King Billy hurried into the bush till he came to a water-hole, and, stripping off his rags, he held up the coat. His jaw fell; there was a remarkable exiguity about the coat which was inexplicable. He had never observed such in his life. He put it on, and, bending over the surface of the still pool, took a good look at the general effect. It was not bad from some points of view, but Billy had his doubts as to whether he would be received with the respect due to his title if he went into Ballarat clothed thus. He tried to button it, but discovered that, if it had ever been intended for buttoning, he could not get it to meet across his chest. He picked up his discarded frock-coat, which was held together by the collar; then he felt the stuff of which the dress-coat was made, and the material pleased him. “Oh, why,” asked Billy, “had it not been made with front tails?” He saw at last that this coat and his high hat alone were insufficient for civilisation. For full dress in a corroboree it might do. Unconsciously, he was so wrought upon by the purpose for which the coat had been built that he determined to reserve it for parties in the seclusion of the bush, where any merriment could be rightly checked by a crack from his waddy. He planted it carefully in a hollow log, and, having inserted himself with as much care into his discarded rags, he wondered off into the town. He got very intoxicated that night, and determined to have a party all by himself. Now it may seem very annoying, and I confess I find it so myself; but, having got so far, I don’t see my way to tell the rest, even if Annie Colborn told me the story herself. For after her father’s death she married a man who had a small sheep-station and a hotel not forty miles from Carabobla, in New South Wales. I stayed there a couple of days when I was going north to the Murrumbidgee. But though she told me, I cannot tell it again, at least not in bold, bad print. Still, it will occur to most that a man of King Billy’s sweet and innocent disposition might very likely create a sensation, when his natural discretion was drowned in bad whisky, if he ended his solitary corroboree in the moonlight by going up to Colborn’s house in order to deliver a speech of gratitude through the French windows. So Colborn and the king had a corroboree all to themselves in the open space before the house, while the gold commissioner’s guests roared with laughter to find out where the missing dress-coat was. Next day King Billy resumed the split frock-coat. THY HEART’S DESIRE, By Netta Syrett