more and more to have forgotten the donor. Yet he kept the trinket too. He liked to think sometimes that he could not always have been so very bad, or she would not have given him this remembrance. But he had formed and broken so many ties since then, he had simply almost forgotten her. Latimer was one of those men on whom a barmaid in præsenti makes more impression than an absent Madonna. What would you have? There are many such. I have often thought these are the dispositions women like best. He had written a second letter to his wife, postponing his promised return to England, but telling her where he was to be found. He now considered whether he should not send her a third, expressing his intentions of never troubling her again, and bidding her a final 'Farewell.' He was waiting before he despatched so conclusive a missive to accompany it with a round sum of money, thus salving, as it were, his own conscience, and persuading himself he was doing rather a generous action after all. He must indeed have quite forgotten Ada when he meditated such a proceeding as this.

It is no easy task, however, to get hold of that same round sum of money, which is not only as slippery as ice, but melts like that substance in the grasp. When he was sober, Latimer was doubtless a shrewd, observant man, not without considerable aptitude for business, and that readiness to embark on fresh schemes, profitable in proportion to their risk, which often in a new country leads to considerable success. But we must take leave to mistrust all these rapid methods of growing rich. Cent. per cent. is a tempting return, doubtless; but undertakings which promise so largely are apt to swallow

up the capital before the interest is paid, and the speculator has nothing left of his venture but the satisfaction of knowing that while five hundred pounds more would have made his fortune, the present amount of his assets is easily represented by a round o.

So Latimer went into one thing after another, with untiring energy indeed, but varied success. One day he had put by an overplus, and saw his way clearly to independence; the next he had kicked it all down again in trying to double it too hastily. He was ever looking forward to a to-morrow that should enable him to send home a certain sum, and what he called 'wind up his affairs; but that 'to-morrow' never came. Such courses could not but tell upon his health and habits. In the true spirit of a gambler, he learned to live only for the enjoyment of the present hour. He had always been addicted to pleasure; he now became a confirmed sensualist. The human appetite, like the human frame, soon adapts itself to circumstances. If we cannot get turtle and venison, we munch with sufficient gusto our simple meal of bread and cheese. Nay, if the latter relish be not forthcoming, we gnaw vigorously at the dry crust. With Katharine the shrew, rather than remain empty, we are fain to cry, Why, then, the beef, and let the mustard rest; nor have we even the heart to fall foul of mocking Grumio when he offers us 'the mustard without the beef.' Latimer used to be very particular about the flavour of his dry champagne, and the exact degree to which it was iced. He could drink gin and bad brandy now out of a battered pewter measure, nor hesitated to qualify his morning draught of milk with that abomin able mixture which is sold under the name of new rum.

Let us see what he is doing at the door of that low store outside the town of Sydney, with the bright morning sun shining on his face, and children all about him, trooping off, clean and healthy, to school

He is altered, shockingly altered. The fresh complexion is mottled and sodden as it were with drink. The eyes are dim, watery, and bloodshot. His figure has lost its squareness, but the body has become bloated, whilst the limbs have shrunk. His cherished whiskers, no longer oiled and curled with

such tender care, run to waste beneath his chin in unkempt circles streaked with grey. His dress is frayed and shabby in the extreme, but looks the less so from being made of such coarse material as suits a working man. He wears a red nightcap over one ear with an assumption of bravado still, and preserves through all his reverses a certain manliness, or call it rather audacity, of gesture and demeanour the result of his adventurous life. There is a bad look though in those leering eyes of his, and as he lights a short pipe, and lifts that wicked face to the sun, the children pass the other side of the way to avoid touching him.

He smokes for a while in silence, and seems weighing some dubious matter in his mind. Once when a burst of childish laughter strikes upon his ear he gives vent to a low curse, feels in his empty pockets, and turns on his heel with a louder and deeper oath. 'Cleaned out!' he mutters, 'you incurable idiot. Well, it must go with the rest!',

A tawdry woman, with sunken eyes and dishevelled hair, cowering under a close-wrapped shawl of flaunting faded colours, walks up to him and lays her hand upon his shoulder. The hand, though dirty, is well-shaped, and the wasted features tell of former beauty, almost of refinement.

Speak to me, Bill,' she says; 'you've never been home all night, dear; what luck?'

