to be a gentleman, and calls himself a
Christian, descend to such an ignominious position as to lead a party
of black troopers? If I were a man, and had to become a sub-inspector of
Native Police, I would at least blacken my face so as to hide my shame
when I rode out with my fellow-murderers and cutthroats."

* Wild blacks.

Her eyes, filled with tears as they were, flashed with scorn as she
spoke. The clergyman looked admiringly at her as he put his hand on her
arm.

"You must remember, Miss Fraser, that the wild blacks on this coast have
committed some dreadful murders. How many settlers, miners, and swagmen
have been ruthlessly slaughtered?"

"And how many hundreds of these unfortunate savages have been ruthlessly
slaughtered, not only by the Black Police, but by squatters and
stockmen, who deny the poor wretches the right to exist? We have taken
away their hunting grounds! We shoot them down as vermin, because,
impelled by the hunger that we have brought upon them, they occasionally
spear a bullock or horse or two! Why cannot the Government do as my
father suggests--reserve a long strip of country for these poor savages,
just a small piece of God's earth that shall be inviolate from the
greedy squatter, the miner, the sugar planter? And let the wretched
beings at least live and die a natural death."

The clergyman's face flushed as he listened to her passionate words.
"It is, I believe, impossible to segregate the coastal tribes of the
Australian mainland. The cost of such an attempt would, in the first
place, be enormous; in the second, the people of the colony----"

"The people, Mr Forde! You mean the squatters, the sugar-planters, the
land-devouring swarm of 'Christians,' who think that a bullock's hide,
worth twenty shillings, is of more moment than the welfare of thousands
of poor, naked savages, whose country we have taken, and yet of whom
we make beasts of burden--hewers of wood and drawers of water. Oh, if I
were only a man!"

"But you are, instead, a beautiful girl, Miss Fraser."

"Don't pay me any compliments, Mr Forde, or I shall begin to dislike
you, and work you a pair of woollen slippers like English girls do in
novels for the pale-faced, ascetic young curates, with their thin hands,
and the dark, melancholy eyes."

Forde laughed heartily this time, and held out his own hands jestingly
for her inspection; they were as brawny and sunburned as those of any
stockman or working miner, and