QUEENSLAND SQUATTERS “DISPERSING” ABORIGINES.

THE BLACK POLICE.

A STORY OF MODERN AUSTRALIA.

BY
A. J. VOGAN.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP BY THE AUTHOR

LONDON:
HUTCHINSON & CO.,
25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

[All rights reserved.]

TO MY READERS.

IN the following story I have endeavoured to depict some of the obscurer portions of Australia’s shadow side.

The scenes and main incidents employed are chiefly the result of my personal observations and experiences; the remainder are from perfectly reliable sources.

Arthur James Vogan.

Tauranga, New Zealand.
September 1890.

CONTENTS.

THE BLACK POLICE.

CHAPTER I.
A PENNY FOR BAD NEWS.

TAR! Ev-en’ Star! Full account o’ the fi-re!” echoes shrilly on all sides from the throats of bare-legged, paper-laden urchins, who after the manner of their kind are actively engaged in supplying the passing public of Auckland, New Zealand, with the second edition of the evening paper.

Queen Street, the principal thoroughfare of the city, is crowded at this hour of the afternoon. Business at the banks and offices is over for the day, and the hot pavements are crowded with homeward-bound pedestrians of many varieties. Pale-faced daughters of the city’s nouveaux riches are there by dozens. Many are accompanied by healthy-looking female cousins from the agricultural Waikato, and if the former do congratulate themselves at the contrast between their own gaudy plumes and their country relative’s more sober feathers, what of that? It is an odd fact too, worth mentioning, that these young ladies always require to do their shopping about this time in the day. But look at the crowd again. There stalks a stately Maori chief, with dark, tattooed, thoughtful face, surmounted with the incongruous “long-sleeved hat” of Europe. Others of his race are also there rubbing noses, and weeping with long-lost friends, or holding consultations with sharp-eyed lawyers, who, spider-like, are sucking the unfortunate natives’ ancestral estates into the insatiable and unscrupulous maws of pakeha landsharks.

On hurries the crowd, and somebody points out Auckland’s richest man. “Entirely devoted to Art,” says our informant, adding that the object of our attention “has found gin-spinning pay better than feeling the pulses of hypochondriacs.”

Bustling past comes a knot of loud-voiced, white-waistcoated mining agents. One of these turns for a moment to buy a paper. Like minnows at a worm, a shoal of newsboys make a dive at him, tumbling over each other, and crying aloud their alto battle-cry in the strange vernacular of their kind: “Star! Ev-en’ Star! Full account of the fi-re! Death of an Australian explorer!”

A young man, who with riding-whip in hand is standing close by on the curb, turns at the last sentence, and hurriedly buying a paper, glances eagerly at it.

“So it is true, after all,” he murmurs half aloud, and remains for a moment or two in deep thought. As we want our readers to know him when they meet him again, here is a brief description of Mr. Claude Angland. As he stands there before us in a loosely-fitting Norfolk jacket and Bedford cords, his dark-brown, wide-brimmed felt hat—light as gossamer—thrown back from his honest, sunburnt face, he looks the beau idéal of what an intelligent, active pioneer in a new country should be. Old ladies would call him “a fine young man to look at;” younger members of the female persuasion, although denying his right to be termed handsome, would naturally turn to him in trouble or in danger, in preference to many a more showy individual.

Our new friend does not stand long in thought; he suddenly glances again at the paper, and then at his watch, and turning on his heel is soon lost to view in the crowd.

The news that has apparently so interested the young man is in the latest telegrams’ column of the evening paper.

“(By special wire.)

“Cairns, Queensland.

“News has just been received from Georgetown confirmatory of wire sent you last week respecting death of Dr. Dyesart. Whilst exploring the country near the Mitchell river he met with a severe fall, and died three days afterwards. His sole companion, a black boy named Billy, who has accompanied him during all his later expeditions, reached Murdaro station with the news ten days since. An attempt will be made to find the body, when the boy, who was also badly hurt, is sufficiently recovered.”

In smaller type, below the telegram, a few brief editorial notes appeared eulogising the deceased explorer, and giving a short outline sketch of his life.

CHAPTER II.
ΣΚΥΤΑ’ΛΗ.

“No more by thee my steps shall be

For ever and for ever.”

N a long, ceilingless room, half kitchen and half parlour, two figures are seated near an enormous fireplace, in which a glowing heap of wood ashes illuminates that end of the otherwise somewhat gloomy chamber. One figure, that of an elderly lady, is reclining in an easy chair. Her brain is evidently busy with anxious and even painful thoughts, the object of which is made evident as she turns her moist eyes, from gazing at the scintillating wonderland amongst the embers, to glance from time to time at the form opposite to her.

The lady’s vis-à-vis at the fireside is a well-built, athletic young man, to whom we have already been introduced. In the rough garments of a working farmer, he lies sleeping there in his chair just as he came in from ploughing twenty minutes before.

The sleepy god, however, has apparently less power over the youth’s brain than his body. The twitching mouth and hands, the murmured words, show that the anima is busy, if the body is not. The sudden barking of a sharp-voiced collie outside the house presently causes the sleeper to open his eyes. They turn immediately to meet the smile of the lady opposite.

“Well, you have not had a very good sleep after all, Claude,” murmured the latter. “I think Dick is back. It was Bob’s barking awakened you.”

“Ah,” returned the still dozy young man, “that’s all right. The old chap’s rather late, isn’t he? D’you know,” he added slowly, “I’ve been dreaming about my trip to Queensland.” Here Claude rose, and, taking both the lady’s hands in his, continued, “I’ve made up my mind, mother, to run over to Queensland, and find out the particulars of Uncle Sam’s death. I’m not superstitious, but I’m sure there’s something odd about it. I’ve dreamed a dozen times since we saw that horrible telegram in the paper that poor uncle was calling me to come to him.”

“Nonsense, my boy, nonsense,” gently returned the lady, “you know we can’t spare you. It’s right you should wish to go, Claude, but we can’t spare you. It’s a fearful place, that Queensland.”

“Oh you! Mollie wouldn’t be alone. Would you, Mollie?” Claude remarked in a louder voice, as a pretty young girl tripped into the room, bearing a lighted lamp in her hands.

“Don’t be silly, Claude,” answered the fair one, smoothing down a spotless white cloth upon a table standing in the centre of the room. “Dick is back, and he’ll be so famished. Do run away and get ready for tea.”

“Oh, of course, it’s Dick is hungry now,” laughed the young man; “your poor brother is second fiddle in the domestic orchestra since the arrival of the young Irishman.” As one door bangs with the exit of the last speaker, another leading on to the verandah opens and quickly closes, showing in the interval a brief picture of fiery sunset behind dark fir-trees. A fresh figure is in the room. It is that of a jolly-looking individual, whose plan of construction, so to speak, is more inclined to squareness than height. The younger of the two women is soon helping the new-comer to empty his pockets and shoulder-bag of letters and papers, chattering all the time. “Oh, Dick, haven’t you got a letter for me?”

“Nary a one, ducky; but I’ve got an important one for Claude. D’you know, Mrs. Angland, it’s from the Queensland police. They sent it here to Inspector Goode, and he gave it to me just before I left town. Maybe now it’s something about poor Dr. Dyesart.” Here Claude re-enters the room.

“Well, old man, glad you’re back safe. How did the mare go? She was bound to be a bit skittish after the long spell she’s had. I hope you’ve had her shod? Have you any news of the Doctor?”

“Taihoa (wait a bit), old chap,” interrupts Dick, with his fingers to his ears to illustrate histrionically the pain such rapid questioning is giving him. “Why, Claude, you’re getting as bad as your sister. Here’s a letter for you, which you needn’t apologise for opening at tea. I myself beg to move that we do now partake of what our black brethren here call ‘kai,’ alias ‘tucker.’”

The little circle now gathered round the white-clothed table consists of an English lady, her son and daughter, and a friend,—a young man from northern Ireland. They had left the old country together, some four years before the time when our story opens, to settle upon a farm in New Zealand.

The youth from the Emerald Isle had, some time before leaving his native land, determined in his own mind that as long as he could settle down close to his friend Claude’s pretty sister, he would remain perfectly contented anywhere. Our friends had not been “out” long enough to feel homesick; the many novelties of life in a new country had not yet lost their charms. The rough life was almost like one long picnic. The lovely climate made up for many hardships; and if it would rain a little less at times, and if a market could be depended upon for fowls when fattened and cheese when made, the life of a New Zealand farmer was one, they all agreed, to be envied.

Claude, to the surprise of his mother, quietly finished his tea before opening the letter. There it lay by his plate in tantalising proximity to her hand, containing, perhaps, news of that poor brother of hers,—long estranged from all his family through no real fault of his or hers, to wander in a barbarous country, and die at last in the wilderness he had braved so long. Tea is cleared away, Dick and Mollie go out into the verandah,—to look at the stars probably,—and in the room the purring of the “harmless necessary cat” upon the hearthrug, and the click click of Mrs. Angland’s knitting needles, are the only sounds. Claude has taken a seat at the lamplit table, and lays the envelope, marked O. H. M. S., and bearing the Queensland postmark, before him upon the red cloth.

He feels instinctively his uncle’s presence in that letter. There is no particular sign by which an ordinary observer could tell it from a letter of ordinary importance. Yet Claude knows, and it puzzles him to think how he knows it, that an answer to his dreams is before him. The truth of the theory of animism never appeared clearer to him than at present. The envelope is addressed to Claude Angland, Care of the Superintendent of Police, Auckland, N.Z. Below this direction is a note to the effect that the writer will be glad if the aforesaid Claude Angland can be found without delay, and handed the enclosed letter and packet. Inside the envelope is a brief note from some official at Cairns, informing Claude that a small packet, enclosed, having been brought to the station of a Mr. Giles by the late explorer’s black boy, that gentleman had forwarded it to the writer, who took the present means of sending it to Mr. Angland, hoping the simple address, as copied from the packet, would find him. A few words expressive of the regret the writer, in common with all colonists, felt at the loss of such an able explorer as Dr. Dyesart closed the letter.