Her voice is kind and tender. She seems to trust and cling to him. Reprobate as the man is, he has found some one to make him a home, even here.

He shakes her off, but not unkindly. 'Cleaned out!' he repeats. "The old story over and over again. Everything I put my hand to seems to rot and turn to rubbish. Whether it's land, or houses, or sheep, or stores, or dice, or cards, all's one to me. There's a turn in the luck for other fellows; I never get a chance. It can't go on! I tell ye, it can't go on. Best leave me, Jane, and try to shift for your

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self. It's only a fool that sticks by a sinking ship!'

Not likely,' she answered, smiling rather sadly; 'is it all gone, Bill? What did you play at?'

A look of interest lights up her countenance while she asks the question. She is a gambler, too, this faded, fallen woman, for his sake, and likes to hear of his successes and reverses because they are his.

He swears horribly in reply. 'Monte' he screams out, with a dreadful imprecation; 'and on that most gambling of games he continues to enlarge through a stream of blasphemous abuse that at length cannot but exhaust his passion and his lungs together.

It is maddening, doubtless, to recal the last night's orgie and its consequences. He had been paid the previous day a large sum of money for a wool-bargain, in which he had certainly not shown the simplicity of the poor shorn animal. He could not of course resist the temptation of turning into a spirit-store for the purpose of 'wetting his luck. There he sat and drank, this man who had once been a member of second-rate clubs and dined at military messes, with the refuse of the worst population of Sydney, taking a strange morbid pleasure, as it seemed, in the very ribaldry and indecency of his associates; even poor abandoned Jane did not dare look for him there, or fetch him thence till daylight. He caroused, and sang, and shouted with the rest-he treated them to liquor-he boasted of his money. With his eyes open, with his intellects no more affected by his potations than those of a man usually are who seldom goes to bed sober, he sat down deliberately to play cards with a party of ruffians any one of whom had merited and probably earned transportation for life. He knew they would cheat him if they could. On occasion, he was not scrupulous in that way himself. He knew that fear of detection alone would make them hesitate for an instant to cut his throat, if by so doing they could get his money; and yet, knowing

SS

all this, such was the habitual craving for excitement, the restless thirst for gain engendered by his mode of life, that he seemed impelled by some irresistible power to risk his whole means, where he felt that chance, and fraud, and violence would all be combined against him.

At first he resolved of course that he would only play for a quarter of the sum he had about him-then the half-then he won, and he thought it would be a fine thing to double it, and so write the long-proposed letter, with a handsome enclosure, to Ada. Fortune was going to smile upon him at last, he felt sure of it. The most experienced gambler is just as infatuated as the raw beginner. He was persuaded he should win his great stake to-night, and never try again. Then he lost-once-twice, sweeping ventures in succession. He must go on now and get it back again at any risk; he should never forgive himself else. The cards seemed to be in league against him. He called for more drink, and now the worst passions of his nature blazed out. He accused his antagonist, a brawny, bearded ruffian on his way to the gold-diggings via the hulks, of cheating, and the accusation, accompanied by the whole pack of cards, was flung back in his face; blows were exchanged, knives were drawn; the landlord, and a gigantic negro who performed the office of waiter, parted them before blood was spilt. Such outrages were neither rare nor much regarded, and the party, including Latimer, were soon set down to their game again as if nothing had happened. When the sun rose he had but a hundred dollars left in the world. It is a strange feeling, that embarkation of the last venture, not without a hideous fascination of its own. The gambler's horizon becomes narrowed to the closest limits. His world is a circle of some two or three feet in diameter. Time is represented by the next deal of the cards. Every sense is sharpened on the keen whetstone of anxiety,

yet strange to say, the very agony of suspense is dashed with something not entirely pain. There is a dull sensation of relief, too, when all is lost, consequent on the relaxation of the nerves, strung to so unendurable a pitch. When the cord is broken the bow cannot but spring back. Ere the sun had been up two hours Latimer walked out of that reeking den into the pure air of heaven, for the hundredth time, a ruined man. The best of wives could hardly have refrained from expressing disapprobation, but she was not his wife, and she never reproached him so much as by a sign.

'We can begin again, Bill,' she said, taking him by the arm to lead him home. Such a home! 'It's been as bad as this more than once before, and I'm stronger now, I can work.'

