* * * * * The dear old boy sat silent, his grey head on his hand. Presently he went on, more to himself than to me: "What could I do? What proof had I? He had burnt them every one. And as long as the public would stand him, Morrison kept his good name at least. And that play was his great success!" I ventured gently to inquire what had happened to Pharazyn. "He died in my arms," my old friend cried, throwing up his head with an oath and a tear. "He died in a few minutes outside the theatre. I could hear them clapping after he was dead--clapping his piece." THE WIDOW OF PIPER'S POINT On the green shores of Sydney harbour, in a garden bounded by the beach, there sat long ago a wizened, elderly gentleman and a middle-aged, sweet-faced woman in widow's weeds. It was a glaring afternoon in early summer, but a bank of ferns protected the couple from the sun, the blue waters of Port Jackson frothed coolly upon the ribbon of golden sand at their feet, and the gentleman at all events was suitably attired. He wore a pair of nankeen trousers, fitting very close and strapped under the instep, with a surtout of the same material. A very tall, very narrow-brimmed hat rested on the ground between his chair and that of the lady; and his card, still lying in her lap, proclaimed a first visit on the part of Major Thomas Blacker, late of the Royal Artillery, but now relegated to Rose Bay, New South Wales. Mrs. Astley was, in fact, a new and interesting arrival in the settlement, who, having found the cottage to the south-east of Point Piper untenanted when she landed, had taken it within a week of that time, as if to eschew her new world as she had fled the old. Her nearest neighbour was the major himself, who lived on the opposite shore of Rose Bay, a mile away by land and half that distance by water. He had not been five minutes in the widow's garden when he pointed across the bay with his cane, and called her attention to a sunlit window blazing among the trees. "That's my place, madam," said the major in an impressive voice. "You can't see it properly for the scrub; but that's where you'll find me when you require my services. I'm afraid you'll have trouble with your convict servants; if you don't you'll be different from everybody else; when you do, you come to me."