The packet referred to by the unknown correspondent at Cairns, whose hieroglyphic signature looked more like the shadow of a delirious spider than the name of a human being, now attracted Claude’s attention. It was about the size of a large walnut, and its outer covering consisted of a piece of soiled linen rag, tightly bound with fine fishing line. In irregular and almost illegible blue-black characters, the same address as that upon the envelope had been scrawled upon it by aid of an indelible ink pencil. The covering removed,—Claude saw at once it had at one time formed part of the lining of a coat,—an empty revolver cartridge was discovered, tightly plugged at one end with wood, the joints and cap-end being smeared over with a kind of resinous, dark-coloured gum.

Claude’s strong but trembling fingers are not long in removing the wooden stopper, and in his hands is a carefully folded piece of paper, which he recognizes on opening it as a leaf from a sketching block. The same handwriting that had attracted the young man’s attention upon the linen wrapper of the packet has covered one side of the opened paper before him.

With head on hand, Claude sits without moving aught save his eyes, poring over the letters. At last, half turning in his chair, his voice pitched in a slightly higher key than usual, he speaks:—

“Mother, here is my summons. I knew I should get one. Come and see poor uncle’s letter.”

Mrs. Angland rises quickly, and stooping over the table, her right hand on her son’s broad shoulder, gazes with filling eyes at the well-known writing on that crumpled paper lying there. The writing is small and somewhat obliterated, and from the varying character and style of the different sentences the same have evidently been written at intervals. One could easily imagine that a wounded man, who required to rest often from his task, would write such a letter.

“Read it to me, my son, I cannot.”

He reads as follows:—

“To my nephew, Claude Angland, of Auckland, New Zealand.

“I am dying before my work is completed. It rests with you to allow me to rest in peace after my death. I wish to make reparation to those I have neglected too long. I have tried to bury the past in science and in work. Your mother will explain all to you at the proper time. Come to where I now lie. You can trust Billy, whom you will remember with me in England. I believe he will get out of this. Come here alone with him, and at once. Good-bye to all. I hope you keep up your chemistry. Beware of squatters and police. This note will be hard to read, but read the whole of it.

“Samuel D. Dyesart.”

“What does he mean?” muses Claude out loud, after a pause,—inadvertently speaking as if the writer was still alive, so difficult was it to believe that the hand that had guided the pencil that traced those shaky letters was fast turning into its original dust.

Mrs. Angland comes of a practical stock, and sees the letter only as it is.

“I suppose, poor fellow,” she says, speaking slowly and softly, “he liked to think that some one he had loved in life would visit his lonely grave out there in those fearful wastes. He was very fond of you, Claude, even from the time he first saw you, a mere baby. But don’t go, Claude,” she adds beseechingly; “that horrible Queensland that has cost me a brother shall not take my son.”

“Mother,” interrupts Claude at this point, “you don’t understand what I mean. Let me read the letter to you again.” The letter is re-read. Presently Mrs. Angland breaks the silence.

“Perhaps he wants you to finish his work—his horrid exploring. God forgive me if I am wicked when I think it was wrong of your uncle to tempt you away from me. But perhaps he was wandering in his mind rather. Poor fellow, what he must have suffered! How odd of him to think of your chemistry. ‘I hope you keep up your chemistry,’” quoting from the letter. “Fancy his thinking of that when so near death.”

Claude is listening in silence; but when Mrs. Angland speaks of his uncle’s mention of chemistry, he rises quickly, and, seizing the letter, holds it to the light, and then proceeds to carefully examine the remainder of the packet, including the cartridge case, etc. He is rewarded by finding the single word that heads this chapter scratched upon the tarnished brass of the latter. “Hidden,” he murmurs, for luckily he knew a little Greek. “Hidden, what is hidden?” and falls to poring over the letter once more.

CHAPTER III.
EUREKA.

“I had a vision when the night was late.”

UTSIDE on the verandah a happy couple are sitting enjoying the hay-scented night wind as it blows in gentle gusts up the valley. Dick and Mollie are in that delightfully idiotic frame of mind known to the vulgar as “being spooney.” A great silver moon is shining down, as only a New Zealand moon can shine, over the forest-clad Hunua ranges in the distance and the neighbouring dewy pastures, where white-backed cattle can be seen resting for the night. The weird-voiced weka calls from the dark fern-hill on the right, and a couple of night-jars, called “More Pork” by the colonists, from their peculiar cry, are proclaiming at intervals their carnivorous desires from the grand Puriri tree by the stockyard. The youth and his betrothed are thinking of anything but the letter that is engaging the attention of the people indoors, and Claude’s voice calling loudly upon Dick is by no means a welcome sound.

“Dick,” comes the summons again.

“Here I am,” answers the owner of the one-syllabled cognomen. A parting squeeze, and he opens the door, and walks into the room rubbing his eyes.

“Look here, Dick,” says his friend, without raising his head from its bowed position over the letter upon the table. “Here’s the summons I expected from the poor Doctor. But it’s an enigma, I’m certain. I’m bothered if I can get at its meaning. Read it, and find out its hidden signification, there’s a good fellow.”

Dick’s face is generally a smiling placid one, but it is curious to notice how it changes, and becomes thoughtful and determined, as its owner catches sight of Claude’s knitted brows and anxious, worried look.

Both young fellows remain seated at the table in silence for a time, till Claude somewhat sharply asks,—

“Well, what do you make of it?”

“Humph,” grunts his friend, “I think I’ll postpone my decision till to-morrow.” Here he glances towards the verandah door, round the jamb of which flutters the white edge of a female’s dress. “The letter has a secret meaning I’ve little doubt. By-the-bye, I didn’t notice these figures before.”

“Oh, I did, but I don’t think they are part of the letter.”

“You bet they are, Claude. I wonder what I, cross, six, nought, double l,—or is it H?—two, nought, can mean.”

Claude leans forward, and seizing the other’s arm said, “I didn’t understand myself till you read them.”

“What do they mean then?”

“They are chemical symbols for iodine mixed with water. Yes, I₆₀H₂₀ can mean nothing else.”

Nothing more can the youths make out of the hidden meaning of the letter, if hidden meaning there was. Before long all save Claude retire to rest. That individual, believing that no sleep will come to him that night, sits in front of the fireplace, puzzling over what part iodine—if iodine is meant by the symbols—can play in unveiling the secret message that he believes lies in the letter. The kerosene lamp is turned down low; and the room, lit only from the great fireplace, becomes darker each minute. Claude, having thought his active brain tired, is almost dropping off to sleep, when a sudden noise occurring in the room causes him to spring from his chair. A few shrill squeals in the dark corner of the room denote that the cause of the disturbance is the black cat Te Kooti, who has caught a mouse. Half-a-dozen books have fallen from a shelf by the door, as evidence of her prowess. After several vain attempts to get the blind side of Mr. Mouse, the feline namesake of the Maori patriot has employed a literary ambush to aid her in her plans, and with perfect success.

“Confound the cat!” growls the awakened one; “get out of the room, you brute. Wonderful, women always will have them in the house!”

Having ejected the poor discomfited animal, who was making her way towards him to be congratulated, as usual, upon her prowess, Claude turns to pick up the fallen books.

He has replaced all but two, when he stops short, for the feel of the smooth, cold cover of one of them now in his hand has made him thoughtful again. Strange what a host of memories will crystallize into shape, one after another, in the brain, like the scintillating colours of the kaleidoscopes,—all arising from a simple keynote set buzzing by some slight passing circumstance. The book he held in his hand was a rough copy-book, so dilapidated that he had hesitated to pack it in his boxes when coming to the colony. In it, when a boy at school, he used to keep his notes upon the science lectures delivered once a fortnight to the assembled scholars. He remembered, in the semi-darkness, how fond he was of those lectures. He recollected, as if it had occurred but yesterday, that he was holding the book just in that position when, at the end of one lecture, he rose in exceeding trepidation to ask a question relative to biblical science that caused an awful hush to fall upon the schoolroom. There before his mind’s eye was the picture of the professor—who was small, and rather nervous amongst boys—as he blushed, stammered, and finally refused to answer “a foolish question,” to the delight of the boys, his pupils, and the glorification of Claude in the playground by-and-by.

Claude turns up the light, and glances through the pages covered with his long-past schoolboy scrawl. His whole attention is however presently directed to a note on a scribbled memorandum, which relates, as a fact, that iodine can be employed to determine whether certain infusoria, in water taken from a pond or ditch, belong to the animal or vegetable kingdom. “The former,” says the note, “do not contain starch and remain unaltered in colour; the latter turn blue upon coming in contact with the iodine.”

Just as the thoughts, roused by reading these words, are shaping themselves for action in Claude’s brain, a step is heard on the stairs, the handle of the door rattles, and Dick enters the room. He is in his pyjamahs, just as he has tumbled out of his bed.

“I guessed you’d be grinding away at your letter,” he roars, “so having had a bright idea I thought I would come and lend you a hand. Cryptography’s the answer to the doctor’s puzzle, and your iodine will do something towards bringing the secret to light.”

“Well, we’ll try, without wasting further time,” and Claude, going out of the room, presently returns with a wine-glass half full of light-brown liquor.

“It’s mighty strange that you should have hit on what I believe is the answer to the puzzle just as I had done the same thing.” Here the speaker pushes the manuscript book towards Dick, who, sitting on the table, is cutting some tobacco for his pipe off a rough roll of Maori-prepared leaf, called torori.

Claude now pours some of the liquid, which contains about forty per cent. of iodine, into a plate, and proceeds with some hesitation to moisten a corner of the letter with the same. Both young men watch the result breathlessly. There is no result. Claude’s face clouds over with a disappointed look; but he nevertheless plunges half the sheet beneath the surface of the liquor.

As if by magic a change immediately begins to make itself apparent upon the surface of the paper.

