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at the Melbourne Club. People were beginning to be affected by gold on the brain ; and to calm public excitement the Superintendent (Mr. Latrobe) ordered Sergeant Rennie to take six black A w a y they rode amidst a shower of good troopers with him and be off to explore the Pyrenees. wishes for their success. During their absence another Pyreneean shepherd arrived in town. About gold he had no knowledge whatever; but as to the " vamoosed b o y " he knew him well from the descriptions given; though all he knew of him was that he was called " T o m m y , " and was a Pentonville "exile." Search parties n o w grew numerous, in twos, and threes, and more; but wherever they went they were dogged by the mounted police. O n one occasion, towards the end of February, one of the parties fired some long grass to interrupt the police surveillance, and thereby caused an extensive bush conflagration. N o w and then a wayfarer would exhibit in Melbourne a piece of quartz with just the smell of gold adhering to it, but by some strange singularity nothing tangible could ever be ascertained as to where these gold-smelling relics were found. Sergeant Rennie and his black patrol returned as news-empty as they went, for they saw and found nothing of the substance so ardently longed for. For want of something to say they put in circulation absurd rumours about the parties w h o had professed to find gold being merely thieves who had stolen it in specie, then melted it, and taking it to the bush to avoid possible detection, brought it back to town, pretending to have found it. But gullible as the public mouth often is this canard was too big a bone to be swallowed. In March some curious disclosures found their way into print anent the runaway " T o m m y , " who was declared to have decamped to Sydney, where he was retained as a servant in an hotel. It was now averred upon his authority that his disappearance from Port Phillip had been caused by Duchene and Brentani having threatened him with a criminal prosecution if he could not succeed in finding for them the place were he picked up the gold. This so frightened him as to make him cut their acquaintance. A s to gold-finding, one day he came upon some samples, the appearance of which he m u c h liked, and had planted them for safe keeping. T h e next day he was shifted to another part of the run, but carried his hidden valuables with him, and had thence come to Melbourne without revisiting the first place, but he knew its whereabouts well. It was about 120 miles from Melbourne. O n reaching town he showed Brentani his find, and bartered 24 ozs., valued at ^ 6 0 , with him for five shirts, a coat, pair of braces, and ^ 2 0 . Duchene paid him £8 for about 14 ozs., and Brentani offered him ,£200 to point out the gold-bearing spot, but he refused. Such is the version of the Chapman-^«;«-Brentani golden episode, as collated in piecemeal from the Melbourne newspapers. T h e Press at the time laboured under infinite difficulty in obtaining full and explicit information from the parties mainly interested, and as I would not wittingly do an injustice to the memory of Mr. Brentani by the insertion of uncorrected possible inaccuracies, I append Mrs. Brentani's version of the interesting event, extracted from a letter written by her in the Argus controversy already referred to :— " M y husband, the late Charles Brentani, and I settled in Melbourne in the year 1845. H e carried on business as a jeweller in premises in Collins Street West, near Queen Street, and subsequently he removed to the premises n o w occupied by Messrs. Berghoff and Touzel, as tobacconists. In the month of May, 1849, a shepherd, then aged about twenty-two, entered our shop, and asked m e to buy a lump of yellow metal weighing between 12 ozs. and 13 ozs. I did not then know the value of the article, but handed it to a Mr. Garrow, one of our employes, w h o tested it, assisted by a Mr. Forrester, w h o was a working-jeweller in our employ. They told m e it was gold. M y husband was away at Geelong at the time on business, and I did not know the metal's worth, but pending his return I m a d e him a small advance, and m y husband afterwards paid him the balance. This shepherd was T h o m a s Chapman, a native of Whitechapel, London, and he told m e that he found the gold under the following circumstances : — H e was employed at the time on Messrs. Hall and M'Neil's station, Daisy Hill. O n e Sunday morning in the month of M a y , while at a creek watering his sheep, he saw the sun shining on the nugget which was sticking out of the bank of the creek, and he later on in the day returned and took it away with him and brought it to Melbourne. O n m y husband's