the rod and bared its head to the cunning and did not rise as one man when in its midst a baby was murdered while all around a helpless kinsfolk were being robbed and wronged. "For the past, who would not choose it? Who would not, if they could, drop civilisation from them as one shakes off a horrid nightmare at the dawning of the day? Who would not be again a drover of cattle, a follower of the plough, a milker of cows, a spinner of wool-yarn by the fireside, to be, as well, strong and fierce and daring, slave to none and fearing none, ignorant alike of all the wisdom and all the woes of this hateful life that is? "For only one moment of the past if the whole past could not be! Only to be free for a moment if the rest were impossible! Only to lose one's hair and bare one's feet and girdle again the single garment round one's waist and to be filled with the frenzy that may madden still as it maddened our mothers when the Roman legions conquered! Only to stand for a moment, free, on the barricade, outlawed and joyous, with Death, Freedom's impregnable citadel, opening its gates behind--and to pass through, the red flag uplifted in the sight of all men, with flaming slums and smoking wrongs for one's funereal pyre!" * * * * * So Nellie thought in her indignation and sorrow, changing the wet cloth on the baby's head, powerless to help it, uncomforted by creeds that moulder in the crimson-cushioned pews. She knew that she was unjust, carried away by her tumultuous emotions, knew also, in her heart, that there was something more to be desired than mere wild outbreaks of the despairing. Only she thought, as we all think, in phases, and as she would certainly have talked had opportunity offered while she was in the mood, and as she would most undoubtedly have written had she just then been writing. The more so as there was a wave of indignation and anger sweeping over Australia, sympathetic with the indignation and anger of the voteless workers in the Queensland bush. The companions of her childhood were to be Gatling-gunned because of the squatters, whose selfish greed and heartless indifference to all others had made them hateful to this selector's daughter. Because the bushmen would not take the squatters' wage and yield his liberty as a workman to the squatter's bidding and agree to this and to that without consultation or discussion, the scum of southern towns and the sifted blacklegs of southern 'estates' were to be drafted in hordes to Queensland to break down the unionism that alone protected the bushman and made him more of a man than he had been when the squatter could do as he would and did. From the first days she could remember she had heard how the squatters filched from the bushmen in their stores and herded the bushmen in vile huts and preferred every colour to white when there were workers wanted; and how the magistrates were all squatters or squatters' friends and how Government