At right angles to the pencil writing there gradually appears, after the manner of a photographic negative that is being developed, a series of parallel lines of disjointed dots and dashes, of a faint blue colour. These markings grow stronger each minute. The letter is wholly immersed, and presently withdrawn and held to the lamp. A hitherto hidden message, written in fairly distinct blue-green characters, is now visible. It runs as follows:—

“I am writing this with rice water. Proceed at once to Sydney, see Winze and Clinskeen, Mining Agents, Pitt Street. There await you valuable papers. You can trust Winze entirely. Find Billy and take out Miner’s Right. Come up here and follow directions map other side paper. Billy does not know of reef. Obliterate your tracks. You may be watched in Sydney perhaps for other reasons. Travel incognito.”

On the other side of the paper, which had appeared blank before the application of the iodine, a roughly-drawn map now appeared, ornamented with dotted lines and arrows. From it, it appeared that if a certain direction was taken—shown by a dotted line—from a point indicated by a cross, a creek would be crossed running through a gorge. This creek followed up for a mile would be found to cut through a region marked “the golden cliffs.”

“It is plain,” remarked Claude after a few moments, “that I must first find Billy.”

“That,” replied his friend, who was smoking off his excitement, “that is clearly an important preliminary.”

CHAPTER IV.
PADDY’S MARKET.

HE newly-arrived traveller in Sydney is generally pestered by the urbane and well-meaning citizens of that London of the South by three or more questions. Until he has answered these, and done so to their satisfaction,—and the correct reply is the “Open Sesame” to their hospitable homes and hearts,—his polite inquisitors will look coldly upon him. This knowledge is worth much to those of our readers who intend visiting Sydney for the first time; and we highly recommend such persons to study what we have to say upon this highly important subject.

Many a time have we seen the learned scholar, the gallant soldier, and the wealthy globe-trotter turned back from the very gates of that Antipodean Paradise, the inner circle of Sydney society, from an inability to pass this curious test. As often we have seen the artful “new chum,” who has received a clear hint from his friends, and acted upon such, glide without exertion into the Elysium fields of Elizabeth Bay and Pott’s Point.

The principal of these questions, and the first one generally asked, is, “What do you think of our beautiful harbour?” (Time being precious in Sydney, the aspirate is seldom sounded in this case.)

The second screw of the interviewer’s mental thumb-smasher is, “What do you think of the Post-Office carvings?”

The third query is generally, “Have you been to Paddy’s Market?”

Now experience has shown us that to the first two questions the simple words “Awfully jolly, bai Jove!” especially if accompanied with a long drawl, will put the knowing if unscrupulous candidate upon his way rejoicing. That he may be able to answer the third in a satisfactory manner, we ask him to follow our story through the wastes that lie over against Cambell and Hay Streets.

It is a curious and interesting fact that no one, whatever command of language he may possess, can describe a place, or thing, successfully to another, if his auditor has never had personal experience of something similar. Who could picture up in his mind the ocean in a storm, or a cavalry charge, from a mere verbal or written description?

The best literary effort would be thrown away upon a man of no experience. Such an individual would, after reading or hearing of the glories of the sea, probably still have only a vague idea that it was in appearance something similar to an animated potato-bed of a green colour.

We trouble our readers with all this in order that they may assist us in picturing the scene we are about to describe, by conjuring up “in the mind’s eye,” one of the flaring midnight markets of the Old World,—Petticoat Lane, Seven Dials, Deptford, the more ancient parts of the Cité, Paris, or the like.

The best admirers of Sydney—and it rightly has many of these—will scarcely proclaim it as a moral city. The unlimited license granted to its youth of both sexes and every class, by the custom and habits of the community, is fraught with those dangerous elements that encourage the growth of the worst sorts of crimes. Monied and unscrupulous blackguards are to be found here, as elsewhere in the world; and nowhere can they have their fling—that every devil’s dance—to better advantage than in Sydney.

Paddy’s Market is one of the hunting-grounds of this class of individuals.

As evening draws over the city vast crowds are to be seen hurrying homeward past the glaring shops and brilliantly-lighted hotels. Now dodging red- and green-eyed steam-trams, as they screech and rumble along the handsome but narrow streets; and anon dashing in open order like frighted sheep across the bus-covered squares, the migratory sojourners of the city flock nightly outwards from the business centres.

Let us allow ourselves to be carried down George Street in the human stream “Southward Ho!” till Cambell Street is reached. Here in the slack-water of the comparatively deserted footpath of a side street we can look around us. A vacant space of ground surrounded by a white railing is on the opposite side of the way, and we become aware of a Chinese quarter being at hand from the acrid stench that reaches us from up the street.

The open square in front of us is being appropriated for the night by a noisy crowd of itinerant ragamuffin “entertainers of the public,” of various callings.

There are the usual Try-yer-weight, Balm-of-Gilead, and Try-afore-yer-buy rascals, and others of like kidney. These, with the dirty evangelists of Kings-of-Pain and Quack-doctors, are busy erecting various machines and tables for the night’s work. The place is busy with moving figures and the Norse-alphabetical rappings of twenty hammers, and gay with the crowd-attracting glories of red paint and bright brass-work. The gloaming gradually sinks into night, and flaring lamps appear in all directions; and four long buildings, that during the week have formed the Covent Garden of Sydney, begin to light up as the numerous stall-holders within commence business. Most of these are Jews of the lower classes; but here and there the child-like smile of a quarantine-flag-coloured follower of Confucius, or the merry, black, oily face of an African, breaks the monotony. At one stall half-a-dozen under-sized Chinamen are fingering some shoddy clothes; at another a “young man from the country” is hurriedly purchasing some indecent photographs from a dealer in church pictures and altar decorations, looking around him nervously the while, lest “his people” should see him. Close by, a lump of human flesh, in black oily ringlets and an astoundingly ample dress of vivid green, is showing off the glories of a ruby-coloured velvet skirt to two fragile “daughters of the public” by holding it against her majestic base. Near this last group, seated upon the only empty show bench within sight, are two men. One, enveloped in a long, light dust-coat, and wearing a fashionable light-felt hat, looks to the casual observer like what he once was, namely, a gentleman. His companion is a short, thick-set fellow, with the ever-restless eyes of a detective or a criminal. His otherwise stolid-looking features are those that mark him at once as a foreigner, probably a Wurtemburger. As far as can be made out, as he sits in the shadow, he is more anxious to avoid notice than is his companion, and is dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed. Both are apparently watching for somebody they expect in the column of men, women, and children, as with the orderly manner, characteristic of a Sydney crowd, it dawdles its long length past.

“I know he left the hotel, and I know he’s not been able to see the firm to-day,” whispers the man in the dust-coat, rising and striking a match upon his pants, and proceeding to light a cigarette. “I slung him a moral yarn or two about Paddy’s Market that’ll fetch him along.”

“Why you not bring ’im mit you?” growls his companion.

“Because, my dear sir, if anything should happen to the young man, and I had been seen in his company, I might find it awkward; d’ye see, Grosse?”

The last speaker continues, after knocking the ashes off his cigarette with a delicate little cane he held in his gloved hands,—

“When I see him I’ll touch your arm. Clear out then at once. And when you see us again—at, you know where—don’t attempt to act if you don’t hear me whistling ‘Killaloo.’”

Here he of the cigarette whistled a bar of that melody for the benefit of his accomplice.

The two men continue for some time sitting moodily watching the faces of the crowd, till the one in the tweed clothes abruptly rises, and, pulling his hat well over his eyes, slouches off. His companion shortly after leaves his seat, and, settling his collar, strolls off in the opposite direction. His walk is slow and deliberate, and as his lack-lustre eyes gaze alternately right and left upon the busy stalls, more than one remark about “swell attire” reaches his ear. His face, however, remains a perfect blank, until he meets the eye of a gentleman going the other way, when it becomes suffused with the smiles and beams of gratified pleasure.

A few words of recognition pass between the two and they join company, and pushing onward are lost to our view. The latest arrival, as our readers have no doubt guessed, is the hero of this story. Regardful of all his uncle’s instructions, save that clause concerning the risk he ran by using his own name in Sydney, he has just met a casual but delightful acquaintance, who is stopping at the same hotel that he has put up at. But before we follow the pair let us try and learn a lesson from, or rather philosophize over, the human panorama before us.

One of the first things that would strike a thoughtful observer of the habitués of Paddy’s Market are the number of young people to be seen there,—that is, persons under twenty-one years of age. Of course anywhere in the Australian colonies, save, perhaps, in some parts of Tasmania, the balance of population will be found to be in favour of youth rather than age, but here there are far more than one would expect to meet at such a place and at such an hour, for it is past eleven o’clock.

Numbers of these young people are pale-faced girls of tender age, who, earning their own livelihood at the big warehouses or millinery establishments of the city, laugh at the discipline of home (too often far away “up-country”), and are rapidly following that easy path that, with ever-increasing declivity, will likely land them ultimately amongst the unfortunates of the pavements. The “pals” of these young damsels are also there by scores. Most of these have been “turned out” after one general pattern; and, to use another mechanic’s term, are chiefly “wasters.” The same disgusting, unnatural, and unhealthy manikin appearance surrounds all of them. There is hardly any sight more pitiful to behold than these youthful bodies, that have never known the youth which Coleridge describes as “the body and spirit in unity.” These little weak-eyed, weak-kneed, man-like creatures are mostly addicted to sham meerschaums, “flash ties,” and “blunderbuss” cut trousers, the bell-bottoms of which cover nearly the whole of their high-heeled “number nineteens.”

Why, for the sake of these unhappy chickens of Hers, does not fair Liberty—who is fast being dethroned in Sydney by her sly bastard-sister License—wake up, and let some paternal edict become law that will make it a State concern to watch over these truly “fatherless and motherless bairns”?

“The childhood,” said Milton, “shows the man, as morning shows the day.” What will Australia’s day be like with all this wealth of youth, that should one day form the voting and the thinking power of the rising Republic of the South, wasting its sweetness upon the tobacco-and-gin-stained wilderness of vice and idleness in all her cities? Who that knows Sydney is not also aware of the fact that these merry, over-dressed companions of these miserable little “market-toffs” fall an easy prey before the devilish machinations of the foul prowler and her client-slaves of appetence? Each girl—womanlike—vies with her work-fellows in extravagance of dress, destroying the beautiful architectural lines of “Nature’s divine building” with her uneducated idea of a perfect vestis forensis. If her legitimate exertions and the pocket money of her “pal” is insufficient for her purpose, other persons, whose business it is to do so, come forward to show her other means of obtaining the necessary funds, and the mischief is done.

