‘Well,’ mused Mr Dulcimer with a sigh as he resumed his seat under the tree; ‘if she won’t have me, I’ll cut the old country and try sheep-farming at the antipodes. Capital cure for love, sheep-farming.’ Taking a pipecase out of his pocket, he extracted therefrom a highly coloured meerschaum. ‘Come along, old friend; let you and me have a confab together. Stay, though, is it the correct thing for a curate—and I suppose everybody will insist on taking me for one—to smoke a meerschaum? Well, if they don’t do it in public, lots of them do it in private. Jolly fellows, some curates—others awful duffers.’ He rose and stretched himself. ‘There must be a quiet nook somewhere among those trees where a fellow can enjoy a whiff without the world being the wiser?’ Whereupon he sauntered away towards the lower part of the grounds, his hands behind his back and his book under his arm, totally unaware that his movements were being watched by a pair of bright black eyes from an upper window of the hotel. INTERVIEWED BY A BUSHRANGER. I was staying in Sydney for a few weeks, and had put up at the _Polynesian Club_. There I made the acquaintance of a young colonial journalist, by name Alison Fellgate, a frank, clever, easy-going fellow, who had compressed a good deal of life into his forty years. One evening after dinner we sat smoking under the broad veranda that ran round three sides of the Club building. Presently, Fellgate took out his watch and held it in his hand for a few moments. ‘I have an engagement this evening, but there is plenty of time yet,’ he said. ‘I have several times noticed what a particularly handsome watch that is of yours, Fellgate,’ I said. ‘Ah, that watch has a story,’ he replied. ‘I have observed some sort of inscription on it. A presentation, I suppose?’ ‘Right. It was a presentation, but of a somewhat unusual sort.’ ‘I grow curious. Let us have the story.’ ‘Very good. It is a story I have had to tell more than once. You must know, then, that I began my journalistic life in the colonies as editor of that able and distinguished organ of public opinion, the _Burragundi Beacon_. I had been conducting it for some six months, to the satisfaction, I am always proud to remember, of the proprietors, when that outbreak of bushranging which was headed by the notorious Frank Gardiner began to keep the country in a state of continual excitement and terrorism. I need not tell you that of all the knights of the bush, Frank Gardiner was in prowess and achievement second to none. For several years, he and his gang eluded all efforts at capture on the part of the government, until the country-people began to think that Frank, like his illustrious forerunner and prototype, Dick Turpin, bore a charmed life. At last, two thousand pounds was set on his head, alive or dead. One morning I received a short letter something like the following, addressed to the editor of the _Beacon_: