A Colonial Reformer, Volume I by Rolf Boldrewood

When a man has suffered the indignity of actual incarceration, a savour of irrevocable dishonour is apt to cling to the sensation, however innocent the victim may subsequently be proved. Some robes once soiled cannot be washed white. The bloom cannot be replaced upon the blushing fruit. And Ernest sorrowfully reflected that, for all future time, if one of those ruthless vivisectors, a cross-examining barrister, chose to ask him, as a witness before a crowded court, whether or not he had ever been in gaol charged with highway robbery, he would be compelled to answer ‘yes,' with the privilege of explanation after that categorical answer, of course. Much regretful and indignant thought passed through his mind before lunch. The last Neuchamp that had heard a prison door barred behind him was enclosed by a troop of Ironside dragoons in the donjon at Neuchampstead, while they merrily revelled above, and praised the malignant's ale and serving-maids. That was honourable captivity. But to be boxed up in ‘the logs' of a bush township, side by side with a confessed robber and swindler! It was hard! The star of the Neuchamps was for a time under an evil influence. However, after a remarkably good lunch and a bottle of Bass (dear to England's subalterns in every land of exile) a more cheerful and philosophical frame of mind succeeded. After all, anybody might be arrested by mistake. No one would ever hear of it, any more than of the detention of Livingstone for a day by King Unilury on the Moombitonja. His friends at Morahmee would _never_ discover it, that was as certain as anything could be.

He ‘had a great mind,' as the phrase runs, to buy a horse, and so relieve himself, for the future, from all risk of evil communications, and other misfortune, which society seemed, with one accord, to trace directly to his using his own proper legs for purposes of locomotion. But he was a true reformer in this one particular. He was not less obstinate than enthusiastic, and he told himself, as he had commenced his journey on foot, that he would so end it, and complete the distance to Garrandilla in spite of all the strange people in this very strange country. He had his own secret doubts as to whether he would need much persuasion to ride or drive whenever he returned to Sydney. But in the meanwhile, and until he was fairly landed at Garrandilla --