The colony of New South Wales is badly in want of wives and mothers, and cries out ceaselessly to the older countries that she cannot give to every man a wife. Yet here are her own flesh and blood, female forms of which she need not be ashamed, all hurrying down the sewer of crime, like drowning butterflies, to rot in the foul slums and gutters of the capital.

As democracy grows used to her new-born powers, perhaps the people will cease to toy with the bright but keen-edged weapons of responsibility, and turn to guard their boys and girls. At present, however, and that is what concerns the object of this book, Sydney is a gigantic bait-pond where the wealthy debauchee can luxuriously roll in sin, and feed, shark-like and unchecked, upon the daughters of the colony.

But to return to Claude, and the delightful acquaintance he has made. Our hero, having discovered that he must wait a few days in Sydney before starting northwards to prosecute the object of his journey, has become fidgety and impatient. It is so annoying that he cannot begin his work at once; and he is only too glad to find any means of passing the intervening time. As the two men stroll along, Claude’s companion discourses eloquently to him upon the scenes around them, and Claude, walking silent and thoughtful at his side, feels grateful to him for doing all the talking.

“You have no idea, my dear fellow,” rattles on the young man in the grey coat, “you can’t have the slightest idea of the growing tendency which the unlimited freedom of the youth of this colony encourages towards the doctrine of Free-love.

“We see the lower orders here,” gracefully waving his cane, “and, mind you, the ‘lower orders’ is not a synonymous term with that of ‘poorer classes,’ as in the older countries. And which of the young people here to-night looks forward to marriage as more or less of a certainty, as people do in the older countries? Even in the parent-land the new doctrine is growing in strength. Here, I assure you, the girls dread marriage, and simply because it curtails that freedom of life, of following their own inclination, that passion that is bred in their bones, and was the holiest creed of their parents.

“Only a wealthy husband, who is not likely to be too uxorious or too particular, will be endured in a few years. Do we not see it already in some of the States of America? Steady fellows like you may call the new doctrine simply open sin. But after all, what is sin? What but the breaking of certain unstable laws, that change and give way to others, as the nations that made them clamber painfully upwards towards the attractive light of freedom. Divorce is becoming every day more common, and easier to obtain. Every day home life is more and more exposed, and is fading away before the searching bull’s-eye of the unsympathetic paper-reading public. The beauties of home, that suited our mutton-headed fathers, are departing; and the price—marriage—is too much nowadays to give for what is often everybody’s property, as much as that of the unfortunate and foolish purchaser. But, as I said, you can see here the lower orders of the people. If you can judge the mind from the exterior body, you will acknowledge I am right in my deductions. And now, if you have no objection, we will visit another place I want you to see, where we can study those human fowls that roost upon the second perch from the ground. Are you agreeable?”

“Oh, I’m in your hands entirely,” replies Claude. His companion smiles grimly,—turning his head away, for they are passing under a lamp. “It’s only too good of you to take the trouble of entertaining a dull country-fellow like myself. Where do you propose taking me to next?”

“Oh, it isn’t far, and I’ll take you a short cut. I want you to see a skating-rink. You’ll see lots of human moths there, and very pretty specimens of lepidoptera some of them are, fluttering, or rather rolling, round the lamp of sin. These rinks are little more or less than places of assignation.”

The young men have left the whirring, noisy, lamplit crowds of Paddy’s Market during this conversation, and are making their way westward to George Street. The air is hot, and steamy with the butyric odours of a Saturday-night crowd. Crossing the wide rattling thoroughfare just mentioned, with its thousands of lights, and busy streams of thundering omnibuses and cabs, Claude and his companion push their way across the pavement,—crowded with purchasing humanity,—and find themselves suddenly in a new world. It is in this locality that one of the few nests of ancient rookeries that still remain in Sydney exists,—a menace breathing the foul odours of vice and sickness upon the rest of the city. Stately warehouses are, bit by bit, pushing these plague spots out of existence, and in a few more years they will happily be swept away. Here is before us an example of Dr. Johnson’s saying “that men are seldom better employed than when making money,”—commerce successfully waging a war of extermination against those fortresses of the city’s criminal population. A few gas lamps here and there, at long intervals, make the dark dreariness of the blank wall, and lightless broken windows of the tumble-down houses, more complete. Black, suspicious-looking alleys and lanes slink off to nowhere in particular from unexpected corners to right and left of the midnight passer-by, as if fearful of being noticed.

At the end of the dark silent street, by the flickering light of a solitary broken lamp, Claude reads, upon the dirty wall of a house, a notice to the effect that a collar-maker had once lived there. That he or any one else existed there now, and was within call, was hardly to be imagined, so lonely did the spot appear to be,—no lights at the windows, no sign of life, and no sound save the lessening roar of the great, hot, artery of traffic fast being left behind.

The two men walked quickly on, their hollow footsteps echoing over the broken pavements, and then another and still darker lane is crossed, surrounded by still more tumble-down wooden tenements. The place is a wilderness, long deserted, surely, by mankind; only peopled by ghostly cats, and half-starved supernatural dogs, that, at the sound of footsteps, slink off like shadows into fetid drains, or through broken doors and fences, under cover of the blackness beyond.

“Where the dickens are you taking me to?” presently asked Claude,—the sound of his voice making quite a pleasant relief to the dead silence around.

“Oh! we’re quite near to Liverpool Street now,” replies his companion. “It’s a dreary neighbourhood, this; is not it? By Jupiter, it’s warm walking too! I’ll take my coat off.” The speaker stops for a moment, and, divesting himself of his dust-coat, hangs it doubled over his left arm.

“There,” he cries, a few steps further on, pointing with his cane, “there are the lights of the rink.” At this moment the two men left the shadowy lane, and felt under their feet the surface of a well-kept street, a pleasant change after the broken ways they had just traversed. Above where they stand, and about a quarter of a mile off, the blue-white radiance of several electric lights show the location of the famous cosmopolitan rink.

The street they are in terminates as such some twenty feet from where they stand, and, changing to a well-paved road, rises upwards, on a wide, serpentine viaduct built upon arches, to the dim building-clad hill before them. A low wall has been built on either side to prevent passengers from falling off upon the pavement below. On the right hand side of the viaduct is a large cobble-stoned yard, covered with hundreds of boxes, crates, and empty barrels of all kinds. It is part of the railway goods station, and is at one point some twenty-five or thirty feet below the road upon the arches.

The faint earth-tremors of moving trucks and carriages, and the distant whirr of machinery, announces that there are persons not very far-off. But, save for a hansom cab that dashes by the spot, it is almost as lonely as the slums just left.

“We’ll soon be there,” says Claude’s companion, who, glancing up the viaduct, has caught sight of a short, stout figure, as it passed under one of the few lamps above, coming slowly down the footing.

“I can hear the music, too, I declare,” he adds presently, as they reach the highest and darkest part of the incline overlooking the railway yard below. “Do you know the air? It’s Killaloo.”

Claude’s friend ceases speaking, and whistles a bar or two of the well-known song. Just then a short lame man is seen hobbling out of the darkness towards them, leaning upon a stick. He passes, and it is odd to notice how he at once becomes cured of his infirmities. At the same instant Claude’s companion exclaims, “A fire, by Jove!” and points towards a distant glare in the sky. Immediately afterwards he quickly steps backward, and seizing his light overcoat in both hands suddenly, with great dexterity flings it over his companion’s head, so as to completely muffle any attempted cry. Claude’s head is turned in the direction indicated by his companion, when he feels his arms suddenly pinioned behind. At the same instant some rough kind of drapery is dragged tightly over his head. He gasps for breath, and with the sudden anger of a surprised and wounded tiger dashes himself backward on his unseen foes. His frantic efforts are unavailing; and before his half-dazed senses have properly taken in his terrible situation, he feels himself raised by four strong arms upon the parapet of the viaduct. The fearful truth flashes through his reeling brain. His whole body breaks out into suddenly alternating hot and icy sweats. He vainly tries with struggling feet and back-bound hands to save himself. It is but for an instant. The next moment he feels his back upon the sharp edge of the coping stones. The hot blood surges through his brain in a red, wild, lurid, ever-increasing rush. Then he suddenly turns cold. His back overhangs the wall! He is resting upon nothing! He is falling!

CHAPTER V.
THE SELVAGE EDGE OF CIVILIZATION.

UR next act in the drama before us begins with the foot-lights still turned down low, for another night scene is to be enacted. It is the new township of Ulysses. Some six or seven thousand miners are crowding into the one long, irregular street of a new Queensland “gold rush” township. For it is the night of the week,—pay-day night; with Sunday for an idle to-morrow on which to get sober.

The new field of Ulysses—some sixty miles from the famous copper mines of Reid’s Creek—is, like many of the later Queensland gold fields which have been within an easy distance of railway communication with the coast, quite a different affair to the old rushes of an earlier date, or even the modern Croydens and Kimberleys of the far north. As such it is worth sketching. Rapid means of transportation, cheap fares, and double-leaded notices in the daily southern papers have brought hosts of town-bred men and boys to compete with the professional miner.

The difference between these two classes of workers is immense. Now the reader can take it as a gospel truth that of the various classes of men who earn their bread with the sweat of their brow, those who follow the profession of the practical miner are amongst the noblest specimens of humanity. Mind you, we do not mean the labourers, who, by hundreds, earn their 6s. to 10s. per day in the great Wyndham “stopes” or upon the hot “benches” of Mount Morgan. Nor do I intend you to mistake for the real article the half digger, half speculator, who haunts the grog-shanties at night, and spies for chances to make some “unearned increment” from the whisky-wagging tongues of the true workers on the field. The professional jumper of claims too, who figures more often in the Warden’s court than the “m drives” and “cross-cuts” of the field, is another individual that no one experienced in mining camps would long mistake for a bonâ fide Queensland miner.