His only answer was another imprecation; but he suffered her to take him on a few steps ere he stopped, and looking fixedly at her shook himself loose from her hold

once more.

'You're a good girl,' he said, 'you've a brave heart of your own. Look ye here, Jane, it's all up with me this bout, I'll have to go to the diggings again, or may be take to the bush, or worse. You and I'll part, not in unkindness, lass, not in unkindness; but what's the use of dragging you down any lower along with me? Don't take on

so, girl! It must have come some day. What's the odds?

She sobbed violently. She clasped her hands over his arm. He was in fustian, she in rags, both were depraved, immoral, desperate, yet the same feeling was tearing that poor sinful bosom, that stirred Cornelia's heart for the father of the Gracchi.

'Let me go with you!' she entreated; 'T'll follow you (follow of you, she expressed it) to the end of the world.'

Something almost like tears came into William Latimer's eyes as he bent down and kissed her poor wan face.

'It can't be, my lass,' he replied;

personage, with a loud shrill voice, and a pair of bare arms smeared with flour. No bad specimen of the English matron of the middle class. Bustling, warm-hearted, suspicious, thrifty, prolific, and uncharitable. She brought up her young family in the rugged paths of virtue, and conducted the business'-a combination of baking, grocery, tea, pepper, snuff, and tobacco-with vigilance and energy. She was much respected, not to say feared, in her native town; by none more so than by her 'master,' as she called him, a ghost-like personage, who might be seen at times pervading the back shop, appearing and disappearing through a trap door like the elder Hamlet, and sustaining his spiritual character by never speaking unless spoken to. He was a quiet man, was Mr. Barber, with a turn for meditation, and his wife was a thought too much for him.

'She've a been to church regular since she come,' answered a little musty old woman, like a moth, who was purchasing with her ounce or two of tea the right to her hebdomadal gossip in Mrs. Barber's shop; a favourite lounge, indeed, as commanding the linen-draper's and the post-office; but she always waits till every one of 'em's gone afore she leaves her pew; and though she give me a shilling only last Sunday, she never lifted her veil, and she durstn't look me in the face. Such airs! She's no widderwoman, not she, mem. I should know, Mrs. Barber, for troubles I've seen, and troubles I've come through. Ow's Jemima? poor lamb, she do take on SO with her teething.'

Such digressions are not unusual in the conversation of ladies who adorn this rank of life, and Jemima's infirmities disposed of, the original topic was reverted to with renewed vigour.

'It's weeks she's been here, Mrs. Mould,' resumed the proprietress, placing one arm akimbo, and the other with thumb reversed upon the counter, and nobody knows no more about her and her belong

ings nor when first she come. I never see her go out a-hairing, or what not, till dusk, and nobody will tell me that's what a respectable woman's been used to. I don't like your fly-by-nights, Mrs. Mould, and I never did. She may be this, and she may be that, but I say I can't make her out, I can't, nor Barber can't make her out, nor nobody can't make her out.'

'She come respectable, too, at first,' observed Mrs. Mould, meditatively. 'First-class railway ticket, two trunks, and a bonnet-box. It's truth, mem, for my lad, you know, he got a job up at the station. She pays regular, too, for what she has -little enough it is, they do tell me; but she's free with her money, for that matter. It's hard to tell, though; the worsest is the least likely to want, more's the pity. Deary me! it's a queer world!"

Mrs. Mould was quite right, it is a queer world. Why did they think ill of the stranger, these two honest, hard-working gossips? Simply because they knew nothing of her; and it seems to come so much more natural to suspect than to confide. Even in that remote country town, with its branch railway and its one hotel-by courtesy so-called-its half-a-dozen shops, its annual fair, and perennial stagnation, the drowsy inhabitants were as prone to think evil of their neighbours as if they formed the most bustling community of the most mercantile city in the world, where it is everybody's business to get the better of somebody else on the shortest notice. No trust,' seems to be the motto on the turnpike road of life. The toll-keeper is but a fair specimen of his kind. 'Will you trust me?' says the bagman, as he pulls up and ungloves, loth even in the act of payment to resist his commercial tendency to a joke. Why should I? answers the toll-keeper, 'I don't know you.' 'Will you trust me to-day? reiterates the waggish traveller on his return. 'Not I,' repeats the tollkeeper, I know you too well.' We are all toll-keepers or bagmen, I think. Confiding reader, would