I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the verandah.

' "Mr Raffles?" said he.

"Mr Raffles!" said I, laughing, as I shook his hand.

' "You're late."

' "I was misdirected."

' "That all? I'm relieved," he said. "Do you know what they are saying? There are some brand-new bushrangers on the road between Whittlesea and this -- a second Kelly gang!    They'd have caught a Tartar in you, eh?"

Bushland along the Whittlesea-Yea road

' "They would in you," I retorted, and my tu quoque    shut him up and seemed to puzzle him. Yet there was much more sense in it than in his compliment to me, which was absolutely pointless.

' "I'm afraid you'll find things pretty rough," he resumed, when he had unstrapped my valise, and handed my reins to his man. "It's lucky you're a bachelor like myself."

'I could not quite see the point of this remark either, since, had I been married, I should hardly have sprung my wife upon him in this free-and-easy fashion. I muttered the conventional sort of thing, and then he said I should find it all right when I settled, as though I had come to graze upon him for weeks! "Well," thought I, "these Colonials do take the cake for hospitality!" And, still marvelling, I let him lead me into the private part of the bank.

' "Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour," said he, as we entered. "I thought you might like a tub first, and you'll find all ready in the room at the end of the passage. Sing out if there's anything you want. Your luggage hasn't turned up yet, by the way, but here's a letter that came this morning."

' "Not for me?"

' "Yes, didn't you expect one?"

' "I certainly did not!"

' "Well, here it is."

'And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own superscription of the previous day -- to W. F. Raffles!