Watch the latter at his work. Look at him toiling over perhaps hundreds of miles of semi-desert to the dreary, flat waste, covered with stunted box or quinine trees, where the white quartz glares back at the red-hot sun across the dusty plain. Burnt by the scorching heat all day; watching midst the dangers of desperate starving natives, poisonous snakes, and unguardable fever all night; thankful if he can fill and boil his pint pot three times a day with the foul drink that goes by the name of water in the interior,—he toils on to the golden goal.

Once there, his active brain and stalwart arms send the stunted forest reeling with flashing axe-strokes. The mushroom village of blue-gum bark and branches springs up in a purple-brown crop around the red and yellow trenches, and “whips” and “poppet heads” rise in due course.

Geologist, mineralogist, carpenter, blacksmith, hunter, surgeon, and cook, the true prospecting and working miner, who has “followed the diggings” since the Canoona rush or the Palmer field excited the mining world, is a veritable Admirable Crichton. He is a true, iron-bound, walking edition of practical receipts. Open-handed when “on a patch;” frugal and level-headed when a “slide” or “fault” has taken his golden “leader” out of sight; quick to take offence at an intentional insult, and as quick to “Put your hand there, pard,” if in the wrong,—this character may be summed up in the expressive words used by a miner to us, when describing a brother of the pick: “He’d lend you a fiver if you harsked him, and he’d fight you for a bob if he thought it b’longed to him.”

The “towneys,” as I have hinted, muster very strong at Ulysses, and as a consequence the rowdy element swamps the steady miners, such as we have just described, right out of sight. The Warden of the new field has only just arrived, and is toiling night and day to arrange affairs into workable form out of the chaos of matters before him.

He is “underhanded,” to use a nautical expression, as is always the case, and is powerless to act, as he could and would act, were he not—besides being Police Magistrate, Warden, Senior-constable Surveyor, Clerk of Petty Sessions, etc., etc.—also general adviser to the field upon every conceivable subject.

Let me draw you a rough outline sketch, in black and white, of a “pay-day Saturday night” at Ulysses.

The long, straggling collection of dwellings, that has not yet crystallized into a town proper, and which is now emerging from the “bark-humpy” to the “iron” age, begins to look more lively than ever, as evening with its lighted windows and moving lanterns shows that business is commencing with the influx of miners from the surrounding claims. Troops of “larrikins,” who think, because they wear muddy clothes and get drunk, they must be rough-and-ready miners, begin to perambulate the muddy street, in a state of body more or less bordering upon intoxication. Crowds of picturesquely-rough characters now collect round the gaming-tables, shooting-tables, and other attractions, over and around which flare great oil lamps, minus shade or glass. Every shot, every throw of the dice, every action of every actor upon the busy scene, gives rise to strings of filthy oaths,—so profane, so disgusting, that to any one but a man long acclimatised to them a feeling of extreme nausea would result.

Darker grows the evening and larger the crowd; oaths, blasphemy, and yells that would make a Red Indian blush with envy hurtle through the hot, close night air.

Wilder grows the feverish excitement, born of bad whisky and worse beer, till, words growing tame, blows are resorted to. A curious and interesting if disgusting spectacle is Ulysses on a Saturday night.

All around are wretched creatures wallowing in the much-trampled mud, like so many spirit-preserved beings,—half hog, half man. From the open door and windows of the foul-smelling, brilliantly-lighted “shanty” just at hand, a Babel of filthy and excited language roars and roars, as if an opening to “the murky pit” were close by, and the voices of the damned had reached our ears.

Crowds of men and boys jostle each other as they pass amidst the flaring lights and dusky shadows of the much-peopled ways, and near us a couple of tipsy, blear-eyed rowdies are doing the only useful thing they have done this day, in attempting to destroy each other with fist, foot, and teeth. Round them a vile crowd, mostly composed of lanky, big-piped, beardless, weakly-looking, youthful, would-be miners are exchanging bets, in language as idiotic as obscene.

Darker grows the night and later the hour; the majority of the crowd are either reposing in the mud or have staggered to their tents and “humpies,” out of reach of the robbers, male and female, who begin to slink about, like those horrible beings who haunt the fields of battle to prey upon the spoils of the honoured dead. Woe betide the sinner who lies down to sleep off his drunken fit in an Ulysses street after sundown if he has money upon him.

The main “street” is now abandoned by the gamblers, three-card-trick men, and other blacklegs of like nature, and now wretches, who disgrace the name of white men, and who would never have dared to show themselves upon the older fields of the colony, are to be seen offering miserable, frightened native women to the loafers round the “shanties.”

One o’clock comes, and only select parties of soakers still make night hideous with their songs.

Outside the “gins” (native women), drunken and howling, are screaming out obscene remarks to each other and passers-by in broken English; and scenes take place that make the observer almost fancy himself viewing one of those horrible December orgies of Ancient Rome, rather than a scene in a civilized township of an English colony.

But let us ring up a change of scene.

In another part of the embryo township, a few hundred yards along the main “street,” the Queensland Federal Banking Company has erected a small, curiously-constructed edifice of galvanised iron and sheets of bark. Competition is immense amongst the Queensland banking concerns to establish the first branch upon a new gold-field. On a new “rush” taking place, information as to the likelihood of its turning out a “wild cat” (or failure) or not is obtained as rapidly as possible. The manager at the nearest township receives a wire from the head office; and next morning some unhappy wight, who likely enough has just been married, or was to have taken unto himself a wife in a few days, is ordered off at perhaps two hours’ notice to administer to the commercial comfort of the rough selvage of humanity at Devil’s Gap, or Three Gin Gulch, five hundred miles from anywhere, and situated in a dreary desert. He starts actually not knowing what part of the country he is going to, till he opens his sealed instructions at the railway station or wharf.

The remarkable little building to which we have referred is about the size of a ticket-taker’s office at a small theatre. Upon its front elevation, and overhanging it at each end, hangs a wooden-framed sheet of linen, upon which is painted the name of the bank whose branch it is. But we must go behind the bank-buildings to where stands the “most desirable residence” upon the field. It is a travelled house this; and has seen more than one “rush” before. With tongued and grooved sides screwed securely to studs and plates, the house can be taken to pieces and removed a few hundred miles by a bullock team, and put up again, not much the worse for wear.

It is like rising from the lower regions to that “ethereal beyond,” which is the appointed permanent location, so say the poets, of all “good niggers,” to leave behind the scenes we have just described, and saunter up to the quiet deserted end of the town, and hear through the darkness the chinkle chankle of a real piano. Through the windows we catch a glimpse of a lady (the only one within, perhaps, a hundred miles), in a cool, white dress, indulging her husband, the bank manager, and a few select sojourners upon the field, with the latest waltz from Melbourne. Inside the cottage—which stands on wooden blocks, surmounted with snake-and-ant-foiling tin plates—are seated some half-dozen men, listening to the music and chatting by turns. All are dressed in white, with crimson or yellow sashes round their waists, save one,—a new “chum,” lately from Albion’s cooler climes, whose idea of what is due to the lady of the “house” makes him appear in a suit of dark tweed, as the nearest approach to evening dress his travelling baggage can afford him. The conversation, as the piano ceases its rather raspy vibrations, reopens upon a subject that had commenced to be discussed earlier in the evening,—the treatment of the aborigines by the settlers.

“Yes, it must appear strange to you,” says a dark-eyed, brown-haired man, leaning back in his cane-chair, and looking at the ceiling of unpainted canvas, “it must appear to you rather strange that such scenes can occur in what people are pleased to call a Christian land. But remember, my dear Mr. Jolly, you are a ‘new chum,’ and don’t understand our ways yet.” After a pause he continued: “I was one myself once, by Jove.”

“If you mean by a ‘new chum,’” replied the young gentleman rather hotly,—whose appearance in dark clothes has already attracted our attention,—“if you mean by that, that I’m an Englishman, I’m only too glad to acknowledge——”

“Now don’t fall out, you two boys,” roars a big, burly, perspiring, jolly-faced, elderly man, who is sitting by the open window, “it’s much too hot to quarrel. Morton’s only trying to get a rise out of you. All new-comers here talk like you do at first. Now as I’m a little bit older than you are, Mr. Jolly, I’ll just give you a friendly bit of advice. Don’t take offence, if I say you are airing your opinions in an incautious manner. You ought to allow that we ‘old chums’ know more about the way to treat the niggers than you can. You raise,” continued the speaker, who is the pushing proprietor-editor of the new-born local gazette, ladling an ant out of his glass of lager-beer, “you raise the old indictment of wholesale slaughter of the black population by the white Christians who have seized upon their lands. It is the ancient story of midnight murder, treachery, bloodshed, hypocrisy, cruelty, and immorality, which has been told in every land where the Englishman——”

“I deny that,” interrupts Mr. Jolly.

“Well, to please you,—the, er, European has come in contact with and dispossessed a feeble population. The men by whom these outrages,—confound the brute! (this to a gecke, or climbing lizard, that has fallen off the ceiling on to the speaker’s pate),—the men by whom these outrages are perpetrated are members of that race which, with all respect for Mr. Jolly’s favourable and patriotic opinions of his countrymen, claims to be the protector of the oppressed all the world over; and the tale of their atrocities is identical with the tales which—when the scene was laid in Bulgaria instead of Australia—roused the whole Anglo-Saxon race to an outburst of virtuous wrath and holy reproach. It is a story, on a smaller scale,” continued the speaker, taking a fresh cigar from a box near him and lighting it, “on a smaller scale, of India over again.”

“No!” jerks out the dark-coated youth.

“But it is,” snaps Mr. Editor-Proprietor. “The tragedy which the British alleged Christian enacted in Jamaica, Burmah, Egypt, and a hundred other scenes of massacre, and which the same snuffling Christian will continue to enact so long as he is strong enough to kill, and some one else is weak enough to be killed——”

Here the speaker paused, and, taking a glass of lager at a gulp, spat out of the window, and looked round, cigar in mouth, at the young man who had been the cause of his lengthy speech.

