in the extreme. 



They reached the churchyard in good order, and had to wait 

 nearly an hour for the clergyman ; the man who officiated as clerk 

 was in such a state of inebriation that he could scarcely read the 

 responses, and the only spectators were a few diggers, who were 

 walking off the previous night's excesses, and had wandered into the 

 churchyard as they recognised a friend in one of the mourners. How- 

 ever, "ashes to ashes" closed the sad service, and poor George, hurried 

 from a scene of boisterous excitement, was left quietly in that bleak- 

 looking little churchyard, many thousand miles away from his native 

 village. Little did his friends at home, who had waited so long "with 

 the sickening anxiety of hope deferred," for tidings of the absentee, 

 think that the autumnal sun of the 6th of November was shining 

 on his new-made grave. 



As soon as the funeral was over, his friends mounted their horses 

 to return home. It was a sore trial to pass by " Old Jenn ings' s " 

 without just calling in for a " nobbier," and to talk over the dead 

 man ; but they had made up their minds for once to leave the town 

 respectably. And so they would have done, if they had not been 

 obliged to pass the house of the subtlest of all tempters, one Paddy 

 Connor. This old fellow was a kind of cattle-dealer, a personal 

 friend of the deceased, and was, as he said, " far too much affected 

 at his death to be present at the funeral." This did not, however, 

 prevent him watching for the funeral procession as it passed his 

 house on the road home, and he stopped them, "just to inquire 

 whether they had given poor George a dacent burial." The old man 

 was not a bad sort, although a rough one j and as he stood upon his 

 door-step, he proposed that the whole party " should shed one tear 

 to the memory of the poor deceased." He had but one idea of 

 mourning for a departed friend ; and a bottle of rum was brought 

 out. The tear having been shed, the old man solemnly observed, 

 " Poor George ! he was such a good sort, don't you think we ought 



