the
Lord!--I am whiter dan der dribben snow!"

Tom Hall sat down on the edge of the veranda and leaned his head against
a post and cried. He had contributed a bob this evening, and he was
getting his money's worth.

Then the Pretty Girl arrived and was pushed forward into the ring.
She looked thinner and whiter than I'd ever seen her, and there was a
feverish brightness in her eyes that I didn't like.

"Men!" she said, "this is Christmas Day-." I didn't hear any more for,
at the sound of her voice, Jack Moonlight jumped up as if he'd sat on a
baby. He started forward, stared at her for a moment as if he couldn't
believe his eyes, and then said, "Hannah!" short and sharp. She started
as if she was shot, gave him a wild look, and stumbled forward; the next
moment he had her in his arms and was steering for the private parlour.

I heard Mrs Bothways calling for water and smelling-salts; she was as
fat as Watty, and very much like him in the face, but she was emotional
and sympathetic. Then presently I heard, through the open window, the
Pretty Girl say to Jack, "Oh, Jack, Jack! Why did you go away and leave
me like that? It was cruel!"

"But you told me to go, Hannah," said Jack.

"That-that didn't make any difference. Why didn't you write?" she
sobbed.

"Because you never wrote to me, Hannah," he said.

"That--that was no excuse!" she said. "It was so k-k-k-cruel of you,
Jack."

Mrs Bothways pulled down the window. A new-comer asked Watty what the
trouble was, and he said that the Army girl had only found her chap, or
husband, or long-lost brother or something, but the missus was looking
after the business; then he dozed again.

And then we adjourned to the Royal and took the Army with us.

"That's the way of it," said Donald Macdonald. "With a woman it's love
or religion; with a man it's love or the devil."

"Or with a man," said Mitchell, presently, "it's love and the devil
both, sometimes, Donald."

I looked at Mitchell hard, but for all his face expressed he might only
have said, "I think it's going to rain."

"LORD DOUGLAS"

They hold him true, who's true to one,
However false he be.
-The Rouseabout of Rouseabouts.

The Imperial Hotel was rather an unfortunate name for an out-back town
pub, for out back is the stronghold of Australian democracy; it was
the out-back vote and influence that brought about "One Man One Vote,"
"Payment of Members," and most