“Well, you surprise me, Mr. Brown,” says the latter, in answer to that gentleman’s stare, “and that’s all I’ll say further. I was prepared to find some excuses presented for such atrocities, as, for example, hot-blood, revenge, etc., but not on the lines you have laid down. You will excuse me if I take your remarks to mean that you are expressing your constituents’ opinions, not your own, when you say that no man would attempt to protect the helpless, unless he had selfish motives in view, or was a fool.”

Swinging round on her chair at the piano, the pretty, little, fragile hostess, who is a young woman of twenty, but who looks at least twenty-five years old, eyes the debaters with an amused and rather satirical face.

“Well,” she says, interrupting the somewhat heated conversation, making a pretty little moue, “what’s the good of talking about those horrid blacks? Augh! I hate them. And I ought to know, for I’m a squatter’s daughter; and my father had to shoot more niggers when he first took up the Whangaborra country than any man in Queensland has.”

The young black-coated philaboriginist turns his head, and looks with mute wonder at the fair young advocate of human slaughter.

“What’s wanted here is a Black war like they had in Tasmania,” continues the fair pianist. “Wait till you’ve been amongst our squatters awhile, and you won’t think more of shooting a nigger than of eating your tucker.” The speaker laughs a silvery little laugh, and all her audience, save one, smile in acquiescence. “What are the blacks? They’re only horrid thieves, and are worse than wild animals, and murdered poor old Billy Smith, only a couple of weeks ago, at Boolbunda.”

“Yes,” growls a stern-faced man with dark hairy face and coal-like eyes, a mine manager on the Mount Rose line of reef, “and many’s the time I said to Billy, ‘They’ll close in on you, my boy, some day.’ How he used to laugh when I told him he oughter carry a shooting-iron! ‘They know me too well,’ he’d say, ‘and this too,’ and he’d clap his hand on his coiled-up stockwhip on the saddle. ‘Many’s the yard of black hide I’ve taken off with my bit of twist here.’ But they got him at last, the black devils! Poor Billy; he was a rough sort, but he was true as a level, was Billy.”

“Did they send the ‘boys’ out?” drawls out a languid youth, who has been silent so far.

“Yes, rather!” answers the bright little hostess, with a curious steely gleam in her grey eyes, clasping her tiny hands together on her lap, as a child does when excited with delight or anticipated pleasure. “Yes, rather! Inspector Puttis, my cousin, you know, was at Gilbey’s station at the time when the news came in. And you bet he gave them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.”

“Did he catch the murderers?” asks the unfortunate Mr. Jolly innocently, immediately wishing, on noticing the half-hidden sneer on all the faces present, that he had kept quiet.

“Catch the murderers?” the little lady in white repeats, with a grin that spoils for the instant her pretty face. “No, indeed. We don’t go hunting round with sleepy Bobbies here, and summonses and such rubbish.” A murmur of applause rises from the cigar-holding lips of the auditors. “No! Cousin Jack I guess cleared off every nigger from the face of the earth within forty miles of the place. At least, if he didn’t, he ought to. They’re a horrid nuisance, and besides, it’s a long time since they’ve given the ‘boys’ a chance of doing anything.”

The irrepressible new chum however is not satisfied.

“But they’re awfully useful as servants, ain’t they?” he asks.

“Yes, if they’re trained young. You saw that girl of mine, when you were pretending to admire my baby this morning.” And the fair speaker smiles a smile of great sweetness upon Mr. Jolly, as she remembers his unfeigned praise of her child. “Well, she comes from a bad lot of Myall blacks near Cairns. The police have cleared them all out now. Inspector Young gave her to me. One of his sergeants got her at a ‘rounding-up’ about three years ago, before I was married. She was only about six years old then, and had got her leg broken above the knee with a bullet. She’d have got away then, he said, but the dogs found her in a hollow log. He saved her,” continued the lady, in the same tone of voice that a sportsman’s daughter in England would have employed when speaking of one of a litter of foxhounds, “he kept the dogs off her and saved her, because she looked such a strong, healthy little animal. But all this reminds me that Jack Puttis, the Inspector, you know, said he’d call in here to-night, if he could get so far. So I’ll just go in and see about supper.” Rising, the active, fragile speaker trips away, leaving the rather stolid brain of the young Englishman slowly recovering from the shock it has received. His preconceived notions—“young-man notions,” if you like—of woman as a gentler, diviner creature than man, and worthy of the worship of the ruder sex as the citadel of mercy and holiness of thought and action, have received a blow that they will never quite recover from. His thoughts flash back to a line in the “Civilization” of Emerson: “Where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman,” and he feels sick and disgusted.

A grave-looking young man, who has sat in silence watching the face of the heretical new chum expounder of the doctrine of Mercy, now leans forward and touches his shoulder.

“It won’t do, Jolly,” he says, in a half whisper, “you really mustn’t express your ideas upon this subject. It isn’t business-like to speak of your opinion against that expressed by a possible customer. You’ll have to get case-hardened, like I had to. We ain’t in England now, and you’ll have to close your eyes and ears to much out here. A new chum is especially the object of suspicion and dislike to many of the older colonists. ‘He’s come out to reap the harvests we have sown in labour and danger,’ they say; and consequently the figurative ‘new chum’ is hated. You can ask as many questions as you like, but don’t air your opinions on such subjects as you’ve broached to-night. You’ll find the colonists hospitable if you wink at their pet vices and sins, but act otherwise, and,—they’re the very devil. Now I’ve told you the square facts, and don’t you forget it.”

“Here’s Puttis!” cries the fat man by the window, at this instant; and the sound of several horses stamping, and the silvery jingling of bits, is soon after heard at the side of the house. Directly afterwards a small, well-made man, wearing enormous spurs (nearly a foot in length), and habilited in the semi-uniform of an Inspector of the Queensland Black Police, marches into the room. He is immediately noisily welcomed by all the men present. Mr. Jolly is, in due course, introduced to the new-comer, of whom he has heard all kinds of terrible tales since his arrival at the new township, and he cannot overcome his repugnance to the man who, he has reason to believe, is a paid butcher of defenceless women and children. He feels unable to stretch forward his hands to meet the slender white fingers extended towards him, and, pretending not to see them, bows stiffly and turns away. The bad impression he has already created is doubled in those who notice this action of the young man, and he is forthwith put down for certain as “an unmannerly, proud beggar of an Englishman.”

Inspector Puttis, as he stands talking to the men (all a head or more taller than he is), has a face that would immediately attract the attention of an artist or physiognomist.

The skin of the forehead and cheeks is pallid beneath the bronze of an open-air life. The “corrugator” muscles of the eyebrows are unusually well developed (a sign, according to Sir Charles Bell, of great power of thought and action combined with the savage and wild rage of a mere animal). The brows cover small, piercing, restless, blue-grey eyes, the lids of which are generally half-closed. The lips are thin, and kept tightly closed over brilliantly white teeth, except when talking or smiling; when expressing the latter emotion the lips are lifted so as to expose the canine teeth, which are large. The nostrils are full and slightly raised. In conversation, the Inspector’s words come short and sharp, in brief breaths of speech; and he has an uneasy way with him, as if always on the watch and impatient of inactivity. You feel, looking at him, instinctively that before you stands a man who is as incapable of a merciful action as he is of running away from an enemy,—a sharp, active, well-drilled man, who bites before he growls, and has led a life of wild exhausting excitement and danger for some years past. His black, tight-fitting jacket (ornamented with frogs) and buckskin riding breeches fit him to perfection; his leather gaiters are splashed with mud, and a dirty straw hat—the national head-dress of Queenslanders, and called by them a “cabbage-tree”—lies by him on the table. Inspector Puttis stands chatting to the men for a few minutes, and then turns to greet the little hostess as she trips in and pays her tribute of welcome and laudation to her “cousin the Inspector.” Handing him two telegrams presently, she says,—

“They came over from Nanga just after you left. As you said you’d be back I didn’t send them after you.”

“Thanks, awfully, Minta. You’ll excuse me; and—er—you gentlemen. May have to start at once. To-night. Never know. Deuce take these telegrams, I say.”

The little man bows an apology for opening the messages in their presence, and struts to the candle still burning on the piano, and tears open the first envelope. It is from the Chief-Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, and is brief and concise:—

“Proceed Cairns and Georgetown, with troop, to relieve Inspector Snaffle.”

“What the devil does this mean?” murmurs the police-officer to himself. Then a ghost of a smile plays over his face—a grim, half-hidden trembling of the nostrils and opening of the eyes—as he reads the second wire. It is signed “Lileth Mundella.”

“Want to see you at once. Palmer will see Commissioner about it. Bad news from Sydney.”

The message that the Inspector holds in his hand is from his fiancée of six months’ standing; and he smiles to himself as he thinks how lucky he is in having appropriated a girl who is clever enough to bend even the Commissioner of Police himself to her purposes.

There are numbers of odd matches arranged every year, and this is one of them. Neither Inspector Puttis nor Miss Mundella, to whom we shall introduce our readers presently, have ever pretended for an instant that either of them were “soft enough” (as the lady once expressed it) to be in love with the other. The one, a dark-haired girl of the Diana type of beauty, who could carry a room full of ordinary people to her wishes with a flash of her magnificent brown eyes and a word from her haughty, firm-set mouth; the other, a determined man, who had climbed through sheer hard work (work that few would care to undertake, and, thank God, still fewer to carry out) to a good position, and from which he meant to climb still higher.

“We can help each other to our mutual advantage, Mr. Puttis,” Miss Mundella had said, when the preliminaries of the arrangement between them were being discussed.

Although we shall introduce this young lady personally to our readers shortly, it is perhaps best to preface that ceremony by a few preliminary remarks.

Miss Mundella, since returning to Australia, some five years before the date of our story, after receiving a European education at London and Paris, has resided with her uncle, a Mr. Wilson Giles. Highly educated, and with the reputation of being a large heiress, Miss Mundella, at the time she left school, was a girl whose lot in life seemed to have been cast in pleasant places. But a change came o’er the spirit of her dream. Her bright châteaux d’Espagne were rudely broken up by the unforeseen ruin of her father, and his subsequent death. This gentleman—a member of an old Jewish family in England—was a successful squatter for some years in Queensland. Suddenly, to the surprise of his friends, and the indignant anger of his relations in the old country, he married a Christian lady. A complete rupture with his own people ensued; and he shortly afterwards became nominally a member of the Church to which his wife belonged. From this period ruin seemed to dog his steps; and finally, whilst his daughter was still in Europe, a series of bad seasons placed his name upon the list of bankrupts. Overcome with the weight of his afflictions, which were suddenly added to by the loss of his wife, Mr. Mundella paid the only debt left in his power to liquidate,—that of Nature. He left two children behind him, a son and a daughter; to the former we have already introduced our readers, in “mufti,” in Paddy’s Market.

A professional visit to the uncle’s station in Northern Queensland throws Inspector Puttis and Miss Mundella into each other’s company. The two individuals both find in the other those strongly ambitious views for the future that is their own bosom’s god. One meeting leads to others; and the arrival of Billy at the station with the deceased explorer’s letter gives Miss Mundella the opportunity of indulging in a scheme for placing herself, by means of her fiancé, in as enviable a position as that occupied by herself when she left school, as the wealthy young heiress.

But we have left our friends waiting for supper and the Inspector to finish his telegrams too long, and must hurry back. The well-drilled little man offers his arm to his fair cousin, and the pair lead the way to the next room.

Whilst the company are seating themselves the Inspector attracts his cousin’s attention, and whispers hurriedly,—

“Will you do me a favour?”

“Anything I can, Jack.”

“Is it likely you’ll be stationed here for a few months?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a young friend of mine—a great chum. Made an awful mess of it. Hurt a man down south. Want him out of the way for a month or two. Vous savez?”

“Is that all?” answers the little hostess with a gay laugh. “Send him up here. If he ain’t too handsome, so as to make Bob wild, he can stop here. As for being out of the way, there’s plenty of that lying around here.”

“Thanks, awfully, I’ll wire him to-morrow.”

CHAPTER VI.
TWO ESCAPES: A FALL AND A RISE.

“Sweet Puck,

You do their work; and they shall have good luck.”

UR fourth chapter left our hero, like Mahommed’s coffin, “twixt earth and heaven.” Luckily, however, for our story, if not for Claude, Providence dipped her umpire’s flag, after merely a momentary hesitation, to the first-named of the opposing attractive forces, with the result that marvellously little harm happened to the chief actor in the tragedy.

We mentioned the empty boxes, crates, and barrels lying in cumbersome confusion about the stony seclusion of the railway yard. It was the presence of certain of these husks from the city’s great dinner-table that saved Claude Angland’s life.

Some good fairy, early in the afternoon previous to the assault upon the viaduct, had whispered into the grimy little ears of one of the numerous shock-headed waifs of the neighbouring alleys to play at building houses with the smaller cases in the yard.

It was a glorious idea. And the diminutive owner of the aforesaid shock-headed and dirty oral appendages got the credit of it, and was unanimously elected master-mason by his juvenile compatriots of the gutter. How do we know how often this same good fairy raises us humans above our natural level, for her own good ends, whilst we are fondly priding ourselves upon our specially gifted brains, and natural superiority to our fellow-men?

But see! The ragged troupe frisks noisily to the yard. The corners of the sorrowful little mouths forget to turn downwards for a time, and the tear-stained, dirty cheeks wrinkle up with mirthful lines. Shouts of glee, and the usual noisy revelry of happy urchindom, echoes back from the grim, dark, smoky arches. The tiny workers gradually build up, under the unfelt gentle influence of some wonderful directive power, a pyramid of perilous construction, about ten or twelve feet in height.

Little did those baby builders, under the mystic architect, know for what purpose their labours were invoked. The work is completed, and the little tools of Providence, tired with their game, move and pass out of our story, leaving their structure to fulfil its appointed duty.

Now the would-be murderers come into view, and commit their crime, as described in Chapter IV., as far as their power will permit them; and decamp forthwith, so much the more soul-soiled than they were before.

Instead, however, of Claude’s body coming down upon the pavements with a fall of some thirty feet, as poor human ingenuity had intended, our young friend fell upon the yielding, unstable erection of cases, barrels, and the like, and was saved from serious injury. Save that he received a severe shock, and remained for a time unconscious from the combined effects of partial asphyxiation,—for the overcoat still remained round his face,—and a slight blow upon the back of the head, he was really, but for a few bruises and cuts, little the worse for his adventure.

Only a crash, followed by the brief tattoo of falling boxes, signalled the occurrence through the silent, still dark air. The night-watchman upon the premises, who alone heard the noise besides the two would-be assassins, awoke with a start, and had time to call down the curse of the Immortal Jove upon “them blank, blank larrikins” before he again fell into his well-earned and peaceful repose. By-and-by the cool, early morning harbour breezes arrive and aid Nature to bring Claude back to the world and consciousness. Gradually, even before he is quite himself again, his arms, working on their own account, have freed themselves from the loosely-tied line that has hitherto bound them together.

He moves his head at last. The muffling overcoat falls partly off, and his strong lungs eagerly suck in their full supply of life-giving oxygen in a series of sob-like gasps. Consciousness dawns upon him, and he realizes his position and feels his bruises. It is some time, however, before he can move his limbs, he is so stiff; but he does at last, and sits up on the edge of a broken crate.

All is silent. It is still dark, and he cannot at first make out where he is. One thing is certain, he must wait for more light ere he can make a move comfortably. Presently, with the instinct of a smoker, he feels for his pipe and matches, and solaces his lonely reflections by puffing peace-bringing, but unseen, clouds of fragrant smoke from his lips, and sits waiting for daylight to appear. A dead stillness is all around, broken only by the sound of a far-off steamboat’s droning whistle from time to time, the rumble of a distant vehicle, or the occasional silver chiming hour-bells from some clock-tower close at hand. Looking upward from where he sits, Claude can see the dark mass of the viaduct standing out against the sky; and, not knowing of the children’s pyramid of boxes, for it had utterly collapsed after performing its appointed duty, wonders with a shudder how he could possibly have escaped as he has done. Why should these men have attempted to destroy him? His uncle’s warning, which he now remembers in conjunction with his late experience, seems to show that some mystery attaches to the work he has to do, and that the late explorer had reason in telling him to travel incognito. He thinks of how nearly, through his own carelessness, he might have been now a shattered corpse; he pictures his mother’s grief, and half-rising utters an exclamation of impatience against himself out loud. As he does so, he hears a slight noise near him, and becomes aware that he is not alone amongst the boxes, that, like the ruined sarcophagi of some Babylonian graveyard, are just visible piled around him. The soft regular sound of snoring reaches his ears, and comes from a corner close by. Claude listens for a few minutes, and tries to guess what kind of animal is the cause of those tender nasal notes. He quickly determines that the midnight music does not proceed from the vibrating mucous membrane of a man, nor is it a drunken snore. It is either that of a woman or a child. But who is it sleeping out here to-night without roof-cover, in this wealthy city? And why does she or it do so?

A mixed feeling of curiosity and compassion makes him determined to solve the mystery: so, lighting a match, he painfully scrambles towards the sleeper, making as little noise as possible. His search is soon rewarded by finding a little ragged body curled up upon some paper-packing in a corner. It is that of a small-limbed boy-child of about eight years, clothed in a torn, dirty linen shirt and ragged trousers,—the latter innocent even of the traditional single brace of street-arabism. The little sleeper is resting face downwards, on his left side, and a thin little bare arm is hugging the dark matted coat of a well-fed puppy, which nestles close to the child’s bosom. Claude gets but a brief sight of all this before another match is needed, the noise of striking which causes both the boy and dog to awake,—the former putting up his arm, as if instinctively to ward off a blow, even before he quite opens his eyes.

“Well, youngster, what are you doing here?” asks Claude, oblivious of the fact that the same question might with equal right have been put to himself. “Don’t be afraid, I sha’n’t hurt you.”

“I hain’t a’ doin’ o’ nothin’, mister,” whimpers the child, in a hoarse dry tone. “Them Star boys collared me ticket, an I’ll get (sob), I’ll get dollied if fayther cotched me back at ’ome without a thick ’un fur ’im.”

“Well, jump up, youngster, and show me the way out of this place, and I’ll get you another ticket,” Claude says kindly, not knowing in the least what a “ticket” may be, or for the matter of that “Star boys” either. “I’ve lost my way here, and,” giving the boy a coin, which that diminutive creature immediately put in his mouth, as the only safe pocket available, “and I hope you’ll be able to sleep at home to-morrow night.”

“Oh, I’ll show er the way, mister,”—here the “arab” made a noise like ough, much after the style of a Red Indian’s expression of surprise. “Guess yer’d better not let ald Sandie cotch yer lightin’ matchers ’ere,” he continued in the same hoarse whisper, looking slyly at Claude out of the corners of his eyes, as our hero strikes another light.

Then taking the aforementioned shaggy-coated puppy carefully up, and placing it in straddle-legged wonder upon his poor thin pointed shoulder, the little guide bobs away into the gloom, his bare feet moving quietly over the boxes, and his dirty shirt forming a sort of sartorial “pillar of fire” leading the way out of the wilderness of the yard. Painfully and slowly Claude scrambles after the diminutive ghostly form in front of him, and at last finds himself once more in Liverpool Street. The boy stands there under a gas lamp, his pup in his arms, but edges off into the road, as if in suspicion of Claude, as the young man hobbles forward. “Now, youngster, could you get me a cab, d’you think?”

“If yer’ll mind er pup,” the hoarse-voiced baby skeleton replies, after hesitation for a minute, and then, like a spirit, he silently and suddenly disappears. Claude is glad to sit down on the curb, and has only waited a few moments when the well-known regular pulsation of an approaching policeman’s walk is heard upon the viaduct. Presently the form of a splendidly-built sub-inspector of city police, in forage-cap and cloak, and holding a riding-whip in his hand, appears, and comes to a halt where Claude is seated.

“What’s up, mate?” asks a powerful but musical bass voice.

Claude has had time to think what answer he will make in case of being questioned, and has decided that his would-be murderers had better go free for the time being, than let a police inquiry retard his search for his uncle’s body; so, turning his head a bit, he lets loose the first lie he has used since a boy at school: “I’m waiting for a cab; have sent a boy for it. I got knocked down by a cab or something an hour or two ago, maybe more, and have been sitting down in the yard there till just now.”

“You don’t know who ran you down?”

“Haven’t the faintest notion. I’m not much hurt, and it was my own fault.”

“Ah! it was you then lighting matches just now in there?”

“It was I. I found a boy sleeping in the yard, and have sent him for a cab. Will he have far to go?”

“To the Town Hall, sir. Were there many boys camped in the yard?”

“Only saw one,—said he had been robbed by ‘Star boys,’ whatever they may be, and was afraid to go home. By-the-bye, Inspector, if you’re not in a hurry, may I ask you something about these youngsters one sees about the streets here? Haven’t had an opportunity before. Am a stranger in Sydney. I think you have more ‘street arabs’ here, as we used to call them in England, than ever I remember seeing in London, or any of our large towns at home.”

“Well, sir, fact is, I can’t spare much time now, but you can come round with me some night if you like. I’m a Londoner, and can tell you that you’ll see all the old familiar scenes in Sydney of houseless beggars, and starving children driven out into the streets by drunken parents, and suchlike, camping around where they can find the softest pavements. But you’ve hit it when you notice the number of ‘larrikins,’ we call them. We’ve got a larger percentage of youthful criminals amongst our bad classes than at home; and it’s a growing percentage, more’s the pity.”

“Well,” observes Claude, “I’ve always been interested in these subjects; and I guessed what you’ve just confirmed, namely, that parental supervision is almost a dead-letter here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered the Inspector, stroking his splendid flaxen beard, and glancing up and down the road, that was now lightening up with approaching sunrise. “Yes; it’s a fact youthful crime is increasing here, faster than it used to do in past years. It is my opinion that the Government will have to look after the children altogether before long, just as it schools them now. The parents wouldn’t or couldn’t see to the schooling business, and the State had to step in and do it. The Government will have to look after the young people altogether pretty soon, if we are not to have a nation of criminals growing up around us.”

“Well, Inspector, from a professional point of view, you don’t object to a decent sprinkling of criminals amongst the population, I suppose?” laughed Claude; but he continued gravely, “I’m very glad to have met you, and sincerely hope to have a chat with you again.”

The subject Angland has broached is a favourite one of the sub-inspector’s, moreover, he is anxious to know who Claude is. So he determines to wait a few minutes longer.

“Thank you, sir,” he goes on, acknowledging Claude’s compliment. “One word more: the parents here, if they can spare threepence a week for schooling their children, pack them off there to get them out of the way, and Sunday Schools are in favour chiefly as a means of getting a quiet afternoon. The kids are bundled off to school; whether they go there or not is another thing.”

“Now that boy I found amongst the barrels, how does he get a living? Does he go to school?”

“Oh, he’s a newspaper boy, likely enough,” replies the police-officer. “He told you about his ticket, didn’t he? The boys get a dozen papers for 9d., and on handing over that sum to the publisher they receive a ticket, which, when presented at another part of the paper office, brings them the required number of ‘Evening Newses,’ or ‘Stars,’ as the case may be.”

“These boys? Well, they’re a class really worth study, sir. That is, if you’re fond of such things. They’re a wild, untamable herd of free-lances, that’s what they are.”

“I suppose there’s a large army of them?”

“Yes. And I suppose nearly half of them are on their own hook, and many of them combine the professions of loafer, thief, and larrikin with their legitimate calling. They’re bright lads,—have to be,—with any amount of courage, and hard as nails. They’re worth protecting; and they should be, by the newspaper proprietors or the Government. But here’s your cab, sir, I think. Any time you like, you’ll find me at the ‘Central,’ or my whereabouts if I’m away. My name? Sub-Inspector Chime, at your service, sir. Good-night.”

The cab rattles up. Claude bids adieu to his small guide, and leaves him with more silver in his mouth than it has ever held before. Then our hero gets back to his hotel, and finds himself so far recovered next day as to be able to set forth for a stroll in the evening. It is not long before the genus Newsboy forces itself upon his notice, and he sets to work to study them carefully. Who that has done so has not been amply repaid? A new class established in the community by the necessities of an advancing civilization,—a class composed, for the most part, of neglected youth, whose useful services to the needs of the public are recompensed by starvation wages and ill-usage. Of course there are many bad ones amongst these newsboys,—these poor, little, ragged, dirty-faced, barefooted arabs of our colonial streets,—but on the whole they are wonderfully honest, hard-working little souls. Amongst the best of them are the paid boys in the employ of some one who has purchased the sole right of street sale of certain thoroughfares or parts of thoroughfares.

Let the unattached newspaper boy, who, finding trade slack amongst the idlers at his own particular corner, come poaching upon a preserve. In such a case, the reception of a yellow ant which has fallen upon a black ant camp, or the welcome of a stranger dog in a country town by the local canines of the place, is tepid, compared with the fever heat of combined patriotism shown by the “regular boys” in driving off the intruder. Throwing papers and petty jealousy to the winds, the unwary invader is soon hurried over the frontier.

Near the book-stall at the corner of King Street Claude finds six or seven very small newsboys. Amongst them is a little, bare-legged, fairy-like girl-child in a dirty red frock, also engaged in disposing of mental food from one of the great “Fourth-Estate” mills of the city.

The girl dodges in and out amongst the crowd that is waiting for the trams, selling her papers, quite heedless of the boys’ angry voices, which follow her with abuse. But as Claude comes upon the scene one youthful protectionist has caught the diminutive object of his wrath, and gives her several blows in the face with his open hand. No one interferes. A newsgirl getting a beating for cutting into the trade of the “regular” boys is to be seen any night in Sydney, and consequently is not worth interfering about. In this case, however, the boy goes off howling instead of the girl, the result of a cut from Claude’s cane. Angland is immediately surrounded by a contingent of youthful “regulars,” and a little hubbub of flat-toned voices rains upon him—

“What er you a-hittin of ’im fur?”

“The gent’s mad cos ’is gurl hain’t met ’im!”

“Yah, you wid the stick; ’it a man yur hown size!”

Claude of course does not heed the abuse, but firmly impresses upon the erring lad he had chastened that if he touches the girl again he will thrash him soundly.

“Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er?” shrieks a catfish-mouthed manikin, resting his head against an adjacent verandah-post, as street-curs sometimes do when they howl. “Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er? She’s ’is sister.”

This evidence in favour of the accused is hailed with a cackling chorus of approval by the remainder of the boys, amidst which Claude takes the girl aside to question her a bit.

She informs him, in better English than the boys employ, that she must sell two dozen “Stars” and “Nooses” before she can go home.

“How long will that take you to do?”

“Ten o’clock; p’r’aps a bit later; p’r’aps a bit hearlier.”

“Have you any parents?”

“Dunno, mister. Mother hired me out er to Missus Bowen a year ago. I live at Woolloomooloo Bay. Buy a ‘Noose,’ sir?”

“And if you don’t sell all your papers, what then?”

“Guess I’d get a lickin’, or p’r’aps have ter sleep in er yard.”

“Was that your brother hit you?”

“Dunno, sir. He’s got ter look after me. That’s all I know. Buy a ‘Star,’ sir? Mother Bowen has three gurls as sells papers. ‘Star,’ sir? ’ere you hare. Jack, he’s got ter look arter two gurls, and Johnnie, that’s he, he looks arter another down the Royal Arcade.”

“How old are you?”

“’Bout ten, sir.”

“Do you go to school? Can you read?”

“No, sir. I hain’t swell enough. I used ter, when huncle sended me, but the missus at the school, she said, ‘Yer a dirty little gal, yer are,’ that what she said. ‘Yer a dirty little gal, and yer must get a tidy gownd afore yer come agin.’ I hain’t been since, sir. Buy a ‘Noose’?”

“Of course I will,” and Claude buys all her papers, straightway returning them to her. Then he walks down Elizabeth Street, and seeing two gruesome juveniles with large mouths and shock heads, who are howling out “Even’ Noose! Even’ Noose!” he gets them to come into a tea-shop and have a feed.

Seated at the clean, white-topped table, Claude is glad to recognize one of the boys as his little friend in need of the night before. The motherly dark-eyed mistress of the tea-shop, in reply to a question put to her, smiles kindly on the trio, and wagging her head slightly, with the air of knowing more than she cares to tell, says, “They know me well enough. Don’t you, boys?”

“Er yes, missus,” from both.

“Do they come here for their meals, then?” asks Claude with surprise.

“They’re always coming in, sir, and saying, ‘Missus, are yer got er stale bun?’ and sometimes they buy a cup of cocoa on a cold night.”

“Is that all they get to eat, d’you think?”

To the casual observer, the boys look as if food was a rarity rather than a regularly recurring feature in the day’s landscape.

“Well, sir, I sees a lot of them, and I don’t think they get more than breakfast at ’ome and a bun, or a stale roll during the afternoon, which they call supper, poor things. They lie long abed of a morning, I believe, and have their breakfast at half-past nine or ten,—they’re up so late, you know.”

The dark-eyed ministering female trots off, and Claude watches the dirty smudged faces of his little guests, as the rolls and sweet tea disappear. They eat but little, however, and that very slowly.

Of the two boys only one, Claude’s friend, possesses a hat, or rather the remnants of one. The happy possessor of this ghastly semblance of a chapeau has carefully removed it on coming into the shop; and our hero notes his well-formed head, and falls to musing over the probable future of the owner. Neither of the little craniums before him is that of a weak or poor intellect, and the faces would be beautiful if the shadows of sorrow, hunger, and neglect were but removed. The dirty, unkempt, elfin locks are growing vigorously around a brain clearly worth cultivating,—an active brain that will expend a vast amount of energy in the world, for weal or for woe, as its budding inclinations are directed. The boys answer Claude’s questions promptly, and to the point. They are little business-men with no time to waste. One tells how he sells three dozen papers a day “fur me bruther;” the other is working on his own account.